Heck, with a fairly popular movie, a modern bittorrent client, and a decent connection you can go from starting the download to watching the movie in less time than that.
If you're going to do this, make sure there is a provision defining the font size, color, and background. Otherwise you might end up with the sort of black on brown 4pt. font that you get on tv advert disclaimers in the US.
Why would a group of people want a display they can all see, with a wireless control mechanism... why, why, why?
Everyone here complains about the "$foo on a computer" patent nonsense, but every time i see "$foo in a car" articles they are full of people shouting about mutilated accident victim porn.
Look, I get it, drivers shouldn't be messing around while they are driving. I agree that far. But that doesn't mean the passengers have to cower in silence for fear of creating a distraction. I would think if the passengers are entertained they would be much less likely to distract the driver.
ALSO:
In the not too distant future we are going to be seeing self-driving cars, and I don't blame the car makers for beginning to test the waters for socially enabled in car entertainment. Yes, some idiots are going to kill themselves and some innocents messing with it, but idiots already kill plenty of people with the widgets, makeup, pets, etc. that people interact with in their car. You can only engineer around stupid to a certain degree, after which, sure, you've made a perfectly safe car, but only a handful of people can afford the damn thing, or it's incredibly boring to operate (which can be dangerous in itself).
You know what driver's also shouldn't do? Mess with the radio, change the A/C setting, reach into the glove box, read a book, use the rear seat cupholder....
For a place where lots of people say we should carpool more, a whole lot of you seem to have forgotten about a little thing called PASSENGERS.
Not every feature on a vehicle is meant to be operated by the driver while it is moving.
I's an "R" all right, and that R is Religion. Believing that there is an infallible entity that controls the universe in all minutiae, and has laid down simple black and white laws to be followed, has a tendency to cause people to believe that, since they are on the side of unquestionable truth and goodness, any thought that passes through their mind obviously must have been placed there by the divine creator, and therefore who opposes it has certainly either made a mistake, or been led astray by the forces of evil.
Because that libertarian attitude every one should be able to enter any contract he wishes without restriction doesn't account for the realities of power play in this world. Only desperate people would sell their organs for money. Very ill rich people know that, so offering money to potential donors would not likely get them very far. However, they could give money to the potential donor's employer so the potential donor gets fired is much easier, then bribe all possible employers so they don't hire that potential donor. Afterwards, they can offer money to the banks so the potential donor doesn't get any credit. Why do all that
Indeed, why do all that when all you need to do is plant some drugs on his person or property and make an anonymous tip? Or child porn? Or terrorist training manuals?
My dad once asked his professor about how to format an assignment, to which the professor replied "I don't care if you do it upside down and backwards, as long as you do it." Well, you can guess where that led to.
After struggling through reading it, he gave my dad an A and made an announcement to the class that homework would no longer be accepted upside down and backwards.
You forgot: 4. Have you ever been convicted of a felony (i.e. picking up a bag of cannabis for your mother who's starving to death from chemotherapy nausea, or having a couple of painkillers in your pocket that you had to buy on the street because you're too poor for health insurance but too rich for medicaid)?
I'm sure we could find plenty of examples of non-drug-related felonies that shouldn't be also, but those account for the majority of the gross increase in number of disenfranchised "citizens".
I've been kicking around the idea of starting a felons rights organization. I've almost got the acronym worked out (that's the important part, right?;-) I just need a good "I" word. Something like 'supporting' or 'helping' but, you know, starting with an I.
American Felon's Rights Association I????? Disenfranchised
If anyone wants to put there email on a mailing list I may never use just send me an email at will.draven [at] ('not evil's' search giant's email domain).com with "AFRAID" in the subject line somewhere.
if these are sold with 0 miles flown, I'd buy one.
Maybe if I was just going to sit it in a climate controlled room and let it appreciate. If I was going to fly in the thing I think I'd prefer if the original owner has rebuilt it and given it at least a test flight or two. But then again I've never been the type to get my hands greasy if I can avoid it. I love fast well built machines, but prefer to let someone else do the dirty work of assembling them.
Of course I first have to win the lottery, throw money at lawyers to get my criminal record expunged, learn to fly, get licensed, buy an antique warplane, pay off the FAA, ATF, DHS, and any other three letter agencies that wouldn't like me flying around with live ammunition, blowing stuff up in the desert.:-D
I'll concede that point, but also dispute it. I personally love micro-brews, but arguing that they are what you should think of when someone says "American Beer" is almost like saying "Rain is only water if you ignore the microscopic dust granule that the droplets formed around." Technically true, statistically insignificant.
Oh, and also, my post was a joke; or maybe two beat-to-death jokes combined. Either way I didn't think it warranted a rebuttal from the micro-brew defense league.
Of course I kind of expected it. It might say something that nobody rushed in to defend American Coffee...
What everyone must keep in mind is this: Even if absolutely none of the solar panels produced today will ever break even (a debatable point, if nothing else), if nobody bought them now, there would be no incentive to increase efficiency in the manufacturing process. Unless physics makes it impossible for solar panels to ever be an economically viable option, I still think it's worth putting the effort into improving the state of the art in the field, even if it has to be subsidized by, oh, I don't know, maybe.. the federal government inflating demand by installing them on large new buildings....
So, you're taking an imaginary situation and trying to compare it to a real one.
Shock and horror! Somebody used an analogy to explain something on Slashdot!
Show me an actual park where a rock quary donated rubble to the pavement of a park that someone writes blog posts praising rock quaries and condemning something that is against rock quaries.
Yeah, right.
Exactly "Yeah, right" It is an absurd situation and was meant as such. The point being, most people using a FREE SERVICE neither know, NOR CARE where the components that went into it came from. There are thousands of web sites and multimedia services hosted on ibiblio. Are we to assume that they are all sucking IBM's giant corporate cock?
We're talking about the fact that PJ public supports IBM in her blog posts, and it just so happens that IBM also donates the servers her site runs under.
IBM has not donated servers to GROKLAW. IBM donated servers to THE UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA, who allows the public to use it's IT infrastructure for non-profit use. The servers donated by IBM are only part of that. She has the same amount of conflict of interest with IBM as she does with UNC's ISP, electric company, IT employees, and anybody who ever donated to the project, the university, or paid taxes in North Carolina. You could argue she has a conflict of interest with UNC, but she has disclosed this with a "hosted by ibiblio" on her page, and, after all this "oh IBM paid her off with teh serverz!" nonsense started up, she decided to put below it who donated the specific server that her site was hosted on, and guess what, IT WAS DONATED BY AMD. My bet is she had not have even known who donated the server she was using until she was accused of being influenced by it.
If she had a shred of decency, she would have moved her site to a server that was not associated with IBM. But she didn't.
That makes about as much sense as saying you have an undisclosed conflict of interest with the local rock quarry owner, because they donated their unwanted rubble to be used to pave the parking lot of the park you like to sit in while you write blog posts on your laptop.
Seriously, take the tin foil hat off and let your brain get some air. I think it's smothering.
If one wanted to, one could argue that the only non-natural materials are the transuranian elements. I will say that with this definition I certainly wouldn't want to be eating any non-natural ingredients!
Well, thanks for explaining that mystery. I had wondered why the number of their products and locations carrying them had suddenly exponentially increased. Not enough to google for an answer, but I was kind of mystified by the Burt's Bees hair spray, toothpaste, perfume, and shaving cream section that had cropped up in all the grocery stores.
Personally, I like (as in, I think it would be cool, not I believe the evidence implies it's true) the idea that space is finite, but unbounded. If that were the case (and you could travel faster than light) you could travel in a straight line (correcting for local [and non-local?] curvature of space) and end back up where you started.
The average cops attitude reminds me of the Roman consul Gnaeus Pompey, who conquered Syria and Jerusalem without the senates prior approval. When some of his victims complained that his actions were unjust, he responded "Stop quoting the laws to us, we carry swords."
Unfortunately, unless you're in a limo or taxi, around here (North Carolina) that gets you a ticket for "open container in a motor vehicle" potentially for both the passenger and the driver if the beverage is "fortified wine or spirituous liquor" or the driver has had any alcohol recently, even if under the legal limit for DUI. Also, if you are pulled over, the officer can demand that you submit to breath and/or blood tests to test for alcohol or drugs. If you test over 0.08 (0.04 for commercial vehicles, 0.00 for those under 21) test positive for any drugs (never mind that you will test positive for many drugs loooong after you are no longer impaired) or refuse to submit to the test, you will have your license immediately suspended for 30 days, and then suspended for a year once you have a hearing (even if you are found not guilty, in the event of a refusal to submit to testing).
I wont even get into all the problems with breathalyzers, there is plenty of info out there in various places. I can't seem to find the one site I saw some time ago that went through all the scientific and legal problems with them. If anyone knows what I'm talking about respond with a link.
One of the problems around here at least is that the MADD Mothers really want prohibition back, and keep pushing for stricter limits on alcohol, and more severe punishments. They were recently pushing to have the legal limit for DUI lowered to 0.06.
In the U.S. losing your license can really destroy your life. Refuse the test? DUI. DUI? Lose your license. No license? Can't drive to work (and no, public transportation if very often not an option, unless you can afford a taxi, which can cost more than you make if you're in a minimum wage job), so you lose your job. No job? No money. Better hope your parents are still around and can afford to lend you some, cause otherwise you'll end up in jail after you fall behind on your probation payments.Unless of course they just keep extending your probation (with an additional $60 added to your balance each month).
Slashdot Mirror
Hmmm...
-goes off to patent electrically activated, self darkening windows.. ON A COMPUTER^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H CAR!-
Heck, with a fairly popular movie, a modern bittorrent client, and a decent connection you can go from starting the download to watching the movie in less time than that.
If you're going to do this, make sure there is a provision defining the font size, color, and background. Otherwise you might end up with the sort of black on brown 4pt. font that you get on tv advert disclaimers in the US.
Hooray for fatalism!
er, wait, I mean..
Fatalism, it exists, oh well.
Why would a group of people want a display they can all see, with a wireless control mechanism... why, why, why?
Everyone here complains about the "$foo on a computer" patent nonsense, but every time i see "$foo in a car" articles they are full of people shouting about mutilated accident victim porn.
Look, I get it, drivers shouldn't be messing around while they are driving. I agree that far. But that doesn't mean the passengers have to cower in silence for fear of creating a distraction. I would think if the passengers are entertained they would be much less likely to distract the driver.
ALSO:
In the not too distant future we are going to be seeing self-driving cars, and I don't blame the car makers for beginning to test the waters for socially enabled in car entertainment. Yes, some idiots are going to kill themselves and some innocents messing with it, but idiots already kill plenty of people with the widgets, makeup, pets, etc. that people interact with in their car. You can only engineer around stupid to a certain degree, after which, sure, you've made a perfectly safe car, but only a handful of people can afford the damn thing, or it's incredibly boring to operate (which can be dangerous in itself).
You know what driver's also shouldn't do? Mess with the radio, change the A/C setting, reach into the glove box, read a book, use the rear seat cupholder....
For a place where lots of people say we should carpool more, a whole lot of you seem to have forgotten about a little thing called PASSENGERS.
Not every feature on a vehicle is meant to be operated by the driver while it is moving.
I just got the mental image of a guy telling his screener "I'm smuggling something in my semen, you're going to have to get it out to find out what."
Not around here (Raleigh, NC). They call it "concealing merchandise" and it's prosecuted like a misdemeanor larceny charge.
I's an "R" all right, and that R is Religion. Believing that there is an infallible entity that controls the universe in all minutiae, and has laid down simple black and white laws to be followed, has a tendency to cause people to believe that, since they are on the side of unquestionable truth and goodness, any thought that passes through their mind obviously must have been placed there by the divine creator, and therefore who opposes it has certainly either made a mistake, or been led astray by the forces of evil.
Because that libertarian attitude every one should be able to enter any contract he wishes without restriction doesn't account for the realities of power play in this world. Only desperate people would sell their organs for money. Very ill rich people know that, so offering money to potential donors would not likely get them very far. However, they could give money to the potential donor's employer so the potential donor gets fired is much easier, then bribe all possible employers so they don't hire that potential donor. Afterwards, they can offer money to the banks so the potential donor doesn't get any credit. Why do all that
Indeed, why do all that when all you need to do is plant some drugs on his person or property and make an anonymous tip? Or child porn? Or terrorist training manuals?
My dad once asked his professor about how to format an assignment, to which the professor replied "I don't care if you do it upside down and backwards, as long as you do it." Well, you can guess where that led to.
After struggling through reading it, he gave my dad an A and made an announcement to the class that homework would no longer be accepted upside down and backwards.
You forgot: 4. Have you ever been convicted of a felony (i.e. picking up a bag of cannabis for your mother who's starving to death from chemotherapy nausea, or having a couple of painkillers in your pocket that you had to buy on the street because you're too poor for health insurance but too rich for medicaid)?
I'm sure we could find plenty of examples of non-drug-related felonies that shouldn't be also, but those account for the majority of the gross increase in number of disenfranchised "citizens".
I've been kicking around the idea of starting a felons rights organization. I've almost got the acronym worked out (that's the important part, right? ;-) I just need a good "I" word. Something like 'supporting' or 'helping' but, you know, starting with an I.
American
Felon's
Rights
Association
I?????
Disenfranchised
If anyone wants to put there email on a mailing list I may never use just send me an email at will.draven [at] ('not evil's' search giant's email domain).com with "AFRAID" in the subject line somewhere.
if these are sold with 0 miles flown, I'd buy one.
Maybe if I was just going to sit it in a climate controlled room and let it appreciate. If I was going to fly in the thing I think I'd prefer if the original owner has rebuilt it and given it at least a test flight or two. But then again I've never been the type to get my hands greasy if I can avoid it. I love fast well built machines, but prefer to let someone else do the dirty work of assembling them.
Of course I first have to win the lottery, throw money at lawyers to get my criminal record expunged, learn to fly, get licensed, buy an antique warplane, pay off the FAA, ATF, DHS, and any other three letter agencies that wouldn't like me flying around with live ammunition, blowing stuff up in the desert. :-D
I'll concede that point, but also dispute it. I personally love micro-brews, but arguing that they are what you should think of when someone says "American Beer" is almost like saying "Rain is only water if you ignore the microscopic dust granule that the droplets formed around." Technically true, statistically insignificant.
Oh, and also, my post was a joke; or maybe two beat-to-death jokes combined. Either way I didn't think it warranted a rebuttal from the micro-brew defense league.
Of course I kind of expected it. It might say something that nobody rushed in to defend American Coffee...
Well, duh.
Everyone knows that it's American BEER that's made of pee.
Taster's Choice and other American Coffee are composed of charred feces.
Can't be mixing up your excrements like that.
What everyone must keep in mind is this: Even if absolutely none of the solar panels produced today will ever break even (a debatable point, if nothing else), if nobody bought them now, there would be no incentive to increase efficiency in the manufacturing process. Unless physics makes it impossible for solar panels to ever be an economically viable option, I still think it's worth putting the effort into improving the state of the art in the field, even if it has to be subsidized by, oh, I don't know, maybe.. the federal government inflating demand by installing them on large new buildings....
So, you're taking an imaginary situation and trying to compare it to a real one.
Shock and horror! Somebody used an analogy to explain something on Slashdot!
Show me an actual park where a rock quary donated rubble to the pavement of a park that someone writes blog posts praising rock quaries and condemning something that is against rock quaries.
Yeah, right.
Exactly "Yeah, right" It is an absurd situation and was meant as such. The point being, most people using a FREE SERVICE neither know, NOR CARE where the components that went into it came from. There are thousands of web sites and multimedia services hosted on ibiblio. Are we to assume that they are all sucking IBM's giant corporate cock?
We're talking about the fact that PJ public supports IBM in her blog posts, and it just so happens that IBM also donates the servers her site runs under.
IBM has not donated servers to GROKLAW. IBM donated servers to THE UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA, who allows the public to use it's IT infrastructure for non-profit use. The servers donated by IBM are only part of that. She has the same amount of conflict of interest with IBM as she does with UNC's ISP, electric company, IT employees, and anybody who ever donated to the project, the university, or paid taxes in North Carolina. You could argue she has a conflict of interest with UNC, but she has disclosed this with a "hosted by ibiblio" on her page, and, after all this "oh IBM paid her off with teh serverz!" nonsense started up, she decided to put below it who donated the specific server that her site was hosted on, and guess what, IT WAS DONATED BY AMD. My bet is she had not have even known who donated the server she was using until she was accused of being influenced by it.
If she had a shred of decency, she would have moved her site to a server that was not associated with IBM. But she didn't.
Oh, the irony...
That makes about as much sense as saying you have an undisclosed conflict of interest with the local rock quarry owner, because they donated their unwanted rubble to be used to pave the parking lot of the park you like to sit in while you write blog posts on your laptop.
Seriously, take the tin foil hat off and let your brain get some air. I think it's smothering.
If one wanted to, one could argue that the only non-natural materials are the transuranian elements. I will say that with this definition I certainly wouldn't want to be eating any non-natural ingredients!
Well, thanks for explaining that mystery. I had wondered why the number of their products and locations carrying them had suddenly exponentially increased. Not enough to google for an answer, but I was kind of mystified by the Burt's Bees hair spray, toothpaste, perfume, and shaving cream section that had cropped up in all the grocery stores.
I've heard more than my fair share of stories of evidence decreasing in weight and volume between arrest and the evidence locker (or even afterwards).
Of course I'm of the opinion that confiscating people's plant extracts and medicines and terrorizing them in the process should be against the law.
This quote helps explain why my dad calls himself a Barry Goldwater Republican, on his way to go vote for a Democrat.
Personally, I like (as in, I think it would be cool, not I believe the evidence implies it's true) the idea that space is finite, but unbounded. If that were the case (and you could travel faster than light) you could travel in a straight line (correcting for local [and non-local?] curvature of space) and end back up where you started.
The average cops attitude reminds me of the Roman consul Gnaeus Pompey, who conquered Syria and Jerusalem without the senates prior approval. When some of his victims complained that his actions were unjust, he responded "Stop quoting the laws to us, we carry swords."
Unfortunately, unless you're in a limo or taxi, around here (North Carolina) that gets you a ticket for "open container in a motor vehicle" potentially for both the passenger and the driver if the beverage is "fortified wine or spirituous liquor" or the driver has had any alcohol recently, even if under the legal limit for DUI. Also, if you are pulled over, the officer can demand that you submit to breath and/or blood tests to test for alcohol or drugs. If you test over 0.08 (0.04 for commercial vehicles, 0.00 for those under 21) test positive for any drugs (never mind that you will test positive for many drugs loooong after you are no longer impaired) or refuse to submit to the test, you will have your license immediately suspended for 30 days, and then suspended for a year once you have a hearing (even if you are found not guilty, in the event of a refusal to submit to testing).
I wont even get into all the problems with breathalyzers, there is plenty of info out there in various places. I can't seem to find the one site I saw some time ago that went through all the scientific and legal problems with them. If anyone knows what I'm talking about respond with a link.
http://sogweb.sog.unc.edu/blogs/ncclaw/?p=1896
http://www.nccrimecontrol.org/index2.cfm?a=000003,000014,000935,000940
http://www.nccrimecontrol.org/Index2.cfm?a=000003,000014,000935,000939
One of the problems around here at least is that the MADD Mothers really want prohibition back, and keep pushing for stricter limits on alcohol, and more severe punishments. They were recently pushing to have the legal limit for DUI lowered to 0.06.
In the U.S. losing your license can really destroy your life. Refuse the test? DUI. DUI? Lose your license. No license? Can't drive to work (and no, public transportation if very often not an option, unless you can afford a taxi, which can cost more than you make if you're in a minimum wage job), so you lose your job. No job? No money. Better hope your parents are still around and can afford to lend you some, cause otherwise you'll end up in jail after you fall behind on your probation payments.Unless of course they just keep extending your probation (with an additional $60 added to your balance each month).
Freedom and Justice for all, right?