his story is nothing new. What's really needed is a clarification of terms... I have RSI (Repetitive Stress Injuries) and my carpal tunnel is just fine.
Ditto. I can't find my exact symptoms described anywhere, and I've seen 8 doctors so far, none of whom can describe in any sensible detail what is going wrong. But it seems clear I have RSI and not Carpal Tunnel Syndrome.
Accupuncture has helped (I am a skeptic, and believe it might just be placebo -- but if so, it's a powerful placebo!), though for the record, it does hurt me, lots. Taking hot baths, MS Natural keyboard, Logitech natural mouse, placing keyboard in my lap, and using these funky wrist splints with shoelaces on the side (Amazon has em) have all helped.
New York City agreed to a proprietary, closed design for their bus/subway card, "MetroCard." Only the company that designed the card knows the information storage format (although hackers have deciphered some of the unencrypted information, like some users' social security numbers!)
The result? As the Village Voice revealed in several investigative pieces in 1997/8, The state (which administers the city's public transportation) is forced to pay an obscene $125,000 for each full-sized MetroCard vending machine they buy. They've lost millions of dollars (money which, for example, might have prevented the recent strike) just because they misunderstood the difference between "proprietary" and "secure."
Does anyone else remember reading about Planet X, which had been detected because of its periodic blocking of light from nearby stars, around 1990? What about the other Pluto-sized Kuiper belt objects under discussion for the past three years? This announcement seems strangely out of context.
I agree that you sound like a libertarian. (I'm not one -- I'm a social democrat, but I agree that most of us social democrats support bloated governments when we get into power).
Want to find out where you fall on the political spectrum, and whether you are a libertarian, liberal, conservative, or socialist?
I can't tell the difference between CD and MP3 192 and CD and Vorbis 128...
I agree that OGG is excellent. In fact, I can often hear weird tinny-sounding artifacts and clicks in MP3 even at 160, while OGG sounds clean. Moreover, the sound of OGG is more, how should I say this, luscious than MP3, even when I compare OGG 80 mbps to MP3 128.
By the way, you should try that compile someone did that allowed Vorbis to encode to -2 quality at 500 BITS per second. It sounded quite amazing, considering the size...
This is what I have found in my own tests. Using
Audiograbber (open-source cd ripper that supports ogg, LAME mp3 and more), I ripped several tracks into mp3 and ogg at different bitrates. I found, to my amazement, that I couldn't tell the difference between ogg at 80mbps (!) and CD most of the time. Now all of my music on my iRiver iHP-120 (around $200 for 20gb player on ebay) is in ogg, at about half the space that mp3's would take, and at better quality.
Kennedy's concurrence is pretty convincing: this case
may not seem fair, but basically, a parking lot for the public to park in
near a park and other public stuff *is* a "public use", not just a pretext
for destroying the homes, or a giveaway to Pfizer. It may not be a very
necessary public use, but the consitution doesn't say it need be. The
takings clause is focused on the compensation, not on defining when the
government may take property, anyway.
In short, I just don't think this case has much connection to the
constitution; certainly not as much as, say, a commerce-clause case, which
at least looks at whether the constitution's wording fits the authority
the federal government is claiming.
O'Connor says that the court, by considering a roundabout justification of
"public use", is effectively removing the "public use" constraint from the
constitution. I'm afraid that is wishful thinking on her part, at least
from where I'm sitting. The fact is that in this matter, and in many
others, the constitution is just vague. The constitution does not and
cannot forbid local governments from doing stupid and unfair things.
But this brings up an interesting point to me. We learn in school that the
Supreme Court's role is to interpret the constitution and ensure that laws
and government or private actions do not violate it. Of course, this is
not strictly the case; really, every court in the country does this, and
the SC also follows the various legal traditions, and even may cite
abstract notions such as "reason and justice" themselves (as O'Connor does
indirectly, quoting Jutice Chase).
This, of course, leads to a fundamental (and I assume, among legal
scholars and students, very familiar?) contradiction of modern law: there
is so damn much of it, in conflicting decisions from different ages, in
common law and other legal traditions, in legislative law both current and
obsolete; can't a judge, like a skillful vendor, pluck the most favorable
cherries, and present these as his produce? To find an unequivocal voice
against eminent domain, Thomas, in his dissent, quotes Blackstone and
Kent's interpretations of common law (thanks, Wikipedia). All well and
good, but if you will go as far back as you need to in order to find clear
allies, why bother to cite them at all? What Thomas really means is, this
case has just gone too far; regardless of what the founding fathers would
have done, or the Taney court, or the Marshall court, or whoever, *I* say
eminent domain shouldn't go so far. The other justices are no different.
O'Connor points out that "the parcel might eventually be used for
parking," supposedly as an innocuous bit of background information, but of
course this reflects her sense of outrage, not that there has been a
technical misinterpretation of law, but that wrong is being done.
Stevens et al's opinion quotes various cases where local governments'
eminent domain seizures have beeen upheld, then says "There is, moreover,
no principled way of distinguishing economic development from the other
public purposes that we have recognized." Well, okay, but doesn't that beg
the question of why those other decisions were right in the first place?
Really, why are the opinions in this case any more cogent that a simple
"dude, that's fucked up!" or "dude, the town's gotta do what the town's
gotta do!"? Why are any decisions considered any more cogent than that?
look at all the tasks' priorities and due
dates (and a random factor) and tell me which one I need to be doing right now.
I keep dozens of items on my todo list at one time, and need them all to come up frequently so that I don't forget them, but don't want to have to look over my whole list every day.
The technology described by Philip is definitely not in this list; the article's submitter is... lazy
>p>Actually, in PKD's book The Divine Invasion, there is an female musician who all of the lonely settlers of other planets love to listen to; she is secretly an AI program created to perfectly comfort through audio and video streams.
TFA is like this in that it involves connecting emotionally to music produced by AI.
the digital error: why high-capacity dvds?
on
Apple Backs Blu-ray
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
I love dvds for many reason, but I hate their unreliability. They degrade far less gracefully than cds, grinding to a halt instead of skipping. I've had even the newest dvd players, and current computers, crash when encountering minor dvd scratches.
So is it a good idea to increase the dvd's capacity? Are the Blu-ray or HD-DVD consortia doing anything to improve digital degrading?
Or is digital storage the wrong form for physical distribution of entertainment? Should we be pushing for refinements in analog instead? After all, my lps may be scratchy, but they all still play, as opposed to kill bill 1 which just crashed last month on my dvd player...
... if Cory wasn't a geek, he'd be writing for Cosmopolitan Magazine.
If a non-geek Cory wrote about fashion and gender (as the previous post suggests), I don't think Comsopolitan would know what the hell to do with one of his gender-jamming, ad-hoc-plastic-surgery, schoolyard-runway stories.
I, for one, really like Cory's writing. It's a little uneven, but frankly, I've read enough even writing that's unimaginative.
Friends keep recommending me writers like Zadie Smith, Don DeLillo and Philip Roth... all of whom seem tired and verbose, none of whom speak to the new forms of culture (and new insights to existing culture) that I see coming to light each day. Cory's writing reflects on these insights and posits new ones, in the tradition of the best sci-fi.
"I, Robot" is punchy, smart, and relevant, and it feels urgent. Hey, Philip Dick was a pretty lousy writer when judged by the quality of prose on any one page (sorry, but it's true) but his ideas light up his books and make them something special that few "great novelists" can touch.
In Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom (no spoilers) his main character does whine quite a bit... but it's in a context where the whining is a symptom of the technology involved.
I would, however, like to see him treat his utopias more subtly than "no more crime" and "no more emotional risk".
You're right, "projects" and "dreams" are not really supported yet... but I'll do it soon, I swear!
[heh heh... "I don't support your dreams!" etc.]
Yes, I figure I'll tinker with it for another few weeks after work, then put it on sourceforge (so it's at least fully functional within its narrow parameters before I ask people to tinker with it too). In the meantime, please play with the source, and let me know your ideas or code changes.
Also, please email me if this project interests you and I'll email you when I put the beta on sourceforge.
on the subject, i've been working on my own php/mysql app, "prioritexter", which is basically a glorified todo list, that sorts items by a combination of priority you set and proximity to their due date. I needed it because I keep dozens of items on my todo list at one time, and need them all to come up frequently so that I don't forget them, but don't want to have to look over my whole list every day.
I can't find any sign of them online, but there was a great line of books with short and fun BASIC programs (mostly games) published by Usborne in the 80's. I typed them into Microsoft Basic for the Mac, then started tweaking them and eventually created my own.
put a... 'E' 'Internet' icon pointing to Firefox and I bet they wouldn't know the difference.
That's what I do with Firefox at the high school computer lab where I work... put a link on the desktop, rename it "Internet Explorer", and change its icon to IE's. Works like a charm, and no spyware!
Though it's a small project, bspam is an excellent Bayesian filter for *nix... I tried bogofilter and some others but nothing jived with my qmail/procmail/pine setup as nicely as bspam.
I agree strongly that learning is more important than prestige. I got a CS degree at Columbia University, and believe you me, that doesn't mean much knowledge of how to actually program in real life.
When I graduated, my ivy league degree opened exactly zero doors for me. I became a junior programmer under a Bulgarian guy who went to some university no one ever heard of but who could program like a fiend. He's writing his own programming ticket now, and I'm teaching math to high school kids (fun but not lucrative!)
Ditto on grad school -- save your money on the undergrad degree, get a good gpa, do subsidized research in a prestigious grad school, and you come out on top in a big way with little debt!
Pest Patrol belongs on this list, as in my experience it beats out Adaware and SpySweeper. It's not shareware but definitely worth the $40 I paid for it.
but will it have wireless internet access? is it capable of rendering websites via html, wml or perhaps msntv techniques? and can its 802.11b hardware act as a repeater, so wireless games and wireless internet can be daisy-chained?
I appreciate the devotion to making mom's pc use OS/Linux, but for me windows is finally stable enough (win2k and winXP) for my parents to use. I set up pc's for a high school student computer lab regularly, and I've found a configuration process that so far has resulted in zero upkeep aside from the occasional printer driver brainfart. Yes, something will eventually find its way in, but ie isn't a problem because I obfuscate ie by putting firefox on the desktop with ie's logo and name and the kids never know the difference.
here is what I do as soon as a pc comes out of the box:
wipe hd because pc's ship with so much crap installed, install xp clean. update with sp2.
set up admin account with my own password, then set up a safe limited user account with no password. this way less app installation
speed up GUI: turn off fade effect and menu shadows
turn off unnecessary services: go to start, run, type services.msc. change the following services properties startup type to:
service name - desired startup type
alerter - disabled
clipbook - disabled
computer browser - disabled
Distributed Link Tracking Client - manual
Error Reporting Service - disabled
Help and Support - manual
Indexing Service - disabled
Logical Disk Manager - manual
Net Logon - disabled
NetMeeting Remote Desktop Sharing - disabled
Messenger - disabled
Network DDE - disabled
Network DDE DSDM - disabled
Network Location Awareness (NLA) - disabled
Network Provisioning Service - disabled
Performance Logs and Alerts - disabled
Portable Media Serial Number Service - disabled
QoS RSVP - disabled
Remote Desktop Help Session Manager - disabled
Remote Registry Service - disabled
Secondary Logon - disabled
Security Center - disabled
Server - disabled
Smart Card - disabled
Smart Card Helper - disabled
SSDP Discovery Service - disabled
System Restore Service - disabled
TCP/IP NetBIOS Helper Service - disabled
Telnet - disabled
Uninterruptible Power Supply - disabled
Universal Plug and Play Device Host - disabled
Upload Manager - disabled
WebClient - disabled
Wireless Zero Configuration - manual
WMI Performance Adapter - disabled
clean up all the crap on desktop. delete all the shortcuts that point to stuff you dont need.
use the add and remove programs control panel to uninstall crap like MSN and ViewPoint
Stop Messenger from loading on startup
Open the System control panel. click on the System Restore tab, and make sure Turn off System Restore is checked. click on the remote tab and uncheck everything there. click on the advanced tab and click the settings button under performance. click Adjust for best performance.
get rid of balloon tips: navigate regedit to : HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Curre ntVersion\Explorer\Advanced . if the field EnableBalloonTips exists, then double-click it and set the value to 0. if it does not exist, then right-click on an empty space in the right pane and select New, then DWORD Value. Give it a name of EnableBalloonTips.
start menu: change to classic view, do not group similar taskbar items, show quick launch
edit quick launch so it shows desktop button, browser, word processor, spreadsheet, calculator, notepad, thunderbird
Create My Downloads folder in My Documents. store downloads there.
Get internet connection running (may need to find new copy of ethernet card driver)
if used by staff member rather than students, Download Thunderbird, configure.
Download Firefox. change its download target location to My Documents/My Downloads.
delete Internet Explorer link on desktop. replace with Firefox. heres the kicker: rename Firefox link 'Internet Explorer' and change its icon to Internet Explorer's.
At the school where I work, kids unwittingly install spyware all the time, thanks to IE and various messengers and such.
Firefox is only a partial solution, but it's a big step, so I remove/hide IE and place a link to firefox on the desktop and in the start menu.
Here's the coup de grace: I go into the firefox link's properties and change its icon to IE's icon! (click change icon, find the IE folder in Programs, select iexplore).
The kids never know the difference and when I come back to do maintenance, the machines are usually spyware-free.
Slashdot Mirror
his story is nothing new. What's really needed is a clarification of terms... I have RSI (Repetitive Stress Injuries) and my carpal tunnel is just fine.
Ditto. I can't find my exact symptoms described anywhere, and I've seen 8 doctors so far, none of whom can describe in any sensible detail what is going wrong. But it seems clear I have RSI and not Carpal Tunnel Syndrome.
Accupuncture has helped (I am a skeptic, and believe it might just be placebo -- but if so, it's a powerful placebo!), though for the record, it does hurt me, lots. Taking hot baths, MS Natural keyboard, Logitech natural mouse, placing keyboard in my lap, and using these funky wrist splints with shoelaces on the side (Amazon has em) have all helped.
New York City agreed to a proprietary, closed design for their bus/subway card, "MetroCard." Only the company that designed the card knows the information storage format (although hackers have deciphered some of the unencrypted information, like some users' social security numbers!)
The result? As the Village Voice revealed in several investigative pieces in 1997/8, The state (which administers the city's public transportation) is forced to pay an obscene $125,000 for each full-sized MetroCard vending machine they buy. They've lost millions of dollars (money which, for example, might have prevented the recent strike) just because they misunderstood the difference between "proprietary" and "secure."
Does anyone else remember reading about Planet X, which had been detected because of its periodic blocking of light from nearby stars, around 1990? What about the other Pluto-sized Kuiper belt objects under discussion for the past three years? This announcement seems strangely out of context.
I agree that you sound like a libertarian. (I'm not one -- I'm a social democrat, but I agree that most of us social democrats support bloated governments when we get into power).
Want to find out where you fall on the political spectrum, and whether you are a libertarian, liberal, conservative, or socialist?
Try taking this brief (about 40 multiple-choice questions) political placement test.
I agree that OGG is excellent. In fact, I can often hear weird tinny-sounding artifacts and clicks in MP3 even at 160, while OGG sounds clean. Moreover, the sound of OGG is more, how should I say this, luscious than MP3, even when I compare OGG 80 mbps to MP3 128.
By the way, you should try that compile someone did that allowed Vorbis to encode to -2 quality at 500 BITS per second. It sounded quite amazing, considering the size...
This is what I have found in my own tests. Using Audiograbber (open-source cd ripper that supports ogg, LAME mp3 and more), I ripped several tracks into mp3 and ogg at different bitrates. I found, to my amazement, that I couldn't tell the difference between ogg at 80mbps (!) and CD most of the time. Now all of my music on my iRiver iHP-120 (around $200 for 20gb player on ebay) is in ogg, at about half the space that mp3's would take, and at better quality.
Also see this comparison of OGG, MP3 (LAME 3.91), WMA8, and MP3Pro at 64mbps and 128mbps, which I didn't believe until I reproduced the results with my own encoder.
In short, I just don't think this case has much connection to the constitution; certainly not as much as, say, a commerce-clause case, which at least looks at whether the constitution's wording fits the authority the federal government is claiming.
O'Connor says that the court, by considering a roundabout justification of "public use", is effectively removing the "public use" constraint from the constitution. I'm afraid that is wishful thinking on her part, at least from where I'm sitting. The fact is that in this matter, and in many others, the constitution is just vague. The constitution does not and cannot forbid local governments from doing stupid and unfair things.
But this brings up an interesting point to me. We learn in school that the Supreme Court's role is to interpret the constitution and ensure that laws and government or private actions do not violate it. Of course, this is not strictly the case; really, every court in the country does this, and the SC also follows the various legal traditions, and even may cite abstract notions such as "reason and justice" themselves (as O'Connor does indirectly, quoting Jutice Chase).
This, of course, leads to a fundamental (and I assume, among legal scholars and students, very familiar?) contradiction of modern law: there is so damn much of it, in conflicting decisions from different ages, in common law and other legal traditions, in legislative law both current and obsolete; can't a judge, like a skillful vendor, pluck the most favorable cherries, and present these as his produce? To find an unequivocal voice against eminent domain, Thomas, in his dissent, quotes Blackstone and Kent's interpretations of common law (thanks, Wikipedia). All well and good, but if you will go as far back as you need to in order to find clear allies, why bother to cite them at all? What Thomas really means is, this case has just gone too far; regardless of what the founding fathers would have done, or the Taney court, or the Marshall court, or whoever, *I* say eminent domain shouldn't go so far. The other justices are no different. O'Connor points out that "the parcel might eventually be used for parking," supposedly as an innocuous bit of background information, but of course this reflects her sense of outrage, not that there has been a technical misinterpretation of law, but that wrong is being done.
Stevens et al's opinion quotes various cases where local governments' eminent domain seizures have beeen upheld, then says "There is, moreover, no principled way of distinguishing economic development from the other public purposes that we have recognized." Well, okay, but doesn't that beg the question of why those other decisions were right in the first place?
Really, why are the opinions in this case any more cogent that a simple "dude, that's fucked up!" or "dude, the town's gotta do what the town's gotta do!"? Why are any decisions considered any more cogent than that?
I keep dozens of items on my todo list at one time, and need them all to come up frequently so that I don't forget them, but don't want to have to look over my whole list every day.
So I made my own. It's called "Prioritizer" and though it's far from finished, you can install and use it [.zip with php for *nix server with php/mysql support, can be installed on a basic shared hosting account] or try a demo out on the web.
It should be considered gamma, or delta, or something short of beta. please give me feedback or edit it yourself!
TFA is like this in that it involves connecting emotionally to music produced by AI.
I love dvds for many reason, but I hate their unreliability. They degrade far less gracefully than cds, grinding to a halt instead of skipping. I've had even the newest dvd players, and current computers, crash when encountering minor dvd scratches.
So is it a good idea to increase the dvd's capacity? Are the Blu-ray or HD-DVD consortia doing anything to improve digital degrading?
Or is digital storage the wrong form for physical distribution of entertainment? Should we be pushing for refinements in analog instead? After all, my lps may be scratchy, but they all still play, as opposed to kill bill 1 which just crashed last month on my dvd player...
If a non-geek Cory wrote about fashion and gender (as the previous post suggests), I don't think Comsopolitan would know what the hell to do with one of his gender-jamming, ad-hoc-plastic-surgery, schoolyard-runway stories.
I, for one, really like Cory's writing. It's a little uneven, but frankly, I've read enough even writing that's unimaginative.
Friends keep recommending me writers like Zadie Smith, Don DeLillo and Philip Roth... all of whom seem tired and verbose, none of whom speak to the new forms of culture (and new insights to existing culture) that I see coming to light each day. Cory's writing reflects on these insights and posits new ones, in the tradition of the best sci-fi.
"I, Robot" is punchy, smart, and relevant, and it feels urgent. Hey, Philip Dick was a pretty lousy writer when judged by the quality of prose on any one page (sorry, but it's true) but his ideas light up his books and make them something special that few "great novelists" can touch.
In Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom (no spoilers) his main character does whine quite a bit... but it's in a context where the whining is a symptom of the technology involved.
I would, however, like to see him treat his utopias more subtly than "no more crime" and "no more emotional risk".
I opened IE, clicked on the britney search link (ahem) and... the photo sites installed spyware! Unbelievable.
[heh heh... "I don't support your dreams!" etc.]
Yes, I figure I'll tinker with it for another few weeks after work, then put it on sourceforge (so it's at least fully functional within its narrow parameters before I ask people to tinker with it too). In the meantime, please play with the source, and let me know your ideas or code changes.
Also, please email me if this project interests you and I'll email you when I put the beta on sourceforge.
A demo is at http://www.mekhaye.net/webdev/prioritexter and a .zip of the program (view README after unzip, no install necessary) is at http://www.mekhaye.net/webdev/prioritexter.zip. I made it for *nix with php/mysql but I imagine other platforms would handle it ok.
It should be considered gamma, or delta, or something short of beta. please give me feedback.
Usborne does have a great-looking book on sale now called "101 Things to do with your Computer".
That's what I do with Firefox at the high school computer lab where I work... put a link on the desktop, rename it "Internet Explorer", and change its icon to IE's. Works like a charm, and no spyware!
Though it's a small project, bspam is an excellent Bayesian filter for *nix... I tried bogofilter and some others but nothing jived with my qmail/procmail/pine setup as nicely as bspam.
I agree strongly that learning is more important than prestige. I got a CS degree at Columbia University, and believe you me, that doesn't mean much knowledge of how to actually program in real life.
When I graduated, my ivy league degree opened exactly zero doors for me. I became a junior programmer under a Bulgarian guy who went to some university no one ever heard of but who could program like a fiend. He's writing his own programming ticket now, and I'm teaching math to high school kids (fun but not lucrative!)
Ditto on grad school -- save your money on the undergrad degree, get a good gpa, do subsidized research in a prestigious grad school, and you come out on top in a big way with little debt!
I've got the iRiver 40GB and it does about 14 hours with vbr MP3 and OGG.
Ditto. I also had mp3 player reservations and my iRiver ihp-120 (20gb) dispelled (almost) all of them.
the only problems i've had are:
Pest Patrol belongs on this list, as in my experience it beats out Adaware and SpySweeper. It's not shareware but definitely worth the $40 I paid for it.
but will it have wireless internet access? is it capable of rendering websites via html, wml or perhaps msntv techniques? and can its 802.11b hardware act as a repeater, so wireless games and wireless internet can be daisy-chained?
service name - desired startup type
alerter - disabled
clipbook - disabled
computer browser - disabled
Distributed Link Tracking Client - manual
Error Reporting Service - disabled
Help and Support - manual
Indexing Service - disabled
Logical Disk Manager - manual
Net Logon - disabled
NetMeeting Remote Desktop Sharing - disabled
Messenger - disabled
Network DDE - disabled
Network DDE DSDM - disabled
Network Location Awareness (NLA) - disabled
Network Provisioning Service - disabled
Performance Logs and Alerts - disabled
Portable Media Serial Number Service - disabled
QoS RSVP - disabled
Remote Desktop Help Session Manager - disabled
Remote Registry Service - disabled
Secondary Logon - disabled
Security Center - disabled
Server - disabled
Smart Card - disabled
Smart Card Helper - disabled
SSDP Discovery Service - disabled
System Restore Service - disabled
TCP/IP NetBIOS Helper Service - disabled
Telnet - disabled
Uninterruptible Power Supply - disabled
Universal Plug and Play Device Host - disabled
Upload Manager - disabled
WebClient - disabled
Wireless Zero Configuration - manual
WMI Performance Adapter - disabled
At the school where I work, kids unwittingly install spyware all the time, thanks to IE and various messengers and such. Firefox is only a partial solution, but it's a big step, so I remove/hide IE and place a link to firefox on the desktop and in the start menu. Here's the coup de grace: I go into the firefox link's properties and change its icon to IE's icon! (click change icon, find the IE folder in Programs, select iexplore). The kids never know the difference and when I come back to do maintenance, the machines are usually spyware-free.
I got one last year for my high school classroom and it's beautiful.