My mum bought one of the rival Instatmatic cameras from Kodak ( and I still have hundreds of the developed photos ) but in 1986 Kodak was sued by Polaroid for patent infringement.
As part of the settlement of the case, Kodak recalled my mum's camera and sent her a voucher for the purchase of the equivalent Polaroid model! It was a rather flimsy affair compared to the "Tricorder"-like Kodak.
In the US, the "Instamatic" name was already taken by Kodak's line of inexpensive point-and-shoot cartridge film cameras. But these weren't instant film cameras. I gotta assume that Kodak kicked themselves for that inadvertent lack of foresight.
My folks got a lousy check for sending in the nameplate peeled off their Kodak "Handle" instant camera. I don't think it would have bought any available Polaroid at the time. When I visited last spring, my sister had dug up the old "Handle", sans nameplate, trying to help Mom downsize.
Polaroids are fun, but I've seen many a ruined/faded polaroid show up in old photo albums. Why somebody would choose to use a Polaroid or some shitty hipstamatic app to ruin a perfectly good photo is beyond me. Sure, the effect is cool now, but in 50 years they'll be kicking themselves.
I've seen "hipstamatic-afied" photos, and I challenge your assertion that they were "perfectly good" to begin with.
All this "This latest pandemic is going to kill us ALL!!" Chicken Little shit gets tiresome. The Littles always cite the Black Death and 1918 pandemic as if that's what we could expect from a pandemic today--all without noting the MASSIVE improvements in sanitation, medical science, vaccine research, etc. that make this scale of pandemic highly unlikely in the modern era.
I don't think I read the same summary and article as you did.
The tangled intersection of international laws is enforced through a thicket of paperwork. Recent revisions to 1900's Lacey Act require that anyone crossing the U.S. border declare every bit of flora or fauna being brought into the country. One is under "strict liability" to fill out the paperwork—and without any mistakes.
I guess I should read the full Lacey Act as amended, because I could be traveling with a lot of flora and fauna. My clothes, luggage, shoes, food . . . I assume that my shirt is made from non-endangered cotton and not something else, but I sure can't prove that. I could show the label, if it's not worn off, but I have no documentation of the provenance of the fabric. Are those pearl buttons? Endangered abalone? A coral necklace?
And that's before worrying about the laws of every other country -- which might not be in a language I can read.
It's about time the EPA had its funding cut. There's nine billion that few would miss.
Why not cut the Department of Defense or the the FAA instead? I suggest this because they have just as much to do with the Fish and Wildlife Service as the EPA.
In case I am being too subtle, the FWS is not part of the EPA. In fact the service predates the EPA by about 100 years.
Would it be too much to ask for people, when submitting a story, to keep their bias out of it and let us form our own opinion. If you want to voice your _opinion_, save it for the comments section. Let's leave story summaries to, you know, summaries.
You and I obviously read the summary and entered the discussion. We might not have with a more reserved summary. Maybe it even helped the submission get accepted.
So there's something to be said for irritating summaries and breathless headlines. I'd like to think there's some room to be a little more subtle w.r.t. one's own biases, but subtlety doesn't always play so well here.
My guess is that they plan to make some changes in the near future that will break it, and nobody cares enough to update it.
Indeed. Old code can be allowed to "live and let live" until such time as architecture, compiler, etc. changes make it uncompilable. Then you've either got to figure out what the hell seven-years-ago guy was doing or cut it out. And if you can live without it (mostly) then the choice is pretty clear.
"First of all, for some people there is a non-zero chance of becoming parents with little warning."
Here I call the bullshits. "Little warning?" Have heterosexual, vaginal sex and be warned - you may be a parent in 9 months. For women there are repeated warnings after that - every month Aunt Flo fails to visit is a warning.
Ugh. It would seem I did a very poor job of making my point here -- probably serves me right for feeding the Anonymous troll in my first post above.
> but how much extra will it cost parents who need to pay for care for younger children
Don't know, don't care. Perhaps the parents should have thought about possible costs before procreating?
First of all, for some people there is a non-zero chance of becoming parents with little warning. Secondly, potential parents who can predict every possible scenario that might impact their future offspring should just play the lottery or stock market and not worry about the cost of kids.
. . . without some help. There was always someplace hard enough (or tricky/gimmicky enough) that I couldn't get past it, and eventually I just plain gave up. Then I gave up on video gaming, period, and went back to RPGs and board games with people.
Easy to get lost in the twisty little passages, what with them being all alike.
But you know, I don't think I've completed a long, story-based computer/console game . . . ever. I never actually played the original Adventure, but I started and never finished a number of Infocom text-only games. I'm sure I never finished any Sierra graphic-adventure-style games.
Does Wolfenstein 3D count in this genre? I went through all the levels and eventually beat the "bosses", but it wasn't really plot-based. That must have been the pinnacle of my career. After that, grad school was over, and so were my gaming days.
In part, structured gaming itself is dying in a social context where people are constantly multitasking and sociallising through damn cell phones and Friendface. If people are living lives where they can not dedicate any real time or thought into doing anything structured in their lives then they're not living at all.
What's funny about this -- as if I need to point it out -- is that it laments that all these modern distractions are taking time and attention away from playing long video games.
. . . it occurs to me that this might have been very subtle sarcasm and I just "whooshed" myself.
And the sad part is... the nanny state will use this an example of why we "need" extremely restrictive laws regulating how and when cell phones and other devices may be used while inside a car. A couple of morons with bad habits are going to ruin it for the vast majority who know better than to take their hands off the wheel.
Nanny state? Really? Dude, he was driving with no hands on the wheel. I don't care if he was holding two cellphones or both your mom's boobs, the "hands-not-on-the-wheel" thing is the problem, not the exact nature of the objects in question.
And a "couple of morons with bad habits"? OK, hardly anyone -- statistically speaking -- commits murder. Just a few n'er-do-wells. Really don't need a law for such an unlikely thing. Right?
If I were a cop, and had a choice to arrest one of two potential criminals -- one that had a knife and one that had a water balloon -- well I think I'd take the safer choice, too.
Did US and Pakistan have some kind of deal where they are not allowed to improve their technology with their friends if US happens to dump their trash all over the country? US would do exactly the same with UK or their other girlfriends.
Well, Pakistan does have an "accept several hundred billion dollars a year from the US" deal. If China's making them a better offer, then Pakistan's actions make sense.
Unless the artists self-financed it and didn't make contracts with record labels, it basically is work for hire.
First of all, wouldn't the law trump a contract?
And secondly, isn't it strange to call it "work for hire" when the recording costs like studio time, engineering, mastering, distribution and promotion are taken off the top before the artists ever see a dime? Is it "work for hire" if you have to sign your own paycheck?
Mediacom do *404 hijacking*. They redirect some 404s (aka page not found) to the same junk page they redirect NXDOMAINs. I thought several sites had dropped off the face of the earth (at least the DNS failed), when it turned out they had just reorgranized the sites and Mediacom had hijacked the 404 responses. As a bonus, the opt-out page (which is at least the kind that affects the whole connection and not the broken "oh we'll set a cookie" type) does not work for 404 hijacking. Within the last week, I did see 404 hijacks stop, so I don't know if the "opt out" started working or if the threats of lawsuits from site owners persuaded Mediacom they cannot pull people away from valid sites, or if the hijacks are simply intermittent.
They also generate the 404 errors themselves by having frequent DNS "problems". I've been logging DNS downtime on a half-hour basis since January, and it seems to be around 20-25%.
Slashdot Mirror
My mum bought one of the rival Instatmatic cameras from Kodak ( and I still have hundreds of the developed photos ) but in 1986 Kodak was sued by Polaroid for patent infringement.
As part of the settlement of the case, Kodak recalled my mum's camera and sent her a voucher for the purchase of the equivalent Polaroid model! It was a rather flimsy affair compared to the "Tricorder"-like Kodak.
In the US, the "Instamatic" name was already taken by Kodak's line of inexpensive point-and-shoot cartridge film cameras. But these weren't instant film cameras. I gotta assume that Kodak kicked themselves for that inadvertent lack of foresight.
My folks got a lousy check for sending in the nameplate peeled off their Kodak "Handle" instant camera. I don't think it would have bought any available Polaroid at the time. When I visited last spring, my sister had dug up the old "Handle", sans nameplate, trying to help Mom downsize.
Polaroids are fun, but I've seen many a ruined/faded polaroid show up in old photo albums. Why somebody would choose to use a Polaroid or some shitty hipstamatic app to ruin a perfectly good photo is beyond me. Sure, the effect is cool now, but in 50 years they'll be kicking themselves.
I've seen "hipstamatic-afied" photos, and I challenge your assertion that they were "perfectly good" to begin with.
Portable printers exist and how often are you more than a couple hours from a drug store?
Do you really need it right now, or is a couple hours later ok?
I think I'm too old to "shake it like a Polaroid" for two hours . . .
Portable mini printers?
Ya. Who knew they had 'em in '72?
Play a bit harder and you'll find out, or idclev31 and idclev32 if you're impatient.
Or for the truly impatient
Truly impatient? If I didn't find a secret level almost 20 years ago, I think you can safely bet I gave up looking.
All this "This latest pandemic is going to kill us ALL!!" Chicken Little shit gets tiresome. The Littles always cite the Black Death and 1918 pandemic as if that's what we could expect from a pandemic today--all without noting the MASSIVE improvements in sanitation, medical science, vaccine research, etc. that make this scale of pandemic highly unlikely in the modern era.
I don't think I read the same summary and article as you did.
When their guy Dick Nixon is the one that proposed, and signed it in to law.
And this is not even about the EPA . . .
Fact: Suspected illegal materials seized from manufacturer. Article speculation: guitars will be seized by Nazi enforcers from individuals.
Warning flag that article is inflammatory: use of "artsy do-gooders only too eager to tell others what kind of light bulbs they have to buy"
They coulda been a little more subtle with that. The WSJ has always had a slant, but they were better at hiding it before Rupert.
The tangled intersection of international laws is enforced through a thicket of paperwork. Recent revisions to 1900's Lacey Act require that anyone crossing the U.S. border declare every bit of flora or fauna being brought into the country. One is under "strict liability" to fill out the paperwork—and without any mistakes.
I guess I should read the full Lacey Act as amended, because I could be traveling with a lot of flora and fauna. My clothes, luggage, shoes, food . . . I assume that my shirt is made from non-endangered cotton and not something else, but I sure can't prove that. I could show the label, if it's not worn off, but I have no documentation of the provenance of the fabric. Are those pearl buttons? Endangered abalone? A coral necklace?
And that's before worrying about the laws of every other country -- which might not be in a language I can read.
It's about time the EPA had its funding cut. There's nine billion that few would miss.
Why not cut the Department of Defense or the the FAA instead? I suggest this because they have just as much to do with the Fish and Wildlife Service as the EPA.
In case I am being too subtle, the FWS is not part of the EPA. In fact the service predates the EPA by about 100 years.
Wow, that sounds awesome! I guess the only drawback would be the whole non-existence thing.
OK, they don't exist in the same way a single charger standard doesn't exist. But they do exist. In fact, you can buy a UC right now: There are 522 different models available at DigiKey.
Would it be too much to ask for people, when submitting a story, to keep their bias out of it and let us form our own opinion. If you want to voice your _opinion_, save it for the comments section. Let's leave story summaries to, you know, summaries.
You and I obviously read the summary and entered the discussion. We might not have with a more reserved summary. Maybe it even helped the submission get accepted.
So there's something to be said for irritating summaries and breathless headlines. I'd like to think there's some room to be a little more subtle w.r.t. one's own biases, but subtlety doesn't always play so well here.
My guess is that they plan to make some changes in the near future that will break it, and nobody cares enough to update it.
Indeed. Old code can be allowed to "live and let live" until such time as architecture, compiler, etc. changes make it uncompilable. Then you've either got to figure out what the hell seven-years-ago guy was doing or cut it out. And if you can live without it (mostly) then the choice is pretty clear.
Not running the latest software? Doom 3 running on a Voodoo 2 ;)
Doom 3 was released 6 years ago. That hardly qualifies as "latest software".
Is Doom 4 out yet?
"First of all, for some people there is a non-zero chance of becoming parents with little warning."
Here I call the bullshits. "Little warning?" Have heterosexual, vaginal sex and be warned - you may be a parent in 9 months. For women there are repeated warnings after that - every month Aunt Flo fails to visit is a warning.
Ugh. It would seem I did a very poor job of making my point here -- probably serves me right for feeding the Anonymous troll in my first post above.
> but how much extra will it cost parents who need to pay for care for younger children
Don't know, don't care. Perhaps the parents should have thought about possible costs before procreating?
First of all, for some people there is a non-zero chance of becoming parents with little warning. Secondly, potential parents who can predict every possible scenario that might impact their future offspring should just play the lottery or stock market and not worry about the cost of kids.
Usually (even in firefox) just typing / to find something just works...
OK, I did not know that. However, I mouse right-handed. If I were a lefty, that would be particularly handy.
. . . without some help. There was always someplace hard enough (or tricky/gimmicky enough) that I couldn't get past it, and eventually I just plain gave up. Then I gave up on video gaming, period, and went back to RPGs and board games with people.
Easy to get lost in the twisty little passages, what with them being all alike.
But you know, I don't think I've completed a long, story-based computer/console game . . . ever. I never actually played the original Adventure, but I started and never finished a number of Infocom text-only games. I'm sure I never finished any Sierra graphic-adventure-style games.
Does Wolfenstein 3D count in this genre? I went through all the levels and eventually beat the "bosses", but it wasn't really plot-based. That must have been the pinnacle of my career. After that, grad school was over, and so were my gaming days.
In part, structured gaming itself is dying in a social context where people are constantly multitasking and sociallising through damn cell phones and Friendface. If people are living lives where they can not dedicate any real time or thought into doing anything structured in their lives then they're not living at all.
What's funny about this -- as if I need to point it out -- is that it laments that all these modern distractions are taking time and attention away from playing long video games.
. . . it occurs to me that this might have been very subtle sarcasm and I just "whooshed" myself.
And the sad part is ... the nanny state will use this an example of why we "need" extremely restrictive laws regulating how and when cell phones and other devices may be used while inside a car. A couple of morons with bad habits are going to ruin it for the vast majority who know better than to take their hands off the wheel.
Nanny state? Really? Dude, he was driving with no hands on the wheel. I don't care if he was holding two cellphones or both your mom's boobs, the "hands-not-on-the-wheel" thing is the problem, not the exact nature of the objects in question.
And a "couple of morons with bad habits"? OK, hardly anyone -- statistically speaking -- commits murder. Just a few n'er-do-wells. Really don't need a law for such an unlikely thing. Right?
nuff said
If I were a cop, and had a choice to arrest one of two potential criminals -- one that had a knife and one that had a water balloon -- well I think I'd take the safer choice, too.
Right to peaceably assemble sound like something you have heard of ?
I vaguely remember it from somewhere. History class, I think.
Did US and Pakistan have some kind of deal where they are not allowed to improve their technology with their friends if US happens to dump their trash all over the country? US would do exactly the same with UK or their other girlfriends.
Well, Pakistan does have an "accept several hundred billion dollars a year from the US" deal. If China's making them a better offer, then Pakistan's actions make sense.
Unless the artists self-financed it and didn't make contracts with record labels, it basically is work for hire.
First of all, wouldn't the law trump a contract?
And secondly, isn't it strange to call it "work for hire" when the recording costs like studio time, engineering, mastering, distribution and promotion are taken off the top before the artists ever see a dime? Is it "work for hire" if you have to sign your own paycheck?
Mediacom do *404 hijacking*. They redirect some 404s (aka page not found) to the same junk page they redirect NXDOMAINs. I thought several sites had dropped off the face of the earth (at least the DNS failed), when it turned out they had just reorgranized the sites and Mediacom had hijacked the 404 responses. As a bonus, the opt-out page (which is at least the kind that affects the whole connection and not the broken "oh we'll set a cookie" type) does not work for 404 hijacking. Within the last week, I did see 404 hijacks stop, so I don't know if the "opt out" started working or if the threats of lawsuits from site owners persuaded Mediacom they cannot pull people away from valid sites, or if the hijacks are simply intermittent.
They also generate the 404 errors themselves by having frequent DNS "problems". I've been logging DNS downtime on a half-hour basis since January, and it seems to be around 20-25%.