sooner or later the rest of the World is going to stop financing our deficits and we'll be looking at serious tax increases and/or spending cuts (likely both) to make the books balance.
When that happens we can just default on all those foreign held bonds. After all, if the rest of the world has already decided to stop buying more bonds, there ain't much for us to lose at that point.
It's very hard to find a RIAA disc that was mastered by a pro that did it right instead of their cookie cutter nastyness they have been creating lately.
To give credit where it is due, I've read a number of times over the years that the pro engineers don't have a choice. They do know how to do it right, but the people who write the paychecks - RIAA MBAs - are telling them to do the over-compression on purpose. They can do it, and get paid or they can not do it, get fired, and the next guy will do it anyway.
it isn't clear if "internet users" own their own computers, or use cyber-cafes. Cyber-cafes are enourmously popular in china (and most of asia) compared to the usa because of the high cost of owning a computer.
Just to be a grammar nazi that is 'alluded' not 'eluded' - it is kind of a funny freudian slip because you might say that playing blu-ray on your linux box has indeed eluded you.
Can someone explain to me why the image looks so weird? I wish I could describe it better, but I didn't sit there long enough to figure it out.
There are really two kinds of 120Hz displays - there are ones that just do simple frame multiplication - real film is 24fps, so 24x5 = 120Hz and video is sort of 30Hz so 30x4 = 120Hz. Then there are these other (stupid IMO) 120Hz displays that do interpolation, so instead of getting the same frame 4 or 5 times in a row, you get the real frames every 4th or 5th refresh and then weirdo interpolated images on the frames in between.
Well, weirdo isn't really fair. The interpolation actually works pretty good, but you aren't used to it. Generally, the only shows shot on video at 30Hz are soap operas and other low-budget productions. 30Hz is 25% faster than 24fps so the difference is easily perceptible. Watching a 24fps movie interpolated up to 120hz is kind of like giving it the same production qualities as a soap opera which is why it looks odd.
I think that until we get real 'films' shot at higher frame rates, very few people will be able to get past the hyper-real and low-budget feel of interpolated frames.
So, if you want to upgrade, look for a tv set that just does frame multiplication or at least lets you turn off the interpolation.
Also, you might want to wait for even faster sets, 240Hz is due this year. The reason you might wait is for a set that can actually accept a higher fps signal - I think there is a chance we will start seeing 3D in the home soon and 240Hz means you can do 3D on a 24fps movie by just duplicating 5 frames for each eye (5hz x 24fps x 2eyes = 240Hz) but you can't do an equal number of frames per eyes at 120Hz (2.5Hz x 24fps x 2eyes = 120Hz). It might not happen, but I personally think 3D will happen sooner for more movies than going to faster native framerates will.
On the other hand (or the other team) viagra has totally changed the porn industry - it used to require real skill to be the guy in the film, getting wood on cue and getting off on cue are not easy. So looks didn't matter so much for the guys. But viagra changed all that, they get some twink with perfect skin and bulging muscles, give him a blue pill and he is good to go all day long.
I can't wait until BD+ is used to stop playback on players/TVs whose keys have been compromised, then we get to see what happens when a specific movie won't play, but all the other movies will.
It doesn't work like that, BD+ is not involved and they are actually able to revoke individual players - not individual models, but specific players. The math is complicated set theory stuff involving sets of thousands of keys and hardware players work differently from software players (powerdvd, windvd, arcsoft totalmedia, etc).
Democrats' intentions are certainly "less than honorable". Christopher Dodd and Barack Obama are the two-highest beneficiaries of the Fannie and Freddie lobbying efforts
Barrack received $127K from Mac/Mae sources, that adds up to 0.03% of the total contributions. Not 3% - three hundredths of one percent. To make such a big deal over such a minute contribution is simply political tribalism.
If you are looking for "morons", they aren't on Wall Street. Some of those people may be arrogant assholes, but "morons" they aren't. The morons are people, who bought houses they had no way of affording without reading the fine print.
No, the morons are DEFINITELY the ones on wall street. They are the ones who relaxed lending requirements to the point where they were doing NINA and NINJA loans - No Income, No Assets loans and No Income, No Job and no Assets loans. They did this because wall street was desperate to sell financial instruments known as CDOs - Collateralized Debt Obligations to both domestic and foreign investors. CDOs are a kind of securitization which is a way of bundling up a bunch of income-producing assets (mortgages in this case) and treating the bundle kind of like a bond offering - i.e. it is 'considered' very low risk because there are assets (the actual homes) to fall back on in case the person paying the debt defaults.
Except the MORONS on wall street never learned that basic rule of life - what goes up, must come down, so they never took into account what would happen if home prices fell - their entire risk management system was based on the assumption that home prices would always remain steady or increase, so mortgage defaults would always be covered by foreclosures. That was fantastically stupid of them and no amount of political tribalism can spin that into making it the fault of the people wall street gave their money to.
This minimum $700 billion bailout is for those MORONS who were careless with their money and gave it away for not much more than a hill of beans. Those people who didn't read the fine print on their mortgages? They'll be lucky to get a dime.
Uhm... the article is about Blu-Ray vs. DVD stats. DVDs have DRM too.
1) DVDs do not require negotiating the maze of HDCP. 2) DVD DRM (CSS) is so thoroughly cracked that the only people who haven't figured out that elvis has left the building are the studio execs.
I hang out on a lot of forums that deal with Blu-Ray and I've not seen a single complaint about DRM, because the disks just play, just like DVD
I bet you have seen PLENTY of complaints about DRM. They just didn't call it that. I am referring to the ridiculously slow boot and load times that have been explained as primarily system and disc DRM validation steps - for example, I just read someone happily proclaim that with the brand new 4.2 firmware for the sony S300 player pirates of the Caribbean loads in 45 seconds. That such a ridiculously slow load time is considered an improvement is indicative of just how big a disconnect there is between the 'blu-ray community' and the rest of the world.
Sure, if blu-ray does survive, those DRM-caused delays will eventually be fixed, I've even heard the new S350 player is a lot better. But my point here is that DRM has been a gigantic pain in the ass for most blu-ray owners due to unexpected side-effects - which is typically the way DRM screws people over every time it is forced on paying customers.
The main difference is that it's trivially easy to back up your own iTunes library.
From a customer-service perspective it seems to me that it would be even easier if Apple just supported re-downloads. Compare all the effort of each person individually backing up their shit versus the effort for apple to enable the feature and then support the occasional re-download.
As long as they clearly mark this as a rental, I'm OK with it. As soon as they describe it as a sale, then I think they're conducting felony fraud and should be prosecuted criminally.
According to the article, they do call it a "purchase" as in "purchased content."
Sounds that way to you because you don't know the context.
The stupid girl should consider herself lucky for having it settled with a simple suspension rather than being taken to court.
That's tantamount to saying that if a cop pulls someone over for speeding, the driver should be happy to just pay the cop a $100 bribe^h^h^h^h^hpenalty rather than going to traffic court. Both cases are abuses of authority where (if guilty) the person should consider themselves lucky for getting a smaller penalty than they MIGHT have received in court.
Based on both your comments and your response time it is fairly clear you didnt actually read what happened. (unless you are capable of parsing all that in under 60 seconds) She was libeling her principle.
Based on YOUR comments it is fairly clear that YOU didn't actually read what happened. She was not libeling the school principal, she was parodying him. Here are the details:
The profile did not use McGonigle's name, but identified the person pictured as a "principal," and described him as a 40-year-old married, bisexual man whose interests included "being a tight ass," "fucking in my office" and "hitting on students and their parents," according to Munley's opinion.
If I were working in education and someone said stuff like that about me I would sue the bejeebers out of them, she should be glad that this is all that happened to her.
Good. Do that. Don't abuse your position as principal to be judge, jury and executioner and suspend her. Take her to court for libel. You'll probably lose since it should be obvious to anyone with a sense of humor that accusations which include an interest in "being a tight ass" are a joke.
That's kinda funny - the closest thing on the web to a printed page - a PDF - and they don't trim that down. Want to bet that it was an oversight and that the PDF gets trimmed down in the next few days too?
Yes, your "choice" here is which set of liberties you want them to go shit over. I really don't see how the third-parties are any better here though. Nader and McKinney will gut the 2nd amendment. Barr is talking a good game but he has a history of trying to repress religious freedom.
You aren't thinking strategically. No matter what you do - neither Nader nor Barr will be elected this time. Not next time either. By the time their parties are actually viable, there will be entirely new people on their tickets. Thus disliking Nader's and Barr's personal ideologies should not be an impediment for voting for them because at this stage in the game what you are really voting for is the concept of more parties.
A vote for McCain or Obama is a vote for the 2-party system, a vote for the greens or the libertarians is a vote for more parties.
The editor kept the summary portions and removed the long multi-paragraph clarifications and expansion on the summaries.
Which, on the web, is poor form. It's probably fine for dead trees, but here we have hyperlinks. Any web editor worth his salt would have moved the detailed stuff to new pages and then hyperlinked the new sound-bite level words to the real meat instead of just throwing it out.
An illegal order is something like "Shoot this prisoner we just captured. I don't want to fucking bring along extra baggage for 24 hours until we can get him to the rear." These kinds of orders are rare enough that most people go their entire enlistment without coming upon an illegal order.
That's pretty blatant - killing somebody ought to give any normal person pause.
But there are much more subtle opportunities as well. See the case of Captain Lawrence Rockwood - who, in Haiti, believed "that American inaction in the face of human rights abuses was contrary to international law" and that he was "personally responsible for carrying out international law... That is the Nuremberg principle." Yet, during a military trial, he was convicted of multiple offenses, dismissed from the army and forfeited all pay.
Actually the point wasn't that I sent the email, it was that the person is question was subject to those rules
What is your point? That a private citizen used a personal mail account to send a message to a public official? REALLY? I must be missing something because it would be absurd if you thought that had any relevance to one public official communicating with an another public official about official government business via personal email accounts that were deliberately used to reduce the chances of a successful subpoena of those communications.
Again, if he's some vigilante hell bent on justice, I think this is the wrong way to go about it. Complain all you like, but I doubt you'll change my opinion
You said: Vigilantism is best left for movies. My point is that when the people who make the rules are the ones who violate them, then the only people who can enforce them are BY DEFINITION vigilantes. Ergo the rhetorical question, where the answer is IMPLICIT.
That is a GENERAL rule. You want to get all worked up over the fact that this SPECIFIC time the vigilante wasn't a 'professional' go ahead, its called missing the forest for the trees.
That aside, THANK YOU MOZILLA FOUNDATION! It was silly to require any type of pop-up to begin with, but being "big enough" to admit it was a mistake and take it off is a VERY good move.
I haven't read the details yet, but I agree with this sentiment 100% - everybody makes mistakes. The good guys are the ones who fix them in a timely fashion.
Slashdot Mirror
They don't hold dollars, they hold dollar-denominated assets -- mostly bonds -- and it is only roughly 1 trillion, not tens.
How many years have you been using PC-based hardware and how many exploding capacitors have you encountered?
Technically they are leaking, not exploding. And it is so common, there is even a name for it -- Capacitor Plague.
sooner or later the rest of the World is going to stop financing our deficits and we'll be looking at serious tax increases and/or spending cuts (likely both) to make the books balance.
When that happens we can just default on all those foreign held bonds. After all, if the rest of the world has already decided to stop buying more bonds, there ain't much for us to lose at that point.
It's very hard to find a RIAA disc that was mastered by a pro that did it right instead of their cookie cutter nastyness they have been creating lately.
To give credit where it is due, I've read a number of times over the years that the pro engineers don't have a choice. They do know how to do it right, but the people who write the paychecks - RIAA MBAs - are telling them to do the over-compression on purpose. They can do it, and get paid or they can not do it, get fired, and the next guy will do it anyway.
It was a multicultural joke.
it isn't clear if "internet users" own their own computers, or use cyber-cafes. Cyber-cafes are enourmously popular in china (and most of asia) compared to the usa because of the high cost of owning a computer.
Just to be a grammar nazi that is 'alluded' not 'eluded' - it is kind of a funny freudian slip because you might say that playing blu-ray on your linux box has indeed eluded you.
Can someone explain to me why the image looks so weird? I wish I could describe it better, but I didn't sit there long enough to figure it out.
There are really two kinds of 120Hz displays - there are ones that just do simple frame multiplication - real film is 24fps, so 24x5 = 120Hz and video is sort of 30Hz so 30x4 = 120Hz.
Then there are these other (stupid IMO) 120Hz displays that do interpolation, so instead of getting the same frame 4 or 5 times in a row, you get the real frames every 4th or 5th refresh and then weirdo interpolated images on the frames in between.
Well, weirdo isn't really fair. The interpolation actually works pretty good, but you aren't used to it. Generally, the only shows shot on video at 30Hz are soap operas and other low-budget productions. 30Hz is 25% faster than 24fps so the difference is easily perceptible. Watching a 24fps movie interpolated up to 120hz is kind of like giving it the same production qualities as a soap opera which is why it looks odd.
I think that until we get real 'films' shot at higher frame rates, very few people will be able to get past the hyper-real and low-budget feel of interpolated frames.
So, if you want to upgrade, look for a tv set that just does frame multiplication or at least lets you turn off the interpolation.
Also, you might want to wait for even faster sets, 240Hz is due this year. The reason you might wait is for a set that can actually accept a higher fps signal - I think there is a chance we will start seeing 3D in the home soon and 240Hz means you can do 3D on a 24fps movie by just duplicating 5 frames for each eye (5hz x 24fps x 2eyes = 240Hz) but you can't do an equal number of frames per eyes at 120Hz (2.5Hz x 24fps x 2eyes = 120Hz). It might not happen, but I personally think 3D will happen sooner for more movies than going to faster native framerates will.
On the other hand (or the other team) viagra has totally changed the porn industry - it used to require real skill to be the guy in the film, getting wood on cue and getting off on cue are not easy. So looks didn't matter so much for the guys. But viagra changed all that, they get some twink with perfect skin and bulging muscles, give him a blue pill and he is good to go all day long.
I can't wait until BD+ is used to stop playback on players/TVs whose keys have been compromised, then we get to see what happens when a specific movie won't play, but all the other movies will.
It doesn't work like that, BD+ is not involved and they are actually able to revoke individual players - not individual models, but specific players. The math is complicated set theory stuff involving sets of thousands of keys and hardware players work differently from software players (powerdvd, windvd, arcsoft totalmedia, etc).
Democrats' intentions are certainly "less than honorable". Christopher Dodd and Barack Obama are the two-highest beneficiaries of the Fannie and Freddie lobbying efforts
Barrack received $127K from Mac/Mae sources, that adds up to 0.03% of the total contributions. Not 3% - three hundredths of one percent. To make such a big deal over such a minute contribution is simply political tribalism.
If you are looking for "morons", they aren't on Wall Street. Some of those people may be arrogant assholes, but "morons" they aren't. The morons are people, who bought houses they had no way of affording without reading the fine print.
No, the morons are DEFINITELY the ones on wall street. They are the ones who relaxed lending requirements to the point where they were doing NINA and NINJA loans - No Income, No Assets loans and No Income, No Job and no Assets loans. They did this because wall street was desperate to sell financial instruments known as CDOs - Collateralized Debt Obligations to both domestic and foreign investors. CDOs are a kind of securitization which is a way of bundling up a bunch of income-producing assets (mortgages in this case) and treating the bundle kind of like a bond offering - i.e. it is 'considered' very low risk because there are assets (the actual homes) to fall back on in case the person paying the debt defaults.
Except the MORONS on wall street never learned that basic rule of life - what goes up, must come down, so they never took into account what would happen if home prices fell - their entire risk management system was based on the assumption that home prices would always remain steady or increase, so mortgage defaults would always be covered by foreclosures. That was fantastically stupid of them and no amount of political tribalism can spin that into making it the fault of the people wall street gave their money to.
This minimum $700 billion bailout is for those MORONS who were careless with their money and gave it away for not much more than a hill of beans. Those people who didn't read the fine print on their mortgages? They'll be lucky to get a dime.
Uhm... the article is about Blu-Ray vs. DVD stats. DVDs have DRM too.
1) DVDs do not require negotiating the maze of HDCP.
2) DVD DRM (CSS) is so thoroughly cracked that the only people who haven't figured out that elvis has left the building are the studio execs.
I hang out on a lot of forums that deal with Blu-Ray and I've not seen a single complaint about DRM, because the disks just play, just like DVD
I bet you have seen PLENTY of complaints about DRM. They just didn't call it that. I am referring to the ridiculously slow boot and load times that have been explained as primarily system and disc DRM validation steps - for example, I just read someone happily proclaim that with the brand new 4.2 firmware for the sony S300 player pirates of the Caribbean loads in 45 seconds. That such a ridiculously slow load time is considered an improvement is indicative of just how big a disconnect there is between the 'blu-ray community' and the rest of the world.
Sure, if blu-ray does survive, those DRM-caused delays will eventually be fixed, I've even heard the new S350 player is a lot better. But my point here is that DRM has been a gigantic pain in the ass for most blu-ray owners due to unexpected side-effects - which is typically the way DRM screws people over every time it is forced on paying customers.
The main difference is that it's trivially easy to back up your own iTunes library.
From a customer-service perspective it seems to me that it would be even easier if Apple just supported re-downloads. Compare all the effort of each person individually backing up their shit versus the effort for apple to enable the feature and then support the occasional re-download.
As long as they clearly mark this as a rental, I'm OK with it. As soon as they describe it as a sale, then I think they're conducting felony fraud and should be prosecuted criminally.
According to the article, they do call it a "purchase" as in "purchased content."
That sounds like blatant libel.
Sounds that way to you because you don't know the context.
The stupid girl should consider herself lucky for having it settled with a simple suspension rather than being taken to court.
That's tantamount to saying that if a cop pulls someone over for speeding, the driver should be happy to just pay the cop a $100 bribe^h^h^h^h^hpenalty rather than going to traffic court. Both cases are abuses of authority where (if guilty) the person should consider themselves lucky for getting a smaller penalty than they MIGHT have received in court.
Based on both your comments and your response time it is fairly clear you didnt actually read what happened. (unless you are capable of parsing all that in under 60 seconds) She was libeling her principle.
Based on YOUR comments it is fairly clear that YOU didn't actually read what happened. She was not libeling the school principal, she was parodying him. Here are the details:
The profile did not use McGonigle's name, but identified the person pictured as a "principal," and described him as a 40-year-old married, bisexual man whose interests included "being a tight ass," "fucking in my office" and "hitting on students and their parents," according to Munley's opinion.
If I were working in education and someone said stuff like that about me I would sue the bejeebers out of them, she should be glad that this is all that happened to her.
Good. Do that. Don't abuse your position as principal to be judge, jury and executioner and suspend her. Take her to court for libel. You'll probably lose since it should be obvious to anyone with a sense of humor that accusations which include an interest in "being a tight ass" are a joke.
who would be better qualified to mount a friggin laser on a shark and joke about it afterward than Q?
Mike Meyers?
That's kinda funny - the closest thing on the web to a printed page - a PDF - and they don't trim that down. Want to bet that it was an oversight and that the PDF gets trimmed down in the next few days too?
Yes, your "choice" here is which set of liberties you want them to go shit over. I really don't see how the third-parties are any better here though. Nader and McKinney will gut the 2nd amendment. Barr is talking a good game but he has a history of trying to repress religious freedom.
You aren't thinking strategically. No matter what you do - neither Nader nor Barr will be elected this time. Not next time either. By the time their parties are actually viable, there will be entirely new people on their tickets. Thus disliking Nader's and Barr's personal ideologies should not be an impediment for voting for them because at this stage in the game what you are really voting for is the concept of more parties.
A vote for McCain or Obama is a vote for the 2-party system, a vote for the greens or the libertarians is a vote for more parties.
The editor kept the summary portions and removed the long multi-paragraph clarifications and expansion on the summaries.
Which, on the web, is poor form. It's probably fine for dead trees, but here we have hyperlinks. Any web editor worth his salt would have moved the detailed stuff to new pages and then hyperlinked the new sound-bite level words to the real meat instead of just throwing it out.
An illegal order is something like "Shoot this prisoner we just captured. I don't want to fucking bring along extra baggage for 24 hours until we can get him to the rear." These kinds of orders are rare enough that most people go their entire enlistment without coming upon an illegal order.
That's pretty blatant - killing somebody ought to give any normal person pause.
But there are much more subtle opportunities as well. See the case of Captain Lawrence Rockwood - who, in Haiti, believed "that American inaction in the face of human rights abuses was contrary to international law" and that he was "personally responsible for carrying out international law... That is the Nuremberg principle." Yet, during a military trial, he was convicted of multiple offenses, dismissed from the army and forfeited all pay.
Actually the point wasn't that I sent the email, it was that the person is question was subject to those rules
What is your point? That a private citizen used a personal mail account to send a message to a public official? REALLY? I must be missing something because it would be absurd if you thought that had any relevance to one public official communicating with an another public official about official government business via personal email accounts that were deliberately used to reduce the chances of a successful subpoena of those communications.
Again, if he's some vigilante hell bent on justice, I think this is the wrong way to go about it. Complain all you like, but I doubt you'll change my opinion
You said: Vigilantism is best left for movies.
My point is that when the people who make the rules are the ones who violate them, then the only people who can enforce them are BY DEFINITION vigilantes. Ergo the rhetorical question, where the answer is IMPLICIT.
That is a GENERAL rule. You want to get all worked up over the fact that this SPECIFIC time the vigilante wasn't a 'professional' go ahead, its called missing the forest for the trees.
That aside, THANK YOU MOZILLA FOUNDATION! It was silly to require any type of pop-up to begin with, but being "big enough" to admit it was a mistake and take it off is a VERY good move.
I haven't read the details yet, but I agree with this sentiment 100% - everybody makes mistakes.
The good guys are the ones who fix them in a timely fashion.
And the creepiest part is that Falwell has been dead for over a year!
If you are a republican, it just means that your political party is the party of God.
If you are a democrat, well...