The accuracy of the human eye is such that you can only distinguish ~4000 pixels in a line while still being able to see the whole picture. 4000x4000=16 megapixels for a square image, or 12 megapixels for a 4:3 aspect ratio picture. Having more resolution than that is only useful if you are going to take part of the image and blow it up or otherwise focus on just a part of the image. So yes, once they achieve 12 megapixels CCDs, they should focus on something else, like speed for example. I have several pictures of "the couch where my daughter was a second ago" because my Nikon Coolpix inserts a huge delay between the time I push the button and the time the picture is actually recorded. Color accuracy would be nice too, or perhaps doing something about the graininess the CCDs seem to exhibit in low light conditions.
How much does Microsoft pay in local property taxes? I would hope they have paid in a lot more than the cost of this project. Local governments are almost always willing to make concessions to businesses that make up a large part of their tax base by contributing to property taxes, state income taxes (by providing jobs), and sales taxes (which Microsoft pays very little of, not being a retail business). I would expect them to do similar improvements for a shopping mall, why not a tech firm? If the local government is giving them a free ride on property taxes AND subsidizing this improvement, then yes, local taxpayers have a right to be pissed off. But since a good number of people in Redmond owe their livelihood to M$ either directly or indirectly, I'd expect most of the taxpayers to keep their mouths shut. Plus, doesn't this overpass benefit everybody by keeping some cars off of the main highway?
On the order of 1,400 legal rights are conferred upon married couples in the U.S. Typically these are composed of about 400 state benefits and over 1,000 federal benefits. Among them are the rights to:
joint parenting;
joint adoption;
joint foster care, custody, and visitation (including non-biological parents);
status as next-of-kin for hospital visits and medical decisions where one partner is too ill to be competent;
joint insurance policies for home, auto and health;
dissolution and divorce protections such as community property and child support;
immigration and residency for partners from other countries;
inheritance automatically in the absence of a will;
joint leases with automatic renewal rights in the event one partner dies or leaves the house or apartment;
inheritance of jointly-owned real and personal property through the right of survivorship (which avoids the time and expense and taxes in probate);
benefits such as annuities, pension plans, Social Security, and Medicare;
spousal exemptions to property tax increases upon the death of one partner who is a co-owner of the home;
veterans' discounts on medical care, education, and home loans; joint filing of tax returns;
joint filing of customs claims when traveling;
wrongful death benefits for a surviving partner and children;
right to visit their partner at the hospital and make decisions about their health care;
bereavement or sick leave to care for a partner or child;
decision-making power with respect to whether a deceased partner will be cremated or not and where to bury him or her;
crime victims' recovery benefits;
loss of consortium tort benefits;
domestic violence protection orders;
judicial protections and evidentiary immunity;
Now you're suggesting yanking those rights away from 95% of people to make it more fair?!? As they say, "Good luck with that!" Wouldn't it be much more politically expedient to just grant those rights to the other 5% of the people?
They are obviously afraid somebody will run their arguments through Microsoft Songsmith and post the result to Youtube, making them sound even more absurd than they already do! Come to think of it, that's not a bad idea... any volunteers to set RIAA lawyers to music?
We appear to agree that we should not use the same term for the legal and religious definition of marriage. Personally and idealistically, I agree with you that churches do not own the word "marriage". However, it may be expedient to let them pretend they do and change the legal definition to "civil union" or some such phrase. I'm very much pro-family; but most religious people fail to acknowledge the simple truth that many same-sex couple do in fact have children, and that those children deserve all the same legal rights as children of mixed-sex couples. Although it is inevitable that eventually same-sex couples will have identical legal rights as all other couples, I say we should try to give them those rights as soon as possible -- for the sake of the children!
Four quad-core Opteron processors, 32 GB of memory, Windows Server 2008, Asus Xonar DX PCI Express sound card, 3Ware 9550SX-8LP SATA 3 Gb/s RAID controller, Two Western Digital 300 GB VelociRaptor hard drives in RAID 1, Two 1 TB Samsung SpinPoint F1s also in RAID 1, and Four 1 TB Samsung SpinPoint F1s in RAID 5. Puget went with MagiCool's Xtreme Nova 1080 radiator, Nine 120 mm fans, Four Koolance CPU blocks, Koolance combined pump and reservoir unit, andCooler Master Stacker 810 case. By a remarkable coincidence, these are almost exactly the hardware requirements for Windows 8!
Oh, so now you want to prevent non-Catholics from getting married, too? No, what he is saying is that the government cannot force a church to perform religious rites on someone they do not want to. Separation of Church and State was one of the founding principles of the United States. Unfortunately, this principle was violated when they allowed the legal and religious definitions of "marriage" to co-mingle. We need to completely separate the two. Any couple that wants all of the legal benefits currently afforded "married" couples should be able to petition the government for a change in status and automatically get those benefits. But that shouldn't mean that they are "married" in the eyes of any given church. The churches retain the right to decide which people they want to perform religious ceremonies on, and can refuse to perform them on anyone they see fit. You can't just walk into any Catholic church and demand to be given you wafer and wine; the priest does have the right to refuse to recognize you as a member of the church.
The way Andy Grove would do it would be to dismiss him but give him a glowing review on the condition that he go to work for a competitor (and presumably steal from them instead). How is this guy ever going to get a job at Office Max or Office Depo when Staples claims he's been stealing?
According to The Register, 71% of the earth's surface is covered by water... which was regarded as an incorrect answer in the survey! Apparently pollsters and journalists aren't too big on science knowledge either. (We were taught in school that 3/4 of the earth's surface was covered in water.)
When I first got my 2003 Civic Hybrid, Oregon DMV was doing a similarly stupid thing - they slapped a surcharge onto the registration fee for all hybrids, on the premise that I wouldn't be paying as much in gasoline taxes! A couple years later they saw the error of their ways; now they don't charge any more to register a hybrid. Now they just want to put a GPS in every car and tax you by mile instead of taxing you by gallon. But yes, use of alternative fuels does screw up the model they use for assessing highway taxes.
Fuck the Kindle though. Umm... it is pretty much the wrong shape to make that use of it even remotely possible. Trust me, I've tried! And besides which, if I actually did find a way to follow your suggestion, Amazon would quickly issue a take down notice prohibiting me from making such creative use of the Kindle.
Econ 101: If your business model involves selling the hardware for less than cost and then making all your money on content licenses, then you need to prevent alternative uses of the hardware by any means necessary. Of course, the alternative would be to FIX YOUR FUCKING BUSINESS MODEL, but then, when has Amazon ever seriously considered the "fix the business model" alternative?
If everybody started using used vegetable oil for an energy source, wouldn't the cost of used vegetable oil go way up? Meaning it would be more cost effective to sell the oil and buy the electricity rather than use the oil to generate my own electricity. Trust me, if dead cats were to become a viable energy source, then even the market value of a dead cat would skyrocket. (What?!? There's currently no market for trading dead cat futures?!?)
It has to be proven that it is YOUR fault. Not in Oregon. Under House Bill 3314, if your car comes into contact with a bicycle, it is automatically assumed to be your fault.
If a news reporter sells packets of sugar or oregano to kids there is nothing to base the charge on. I don't know... if I was the kids, I'd be tempted to file fraud charges against the reporter! Am I the only one out there that calls the cops when somebody sells me some bogus drugs?!?
So they could argue intent as extenuating circumstances and it is a lesser crime... but it is still a crime. That being said, you're correct -- it ain't illegal unless a prosecutor decides to prosecute it, which in this case would serve no useful purpose.
If that woman didn't want to have sex with me, she should have been wearing a chastity belt! Its her own fault for not having the appropriate security in place!
Sorry, I don't think that explanation is going to fly in court.
If this exercise had been done with criminal intent it would be breaking the law.
"Your honor, I just pointed the gun in a random direction and pulled the trigger. If this exercise had been done with criminal intent it would be breaking the law. But since I had no intention of actually shooting someone, only demonstrating what can happen when a gun goes off, I consider this perfectly legal! And please, give my condolences to their next of kin."
I'm sorry, but intent can never be proved in court. Penalties need to be assessed based on outcomes, not intent. Accidentally kill somebody with your car, and you go to jail for involuntary manslaughter, even if your intentions were perfectly innocent. And this wasn't an "accident", it was a deliberate violation of computer security and privacy laws. If a news reporter sells drugs to school kids to prove how easy it is to do, he's still gonna go to jail!
Our local library carries CDs and DVDs as well as books. They also have free Wi-Fi and make desks available for people to bring in their own laptops. I had a conversation with the librarian where I pointed out that anybody could come in, rip all the CDs to their laptop, and place them back on the shelf. If I recall correctly, his response was that he wasn't going to comment on whether or not that was fair use, he wasn't going to stop me, but if I did do that, then he didn't want to know about it. In other words, its not their job to be copyright police, but they want to maintain plausible deniability in case someone makes a stink about their material being copied.
You're assuming he was actually trying to hit someone. Watching humans scream with panic and run away when you throw things at them is funny! Watching them fall down, bleed, and get carried away in a stretcher -- not so funny. He's throwing rocks for the same reason most chimps throw feces -- not because he is trying to injure a spectator, but because it amuses him to see their reaction!
No big deal... they just used Babelfish and clicked on "Chimp to English". But we probably ought to revoke these chimps' internet access -- we've already got enough people acting like monkeys on the 'net!
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The accuracy of the human eye is such that you can only distinguish ~4000 pixels in a line while still being able to see the whole picture. 4000x4000=16 megapixels for a square image, or 12 megapixels for a 4:3 aspect ratio picture. Having more resolution than that is only useful if you are going to take part of the image and blow it up or otherwise focus on just a part of the image. So yes, once they achieve 12 megapixels CCDs, they should focus on something else, like speed for example. I have several pictures of "the couch where my daughter was a second ago" because my Nikon Coolpix inserts a huge delay between the time I push the button and the time the picture is actually recorded. Color accuracy would be nice too, or perhaps doing something about the graininess the CCDs seem to exhibit in low light conditions.
How much does Microsoft pay in local property taxes? I would hope they have paid in a lot more than the cost of this project. Local governments are almost always willing to make concessions to businesses that make up a large part of their tax base by contributing to property taxes, state income taxes (by providing jobs), and sales taxes (which Microsoft pays very little of, not being a retail business). I would expect them to do similar improvements for a shopping mall, why not a tech firm? If the local government is giving them a free ride on property taxes AND subsidizing this improvement, then yes, local taxpayers have a right to be pissed off. But since a good number of people in Redmond owe their livelihood to M$ either directly or indirectly, I'd expect most of the taxpayers to keep their mouths shut. Plus, doesn't this overpass benefit everybody by keeping some cars off of the main highway?
joint parenting;
joint adoption;
joint foster care, custody, and visitation (including non-biological parents);
status as next-of-kin for hospital visits and medical decisions where one partner is too ill to be competent;
joint insurance policies for home, auto and health;
dissolution and divorce protections such as community property and child support;
immigration and residency for partners from other countries;
inheritance automatically in the absence of a will;
joint leases with automatic renewal rights in the event one partner dies or leaves the house or apartment;
inheritance of jointly-owned real and personal property through the right of survivorship (which avoids the time and expense and taxes in probate);
benefits such as annuities, pension plans, Social Security, and Medicare;
spousal exemptions to property tax increases upon the death of one partner who is a co-owner of the home;
veterans' discounts on medical care, education, and home loans; joint filing of tax returns;
joint filing of customs claims when traveling;
wrongful death benefits for a surviving partner and children;
right to visit their partner at the hospital and make decisions about their health care;
bereavement or sick leave to care for a partner or child;
decision-making power with respect to whether a deceased partner will be cremated or not and where to bury him or her;
crime victims' recovery benefits;
loss of consortium tort benefits;
domestic violence protection orders;
judicial protections and evidentiary immunity;
Now you're suggesting yanking those rights away from 95% of people to make it more fair?!? As they say, "Good luck with that!" Wouldn't it be much more politically expedient to just grant those rights to the other 5% of the people?
They are obviously afraid somebody will run their arguments through Microsoft Songsmith and post the result to Youtube, making them sound even more absurd than they already do! Come to think of it, that's not a bad idea... any volunteers to set RIAA lawyers to music?
Now, why did we vote these guys in?
;-)
I voted with my feet and moved to Oregon... why are you still in California?
Maybe... but only if you disable Windows Aero.
We appear to agree that we should not use the same term for the legal and religious definition of marriage. Personally and idealistically, I agree with you that churches do not own the word "marriage". However, it may be expedient to let them pretend they do and change the legal definition to "civil union" or some such phrase. I'm very much pro-family; but most religious people fail to acknowledge the simple truth that many same-sex couple do in fact have children, and that those children deserve all the same legal rights as children of mixed-sex couples. Although it is inevitable that eventually same-sex couples will have identical legal rights as all other couples, I say we should try to give them those rights as soon as possible -- for the sake of the children!
Four quad-core Opteron processors, 32 GB of memory, Windows Server 2008, Asus Xonar DX PCI Express sound card, 3Ware 9550SX-8LP SATA 3 Gb/s RAID controller, Two Western Digital 300 GB VelociRaptor hard drives in RAID 1, Two 1 TB Samsung SpinPoint F1s also in RAID 1, and Four 1 TB Samsung SpinPoint F1s in RAID 5. Puget went with MagiCool's Xtreme Nova 1080 radiator, Nine 120 mm fans, Four Koolance CPU blocks, Koolance combined pump and reservoir unit, andCooler Master Stacker 810 case. By a remarkable coincidence, these are almost exactly the hardware requirements for Windows 8!
Oh, so now you want to prevent non-Catholics from getting married, too? No, what he is saying is that the government cannot force a church to perform religious rites on someone they do not want to. Separation of Church and State was one of the founding principles of the United States. Unfortunately, this principle was violated when they allowed the legal and religious definitions of "marriage" to co-mingle. We need to completely separate the two. Any couple that wants all of the legal benefits currently afforded "married" couples should be able to petition the government for a change in status and automatically get those benefits. But that shouldn't mean that they are "married" in the eyes of any given church. The churches retain the right to decide which people they want to perform religious ceremonies on, and can refuse to perform them on anyone they see fit. You can't just walk into any Catholic church and demand to be given you wafer and wine; the priest does have the right to refuse to recognize you as a member of the church.
The way Andy Grove would do it would be to dismiss him but give him a glowing review on the condition that he go to work for a competitor (and presumably steal from them instead). How is this guy ever going to get a job at Office Max or Office Depo when Staples claims he's been stealing?
According to The Register, 71% of the earth's surface is covered by water... which was regarded as an incorrect answer in the survey! Apparently pollsters and journalists aren't too big on science knowledge either. (We were taught in school that 3/4 of the earth's surface was covered in water.)
When I first got my 2003 Civic Hybrid, Oregon DMV was doing a similarly stupid thing - they slapped a surcharge onto the registration fee for all hybrids, on the premise that I wouldn't be paying as much in gasoline taxes! A couple years later they saw the error of their ways; now they don't charge any more to register a hybrid. Now they just want to put a GPS in every car and tax you by mile instead of taxing you by gallon. But yes, use of alternative fuels does screw up the model they use for assessing highway taxes.
Fuck the Kindle though. Umm... it is pretty much the wrong shape to make that use of it even remotely possible. Trust me, I've tried! And besides which, if I actually did find a way to follow your suggestion, Amazon would quickly issue a take down notice prohibiting me from making such creative use of the Kindle.
Econ 101: If your business model involves selling the hardware for less than cost and then making all your money on content licenses, then you need to prevent alternative uses of the hardware by any means necessary. Of course, the alternative would be to FIX YOUR FUCKING BUSINESS MODEL, but then, when has Amazon ever seriously considered the "fix the business model" alternative?
If everybody started using used vegetable oil for an energy source, wouldn't the cost of used vegetable oil go way up? Meaning it would be more cost effective to sell the oil and buy the electricity rather than use the oil to generate my own electricity. Trust me, if dead cats were to become a viable energy source, then even the market value of a dead cat would skyrocket. (What?!? There's currently no market for trading dead cat futures?!?)
It has to be proven that it is YOUR fault. Not in Oregon. Under House Bill 3314, if your car comes into contact with a bicycle, it is automatically assumed to be your fault.
If a news reporter sells packets of sugar or oregano to kids there is nothing to base the charge on. I don't know... if I was the kids, I'd be tempted to file fraud charges against the reporter! Am I the only one out there that calls the cops when somebody sells me some bogus drugs?!?
So they could argue intent as extenuating circumstances and it is a lesser crime... but it is still a crime. That being said, you're correct -- it ain't illegal unless a prosecutor decides to prosecute it, which in this case would serve no useful purpose.
Sorry, I don't think that explanation is going to fly in court.
If this exercise had been done with criminal intent it would be breaking the law.
"Your honor, I just pointed the gun in a random direction and pulled the trigger. If this exercise had been done with criminal intent it would be breaking the law. But since I had no intention of actually shooting someone, only demonstrating what can happen when a gun goes off, I consider this perfectly legal! And please, give my condolences to their next of kin."
I'm sorry, but intent can never be proved in court. Penalties need to be assessed based on outcomes, not intent. Accidentally kill somebody with your car, and you go to jail for involuntary manslaughter, even if your intentions were perfectly innocent. And this wasn't an "accident", it was a deliberate violation of computer security and privacy laws. If a news reporter sells drugs to school kids to prove how easy it is to do, he's still gonna go to jail!
Our local library carries CDs and DVDs as well as books. They also have free Wi-Fi and make desks available for people to bring in their own laptops. I had a conversation with the librarian where I pointed out that anybody could come in, rip all the CDs to their laptop, and place them back on the shelf. If I recall correctly, his response was that he wasn't going to comment on whether or not that was fair use, he wasn't going to stop me, but if I did do that, then he didn't want to know about it. In other words, its not their job to be copyright police, but they want to maintain plausible deniability in case someone makes a stink about their material being copied.
"Nice little laptop you got here... shame if anything happened to it!"
I don't know why you would make that comparison!
You're assuming he was actually trying to hit someone. Watching humans scream with panic and run away when you throw things at them is funny! Watching them fall down, bleed, and get carried away in a stretcher -- not so funny. He's throwing rocks for the same reason most chimps throw feces -- not because he is trying to injure a spectator, but because it amuses him to see their reaction!
No big deal... they just used Babelfish and clicked on "Chimp to English". But we probably ought to revoke these chimps' internet access -- we've already got enough people acting like monkeys on the 'net!