God damn, I'm so tired of this. Please, take my karma, I don't care.
2001-12-14 16:50:32 dmca and college radio stations (articles,news) (rejected)
This is like the 3rd or 4th damn time this has happened to me. In the beginning I submitted stories because I loved the site and what they'd done with it and wanted to help them. And then that feeling faded away, and I submitted stories because I cared about helping make sure that important news was seen by all the like-minded people who come here. Now I wonder what I even bother anymore at all, cause they'll just reject whatever I submit anyways.
From the interesting stories I have submitted and had shot down, I realize there must be so many great stories out there just waiting to be told, and the only thing holding us back is that we have no way of getting them to the audience because the powers that be decide that Bozo the wonder toaster powered by Linux is more interesting than people getting arrested for the first time in the world for using File Sharing clients (in Japan, look it up) or anti-cancer molecules which self-reproduce. Pisses me off.
I wish there were someway I could read through the submissions directly, and cut those worthless editors, with their inane, poorly-written comments, right out of the process since I could really give a damn about those little biased blurbs they throw on the end of each post. What would be really great would be to see the same moderation applied to comments applied to articles, or to see each rejection or acceptance by an editor labeled with a numerical value that he decides, and we can choose the level at which we want to browse articles, just like we can do with comments. Of course, for them to implement either of these might require them to take time out of their busy schedule of randomly picking marbles out of hat while blindfolded to choose which stories they post........
After snooping around a little with Google, it would seem that TI has banned programs featuring:
Profanity
Pornography or sexually explicit content
Drug-related content
Content promoting or depicting terrorism or racial/ethnic hatred.
Content promoting or depicting violence in schools
Programs made exclusively for cheating (e.g. fake memory-clearing programs)
Copyright or trademark violations (e.g. calculator ROMs, text or graphics that violate others' copyrights or trademarks)
Programs that were specifically mentioned by people included Drug Wars (too bad, that was a fun game, but I could see how parental no-fun no-humor censor types could get pissed off) and strip blackjack (which somehow had no pornography in it actually, or so they say).
As a former high school student, I can tell you that it's not the Tetris that caused students to stop paying attention in your class.
I dunno if you remember what it was like to be a high school student anymore, but if it's not the Tetris it'd be something else, like staring blankly out the window or day dreaming.
The Tetris on the calculator wasn't so fun that I would think about it when I wasn't playing it, it was just something I would do when I was bored to tears and needed a distraction. Rather than blame some calculator game for why your students no longer listen, maybe you should look at other possible causes........and yeah yeah, I know, you don't have a whole lot to be working with there, given the subject you're teaching to high-schoolers, but I have definitely had good and bad math teachers. The good teachers were the ones who made me think, and came up with interesting ways to link the subject back to real life. And even in their classes, I would play calculator games when they were spending too long on a subject (maybe for other people in the class) that I already understood.
So if all your students have stopped paying attention in your class, maybe rather than blaming the easy to blame calculator games, you should look at yourself and how you're teaching them.......
Well, I am a biologist in the sense that I studied it in college, and I see no indication that this affects fat absorption in any way. It seems to me to actually be interacting with the abdominal fat calls, and by that point the fat has already been absorbed. So yeah, you are just redistributing the fat around. But I guess being a little fatter overall is better than having a beer belly....
And if you ask me, that's exactly what the problem is with Linux still. In Windows, you conceivably could boot into it for the first time 4 minutes ago, and 4 minutes later be able to figure out how to do sharing (if you're a quick learner on the basics like clicking and rightclicking and folders). And I know it's hackneyed to say it by now, but until developers start caring more about the stuff that doesn't interest them (useability for newbies) Linux is never going to have a real shot at displacing Windows on the home computer.
Whoops, my mistake, Hong Kong is actually in a different region than Japan, it's in region 3. Seems like they didn't consider Japan a piracy threat when they designed the regions or something, so they lumped Japan in with Europe in region 2, while they put bad-boy Hong Kong in region 3 with all the other trouble maker Asian countries (besides China) that pirate movies.....
Both Japan and Hong Kong are region 2. I live in Japan, and aside from those shady stores in the electronics district, I don't see any region free DVD players for sale in the major retailers here.
I know I'm replying too late for anyone ever to see my post, but if you don't mind spending the cash, the Sony Clie 7x0 PDA series, which can be had for around $400 these days I think, offers mp3 playback with no copy protection. It can also play back SDMI compliant ATRACs, but of course no one uses that really.
Oh, and plus you get a free PDA thrown in with your mp3 player hehe.
I had one of the original "classic" cybiko's. Why did I have it? Because they gave them away by the boatload in a contest on their website where everyone who signed up won one pretty much. A lot of people who got them took them right back to Best Buy/CompUSA/Staples/Toys R US etc. and got themself a $100 return credit. I wonder how many of these give-aways they're including in the "half a million" they claim they sold.
That aside, it was really a pretty neat toy for any one in school still. It was no PDA, but it wasn't meant to be one either. They eliminated features that you can live without in a device targeted towards school kids (touch screen, high res screen, size, etc.) and they added some really nice features (wireless networking which could chat, play games, check email, etc). It would supposedly automatically network with nearby Cybiko's so you could chat, and play games with them, and if one of them was plugged into a computer, you could use that one to access the internet to check email and stuff, though I dunno how well these things actually worked as I never met anyone with one besides me.
I was a little surprised these things didn't catch on more. I'm guessing that's why they gave so many away, because this seems like the sorta thing with a critical mass. On its own, it sucks (not much fun to chat with yourself), but the more people who have it, the better it becomes. Add in the school mentality of the more people who have it, the cooler it becomes as well, and I thought this thing had a lot of potential if they could have gotten the spark started.
But in their giveaway they screwed up big time by not including an age limit at that time, so the wrong people ended up with these things, and those people took them back to the stores, thus taking away even more sales for them! I'm surprised to see that these guys are still around, I was sure at the time after that mistake, and giving away 1000's of these things that surely they would be just another.com/tech company down the tubes. Their new one seems pretty nice though, the size was one of the kickers with the original, maybe they'll make it this time.
Though this also seems like exactly the sort of thing where just as it starts to get popular, school administrators will start banning it, so I don't think they're out of the woods yet......
heh, reminds me of the cellular phones here in Japan. Among the (numerous) ways that they're a million times better than American cell phones is that some of the more recent models have a built in digital camera, and you can email the pictures to your friends' phones. (All modern Japanese cellular phones have good enough displays to display small pictures on. Some even 24 bit color I think).
They're advertising campaign actually focuses on how you can use the cameras to take compromising pictures of people hehe. The common theme goes something like this:
A guy's sleeping at his desk, when he's supposed to be meeting this girl. The girl's friend sees this and snaps and picture and emails it to the girl. When the guy later shows up, and gaves a lame excuse, the girl triumphantly whips out her photo-cell phone and the guy is caught in his lie. Outside you see her friend doing a victory dance as the logo and theme music come on.
And just my opinion, but somehow having a watch with a built-in camera seems nerdy, but having a cellular phone with a built-in camera seems cool. Probably a hold over from the fact that calculator watches were never cool, but having the best cellular phone on the block has always been cool....
>Clearly, if civil rights have been "trashed",
>there must be endless examples. And by the
>way, "potential" abuses don't count. I want REAL
>examples.
And why the Hell would, as you put it, "potential" abuses not count?
So if they were to pass a law saying its ok for police to break into your house, without any liability for any damages whatsoever, and confiscate whatever they see fit with no limitations, on the mere suspicion that you may have pirated copyrighted material on your computer - but they passed this law with the promise that this won't be used against good people and won't abuse it. So in that case, that would be ok with you? I mean, they say they won't use it against good people, that they won't abuse it. Just because it has the potential to be abused doesn't mean that it will, so it should be alright right?
Give me one concrete example of what you could do before that you can't do now. I don't give a damn about quote unquote "potential" abuses, I want REAL examples. C'mon, be exact.
What the Hell do you even mean when you say "potential" versus REAL examples? This law hasn't even been passed yet, how can anything besides potential examples even exist yet?
I mean, obviously this is an extreme example, but extreme examples are useful in that they point out the flaws that may be present in the reasoning on not-so-extreme examples. The price of liberty is eternal vigilence. Don't let a law pass today that has the potential to be abused, and then complain down the road when it is abused....
well, sorry to nitpick you, but technically this isn't true, and I hate to see wrong information being spread.
http://gi.grolier.com/wwii/wwii_hitler.html
Hitler actually lost the general election to the incumbent Paul von Hindenburg. He was subsequently _appointed_ chancellor by von Hindenburg, who thought that he could use Hitler to his own advantage, and form a coalition government. Unfortunately for everyone, he was mistaken.
A better example perhaps of dictator being voted into power would be Mussolini in Italy. There he was voted into office like you said, and slowly took away people's rights one by one....
This is a repost of an article from a couple days back. The last one was one the main page too, so it has a rather extensive discussion if anyone somehow missed it and wants to see it:
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/10/17/202521 8
(there shouldn't be any spaces in that URL, but for some reason when I'm previewing it a space keeps appearing between the last 8 and the 1 proceeding it. no idea why)
priorities (don't underestimate size)
on
Which Laptop To Buy?
·
· Score: 2, Informative
My biggest suggestion to you would be not to underestimate the importance of size and weight. I'm on my second laptop now, and I have the benefit of 20/20 hindsight. My first laptop was your standard sized laptop, a Hitachi Visionbook Pro, which had good power-wise specs for the time, and was only of average size and weight, because I completely blew off the importance of these factors. I thought to myself, p-shaw all the laptop owners who complain about how heavy their computers are and don't actually carry them with them to places are trippin', it's only 5-7 pounds we're talking about here for heaven sakes. But 5-7 pounds gets surprisingly annoying when you have to carry it around with you whenever you go anywhere where you'll need it, especially with all the support equipment (power, carrying-case, batteries, etc.). That computer got stolen, and now after having owned a laptop, and wanting to buy a new one, I made a more informed choice and purchased a Sony Vaio super slim model, and I could not be happier with my choice.
I think you'll find there's an exponential return between the size of the computer you choose and how willing you are to take it with you to places where it'd help. With a PDA you'll probably be willing to carry it with you everywhere you go, just in case. With a superslim style computer, you'll probably be willing to carry it with you whenever you have good reason to believe that you'll need it. With some monster oversized 15" screen desktop replacement laptop, you'll probably find that that's exactly what you bought - a replacement for your desktop. And that's all well and good, but most people who are thinking about buying laptops do so with the expectation that they will be using the computer on the go, not just buying a small desktop with poor expansion options.
These days, every damn computer has so much power and video speed and such. I would suggest that these factors can be minimized unless you absolutely, positively need to play games or do something else very video/cpu intensive on your system. For what you need on the run (word processing, internet, mp3s maybe, etc.) it's important to keep in mind that you're not buying a desktop, and not to think like you are. So realize what you need and buy with those in mind. Every laptop will fulfill what you need from it application wise, so try and maximize the other laptop-specific attributes, such as battery life, size/weight, storage space and screen. I'd even go so far as to suggest that these days almost every laptop has a pretty decent screen, so you probably don't need to worry about that too much, but I haven't owned one of those laptops with a truly huge (14"+) screen yet, so this is just speculation.
As far as price is concerned, I would suggest that around ~1300-1500 is the sweet spot these days for slim computers. But if you absolutely, positively, need to have it be bargain basement priced, you might want to consider going used.
If it has to be new, I don't know about other manufacturers, but Sony has a pretty decent super tiny laptop for 999 here:
http://www.sonystyle.com/vaio/sr/index.html
yup, but you're missing the point. If any sort of stereoscopic preference is found, then that's a pretty damn good evidence that it's life. Only stereoisomers can distinguish other stereoisomers from mixes of both the left and right handed molecules, and there is no known non-biological source for stereoisomers, for so if the Martian soil can distinguish between left and right handed amino acids, you know that something is up. Of course, it might be even more exciting and have more implications if the Martian life is left-handed like we are.......
Actually, apparently not on that doppler method only being able to detect gigantic planets.
Here is an article from a UK paper (I first found it referenced by exosci.com) on the preliminary results from one such doppler study that have found two potential earth like planets. The system is a double red star system named CM Draconis. It even comes complete with a large Jovian sized gas giant in the system to draw asteroids and meteors away from the terrestrial sized planets with. Gotta wonder about what effect the two red stars would have on any possible development of life though. They do also note that this study was pushing the instruments to their very limits in the article as well.
Slashdot Mirror
God damn, I'm so tired of this. Please, take my karma, I don't care.
2001-12-14 16:50:32 dmca and college radio stations (articles,news) (rejected)
This is like the 3rd or 4th damn time this has happened to me. In the beginning I submitted stories because I loved the site and what they'd done with it and wanted to help them. And then that feeling faded away, and I submitted stories because I cared about helping make sure that important news was seen by all the like-minded people who come here. Now I wonder what I even bother anymore at all, cause they'll just reject whatever I submit anyways.
From the interesting stories I have submitted and had shot down, I realize there must be so many great stories out there just waiting to be told, and the only thing holding us back is that we have no way of getting them to the audience because the powers that be decide that Bozo the wonder toaster powered by Linux is more interesting than people getting arrested for the first time in the world for using File Sharing clients (in Japan, look it up) or anti-cancer molecules which self-reproduce. Pisses me off.
I wish there were someway I could read through the submissions directly, and cut those worthless editors, with their inane, poorly-written comments, right out of the process since I could really give a damn about those little biased blurbs they throw on the end of each post. What would be really great would be to see the same moderation applied to comments applied to articles, or to see each rejection or acceptance by an editor labeled with a numerical value that he decides, and we can choose the level at which we want to browse articles, just like we can do with comments. Of course, for them to implement either of these might require them to take time out of their busy schedule of randomly picking marbles out of hat while blindfolded to choose which stories they post........
After snooping around a little with Google, it would seem that TI has banned programs featuring:
Profanity
Pornography or sexually explicit content
Drug-related content
Content promoting or depicting terrorism or racial/ethnic hatred.
Content promoting or depicting violence in schools
Programs made exclusively for cheating (e.g. fake memory-clearing programs)
Copyright or trademark violations (e.g. calculator ROMs, text or graphics that violate others' copyrights or trademarks)
Programs that were specifically mentioned by people included Drug Wars (too bad, that was a fun game, but I could see how parental no-fun no-humor censor types could get pissed off) and strip blackjack (which somehow had no pornography in it actually, or so they say).
As a former high school student, I can tell you that it's not the Tetris that caused students to stop paying attention in your class.
I dunno if you remember what it was like to be a high school student anymore, but if it's not the Tetris it'd be something else, like staring blankly out the window or day dreaming.
The Tetris on the calculator wasn't so fun that I would think about it when I wasn't playing it, it was just something I would do when I was bored to tears and needed a distraction. Rather than blame some calculator game for why your students no longer listen, maybe you should look at other possible causes........and yeah yeah, I know, you don't have a whole lot to be working with there, given the subject you're teaching to high-schoolers, but I have definitely had good and bad math teachers. The good teachers were the ones who made me think, and came up with interesting ways to link the subject back to real life. And even in their classes, I would play calculator games when they were spending too long on a subject (maybe for other people in the class) that I already understood.
So if all your students have stopped paying attention in your class, maybe rather than blaming the easy to blame calculator games, you should look at yourself and how you're teaching them.......
Well, I am a biologist in the sense that I studied it in college, and I see no indication that this affects fat absorption in any way. It seems to me to actually be interacting with the abdominal fat calls, and by that point the fat has already been absorbed. So yeah, you are just redistributing the fat around. But I guess being a little fatter overall is better than having a beer belly....
And if you ask me, that's exactly what the problem is with Linux still. In Windows, you conceivably could boot into it for the first time 4 minutes ago, and 4 minutes later be able to figure out how to do sharing (if you're a quick learner on the basics like clicking and rightclicking and folders). And I know it's hackneyed to say it by now, but until developers start caring more about the stuff that doesn't interest them (useability for newbies) Linux is never going to have a real shot at displacing Windows on the home computer.
Whoops, my mistake, Hong Kong is actually in a different region than Japan, it's in region 3. Seems like they didn't consider Japan a piracy threat when they designed the regions or something, so they lumped Japan in with Europe in region 2, while they put bad-boy Hong Kong in region 3 with all the other trouble maker Asian countries (besides China) that pirate movies.....
Both Japan and Hong Kong are region 2. I live in Japan, and aside from those shady stores in the electronics district, I don't see any region free DVD players for sale in the major retailers here.
I know I'm replying too late for anyone ever to see my post, but if you don't mind spending the cash, the Sony Clie 7x0 PDA series, which can be had for around $400 these days I think, offers mp3 playback with no copy protection. It can also play back SDMI compliant ATRACs, but of course no one uses that really.
Oh, and plus you get a free PDA thrown in with your mp3 player hehe.
I had one of the original "classic" cybiko's. Why did I have it? Because they gave them away by the boatload in a contest on their website where everyone who signed up won one pretty much. A lot of people who got them took them right back to Best Buy/CompUSA/Staples/Toys R US etc. and got themself a $100 return credit. I wonder how many of these give-aways they're including in the "half a million" they claim they sold.
.com/tech company down the tubes. Their new one seems pretty nice though, the size was one of the kickers with the original, maybe they'll make it this time.
That aside, it was really a pretty neat toy for any one in school still. It was no PDA, but it wasn't meant to be one either. They eliminated features that you can live without in a device targeted towards school kids (touch screen, high res screen, size, etc.) and they added some really nice features (wireless networking which could chat, play games, check email, etc). It would supposedly automatically network with nearby Cybiko's so you could chat, and play games with them, and if one of them was plugged into a computer, you could use that one to access the internet to check email and stuff, though I dunno how well these things actually worked as I never met anyone with one besides me.
I was a little surprised these things didn't catch on more. I'm guessing that's why they gave so many away, because this seems like the sorta thing with a critical mass. On its own, it sucks (not much fun to chat with yourself), but the more people who have it, the better it becomes. Add in the school mentality of the more people who have it, the cooler it becomes as well, and I thought this thing had a lot of potential if they could have gotten the spark started.
But in their giveaway they screwed up big time by not including an age limit at that time, so the wrong people ended up with these things, and those people took them back to the stores, thus taking away even more sales for them! I'm surprised to see that these guys are still around, I was sure at the time after that mistake, and giving away 1000's of these things that surely they would be just another
Though this also seems like exactly the sort of thing where just as it starts to get popular, school administrators will start banning it, so I don't think they're out of the woods yet......
heh, reminds me of the cellular phones here in Japan. Among the (numerous) ways that they're a million times better than American cell phones is that some of the more recent models have a built in digital camera, and you can email the pictures to your friends' phones. (All modern Japanese cellular phones have good enough displays to display small pictures on. Some even 24 bit color I think).
They're advertising campaign actually focuses on how you can use the cameras to take compromising pictures of people hehe. The common theme goes something like this:
A guy's sleeping at his desk, when he's supposed to be meeting this girl. The girl's friend sees this and snaps and picture and emails it to the girl. When the guy later shows up, and gaves a lame excuse, the girl triumphantly whips out her photo-cell phone and the guy is caught in his lie. Outside you see her friend doing a victory dance as the logo and theme music come on.
And just my opinion, but somehow having a watch with a built-in camera seems nerdy, but having a cellular phone with a built-in camera seems cool. Probably a hold over from the fact that calculator watches were never cool, but having the best cellular phone on the block has always been cool....
>Clearly, if civil rights have been "trashed",
>there must be endless examples. And by the
>way, "potential" abuses don't count. I want REAL
>examples.
And why the Hell would, as you put it, "potential" abuses not count?
So if they were to pass a law saying its ok for police to break into your house, without any liability for any damages whatsoever, and confiscate whatever they see fit with no limitations, on the mere suspicion that you may have pirated copyrighted material on your computer - but they passed this law with the promise that this won't be used against good people and won't abuse it. So in that case, that would be ok with you? I mean, they say they won't use it against good people, that they won't abuse it. Just because it has the potential to be abused doesn't mean that it will, so it should be alright right?
Give me one concrete example of what you could do before that you can't do now. I don't give a damn about quote unquote "potential" abuses, I want REAL examples. C'mon, be exact.
What the Hell do you even mean when you say "potential" versus REAL examples? This law hasn't even been passed yet, how can anything besides potential examples even exist yet?
I mean, obviously this is an extreme example, but extreme examples are useful in that they point out the flaws that may be present in the reasoning on not-so-extreme examples. The price of liberty is eternal vigilence. Don't let a law pass today that has the potential to be abused, and then complain down the road when it is abused....
well, sorry to nitpick you, but technically this isn't true, and I hate to see wrong information being spread.
http://gi.grolier.com/wwii/wwii_hitler.html
Hitler actually lost the general election to the incumbent Paul von Hindenburg. He was subsequently _appointed_ chancellor by von Hindenburg, who thought that he could use Hitler to his own advantage, and form a coalition government. Unfortunately for everyone, he was mistaken.
A better example perhaps of dictator being voted into power would be Mussolini in Italy. There he was voted into office like you said, and slowly took away people's rights one by one....
http://gi.grolier.com/wwii/wwii_mussolini.html
This is a repost of an article from a couple days back. The last one was one the main page too, so it has a rather extensive discussion if anyone somehow missed it and wants to see it: http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/10/17/202521 8
(there shouldn't be any spaces in that URL, but for some reason when I'm previewing it a space keeps appearing between the last 8 and the 1 proceeding it. no idea why)
My biggest suggestion to you would be not to underestimate the importance of size and weight. I'm on my second laptop now, and I have the benefit of 20/20 hindsight. My first laptop was your standard sized laptop, a Hitachi Visionbook Pro, which had good power-wise specs for the time, and was only of average size and weight, because I completely blew off the importance of these factors. I thought to myself, p-shaw all the laptop owners who complain about how heavy their computers are and don't actually carry them with them to places are trippin', it's only 5-7 pounds we're talking about here for heaven sakes. But 5-7 pounds gets surprisingly annoying when you have to carry it around with you whenever you go anywhere where you'll need it, especially with all the support equipment (power, carrying-case, batteries, etc.). That computer got stolen, and now after having owned a laptop, and wanting to buy a new one, I made a more informed choice and purchased a Sony Vaio super slim model, and I could not be happier with my choice.
I think you'll find there's an exponential return between the size of the computer you choose and how willing you are to take it with you to places where it'd help. With a PDA you'll probably be willing to carry it with you everywhere you go, just in case. With a superslim style computer, you'll probably be willing to carry it with you whenever you have good reason to believe that you'll need it. With some monster oversized 15" screen desktop replacement laptop, you'll probably find that that's exactly what you bought - a replacement for your desktop. And that's all well and good, but most people who are thinking about buying laptops do so with the expectation that they will be using the computer on the go, not just buying a small desktop with poor expansion options.
These days, every damn computer has so much power and video speed and such. I would suggest that these factors can be minimized unless you absolutely, positively need to play games or do something else very video/cpu intensive on your system. For what you need on the run (word processing, internet, mp3s maybe, etc.) it's important to keep in mind that you're not buying a desktop, and not to think like you are. So realize what you need and buy with those in mind. Every laptop will fulfill what you need from it application wise, so try and maximize the other laptop-specific attributes, such as battery life, size/weight, storage space and screen. I'd even go so far as to suggest that these days almost every laptop has a pretty decent screen, so you probably don't need to worry about that too much, but I haven't owned one of those laptops with a truly huge (14"+) screen yet, so this is just speculation.
As far as price is concerned, I would suggest that around ~1300-1500 is the sweet spot these days for slim computers. But if you absolutely, positively, need to have it be bargain basement priced, you might want to consider going used.
If it has to be new, I don't know about other manufacturers, but Sony has a pretty decent super tiny laptop for 999 here:
http://www.sonystyle.com/vaio/sr/index.html
yup, but you're missing the point. If any sort of stereoscopic preference is found, then that's a pretty damn good evidence that it's life. Only stereoisomers can distinguish other stereoisomers from mixes of both the left and right handed molecules, and there is no known non-biological source for stereoisomers, for so if the Martian soil can distinguish between left and right handed amino acids, you know that something is up. Of course, it might be even more exciting and have more implications if the Martian life is left-handed like we are.......
Actually, apparently not on that doppler method only being able to detect gigantic planets.
Here is an article from a UK paper (I first found it referenced by exosci.com) on the preliminary results from one such doppler study that have found two potential earth like planets. The system is a double red star system named CM Draconis. It even comes complete with a large Jovian sized gas giant in the system to draw asteroids and meteors away from the terrestrial sized planets with. Gotta wonder about what effect the two red stars would have on any possible development of life though. They do also note that this study was pushing the instruments to their very limits in the article as well.
Results are very preliminary still it seems.