I install it everywhere to reduce bandwidth usage, same as adblock. The amount of traffic all these trackers generate per page is ridiculous; often the page won't even load unless the trackers have completed sending their data, unacceptable. I also happen to use noscript, cookie monster and refcontrol, to whitelist selected sites.
Goes on to show their hypocrisy. If they are going to mention Castro, how about mentioning American backed terrorists? Castro did not blew a Jet Liner, Posada Carriles living happily in Florida did (and confessed it). He is also responsible of planting bombs in Cuba and central America, killing an Italian tourist in the process. He is protected by the US gov. over a CIA pact for doing anti-communism dirty jobs.
Yes, the USA is infringing their own counter-terrorism UN resolutions by protecting the likes of him (and Orlando Bosch among others, sentenced in US soil but quickly pardoned by Bush father), also living happily directing the nice Cuban lobbyists...
The cheaper CFLs have electronics that can't handle the heat, when ppl use them the usual way with the screw (and electronics) up and the glass part pointing down, it fries them (heat goes up).
Want to have them last longer?, make sure they are the other way, with the screw down and the glass pointing up. When they are horizontal, the longevity is average. Incandescents don't care and can point down just fine.
Incidentally i have a couple of 10w Phillips LEDs, flood lamp style. They use 4pcs of 2.5w led each. Some people has had them burn out quickly when used in a typical enclosed flood lamp fashion, perhaps pointing down from above. I noticed they also have electronics that heat like crazy; thankfully mines are pointing up (their light is too strong for my room, opting for bouncing instead) and they are uncovered, with plenty of ventilation.
Even with bouncing, their combined strength is similar to a 100w incandescent.
I believe these leds are spending a lot in ac/dc transform. Perhaps if houses had some sort of dc standard, it would make implementation and longevity easier (a single ventilated transformer elsewhere instead of lots of small inefficient ones attached).
Btw with leds if the transformer doesn't fry, they also become dimmer with time. They just last much more than fluorescents, and no mercury or fragile glass is needed.
I hate it how gsm handsets interfere with computer speakers, you can always tell when someone carries a gsm instead of, say, cdma or its later incarnations. Its also silly to learn by the speakers noise you are going to get a call before the actual phone rings... And, have found gsm despite in theory being more rebust, struggles more in bad situation such as inside buildings.
A single operator in my country happens to service both cdma and gsm phones, with the latter being more heavily pushed. Perhaps it can simply accomodate more lines per cell?
I mentioned computer speakers but the noise made by gsm handsets actually affects most recording equipment, such as studio or even live tv broadcasts (ie, a guest in a show forgets to turn off the phone...), and you get to hear the familiar beep beep beep, beep beep beep; twaaaaaaaa twaaaaaa twaaaaa thing.
I find this scenario much better than the alternative: Windows Starter.
In all countries, it should be mandatory to offer an OS-less or free-OS choice; it should be illegal to provide windows only pre-installs, because that is benefiting a particular corporation which is anti-competitive at best.
It is the user's problem if they buy a windows license or install ubuntu, but at least they are not forced to pay the Microsoft tax.
In my work, many brand machines with windows pre-installed have been wiped in favor of Debian. So is not like the opposite doesn't happen, all it takes is a company policy change and thats it.
Ubuntu pre-installed will introduce it to people who would have never tried it before, even if they wipe it, they will now learn there is "something else" out there... And perhaps one day they will give it another chance, perhaps after utter frustration and countless windows reinstalls, or the Windows 8 Metro Experience;)
It doesn't matter if the impact is minor, choice is always good.
Interlace video has twice the speed, even if its only half of the lines, they are updating content; which is why they are not really 25fps but 50fps on half the lines all the time. This shows in panning, and when people move, sports, etc.
I'm sorry but there was something more: The Floppy drive, namely, Woz floppy drive... Did you ever use floppies with the other machines? Then you know what i mean, several minutes vs few seconds to boot the very same program, and hell nothing would crash if you accidentaly pushed a button when the drive was reading, unlike certain other brand...
What makes people deaf seems to be passive exposure to monotonous, permanent noise.
Dynamic compression overuse kills the natural breathing when you listen to music, the recording rapidly approaches white noise and looks like a solid rectangle when viewed with an audio editor.
Obviously people listening to overcompressed music for long periods are getting in trouble. The problem is the labels keep demanding sound engineers to produce this crap.
When you leave the dynamics in your music alone, you can listen comfortably for hours. Compress them away and your head starts hurting quickly... And they wonder why sales are going down...
Ah!, so that's why ATSC was designed that way, to kill indoor and mobile reception and force everyone invest in a fixed installation...
However you are mistaken with the "increasingly rare across the world" part. You see, very few countries were foolish enough to adopt the American digital standard, and while the European DVB system is not perfect, it does allow for mobile reception and some indoor.
The Japanese system (enhanced in Brazil) is becoming increasingly popular in 3rd world nations. The whole of South America, and some other Asian countries which used NTSC and PAL in the past, are joining with ISDB-T. This system allows for both mobile (as in 120kph/75mph moving car) and bunny rabbit/circle antenna indoor reception. Just watch these tests on live digital tv reception under different conditions.
As a matter of fact, one of the modifications done in Brazil to the Japanese system, was the complete removal of DRM, that and the technology transfer without payment of licenses or such. We like free as in freedom, thank you very much...
I have a Samsung Syncmaster 997df 19" crt that can happily do this resolution (@ 60hz). I usually use it in 1600x1200 for 75hz tho.
Refreshing aside, the color gamut and black levels makes any flat panel cry, with LED back-light becoming even worse. Heck, this screen doesn't even need color calibration in a black room., see all the lagom color gamma hit the right spot in all brightness, where all the flat displays i try look bad.
Granted, back when everyone had CRTs i couldn't afford a screen this quality, i only got it recently because someone was discarding it as "obsolete"... But really, color has suffered a lot with flat displays. Now to compensate a little i urge everyone to get a color calibration tool, if only to get something like 80% of the performance a CRT could have, but much better than the usual 40% a factory setting would bring.
I'll tell you how it works in a country where its successfully automated. The main benefits are speed and fairness.
With manual voting, sometimes the minor parties don't have enough people to witness counting in all places, so the big parties can do what they want with those votes...
Anyway the machines are not connected to a network. Only at the end of the day, they connect to a server (using isolated secure links) to send results; should this fail, a memory card is physically sent.
The machines also do something stupidly simple which, for some reason, others fail to do: Print the vote in paper, the voter verifies and then stores that paper in a box for public auditing. Is that simple, really. At the end of the day, the machine prints its results which are compared to the votes stored in the box, that's it.
If you think this is a waste of time, you must remember the machines have already sent their results before the auditing begins. Only if there is a major discrepancy will the votes of that specific machine be later put on hold for revision.
Pen and paper is horribly prone to abuse; you just can't imagine. Someone sees a vote they don't like, they hide/eat/destroy the paper, etc... Or they make the box with the votes "disappear" before counting (the machine would have already sent the votes before a manual audit).
If you want to laugh, the machines used are just Olivetti lottery machines (x86) with custom software; and they work just fine. With them, we can have preliminary (but official) results in hours, rather than days or weeks. And there is plenty of replacements, what with worldwide lottery business and all, no custom (expensive) hardware is needed.
Also there is no mess with people writing improperly in paper or ink their fingers, etc. They go to the ballot cabin, push a button, get a printed paper with their vote, they see if it is the same, fold it, and deposit the paper in a box before leaving. Quite fast and clean.
Oh yes, all machines are sent with a car battery and inverter, should the power fail somewhere, there is enough power for 6+ hours (enough time to bring more batteries if needed).
How to detect if someone already voted? There is a separate machine (laptop/netbook) in its own network with a fingerprint scanner where people is checked first.
It is that simple, with current technology, it works, and has been verified by countless international organizations in dozens of elections already in the past decade, that system has 7 failsafe mechanisms IIRC. Why can't you guys do this properly, beats me...
Perhaps your big parties want to keep things exactly as they are, so the minor parties never have a chance...
Calling them fake is ignorant at best. First, China makes the "genuine" ones; then they make "non genuine" of varying qualities, starting from identical, all down to rip-off. Also, you can make them stamp anything on them, starting from an identical logo, subtle variations to avoid "counterfeit" claims in different countries, down to generic or whatever you want written on them. These variations have different prices and levels of legality (within China). They will officially deny to stamp "Sony" in some random electronic equipment, but if you are willing to pay, it can be done. Kinda defeats the saving of buying a cheap alternative in the first place? You decide, but people is stupid enough to buy for brands.
Many times I'd rather buy a Chinese labelled device because at least the price is fair, some people do try to sell you bad quality but brand stamped stuff; when instead you could buy good quality but generic Chinese brand instead. Indeed, you can buy in Hong Kong super expensive brands, or cross the street and obtain very high quality same brand stamped "non genuine" product. Knowing to recognise which is which can be very hard, sometimes they copy packaging, stickers and such very well; and normally that doesn't matter there because it has the fair (much lower price) while keeping the same quality very often.
What I hate is when they try to sell you a counterfeit with almost the same price of the genuine, or sometimes just a little cheaper. Software is silly, "counterfeit" price is 0$ in the net, but fakes are sold online for 25$ or such, sometimes with good enough packaging, aluminium (plant pressed) CDs etc for software meant to cost 100$, 500$ etc.
Does these justify blocking of sites? the Bill is a blacklist, how do you fall on it or how do you get out of it is shady at best. Further, the State is not even enforcing it directly (like China or Iran), it passes the responsibility to the ISPs. This means they will rather block in excess rather than infringe the law; and many will be falsely accused and promptly disconnected in fear.
Iran is requiring full ID before using the net, and America is not far from that. China forbids cryptographic connections, America will get there as well, because this gets in the way of proper deep packet inspection; and only criminals have something to hide... Soon enough dissent will get banned, it is too easy to make a site go down by having agents post links to blacklisted sites; and this way the establishment cannot be accused. See? Americans are much more refined than China and Iran, while achieving the same.
Of course, the countries who do not implement these laws become "source of terrorism", blah, blah lets invade (war helps the economy, stupid).
I'm sorry but you are wrong in some details about NTSC. Also there is the problem of trying to reproduce the analog way of video "resolution", its currently pointless to use the ancient method despite the marketing. "HD" Video is just 1920x1080p, 1440x1080p or 1280x720p, omitting the horizontal resolution is silly. (Or you could use the now entrenched "megapixel" standard just to embarrass the industry and awake others... 1920x1080 is 2MP, 1440x1080 just 1.5MP, 1280x720 a mere 0.9MP). Want to spend a fortune for a 2MP monitor with tuner?
NTSC and all analog variants have a variable horizontal resolution, but fixed vertical resolution. The number of dots each line in the screen has depends on the bandwidth used but will get stretched regardless. NTSC has 525 lines BUT only 486 are viewable, or about 480 lines, (480i). But thats for luminance, we know they use half resolution for chroma (color), and a quarter in some media, so the color "bleeds", etc (this practice continues with compressed video).
If we try to approximate the resolution of NTSC to modern usage, lets say under optimal (broadcast over the air) conditions it would be something like 360x480 (luminance), and something like 180x240 (color) chroma.
Why is NTSC 4:3? Movies used an aspect ratio very close to that when it was defined; later, computer displays simply borrowed the TV screens, so it remained for a good while, UIs were designed around it, etc.
Size is proportional to distance. More resolution allows you to get closer but there is still a limit where you start noticing each pixel apart and becomes annoying. At some point you CAN remain close to a big screen, but then you are going to lose content due to escaping your field of vision, even if what you can see is crystal clear. That might be desirable in a computer screen with smaller windows, but not for full screen watching. A big screen doesn't need much resolution if you cannot stay close enough to it anyway, as is the case in public displays, etc. Similarly you will want HD content in your small screen if you are very close to it (eg computer display or portables).
For that reason you just can't say "x is good, y is bad", it depends. a 19" NTSC TV was probably good in a living room during the 70ies. Laserdisc had good performance, but you could do even better with betacam tapes or c band satellite, which wasn't considered "consumer" market, but studio/distribution use.
1080i is an issue of the digital formats the way they originally defined them, But, it is hard to tell an mpeg decoder to reject a 1080p stream, especially considering it can use less bitrate so quite pointless and stupid in practice. 1080p quickly became defacto and then sanctioned.
My personal opinion about optical spinning media is that its obsolete, even if the industry doesn't notice. it is simply too much a hassle to get a slow, scratch-able optical disc spinning when you could simply use a flash card/stick or net-stream the content. I wouldn't buy a blueray, instead opting for a very small computer (like those with atom cpu you can attach in the back of your screen). And some TVs are already bundling the machine inside anyway. If the industry had any clue, they would be already using SD cards. But perhaps this way is better, because people won't DRM the content.
Also digital vs analog, digital is simpler to setup and much more resilient than an equivalent analog counterpart. Also in HD broadcasting it needed an insane amount of bandwidth (yes, the Japanese did it in the 90ies). To have good analog you need very expensive equipment, digital will allow you a "close enough" experience with a much cheaper setup. Unfortunately Americans designed a dttv format which is not very friendly indoors or while moving, so this might sound the opposite to their experience. BUT, watch in youtube the tests done in japan and south america of what a decent dttv format can do and you won't miss anything from analog (do remember Japan also used NTSC before).
Americans do not believe in Democracy. Power to the masses to them equals ignorants ruling. They crafted a system where the rich (educated) elite is able to influence politics to the extreme, the "Lobby system" which is basically illegal in the rest of the world; rich people and corporations openly funding politicians (elsewhere a scandal).
Technically they don't define themselves as a democracy either, its a republic at best. A federal states union or something along those lines; each ruled by the wealthy (now corporations) in practice. A form of plutocracy, and it was intended that way. The rest is (corporate) propaganda to keep the masses controlled, and brag the world of how perfect they are and how undeveloped everyone else is.
It is a good idea, if the block shows a notice about the issue at hand. Wikipedia Italy did the same to protest something similar.
SOPA/PIPA in the end forces self-censorship, Americans might as well try an early taste of it. Also, nobody in their right mind should keep their e-business there, and its about time the world breaks with ICANN and switch to alternatives like OpenNIC.
I don't agree with that "nuclear" wording made by CNET. For a moment i though either the nuclear power industry was involved and would agree to a literal "blackout" or something unlikely involving weapons of mass destruction...
Also i hope they make clear this is something concerning USA legislative branch, aka Congress, and its their citizens the ones getting the worst. Might be painful at first, but The World will learn to route around America. So the "blackouts" should be limited to American IPs.
The notice might also show a list of who are supporting this bill, and call for boycotts, go daddy style; an action which seems to have gotten some people nervous.
Suppose sensors (maybe 50% of them) are bringing wrong data (not necessarily invalid), the plane is actually leveled but machines believe its nose diving... The automated response will probably induce a deadly stall.
Voting: Suppose 2 computers vote A, 2 vote B, and the last one abstains (ie. malfunctions) Solution?
Add in Captain input, Airbus style doesn't even move the physical lever, machine wants (and believes) is at 60%, captain feels is going too slow and moves throttle from 40% to 60%, machine does no change; in reality its going at 30% (or has an effective thrust equivalent to 30%)... Now add multiple independent engines for more fun, and there is still the control surfaces...
Fly by wire is a little like ABS, you hit the brake, and a machine understands you want to slow down real quick but (unlike a mechanical input) will not lock the wheel no matter how hard you push, resulting "in most conditions" a faster but controlled slowdown. There is a similar system for the gas pedal, gear changing etc. Your inputs are not direct anymore, they become "intent" that a machine proxy interprets according to programming. In planes that also depends on sensors.., in addition to human input, which might or might not have more weight regardless.
The Airlines want to replace Captains with operators, not unlike an automated subway train, with a human which rarely touch controls anymore; their dream would be a completely automated flight without any human intervention, for the maximum fuel saving.
Problems arise when conditions start drifting from "normal", the (few) good pilots used to solve it, the (many) bad would make it worse. This "human deviation" seems undesirable from business, and the Airline would be more than happy to get rid if this human factor soon, they are expensive and the good ones take too long to mature.
Which approach is the best in the long run is debatable, but crashes are going to continue, unfortunately.
Install the add-on called "Add-on Compatibility Reporter" and you won't have to manually edit things anymore. Things just work; i installed it around version 5 and every time Firefox updated, 99% of the add-ons that used to say "incompatible" actually worked just fine. (Btw, despite its name, you don't have to report a thing).
In fact, i remember only 1 add-on not working (simply had no effect), which is the one to force youtube videos use a certain quality/resolution, nothing critical.
As someone else said here, all the Firefox bashing must come from people using other browsers. Fine with me, I stay with Firefox, i hate the way Chrome takes over the processor and memory; it may start fast, but later makes the system slow down to a crawl, unless you stick to use a single tab or something...
Firefox might not release memory aggressively while in use, but with the session saved (remember to use Options -> General -> Startup -> Check "Don't load tabs until selected" ) restarting the browser takes no time, and with the Lazarus add-on, you don't even lose anything you have typed in text boxes... I just close the browser when i don't need it knowing everything comes back quickly where i left when its opened again. I also disabled hard disk cache (browser.cache.disk.enable false) memory cache is good enough.
The only thing i would wish Mozilla team to do, is to switch to date based versioning, Ubuntu style (year.month) instead of nonsensical number increases, only a human perception thing. Their LTS plan should address the enterprise concern.
Slashdot Mirror
I install it everywhere to reduce bandwidth usage, same as adblock. The amount of traffic all these trackers generate per page is ridiculous; often the page won't even load unless the trackers have completed sending their data, unacceptable. I also happen to use noscript, cookie monster and refcontrol, to whitelist selected sites.
Goes on to show their hypocrisy. If they are going to mention Castro, how about mentioning American backed terrorists? Castro did not blew a Jet Liner, Posada Carriles living happily in Florida did (and confessed it). He is also responsible of planting bombs in Cuba and central America, killing an Italian tourist in the process. He is protected by the US gov. over a CIA pact for doing anti-communism dirty jobs.
Yes, the USA is infringing their own counter-terrorism UN resolutions by protecting the likes of him (and Orlando Bosch among others, sentenced in US soil but quickly pardoned by Bush father), also living happily directing the nice Cuban lobbyists...
The cheaper CFLs have electronics that can't handle the heat, when ppl use them the usual way with the screw (and electronics) up and the glass part pointing down, it fries them (heat goes up).
Want to have them last longer?, make sure they are the other way, with the screw down and the glass pointing up. When they are horizontal, the longevity is average. Incandescents don't care and can point down just fine.
Incidentally i have a couple of 10w Phillips LEDs, flood lamp style. They use 4pcs of 2.5w led each. Some people has had them burn out quickly when used in a typical enclosed flood lamp fashion, perhaps pointing down from above. I noticed they also have electronics that heat like crazy; thankfully mines are pointing up (their light is too strong for my room, opting for bouncing instead) and they are uncovered, with plenty of ventilation.
Even with bouncing, their combined strength is similar to a 100w incandescent.
I believe these leds are spending a lot in ac/dc transform. Perhaps if houses had some sort of dc standard, it would make implementation and longevity easier (a single ventilated transformer elsewhere instead of lots of small inefficient ones attached).
Btw with leds if the transformer doesn't fry, they also become dimmer with time. They just last much more than fluorescents, and no mercury or fragile glass is needed.
I hate it how gsm handsets interfere with computer speakers, you can always tell when someone carries a gsm instead of, say, cdma or its later incarnations. Its also silly to learn by the speakers noise you are going to get a call before the actual phone rings... And, have found gsm despite in theory being more rebust, struggles more in bad situation such as inside buildings.
A single operator in my country happens to service both cdma and gsm phones, with the latter being more heavily pushed. Perhaps it can simply accomodate more lines per cell?
I mentioned computer speakers but the noise made by gsm handsets actually affects most recording equipment, such as studio or even live tv broadcasts (ie, a guest in a show forgets to turn off the phone...), and you get to hear the familiar beep beep beep, beep beep beep; twaaaaaaaa twaaaaaa twaaaaa thing.
2) Just like the DEA then.
I find this scenario much better than the alternative: Windows Starter.
In all countries, it should be mandatory to offer an OS-less or free-OS choice; it should be illegal to provide windows only pre-installs, because that is benefiting a particular corporation which is anti-competitive at best.
It is the user's problem if they buy a windows license or install ubuntu, but at least they are not forced to pay the Microsoft tax.
In my work, many brand machines with windows pre-installed have been wiped in favor of Debian. So is not like the opposite doesn't happen, all it takes is a company policy change and thats it.
Ubuntu pre-installed will introduce it to people who would have never tried it before, even if they wipe it, they will now learn there is "something else" out there... And perhaps one day they will give it another chance, perhaps after utter frustration and countless windows reinstalls, or the Windows 8 Metro Experience ;)
It doesn't matter if the impact is minor, choice is always good.
Interlace video has twice the speed, even if its only half of the lines, they are updating content; which is why they are not really 25fps but 50fps on half the lines all the time. This shows in panning, and when people move, sports, etc.
He probably doesn't want desktop compositing in the way, leaving that issue for later.
I'm sorry but there was something more: The Floppy drive, namely, Woz floppy drive... Did you ever use floppies with the other machines? Then you know what i mean, several minutes vs few seconds to boot the very same program, and hell nothing would crash if you accidentaly pushed a button when the drive was reading, unlike certain other brand...
Marketing pushed Macs later.
All of that can be done with XFCE, but without the bugs and sluggishness the gnome developers never cared to fix.
If it says "gyrocopter" it implies VTOL (with engine assisted initial rotation). Autogyros have always been able to vertical land.
In this situation you musn't leave the plane, if it belongs to another country, its offlimits to local authorities.
Dynamic compression overuse kills the natural breathing when you listen to music, the recording rapidly approaches white noise and looks like a solid rectangle when viewed with an audio editor.
Obviously people listening to overcompressed music for long periods are getting in trouble. The problem is the labels keep demanding sound engineers to produce this crap.
When you leave the dynamics in your music alone, you can listen comfortably for hours. Compress them away and your head starts hurting quickly... And they wonder why sales are going down...
Perhaps try adding that to your hosts file?
Tor should also help you bypass censorship.
I'm using Xubuntu just fine, thank you very much...
Ah!, so that's why ATSC was designed that way, to kill indoor and mobile reception and force everyone invest in a fixed installation...
However you are mistaken with the "increasingly rare across the world" part. You see, very few countries were foolish enough to adopt the American digital standard, and while the European DVB system is not perfect, it does allow for mobile reception and some indoor.
The Japanese system (enhanced in Brazil) is becoming increasingly popular in 3rd world nations. The whole of South America, and some other Asian countries which used NTSC and PAL in the past, are joining with ISDB-T. This system allows for both mobile (as in 120kph/75mph moving car) and bunny rabbit/circle antenna indoor reception. Just watch these tests on live digital tv reception under different conditions.
You only need to take a look to the minority of ATSC countries to get a glimpse of the places where free tv is becoming rare, basically just North America...
As a matter of fact, one of the modifications done in Brazil to the Japanese system, was the complete removal of DRM, that and the technology transfer without payment of licenses or such. We like free as in freedom, thank you very much...
I have a Samsung Syncmaster 997df 19" crt that can happily do this resolution (@ 60hz). I usually use it in 1600x1200 for 75hz tho.
Refreshing aside, the color gamut and black levels makes any flat panel cry, with LED back-light becoming even worse. Heck, this screen doesn't even need color calibration in a black room., see all the lagom color gamma hit the right spot in all brightness, where all the flat displays i try look bad.
Granted, back when everyone had CRTs i couldn't afford a screen this quality, i only got it recently because someone was discarding it as "obsolete"... But really, color has suffered a lot with flat displays. Now to compensate a little i urge everyone to get a color calibration tool, if only to get something like 80% of the performance a CRT could have, but much better than the usual 40% a factory setting would bring.
https://jcornuz.wordpress.com/2009/03/23/monito-calibration-the-dispcalgui-way/
I'll tell you how it works in a country where its successfully automated. The main benefits are speed and fairness.
With manual voting, sometimes the minor parties don't have enough people to witness counting in all places, so the big parties can do what they want with those votes...
Anyway the machines are not connected to a network. Only at the end of the day, they connect to a server (using isolated secure links) to send results; should this fail, a memory card is physically sent.
The machines also do something stupidly simple which, for some reason, others fail to do: Print the vote in paper, the voter verifies and then stores that paper in a box for public auditing. Is that simple, really. At the end of the day, the machine prints its results which are compared to the votes stored in the box, that's it.
If you think this is a waste of time, you must remember the machines have already sent their results before the auditing begins. Only if there is a major discrepancy will the votes of that specific machine be later put on hold for revision.
Pen and paper is horribly prone to abuse; you just can't imagine. Someone sees a vote they don't like, they hide/eat/destroy the paper, etc... Or they make the box with the votes "disappear" before counting (the machine would have already sent the votes before a manual audit).
If you want to laugh, the machines used are just Olivetti lottery machines (x86) with custom software; and they work just fine. With them, we can have preliminary (but official) results in hours, rather than days or weeks. And there is plenty of replacements, what with worldwide lottery business and all, no custom (expensive) hardware is needed.
Also there is no mess with people writing improperly in paper or ink their fingers, etc. They go to the ballot cabin, push a button, get a printed paper with their vote, they see if it is the same, fold it, and deposit the paper in a box before leaving. Quite fast and clean.
Oh yes, all machines are sent with a car battery and inverter, should the power fail somewhere, there is enough power for 6+ hours (enough time to bring more batteries if needed).
How to detect if someone already voted? There is a separate machine (laptop/netbook) in its own network with a fingerprint scanner where people is checked first.
It is that simple, with current technology, it works, and has been verified by countless international organizations in dozens of elections already in the past decade, that system has 7 failsafe mechanisms IIRC. Why can't you guys do this properly, beats me...
Perhaps your big parties want to keep things exactly as they are, so the minor parties never have a chance...
Calling them fake is ignorant at best. First, China makes the "genuine" ones; then they make "non genuine" of varying qualities, starting from identical, all down to rip-off. Also, you can make them stamp anything on them, starting from an identical logo, subtle variations to avoid "counterfeit" claims in different countries, down to generic or whatever you want written on them. These variations have different prices and levels of legality (within China). They will officially deny to stamp "Sony" in some random electronic equipment, but if you are willing to pay, it can be done. Kinda defeats the saving of buying a cheap alternative in the first place? You decide, but people is stupid enough to buy for brands.
Many times I'd rather buy a Chinese labelled device because at least the price is fair, some people do try to sell you bad quality but brand stamped stuff; when instead you could buy good quality but generic Chinese brand instead. Indeed, you can buy in Hong Kong super expensive brands, or cross the street and obtain very high quality same brand stamped "non genuine" product. Knowing to recognise which is which can be very hard, sometimes they copy packaging, stickers and such very well; and normally that doesn't matter there because it has the fair (much lower price) while keeping the same quality very often.
What I hate is when they try to sell you a counterfeit with almost the same price of the genuine, or sometimes just a little cheaper. Software is silly, "counterfeit" price is 0$ in the net, but fakes are sold online for 25$ or such, sometimes with good enough packaging, aluminium (plant pressed) CDs etc for software meant to cost 100$, 500$ etc.
Does these justify blocking of sites? the Bill is a blacklist, how do you fall on it or how do you get out of it is shady at best. Further, the State is not even enforcing it directly (like China or Iran), it passes the responsibility to the ISPs. This means they will rather block in excess rather than infringe the law; and many will be falsely accused and promptly disconnected in fear.
Iran is requiring full ID before using the net, and America is not far from that. China forbids cryptographic connections, America will get there as well, because this gets in the way of proper deep packet inspection; and only criminals have something to hide... Soon enough dissent will get banned, it is too easy to make a site go down by having agents post links to blacklisted sites; and this way the establishment cannot be accused. See? Americans are much more refined than China and Iran, while achieving the same.
Of course, the countries who do not implement these laws become "source of terrorism", blah, blah lets invade (war helps the economy, stupid).
I'm sorry but you are wrong in some details about NTSC. Also there is the problem of trying to reproduce the analog way of video "resolution", its currently pointless to use the ancient method despite the marketing. "HD" Video is just 1920x1080p, 1440x1080p or 1280x720p, omitting the horizontal resolution is silly. (Or you could use the now entrenched "megapixel" standard just to embarrass the industry and awake others... 1920x1080 is 2MP, 1440x1080 just 1.5MP, 1280x720 a mere 0.9MP). Want to spend a fortune for a 2MP monitor with tuner?
NTSC and all analog variants have a variable horizontal resolution, but fixed vertical resolution. The number of dots each line in the screen has depends on the bandwidth used but will get stretched regardless. NTSC has 525 lines BUT only 486 are viewable, or about 480 lines, (480i). But thats for luminance, we know they use half resolution for chroma (color), and a quarter in some media, so the color "bleeds", etc (this practice continues with compressed video).
If we try to approximate the resolution of NTSC to modern usage, lets say under optimal (broadcast over the air) conditions it would be something like 360x480 (luminance), and something like 180x240 (color) chroma.
Why is NTSC 4:3? Movies used an aspect ratio very close to that when it was defined; later, computer displays simply borrowed the TV screens, so it remained for a good while, UIs were designed around it, etc.
Size is proportional to distance. More resolution allows you to get closer but there is still a limit where you start noticing each pixel apart and becomes annoying. At some point you CAN remain close to a big screen, but then you are going to lose content due to escaping your field of vision, even if what you can see is crystal clear. That might be desirable in a computer screen with smaller windows, but not for full screen watching. A big screen doesn't need much resolution if you cannot stay close enough to it anyway, as is the case in public displays, etc. Similarly you will want HD content in your small screen if you are very close to it (eg computer display or portables).
For that reason you just can't say "x is good, y is bad", it depends. a 19" NTSC TV was probably good in a living room during the 70ies. Laserdisc had good performance, but you could do even better with betacam tapes or c band satellite, which wasn't considered "consumer" market, but studio/distribution use.
1080i is an issue of the digital formats the way they originally defined them, But, it is hard to tell an mpeg decoder to reject a 1080p stream, especially considering it can use less bitrate so quite pointless and stupid in practice. 1080p quickly became defacto and then sanctioned.
My personal opinion about optical spinning media is that its obsolete, even if the industry doesn't notice. it is simply too much a hassle to get a slow, scratch-able optical disc spinning when you could simply use a flash card/stick or net-stream the content. I wouldn't buy a blueray, instead opting for a very small computer (like those with atom cpu you can attach in the back of your screen). And some TVs are already bundling the machine inside anyway. If the industry had any clue, they would be already using SD cards. But perhaps this way is better, because people won't DRM the content.
Also digital vs analog, digital is simpler to setup and much more resilient than an equivalent analog counterpart. Also in HD broadcasting it needed an insane amount of bandwidth (yes, the Japanese did it in the 90ies). To have good analog you need very expensive equipment, digital will allow you a "close enough" experience with a much cheaper setup. Unfortunately Americans designed a dttv format which is not very friendly indoors or while moving, so this might sound the opposite to their experience. BUT, watch in youtube the tests done in japan and south america of what a decent dttv format can do and you won't miss anything from analog (do remember Japan also used NTSC before).
PS: "3D" is a gimmick, junk not wor
Americans do not believe in Democracy. Power to the masses to them equals ignorants ruling. They crafted a system where the rich (educated) elite is able to influence politics to the extreme, the "Lobby system" which is basically illegal in the rest of the world; rich people and corporations openly funding politicians (elsewhere a scandal).
Technically they don't define themselves as a democracy either, its a republic at best. A federal states union or something along those lines; each ruled by the wealthy (now corporations) in practice. A form of plutocracy, and it was intended that way. The rest is (corporate) propaganda to keep the masses controlled, and brag the world of how perfect they are and how undeveloped everyone else is.
It is a good idea, if the block shows a notice about the issue at hand. Wikipedia Italy did the same to protest something similar.
SOPA/PIPA in the end forces self-censorship, Americans might as well try an early taste of it. Also, nobody in their right mind should keep their e-business there, and its about time the world breaks with ICANN and switch to alternatives like OpenNIC.
I don't agree with that "nuclear" wording made by CNET. For a moment i though either the nuclear power industry was involved and would agree to a literal "blackout" or something unlikely involving weapons of mass destruction...
Also i hope they make clear this is something concerning USA legislative branch, aka Congress, and its their citizens the ones getting the worst. Might be painful at first, but The World will learn to route around America. So the "blackouts" should be limited to American IPs.
The notice might also show a list of who are supporting this bill, and call for boycotts, go daddy style; an action which seems to have gotten some people nervous.
Ah, just like the Americans burning the National Library in Baghdad
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq_National_Library_and_Archive#Iraq_War
Suppose sensors (maybe 50% of them) are bringing wrong data (not necessarily invalid), the plane is actually leveled but machines believe its nose diving... The automated response will probably induce a deadly stall.
Voting: Suppose 2 computers vote A, 2 vote B, and the last one abstains (ie. malfunctions) Solution?
Add in Captain input, Airbus style doesn't even move the physical lever, machine wants (and believes) is at 60%, captain feels is going too slow and moves throttle from 40% to 60%, machine does no change; in reality its going at 30% (or has an effective thrust equivalent to 30%)... Now add multiple independent engines for more fun, and there is still the control surfaces...
Fly by wire is a little like ABS, you hit the brake, and a machine understands you want to slow down real quick but (unlike a mechanical input) will not lock the wheel no matter how hard you push, resulting "in most conditions" a faster but controlled slowdown. There is a similar system for the gas pedal, gear changing etc. Your inputs are not direct anymore, they become "intent" that a machine proxy interprets according to programming. In planes that also depends on sensors.., in addition to human input, which might or might not have more weight regardless.
The Airlines want to replace Captains with operators, not unlike an automated subway train, with a human which rarely touch controls anymore; their dream would be a completely automated flight without any human intervention, for the maximum fuel saving.
Problems arise when conditions start drifting from "normal", the (few) good pilots used to solve it, the (many) bad would make it worse. This "human deviation" seems undesirable from business, and the Airline would be more than happy to get rid if this human factor soon, they are expensive and the good ones take too long to mature.
Which approach is the best in the long run is debatable, but crashes are going to continue, unfortunately.
Install the add-on called "Add-on Compatibility Reporter" and you won't have to manually edit things anymore. Things just work; i installed it around version 5 and every time Firefox updated, 99% of the add-ons that used to say "incompatible" actually worked just fine. (Btw, despite its name, you don't have to report a thing).
In fact, i remember only 1 add-on not working (simply had no effect), which is the one to force youtube videos use a certain quality/resolution, nothing critical.
As someone else said here, all the Firefox bashing must come from people using other browsers. Fine with me, I stay with Firefox, i hate the way Chrome takes over the processor and memory; it may start fast, but later makes the system slow down to a crawl, unless you stick to use a single tab or something...
Firefox might not release memory aggressively while in use, but with the session saved (remember to use Options -> General -> Startup -> Check "Don't load tabs until selected" ) restarting the browser takes no time, and with the Lazarus add-on, you don't even lose anything you have typed in text boxes... I just close the browser when i don't need it knowing everything comes back quickly where i left when its opened again. I also disabled hard disk cache (browser.cache.disk.enable false) memory cache is good enough.
The only thing i would wish Mozilla team to do, is to switch to date based versioning, Ubuntu style (year.month) instead of nonsensical number increases, only a human perception thing. Their LTS plan should address the enterprise concern.