I recall it fondly, ever since they started requiring it in 6th grade, I've hated reading. I'm now a junior in high school.
The system was so broken. 11th grade level nonfiction books were virtually worthless, and since that's what I liked to read, I was not allowed to read them anymore. I had to read a bunch of crappy fiction books instead. And even then they'd ask stupid questions that were way too specific that nobody in their right mind could remember. And of course, reading a book that didn't have the AR sticker on it was FORBIDDEN! How DARE you read a non-AR book!
AR is an example of technology that's NOT right. I was taught to read stuff that was of value and to enjoy those things. Fiction was not one of those things. So then they made sure to break non-fiction for me too. Thank goodness we have Accelerated Reader!
So they have to give away copies of their IP for free. That costs them... nothing! What a penalty! Next time I murder someone, I want to be able to just promise never to do it again and be let go!
I'm looking at my parents as the users here, and it's not hard to imagine them investigating alternatives when I'm not at home anymore. Without me here, I know for a fact that they (in particular my dad) would not be able to use, let alone secure, the systems they have.
I know that Windows can be secured; I've done it in my own house for my parents and my sister (and myself back when I used it).
I know the way my dad thinks. If something is too much trouble, he looks for a superior alternative. I also know there are other people who think that way. It's not a stretch to me to imagine my parents and others looking at Intel Macs in the future. I mean, there's only so much that's different between the two systems; all my dad would have to do is learn which icon is the Internet and he'll be just fine.
Also, off-topic, but I've never been a fan of the redundant mod. When I began typing my post, there were 0 comments. By the time I finished and proof-read, there were 19 and mine was redundant. Most irritating.
I can understand why Microsoft would be against it.
Imagine if people suddenly got booted off and told it was because their computers needed repair, then they'd find out what's wrong (spyware/viruses) and why (holes in Windows), and then some of the more intelligent ones would investigate alternatives like Apple and Linux.
Personally, I'm all for quarantining computers that are spreading spam/worms/problem-of-the-month, so long as these restrictions don't spread to keeping people from using Linux and Apple.
Companies that institue such a policy would also have to be responsive, so that if an account that is kicked off performs the needed repairs, they are quickly given service back. Even better, the users in question should be warned prior to a service shutoff and given x number of days to repair it.
I wonder if government regulators would allow Microsoft to buy Opera at all. Wouldn't they see a problem with the company that controls 80%+ of a market buying out one of the few surviving competitors they have? There's Firefox, AOL... uh... Netscape doesn't count since it's a blend of Firefox and IE...
I mean, I don't know, I just can't see it being allowed.
Last time this bill came up I said this, and I'll say it again.
I don't think the industry or anyone expects it to pass. I think they expect it to fail, and then they'll get a lesser, though still not acceptable, bill passed that does what the industry really wants.
Because let's be honest, all you're going to do with this bill is piss people off. You want to get people up in arms? Get between them and their TV. See how long you live.
Why do you think the digital TV transition, which was supposed to occur in just over a year, has now been pushed to 2009? The people in Washington don't want people to be able to point to them and say "THEY KILLED TV!"
No problem. I happened to catch this article as it appeared and it was already very VERY slow, so I left it open and checked the comments and nobody else had been able to get in it seemed, so I copied and pasted.
Many people around the world plan their charitable giving around this time of the year, for religious, tax or other similarly benevolent reasons. As a geek who spends an inordinate amount of time with around his computer, these are the entities that have made my life easier in the past year and deserve all the recognition, money and general fulfillment of all Amazon Wish List desires:
* Firefox : This has undoubtedly been the year of Firefox. If you aren't using it yet... what are you waiting for? With plugins, extensions, tabbed browsing, pop-up blocking and the fact that it's free and open for all make it the IE-killer that we've all been waiting for.
Get FireFox | Get Involved | Donate
* Wikipedia If this year was the year of Firefox, then Wikipedia was a close second. This is the largest single resource of information ever created by men. They are having their quarterly fund drive; please give generously. Become a contributor; and editor. Many people believe they don't know enough or need to be an expert in order to contribute meaningfully. You don't have to be. I'm no expert and I've written about my home town, my college, my favorite sports team, and other random stuff I find errors or omissions in. Give it a try and enjoy.
* OpenOffice.org : By providing a viable, free and open option to the over-priced monopoly of MS Office, OO.o has shown us a world without rules and controls, without borders or boundaries. A world where anything is possible.
Contribute
* Fedora : The low-hassle Linux distribution that I've been using for a year or so; a worthy successor to the Red Hat name; easy to get up and running in addition to or in place of that MS OS of yesterday. Contribute
* Gnucash : This year, there was life before Gnucash and then there was life after Gnucash. And life after has been undoubtedly better. This is a smash free and open source personal (and small business) financial accounting tool that blows everything else out of the water- mainly because it's free and extensible to do what you want it to. Gnucash, you've changed my life for the better. I may not save more money than I used to, but at least I know what I'm not saving money on.
Contribute
* Emacs : Emacs, you complete me. 'nuff said.
Contribute
* Adium : There was a time when I would have multiple messenger applications running at the same time. Then came Gaim. There was a time when Gaim was ugly; then came Adium, a tremendous messenger client for the Mac OS that looks great, is extensible (has great plugins) and is free/open.
Donate (donate link at bottom of page)
* NetNewsWire : This piece of software is one of the great RSS readers of the world (for the Mac). In the new year, I will be buying the full version. Easy to use, great to look at and powerful under the hood; this is the app that made turned me into an RSS junky.
* Fink : Fink allows Mac OS to be more Unixey than it already is. With easy to install ports of all major UNIX/Linux packages through the command-line or GUI interface, Mac OS X without Fink is like Windows without Ctrl-Alt-Delete.
* Brattle : The Brattle Theatre in Cambridge, Mass. is in trouble. If they can't put together enough funding to pay past debts and future leases, they will be closed by February 2006. This is unacceptable- the Brattle is one of few truly independent movie theatres in the country. Without Brattle I would have never seen Casablanca on the big screen and would not have the opportunity to see the 1930s Kin
After spending over an hour trying to get it to compile with the voice/video support only for make to choke on something in mediastreamer, I did get it running fairly easily after that. (Fedora Core 4, KDE)
My first impressions are mixed. There seems to be a bug in the handling of the new away window on the buddy list, as it has completely vanished on me once and sometimes it contains the message-window-style formatting bar which by itself suddenly vanishes.
I'm also annoyed at the size of the status buttons. I shrunk the ones for the individual protocols all the way down and got rid of them, but there's still that giant one and it would be nice if it were smaller.
I love the little effect where new messages "scroll up" from the bottom, as though the text entered is moving right up into the window. I've seen numerous complaints about it, but I think it's very neat.
File transfers work now in AIM. FINALLY. Previously, I'd had a 20% success rate, primarily when I disabled iptables. It worked flawlessly when I tested with some friends last night, which is nice because now I don't have to tell them to go e-mail me stuff.
I did get pretty annoyed because I knew the theme could be controlled through Gnome, but from KDE, I could NOT find the Gnome theme control! I Googled, I checked a ton of menu options and documentation, and there was no way to do it without logging out and logging in under Gnome. I thought this release was uglier than past releases and this was the first time I'd tried to theme it.
I still think Guifications needs to be included as standard rather than a plugin. Every other client I've used has it standard, and in fact, some like Trillian even have it better, displaying the message text rather than just "xyzperson has messaged you."
Overall, I'm quite impressed, but there's quite a bit of work that needs to be done I'd think.
Excuse me for sounding dumb, but what is Ruby on Rails? I've heard a lot about it recently, but haven't the slightest clue what it is. A little bit of background would be most appreciated.
1080i: Everyone except ABC and Fox stations and other properties, such as ESPN.
720p: ABC, Fox, ESPN. Dunno for sure about DirecTV, but it would make sense as they're owned by Fox.
Now there are exceptions, such as WVEC-13 (ABC) in Norfolk and WFAA-8 (ABC) in Dallas doing 1080i instead of 720p. All Belo stations are doing 1080i, even if they're ABC (they're upconverting it).
On the other hand, WHRO-15 (PBS) in Norfolk and WCBI-4 (CBS) in Tupelo, MS doing 720p instead of 1080i.
Most stations maximize the HD at the expense of the SD, so if you realize that an SD stream will survive with about 3MBPS, you should be able to figure the bitrates.
Now if you want to know what subchannels you have, if you're lucky enough to be near myself or a fellow in Minnesota I have helping me, I've set up a site ( http://www.rabbitears.info/ ) that I've been working on in my spare time. Otherwise, check http://www.avsforum.com/ and look for your market in the Local HDTV forum. Also, you could webmaster email at me rabbitears and dot I info could try to help you out, if you'll give me the city the stations you watch come from.
I honestly can't say I've seen a big difference between 720p and 1080i, though 720p is less likely to "pixelate" in high motion. I have a front-projector that has been well-calibrated and it does 720p, and that's the only thing I've noticed different about the two.
There's really no way to deal with listing of bitrates, since the amount of bandwidth given to the stream varies by station.
For example, NBC29 (WVIR in Charlottesville, VA) dedicates the entire 19.393 MBPS to their NBC-1080i broadcast, while my local NBC station (WSLS in Roanoke, VA) reserves a small amount for a radar feed and serves the rest (in the neighborhood of 16.5 MBPS) to HDTV.
Further, some stations that broadcast more than one stream do what's called stat-muxing, short for Statistical Multiplexing. This means that when the HDTV feed needs the bandwidth, it is given to it and the other streams are cut down, then when it's not needed anymore, it is given to the subchannel, so there is NO set bitrate. This is done dynamically as it is transmitted, so in a high-motion scene it may draw 18 MBPS, but then change to a scene of someone sitting in a chair talking and drop to 12 or 13 MBPS.
What was said at the end, in particular, about the record labels feeling that because it targetted college students with the best access to P2P was the reason to put the DRM on it.
But the labels obviously don't see that that would only drive college students to download. If one person buys the CD in the college setting and it won't get on his iPod, he'll inform his friends and they won't buy it, no matter how great the CD is, and will instead go onto a P2P service and download it from a Linux/Mac/Shift-key user who ripped it in 10 minutes anyway.
I begin to wonder if the labels understand cause and effect. And that quite a number of college students are tech-savvy enough to use Linux/Mac/etc. anyway, more so than in the home setting.
Slashdot Mirror
Ah yes, the system that destroyed reading for me.
I recall it fondly, ever since they started requiring it in 6th grade, I've hated reading. I'm now a junior in high school.
The system was so broken. 11th grade level nonfiction books were virtually worthless, and since that's what I liked to read, I was not allowed to read them anymore. I had to read a bunch of crappy fiction books instead. And even then they'd ask stupid questions that were way too specific that nobody in their right mind could remember. And of course, reading a book that didn't have the AR sticker on it was FORBIDDEN! How DARE you read a non-AR book!
AR is an example of technology that's NOT right. I was taught to read stuff that was of value and to enjoy those things. Fiction was not one of those things. So then they made sure to break non-fiction for me too. Thank goodness we have Accelerated Reader!
So they have to give away copies of their IP for free. That costs them... nothing! What a penalty! Next time I murder someone, I want to be able to just promise never to do it again and be let go!
Saturday's word was "transferbangle." Today's word is "volunerability." I wonder what tomorrow's word will be!
I'm looking at my parents as the users here, and it's not hard to imagine them investigating alternatives when I'm not at home anymore. Without me here, I know for a fact that they (in particular my dad) would not be able to use, let alone secure, the systems they have.
I know that Windows can be secured; I've done it in my own house for my parents and my sister (and myself back when I used it).
I know the way my dad thinks. If something is too much trouble, he looks for a superior alternative. I also know there are other people who think that way. It's not a stretch to me to imagine my parents and others looking at Intel Macs in the future. I mean, there's only so much that's different between the two systems; all my dad would have to do is learn which icon is the Internet and he'll be just fine.
Also, off-topic, but I've never been a fan of the redundant mod. When I began typing my post, there were 0 comments. By the time I finished and proof-read, there were 19 and mine was redundant. Most irritating.
I can understand why Microsoft would be against it.
Imagine if people suddenly got booted off and told it was because their computers needed repair, then they'd find out what's wrong (spyware/viruses) and why (holes in Windows), and then some of the more intelligent ones would investigate alternatives like Apple and Linux.
Personally, I'm all for quarantining computers that are spreading spam/worms/problem-of-the-month, so long as these restrictions don't spread to keeping people from using Linux and Apple.
Companies that institue such a policy would also have to be responsive, so that if an account that is kicked off performs the needed repairs, they are quickly given service back. Even better, the users in question should be warned prior to a service shutoff and given x number of days to repair it.
You assume that the trash can is being used near Windows. What if it has Apples in it, or is being guarded by a penguin?
Maxathon is based on IE.
It's a decent browser, I just don't like the feel of it.
Regardless of how small it may be, it's STILL a competitor. I'm thinking really hard about Windows-capable browsers and all I'm coming up with is:
Internet Explorer
Firefox
Opera
Netscape (which doesn't count)
I wonder if government regulators would allow Microsoft to buy Opera at all. Wouldn't they see a problem with the company that controls 80%+ of a market buying out one of the few surviving competitors they have? There's Firefox, AOL... uh... Netscape doesn't count since it's a blend of Firefox and IE...
I mean, I don't know, I just can't see it being allowed.
So they want taxes from one state to be enforceable in another, but not marriages? I love double-standards.
No. I'm not. I'm opposed to Y! and Google operating in China at all. Because when they do, they have to follow the laws of China.
If Microsoft wants to operate in a particular market, they have to respect the laws and governments of that market, no matter what those laws may be.
Last time this bill came up I said this, and I'll say it again.
I don't think the industry or anyone expects it to pass. I think they expect it to fail, and then they'll get a lesser, though still not acceptable, bill passed that does what the industry really wants.
Because let's be honest, all you're going to do with this bill is piss people off. You want to get people up in arms? Get between them and their TV. See how long you live.
Why do you think the digital TV transition, which was supposed to occur in just over a year, has now been pushed to 2009? The people in Washington don't want people to be able to point to them and say "THEY KILLED TV!"
No problem. I happened to catch this article as it appeared and it was already very VERY slow, so I left it open and checked the comments and nobody else had been able to get in it seemed, so I copied and pasted.
Yes, I did finally discover that, though by the time I did I had already signed in through Gnome to do it.
Season's Givings
Many people around the world plan their charitable giving around this time of the year, for religious, tax or other similarly benevolent reasons. As a geek who spends an inordinate amount of time with around his computer, these are the entities that have made my life easier in the past year and deserve all the recognition, money and general fulfillment of all Amazon Wish List desires:
* Firefox : This has undoubtedly been the year of Firefox. If you aren't using it yet... what are you waiting for? With plugins, extensions, tabbed browsing, pop-up blocking and the fact that it's free and open for all make it the IE-killer that we've all been waiting for.
Get FireFox | Get Involved | Donate
* Wikipedia If this year was the year of Firefox, then Wikipedia was a close second. This is the largest single resource of information ever created by men. They are having their quarterly fund drive; please give generously. Become a contributor; and editor. Many people believe they don't know enough or need to be an expert in order to contribute meaningfully. You don't have to be. I'm no expert and I've written about my home town, my college, my favorite sports team, and other random stuff I find errors or omissions in. Give it a try and enjoy.
* OpenOffice.org : By providing a viable, free and open option to the over-priced monopoly of MS Office, OO.o has shown us a world without rules and controls, without borders or boundaries. A world where anything is possible.
Contribute
* Fedora : The low-hassle Linux distribution that I've been using for a year or so; a worthy successor to the Red Hat name; easy to get up and running in addition to or in place of that MS OS of yesterday. Contribute
* Gnucash : This year, there was life before Gnucash and then there was life after Gnucash. And life after has been undoubtedly better. This is a smash free and open source personal (and small business) financial accounting tool that blows everything else out of the water- mainly because it's free and extensible to do what you want it to. Gnucash, you've changed my life for the better. I may not save more money than I used to, but at least I know what I'm not saving money on.
Contribute
* Emacs : Emacs, you complete me. 'nuff said.
Contribute
* Adium : There was a time when I would have multiple messenger applications running at the same time. Then came Gaim. There was a time when Gaim was ugly; then came Adium, a tremendous messenger client for the Mac OS that looks great, is extensible (has great plugins) and is free/open.
Donate (donate link at bottom of page)
* NetNewsWire : This piece of software is one of the great RSS readers of the world (for the Mac). In the new year, I will be buying the full version. Easy to use, great to look at and powerful under the hood; this is the app that made turned me into an RSS junky.
* Fink : Fink allows Mac OS to be more Unixey than it already is. With easy to install ports of all major UNIX/Linux packages through the command-line or GUI interface, Mac OS X without Fink is like Windows without Ctrl-Alt-Delete.
* Brattle : The Brattle Theatre in Cambridge, Mass. is in trouble. If they can't put together enough funding to pay past debts and future leases, they will be closed by February 2006. This is unacceptable- the Brattle is one of few truly independent movie theatres in the country. Without Brattle I would have never seen Casablanca on the big screen and would not have the opportunity to see the 1930s Kin
After spending over an hour trying to get it to compile with the voice/video support only for make to choke on something in mediastreamer, I did get it running fairly easily after that. (Fedora Core 4, KDE)
My first impressions are mixed. There seems to be a bug in the handling of the new away window on the buddy list, as it has completely vanished on me once and sometimes it contains the message-window-style formatting bar which by itself suddenly vanishes.
I'm also annoyed at the size of the status buttons. I shrunk the ones for the individual protocols all the way down and got rid of them, but there's still that giant one and it would be nice if it were smaller.
I love the little effect where new messages "scroll up" from the bottom, as though the text entered is moving right up into the window. I've seen numerous complaints about it, but I think it's very neat.
File transfers work now in AIM. FINALLY. Previously, I'd had a 20% success rate, primarily when I disabled iptables. It worked flawlessly when I tested with some friends last night, which is nice because now I don't have to tell them to go e-mail me stuff.
I did get pretty annoyed because I knew the theme could be controlled through Gnome, but from KDE, I could NOT find the Gnome theme control! I Googled, I checked a ton of menu options and documentation, and there was no way to do it without logging out and logging in under Gnome. I thought this release was uglier than past releases and this was the first time I'd tried to theme it.
I still think Guifications needs to be included as standard rather than a plugin. Every other client I've used has it standard, and in fact, some like Trillian even have it better, displaying the message text rather than just "xyzperson has messaged you."
Overall, I'm quite impressed, but there's quite a bit of work that needs to be done I'd think.
I'm aware, but still, the rumors are still out there. It wouldn't be the first time such rumors were correct (think iPod Video).
But doesn't AOL own the rights to the Netscape browser (repackaged Firefox)? If so, what does this do to the rumor about Opera?
...it's that in a world where all the advertisements are flashly, the plain one stands out.
Excuse me for sounding dumb, but what is Ruby on Rails? I've heard a lot about it recently, but haven't the slightest clue what it is. A little bit of background would be most appreciated.
Well, the rule is NORMALLY this:
1080i:
Everyone except ABC and Fox stations and other properties, such as ESPN.
720p:
ABC, Fox, ESPN. Dunno for sure about DirecTV, but it would make sense as they're owned by Fox.
Now there are exceptions, such as WVEC-13 (ABC) in Norfolk and WFAA-8 (ABC) in Dallas doing 1080i instead of 720p. All Belo stations are doing 1080i, even if they're ABC (they're upconverting it).
On the other hand, WHRO-15 (PBS) in Norfolk and WCBI-4 (CBS) in Tupelo, MS doing 720p instead of 1080i.
Most stations maximize the HD at the expense of the SD, so if you realize that an SD stream will survive with about 3MBPS, you should be able to figure the bitrates.
Now if you want to know what subchannels you have, if you're lucky enough to be near myself or a fellow in Minnesota I have helping me, I've set up a site ( http://www.rabbitears.info/ ) that I've been working on in my spare time. Otherwise, check http://www.avsforum.com/ and look for your market in the Local HDTV forum. Also, you could webmaster email at me rabbitears and dot I info could try to help you out, if you'll give me the city the stations you watch come from.
I honestly can't say I've seen a big difference between 720p and 1080i, though 720p is less likely to "pixelate" in high motion. I have a front-projector that has been well-calibrated and it does 720p, and that's the only thing I've noticed different about the two.
If you have any more questions, feel free.
There's really no way to deal with listing of bitrates, since the amount of bandwidth given to the stream varies by station.
For example, NBC29 (WVIR in Charlottesville, VA) dedicates the entire 19.393 MBPS to their NBC-1080i broadcast, while my local NBC station (WSLS in Roanoke, VA) reserves a small amount for a radar feed and serves the rest (in the neighborhood of 16.5 MBPS) to HDTV.
Further, some stations that broadcast more than one stream do what's called stat-muxing, short for Statistical Multiplexing. This means that when the HDTV feed needs the bandwidth, it is given to it and the other streams are cut down, then when it's not needed anymore, it is given to the subchannel, so there is NO set bitrate. This is done dynamically as it is transmitted, so in a high-motion scene it may draw 18 MBPS, but then change to a scene of someone sitting in a chair talking and drop to 12 or 13 MBPS.
But then Microsoft would have to release an operating system too! Oh, wait...
I found that piece to be quite interesting.
What was said at the end, in particular, about the record labels feeling that because it targetted college students with the best access to P2P was the reason to put the DRM on it.
But the labels obviously don't see that that would only drive college students to download. If one person buys the CD in the college setting and it won't get on his iPod, he'll inform his friends and they won't buy it, no matter how great the CD is, and will instead go onto a P2P service and download it from a Linux/Mac/Shift-key user who ripped it in 10 minutes anyway.
I begin to wonder if the labels understand cause and effect. And that quite a number of college students are tech-savvy enough to use Linux/Mac/etc. anyway, more so than in the home setting.