'He also took advantage of the gene. It allowed him to spray Roundup (or a generic version of the same weedkiller), which made controlling weeds relatively cheap and easy.'
If you are buying leftover seed and harvested seed it's one thing. If you spray it with Roundup, you are using it as Roundup-ready seed and you are thus utilizing the value of Monsanto's invention. Why should you not pay for the enhanced features of Monsanto's seed if you use them?
If you don't use them, the Monsanto doesn't sue. So you can buy and harvest seed, just use it as regular seed, not Roundup-ready seed.
Is there any kind of actual story here or just predictable excuses and hair splits about the UN not being involved but actually involved and the UN isn't technically a state anyway, so it's okay?
Every ISP who signed on is also a cable company. They vend content from Big Content. Big Content surely says "if you want to keep our content, you have to help us protect it". So they sign on in order to keep the ability to offer cable.
ISPs who are not cable providers like sonic.net have no incentive to sign on. They'll just annoy their customers to no advantage.
5.25" just doesn't make sense anymore. Any amount of vibration, out of roundness or runout, tilt or wobble are all increased by having bigger platters. Getting that head to fly well and closely requires very little tilt, and that's harder at bigger diameters. It also requires more power to spin them faster to get low rotational latencies.
Maybe if you don't need good latency you could just spin them slow and live with it. But really smaller makes more sense.
To stream major studio content over digital output (DVI/HDMI) requires HDCP. If you don't have it, it'll drop to non-HD. If you have VGA, it'll do it even though VGA doesn't do HDCP. If you have a laptop and the video is on the internal display (not being output on a connector at all) it'll do it even if you don't have HDCP.
Weird? Yes. But the major studios require this. On all platforms with all services. It happens on Blu-ray. It happens on Netflix. It happens on PC. It happens on Xbox 360. It happens on Apple TV.
TV content (which comprises a large amount of Netflix' streaming library) doesn't require this, as it doesn't come from movie studios. The studios knew people would not like this, and would seek out any platform it isn't true on. So that's why they require it on all content.
If you have digital output without HDCP and try to play content that requires HDCP, it cannot output it at higher than 540p. I think it just goes right down to 480P.
I just double checked this with my Mac using Netflix and it will not stream Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol in HD whether I have HDCP. Netflix says "available in HD on your TV". Non-studio content, like Portlandia for example (a TV show) says "Available in HD" and it streams in HD whether I have HDCP or not.
So it looks like for PC/Mac, Netflix doesn't do HD at all for major studio content, regardless of VGA, HDMI and HDCP. That content is only "Available in HD on your TV", not your computer.
Also, I'd say the dBase series of programs. Those and VisiCalc/Multiplan/Excel really made the name for micro computers in business.
Also Gutenberg, the text editor for the Apple 2 that did multiple fonts and "page layout" before anyone else was talking about that. It was super slow, but it was stepping in the desktop publishing direction that computers would later go in.
See here. Note the date, 1983. The Mac didn't even come out until 1984 and desktop publishing didn't really take flight until The Macintosh Office in 1985.
Also, maybe just for the lulz, but I think The Print Shop was a pretty big deal. You can write off banners and certificates as frivolous, but everyone used them. Suddenly customized banners and awards were not only possible but expected.
Seriously. When I read the title, it was obvious it meant Eurovision. But oddly, it doesn't. Eurovision must get at least 250M votes, right? Possibly even a billion.
So just noting they sound similar doesn't prove it wasn't reperformed.
And Coulton stops short of saying it wasn't reperformed, he says "he thinks he can hear a quack in there" and "maybe someone can find it for him".
There are hyper-accurate note-for-note covers out there for the purpose of avoiding copyright. Check Spotify. Prince even threatened to do it to his own songs because he didn't own the masters, just the creative copyright.
Look up the ARPANet, the NSFNet and the current internet infrastructure.
The government did okay with what they had, but once private enterprise took over prices plummeted and coverage expanded hugely. I would say service got better too, but that depends on how you measure better.
The microinverters will not turn on unless the grid power is there. If the grid power goes, it has to come back for 5 minutes before the microinverters come back on.
Everyone who has this type of microinverter lames the lack of any "zombie apocalypse" capability but as far as I can tell it's actually a difficult problem to sell.
AC power systems have problems with power factor (reactive power) and harmonic distortion and the problem of where to put the power if you are generating more power than is being used (something is going to burn it up as heat). If the grid is up, all these problems go away, the grid is powerful enough to hammer our the harmonic distortions. And if you have equipment which is far out of phase (lagging/leading, poor power factor) it will provide current at the right time in the AC cycle and absorb it at the right time in the AC cycle in order to correct for power factor problems. And finally if you have extra power you just shove it into the grid and don't worry about who is going to burn it off.
Take away the grid and all that goes away, the microinverters would have to be far more capable in order to power your house when the sun is up with no grid.
There are other inverter systems which will stay up when the grid goes down like "Sunny Island". But they require you rewire everything that stays up to not be connected directly to the grid, but instead through the Sunny Island. And then the current capacity is small, you need a 63kg inverter for every 4500W of devices (3 circuits in your house), it can pass through a bit more current, like about 6000W. And as far as I can tell you still need to put on at least some batteries if it is to operate off-grid, as it says it uses the batteries for power factor correction.
Phone home? I'm definitely not worried about it phoning home. Why would GM phone my data home? They aren't interested in the data. What would they do with it? They're going to make every car call home for data they don't even have a use for?
I said I don't think GM is calling IN to my car to get data. They might call in to get data once they know they want it. I don't think they are doing so. If I were, I could just pull the fuse.
Why do you bring up the cops with ANPR data? It's not the cops I am worried about. Because if they have a warrant they can't be stopped anyway.
I do expect plate-readers to be networked and cross-referenced. Companies will run large systems. The government will contract with them to at the very least track traffic. Companies would love this data too. I expect the readers will be pointed at roads, not just parking lots.
I do not expect license plate hiding to be common. Places like Target will require you have your license plate uncovered, the excuse can be because they allow the police to enforce laws in their parking lot (which they do). I would love to see license plates that randomize daily become available, even though they would have to register your daily number with the cops each day. At least we would be able to evade all the private license plate readers, if we wish.
But these cars use Verizon, not MetroPCS. Verizon is not going to shut down CDMA 1x for a while as right now it is their only way of making calls (you cannot make calls on 3G or 4G LTE on Verizon right now).
OnStar hardware became obsolete before, my understanding is the new system uses a plug-in radio so the cars can be upgraded. Yes, it will require upgrades. Presumably if you are a continuing customer they will give you the upgrade for free.
OnStar already has versions on deck that use 3G and 4G (not sure which 4G, they didn't say), so by the time the switchover happens, many cars will already be capable, older ones still active on OnStar will have to be upgraded though.
Those are user comments, not generated by the site. If the owner was worried him from his white diamond description on the net, he wouldn't have entered that in the user comments.
So you can't pull the SIM card. It uses CDMA, not GSM.
You can pull the fuse if you want.
AC asked about this service. I answered about this service.
I don't think GM is calling my car to get data from it and frankly I would be all that concerned if they did. License plate scanners are going to be so cheap and available within a year or two that you won't be able to go anywhere in a car without a dozen companies knowing where you went and unlike GM, you can't retaliate against them by changing car brands if they send out your data.
This is a 3rd party service and they cannot access your data without you authenticating to GM. So don't go to the site, don't log in and they don't get any data.
PCs that used DE9s (DB9s) used a male connector on the computer. This is a male connector on the mouse.
Macintoshes before the SE/II (Mac, Mac 512, Mac Plus) used female DE9s on the computer and male DE9s on the mouse.
This is almost certainly a Mac mouse or similar. The protocol was very simple, it just ran the quadrature signals and buttons straight out, no multiplexing.
'The controversial ID badge includes the photo and name of each student, a barcode tied to the student’s social security number, as well as an RFID chip which pinpoints the exact location of the individual student, including after hours and when the student leaves campus.'
RFID chips don't work that way. They don't know their location. They seem to be worried that the RFID will be read by someone else when the student is off campus. All the student has to do is remove the RFID chip when off campus.
Nokia had developers because they had the dominant platform. Websites looked like garbage at the time one phones, so companies wanted to program for Symbian. With Symbian they could easily make apps which were slightly to somewhat better than garbage. So they did.
Once any other company came in and made better hardware (RIM first) and a better OS/UI toolkit (Apple), it was over for Symbian and Nokia was put in a tough spot.
That's 13GiB gone. From 29GiB, that's almost half.
'After taking into account Windows RT, Microsoft Office, built-in apps, and Windows recovery tools, nearly 13 GB of the available space is eliminated from user accessible storage.'
I don't really get what your complaint is here. The summary seems pretty accurate, especially for slashdot.
The fuel economy isn't great? Which care of similar size gets much better? An Avalon gets 28 highway. A Chrysler 300 gets 31 highway. A BMW 5-series (which is significantly smaller) gets 34 which I guess is good. How long is it going to make back the $25,000 more the BMW costs you in fuel savings?
And it makes 300HP, which isn't less than any normally aspirated 4-cylinder I've seen for sale. And it's higher than any production turbocharged 4 on the market in the US. Also, turbochargers and intercoolers add cost, size and weight. It's not a slam dunk to use a turbocharged 4 over a V6. The thing is the Impala isn't designed to make a ton of HP. The same engine makes 318 or 323HP in a car that is designed to make that much (Cadillacs, Camaros).
I don't see what's wrong with using a V6 when price constraints are in play, especially when it does get decent mpg.
The Impala suffers more than anything from being a cheap car. You don't expect the cheapest anything else to be the best on the market, why would we expect it from cars?
Slashdot Mirror
Better story at npr, please stop linking to RT.
http://www.npr.org/blogs/thesalt/2012/10/15/162949288/farmer-tackling-monsantos-seed-policy-gets-a-day-in-supreme-court
'He also took advantage of the gene. It allowed him to spray Roundup (or a generic version of the same weedkiller), which made controlling weeds relatively cheap and easy.'
If you are buying leftover seed and harvested seed it's one thing. If you spray it with Roundup, you are using it as Roundup-ready seed and you are thus utilizing the value of Monsanto's invention. Why should you not pay for the enhanced features of Monsanto's seed if you use them?
If you don't use them, the Monsanto doesn't sue. So you can buy and harvest seed, just use it as regular seed, not Roundup-ready seed.
Is there any kind of actual story here or just predictable excuses and hair splits about the UN not being involved but actually involved and the UN isn't technically a state anyway, so it's okay?
Every ISP who signed on is also a cable company. They vend content from Big Content. Big Content surely says "if you want to keep our content, you have to help us protect it". So they sign on in order to keep the ability to offer cable.
ISPs who are not cable providers like sonic.net have no incentive to sign on. They'll just annoy their customers to no advantage.
5.25" just doesn't make sense anymore. Any amount of vibration, out of roundness or runout, tilt or wobble are all increased by having bigger platters. Getting that head to fly well and closely requires very little tilt, and that's harder at bigger diameters. It also requires more power to spin them faster to get low rotational latencies.
Maybe if you don't need good latency you could just spin them slow and live with it. But really smaller makes more sense.
To stream major studio content over digital output (DVI/HDMI) requires HDCP. If you don't have it, it'll drop to non-HD. If you have VGA, it'll do it even though VGA doesn't do HDCP. If you have a laptop and the video is on the internal display (not being output on a connector at all) it'll do it even if you don't have HDCP.
Weird? Yes. But the major studios require this. On all platforms with all services. It happens on Blu-ray. It happens on Netflix. It happens on PC. It happens on Xbox 360. It happens on Apple TV.
TV content (which comprises a large amount of Netflix' streaming library) doesn't require this, as it doesn't come from movie studios. The studios knew people would not like this, and would seek out any platform it isn't true on. So that's why they require it on all content.
If you have digital output without HDCP and try to play content that requires HDCP, it cannot output it at higher than 540p. I think it just goes right down to 480P.
I just double checked this with my Mac using Netflix and it will not stream Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol in HD whether I have HDCP. Netflix says "available in HD on your TV". Non-studio content, like Portlandia for example (a TV show) says "Available in HD" and it streams in HD whether I have HDCP or not.
So it looks like for PC/Mac, Netflix doesn't do HD at all for major studio content, regardless of VGA, HDMI and HDCP. That content is only "Available in HD on your TV", not your computer.
The Apple 2 learning expert system program.
Also, I'd say the dBase series of programs. Those and VisiCalc/Multiplan/Excel really made the name for micro computers in business.
Also Gutenberg, the text editor for the Apple 2 that did multiple fonts and "page layout" before anyone else was talking about that. It was super slow, but it was stepping in the desktop publishing direction that computers would later go in.
See here. Note the date, 1983. The Mac didn't even come out until 1984 and desktop publishing didn't really take flight until The Macintosh Office in 1985.
http://www.atarimagazines.com/creative/v9n6/64_Gutenberg.php
Also, maybe just for the lulz, but I think The Print Shop was a pretty big deal. You can write off banners and certificates as frivolous, but everyone used them. Suddenly customized banners and awards were not only possible but expected.
title:
'Data Analyst Spoils the World's Biggest Song Vote'
In Eurovision you vote for songs. And it's far bigger.
Title wrong. End of story. Drop mike on floor.
Seriously. When I read the title, it was obvious it meant Eurovision. But oddly, it doesn't. Eurovision must get at least 250M votes, right? Possibly even a billion.
So just noting they sound similar doesn't prove it wasn't reperformed.
And Coulton stops short of saying it wasn't reperformed, he says "he thinks he can hear a quack in there" and "maybe someone can find it for him".
There are hyper-accurate note-for-note covers out there for the purpose of avoiding copyright. Check Spotify. Prince even threatened to do it to his own songs because he didn't own the masters, just the creative copyright.
Have you never met an FFA member or gone to a 4H event?
And we eat pigs (typically the pets even). And rabbits. And fish.
As to eating cats and dogs, I'm not against it personally.
Look up the ARPANet, the NSFNet and the current internet infrastructure.
The government did okay with what they had, but once private enterprise took over prices plummeted and coverage expanded hugely. I would say service got better too, but that depends on how you measure better.
The microinverters will not turn on unless the grid power is there. If the grid power goes, it has to come back for 5 minutes before the microinverters come back on.
Everyone who has this type of microinverter lames the lack of any "zombie apocalypse" capability but as far as I can tell it's actually a difficult problem to sell.
AC power systems have problems with power factor (reactive power) and harmonic distortion and the problem of where to put the power if you are generating more power than is being used (something is going to burn it up as heat). If the grid is up, all these problems go away, the grid is powerful enough to hammer our the harmonic distortions. And if you have equipment which is far out of phase (lagging/leading, poor power factor) it will provide current at the right time in the AC cycle and absorb it at the right time in the AC cycle in order to correct for power factor problems. And finally if you have extra power you just shove it into the grid and don't worry about who is going to burn it off.
Take away the grid and all that goes away, the microinverters would have to be far more capable in order to power your house when the sun is up with no grid.
There are other inverter systems which will stay up when the grid goes down like "Sunny Island". But they require you rewire everything that stays up to not be connected directly to the grid, but instead through the Sunny Island. And then the current capacity is small, you need a 63kg inverter for every 4500W of devices (3 circuits in your house), it can pass through a bit more current, like about 6000W. And as far as I can tell you still need to put on at least some batteries if it is to operate off-grid, as it says it uses the batteries for power factor correction.
http://www.networkworld.com/news/2012/092412-ipv6-side-262674.html
US has the most IPv6 users, North America has the most IPv6 traffic.
Sure, it's still small in absolute magnitude, but it's a start.
If it can phone home, it is.
Phone home? I'm definitely not worried about it phoning home. Why would GM phone my data home? They aren't interested in the data. What would they do with it? They're going to make every car call home for data they don't even have a use for?
I said I don't think GM is calling IN to my car to get data. They might call in to get data once they know they want it. I don't think they are doing so. If I were, I could just pull the fuse.
Why do you bring up the cops with ANPR data? It's not the cops I am worried about. Because if they have a warrant they can't be stopped anyway.
I do expect plate-readers to be networked and cross-referenced. Companies will run large systems. The government will contract with them to at the very least track traffic. Companies would love this data too. I expect the readers will be pointed at roads, not just parking lots.
I do not expect license plate hiding to be common. Places like Target will require you have your license plate uncovered, the excuse can be because they allow the police to enforce laws in their parking lot (which they do). I would love to see license plates that randomize daily become available, even though they would have to register your daily number with the cops each day. At least we would be able to evade all the private license plate readers, if we wish.
But these cars use Verizon, not MetroPCS. Verizon is not going to shut down CDMA 1x for a while as right now it is their only way of making calls (you cannot make calls on 3G or 4G LTE on Verizon right now).
OnStar hardware became obsolete before, my understanding is the new system uses a plug-in radio so the cars can be upgraded. Yes, it will require upgrades. Presumably if you are a continuing customer they will give you the upgrade for free.
OnStar already has versions on deck that use 3G and 4G (not sure which 4G, they didn't say), so by the time the switchover happens, many cars will already be capable, older ones still active on OnStar will have to be upgraded though.
See another car:
http://www.voltstats.net/Stats/Details/771
Those are user comments, not generated by the site. If the owner was worried him from his white diamond description on the net, he wouldn't have entered that in the user comments.
So you can't pull the SIM card. It uses CDMA, not GSM.
You can pull the fuse if you want.
AC asked about this service. I answered about this service.
I don't think GM is calling my car to get data from it and frankly I would be all that concerned if they did. License plate scanners are going to be so cheap and available within a year or two that you won't be able to go anywhere in a car without a dozen companies knowing where you went and unlike GM, you can't retaliate against them by changing car brands if they send out your data.
This is a 3rd party service and they cannot access your data without you authenticating to GM. So don't go to the site, don't log in and they don't get any data.
PCs that used DE9s (DB9s) used a male connector on the computer. This is a male connector on the mouse.
Macintoshes before the SE/II (Mac, Mac 512, Mac Plus) used female DE9s on the computer and male DE9s on the mouse.
This is almost certainly a Mac mouse or similar. The protocol was very simple, it just ran the quadrature signals and buttons straight out, no multiplexing.
'The controversial ID badge includes the photo and name of each student, a barcode tied to the student’s social security number, as well as an RFID chip which pinpoints the exact location of the individual student, including after hours and when the student leaves campus.'
RFID chips don't work that way. They don't know their location. They seem to be worried that the RFID will be read by someone else when the student is off campus. All the student has to do is remove the RFID chip when off campus.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peace_for_our_time
It didn't work out so well. After that situation I doubt there was much talk of deals.
Yes. It keeps track of what you're doing. You know this because you can see the data it captures.
And yes, if you share what you're doing with someone else, they might notice you aren't doing what you're supposed to be doing.
I don't understand the constant alarmism.
Nokia had developers because they had the dominant platform. Websites looked like garbage at the time one phones, so companies wanted to program for Symbian. With Symbian they could easily make apps which were slightly to somewhat better than garbage. So they did.
Once any other company came in and made better hardware (RIM first) and a better OS/UI toolkit (Apple), it was over for Symbian and Nokia was put in a tough spot.
8GiB for RT+Office+apps
5GiB for recovery
That's 13GiB gone. From 29GiB, that's almost half.
'After taking into account Windows RT, Microsoft Office, built-in apps, and Windows recovery tools, nearly 13 GB of the available space is eliminated from user accessible storage.'
I don't really get what your complaint is here. The summary seems pretty accurate, especially for slashdot.
The fuel economy isn't great? Which care of similar size gets much better? An Avalon gets 28 highway. A Chrysler 300 gets 31 highway. A BMW 5-series (which is significantly smaller) gets 34 which I guess is good. How long is it going to make back the $25,000 more the BMW costs you in fuel savings?
And it makes 300HP, which isn't less than any normally aspirated 4-cylinder I've seen for sale. And it's higher than any production turbocharged 4 on the market in the US. Also, turbochargers and intercoolers add cost, size and weight. It's not a slam dunk to use a turbocharged 4 over a V6. The thing is the Impala isn't designed to make a ton of HP. The same engine makes 318 or 323HP in a car that is designed to make that much (Cadillacs, Camaros).
I don't see what's wrong with using a V6 when price constraints are in play, especially when it does get decent mpg.
The Impala suffers more than anything from being a cheap car. You don't expect the cheapest anything else to be the best on the market, why would we expect it from cars?