Just curious here but since you mentioned the Weights and Measures clause, any more initiatives for finally switching over to the metric system? I mean if we're changing time around why not the measurements as well.
I bet if they did it the only people that would have trouble with it would be the people that hadn't been taught it in school or havent heard of it (a very small number I'm sure).
I'd like to see it start gradually, say by putting the road signage in kilometers and miles both. That way we can all dip our toes in the water gradually:).
Even though a lot of you seem to be bitching and moaning about the quality of the video encoding encoding, I think we're missing the so called "bigger picture" here.
The ThinkSecret article pointed out that there would be another iPod released later on in the year with a widescreen display and presumably with better encoding.
Now while I don't have any evidence other than this article to support that, it would stand to reason from a marketing perspective that Apple would hold out on rolling that better version out, because you don't roll out the best product that you have and then be left without anything to build on it. So I think that they released this version as a primer for consumers, to get them accustomed to video on their iPod's, and then when they release the widescreen higher res version, people will be more willing to buy it. Just my take on it though:).
Okay, while I agree that yes Clinton et al did increase the role the UN plays in US law, the fact of the matter is that US law supersedes all other's in our own country, and for cases where it won't all it would take was an act of Congress making those UN friendly laws null and void. Not that they would do that, but it's still an option.
A lot of this seems to be a rehashing of the same thing the world has been saying about the USA since Day 1, and it goes something like "If you people would just see things our way, all would be well".
I'm not going to say that we aren't as bad, because in some cases we are. No government or people are perfect, and having made friends with people from all over the world, I've gained a great respect for other cultures and the people in other countries.
All that being said however, I'm very glad that I was born and raised in the US and even though I'm not necessarily a fan of the current government, I wouldn't trade my citizenship for anything. I'm not a "world citizen", I'm an American, and I wouldn't have us give up our culture or our beliefs to please the world.
.How much of our own individual freedoms and beliefs would the UN and EU have us give up in order to blanket the world in a uniform culture? How far do we need to go in the world's eyes in order to be considered "good"?
I'm not trying to flame at all, I'm just trying to understand why erasing uniqueness is a good thing?
How will the UN/EU "wrestle" control from us? As far as I know the UN has no control over US law or corporations.
And it'd just be laughable if they decided to "pass a resolution" handing themselves control. Even if the whole world agreed that we shouldn't control it, that doesn't mean that we'll hand it over.They could decide to go along the route of "Fine, we'll just build our own and not let you have access to it", but it'd be interesting to see what happens afterwards.
I don't think that Rev A is rolled out anywhere. I remember hearing VZW was testing it for possible deployement like 2007??
I think the Rev A will be around 3.4Mbps down/1.8Mbps up maximum, which is still better than the standard EV-DO.
Just out of curiosity, what is the latency like on EV-DO and EV-DO Rev A? Does anyone know.
Not entirely true. I have VZW and anyone I call on VZW is a free call no matter when I call or where they are in the USA.
As far as having to pay for calls to another cell phone, yeah if you count using your minutes as paying then it is:).
Or I could just wait till I'm on night and weekend mins and do my serious calling (longer than say ten minutes) then.:)
Isn't PBS thinking of doing the same thing? I mean I know that the new Cringley show is going to be made available on the net, but I remember hearing that PBS may make more shows available online as time goes on.
Curl into a fetal position and whimper maybe ?.
Seriously though, I haven't figured it out either on how to deal with them:).
Maybe we should establish a hunting season on IT managers, say from Sysadmin day on for about another month:). But don't get rid of him until you've trained his replacement:).
(note to all IT managers out there) I am just kidding. No one would want to hunt their IT manager:) . Would they?? WOULD THEY?:)
That may well be, but I have no problems with surrendering a litle bit of privacy by always having the phone on except for when I'm asleep. When I give someone the number and tell them they can call me, I expect that some of those calls will come at inconvenient or late at night.
If you have a cell phone and people have that number, you are in fact tacitly agreeing that they can call you at their discretion unless you specifically tell them not to call during such and such hours.
And to those of you who say that it disturbs your peace of mind or is annoying etc even with it on vibrate, it also disturbs me when your insane concepts of courtesy interfere with my ability to get things done or do things. So it kind of goes both ways.
If you spend your entire life worrying about how something you do might offend someone, you will end up doing nothing valuable at all, because you'll be so worried about making someone mad at you that you will just fence sit your entire life.
If the rest of the world doesn't want to dance to your tune, dance around them:).
Ahh the typical well reasoned/. discussion:).
First, as to those of you who say turning it off is common courtesy, how is it discourteous if I have it on vibrate and am not sitting there with it open? I simply do not want to have to wait the 30 seconds for the phone to power itself up and then also have to wait another indeterminate length of time as messages and voicemails come through scattershot. That's not discourteous to the rest of you, that's simply me ensuring that information that is supposed to get to me does so in a timely manner.
Second, the world we live in is one where things are instant. That means that people *expect* that if you have a cell phone, they can call it, and they further expect that you will be available to answer said phone. If I purposely ignored my boss's calls or called him back any later than absolutely necessary, there would be hell to pay, because I'd be impeding the running of the business and furthermore I'd be willfully ignoring my responsibilites. Same thing with my family.
Now, if I am in the theater, I am not going to be answering it, but anywhere else pretty much I will. Hell I answer my phone in church (I walk out and join the crowd of other adults who are also doing the same thing chatting with grandma or their business colleagues or whoever). No place is sacred, nor should it be.
My final point is that while I realize that it is hard for people to accept that today's standards of courtesy have changed,in this respect they have. Cry me a river, build me a bridge, and get over it. I'm not changing my habits just so that Mr Jones standing next to me feels better.
I don't open the screen while the movie is playing:).
I do however, like to know when a txt or voice mail or call comes through. And yes it does go to voicemail also, but sometimes it may take up to five minutes befoer my voicemails and txts get pulled through after the phone is turned on, and I don't like waiting that long.
Also, my cell phone is my primary phone, I do not have a landline, and I do need to be accessible at all times (aside from when I'm asleep) for my business and family use, in fact it's specifically in my contract with my employer that I am always available and that includes my cell phone.
I've never understood why people do so much whining about cell phones and how annoying they are but yet continue to support them by buying them and *gasp* using them in public:). If you're so obsessed with not hearing someone's ring tone as you're in the grocery store or theter or wherever, why not turn yours off all the time too? that way we can all not be bothered, and we may as well not have the things:).
it's the way things are going, especially as more and more people drop landlines for cell phones. Just because you personally don't like it, does not mean that it's wrong for the rest of us to use them.
I just put my cell on vibrate:). I'm not going to turn the thing all the way off because my cell phone is where I take the majority of my calls and I should at least make it available at all times, even if I don't answer a call in the theatre:).
No one touches/takes my cell phone without my explicit permission. At least not if they value their lives;).
Umm I don't know about you, but I have at least 75 hours of recorded Divx Video on the harddrive at the moment as it is, and thats not even full HDTV quality.
Since a terabyte can only hold 128 hours of HDTV, I'd consider it a good start but I'd probably need to see a 2-5-10 TB drive soon otherwise I bet you I could run out of space on the 1 TB model between videos, programs, etc:).
And if thats your position, you eventually will never own a computer or another electronic device, because we all know that once it gets installed, it'll only get worse:).
I don't agree with it either, and I'll be one of the first to tip my hat to whoever cracks this, but the general consumer won't really care enough to make a fuss and get the studios to change. As long as it works reasonably well (read, even if it gets downsampled to 480p) they'll go for it,.
On the other hand who knows, maybe the average consumer will surprise me and when they find out that the studios are pulling this, they will boycott it. But I'm guesssing that their response will be "Oh, really?? That's sure nasty of them". And then they will continue to watch their downsampled movie:).
Just my $.02
I have to say having experienced Microservs broadband links I'm not impressed. The mileage of the connection is impressive however their service routinely sucks. Dropped coonnections, low uptime, high prices for slow speeds.They have good latency when it actually works properly though:).
Qwest DSL or CableOne has Microserv beat all hollow. Even the local Teton Wireless internet kicks their ass. But Teton wireless does have some pretty impressive speeds for a long range wireless link (I've seen it get as high as 5Mbps down and 2Mbps up).
Actually this is just part of a much broader Free Trade Association of the America's bill that has yet to be passed so Bush is passing it in bits and pieces:).
It sounds a lot to me like an attempt to form an EU type thing in the Western hemisphere, including eliminating borders,tariffs etc.
I've heard rumor they eventually want to move to only one currency for all those countries and it won't be the US Dollar:).
Only upside I can see to these is that they do stipulate all the countries go metric system and standardize trade laws etc within a reasonable timeframe, and that can only be a good thing:)
Well as long as we're doing all this converting can I make a request that we finally finish totally converting to the metric system?:)
I realize that the US has already accepted it as a official standard, but a lot of the measurements are put in the English system and metric system.
As a tech person used to dealing with the metric system on a daily basis, I would welcome it. It's a whole lot less confusing, and it'd be nice to not to have to constantly stop and think whenever I'm talking to colleagues in other countries that only understand metrics.
Those were my thoughts as well, but it's still interesting to read about:).
I knew I could count on an *educational,unbiased*/. discussion;).
By the way, that price on the swampland I'm selling you? I just lowered it:)
Amen to that. I guess there really are people with nothing better to do with their lives than monitor and attempt to stop all *indecency*, or what they consider to be indecent.
However one thing also strikes me as odd. One million complaints were filed with the FCC, and that represents a very small part of the population that has actually bothered to complain. The rest just grin and bear it apparently? Or could it be THEY DON"T CARE???:). Could it possibly be that people are a bit more sensible about what constitutes profanity and other content??
So we're having a small majority of the population try to force their moral beliefs on the rest of us. I realize this is how America works today, but it still annoys me.
*sticks hand up in agreement* . Amazing that politicians have nothing better to do than regulate the gaming industry:).
I've never been a fan of any content ratings at all, but I'm also not a fan of the current administrations conservative viewpoint towards all this. So a fifteen year old see's some skin in a video game, big deal.
It's time for the government to get back into its assigned role and stop meddling in our personal affairs
They will make money by innovating and also by offering both the cheapest player on the market (think Shuffle) and the more high end one for people who want that sort of stuff.
This is no different than when the PC manufacturers markets became saturated and they started competing on price/performance.
As long as Apple stays true to its nature and designes products that work well and are a pleasure to use, as well as looking good, they will be fine:)
I do need to point out here that digital radio supports up to eight separate FM channels in the same band as the current 1 analog channel:D.
It won't be as maxed out once digital radio becomes more commonplace. That being said I'm not floored by the audio quality of either DAB in Europe or Ibiquity in the USA. 128kbps encoding doesn't cut it:)
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Just curious here but since you mentioned the Weights and Measures clause, any more initiatives for finally switching over to the metric system? I mean if we're changing time around why not the measurements as well. I bet if they did it the only people that would have trouble with it would be the people that hadn't been taught it in school or havent heard of it (a very small number I'm sure). I'd like to see it start gradually, say by putting the road signage in kilometers and miles both. That way we can all dip our toes in the water gradually :).
Oops, didn't see the double encoding typo till I posted it. Ah well, repeating things adds emphasis right :)?
Even though a lot of you seem to be bitching and moaning about the quality of the video encoding encoding, I think we're missing the so called "bigger picture" here. The ThinkSecret article pointed out that there would be another iPod released later on in the year with a widescreen display and presumably with better encoding. Now while I don't have any evidence other than this article to support that, it would stand to reason from a marketing perspective that Apple would hold out on rolling that better version out, because you don't roll out the best product that you have and then be left without anything to build on it. :).
So I think that they released this version as a primer for consumers, to get them accustomed to video on their iPod's, and then when they release the widescreen higher res version, people will be more willing to buy it.
Just my take on it though
Okay, while I agree that yes Clinton et al did increase the role the UN plays in US law, the fact of the matter is that US law supersedes all other's in our own country, and for cases where it won't all it would take was an act of Congress making those UN friendly laws null and void. Not that they would do that, but it's still an option. A lot of this seems to be a rehashing of the same thing the world has been saying about the USA since Day 1, and it goes something like "If you people would just see things our way, all would be well". I'm not going to say that we aren't as bad, because in some cases we are. No government or people are perfect, and having made friends with people from all over the world, I've gained a great respect for other cultures and the people in other countries.
All that being said however, I'm very glad that I was born and raised in the US and even though I'm not necessarily a fan of the current government, I wouldn't trade my citizenship for anything. I'm not a "world citizen", I'm an American, and I wouldn't have us give up our culture or our beliefs to please the world.
.How much of our own individual freedoms and beliefs would the UN and EU have us give up in order to blanket the world in a uniform culture? How far do we need to go in the world's eyes in order to be considered "good"? I'm not trying to flame at all, I'm just trying to understand why erasing uniqueness is a good thing?
How will the UN/EU "wrestle" control from us? As far as I know the UN has no control over US law or corporations. And it'd just be laughable if they decided to "pass a resolution" handing themselves control. Even if the whole world agreed that we shouldn't control it, that doesn't mean that we'll hand it over.They could decide to go along the route of "Fine, we'll just build our own and not let you have access to it", but it'd be interesting to see what happens afterwards.
I don't think that Rev A is rolled out anywhere. I remember hearing VZW was testing it for possible deployement like 2007?? I think the Rev A will be around 3.4Mbps down/1.8Mbps up maximum, which is still better than the standard EV-DO. Just out of curiosity, what is the latency like on EV-DO and EV-DO Rev A? Does anyone know.
Not entirely true. I have VZW and anyone I call on VZW is a free call no matter when I call or where they are in the USA. As far as having to pay for calls to another cell phone, yeah if you count using your minutes as paying then it is :).
Or I could just wait till I'm on night and weekend mins and do my serious calling (longer than say ten minutes) then. :)
Isn't PBS thinking of doing the same thing? I mean I know that the new Cringley show is going to be made available on the net, but I remember hearing that PBS may make more shows available online as time goes on.
Curl into a fetal position and whimper maybe ?. Seriously though, I haven't figured it out either on how to deal with them :).
Maybe we should establish a hunting season on IT managers, say from Sysadmin day on for about another month :). But don't get rid of him until you've trained his replacement :).
(note to all IT managers out there) I am just kidding. No one would want to hunt their IT manager :) . Would they?? WOULD THEY? :)
That may well be, but I have no problems with surrendering a litle bit of privacy by always having the phone on except for when I'm asleep. When I give someone the number and tell them they can call me, I expect that some of those calls will come at inconvenient or late at night.
:).
If you have a cell phone and people have that number, you are in fact tacitly agreeing that they can call you at their discretion unless you specifically tell them not to call during such and such hours.
And to those of you who say that it disturbs your peace of mind or is annoying etc even with it on vibrate, it also disturbs me when your insane concepts of courtesy interfere with my ability to get things done or do things. So it kind of goes both ways.
If you spend your entire life worrying about how something you do might offend someone, you will end up doing nothing valuable at all, because you'll be so worried about making someone mad at you that you will just fence sit your entire life. If the rest of the world doesn't want to dance to your tune, dance around them
Ahh the typical well reasoned /. discussion :).
First, as to those of you who say turning it off is common courtesy, how is it discourteous if I have it on vibrate and am not sitting there with it open? I simply do not want to have to wait the 30 seconds for the phone to power itself up and then also have to wait another indeterminate length of time as messages and voicemails come through scattershot. That's not discourteous to the rest of you, that's simply me ensuring that information that is supposed to get to me does so in a timely manner.
,in this respect they have. Cry me a river, build me a bridge, and get over it. I'm not changing my habits just so that Mr Jones standing next to me feels better.
Second, the world we live in is one where things are instant. That means that people *expect* that if you have a cell phone, they can call it, and they further expect that you will be available to answer said phone. If I purposely ignored my boss's calls or called him back any later than absolutely necessary, there would be hell to pay, because I'd be impeding the running of the business and furthermore I'd be willfully ignoring my responsibilites. Same thing with my family.
Now, if I am in the theater, I am not going to be answering it, but anywhere else pretty much I will.
Hell I answer my phone in church (I walk out and join the crowd of other adults who are also doing the same thing chatting with grandma or their business colleagues or whoever). No place is sacred, nor should it be.
My final point is that while I realize that it is hard for people to accept that today's standards of courtesy have changed
I don't open the screen while the movie is playing :).
I do however, like to know when a txt or voice mail or call comes through. And yes it does go to voicemail also, but sometimes it may take up to five minutes befoer my voicemails and txts get pulled through after the phone is turned on, and I don't like waiting that long.
Also, my cell phone is my primary phone, I do not have a landline, and I do need to be accessible at all times (aside from when I'm asleep) for my business and family use, in fact it's specifically in my contract with my employer that I am always available and that includes my cell phone.
I've never understood why people do so much whining about cell phones and how annoying they are but yet continue to support them by buying them and *gasp* using them in public :). If you're so obsessed with not hearing someone's ring tone as you're in the grocery store or theter or wherever, why not turn yours off all the time too? that way we can all not be bothered, and we may as well not have the things :).
it's the way things are going, especially as more and more people drop landlines for cell phones. Just because you personally don't like it, does not mean that it's wrong for the rest of us to use them.
I just put my cell on vibrate :). I'm not going to turn the thing all the way off because my cell phone is where I take the majority of my calls and I should at least make it available at all times, even if I don't answer a call in the theatre :).
No one touches/takes my cell phone without my explicit permission. At least not if they value their lives ;).
Umm I don't know about you, but I have at least 75 hours of recorded Divx Video on the harddrive at the moment as it is, and thats not even full HDTV quality. Since a terabyte can only hold 128 hours of HDTV, I'd consider it a good start but I'd probably need to see a 2-5-10 TB drive soon otherwise I bet you I could run out of space on the 1 TB model between videos, programs, etc :).
And if thats your position, you eventually will never own a computer or another electronic device, because we all know that once it gets installed, it'll only get worse :).
I don't agree with it either, and I'll be one of the first to tip my hat to whoever cracks this, but the general consumer won't really care enough to make a fuss and get the studios to change. As long as it works reasonably well (read, even if it gets downsampled to 480p) they'll go for it,.
On the other hand who knows, maybe the average consumer will surprise me and when they find out that the studios are pulling this, they will boycott it. But I'm guesssing that their response will be "Oh, really?? That's sure nasty of them". And then they will continue to watch their downsampled movie :).
Just my $.02
I'll only buy one if it supports Divx :). That way I can stick it to MS and Real one more time and rest happily.
Don't feel bad. When my mom announced we were moving here 7 years ago from NY, I had to go grab a map too :).
I have to say having experienced Microservs broadband links I'm not impressed. The mileage of the connection is impressive however their service routinely sucks. Dropped coonnections, low uptime, high prices for slow speeds.They have good latency when it actually works properly though :).
Qwest DSL or CableOne has Microserv beat all hollow. Even the local Teton Wireless internet kicks their ass. But Teton wireless does have some pretty impressive speeds for a long range wireless link (I've seen it get as high as 5Mbps down and 2Mbps up).
Actually this is just part of a much broader Free Trade Association of the America's bill that has yet to be passed so Bush is passing it in bits and pieces :).
It sounds a lot to me like an attempt to form an EU type thing in the Western hemisphere, including eliminating borders,tariffs etc.
I've heard rumor they eventually want to move to only one currency for all those countries and it won't be the US Dollar :).
Only upside I can see to these is that they do stipulate all the countries go metric system and standardize trade laws etc within a reasonable timeframe, and that can only be a good thing :)
Well as long as we're doing all this converting can I make a request that we finally finish totally converting to the metric system? :)
I realize that the US has already accepted it as a official standard, but a lot of the measurements are put in the English system and metric system.
As a tech person used to dealing with the metric system on a daily basis, I would welcome it. It's a whole lot less confusing, and it'd be nice to not to have to constantly stop and think whenever I'm talking to colleagues in other countries that only understand metrics.
Those were my thoughts as well, but it's still interesting to read about :).
I knew I could count on an *educational,unbiased* /. discussion ;).
By the way, that price on the swampland I'm selling you? I just lowered it :)
Amen to that. I guess there really are people with nothing better to do with their lives than monitor and attempt to stop all *indecency*, or what they consider to be indecent. However one thing also strikes me as odd. One million complaints were filed with the FCC, and that represents a very small part of the population that has actually bothered to complain. The rest just grin and bear it apparently? Or could it be THEY DON"T CARE??? :). Could it possibly be that people are a bit more sensible about what constitutes profanity and other content??
So we're having a small majority of the population try to force their moral beliefs on the rest of us. I realize this is how America works today, but it still annoys me.
*sticks hand up in agreement* . Amazing that politicians have nothing better to do than regulate the gaming industry:). I've never been a fan of any content ratings at all, but I'm also not a fan of the current administrations conservative viewpoint towards all this. So a fifteen year old see's some skin in a video game, big deal. It's time for the government to get back into its assigned role and stop meddling in our personal affairs
They will make money by innovating and also by offering both the cheapest player on the market (think Shuffle) and the more high end one for people who want that sort of stuff. This is no different than when the PC manufacturers markets became saturated and they started competing on price/performance. As long as Apple stays true to its nature and designes products that work well and are a pleasure to use, as well as looking good, they will be fine :)
I do need to point out here that digital radio supports up to eight separate FM channels in the same band as the current 1 analog channel :D.
It won't be as maxed out once digital radio becomes more commonplace. That being said I'm not floored by the audio quality of either DAB in Europe or Ibiquity in the USA. 128kbps encoding doesn't cut it :)