It should amuse you, then, that the tyrannical electoral college always elects the person who won the election.
Tut, tut. I might want to do some research before I used words like "always". Rutherford B. Hayes received a majority in the electoral college and was elected in 1876 despite losing the popular vote. In 1888, Benjamin Harrison lost the popular vote but won in the electoral college. In a close election, this is always a possibility, even today--imagine a candidate who wins big in small states but is narrowly defeated in the larger states.
My prediction is that the electoral college will be abandoned next time this happens....
don't know very much about DVD at all, but I could imagine that if I was given an audio CD that was encrypted, I could just read off a raw image and burn it to a fresh CD. Are DVD's somehow different?
Well, I'm no expert either, but the first thing that comes to mind to defeat this is to put a magic header in some non-writeable area of prerecorded DVD's. That way, if the player encounters CSS-scrambled data, it looks for the header. Since it's on a non-writeable area, you didn't properly copy it when you ripped the disk and your player therefore chokes on it. Naturally, since your own videos (home movies, whatever) wouldn't normally be scrambled, there's no need for the player to look for the header validating the content...
I can watch local Buffalo news!! MORE FIRES IN CHEEKTAVEGAS!!:)
Cool! Now you can play the "Buffalo House Fire Home Game"! Watch the local news. Try to guess which part of town tonight's house fire is in (eastside, southside, etc.) Bonus points for guessing the specific neighborhood/street ("An Allentown couple is homeless tonight after a two-alarm...")
Don't forget the basic format: if two or more people died, it's the lead story; otherwise, it'll be the first story after the first break.
I always thought that they should shoot for some sort of promotional tie-in - e.g., "Tonight's fire is brought to you by "First Alert" brand Smoke detectors..." or Diamond-brand matches, or...use your imagination! Think of the ad bucks!
BTW, you aren't a true Don Cherry fan until you own and wear the entire Don Cherry ready-to-wear collection;)
Ummm... The area code prompt is not likely meant as a means to prevent them pesky Americans from invading the site and watching Canadian TV. More than likely, the company is using it as a quick way to gather demographic information about who is watching from where.
Well, yes it probably does that, but rather than prevent pesky americans from watching Canadian TV, it's to prevent pesky Americans from watching AMERICAN TV. Network affiliates have broadcast exclusivity agreements in the areas they serve, and the NBC (for example) affiliates in Chicago, Miami, Dallas, etc., would be rather upset to learn that people were watching "E.R." on WGRZ Buffalo instead of their local stations.
Living here in Buffalo, I'm probably safe--these are the channels I see anyway:), except that the PBS station is WNED, not WNEB. Anyway, why the hell would you all want to watch "AM Buffalo"?
It's definitely more expansive players and... and... more music on a disk. Not everyone needs them though (including me)...
Yeah, so instead of shelling out $15-$20 for an album with 12 songs, 10 of which are shit, you can part with twice as much for a disk with 80 songs, 78 of which are shit....
Now, I seem to remember a killer parody about MSFT hyping up some 6-year-old child prodigy who was developing a mental-computing interface (or some such bullshit, anyway) for them, how he had the personal ear of BillG, etc. This reminds me of that--funny as hell, now why can't I remember where I saw this thing?
Finally, I couldn't do anything but laugh at their "forensic rendering". There are a lot of groundless assumptions being made in it, and i suggest that if they gave the skull to a qualified forensic artist without telling them "we think its an alien skull!" it would look pretty normal, although obviously a little top-heavy (a lot like someone with progeria).
I especially liked the pointed ears, considering there was no ear cartilage or other physical structure to indicate what shape they should be other than normal human rounded...
I noticed that too. Did you notice also the shape of the chin in the artist's rendering, how it comes to a nice pointy alien-looking shape? All well and good, except that they apparently don't actually HAVE the lower mandible, making all this rank speculation.
Anyway, this looks like yet another case of trying to make the data fit one's personal pet theory, rather than coming up with a theory to explain the available data (which is what real science does).
You know, where do they get the names for these things? Why do they have to make it sound as though it might jump out of your machine at any moment and kill you?
andy (waiting for the new Elf Rosepetal Happyguy 256 from Matrox)
Omigod, dude, you just totally made my day...anyone who is interested in understanding why schools fail their students must check out two books (both out of print, dammit) by Richard Mitchell (a.k.a. the Underground Grammarian).
Run, don't walk, to your local library and check out "The Graves of Academe" and "The Leaning Tower of Babel" by Mitchell. Go. Now. Hurry.
Very interesting article, with some valid points. I find it fascinating that he uses Fred Moody's article as source on the shortcomings of OSS, particularly when that same article was roundly destroyed here on/.
In fact, THAT discussion spawned a discussion on how best to engage in Linux/OSS advocacy. So, you tell me--is this REALLY evidence that the OSS community is broken? It seems that if you are going to use this as a source, you ought to at least see if any responses exist.
The general sez: do your research, Mr. Bezroukov...
Re:Why are metered local calls "stupid"?
on
ISP War in the UK
·
· Score: 1
Don't US users pay a lot more for 'long distance' calls than we do anyway?
I can't really comment on intra-national long-distance rates, but for international long-distance, US companies are generally much cheaper that other telcos. Note the popularity of so-called "callback" long distance services for calls to the states. What those companies basically do is provide you with a dial tone from a US telco, usually _significantly_ cheaper than directly dialing to the US yourself... Funny I should be reading this at the same time as I open my bill from Bell Atlantic. So for comparison purposes, the local charges on my bill (as listed):
1) Flat Rate Service $8.47 2) Bell Atlantic Calling Card $0.00 3) Flat Rate Usage $13.56 4) Non Published Service $1.95
And the following mandates:
FCC Line Charge $3.50 Local Number Portability $0.21 911 Surcharge $0.35
Etc., etc. Plus, of course local/state sales tax and a federal tax.
One thing I haven't seen mentioned is that local US telcos don't require flat rate service--if you prefer, you can be billed per-minute for local calls, which makes sense for those who make very few calls per month. Anyway, the point is that you have a choice. Guess which option most people choose?;)
For those who are realaudio-enabled, NPR had a really cool obit this afternoon, available here. They got some of my favorite bits, but they left out one of my personal favorites, Day of the Dolphin (okay, the movie's not that great, but Scott sure as hell is...)
Anyway, the best part of the piece is when Rex Reed is quoted as calling George C. Scott "the meanest Richard III ever seen by human eyes".
Hey, that's a great idea. Unfortunately, it won't work, mainly because your plan assumes the existence of an intelligent, educated, concerned electorate. What are the odds of THAT happening any time soon? (At least, here in the U.S., anyway):) In any case, it seems to me that Jed 'n' Ethel Average have enough trouble figuring out how (or even whether!) various policy proposals will affect them, if they even care, without additionally guessing what "percentage" of their vote to spend on them...
Wow, that column really sucked. The guy wasted valuable electrons trashing what was, at it's peak, one of the funniest things on TV.
I suppose I should have known better, though. Any writer who has the balls to be referred to as "a freelance writer and frequent contributor to Hermenaut: The Digest of Heady Philosophy" has clearly spent a little too much time sipping from the heady waters of the bullshit fountain...
Re:Prohibiting discussion of drugs?
on
New Cyberlaws
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· Score: 1
There is a head shop in Buffalo, NY, which has been openly selling bongs and other drug paraphernalia for a while without too much legal problems. I could link to them without violating this law. (In case you were wondering, they have a large sign in the store that says "If you mention illegal drugs, we can't sell to you" which is enforced, and they claim that their materials are for smoking tobacco).
Ahh, the infamous Terrapin Station. Yes, indeed. Although, I have to point out that their radio spots are rather amusingly ambiguous about their products. I particularly like the one claiming that all their "smoking accessories" are Y2K-compliant...
If the laws are that easily circumvented...
Well, isn't that the point? If all you have to do to get around the law is play these idiotic hair-splitting semantic games, what's the point of the law? Why bother? And, it seems to me that the vagueness of this law is it's undoing. For example, I should point out that Terrapin Station in Buffalo is located a mere mile-and-half or so from Hydroponics of Buffalo. There. Now I've linked/. to a retailer selling items and information that could be used to grow pot...or tomatoes. Is Slashdot now potentially in violation of this proposed new law? And if this sounds extreme, keep in mind that with all the police and prosecutors we have working in this country, I guarantee that at least one is willing to try to make stuff like that stick...
Okay, I guess I wasn't totally clear on your original point; nevertheless, the fact that disagreement could lead to conflict is not a reason to avert our eyes. I believe, strongly, that if we do not actively condemn such behavior, than we are implicitly condoning it. And if that leads to conflict, then I believe that the freedom of my fellow man is a cause worth fighting for.
Nowadays, though, it seems as though I am in the minority in America, as well as the West in general. We continue to, as you said, paper over these differences in the name of commerce. After all, a market of 1 billion chinese consumers makes it very difficult for the moral concerns to outweigh the economic ones. Hell, we'll sell ourselves down the river in the name of a quick buck, let alone the average chinese citizen.
Maybe I'm getting more cynical as I get older, but it seems clearer and clearer to me that Kruschchev was right when he noted that when it came time to hang the West, a Western businessman would sell him the rope.
Mmmmm....okay, China is a large, homogeneous culture, unlike the West. I'm with you there. And we should try to understand political differences in terms of cultural differences. So far, so good. Where I must disagree with you however, is where you suggest:
Accepting differences is just a matter of acknowledging a reality one could do little about.
and:
While I personally believe that the future belongs to diversity and multicultural cooperation, I also see that the Chinese don't necessarily agree. As long as they stay in their corner and don't mess with any of us, it doesn't have to get ugly.
The problem I have is that you have essentially denied the universality of human rights. We believe that tolerance of others is okay for us, but because the Chinese have a different culture, they don't really have to tolerate differences--in fact, they are totally within their rights to crush these people, or any other domestic group or individual, on a whim.
As soon as we allow that a different cultural background is an an acceptable reason for a government to harass, imprison, torture, and murder its citizens, well, then we basically set sail off into a sea of moral relativism wherein NOTHING is ever really bad or wrong.
Don't get me wrong--we can and should try to understand and appreciate cultural differences. But, there is a difference between understanding something and accepting that thing. We should not accept this notion that somehow human rights are this peculiar thing that can only be enjoyed by westerners.
I don't accept that the Chinese government's actions are somehow okay because they're, y'know, CHINESE. It is enlightening to see how crappy this argument is (it was gospel for my anthro. profs, BTW) when you use the same logic to try to suggest that lynchings by the Klan are really okay, because, after all, they're an inevitable part of the culture of the Southern/Midwestern United States, and that we should all learn to understand, appreciate, and accept them.
>>Isn't it amazing that Trasmeta, without any >>thing, has most people here believers. While >>E2K, on the same boat, with evidence, has most >>people here yell fraud? Yeah, but here's the difference. Transmeta has been basically silent about their project(s)--what you hear about them is speculation from outsiders, whereas Elbrus is it's own PR machine. And, at the risk of sounding cynical, they do have a vested interest in everybody beliving their claims, true or not. Elbrus is the one making the outrageous claims here, let them prove that what they say is true. And in the absence of such proof, why should I believe them? Third-party benchmarks anyone?
I would just like to point out that, as this seems to have come out of Los Alamos, this undoubtedly means that the Chinese Army has been warping around the galaxy for twenty years now.
Slashdot Mirror
It should amuse you, then, that the tyrannical electoral college always elects the person who won the election.
Tut, tut. I might want to do some research before I used words like "always". Rutherford B. Hayes received a majority in the electoral college and was elected in 1876 despite losing the popular vote. In 1888, Benjamin Harrison lost the popular vote but won in the electoral college.
In a close election, this is always a possibility, even today--imagine a candidate who wins big in small states but is narrowly defeated in the larger states.
My prediction is that the electoral college will be abandoned next time this happens....
WTF?
Wu-Name = "Asthmatic Enemy of God"
Like this:
"What is truth?" (cough, wheeze)
?
don't know very much about DVD at all, but I could imagine that if I was given an audio CD that was encrypted, I could just read off a raw image and burn it to a fresh CD. Are DVD's somehow different?
Well, I'm no expert either, but the first thing that comes to mind to defeat this is to put a magic header in some non-writeable area of prerecorded DVD's. That way, if the player encounters CSS-scrambled data, it looks for the header. Since it's on a non-writeable area, you didn't properly copy it when you ripped the disk and your player therefore chokes on it. Naturally, since your own videos (home movies, whatever) wouldn't normally be scrambled, there's no need for the player to look for the header validating the content...
Just my $0.02
I can watch local Buffalo news!! MORE FIRES IN CHEEKTAVEGAS!! :)
;)
Cool! Now you can play the "Buffalo House Fire Home Game"! Watch the local news. Try to guess which part of town tonight's house fire is in (eastside, southside, etc.) Bonus points for guessing the specific neighborhood/street ("An Allentown couple is homeless tonight after a two-alarm...")
Don't forget the basic format: if two or more people died, it's the lead story; otherwise, it'll be the first story after the first break.
I always thought that they should shoot for some sort of promotional tie-in - e.g., "Tonight's fire is brought to you by "First Alert" brand Smoke detectors..." or Diamond-brand matches, or...use your imagination! Think of the ad bucks!
BTW, you aren't a true Don Cherry fan until you own and wear the entire Don Cherry ready-to-wear collection
Ummm... The area code prompt is not likely meant as a means to prevent them pesky Americans from invading the site and watching Canadian TV. More than likely, the company is using it as a quick way to gather demographic information about who is watching from where.
:), except that the PBS station is WNED, not WNEB. Anyway, why the hell would you all want to watch "AM Buffalo"?
Well, yes it probably does that, but rather than prevent pesky americans from watching Canadian TV, it's to prevent pesky Americans from watching AMERICAN TV. Network affiliates have broadcast exclusivity agreements in the areas they serve, and the NBC (for example) affiliates in Chicago, Miami, Dallas, etc., would be rather upset to learn that people were watching "E.R." on WGRZ Buffalo instead of their local stations.
Living here in Buffalo, I'm probably safe--these are the channels I see anyway
It's definitely more expansive players and... and... more music on a disk. Not everyone needs them though (including me)...
Yeah, so instead of shelling out $15-$20 for an album with 12 songs, 10 of which are shit, you can part with twice as much for a disk with 80 songs, 78 of which are shit....
And this is progress?
Pretty sad, replying to my own post...
Anyway check this out and tell me if this doesn't seem oddly prescient...
Now, I seem to remember a killer parody about MSFT hyping up some 6-year-old child prodigy who was developing a mental-computing interface (or some such bullshit, anyway) for them, how he had the personal ear of BillG, etc. This reminds me of that--funny as hell, now why can't I remember where I saw this thing?
Dammit, somebody help me out here...:)
Finally, I couldn't do anything but laugh at their "forensic rendering". There are a lot of groundless assumptions being made in it, and i suggest that if they gave the skull to a qualified forensic artist without telling them "we think its an alien skull!" it would look pretty normal, although obviously a little top-heavy (a lot like someone with progeria).
I especially liked the pointed ears, considering there was no ear cartilage or other physical structure to indicate what shape they should be other than normal human rounded...
I noticed that too. Did you notice also the shape of the chin in the artist's rendering, how it comes to a nice pointy alien-looking shape? All well and good, except that they apparently don't actually HAVE the lower mandible, making all this rank speculation.
Anyway, this looks like yet another case of trying to make the data fit one's personal pet theory, rather than coming up with a theory to explain the available data (which is what real science does).
Omigod, that's the funniest...
mp3's from mp3.com:
low-bandwidth stream
high bandwidth stream
download the whole wad
You know, where do they get the names for these things? Why do they have to make it sound as though it might jump out of your machine at any moment and kill you?
andy
(waiting for the new Elf Rosepetal Happyguy 256 from Matrox)
Omigod, dude, you just totally made my day...anyone who is interested in understanding why schools fail their students must check out two books (both out of print, dammit) by Richard Mitchell (a.k.a. the Underground Grammarian).
Run, don't walk, to your local library and check out "The Graves of Academe" and "The Leaning Tower of Babel" by Mitchell. Go. Now. Hurry.
Good call on the quote, my man...
Very interesting article, with some valid points. I find it fascinating that he uses Fred Moody's article as source on the shortcomings of OSS, particularly when that same article was roundly destroyed here on /.
In fact, THAT discussion spawned a discussion on how best to engage in Linux/OSS advocacy.
So, you tell me--is this REALLY evidence that the OSS community is broken?
It seems that if you are going to use this as a source, you ought to at least see if any responses exist.
The general sez: do your research, Mr. Bezroukov...
Don't US users pay a lot more for 'long distance' calls than we do anyway?
;)
I can't really comment on intra-national long-distance rates, but for international long-distance, US companies are generally much cheaper that other telcos. Note the popularity of so-called "callback" long distance services for calls to the states. What those companies basically do is provide you with a dial tone from a US telco, usually _significantly_ cheaper than directly dialing to the US yourself...
Funny I should be reading this at the same time as I open my bill from Bell Atlantic. So for comparison purposes, the local charges on my bill (as listed):
1) Flat Rate Service $8.47
2) Bell Atlantic Calling Card $0.00
3) Flat Rate Usage $13.56
4) Non Published Service $1.95
And the following mandates:
FCC Line Charge $3.50
Local Number Portability $0.21
911 Surcharge $0.35
Etc., etc. Plus, of course local/state sales tax and a federal tax.
One thing I haven't seen mentioned is that local US telcos don't require flat rate service--if you prefer, you can be billed per-minute for local calls, which makes sense for those who make very few calls per month. Anyway, the point is that you have a choice. Guess which option most people choose?
For those who are realaudio-enabled, NPR had a really cool obit this afternoon, available here. They got some of my favorite bits, but they left out one of my personal favorites, Day of the Dolphin (okay, the movie's not that great, but Scott sure as hell is...)
Anyway, the best part of the piece is when Rex Reed is quoted as calling George C. Scott "the meanest Richard III ever seen by human eyes".
I don't doubt it a bit...
Hey, that's a great idea. Unfortunately, it won't work, mainly because your plan assumes the existence of an intelligent, educated, concerned electorate. What are the odds of THAT happening any time soon? (At least, here in the U.S., anyway) :)
In any case, it seems to me that Jed 'n' Ethel Average have enough trouble figuring out how (or even whether!) various policy proposals will affect them, if they even care, without additionally guessing what "percentage" of their vote to spend on them...
All above are excellent orgs with good records..I'll throw one of my favorites into the mix too--don't forget the The Center for Democracy and Technology.
From "their" copyright notice:
MacLane Nova New Media can not and will not be held responsible for any of the contents in this site.
I love it. Not only do they (apparently) steal this guy's stuff, they also basically give the world the finger about it...
Sheesh...
Wow, that column really sucked. The guy wasted valuable electrons trashing what was, at it's peak, one of the funniest things on TV.
I suppose I should have known better, though. Any writer who has the balls to be referred to as "a freelance writer and frequent contributor to Hermenaut: The Digest of Heady Philosophy" has clearly spent a little too much time sipping from the heady waters of the bullshit fountain...
There is a head shop in Buffalo, NY, which has been openly selling bongs and other drug paraphernalia for a while without too much legal problems. I could link to them without violating this law. (In case you were wondering, they have a large sign in the store that says "If you mention illegal drugs, we can't sell to you" which is enforced, and they claim that their materials are for smoking tobacco).
/. to a retailer selling items and information that could be used to grow pot...or tomatoes. Is Slashdot now potentially in violation of this proposed new law? And if this sounds extreme, keep in mind that with all the police and prosecutors we have working in this country, I guarantee that at least one is willing to try to make stuff like that stick...
Ahh, the infamous Terrapin Station. Yes, indeed. Although, I have to point out that their radio spots are rather amusingly ambiguous about their products. I particularly like the one claiming that all their "smoking accessories" are Y2K-compliant...
If the laws are that easily circumvented...
Well, isn't that the point? If all you have to do to get around the law is play these idiotic hair-splitting semantic games, what's the point of the law? Why bother?
And, it seems to me that the vagueness of this law is it's undoing. For example, I should point out that Terrapin Station in Buffalo is located a mere mile-and-half or so from Hydroponics of Buffalo. There. Now I've linked
Okay, I guess I wasn't totally clear on your original point; nevertheless, the fact that disagreement could lead to conflict is not a reason to avert our eyes. I believe, strongly, that if we do not actively condemn such behavior, than we are implicitly condoning it. And if that leads to conflict, then I believe that the freedom of my fellow man is a cause worth fighting for.
Nowadays, though, it seems as though I am in the minority in America, as well as the West in general. We continue to, as you said, paper over these differences in the name of commerce. After all, a market of 1 billion chinese consumers makes it very difficult for the moral concerns to outweigh the economic ones. Hell, we'll sell ourselves down the river in the name of a quick buck, let alone the average chinese citizen.
Maybe I'm getting more cynical as I get older, but it seems clearer and clearer to me that Kruschchev was right when he noted that when it came time to hang the West, a Western businessman would sell him the rope.
Mmmmm....okay, China is a large, homogeneous culture, unlike the West. I'm with you there. And we should try to understand political differences in terms of cultural differences. So far, so good. Where I must disagree with you however, is where you suggest:
Accepting differences is just a matter of acknowledging a reality one could do little about.
and:
While I personally believe that the future belongs to diversity and multicultural cooperation, I also see that the Chinese don't necessarily agree. As long as they stay in their corner and don't mess with any of us, it doesn't have to get ugly.
The problem I have is that you have essentially denied the universality of human rights. We believe that tolerance of others is okay for us, but because the Chinese have a different culture, they don't really have to tolerate differences--in fact, they are totally within their rights to crush these people, or any other domestic group or individual, on a whim.
As soon as we allow that a different cultural background is an an acceptable reason for a government to harass, imprison, torture, and murder its citizens, well, then we basically set sail off into a sea of moral relativism wherein NOTHING is ever really bad or wrong.
Don't get me wrong--we can and should try to understand and appreciate cultural differences. But, there is a difference between understanding something and accepting that thing. We should not accept this notion that somehow human rights are this peculiar thing that can only be enjoyed by westerners.
I don't accept that the Chinese government's actions are somehow okay because they're, y'know, CHINESE. It is enlightening to see how crappy this argument is (it was gospel for my anthro. profs, BTW) when you use the same logic to try to suggest that lynchings by the Klan are really okay, because, after all, they're an inevitable part of the culture of the Southern/Midwestern United States, and that we should all learn to understand, appreciate, and accept them.
>>Isn't it amazing that Trasmeta, without any
>>thing, has most people here believers. While
>>E2K, on the same boat, with evidence, has most
>>people here yell fraud?
Yeah, but here's the difference. Transmeta has been basically silent about their project(s)--what you hear about them is speculation from outsiders, whereas Elbrus is it's own PR machine. And, at the risk of sounding cynical, they do have a vested interest in everybody beliving their claims, true or not.
Elbrus is the one making the outrageous claims here, let them prove that what they say is true. And in the absence of such proof, why should I believe them?
Third-party benchmarks anyone?
I would just like to point out that, as this seems to have come out of Los Alamos, this undoubtedly means that the Chinese Army has been warping around the galaxy for twenty years now.
:)
JPEG watermarks can be defeaated...
unZign
or
StirMark