Agreed, I also have a 50" Sony LCD rear projection set and it's fantastic. I've had mine for about two years, maybe two and a half, and haven't had to replace the lamp yet.
The general consensus of everybody on the network card story threads was that the product was total BS - latency in the online gaming experience is not caused by ethernet cards, it's caused (or at least 99% of it is caused) by routers and network hops outside of your own computer.
Again your statement "You don't seem to be familiar with the pseudo-science of the Israeli company. That appeared to me to be fraudulent." proves my original point, which you have still not addressed.
What the FBI needs is a small team of a couple smart guys who understand enough technology to know what is and isn't algorithmically or logically impossible, and understand how to deal with the human elements of project management from their end. Basically a real CTO and a couple good project managers and architect level technologists. If these people work with the contractors to gather requirements, build early prototypes to evaluate functionality before investing hundreds of millions in a fully functional system, and bring on board domain experts for specific areas like security, redundancy, backup systems, etc., then they should be fine. The fact that they seem not to have such a team and instead choose to throw hundreds of millions of dollars at contractors is just a disgusting waste of taxpayer dollars.
The people who spout off on Slashdot about how it's impossible have clearly never tried it. I can empirically tell you that GSM phones work at even 10-15 thousand feet of altitude, having done so myself on a private jet flight where there is nobody to enforce the absurd restrictions on commercial flights. They don't work *well*, but it is possible to get through a quick voice call for a minute or so, or to get data access for long enough for your Treo or Blackberry to suck down chunks of email here and there.
However, at cruising altitude for private jet flights, usually in the 33-35k feet range (private jets tend to cruise at higher altitudes than commercial flights), GSM service is not so good. I don't recall off the top of my head successfully getting through any calls or meaningful amounts of data at that altitude, though you *will* sometimes still see evidence of your phone picking up a GSM cell site from the ground, so there's at least some one way transmission. Doesn't mean it's impossible, of course, just means that I don't recall doing it.
I've also only been lucky enough to fly on a private jet a small handful of times, not something I do on a regular enough basis to have thought about doing extensive experimentation.
Okay, I'll trust you that maybe it doesn't happen as often as we think that people go literally from rags to riches, but I have seen tons of examples of class mobility, both up and down the scale, in my own personal life and in members of my family. Also with plenty of friends I know around here in New York, whose families were definitely not born rich but are now quite well off.
So granted, I don't have any quantitative figures as evidence, merely vast amounts of empirical evidence from my own life, and the many interactions I've had with friends from the UK and mainland Europe in which we've discussed views on class in our respective cultures that have strongly backed up my beliefs.
Not saying that they are all fradulent, but at least a couple of them appear quite shady (especially that ridiculous network card company) and seem to be indirectly fishing for investments by tech blog slashvertisement-style PR. Hell, just do a search for Piquepaille on Slashdot, and you'll see about half the stories he submits follow this general pattern. Only a small percentage of them are Israeli.
So... I return to my point from before. You only seem to remember the shady-sounding Israeli companies fishing for investments or free press on some vaporware product that never ends up seeing the light of day. And you seem to forget about all the other companies that meet this description. I suggest you consider why this might be, and that you re-read my prior post for some insight.
At the same time, countries that practice similar-sounding systems, like France, have tons of terribly unhappy people stuck in a lower-middle-class lifestyle, who believe wholeheartedly in the caste system that surrounds them - that the rich are born rich and are a separate class of beings than the "regular people". America has the remarkable characteristic of class mobility - people can actually aspire to give their children better lives than they have, and frequently succeed in doing so.
In any case, you are right, there are some smaller countries, like Sweden and Switzerland, that seem to pull the pseudo-socialist system off quite well. There are some common characteristics that differentiate these countries from countries where it seems to not work quite as well. Ethnic and cultural homogeneity and strong social institutions seems to be part of it. When you add huge immigrant populations and massively diverse understandings of the world, it's not so clear that a "kinder, gentler" socialist-capitalist hybrid system works as well.
But I'm sure somebody will come up with some counter-examples for me, so fire away.
Right, let's use some slightly more realistic numbers for a minute. Assume 1 out of every 100 million passengers intends to commit a terrorist attack on his/her flight. With an 8% false positive rate, that means 8 million people will be flagged as potential terrorists for every 1 terrorist. Say you waste 1 hour of each of their time with a grilling and in-depth search. That's 8 million hours of wasted time, or about 900 years, or about 12 lifetimes wasted. It's hard to imagine that this mechanism, in itself, is an efficient way to find terrorists, or that this is any more effective than just watching for suspicious looking or acting people in the airport.
And you still only have an 85% chance of correctly flagging the terrorist as such, assuming he has not properly trained himself to moderate biofeedback response (a relatively easy thing to do if you have months or years to prepare). Probably far, far lower with properly trained, sophisticated terrorists.
Doesn't seem like this device is terribly useful in its current form.
Nice, throw in a little subtle anti-semitic jab to the mix. Good job, bro. Because god knows there are never any slashvertisements for ridiculous American or European companies on Slashdot. Never.
I've heard that there are those among us who have moved beyond teenage-level stereotypes of "jocks" and "nerds" and have been more successful for it.:)
What you are describing is a question best left to the appropriate state courts and to the legislature of California in defining their "shield law". The problem here is that the Federal court decided to play fast and loose with the law to get jurisdiction so they could bypass the state shield laws. This is unacceptable.
The question should be for a state court to decide as a ruling of fact - either the guy can claim the protections of the shield law, or not. If the shield law doesn't work because it fails to properly define who should be able to claim its protections, the state of California needs to fix the law or eliminate it, and suck it up on this case - remember that ex post facto laws are explicitly un-Constitutional.
Okay, so maybe shield laws suck. Maybe not. But if the state of California has one, it has to abide by it. Playing jurisdictional games that make a mockery of the law to circumvent a shield law is entirely unacceptable. If you really want to change this, then you should convince the people of California that they need to repeal or modify their shield laws using the arguments you outlined above instead of posting them on Slashdot to justify the blatant falsehoods being perpetrated by a judge to circumvent them.
I do not see how this would be anything but a federal matter.
Did you read the summary of the argument for Federal jurisdiction? It is apparently based on the fact that the SFPD receives Federal anti-terrorism funding. This is absurd. Though I find the act of burning police cars repugnant and I loathe most of these nonsensical protestors more than anything, I can't abide the abuse of jurisdiction just to browbeat a guy into giving the Feds a video that somebody says might contain footage of a crime being committed.
I don't know what the qualifications for being a "journalist" are, but if the state has laws that shield journalists, why not let the state court decide whether the guy is a journalist rather than relying on a complete legal fiction and an "ends-justify-the-means" attitude towards jurisdiction?
The collective guilt you espouse is no different than racism of any other form. You are holding people guilty of something because of something that somebody with vaguely more genetic relation to them than to you did in the past that may or may not have benefitted them in any way.
Your discussion of how "white men" did various things to African countries is no different than me writing about how black men like to riot and behave in an uncivilized manner given the first opportunity. Or that black men are dangerous because they like to shoot people. All of these statements are based on facts and occurrences (here in the US, the perpetrators of riots always seem to be black, and proportionally more blacks commit violent crimes), but all of them make needless and useless generalizations that are intellectually dishonest in the name of spreading hatred and racism.
In short, "white men" didn't colonize Africa, certain governments and wealthy industrialists colonized Africa. "White men" didn't take slaves, slave traders and slave owners took slaves. "White men" didn't create puppet dictators, the Cold War (largely) and the USSR and the US governments supported puppet regimes as part of the brinksmanship in a global conflict that could have nuked us all. "White males" don't give African regimes guns, governments and specific rulers who seek to build alliances and have support in global forums give guns to African regimes.
Imagine how a white male must feel when he is told he is responsible for all of these evils. Kind of like how a black male must feel when he is told that he is inherently a uncivilized, riot-prone rapist and violent criminal. People are responsible for their actions as individuals, not for the actions of others who look sort of like them.
A much better marketing move would be to try to get kids to call Walmart "Wäl-mArr" or maybe even "Wil-merr". You know the pseudo-French pronunciation makes it much more hip and acceptable in upper middle class circles.
Seriously, Walmart is anti-cool. Nobody here in New York would ever admit that they shop at Walmart, even if they had them here in the city. Fuck, they hire old people to sit by the doors and say hello. If that's not unhip, I don't know what is.
Folksy and hip are basically at odds with each other. They should try to be one or the other and stick to it. If they want to do hip, it's going to have to be under a totally separate brand name. If they don't understand that, they don't deserve to be in business.
Strange, since I started using MEPIS I have not yet had to recompile a kernel. I recall having to do kernel recompiles all the time back in the days when I used RedHat (and then later Mandrake), just to get Linux to do anything.
What, pray tell, requires all this recompiling of kernels on a modern Linux distro?
It sends shivers of disgust down the spine of every serious developer.
Unlike Perl?!?! Perl is just a foul, disgusting-looking beast. While the PHP libraries may be a touch on the fragile and "arbitrary" side, compared to the libraries in Java, for example, the language itself is like Miss America to Perl's Roseanne Barr.
The "serious developers" who used to write web apps in Perl and TCL, when those were the two most popular choices for such things back in the day, generally produced write-only web monstrosities that could never be picked up or figured out by anybody else, "serious developer" or not.
PHP is relatively fast, simple, syntactically straightforward, and easy to work with. This makes it a good choice for a variety of web applications, though obviously not always the best choice. For some of us, getting the job done is more important than feeling like an elite hax0r.
While one could interpret the original post as irony, I see no particular reason to think, in the context of the thread and other responses, that it was.
In any case, the "fuck you" was meant in a jesting manner anyway. What, couldn't you tell that from my tone? Oh wait, you mean there is no way to know such a thing from a forum post? Oh. Darn.
Slashdot Mirror
Agreed, I also have a 50" Sony LCD rear projection set and it's fantastic. I've had mine for about two years, maybe two and a half, and haven't had to replace the lamp yet.
The general consensus of everybody on the network card story threads was that the product was total BS - latency in the online gaming experience is not caused by ethernet cards, it's caused (or at least 99% of it is caused) by routers and network hops outside of your own computer.
Again your statement "You don't seem to be familiar with the pseudo-science of the Israeli company. That appeared to me to be fraudulent." proves my original point, which you have still not addressed.
What the FBI needs is a small team of a couple smart guys who understand enough technology to know what is and isn't algorithmically or logically impossible, and understand how to deal with the human elements of project management from their end. Basically a real CTO and a couple good project managers and architect level technologists. If these people work with the contractors to gather requirements, build early prototypes to evaluate functionality before investing hundreds of millions in a fully functional system, and bring on board domain experts for specific areas like security, redundancy, backup systems, etc., then they should be fine. The fact that they seem not to have such a team and instead choose to throw hundreds of millions of dollars at contractors is just a disgusting waste of taxpayer dollars.
The people who spout off on Slashdot about how it's impossible have clearly never tried it. I can empirically tell you that GSM phones work at even 10-15 thousand feet of altitude, having done so myself on a private jet flight where there is nobody to enforce the absurd restrictions on commercial flights. They don't work *well*, but it is possible to get through a quick voice call for a minute or so, or to get data access for long enough for your Treo or Blackberry to suck down chunks of email here and there.
However, at cruising altitude for private jet flights, usually in the 33-35k feet range (private jets tend to cruise at higher altitudes than commercial flights), GSM service is not so good. I don't recall off the top of my head successfully getting through any calls or meaningful amounts of data at that altitude, though you *will* sometimes still see evidence of your phone picking up a GSM cell site from the ground, so there's at least some one way transmission. Doesn't mean it's impossible, of course, just means that I don't recall doing it.
I've also only been lucky enough to fly on a private jet a small handful of times, not something I do on a regular enough basis to have thought about doing extensive experimentation.
Okay, I'll trust you that maybe it doesn't happen as often as we think that people go literally from rags to riches, but I have seen tons of examples of class mobility, both up and down the scale, in my own personal life and in members of my family. Also with plenty of friends I know around here in New York, whose families were definitely not born rich but are now quite well off.
So granted, I don't have any quantitative figures as evidence, merely vast amounts of empirical evidence from my own life, and the many interactions I've had with friends from the UK and mainland Europe in which we've discussed views on class in our respective cultures that have strongly backed up my beliefs.
Okay, I guess all these companies are Israeli? That's just a couple from a quick glance at the last few weeks of /. stories.
Not saying that they are all fradulent, but at least a couple of them appear quite shady (especially that ridiculous network card company) and seem to be indirectly fishing for investments by tech blog slashvertisement-style PR. Hell, just do a search for Piquepaille on Slashdot, and you'll see about half the stories he submits follow this general pattern. Only a small percentage of them are Israeli.
So... I return to my point from before. You only seem to remember the shady-sounding Israeli companies fishing for investments or free press on some vaporware product that never ends up seeing the light of day. And you seem to forget about all the other companies that meet this description. I suggest you consider why this might be, and that you re-read my prior post for some insight.
At the same time, countries that practice similar-sounding systems, like France, have tons of terribly unhappy people stuck in a lower-middle-class lifestyle, who believe wholeheartedly in the caste system that surrounds them - that the rich are born rich and are a separate class of beings than the "regular people". America has the remarkable characteristic of class mobility - people can actually aspire to give their children better lives than they have, and frequently succeed in doing so.
In any case, you are right, there are some smaller countries, like Sweden and Switzerland, that seem to pull the pseudo-socialist system off quite well. There are some common characteristics that differentiate these countries from countries where it seems to not work quite as well. Ethnic and cultural homogeneity and strong social institutions seems to be part of it. When you add huge immigrant populations and massively diverse understandings of the world, it's not so clear that a "kinder, gentler" socialist-capitalist hybrid system works as well.
But I'm sure somebody will come up with some counter-examples for me, so fire away.
Right, let's use some slightly more realistic numbers for a minute. Assume 1 out of every 100 million passengers intends to commit a terrorist attack on his/her flight. With an 8% false positive rate, that means 8 million people will be flagged as potential terrorists for every 1 terrorist. Say you waste 1 hour of each of their time with a grilling and in-depth search. That's 8 million hours of wasted time, or about 900 years, or about 12 lifetimes wasted. It's hard to imagine that this mechanism, in itself, is an efficient way to find terrorists, or that this is any more effective than just watching for suspicious looking or acting people in the airport.
And you still only have an 85% chance of correctly flagging the terrorist as such, assuming he has not properly trained himself to moderate biofeedback response (a relatively easy thing to do if you have months or years to prepare). Probably far, far lower with properly trained, sophisticated terrorists.
Doesn't seem like this device is terribly useful in its current form.
Nice, throw in a little subtle anti-semitic jab to the mix. Good job, bro. Because god knows there are never any slashvertisements for ridiculous American or European companies on Slashdot. Never.
I think Ahmadinejad is more down with the Friendster vibe.
I've heard that there are those among us who have moved beyond teenage-level stereotypes of "jocks" and "nerds" and have been more successful for it. :)
What you are describing is a question best left to the appropriate state courts and to the legislature of California in defining their "shield law". The problem here is that the Federal court decided to play fast and loose with the law to get jurisdiction so they could bypass the state shield laws. This is unacceptable.
The question should be for a state court to decide as a ruling of fact - either the guy can claim the protections of the shield law, or not. If the shield law doesn't work because it fails to properly define who should be able to claim its protections, the state of California needs to fix the law or eliminate it, and suck it up on this case - remember that ex post facto laws are explicitly un-Constitutional.
Okay, so maybe shield laws suck. Maybe not. But if the state of California has one, it has to abide by it. Playing jurisdictional games that make a mockery of the law to circumvent a shield law is entirely unacceptable. If you really want to change this, then you should convince the people of California that they need to repeal or modify their shield laws using the arguments you outlined above instead of posting them on Slashdot to justify the blatant falsehoods being perpetrated by a judge to circumvent them.
I do not see how this would be anything but a federal matter.
Did you read the summary of the argument for Federal jurisdiction? It is apparently based on the fact that the SFPD receives Federal anti-terrorism funding. This is absurd. Though I find the act of burning police cars repugnant and I loathe most of these nonsensical protestors more than anything, I can't abide the abuse of jurisdiction just to browbeat a guy into giving the Feds a video that somebody says might contain footage of a crime being committed.
I don't know what the qualifications for being a "journalist" are, but if the state has laws that shield journalists, why not let the state court decide whether the guy is a journalist rather than relying on a complete legal fiction and an "ends-justify-the-means" attitude towards jurisdiction?
This is truly one of the most bizarre, ridiculous-sounding cases ever. What kind of country are we becoming if this is the way things work these days?
While it wouldn't be very nice to whack a colonel, if you whack-off a colonel, well, that's a totally different story.
Shhh, please don't tell those companies why they can't compete with my company.
The collective guilt you espouse is no different than racism of any other form. You are holding people guilty of something because of something that somebody with vaguely more genetic relation to them than to you did in the past that may or may not have benefitted them in any way.
Your discussion of how "white men" did various things to African countries is no different than me writing about how black men like to riot and behave in an uncivilized manner given the first opportunity. Or that black men are dangerous because they like to shoot people. All of these statements are based on facts and occurrences (here in the US, the perpetrators of riots always seem to be black, and proportionally more blacks commit violent crimes), but all of them make needless and useless generalizations that are intellectually dishonest in the name of spreading hatred and racism.
In short, "white men" didn't colonize Africa, certain governments and wealthy industrialists colonized Africa. "White men" didn't take slaves, slave traders and slave owners took slaves. "White men" didn't create puppet dictators, the Cold War (largely) and the USSR and the US governments supported puppet regimes as part of the brinksmanship in a global conflict that could have nuked us all. "White males" don't give African regimes guns, governments and specific rulers who seek to build alliances and have support in global forums give guns to African regimes.
Imagine how a white male must feel when he is told he is responsible for all of these evils. Kind of like how a black male must feel when he is told that he is inherently a uncivilized, riot-prone rapist and violent criminal. People are responsible for their actions as individuals, not for the actions of others who look sort of like them.
Can we ... PLEASE... stop talking about groin shots?!??
Thanks.
Finally, a BSD chick that's *actually* hot.
A much better marketing move would be to try to get kids to call Walmart "Wäl-mArr" or maybe even "Wil-merr". You know the pseudo-French pronunciation makes it much more hip and acceptable in upper middle class circles.
Seriously, Walmart is anti-cool. Nobody here in New York would ever admit that they shop at Walmart, even if they had them here in the city. Fuck, they hire old people to sit by the doors and say hello. If that's not unhip, I don't know what is.
Folksy and hip are basically at odds with each other. They should try to be one or the other and stick to it. If they want to do hip, it's going to have to be under a totally separate brand name. If they don't understand that, they don't deserve to be in business.
How many Yale students does it take to change a lightbulb?
None--New Haven looks better in the dark.
Strange, since I started using MEPIS I have not yet had to recompile a kernel. I recall having to do kernel recompiles all the time back in the days when I used RedHat (and then later Mandrake), just to get Linux to do anything.
What, pray tell, requires all this recompiling of kernels on a modern Linux distro?
It sends shivers of disgust down the spine of every serious developer.
Unlike Perl?!?! Perl is just a foul, disgusting-looking beast. While the PHP libraries may be a touch on the fragile and "arbitrary" side, compared to the libraries in Java, for example, the language itself is like Miss America to Perl's Roseanne Barr.
The "serious developers" who used to write web apps in Perl and TCL, when those were the two most popular choices for such things back in the day, generally produced write-only web monstrosities that could never be picked up or figured out by anybody else, "serious developer" or not.
PHP is relatively fast, simple, syntactically straightforward, and easy to work with. This makes it a good choice for a variety of web applications, though obviously not always the best choice. For some of us, getting the job done is more important than feeling like an elite hax0r.
While one could interpret the original post as irony, I see no particular reason to think, in the context of the thread and other responses, that it was.
In any case, the "fuck you" was meant in a jesting manner anyway. What, couldn't you tell that from my tone? Oh wait, you mean there is no way to know such a thing from a forum post? Oh. Darn.