I won't address the question of the legality of the posting - it's been hashed over fairly well here. I think it's safe to say that it's probably not legal in this context, and if it is, then it probably shouldn't be.
As for your shame, I urge you NOT to feel ashamed. Because these people (Indymedia, other nutjobs) have NOTHING to do with the mainstream Democratic party. That's like saying that Republicans should feel ashamed when an abortion provider is murdered by a nutjob - we must not let the radical elements of our society subvert the political process or delegitimize legitimate political dissent and argumentation. Of course, in recent years, the Republican party is much cozier with it's radical elements than the Democratic party has been (other than the pandering to Hollywood types for money, but they are just a funding source, nothing more, and nobody gives any policy creedence to a thing they say). The right wing of the Republican party actually is able to set a lot of their policy agenda on the table, which is scary.
In any case, I disapprove of any persuasion tactic that involves posting an individual's name, address and phone number on the web with vague contextual suggestions about what should be done with this information, I don't care what side of the political spectrum you are on.
Not what I do for a living, that was a project I did mostly for fun while taking some time off from work, that happened to turn a modest profit and result in some contract work and the like. 3D screensavers are sure a lot of fun to write after spending several years running an enterprise software company building backend financial trading systems, and relatively speaking, provide far, far more mental exercise than most of the applications that I've been involved in developing in my post-college career.
But regardless, you actually _do_ need a fair amount of physics to do even a mediocre job of simulating nature with some visual accuracy. 3D graphics in general is very similar to physics, it's just the metric of success is slightly different. Rather than the extent to which your model matches experimental measurement, the relevant metric is the extent to which your mathematical model creates suspension of disbelief and enjoyment by the viewer or user.
Incidentally, pretty much everything I _have_ done career-wise came out of the people I knew from high school and college. That was part of my original point - in general, that's been far more relevant to my ability to make money than the strength of my physics education.
I agree 100%. I actually have an XMDirect in my car right now, but since I use it I don't feel like pulling it apart. I'm considering getting another one, but as far as I can tell, you can't buy them standalone yet (I paid 300 dollars for my Blitzsafe BMW adapter + XMDirect, and I am not shelling out another 300 bucks just to get a unit to hack on).
Anyway, hopefully we will all keep quiet about the XMDirect hackability potential until the things are readily available for 50 bucks at retail. I would hate to see somebody start selling serial/USB adapters or DIY kits for the XMDirect and then have XM discontinue that product too. Just need to keep this stuff slightly underground enough that it doesn't attract big media attention and get the RIAA coming down on XM again.
Please see comment here. I already addressed your stupid comments. Your parents are supposed to pay for college. If they aren't, then they are failing to live up to basic parental responsibility. You are also supposed to work, but it's not reasonable to expect that you can earn enough to pay for college while studying full time. If your parents are such shits that they won't do this, or can't afford private colleges, there are lots of excellent public schools in this country, change your residency to a different state if necessary, take out college loans, etc. Geez, your average state school is still what, 4 or 5 grand a year tuition (that's what SUNY Binghamton runs here in New York). And if you choose to go to a private school that's much more expensive, then deal with it. Go to a school where you can get a free ride. My good friend whose family was not at all well-off got into MIT and Dartmouth and was offered a full ride at Dartmouth. He went to MIT anyway, racked up a lot of debt, but that was his damned choice.
Then GET OVER YOUR BITTERNESS ABOUT YOUR LIFE and realize that there's always going to be somebody richer and somebody poorer than you and learn to deal. You are going to be working your ass off after graduation, and you know those parents you "sucked at the teat" from? Well, eventually they get old and need somebody to take care of them.
Life lesson number one right here, asshole: my mother developed cancer 3 and a half years ago. Guess who's been taking care of her since, paying the bills, managing her finances, and now taking time off from work to spend with her? That's right, the "asshole" who sucked on her teat. I'm sorry that so many people around here seem to have no idea of what it means to be a family or how to take care of each other. That must be a sad way to go through life. I hope you don't treat your children the way you were treated by your parents.
I concur on the possibility of condom failure. Which is why I highly recommend condoms in conjunction with the pill or other hormonal contraceptive (and THOSE aren't 100% alone either - trust me on this one, I've heard several stories down that route too).
Just to be clear, I didn't say I actually successfully screwed everything in sight, or that I tried to. In fact, I had sex with only a couple of women in college, all of whom I had real relationships with for at least some duration of time. But I dated a lot, and had a good time - that was my point, not to poke your rod in everything you see. And in this day and age of sexually transmitted diseases, I recommend you try sexual activities that involve no actual mixing of bodily fluids when possible, always use a condom when not, and even so, be thoughtful about who you sleep with.
Jeez, I guess I just figured you'd get that speech from your father, your high school health classroom or something. Here on Slashdot, I assume everybody is anal enough to realize these things and probably spends weeks of worrying and guilt after they lose their virginity anyway (heck, I know I did). I used to be obsessive and paranoid about that stuff, thanks to all the indoctrination they offer you in elementary and middle school My generation (college class of 2000) did grow up during the dawn of the AIDS crisis, so I guess you can't blame us, maybe it's different for kids these days who were born in the mid-to-late-80s. I was just trying to offer some encouragement in the opposite direction - like I said, we all die eventually, don't forget to live life while you're here. Don't take stupid risks, don't get girls pregnant.
And if you don't believe in early first trimester abortion if all the countermeasures fail, then don't have intercourse with anyone even with condoms and hormonal contraceptive - like I said, there are LOTS of things you can do with women that meet my general parameters that don't involve actual intercourse.
If your parents aren't willing to help with college than they are real shits (seriously, I've met people with parents like this who could afford it but didn't want to, what assholes). If they aren't able, then go to a college where you can get much of your ride paid for. Some of the smartest, most successful people I know went to thoroughly mediocre colleges (and this is coming from an Ivy League grad). I did work in college, sophomore year, most of junior year and full time every summer. The term-time jobs I picked were ones that furthered my goals - seriously, I was the manager of the House Grille which was located in the basement of our large dorm and open every night from 8pm to 1am. It was a lot of work, but it paid better than other campus jobs, and you could meet and hang out with people who lived in your dorm and flirt with women while working. It was a very social job - I'd do my homework and problem sets starting at about 5pm every day, work until 8, open up the restaurant, make sure things were going okay, and then continue working until I was done. The go downstairs and hang out, oversee the restaurant, etc. and close up at the end of the night.
My summer jobs all paid a lot too - mind you, back in 1996 and 1997 it was piss easy for a decent programmer to make oodles of cash. I was also already working full time at a real job senior year and earning real cash. Like I said, that part I occasionally regret.
So did my family have enough money to pay my tuition bills? Yes, and I'm glad for that, but this doesn't presuppose phenomenal wealth. And will I do the same for my children? Of course I will, because I expect them to have fun and learn, AND to learn personal responsibility while in college. I will encourage them to work part time in college because it teaches them fiscal responsibility. But there's plenty of time for full time employment, earning much more money than you'll earn as an undergrad, after you finish school.
1. Drink. None of that pussy "I don't drink" shit. Learn to suck it up and drink like a real man, that's what college is for. Trust me, soon enough you'll have all sorts of annoying health problems and aging concerns, and you'll have to moderate your drinking. College is your chance to get this out of your system and give your liver a good working out.
2. Have sex. Meet women and fuck them. Seriously. If you followed step 1 above, you will find step 2 much easier. I promise. If you still don't know how to do this, learn. Study the art of fast seduction if you need that sort of thing (Google is your friend), or just be yourself if you have more luck that way. Freshman year is tough, but by the time Junior year rolls around you should have your game on and the Frosh chicks and ready for action. Don't bother with the Junior and Senior chicks, they're getting banged by the grad students, or people with real jobs and incomes. Don't waste your undergraduate years in some long distance relationship or any of that crap, and don't stick with the first girl that gives you some booty. This lesson goes for the rest of life too. And if you are gay, please feel free to replace "chick" with "dude" in the above paragraph. And if you are female, well, go screw some underclassmen and stop hogging all the senior dudes.
3. Make friends and connections. The people you meet in high school and college (if you go to a good high school, maybe more there than college) are the connections you have for the rest of your life. These people are critical for building your career. You will help them out and they will help you out. Join a fraternity if that's your thing (preferably one where people aren't complete morons - my friend's frat at MIT had more multimillionaire entrepreneur alumni than I can count), or get involved in extracurricular activities. In the end, this is as important as your grades - your grades will be useful for grad school if you go that route and to a lesser extent for your first few jobs. Beyond that, the most that will matter is "cum laude", "magna cum laude", etc. People still are impressed when I say I graduated from Harvard in Physics, magna cum laude.
4. Study. Go to your classes. Except when it interferes with 1, 2 or 3. Your parents are paying for an education, get it. And not just in the area you are majoring in, branch out, take some other classes. But don't get obsessed with pulling straight As at the expense of the friend-making and networking. And definitely not at the expense of getting laid and drinking, or you'll regret it for the rest of your life. Remember, we all end up dead someday, don't forget to enjoy life while you're young.
After you've done all of the above, you are welcome to fit a few hours in of sleeping and securing your damned laptop/bike/whatever (jesus, who has time in college to obsess about their _stuff_? don't bring too much expensive shit to college, just the bare minimum, and expect to lose some stuff or have it "borrowed" out of your dorm room, etc.). Sure, play computer games, unwind, download tons of MP3s, warez, whatever floats your boat, but don't let that stuff get in the way of what really matters (see points 1 through 4 above).
You may think I'm crazy, but I have no regrets. I think I sacrificed a summa cum laude along with a few hundred thousand brain cells to Bachanallian revelry, but I will never for a minute regret it. If anything, I can only say I wish I hadn't taken on such a ridiculous workload junior year when I finished my physics honors requirements a year early, and that I hadn't worked full time at my company senior year instead of partying heartily and pursuing goals 1 and 2 above.
No you can't, I'm registered and have ordered from there before (I bought an XMPCR a few days ago from their site), and I can't get one now either - try it yourself, the BUY button won't let you put it in your shopping cart anymore.
Are you quite sure about that? What about the TOSLink digital adapters that people are using for the XMPCR (see here for the device I'm talking about)? I don't know if the output is lossy and digital or not - frankly, I don't think it matters, it's not like XM transmission quality is really at CD level or anything. If you want CD quality audio, you still need to rip a song off a CD.
In any case, the difference in quality between the TOSLink digital output and the analog output apparently is only moderate anyway apparently. The point is that this was never about "closing the digital loophole" - there is no meaningful loophole to close here, the stuff people were recording was almost all D to A to D converted anyway. It was just the ease with which the access to the data feed gave to splice and dice and name MP3 files that seems to have caused the brick shitting. LOL, when you think about it, it's quite absurd - they just object to the labor saving aspect here.
Yup, I'm pretty certain you'll be seeing XMPCR compatible DIY kits for the Roady or SkyFi units within a month or two. Or an adapter board to sit between your USB or serial port and the XM Direct unit that talks to the headunit in my BMW - again, using a serial protocol of some sort, with a BlitzSafe adapter in the middle.
XM just needs to suck it up and realize this is the way the game is played. You just have to try to keep it low profile, geek hobbyist only and then tell the RIAA you do not condone or support any such functionality. And let the geeks do their hacking and the rest of the sheeple just won't bother. As long as it requires soldering or breaking open plastic cases, it'll be off the scope and shouldn't attract any more of this RIAA-fodder media attention.
Thank god all the Tivo hacks never attracted this kind of media frenzy. I've been sucking video off my Series 1 Tivo for several years now, it's just been low profile because it requires a moderate amount of technical know-how to install all the requisite software.
I ordered mine on Thursday from xm-radio-satellite.com (they're out of stock now like everyone else), and it shipped out Friday. Supposedly mid-transit right now up to NYC from Florida, scheduled UPS delivery date Wednesday.
Now if only I could pick stocks that quintupled in value in 5 days....
OK, agreed, with those more complete numbers it looks pretty clear that it did lose some money. Nonetheless, still not a megaflop like Gigli or Waterworld. Damn, never mind, I just looked up Waterworld on that site and even though it bombed here in the US it looks like it actually netted almost 100 million dollars worldwide due to amazing success in overseas showings. Weird, I always remember that as the example of one of the biggest big budget (175 million dollars) bombs ever.
Now THAT'S cool. When was the last time you saw George Lucas hanging out with a bunch of Star Wars fanboys answering their annoying questions about "Episode 3: How I Shat On Your Childhood Memories" or whatever other piece of junk he's making these days?
I guess if he had, he might have actually made a movie people wanted to see.
Wait a second, Jersey Girl did come out in theaters, it didn't go direct-to-video. Also, though it was not a success by big budget movie standards, and it apparently wasn't such a great movie, the production budget was 35 million (just found that in another article) and the US Gross was 25 million as your source says - presumably world-wide, it may have roughly broken even (I'm guessing here). So it wasn't a mega-flop like Gigli, just not anywhere near as successful as Kevin Smith's other films. Probably because he was just not doing the kind of filmmaking that he's really good at.
Having worked on QC myself at MIT, I agree with you. The engineering effort required to do computation with even a few qubits is enormous. Certainly the bulk spin resonance NMRQC stuff we were working on several years back is destined to go nowhere (in terms of useful computational applications anyway, I'm not saying the research isn't useful at some level) - this was 5 or 6 years back, and I'm pretty sure the state of the art has moved on to solid state QC research now, or elsewhere. But I don't know how far that's getting either (I'm no longer a quantum physicist, so excuse me for not being up to date).
As for your assertions about theoretical CS and information theory needing to catch up, I'm not sure I follow you. There's lots of excellent theory behind QC that is decades ahead of the practice.
No, affirmative action does not attack this truth in any way. People make unjust choices, thus by enforcing injustice systemically, the result is somehow "better"? That argument makes no sense.
I never said that everything people naturally do is just or right. The problem is there is a class of things you can easily legislate and enforce, called behaviors - they are quantifiable, provable things. Either you DID kill that other tribe or you DIDN'T. And we have a legal system built around making those determinations. However, when you get into promotions, hiring, school admission and so on, you are getting into the realm of the subjective decision-making process. You are no longer legislating behavior, you are legislating thought, which is as far as I know, nearly completely ineffective.
This doesn't mean we should try to not exhibit racial bias, it just means we should try to not exhibit ALL arbitrary biases about hiring and other job-related decisions. I made a point before which you seem to have missed, that there are TONS of factors that are arbitrary and social that come into the workplace fit, employer-employee fit and other relavant equations. Why is it okay to discriminate based on your affinity for golf playing, but not on skin pigmentation? How the hell does affirmative action in any way truly address the underlying problem here?
Come to think of it, I'm giving your argument more creedance than it deserves. Discrimination is "bad" but more discrimination (affirmative action) is good because it makes up for the bad discrimination? Completely illogical. And I'm a Massachusetts liberal - if I don't buy that argument, forget about trying to get a conservative to buy it.
EULA == contract of adherence == can't likely impinge on fair use rights in America. However this guy is in Canada, and their legal system is somewhat different.
I don't know what they think they could do (sue for damaging their relationship with the RIAA by your breach of contract, I guess). Nonetheless, they are still free to axe your subscription and blacklist you for violating their unilaterally imposed, non-negotiable, unsigned agreement. I think that's what users of this software are afraid of - if somehow XM sues this guy successfully and gets access to his customer database, they can figure out who is who (he supposedly is storing only hashed subscriber IDs, not the actual IDs, but if they seize his source code and the like, it would probably be pretty trivial for them to figure out which subscribers purchased this software and axe of all their accounts for presumed violation of subscriber agreements. Now that would seriously (Siriusly?) suck.
Now imagine instead of an auditory disturbance in your middle ear, it was a balance disturbance in your inner ear. That's what vestibular neuritis is, which I got last year (presumably from a virus that somehow got through the tympanic membrane into my inner ear, though there were never any substantive middle ear symptoms, probably from blowing my nose too hard, though nobody really knows shit). It's like tinnitus of your balance system. About 6 or 7 weeks of my life were living hell - in a constant state of torturous dizziness, unable to walk farther than to the bathroom and back, and when I was in good shape, to the living room.
The funny thing is by the time the otolaryngologist/otoneurologist got around to ordering all the tests and stuff, it had already started to abate somewhat (though the balance tests they did made me so nauseous and dizzy, I was back in bed for 3 days afterwards - won't be doing THAT again, despite the recommendation for 6 month follow ups). In my case, the damage to the vestibular system on the right side is apparently permanent - so it turns out that just like tinnitus, your brain has to adapt to the spurious signal coming out of one side of your peripheral vestibular system and learn to filter out what is essentially white noise. The brain, being an adaptible organ, is remarkably good at this - you become highly visually dependent for a while as the brain resets the system (can't look at the damned venetian blinds hanging in my own room, for example). Over time the visual dependence has abated, and I'm left with only a mild predisposition for motion sickness if I don't see EXACTLY what is going on, so I take dramamine and valium when I'm on a plane or bus or something.
Anyway, you don't realize how dependent you are on your balance system until it stops working. Truly one of the most unpleasant experiences of my life. I wonder if tinnitus sufferers have one of the same long term symptoms that I have - a vastly increased sensitivity to caffeine and alcohol. I used to slug down coffee like nobody's business, but now if I have more than about 2 cups in a two or three hour window, it causes the dizziness to come back, and usually takes at least a day or two to abate, sometimes longer depending on how much I overdid it. It's like the volume on the white noise gets turned *WAY* up.
And I still drink beer and wine regularly, but hard liquor is tough - if I do the kind of drinking I used to do in college and get really drunk, my balance system gets crazy on me, kicks out, and I puke everywhere (even if I am only moderately drunk). The aftermath the next morning is even worse - I end up partially-bedridden again for a week or so at a time.
Okay, lest I sound like a cripple, I have learned to live with all this stuff, I just drink half-caf coffee or one small cup of caffeinated tops a day, and avoid the binge drinking, which makes me sorely miss my college days, but I just see it as the price of getting older (yeah, I'm a whopping 25 years old). And at least my liver will last till I'm 80 now.
There are definitely too many smart people around in Boston and too few _interesting_ technology opportunities right now. Seeing as I'm not in a hiring position anymore I have no help to offer to the many folks who have asked, so no contract work right now (in fact, I'm not working full time right now due to illness in my family - hopefully that situation will change in the next few months, but we'll see).
In general, the contract scene in Boston is much drier than it was a few years back before the economy tanked, unless you have very specific expertise that somebody needs. Also, welcome to the world of being overqualified for every job out there except the ones nobody wants to give you *grin*. It's called entrepreneurship at gunpoint.
This doesn't make too much sense. There is NO SUCH THING as a person who doesn't harbor biases or stereotypes, since the tendency to categorize and "stereotype" (I mean this in the general sense) is a well known social psychology phenomenon. Humans seem to be built to do these sorts of things. Whites are no more "aversive racists" than blacks and every other race. This doesn't mean that you are forced to act on these reactions, and it doesn't mean that you can't work just as productively with a person of another race. In my experience, the factors that influence productivity in the workplace FAR more than skin tone are language and cultural barriers. It is much easier for me to work with a black person from New York than to work with a guy fresh off the boat from India or China, who has language issues and is hard for co-workers to understan, different cultural norms with respect to interactions with authority figures and peers, different gestures and body language, and so on.
Yes, I've worked with all of the aforementioned groups. So maybe they all need "affirmative action". Maybe people with funny accents from the South need affirmative action. Maybe rednecks and blue collar-background people need affirmative action too, since they don't play golf, go to country clubs, or do the other requisite things needed to get ahead in corporate America. You see why this argument is ridiculous?
I'm sorry if black people occasionally have to work harder to overcome their co-workers uneasiness, or have to learn to adopt to mainstream corporate norms with respect to dress, speech mannerisms and so on, and that those that don't find it harder to get ahead in the workplace. But this applies to EVERYBODY who is different from the absolute norm, and EVERYBODY who comes laden with ethnic/racial/whatever stereotypes.
Up in Boston, where I worked for several years, if you weren't of Boston Irish descent, you weren't one of the boys with respect to management, you were somewhat of an outsider. Well, tough shit for me and tough shit for them, sometimes you have to work with people who aren't exactly like you. In a perfect world, we'd all be able to easily and instantly communicate with each other because we were just so damned homogenous we understood each other all the time. That's not our world, and that doesn't justify bias, but neither does it justify the absurdly unevenly applied affirmative action, which is really only affirmative for blacks and hispanics - every other race or ethnic group that has had it rough, first, second or third generation immigrants, doesn't matter, you can all go jump off a cliff.
In my experience, the Treo 600 battery life is great until you start doing heavy GPRS (GSM data network) use. I have recently been spending long days away from my desk and have had to resort to extensive Treo use. If I check my email every 20 minutes, even if I disconnect immediately from GPRS manually right afterwards, and I do some modest web browsing (including a bit of/. lite surfing), I find my battery to be at less than 20% by the end of the day. In fact, each checking of my email and disconnecting from GPRS eats up about 1-1.5% of my battery life. If I leave the thing connected to GPRS for longer periods of time, it seems it's slightly more (though if you aren't using GPRS actively, it doesn't drain TOO much battery). Anyway, it's still not terrible, but I do find it to be bad enough to categorize as a "defect" from the user perspective. I can use the thing for hours as a phone and it seems fine - actively using GPRS seems to suck up battery at maybe twice the rate of normal voice phone usage, and just being connected to GPRS seems to drain at maybe 25-30% the rate of voice usage. These are rough estimates, but you get the general idea.
That being said, the Treo 600 has basically successfully replaced 60-70% of my need for a laptop, which I find myself lugging around much less often these days. The only other issue I see with the Treo 600 is that the default software selection is only decent - compared to a blackberry, the email app is lame - push email is still a killer app for blackberry. Even SnapperMail, which I currently use, is lame in comparison. You can get third party Treo apps to do this, as with almost anything else you can imagine since it's Palm, but outside of the geek/power user community, most people want bundled default functionality. Nonetheless, the Blackberries are still basically single purpose email/push message appliances (with crappy phone capabilities included), whereas the Treo is a real general purpose PDA/handheld/phone/everything. Other than the Samsung i500 and friends (with which I think it is nearly tied on the balance), it's the best phone/PDA fusion device on the market right now. The i500 wins for form factor, but loses for using Palm OS 4, and lack of thumb keyboard - which is still faster than Graffiti even if you are a decently skillful Graffiti writer as I am. Also it's annoying that you have to do a hack to get back _real_ Graffiti (i.e. not that Graffiti 2 crap) on the Treo 600, but I did it in the first 15 minutes I owned mine, along with installing GraffitiAnywhere, and never thought about it since.
And all the Wall Street guys I hang out with, with their little Blackberries suffer from serious Treo envy. I've made several converts in that crowd. Oh yeah, did I mention, I'm psyched to get the Treo 650. Bluetooth is going to rock.
I'm not saying that you are wrong, since there is some truth to what you say, but it is a truth about human nature, not a proof of discrimination. People in general do feel comfortable working with people who are "like them" in some abstract sense. Of course, working up in Massachusetts and doing a lot of hiring, I always found that I preferred the younger candidates for a job since I was myself young, and I identified with them (their work ethic, out-of-work interests, educational background, etc.) much more than the older candidates. Being able to relate to and communicate well with the people you work with IS critical.
But I also hired a black person (yeah, I know, sounds like a token, but if you know Massachusetts, you know there aren't exactly thousands of blacks applying for high tech jobs either, one of about 15-20 people I hired, along with 2 or 3 asians, and 2 Indians - to some extent, it just reflects the demographics of moderately qualified candidates who applied for jobs).
As a guy who grew up in New York City, a thoroughly urbanized young guy, in many ways I would identify more with a lot of black people more than I did with many of the middle aged, blue collar-ish white males I worked with. In any case, my point is that there are a lot of other factors that come into who people feel comfortable with and who they relate to beyond just the hue of their skin. These are complex cultural and background issues, whether people like to play golf, watch baseball or hack on open source code in their spare time, whether people are religious zealots or avowed atheists, whether people have 7 children or are sworn bachelors. All these things can have just as much effect on the hiring process as race does. That's why I don't believe in practicing affirmative action in the way it is now (I do support legislating non-discrimination, I just think it's generally pretty tough to enforce, since like I said, there are so many other arbitrary but often coupled factors involved in workplace fit that it's hard to say why certain people get promoted, why others get fired, and so on).
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As for your shame, I urge you NOT to feel ashamed. Because these people (Indymedia, other nutjobs) have NOTHING to do with the mainstream Democratic party. That's like saying that Republicans should feel ashamed when an abortion provider is murdered by a nutjob - we must not let the radical elements of our society subvert the political process or delegitimize legitimate political dissent and argumentation. Of course, in recent years, the Republican party is much cozier with it's radical elements than the Democratic party has been (other than the pandering to Hollywood types for money, but they are just a funding source, nothing more, and nobody gives any policy creedence to a thing they say). The right wing of the Republican party actually is able to set a lot of their policy agenda on the table, which is scary.
In any case, I disapprove of any persuasion tactic that involves posting an individual's name, address and phone number on the web with vague contextual suggestions about what should be done with this information, I don't care what side of the political spectrum you are on.
But regardless, you actually _do_ need a fair amount of physics to do even a mediocre job of simulating nature with some visual accuracy. 3D graphics in general is very similar to physics, it's just the metric of success is slightly different. Rather than the extent to which your model matches experimental measurement, the relevant metric is the extent to which your mathematical model creates suspension of disbelief and enjoyment by the viewer or user.
Incidentally, pretty much everything I _have_ done career-wise came out of the people I knew from high school and college. That was part of my original point - in general, that's been far more relevant to my ability to make money than the strength of my physics education.
Anyway, hopefully we will all keep quiet about the XMDirect hackability potential until the things are readily available for 50 bucks at retail. I would hate to see somebody start selling serial/USB adapters or DIY kits for the XMDirect and then have XM discontinue that product too. Just need to keep this stuff slightly underground enough that it doesn't attract big media attention and get the RIAA coming down on XM again.
Then GET OVER YOUR BITTERNESS ABOUT YOUR LIFE and realize that there's always going to be somebody richer and somebody poorer than you and learn to deal. You are going to be working your ass off after graduation, and you know those parents you "sucked at the teat" from? Well, eventually they get old and need somebody to take care of them.
Life lesson number one right here, asshole: my mother developed cancer 3 and a half years ago. Guess who's been taking care of her since, paying the bills, managing her finances, and now taking time off from work to spend with her? That's right, the "asshole" who sucked on her teat. I'm sorry that so many people around here seem to have no idea of what it means to be a family or how to take care of each other. That must be a sad way to go through life. I hope you don't treat your children the way you were treated by your parents.
Just to be clear, I didn't say I actually successfully screwed everything in sight, or that I tried to. In fact, I had sex with only a couple of women in college, all of whom I had real relationships with for at least some duration of time. But I dated a lot, and had a good time - that was my point, not to poke your rod in everything you see. And in this day and age of sexually transmitted diseases, I recommend you try sexual activities that involve no actual mixing of bodily fluids when possible, always use a condom when not, and even so, be thoughtful about who you sleep with.
Jeez, I guess I just figured you'd get that speech from your father, your high school health classroom or something. Here on Slashdot, I assume everybody is anal enough to realize these things and probably spends weeks of worrying and guilt after they lose their virginity anyway (heck, I know I did). I used to be obsessive and paranoid about that stuff, thanks to all the indoctrination they offer you in elementary and middle school My generation (college class of 2000) did grow up during the dawn of the AIDS crisis, so I guess you can't blame us, maybe it's different for kids these days who were born in the mid-to-late-80s. I was just trying to offer some encouragement in the opposite direction - like I said, we all die eventually, don't forget to live life while you're here. Don't take stupid risks, don't get girls pregnant.
And if you don't believe in early first trimester abortion if all the countermeasures fail, then don't have intercourse with anyone even with condoms and hormonal contraceptive - like I said, there are LOTS of things you can do with women that meet my general parameters that don't involve actual intercourse.
My summer jobs all paid a lot too - mind you, back in 1996 and 1997 it was piss easy for a decent programmer to make oodles of cash. I was also already working full time at a real job senior year and earning real cash. Like I said, that part I occasionally regret.
So did my family have enough money to pay my tuition bills? Yes, and I'm glad for that, but this doesn't presuppose phenomenal wealth. And will I do the same for my children? Of course I will, because I expect them to have fun and learn, AND to learn personal responsibility while in college. I will encourage them to work part time in college because it teaches them fiscal responsibility. But there's plenty of time for full time employment, earning much more money than you'll earn as an undergrad, after you finish school.
You can't, it's a server side validation of the form submit values that causes the page to return with the Javascript alert spliced in at the end.
1. Drink. None of that pussy "I don't drink" shit. Learn to suck it up and drink like a real man, that's what college is for. Trust me, soon enough you'll have all sorts of annoying health problems and aging concerns, and you'll have to moderate your drinking. College is your chance to get this out of your system and give your liver a good working out.
2. Have sex. Meet women and fuck them. Seriously. If you followed step 1 above, you will find step 2 much easier. I promise. If you still don't know how to do this, learn. Study the art of fast seduction if you need that sort of thing (Google is your friend), or just be yourself if you have more luck that way. Freshman year is tough, but by the time Junior year rolls around you should have your game on and the Frosh chicks and ready for action. Don't bother with the Junior and Senior chicks, they're getting banged by the grad students, or people with real jobs and incomes. Don't waste your undergraduate years in some long distance relationship or any of that crap, and don't stick with the first girl that gives you some booty. This lesson goes for the rest of life too. And if you are gay, please feel free to replace "chick" with "dude" in the above paragraph. And if you are female, well, go screw some underclassmen and stop hogging all the senior dudes.
3. Make friends and connections. The people you meet in high school and college (if you go to a good high school, maybe more there than college) are the connections you have for the rest of your life. These people are critical for building your career. You will help them out and they will help you out. Join a fraternity if that's your thing (preferably one where people aren't complete morons - my friend's frat at MIT had more multimillionaire entrepreneur alumni than I can count), or get involved in extracurricular activities. In the end, this is as important as your grades - your grades will be useful for grad school if you go that route and to a lesser extent for your first few jobs. Beyond that, the most that will matter is "cum laude", "magna cum laude", etc. People still are impressed when I say I graduated from Harvard in Physics, magna cum laude.
4. Study. Go to your classes. Except when it interferes with 1, 2 or 3. Your parents are paying for an education, get it. And not just in the area you are majoring in, branch out, take some other classes. But don't get obsessed with pulling straight As at the expense of the friend-making and networking. And definitely not at the expense of getting laid and drinking, or you'll regret it for the rest of your life. Remember, we all end up dead someday, don't forget to enjoy life while you're young.
After you've done all of the above, you are welcome to fit a few hours in of sleeping and securing your damned laptop/bike/whatever (jesus, who has time in college to obsess about their _stuff_? don't bring too much expensive shit to college, just the bare minimum, and expect to lose some stuff or have it "borrowed" out of your dorm room, etc.). Sure, play computer games, unwind, download tons of MP3s, warez, whatever floats your boat, but don't let that stuff get in the way of what really matters (see points 1 through 4 above).
You may think I'm crazy, but I have no regrets. I think I sacrificed a summa cum laude along with a few hundred thousand brain cells to Bachanallian revelry, but I will never for a minute regret it. If anything, I can only say I wish I hadn't taken on such a ridiculous workload junior year when I finished my physics honors requirements a year early, and that I hadn't worked full time at my company senior year instead of partying heartily and pursuing goals 1 and 2 above.
No you can't, I'm registered and have ordered from there before (I bought an XMPCR a few days ago from their site), and I can't get one now either - try it yourself, the BUY button won't let you put it in your shopping cart anymore.
In any case, the difference in quality between the TOSLink digital output and the analog output apparently is only moderate anyway apparently. The point is that this was never about "closing the digital loophole" - there is no meaningful loophole to close here, the stuff people were recording was almost all D to A to D converted anyway. It was just the ease with which the access to the data feed gave to splice and dice and name MP3 files that seems to have caused the brick shitting. LOL, when you think about it, it's quite absurd - they just object to the labor saving aspect here.
XM just needs to suck it up and realize this is the way the game is played. You just have to try to keep it low profile, geek hobbyist only and then tell the RIAA you do not condone or support any such functionality. And let the geeks do their hacking and the rest of the sheeple just won't bother. As long as it requires soldering or breaking open plastic cases, it'll be off the scope and shouldn't attract any more of this RIAA-fodder media attention.
Thank god all the Tivo hacks never attracted this kind of media frenzy. I've been sucking video off my Series 1 Tivo for several years now, it's just been low profile because it requires a moderate amount of technical know-how to install all the requisite software.
Now if only I could pick stocks that quintupled in value in 5 days....
OK, agreed, with those more complete numbers it looks pretty clear that it did lose some money. Nonetheless, still not a megaflop like Gigli or Waterworld. Damn, never mind, I just looked up Waterworld on that site and even though it bombed here in the US it looks like it actually netted almost 100 million dollars worldwide due to amazing success in overseas showings. Weird, I always remember that as the example of one of the biggest big budget (175 million dollars) bombs ever.
I guess if he had, he might have actually made a movie people wanted to see.
Wait a second, Jersey Girl did come out in theaters, it didn't go direct-to-video. Also, though it was not a success by big budget movie standards, and it apparently wasn't such a great movie, the production budget was 35 million (just found that in another article) and the US Gross was 25 million as your source says - presumably world-wide, it may have roughly broken even (I'm guessing here). So it wasn't a mega-flop like Gigli, just not anywhere near as successful as Kevin Smith's other films. Probably because he was just not doing the kind of filmmaking that he's really good at.
As for your assertions about theoretical CS and information theory needing to catch up, I'm not sure I follow you. There's lots of excellent theory behind QC that is decades ahead of the practice.
But autopr0n.com is down and has been for at least a week. Not that I go there often or anything... err.... nevermind.
of this?
I never said that everything people naturally do is just or right. The problem is there is a class of things you can easily legislate and enforce, called behaviors - they are quantifiable, provable things. Either you DID kill that other tribe or you DIDN'T. And we have a legal system built around making those determinations. However, when you get into promotions, hiring, school admission and so on, you are getting into the realm of the subjective decision-making process. You are no longer legislating behavior, you are legislating thought, which is as far as I know, nearly completely ineffective.
This doesn't mean we should try to not exhibit racial bias, it just means we should try to not exhibit ALL arbitrary biases about hiring and other job-related decisions. I made a point before which you seem to have missed, that there are TONS of factors that are arbitrary and social that come into the workplace fit, employer-employee fit and other relavant equations. Why is it okay to discriminate based on your affinity for golf playing, but not on skin pigmentation? How the hell does affirmative action in any way truly address the underlying problem here?
Come to think of it, I'm giving your argument more creedance than it deserves. Discrimination is "bad" but more discrimination (affirmative action) is good because it makes up for the bad discrimination? Completely illogical. And I'm a Massachusetts liberal - if I don't buy that argument, forget about trying to get a conservative to buy it.
I don't know what they think they could do (sue for damaging their relationship with the RIAA by your breach of contract, I guess). Nonetheless, they are still free to axe your subscription and blacklist you for violating their unilaterally imposed, non-negotiable, unsigned agreement. I think that's what users of this software are afraid of - if somehow XM sues this guy successfully and gets access to his customer database, they can figure out who is who (he supposedly is storing only hashed subscriber IDs, not the actual IDs, but if they seize his source code and the like, it would probably be pretty trivial for them to figure out which subscribers purchased this software and axe of all their accounts for presumed violation of subscriber agreements. Now that would seriously (Siriusly?) suck.
The funny thing is by the time the otolaryngologist/otoneurologist got around to ordering all the tests and stuff, it had already started to abate somewhat (though the balance tests they did made me so nauseous and dizzy, I was back in bed for 3 days afterwards - won't be doing THAT again, despite the recommendation for 6 month follow ups). In my case, the damage to the vestibular system on the right side is apparently permanent - so it turns out that just like tinnitus, your brain has to adapt to the spurious signal coming out of one side of your peripheral vestibular system and learn to filter out what is essentially white noise. The brain, being an adaptible organ, is remarkably good at this - you become highly visually dependent for a while as the brain resets the system (can't look at the damned venetian blinds hanging in my own room, for example). Over time the visual dependence has abated, and I'm left with only a mild predisposition for motion sickness if I don't see EXACTLY what is going on, so I take dramamine and valium when I'm on a plane or bus or something.
Anyway, you don't realize how dependent you are on your balance system until it stops working. Truly one of the most unpleasant experiences of my life. I wonder if tinnitus sufferers have one of the same long term symptoms that I have - a vastly increased sensitivity to caffeine and alcohol. I used to slug down coffee like nobody's business, but now if I have more than about 2 cups in a two or three hour window, it causes the dizziness to come back, and usually takes at least a day or two to abate, sometimes longer depending on how much I overdid it. It's like the volume on the white noise gets turned *WAY* up.
And I still drink beer and wine regularly, but hard liquor is tough - if I do the kind of drinking I used to do in college and get really drunk, my balance system gets crazy on me, kicks out, and I puke everywhere (even if I am only moderately drunk). The aftermath the next morning is even worse - I end up partially-bedridden again for a week or so at a time.
Okay, lest I sound like a cripple, I have learned to live with all this stuff, I just drink half-caf coffee or one small cup of caffeinated tops a day, and avoid the binge drinking, which makes me sorely miss my college days, but I just see it as the price of getting older (yeah, I'm a whopping 25 years old). And at least my liver will last till I'm 80 now.
In general, the contract scene in Boston is much drier than it was a few years back before the economy tanked, unless you have very specific expertise that somebody needs. Also, welcome to the world of being overqualified for every job out there except the ones nobody wants to give you *grin*. It's called entrepreneurship at gunpoint.
Yes, I've worked with all of the aforementioned groups. So maybe they all need "affirmative action". Maybe people with funny accents from the South need affirmative action. Maybe rednecks and blue collar-background people need affirmative action too, since they don't play golf, go to country clubs, or do the other requisite things needed to get ahead in corporate America. You see why this argument is ridiculous?
I'm sorry if black people occasionally have to work harder to overcome their co-workers uneasiness, or have to learn to adopt to mainstream corporate norms with respect to dress, speech mannerisms and so on, and that those that don't find it harder to get ahead in the workplace. But this applies to EVERYBODY who is different from the absolute norm, and EVERYBODY who comes laden with ethnic/racial/whatever stereotypes.
Up in Boston, where I worked for several years, if you weren't of Boston Irish descent, you weren't one of the boys with respect to management, you were somewhat of an outsider. Well, tough shit for me and tough shit for them, sometimes you have to work with people who aren't exactly like you. In a perfect world, we'd all be able to easily and instantly communicate with each other because we were just so damned homogenous we understood each other all the time. That's not our world, and that doesn't justify bias, but neither does it justify the absurdly unevenly applied affirmative action, which is really only affirmative for blacks and hispanics - every other race or ethnic group that has had it rough, first, second or third generation immigrants, doesn't matter, you can all go jump off a cliff.
That being said, the Treo 600 has basically successfully replaced 60-70% of my need for a laptop, which I find myself lugging around much less often these days. The only other issue I see with the Treo 600 is that the default software selection is only decent - compared to a blackberry, the email app is lame - push email is still a killer app for blackberry. Even SnapperMail, which I currently use, is lame in comparison. You can get third party Treo apps to do this, as with almost anything else you can imagine since it's Palm, but outside of the geek/power user community, most people want bundled default functionality. Nonetheless, the Blackberries are still basically single purpose email/push message appliances (with crappy phone capabilities included), whereas the Treo is a real general purpose PDA/handheld/phone/everything. Other than the Samsung i500 and friends (with which I think it is nearly tied on the balance), it's the best phone/PDA fusion device on the market right now. The i500 wins for form factor, but loses for using Palm OS 4, and lack of thumb keyboard - which is still faster than Graffiti even if you are a decently skillful Graffiti writer as I am. Also it's annoying that you have to do a hack to get back _real_ Graffiti (i.e. not that Graffiti 2 crap) on the Treo 600, but I did it in the first 15 minutes I owned mine, along with installing GraffitiAnywhere, and never thought about it since.
And all the Wall Street guys I hang out with, with their little Blackberries suffer from serious Treo envy. I've made several converts in that crowd. Oh yeah, did I mention, I'm psyched to get the Treo 650. Bluetooth is going to rock.
But I also hired a black person (yeah, I know, sounds like a token, but if you know Massachusetts, you know there aren't exactly thousands of blacks applying for high tech jobs either, one of about 15-20 people I hired, along with 2 or 3 asians, and 2 Indians - to some extent, it just reflects the demographics of moderately qualified candidates who applied for jobs).
As a guy who grew up in New York City, a thoroughly urbanized young guy, in many ways I would identify more with a lot of black people more than I did with many of the middle aged, blue collar-ish white males I worked with. In any case, my point is that there are a lot of other factors that come into who people feel comfortable with and who they relate to beyond just the hue of their skin. These are complex cultural and background issues, whether people like to play golf, watch baseball or hack on open source code in their spare time, whether people are religious zealots or avowed atheists, whether people have 7 children or are sworn bachelors. All these things can have just as much effect on the hiring process as race does. That's why I don't believe in practicing affirmative action in the way it is now (I do support legislating non-discrimination, I just think it's generally pretty tough to enforce, since like I said, there are so many other arbitrary but often coupled factors involved in workplace fit that it's hard to say why certain people get promoted, why others get fired, and so on).