|| Every time a MiniDisc article gets posted on slashdot, I pull out my collection of players and recordings I made back in the 90s
Wow - every time an MD-related article gets on the front page of Slashdot, I go and buy another MZ-RH1 off of eBay.
Soon the BBC, ITV, et al will come begging for decent recording equipment, when the only stuff available is disgusting, shoddy, yet "good enough for all you idiots" MP3 format. More fool the lot of you. I'd rather work around dirty and awkward DRM, but with a CD-quality analog hole than anything limited to compressed (MP3, WMA) formats.
I've also noticed that WMA has deprecated WMA lossless on portable devices sometime in last 5 years - an excellent indicator of things yet to come.
Wow, this is actually amazing, and it would be all my fault for jumping the er... baton on this one.
Only one slight correction, and an observation of a further potential consequence.
The Police Federation is a Union for officers of below Inspector rank ("rank and file") serving in UK Police Forces. The rag is a somewhat left-leaning, introspective commentary on life in the job, and how wider changes (only observable from the unique point of view of a rank-and-file constable) have a huge impact on the Common Man(TM). In other words, they know all about the banking fraud, they know just much damage cuts to frontline policing is going to do to this country, and they know all about the corrupt links and nods and winks going on at higher levels - for example:
In the Force (cash for facts)
Higher up in the Force (govt. oversight - despite the fact UK Police are sworn to remain neutral and simply enforce laws, most Forces (not all) will move a protest, for example, if told to do so, without due process of law)
In the Media (it's not the Police who put out "missing" stuff, it's the Media - do you think they would spend their own money helping police find - for example, an average unemployed man??)
In the NHS (Jimmy Saville, et al, nod nod wink wink, we all know what dirty beasts these "secret societies" encourage... whether it's "Illuminati" or just plain warped Christianity!!!)
And everywhere else in society, too. They write about this stuff, and about how powerless they feel when reasonable suspicion is present in their minds but a Warrant may not be forthcoming from the Duty Inspector, for example... so forget it. Move on. 999 calls to deal with.
So, moving onto consequences, if the above happened, Utopia would quickly follow. When the protesters realise that the Police are not, after all, their ultimate enemy, and that the Police are more like them than they thought, both sides will find their real enemy. Utopia will quickly follow. Well, we live in hope...
I'm agreeing that it could well be from Dilbert (which I don't remember seeing, or it being that interesting if I did see it in passing), it's just that I was under the impression that Dogbert, the irreverant cartoon voice of the Police Federation's magazine, was the only Dogbert, and since the quote would definitely be something he'd say (regarding the relevant topic - policing the UK) I just assumed it WAS our Dogbert...
Please see my other note about how silly it was of me to ASS U ME, we can all learn from the craziness I posted that night!
Oh damn. Dogbert is also a regular character, in a cartoon sketch, in the Police Federation magazine (UK)! I honestly thought he was only Dogbert until you posted that...
Yes, Dogbert is a plod in the cartoon. It's meant to be a tongue-in-cheek look at day-to-day police work. The quote above is definitely something he'd say!
Coming from AC? I've seen you express so many conflicting opinions and directions, you make both copies of GW Bush look tame and when compared to your outpourings over the years, the Bible seems perfectly logical and sensible!;-)
...spends ages writing a reply, making lots of assumptions based on a sig... clicks submit... goes to read "slashdot.org/~hduff" page, facepalm!
No reference whatsoever to the line of work referred toby me (and the sig), no topics or posts related to it, just a good quote in the sig, from the Police Federation's (UK) magazine for members of the Fed. Yep, a it's a union for frontline (below Inspecter rank) Police officers.
Boy, did I get the wrong end of the, er, baton... (winds neck back in, reminds herself why she was taught "Never assume - ASS U ME makes an ASS of U and ME", straightens hat, whistles, "Move along, nothing to see here folks...")
ps I'll probably get modded Offtopic for the other post, and Insightful for this one - for self-revelation and the ASSUME thing - it's a useful one, that. Remember it - I should have!;-)
I must be honest, the only reason I'm posting a reply is that I can't believe I'm seeing a Dogbert reference in someone's sig on Slashdot - wow, I am pleased! Yes, this is off-topic, and yes, they can Mod me down all they like, but that couldn't possibly compare with knowing there's a fellow reader of the Federation's rag on here! Hi from the GMP area! (adds Friend...)
ps Mods, give me a break. Posted with no Karma Bonus, and this is a very specialised, very rare, meeting of minds happening here, completely accidentally. If you can be bothered to research who Dogbert is, and the "Federation" which I refer to, you'll find a rare combination of "Member of News for Nerds Site" and another profession.
I tip my Pathfinder to you, there's very few geeks in the uniform (although one of our ACCs is a declared geek!)
"In many locales, parking a car correctly and legally is out of the ordinary"
I'm not sure how many high-profile terrorist targets thare are where parking properly would be out of the ordinary - but I'm pretty sure there's not many. Dump your van near our big mall in Manchester and you'd have people onto you fairly quickly. Through a combination of pedestrianisation and planned parking, the risk to the mall is greatly reduced. Can you town say this? Maybe if it's "out of the ordinary" to park normally near where you live, you need to look at your local planning and "safety by design, not force" policies.
I'll be honest, as a non gun-using geek who read all that thread, I'd imagine that calling a computer a hard drive is far dumber than somebody mistaking a magazine for a clip.
I'd say the average geek type is more likely to know the difference between hackers, crackers, PC's and hard drives than between clips and magazines.
I'm quite sure that any terrorist is likely to ensure that he takes great care over how his car bomb is parked, right down to the number of spaces.
First, he wants to ensure that bomb damages the target, and even more importantly the bomb has to go off.
Do you think somebody handbraking untidily across car parking spaces and jumping out in the way you imply isn't going to arouse suspicion? Obviously, he's unlikely to want to be caught, too, your analogy simply isn't working. Also, a lot of 'criminals' want to "go straight" and Google is offering them a perfect opportunity here.
"Just because you don't understand how to make your own tweets" - duh. In terms of intellect, making a tweet is like making a fart compared to the websites I've made that are at no1 for their subject (try timber recycling sometime) with content easily managed by non-techie staff.
Just because your average level of communication is so shallow that Twitter's 140 chars is an appropriate venue for you and your ilk, doesn't mean the rest of the world has to like it, and the way it offers people who MIGHT have more to say an easy way of saying nothing after all... and forces on the rest a flood of gossip and crap from "popular" people that drowns out anything important they might have to say anyway, makes Twitter a rather negative communications medium overall.
tl;dr: It dumbs us down, and encourages "sheep" mentality. Don't use it, don't be a sucker.
Apple loves Twitter. It's 140-char limit and mentality (following celebrity and names rather than participating or creating) really encourages the kind of consumer thinking Apple depends on. I predict that they won't ban, they'll put pressure on Vine to remove adult content.
Yes, I was thinking when I first read the GP that he should have remembered the rest of the world before posting that.... I'm the UK, I doubt turning the thermostat up would save me money either.
Where are you, anyway? Alaska? A polar station? The ISS??? Hi from -3 England, anyhow! Brrrr!
Actually I thought about it straight away. It's hyperbole; just the sort of thing somebody on CNN might say to start a good debate.
After all, these places take away the Internet completely. If the Internet is essential, where does that lead?
Also, Re: Food and even Water, yes too much can kill you but when was the last time a geek electrocuted her/himself in the basement through too much Internet usage? Or got too fat solely because of the Internet (not lifestyle - i.e. we all know what couch potatoes look like.
So actually, it was a spark, to find out what other thoughts that would lead to, for others.
Posting without Karma bonus, I've earned it above, and this is merely an explanatory post - and therefore is neither off-topic, nor redundant!
If you're chatting up people who are, or are who purport to be, teenage girls, and those teenage girls couldn't fairly, decently or naturally be referred to by others as YOUR peers, then I'm glad the desk sergeant is doing his job.
Also, I read it wrong at first - I actually warmed to the idea of being chatted up online by a Sarge, then I read it again and got the context correct from the bust bit...
If Internet is essential to everyday life, these so called "rehab clinics" where they "cure" people from the Internets are actually not "good for us" at all.
Why would any professor worth his salt "Recommend" his students be locked into a device for consumption rather than one that more freely enables co-operation and creativity? Because that's not education is for, that's why.
Slashdot Mirror
Correction - for pedants - WMA hasn't deprecated anything. Microsoft has deprecated WMA lossless.
There, fixed that for myself.
|| Every time a MiniDisc article gets posted on slashdot, I pull out my collection of players and recordings I made back in the 90s
Wow - every time an MD-related article gets on the front page of Slashdot, I go and buy another MZ-RH1 off of eBay.
Soon the BBC, ITV, et al will come begging for decent recording equipment, when the only stuff available is disgusting, shoddy, yet "good enough for all you idiots" MP3 format. More fool the lot of you. I'd rather work around dirty and awkward DRM, but with a CD-quality analog hole than anything limited to compressed (MP3, WMA) formats.
I've also noticed that WMA has deprecated WMA lossless on portable devices sometime in last 5 years - an excellent indicator of things yet to come.
Wow, this is actually amazing, and it would be all my fault for jumping the er... baton on this one.
Only one slight correction, and an observation of a further potential consequence.
The Police Federation is a Union for officers of below Inspector rank ("rank and file") serving in UK Police Forces. The rag is a somewhat left-leaning, introspective commentary on life in the job, and how wider changes (only observable from the unique point of view of a rank-and-file constable) have a huge impact on the Common Man(TM). In other words, they know all about the banking fraud, they know just much damage cuts to frontline policing is going to do to this country, and they know all about the corrupt links and nods and winks going on at higher levels - for example:
In the Force (cash for facts)
Higher up in the Force (govt. oversight - despite the fact UK Police are sworn to remain neutral and simply enforce laws, most Forces (not all) will move a protest, for example, if told to do so, without due process of law)
In the Media (it's not the Police who put out "missing" stuff, it's the Media - do you think they would spend their own money helping police find - for example, an average unemployed man??)
In the NHS (Jimmy Saville, et al, nod nod wink wink, we all know what dirty beasts these "secret societies" encourage... whether it's "Illuminati" or just plain warped Christianity!!!)
And everywhere else in society, too. They write about this stuff, and about how powerless they feel when reasonable suspicion is present in their minds but a Warrant may not be forthcoming from the Duty Inspector, for example... so forget it. Move on. 999 calls to deal with.
So, moving onto consequences, if the above happened, Utopia would quickly follow. When the protesters realise that the Police are not, after all, their ultimate enemy, and that the Police are more like them than they thought, both sides will find their real enemy. Utopia will quickly follow. Well, we live in hope...
I'm agreeing that it could well be from Dilbert (which I don't remember seeing, or it being that interesting if I did see it in passing), it's just that I was under the impression that Dogbert, the irreverant cartoon voice of the Police Federation's magazine, was the only Dogbert, and since the quote would definitely be something he'd say (regarding the relevant topic - policing the UK) I just assumed it WAS our Dogbert...
Please see my other note about how silly it was of me to ASS U ME, we can all learn from the craziness I posted that night!
Oh damn. Dogbert is also a regular character, in a cartoon sketch, in the Police Federation magazine (UK)! I honestly thought he was only Dogbert until you posted that...
Yes, Dogbert is a plod in the cartoon. It's meant to be a tongue-in-cheek look at day-to-day police work. The quote above is definitely something he'd say!
Coming from AC? I've seen you express so many conflicting opinions and directions, you make both copies of GW Bush look tame and when compared to your outpourings over the years, the Bible seems perfectly logical and sensible! ;-)
...spends ages writing a reply, making lots of assumptions based on a sig... clicks submit... goes to read "slashdot.org/~hduff" page, facepalm!
No reference whatsoever to the line of work referred toby me (and the sig), no topics or posts related to it, just a good quote in the sig, from the Police Federation's (UK) magazine for members of the Fed. Yep, a it's a union for frontline (below Inspecter rank) Police officers.
Boy, did I get the wrong end of the, er, baton... (winds neck back in, reminds herself why she was taught "Never assume - ASS U ME makes an ASS of U and ME", straightens hat, whistles, "Move along, nothing to see here folks...")
ps I'll probably get modded Offtopic for the other post, and Insightful for this one - for self-revelation and the ASSUME thing - it's a useful one, that. Remember it - I should have! ;-)
Hi!
I must be honest, the only reason I'm posting a reply is that I can't believe I'm seeing a Dogbert reference in someone's sig on Slashdot - wow, I am pleased! Yes, this is off-topic, and yes, they can Mod me down all they like, but that couldn't possibly compare with knowing there's a fellow reader of the Federation's rag on here! Hi from the GMP area! (adds Friend...)
ps Mods, give me a break. Posted with no Karma Bonus, and this is a very specialised, very rare, meeting of minds happening here, completely accidentally. If you can be bothered to research who Dogbert is, and the "Federation" which I refer to, you'll find a rare combination of "Member of News for Nerds Site" and another profession.
I tip my Pathfinder to you, there's very few geeks in the uniform (although one of our ACCs is a declared geek!)
"In many locales, parking a car correctly and legally is out of the ordinary"
I'm not sure how many high-profile terrorist targets thare are where parking properly would be out of the ordinary - but I'm pretty sure there's not many. Dump your van near our big mall in Manchester and you'd have people onto you fairly quickly. Through a combination of pedestrianisation and planned parking, the risk to the mall is greatly reduced. Can you town say this? Maybe if it's "out of the ordinary" to park normally near where you live, you need to look at your local planning and "safety by design, not force" policies.
I'll be honest, as a non gun-using geek who read all that thread, I'd imagine that calling a computer a hard drive is far dumber than somebody mistaking a magazine for a clip.
I'd say the average geek type is more likely to know the difference between hackers, crackers, PC's and hard drives than between clips and magazines.
I'm quite sure that any terrorist is likely to ensure that he takes great care over how his car bomb is parked, right down to the number of spaces.
First, he wants to ensure that bomb damages the target, and even more importantly the bomb has to go off.
Do you think somebody handbraking untidily across car parking spaces and jumping out in the way you imply isn't going to arouse suspicion? Obviously, he's unlikely to want to be caught, too, your analogy simply isn't working. Also, a lot of 'criminals' want to "go straight" and Google is offering them a perfect opportunity here.
I can think of two. The porn industry, and the weight loss industry. ;-)
WTF?
On another note, "from the your-curtains-are-ugly dept.", my curtains are lovely, thank you.
ON TOPIC, mods, read the headline AND the subtitle!
"Just because you don't understand how to make your own tweets" - duh. In terms of intellect, making a tweet is like making a fart compared to the websites I've made that are at no1 for their subject (try timber recycling sometime) with content easily managed by non-techie staff.
Just because your average level of communication is so shallow that Twitter's 140 chars is an appropriate venue for you and your ilk, doesn't mean the rest of the world has to like it, and the way it offers people who MIGHT have more to say an easy way of saying nothing after all... and forces on the rest a flood of gossip and crap from "popular" people that drowns out anything important they might have to say anyway, makes Twitter a rather negative communications medium overall.
tl;dr: It dumbs us down, and encourages "sheep" mentality. Don't use it, don't be a sucker.
Apple loves Twitter. It's 140-char limit and mentality (following celebrity and names rather than participating or creating) really encourages the kind of consumer thinking Apple depends on. I predict that they won't ban, they'll put pressure on Vine to remove adult content.
Yes, I was thinking when I first read the GP that he should have remembered the rest of the world before posting that.... I'm the UK, I doubt turning the thermostat up would save me money either.
Where are you, anyway? Alaska? A polar station? The ISS??? Hi from -3 England, anyhow! Brrrr!
Actually I thought about it straight away. It's hyperbole; just the sort of thing somebody on CNN might say to start a good debate.
After all, these places take away the Internet completely. If the Internet is essential, where does that lead?
Also, Re: Food and even Water, yes too much can kill you but when was the last time a geek electrocuted her/himself in the basement through too much Internet usage? Or got too fat solely because of the Internet (not lifestyle - i.e. we all know what couch potatoes look like.
So actually, it was a spark, to find out what other thoughts that would lead to, for others.
Posting without Karma bonus, I've earned it above, and this is merely an explanatory post - and therefore is neither off-topic, nor redundant!
140 characters is enough for me to correct your grammar (more readable, not more clear) and still say it 4 times.
If you're chatting up people who are, or are who purport to be, teenage girls, and those teenage girls couldn't fairly, decently or naturally be referred to by others as YOUR peers, then I'm glad the desk sergeant is doing his job.
Also, I read it wrong at first - I actually warmed to the idea of being chatted up online by a Sarge, then I read it again and got the context correct from the bust bit...
If Internet is essential to everyday life, these so called "rehab clinics" where they "cure" people from the Internets are actually not "good for us" at all.
You had that ready, didn't you?
What? The world has come to this? Instead of how intelligent, strong, or attractive we are, the primary factor is socio-economic status?
Wow, I bet that realisation causes more than a few suicides.
Yet surely the hard drive is less likely to be mistake for a tasty snack?
No, nil point, try again. ;)
Why would any professor worth his salt "Recommend" his students be locked into a device for consumption rather than one that more freely enables co-operation and creativity? Because that's not education is for, that's why.