worrying [regulation] would harm the internet as it is - which is working fine.
Right now the ISP's are not throttling that much because they are uncertain about the political ramifications and state-level counter-actions. However, they want to throttle because they want to charge you add-on fees for full-speed access to anything they can bilk you for.
IF there were enough viable ISP choices for the typical consumer, then the market would indeed solve the problem by itself without the need for regulation. But as most of us know, the average consumer only has between 1 and 3 viable ISP choices, and oligopolies have historically shatted all over consumers. (The big players already do.)
A rule of thumb is you need at least 7 competitors in an area to have sufficient competition to avoid OPEC-like collusion among a few companies.
Without regulation, the oligopolies will turn the Internet back into AOL, CompuServe, etc. They will control the content and control where you go, and nickel and dime you if you wander outside their compound. They'll do it simply because they can and you'll have no alternative.
I should clarify that MP3 compression is variable and that a "high quality" setting (which makes the file bigger) greatly reduces the artifacts, perhaps to imperceptible levels.
But "typical" compression ratios have well-known artifacts.
go to the coal miners...and offer them jobs in gov't run factories building solar panels.
I'm not "anti-gov't", but trust me, you don't want the gov't running factories. I'd estimate they are only about 60% as efficient as the private sector in manufacturing, based on experiments in other countries.
Solar panels mostly pay for themselves over time. (There may need to be minor subsidies, but worth it to get off oil.) The gov't could essentially require panels but issue the home-owner and/or builder a loan which is paid off via their power bill just like regular power utilities. The owner or builder would buy the panels on the private market made by private industry.
Whether those panel factories are in the US or elsewhere depends issues that are probably outside of this topic.
Maybe it's a generational thing. Those who grew up used to film-based movies expect that look, and directors don't want to alienate those people. This is not necessarily "bad", for it's just entertainment. The job of entertaining is to make the brain happy (or at least engaged), not necessarily render things crisp, or whatnot.
When MP3 music became widespread, those used to CD's didn't like the compression artifacts of MP3's, but those who grew up on MP3's either didn't notice or didn't care: it got them more music and cheaper music. Their ears got accustomed to the MP3's compression artifacts.
The entire industry would have to invest and corporate on "delta polygon" frameless technology for it to be viable. The technology is not ready even if a given director wanted it.
Granted, they could open an R&D lab, similar to Lucas' special effects lab in the mid 70's. There's always going to be Lucas-esque directors trying new things, but to be a pioneer "vector slinger" is asking a lot of someone from an arts background.
Maybe in the future, video will be encoded as moving & morphing polygons instead of frames. Most video compression kind of already does that, but in a brutish way. If a video/movie is encoded as moving/morphing polygons, then the movie director can control how and if interpolation is done, per their original raw content. "Frames" then die as default concept.
If a director wants emulate a frame-ish look, they can using "choppy" polygon changes; but otherwise the final frame rate could be entirely up to the viewer and/or the device (per technical limits).
Input cameras don't need frames either, in theory. Photons hit individual pixel-esque sensors and the time-stamp for a hit can be at a finer level (more precision) than the usual "frames". Perhaps the photon hits can be recreated as-recorded on the viewing device also. However, I suspect moving/morphing polygons provides better data compression for most content.
The point is our technology may be outgrowing frames.
My parents have it setup by default on their TV and it doesn't bother them so they leave it on. I, on the other hand, want to smash the TV to bits every time I'm there and we sit down to watch something.
Maybe they do it on purpose to get you out of their friggen basement.
You are confusing slavery and eugenics. Fix your neurons so that you stop confusing them. And you gave nothing that clearly establishes proportions/ratios/counts anywhere. You got categories wrong and numbers wrong = double fail.
It's too early to know the outcome. Giving lip-service and token actions to reform plans has happened quite often in the past, but the follow-through is where it usually fails.
There is fake Chicom stuff everywhere in China, fake Apple stores, etc.
By some accounts this is because the enforcement of IP is usually local, and you have to butter-up/bribe the local officials for them to act. While loyalty to country may play a part, loyalty to money is usually greater.
However, punishment for bribery may be heavier for employees of foreign companies.
Indeed! Compatibility with Windows/x86-based software is pretty much the ONLY reason people still buy Windows and put up with M$'s shit-show. M$ cannot compete on raw merit alone. It's not in their DNA anymore. X-Box was their last non-compatibility-based hit.
Here is what M$ should do: create a new "GUI browser" standard to compete with the HTML stack. But, make it desktop-friendly and focus on CRUD and "productivity" mouse-based applications that don't want to live with the wasted screen space and limited UI widgets of Bootstrap-like frameworks. Build in standard widgets like data grids, tree browsers (File Explorer-like), combo boxes, MDI nested windows, etc. No more dependence on flaky JavaScript libraries for common GUI idioms.
Make an open-source GUI browser and allow forks to live so people don't fear M$ compatibility games. It's not guaranteed to work, but it would disrupt the browser market, giving MS a chance at a second life because M$ would be ahead of the curve for this new standard. If the current deck is not favoring you, then reshuffle it. There's a big need for better network-based productivity GUI's. HTML-based standards suck bigly for those, requiring too much code to fake it.
Mars 3 of the soviets did the first ever soft landing on Mars. It stopped working within seconds after landing...
There was a dust storm in the area, which may have affected the electronics. The dust storm was known about via Earth telescopes, but these particular probes had no ability to hang out in orbit to wait out a dust storm.
At the time, it was also speculated that it sank in something akin to quicksand. In case the same thing happened to the upcoming Viking mission, the Viking cameras were programmed to photograph a footpad and send it almost immediately after landing. That way, they'd at least get one photo, and verify the quicksand theory if the probe went dark.
In the very first photo ever taken from the surface of Mars, the left side is kind of foggy. This is because dust was still in the air from the landing rockets. The cameras "scanned" in strips somewhat like a fax machine, so that as the scan "beam" moved right, the dust had settled.
The quick-sand theory has now been pretty much ruled out, leaving the dust-storm theory as the most plausible reason for the short life of Mars 3. Or maybe it just failed on its own.
The fight you started with "my general impression is...
I labelled it as a personal impression. What's so "fighty" about that?
Democrats: the party of slavery, the party of Jim Crow, the party of lynchings, the party of the KKK...
Democrats grew up. GOP de-volved so much that they just put a xenophobic toddler in office. One cannot change the past, but they can fix the here and now.
History has a lot of jerks on both sides of the left/right spectrum. That doesn't settle the quantity/proportion issue. I hope this doesn't degenerate into "my historical anecdotes can beat up your historical anecdotes".
Slashdot Mirror
It's lying turtles all the way down...
Right now the ISP's are not throttling that much because they are uncertain about the political ramifications and state-level counter-actions. However, they want to throttle because they want to charge you add-on fees for full-speed access to anything they can bilk you for.
IF there were enough viable ISP choices for the typical consumer, then the market would indeed solve the problem by itself without the need for regulation. But as most of us know, the average consumer only has between 1 and 3 viable ISP choices, and oligopolies have historically shatted all over consumers. (The big players already do.)
A rule of thumb is you need at least 7 competitors in an area to have sufficient competition to avoid OPEC-like collusion among a few companies.
Without regulation, the oligopolies will turn the Internet back into AOL, CompuServe, etc. They will control the content and control where you go, and nickel and dime you if you wander outside their compound. They'll do it simply because they can and you'll have no alternative.
I should clarify that MP3 compression is variable and that a "high quality" setting (which makes the file bigger) greatly reduces the artifacts, perhaps to imperceptible levels.
But "typical" compression ratios have well-known artifacts.
I'm not "anti-gov't", but trust me, you don't want the gov't running factories. I'd estimate they are only about 60% as efficient as the private sector in manufacturing, based on experiments in other countries.
Solar panels mostly pay for themselves over time. (There may need to be minor subsidies, but worth it to get off oil.) The gov't could essentially require panels but issue the home-owner and/or builder a loan which is paid off via their power bill just like regular power utilities. The owner or builder would buy the panels on the private market made by private industry.
Whether those panel factories are in the US or elsewhere depends issues that are probably outside of this topic.
Maybe it's a generational thing. Those who grew up used to film-based movies expect that look, and directors don't want to alienate those people. This is not necessarily "bad", for it's just entertainment. The job of entertaining is to make the brain happy (or at least engaged), not necessarily render things crisp, or whatnot.
When MP3 music became widespread, those used to CD's didn't like the compression artifacts of MP3's, but those who grew up on MP3's either didn't notice or didn't care: it got them more music and cheaper music. Their ears got accustomed to the MP3's compression artifacts.
The entire industry would have to invest and corporate on "delta polygon" frameless technology for it to be viable. The technology is not ready even if a given director wanted it.
Granted, they could open an R&D lab, similar to Lucas' special effects lab in the mid 70's. There's always going to be Lucas-esque directors trying new things, but to be a pioneer "vector slinger" is asking a lot of someone from an arts background.
But then you encounter the real thing* and fail to "perform" because your mind expects compression/interpolation artifacts during the act.
Took me years to get over ASCII "content". She wouldn't wear my special symbol stickers.
* Then again, this is Slashdot probabilities we are dealing with.
Maybe in the future, video will be encoded as moving & morphing polygons instead of frames. Most video compression kind of already does that, but in a brutish way. If a video/movie is encoded as moving/morphing polygons, then the movie director can control how and if interpolation is done, per their original raw content. "Frames" then die as default concept.
If a director wants emulate a frame-ish look, they can using "choppy" polygon changes; but otherwise the final frame rate could be entirely up to the viewer and/or the device (per technical limits).
Input cameras don't need frames either, in theory. Photons hit individual pixel-esque sensors and the time-stamp for a hit can be at a finer level (more precision) than the usual "frames". Perhaps the photon hits can be recreated as-recorded on the viewing device also. However, I suspect moving/morphing polygons provides better data compression for most content.
The point is our technology may be outgrowing frames.
Maybe they do it on purpose to get you out of their friggen basement.
You are confusing slavery and eugenics. Fix your neurons so that you stop confusing them. And you gave nothing that clearly establishes proportions/ratios/counts anywhere. You got categories wrong and numbers wrong = double fail.
Flying cars and commuters with jet packs are blocking the drones' paths.
Why would it cost billions?
Compromise, only allow mime ads during pauses.
(You can verify they are mime ads by checking the file MIME type, badda boomp!)
It's too early to know the outcome. Giving lip-service and token actions to reform plans has happened quite often in the past, but the follow-through is where it usually fails.
By some accounts this is because the enforcement of IP is usually local, and you have to butter-up/bribe the local officials for them to act. While loyalty to country may play a part, loyalty to money is usually greater.
However, punishment for bribery may be heavier for employees of foreign companies.
They should have used a private server hidden in a closet. Nobody has proven H's was actually hacked.
No fingers? What, you have a Goatse-based interface or something?
Indeed! Compatibility with Windows/x86-based software is pretty much the ONLY reason people still buy Windows and put up with M$'s shit-show. M$ cannot compete on raw merit alone. It's not in their DNA anymore. X-Box was their last non-compatibility-based hit.
Here is what M$ should do: create a new "GUI browser" standard to compete with the HTML stack. But, make it desktop-friendly and focus on CRUD and "productivity" mouse-based applications that don't want to live with the wasted screen space and limited UI widgets of Bootstrap-like frameworks. Build in standard widgets like data grids, tree browsers (File Explorer-like), combo boxes, MDI nested windows, etc. No more dependence on flaky JavaScript libraries for common GUI idioms.
Make an open-source GUI browser and allow forks to live so people don't fear M$ compatibility games. It's not guaranteed to work, but it would disrupt the browser market, giving MS a chance at a second life because M$ would be ahead of the curve for this new standard. If the current deck is not favoring you, then reshuffle it. There's a big need for better network-based productivity GUI's. HTML-based standards suck bigly for those, requiring too much code to fake it.
That's how you Make MS Great Again, Mr. Nadella.
There was a dust storm in the area, which may have affected the electronics. The dust storm was known about via Earth telescopes, but these particular probes had no ability to hang out in orbit to wait out a dust storm.
At the time, it was also speculated that it sank in something akin to quicksand. In case the same thing happened to the upcoming Viking mission, the Viking cameras were programmed to photograph a footpad and send it almost immediately after landing. That way, they'd at least get one photo, and verify the quicksand theory if the probe went dark.
In the very first photo ever taken from the surface of Mars, the left side is kind of foggy. This is because dust was still in the air from the landing rockets. The cameras "scanned" in strips somewhat like a fax machine, so that as the scan "beam" moved right, the dust had settled.
The quick-sand theory has now been pretty much ruled out, leaving the dust-storm theory as the most plausible reason for the short life of Mars 3. Or maybe it just failed on its own.
GOP: "How dare Maxine talk like Trump!"
Is this MS's new new browser, or their new new new browser?
What could possibly go wrong?
I labelled it as a personal impression. What's so "fighty" about that?
Democrats grew up. GOP de-volved so much that they just put a xenophobic toddler in office. One cannot change the past, but they can fix the here and now.
Marketing: "We are about to publish a press release about our successful satellite launch."
Engineering: "Wait! The satellite just broke up into 60 pieces!"
Marketing: "60? Hmmm..."
Press-Release: "Space X has successfully launched 60 satellites at once!"
History has a lot of jerks on both sides of the left/right spectrum. That doesn't settle the quantity/proportion issue. I hope this doesn't degenerate into "my historical anecdotes can beat up your historical anecdotes".