It's funny, a T1 can cost up to (or over) $1000. A 10Mbit point to point fiber to a specific location can be had for $500 or less. Companies I work with that provide data centers are starting to order OC3s and DS3s, which cost a fraction of the price per Mbit than T1) and are allowing their customers cheap 10Mbit pipes to the net at just more per months (total cost) than a T1 from the local ISP.
In the neighborhood I'm having a new home built in, a local company has run fiber to each new house, and that fiber runs back to their central office where they have a OC12 connection to the net's backbone. They're offering this at 2Mbit up (guaranteed) and 8 down (shared), including VoIP and security system monitoring, with guaranteed bandwidth, a static IP, and a managed firewall, for $99 a month. The ping latency is about 6ms! When filled out at 300 households they'll be taking in 30K a month, for a head end line that costs 30K a year. The builder of the homes is covering most of the infrastructure costs so it's massively profitable. They're are neighborhoods standing in line waiting to jump on board.
This action is actually timed perfectly. The Dems have the majority now, enough to start the impeachment trial, and with the upcoming election, the republicans who DON'T vote to impeach Cheney will fall. We can't really get rid of Bush or Cheney in any reasonable amount of time that will save America any grief, but attacking them now may eliminate as much as half the republicans up for re-election, and almost guarantee a democrat president.
I'm just surprised there's no evidence presented with him and Halliburton, or any of the other bills he's had a hand in that made him and his companies billions at the expense of troops, other companies welfare, and that many of his actions are obviously illegal under multiple abuse of powers acts. All the evidence is simply surrounding the war. Could the Dems be worried about retaliation?
You can also make a cheaper, more durable, softer fabric from it than cotton. It's illegal to grow in America not for it's mind altering characteristics, but because William Randolf Hurst, DuPont, The Cotton Growers Association of America, and the Lumber industry were getting killed in business by Hemp. It's the miracle crop for production where Soy is the miracle crop for food. Hemp can make paper, plastics, oils, strong soft thread, high protein content foods, and various medicines to help asthma, Alzheimer's, arthritis (and that's just the A's). It also rejuvenates soil making it a great rotational crop. It's a weed, needs virtually no fertilizer, grows quickly, and few insects can harm it so it needs little or no chemical protection. It's easy to harvest as well. Heck in the 16 and 1700 you could even PAY YOUR TAXES WITH IT!
Squashing your theories: A) You're right about 2 different resolutions reduced to 1024X768 being meaningless, but most people don't care about why their 10MP camera looks the same as a 2MP at 1024X768. They care about the quality of their 8X10 prints they either make themselves or order online. Also, 10MP cameras (most of them) use miltiple CCDs (or better things than CCD), and eliminate artifacts, hard lines, and false colors on edges. They simply take better pictures, especially close-ups of nature and other high contrast environments, and they take better high speed images. They also have better focal length and less distortion. Many people may post their pictures online, even most as you say, but ALL of them print pictures, and ALL of them can easily see that difference.
B) First, very few people buy expensive things simply because they're expensive. There is a reason Haselblald cameras cost 10s of thousands of dollars. Professionals buy the best because they are the best. The consumer grade equivalents hold the the same premise. Sure, there are some overprices items on the market that some few stupid people buy without a true comparison, but those items don't survive well once their quality becomes an issue vs the price of a competitor. Consumers also know that not only does a 10MP image look better as an 8X10 than a 6MP, but also that DSLR has exchangeable lenses, better zoom capability, faster image capture, external flash support, etc.
Just like all the SUVs that never see dirt roads, there are some features that every device has that aren't needed, but you can't get a big vehicle for a family that's not a minivan unless you buy a big honking SUV. There's no middle ground. There's not a high rez camera with cheap features. Manufactures NEVER put out a single model that has what people actually want. There's always one thing missing and several things you don't want. Try buying an HP 6 color photo printer with wired and wireless, bluetooth, scanner, fax, and memory reader all in one. It doesn't exist. If it did, they wouldn't sell any other printers. You can get a wireless fax/photo printer, but no card readers. You can get a great wireless photo printer/scanner, but no fax. You can get a great all-in-one with everything, but no networking. Thus, we spend more because we have to.
Case and point: I have both a Cannon film SLR and an 8MP 10X zoom Sony point-and-shoot. I shoot far more photos in film simply because when scanning and cropping, I can get much more detail out of a film image that I can in digital. I don't do it every day, but I do it sometimes, and that's enough. Also, I have the film (negative) as a backup in case I loose my hard disk. I can't afford a camera nice enough to replace film completely, nor the drives or backup systems to protect my images. I use the point-and-shoot for portrait photos and panoramic scenes. It's not good enough to use for professional shots or action. It is however a LOT better, and completely worth $200 more than the 6MP i got first and then quickly returned.
Oh, and your math? A 10MP image, at screen resolution of 72dpi, is over 50" wide and 38" tall. This includes the crossover of RGB. See the CCD actually takes the image 3 times on the same 10MP backing within a few milliseconds. This is why you sometimes get some funny colored lines on the edges of high contrast objects. 3CCD cameras use 3 separate 10MP image captures on separate CCDs and eliminate this ghosting, which is why they cost significantly more and produce better pictures. It's 3748X2746 x3 concurrent images, not 2048X1536 all at once for 3 separate colors. You do really get 10MP from a 10MP camera.
As for 1) usually it is justified, and people who have that kind of money are willing to spend it and 2) Even my father, in his late 60s and wearing reading glasses could tell the difference immediately between a 6MP 4X6 print, and 8MP print, and a negative that was scanned and printed on the same paper as the other two. As such, he bought a $
First, I don't know where some of the posters get their information, but cloned meat from an adult subject is in almost all measurable metrics identical to that of the host. Cloning the best subject leads to higher yield, less steroid use, lower feeding and medical costs for stock, and more. The meat is completely safe.
Genetic anomalies being passed through generations are irrelevant since there's only 1 generation. There is no "passing down" a bad gene. Simple every day DNA comparisons can be used to make certain the clone is healthy. Mutations that may occur typically result in failed growth of the embryo. Even if it does survive until birth, deformations of even the slightest measure would be discarded.
I like the idea of cheaper, healthier meat. I'm glad they'll be labeling it, and glad the undereducated populous will cause it to cost less than traditionally harvested meats. I'm also glad "organic" meats cost more too. Organic meat if FAR more likely to contain bacterial infection, vitamin deficiency, and other issues that are even more dangerous than mild genetic anomaly. This all means that the best tasting, best cooking, safest meat with BE THE CHEAPEST! It's one of the few times in history that I can actually say I'm glad we have ignorant people that get to make decisions.
I'm even OK with genetically modified foods. Although science is now allowing us to directly modify specific genes through DNA and viral modification processes, we've actually been doing it through breeding for hundreds of years. The breeding process is not scientific in any more a way that cross pollination is, and is not regulated either (as science would be strictly monitored). Anyone out there use insulin? Human insulin hormones are provided by genetically modified cows and pigs. Most of you would be dead without this.
Also remember, cloning is just becoming possible and is not really affordable yet. Its use does not mean that in 2-3 years every grocery store will be carrying genetically cloned products. We've got several years to implement an exacting system for genetic comparison that can guarantee safe, healthy clones. It will be easy using a simple blood test to tell if a clone is 100% perfect or if it has any issues. We'll also have a map of the genome for the cloned animal and can tell if an unsafe gene is active in the clone or not mere weeks after fertilization. This process will be FAR superior to the FDAs current method of rating meats. I'm all for it.
Actually, both SC and California do have a database of payment information. They simply do not yet support receiving electronic payments via EFT/EDI from federal agencies directly to the recipients. (SC supports this in many counties, but not state wide) They support an older electronic payment system which is required by law. EFT/EDI payment receipt is not required by law. SC can still capture payroll information (by court order), automatically deduct from your paycheck forcibly, without your permission to pay your child support, collect that money centrally, and distribute it by check as well as electronic methods automatically to bank accounts of those who are due the payment. This process has been in place using a database since June 1999 in SC. The DSS is one of the best computerized system in SC. Only the DMV has now surpassed its information tracking ability. Just because they don't directly integrate with the national ACH banking system through EFT/EDI doesn't mean they're out of the loop. (though most other things in this state resemble the status of other states in the 70s or 80s).
That said, it's damned near impossible to get DSS to actually take action in this state unless it revolves around collecting money or fines in some way (or if the press gets involved). My in laws for instance take care of a child that is not of their own blood on a regular basis simply because DSS refuses to take the baby from the grand parents who have been arrested for drugs several times, have had complaints of child abuse against them, don't have a legally registered car, and the mother of the baby doesn't even live there! They know the child only because my brother-in-law dated the mother several years ago and they heard about it when she fled the state and left her kid behind.
OK, so have we're coming in line with the rest of the world where little inventors and small time research firms can get screwed because some inside guy leaked details and a major corp like Microsoft or Verizon throws a bunch of money at the idea to develop it first, then patent it before the small guy can even finish his write up and submit it. in other words, we're implementing a system where big corps can steal ideas for little guys who are too slow, too poor, or simply don't know how too file a patent, and then these small guys get NOTHING.
Well, I do use gmail. I also use Thunderbird. On my home machine, it's nice to use it as a traditional e-mail client, imparting filters and rules to sort my mail, and a more dynamic client for formatting messages than a web page can provide. On my notebook I use it to store an off line copy of my e-mail so I can access important information and my contacts when I don't have net access.
It's also handy to have a single client that can access not only my gmail, but also several other accounts at the same time and keep all that mail in one place (even uploading some of it back to Google for storage and remote access). I use Outlook for my IMAP access to my work systems and keep my work and private e-mail separate. I only go the the gmail web page to access mail when I'm temporarily using a machine I don't own (visiting family, etc).
Well, this is for concentrated sunlight. It also requires active cooling which costs energy. What's that ration? Big deal the cell can product higher efficiency, but if it can't be used under normal sunlight, what good is it?
OK, so first of all, how do you get systems, cables, etc in and out once it's soaked. Also, what kind of floor reinforcing are we talking about after we fill a rack with a hundred or more gallons of oil. And what if I have to move it!?!?
Why don't we just put in centralized water cooling attachments in the rack risers so we can add and remove cooling blocks? sounds like a better idea to me. It would not be hard at all to do. In fact, I'm about to do some patent research and file one on this idea if I can:)
OK, we do NOT want chip makers to be able to release "buggy" chips like most vendors release code. Intel made a slight mistake 10 years ago or so where one of their Pentium releases had a bug that caused banks much heartache. It took months for someone to notice. Problem is, this chip wasn't exactly "rushed" to market. Intel thought it was fully functional after much internal and external testing. Can you imagine what the result might have been if they started releasing unproven components just for market share?
something must be off in your calculation because at 11 feet I can tell the difference between 720P and 1080P on my 42" set... Heck, I can tell the difference between that an my 1600X1200 display if I map the size:distance ratio out. What I have a hard time with is telling 1080i from 1080p. The image is equally as vivid and detailed, but in some high motion scenes I can see a slight blur at 1080i that almost vanishes at 1080p, but I have to switch from one to the other to tell the difference at all.
There's only 1 thing I see at issue here as far as refilling the battery goes. The battery must last long enough to get from one fueling station to another. Current cars constantly recharge their batteries via the alternator when running, so battery changes are infrequent. How long will this stuff last if we can't in-line charge it without refilling it? If we're thinking about electric cars, this might actually work, but the enzyme process must be able to not only produce a charge, but hold one until needed, possibly for weeks on end if parked for an extended time. Can this technology accommodate that? Also, if we're thinking about electric cars, I'd like to be able to plug one in at home and avoid fill-ups when possible. I'm not so worried about choosing chemical batteries over biodegradable if I only change them every few years...
I wouldn't mind if I had to not only fill the tank with ethanol, but also periodically also fill a separate tank/battery with fluid as well. If the designers of cars are ingenious enough, we should be able to do this with a single hose/connector, including draining the dead battery while filling with new juice. I'm just worried about the flexibility of this technology.
OK, myth 1: Watching TV hurts your eyes. Where this may have been true to an extremely minor extent in the early days of TV but not enough evidence was presented to support it. It was only associated with children who sat extremely close to the TV (2-3 feet). It was actually due to the poor phosphor quality in older TVs and the flickering effect, not the radiation.
Myth 2: Using a computer can hurt your eyes. This one is more true, but again, not related to the radiation. If you read the ergonomics guide that comes with your screen you will note it says "may" cause long term eye damage. This is because there is no conclusive evidence. However, placing your monitor closer than 18" from your face at too high a brightness can reduce your vision quality, or effect night vision, due to the extreme light over time just like listening to music too loud will damage your ears. Also, cheap screens flicker can be extremely damaging. The most associated damage caused to eyes is that when watching TV, you typically watch the center of the screen and your brain processes the whole image. When working on a PC screen, your eyes are in constant motion, and focus directly on characters. Poor screen resolution (less than 640x480 @ 14") or poor quality (especially in green screen systems and other older technology) can be damaging. LCDs do not flicker and typically have very high resolution, and should not be an issue. If you read text all day on a screen, it is recommended that you change the background color from white to a more muted color to avoid "white blind" and to turn your brightness to a comfortable level. You should never have to squint at your screen.
Back to the article itself: They are not saying playing games actually improves your OPTICAL vision characteristics. Watching TV or playing games has little or no impact on your vision prescription, unless you sit too close to the screen for extended periods (years) which can lead to nearsightedness. What they're saying is playing these games allows your brain to better process the information it sees. This process is similar to the training that police and military receive to better be able to identify objects in stressful situations, or to be able to identify objects quickly when entering a room. This has little to do with the eyes and mostly to do with the brain.
Suncom Wireless offers unlimited plans on their network for $59 and up with $0.10 per minute roaming fees. (true unlimited nationwide with no roaming is $149 or $79 with $0.50 per minute roaming)
Their area covers nearly all populated areas of North and South Carolina, and stretching into small areas of Georgia, Virginia, and Tennessee.
If you travel a lot out of state, it's not a great plan, but for 95% of people i talk to, they never pay roaming at all.
It's truly unlimited for calling. Web access (unlimited access on their regional network) is free, and unlimited text/picture is another $15. Additional phones are only $39 (up to 4 lines).
They operate under AT&T wireless and appear to be availible in most places nation wide, but may operate under different names regionally.
Broadcast signals are free. They are required by current FCC mandates to be backwards compatible to existing color TV sets. All one has to do it get a decoder, provided free by federal funds, and they can decode OTA digital HDTV broadcasts and play them back on standard HDTV sets. If we can do this, we can redirect that signal and record it in any form we want. Broadcast media, once sent, and recorded by a person can be used for any purpose excluding profit or public display. I can make LEGALLY as many copies of broadcast material as I want and give it away free to as many people as I want who were also within broadcast range under existing FCC rules. It is only illegal to do so for content that I am required to pay for to receive.
If they embed some kind of flag allowing me them to tell what day/time the show was broadcast, from where, and the ID of my decoder should I decide to illegally distribute my recording of their broadcast, that's fine by me, as long as I don't have to pay for any equipment upgrades to do so and can continue to use my existing TV and computer hardware.
I have no problem with them trying to protect themselves from blatant illegal internet distribution or rebroadcast without permission of content they charge for, as long as I can easily record, play back, copy, and store anything my receiver can decode without hassle, without additional equipment, and without enforced resolution degradation. I will not be bound to pay $1.99 for each TV show I want to store and playback later from DVD just because they're afraid I might give it to someone else, who could also view the same program for free anyway. If I want to capture a piece of TV footage and add it to a home movie, I have a legally protected right to do so. If I want to record a movie from HBO and watch it later at any point, I have a legally protected right to do that. As long as I don't re broadcast, distribute, or sell copies of it, I'm not doing anything illegal, and will fight vigerously to protect that right.
I think what they really want is a system for being able to easily back track any distributed content to the location at which it was originally received and recorded. This would make prosecution easy. As long as they do this without impacting my current rights, I'm completely OK with it. If it costs money to make the switch, or I have to trade out any equipment, I expect THEM to foot the bill and provide all the required labor services, cables, etc to replace my current setup.
I don't use a ton of bandwidth currently, but I used to... Time Warner Cable notified me and offered to switch my package to one on an business class subscription (at a higher price) to avoid capping or canceling my service.
Their "Acceptable Use" policy, currently posted on their web site states "The Road Runner service may not be used to engage in any conduct that interferes with Road Runner's ability to provide service to others, including the use of excessive bandwidth."
They were quite nice, and ended up only charging me another $30 per month including the static IP I got. More over, I got premium services like online storage and backup thrown in, was using a business connection in a residential area (ie, it was ALL my bandwidth!), and I never had to call the guys at residential level 1 support again (worth $30 alone in my book)...
Road Runner considers hosting a torrent or other download service on your community shared line to be an impact on other's ability to use bandwidth. Downloading a few TV shows or movies a week won't set off your limits on most packages, but hitting a newsgroup and downloading a few hundred illegal movie copies likely will. I'm sure they notice you when you hit a certain mark, and then monitor your activity to see what you might be using it for before cutting you off. I was hosting a private FTP site for friends from college combined with syncing my backups nightly across the WAN to my office. They likely saw all my traffic was to less than 10 IPs and assumed it was important data, not illegal downloads, which is probably why they were nice to me.
I have friends on Road Runner Lite who download more than 5GB per week and they've never been contacted. I'm guessing I was downloading somewhere around 2GB per week on the standard service, but I know I was transmitting at least 10GB per week in packets from my backup synchronization alone. That's a LOT of data for a 512K up connection considering the max theoretical limit is about 38GB per week.
In the end, DSL is all yours, use it as much as you like without worry (from the ISP anyway). However, the bandwidth sucks for the money. Business class cable services cost a good bit more, but you can get 4 down 1 up with a static for typically $79 a month, and you'll get nearly ALL of that bandwidth to yourself since business connections are segregated from residential, and the business connections do not have fair use policies attached.
PC monitors do have significantly higher resolution than TV, but to play encoded HD DVD or Blu-ray disk content (which virtually no disks use yet, but likely will soon) you need HDCP support.
Monitors of higher resolution with HDMI built in are just around the corner. In the meantime, the manufacturer clearly understood the limitation and has released the connector on 2 of the lower end cards designed for video playback and encoding, not on their top end graphics cards.
I agree. I'd prefer dark in the morning anyway with gradual waking instead of having to put on sunglasses to make a pot of coffee. Also, if I'm going to do something with daylight, it's going to be in the early evening after work. The new change gives me and the wife a chance to start our spring planting cycle without having to blow a weekend to do it. I can actually do yard work in the spring!!!! This also means I'll be mowing the lawn for the first time of the year without having to turn on floodlights to finish the yard...
My weekends are important to me, if I can do things on weeknights instead of weekends, i'm much happier, and much more productive. With the change happening on a Saturday night, it's not that bad, and after years of doing it, I'm just as happy come Monday as any other sucky Monday would be.
I see all the major parties of government investing LOTS of time and money in this system so they can more efficiently find and knock on my door. They'll know expected race, income, etc before ever getting to my block.
Now if only someone would combine that with a phone to address directory, they could do it all by phone!
Recording begins: "Hello Mr voter, we understand you are elderly, white, and poor, and that your wife past away a few years ago. You seem to have an excellent credit rating and the republican party would like to assure you that if you contribute money to our election fund we'll to our best make sure Social Security keeps afloat so you can keep that nice credit rating. Please type your credit card number at the tone...."
...and this is EXTREMETLY dangerous. All someone needs to do is guess a firmware password and they have the same access to the disk that they would have had by guessing the user password to a software encrypted disk.
If ANY data is lost by a company, I want to know about it if my information is contained in any part of the data set that may even be believed to be lost...
My company manufactures distributes a disk to disk backup system. Even at 256 bit encryption on disk our customers would still have to report a lost drive. The only difference between our disk and theirs is that the partition information itself on their disk is encryperd, where in our case, only the date inside of the partition is encryped. Either way, it's just as secure if all they have to do is guess a password...
btw: where's the key pair stored? In the hardware? If both halves of the key are in the same place, what's the point? All i have to do is crack the key generation system and make it give me the key! (not exactly easy, but easier than cracking the key itself).
Likely because SATA II included Native Command Queuing, which likely helps alleviate any lag the drive may suffer due to it's hardware encoding process.
Agreed,
For $1000, not getting a dedicated graphic processor is lame. More over, it doesn't have gigabit networking, fiber audio connector, HDMI or DVI, so what the hell use is it as a media center. I can't even connect it to my HD setup!
I've seen this story from both sides in my personal life. I have one friend who we jokingly call an "enviro-nazi." You know, the type of guy who might take a aluminum can you threw in the trash and throw it across the room hitting you in the head with it while pointing at the recycle bin and swearing to tie you down and make you watch "In Inconvenient Truth." I also have friends in chemical and environmental science who, although they strongly believe in global warming, do debate openly just how much of an impact we have had, or even can have, to help the problem. Note: No one I know debates the existence of global warming, or even that humans negatively impact it, just to what extent we do.
Each year, more, and more, and more data comes out showing more accurately the growth trend in global warming. We've not only proved it, but proved to predictable extents the results and trending. This is established science. Hundreds of scientists collaborate to come up with that data independently, and their data is cross validated. The scientists that oppose the fact that man is contributing to global warming rarely show evidence that is supportable, or are in some way backed or funded by those who would profit from the release of such data.
We have a word for those who still believe the Earth is flat: Insane. I propose the same word should be used for those who stand against the phenomenon of Global Warming. I do not condone violence or threats against these persons, but instead institutionalization.
Besides, there's nothing like a mass global re-engineering effort to create jobs, spruce up economies, and generate wealth. Sure the oil companies won't get much of it (those that haven't already been investing heavily in farms, wind, and solar technology firms), but we're just talking about having people change jobs, not loose them, and most everyone will make more money. Is it a bad thing to do this even if it does turn out to be pointless as the really extreme minority believes?
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It's funny, a T1 can cost up to (or over) $1000. A 10Mbit point to point fiber to a specific location can be had for $500 or less. Companies I work with that provide data centers are starting to order OC3s and DS3s, which cost a fraction of the price per Mbit than T1) and are allowing their customers cheap 10Mbit pipes to the net at just more per months (total cost) than a T1 from the local ISP. In the neighborhood I'm having a new home built in, a local company has run fiber to each new house, and that fiber runs back to their central office where they have a OC12 connection to the net's backbone. They're offering this at 2Mbit up (guaranteed) and 8 down (shared), including VoIP and security system monitoring, with guaranteed bandwidth, a static IP, and a managed firewall, for $99 a month. The ping latency is about 6ms! When filled out at 300 households they'll be taking in 30K a month, for a head end line that costs 30K a year. The builder of the homes is covering most of the infrastructure costs so it's massively profitable. They're are neighborhoods standing in line waiting to jump on board.
This action is actually timed perfectly. The Dems have the majority now, enough to start the impeachment trial, and with the upcoming election, the republicans who DON'T vote to impeach Cheney will fall. We can't really get rid of Bush or Cheney in any reasonable amount of time that will save America any grief, but attacking them now may eliminate as much as half the republicans up for re-election, and almost guarantee a democrat president. I'm just surprised there's no evidence presented with him and Halliburton, or any of the other bills he's had a hand in that made him and his companies billions at the expense of troops, other companies welfare, and that many of his actions are obviously illegal under multiple abuse of powers acts. All the evidence is simply surrounding the war. Could the Dems be worried about retaliation?
You can also make a cheaper, more durable, softer fabric from it than cotton. It's illegal to grow in America not for it's mind altering characteristics, but because William Randolf Hurst, DuPont, The Cotton Growers Association of America, and the Lumber industry were getting killed in business by Hemp. It's the miracle crop for production where Soy is the miracle crop for food. Hemp can make paper, plastics, oils, strong soft thread, high protein content foods, and various medicines to help asthma, Alzheimer's, arthritis (and that's just the A's). It also rejuvenates soil making it a great rotational crop. It's a weed, needs virtually no fertilizer, grows quickly, and few insects can harm it so it needs little or no chemical protection. It's easy to harvest as well. Heck in the 16 and 1700 you could even PAY YOUR TAXES WITH IT!
Squashing your theories: A) You're right about 2 different resolutions reduced to 1024X768 being meaningless, but most people don't care about why their 10MP camera looks the same as a 2MP at 1024X768. They care about the quality of their 8X10 prints they either make themselves or order online. Also, 10MP cameras (most of them) use miltiple CCDs (or better things than CCD), and eliminate artifacts, hard lines, and false colors on edges. They simply take better pictures, especially close-ups of nature and other high contrast environments, and they take better high speed images. They also have better focal length and less distortion. Many people may post their pictures online, even most as you say, but ALL of them print pictures, and ALL of them can easily see that difference.
B) First, very few people buy expensive things simply because they're expensive. There is a reason Haselblald cameras cost 10s of thousands of dollars. Professionals buy the best because they are the best. The consumer grade equivalents hold the the same premise. Sure, there are some overprices items on the market that some few stupid people buy without a true comparison, but those items don't survive well once their quality becomes an issue vs the price of a competitor. Consumers also know that not only does a 10MP image look better as an 8X10 than a 6MP, but also that DSLR has exchangeable lenses, better zoom capability, faster image capture, external flash support, etc.
Just like all the SUVs that never see dirt roads, there are some features that every device has that aren't needed, but you can't get a big vehicle for a family that's not a minivan unless you buy a big honking SUV. There's no middle ground. There's not a high rez camera with cheap features. Manufactures NEVER put out a single model that has what people actually want. There's always one thing missing and several things you don't want. Try buying an HP 6 color photo printer with wired and wireless, bluetooth, scanner, fax, and memory reader all in one. It doesn't exist. If it did, they wouldn't sell any other printers. You can get a wireless fax/photo printer, but no card readers. You can get a great wireless photo printer/scanner, but no fax. You can get a great all-in-one with everything, but no networking. Thus, we spend more because we have to.
Case and point: I have both a Cannon film SLR and an 8MP 10X zoom Sony point-and-shoot. I shoot far more photos in film simply because when scanning and cropping, I can get much more detail out of a film image that I can in digital. I don't do it every day, but I do it sometimes, and that's enough. Also, I have the film (negative) as a backup in case I loose my hard disk. I can't afford a camera nice enough to replace film completely, nor the drives or backup systems to protect my images. I use the point-and-shoot for portrait photos and panoramic scenes. It's not good enough to use for professional shots or action. It is however a LOT better, and completely worth $200 more than the 6MP i got first and then quickly returned.
Oh, and your math? A 10MP image, at screen resolution of 72dpi, is over 50" wide and 38" tall. This includes the crossover of RGB. See the CCD actually takes the image 3 times on the same 10MP backing within a few milliseconds. This is why you sometimes get some funny colored lines on the edges of high contrast objects. 3CCD cameras use 3 separate 10MP image captures on separate CCDs and eliminate this ghosting, which is why they cost significantly more and produce better pictures. It's 3748X2746 x3 concurrent images, not 2048X1536 all at once for 3 separate colors. You do really get 10MP from a 10MP camera.
As for 1) usually it is justified, and people who have that kind of money are willing to spend it and 2) Even my father, in his late 60s and wearing reading glasses could tell the difference immediately between a 6MP 4X6 print, and 8MP print, and a negative that was scanned and printed on the same paper as the other two. As such, he bought a $
First, I don't know where some of the posters get their information, but cloned meat from an adult subject is in almost all measurable metrics identical to that of the host. Cloning the best subject leads to higher yield, less steroid use, lower feeding and medical costs for stock, and more. The meat is completely safe. Genetic anomalies being passed through generations are irrelevant since there's only 1 generation. There is no "passing down" a bad gene. Simple every day DNA comparisons can be used to make certain the clone is healthy. Mutations that may occur typically result in failed growth of the embryo. Even if it does survive until birth, deformations of even the slightest measure would be discarded. I like the idea of cheaper, healthier meat. I'm glad they'll be labeling it, and glad the undereducated populous will cause it to cost less than traditionally harvested meats. I'm also glad "organic" meats cost more too. Organic meat if FAR more likely to contain bacterial infection, vitamin deficiency, and other issues that are even more dangerous than mild genetic anomaly. This all means that the best tasting, best cooking, safest meat with BE THE CHEAPEST! It's one of the few times in history that I can actually say I'm glad we have ignorant people that get to make decisions. I'm even OK with genetically modified foods. Although science is now allowing us to directly modify specific genes through DNA and viral modification processes, we've actually been doing it through breeding for hundreds of years. The breeding process is not scientific in any more a way that cross pollination is, and is not regulated either (as science would be strictly monitored). Anyone out there use insulin? Human insulin hormones are provided by genetically modified cows and pigs. Most of you would be dead without this. Also remember, cloning is just becoming possible and is not really affordable yet. Its use does not mean that in 2-3 years every grocery store will be carrying genetically cloned products. We've got several years to implement an exacting system for genetic comparison that can guarantee safe, healthy clones. It will be easy using a simple blood test to tell if a clone is 100% perfect or if it has any issues. We'll also have a map of the genome for the cloned animal and can tell if an unsafe gene is active in the clone or not mere weeks after fertilization. This process will be FAR superior to the FDAs current method of rating meats. I'm all for it.
Actually, both SC and California do have a database of payment information. They simply do not yet support receiving electronic payments via EFT/EDI from federal agencies directly to the recipients. (SC supports this in many counties, but not state wide) They support an older electronic payment system which is required by law. EFT/EDI payment receipt is not required by law. SC can still capture payroll information (by court order), automatically deduct from your paycheck forcibly, without your permission to pay your child support, collect that money centrally, and distribute it by check as well as electronic methods automatically to bank accounts of those who are due the payment. This process has been in place using a database since June 1999 in SC. The DSS is one of the best computerized system in SC. Only the DMV has now surpassed its information tracking ability. Just because they don't directly integrate with the national ACH banking system through EFT/EDI doesn't mean they're out of the loop. (though most other things in this state resemble the status of other states in the 70s or 80s). That said, it's damned near impossible to get DSS to actually take action in this state unless it revolves around collecting money or fines in some way (or if the press gets involved). My in laws for instance take care of a child that is not of their own blood on a regular basis simply because DSS refuses to take the baby from the grand parents who have been arrested for drugs several times, have had complaints of child abuse against them, don't have a legally registered car, and the mother of the baby doesn't even live there! They know the child only because my brother-in-law dated the mother several years ago and they heard about it when she fled the state and left her kid behind.
OK, so have we're coming in line with the rest of the world where little inventors and small time research firms can get screwed because some inside guy leaked details and a major corp like Microsoft or Verizon throws a bunch of money at the idea to develop it first, then patent it before the small guy can even finish his write up and submit it. in other words, we're implementing a system where big corps can steal ideas for little guys who are too slow, too poor, or simply don't know how too file a patent, and then these small guys get NOTHING.
Well, I do use gmail. I also use Thunderbird. On my home machine, it's nice to use it as a traditional e-mail client, imparting filters and rules to sort my mail, and a more dynamic client for formatting messages than a web page can provide. On my notebook I use it to store an off line copy of my e-mail so I can access important information and my contacts when I don't have net access.
It's also handy to have a single client that can access not only my gmail, but also several other accounts at the same time and keep all that mail in one place (even uploading some of it back to Google for storage and remote access). I use Outlook for my IMAP access to my work systems and keep my work and private e-mail separate. I only go the the gmail web page to access mail when I'm temporarily using a machine I don't own (visiting family, etc).
Well, this is for concentrated sunlight. It also requires active cooling which costs energy. What's that ration? Big deal the cell can product higher efficiency, but if it can't be used under normal sunlight, what good is it?
OK, so first of all, how do you get systems, cables, etc in and out once it's soaked. Also, what kind of floor reinforcing are we talking about after we fill a rack with a hundred or more gallons of oil. And what if I have to move it!?!?
:)
Why don't we just put in centralized water cooling attachments in the rack risers so we can add and remove cooling blocks? sounds like a better idea to me. It would not be hard at all to do. In fact, I'm about to do some patent research and file one on this idea if I can
OK, we do NOT want chip makers to be able to release "buggy" chips like most vendors release code. Intel made a slight mistake 10 years ago or so where one of their Pentium releases had a bug that caused banks much heartache. It took months for someone to notice. Problem is, this chip wasn't exactly "rushed" to market. Intel thought it was fully functional after much internal and external testing. Can you imagine what the result might have been if they started releasing unproven components just for market share?
Of course, I guess we could all ride around safe and happy sitting on top of several Kg of highly compressed hydrogen gas...
something must be off in your calculation because at 11 feet I can tell the difference between 720P and 1080P on my 42" set... Heck, I can tell the difference between that an my 1600X1200 display if I map the size:distance ratio out. What I have a hard time with is telling 1080i from 1080p. The image is equally as vivid and detailed, but in some high motion scenes I can see a slight blur at 1080i that almost vanishes at 1080p, but I have to switch from one to the other to tell the difference at all.
There's only 1 thing I see at issue here as far as refilling the battery goes. The battery must last long enough to get from one fueling station to another. Current cars constantly recharge their batteries via the alternator when running, so battery changes are infrequent. How long will this stuff last if we can't in-line charge it without refilling it? If we're thinking about electric cars, this might actually work, but the enzyme process must be able to not only produce a charge, but hold one until needed, possibly for weeks on end if parked for an extended time. Can this technology accommodate that? Also, if we're thinking about electric cars, I'd like to be able to plug one in at home and avoid fill-ups when possible. I'm not so worried about choosing chemical batteries over biodegradable if I only change them every few years...
I wouldn't mind if I had to not only fill the tank with ethanol, but also periodically also fill a separate tank/battery with fluid as well. If the designers of cars are ingenious enough, we should be able to do this with a single hose/connector, including draining the dead battery while filling with new juice. I'm just worried about the flexibility of this technology.
OK, myth 1: Watching TV hurts your eyes. Where this may have been true to an extremely minor extent in the early days of TV but not enough evidence was presented to support it. It was only associated with children who sat extremely close to the TV (2-3 feet). It was actually due to the poor phosphor quality in older TVs and the flickering effect, not the radiation.
Myth 2: Using a computer can hurt your eyes. This one is more true, but again, not related to the radiation. If you read the ergonomics guide that comes with your screen you will note it says "may" cause long term eye damage. This is because there is no conclusive evidence. However, placing your monitor closer than 18" from your face at too high a brightness can reduce your vision quality, or effect night vision, due to the extreme light over time just like listening to music too loud will damage your ears. Also, cheap screens flicker can be extremely damaging. The most associated damage caused to eyes is that when watching TV, you typically watch the center of the screen and your brain processes the whole image. When working on a PC screen, your eyes are in constant motion, and focus directly on characters. Poor screen resolution (less than 640x480 @ 14") or poor quality (especially in green screen systems and other older technology) can be damaging. LCDs do not flicker and typically have very high resolution, and should not be an issue. If you read text all day on a screen, it is recommended that you change the background color from white to a more muted color to avoid "white blind" and to turn your brightness to a comfortable level. You should never have to squint at your screen.
Back to the article itself: They are not saying playing games actually improves your OPTICAL vision characteristics. Watching TV or playing games has little or no impact on your vision prescription, unless you sit too close to the screen for extended periods (years) which can lead to nearsightedness. What they're saying is playing these games allows your brain to better process the information it sees. This process is similar to the training that police and military receive to better be able to identify objects in stressful situations, or to be able to identify objects quickly when entering a room. This has little to do with the eyes and mostly to do with the brain.
Suncom Wireless offers unlimited plans on their network for $59 and up with $0.10 per minute roaming fees. (true unlimited nationwide with no roaming is $149 or $79 with $0.50 per minute roaming)
Their area covers nearly all populated areas of North and South Carolina, and stretching into small areas of Georgia, Virginia, and Tennessee.
If you travel a lot out of state, it's not a great plan, but for 95% of people i talk to, they never pay roaming at all.
It's truly unlimited for calling. Web access (unlimited access on their regional network) is free, and unlimited text/picture is another $15. Additional phones are only $39 (up to 4 lines).
They operate under AT&T wireless and appear to be availible in most places nation wide, but may operate under different names regionally.
Broadcast signals are free. They are required by current FCC mandates to be backwards compatible to existing color TV sets. All one has to do it get a decoder, provided free by federal funds, and they can decode OTA digital HDTV broadcasts and play them back on standard HDTV sets. If we can do this, we can redirect that signal and record it in any form we want. Broadcast media, once sent, and recorded by a person can be used for any purpose excluding profit or public display. I can make LEGALLY as many copies of broadcast material as I want and give it away free to as many people as I want who were also within broadcast range under existing FCC rules. It is only illegal to do so for content that I am required to pay for to receive.
If they embed some kind of flag allowing me them to tell what day/time the show was broadcast, from where, and the ID of my decoder should I decide to illegally distribute my recording of their broadcast, that's fine by me, as long as I don't have to pay for any equipment upgrades to do so and can continue to use my existing TV and computer hardware.
I have no problem with them trying to protect themselves from blatant illegal internet distribution or rebroadcast without permission of content they charge for, as long as I can easily record, play back, copy, and store anything my receiver can decode without hassle, without additional equipment, and without enforced resolution degradation. I will not be bound to pay $1.99 for each TV show I want to store and playback later from DVD just because they're afraid I might give it to someone else, who could also view the same program for free anyway. If I want to capture a piece of TV footage and add it to a home movie, I have a legally protected right to do so. If I want to record a movie from HBO and watch it later at any point, I have a legally protected right to do that. As long as I don't re broadcast, distribute, or sell copies of it, I'm not doing anything illegal, and will fight vigerously to protect that right.
I think what they really want is a system for being able to easily back track any distributed content to the location at which it was originally received and recorded. This would make prosecution easy. As long as they do this without impacting my current rights, I'm completely OK with it. If it costs money to make the switch, or I have to trade out any equipment, I expect THEM to foot the bill and provide all the required labor services, cables, etc to replace my current setup.
I don't use a ton of bandwidth currently, but I used to... Time Warner Cable notified me and offered to switch my package to one on an business class subscription (at a higher price) to avoid capping or canceling my service. Their "Acceptable Use" policy, currently posted on their web site states "The Road Runner service may not be used to engage in any conduct that interferes with Road Runner's ability to provide service to others, including the use of excessive bandwidth." They were quite nice, and ended up only charging me another $30 per month including the static IP I got. More over, I got premium services like online storage and backup thrown in, was using a business connection in a residential area (ie, it was ALL my bandwidth!), and I never had to call the guys at residential level 1 support again (worth $30 alone in my book)... Road Runner considers hosting a torrent or other download service on your community shared line to be an impact on other's ability to use bandwidth. Downloading a few TV shows or movies a week won't set off your limits on most packages, but hitting a newsgroup and downloading a few hundred illegal movie copies likely will. I'm sure they notice you when you hit a certain mark, and then monitor your activity to see what you might be using it for before cutting you off. I was hosting a private FTP site for friends from college combined with syncing my backups nightly across the WAN to my office. They likely saw all my traffic was to less than 10 IPs and assumed it was important data, not illegal downloads, which is probably why they were nice to me. I have friends on Road Runner Lite who download more than 5GB per week and they've never been contacted. I'm guessing I was downloading somewhere around 2GB per week on the standard service, but I know I was transmitting at least 10GB per week in packets from my backup synchronization alone. That's a LOT of data for a 512K up connection considering the max theoretical limit is about 38GB per week. In the end, DSL is all yours, use it as much as you like without worry (from the ISP anyway). However, the bandwidth sucks for the money. Business class cable services cost a good bit more, but you can get 4 down 1 up with a static for typically $79 a month, and you'll get nearly ALL of that bandwidth to yourself since business connections are segregated from residential, and the business connections do not have fair use policies attached.
PC monitors do have significantly higher resolution than TV, but to play encoded HD DVD or Blu-ray disk content (which virtually no disks use yet, but likely will soon) you need HDCP support.
Monitors of higher resolution with HDMI built in are just around the corner. In the meantime, the manufacturer clearly understood the limitation and has released the connector on 2 of the lower end cards designed for video playback and encoding, not on their top end graphics cards.
I agree. I'd prefer dark in the morning anyway with gradual waking instead of having to put on sunglasses to make a pot of coffee. Also, if I'm going to do something with daylight, it's going to be in the early evening after work. The new change gives me and the wife a chance to start our spring planting cycle without having to blow a weekend to do it. I can actually do yard work in the spring!!!! This also means I'll be mowing the lawn for the first time of the year without having to turn on floodlights to finish the yard... My weekends are important to me, if I can do things on weeknights instead of weekends, i'm much happier, and much more productive. With the change happening on a Saturday night, it's not that bad, and after years of doing it, I'm just as happy come Monday as any other sucky Monday would be.
I see all the major parties of government investing LOTS of time and money in this system so they can more efficiently find and knock on my door. They'll know expected race, income, etc before ever getting to my block. Now if only someone would combine that with a phone to address directory, they could do it all by phone! Recording begins: "Hello Mr voter, we understand you are elderly, white, and poor, and that your wife past away a few years ago. You seem to have an excellent credit rating and the republican party would like to assure you that if you contribute money to our election fund we'll to our best make sure Social Security keeps afloat so you can keep that nice credit rating. Please type your credit card number at the tone...."
...and this is EXTREMETLY dangerous. All someone needs to do is guess a firmware password and they have the same access to the disk that they would have had by guessing the user password to a software encrypted disk. If ANY data is lost by a company, I want to know about it if my information is contained in any part of the data set that may even be believed to be lost... My company manufactures distributes a disk to disk backup system. Even at 256 bit encryption on disk our customers would still have to report a lost drive. The only difference between our disk and theirs is that the partition information itself on their disk is encryperd, where in our case, only the date inside of the partition is encryped. Either way, it's just as secure if all they have to do is guess a password... btw: where's the key pair stored? In the hardware? If both halves of the key are in the same place, what's the point? All i have to do is crack the key generation system and make it give me the key! (not exactly easy, but easier than cracking the key itself).
Likely because SATA II included Native Command Queuing, which likely helps alleviate any lag the drive may suffer due to it's hardware encoding process.
Agreed, For $1000, not getting a dedicated graphic processor is lame. More over, it doesn't have gigabit networking, fiber audio connector, HDMI or DVI, so what the hell use is it as a media center. I can't even connect it to my HD setup!
I've seen this story from both sides in my personal life. I have one friend who we jokingly call an "enviro-nazi." You know, the type of guy who might take a aluminum can you threw in the trash and throw it across the room hitting you in the head with it while pointing at the recycle bin and swearing to tie you down and make you watch "In Inconvenient Truth." I also have friends in chemical and environmental science who, although they strongly believe in global warming, do debate openly just how much of an impact we have had, or even can have, to help the problem. Note: No one I know debates the existence of global warming, or even that humans negatively impact it, just to what extent we do.
Each year, more, and more, and more data comes out showing more accurately the growth trend in global warming. We've not only proved it, but proved to predictable extents the results and trending. This is established science. Hundreds of scientists collaborate to come up with that data independently, and their data is cross validated. The scientists that oppose the fact that man is contributing to global warming rarely show evidence that is supportable, or are in some way backed or funded by those who would profit from the release of such data.
We have a word for those who still believe the Earth is flat: Insane. I propose the same word should be used for those who stand against the phenomenon of Global Warming. I do not condone violence or threats against these persons, but instead institutionalization.
Besides, there's nothing like a mass global re-engineering effort to create jobs, spruce up economies, and generate wealth. Sure the oil companies won't get much of it (those that haven't already been investing heavily in farms, wind, and solar technology firms), but we're just talking about having people change jobs, not loose them, and most everyone will make more money. Is it a bad thing to do this even if it does turn out to be pointless as the really extreme minority believes?