This site is quite a good read if you are sick of seeing commercials for riduculous "Fad Medicine": http://www.quackwatch.org/
It's a really entertaining site! It's scary to know that there are people stupid enough out there to make money for the "doctors" out there that offer such bogus "remedies/treatments/therapies" etc.
A really scary site is Aetna's IntelliHealth section on "Complimentary & Alternative Medicine". I can't belive that a major medical provider is allowed to post/advertise such unbelievably stupid things.
No the real problem with tv pharmaceutical ads are the ads that hawk 'supplements'. It has been proven that the products sold as supplements are a bigger danger than the other FDA-approved drugs. When you sell something as a supplement, you cannot be regulated by the FDA. Instead of going after he major drug companies and their advertisements, why not do something that is actually usful and go after the companies that are sellgin 'supplements' that claim to do everything by make you rich.
Yesterday, while I was watching TV, I saw a ton of commercials that were selling 'supplements' such as, among other things:
1. A glue-stick like product that you roll across your forhead to cure headaches (Head On). 2. An ad for pills that claim to boost your memory (Focus Factor).
3. Ads for CortiSlim and TrimSpa, which claim weight loss (but only when used with a 'sensible' diet. Duh!)
4. Magazine and T.V. ads for a bracelet-like device that claims to fix dozens of bone and joint ailments you have (Q-Ray).
5. A spray-on product that claims to cure bone and joint pain (I forgot the name).
This kind of shameless advertising makes the large drug companies look like saints. It is also known that 'supplements' are usually more dangerous than the-r FDA-approved counterparts. What's more is that it is ILLEGAL for the FDA to even make an attempt to regulate these 'drugs', some of which are contain more potent psychoactive chemicals that vary wildly from batch to batch and even box to box. Just because they contain 'all natural' ingredients is clearly deceptive advertising, as the supplement companies make no mention of the unreliability and saftey issues associated with non-FDA approved supplements.
The drug companies actually disclose what can happen with their product and have FDA-approval, including strict testing and guidelines for their use. Supplements have NO OVERSIGHT as to their chemical content. Is it really worth to be whining about the claimed emotional ploys (yes, some really do abuse emotion, while others don't) when other companies are allowed to hawk untested, unregulated, and sometimes dangerous 'supplements' while enjoying full legal protection from authorities and regulators?
Wkipedia should be used by students as simply a general guid to sudjects that they are not familiar with. I t should be the same as asking a freind who just happens to know alot about everything. It should be used as a basic, 'here's-the-idea' type resource. For example, if I had to give a report on the effects of.....say....."the influence of metallurgical advances on the evolution of cooking utensils", I would probably go to Wikipedia for a rough idea about coking utensils and metallugy. I know about metallurgy, but not enough to help with the specific application in question. BUT, if I go to Wiki for info on cooking utensils and, separaely, metallurgy, I would probably have a good idea what was going on, but nothing accurate enough to write a report on, but enough to get me headed in the right direction.
Using Wikipedia as an encyclopedia is just asking for a problem. The Professors have every argument prohibiting it's use as a source or citation in reports. It's simply too inaccurate, and, from the student's vantage point, impossible to tell what and where *exactly* innacuracies are.
I would NEVER and HAVE NEVER used Wikipedia as a 'source' of information. The only things I use it for is if I want to get a basic hold on a subject that I don't anything about. If you want accurate, buy the World Book or Encyclopedia Britannica encyclopedias.
Why don't they just stop minting pennies for a short break. That would force people to spend their pennies as a way of getting exact change, because reatailers won't issue them pennies as part of their change. Then, when the retailers go to the back, the pennies are transferred from the retailer to the bank, and then back to the mint, where they can be melted down or stored and reminted when the amount of metals in reserve has made them chepaer to mint?
Pennies are usually givern in amounts up to 4, unless I've run out of them in my til l, the customer doesn't want them (where they usually go into whatever charity box on the register), or I just feel like giving them a nickel instead. So, instead me me having to give exact change because they paid in an amount greater than the total, why not force consumers to pay with exact change and send the pennies in the other direction?
Trust me. Alot of people have these things HOARDED up, either intentionally, or just because they don't want to go through the hassle of taking them to the bank.
I once hade to identify the date, mint, design, any misstrikes of errors, and then compare it with 25 years of "Penny Books" to see if my freind's grandfather had already collected it. As if that wasn't enough, I had to help count and roll them. In the end, we (mainly me and me ex-g/f) had done this with over $500.00 worth, or 50,000 individual pennies.
Good point, but someone would then have to do something that would make the manufacturing technology and manufacturing rights public domain, which is practically impossible, since it is a technology that Sony copyrighted/patented.
Hybrid players will do the same thing for the format war that the Big Three video game platforms ave done for the video game industry: Change the game but not finish it.
There are now three formats out: Standard DVD, Blu-Ray, and HD-DVD. If you bought a player that would play all three, why would you need to switch? Of course, in the future, DVD will definitely become obselet, since it is the only format that is not HD as Blu-Ray and HD-DVD already are. So, that leaves two high definition formats for 100% of the HD disk market share. If you start selling hybrid players that can play both of them, then what does it matter if you are buying Blu-Ray or HD-DVD? Unless you are a videophile or always have to have the biggest and best of anything in your neighborhood, it doesn't matter what format you use. So, if companies no longer have to worry about compatibility issues and the criticality of those issues in determining a commercially viable product, no one is going to back out and let the other take over. If companies realize that they no longer have to worry about getting customers to buy their products as a matter of life and death, then we will be stuck with the same problem facing video game developers: Platform contracts, format conracts, and proprietary content issues that just irritate the customer because they would have to buy multiple expensive platforms so they can play all the games they enjoy, not just be limited to a specific few.
A hybrid player would further the multiple format problems that just flat out irritate users, since they would have to buy a hybrid player to be able to fully enjoy video media. If movie houses and studios got locked into contracts depending on what Sony will pay and what HD-DVD manufacturers will pay. If hybrid players come out, then good, I won't have to buy a different player for certain movies. BUT, then ALL players that you bought in the future would have to be dual format. The same thing can be seen in video media files:.avi,.wmv,.rm,.mpeg,.mpg,.xvid,.umd,.mp4... It's just another pain in the ass thing to complexify the problem. Sure media players can goup all of these into a single player, but the contractural and legal issue that arise, since these are proprietary formats, make updaes and compatibility a h uge headache and pain in the ass.
They should do it like TV: "We're gonna switch from analog to digital in 2010. Do what you need to change. If you want something else, buy it, but it's you're problem.". There needs to be standard format for media, and someone needs to put practicalty above profits for that to happen.
If you want to see what runaway formats can be like, just look at a complete list of Centerfire Rifle Calibers (Wikipedia has a short list). They all do the same thing, but everybody wants to make there mark on the industry.
SlashDot is the perfect format and environment for marketers to get their company name thrown around. I call it Viral Reporting or Viral Journalism, since all that is needed to further your business is the mention of your company in a journalistic context, being for a positive or negative reason, where millions of people will check you out, even if they despise you. Thus, even though you have created a negative PR image, you get unintentional advertising and name exposure with the great possibility of financial windfall from it.
I have noticed lately that Apple has two very distinct faces. Steve Jobs, idolozed by Apple Worms as someone who built a company that cares about computer users and strives to make the internet and computer seamlessly integrated into human society and as easy as possible for people to use, and to allow the spreading of ideas and media throughout the world. Then there is the other face of Apple Marketing, which totally contradicts the "People loving, society oriented, free thinking" world that Steve Jobs is proclaimng to love.
This marketing gimmick (one of MANY, for Apple) is purely an exmple of marketing tactics that make it almost indistinguishable from Microsoft and most Network News stations. Apple can created this wonderful public relations image in the eyes of the consumer, and has, almost literally, made the consumer fall in love with it. Apple has figured out that they can exploit this "Aple Affinity" to their advantage by using the good PR as a means of diverting the customers' attention away from their tactics and sedating them with all of the benefits and joys of Apple products.
Apple is just like Microsoft, in that what lies underneath is a big stinking pile of crap. The only difference is that Apple is more appealing to the customer. Would YOU buy a pile of dog crap if it smelled Mountain Springtime or Pine fresh? I still wouldn't, because it know what it really is.
I used to use a Macintosh LC, back in the days where a quad speed CD-ROM's and 14.4 modems were was the status equivalent of optical holographic drives and T4 connections. However, PC or Mac, the marketing schemes that all companies, not just electronics, create to divert attention has crosse the line from being a threat to society to controlling society. When you control what people see, you ARE what people see and that can be abused when you control content for your own personal or commercial interests.
Cars only sway in ice or oil? Then why are there accidents on icy and oily road surfaces? Yes the car is a newtonian object but in almost all cars, except those are 2x4, 4x4, or full-time AWD, only one rear wheel actually drives the car forward. So, if that rear wheel is the only one that has traction, the car whill fishtail or swerve, and the driver will over-correct, which results in even more sliding arouns. Also, the car will only go in a straight direct as a result of Newtonian physics IF ALL of the other wheels have an equal amount of traction. If they don,t then the car will not travel in a stright light because of changes in drag at different points on the car. Since the change is at multiple points at the four corners of a car, tractive changes will cause the momentum of the vehicle to treat that point as a fulcrum and the inertia of the car will be diverted in a straight line relative to the point with the greatest tractive force.
RTFA-The article also says that a counteractive agent is sprayed onto tractive surfaces such as boots and tires that counteract the slickness of the 'black ice'.
I am more of a documentary fan rather than a movie fan, and I still see cars slide on ice and oil, even in live footage. Hollywood conspiracy?
Jumbo jets, Statues of Liberties, etc. are all large enough for people to roughly compare size with. Nobody can see a white blood cell, or can make a practical comparison of it to other easily observable things. I can easily compare a 747 other things, such as a yacht or football field because they are both commonly observed and easily observed. Comparing the physical size of a white blood cell to the data size of the Declaration of Independance is a little difficult, since the average person (or even supehuman, unless your are a die-hard Geek) can observe the data size of the Declaration of Independace without a computer or other computational device, and cannot judge the size of a white blood cell without having observed it through a microscope. It's like asking someone what their height in angstroms or parsecs is.
Of course, with any reference object, the whole principle of using comparative measurements is meaningless unless you understand the actual size of what objects are being compared. It was just a rough, albeit somewhat confusing, comparison between physical size and data size.
I think what they were trying to say is that the data density is higher in the amount of physical space occupied by a white blood cell than is occupied by the same data set on a hard disk platter.
Speaking of obscure and confusing measurements, I would love to hear of someone who correctly uses obscrue, overly technical, or ancient measurements to correctly list their physical characterists on their next tax return or census form.
Weight: 44,528,163,360,000,000,000,000,000,000 Gigaelectronvolts Height: 16 729 333 475 172.748 X-Units Date Of Birth: 423964800 Unix Timestamp Date Age: 72,532,800,000,000,000 Shakes
Nice nice... At least you guys are on the right track. Our Sentor Dianne Feinstein has officially vowed to vote against anything that has to deal with nuclear power, even the new (and really cool) Pebble Bed Modular Reactors, so that leaves wind power, gas turbine, and solar the only remotely viable methods. Wind power is illegal now in the only productive areas, and the only place we get enough sun is in the deserts.
However, in a state of 33,871,648 (2000) people, that would require covering so much open space with PV arrays that it would make the land preservationists scream bloody murder. That takes us back to square one and leaves us with our existing nuclear plants and the only option of build more gas turbines.
What if you registered your PV arrays as an independant power company? Here in California, the larger utilities would be forced to buy the electricity from you ar market value.
Also, about people who want to go wind turbine, don't. There is an indefinite (read: nearly permanent) moratorium on issuing permits for ind turbines because of birds that fly into them and are killed. Makes yu wonder what is going on in the Green movement.
Wind Power in the windiest place on Earth is currently illegal.
It's amazing that you can patent something that you didn't invent or create. I think the names were created so that people would more easily associte 'digestivus' and 'regularus' with their product's claimed benefits. THAT is a marketing ploy that should be illegal. You should not be able to rename a life form just to make it sound more holistically appealing for product sale, as the renaming of the not so chic-trendy name 'Bifidobacterium animalis' which is the REAL name on the bacteria. If you look at all the other names and trade names for Bifidobacterium animalis, they are all geared toward generating sales. Activo, Digestivum, Essenis, Regularis, everything BUT the real name of the bacteria.
In addition to licensing the formula to chemical companies and manufacturers, the would make a hell of alot more by licensing to toy companie. THAT would be a huge sale during the next Spider Man release or Christmas season. The problems that happened during the Tickle Me Elmo ordeal would pale in comparison.
Did they store the image on ONE photon, or did they store it on MULTIPLE photons. Also, they didn't define what they meant by 'image'. Did they mean 'image' in a sense like storing a photograph of yourself, or did they mean 'image' in the sense that it is an energy level that only codes for ONE PIXEL in an image? From the "UR" sample images, it appears that they were able to only code each individual photo so that it functions as a pixel, rather than an image. Remember, there is a difference between pixels and images.
Sometimes, I think that researchers and engineers get so excited about things that they forget what they are talking about and are so eager to proclaim their new 'discovery' to the world that they tend to over-exaggerate and/or forget what exactly they really did.
As blown out of proportion as their claim is, it is really cool that they were actually able to code photons as pixels.
Your Point #1: It has everything to do with parenting skill. If you are any bit worth a parent, you WILL be able to find out what they are doing because you will realize the importance of knowing what your kids are up to. Yes, we were all kids, and all of us got caught doing something we wren't supposed to be doing. In my case, it was building a truck mounted potato cannon that could be heard from two zip codes away, imitation nitrocellulose and napalm, and launching rockets from miniature 'silos' buried underneath the backyard lawn. Don't pawn off your shortcoings as a parent on other things and expect them to do your job for you. You don't have to monitor your kids all the time to know what is going on and what shouldn't be going on.
Your Point #2: MySpace undoubtedly knows there are predators operating on their site and there is absolutely no way to tell a predator from Joe Average on the Internet. You can't expect everyone to be able to and eager to provide a credit card #, or driver's license number, or social security number just so they can sign up. What do you propose next.....Shutting down the Internet because ICANN knows full well that child predators operate on the Internet as well? What about the local Mall? I'll bet that there are more child predators at America's malls at any given time than there are on MySpace. So, seeing as how we know, through police records, news reports, and such, that child predators are lurking at malls, does it make sense to shut them down like MySpace? Absolutely not.
Your Point #3: Registration through snail mail? Are you serious? This isn't exactly a warranty card for your new vaccuum cleaner we're talking about. Nobody would care enough about anything online if they has to send in written permission through the mail. Besides, if you can fake it online, you can fake it in the mail. Like I said before, ID can be faked, if you haven't been paying attention to the amount of ID fraud that has been going on for the last decade. It's not about profits, it's about PRACTICALITY. It is very impractical to sort through the millions of requests that MySpace would be slammed with if there had to be someone to physically open the letter, read it, enter the information, and then file the letter as proof. I know it has become popular in society for the Have-Nots to blame there problems and misery on the Haves.
Your Point #4: That's it, blame the guys who have more mone than you. Your envy of the rich is telling and it is a bad argument anyways. So what if they made a pile of money operating their site. If they were catering exclusively to child predators, then that would be flagrantly illegal. What manner are they operating in? They aren't catering exclusively to child predators, or even to predators in any way. They are offering a service that is being used by EVERYONE, but in the wrong way by a few individuals who use it in a way as serving their own illegal and sordid intentions.
MySpace is being user freindly to EVERYONE. It is up to the choices made by the individual, NOT MYSPACE, to use the service in any way that they want.....Just like the entire globe uses the Internet any way they want. From porn to the periodic table, the Internet is what you make of it. Should we ban telephones because child predators use them too? How about vehicles and strip malls. Or, maybe even ban cameras, because child predators have been known to use them in illegal ways. Is this the kind of 'It's-not-my-fault' baloney you teach your kids? Look, if you want to be a parent, know what they are doing. We were all kids, we all got caught doing thins that we weren't supposed to be doing, and had a mom or dad or someone looking over our shoulder asking what was going on.
If you don't want to do what it takes to be a good parent, then you should have kept your pants on in the first place. Child predators were around long be fore MySpace and the Internet, so find something else to blame.
Ok... here is my attempt at a serious discussion, especially when we live in a time when politicians from both sides of the aisle like to throw around terms like 'Fascist', 'Dictator', 'Commie', 'Ulta-Conservative', 'Uber-Liberal', and the like. If you want a post that will suit your political leanings by exploiting this as a prime opportunity to Democrat-bash, go read some other post. I am a very strong Republican, but moderate more than conservative, as there is no mutual benefit to either side by being an extremist. Don't agrre with me because you are a Republican, but don't disagree with me because you are a Democrat.
I find it curious to note that there was a considerable share of Democrats that actually voted *yea* on this bill, instead of nay. I am quite suprsed to see that it was a very one-sided vote, as I would expect to see it either pass by a majority (a very unlikely event at all), or be rejected by a vast majority by both sides. However, only 7 Democrats voted with the majority against the bill to defeat it. I was not suprised to see this bill fail, but was still happy nonetheless. I was under the impression that personal freedom from government was the supreme sacred icom of the Democratic Party. The bill, a flagrant disregard for anything, having to do, even remotely, with the Constitution, would have essentially required registration for the excercise of free speech that had a quantified popularity. Basically, if more than a specified number of people liked or read your opinion (blog), then you would be required to register with the Federal Government as a lobbyist.
Yes, lobbyists are a strong influence on The Hill, but there is a distinct difference between how lobbyists and bloggers conduct their political warfare: Ammunition. Lobbyists use money and other monetary particulars (gifts, trips, and other compensations that are not in the form of currency or cash) as a means of excercising political influence. Bloggers use arguments, finger-pointing, jokes, cynical with, and cheap shots as their means of political warfare. Another difference is Strategy. Lobbyists are a behind-the-scenes, shadowy, clandestine type of political soldier. They fight their battles in the dark, sometimes with a pseudo-guerrilla style, and until recently, usually go unnoticed and fade away quickly. Bloggers are the kind who fight in the open, conducting the political equivalent of an open bayonet charge and carpet-bombing. They usually don't care who sees them and sometimes prefer it. No weapon, including the 'Nuclear Option' goes unused. When lobbyists strike, usually all that is heard is a muffled thud or a brief whimper. When bloggers strike, it's usually a nuclear explosion followed by a three-day Blitzkrieg of network television specials narrated by talking heads. Both have different motives: Lobbyists are usually business-oriented. Bloggers are roughly, in my view, a 40/40 mix of armchair political analysts (I don't mean that in a bad way; just most bloggers are not working for 'analysis farms' like Brookings or Pew or other similar institutions) and self-glorifying 'social pyromaniancs' who love to make outrageous claims so people will look at them. The remaining 20% are those who blog with clear political intentions, and can not be swayed by even the most blatantly contradictory facts.
What this bill was intended to do is classify both lobbyists and bloggers as one in the same. It's like a new form of Newspeak: Apples are apples, and oranges are oranges. Both are fruits. To make it easier for everyone, we'll just call them both fruits and eliminate the extra step of identifying each one as an apple or an orange. Both are fairly popular, so it is of great importantce that we just call them fruits, since that is all people need to know about them.
In no way did I expect this bill to pass, although I did leave some room open for the possibility, as other similarly-restrictive bills and nonesuch have been passed before. But the shocker for me was that only 7 Democrats voted against it. THAT was a
I wonder how much time and effort they put into the 'rifle-recognition' feature when the whole schee can be foiled in a million different ways.
First of all, it would have to have a prerecorded sound sample of every combat rifle in every configuration with evey type of every caliber with every type charge and every bullet type resulting in thousands of possibilities. Second, it would have to be able to compensate for sound changes caused by terrain features, changes in elevation, thermal gradients (possibly multiple gradients), distance, humidity, direction of fire, wind, and backgroud/ambient noise, animal life, vegetation. The mechanical variables would be bullet caliber, bullet type, bullet weight, charge size, charge type, primer type, fouled ammunition, barrel length, type of action (Bolt-action, pump-action, semi-automatic, full-automatic, rimfire, centerfire, shotgun, muzzle brake, gas-operated, recoil-operated), muzzle brake, grenade launcher (SKS-types). All of these variables can produce differently sounding muzzle 'blasts' that can disguise or alter, intentionally or not, the sound of the gunshot. What's more is that parts can be changed, such as longer or shorter barells on some rifles.
What use is sound recognition technology if it can only identify a gunshot cross an open field.
The problem is that since it *may* be able to recognize gunshots, there are way too many variables that current computing can account for.
Slashdot Mirror
The Internet is a hypochondriacs wet dream.....
3 /34968.html
This site is quite a good read if you are sick of seeing commercials for riduculous "Fad Medicine": http://www.quackwatch.org/
It's a really entertaining site! It's scary to know that there are people stupid enough out there to make money for the "doctors" out there that offer such bogus "remedies/treatments/therapies" etc.
A really scary site is Aetna's IntelliHealth section on "Complimentary & Alternative Medicine". I can't belive that a major medical provider is allowed to post/advertise such unbelievably stupid things.
Aetna InteliHealth URL:
http://www.intelihealth.com/IH/ihtIH/WSIHW000/851
No the real problem with tv pharmaceutical ads are the ads that hawk 'supplements'. It has been proven that the products sold as supplements are a bigger danger than the other FDA-approved drugs. When you sell something as a supplement, you cannot be regulated by the FDA. Instead of going after he major drug companies and their advertisements, why not do something that is actually usful and go after the companies that are sellgin 'supplements' that claim to do everything by make you rich.
Yesterday, while I was watching TV, I saw a ton of commercials that were selling 'supplements' such as, among other things:
1. A glue-stick like product that you roll across your forhead to cure headaches (Head On).
2. An ad for pills that claim to boost your memory (Focus Factor).
3. Ads for CortiSlim and TrimSpa, which claim weight loss (but only when used with a 'sensible' diet. Duh!)
4. Magazine and T.V. ads for a bracelet-like device that claims to fix dozens of bone and joint ailments you have (Q-Ray).
5. A spray-on product that claims to cure bone and joint pain (I forgot the name).
This kind of shameless advertising makes the large drug companies look like saints. It is also known that 'supplements' are usually more dangerous than the-r FDA-approved counterparts. What's more is that it is ILLEGAL for the FDA to even make an attempt to regulate these 'drugs', some of which are contain more potent psychoactive chemicals that vary wildly from batch to batch and even box to box. Just because they contain 'all natural' ingredients is clearly deceptive advertising, as the supplement companies make no mention of the unreliability and saftey issues associated with non-FDA approved supplements.
The drug companies actually disclose what can happen with their product and have FDA-approval, including strict testing and guidelines for their use. Supplements have NO OVERSIGHT as to their chemical content. Is it really worth to be whining about the claimed emotional ploys (yes, some really do abuse emotion, while others don't) when other companies are allowed to hawk untested, unregulated, and sometimes dangerous 'supplements' while enjoying full legal protection from authorities and regulators?
Leave it to welfare-mooching parasites and pork-crazed politicians to ruin the good fortunes of the hardworking man.
This just makes me hate the welfare-moochers and fat-assed politicos even more.
Let's get ready for the conspiracy theories!
All you need to do is find an offshore shell portal and submit your Google searches throuh them.
ProxyBox is used by some Chinese searchers and is an easy way to get around the blocks tht schoold put on MySpace.
In Soviet Russia, Wi-Fi drops YOU! .....oh wait, that already happens here in the States.
Wkipedia should be used by students as simply a general guid to sudjects that they are not familiar with. I t should be the same as asking a freind who just happens to know alot about everything. It should be used as a basic, 'here's-the-idea' type resource. For example, if I had to give a report on the effects of.....say....."the influence of metallurgical advances on the evolution of cooking utensils", I would probably go to Wikipedia for a rough idea about coking utensils and metallugy. I know about metallurgy, but not enough to help with the specific application in question. BUT, if I go to Wiki for info on cooking utensils and, separaely, metallurgy, I would probably have a good idea what was going on, but nothing accurate enough to write a report on, but enough to get me headed in the right direction.
Using Wikipedia as an encyclopedia is just asking for a problem. The Professors have every argument prohibiting it's use as a source or citation in reports. It's simply too inaccurate, and, from the student's vantage point, impossible to tell what and where *exactly* innacuracies are.
I would NEVER and HAVE NEVER used Wikipedia as a 'source' of information. The only things I use it for is if I want to get a basic hold on a subject that I don't anything about. If you want accurate, buy the World Book or Encyclopedia Britannica encyclopedias.
Old News. Pass it on.....
Why don't they just stop minting pennies for a short break. That would force people to spend their pennies as a way of getting exact change, because reatailers won't issue them pennies as part of their change. Then, when the retailers go to the back, the pennies are transferred from the retailer to the bank, and then back to the mint, where they can be melted down or stored and reminted when the amount of metals in reserve has made them chepaer to mint?
Pennies are usually givern in amounts up to 4, unless I've run out of them in my til l, the customer doesn't want them (where they usually go into whatever charity box on the register), or I just feel like giving them a nickel instead. So, instead me me having to give exact change because they paid in an amount greater than the total, why not force consumers to pay with exact change and send the pennies in the other direction?
Trust me. Alot of people have these things HOARDED up, either intentionally, or just because they don't want to go through the hassle of taking them to the bank.
I once hade to identify the date, mint, design, any misstrikes of errors, and then compare it with 25 years of "Penny Books" to see if my freind's grandfather had already collected it.
As if that wasn't enough, I had to help count and roll them. In the end, we (mainly me and me ex-g/f) had done this with over $500.00 worth, or 50,000 individual pennies.
Good point, but someone would then have to do something that would make the manufacturing technology and manufacturing rights public domain, which is practically impossible, since it is a technology that Sony copyrighted/patented.
Hybrid players will do the same thing for the format war that the Big Three video game platforms ave done for the video game industry: Change the game but not finish it.
.avi, .wmv, .rm, .mpeg, .mpg, .xvid, .umd, .mp4... It's just another pain in the ass thing to complexify the problem. Sure media players can goup all of these into a single player, but the contractural and legal issue that arise, since these are proprietary formats, make updaes and compatibility a h uge headache and pain in the ass.
There are now three formats out: Standard DVD, Blu-Ray, and HD-DVD. If you bought a player that would play all three, why would you need to switch? Of course, in the future, DVD will definitely become obselet, since it is the only format that is not HD as Blu-Ray and HD-DVD already are. So, that leaves two high definition formats for 100% of the HD disk market share. If you start selling hybrid players that can play both of them, then what does it matter if you are buying Blu-Ray or HD-DVD? Unless you are a videophile or always have to have the biggest and best of anything in your neighborhood, it doesn't matter what format you use. So, if companies no longer have to worry about compatibility issues and the criticality of those issues in determining a commercially viable product, no one is going to back out and let the other take over. If companies realize that they no longer have to worry about getting customers to buy their products as a matter of life and death, then we will be stuck with the same problem facing video game developers: Platform contracts, format conracts, and proprietary content issues that just irritate the customer because they would have to buy multiple expensive platforms so they can play all the games they enjoy, not just be limited to a specific few.
A hybrid player would further the multiple format problems that just flat out irritate users, since they would have to buy a hybrid player to be able to fully enjoy video media. If movie houses and studios got locked into contracts depending on what Sony will pay and what HD-DVD manufacturers will pay. If hybrid players come out, then good, I won't have to buy a different player for certain movies. BUT, then ALL players that you bought in the future would have to be dual format. The same thing can be seen in video media files:
They should do it like TV: "We're gonna switch from analog to digital in 2010. Do what you need to change. If you want something else, buy it, but it's you're problem.". There needs to be standard format for media, and someone needs to put practicalty above profits for that to happen.
If you want to see what runaway formats can be like, just look at a complete list of Centerfire Rifle Calibers (Wikipedia has a short list). They all do the same thing, but everybody wants to make there mark on the industry.
SlashDot is the perfect format and environment for marketers to get their company name thrown around. I call it Viral Reporting or Viral Journalism, since all that is needed to further your business is the mention of your company in a journalistic context, being for a positive or negative reason, where millions of people will check you out, even if they despise you. Thus, even though you have created a negative PR image, you get unintentional advertising and name exposure with the great possibility of financial windfall from it.
I have noticed lately that Apple has two very distinct faces. Steve Jobs, idolozed by Apple Worms as someone who built a company that cares about computer users and strives to make the internet and computer seamlessly integrated into human society and as easy as possible for people to use, and to allow the spreading of ideas and media throughout the world. Then there is the other face of Apple Marketing, which totally contradicts the "People loving, society oriented, free thinking" world that Steve Jobs is proclaimng to love.
This marketing gimmick (one of MANY, for Apple) is purely an exmple of marketing tactics that make it almost indistinguishable from Microsoft and most Network News stations. Apple can created this wonderful public relations image in the eyes of the consumer, and has, almost literally, made the consumer fall in love with it. Apple has figured out that they can exploit this "Aple Affinity" to their advantage by using the good PR as a means of diverting the customers' attention away from their tactics and sedating them with all of the benefits and joys of Apple products.
Apple is just like Microsoft, in that what lies underneath is a big stinking pile of crap. The only difference is that Apple is more appealing to the customer. Would YOU buy a pile of dog crap if it smelled Mountain Springtime or Pine fresh? I still wouldn't, because it know what it really is.
I used to use a Macintosh LC, back in the days where a quad speed CD-ROM's and 14.4 modems were was the status equivalent of optical holographic drives and T4 connections. However, PC or Mac, the marketing schemes that all companies, not just electronics, create to divert attention has crosse the line from being a threat to society to controlling society. When you control what people see, you ARE what people see and that can be abused when you control content for your own personal or commercial interests.
Cars only sway in ice or oil? Then why are there accidents on icy and oily road surfaces? Yes the car is a newtonian object but in almost all cars, except those are 2x4, 4x4, or full-time AWD, only one rear wheel actually drives the car forward. So, if that rear wheel is the only one that has traction, the car whill fishtail or swerve, and the driver will over-correct, which results in even more sliding arouns. Also, the car will only go in a straight direct as a result of Newtonian physics IF ALL of the other wheels have an equal amount of traction. If they don,t then the car will not travel in a stright light because of changes in drag at different points on the car. Since the change is at multiple points at the four corners of a car, tractive changes will cause the momentum of the vehicle to treat that point as a fulcrum and the inertia of the car will be diverted in a straight line relative to the point with the greatest tractive force.
RTFA-The article also says that a counteractive agent is sprayed onto tractive surfaces such as boots and tires that counteract the slickness of the 'black ice'.
I am more of a documentary fan rather than a movie fan, and I still see cars slide on ice and oil, even in live footage. Hollywood conspiracy?
Jumbo jets, Statues of Liberties, etc. are all large enough for people to roughly compare size with. Nobody can see a white blood cell, or can make a practical comparison of it to other easily observable things. I can easily compare a 747 other things, such as a yacht or football field because they are both commonly observed and easily observed. Comparing the physical size of a white blood cell to the data size of the Declaration of Independance is a little difficult, since the average person (or even supehuman, unless your are a die-hard Geek) can observe the data size of the Declaration of Independace without a computer or other computational device, and cannot judge the size of a white blood cell without having observed it through a microscope. It's like asking someone what their height in angstroms or parsecs is.
Of course, with any reference object, the whole principle of using comparative measurements is meaningless unless you understand the actual size of what objects are being compared. It was just a rough, albeit somewhat confusing, comparison between physical size and data size.
I think what they were trying to say is that the data density is higher in the amount of physical space occupied by a white blood cell than is occupied by the same data set on a hard disk platter.
Speaking of obscure and confusing measurements, I would love to hear of someone who correctly uses obscrue, overly technical, or ancient measurements to correctly list their physical characterists on their next tax return or census form.
Weight: 44,528,163,360,000,000,000,000,000,000 Gigaelectronvolts
Height: 16 729 333 475 172.748 X-Units
Date Of Birth: 423964800 Unix Timestamp Date
Age: 72,532,800,000,000,000 Shakes
We already save billions in hot air..... :P
Nice nice... At least you guys are on the right track. Our Sentor Dianne Feinstein has officially vowed to vote against anything that has to deal with nuclear power, even the new (and really cool) Pebble Bed Modular Reactors, so that leaves wind power, gas turbine, and solar the only remotely viable methods. Wind power is illegal now in the only productive areas, and the only place we get enough sun is in the deserts.
However, in a state of 33,871,648 (2000) people, that would require covering so much open space with PV arrays that it would make the land preservationists scream bloody murder. That takes us back to square one and leaves us with our existing nuclear plants and the only option of build more gas turbines.
What if you registered your PV arrays as an independant power company? Here in California, the larger utilities would be forced to buy the electricity from you ar market value.
Also, about people who want to go wind turbine, don't. There is an indefinite (read: nearly permanent) moratorium on issuing permits for ind turbines because of birds that fly into them and are killed. Makes yu wonder what is going on in the Green movement.
Wind Power in the windiest place on Earth is currently illegal.
Someone will ask me how my nano movers are:
"Belligerant and numerous!
"Perverting The Course Of Justice" Oh my God. How I wish that was a technical legal term here in the States. Simply great.
It's amazing that you can patent something that you didn't invent or create. I think the names were created so that people would more easily associte 'digestivus' and 'regularus' with their product's claimed benefits. THAT is a marketing ploy that should be illegal. You should not be able to rename a life form just to make it sound more holistically appealing for product sale, as the renaming of the not so chic-trendy name 'Bifidobacterium animalis' which is the REAL name on the bacteria. If you look at all the other names and trade names for Bifidobacterium animalis, they are all geared toward generating sales. Activo, Digestivum, Essenis, Regularis, everything BUT the real name of the bacteria.
Someone should call them on this.
In addition to licensing the formula to chemical companies and manufacturers, the would make a hell of alot more by licensing to toy companie. THAT would be a huge sale during the next Spider Man release or Christmas season. The problems that happened during the Tickle Me Elmo ordeal would pale in comparison.
Did they store the image on ONE photon, or did they store it on MULTIPLE photons. Also, they didn't define what they meant by 'image'. Did they mean 'image' in a sense like storing a photograph of yourself, or did they mean 'image' in the sense that it is an energy level that only codes for ONE PIXEL in an image? From the "UR" sample images, it appears that they were able to only code each individual photo so that it functions as a pixel, rather than an image. Remember, there is a difference between pixels and images.
Sometimes, I think that researchers and engineers get so excited about things that they forget what they are talking about and are so eager to proclaim their new 'discovery' to the world that they tend to over-exaggerate and/or forget what exactly they really did.
As blown out of proportion as their claim is, it is really cool that they were actually able to code photons as pixels.
Problems with your "points":
Your Point #1: It has everything to do with parenting skill. If you are any bit worth a parent, you WILL be able to find out what they are doing because you will realize the importance of knowing what your kids are up to. Yes, we were all kids, and all of us got caught doing something we wren't supposed to be doing. In my case, it was building a truck mounted potato cannon that could be heard from two zip codes away, imitation nitrocellulose and napalm, and launching rockets from miniature 'silos' buried underneath the backyard lawn. Don't pawn off your shortcoings as a parent on other things and expect them to do your job for you. You don't have to monitor your kids all the time to know what is going on and what shouldn't be going on.
Your Point #2: MySpace undoubtedly knows there are predators operating on their site and there is absolutely no way to tell a predator from Joe Average on the Internet. You can't expect everyone to be able to and eager to provide a credit card #, or driver's license number, or social security number just so they can sign up. What do you propose next.....Shutting down the Internet because ICANN knows full well that child predators operate on the Internet as well? What about the local Mall? I'll bet that there are more child predators at America's malls at any given time than there are on MySpace. So, seeing as how we know, through police records, news reports, and such, that child predators are lurking at malls, does it make sense to shut them down like MySpace? Absolutely not.
Your Point #3: Registration through snail mail? Are you serious? This isn't exactly a warranty card for your new vaccuum cleaner we're talking about. Nobody would care enough about anything online if they has to send in written permission through the mail. Besides, if you can fake it online, you can fake it in the mail. Like I said before, ID can be faked, if you haven't been paying attention to the amount of ID fraud that has been going on for the last decade. It's not about profits, it's about PRACTICALITY. It is very impractical to sort through the millions of requests that MySpace would be slammed with if there had to be someone to physically open the letter, read it, enter the information, and then file the letter as proof. I know it has become popular in society for the Have-Nots to blame there problems and misery on the Haves.
Your Point #4: That's it, blame the guys who have more mone than you. Your envy of the rich is telling and it is a bad argument anyways. So what if they made a pile of money operating their site. If they were catering exclusively to child predators, then that would be flagrantly illegal. What manner are they operating in? They aren't catering exclusively to child predators, or even to predators in any way. They are offering a service that is being used by EVERYONE, but in the wrong way by a few individuals who use it in a way as serving their own illegal and sordid intentions.
MySpace is being user freindly to EVERYONE. It is up to the choices made by the individual, NOT MYSPACE, to use the service in any way that they want.....Just like the entire globe uses the Internet any way they want. From porn to the periodic table, the Internet is what you make of it. Should we ban telephones because child predators use them too? How about vehicles and strip malls. Or, maybe even ban cameras, because child predators have been known to use them in illegal ways. Is this the kind of 'It's-not-my-fault' baloney you teach your kids? Look, if you want to be a parent, know what they are doing. We were all kids, we all got caught doing thins that we weren't supposed to be doing, and had a mom or dad or someone looking over our shoulder asking what was going on.
If you don't want to do what it takes to be a good parent, then you should have kept your pants on in the first place. Child predators were around long be fore MySpace and the Internet, so find something else to blame.
Ok... here is my attempt at a serious discussion, especially when we live in a time when politicians from both sides of the aisle like to throw around terms like 'Fascist', 'Dictator', 'Commie', 'Ulta-Conservative', 'Uber-Liberal', and the like. If you want a post that will suit your political leanings by exploiting this as a prime opportunity to Democrat-bash, go read some other post. I am a very strong Republican, but moderate more than conservative, as there is no mutual benefit to either side by being an extremist. Don't agrre with me because you are a Republican, but don't disagree with me because you are a Democrat.
I find it curious to note that there was a considerable share of Democrats that actually voted *yea* on this bill, instead of nay. I am quite suprsed to see that it was a very one-sided vote, as I would expect to see it either pass by a majority (a very unlikely event at all), or be rejected by a vast majority by both sides. However, only 7 Democrats voted with the majority against the bill to defeat it. I was not suprised to see this bill fail, but was still happy nonetheless. I was under the impression that personal freedom from government was the supreme sacred icom of the Democratic Party. The bill, a flagrant disregard for anything, having to do, even remotely, with the Constitution, would have essentially required registration for the excercise of free speech that had a quantified popularity. Basically, if more than a specified number of people liked or read your opinion (blog), then you would be required to register with the Federal Government as a lobbyist.
Yes, lobbyists are a strong influence on The Hill, but there is a distinct difference between how lobbyists and bloggers conduct their political warfare: Ammunition. Lobbyists use money and other monetary particulars (gifts, trips, and other compensations that are not in the form of currency or cash) as a means of excercising political influence. Bloggers use arguments, finger-pointing, jokes, cynical with, and cheap shots as their means of political warfare. Another difference is Strategy. Lobbyists are a behind-the-scenes, shadowy, clandestine type of political soldier. They fight their battles in the dark, sometimes with a pseudo-guerrilla style, and until recently, usually go unnoticed and fade away quickly. Bloggers are the kind who fight in the open, conducting the political equivalent of an open bayonet charge and carpet-bombing. They usually don't care who sees them and sometimes prefer it. No weapon, including the 'Nuclear Option' goes unused. When lobbyists strike, usually all that is heard is a muffled thud or a brief whimper. When bloggers strike, it's usually a nuclear explosion followed by a three-day Blitzkrieg of network television specials narrated by talking heads. Both have different motives: Lobbyists are usually business-oriented. Bloggers are roughly, in my view, a 40/40 mix of armchair political analysts (I don't mean that in a bad way; just most bloggers are not working for 'analysis farms' like Brookings or Pew or other similar institutions) and self-glorifying 'social pyromaniancs' who love to make outrageous claims so people will look at them. The remaining 20% are those who blog with clear political intentions, and can not be swayed by even the most blatantly contradictory facts.
What this bill was intended to do is classify both lobbyists and bloggers as one in the same. It's like a new form of Newspeak: Apples are apples, and oranges are oranges. Both are fruits. To make it easier for everyone, we'll just call them both fruits and eliminate the extra step of identifying each one as an apple or an orange. Both are fairly popular, so it is of great importantce that we just call them fruits, since that is all people need to know about them.
In no way did I expect this bill to pass, although I did leave some room open for the possibility, as other similarly-restrictive bills and nonesuch have been passed before. But the shocker for me was that only 7 Democrats voted against it. THAT was a
I wonder how much time and effort they put into the 'rifle-recognition' feature when the whole schee can be foiled in a million different ways.
First of all, it would have to have a prerecorded sound sample of every combat rifle in every configuration with evey type of every caliber with every type charge and every bullet type resulting in thousands of possibilities. Second, it would have to be able to compensate for sound changes caused by terrain features, changes in elevation, thermal gradients (possibly multiple gradients), distance, humidity, direction of fire, wind, and backgroud/ambient noise, animal life, vegetation. The mechanical variables would be bullet caliber, bullet type, bullet weight, charge size, charge type, primer type, fouled ammunition, barrel length, type of action (Bolt-action, pump-action, semi-automatic, full-automatic, rimfire, centerfire, shotgun, muzzle brake, gas-operated, recoil-operated), muzzle brake, grenade launcher (SKS-types). All of these variables can produce differently sounding muzzle 'blasts' that can disguise or alter, intentionally or not, the sound of the gunshot. What's more is that parts can be changed, such as longer or shorter barells on some rifles.
What use is sound recognition technology if it can only identify a gunshot cross an open field.
The problem is that since it *may* be able to recognize gunshots, there are way too many variables that current computing can account for.