Kids, do *not* think that this is a mirror. Moderators, do *not* moderate this up. If you don't believe me, just view the pics when there are no children around.
Let me try to put this in context. Bend, Oregon is a small town, with nothing nearby except for Redmond, Oregon (not to be confused with Redmond, Washington, 450 miles north).
All around these two towns is pretty much nothing. There used to be a lot of logging in the area, but that died off from a combination of droughts, diseases, fires, and the spotted owl.
Bend has tried to reinvent itself as a technology mecca, but is still a outdoorsy, REI feeling town. Smith Rock is good for climbing, the lakes are good for fishing, and Mt. Bachelor is some of the best skiing in the Pacific West (CA, OR, & WA).
So it's still a sleepy resort town, up in a high desert climate. The air feels thin enough that you may imagine you actually are in space.
The point is, what else are you going to do with your time? Rustle cattle in the desert? Not likely.
Having someone decide to strap themselves to a rocket and blast 30 miles up doesn't surprise me. The people that live there are very well educated, have spending money, and tend to be a bit.. eccentric.
Ask yourself: how many people do you know that double their disk drives? Probably not very many, if any at all.
A few years ago that was all the rage. Now drives are cheap and large. I expect the same to happen with memory- with all the new technologies coming down the pipeline, would you really want to hassle with a "ram doubler"?
Even if it's in memory, you KNOW it's going to cause a bug in some program somewhere:-)
My phone is seeing quite clearly three tower where I am right now, and I'm in a small town. In high density urban areas, you quite often have more than that.
This may be true in relatively simple areas, geographically speaking, but I'll present 3 examples here that show it isn't that simple:
1. San Diego, California. The place is full of mesas, valleys, and canyons. Line of Sight is often not very far because you're either on the side of a hill, or at the bottom of a hill where LOS isn't very far in most directions. If you're at the top of a hill, LOS isn't usually very far either because the land rolls so much.
Sheesh. It wasn't THAT many years ago that Washington State thought we were doomed.
That's when they started building nuke plants under a project named WPPSS (yes, "whoops"). It ended up being the biggest bond default of all time.
Why? Because they were projecting a linear growth in population and energy. Instead, we became more energy efficient, and as the population went up 50%, we only used 10% more energy.
There are several places in Washington State where you can see the rotting hulks of nuke plants that were never put into commission.
The doom and gloom that they are predicting in 2007 may never come true. Does it take into account Moore's law? By 2007, it's likely that computing will be using *less* energy than it is using now, yet have grown by leaps and bounds.
One point is that this article is stating that the summary motion filed by Napster was denied. Basically Napster didn't want to go through a full court battle, they hoped the case would just be dismissed.
This isn't really a problem for Napster, it just indicates that the judge notices that there are issues being disputed, and he needs a full hearing on them.
You've got some good points. Of course, I'm willing to bet that Polaroid cameras are more than 5% of the cameras sold, and nobody expects them to take over anytime soon:-)
You do have some good points aout paying for the pics, getting the new digital functions, and more.
It's been said for the last 3 years that digital cameras are replacing "film" cameras. I don't think that's happening.
Digitals are great for snapshots, web-related stuff, and the like, but most individuals that have a serious interest in photography will own a digital, plus one or more "film" cameras.
It seems that the digital camera is an add-on- you don't replace a good camera with a digital, you simply use both.
It's amazing how good the quality of old-fashioned film cameras is. The level of control over your subject through aperture, focus, lenses, exposure time, film usage, and more hasn't been duplicated in the digital world. The quality of 35mm has not been matched in the digital space yet, not to mention medium format!
Saying that "undegreed kids with little formal knowledge [is a bad thing]" isn't always true. I work at a large "dotcom", that would rather see 4 years of real world experience than 4 years of book experience. The majority of the software engineers here are "undegreed", and I'm willing to bet they could code in circles around many individuals with degrees.
One of the issues that affects this is that individuals that are self-starters, that have learned how to code because they wanted to, and have done so on their own, can code better than an individual that didn't decide until his junior year in college to be a comp sci major. So the guys walking out of college are going to be using old AS/400s, NT platforms and the like, while the "undegreed" kids are the ones that have hacked on linux since the 1.0 kernels were released.
Who would you like on your team? I'd rather have the individual that doesn't have a pretty piece of paper from some prestigous college that his parents paid for him to party through.
I was going to post on how to design high-capacity web sites as we do here at MP3.com, but got involved in this instead. Feh.
Here are good explanations of the word play and allusions in the patent mentioned in this post. The URL they came from will follow.
4,666,425 (*) [GG, RB] -- "Device for Perfusing an Animal Head." Yep, anmachine designed to keep a severed head alive. Sadly, all drawings show the head from the back; the draftsman missed a great opportunity to have some great expressions. Assignee-at-issue is "Dis Corporation," a play on words of "discorporation," to have one's head severed (Or death, if one reads Heinlen).
["Applied for as a joke by 'Chet Fleming,' a nom de plume. Fleming wrote a book about it, which I have a copy of. His device allows one to remove a head of an animal (or human) and hook it up to a prior art heart/lung machine, kidney dialysis, etc., to keep the head alive. Examiners have had great fun with it -- a bulletin board favorite, with the obvious comparisons to 'They Saved Hitler's Brain' (that great B-movie). I understand the Office was embarrassed and may have withdrawn it from issue (apparently not - ed.). The copies in the shoes were stamped 'do not cite as reference.' 'Fleming's' book is 'If We Can Keep A Severed Head Alive...,' published by Polinym Press (ISBN 0-942287-02-9). A friend of mine knew 'Fleming,' who is an engineer and patent attorney (and is probably reading this). I'd love to meet him." - RB].
And the URL: http://www.perpendicular.com/becker/craig/patents. html
I don't know of any that have hit the market yet. The CD player in the Ford Focus is rumored to play MP3 CDs- though I haven't ever heard directly from someone that can say yes or no for sure.
The Pine unit, the MamboX, Aiwa's upcoming car unit, and others are all supposed to be released within the next 3 months. Of course, that's what they said 3 months ago.
tedt (at) MP3.com Want to code perl at MP3.com? Drop me a line..
Per what court ruling are they "not allowed to do that"?
As an example, individuals flying over Oregon State (and other states, I imagine) are required to wear seatbelts at all times- not just during turbulence and takeoff/landing. Most airlines also have this policy, but Oregon has made it law.
Does that mean that the pilots are "forced to check that their passengers are not in Oregon" if they want to take off their seat belt inflight? I really doubt it.
Back to the matter at hand, the law's passing was GREAT in the antispam community. There is a registry of Washington State email addresses and domains that spammers can crosscheck their lists with to make sure they are excluding those in Washington.
From a more philisophical standpoint, this law was drafted quite nicely. And it was doing a good job at getting the ball rolling for other, better antispam laws in other states. Yeah, it should be a federal law (probably, people would argue this too), but that hasn't been close to reality yet. Let's start a state at a time.
Also note that several people have won damages using this law. This is NOT the first time it was tried in court.
Sure, it has been done before (Matrix), sure it was a little thin in plot, but you've got to give them credit for trying.
Attacking a Matrix-like plot is perfect for X-files. It isn't little green men, but it has the "paranormal" factor.
What it seemed to be missing was an adequate cause of death for the unlucky duo that died. But they could't make it too much like the Matrix either.:-).
I give it an 8 of 10 for effort, 6 of 10 for execution, and 9 of 10 for the geek factor.
Slashdot Mirror
This is not a mirror, kids. Don't go there thinking it is.
-ted
Uh, *don't* go there. Those images aren't for kids. And it *isn't* a mirror. Really.
-ted
Kids, do *not* think that this is a mirror. Moderators, do *not* moderate this up. If you don't believe me, just view the pics when there are no children around.
-ted
Let me try to put this in context. Bend, Oregon is a small town, with nothing nearby except for Redmond, Oregon (not to be confused with Redmond, Washington, 450 miles north).
All around these two towns is pretty much nothing. There used to be a lot of logging in the area, but that died off from a combination of droughts, diseases, fires, and the spotted owl.
Bend has tried to reinvent itself as a technology mecca, but is still a outdoorsy, REI feeling town. Smith Rock is good for climbing, the lakes are good for fishing, and Mt. Bachelor is some of the best skiing in the Pacific West (CA, OR, & WA).
So it's still a sleepy resort town, up in a high desert climate. The air feels thin enough that you may imagine you actually are in space.
The point is, what else are you going to do with your time? Rustle cattle in the desert? Not likely.
Having someone decide to strap themselves to a rocket and blast 30 miles up doesn't surprise me. The people that live there are very well educated, have spending money, and tend to be a bit.. eccentric.
-ted
MP3s are already very highly compressed.
-ted, MP3.com software engineer
Ask yourself: how many people do you know that double their disk drives? Probably not very many, if any at all.
:-)
A few years ago that was all the rage. Now drives are cheap and large. I expect the same to happen with memory- with all the new technologies coming down the pipeline, would you really want to hassle with a "ram doubler"?
Even if it's in memory, you KNOW it's going to cause a bug in some program somewhere
Hmm. ESPN and ABC have been doing this for at least two race seasons. True, no IR, but RPM, braking and g-forces are all there.
Have you watched a race.. ever?
-ted
Yeah! Wacky Willies.
For those that haven't ever been to WW in Portland, Oregon, imagine a military surplus store crossed with Radio Shack and your parts bin.
They've got everything, from industrial chemicals to bulk wire to test tubes to heater elements. Definitely a geeks' dream.
-ted, now in San Diego (1000 miles from WW)
This may be true in relatively simple areas, geographically speaking, but I'll present 3 examples here that show it isn't that simple:
1. San Diego, California. The place is full of mesas, valleys, and canyons. Line of Sight is often not very far because you're either on the side of a hill, or at the bottom of a hill where LOS isn't very far in most directions. If you're at the top of a hill, LOS isn't usually very far either because the land rolls so much.
2. San Francisco, California. Similar problems.
3. Seattle, Washington. Similar problems.
-ted
That's when they started building nuke plants under a project named WPPSS (yes, "whoops"). It ended up being the biggest bond default of all time.
Why? Because they were projecting a linear growth in population and energy. Instead, we became more energy efficient, and as the population went up 50%, we only used 10% more energy.
There are several places in Washington State where you can see the rotting hulks of nuke plants that were never put into commission.
The doom and gloom that they are predicting in 2007 may never come true. Does it take into account Moore's law? By 2007, it's likely that computing will be using *less* energy than it is using now, yet have grown by leaps and bounds.
-ted
This isn't really a problem for Napster, it just indicates that the judge notices that there are issues being disputed, and he needs a full hearing on them.
You do have some good points aout paying for the pics, getting the new digital functions, and more.
Digitals are great for snapshots, web-related stuff, and the like, but most individuals that have a serious interest in photography will own a digital, plus one or more "film" cameras.
It seems that the digital camera is an add-on- you don't replace a good camera with a digital, you simply use both.
It's amazing how good the quality of old-fashioned film cameras is. The level of control over your subject through aperture, focus, lenses, exposure time, film usage, and more hasn't been duplicated in the digital world. The quality of 35mm has not been matched in the digital space yet, not to mention medium format!
One of the issues that affects this is that individuals that are self-starters, that have learned how to code because they wanted to, and have done so on their own, can code better than an individual that didn't decide until his junior year in college to be a comp sci major. So the guys walking out of college are going to be using old AS/400s, NT platforms and the like, while the "undegreed" kids are the ones that have hacked on linux since the 1.0 kernels were released.
Who would you like on your team? I'd rather have the individual that doesn't have a pretty piece of paper from some prestigous college that his parents paid for him to party through.
I was going to post on how to design high-capacity web sites as we do here at MP3.com, but got involved in this instead. Feh.
-ted
4,666,425 (*) [GG, RB] -- "Device for Perfusing an Animal Head." Yep, anmachine designed to keep a severed head alive. Sadly, all drawings show the head from the back; the draftsman missed a great opportunity to have some great expressions. Assignee-at-issue is "Dis Corporation," a play on words of "discorporation," to have one's head severed (Or death, if one reads Heinlen).
["Applied for as a joke by 'Chet Fleming,' a nom de plume. Fleming wrote a book about it, which I have a copy of. His device allows one to remove a head of an animal (or human) and hook it up to a prior art heart/lung machine, kidney dialysis, etc., to keep the head alive. Examiners have had great fun with it -- a bulletin board favorite, with the obvious comparisons to 'They Saved Hitler's Brain' (that great B-movie). I understand the Office was embarrassed and may have withdrawn it from issue (apparently not - ed.). The copies in the shoes were stamped 'do not cite as reference.' 'Fleming's' book is 'If We Can Keep A Severed Head Alive...,' published by Polinym Press (ISBN 0-942287-02-9). A friend of mine knew 'Fleming,' who is an engineer and patent attorney (and is probably reading this). I'd love to meet him." - RB].
And the URL: http://www.perpendicular.com/becker/craig/patents. html
-ted
How many pairs of shoes do the shoemaker's children have?
-ted
Sounds like when the empeg came out- it shipped what, 12 months late?
tedt (at) MP3.com
Want to code perl at MP3.com? Drop me a line!
The Pine unit, the MamboX, Aiwa's upcoming car unit, and others are all supposed to be released within the next 3 months. Of course, that's what they said 3 months ago.
tedt (at) MP3.com
Want to code perl at MP3.com? Drop me a line..
Okay Hemos et al, will you be telling us why the site was down for ~7+ hours, or not?
If you're on a 33.6 modem, you're already throttling bandwidth :-)
-ted
This hardly seems more than a followup on a story CmdrTaco ran a month ago. Or maybe it's just the voices in my head.
Washington State Attorney General sues spammer
The text of the law (mirror)
4 individuals sue a spammer
The Washington State Attorney General's Office (spam section)
-ted
As an example, individuals flying over Oregon State (and other states, I imagine) are required to wear seatbelts at all times- not just during turbulence and takeoff/landing. Most airlines also have this policy, but Oregon has made it law.
Does that mean that the pilots are "forced to check that their passengers are not in Oregon" if they want to take off their seat belt inflight? I really doubt it.
Back to the matter at hand, the law's passing was GREAT in the antispam community. There is a registry of Washington State email addresses and domains that spammers can crosscheck their lists with to make sure they are excluding those in Washington.
From a more philisophical standpoint, this law was drafted quite nicely. And it was doing a good job at getting the ball rolling for other, better antispam laws in other states. Yeah, it should be a federal law (probably, people would argue this too), but that hasn't been close to reality yet. Let's start a state at a time.
Also note that several people have won damages using this law. This is NOT the first time it was tried in court.
-ted
Attacking a Matrix-like plot is perfect for X-files. It isn't little green men, but it has the "paranormal" factor.
What it seemed to be missing was an adequate cause of death for the unlucky duo that died. But they could't make it too much like the Matrix either. :-).
I give it an 8 of 10 for effort, 6 of 10 for execution, and 9 of 10 for the geek factor.
-ted