But at least social security, medicare and medicade actually _help_ people. The Iraq War doesn't seem to be doing that. Don't give me the whole "the people of Iraq want us there" crap. I served in the U.S.M.C. They don't want us for the most part. Some seem to be glad the we got rid of a nasty dictator, however now most seem to be like, "Uh, OK, now get the hell out". While I think the people are stuck in the middle ages as far as their religious beliefs go, that is there right.
Stop bashing social security, medicare and medicade when there are many Americans that actually need it. I personally am blessed and have good health insurance, income, etc. However, I have met many others that have had to choose between paying rent, buying food or getting much needed medication. That is a sad state for _any_ American to be in. We are the wealthiest single nation in the world. Why can't we come up with some system to allow everyone to at least get proper medical treatment and medication?
Private health care just doesn't cut it. Private health care only cares about one thing. Profits. Profits and the well-being of a human do not mix well.
Why did you have to say Gryffon. I was getting tired and ready to head to the sack. Now I need to grab some beers and play some type of fantasy game with Gryffon's!
That's your choice, but how much more of the market would Apple get by supporting Divx?
Are you serious? How many people out there that would even be interested in a device like this use DRM encrusted formats vs. DivX/Xvid? Just look to P2P/Usenet for the answer. How many posts items on P2P/Usenet do you see that use DRm encrusted wmv or DRM encrusted m4v? I can tell you the answer, none. How many users encode the DVD's that they bought to DRM encrusted wmv or DRM encrusted m4v? I hope the answer is none, I know I do not.
Streaming MPEG/H.264 across a regular wireless connection sucks. I tried to watch a TV show I bought from iTMS on my Intel iMac streaming to my Intel Macbook over a wireless connection. It was choppy as h-e-double-hockey-sticks with a perfect Wireless G connection. MPEG is to large, and H.264 just uses too much CPU, at least on the two recent Intel Mac's that I have bought over the last 4 months.
OK, I have never played SL. I take it that SL is just some VR game? So, people actually pay real money so the can get a better "life" in SL? Damnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn! Can anyone say...... loser?
So now there is a real company selling _make_pretend_assets? You have got to be kidding me? So what happens if I create a person in SL, have this make pretend person go and get/buy a gun. Next I have this make pretend person go and shoot someone. Does that mean that in _real_life_ I get arrested for murder?
Please, I am not trolling here. I have never played these type of "life" games. I am an old-school dude that played D&D games like Secret of the Silver Blades (dang, I loved that one).
I thought Apple products "just work". If that is the case then why the need for a "hack"? Oh, and I also thought Apple products were targeted at the average user? How in the world would an average user be able to do this "hack"?
Take off your Steve-Jobs-Blinders(tm) and get a grip. Everything Apple does is not perfect. People can have an opinion about Apple products.
Why did I post? Well I live in a free country and I and just expressing my opinion. If you don't like it than too bad. Sorry if I hurt your feelings. I know you get a woody for Steve Jobs.
you're just bitching.
So giving an opinion about the lack of features in an Apple product is "bitching" while giving an opinion about the lack of features in an MS product is "insightful"? Geez, anyone with 3 brain cells can see right through you Apple fanboi's.
You can use Handbrake (free open source software available for Windows, Macs, and Linux) to rip DVDs to either MPEG or H.264
Uh, MPEG uses up way to much space. The AppleTV has a very small HD, way too small IMO. H.264 under QuickTime sucks. It uses up way too much CPU and can be jerky. I personally want DivX or Xvid. That is why I don't think the AppleTV is a good product. Why do you Apple fanboi's run around trying to "damage control" when someone says they do not like an Apple product? Should every human in the world love Apple and all of their products?
And QuickTime doesn't support much OTB. I have a DivX file and an Xvid file. QuickTime wouldn't play them OTB, which means AppleTV won't play them either. Unless, of course you want to void your warranty and "hack" the AppleTV.
I think a stronger case could be made for them to try to support Windows Media -- at least there's a reason for so much content to exist in that format.
Huh? And what reason is that? To give more money to Microsoft? No thanks. MS Windows Media sucks. It is MS Windows only. I tried to get it to play on Linux and OS X. The Flip4Mac stuff sucks on my two Intel based Macs. It constantly would hang or crash so I go rid of Flip4Mac. Just try to play some DRM-encrusted wmv on Mac or Linux, it won't work. So why in the world would I want an AppleTV to support more DRMed crap? Apple puts enough DRM crap in AppleTV, please don't add Microsoft's DRM crap on top of it.
While as a geek I think it is cool to hack the hardware to offer more features, I don't think you should have to do that for a device you pay for to just watch some content that you record. Xvid is open, so there is no reason for Apple to not at least include Xvid playback support. The only thing I can think of is that Apple wants the AppleTV to be nothing more than a player for iTMS content. If that is the case, then no thanks.
That is a lot of crap to do just to support a non-DRM encrusted format. The blurb even said you need QT Pro, which means more money for Apple to just play a file. No thanks, I will stick to MythTV.
Well, speaking as a chemist, I can tell you for sure that it would take a chemistry graduate student under a day to reverse engineer the trade secret formulation.
I agree with you here to some extent. My father, his brother, and his aunt are all chemists. One thing I will say though, is that the formulation is not always exact. I know most will say that they are "chemically equivalent", however, I know from experience that some generics are just not the same as the original. I actually had a doctor require me to not take a generic because the generic formulation just sucked for me compared to the original. My insurance company didn't like that at all, but in the end I won.
I was just trying to shoot off some ideas about how to better the patent situation with pharmaceutical companies. IMO, it is way out of hand. There are a ton of intelligent people in this world, I am sure we can come up with a little better patent system that would protect the investments of pharmaceutical companies while also not depriving those less fortunate from proper drug therapy.
I don't know if your read some of my other replies, however I will give a short summary. Of the top 5 selling drugs, more than 55% of the research was done by tax payer funded monies. Why should I, as a tax payer, allow pharmaceutical companies to take that research and "own" it by patents and charge me a crap load of money for something I already paid for?
I would have no problem with pharmaceutical companies getting patent protection if they were required to base the price on the amount of tax payer funded research that went into the drug they are selling.
I would much rather have a cross platform desktop environment that lets me run on Mac, Linux and MS Windows than some MS-Only desktop programming model. I run all three OS'es I listed. The only one I have problems with from a cross plat-form programming perspective is MS Windows. Gee, I wonder why? Can you say lock-in?
Why would something like this suck for the USA? For someone that spends most of their time in a city area, I think it would be great.
Heck, if the top speed was a little higher, I would be all over something like this. I live in the "burbs" and my commute takes me on a highway where the speed limit is 70 MPH. That actually means, slow people go 75 MPH and most "normal" traffic goes at least 80 MPH. Having a top speed of only 68 MPH is just a little too slow for non urban conditions.
Now, if they can add just 10-15 MPH to that speed, it could be a killer car.
Well, let me be totally honest here. As an American, I love my big gas guzzling autos. Why? Not because I like to spend a crap load of my money on gas or pollute the environment that my 3 little kids have to live in. Nope. I would rather spend that money on a billion/milliard other things. I like big autos because they are generally higher off the ground and most importantly have a crap load more steel in them! Yup. I want my beautiful wife and my 3 angels (my kids) surrounded by as much steel as possible while driving. If had the ability to drive my wife and kids around in an M1A1 Marine Tank (I was a U.S.M.C), I would.
For now, small cars are just not safe enough in an auto accident to protect my precious goods (my family). I will continue to spend money on big @ss vans/trucks/SUV's until there are much higher safety standards.
It only takes one drunk fool or one young punk to kill a family. I won't take that chance, ever. I lost a friend to some young punk driving like an idiot in his "supped-up" little "tricked-out" Honda. I have seen too many little punks in their puny little Honda's that think they have some type of race car. Those little Honda's are slow as balls, yet these little punks think they are all that and got "bling" or something. At my house I have a big old mini-van (a lot of steel), a big old Chevy 1500, and a big old Half-Ton Suburban! They all cost at least $50 USD to fill up, though I don't give a crap. I know that when my wife and kids are in the Suburban or even the min-van, they will most likely come out better in an accident, unless they get hit by a big @ss 18-wheeler. Though those chances are a lot less then the typical American/foreign sedan that most people drive to work.
I have been driving to work (as a programmer) for almost 15 years now. The majority of bad/selfish drivers I see all drive nice little sedans. They are on their cell phones, putting on make-up, shaving, etc. or are some little punk in his "tricked out" little Honda. I have seen far too many accidents where these type of people are always rushing around, trying to get here or there as fast as they can, you know, because they are important. I have had so many @ss holes cut me off, just because they didn't want to merge behind me. I guess they thought they were more important and should be able to speed up in a merge and just force me to either slow down (which is not the law) or force me to get out of their way.
When I drive to work I usually drive my big V-8 Chevy 1500 that is jacked up and on some really big @ss tires (no I am not a redneck, I bought it that way), or my big-dog Suburban. While I always try to help the flow of traffic by getting out of merge lanes when I can, however if I cannot, don't think about forcing me off the road. I know I will win that fight against all those little sedans/commuter cars/"tricked-out" Honda's.
An internal National Institutes of Health (NIH) document, obtained by Public Citizen through the Freedom of Information Act, shows how crucial taxpayer-funded research is to top-selling drugs. According to the NIH, taxpayer-funded scientists conducted 55 percent of the research projects that led to the discovery and development of the top five selling drugs in 1995. (See Section III)
Well, that $100 million is very small compared to how much the pharmaceutical companies spend on advertising. So it doesn't seem as important to them. Also, a lot of that money comes from tax dollar funded research, either at the private level or university level. Pharmaceutical companies have a pretty sweet deal IMO. We the tax payers fund a huge portion of the research. Pharmaceutical companies get to "own" that research and prevent others from using it for a certain number of years in products. Pharmaceutical companies then turn around and charge huge prices for these drugs during the period that the drugs are covered by patents. So we are effectively paying twice for all new beneficial drugs. At least crack dealers on the streets only charge you once for the product.
A better system for pharmaceutical companies would be for them to be able to protect their formulations by trade secret for a certain period of time, say 5 years or so. The only entity that needs to know about the formulations would be the FDA for safety approval during the 5 year protection period. After the 5 year protection period, the pharmaceutical company releases the formulation to the public domain so that generics can be made. Or heck, the pharmaceutical can maybe even be allowed to keep it a trade secret after 5 years, however they would be required to license out the formulation under contract (at a controlled price) to generic pharmaceutical companies.
Either way, you have non-natural chemicals entering the human food supply, which could easily have adverse health effects.
Huh? We are talking about a for profit company here. They do not understand the term, adverse health effects. It just does not compute! Now, if you were to rephrase that as risk management/cost justification, then sure, the for profit company would totally understand. You see, at some point the company execs decided that it would be more profitable to sell this product and risk litigation than to care about adverse health effects. This is extreme Capitalism at its best, profits at all costs!
Technically, you could eat a poison frog. You could eat the meat(tissue). It is the skin that produces the extremely potent neurotoxin, batrachotoxin (not all species of "poison dart frogs" are harmful to mammals, there are about 44 know poison frogs that can really mess up your day). For those 44 that are harmful to mammals, just one lick of their back is enough to kill you. Heck, only 40 micrograms of that stuff can kill a man!
So exactly why are you expressing your "views" about a topic you have no formal education in? Seriously. I am educated in physics, I would never attempt to enter my "view" to Vascular Surgery. It would just be stupid.
Your "views" just make no sense from a scientific stand-point. As far as the "atom" stuff goes, you do know what you are really made from, correct? You do know what the Sun and Moon and Earth are mad from, correct?
All of your other posts were trying to separate celestial bodies by such stupid criterion, that I thought we might as well just lump everything together on the atomic scale. After all, matter is made up of atoms. So there is a much closer link to categorize objects based on atoms vs. the 3rd grade "science view" that you came up with. Though I am very glad that we do not categorize things based only on their atomic make-up.
Please, stop trying to defend your original post. At least own up to the fact that you know crap about physics or astronomy at a graduate or post-graduate level.
Heck, maybe the scientific community should just let any amateur or enthusiast just start calling the shots. Hell, education is over-rated, and let us all just start to build our world view on the "views" of people like you.
That is the problem. It is your view and not the view of the scientific community. The materials that condense to form planets are also what makes debris, life, etc. Stop looking at the world from your 3rd grade "macro-science". You and I are formed from atoms, just like the sun, the planets, our Moon, natural satellites, etc. When you pick your nose and pull out a booger, that is not a man-made object, it is really just atoms, like the rest of the Universe. Stop looking at the Universe/World through a straw.
Slashdot Mirror
For 1 mil, it better do much more than make coffee IMO. Some sweet little Swedish chick should be included in that price :-)
But at least social security, medicare and medicade actually _help_ people. The Iraq War doesn't seem to be doing that. Don't give me the whole "the people of Iraq want us there" crap. I served in the U.S.M.C. They don't want us for the most part. Some seem to be glad the we got rid of a nasty dictator, however now most seem to be like, "Uh, OK, now get the hell out". While I think the people are stuck in the middle ages as far as their religious beliefs go, that is there right.
Stop bashing social security, medicare and medicade when there are many Americans that actually need it. I personally am blessed and have good health insurance, income, etc. However, I have met many others that have had to choose between paying rent, buying food or getting much needed medication. That is a sad state for _any_ American to be in. We are the wealthiest single nation in the world. Why can't we come up with some system to allow everyone to at least get proper medical treatment and medication?
Private health care just doesn't cut it. Private health care only cares about one thing. Profits. Profits and the well-being of a human do not mix well.
Why did you have to say Gryffon. I was getting tired and ready to head to the sack. Now I need to grab some beers and play some type of fantasy game with Gryffon's!
Hey, I agree. Most of American journalism is total crap. However, we at least have one news source we can trust. ;-)
Streaming MPEG/H.264 across a regular wireless connection sucks. I tried to watch a TV show I bought from iTMS on my Intel iMac streaming to my Intel Macbook over a wireless connection. It was choppy as h-e-double-hockey-sticks with a perfect Wireless G connection. MPEG is to large, and H.264 just uses too much CPU, at least on the two recent Intel Mac's that I have bought over the last 4 months.
Huh? Your comment doesn't even make sense. Oh, an why are you posting as an AC? Seriously.
OK, I have never played SL. I take it that SL is just some VR game? So, people actually pay real money so the can get a better "life" in SL? Damnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn! Can anyone say...... loser?
So now there is a real company selling _make_pretend_assets? You have got to be kidding me? So what happens if I create a person in SL, have this make pretend person go and get/buy a gun. Next I have this make pretend person go and shoot someone. Does that mean that in _real_life_ I get arrested for murder?
Please, I am not trolling here. I have never played these type of "life" games. I am an old-school dude that played D&D games like Secret of the Silver Blades (dang, I loved that one).
Take off your Steve-Jobs-Blinders(tm) and get a grip. Everything Apple does is not perfect. People can have an opinion about Apple products.
Why did I post? Well I live in a free country and I and just expressing my opinion. If you don't like it than too bad. Sorry if I hurt your feelings. I know you get a woody for Steve Jobs. So giving an opinion about the lack of features in an Apple product is "bitching" while giving an opinion about the lack of features in an MS product is "insightful"? Geez, anyone with 3 brain cells can see right through you Apple fanboi's.
And QuickTime doesn't support much OTB. I have a DivX file and an Xvid file. QuickTime wouldn't play them OTB, which means AppleTV won't play them either. Unless, of course you want to void your warranty and "hack" the AppleTV.
While as a geek I think it is cool to hack the hardware to offer more features, I don't think you should have to do that for a device you pay for to just watch some content that you record. Xvid is open, so there is no reason for Apple to not at least include Xvid playback support. The only thing I can think of is that Apple wants the AppleTV to be nothing more than a player for iTMS content. If that is the case, then no thanks.
That is a lot of crap to do just to support a non-DRM encrusted format. The blurb even said you need QT Pro, which means more money for Apple to just play a file. No thanks, I will stick to MythTV.
I agree with you here to some extent. My father, his brother, and his aunt are all chemists. One thing I will say though, is that the formulation is not always exact. I know most will say that they are "chemically equivalent", however, I know from experience that some generics are just not the same as the original. I actually had a doctor require me to not take a generic because the generic formulation just sucked for me compared to the original. My insurance company didn't like that at all, but in the end I won.
I was just trying to shoot off some ideas about how to better the patent situation with pharmaceutical companies. IMO, it is way out of hand. There are a ton of intelligent people in this world, I am sure we can come up with a little better patent system that would protect the investments of pharmaceutical companies while also not depriving those less fortunate from proper drug therapy.
I don't know if your read some of my other replies, however I will give a short summary. Of the top 5 selling drugs, more than 55% of the research was done by tax payer funded monies. Why should I, as a tax payer, allow pharmaceutical companies to take that research and "own" it by patents and charge me a crap load of money for something I already paid for?
I would have no problem with pharmaceutical companies getting patent protection if they were required to base the price on the amount of tax payer funded research that went into the drug they are selling.
While I don't agree with your wife's theory, I do agree that commercial Hummers Suck. I love the real military High Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicle (Humvee) which the civilian "Hummers" are a very poor knock-off of.
Point 1: None of my cars have 4ft of ground clearance. I don't even know if that is legal in most states for non-commercial vehicles.
Point 2: The Ford Windstar have 4 of 5 stars in Rollover Rating. Take a look at safercar.gov.
I would much rather have a cross platform desktop environment that lets me run on Mac, Linux and MS Windows than some MS-Only desktop programming model. I run all three OS'es I listed. The only one I have problems with from a cross plat-form programming perspective is MS Windows. Gee, I wonder why? Can you say lock-in?
Why would something like this suck for the USA? For someone that spends most of their time in a city area, I think it would be great.
Heck, if the top speed was a little higher, I would be all over something like this. I live in the "burbs" and my commute takes me on a highway where the speed limit is 70 MPH. That actually means, slow people go 75 MPH and most "normal" traffic goes at least 80 MPH. Having a top speed of only 68 MPH is just a little too slow for non urban conditions.
Now, if they can add just 10-15 MPH to that speed, it could be a killer car.
Well, let me be totally honest here. As an American, I love my big gas guzzling autos. Why? Not because I like to spend a crap load of my money on gas or pollute the environment that my 3 little kids have to live in. Nope. I would rather spend that money on a billion/milliard other things. I like big autos because they are generally higher off the ground and most importantly have a crap load more steel in them! Yup. I want my beautiful wife and my 3 angels (my kids) surrounded by as much steel as possible while driving. If had the ability to drive my wife and kids around in an M1A1 Marine Tank (I was a U.S.M.C), I would.
For now, small cars are just not safe enough in an auto accident to protect my precious goods (my family). I will continue to spend money on big @ss vans/trucks/SUV's until there are much higher safety standards.
It only takes one drunk fool or one young punk to kill a family. I won't take that chance, ever. I lost a friend to some young punk driving like an idiot in his "supped-up" little "tricked-out" Honda. I have seen too many little punks in their puny little Honda's that think they have some type of race car. Those little Honda's are slow as balls, yet these little punks think they are all that and got "bling" or something. At my house I have a big old mini-van (a lot of steel), a big old Chevy 1500, and a big old Half-Ton Suburban! They all cost at least $50 USD to fill up, though I don't give a crap. I know that when my wife and kids are in the Suburban or even the min-van, they will most likely come out better in an accident, unless they get hit by a big @ss 18-wheeler. Though those chances are a lot less then the typical American/foreign sedan that most people drive to work.
I have been driving to work (as a programmer) for almost 15 years now. The majority of bad/selfish drivers I see all drive nice little sedans. They are on their cell phones, putting on make-up, shaving, etc. or are some little punk in his "tricked out" little Honda. I have seen far too many accidents where these type of people are always rushing around, trying to get here or there as fast as they can, you know, because they are important. I have had so many @ss holes cut me off, just because they didn't want to merge behind me. I guess they thought they were more important and should be able to speed up in a merge and just force me to either slow down (which is not the law) or force me to get out of their way.
When I drive to work I usually drive my big V-8 Chevy 1500 that is jacked up and on some really big @ss tires (no I am not a redneck, I bought it that way), or my big-dog Suburban. While I always try to help the flow of traffic by getting out of merge lanes when I can, however if I cannot, don't think about forcing me off the road. I know I will win that fight against all those little sedans/commuter cars/"tricked-out" Honda's.
Rx R&D Myths: The Case Against The Drug Industry's R&D "Scare Card"
Well, that $100 million is very small compared to how much the pharmaceutical companies spend on advertising. So it doesn't seem as important to them. Also, a lot of that money comes from tax dollar funded research, either at the private level or university level. Pharmaceutical companies have a pretty sweet deal IMO. We the tax payers fund a huge portion of the research. Pharmaceutical companies get to "own" that research and prevent others from using it for a certain number of years in products. Pharmaceutical companies then turn around and charge huge prices for these drugs during the period that the drugs are covered by patents. So we are effectively paying twice for all new beneficial drugs. At least crack dealers on the streets only charge you once for the product.
A better system for pharmaceutical companies would be for them to be able to protect their formulations by trade secret for a certain period of time, say 5 years or so. The only entity that needs to know about the formulations would be the FDA for safety approval during the 5 year protection period. After the 5 year protection period, the pharmaceutical company releases the formulation to the public domain so that generics can be made. Or heck, the pharmaceutical can maybe even be allowed to keep it a trade secret after 5 years, however they would be required to license out the formulation under contract (at a controlled price) to generic pharmaceutical companies.
Technically, you could eat a poison frog. You could eat the meat(tissue). It is the skin that produces the extremely potent neurotoxin, batrachotoxin (not all species of "poison dart frogs" are harmful to mammals, there are about 44 know poison frogs that can really mess up your day). For those 44 that are harmful to mammals, just one lick of their back is enough to kill you. Heck, only 40 micrograms of that stuff can kill a man!
So exactly why are you expressing your "views" about a topic you have no formal education in? Seriously. I am educated in physics, I would never attempt to enter my "view" to Vascular Surgery. It would just be stupid.
Your "views" just make no sense from a scientific stand-point. As far as the "atom" stuff goes, you do know what you are really made from, correct? You do know what the Sun and Moon and Earth are mad from, correct?
All of your other posts were trying to separate celestial bodies by such stupid criterion, that I thought we might as well just lump everything together on the atomic scale. After all, matter is made up of atoms. So there is a much closer link to categorize objects based on atoms vs. the 3rd grade "science view" that you came up with. Though I am very glad that we do not categorize things based only on their atomic make-up.
Please, stop trying to defend your original post. At least own up to the fact that you know crap about physics or astronomy at a graduate or post-graduate level.
Heck, maybe the scientific community should just let any amateur or enthusiast just start calling the shots. Hell, education is over-rated, and let us all just start to build our world view on the "views" of people like you.
No thanks!