Generally I agree that kids should aspire to the highest levels, but let's not pretend that the value of a high school diploma was undervalued by the existence of people going to college.
It was devalued in the workforce by the slipping level of education attained by the end of high school, and the relative ease-of-access to colleges and universities.
I have a college degree, and did well in school. But I can tell you that my grandfather had nothing more than a high school diploma and did quite well as a machinist and later a shop manager. In fact, adjusted for inflation, he made significantly more WITHOUT a college education than I do with one. A college degree these days is like the high school diploma of 4-6 decades ago. It will qualify you for a bit more than an $40,000-year entry level job in cubedom. Thankfully, I no longer work in cubedom.
We have lost nearly all the well-paying (admittedly, mostly trade) jobs that one used to get out of high school, and replaced them with under-paying consumer services (retail) jobs that anyone with an IQ greater than their own shoe size can tackle.
Couple that with having high schoolers performing at middle school levels and colleges that have gone to 'vocational education' en masse, and you have a recipe for the pie we're presently learning to digest.
Yeah, definitely. Bonuses for teachers who can up standards according to concrete metrics is the way to go.
Look at all the extremely high-paid and 'bonused' CEOs and executives out there at the helms of those successful retail, media, manufacturing, finance and technology firms out there lining up to suckle at the government's bailout teat.
Pardon my rant, but I'm a professional editorial and commercial photographer with a lot of experience in the news publishing industry.
This is exactly what is wrong with the business these days. Media companies can't make any bloody money because they can't tell stories on their own. There is NO reason to pick up the local paper over hopping onto Yahoo! Google or any other electronic source.
Despite large staffs (even after layoffs in most places) and a broad reach, they rely on everyone else to do their work for them, so they can continue to wallow in the mediocre goal of being all things to all people in the lowest common denominator.
From the AP and National Geographic on down the line to the Buttfuck, Iowa Weekly Register, publications need to get it through their fat fucking skulls that GENERATING highest quality content is far more important both to mission and money than just regurgitating information at the speed of thought.
You know why newspapers can't make money? The bloat it takes to run 84 pages of wire shit, box scores and stock quotes (day old, mind you) around the 12 pages of actual, real content worth reading.
But that's OK. Let them continue to take and publish HAND OUT MATERIAL FROM SOURCES. Then they can sit around the board room jerking each other off about 'multimedia initiatives' for the future while their stock and company eats shit and dies.
Places like Voice of San Diego have their shit together (mostly). Right on to the real, and death to the fakers.
We don't respect ourselves enough to have our words carried on the 'value' of our names, and we certainly don't respect others enough to tell them plainly and clearly who is speaking against them; either practically or impractically.
I don't think Columbia did start any ground fires.
NASA is rightfully concerned in cases where engine components, or parts of vehicles near the engine/fuel storage come in contact with earth/people because of the risk of hydrazine exposure. It can be absorbed through skin, doesn't readily decompose into less harmful chemicals and can fry your liver in a matter of minutes.
As I recall, a drop the size of a dime on the back of one's hand is a one-way ticket to the morgue.
Frankly, given it's flammability, I doubt any of that would reach the Earth in any incident where the vehicle broke up in or before entering the atmosphere.
Accidents like the Challenger, though, are a different story.
Assuming this is pretty bloody pure ammonia, it has a boiling point of -33.34 ÂC (239.81 K). Anything that hasn't burned off in the blast furnace that is re-entry will dissipate in gaseous form long before the metallic bits hit the ground.
I still wouldn't put a piece in my mouth, but then, I'm not really in the habit of picking stuff up off the ground and attempting to ingest it anyway.
And if this stuff is hitting the ground at 100mph, that's not fast enough for air friction to cause any significant heating, and would cool any smaller chunks (probably including the biggest pieces) to ambient air temperature.
I think NASA is probably just a) trying to CYA and b) prevent people from selling space junk souvenirs on Ebay.
One thing that will really help us in the broadband capping initiative is that a lot of people have gotten used to "all you can eat" systems (or at least where "all you can eat" is capped way beyond what 99.9999% of users will consume.
Where some will cap, others will step in to say 'hey, we don't cap.' While there may not be much competitive choice when it comes to cable companies, DSL companies can compete with eachother because they use the same telephone lines for transmission (at least, that's how I understand it).
But there are a lot of 'ifs' in the terms, and for more generalized problems with generalized symptoms and effects.
Beyond that, coverage is guaranteed if there is no lapse in coverage, but a reasonable price is not.
As the system stands, the insurance company has all the money, power and lawyers. Anybody who can reasonably afford to fight them probably doesn't need them.
Any, and I mean any action the government takes to fix healthcare is going to be monumentally expensive.
I suspect that the economic situation dictates that neither candidate will be able to do anything more than *maybe* get the ball rolling on some very minor refinements before having to deal with an out-of-control global economy.
I remember Bill Clinton being elected the first time 'round in a weak economy (and not nearly as bad as what we're stewing in here). Remember all those healthcare promises and tax reforms he proposed from the stump? They were altogether canceled or put on hold until the much stronger (economically) second term. Even then, not nearly what he promised came true. We just didn't care because the stock market was printing us vast sums of money.
Frankly, while I don't think we're on the precipice of a Great Depression Pt. 2 and a dust-bowl to boot, we really need to get the economy in shape. If people can't feed themselves (and especially their children) a good diet, or are working 60-80 hours a week under high stress to do so, what is the point of having a stellar insurance plan? After all, at that point, we go back to dying at 65.
Food affordability is also critical. As much as we joke about lazy, fat Americans, people aren't only eating at McDonald's 7 times per week (hey, moderation is OK in my book) because they're lazy and like it. It's because they can feed themselves a lot of food for $3.
A family of 4 can have their "big meal" of the day for under $10 by eating off the dollar menu. And that's a lot more flavorful (despite being nutritionally bankrupt) than eating redbeans and rice instead.
Couple that with the fact that running a household is a full-time job, and with two parents working, all the 'extra' money goes to daycare for the little ones and sports clubs/activities for the older ones. The time used to shop frugally and prepare a nutritious meal is lost to overtime, commute, and schlepping the kids all over God's green earth.
Yes, the individual American needs to put down the nearly maxed-out Visa and be better about how he spends his money, so that he can focus on the core familial needs. But the government needs to enable us to find ways to put more money in our pockets.
The middle class needs the most access to affordable, reliable healthcare. The poor/working poor (in every place I've ever lived) generally have acceptable to great access to free health care, and the richest demographic can afford (under less-than-ideal-cirucumstances, albeit) to largely self-insure.
Until we can get the middle class fiscally healthy, physical health will be put mostly on the back burner.
But when things do turn around (hey, it's the USA; things ALWAYS turn around), let's remember to actually, really fix healthcare.
It's really just that when things are good, we're all too busy consuming and enjoying it to help build stability and (expensively) revamp the systems that need it.
You know why I don't like going to the doctor for 'preventative maintenance?'
It's because any irregularities they find during the checkups become "pre-existing conditions" when you lose/change jobs and such, insurance companies.
Cholesterol 1 point above what's regarded as "normal?" Your next insurance company will bill you a higher premium, or might not even cover that condition at all.
Do you have hypertension (generally regarded as a hereditary condition)? Hell, that can lead to all kinds of bad stuff: heart disease, heart attacks, stokes, kidney failure, GI bleeding, etc. That's one helluva pre-existing condition to have when you stroke out at 65 and your family is stuck arguing with the insurance company over tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars in ICU/surgery bills.
Stuff like that gives insurance companies an awful lot of leverage to say 'no' to paying claims made by survivors.
Oh, and did I mention that hypertension can be highly effectively controlled through medication and lifestyle?
I also hate going to the doctor because my insurance only fully covers 'preventative maintenance' (and once every 5 years until I'm 37, at that). For the $3000USD I pay for it every year, I'm still on the hook for a $1500 deductible (meaning I can spend more than $4500/year plus copays) before I even see a DISCOUNT on the services performed. See, My insurance will cover 80%-90% of most medical treatments. Even being on the hook for 10% of, say, a $100,000 surgery/hospital stay is a large, crippling sum of money to have immediately come due.
If I get seriously ill or hurt in an accident, I hope it kills me quick and cheap.
The above really is how I sum up my outlook on healthcare.
I don't even mind the commercials. Well, the concept of the commercials, anyway.
The problem is that I don't need to see a commercial for Taco Bell at EVERY intermission.
I don't have the requisite anatomy to menstruate, so I don't buy tampons or PMS medication.
The fact that commercials are broadcast orders of magnitude louder than the program bothers me immensely.
If they showed commercials for shit I'd actually buy/consume, I'd mind watching them a lot less.
But even fast-forwarding through them on my DVR still gives me a brand impression. I know it's Budweiser, Ford or Victoria's Secret.
This is where advertising innovation comes in. Give me a set-top cable box that knows my rough demographics, allows me to watch programs on-demand and with more limited commercial interruption and that displays ads geared for me.
I would expect to pay a reduced fee (premium tiers should be available to skip commercials altogether) in exchange for the company being able to offer much more precise ads. To get the cheaper rate, I would also be more than happy to fill out quarterly or semi-annually a questionnaire that takes up to 15 minutes to complete so long as my NAME is never released, but my demography and a unique "ad member" number is fine.
Would it be too much to ask to get BBC World Service in something other than WMP/Real format?
Right now, Vermont Public Radio has a transcoder that takes the Real and rebroadcasts it in streaming MP3, but even after donating to them, I still feel bad that the burden is on them to re-encode the stream.
I'd transcode the stream myself but, a) don't want to go to the trouble and b) suspect it's against their TOS anyway.
I'm sure the Beeb poured a ton of money into the Real platform years ago (to the extent that they may still be locked-in), but I'd really love to see such an important service be more accessible.
Perhaps large, state universities are spending $100,000/year on P2P enforcement.
But at your run-of-the-mill $2bn+ public university that's absolute chump change. They spend more watering the lawn.
In fact, that's probably the equivalent of ONE junior attorney in the general counsel's office. Or a couple of QoS handlers and a few techs to run them.
A lack of clear profit incentive is one of the big problems inherent in the system.
My wife and I bought a house that was built in the mid 1950's. We like the neighborhood, the floorplan, and the fact that the thing is built like the pyramids.
After time in 'stick-and-stucco' housing, and seeing what friends have gone through in the same as homeowners, we opted for an old, double-brick bastard. In the US Southwest.
While we're in the process of "greening" the house, we are fully aware that to maximize its efficiency, we are dumping money into it that we'll never recover.
By replacing the gas furnace and refrigeration air conditioner with new, more efficient ones, we managed to drive down cooling costs by 40% over the last owner. But that's the only upgrade that will "pay for itself."
Upgrading single pane casement windows with super efficient double/triple pane windows will only afford a minor increase in efficiency; and at a cost of around $20,000. We will never get that back.
The roof is a built-up reflective (basically whitewash over tar to reflect the sun in the summer), and has a couple years left on it. After that, we'll likely go for a foam 'n' fiberglass roof. About $10,000 for that (where a traditional built-up is about half of that). We won't see enough in energy savings to 'pay' for that improvement either.
In a state with one of the highest energy-from-the-sun potentials year-round, it's going to run us $27,000 AFTER discounts, rebates and amortized tax breaks to have a grid-tied, net-zero (If we draw, it's only only during peak, and contribute to the grid during non-peak) solar system installed. We won't earn back that cost either. And that's for a 4kW system. With 6kW, we could safely remove the mains grid line and never look back.
At some point, we might get ballsy and do a foam wrap over the brick on the exterior, add 2 inches of solid foam insulation and stucco over that. If we did it ourselves, we might come out ahead. Paying a contractor? Forget about recouping the money.
The only other efficiency upgrade that we MIGHT be able to recover cost on is going to a tankless water heater. Maybe. Although that's a $2500 job between buying the unit, enlarging the gas main and re-plumbing the utility closet. Never mind that while natural gas used to be cheaper than electricity, it ain't no more.
The point of this story is that I can make my 50-plus-year-old house pretty damned efficient; perhaps to the point where the only thing I'm taking in and not 'replacing' is water. But to go much further than a ~$6,000 HVAC upgrade is going to be done because I am interested in doing so; for bragging rights, for environmental reasons and for the good of those around me. There is NO financial advantage to it.
I'm a professional commercial photographer. I do advertising work, editorial (newspaper/magazine) and documentary work.
For an in-the-clear commercial infringement, I typically seek the cost of the shoot plus 5x the 'market rate' for the run of the photo; and any lawyers' fees I'm entitled to recoup.
Why? To get fairly compensated for what was taken from me, and to make it painful enough to the infringer (usually a company, occasionally a mom-and-pop publisher/advertiser) to realize that next time, they're better off paying market value than 'borrowing' someone else's work to make a buck.
But then, I'm not a parasite. I wouldn't sue you for downloading a picture and making it your desktop wallpaper. I would sue your ass off if you downloaded an image, and used it to sell your business, illustrate your book/publication or sell art prints of the same.
Technically, I would be legally in bounds to sue for infringement if the work appeared on your Web site under a lot (granted, not all) of circumstances. Most of the time, I don't care. Unless you're directly or indirectly profiting from having the work there, toss me a credit, link and an email asking permission.
Copyright is an act of moderation, and I firmly believe in letting the punishment fit the crime/infraction.
But from a practical standpoint, I don't see any real benefit. Likely, anyone that needs instant and practically always-on email/Web access would have a smartphone; thereby reducing their need for the laptop to act as a smartphone.
But then, maybe this will help folks realize how much bloat and crap there is in operating systems, and how precious little is really needed to access Internet services.
Re:It's still essentially 8-bit.
on
GIMP 2.6 Released
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· Score: 5, Informative
Actually, that's not necessarily the case.
I am a professional commercial photographer and editorial photojournalist. Sure, CS3 is still my editor of choice, but the GIMP is moving ever-closer to being a viable option.
There is not a single application I can think of where someone working as a photojournalist would ever need more than what the GIMP offers.
File submission standard for newsprint is still 10 inches on the long axis @ 200 ppi. Files are then compressed to clock in at betweek 650kb-900kb. sRGB colorspace and 8 bits-per-pixel are more than enough. Pre-press does the CYMK conversion and Web crop, usually.
The level of editing (painting) done to editorial photos is minimal by standard ethical practice; and so really the tool need only be able to crop, resample, dust spot and adjust the exposure.
In fact, for funzies, I just did a complete start-to-finish editorial shoot post in GIMP 2.4. The EXIF/XMP/IPTC stuff hurts bad (please, please, please, please FIX THIS), but the actual post went fine.
Making stuff screen-ready can easily be accomplished in the GIMP as well.
I don't have a whole lot of experience with making multimedia presentations (audio slideshows, etc.) for Web and screen display in the GIMP/Linux, so I'll leave that alone for now.
On the commercial, every-photo-is-a-painting side, the GIMP might be a bit of a hindrance. The more advanced layering, color conversions, spot toning, etc. typically deployed in, say, advertising post is probably more than can be reasonably handled by the GIMP.
Admittedly, some of that sentiment may come from my being a lot more comfortable in Photoshop than GIMP.
Generally speaking, some of the resizing plugins and effects plugins that we have come to count on are not available for GIMP, and even if the same thing can be accomplished with a different set of tools, we're disinclined to learn them.
Keep in mind that more than half the professional photographers out there are self-employed, and the time required to learn a new toolset can be killer.
The GIMP has come a long way since I first started playing with Linux about 10 years ago.
It even plays fairly nicely with RAW files from my cameras.
Today, I have it (under Hardy Heron) installed on my non-production workstation, and have no doubt that in years to come, it may very well become a full-fledged alternative to Photoshop.
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Generally I agree that kids should aspire to the highest levels, but let's not pretend that the value of a high school diploma was undervalued by the existence of people going to college.
It was devalued in the workforce by the slipping level of education attained by the end of high school, and the relative ease-of-access to colleges and universities.
I have a college degree, and did well in school. But I can tell you that my grandfather had nothing more than a high school diploma and did quite well as a machinist and later a shop manager. In fact, adjusted for inflation, he made significantly more WITHOUT a college education than I do with one. A college degree these days is like the high school diploma of 4-6 decades ago. It will qualify you for a bit more than an $40,000-year entry level job in cubedom. Thankfully, I no longer work in cubedom.
We have lost nearly all the well-paying (admittedly, mostly trade) jobs that one used to get out of high school, and replaced them with under-paying consumer services (retail) jobs that anyone with an IQ greater than their own shoe size can tackle.
Couple that with having high schoolers performing at middle school levels and colleges that have gone to 'vocational education' en masse, and you have a recipe for the pie we're presently learning to digest.
Pass the pepto, please.
Yeah, definitely. Bonuses for teachers who can up standards according to concrete metrics is the way to go.
Look at all the extremely high-paid and 'bonused' CEOs and executives out there at the helms of those successful retail, media, manufacturing, finance and technology firms out there lining up to suckle at the government's bailout teat.
Oh, wait...
Pardon my rant, but I'm a professional editorial and commercial photographer with a lot of experience in the news publishing industry.
This is exactly what is wrong with the business these days. Media companies can't make any bloody money because they can't tell stories on their own. There is NO reason to pick up the local paper over hopping onto Yahoo! Google or any other electronic source.
Despite large staffs (even after layoffs in most places) and a broad reach, they rely on everyone else to do their work for them, so they can continue to wallow in the mediocre goal of being all things to all people in the lowest common denominator.
From the AP and National Geographic on down the line to the Buttfuck, Iowa Weekly Register, publications need to get it through their fat fucking skulls that GENERATING highest quality content is far more important both to mission and money than just regurgitating information at the speed of thought.
You know why newspapers can't make money? The bloat it takes to run 84 pages of wire shit, box scores and stock quotes (day old, mind you) around the 12 pages of actual, real content worth reading.
But that's OK. Let them continue to take and publish HAND OUT MATERIAL FROM SOURCES. Then they can sit around the board room jerking each other off about 'multimedia initiatives' for the future while their stock and company eats shit and dies.
Places like Voice of San Diego have their shit together (mostly). Right on to the real, and death to the fakers.
We don't respect ourselves enough to have our words carried on the 'value' of our names, and we certainly don't respect others enough to tell them plainly and clearly who is speaking against them; either practically or impractically.
Remind me again, what the fuck is wrong with aggression?
It's how we deal with/apply the aggression that determines the 'good' or 'bad' aspects of it.
I don't think Columbia did start any ground fires.
NASA is rightfully concerned in cases where engine components, or parts of vehicles near the engine/fuel storage come in contact with earth/people because of the risk of hydrazine exposure. It can be absorbed through skin, doesn't readily decompose into less harmful chemicals and can fry your liver in a matter of minutes.
As I recall, a drop the size of a dime on the back of one's hand is a one-way ticket to the morgue.
Frankly, given it's flammability, I doubt any of that would reach the Earth in any incident where the vehicle broke up in or before entering the atmosphere.
Accidents like the Challenger, though, are a different story.
Assuming this is pretty bloody pure ammonia, it has a boiling point of -33.34 ÂC (239.81 K). Anything that hasn't burned off in the blast furnace that is re-entry will dissipate in gaseous form long before the metallic bits hit the ground.
I still wouldn't put a piece in my mouth, but then, I'm not really in the habit of picking stuff up off the ground and attempting to ingest it anyway.
And if this stuff is hitting the ground at 100mph, that's not fast enough for air friction to cause any significant heating, and would cool any smaller chunks (probably including the biggest pieces) to ambient air temperature.
I think NASA is probably just a) trying to CYA and b) prevent people from selling space junk souvenirs on Ebay.
One thing that will really help us in the broadband capping initiative is that a lot of people have gotten used to "all you can eat" systems (or at least where "all you can eat" is capped way beyond what 99.9999% of users will consume.
Where some will cap, others will step in to say 'hey, we don't cap.' While there may not be much competitive choice when it comes to cable companies, DSL companies can compete with eachother because they use the same telephone lines for transmission (at least, that's how I understand it).
Indeed, they do.
But there are a lot of 'ifs' in the terms, and for more generalized problems with generalized symptoms and effects.
Beyond that, coverage is guaranteed if there is no lapse in coverage, but a reasonable price is not.
As the system stands, the insurance company has all the money, power and lawyers. Anybody who can reasonably afford to fight them probably doesn't need them.
The country is basically flat fucking broke.
Healthcare is indeed a massive fuckup.
Any, and I mean any action the government takes to fix healthcare is going to be monumentally expensive.
I suspect that the economic situation dictates that neither candidate will be able to do anything more than *maybe* get the ball rolling on some very minor refinements before having to deal with an out-of-control global economy.
I remember Bill Clinton being elected the first time 'round in a weak economy (and not nearly as bad as what we're stewing in here). Remember all those healthcare promises and tax reforms he proposed from the stump? They were altogether canceled or put on hold until the much stronger (economically) second term. Even then, not nearly what he promised came true. We just didn't care because the stock market was printing us vast sums of money.
Frankly, while I don't think we're on the precipice of a Great Depression Pt. 2 and a dust-bowl to boot, we really need to get the economy in shape. If people can't feed themselves (and especially their children) a good diet, or are working 60-80 hours a week under high stress to do so, what is the point of having a stellar insurance plan? After all, at that point, we go back to dying at 65.
Food affordability is also critical. As much as we joke about lazy, fat Americans, people aren't only eating at McDonald's 7 times per week (hey, moderation is OK in my book) because they're lazy and like it. It's because they can feed themselves a lot of food for $3.
A family of 4 can have their "big meal" of the day for under $10 by eating off the dollar menu. And that's a lot more flavorful (despite being nutritionally bankrupt) than eating redbeans and rice instead.
Couple that with the fact that running a household is a full-time job, and with two parents working, all the 'extra' money goes to daycare for the little ones and sports clubs/activities for the older ones. The time used to shop frugally and prepare a nutritious meal is lost to overtime, commute, and schlepping the kids all over God's green earth.
Yes, the individual American needs to put down the nearly maxed-out Visa and be better about how he spends his money, so that he can focus on the core familial needs. But the government needs to enable us to find ways to put more money in our pockets.
The middle class needs the most access to affordable, reliable healthcare. The poor/working poor (in every place I've ever lived) generally have acceptable to great access to free health care, and the richest demographic can afford (under less-than-ideal-cirucumstances, albeit) to largely self-insure.
Until we can get the middle class fiscally healthy, physical health will be put mostly on the back burner.
But when things do turn around (hey, it's the USA; things ALWAYS turn around), let's remember to actually, really fix healthcare.
It's really just that when things are good, we're all too busy consuming and enjoying it to help build stability and (expensively) revamp the systems that need it.
You know why I don't like going to the doctor for 'preventative maintenance?'
It's because any irregularities they find during the checkups become "pre-existing conditions" when you lose/change jobs and such, insurance companies.
Cholesterol 1 point above what's regarded as "normal?" Your next insurance company will bill you a higher premium, or might not even cover that condition at all.
Do you have hypertension (generally regarded as a hereditary condition)? Hell, that can lead to all kinds of bad stuff: heart disease, heart attacks, stokes, kidney failure, GI bleeding, etc. That's one helluva pre-existing condition to have when you stroke out at 65 and your family is stuck arguing with the insurance company over tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars in ICU/surgery bills.
Stuff like that gives insurance companies an awful lot of leverage to say 'no' to paying claims made by survivors.
Oh, and did I mention that hypertension can be highly effectively controlled through medication and lifestyle?
I also hate going to the doctor because my insurance only fully covers 'preventative maintenance' (and once every 5 years until I'm 37, at that). For the $3000USD I pay for it every year, I'm still on the hook for a $1500 deductible (meaning I can spend more than $4500/year plus copays) before I even see a DISCOUNT on the services performed. See, My insurance will cover 80%-90% of most medical treatments. Even being on the hook for 10% of, say, a $100,000 surgery/hospital stay is a large, crippling sum of money to have immediately come due.
If I get seriously ill or hurt in an accident, I hope it kills me quick and cheap.
The above really is how I sum up my outlook on healthcare.
I don't even mind the commercials. Well, the concept of the commercials, anyway.
The problem is that I don't need to see a commercial for Taco Bell at EVERY intermission.
I don't have the requisite anatomy to menstruate, so I don't buy tampons or PMS medication.
The fact that commercials are broadcast orders of magnitude louder than the program bothers me immensely.
If they showed commercials for shit I'd actually buy/consume, I'd mind watching them a lot less.
But even fast-forwarding through them on my DVR still gives me a brand impression. I know it's Budweiser, Ford or Victoria's Secret.
This is where advertising innovation comes in. Give me a set-top cable box that knows my rough demographics, allows me to watch programs on-demand and with more limited commercial interruption and that displays ads geared for me.
I would expect to pay a reduced fee (premium tiers should be available to skip commercials altogether) in exchange for the company being able to offer much more precise ads. To get the cheaper rate, I would also be more than happy to fill out quarterly or semi-annually a questionnaire that takes up to 15 minutes to complete so long as my NAME is never released, but my demography and a unique "ad member" number is fine.
Not that I presently (or will) have children, but I'm ok if they understand that all three are OK if handled responsibly and appropriately.
Perhaps under the DMCA they are making available information about how to circumvent copy protection?
*farts loudly*
Try watching Orgazmo on TBS sometime.
My sentiments exactly. I'm posting rather than modding because I'm out of points.
The whole concept of sitting down in front of a TV to passively surf it (as opposed to taking in a few actively sought programs) seems so dated now.
For me, it's either a live sporting event (and that's increasingly rare), off the DVR or on the Web.
I just can't sit down and "watch TV" anymore.
Would it be too much to ask to get BBC World Service in something other than WMP/Real format?
Right now, Vermont Public Radio has a transcoder that takes the Real and rebroadcasts it in streaming MP3, but even after donating to them, I still feel bad that the burden is on them to re-encode the stream.
I'd transcode the stream myself but, a) don't want to go to the trouble and b) suspect it's against their TOS anyway.
I'm sure the Beeb poured a ton of money into the Real platform years ago (to the extent that they may still be locked-in), but I'd really love to see such an important service be more accessible.
They can pass as many laws as they want. Passing a law like this sends some positive PR to whatever junior Congressman put forth the bill.
Problem is that so many of these laws are unenforced/unenforceable.
Until a lot of important people have been truly harmed by these scammers, no one will give two shits.
Perhaps large, state universities are spending $100,000/year on P2P enforcement.
But at your run-of-the-mill $2bn+ public university that's absolute chump change. They spend more watering the lawn.
In fact, that's probably the equivalent of ONE junior attorney in the general counsel's office. Or a couple of QoS handlers and a few techs to run them.
A lack of clear profit incentive is one of the big problems inherent in the system.
My wife and I bought a house that was built in the mid 1950's. We like the neighborhood, the floorplan, and the fact that the thing is built like the pyramids.
After time in 'stick-and-stucco' housing, and seeing what friends have gone through in the same as homeowners, we opted for an old, double-brick bastard. In the US Southwest.
While we're in the process of "greening" the house, we are fully aware that to maximize its efficiency, we are dumping money into it that we'll never recover.
By replacing the gas furnace and refrigeration air conditioner with new, more efficient ones, we managed to drive down cooling costs by 40% over the last owner. But that's the only upgrade that will "pay for itself."
Upgrading single pane casement windows with super efficient double/triple pane windows will only afford a minor increase in efficiency; and at a cost of around $20,000. We will never get that back.
The roof is a built-up reflective (basically whitewash over tar to reflect the sun in the summer), and has a couple years left on it. After that, we'll likely go for a foam 'n' fiberglass roof. About $10,000 for that (where a traditional built-up is about half of that). We won't see enough in energy savings to 'pay' for that improvement either.
In a state with one of the highest energy-from-the-sun potentials year-round, it's going to run us $27,000 AFTER discounts, rebates and amortized tax breaks to have a grid-tied, net-zero (If we draw, it's only only during peak, and contribute to the grid during non-peak) solar system installed. We won't earn back that cost either. And that's for a 4kW system. With 6kW, we could safely remove the mains grid line and never look back.
At some point, we might get ballsy and do a foam wrap over the brick on the exterior, add 2 inches of solid foam insulation and stucco over that. If we did it ourselves, we might come out ahead. Paying a contractor? Forget about recouping the money.
The only other efficiency upgrade that we MIGHT be able to recover cost on is going to a tankless water heater. Maybe. Although that's a $2500 job between buying the unit, enlarging the gas main and re-plumbing the utility closet. Never mind that while natural gas used to be cheaper than electricity, it ain't no more.
The point of this story is that I can make my 50-plus-year-old house pretty damned efficient; perhaps to the point where the only thing I'm taking in and not 'replacing' is water. But to go much further than a ~$6,000 HVAC upgrade is going to be done because I am interested in doing so; for bragging rights, for environmental reasons and for the good of those around me. There is NO financial advantage to it.
Whoa, whoa, whoa.
You put WAYYY too much thought into that. This is a gub'ment operation. Nothing could be THAT well deployed.
Hang him by his fucking balls.
He is cheap, and nothing more than a common thief.
Thanks, Mr. Beckerman. That means a lot coming from a guy like you.
Here's how you can put a dollar amount on things:
I'm a professional commercial photographer. I do advertising work, editorial (newspaper/magazine) and documentary work.
For an in-the-clear commercial infringement, I typically seek the cost of the shoot plus 5x the 'market rate' for the run of the photo; and any lawyers' fees I'm entitled to recoup.
Why? To get fairly compensated for what was taken from me, and to make it painful enough to the infringer (usually a company, occasionally a mom-and-pop publisher/advertiser) to realize that next time, they're better off paying market value than 'borrowing' someone else's work to make a buck.
But then, I'm not a parasite. I wouldn't sue you for downloading a picture and making it your desktop wallpaper. I would sue your ass off if you downloaded an image, and used it to sell your business, illustrate your book/publication or sell art prints of the same.
Technically, I would be legally in bounds to sue for infringement if the work appeared on your Web site under a lot (granted, not all) of circumstances. Most of the time, I don't care. Unless you're directly or indirectly profiting from having the work there, toss me a credit, link and an email asking permission.
Copyright is an act of moderation, and I firmly believe in letting the punishment fit the crime/infraction.
On the surface, this is a really good idea.
But from a practical standpoint, I don't see any real benefit. Likely, anyone that needs instant and practically always-on email/Web access would have a smartphone; thereby reducing their need for the laptop to act as a smartphone.
But then, maybe this will help folks realize how much bloat and crap there is in operating systems, and how precious little is really needed to access Internet services.
Actually, that's not necessarily the case.
I am a professional commercial photographer and editorial photojournalist. Sure, CS3 is still my editor of choice, but the GIMP is moving ever-closer to being a viable option.
There is not a single application I can think of where someone working as a photojournalist would ever need more than what the GIMP offers.
File submission standard for newsprint is still 10 inches on the long axis @ 200 ppi. Files are then compressed to clock in at betweek 650kb-900kb. sRGB colorspace and 8 bits-per-pixel are more than enough. Pre-press does the CYMK conversion and Web crop, usually.
The level of editing (painting) done to editorial photos is minimal by standard ethical practice; and so really the tool need only be able to crop, resample, dust spot and adjust the exposure.
In fact, for funzies, I just did a complete start-to-finish editorial shoot post in GIMP 2.4. The EXIF/XMP/IPTC stuff hurts bad (please, please, please, please FIX THIS), but the actual post went fine.
Making stuff screen-ready can easily be accomplished in the GIMP as well.
I don't have a whole lot of experience with making multimedia presentations (audio slideshows, etc.) for Web and screen display in the GIMP/Linux, so I'll leave that alone for now.
On the commercial, every-photo-is-a-painting side, the GIMP might be a bit of a hindrance. The more advanced layering, color conversions, spot toning, etc. typically deployed in, say, advertising post is probably more than can be reasonably handled by the GIMP.
Admittedly, some of that sentiment may come from my being a lot more comfortable in Photoshop than GIMP.
Generally speaking, some of the resizing plugins and effects plugins that we have come to count on are not available for GIMP, and even if the same thing can be accomplished with a different set of tools, we're disinclined to learn them.
Keep in mind that more than half the professional photographers out there are self-employed, and the time required to learn a new toolset can be killer.
The GIMP has come a long way since I first started playing with Linux about 10 years ago.
It even plays fairly nicely with RAW files from my cameras.
Today, I have it (under Hardy Heron) installed on my non-production workstation, and have no doubt that in years to come, it may very well become a full-fledged alternative to Photoshop.