Throughout human history, those civilizations that have advanced have done so at times when their individual lives were unencumbered by a constant search for food and shelter.
What the fuck does a starving kid in Detroit, or Sierra Leone for that matter, care about a 1TB hard drive or mapping another solar system.
keeping a few million uneducated people from starving is only beneficial to those few million uneducated starving people
So let's look at it from a purely economic standpoint: If we can get people healthy and sheltered enough to get them an education that's a few million more people to make your Nikes, to dig the minerals that go into the manufacture of spacecraft, and more people to sell luxury pharmaceuticals to. Hopefully that cold-hearted perspective fits into your worldview.
Again, I'm all in favor of spending money on space research. And lots of it. But let's not bullshit around pretending that it helps all of humanity.
Why can't the NFL get it through their heads that they don't control the universe. If they're worried about people selling their tickets to other fans for more than the team/stadium was charging, RAISE PRICES.
Besides if I bought tickets to a game for $75/ticket including fees, and sold them for $100/ticket, I'd still be making less than the team/stadium made off the initial sale. Hell, let the stadium charge $3000 per ticket. They're not depriving anyone of a critical resource.
I totally agree about spending money in the pursuit of knowledge over violence, but statements like yours make me cringe:
zero on things like this which expand our knowledge for the betterment of us all
How does this help the people that have core human needs that are not being fulfilled. And I'm not talking about laptops or vaccinations. I'm talking about basic food and shelter.
Space exploration is a good thing. I'd put it in the top 10 ways to spend public money. But I also don't pretend that it's a great leap forward for all of humanity. It isn't.
Yes, there are a tremendous number of stupid criminals out there, just like there are a tremendous number of stupid people out there.
But we chronically underestimate what people are capable of. I know a bit about O-chem, and with a bit of research could probably manufacture meth fairly easily. It's really not much more complicated than setting up a moonshine still. Out of the reach of some? Sure. But the fact remains that tens of thousands of strung-out hoopleheads manage to do it every day.
We complain about them damn young kids sailing the high seas of Internet and maliciously raiding commerce vessels trading in MP3s, and yet many judges seem baffled by even simple concepts like IP addressing and server logging.
These steganography tools are fairly easy to use. So why, again, are we surprised that criminals can point and click?
I think that they, and others, recognize that one of the things facing the computer industry is the death of the home, whitebox PC.
Right now, many home users use their computers for email, pr0n, surfing the web and not a whole lot more. As handheld web devices become more prevalent, the general home desktop has become obsolete.
Others use desktops for games, but there are really two camps here. The first group is happy to game for the sake of gaming, and likely will move to consoles. I used to be a PC gamer, but got tired of the endless upgrade cycle, the driver support, etc. The bleeding edge gamers with $600 video cards will continue to buy high-end desktops to play, but then, they're already not buying El Cheapo $499 Dell whiteboxes now.
Business users will continue to consume business class desktops and handheld internet appliances.
Media professionals will, as their job demands, buy the fastest most expensive thing they can get their hands on once every 3-4 years.
But as for the traditional concept of the home PC? I think it's dying.
In the Sea of Cortés (Golfo de California), there is a fish known by locals as the 'botete'. It is a type of puffer fish. It causes exactly this kind of problem.
What does unlocking a phone have to do with terminating a cellular contract?
I'd love to see locked phones AND cell termination fees go the way of the dodo, but this seems like an "I don't like the terms of teh service I signed up for, so I'm suing" suit.
In theory, if we could buy unlocked phones more easily, we could then choose whatever carrier we want, adn would probably be less likely to pay the cancellation fee.
Humans (and man-made products) are kind of like hermit crabs. You can definitely find a bigger shell, and when you do, nature inclines you to occupy all of it.
This woman could have walked into a record store, pointed a gun at the clerk and taken cash out of the register, and have received a less damaging penalty.
Fuck you RIAA and fuck you Mr. Hegg. May you all burn in Hell while it's under my watch.
There are plenty of comments here with arguments about if or if not churches should include games like Halo in church activities.
One of the biggest arguments is that the game goes against commandments not to kill and/or murder.
This is the problem with videogames (and I love videogames). No one thinks rationally about them. The genocide of bits and bytes that is Halo has nothing to do with the real world, real life, or real people around us; until we let it.
Intrinsically, Halo is no different than the concepts brought forth in dodgeball, tag, cowboys and indians or GI Joe. It's not even that violent of a game. Most of the aliens don't bleed red, there is no real fragging (a la Unreal Tournament), and the game types are all quite similar to playground games that we encourage small children to play.
Whether it's Halo, GTA or My Little Pony, we lend too much relevance and worry to videogames. I'm not saying there shouldn't be limits. I'd never let a child play GTA.
To gamers: Videogames are not real, nor are they accurate simulators for acceptable behavior in real life.
To game haters: Videogames are not real, nor are they accurate simulators for acceptable behavior in real life.
With so much else going wrong in the world, can't we focus on things that really need fixing first?
There are two camps to this argument, but both neglect the obvious answer:
Camp A maintains that AT&T/Apple are evil for not supplying SKDs, for locking everyone into the service, for not unlocking the phones, for bricking (intentionally or unintentionally) custom-modified phones.
Camp B says that Apple and AT&T can do whatever the hell they want because the product (the phone) and the service (cellular access) are two completely different products. Synopsis: "If you modify your own phone (perfectly within your right to do it), and it breaks some functionality, how exactly is that Apple's OR AT&T's problem?"
I think the right answer is to educate yourself about the product you're buying and then make the choice whether to buy the product. Apple, good or bad, was very up-front that if you buy the phone, the service is through AT&T only and that the minimum contract length is 2 years.
They were also up-front about the cost of the phone and the cost of the monthly service to the phone.
I can't believe that so many people laid out hard-earned cash for the phone, made custom modifications to the phone, and expect Apple to continue to support it.
It does suck that the phones are tied to AT&T. Don't like? Don't buy.
In the time-honored tradition of Slashdot car analogies, the iPod is like a Bentley that you're only allowed to drive on certain streets. Freedom of choice is important to me; therefore I buy cars that I can drive on m/any streets. It seems far more practical to spend money on something that works the way I want it to, rather than to buy it, break it and then sue someone else to make it work.
Why spend $500 on a phone that doesn't do what you want it to (IE, is tied to only one network, doesn't have an SDK, doesn't do x, yo or z)?
When I was in college, my roommate tossed a pair of jeans into our dryer to fluff out some wrinkles but he left his iPod mini in the pocket.
After a 15 or so minute dry cycle, it looked about exactly how that one looks (except it was a different model). The liner in the pocket was scorched, but not burned. Oddly, the screen on the iPod didn't even break.
Even if this guy had it on him, and it did spontaneously combust, there is no f-ing way he, his pants, or his iPod were on fire for 15 seconds. Lithium rapidly oxidizes and releases tremendous amounts of heat in the process. His pants would be burned through, and there would be nothing left to that glossy piece of paper.
Additionally, most men have pretty hairy legs and groins, and hair burns really easily and rapidly. He's have some pretty serious burns to contend with after 15 seconds, or even 5 seconds.
If this thing did go off in his pocket, the flash of the initial oxidation probably used up all the available 02 in his pocket, and stifled the fire.
It did get hot enough to melt the plastic on his iPod, and if there were any plastic-based fibers in his pants, those would nearly have to be at least puckered and deformed, if not melted.
I'm calling bullshit on the 15 second thing. This was a flash burn, if not an accident similar to my roommate's.
Yeah. I agree. If the HOUSEHOLD income is $60,000/year in Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Jose, San Diego (actually, basically ALL of California), or D.C., It's lower middle class.
But it is also entirely livable. People tend to make very poor credit and purchasing decisions which makes already tight cashflow even tighter. That's the real killer.
Elements is basically just a stripped-down version of Photoshop. If you're doing very basic editing (color correction, cropping, etc.), it's a great solution.
Most people can probably get away with using only Elements.
We might have a government run by Corporate America dot Com, but we're certainly trading in personal freedoms at a much slower rate than certain European countries.
Lightroom and Aperture are both eye candy and nothing more. They do not replace the functionality of Pshop (including clone-stamping out dust and making color-channel level edits). Additionally, their support for IPTC/EXIF metadata is shaky at best. If you use a server or network storage device to store your image archive, it's kind of fun to watch Lightroom and Aperture shit the bed trying to figure out how to deal with it.
It's almost like a lot of the developers have realized that everyone and his brother have bought digital cameras, and that they can probably sell yet another expensive 'make my photos stop sucking' software to people who already can't use what they have.
I've used the Gimp on Windoze and Linux, and it's about where Pshop was at version 4 or 5. All software can be improved upon, and Pshop is no exception. But there is a reason that they have driven everyone else under (or nearly under). It's a damn fine couple of million lines of code.
In my expert opinion, the best combination for browser/meta editor and editing app has to be Photo Mechanic and Photoshop.
It's that very regulation that allows companies to abuse the hell out of people. Why should the government create regulatory shields for the record industry? Such regulation comes in the form of the DMCA Act and other similar junk legislation.
I'm a professional photographer. It turns out that these days, a bunch of hacks are giving away photos to magazines, newspapers and advertisers. That has forced me to re-strategize how I make my money. I'm not sitting here crying for more regulation forcing people to buy from me.
But the record industry is so shielded, they'd rather force compliance than adapt to the marketplace.
Slashdot Mirror
This doesn't seem like flamebait to me. Offering a counterpoint is not picking a fight.
Throughout human history, those civilizations that have advanced have done so at times when their individual lives were unencumbered by a constant search for food and shelter.
What the fuck does a starving kid in Detroit, or Sierra Leone for that matter, care about a 1TB hard drive or mapping another solar system.
keeping a few million uneducated people from starving is only beneficial to those few million uneducated starving peopleSo let's look at it from a purely economic standpoint: If we can get people healthy and sheltered enough to get them an education that's a few million more people to make your Nikes, to dig the minerals that go into the manufacture of spacecraft, and more people to sell luxury pharmaceuticals to. Hopefully that cold-hearted perspective fits into your worldview.
Again, I'm all in favor of spending money on space research. And lots of it. But let's not bullshit around pretending that it helps all of humanity.
Why can't the NFL get it through their heads that they don't control the universe. If they're worried about people selling their tickets to other fans for more than the team/stadium was charging, RAISE PRICES.
Besides if I bought tickets to a game for $75/ticket including fees, and sold them for $100/ticket, I'd still be making less than the team/stadium made off the initial sale. Hell, let the stadium charge $3000 per ticket. They're not depriving anyone of a critical resource.
I totally agree about spending money in the pursuit of knowledge over violence, but statements like yours make me cringe:
zero on things like this which expand our knowledge for the betterment of us allHow does this help the people that have core human needs that are not being fulfilled. And I'm not talking about laptops or vaccinations. I'm talking about basic food and shelter.
Space exploration is a good thing. I'd put it in the top 10 ways to spend public money. But I also don't pretend that it's a great leap forward for all of humanity. It isn't.
Yes, there are a tremendous number of stupid criminals out there, just like there are a tremendous number of stupid people out there.
But we chronically underestimate what people are capable of. I know a bit about O-chem, and with a bit of research could probably manufacture meth fairly easily. It's really not much more complicated than setting up a moonshine still. Out of the reach of some? Sure. But the fact remains that tens of thousands of strung-out hoopleheads manage to do it every day.
We complain about them damn young kids sailing the high seas of Internet and maliciously raiding commerce vessels trading in MP3s, and yet many judges seem baffled by even simple concepts like IP addressing and server logging.
These steganography tools are fairly easy to use. So why, again, are we surprised that criminals can point and click?
I think that they, and others, recognize that one of the things facing the computer industry is the death of the home, whitebox PC.
Right now, many home users use their computers for email, pr0n, surfing the web and not a whole lot more. As handheld web devices become more prevalent, the general home desktop has become obsolete.
Others use desktops for games, but there are really two camps here. The first group is happy to game for the sake of gaming, and likely will move to consoles. I used to be a PC gamer, but got tired of the endless upgrade cycle, the driver support, etc. The bleeding edge gamers with $600 video cards will continue to buy high-end desktops to play, but then, they're already not buying El Cheapo $499 Dell whiteboxes now.
Business users will continue to consume business class desktops and handheld internet appliances.
Media professionals will, as their job demands, buy the fastest most expensive thing they can get their hands on once every 3-4 years.
But as for the traditional concept of the home PC? I think it's dying.
Just like they did with the Iraq thing? Or Healthcare? Or when the put Kerry up against Bush?
Not trying to sound like a troll, but I think that the belief that "the other team" will fix it has been proven false.
I would suppose that the toxin either dehydrates soft tissue (gums) OR that a change in blood pressure can cause the mouth to throb.
In the Sea of Cortés (Golfo de California), there is a fish known by locals as the 'botete'. It is a type of puffer fish. It causes exactly this kind of problem.
Very interesting the way neurotoxins work...
Nah. They have slush-funded corporate jets which are probably largely exempt from passenger screenings anyway.
What does unlocking a phone have to do with terminating a cellular contract?
I'd love to see locked phones AND cell termination fees go the way of the dodo, but this seems like an "I don't like the terms of teh service I signed up for, so I'm suing" suit.
In theory, if we could buy unlocked phones more easily, we could then choose whatever carrier we want, adn would probably be less likely to pay the cancellation fee.
Humans (and man-made products) are kind of like hermit crabs. You can definitely find a bigger shell, and when you do, nature inclines you to occupy all of it.
And in those countries, is the iPhone available via direct-import or are people buying unsupported grey market devices?
This woman could have walked into a record store, pointed a gun at the clerk and taken cash out of the register, and have received a less damaging penalty.
Fuck you RIAA and fuck you Mr. Hegg. May you all burn in Hell while it's under my watch.
There are plenty of comments here with arguments about if or if not churches should include games like Halo in church activities.
One of the biggest arguments is that the game goes against commandments not to kill and/or murder.
This is the problem with videogames (and I love videogames). No one thinks rationally about them. The genocide of bits and bytes that is Halo has nothing to do with the real world, real life, or real people around us; until we let it.
Intrinsically, Halo is no different than the concepts brought forth in dodgeball, tag, cowboys and indians or GI Joe. It's not even that violent of a game. Most of the aliens don't bleed red, there is no real fragging (a la Unreal Tournament), and the game types are all quite similar to playground games that we encourage small children to play.
Whether it's Halo, GTA or My Little Pony, we lend too much relevance and worry to videogames. I'm not saying there shouldn't be limits. I'd never let a child play GTA.
To gamers: Videogames are not real, nor are they accurate simulators for acceptable behavior in real life.
To game haters: Videogames are not real, nor are they accurate simulators for acceptable behavior in real life.
With so much else going wrong in the world, can't we focus on things that really need fixing first?
There are two camps to this argument, but both neglect the obvious answer:
Camp A maintains that AT&T/Apple are evil for not supplying SKDs, for locking everyone into the service, for not unlocking the phones, for bricking (intentionally or unintentionally) custom-modified phones.
Camp B says that Apple and AT&T can do whatever the hell they want because the product (the phone) and the service (cellular access) are two completely different products. Synopsis: "If you modify your own phone (perfectly within your right to do it), and it breaks some functionality, how exactly is that Apple's OR AT&T's problem?"
I think the right answer is to educate yourself about the product you're buying and then make the choice whether to buy the product. Apple, good or bad, was very up-front that if you buy the phone, the service is through AT&T only and that the minimum contract length is 2 years.
They were also up-front about the cost of the phone and the cost of the monthly service to the phone.
I can't believe that so many people laid out hard-earned cash for the phone, made custom modifications to the phone, and expect Apple to continue to support it.
It does suck that the phones are tied to AT&T. Don't like? Don't buy.
In the time-honored tradition of Slashdot car analogies, the iPod is like a Bentley that you're only allowed to drive on certain streets. Freedom of choice is important to me; therefore I buy cars that I can drive on m/any streets. It seems far more practical to spend money on something that works the way I want it to, rather than to buy it, break it and then sue someone else to make it work.
Why spend $500 on a phone that doesn't do what you want it to (IE, is tied to only one network, doesn't have an SDK, doesn't do x, yo or z)?
Maybe people just have far too much money...
Very interesting that you mention dry-cleaning.
When I was in college, my roommate tossed a pair of jeans into our dryer to fluff out some wrinkles but he left his iPod mini in the pocket.
After a 15 or so minute dry cycle, it looked about exactly how that one looks (except it was a different model). The liner in the pocket was scorched, but not burned. Oddly, the screen on the iPod didn't even break.
Even if this guy had it on him, and it did spontaneously combust, there is no f-ing way he, his pants, or his iPod were on fire for 15 seconds. Lithium rapidly oxidizes and releases tremendous amounts of heat in the process. His pants would be burned through, and there would be nothing left to that glossy piece of paper.
Additionally, most men have pretty hairy legs and groins, and hair burns really easily and rapidly. He's have some pretty serious burns to contend with after 15 seconds, or even 5 seconds.
If this thing did go off in his pocket, the flash of the initial oxidation probably used up all the available 02 in his pocket, and stifled the fire.
It did get hot enough to melt the plastic on his iPod, and if there were any plastic-based fibers in his pants, those would nearly have to be at least puckered and deformed, if not melted.
I'm calling bullshit on the 15 second thing. This was a flash burn, if not an accident similar to my roommate's.
Yeah. I agree. If the HOUSEHOLD income is $60,000/year in Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Jose, San Diego (actually, basically ALL of California), or D.C., It's lower middle class.
But it is also entirely livable. People tend to make very poor credit and purchasing decisions which makes already tight cashflow even tighter. That's the real killer.
This sounds like one horribly, terribly bad idea to me from a security standpoint.
Also, I can't help but believe that 'anonymous' information will be handed over to drug companies so they can 'research' their 'market'.
Some things are still best done with paper and pen.
Elements is basically just a stripped-down version of Photoshop. If you're doing very basic editing (color correction, cropping, etc.), it's a great solution.
Most people can probably get away with using only Elements.
Not trying to start a flamewar here, but...
We might have a government run by Corporate America dot Com, but we're certainly trading in personal freedoms at a much slower rate than certain European countries.
I guess you take the good with the bad.
IAAPP (I am a professional photographer)
Lightroom and Aperture are both eye candy and nothing more. They do not replace the functionality of Pshop (including clone-stamping out dust and making color-channel level edits). Additionally, their support for IPTC/EXIF metadata is shaky at best. If you use a server or network storage device to store your image archive, it's kind of fun to watch Lightroom and Aperture shit the bed trying to figure out how to deal with it.
It's almost like a lot of the developers have realized that everyone and his brother have bought digital cameras, and that they can probably sell yet another expensive 'make my photos stop sucking' software to people who already can't use what they have.
I've used the Gimp on Windoze and Linux, and it's about where Pshop was at version 4 or 5. All software can be improved upon, and Pshop is no exception. But there is a reason that they have driven everyone else under (or nearly under). It's a damn fine couple of million lines of code.
In my expert opinion, the best combination for browser/meta editor and editing app has to be Photo Mechanic and Photoshop.
And in addition to that, anyone (professional or consumer) trying to print will find that color management in the Gimp blows nine kinds of donkey ass.
It's that very regulation that allows companies to abuse the hell out of people. Why should the government create regulatory shields for the record industry? Such regulation comes in the form of the DMCA Act and other similar junk legislation.
I'm a professional photographer. It turns out that these days, a bunch of hacks are giving away photos to magazines, newspapers and advertisers. That has forced me to re-strategize how I make my money. I'm not sitting here crying for more regulation forcing people to buy from me.
But the record industry is so shielded, they'd rather force compliance than adapt to the marketplace.
So how is that free-market capitalism again?
So, sorry for not being up to speed on this, but how much crack or meth can you buy for $2,000?