I wonder what hidden properties we could find out about our reality through selective filtering. It would be cool if shifting sky data via a particular matrix revealed a hidden message. What if all the white noise of reality we exist in just needs the right filter to reveal something profound?
I wonder if you could use this to enhance vision by filtering out certain wavelengths or only doing edge detection...
Your contractor was right. Though Saddam's connection to Al Qaeda was limited, there are currently Al Qaeda in Iraq elements that have openly threatened the U.S. In effect, if we don't defeat them in Iraq they become potential attackers here.
If you continue to run off those who disagree with you world view, simply because you can't handle differing opinions, how are you ever going to realize when you're wrong? Surrounding yourself with "yes men" is potentially hazardous to your intelligence.
Do you really believe that Al Qaeda is not currently operating in Iraq?
I just convinced my company to buy me Flash CS3 and so far I have enjoyed the experience much more than Flash 8, but Actionscript 3.0 is still lacking. I watched the development video which showed how easy it is to integrate the client side with the server side and I as salivating.
Since I am already so far into my project I think I'll finish it up in Flash, but I think in my spare time I am going to attempt to rewrite it in c#/silverlight. I am primarily a c# coder so this looks like welcome news.
Do you happen to know if I can do this with VS2005 or do I have have the beta version?
You must live in a box, because you seem to think that everyone else does as well. The next time you're repositioning your refrigerator bungalow so the "this end up" points north, you might want to consider the possibility that not everyone who believes issue A also believes issue B. Boxing people into stereotypes limits your ability to argue effectively, as it makes it appear that you are unable to effectively argue issue A, so you bring up B to change the subject.
Perhaps conservatives denying bad science, such as Carbon-induced global warming theories, is what keeps reinforcing it among the believers. Perhaps if the religious claimed that God made cows fart to cause global warming, the scientific community would actually allow more viable alternative theories to be assessed.
Does anyone know what material this is made of and how long it will last? I could see this being one of many items that space-faring treasure hunters will search for in the future. Though, if it gets sucked into Earth's atmosphere or melts under the heat of the sun, I guess not...
The RIAA members are the sole source of popular music in mainstream culture. I could believe the "if you don't like the product don't buy it," argument if there was a competitor from which to buy music with equal talent and production quality.
Because there is no other option, the RIAA can force the standard for what types of music are popular, and on what formats it is available. In the case of Napster the consumer wanted an easy way to download individual songs they liked from CDs, without having to go to the store and buy the entire CD. The RIAA refused to switch to the new medium, and consequently the black market stepped in to provide that service.
Now the RIAA is attempting to control a new format, internet streaming. I believe that they are making this rate change in order to kill not-for-profit and donation based stations. The reasoning seems to be that under the old rates structure, stations only have to pay a percentage of their profits to SoundExchange. This means that a commercial for-profit station will always generate more revenue than a not-for-profit station.
The problem is that the consumer prefers to listen to the commercial free stations. This means that there are less for-profit internet stations out there, which in turn meant less profits for the industry. (when paying a percentage of income to SoundExchange)
Instead of embracing the idea of commercial free radio and cultivating in a way that would generate more music sales, the industry has embraced a model that the consumer does not want. The current not-for-profit stations will most likely just go overseas, the consumer will continue to listen to them, and the industry will lose any chance of revenue.
What the industry should do is work with internet radio to generate sales, yet instead they have chosen path that will only lose them more money and further alienate the customer.
It is true that there is no free lunch, but it is also true that consumers prefer their lunches prepared in a certain way. The RIAA continues to ignore what the customers want, which ultimately leads to customer dissatisfaction and fewer profits.
Raising the rates of internet streams above that of traditional radio in order to change consumer habits will not work. My point is that by ignoring what the customers want, the RIAA is in effect creating another Napster. This is almost just like the way the music industry missed the boat with digital downloads. They are once again shunning a potential profit avenue. The music industry should be utilizing internet radio instead of destroying it.
[unrelated]The industry seems hell bent on clinging to a model that force feeds "the next best artist" on the public, instead of allowing the public to decide who that artist is. That is why they are ultimately going to lose in this endeavor. The Internet has changed everything.
SoundExchange may force internet radio as we know it off the air, but it will swiftly be replaced by a system that does not pay royalties. I am speaking of course of overseas broadcasting, and P2P radio networks.
Consumers want to hear streaming music on the internet without annoying commercials. If there exists no legal, cost-effective way to do it, then the black market will find a way. It's time for the industry to wake up and realize that alienating the consumer base does not equal more profits.
Did anyone else envision a mannequin covered in a burka with a camera hidden under a veil when they read this title?
I was thinking about all of the Palestinians who protest Israel wearing ski mask. I've often wondered if Israel uses IR technology to scan the faces of these people under their masks to ascertain their true identity. I wonder if they use a retinal scanning camera to track who's protesting in their black mask and matching AK 47?
I believe that the AA software reads the MAC address of the network hardware you are using to interface with the net. It might also read serial numbers from your hard drive or other hardware. This could all probably be circumvented by using a virtual machine to fake these particular hardware ids, but this sort of solution is effective at banning most of the script kiddies running hacks.
I have never cheated at any online game but still have been banned in AA before. Sometimes you can be on too good of a streak for the admin of a server and your access must be sacrificed for the greater good
I believe that most cheating stems from the adolescent "Superman" wish. I think secretly many people want to overcome the basic rules that define their reality and dominate others. If your world only consists of horizontal movement, you secretly wish you had vertical movement etc. I think this is base human nature, and nothing will change this desire.
What gaming needs are adult-only servers that require a valid real world ID to enter. Pseudo-anonymity and adolescence is the catalyst for brazen cheating and game-hacks. For many people, knowing their true real world identity will be tied to any action in a game will make them think twice about cheating. It wouldn't stop cheating in its entirety, but it would helped to stem the epidemic.
Closed-box systems like the Xbox also help. The skill level required to modify the reality generated by a closed-box system then becomes so great that it deters the average script kiddie.
When I read the review of the article I expected the "bear" to look much different than it appears to in the relate images.
I imagined a tall, four legged machine that would hover over the wounded, and raise the wounded up into protective shell within its torso. This design appears to leave the soldier vulnerable to more attacks.
Also, the head was a disappointment. I was expecting a large stuffed teddy bear head with a metallic body.
I have to agree with most of your experience with GIMP. It repeatedly crashed on my machine. The GIMP interface is also not very usable. I know how to use it, but the separately floating tool windows, the cryptic menu layout, and the inconsistent design mean that you'll spend twice the time trying to accomplish a goal you could complete more quickly in Paint.Net.
Paint.Net was a godsend to me. The interface is professional, well-designed, and responsive. The application also has most of the features I need in an imaging program. The fact that it is free and receives regular updates is just icing on the cake. Paint.net feels like a sold application from top to bottom.
http://www.getpaint.net/
I own a Slingbox but I am probably going to be building a MythTv box based on Ubuntu within the next month.
The Slingbox does what it is advertised to do, but I have had recurrent problems interfacing it with the Moxi DVR that my cable company supplied. When I first got the Slingbox it wasn't even compatible with the Moxi DVR. Then a few months later they released IR codes that allowed me to control it. Unfortunately that control is intermittent as sometimes (mostly when I am 600 miles away) the Slingbox refuses to change the channel on my Moxi DVR.
Slingbox has also started encoding their digital stream to the client. You used to be able to record the stream to a Windows Media file for fair use (such as on your portable device) but now the stream is encoded. You either have to revert to an older version of the client to circumvent this, or use a hack that prevents the latest client from requesting an encrypted stream from the Slingbox.
So after noting that my DVR is costing me at least $7 a month to rent, that the DVR doesn't allow me fair use of the content, and that my Slingbox doesn't give me all the functionality that I want; I have decided to switch to a homemade DVR.
I have read that MythTV for Ubuntu is easier to set up than it once was. I looked into BeyondTV and other software DVRs but I like the fact that MythTV is open sourced, and supports game emulators. There is a freeware Windows-based DVR software, but it doesn't appear to have all the features MythTV does and I can't justify buying another MS license.
I am guessing that my greatest cost will be in purchasing a PVR card or two since my two ATI cards are not Linux compatible, and they software encode instead of hardware encode.
Perhaps this is all common sense to everyone else, but I am just now seeing the business angle of this issue. I am a layman on this subject, so please regard all of the following as purely conjecture:
Free/donation based internet stations play the same music advertising driven stations play, but without the annoyance of commercial interruption.
Free/Donation based stations usually have the goal of generating just enough revenue to cover their expenses, while advertising driven stations hope to generate a profit for their investors.
Since the rates paid by stations currently is a percentage of their annual income, it is more advantageous to the artists and music companies if the existing internet radio stations have the goal of generating more revenue. It is not advantageous for free/donation based stations to exist, because their profit structure ultimately means less revenue for the record labels.
I think this is why the rates have been restructured. A popular free station doesn't generate a lot of revenue, but it has a lot of listeners. These are listeners who aren't listening to advertiser driven radio, radio that ultimately generates more revenue for the record companies.
I believe the goal of the rate-restructure is to put free/donation based radio out of business. By charging per-person they take the low revenue advantage from free/donation radio, and penalize them for being popular. This forces internet radio to be profitable to survive, which means free/donation profit structures cannot exist.
I am sad to say this, but I am not sure this could ever resolve in a way to be in favor of the listener. Eclectic, commercial free radio that listeners enjoy is just not profitable to the music industry. It also sucks away potential profits from commercial driven radio which ultimately means less revenue for the industry.
There is probably no tangible way to show that independent internet radio helps to generate more industry profit just by existing. I think we have to solve the underlying economic problem before we can ultimately win.
This reminds me of the movie, The Thirteenth floor.
If you could simulate the building blocks of life in a virtual life, could you not also accelerate the evolution process and create sentient life? If all life truly started from these base chemical reactions, then it should be possible, technology willing, to create virtual life.
I was surprised that no one commented here on E. Howard Hunt's audio tape confession of involvement in the Kennedy assassination: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E._Howard_Hunt#Audio- taped_confession
Within the audio tape Hunt names Cord Meyer, Frank Sturgis, David Sánchez Morales, and David Atlee Phillips as co-conspirators. He also claims Lyndon Johnson approved of the assassination for political gain.
"I think that LBJ settled on Meyer as an opportunist, parent--like himself a parent--and a man who had very little left to him in life ever since JFK had taken Cord's wife as one of his mistresses. I would suggest that Cord Meyer welcomed the approach from LBJ, who was after all only the Vice President at that time and of course could not number Cord Meyer among JFK's admirers--quite the contrary."
E. Howard Hunt was also famous for organizing the bugging of the DNC in the Watergate scandal.
Slashdot Mirror
I wonder what hidden properties we could find out about our reality through selective filtering. It would be cool if shifting sky data via a particular matrix revealed a hidden message. What if all the white noise of reality we exist in just needs the right filter to reveal something profound?
I wonder if you could use this to enhance vision by filtering out certain wavelengths or only doing edge detection...
Your contractor was right. Though Saddam's connection to Al Qaeda was limited, there are currently Al Qaeda in Iraq elements that have openly threatened the U.S. In effect, if we don't defeat them in Iraq they become potential attackers here. If you continue to run off those who disagree with you world view, simply because you can't handle differing opinions, how are you ever going to realize when you're wrong? Surrounding yourself with "yes men" is potentially hazardous to your intelligence. Do you really believe that Al Qaeda is not currently operating in Iraq?
I just convinced my company to buy me Flash CS3 and so far I have enjoyed the experience much more than Flash 8, but Actionscript 3.0 is still lacking. I watched the development video which showed how easy it is to integrate the client side with the server side and I as salivating. Since I am already so far into my project I think I'll finish it up in Flash, but I think in my spare time I am going to attempt to rewrite it in c#/silverlight. I am primarily a c# coder so this looks like welcome news. Do you happen to know if I can do this with VS2005 or do I have have the beta version?
You must live in a box, because you seem to think that everyone else does as well. The next time you're repositioning your refrigerator bungalow so the "this end up" points north, you might want to consider the possibility that not everyone who believes issue A also believes issue B. Boxing people into stereotypes limits your ability to argue effectively, as it makes it appear that you are unable to effectively argue issue A, so you bring up B to change the subject.
Perhaps conservatives denying bad science, such as Carbon-induced global warming theories, is what keeps reinforcing it among the believers. Perhaps if the religious claimed that God made cows fart to cause global warming, the scientific community would actually allow more viable alternative theories to be assessed.
Apparently I get the idiot award today. I misread something somewhere between compiles. Please mod me down as a lesson to others.
Does anyone know what material this is made of and how long it will last? I could see this being one of many items that space-faring treasure hunters will search for in the future. Though, if it gets sucked into Earth's atmosphere or melts under the heat of the sun, I guess not...
But how do I make the yellow letters scroll up that tell me what the story is about?
The RIAA members are the sole source of popular music in mainstream culture. I could believe the "if you don't like the product don't buy it," argument if there was a competitor from which to buy music with equal talent and production quality.
Because there is no other option, the RIAA can force the standard for what types of music are popular, and on what formats it is available. In the case of Napster the consumer wanted an easy way to download individual songs they liked from CDs, without having to go to the store and buy the entire CD. The RIAA refused to switch to the new medium, and consequently the black market stepped in to provide that service.
Now the RIAA is attempting to control a new format, internet streaming. I believe that they are making this rate change in order to kill not-for-profit and donation based stations. The reasoning seems to be that under the old rates structure, stations only have to pay a percentage of their profits to SoundExchange. This means that a commercial for-profit station will always generate more revenue than a not-for-profit station.
The problem is that the consumer prefers to listen to the commercial free stations. This means that there are less for-profit internet stations out there, which in turn meant less profits for the industry. (when paying a percentage of income to SoundExchange)
Instead of embracing the idea of commercial free radio and cultivating in a way that would generate more music sales, the industry has embraced a model that the consumer does not want. The current not-for-profit stations will most likely just go overseas, the consumer will continue to listen to them, and the industry will lose any chance of revenue.
What the industry should do is work with internet radio to generate sales, yet instead they have chosen path that will only lose them more money and further alienate the customer.
It is true that there is no free lunch, but it is also true that consumers prefer their lunches prepared in a certain way. The RIAA continues to ignore what the customers want, which ultimately leads to customer dissatisfaction and fewer profits.
Raising the rates of internet streams above that of traditional radio in order to change consumer habits will not work. My point is that by ignoring what the customers want, the RIAA is in effect creating another Napster. This is almost just like the way the music industry missed the boat with digital downloads. They are once again shunning a potential profit avenue. The music industry should be utilizing internet radio instead of destroying it.
[unrelated]The industry seems hell bent on clinging to a model that force feeds "the next best artist" on the public, instead of allowing the public to decide who that artist is. That is why they are ultimately going to lose in this endeavor. The Internet has changed everything.
SoundExchange may force internet radio as we know it off the air, but it will swiftly be replaced by a system that does not pay royalties. I am speaking of course of overseas broadcasting, and P2P radio networks.
Consumers want to hear streaming music on the internet without annoying commercials. If there exists no legal, cost-effective way to do it, then the black market will find a way. It's time for the industry to wake up and realize that alienating the consumer base does not equal more profits.
Did anyone else envision a mannequin covered in a burka with a camera hidden under a veil when they read this title? I was thinking about all of the Palestinians who protest Israel wearing ski mask. I've often wondered if Israel uses IR technology to scan the faces of these people under their masks to ascertain their true identity. I wonder if they use a retinal scanning camera to track who's protesting in their black mask and matching AK 47?
I believe that the AA software reads the MAC address of the network hardware you are using to interface with the net. It might also read serial numbers from your hard drive or other hardware. This could all probably be circumvented by using a virtual machine to fake these particular hardware ids, but this sort of solution is effective at banning most of the script kiddies running hacks. I have never cheated at any online game but still have been banned in AA before. Sometimes you can be on too good of a streak for the admin of a server and your access must be sacrificed for the greater good I believe that most cheating stems from the adolescent "Superman" wish. I think secretly many people want to overcome the basic rules that define their reality and dominate others. If your world only consists of horizontal movement, you secretly wish you had vertical movement etc. I think this is base human nature, and nothing will change this desire. What gaming needs are adult-only servers that require a valid real world ID to enter. Pseudo-anonymity and adolescence is the catalyst for brazen cheating and game-hacks. For many people, knowing their true real world identity will be tied to any action in a game will make them think twice about cheating. It wouldn't stop cheating in its entirety, but it would helped to stem the epidemic. Closed-box systems like the Xbox also help. The skill level required to modify the reality generated by a closed-box system then becomes so great that it deters the average script kiddie.
The game seems to load fine and work on my browser. Perhaps I am playing from the server...
Clearly this is Martian Censorship. The Martians are preventing the disclosure of sensitive locations so that they aren't published on Google Mars.
When I read the review of the article I expected the "bear" to look much different than it appears to in the relate images. I imagined a tall, four legged machine that would hover over the wounded, and raise the wounded up into protective shell within its torso. This design appears to leave the soldier vulnerable to more attacks. Also, the head was a disappointment. I was expecting a large stuffed teddy bear head with a metallic body.
This is what Xerces would sit on if the movie 300 were set in the future
This is why no ancient photographs exist. We need to find a way to port our digital images to stone.
I have to agree with most of your experience with GIMP. It repeatedly crashed on my machine. The GIMP interface is also not very usable. I know how to use it, but the separately floating tool windows, the cryptic menu layout, and the inconsistent design mean that you'll spend twice the time trying to accomplish a goal you could complete more quickly in Paint.Net. Paint.Net was a godsend to me. The interface is professional, well-designed, and responsive. The application also has most of the features I need in an imaging program. The fact that it is free and receives regular updates is just icing on the cake. Paint.net feels like a sold application from top to bottom. http://www.getpaint.net/
I own a Slingbox but I am probably going to be building a MythTv box based on Ubuntu within the next month.
The Slingbox does what it is advertised to do, but I have had recurrent problems interfacing it with the Moxi DVR that my cable company supplied. When I first got the Slingbox it wasn't even compatible with the Moxi DVR. Then a few months later they released IR codes that allowed me to control it. Unfortunately that control is intermittent as sometimes (mostly when I am 600 miles away) the Slingbox refuses to change the channel on my Moxi DVR.
Slingbox has also started encoding their digital stream to the client. You used to be able to record the stream to a Windows Media file for fair use (such as on your portable device) but now the stream is encoded. You either have to revert to an older version of the client to circumvent this, or use a hack that prevents the latest client from requesting an encrypted stream from the Slingbox.
So after noting that my DVR is costing me at least $7 a month to rent, that the DVR doesn't allow me fair use of the content, and that my Slingbox doesn't give me all the functionality that I want; I have decided to switch to a homemade DVR.
I have read that MythTV for Ubuntu is easier to set up than it once was. I looked into BeyondTV and other software DVRs but I like the fact that MythTV is open sourced, and supports game emulators. There is a freeware Windows-based DVR software, but it doesn't appear to have all the features MythTV does and I can't justify buying another MS license.
I am guessing that my greatest cost will be in purchasing a PVR card or two since my two ATI cards are not Linux compatible, and they software encode instead of hardware encode.
Perhaps this is all common sense to everyone else, but I am just now seeing the business angle of this issue. I am a layman on this subject, so please regard all of the following as purely conjecture:
Free/donation based internet stations play the same music advertising driven stations play, but without the annoyance of commercial interruption.
Free/Donation based stations usually have the goal of generating just enough revenue to cover their expenses, while advertising driven stations hope to generate a profit for their investors.
Since the rates paid by stations currently is a percentage of their annual income, it is more advantageous to the artists and music companies if the existing internet radio stations have the goal of generating more revenue. It is not advantageous for free/donation based stations to exist, because their profit structure ultimately means less revenue for the record labels.
I think this is why the rates have been restructured. A popular free station doesn't generate a lot of revenue, but it has a lot of listeners. These are listeners who aren't listening to advertiser driven radio, radio that ultimately generates more revenue for the record companies.
I believe the goal of the rate-restructure is to put free/donation based radio out of business. By charging per-person they take the low revenue advantage from free/donation radio, and penalize them for being popular. This forces internet radio to be profitable to survive, which means free/donation profit structures cannot exist.
I am sad to say this, but I am not sure this could ever resolve in a way to be in favor of the listener. Eclectic, commercial free radio that listeners enjoy is just not profitable to the music industry. It also sucks away potential profits from commercial driven radio which ultimately means less revenue for the industry.
There is probably no tangible way to show that independent internet radio helps to generate more industry profit just by existing. I think we have to solve the underlying economic problem before we can ultimately win.
This reminds me of the movie, The Thirteenth floor.
If you could simulate the building blocks of life in a virtual life, could you not also accelerate the evolution process and create sentient life? If all life truly started from these base chemical reactions, then it should be possible, technology willing, to create virtual life.
I was surprised that no one commented here on E. Howard Hunt's audio tape confession of involvement in the Kennedy assassination: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E._Howard_Hunt#Audio- taped_confession
Within the audio tape Hunt names Cord Meyer, Frank Sturgis, David Sánchez Morales, and David Atlee Phillips as co-conspirators. He also claims Lyndon Johnson approved of the assassination for political gain.
"I think that LBJ settled on Meyer as an opportunist, parent--like himself a parent--and a man who had very little left to him in life ever since JFK had taken Cord's wife as one of his mistresses. I would suggest that Cord Meyer welcomed the approach from LBJ, who was after all only the Vice President at that time and of course could not number Cord Meyer among JFK's admirers--quite the contrary."
E. Howard Hunt was also famous for organizing the bugging of the DNC in the Watergate scandal.