You're making the flaw most defenders of the "BAH! GIMME A GOOD PLOT INSTEAD!"-posts make..

I'm not saying you can't make a good movie -without- 3D, CGI, HD, surround sound, color, etc... of course you can.

I'm not even saying that using that tech available would make a movie that was already good even better.. that's just not a given.

I'm saying there's no reason that these should be considered mutually exclusive.
Would Forrest Gump have been a lesser movie if, instead of digitally inserting Tom Hanks in existing footage, they got some look-alikes to re-enact those scenes instead? Probably not. Does that mean we should decry the Forrest Gump moviemakers for using CGI to insert him and automatically dismiss the movie altogether? Heck no.

Conversely.. if a movie has a crappy plot/crappy acting, making that movie in 3D isn't going to make that any worse, or any better.

Well, personally I think the aesthetic thing is hogwash... sure, there will be the cheap cardboard things, just as there will be the rather bulky ones required for current shutter glasses... but the RealD glasses I get at the theater now are already reasonably good looking.. sure, they're not Oakleys or RayBans or whatever is 'in' these days in the sunglasses market.. but I've seen worse on some fashionista's faces. The best part, at least where it concerns polarization, is that this could be added to practically any (sun)glasses.

As far as parallax goes.. absolutely! Keep in mind that implied with this is a sufficient number of viewing angles to give a smooth progression as you move your head (at the moment, that means you're likely to be limited to real-time generated content - which could be processed from stereo pairs to an extent) and even a small movement of your head is going to give that '3D' illusion by way of changes in parallax and surface appearance (wet surfaces, oily skn, reflections in eyes, etc.). Although I don't think people would be bobbing their head from side-to-side to get this effect continually, it is present even with just subtle head motions.

Don't you check what links are before you click them?

Just plugging a FireFox add-on related to that...
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/3199/ - Link Alert

I didn't realize scrip/acting and 3D were mutually exclusive.. does the same apply to CGI, HD video at home, surround sound and color, too?

No magic way, no.. but there's certainly other forms of 3D display.

From stacking a bunch of LCDs behind eachother to projecting images onto a rapidly spinning disc.

Or, even, drop the stereoscopic aspect and exploit other 3D visual cues - such as parallax when changing the observing angle ( remember that youtube wiimote headtracking vid? )

Thing is.. they all have problems of their own. Stereoscopic 3D with glasses is simply the most efficient with the least problems at this point in time; but as people have such an aversion to them for aesthetic reasons (see comments regarding 'silly, 'goofy', 'stupid-looking', etc. glasses - sometimes thinly hidden behind other arguments), I do suspect it will remain a niche use.. a niche I'll gladly help fill.

Mostly because it's a simplification of the problem at hand.

yes, you can search for content only
but does that actually return the results that it should?

The question is "which results -should- it return?"

Windows 7's Windows Explorer fancy search basically determines this based on indexing options, search options, folder and file options, and a slew more things; suffice it to say, it won't return -all- possible results.

i.e. if you have "hello world" in a file that hasn't been indexed, the search service is going to throw a big fat nothing at you.

On the other hand.. if you have it in a Word document that it has indexed, it'll find it.. while a lower level search tool might not (if the Word file was packed in such a way that the string would not exist as 'plaintext' or as a simple "h.e.l.l.o. .w.o.r.l.d" regex match in the file).

I'd imagine there -is- a way to tweak things so that all instances would be found, but the thread referenced in the follow-up post here currently moderated as Troll seems to suggest otherwise.

Now personally I don't care.. I use Total Commander for that sort of stuff under Windows, and the aforementioned thread points out Grep for Windows which tends to largely solve the issue for those who just need to search.
For those who need to search and insist on using the Windows Search thing... well.. that thread is still open to further - justified, mind you, ranting.

gah... and what probably doesn't help Microsoft either is its constant renaming of the darn thing. Windows Media Photo -> HD Photo -> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JPEG_XR

JPEG-2000 is fraught with licensing issues, however.

There was also Microsoft's attempt, HD Photo.. not going anywhere either, probably for similar reasons.

WebP has that one major advantage.. Google won't be as trigger-happy on wanting licensing moneys / suing people - yet they, too, have potential patent problems.

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by the way.. JPEG also supports an encoding called "progressive"; although I've not seen this implemented anywhere, there's no reason the browser couldn't stop downloading the JPEG after the first, 2nd, 3rd level if the use resolution is smaller than the native resolution.

mod parent anon up, if you could.

I understand that a company at least -somewhat- vetting the apps in their store is better than the company that says "not our problem", but ultimately it -is- the end user's responsibility and decision of whether or not to trust the app/author.

I download extensions for FireFox and Mozilla certainly isn't certifying that they do nothing nefarious.. and I can't be bothered to check the code.. I *trust* the authors not to do anything wonky, but I fully acknowledge that the basis of that trust is a house of flimsy argument cards.

When you're about to install a dumb wallpaper app and your phone says that it wants access to your location, the internet, and your call log, that should be a giant warning sign.

Sure... but now try a navigation app.

The navigation app wants access to your position - sounds reasonable, right? Difficult to do that turn-by-turn thing otherwise.
The navigation app wants access to the internet - sounds reasonable, too, right? Lets you download map updates, POI data, etc.

But that doesn't mean there can't be a piece of code in there that uploads your position to some server.

Can't really protect against that sort of thing either except with code review... but who's going to review the code of all those apps? Even Apple let a few sneaky things through.

At some point, warnings or no warnings, you just have to decide whether you trust the app/author or not.

The only thing missing is his reviews of Episodes 4, 5 and 6.

It's all good and well to, as somebody above pointed out, nerdrage about the first 3 episodes - but in all fairness, the older episodes weren't exactly masterpieces of cinema either.. but either that reviewer thinks otherwise, or he realizes that wasting hours reviewing those movies in the same manner would just destroy the polarization he so carefully set up.

I started this small, unknown, a good thing to hear, many people are in machine translation is complete, there is a very good place. You May Have on the fire ;)

You make a lot of assumptions, though.. odds are it would be much less time.

You assume that the 62M all have internet connections, which you admit is rather generous. They don't, so the time would be cut down.. let's say it's maybe 40M, which is still pretty generous if I look at the age statistics, internet distribution, sharing of connections (2 adults in 1 household = 1 connection) etc.

However, you also assume that each and every one of them would be written to. Believe it or not, not -everybody- downloads stuff they have no explicit or implicit license to download.. so this would already change the time it would take into 'infinity'.. some people would simply never have to deal with this. But just for the sake of argument: this is where numbers get pulled out of orifices.. let's say 80% do, however... 32M.
Then you also assume that those who do, are caught.. looking around at people I know who download, I know several of them use proxies.. so those wouldn't have to deal with this either. Let's say that's a paltry 5%, so we're left with 30.4M.
Then you assume that those who are caught, and get their first warning, will turn it into a sport to get warning 2 the next day and be cut off on the 3rd day.. I guess some might do that on principle, but most people will just bow their head and clamor to their internet connection for general use more than their gotta-have-that-latest-movie fix. Say a third of the population does make it to Strike 3 for whatever reason. 10.1(3)M.

10.1(3)M / 0.15M/day = 67.(5)days or about 2 months + 2 days drop-off assuming that Strikes follow day-upon-day.. which also seems unlikely.. say there's at least 1 month between strikes, and it's closer to 4 months time in which all Contrefacteurs would be dealt with.

Seems rather speedy... where's the popcorn?

But then again.. orifice-numbers.

I'd love to see 150,000 court cases brought every day, all for downloading a couple of mp3s but the sad fact is that most cases won't go much further than sending a letter or two.

presuming that downloading those mp3s was not authorized... ...isn't "won't go much further than sending a letter or two" exactly the intent of the three strikes model? Those two letters being the first two strikes? If it does go further than that, it's Strike 3 and the court actually -should- come into play if that strike is contested. ( I'm more curious about if/how one might contest Strike 1, though. )

No.. but your choice -is- to eat at an establishment in a state where tipping is commonly used to make up for extremely low wages (even below minimum wage).

You could say "yes, but it's not like i have a choice.. they're -all- like that"... but then that's the point of argument for your other questions; if a restaurant simply asks more, let's say that 20%, up-front, then they'll be more expensive than their competitor without there being an increase in quality, quantity or service; and although you and I would be okay with that, given that it means the waitstaff and such would get normal pay, most people are just going to go to the cheaper restaurant and decide for themselves whether they want to pay 0%, 10% or 20%.
Besides.. it's not entirely true - you could eat at home.

It's basically a problem of the status quo, and is one that's incredibly tough to break - similar to gun laws. Make it legal in the UK to sell and own guns as freely as one is in the U.S. The market may be flooded with guns. Now revert that law and make it illegal again.. good luck getting all those guns out of the country again. It's much easier to restrict their sale in the first place and count your losses with the ones that get through.

That said.. I -have- also seen a logical, albeit slightly disturbing, rationale for tipping to make for a decent income in an older discussion on /. .. I'd imagine it's somewhere in these comments, too...
If you already pay the person a decent wage, then their only motivation for providing excellent service and thus higher tips comes from trying to make a little extra money for niceties. If you underpay the person, then those tips are needed to make ends meet... that's a much greater motivating factor. It makes for a relatively shitty high-stress job where most waitstaff are fakes, and of course fosters much more spite (i.e. if you don't tip, next time they'll mess up your order on purpose some.. or worse) than if you don't tip in a place where the tip would only go to those niceties anyway.