Become a fan of Slashdot on Facebook

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror
×

Comment Re:How about this? (Score 1) 349

What about near the motorway? On the shoulder of one, calling for help? Calls that are data only? (Those are still normal cellphones underneath, with a number and everything.) Should passengers be allowed to use the phone? What of people who live in buildings adjacent to them?

Of course, this is all assuming that you can even tell that someone is on a roadway with any amount of certainty.

Deliberately breaking a class of technology isn't going to stop people from being distracted while driving a car. I would wager that someone on an animated phone call is still safer than all the people that read while driving.

Your scenario is more likely to end up like the annoying GPS systems that lock the screen out from changes while moving: disabled.

Comment Re:Maybe Americans just fly too much? (Score 2, Insightful) 457

Sure, if you force private air travel to be only affordable to the super rich, then they will only be affordable to the super rich. However, *you* would be creating that situation artificially.

Small aircraft are the only reasonable way to get to an awful lot of places, unless you were prefer things taking weeks to get places because everything has to travel by car to a port, and then boat to another one, and then back on yet another car.

Personally, I would rather not artificially distort markets just because I decided I don't like something. Just because Europe decided to make fuel an order of magnitude more expensive than places that don't tax it doesn't make them right.

Comment Re:There's more to this story (Score 3, Informative) 691

No, MA just makes you pay big tax penalties for not having health care. They don't provide you health coverage, though.

They set up group plans through private insurers, but you buy a plan through the state. They also expanded state aid for paying for the premiums. This means you can't be denied coverage or have to deal with pre-existing condition BS. The rates are also cheaper than normal open-market pricing.

Comment Action when it is appropriate (Score 1) 227

The problem with this is that it really should never be the responsibility of an ISP to conduct an investigation just because some other privacy entity said so.

I shouldn't be able to get a landlord to provide me with tenant information because I decided one was looking at me out of their window. I shouldn't be able to get a purchase history from a merchant because I decided a customer was going to build a deck and their condo association forbids it. I shouldn't be able to get subscriber information from an ISP just because I decided that someone downloaded something that I think they shouldn't have.

If the movie industry wants this kind of information, then they should have to file suit, and get a court order for that information. Then they will have to prove that something unlawful actually happened, convince a judge that there was damage, and that an order for discovery needs to be created.

It is inappropriate to allow some private group to have the power to compel anything from anyone.

Music

Apple Shifts iTunes Pricing; $0.69 Tracks MIA 429

Hodejo1 writes "Steve Jobs vowed weeks ago that when iTunes shifted to a tiered price structure in April, older tracks priced at $0.69 would outnumber the contemporary hits that are rising to $1.29. Today, several weeks later, iTunes made the transition. While the $1.29 tracks are immediately visible, locating cheaper tracks is proving to be an exercise in futility. With the exception of 48 songs that Apple has placed on the iTunes main page, $0.69 downloads are a scarce commodity. MP3 Newswire tried to methodically drill down to unearth more of them only to find: 1) A download like Heart's 34-year-old song Barracuda went up to $1.29, not down. 2) Obscure '90s Brit pop and '50s rockabilly artists — those most likely to benefit from a price drop — remained at $0.99. 3) Collected tracks from a cross-section of 1920s, '30s, and '40s artists all remained at $0.99. Finally, MP3 Newswire called up tracks in the public domain from an artist named Ada Jones who first recorded in 1893 on Edison cylinder technology. The price on all of the century-old, public-domain tracks remained at $0.99. (The same tracks are available for free on archive.org.) The scarcity of lower-priced tracks may reflect the fact that the labels themselves decide which price tier they want to pursue for a given artist; and they are mostly ignoring the lower tier. Meanwhile, Amazon's UK site has decided to counter-promote their service by dropping prices on select tracks to 29 pence ($0.42)."

Comment Re:Let's stop making reviews for gamers (Score 1) 214

I took my i7 920 from 2.66GHz to 3.32GHz by upping my base clock from 133MHz to 166Mhz. This changes the QPI bus accordingly, making system transactions much faster as well. It cost me nothing over the original system cost to do this, and I didn't have to change voltages to make it work.

This makes all single core bound tasks (which are frequent) substantially faster, and I spend far less money to do it.

Comment Re:What the hell? (Score 1) 653

>I've been pulled over at least a dozen times in the 11 years I've been driving, and only come away with a ticket once. Half the time I was definitely over the limit.

Why is a cop pulling you over when you weren't doing something? How is that okay? What are you doing that they keep deciding to pull you over? I certainly am not starting out respectful of someone falsely accusing me of something, especially when there is a high probably that they know they are lying about it.

I've been pulled over for being young in a car, young at night, young with other people in the car, "too young" for the car I was driving. I've been pulled over at various times for my hair being long. I've also been pulled over for doing something that I knew was against the laws of the area.

The people that have pulled me over for doing something worthy of a citation have tended approach me, ask what I was doing, tell me why they pulled me over, and let me respond. I don't fight with someone when I know I'm in the wrong.

BY FAR, the most offensive, lowest form of life I have ever encountered has been the cops that pulled me over for the far more frequent problem of being young. These cops endanger everyone around them, they will openly lie to you, on their reports, and to judges. They will fly down the road and tailgate you to pull you over. They will get in your face and call you a liar. This type is the kind that I have encountered more than anyone positive with a badge.

And the worst part, is that many of the ones that aren't like the above, still cover for them. That doesn't make them particularly good people, either.

I've spent a lot of miles on the road, and while minivans and vehicles like Buicks and such are most likely to be not paying attention... police cruisers are the mostly likely to do something dangerous. I've seen marked cruisers tailgating people with only feet of room on the highway, I've been nearly rear-ended, broadsided, and t-boned by them, because they think they own the road, and just expect people will throw their cars into ditches because there's something with a lightbar behind them, even when it's turned off. Hell, I've had one of these assholes shine a spotlight on me *while driving down a highway*.

As someone that has been driving for well over 10 years, and has worked with police for years, I wish I had something more positive to say about them. The ones worth giving a badge to seem to have a high tendency to change jobs or retire.

Comment Re:Still making 32 bit? (Score 1) 641

Actually, just below the graph you mention it says that Snow Leopard is shipping both 32bit and 64bit version of the kernel and all bundled applications. Apple is doing exactly what MS has been, but shipping a combined OSX product on one DVD, rather than selling two separated editions.

I would say that the Apple way of shipping is far better than MS, but it is certainly not the first away from 32-bit. They are still maintaining a 32bit *and* a 64bit version of their OS.

Censorship

India Sleepwalks Into a Surveillance Society 292

An anonymous reader writes "ZeroPaid has a fascinating roundup of news stories surrounding the latest surveillance laws passed in India, including a first-hand account of someone writing from inside India. The legislation in question is the Information Technology Act's amendment bill 2006, which was recently passed in the Indian parliament. Things you can't do with the new legislation include surfing for news in Bollywood and looking up porn on the internet. The legislation also allows all transmissions over the internet to be monitored for any form of lawbreaking and permits a sub-inspector to break into your house to make sure you aren't browsing porn on your computer."

Comment Re:WTF do they need GPS for? (Score 1) 713

Definitely not likely to get cheap enough. Perhaps it is possible to build something half-assed that would be just good enough to offset south-east by 500 miles or something.

I don't know how the timing and tracking works on GPS, if you couldn't tell. ;-) I thought it had to do with knowing the expected positions and an exact time. If there isn't encryption, it would certainly be easier.

Slashdot Top Deals

Two can Live as Cheaply as One for Half as Long. -- Howard Kandel

Working...