"Why would the writer think that adding body sensors are an answer, 'instead of improving the fucking sound?"<br><br>They have to go a bit further back than the hardware I think. I've you've looked at a waveform for what passes as music these days, you would agree<nobr> <wbr></nobr>:D Listening to THAT on even a decent set of headphones won't help it any.<br><br>The folks that put this stuff together need to understand that the entire waveform isn't supposed to look like a solid block just barely under the clipping threshold.<nobr> <wbr></nobr>:|

This line of reasoning works great until they whip out the Taser because you weren't being " co-operative " with the officer.

Your point is valid, never consent to anything nor say anything to Law Enforcement, just understand you'll likely get the shit kicked out of you for standing up for your rights.

to note the furor of the drinking crowd is much the same as it is with the gun crowd when folks start talking about means to limit their consumption of it.

The fact that alcohol causes quite a bit of death should come as no shock to anyone. The fact that it causes MORE death than the favorite target of activists ( firearms ) these days isn't much of a shock either. What puzzles me is why folks continue to go after one with such ferocity and not the other ? Why is one such a popular icon of EVIL, while the other does even more damage ? ( Don't even get me started about heart disease, medical mistakes and the real scary killers of us all these days )

When was the last time you heard ANYONE speak of banning alcohol, certain types / amounts of alcohol, or alcohol in scary looking bottles ? Any Congressional bills getting drafted on the matter ? Demonstrations by folks with signs ? Anything ?

*crickets*

Exactly.

but it's more likely my experience.<nobr> <wbr></nobr>:D<br><br>I don't buy ANY game at full price anymore. It's not that I'm cheap, I can easily afford them, it's that I'm fed up with games that are effectively Beta II at launch date. Been burned too many times I guess. Within a month of launch, most games will have a Gigabyte sized patch to fix all the crap that should have been fixed prior to release. The world certainly won't end if I don't get to play ( insert AAA title here ) on launch day. Considering the login server issues, DRM and just an overall shitty job ( is there such a thing as Quality Assurance these days ? ) I can wait.<br><br>Usually takes at least six months before I would consider the game stable.<br><br>By that time, all the bugs have been ironed out, the reviews are in either supporting or negating the pre-launch hype and the experience is more pleasant overall.<br><br>If everyone did this, companies would either release a finished and polished product as they are supposed to, or go bankrupt. Simple choice really. I choose to spend my money only on that which is worth it.

Interesting ruling, but I wonder how long it will take some law school type to figure out they may be able to apply this case to other unions as well.

All unions, to my knowledge anyway, prize seniority over all other variables. You can be the most amazing employee ever, but when it comes to layoffs, if you have less seniority than someone else, you get the boot first regardless of your abilities.

The flip side of that is you can be the most incompetent employee ever and, due to seniority rules, you get to stay because you've sat in the chair longer.

What really burns me about unions is the two aforementioned employees are paid the same once they have been with the company X years. In my opinion, this creates serious motivational issues for both employees:

One realizes they can do the bare minimum and still get paid.

While your super employee realizes that busting their ass is rather pointless since the other one that is sitting in the corner, drooling on themself is being paid exactly the same as well. ( to add insult to injury, if droolio has more seniority, they have more vacation time to boot )

I fight with unionites all the time who try to tell me the pay is what it is because the Union fights for their members. I point out that since Union dues are a percentage of employee pay, the Union is actually fighting for its own pay raise, not the members. It also explains why the unions never back down over pay, but will instantly give in to health care premium increases since those come out of the employees pockets and not the Unions.

just to see what the differences are between it and Mental Ray and / or V-Ray. ( I own both ) Unless it adds some serious " just gotta have it " reasons over Mental Ray or the other commercial renderers, then most folks probably won't bother with it.

The new hotness, however, is GPU rendering. ( eg: I-Ray or Octane )

If Renderman supports GPU rendering, then it will gain a lot more interest as it won't be considered a deprecated rendering solution.

I used to think otherwise, but have recently come to the revelation that even the most incapable member of a team can be useful under the right circumstances.

Example: One of my team members has been with us a few years. Their capabilities are limited to the most basic of tasks and the odds of their learning the more advanced concepts are slim. Yet, the way our company is structured, their compensation is the exact same as the most capable team members. Creates an odd environment to work in when the most capable are paid the same as the least. . . but that's another story.

One day I realized our LSTM ( Least significant team member ) had a very powerful hidden ability. They now have a code-name: Agent ITWMD. ( Yes, the Information Technology Weapon of Mass Destruction )

Anytime we get an overly pushy marketing department or someone trying to force unrealistic time-lines upon us, we simply deploy the IT WMD to handle that project, sit back and watch the chaos unfold. To give you an idea, what should take two hours will take TWO DAYS with our secret weapon. Imagine sitting on a conference call for two days on a project that any other team member can complete in their sleep in a fraction of the time. It's like being told it will take a week to rotate the tires on your car :D

After one or two of those sessions, the formerly pushy and obnoxious groups will all but BEG us to spare them the horror of such a weapon. We kindly tell them to behave and give us realistic timelines to work with and we'll provide them with a more than capable tech to work with. They usually learn rather quickly. We need only mention the IT WMD on the call when they start to go stupid again and they will instantly understand the direction they are going is the wrong one.

Keep this in mind the next time you have a LSTM of your own. :D

Terrorism doesn't come to this country because they hate our way of life, our religion, or beliefs. It comes to this country because our foreign policy is, and has been, bomb everyone that doesn't doesn't agree with us as a means of control.

In the eyes of the rest of the world, the United States is the primary exporter of terrorism. We're pretty much the bully of the planet. It's obvious why we don't have daily drone strikes against Russia or China. They won't put up with it and a conflict between Super-Powers doesn't have a guaranteed or predictable outcome. So we pick on the little countries instead.

We kill some folks with a drone strike, they gun down an embassy, we stomp our feet and point " Look, look ! Teh terrorists ! " and we launch another drone. :|

Americans like to think we are the just ones here. We right the wrongs of the world and that we're the shining example of how things are supposed to be. That's what has been burned into our heads since day one. It's starting to become crystal clear just how incorrect that line of thinking really is. Sadly, outside of an armed revolution*, it's unlikely we'll be able to remove enough of the established government to make any real change in how things work here. It would basically take a complete removal of our elected leadership with some major changes to the existing laws and rules to get us back on the right track.

I sincerely hope there is more to come from Mr. Snowdens documents. I also hope the information contained therein is horrific enough to snap the average American out of the " everything is ok " daze we've been in for the last several decades. Because it will take something along those lines to get the engine of true change running.

*For the inevitable " good luck with your guns vs the military might " post that always seems to show up, I'll simply point out the last several conflicts the US has been involved with were against a much weaker military opponent who used basic guns and IED's. No tanks. No ships or aircraft to speak of. We haven't " won " any of those conflicts in recent history unless you believe the propaganda. Just food for thought before you post it.

At some point, the world will completely lose trust in the United States and when that happens, our existence and / or relevance as a country will cease to be.

when our government can trump them with their " think of the terrorists / kids / national security / state secrets " bullshit.

They're already breaking constitutional laws on an epic scale, do you really think they give two shits about breaking some more ?

It's akin to thinking the " no guns " sign on the front door of a bank will somehow magically avert a bank robbery :/

A nice symbolic gesture perhaps, but laughable if anyone believes it will make any difference.

The only way this gets fixed is when the companies realize that being in bed with the US govt is great, until you get caught. At which point you've eroded public trust to the point you can't GIVE away your product. You may as well blow out the candles and go home.

Google: We're going to give you a super-car for the price of a consumer model. The caveat is we're going to install cameras, microphones and gps into it so anytime you use it, we get to collect all your " meta-data " for use as we see fit. We swear we won't sell it to third parties and certainly won't let the government -cough-NSA-cough- ever use it. Really :)

Not that AT&T is the champion of digital privacy by any means, but Google isn't exactly a savior either. The old saying " Beware of strangers bearing gifts " comes to mind.

It is to their business customers. Fiber systems terminating directly to the customer site breaking out into gigabit eth connection points. Need a gigabit connection ? No problem, can just connect your office to the shiny new unit in the basement with some cat-5e and you're good to go.

All the telecoms pretty much own the backbone and long haul systems that move all that precious data around. Those high capacity Sonet systems are not cheap, nor is the fiber infrastructure they ride upon.

The telcos don't have to own the ' last mile ' to get it to your business or home as long as they own the rest of it.

Though, while they won't admit it, Google IS the reason behind this. AT&T has never been a pro-active company, but rather a reflexive one. They're pushing fiber to the business very hard right now, since they don't want to lose their business customers.

Fiber to the home will be selective markets only as I doubt their plans include retrofitting fiber into neighborhoods that would never pay for such services to begin with.

As for the telcos going away, all of them are selling off or have plans to sell off the wireline side of things. ( copper facilities ) They want to get out of that business anyway since it's a pita to maintain and everyone is transitioning to wireless.

Want to know what scares the telcos ?

Anything that undermines the cellular business model since that is their bread and butter going forward. I would think that municipal owned wi-fi networks and wi-fi capable voip phones would scare the hell out of them as it would negate the need for cellular at all for large swaths of folks within range of those systems.

Heh, think about why the telcos fight the deployment of such systems so fiercely :)

Take away " guns " and replace it with " smartphones ". Use the same tech as the watch, to prevent any use of a smartphone ( other than emergency calls ) while inside a running vehicle. No exceptions.

Watch how fast folks lose their MINDS when you try to change something. Even if you're only trying to do the right thing. ( prevent deaths )

I would say 75% know not to use their phones while driving, yet the tech will impact 100% of all drivers. ( So, to fix what is clearly an issue with a minority of users, we'll just screw everyone over )

Would you be ok with this ?

Anyone who still retains even a shred of common sense knows that driving while texting / talking / playing Angry Birds on the damn phone is stupid. Yet, I would guesstimate somewhere around one in four do it anyway. Next time you're at a red light, watch crossing traffic and count how many are on their damn phones as they go by :|

Their stupidity puts more people at risk and kills / injures far more people every year ( accidents due to driving while distracted ) than any Jammer will ever come close to touching. Ever heard of a fatality pile up on the freeway because someone was running a jammer ? Yeah, me either :| Compare it to how many we hear about because they CAN'T PUT THE FUCKING PHONE DOWN for even a moment of their life. I mean really ? Driving. The ONE thing you need to do while driving is pay attention full time to the environment around you and a good portion of folks are completely incapable of it.

The reason the guy resorted to such measures is simple. Inaction to stop the practice from the usual legal and / or technological channels. Wasn't very smart about it in that he let it run full time ( put a switch on it, trigger as you need to, much harder to find ) but, the world is full of folks who don't think things through very well before acting.

The fine is excessive IMO as you can drive down the highway snot-slinging drunk ( a certifiable hazard if ever there was one ) get pulled over, arrested and your fine will be a fraction of what this guys is. The masses cheer and rejoice about the guy getting hit with such a fine. Maybe we should start hitting folks with a $50,000 fine any time you're spotted driving and fiddling with your phone. After all, it's a non-argument that driving while distracted is a danger to everyone yet, nothing is done about it. Thus, this guy decided to take matters on himself.

Hell, I would give him a medal if I had any to give.

The human species overall is pretty stupid. We're one of the few ( if not the only ) that is intelligent enough to know when something is probably a dumb idea, but do it anyway. Then question when the outcome is a negative one.

Some of the data storage units we had would put the 8" floppy to shame.

They were called DTD's and were the size of a medium Igloo cooler. Kinda cool in that the case was see through and you could watch the platter mechanism and read / write heads do their thing while it was operating. They weighed ~40 pounds or so and were hot-swappable. They were kept in two person control safes ( yes, two combos, no one ever had both combos ) and were loaded into the system as needed depending on mission and where in the world we were at the time.

To transport them, they were placed into a larger DOD approved case ( like a big Pelican case, just DOD approved ) locked, then sealed in with tamper seals. Big enough to require two persons to carry which was convenient since they were two-person control items.

Unlikely it is still the same today, but this was only back as far as the mid-90's.

New tech is great, but you can't toss one of those things in your bag, throw it over your shoulder and walk off with it :D