I'm sorry, resisting what hackel wants is not what makes them dinosaurs. Resisting what the market wants is what makes them dinosaurs. The market is waning for broadcast, timeslotted, shut-up-and-eat-your-spam programming now that new technology allows time shifting and format shifting. That's what people want, what they'll spend their time on and what they'll pay to have. Why do we need a "try before you buy" of something we don't want to buy? Oh wait, it's not about what we want. It's about what you want. You still want us (eg, everyone else) to bleed in order to finance your pork barrel programming. I remember this conversation! We're still weeping for the impending demise of the $300 million blockbuster. :D

Wasn't the point recently discussed that the shows are not products, our eyeballs are? We don't show demand, the advertisers do? We're not being sold cheese it's just baiting the mousetrap. How is sneaking the cheese off the mousetrap the "worst thing that we can do, yes worse than walking into the trap" when most every natural food source was paved over long ago by the powers that be?

When you find independant programming that you like, rejoice! Involve yourself in the communities. Buy the merchandise. Support the cause! But to this date, there's not a lot of independant material to choose from. In any event, "not watching" material just because it's commercial and someone is hoping to extort you is precisely as disingenuous as deciding you must plug your ears when walking past a street musician you have no intention of tipping. You'd better close your eyes too, or you might see an expensively produced billboard advertisement for a product you don't intend to purchase. You can't keep "showing demand" for things you don't like, or you'll be waist deep in street musicians! Except .. oh yeah. You can't quantify non-transactional demand for creative work. The Media industry completely fabricates their piracy loss figures already (amount of $ we wish we made minus amount we made = ....), those numbers won't go down if you cross your heart and close your eyes to their content. So if we're already freely painted as pirates, even if you have payed for christ sakes, then why urge us to decline the spoils?

Except, sorry, I keep forgetting that VFB isn't here to negotiate an intellectual accord. His very nickname belies his preoccupation with discord, and his sig clarifies his belief that any argument can be won with persistence and repetitive use of a "NO, U!" image macro. ;3

Yeah but it doesn't actually need to explode. Just use a subsystem not directly controlled by the CPU which remotely bricks the device (blows a fuse to the power relay, whatev) when it receives the appropriate RF code on the appropriate band. Lose access to your coms? Detect coms from the satellite which infer it's talking to someone who isn't you, encrypted channel or no? Either send the kill code to brick it, or broadcast a blanket message to whomever might have it that you'll brick it unless they pay you a ransom. *shrug*

Incorrect; when the Pepper's Ghost illusion is done properly (with a live, offstage ghost and props) the effect is completely stereographic. If you move your POV then your line of sight to any given point on the reflective surface changes, that line of sight reflects into a new part of the reflected room offstage in perfect step with the parts of the main stage. So your left and right eyes see stereovision, continue to do so if you tilt your head, and you can get up and walk about in the designated audience area to look around "virtual" objects to your heart's content.

I don't actually see how Pepper's Ghost could be altered to suit projectors or computer generated imagery at all. Unless the audience is somehow forced to view the stage from a given angle, or unless the live actors always approach the translucency directly to interact. *shrug*

You're kidding, right?

Gravity wells do not simply waste energy to leave. It is also possible (though possibly tricky) to reclaim much of that lost energy on return.

Presently we use rockets to get off the ground here and then rockets to slow our approach again there. But with the right infrastructure, one could capture incoming space vessels in a device (for simplicity if not reliability, let's say a slingshot) which absorbs the energy of their approach. Then when they wish to lift off again, let loose their slingshot with a moderate rocket assist to make up for lost momentum.

I guess that strategy makes sense if you actually vote. Do people still do that? Who are these people, and why would you want to associate with them if they put Bush in power twice in a row?

Put simply, no matter who you vote for you're voting for wealth and incumbent power. Only they can afford to purchase the mind share required to woo millions of JoeThePlumbers at a time. I view this as a flaw in the purely democratic (and democratic republic) system: requiring too much specialized education from the layman.

The layman is fleeced every election, whether he votes or not, because the basic outcome (wealthy, well connected servant of incumbent power) represents every one of the only viable options.

The layman needs his voice represented. The problem is the voice of the layman is "taxes are too high" and "we need more school teachers" and "why are we dicking around in the middle east?" which cannot be expressed by voting elephant or donkey. Involving another handful of parties would not help to directly address this problem.

I think the ideal solution would be to build a governmental system which, instead of democratic-republic, is democratic-deferred. This is honestly an idea I got from another slashdot commenter, some years back. :D

Everyone gets to vote. On every issue. At every level of government they participate in. From municipal to state to federal to international, both NATO and treaty. That's the basis of Pure Democracy, and one of it's major failures is because no one but a professional politician (even then, a staff of professional politicians) can even hope to remain educated on literally every political decision in the world. That's where the "deferred" part comes in.

It's simple. You may cast your vote on an issue or a law directly, but very few people will almost ever. Instead, most people will "defer" each of their votes by proxy voting through any other voter. You can easily defer all of your votes through another (one would expect trusted and more well informed) person, or choose rafts of votes to defer in different directions. The person you defer to may in turn choose to defer again. You can set your votes on autopilot, "Just defer to my parents until I check in again". And that's it.

Doing this replaces an installed representative with a fluid field of experts who must work hard to maintain their trust with the electorate. People and organizations will work hard to achieve their political ends, and the easiest way to do so will be to win the deferrals of the common people to add clout to their aggregate votes. One wrong move will lose you supporters instantly. INSTANTLY. No waiting for another term, no impeachment hassle, just a "LOL FAIL" and the public moves on to someone more competent or more honest.

This puts Joe the Plumber in a position where he doesn't need to understand every issue, he just needs to identify someone more educated in politics than he is who shares his values. Official "political parties" would no longer be needed, though they may help people identify causes in an unofficial capacity.

Put me in that system or something comparable and I'll vote. I'm not wasting effort casting votes into an antiquated, broken system.

TBH these qualities you list sound more Libertarian than Republican or conservative. Are you sure the Republican Party is best representing your interests? It's hard to find authoritative definitions on this subject, but my reading is that the American Republican Party is a Conservative party who's goals are to retard cultural and scientific progress, make war and consolidate power amongst large business and the church.

I mean, I know that sounds harsh and all, but I honestly can't determine what other goals they have from their track record.

I am a Libertarian, and my belief is that the greatest common good can be found by maximizing personal liberty. This implies repealing the Patriot Act, shrinking governmental responsibility to the level mandated by the constitution (the people's contract with the federal government), repealing the prohibition of recreational drugs, erasing the sexist boundaries around the definition of marriage, etc etc.

It's really not that hard to grok, "new tech" is not always "good tech". "Expensive and complex" does not always mean "worthwhile or interesting". 3D (but I'm on board with the more accurate term Stereovision) as it is sold today is really just the tech industry selectively forgetting the lessons learned from Virtual Boy/VR32, and really the whole VR hype train from the 90's.

We want our TV's to have good brightness at an angle because we're not always sitting right in front of them. We want our game controllers wireless and our laptops and tablets to have wireless internet and good battery life because we want to pick them up and take them places. We want to lay down or sit or sprawl in odd positions.

We want our electronics to accommodate how we feel comfortable using them.

The current generation of Stereovision fails on that point. It makes us strap shit to our heads. Many geeks already wear glasses, and those almost never stack comfortably. It makes us sit at a certain angle from the screen, and we cannot tilt our head more than a few degrees. Our eyes are forced to refocus on the binocular (cross, uncross) while remaining at a fixed focus on the monocular (depth of field) which induces the same headaches as stereograms do.

So as far as "new tech" goes, it's barely even a novelty. The basics of Stereovision are nearly a hundred years old, and we've all ridden this train before. It's expensive and inconvenient. And probably the worst bit for geek involvement is, it's not really hackable or malleable in any way.

Part of the goal for media's stereovision push it to create a content walled garden. 3d is expensive to produce, more difficult to pirate, and gives them an excuse to charge for another premium. Independents can't compete. Geeks have no easy way to generate or record their own 3d content to display on these devices.

But if tech only has to be complex or new to turn you on, then there is this great inmate ankle band you've got to hear about. Delivers shocks on par with a tazer when the inmate leaves their itinerary. It's all proprietary so I can't really tell you how it works this magic, and it costs a mint, but I can certainly put one on you and charge it to your nerd card! :D

The other major issue is the content side of the equation. Studios want control over content, and they are losing it. On one face this means stopping "piracy" and "copyright infringement" because they don't want people to view their content without first paying the right (set of) toll(s). They're a bit hamstrung on this point because they have to pay their tolls for music, footage and clearance within their own content so they need us to pay ours.

The other face of this is stopping all competing content. Studios can't make payroll if you watch their stuff without paying, but turned on it's head that really means they can't make payroll unless you pay to watch their stuff. Watch pirated content or watch independent content or public domain or creative commons content, and it's all the same blow to big media. So it's not even about making you pay to watch *their* stuff, it's about making you pay to watch *anything* at all.

They look at 3D as the next battleground which may help to plug the analog hole. If everyone is magically hooked on 3D content (that's the step 3 ??? part) then independent creators have a harder time crafting said content to compete with them, rippers have a harder time pirating the content, etc etc.

Yes, it will bomb. While this this rendition of Stereovision is marginally superior to the Anaglyph offerings of the 20th century, they are still messy and complicated for the end user. This is nothing like the radio to video, black and white to color, or analog to digital transitions. Color never gave anyone a headache or forced you to keep your head still at an uncomfortable angle nor required expensive glasses which interfere with your prescription ones, took batteries or had to be tethered to the set. Also, color offers a much richer addition to a black and white image than stereovision does to monovision.

Even if you compare stereovision to a mounted set of binoculars, the binoculars at least come with a "focus" knob that let you alter the depth of field, like the human eye does naturally when encountering an actually 3d scene. Stereovision media puts you at the director's mercy for depth of field, which in turn gives you a headache whenever your eyes try to focus on the blurry foreground or background objects (cued by having to cross or uncross to see them without doublevision) and naturally fail. I first noticed this watching Bolt in 3D at the theater, when the camera was looking down a tall wall. Depth of field was first at the dog, at the bottom of the wall, and then refocused to the top of the wall. In Monovision my eyes don't care, as they're not being prompted to cross and uncross at someone else's whim. in Stereovision, I just about barfed.

Wrong, bitches play Minecraft, just like everyone else. Reminds me a lot of a 3d Conway's, though..

That's still up to 20,000km as the crow flies, or distance between points as measured in 3d polar coordinates. GP's terminology is just fine, nobody here is assuming a Euclidean metric. :S

And that seems to be what they are doing, which is inferior to being able to read local signage for reasons such as the following:

Signage
Signage
Signage
Opps

You're not designing for availability. Each movement should get it's own child table. Each hosted on a separate machine. Geographically distributed, ideally each on different continents.

Granted you might run out of continents, but if you can't just buy more then you probably can't afford my consulting fees, either. Next!

Alright, so now for instance my graph is at "1.17GB" while the stats below (which I rarely read being that they never seem to add up, and .. they're not a graph ;D) Say:

Physical Memory (MB)
Total: 4094 (sounds right to me)
Cached: 1911 (more than the graph has .. so not represented in graph?)
Available: 2887 (?)
Free: 1046 (?)

Not that this is a Window's howto forum or anything, but I just rely on the graph to tell me how much RAM I have free. I never see problems until that graph is at 100% memory utilization (which in turn has never happened to me since upgrading to 4gig .. yes I run hundreds of tabs in 4 web browsers plus 3 dozen other applications sometimes :D)

If My graph shows ~500MB more used on startup than it did when I was in XP, and if the cache you mention is not represented in that graph, then it's not relevant to my measurement. Of course, if I've got four gig (as did OP) and never remotely approach that in either OS, then memory usage might not be OP's problem either.

So, just saying. Thanks for the input, just doesn't look relevant. :3

Yeah, OK. Again, I've got 4 gigs. So instead of never going over 2 gigs used now I never go over 2.5. I dun care. :3

Still, if what you say explains the readings I get from Task Manager, then why not can they put a separate line for amount of memory used by disk cache? Kind of like the optional "kernel" line for CPU usage, or like the "+/- buffers" column in linux' "free" command.