Still not had an answer explaining how the US government inspecting communications crossing its borders, something it has always had the power to do within the constitution, offends the 4th amendment.

*"The bad news is that the 4th amendment needs to be applied to private corporations and organizations that are NOT governmental."

*Well, it can't be. The constitution is a set of limits on the government, not on the citizenry. That's the whole point of it. For the constitution to remain meaningful and worthy, it absolutely must remain entirely a description of the government and its limititations.

There's nothing to stop congress enacting data protection legislation and so no reason to completely subvert the intention of the constitution, as you suggest.

*" 'We suspect XYZ of some of your customers, hand over your market spying records that you've been collecting.' " 

• The IRS has been able to inspect all your financial records, including demanding them from your bank, for decades. Nought new.

*"...transgender fetish porn..."

*How did you know? Do you work for the government?

"This is ultimately the destruction of our 4th Amendment rights against illegal search and seizure."

*mboncher, you seem a rational voice in this. The Swedish statute seems similar to powers already used in the US since 2001 (powers regarded as controversial by some but recently supported by the Democratic nominee for president I believe). As I said previously, the powers do not change the rights of Americans communicating with Americans in America.

Do you believe differently? If so, why?

Lousy government happens wherever and whenever you have government. Sometimes government is the best way of getting things done (i.e. the military) but always in the context that it is lousy but where the lousiness outweighs the bad points of the alternatives.

When you have a government strategy for dance:
http://www.thestage.co.uk/news/newsstory.php/20151/burnham-steps-up-youth-dance-support-by
then you can be sure that you've gone too far in the lousy direction.

Yes, a whole government department squandering hundreds of millions of £££ of tax payers money on culture, media and sport. For feck's sakes.

Let's all be treeeees

The Swedish and US (and other) laws on this cover traffic coming into and out of the country(ies). The rules on internal traffic are unchanged. The US government has had the power to open and inspect every piece of (snail) mail, parcel and freight crossing its borders since its beginning back in the 1700s. The Constitution has never once been breached by the proper use of that power.

Given the incredible level of active Islamist conspiracy throughout the western world, it doesn't seem unreasonable to me that governments should have the power to monitor modern communications traffic between domestic groups and foreign groups. And in more traditional security areas there is no doubt that Russia and especially China are highly aggressive with online spying and hacking.

There are obvious concerns about "mission creep" and just lousy government, surrounding these powers but that doesn't alter the fact that we are threatened by very real enemies that rightly should be monitored.

Something I have noted in the UK is that more often than not those who express concern about the erosion of their liberties by anti-terror legislation are the same ones who are quite happy to support state corporatism like the BBC. Here is an organisation that operates a legalised protection racket; that advertises that it roams the land electronically snooping on people in their own home; that advertises that it keeps and uses a database of every home in the country; that advertises that it prosecutes tens of thousands of citizens every year (listing their names and addresses); that collects purchase data from every shop that sells a television, that imprisons hundreds every year, etc, etc, etc.

Monitoring terrorists = evil state power

Enforced state television = ooooh, cuddly aunty beeb

You want Orwellian? Here is a real video from the BBC (TV Licensing is owned by the BBC):
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=8ee_1210010683&p=1
This shit has been going on for decades but somehow the sandalistas bleating about freedom think it's fecking marvellous. Even more marvellous is that it's inevitably going to spread:
http://hardware.silicon.com/servers/0,39024647,39128359,00.htm

Meanwhile, back in Sweden, sandalista infested state schools want to control who eight year old kids can invite to their birthday party:
http://ca.news.yahoo.com/s/capress/080629/koddities/oddity_party_snub

So, you gonna fight for your right to party or is there something good on TV tonight?

A shotgun helps quite a lot with termites. As a solution, it must be said that it's almost totally ineffective in dealing with the overall termite problem; it's just that the application can be highly rewarding.

Better results are guaranteed with the latest developments in conventional explosive ordnance - though it seems likely any potato crop may see a reduced yield.

.

...and i don't sell for the Poser community...

http://www.daz3d.com/i.x/shop/itemdetails/-/?item=5110

Must be really tough having DAZ take your work for Poserisers

.

.
"...most people use poser just like a Barbie but for computers."

I agree, but just don't see anything wrong with it. After all, the 3D stuff I enjoy is equivalent to going 'whoosh' past your head with a spaceship model. There are at least three guys in this thread who do fine work in that vein.

When it comes to actual, you-know-it-when-you-see-it art, there is very little on evidence in any of the galleries here.

There is, however, rather a lot of highly skilled 3D illustration, even amongst Poser users who use purchased models and freebies:

Ken..

***"me: see, if you work with poser, it's okay to call them props. if you work with anything else, you call them art"

***Well, one interpretation of that could be that Poser workers are down-to-earth whereas those "anything else" workers are right up their own arses.

Being in both work groups means I know neither generalisation is true, but I am left wondering if there's maybe a little something arse related about someone who sells product to Poser users being on a Poser rant in the Bryce forum.

True appreciation of this editorial can only be acquired in the Poser forum. Let the entertainments begin...

.

You're along a useful track there, skiwillgee. 

You can place a 2D Face (or Disk) Vertical; or a flattened cube, in front of the camera. Make it entirely transparent but with a little refraction, and apply a noise at high frequency to the bump channel. After a bit of fiddling you'll have a satisfactory grain effect that will scale reasonably well with render size (will likely need a bit more fiddling). If you want more "art" you can use a softly undulating terrain object instead of a flat one - with the same material applied, you'll get low frequency distortion along with the grain. You can also do this noise-grain thing with a reflective object, if you don't mind things being backwards. Bryce5 brought along blurry transmissions/reflections, which is another avenue worth exploring.

Obviously these will all put the render time up, but not horrendously so on a modern computer. And it's better than all this non-Bryce editing sacrilege.

In the immortal words of Val, here's one I prepared earlier. So much earlier, in fact, that it's a Bryce3D render from the previous millennium. This is all Bryce except for the Poser3 dog. I could even do trees back then, before Bryce5 came along. Beer and general decrepitude has made me forget how, and I can't even remember if the file still exists or on what disk (or where).

.

Confusingly, a Centrino isn't a processor - it's an Intel marketing term that assures buyers they are getting a certain platform of bits in their laptop (all Intel bits, of course). The Centrino platform consists of a combination of processor, mainboard chipset and wireless network. Intel has further confused matters with additional terms like "Centrino Processor Technology", but nevertheless there is no Centrino processor.

A Centrino platform laptop can have one of a number of types of Intel processor in it. Possible examples are "Pentium M";  "Core Solo";  "Core Duo" and "Core 2 Duo". So to compare Centrino laptops with others (such as AMD powered devices), you need to know the actual specification of the units you're considering. 

If a Centrino laptop has a Core 2 Duo processor then it's likely better than a Turion x2 for rendering. Depending, of course, on their relative speeds and other specs like memory. I did try a brief survey of HP dv6000 series models (discontinued, btw), but there're too many variations to offer any meaningful advice. 

If you can provide the specs of the actual laptops you're considering, a judgement can be made about their relative value.

*"If something is to be done, whether or not global warming is real or not, comes down to what decisions are the right decisions."

*How about a carbon tax that is linked to warming, or more accurately the specified predictors of warming.

The IPCC made specific predictions about what initial form warming due to a man-made greenhouse effect would take (as distinct from other warming influences, such as the Sun), and said that it would be an early indicator.

If the early indicator shows up, the tax goes up - as it should. The higher the warming indicator gets, the higher the tax goes - to the point of making carbon fuels uneconomic. If the indicators don't show, the tax stays low (or eventually disappears) - as it should. 

That is a course of action that can be started now, that will only take effect if needed, and won't cause damage if it is not needed.

I'm up for it.

Dann-O wrote:
"watching people flail around with their arguments of the lack of Global woarming is almost amusing. "

Luckily, the humour quotient for the thread is rescued by your spectacularly greenhouse-irrelevant car-in-garage experiment (though I suppose it might be helpful for anyone feeling suicidal over fears of the woarming - and don't worry, carbon monoxide isn't covered by the Kyoto treaty).

"Greenhouse gases are bad for you."

The mean surface temperature of the Earth would be at about -18 °C if the gases in the atmosphere had no "greenhouse effect". Have you tried typing at -18 °C? You'd have to leave the car running and insulate the garage.

The most significant atmospheric greenhouse constituent (due to abundance) is di-hydrogen monoxide, sometimes known as "water". In the form of vapour and clouds, water is responsible for 90% of our lovely, cosy greenhouse effect.

If you're calling water "bad" I might have to question your political leanings. Water is the source of all life. Seven-tenths of the earth's surface is water. Why, do you realize that 70% of you is water? And as human beings, you and I need fresh, pure water to replenish our precious bodily fluids. What do you drink? Vodka? Are you some kind of Commie?

The next most significant freeze-stopping constituent is carbon dioxide. This trace gas (just 0.038%) is an essential part of the global food chain. Plants and ecosystems love it so much that even the tiny increase that industry has added to the air is thought to have increased agricultural production by 15%, saving millions from starvation and large areas of the natural environment from having to be ploughed up. It's really nasty stuff. 

"I do know pollution is bad clean air is good."

In an effort to explain the lack of their predicted warmening, warmenisers have offered the excuse of high levels of particulate and aerosol pollutants as causing a compensating cooling. So Dann-O, your participation in the dirtiest economy in the world is saving the planet from melting. Good things can come from pollution.

Fancy a tab?

This is just "Pascal's Wager" on the existence of (the Christian) God redressed for environmentalism. If you follow the link to the wiki you'll even see the same decision theory style matrix being used.

Given that I regard the "man-made global warming" campaign as a quasi-religion, the use of Pascal's simplistic logic trick seems entirely appropriate. The guy on the video is clearly an evangelist (spread the word!), and his enthusiasm for catastrophy as a consequence of inaction is hilarious.

If you replace "existence of God" or "man-made global warming" as the true-or-false option with something like "stepping on the cracks in the pavement brings bad luck", then the actual worth of this matrix is exposed. The same logic applies, this time to something obviously preposterous. 

Tread carefully, fellow Brycers...  ;-)

Bloody hell.

Glad you both lived! 

No jokes, 'cos any injury at C3 is potentially worrying. I hope your son gets the all clear.

Congrats on the new machine (and for having such a generous family!). Since your new machine is better than my new machine (harumph, sniffle), I feel obliged to be a party-pooper and impart a bit of tech twaddle.

If you're running normal 32bit WindowsXP (i.e. not Windows XP Professional x64 Edition) then you don't have 4GB of RAM and, shock-horror, never can have. Although the RAM chips are working, installed in the motherboard and seen by the bios, Windows (32bit) is forever blinded to most of that fourth gigabyte. If you right-click on the "My Computer" icon on the desktop and click on "Properties" at the bottom of the menu that comes up, the "General" tab of the "System Properties" dialog will show. In the computer description you'll see how much RAM Windows can see (and use) on your particular unit. The most common figure I've seen reported by people with 4GB of RAM installed is about 3.2GB.

The culprit for this outrage is the 32bit nature of 32bit Windows. The numbers limit the amount of stuff called "virtual address space" to 4GB. Now, despite the use of "gigabyte" units to describe levels of virtual address space, this is not the same stuff as RAM. Virtual address space consists of the possible pointer values that can be addressed by the processor at any one time. The processor sees everything "real" on the computer (applications, the operating system, and all hardware) by way of this virtual address space.

The hardware (buses, video cards, etc) has to take up a certain amount of this limited virtual address space in order for Windows to operate on it, and so that virtual address space is not available to be assigned to RAM. By convention (from the days of not-much-RAM) the virtual address space used by hardware is mapped to the upper (3GB+) region. The amount of virtual address space used up by hardware depends on the individual hardware configuration of each computer. As an example, a video card with 512Mb of onboard memory will use up more virtual address space than one with 256mb.

So in 32bit Windows, there is a limited, fixed amount (4GB) of virtual address space and some of it is tied up by hardware. The remainder is available to be assigned to RAM (or rather the applications and operating system kernel loaded in RAM) - but - if your amount of RAM is more than the virtual address space left after hardware, then it can't be seen by Windows and is effectively not there.

Some might tell you that Windows is using this missing RAM even though it's not reporting it - but they'd be wrong. Some might tell you that you can recover the missing RAM by setting something called a "/3GB switch" - but they'd be wrong. That system properties dialog will tell you how much RAM is available on your machine. That's your lot. No way around it unless you install weird server programs OR -

• a 64bit operating system*.