Lookee here: A German newspaper made an interactive map of the location of a politician of the Green party who subpoena'd his cell retained phone location data and made it available. It's a very enlightening demo, IMHO (web-page in German, but self-explanatory: hit the 'Play' button and adjust speed with the slider to the right of it). Not only does it show his location over a very long period of time, but also when and where he made phone calls.

And I'd be really surprised if the US had less data retention than Germany.

Not exactly - and the attempts to close it also aren't quite the newest: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GHmhxpQEGPo

Sorry to break it to you, but I lived in Creve Coeur in the early 80's and you've always had to stop before making a right turn on red there, and everywhere I've lived. In the case of a right turn a red light is like a stop sign.

"Webkit", though, tells you nothing about codec support. Chrome and Safari, for instance, have pledged different sets of codec support.

There are other details that matter, as well. If the browser in question allows 3rd party extensions, or simply supports video by falling back on the OS-provided set of codecs, then the codecs it supports are user-changeable. If the browser only functions with the codecs built in, or relies on a non-user-modifiable set of OS-provided codecs(the iPhone version of Safari almost definitely qualifies), than the set of codecs it ships with really matter; because they aren't going to change.

Your hypothesis fails the falsification test. Basically no matter what Google does, people like you are going to say they did it for their direct advantage.

To make it a scientific opinion, you have to give an example of an action that Google will take that will convince you they were not evil. Sometime ago, slashdotters were saying that if Google open sources VP8, that would be proof enough. Apparently you want more. So tell us. What do you want?

And those are ridiculously easy once you get the trick. The first ones that were out, I remember, hit in the very early 90's in magazines like Popular Science. In those, you had two dots right above the picture, and the instructions were to visually split the dots and combine them in such a way there were now three. That achieved, look down at the picture.

Most, if not all of the later ones removed those instructions, and it became a game of "stare at this until you get it." For the really old-timers, we understood the real trick is to cross your eyes slightly and vary the degree until you hit the magic separation necessary to resolve the picture.

I'm not entirely convinced the effects are related to those used for 3D movies, since Magic Eye works through the transposition created by overlapping the two visual fields by crossing your eyes.

And time lost in bureaucratic runaround. Lots and lots of runaround. Unless you're deliberately looking for a really big settlement, it ain't worth it. I once swerved to avoid a Pepsi truck that ran a stop sign--a potential accident that could have set me up for life without major injury (wasn't going that fast), and I'm still not sure it would have been worth it.

Most states have a provision for "can stop safely", so you're well within the law to avoid slamming on the breaks on a yellow.

This is essentially how it is in Athens, GA. My wife (several times, unfortunately) got tagged by one of the 4 red light cams in Athens. The letter (no video, or link to video... just a Print Page from IE, completely with a URL at the bottom) showing 2 pictures of her van. The "ticket" was for me to pay the $75 fine, as the van is in my name. She forgot to pay it, and called the courthouse to see what would happen. The person there said "nothing will happen, wont go on your record, no warrants will ever be issued... you will just keep getting letters to pay".

They dont even report to credit agencies there, as there's no clear way to tell who's driving... so they'll just send you monthly letters saying "PAY ME Or or or.. I'll tell you to pay me again!"

its all about the encoders !

google can quite easily make reference but until there is High quality encoders then its pretty pointless

making decoder plugins for IE and mac is actually pretty easy in comparison

hardware reference designes need to be seeded also to the likes of TI and STMicroelectronics before it will even start to be useful after all where do all the camera's now do mp4 come from...

its all about the encoders !

regards

John Jones

That was kinda creepy, what do you mean? Also, tell me what was negative about me having sex when I was young? Oh wait, there wasn't anything and you're wrong.

is it still a godwin if its on-topic?

Just like Google thinks that business is war too, then. They weren't going anywhere in China and decided it was too much trouble staying there. Remember that Google pretty much stopped gaining market share from Baidu. They did the next best thing - make it a PR campaign and try to gain love in western countries. Why do you think they're only bitching at China in English blogs and are now blaming Bing for staying in China? It's all PR.

That would depend on whether you are prepared to recognize the sovereignty of totalitiarian dictatorships that torture and murder their own people. Dictators (and their cronies) have no right to say what may happen in their own country, let alone anyone else's. They lose those rights the moment they seize power. All Microsoft is doing is helping the Chinse dictatorship to oppress their own people. For the religious amongst us, think Judas and the money.

Problems with the NHS are hyped-up way over what they are in reality. I have lived and been treated in 5 countries including the UK, the US and Canada. In the UK you get prioritised by need. If you have a life-threatening problem, you get operated on immediately, no questions asked. If you want a knee-replacement that's not urgent, you need to wait (and it's getting shorter). If you don't want to wait that long, you can choose from a variety of options including paying for the procedure privately or by having health insurance. Frontline care is usually delivered by the NHS even if you have private health insurance. There's nothing *poor* about the NHS, and compared with the Canadian system, you also have a choice to go private if you wish. When you consider that the Canadian system costs 20% more and the American one 100% more, that's a pretty good.

I think you will find that, in fact, the de jure leaders on the right are Michael Steele, Mitch McConnell, and John Boehner, and that Limbaugh and Beck are as about as integrated in Republican policy-making as the Simpsons are in the Democrats'.

You seem to be under a false impression. I'm neither a Republican nor a Democrat. In fact, I'm not even American. I don't support Republican policies any more than I support Democrat ones. My objection was to the (evidently not uncommon) position that Ann Coulter is some sort of Republican mastermind who can be taken as representative of the American right, when she's got as much political clout as Colbert. Which is to say, probably some, but seriously, I'm not even a Republican and I find the assertion offensively weak. If you're going to point and wail at how immature the Republicans are, point and wail at serving politicians, not people with radio shows.