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I kept thinking about derailing a car, before I realized I was on the wrong track.

It's easy. (With a little help from Google Images...)

Car

Derailer

1997 Tech Note from apple on CD Remote Programs, the prior art that crushes all of GraceNote's patent claims using blatantly similar prior art :

http://developer.apple.com/technotes/dv/pdf/dv_25. pdf

specifically the user editable and SHARABLE after editing and saving to otehr machines field called "'STR#' Resource" there are many mnay fields in the playlist database but the track names summoned upon cd insertion later based on a unique ID is in the document and user software ran by millions of customers as early as 1987

Unique1ID() generates the hardy GUID for the CD

Here is a 1996 page posted from a book "New Complete Mac Handbook" but the apple player with user editable track names goes back to apple antiquity (march 1987):

http://www.mcn.org/heidsite/audio/CDplayertips.htm l

many 3rd party tools imported and exported into apples track name database directly , at least 5 or 6 products

Does anyone get the feeling that sometimes America is a place where rich, powerful people do whatever they want?

Yes, it's been that way since a Supreme Court Clerk Decided that corporations were persons back in 1886. We lost our democracy then.

Yesterday, we learn that the HP executive who authorized the illegal surveillance has been slapped on the wrist.

Of course- she's not in your class.

Today, we learn that government officials will arbitrarily test military weapons on American citizens.

But only in keeping with what the Corporations want- in other words, they'll be used on protestors who are blocking streets and endangering profits.

call me old fashioned but shouldn't any revenue be EARNED ??? :))

In this particular context, it would include people who have signed up for Microsoft "software subscription" program. Declining unearned revenues mean that there aren't as many people signing up for their subscriptions as they'd hoped.

I love that song. I got it off KaZaa, on account of those subversives in Rage Against the Machine recorded with Sony, who wants $17 for each record in their catalogue.

Like this white flag song too...

You know... the ones left by the Martians before they colonized Earth?

She of the burning mouse-palm evidently didn't mind letting her students cruise the Web back in '96. One of the goals of a course was to "USE TECHNOLOGY and the INTERNET to communicate, cooperate and write with students in other places". Hmm. I wonder if she's apologized to all those poor twitchin' kids she led astray?

She of the burning mouse-palm evidently didn't mind letting her students cruise the Web back in '96. One of the goals of a course was to "USE TECHNOLOGY and the INTERNET to communicate, cooperate and write with students in other places". Hmm. I wonder if she's apologized to all those poor twitchin' kids she led astray?

Cool! Bob Blick, my old Electronics teacher from high school, made Slashdot! When he was teaching, he was pretty much everyone's favorite teacher. Congratulations Bob.

Mendocino High School is an example of how all schools should be. Nothing like JonKatz's articles at all -- for schools like that, you will have to continue up the coast to Fort Bragg... yuck...

This is just the sort of thing I want to hear. Embed those puppies in my skin! I want to be green and foodless by the year 2020 goddammit!

But seriously, this is great news. Considering the shamefully small amount of money that goes into researching renewable sources of energy, I'm always delighted when they hit a new breakthrough. Solar is especially attractive - imagine running your entire home off a refrigerator-sized panel adhered to the roof. Total personal independence!

Unfortunately, there are severe limits at the moment. I recently looked into roofing a home with solar panels. Turns out that it would cost around $20k to be self-sufficient (and then only just barely). I worked it out, and it seems that with my monthly electricity costs, it would take me 103 years to pay that off.

http://www.mcn.org/a/mendom otive/Products/Unisolar2.htm

The trouble is that even the theoretical output of solar cells is low. It's bounded severely by the surface area because of the limitations of the diode materials available to us today. Turns out that even if you have full light shining on the surface, you can only get about 29% efficiency - and that's theoretical. In reality, it's less. Here's a site that explains the technical details:

http://www.nrel.gov/ncpv/documents/ pvpaper.html

Now, I have heard some clever ideas for increasing the efficiency. For example, one team discovered purely by accident that they could increase surface area by making the silicon layer extremely "spikey" on a microscopic level. The sunlight bounces around inside the spikes and is more likely to ultimately by trapped by a cell.
I think the theoretical number they cited was 40% efficiency, but right now that's still vaporware.

I wonder whether some slashdotter is brave enough to post the original ACS paper. I don't have access. I'd love to see what efficiency numbers these people are touting. Anybody?


-konstant