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Fancy hotels give federal travelers a break

There is a convincing piece by Damien Cave on Salon.com titled "File Sharing: Innocent Until Proven Guilty" which argues that there is no proven correlation between downloaded music and the decline in CD sales. He continues to argue in "File Sharing: Guilty As Charged?" that a good deal of the 'sky is falling' rhetoric created by the record companies and the RIAA is based on supposition and self-interest. In addition, the article "RIAA's Statistics Don't Add Up To Piracy" analyzes the RIAA's own statistics and argues that they do not support the RIAA's conclusion that downloaded music is the cause for the decline in CD sales. In this detailed analysis, George Ziemann argues that the record industry released 11,900 fewer titles in 2000 than it released in 1999, a 25% decrease, yet the total number of units shipped decreased only 10.3% and the dollar value of these units fell by only 4.1%. It seems that the RIAA is misinterpreting its own statistics.

Also, the record companies just settled a price fixing suit in which they admitted they were overcharging consumers. This point seems to be overlooked by the RIAA in its attempt to place all blame for the woes of the music business at the feet of mp3's. Is it possible that the decrease in CD sales is related to the conspiracy by the major record labels to inflate prices?

Some computer geeks with a knack for sports have found a way to merge the two together...

Comprank Ratings for Sports
Massey Ratings
Sagarin's Ratings

Super Bowl Commercials.

Super Bowl commercials with animals.

Those cameras are proliferating in the States -- they turn out to be wonderful moneymakers -- and are fairly controversial. There has even been some question whether they improve safety, because motorists who know the cameras are there sometimes behave recklessly to beat the red light or slam on the brakes. I'm waiting to see statistics.

Anyway, I'm almost certain the images are still processed by humans. I'm sure there will be some reluctance to handing is over to a computer, but I was just speculating it would happen. And apparently is has. Now, with a system like that -- plenty of cameras already installed -- why bother with tire chips?

Here is an example of what you describe, I think. I also see via Google various reference to these systems being used in the U.S. -- going back a couple of years! But I'm sure I haven't read about them, only the human mediated system used by Lockheed, which runs the cameras in our area by contract.

I thought Michael Robertson had changed his ways when he started Lindows.

Sorry, no. MP3.com was a portal built by distributing commercial music without the owner's consent (my.mp3.com). Also, the Indie artists on there basically give up their rights in trade for hosting services and "payback for playback" that has in most cases earned them more money than they would make any other way.

Now he is doing the same thing with Lindows.com and GPL'd packages -- other people's work being sold. Compare http://mp3.com and http://lindows.com web sites and you will see they are very similar.

'MR' was told by his own engineers that what he was doing was (music)piracy. He blew it off, lost most of mp3.com's money to Universal studios, then sold the remnants to a French madman who soon found himself unemployed for wasting money on dot coms. Robertson will flirt with this again with GPL apps. and Lindows.com. Maybe Bill Gates will buy lindows in a year or two!

I don't think he is an evil or greedy genius. He just has a reality distortion field a la Steve Jobs.

If he has a genius, it is that he has found a way to build companies on the synergy between digital assets and broadband networking!

RANT_MODE=ON

I can't believe what I'm reading. Where do people (and organizations) get off coming up with ideas like this in the first place. I'll be damned if I'm going to let some organization tax my use of the internet just because their "shown to be corrupt" business model can't handle a slow down in the economy, and because the organization can't figure out why nobody wants to buy it's crap!

It galled me when "they" got away with the audio cassette taxation! Why should I pay an extra fee that supposedly goes to music artists when I don't use the audio cassette to record music. There are other conceivable uses you know!

It will gall me when they finally succeed in taxing blank CDR's. I have them know, I don't put any music on CDR! I do have other, more legitimate uses and I shouldn't have to pay a tax to back up my digital photos, or my income tax records, or my home movies! Give me a break!

This one is for you Hillary! Wake up and join reality. Your sales are down because the global economy is in the crapper. Food is more important than new music CD's. Rent is more important than new music CD's. And frankly, people don't like what you have to offer! I suggest you quit trying to find alternative, highly questionable, possibly immoral, streams of revenue!

As for buying music. Yup, I buy music! Local artists do exist you know! Their music tends to be better (i.e. more original than the latest teeny-bopper) and the CD is cheaper! What a concept! A $10 CD with decent music! Not a single artist I buy is affiliated with the RIAA. It's called a boycott! Get used to it! We are not your sheep! Time for you to return to the concept of "The customer is always right!" Maybe then, you will see some customers return, but don't count on it!

Also, as many have mentioned, despite losing world marketshare their American marketshare has been creeping up. Also the recent powerbooks are clearly aimed at the Japanese market. Don't get me wrong, it would be nice to have a larger world marketshare. But given a lot of the economies and politics of the world market, I doubt that will happen. The important figures are for the US, Canada, Japan and some of the European countries. That sounds a little ethnocentric, but it is good business sense. I predict that within 10 years even MS will have lost a lot of world marketshare due to the nature of opensource being so attractive to 3rd world and 2cd world economies and political situations.

In that more useful (and meaningfully measurable) barometer Apple is doing quite well. For instance in America Apple's share increased from 2.9% to 3.0%. Report That's quite amazing when you realize that they did this with machines that are heavily overpriced and woefully underpowered and did it at a time when most PC manufactures were doing quite poorly.

That's the real issue. Right now any switching is being done on more emotional decisions. You want an alternative to Microsoft. You like the "look" of OSX. However once Apple weathers this recession and its chip problems there will be far more rational reasons for switching. The 970 will provide a huge performance boost for Apple. In terms of SMP it will be at least on the AMD level. (Albeit not in performance - at least for the initial 970 run) I don't know what prices will look like, but it may well be that Apple gets well within the PC's price/performance range.

At that point when you add in all the benefits of a Unix based OS (especailly with Apple's recent X11 app), the aesthetics of OSX and (IMO) its better multitastking to XP, it will be very attractive for switchers. Right now Apple is spreading the word, preparing folks for what is ahead this fall.

Mark my words. This fall is going to be very exciting. The Iraq situation will be over. I think the recession and slowdown will be over. And I think Apple will be the computer manufacturer to watch.

Really??? HMMM USA Today disagrees.

As far as your concern about Muslim extremeists (sic) getting Ricin and Anthrax and presumably Saddam Hussein's "weapons of mass destruction", you can read in USA Today where Hussein got those weapons - straight from the American government.

Interestingly, the case has some relevance to current news. Mudd's supporters complain that, as a citizen, he should not have been tried in a military tribunal in the first place. Bush is claiming the right to hold people like Abdullah Al-Mujahir as "enemy combatants". There was a recent ruling upholding the Bush position, but I can't find it on Google, sorry...

A lot of people may not know this, but the segway, in addition to being a means of transportation, is also a testbed for technologies used in Dean Kamans latest invention, the iBOT. Its a new wheelchair thats being tested by the FDA, but most of its technology has been proven in the non medical(meaning it didnt have to be tested by the FDA) Segway HT. The iBOT is a revolutionary wheelchair with that can climb stairs and raise a person up to normal eye-level. link link link link

Consider their positions regarding our signed commitments and treaties vs. our Oil interests (Kyoto treaty).

"One of them is Linus Torvalds, chosen for his work in on Linux and 'Open Source'. Too bad RMS or Saint Ignuciuis he wasn't chosen, even though he was recommended."

The reason for the overlooking of the real developers of Linux such as RMS is the same reason as Tim Berners-Lee is credited with "inventing" the internet, when obvious evidence suggests otherwise. The American public is, at the base, ignorant of computers.
They think it is possible for only one person to invent the Internet, when geeks like us know the underlying protocols demand more than one inventor.
It is the same way with Linus and RMS, with RMS creating most of the base for Linux, but since Linus was the original bootloader writer, people assume he "invented" Linux, while overlooking the more important luminaries.

Poped your girlfriend's Internet cherry? A disturbing thought, to say the least.

"My own personal theoary as to why CD sales are down has to do with local bands."

Thats a good theory, but I think the RIAA's sales are down due more to economics.

1. The RIAA has abused its customers for a long time, and many have had enough. There are scores of websites devoted to boycotting our favorite monopolistic cartel

2. The nation has been in a recession for a while, and people just don't have the money to spend on commodities anymore. Plus, music now has to compete with DVD movies, which are often cheaper and games which can be found just as cheap depending on the system and age. Remember, not everyone has a 10gb collection of MP3s on a 3mb+ cable modem with a 40x burner.

3. The RIAA raised prices during a recession. Don't these people get it? There are executives who get payed more money than the average person will see in a lifetime and they can't understand simple high school economics. Don't raise prices when people don't have money to pay the current prices. People like products that are economical and have some sort of value. Raising prices during a rocky economy is not a good method of increasing sales

Its simple economics. They are losing money based on stupidity. Nothing more.

So Elcomsoft is cleared, but is the software legal? This article on USA Today touched on fair use and how it seemed to influence the jury.

According to this article it was a modification of existing radar.

Some aviation experts suspect the Serbs used a crude version of passive radar -- plugging computers into their existing air defense system -- to locate an F-117A Nighthawk stealth bomber, shot down in 1999.

Also from the article:

John Hansman, professor of aeronautics and astronautics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said passive radar is still in its "infancy, but is something that will lead to new stealth research."

"This is another trick that will force stealth researchers to push forward," Hansman said.

All in all just another iteration in spy v spy.

I still have a (working) floppy drive that I got from them in my (working) Apple ][.

Hmm, wonder if they have Z80 cards (for the new ][e I just got to complement the ][+) in that liquidation sale...

Until you've managed to slice off 20 bytes from your code to make it run quicker, you have no place calling yourself a software hacker.

Now, trivia question: What's the memory location (in hex) that contained the current pixel being drawn? (and a note, in 20 some years, I forget too).
(useful so you don't get snow by writing to video RAM while it's being displayed)

You kids with your gigabytes. Any application larger than 48k is a waste of space.

So, anyone got IPv6 running on the 6502 or 65802 upgrade?

Of course, many people find the Witnesses annoying.

Interesting, though, are the free speech rights they have helped enforce not only here in the U.S. (recently here USA Today and here
Freedom Forum web site), but also around the world.

Of course, many people find the Witnesses annoying.

Interesting, though, are the free speech rights they have helped enforce not only here in the U.S. (recently here USA Today and here
Freedom Forum web site), but also around the world.

Of course, many people find the Witnesses annoying.

Interesting, though, are the free speech rights they have helped enforce not only here in the U.S. (recently here USA Today and here
Freedom Forum web site), but also around the world.

"It then drags three steel conduits -- casing that houses the fiber and shields it from the sewage"

In this article they have a bit at the end detailing how it works. First the robot inserts steel rings into the pipe, then it drags the steel conduit into the pipe and attaches it to the rings.
The cable is then blown through the conduit with pressurized air.

I'm also fairly certain that if a site with fiber optic cable in its sewer pipes had plumbing problems, they'd be sure to let the plumber know before hand. There may even be warning lables attached to said pipes.

Good thing i just reorganized all my links yesterday. Had kept this one for laughs. It's called the GAYDAR. ;)

Not Exactly the same, but similer. here

I think he seriously hates himself. It's a classic case of black self-hatred in my uneducated armchair opinion. It's a shame, too, he used to be a perfectly normal-looking African-American. Here is a chronology -- even if he'd stopped back at age 26 or so... It's not just the nose -- the skin-bleaching and other surgeries, too. And orangatans?

OK, he needs help for other reasons, but I think he does have the common social maladjustment, too. To the extent his fame has denied him the help he needs, I feel bad for him. He seems to be a nice guy; nice, anyway, these days.

And yet -- what was the deal with the child dangling thing, anyway?

I must say, I don't care for the new, beardless look. (Well, not completely beardless, but close. Maybe he's just getting older, too. There's a lot of grey in his hair now.

Anyway, back to Java: I'm disappointed that Bruce Eckel has "sold out" and switched from being a C++ guru to a Java guru. We all know that Java has lowered the standards for Computer Scientists, and has crippled many a new college grad who doesn't know what a pointer is! Also Java has a bad reputation, thanks to people like Patrick Naughton, a co-inventor of Java who used it to search for child pornography on the Internet.

More details available from McPaper

Slashdot headline: Massachusetts Appealing Microsoft Ruling

The NYT, WSJ, and McNews seem to agree with Slashdot's perspective, FWIW.

Essentially, anything that could possibly affect a compnies profit is getting to be considered illegal.

And you have a problem with that? What is your ID number and grid location?

The MPAA & co. argument appears to center on our friend copyright, from my very brief search. (Bedtime for Bonzo.) The idea is that skipping the commercials alter the work as shown. Now, I don't know what people said, but this seems pretty stupid, like saying it's illegal to skip "plot" pages in a Penthouse book to get to the sex parts (uh, not that I've ever done that ... or read one of those naughty books).

Here's some blather about the contractural argument I proposed -- someone has been dumb enough to argue it.

If the deletion were done as part of a recording, I could kinda sorta see a violation of fair use argument. But it's not, it is on playback. The mfrs did not want to litigate it, but the Q will come to a head soon enough. The article notes that the name-calling was great free advertising for PVR's. And ultimately the industry will survive. What I fear actually is having mostly for-pay commerciall-free TV -- cable has gotten us part-way there -- but I bet that's the future trend. It just seems less democratic.

He needs someone to solve serious problems his brand new Homeland Security Office has. There are, for instance, "...technical issues such as how to handle incompatible e-mail systems".

If I sold you a mo-ped and told you it was a Ford Explorer, I'd be guilty of fraud - because I misrepresented it as a trademarked good. If not for the trademark, I'd be innocent so long as there was a sticker on it saying 'Ford Explorer'.

Is this similar to the Toy Yoda" case?

Aparently, he sold'em and later got some more, when the company was doing better....

From the article: After a 5% decline in the sales of recorded music in 2001, the first fall in living memory,.

That statement would be correct if nobody could remember way back to 1997. In those heady days of the Clinton presidency and the dot com boom, the folks at the RIAA reported a 6.5% decrease in annual sales. Back then they didn't have the p2p bogeyman to blame so they laid the blame on retailers streamlining their inventories.

On the whole 'who to blame' angle, I'm amazed that nobody is talking about the role of Clearchannel's radio monopoly on decreased music sales. Before one company dictated that there would be only a handful of radio formats across most major cities, stations were more likely to expand their playlists to include local acts, independent musicians, and songs that local programming personnel liked. Now, playlists are sent down from the home office, and there is more homogeneity among playlists. What does that mean? Fewer new songs get any real airplay, thus giving the listeners of Big Radio fewer unique albums to consider buying...

Back to EMI: The description of their system has so many vague statements that I seriously doubt that this will take off (and we know that EMI never tries to mislead listeners). What listeners want is ease and freedom.

Here's what needs to happen for online music to be profitable for the labels:

1. Record companies have to realize that consumers really don't care who produces or distributes an album. When I go to a record store to by an album, I don't have to know whether it's a BMG or Sony album, I just go to the store and buy it. With these disperate online music services, each with their own catalogs, consumers are supposed to care about these things.

2. Give me the freedom to listen to my music how I want and when I want. Too many of these services offer limited ability to burn CDs or copy to mp3 players. Stop that. I bought the damn music, let me listen to it the way I want. Stop treating your customers like crooks.

It's not that hard. Record executives have a hard time realizing that the music industry is about the artists. Yes, Mr. Exec I'm sure you're a really neat guy, and I know you spend a lot of time doing important things like Bribing radio stations to play your music and engaging in $480,000,000 in price fixing, and I can only imagine how difficult it is to threaten academic researchers. But seriously, you may be getting just a teansy bit greedy and irrational.

Man, I need some sleep...

What I believe is beside the point...a simple google search for "coriolis effect" reveals:

Quote from usatoday.com:

Any teacher who stands up in front of a class and says that Coriolis force determines which way the water flows from a sink or bathtub, should not only read Fraser's Bad Coriolis Web page, but be required to copy it on the blackboard 100 times.

Or, take this much more detailed debunking, containing the following quote:

This is so large that Coriolis forces will be insignificant compared to other fluid phenomena.

Don't take my word for it, look it up yourself...I'm just the messenger ;-)

Here are some links re: those episodes. Nothing really earth-shattering in them though: http://www.accessatlanta.com/ajc/living/0512spaces .html

http://www.wingfieldfans.org/douglas_wilson/articl e.asp?pubid=58

http://www.usatoday.com/life/llead.htm

http://www.ew.com/ew/report/0,6115,233279~3~~,00.h tml

Indeed, I wrote a letter (ready to be sent out tomorrow) to the USA Today giving them some basic facts and why it should interest them. You may be thinking, why them? Publicity causes public opinion. Public opinion is bound to be formed pretty quickly when they see a heartless corporation (that survives by suing) suing a great (from what my friend told me) local chocolate shop in the mall. In this case, I think publicity will help their case a lot.

"
Using seven different aliases, Titzer posted 246 messages on Yahoo Internet message boards ... Nam Tai argued that at least three of Titzer's messages were false, defamatory and unlawful."

Coupled with yesterdays news that gas mileage is continuing to drop in 2003 models, this is a great announcement.

Now if only the EU could do this with Microsoft

They are doing this to Microsoft

"Microsoft as well as interested third parties will have the opportunity to present their positions at a formal hearing," Monti told reporters.

Does anyone know where "Interested third parties" can get involved?

Now if only the EU could do this with Microsoft The are doing this to Microsoft "Microsoft as well as interested third parties will have the opportunity to present their positions at a formal hearing," Monti told reporters.
Does anyone know where "Interested third parties" can get involved?

If not, it isn't worth the price tag.

This is actually extremely cheap for a robot having this kind of functionality. The only equivalent product on the market (or soon on the market) is Sony's SDR-4X, which costs about 20x the price of this one. The SDR-4X can, however, sing in harmony, shake its hips and wave its arms in tempo. That's got to count for something.

Or maybe Sony's CEO just had a joint too much.

The conditions imposed by the FTC on the AOL/TW merger were that AOL must open it's IM network to competitors when it starts offering "advanced" services like video. Ever since then, they've dragged their feet on putting video features in AIM (pretty obvious when you see the "everything but the kitchen sink" feature list in AIM 5.0). Yahoo and MSN have had video for at least a year now. article here

I heard that the TiVO for DirectTV can do this stuff? Anyone have one and is it true?

Yes it can do this because the TiVo is built into the DirecTV unit. In fact, it has two tuners, so you can record two shows at once, also. (That is how it allows you to watch TV while it's recording another show... dual tuners.)

Anyone know of a future release where the TiVO and the set-top boxes work together?

This would involve your cable company releasing a PVR, because the PVR and digital cable box have to be integrated in order to do what you're talking about. It would also need dual tuners.

I know TimeWarner announced plans to release their own PVR for their digital cable service, but no news lately. As a die-hard TiVo user, and a TW digital cable subscriber, I am torn. I love the TiVo, but if TW's PVR is integrated nicely with their digital cable, I would definitely consider switching over.

(When they made the announcement, they didn't specify who was providing the PVR technology ... it could be "in-house" or perhaps they're leasing from TiVo or someone else.)

NEWS FLASH... I just did a news.google.com search, and found this article, which states they are already testing it in 2 markets, and hope to have it in 18 markets by year's end. It is $5-$10 per month for the PVR service, and you get the box at no extra charge!

States settle CD price-fixing case

States settle CD price-fixing case

By David Lieberman, USA TODAY

NEW YORK - The five largest music companies and three of the USA's largest music retailers agreed Monday to pay $67.4 million and distribute $75.7 million in CDs to public and non-profit groups to settle a lawsuit led by New York and Florida over alleged price-fixing in the late 1990s.

Attorneys general in the two states, who were joined in the lawsuit by 39 other states, said that the industry kept consumer CD prices artificially high between 1995 and 2000 with a practice known as "minimum-advertised pricing" (MAP).

The settlement will go to all 50 states, based on population. Consumers may be able to seek compensation.

Under MAP, the record companies subsidized ads by retailers in return for agreement by the stores to sell CDs at or above a certain price.

"This is a landmark settlement to address years of illegal price-fixing," New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer said in a statement. "Our agreement will provide consumers with substantial refunds and result in the distribution of a wide variety of recordings for use in our schools and communities."

The companies, including Universal Music, Sony Music, Warner Music, Bertelsmann's BMG Music and EMI Group, plus retailers Musicland Stores, Trans World Entertainment and Tower Records, admitted no wrongdoing.

The companies have not practiced the pricing agreement since 2000. At that time, they agreed in settling a complaint by the Federal Trade Commission that they would refrain from MAP pricing for seven years.

Former FTC chairman Robert Pitofsky said at the time that consumers had been overcharged by $480 million since 1997 and that CD prices would soon drop by as much as $5 a CD as a result.

In settling the lawsuit, Universal BMG and Warner said they simply wanted to avoid court costs and defended the practice.

"We believe our policies were pro-competitive and geared toward keeping more retailers, large and small, in business," Universal said in a statement.

Previously, the companies said that MAP was needed to protect independent music retailers from rising competition from discount chains such as Wal-Mart, Circuit City and Best Buy. They had slashed CD prices, below cost in some cases, in the hope that once consumers were in their stores they would buy other, more expensive products.

The music companies said that MAP did not directly help them because it didn't affect wholesale prices. Retailers added that they needed support to keep prices up because their rents, particularly for stores in malls, were higher than the discount chains.

Lately, several record companies have cut prices on some CDs, particularly for new acts, to counter the continuing industry slump. Album sales are off nearly 11% this year compared with the same period in 2001, according to Nielsen SoundScan.

So our American friends are becoming mad?

I really wonder why Germanys Government has no problem to fund the GPL hosting company Berlios and KGroupware, GnuPG and Aegypten.
Will Europe be set under pressure to follow American anti-Free Software intellectual property laws? Sign Eurolinux petition

They are getting more butt into the seat. It is just more surface area and not more cheeks.



Eric

This has been concieved as a way of defeating stealth aircraft, and some observers believe this was how the Serbs shot down the F117 stealth fighter during the Kosovo campaign.

Stealth aircraft work mostly by reflecting radar away from the transmitter. But when the transmitter and receiver are not located at the same site, this can be defeated. Mobile phone networks fill the air with electromagnetic radiation, and if any one transmitter is located at a "lucky" spot, the receiver will be able to pick up the reflection from an aircraft. Since the open air usually doesn't reflect any radiation, an aircraft will stand out from the background.

Of course, to aquire range information, you'd have to trangulate with another receiver. And you can hardly use the doppler effect to get rid of ground clutter, since you'll be listening to a wide range of frequencies from a number of base stations. Also, it puts a new perspective on the question of targeting civilian infrastructure or not.

Please take note of this USA Today article in which Paul Wolfowitz is quoted as saying

"I don't think there was actually a plot beyond some fairly loose talk and (Al Muhajir's) coming in here obviously to plan further deeds."

It's pretty clear (read the government's court filings) that this case is intended to establish a precedent that the executive branch can-based only on its word and with no judicial review-confine an individual in a military prison indefinitely without trial.

If you believe in basic human rights, that concept really ought to scare you.

On the other hand, I will agree that this has nothing to do with the USA Patriot act. :-)

I'm curious so I googled (sorry no academic indices handy) and found this newspaper story. It's outdated, but supports the less than 5% percentage contention.

For more recent data you can consult this study from the Computer Science and Telecommunications Board. It suggests that only 1.5% of web sites are devoted to the porn industry. This is a pain to browse, but informative. You'll find the details in chapter 3.