Slashdot Mirror

Vinyl went away.

Records sell in the hundreds, maybe thousands at very best. When was the last time an LP was certified Gold or Platinum? The sales that have continued are minuscule in relation to the over all music sales. It's a cult thing, much like the sales of blank cassettes. Yeah, these are RIAA figures, but the point is still valid:

http://blog.wired.com/music/2008/04/riaa-admits-vin.html

As for hearing the difference, that's already been debunked here.

There has been already one muslim in space last year - a Malaysian astronaut. See http://www.wired.com/science/space/news/2007/09/mecca_in_orbit for further details - he faced exactly the questions you mention.

Do you live in a different country than that ocean?

Didn't think so. Power generated within the same country could be considered "local" compared to foreign imports.

Setting aside the fact that basically all oceans are outside national borders -- why they're called international waters -- have you heard of Enron and power "deregulation" in California a few years back. Yeah, that was fun.

In addition, are you aware of how large the US is? Do you know of any power lines that stretch over 1,000 miles between a power station and a home? Being a state away is by no means local. The prices may be regulated, but electrical loss and electrical resistance do not give a rat's ass about in-state vs. out-of-state vs. international.

...the best minds in the world are at work.

And this is perhaps my biggest gripe: relying on others to solve our problems. Far more problems would be solved if some of those lazy social science majors would get off their collective asses and take some "hard" science and/or engineering courses. At least then it would dawn on people that hydrogen is not an energy source.

Since we're throwing around Wired links, try this one about thorium reactors. Not all "nukes" are trying to replicate Chernobyl contrary to popular belief, and I don't see us running out of thorium anytime soon. If we can't figure out fusion before then, maybe we as a species deserve to die. Who knows?

Bottom line: too many people. Conserve all you want, and I applaud you for doing so; however, unless we can reduce our population substantially, even the most efficient home times a few billion is more than wind and solar -- and maybe even nuclear -- can bear. I don't see a huge number of people in the US putting up quite the same effort in staying childless, but I guess that's just a little too much to ask.

Or, we'd shiver in the dark and/or swelter in the heat. Because if it was that easy, it would be done already.

Did you hear me say "easy"? I seem to recall saying something like:

It will be expensive in the short term. It will pay and pay and pay for generations thereafter.

Yep. My words for "won't be easy", but nonetheless important.

Still, those few square feet wouldn't even run the blower for my A/C, never mind the compressor.

If your house was designed properly, it wouldn't even need a huge-assed A/C. At the very least, it wouldn't need to be anything as big as it is now. When I recently doubled the size of my house, I demanded the best insulating EVERYTHING. 6" thick walls instead of 4", stuffed to the gills with insulation. Attic crammed high with almost 3' of insulation. Highest-efficiency central air available. The end result is that despite DOUBLING the size of my house, and despite RISING energy costs, my average utility bill went DOWN. Before the rise of energy costs, I calculated my ROI at about 5 years. But they've gone up, so I'll break even on this extra expense in more like 3 years!

Since doing this, I've done some research to find that, while I was on the right track, I didn't travel down it nearly far enough. I could have all-but eliminated my A/C altogether by using the ground UNDERNEATH MY HOUSE as a heat-sink.

Damn. (Where was that nuke, again?)

Ain't seen any geysers around here. And there's a whole state between me and the ocean. Bio-fuels... well, most of the stuff people grow around here, they grow for food. I don't think the little bit of miracle-fuel-plant-of-the-week I could plant on my front lawn would power my heat for the season it takes to grow it, either.

Do you live in a different country than that ocean?

Didn't think so. Power generated within the same country could be considered "local" compared to foreign imports. And with a properly designed power grid, including ubiquitous electric vehicles, (and its distributed power storage capability) the occasional non-windy day provides almost no hassle. Think it's far off? Think again - the best minds in the world are at work.

And let's talk about those fields growing food. They are excellent locations to keep windmills in, since they have few obstructions to wind, keeping turbulence to a minimum while causing almost no reduction in the amount of usable farmland.

(sigh) But I guess you're the "half-empty" kind of guy. Go back to your mother's basement, why don't ye? I'll try to stay off your precious lawn.

Why do you assume this problem will first arise when Iranians fly into space? Have you considered the possibility that it has already arisen, as it were, and been addressed? Because it has, and it was.
Here's an interesting and useful link for you: http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/files/a_guideline_ibadah_at_iss.doc
The title of the document is "A Guideline of Performing Ibadah (worship) at the International Space Station (ISS)" It's for the Malaysian space program, and one of their astronauts has already been to the ISS.

For instance, if you orbit the earth every 90 minutes, you experience a very short day. If you are Muslim, how does that effect praying 5 times a day (every 18 minutes!). And what about direction?...In a related vein, can devout Jews use thrusters (light a fire) on the Sabbath?

Questions related to Muslims in space were considered when Saudi Arabia sent its first man off-planet. See http://www.wired.com/science/space/news/2007/09/mecca_in_orbit.

As for whether Jews can use thrusters on the Sabbath, my guess is that you can provided you don't actually go where you want to. That was the position of my friend's rabbi about moving household furniture around the living room on the Sabbath.

..this http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/08/watch-listed--1.html
Apparently someone's word processor interpreted -- as ?.

Heh, captcha is reduce.

Finally, the US Courts are getting wise to the abuses we Americans have been subjected to in the name of battling terrorism.

Hopefully, this will come in time for this commercial pilot, he has 15 days to get off the no-fly-list -- or he's going to lose his job.

... but broken link. It looks like some helpful filter somewhere replaced a double hyphen with a dash. Article here.

>big, clunky, and with no regard for elegance.

Dealing with a vibration problem by adding nearly a ton of lead bouncy weights is not a great solution; especially when your mission is climbing out of a deep gravity well. They need to be looking for and fixing the source of the vibration.

Fortunately, they are. From Wired: "In the long term, Gary Lyles, associate director for technical management at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center, said they are planning cold flow testing to learn more about the source of the vibration within the motor design itself. The next step would be sub-scale hot flow tests with solid rocket motors. If the tests prove conclusive, NASA will be able to look at doing a block upgrade to the motor and adding design changes to the full scale motor that will result in less vibration being produced. This would solve the problem without adding on extra weight to compensate for the problem."

Exactly. It's not spelled out. It's just 'everyone put their money in this big pot, and we promise to divvy it up between our artists'. And it's not like this is clearly a 'rental/subscription' or a 'purchase', so it's not really covered by current trade licensing agreements.

And given todays report http://blog.wired.com/music/2008/08/jared-leto-hits.html is at all correct, that a group can have sales of over 2 million CD's and still 'owe' the label $1.4 million, do you really believe the labels will setup a system that is more than superficially 'verifiable', let alone one that results in most of the money received going to artists?

You sir, are an optimist.

Yes.

"How a Classic Man-in-the-Middle Attack Saved Colombian Hostages"
http://www.wired.com/politics/security/commentary/securitymatters/2008/07/securitymatters_0710

Harmonix has already announced that RB2 for the Wii will have DLC and online play...

As much as I'd like to get my hopes up for a version of Rock Band on the Wii that's worth buying, I clicked that link, and the sub link in that article and as much as I got was:

"While we didn't get into nitty-gritty details, I was assured by representatives of Harmonix at E3 this year that the Wii version of Rock Band 2 will be a much more competitive product.

A "much more competitive product" could mean "It comes with 90 tracks!", or "you can play the Mushroom Kingdom theme in this version!" or "You can use your Mii's!" Nowhere in either article did they confirm feature parity with the other console versions, or specifically say there would be DLC or online play. If you can site a source where they actually say the Wii Version of Rock Band2, will specifically have, a Character creator, a World tour mode, DLC, online play, or GH guitar support, I would love to see it.

Thanks.

You might not be able to tell, but a mathematician probably can.

Basically the idea is that if you open up a JPG, and then save it, the overall quality of the image deteriorates in a non-linear fashion with repeated saves. So, if you resave the image at 95% quality, and introduce a known error, then compare that against the original, the deterioration in quality should be homogeneous throughout the image. If not, the image is a composition from multiple sources. Check out slides 42 and 43 in the linked PDF file.

You can get around this, but you need to be VERY careful. Ideally you'd want to start out with raw images, and do all your manipulation saves/loads in some lossless format. Any kind of painting or blending in the image would have to be done carefully, as well, as it would be easy to produce a region of superior quality pixels that would show up in this kind of analysis.

from their response column, by a poster who has no history and joined the same day:

Most of you I am sure won't remember who Declan is... He was a prominent supporter of Microsoft in a newsgroup called "Appraising Microsoft" That group was active in the mid90's. That group was one of many spearheading the push for the justice department to "corral" Microsoft and prevent them form screwing up the computer industry. Alas as most of you are using Microsoft Windows, that group and many others failed. And as a result we have Microsoft as the operating system on the majority of computer world wide. And now we are at least 10 years behind in the software industry. Also Declan is attributed to starting and failing to stop a rumour regarding Al Gore. Declan was the sycophant reporter on Air Force One, traveling in the entourage of George Bush. It was Declan who misquoted Al Gore and ran off with the rumour that Al Gore Created / invented the internet. And although Declan has been laughed out loud at by the people who are aware of him and his writing, many of you who are not involved in the computer industry from the early days, are unaware of his actions. Declan has zero credibility in the information oped world, then as he does now. Unfortunately Declan will continue to create havoc in the press due to the fact that most of the public are unaware of his sycophantic habits. He will inexorably crawl up the butt of anyone with a buck to offer to his retirement fund. And since he writes about the information age, most people are blindly unaware of the facts and opinions that vary greatly in that arena. since most are unaware of the facts, they accept the writings of a few.

Sigh.... and Declan makes a living writing about this rubbish. Rubbish he is somewhat responsible for.....

A quick google of "declan al gore internet" gets me this, among many other results.
http://www.wired.com/politics/law/news/2000/10/39301

This is confirmed by the wikipedia entry, which has not been edited for quite some time:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Declan_McCullagh&action=history

So, this guy is telling me the extent of the astroturfing? The guy who helped swiftboat gore?

Then again, there wasn't even the slightest hint of effort put toward the Wii. Guitar Hero will continue to dominate on that front if nothing else, especially with confirmed DLC coming with World Tour. That is, of course, after Harmonix claimed it was technically impossible... y'know, just like including the character creator was technologically impossible (something else World Tour will have).

Harmonix has already announced that RB2 for the Wii will have DLC and online play. There's no word yet on whether the character creator will make it to RB2 Wii yet but it definitely won't be as gimped as RB1 in terms of features.

What happened was that most companies saw the Wii as an "also ran" once again. The XBox barely beat out the Gamecube lastgen (both getting their asses handed to them by the PS2). So, when Nintendo said "less power more immersive", the developers scratched their heads then "ooh"ed and "aah"ed over PS3 and 360 graphics. As with most of the market, they were thinking only of the core market (14-25 males) and what they would bring.

(It should be noted that the DS was only coming into its own right leading up to the Wii's launch, so the whole "it prints money" thing hadn't connected yet.)

Fast forward a year after release. 360's numbers are still looking alright, but Sony can't give away PS3 consoles (which were free with any HDTV purchase above a grand at many stores for a while). Wii, in the mean time, either has already surpassed the 360 in sales or is set to do so in a month or two's time, despite having a year's handicap. Suddenly, developers are going "oh shit" and want to jump on the money train. They see the success of games like Wii Sports (duh, as it's packaged with the Wii), Wii Play, and Rayman Raving Rabbids (which is quite fun) and think "We an pump out a bunch of minigame games". So we get isles of shovelware for Wii Year 2. In this time we get a bunch of good games as well, but it's starting to suffer the same way the PS2 did.

But we're coming up on Year 3 and it seems that a lot of companies are announcing original properties or new titles for the console. We have MadWorld, Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of a New World, The Conduit, and Fatal Frame (4): Mask of the Lunar Eclipse. For the casuals, there are plenty of other enticing options, such as Rayman Raving Rabbids TV Party, Wii Music (along with other Nintendo Wii titles), and Dance Dance Revolution: Hottest Party 2. At the same time, the Wii is becoming more than an afterthought. For instance, Rock Band 2 will not be crippled like the original Rock Band Wii was.

I think, though, that Year 3 will not be the year of casuals, as that's more of an over-arching thing, partly because casual gamers are far more likely to buy older titles they haven't played or only rented/borrowed before, whereas "core" gamers are much more likely to stick with new releases. Instead, a trend that I see developing for late Year 3/early Year 4 is ports, either straight or enhanced. We've had Resident Evil 4 and Okami, as well as other titles like House of the Dead (2 & 3). Capcom has announced Dead Rising: Chop Till You Drop and Sega has Samba de Amigo. Only two titles, sure, but as Wii sales continue on their steady pace (and stores continue to sell out), more and more developers are going to reach into their catalog of PS2, XBox, and Dreamcast games and grab some of the more popular titles to bring to the Wii. Because the expectations lower, they won't need to spend much time ramping up graphics, and by this point many studios have gotten good with applying the Wii controls. Throw in a bit of extra content here and there, price it at $30 or $40, and you have an easy seller.

Nintendo did have a bad E3 (I mean, wow), but this allows 3rd parties to step up not just for casual gaming, but for the core market as well. Over time some of those casuals will come over to the dark side, spurring "core"

Some information about his site being down: http://blog.wired.com/music/2008/08/yahoo-pulls-his.html

Bruce Schneier would like to have a word with you: The Myth of the 'Transparent Society

Another view of things http://blog.wired.com/defense/2008/08/air-force-suspe.html but if things turn black will we ever know?

From Wired Magazine Issue 15.05
"Pop-Up Cities: China Builds a Bright Green Metropolis"
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/15.05/feat_popup.html

"Anywhere else in the world, it would have been a thought exercise, done up pretty for a design book or a museum show...These new megacities could evolve into sprawling, polluting megaslums. Or they could define a new species of world city. Unlike New York or London, they are blank slates - less affluent, perhaps, but also free from legacy designs and technologies tailored to the world of the 19th and 20th centuries."

The pressure of flying and fighting half way across the globe whilst sitting in an air conditioned trailer somewhere in the USA can be a bit of a strain but don't worry the shrinks are on the job. http://blog.wired.com/defense/2008/08/flying-drones-f.html

As opposed to 'regular' fighter jocks. The article is here:

http://blog.wired.com/defense/2008/08/flying-drones-f.html

The Heat Map planning tool looks pretty nice. Does anyone know the name of this tool? I'm squinting at the image, but I don't recognize the interface and can't read some of the words.

Unfortunately the purpose for the download of copyrighted material does not make it anymore legal, no matter how one rationalizes it, it's just simply not your right.

One reason we don't shed a tear for the recording, radio, cable TV and movie industries is they were all founded on piracy themselves. Film makers didn't set up shop in Hollywood just for the nice weather, they did it to get away from Thomas Edison's patents on cameras. The rest took advantage of loopholes to make money from other people's content without paying for it.

Copyright violations aren't the problem these industries have with Napster or Bittorrent, it's that they aren't controlled by industry so they can make money from it.

Parts of it already are....like interpreting tests, reading medical imaging output, writing the reports, etc.

It's a big deal from the standpoint that the contractors that are typing in the results and interpreting your medical diagnostics are not regulated by US law nor subject to the the US HIPPA medical privacy rules -- since they don't have to have privacy safeguards, their services can be offered due to lower overhead in procedures and safeguards as well as lower labor costs. I'm sure having an 'expert on call' would be much cheaper if on call from other continents.

Taking samples is something that isn't likely to be outsourced overseas any time soon. But remote surgery? Trans-atlantic surgery was done via remote 7 years ago.....

No, HVDC isn't really any more costly than AC, and over long distances it loses less power even with loses due to inverters.

The problem is that we continue to use AC power.

Originally we used DC. Thomas Edison's power company in NYC was DC. It was only after Tesla pushed for AC, backed by Westinghouse, did AC become dominate. Edison even tried to electrocute an elephant in the War of Currents to discredit AC. Unfortunately the elephant was made to suffer by being electrocuted a number of tymes, Edison wasn't successful in killing the elephant at first. It wasn't until 2007 before all the DC power in NYC was changed to AC. However NYC's Subway system still runs on DC. And people who build their homes Off the Grid, and there are more and more people doing it, all use DC.

Solar power is a great advancement, but it simply cannot provide the energy needs of the country at this time. Supplemental use is good but the infrastructure needed to support wide scale solar use is simply too inefficient and expensive.

Therein lies the problem, I made the mistake myself in not talking about distributed power generation. Most people including you want the next big thing to solve everything. If instead of building large power plants and relying on the infrastructure of large powerlines transmission wouldn't be such a big problem. In California almost every building could have PVs installed on the roof providing some power. While Washington may not be a good place for solar, it's great for wind. And a 5 megawatt wind genie on 5 acres can provide power for a number of families and small businesses. With power generation closer to where it's used large powerlines aren't needed as much. Places like Boeing's factory in Seattle will need more power than the site can provide, but those place are few and far between each other.

Falcon

Now, the students' confidential. detailed Vulnerability Assessment Report to the MBTA is out in public, thanks to the wise guys submitting it to the court (as "Exhibit A").
Apart from the fact that the MBTA would have normally paid five-figures to receive such a report from some risk-management firm, it also lists a few of the glaring shortcomings of the system.

Who in his right mind would store the (money-equivalent) value of a card on the card itself?
Even my university back in the 90s was smart enough not to do that for such a simple thing as a cafeteria-card (the card had a number on it - all data was stored on a PC in the backroom).
Hello, McFly - anybody at home?
It's no longer 1972, where you needed 30k of equipment to read and write data from a smart-card or swipe-card.
It's 21st century now. Fraudsters have made a business over stuff with much less profit than in this case.
And trying to keep the information about all this stuff secret has helped spread the news about the talk all over the web.
What a great achievement.

http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/files/vulnerability_assessment_of_the_mtba_system.pdf

Here is the presentation:
http://www-tech.mit.edu/V128/N30/subway/Defcon_Presentation.pdf

Mirrors:
http://www.evernote.com/pub/ssulistyo/InfoSecStuff#07ff6ce9-1aa9-45e9-8bd2-10ce0805e534
https://dl.getdropbox.com/u/77164/anatomy%20of%20a%20subway%20hack.pdf

Also, a vulnerability assessment report:
http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/files/vulnerability_assessment_of_the_mtba_system.pdf

Plastic keys FTW!!

http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/08/medeco-locks-cr.html

Maybe the US government should look at themselves before telling a country not to spy on its citizens? http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2007/08/secret-spying-s.html just a thought

payed[sic]?

A variant of "You Get What You Pay For", quote: "A society committed to the wage-inflation model sees low-paid populations as victimized and handicapped.".

CC.

-- In about 2003, Gonzalez and others found an unencrypted wireless access point at a BJ's Wholesale Club store. BJ's reported a breach of its computer networks in early 2004.

-- In 2004, other members of the ID theft ring compromised an OfficeMax wireless access point in Miami, and they were able to steal credit card data. After law enforcement officials in 2006 identified OfficeMax as the victim of a data breach, the company said it hired an outside auditor to conduct an investigation and found no evidence of a security breach. An OfficeMax spokesman didn't immediately return a message seeking comment.

So either the Secret Service was letting this go on just so they could make one bust, or they had no idea that their own informant was committing major breaches while under their supervision. Also, how stupid is this guy that he didn't even stop breaking the law after getting busted and becoming an informant? Some people are just begging to be sent to prison, and it looks like the prosecuters are going to grant his wish. For the rest of his life if they have their way.

P.S.: The Threat Level post with the info about him being an informant also contains a link to another case about another informant who was stealing social security numbers while working on a computer inside the Secret Service offices.

The usdoj.gov website seems to be down for me at the moment but should come back up eventually.

-- In about 2003, Gonzalez and others found an unencrypted wireless access point at a BJ's Wholesale Club store. BJ's reported a breach of its computer networks in early 2004.

-- In 2004, other members of the ID theft ring compromised an OfficeMax wireless access point in Miami, and they were able to steal credit card data. After law enforcement officials in 2006 identified OfficeMax as the victim of a data breach, the company said it hired an outside auditor to conduct an investigation and found no evidence of a security breach. An OfficeMax spokesman didn't immediately return a message seeking comment.

So either the Secret Service was letting this go on just so they could make one bust, or they had no idea that their own informant was committing major breaches while under their supervision. Also, how stupid is this guy that he didn't even stop breaking the law after getting busted and becoming an informant? Some people are just begging to be sent to prison, and it looks like the prosecuters are going to grant his wish. For the rest of his life if they have their way.

P.S.: The Threat Level post with the info about him being an informant also contains a link to another case about another informant who was stealing social security numbers while working on a computer inside the Secret Service offices.

The usdoj.gov website seems to be down for me at the moment but should come back up eventually.

But anyone who showed that it could be done would be arrested and spend serious jail time.

Not anyone. The GAO already did this.

Results were as expected: the TSA operates a security theater.

Anyway, while us über-rational Slashdotters disdain security theater because we only care about real security, Bruce Schneier, who coined the term "security theater," points out that security theater can help bring inaccurate perceptions of security closer inline with reality. It's not an entirely worthless effort, if it helps misinformed people make more efficient tradeoffs by bringing their mistaken perceptions closer inline with reality. Even if we could force everyone to study statistics and learn the real dangers in their lives so that they could act in better accordance with reality, it's not clear that's necessarily a good thing. There are significant costs involved with education and information that would have to be weighed against the benefits of modifying people's behavior to act more rationally when considering danger.

Our unnamed university uses Cisco Clean Access which registers every MAC address to a particular user. If the RIAA/MPAA were to subpoena that information from us, we'd not have the luxury to make that argument. We make a point to tell our students this and it has somewhat reduced the number of nasty cease and desist letters. (I think they've found other solutions like "Tor" to keep themselves anonymous).

We have a visitor wireless network that is the preferred "anonymizer" for students. The networking guys throttled this network to make P2P sharing a total pain although many students use it.

It's kind of a shame because there are plenty of legit uses for P2P sharing but the overwhelmingly negative reputation for them is for piracy.

It's funny how the RIAA/MPAA lawyers throw the book at people and basically blackmail them into a settlement but when one of their goons totally brings down a media company with a DoS, they pretend they didn't break federal laws.

• Google — you could have one central authority organize everything into a single hierarchical structure that's organized very well... or, you can do as good of a guess as possible with lots of help from machines.
• GMail — you could spend lots of man-hours neatly organizing your mail into folders... or, you could just search it.
• Biology — using humans to figure out causation is best, but using machines to find correlation will work for now.

When you find yourself spending your whole day organizing data into trees, but the amount of data is constantly growing, you begin to realize that it's not useful to perfectly organize everything anymore.

It seems like most of the replies here aren't fully informed about the issues of the case and are looking at the "free speech" in the subject the wrong way, so here's a brief overview.

Originally the prosecution looked to charge her for harassment and/or threatening behavior. However, under the law at the time, her speech was considered protected speech, and the prosecution decided that they didn't have a case for harassment. (The law has since been amended so if she did that now, she could very easily charged).

The prosecution ultimately decided to indict her using an anti-hacking law that prevents "unauthorized access to a computer." The argument is that by misrepresenting herself on myspace, she violated the Terms of Service. Therefore, her access to Myspace's Servers was unauthorized, and she committed a felony by using myspace while violating their ToS. The indictment is not for harassment/threatening behavior. It's for breaking the ToS of a website, which the hacking law has never been used for before.

As the EFF amicus brief points out, if violating the ToS of a site is criminal behavior, this has far reaching implications. Google has something in their Terms of Service that says you have to be 18 to use google. According to the prosecution in this case, anyone under 18 who does a google search is a felon. Facebook's ToS has a provision that says you must keep all information in your profile up to date. If i change my favorite movie and don't update my facebook account promptly, i'm a felon.

This is not an issue of harassment vs. free speech. I think we all agree that Lori Drew is an ass and ideally, she should be punished. However, don't try and get her on an obscure law that will have far reaching implications. Violating the terms of service on a website (which a large majority of people don't even read fully) should not be a criminal offense. That's what this case is seeking to do

the act of downloading(picking up the paper) was not illegal.

The act of downloading, without copyright holder's approval is illegal. The judge in this case is deciding whether the RIAA has to prove anybody downloaded any music. From the "Wired" article: "At issue is whether the RIAA needs to prove that copyrighted music offered by a defendant on a peer-to-peer network was actually downloaded by anyone." If the RIAA can't prove anyone downloaded music he may vacate the defendant's conviction. Further it says the "judge said that the Copyright Act appears to outlaw only an actual transfer of copyrighted material."

Falcon

Just "coincidentally" the current Wired August 2008 issue has review of 4 models of disk repair appliances. The best one goes over $500, but they list a Maxell Pro Disk Fixer for $50 that might fill the bill. Note that the weblink doesn't contain the actual article (yet), since this issue is still in print.

http://www.wired.com/gadgets/gadgetreviews/magazine/16-08/pl_test

The best of the bunch was the Venmill Skip-Away Pro, which actually heats up the polycarbonate, then smooths it out - "like ironing the wrinkles out a shirt", to use the vendor's analogy. At US$500 retail it's not for the budget-conscious though.

How odd. Just last night I was reading an older issue of Wired magazine (16.03 / March 2008) and it had a review of four disc cleaners. I can't find it online though, but you can try starting here:

http://www.wired.com/wired/issue/16-03

I would like to point out this article from David Byrne which I found highly instructive on different record contract structures. It's an older article, but still very good from someone who has been there, on both sides of the equation.

While some bands may chose the megastar option (at risk of loss of other things), a great many other musicians would likely do well on a number of different levels.

Acually the catholics in particular have been making a point of going on record not only that life may exist elsewhere, but that it probably does and that catholics should be ready to accept that. Here's a litte sample from Wired a bit back. http://www.wired.com/science/space/news/2008/06/alien_religion?currentPage=all Most poeple I've met that belive in God view the exisitance of life elsewhere as further proof. After all God would have created it too.

Have you read The Long Tail? (Or the Book)

Don't forget China ...

http://www.wired.com/science/space/news/2006/12/72276

I think you miss the point with #4. There is no revenue in recorded music anymore. I know I'm not buying any, and nobody I know is buying any. Anyone that knows how to is downloading it for free. Some folks think they are clever by saying they will eventually buy something when it is the right price and right quality. In the meantime, they are downloading as well and not paying.

Apple Apparently Turned $570 Million Profit from ITunes Last Year

Quote: "So when revenue is brought back to the States, Billboard estimates iTunes' music download revenue at $1.9 billion last year"

That must be 1.9 billion imaginary dollars.

Or even a working link.

That doesn't appear to be exactly the same, but similar and interesting, and the article makes some good points.

And don't try that bullshit of "we'll only get prepared for it when the cost goes up too high".

It's pretty obvious that's true -- notice how, despite common knowledge that the amount of oil in the world is limited, and that using it damages the environment, most of us still aren't prepared.

It's bullshit because the same people who are happy as pigs in shit that we're running out of oil now are the same people that stop us from embracing the only currently viable options.

Currently viable options... like, oh, this one? Or, wait a bit, and there's this one.

And don't forget about some old, clean, cheap or free modes of transportation.

We're working on real solutions. You just want a band-aid.