Outside of an actual transaction, the value of anything is nebulous. Obviously, some things such as commodities that are actively traded can be more accurately estimated in the short-term. However, if you change the trading space, the price can go anywhere. The RIAA arguments are based on one trading space (where a song is on a CD that retails for ~$10), a defense lawyer might argue for an online trading space where most songs are free or at most a dollar. For something with tangible intrinsic value, such as a baseball, this might be a sound basis. But for intellectual property that can either be "downloaded and deleted" like song on the radio, or "downloaded and distributed" like iTunes, the 'potential' value could range from zero to infinity.
This is actually a "damned if you do and damned if you don't" problem. If there were no RIAA, then artists might realize little from the digital distribution of their work. If this happened, and it could, then the news would be full of stories about artists who are victims of a society that exploits their efforts. The press would hype this up in a feeding frenzy -- "artist XXX starves to death while her songs 'top the charts'." If that sounds crazy, then you obviously have never seen Fox News or even CNN.
So, what can be done about it? This falls into the same conundrum category as abortion, Palestine, and anything else where two side can be right about the wrong thing. I suspect that Dante couldn't muster the courage to write about it.
Amazing Quantum Man made a good point, the government can make you pay taxes on anything, even ill gotten gains. That is how they got Capone. The IRS does not care whether you earned it saving kids or selling heroin to them; they just want their cut. Since the burden of proof is different -- the onus is on the one in possession of the facts -- then prosecution is much easier.
This is really an old story, actually a continuation of the NTSC/PAL battles. VSB is the acronym for vestigial sideband, a variation of the modulation scheme used for NTSC. Coded Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (COFDM) is a different and more complex modulation scheme used by Digital Video Broadcast (DVB) in Europe and Japan. The general consensus at the time (way back in the last millennium) was that OFDM was better for penetration but the receivers were more expensive. VSB had a greater service area but could not handle noise (especially reflections) as well. In Europe and Japan, there are more large concentrations of people and DVB/COFDM made more sense.
THE REAL REASON, however, was that European companies owned the patents on COFDM, and Zenith had the patent on VSB-8 (some say 8-VSB, 8 for the number of levels of signal amplitude used, there is also a 16-level version for cable that was never used). So, America "bought American" and chose Zenith's solution. Later, LG Electronics bought Zenith. LOL!
Note: Bell Labs patented OFDM in 1966, but Philips and STM wrote patents covering DVB COFDM in 1987. I am sure there are others too.
If you want to write code, you gotta snort a load; cocaine.
If you don't prototype, you better unit test twice; cocaine.
Write that line, write that line, write that line; cocaine.
If your routine is hung, and you have to debug; cocaine.
When your coding is done, but it still will not run; cocaine.
Write that line, write that line, write that line; cocaine.
If your SCC's gone, and you want to write on; cocaine.
Forget this fact - you can't get it back; cocaine.
Write that line, write that line, write that line; cocaine!
I guess this is something to think about when you are being wheeled into the emergency room and meet your doctor who has been up for 30 hours. See http://www.ergoweb.com/news/detail.cfm?id=1190.
. . . in the proper context. The true beauty of this is that no one can really understand the infinite. For all you know, you may be your own god. See http://www.simulation-argument.com/simulation.html. On the line between knowing everything and knowing nothing, we all sit so close to nothing that the probability of knowing/guessing the ultimate truth of the universe (even if there is such a thing) is infinitesimal. Therefore, evolution is as likely to be wrong as creationism. The advantage of creationism is that is gives hope to people who otherwise have nothing. The advantage of Darwinism is that it help us understand biology. Being right or wrong in the absolute sense is like arguing about when the next rock will roll on a planet in a galaxy that is one billion light years away. It would seem more relevant to argue about Brittany Spears' next lover.
The Russians can do this, no problem. Probably some Ukrainians could easily do it too. Both charge more than the Chinese, but doing it there might bring some problems with the CPC. Disclaimer: I would never intend to do anything illegal, immoral, unethical, illogical, politically incorrect, or bad by anybody's definition of the word. If this is in any way seemed or inferred to be one of the above, I disavow any knowledge of my actions and plead insanity. Good luck and I hope that you fuck them up really good. Oh, I didn't mean that.
Re:...only if the BIOS chip is replaceable.
on
Phoenix BIOSOS?
·
· Score: 5, Funny
Not without getting arrested, this is a PC world, ya know.
I have a much duller life and would enjoy an Amazon swat team raiding my house to disable my Kindle, particularly if they were Amazons in the Greek mythology sense of the word. Whilst I read of Antianeira in the Iliad, who invaded Libya with their labials and beheaded the king . . . oh, I digress, sorry.
This is really sad. ATMs have rights too, ya know. Such blatant exploitation should be a Capitol One crime. "What do you have in your ATM?" should not be an American Expression.
Actually, Steve Ballmer was overheard in the bathroom saying, "Apple is going to die withered," but someone flushed as he said it. Of course, Steve always says this about competitors, mocking the old "wither and die, Microsoft" mantra of Scott McNealy. BTW, Scott's company did wither.
They will probably offer a free 7-UPgrade to anyone who has a legit copy of Vista. It makes too much business sense. Vista will become an albatross support burden. Giving away bits-on-a-wire to all those who bought Vista and even paid more to downgraded to XP will create some goodwill and begin to phase out older versions of the OS. If XP continues to have a huge installed base as W2K did, Microsoft will be forced to support it longer. That draws resource$ away from new products. They would probably save the 7-UP distribution costs in six months. Of course, I am talking about Microsoft, a company that seems to be living in its own reality distortion zone. Therefore, they might force people who bought Vista to pay MORE for a 7-UPgrade and tell people who downgraded to XP that they must buy an X-Box to get Win7. They also might sue anyone who criticizes them - hold on, there's someone at the door - HEY YOU CAN'T COME IN HERE.......
The issue really isn't the science, it is risk. Humanity could go a lot further with many things if we accept a different risk/reward scenario. When people first crossed the pacific to find Hawaii, they accepted a huge level of risk, and most probably died trying. If we were willing to accept a 20% or even 10% death rate, then medicine would progress much faster. If the public perceived a national security or loss of world status risk, they might be willing to accept more risk in medical experimentation. It is hard to say. However, unless something dramatically changes our comfort level, we will continue to play it safe.
This is sad, just another example of how the wheels are coming off the cart while careening down another blind alley. I was at a trade show last month, and the visit to the Microsoft booth was surreal. The first kiosk was for Windows 7 and a smiling young man touting the virtues of this beta software. When I mentioned that I was having trouble running Vista on a 3.2GHz P4 with 4GB RAM, a 512MB ATI video card with DX10.1, and a terabyte HDD, he scoffed and said that nobody at Microsoft was running Vista, not even the developers. He gave me a DVD of beta 7 and told me that even as a beta, Windows 7 was "so much better than Vista." I accepted his disc (which expires on August 1), and went to the Windows Mobile (WM).
This kiosk had a good looking young man who was part of the product management group for WM 6.5 and very knowledgeable about the product. When I told him that I was a WM developer, he listened attentively as I explained my frustration in trying to program the WM6 smartphone camera to work. His smile faded as he explained that Microsoft had failed to thoroughly test the OEMs for WM5, WM6 and WM6.1. As a result, the DirectShow APIs for many phones were not fully/correctly implemented. He showed me a web page - http://studierstube.icg.tu-graz.ac.at/handheld_ar/camera_phones.php - that explained the problem phones. Then I asked, "will this be fixed in the coming 6.5 release?" He shook his head and replied, "no, not until WM7." I thanked him for his candor and moved onto Live Search.
At Live Search, a bright young man was touting the performance of their latest version and let me test it against Google, where it seemed to respond comparably. He talked about how his group was trying to get other parts of Microsoft to use their Live Search instead of their own, "an uphill battle." At that moment, another person walked up and asked a question, prompting him to pull out his iPhone. I reached out with my WM phone and joked, "wouldn't it be more politically correct to show this?" He responded, "oh, no. Most of my friends at work have iPhones. It's OK."
The problems documented by Daniel Wagner's web page (above) and unmentioned on microsoft.com or msdn.com cost us three months of development time. I should have suspected; mea culpa. Our application now runs on iPhone, and we are not looking back.
BTW, the Microsoft coffee table looks like a giant iPhone.
"Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe." Albert Einstein. "You make your choices and you take your chances," P.T. Barnum.
Slashdot Mirror
PT Barnum would have developed software for the iPhone. His customers would probably would have developed software for the Blackberry.
Outside of an actual transaction, the value of anything is nebulous. Obviously, some things such as commodities that are actively traded can be more accurately estimated in the short-term. However, if you change the trading space, the price can go anywhere. The RIAA arguments are based on one trading space (where a song is on a CD that retails for ~$10), a defense lawyer might argue for an online trading space where most songs are free or at most a dollar. For something with tangible intrinsic value, such as a baseball, this might be a sound basis. But for intellectual property that can either be "downloaded and deleted" like song on the radio, or "downloaded and distributed" like iTunes, the 'potential' value could range from zero to infinity.
This is actually a "damned if you do and damned if you don't" problem. If there were no RIAA, then artists might realize little from the digital distribution of their work. If this happened, and it could, then the news would be full of stories about artists who are victims of a society that exploits their efforts. The press would hype this up in a feeding frenzy -- "artist XXX starves to death while her songs 'top the charts'." If that sounds crazy, then you obviously have never seen Fox News or even CNN.
So, what can be done about it? This falls into the same conundrum category as abortion, Palestine, and anything else where two side can be right about the wrong thing. I suspect that Dante couldn't muster the courage to write about it.
Coal, soda pop, vinyl siding, housebrand whiskey, anything from Wal-Mart.
.
Amazing Quantum Man made a good point, the government can make you pay taxes on anything, even ill gotten gains. That is how they got Capone. The IRS does not care whether you earned it saving kids or selling heroin to them; they just want their cut. Since the burden of proof is different -- the onus is on the one in possession of the facts -- then prosecution is much easier.
This is really an old story, actually a continuation of the NTSC/PAL battles. VSB is the acronym for vestigial sideband, a variation of the modulation scheme used for NTSC. Coded Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (COFDM) is a different and more complex modulation scheme used by Digital Video Broadcast (DVB) in Europe and Japan. The general consensus at the time (way back in the last millennium) was that OFDM was better for penetration but the receivers were more expensive. VSB had a greater service area but could not handle noise (especially reflections) as well. In Europe and Japan, there are more large concentrations of people and DVB/COFDM made more sense.
THE REAL REASON, however, was that European companies owned the patents on COFDM, and Zenith had the patent on VSB-8 (some say 8-VSB, 8 for the number of levels of signal amplitude used, there is also a 16-level version for cable that was never used). So, America "bought American" and chose Zenith's solution. Later, LG Electronics bought Zenith. LOL!
Note: Bell Labs patented OFDM in 1966, but Philips and STM wrote patents covering DVB COFDM in 1987. I am sure there are others too.
China goes chumming for American brands. Who's next, ChitiBank?
. . . and it is looking back at me.
If you want to write code, you gotta snort a load; cocaine.
If you don't prototype, you better unit test twice; cocaine.
Write that line, write that line, write that line; cocaine.
If your routine is hung, and you have to debug; cocaine.
When your coding is done, but it still will not run; cocaine.
Write that line, write that line, write that line; cocaine.
If your SCC's gone, and you want to write on; cocaine.
Forget this fact - you can't get it back; cocaine.
Write that line, write that line, write that line; cocaine!
Worked for Disney (see http://www.snopes.com/disney/films/drugs.asp).
Apologies to Eric.
I guess this is something to think about when you are being wheeled into the emergency room and meet your doctor who has been up for 30 hours. See http://www.ergoweb.com/news/detail.cfm?id=1190.
. . . in the proper context. The true beauty of this is that no one can really understand the infinite. For all you know, you may be your own god. See http://www.simulation-argument.com/simulation.html. On the line between knowing everything and knowing nothing, we all sit so close to nothing that the probability of knowing/guessing the ultimate truth of the universe (even if there is such a thing) is infinitesimal. Therefore, evolution is as likely to be wrong as creationism. The advantage of creationism is that is gives hope to people who otherwise have nothing. The advantage of Darwinism is that it help us understand biology. Being right or wrong in the absolute sense is like arguing about when the next rock will roll on a planet in a galaxy that is one billion light years away. It would seem more relevant to argue about Brittany Spears' next lover.
The Russians can do this, no problem. Probably some Ukrainians could easily do it too. Both charge more than the Chinese, but doing it there might bring some problems with the CPC. Disclaimer: I would never intend to do anything illegal, immoral, unethical, illogical, politically incorrect, or bad by anybody's definition of the word. If this is in any way seemed or inferred to be one of the above, I disavow any knowledge of my actions and plead insanity. Good luck and I hope that you fuck them up really good. Oh, I didn't mean that.
Not without getting arrested, this is a PC world, ya know.
I have a much duller life and would enjoy an Amazon swat team raiding my house to disable my Kindle, particularly if they were Amazons in the Greek mythology sense of the word. Whilst I read of Antianeira in the Iliad, who invaded Libya with their labials and beheaded the king . . . oh, I digress, sorry.
Why don't we just plug them into out butts and run 'em on methane. Mine would clock 10THz.
This is really sad. ATMs have rights too, ya know. Such blatant exploitation should be a Capitol One crime. "What do you have in your ATM?" should not be an American Expression.
I believe that Cabletron had that rule 20 years ago, along with no chairs in the room (sitters were fired).
It would be easier to send something non-corporeal through space/time. Why deal with the environmental overhead?
Actually, Steve Ballmer was overheard in the bathroom saying, "Apple is going to die withered," but someone flushed as he said it. Of course, Steve always says this about competitors, mocking the old "wither and die, Microsoft" mantra of Scott McNealy. BTW, Scott's company did wither.
See http://blogs.intel.com/research/2008/10/rattner_the_promise_of_wireles.php . Tesla was, obviouly, much omre ambitious.
The MDSN users are clearly to blame here. They are probably using Vista and IE8. They should be using a Mac and Safari.
They will probably offer a free 7-UPgrade to anyone who has a legit copy of Vista. It makes too much business sense. Vista will become an albatross support burden. Giving away bits-on-a-wire to all those who bought Vista and even paid more to downgraded to XP will create some goodwill and begin to phase out older versions of the OS. If XP continues to have a huge installed base as W2K did, Microsoft will be forced to support it longer. That draws resource$ away from new products. They would probably save the 7-UP distribution costs in six months. Of course, I am talking about Microsoft, a company that seems to be living in its own reality distortion zone. Therefore, they might force people who bought Vista to pay MORE for a 7-UPgrade and tell people who downgraded to XP that they must buy an X-Box to get Win7. They also might sue anyone who criticizes them - hold on, there's someone at the door - HEY YOU CAN'T COME IN HERE.......
The issue really isn't the science, it is risk. Humanity could go a lot further with many things if we accept a different risk/reward scenario. When people first crossed the pacific to find Hawaii, they accepted a huge level of risk, and most probably died trying. If we were willing to accept a 20% or even 10% death rate, then medicine would progress much faster. If the public perceived a national security or loss of world status risk, they might be willing to accept more risk in medical experimentation. It is hard to say. However, unless something dramatically changes our comfort level, we will continue to play it safe.
This is sad, just another example of how the wheels are coming off the cart while careening down another blind alley. I was at a trade show last month, and the visit to the Microsoft booth was surreal. The first kiosk was for Windows 7 and a smiling young man touting the virtues of this beta software. When I mentioned that I was having trouble running Vista on a 3.2GHz P4 with 4GB RAM, a 512MB ATI video card with DX10.1, and a terabyte HDD, he scoffed and said that nobody at Microsoft was running Vista, not even the developers. He gave me a DVD of beta 7 and told me that even as a beta, Windows 7 was "so much better than Vista." I accepted his disc (which expires on August 1), and went to the Windows Mobile (WM).
This kiosk had a good looking young man who was part of the product management group for WM 6.5 and very knowledgeable about the product. When I told him that I was a WM developer, he listened attentively as I explained my frustration in trying to program the WM6 smartphone camera to work. His smile faded as he explained that Microsoft had failed to thoroughly test the OEMs for WM5, WM6 and WM6.1. As a result, the DirectShow APIs for many phones were not fully/correctly implemented. He showed me a web page - http://studierstube.icg.tu-graz.ac.at/handheld_ar/camera_phones.php - that explained the problem phones. Then I asked, "will this be fixed in the coming 6.5 release?" He shook his head and replied, "no, not until WM7." I thanked him for his candor and moved onto Live Search.
At Live Search, a bright young man was touting the performance of their latest version and let me test it against Google, where it seemed to respond comparably. He talked about how his group was trying to get other parts of Microsoft to use their Live Search instead of their own, "an uphill battle." At that moment, another person walked up and asked a question, prompting him to pull out his iPhone. I reached out with my WM phone and joked, "wouldn't it be more politically correct to show this?" He responded, "oh, no. Most of my friends at work have iPhones. It's OK."
The problems documented by Daniel Wagner's web page (above) and unmentioned on microsoft.com or msdn.com cost us three months of development time. I should have suspected; mea culpa. Our application now runs on iPhone, and we are not looking back.
BTW, the Microsoft coffee table looks like a giant iPhone.
"Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe." Albert Einstein. "You make your choices and you take your chances," P.T. Barnum.