If you think about it, this is an updated version of the serialized installments that Charles Dickens used to publish his books. They were originally installments in magazines, and the installments weren't collected into complete books until muchlater. As I recall, the reason installments in magazines died out was that it became cheaper to buy entire books instead of waiting for the next installment, as whole books were previously seen as an "upper class" thing.
Now we're seeing the same forces that drove magazine sales in Victorian times being applied to a new medium, that being the hope that the reader's interest in the story will drive them to pay for the next installment. And I think that's a good thing, as it will hopefully be a step towards a time when people will choose to pay for an entire online book, or any other form of art for that matter. --Fesh
Yeah, I know it's pretty funny, but underneath that is a nasty grain of truth. A minority group could conceivably effectivly censor any work they didn't approve of through such tactics. The question is, how to keep it from messing up the system? I guess the obvious answer would be to discount massive amounts of downloads from the same place... But what if the would-be censors used a network of machines... DDOL (Distributed Denial Of Literature)? Eek. The prospects are pretty scary.
Yep, I'm quite familiar with Trinity... One of my friends snapped up all the new stuff for it when it came out. Unfortunately, we haven't played it in a goodly while... It was a pretty good system.
This was actually a major plot point in a book by Larry Niven and Stephen Barnes entitled The Descent of Anansi. Basically, there was this spool of monofilament wire (several million kilometers worth) that had been produced in orbit and needed to be brought back to Earth. However, a Brazilian company that lost the bid for the wire sabotaged the space shuttle that was to recover the spool so they could claim salvage rights.
I had a point somewhere... Where is it... Ah.
Anyway, the act of sabotage damaged the shuttle so it couldn't deorbit. The crew came up with the idea of attaching the free end of the wire to the shuttle and letting the wire spool out, thus deorbiting the shuttle and putting the spool itself in a higher orbit. Anyway, it's neat to see that a concept that I first saw in an admittedly pulpy piece of science-fiction writing is finally getting scientific attention.
For a second, I thought that said, "Don't think environmentalists don't know about it". Which got me thinking about Neal Stephenson's Zodiac... That was one environmentalist who certainly did know about nitrous... *grin*
As I recall, though, the Concorde has four afterburning turbojets. So actually, the engines are even dirtier than your F-15 example (as the F-15 only has two low-bypass turbofans). The Concorde went into service in the mid-seventies, right? The aerospace companies had just figured out how to make high-bypass turbofans work by that point.
But on the other hand, you're right about jet tailpipe products not being extremely harmful to the ozone layer... The nitric oxides produced combine with water vapor to produce acid rain, but are not (as far as I know) active against ozone.
Next thing we have to do is figure out a way to have an e-picket(tm pending).
Easy. Set up everyone's DNS servers to resolve every incoming name to the same machine hosting protest info. Shouldn't be any harder to coordinate than taking down the DNS servers entirely...
Yep, logs are good because they're made of wood. Wood comes from trees, which were made by God to keep drunk frat-boys from driving cars! Cars are eeeeevil! They run on gasoline, and are too much fun. As we all know, anything that's too much fun is eeeeevil! Gasoline is used in chainsaws, and as we all know, chainsaws are eeeeevil! They cut down trees and run on gasoline. Gasoline, as we all know, is eeeeevil! Give me a good sturdy axe, never mind those eeeevil chainsaws... Axes are good, because they're made of wood, which comes from trees. And so do logs, so they're good as well. But chainsaws... Chainsaws are eeeeeeevil!
Since Casinos are backing this, it's not just an issue of state sanctioned v. non-sanctioned.
That's a very telling comment there... Do you have documentation on that? Sounds like another "industry" may be trying to legislate it's online competition out of business...
--Fesh
Re:The Failing of Democracy, Capitalism as Governm
on
The Perils Of E-Voting
·
· Score: 1
That's one of the ideas my dad has... But I like the other one better: draft the government. Every four years, random (un)lucky individuals get this letter in their mailbox:
"Greetings, Citizen. For the next four years, you will represent your district in the United States House of Representatives. You will report to Capitol Hill no later than..."
Yeah, and I hear that the same guy is owed favors from nearly half the politicians in DC and that he's now Shrub's campaign manager. Makes you wonder, doesn't it? I forget the guy's name... Heard a bio on him on NPR last week.
A straightforward reading of this suggests that neither the manufacturer or the consumer may be sued, regardless of whether the non-commercial recording in question is legal or illegal.
Hrm. No, I still maintain that this section only applies to manufacturers. To delve into the messy english grammar rules involved, the sentance is a list of actions under which a suit may not be brought, as shown by its parallel structure. To put it in C:
if( reason == manufacture of device || reason == manufature of media || reason == noncommercial use by consumer ) {
canSueForCopyrightViolation = FALSE; }
Note that Diamond got sued over the Rio despite the fact that the Rio did not have a (consumer-accessible) digital output, and could be loaded only with the aid of a computer.
Note that the recording industry is liable to sue anybody they think is trying to provide digital music to consumers, regardless of whether there is a legal base for the suit. Didn't Diamond settle? According to this, that suit was bogus and should have been thrown out.
And maybe he'd listen to reason if we explained our position on DeCSS? How many Linux users do you think it would take for him to consider us a substantial voting bloc?
Actually, the way I read the snippet of the AHRA as given above, the RIAA can't sue the manufacturers of recording equipment for copyright infringement. Basically, it seems to say that you can't sue Aiwa for copyright infringement because somebody made a bunch of copies of an album on their Aiwa stereo. It doesen't seem to say squat about the consumer. Allow me to emphasize a few things, and this will hopefully become clear.
"No action may be brought under this title alleging infringement of copyright based on the manufacture, importation, or distribution of a digital audio recording device, a digital audio recording medium, an analog recording device, or an analog recording medium, or based on the noncommercial use by a consumer of such a device or medium for making digital musical recordings or analog musical recordings."
It doesn't say that a consumer can make recordings without being sued, it says that recording equipment manufacturers can't be sued for making stereos capable of making recordings, tape manufacturers can't be sued for making tapes, and neither can be sued if the person who buys the stereo or tape and uses them for non-commercial purposes. It also doesn't say anything in cases where the user uses equipment to make commercial copies...
There was a vehicle called Pegasus in the late 80's and early '90s which looked like a cross between a Tomahawk cruise missile and the space-shuttle's SRB. It was intended to launch microsats and was air-dropped from a B-52. However, I think it got axed (not sure why, from what I recall the tests were successful).
Slashdot Mirror
--Fesh
Now we're seeing the same forces that drove magazine sales in Victorian times being applied to a new medium, that being the hope that the reader's interest in the story will drive them to pay for the next installment. And I think that's a good thing, as it will hopefully be a step towards a time when people will choose to pay for an entire online book, or any other form of art for that matter.
--Fesh
--Fesh
--Fesh
--Fesh
I had a point somewhere... Where is it... Ah.
Anyway, the act of sabotage damaged the shuttle so it couldn't deorbit. The crew came up with the idea of attaching the free end of the wire to the shuttle and letting the wire spool out, thus deorbiting the shuttle and putting the spool itself in a higher orbit. Anyway, it's neat to see that a concept that I first saw in an admittedly pulpy piece of science-fiction writing is finally getting scientific attention.
--Fesh
--Fesh
But on the other hand, you're right about jet tailpipe products not being extremely harmful to the ozone layer... The nitric oxides produced combine with water vapor to produce acid rain, but are not (as far as I know) active against ozone.
--Fesh
--Fesh
Easy. Set up everyone's DNS servers to resolve every incoming name to the same machine hosting protest info. Shouldn't be any harder to coordinate than taking down the DNS servers entirely...
--Fesh
--Fesh
Yep, logs are good because they're made of wood. Wood comes from trees, which were made by God to keep drunk frat-boys from driving cars! Cars are eeeeevil! They run on gasoline, and are too much fun. As we all know, anything that's too much fun is eeeeevil! Gasoline is used in chainsaws, and as we all know, chainsaws are eeeeevil! They cut down trees and run on gasoline. Gasoline, as we all know, is eeeeevil! Give me a good sturdy axe, never mind those eeeevil chainsaws... Axes are good, because they're made of wood, which comes from trees. And so do logs, so they're good as well. But chainsaws... Chainsaws are eeeeeeevil!
(/crotchety old man voice)
--Fesh
From what I understand, it's an ingredient in Excedrin because a lot of North American headaches are caused by caffeine withdrawl...
--Fesh
So... Who sponsors .sex and .porn?
--Fesh
--Fesh
That's a very telling comment there... Do you have documentation on that? Sounds like another "industry" may be trying to legislate it's online competition out of business...
--Fesh
"Greetings, Citizen. For the next four years, you will represent your district in the United States House of Representatives. You will report to Capitol Hill no later than..."
I dunno, I think it's a neat idea...
--Fesh
--Fesh
--Fesh
Hrm. No, I still maintain that this section only applies to manufacturers. To delve into the messy english grammar rules involved, the sentance is a list of actions under which a suit may not be brought, as shown by its parallel structure. To put it in C:
if( reason == manufacture of device || reason == manufature of media || reason == noncommercial use by consumer )
canSueForCopyrightViolation = FALSE;{
}
Note that Diamond got sued over the Rio despite the fact that the Rio did not have a (consumer-accessible) digital output, and could be loaded only with the aid of a computer.
Note that the recording industry is liable to sue anybody they think is trying to provide digital music to consumers, regardless of whether there is a legal base for the suit. Didn't Diamond settle? According to this, that suit was bogus and should have been thrown out.
--Fesh
--Fesh
--Fesh
"No action may be brought under this title alleging infringement of copyright based on the manufacture, importation, or distribution of a digital audio recording device, a digital audio recording medium, an analog recording device, or an analog recording medium , or based on the noncommercial use by a consumer of such a device or medium for making digital musical recordings or analog musical recordings."
It doesn't say that a consumer can make recordings without being sued, it says that recording equipment manufacturers can't be sued for making stereos capable of making recordings, tape manufacturers can't be sued for making tapes, and neither can be sued if the person who buys the stereo or tape and uses them for non-commercial purposes. It also doesn't say anything in cases where the user uses equipment to make commercial copies...
IANAL. YMMV. RADBTM. HAND.
--Fesh
--Fesh
--Fesh