According to National Geographic's Flash Facts About Lightning, the odds of being struck in a lifetime is three-thousand to one.
That sounds surprisingly likely... but I'm inclined to think he was lying.
I mean, doesn't lightning heat the surrounding air enough to melt sand into glass? We're talking thousands of degrees here. How could someone survive that ONCE, let alone 6 more times?
google has jumped the shark and become a big company
Google has become a big company?! Oh no!:O
Google might be an advertising agency, but they don't have any connection to the world of traditional media - they are (nearly) entirely dependent on the Internet.
The Internet is a great place to advertise, but I feel a television campaign can really open up the flood gates for the "casual user" demographic.
This also fits with Google's mantra when you boil down everything they do -- throw your money at it. They have the resources, why not?
hating on pop stars, Windows, and Kraft Parmesan cheese.
Many pop stars are manufactured/talentless, Windows has many issues (on its own merit, its still commendable though) and Kraft Parmesan cheese tastes like sawdust compared to the real thing (Read: Parmigiano-Reggiano).
I'm unaware of any place in the US which enforces anti-gay sex laws.
Granted, I don't actually believe most people/states enforced such laws, but laws against sodomy (I would certainly consider anti-sodomy laws to be "anti gay sex") were alive an well in many states up until about 2003. On principle alone, the recency is disturbing and there actually have been cases where such laws/punishments have been applied. The primary focus of which -- of course -- was always to criminalize male/male sex.
supply is nearly infinite so the price should be nearly zero
I don't know anything about markets etc.. and I'm sure that's about to show... However, I wouldn't say *that*. Sure, the file itself costs nearly zero to distribute, keep in mind, we're not dealing with JUST a product here. Music is also a service.
There are industry costs such as production, management, distribution (not so much with digital transmission), advertising and various salaries and who knows what else for an unimaginable number of other things. Granted, an independent act can scrape by with little capital expenditure, but their song prices would also reflect that. Capital investment could certainly be the excuse for charging more, kind of like research & development for software etc...
Another thing is, even though the supply is infinite, there will almost always still be demand. Of course, demand would still drive the price up, but indy acts with tiny start up costs would be cheap to purchase at first. The low price would encourage demand and the cost would go up until demand is in line with what people would pay. If the music sucks, then the price only goes as high as people are willing to pay.
Conversely, big acts with huge capital investments would probably want to charge top dollar. But, they too will need to work their way up the pricing ladder. I'm sure plenty of crap would sell for top dollar because people seem to demand it, but maybe it would reward 'good' music more than it would reward 'bad' music.
Why are people willing to spend money on something that has no appreciable value?
I don't consider music having 'no appreciable value'. The digital distribution costs are almost nothing, but everything that goes into does cost something. And even without that, music is still worth money to people. Now, maybe music is more expensive than it should be because of the influence of exploitation, but it's entertainment - and people pay for that not out of exploitation, but because it is worth it to them. I honestly think that's a clever (and at least somewhat fair) way to price music - based on what it is *worth* to you. What makes the current system more unfair is they charge an arbitrary amount based on what they *think* it is worth.
I'd counter that claim using examples of other digital distribution services that are both more convenient and cheaper than their brick & mortar counterparts: Netflix, Steam, Internet news, e-mail, eBook services, online shopping, Internet classifies like Craigslist and from a purely digital distribution standpoint -- even VoIP.
Convenience is okay to charge for (and often is), but competition should eventually bring the price down to what the market can bear. I guess the problem here is iTunes is such a gigantic music distribution channel, Apple & company don't feel the need to lower their prices to compete yet?
Regardless, I might also argue the battle isn't even about convenience anymore. If the music industry is to be believed, their biggest issue is 'pirated' music. With that in mind, I don't believe this is a step in the right direction.
I realize it makes too much sense for the RIAA to ever agree to it, but the prices should be based on demand. If a song gets downloaded a lot at $.99, then bump it to $1.29.
Why? The supply and demand model is based on the idea of scarcity of a resource.
Well, money isn't infinite... The "scarcity of resource" isn't the product, but rather the money used to purchase it.
It may not be traditional economics, but there is an optimal price for every song that will make the most money. I don't have a formula to figure out what that might be, but using a system similar to what was suggested might get them closer to capitalizing more on music tracks than just flat fees based on guesses of what's going to be hot.
Let's say your typical CD has about 14 tracks. That's $14 at $1.00 per track. Nearly any CD can be found for less than $14... even at places like Best Buy and let us not forget that includes the personal fulfillment of a physical copy, booklet etc...
$1.29 x 14 = $18.06.... How can $1.29/song be justified?
This is completely ass backwards. The music industry HAS to price its products lower or it risks looking completely unattractive to consumers. They can't compete with higher prices against its easily available, convenient and free "black market" competition.
Well, as long as everything you have is supported and installed correctly (I imagine most netbooks work fine OOTB).
God forbid you have some hardware that doesn't work out OOTB though... If that's true, then there's a realistic chance you'll be trying to compile and install modules. I don't know what your experiences have been, but there's a lot of things that can go wrong like your GCC is too old or new or you don't have the correct dependencies. Hell, maybe the module won't even compile without editing the source... No average user wants to deal with that crap.
But when all of your hardware is recognized properly and works with Linux automagically, I agree it is a beautiful thing.
This isn't much of an argument for it, but aren't faster boot times better? Shouldn't we aim to improve things?
As far as why it is SO important, I can't say for sure. I think the desire for this is an extension of instant gratification. Why wait if you don't have to? That's really about the only argument I can think for it. Let us not forget enthusiast users as well, as a faster boot time is every bit as symbolic as faster HDD benchmarks, overclock CPUs, lower memory timings and +2FPS in a game. At the very least this appeals to the enthusiast -- simliar to squeezing every bit of horse power out of your car for a gear head.
As for other power states, standby is a waste of power and suspend-to-disk still takes a bit to load and to shutdown (about 10 seconds on my 4GB RAM laptop). As RAM capacities increase and the speeds of storage media do not (hopefully they will as SSD penetrates consumer markets), this is only going to take longer and longer. But yeah, I believe hibernate is a decent substitute. I can't recall seeing anyone use it though and as a computer technician, I get lots of questions about, "Should I hibernate my system???". Computer novices are scared of it.:-)
Also, granted, 10 or 20 seconds doesn't matter too much in a ~85,000 second day, but it would still be nice and I can think of a number of times it would have been helpful (like having to restart my businesses computer for a customer transaction after some funny behavior or restarting after some updates etc..).
Anyway, I can't really make a case for the importance of boot times for desktops, servers and such -- but I'm sure you'd agree with me that it's a positive thing and as such, perhaps you'd also agree that it is worthy of some consideration.
but that's what, once a month, once a year, once a decade if your server is in good health?
You seem to make the assumption that people keep their computers on 24x7.
I imagine *many* consumers want their computer to turn on instantly during a cold boot. That's obviously unrealistic for now. But even more certainly, *more* people would prefer it.
Now, I know you may not care much -- but if given the chance -- wouldn't you want faster boot times if possible? Why not? So if yes, why not try?
I don't believe an entirely open source, wiki-style government sounds appealing at all. That would be anarchy.
But that isn't what you're talking about... Just wanted to make that point first.
This is a stretch, but in a way -- on paper -- we already have an 'open source' government. You contribute by suggesting/complaining to your congress critter and they are supposed to represent you. The idea is that your contribution will be taken into consideration, expanded upon and eventually legislated. You elect these officials and the idea is that they are supposed to represent your ideals. These people are the management, in a sense.
The reality, of course, is it doesn't quite work that way. But I think that's the idea behind our system.
By 'open sourcing' the government more, I think we can improve this process. Our system is archaic, designed for people getting messages on horseback. We have all of these great, easy, instant ways to communicate now and lots of people have lots of ideas. While a pure OSS model might not work out so well -- opening up the government a little more, loosely based on OSS ideas and principles -- I theorize would be a good thing.
Commercial pilots are trained to work like a machine. I would be just as happy if they weren't there.
... if you happen to know anyone who can design an autopilot system that can account for nearly as many external/environmental variables as a human being -- I would too.
There is a simple fix to this whole issue from a cell companies perspective. Never offer 'unlimited' internet plans or charge huge amounts of money for them. Charge for every byte of data so that it no longer becomes viable to use skype over standard calling and now consumers are in a worse position.
If you don't understand why skype should not be allowed to be run over the cell networks then I don't know what to tell you. It is not a corporate scam to steal money from consumers, that is for sure.
Be careful what you wish for.
That's a pretty darn good deterrant and powerful control over the flow of information.
As the RIAA has found out - no it is not. I don't like the RIAA, but I think their inability to control 'the flow of information' despite their desperate attempts proves this point unlike any other entity can.
Copyright offers no 'control' -- It only offers recourse. DRM is almost entirely preventative. Copyright infringement these days happens on an International stage and data moves at light speed. It's quite impossible to enforce IP anymore and short of randomly suing people to scare (some) people, you have little recourse.
In short, you can't sue everyone in the world and everyone in the world knows that. And copyright doesn't prevent the material from being copied. How is it a powerful way to control the flow of information?
However, the current build only has support for IE â" it will compare rendering in IE6 with either IE7 or IE8, whichever is installed.
Well, that's not too bad, at least. Webkit and firefox seem to render the pages I design just as I expect. It's almost always IE6 that has the issues, so if I could pick one...
True, but how does causation ever get proven? Every day life doesn't exist in a lab and not all (or even most) variables can be controlled for. It's very much impossible to concretely prove causation within our populations for things that don't cause instantaneous death... Often times, the best we can hope for are very strong correlations and make a *reasonably* educated assumption.
True, there are tons of buses and you can to most places using public transportation. The problem with LA public transit is it can be impractical to do so. This isn't a failing of the transit system necessarily, but because LA is the poster child for urban sprawl.
To get to work (an 18 mile drive) takes me just under 2 hours on the bus and I'd have to catch multiple buses. I can drive it in 30 mins -- with traffic.
Similarly, there are MANY miles of tracks for the Metro rail system too, but again, LA is too big and the accessibility of the rail system is limited at best. For example, the rail almost completely ignores West LA (where I live).
If that's the case, sounds pretty good to me. I'm going to start doing my shopping on eBay.;)
I don't consider myself much of a capitalist, but I find it interesting that a company can have a product that another company reproduces for less (at the same quality), but can't compete with them. Why is that? I know regulations help level the playing field, but in a cold way, the consumer wins if another company can create the same product for less. I think typically though, products like this are of inferior quality - maybe the product itself, support etc...
Slashdot Mirror
Proving that one person intentionally did something may be hard.
Proving fifty thousand people doing something within a short period of time, beginning right after a very public request to do so... not so hard.
... Prosecuting fifty thousand people for $0.13...
Priceless... Or at least, prohibitively expensive.
According to National Geographic's Flash Facts About Lightning, the odds of being struck in a lifetime is three-thousand to one.
That sounds surprisingly likely... but I'm inclined to think he was lying.
I mean, doesn't lightning heat the surrounding air enough to melt sand into glass? We're talking thousands of degrees here. How could someone survive that ONCE, let alone 6 more times?
google has jumped the shark and become a big company
Google has become a big company?! Oh no! :O
Google might be an advertising agency, but they don't have any connection to the world of traditional media - they are (nearly) entirely dependent on the Internet.
The Internet is a great place to advertise, but I feel a television campaign can really open up the flood gates for the "casual user" demographic.
This also fits with Google's mantra when you boil down everything they do -- throw your money at it. They have the resources, why not?
Well, the obvious answer is: "To detect neutrons". But here's much more info: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutrino_detector
Neutrons appear to be useful in quantum particle experiments.
hating on pop stars, Windows, and Kraft Parmesan cheese.
Many pop stars are manufactured/talentless, Windows has many issues (on its own merit, its still commendable though) and Kraft Parmesan cheese tastes like sawdust compared to the real thing (Read: Parmigiano-Reggiano).
Just saying...
I'm unaware of any place in the US which enforces anti-gay sex laws.
Granted, I don't actually believe most people/states enforced such laws, but laws against sodomy (I would certainly consider anti-sodomy laws to be "anti gay sex") were alive an well in many states up until about 2003. On principle alone, the recency is disturbing and there actually have been cases where such laws/punishments have been applied. The primary focus of which -- of course -- was always to criminalize male/male sex.
http://www.sodomy.org/laws/
Amazon, where being gay makes you invisible
supply is nearly infinite so the price should be nearly zero
I don't know anything about markets etc.. and I'm sure that's about to show... However, I wouldn't say *that*. Sure, the file itself costs nearly zero to distribute, keep in mind, we're not dealing with JUST a product here. Music is also a service.
There are industry costs such as production, management, distribution (not so much with digital transmission), advertising and various salaries and who knows what else for an unimaginable number of other things. Granted, an independent act can scrape by with little capital expenditure, but their song prices would also reflect that. Capital investment could certainly be the excuse for charging more, kind of like research & development for software etc...
Another thing is, even though the supply is infinite, there will almost always still be demand. Of course, demand would still drive the price up, but indy acts with tiny start up costs would be cheap to purchase at first. The low price would encourage demand and the cost would go up until demand is in line with what people would pay. If the music sucks, then the price only goes as high as people are willing to pay.
Conversely, big acts with huge capital investments would probably want to charge top dollar. But, they too will need to work their way up the pricing ladder. I'm sure plenty of crap would sell for top dollar because people seem to demand it, but maybe it would reward 'good' music more than it would reward 'bad' music.
Why are people willing to spend money on something that has no appreciable value?
I don't consider music having 'no appreciable value'. The digital distribution costs are almost nothing, but everything that goes into does cost something. And even without that, music is still worth money to people. Now, maybe music is more expensive than it should be because of the influence of exploitation, but it's entertainment - and people pay for that not out of exploitation, but because it is worth it to them. I honestly think that's a clever (and at least somewhat fair) way to price music - based on what it is *worth* to you. What makes the current system more unfair is they charge an arbitrary amount based on what they *think* it is worth.
Convenience is valuable.
I'd counter that claim using examples of other digital distribution services that are both more convenient and cheaper than their brick & mortar counterparts: Netflix, Steam, Internet news, e-mail, eBook services, online shopping, Internet classifies like Craigslist and from a purely digital distribution standpoint -- even VoIP.
Convenience is okay to charge for (and often is), but competition should eventually bring the price down to what the market can bear. I guess the problem here is iTunes is such a gigantic music distribution channel, Apple & company don't feel the need to lower their prices to compete yet?
Regardless, I might also argue the battle isn't even about convenience anymore. If the music industry is to be believed, their biggest issue is 'pirated' music. With that in mind, I don't believe this is a step in the right direction.
I realize it makes too much sense for the RIAA to ever agree to it, but the prices should be based on demand. If a song gets downloaded a lot at $.99, then bump it to $1.29.
Why? The supply and demand model is based on the idea of scarcity of a resource.
Well, money isn't infinite... The "scarcity of resource" isn't the product, but rather the money used to purchase it.
It may not be traditional economics, but there is an optimal price for every song that will make the most money. I don't have a formula to figure out what that might be, but using a system similar to what was suggested might get them closer to capitalizing more on music tracks than just flat fees based on guesses of what's going to be hot.
Let's say your typical CD has about 14 tracks. That's $14 at $1.00 per track. Nearly any CD can be found for less than $14... even at places like Best Buy and let us not forget that includes the personal fulfillment of a physical copy, booklet etc...
$1.29 x 14 = $18.06.... How can $1.29/song be justified?
This is completely ass backwards. The music industry HAS to price its products lower or it risks looking completely unattractive to consumers. They can't compete with higher prices against its easily available, convenient and free "black market" competition.
Well, as long as everything you have is supported and installed correctly (I imagine most netbooks work fine OOTB).
God forbid you have some hardware that doesn't work out OOTB though... If that's true, then there's a realistic chance you'll be trying to compile and install modules. I don't know what your experiences have been, but there's a lot of things that can go wrong like your GCC is too old or new or you don't have the correct dependencies. Hell, maybe the module won't even compile without editing the source... No average user wants to deal with that crap.
But when all of your hardware is recognized properly and works with Linux automagically, I agree it is a beautiful thing.
This isn't much of an argument for it, but aren't faster boot times better? Shouldn't we aim to improve things?
:-)
As far as why it is SO important, I can't say for sure. I think the desire for this is an extension of instant gratification. Why wait if you don't have to? That's really about the only argument I can think for it. Let us not forget enthusiast users as well, as a faster boot time is every bit as symbolic as faster HDD benchmarks, overclock CPUs, lower memory timings and +2FPS in a game. At the very least this appeals to the enthusiast -- simliar to squeezing every bit of horse power out of your car for a gear head.
As for other power states, standby is a waste of power and suspend-to-disk still takes a bit to load and to shutdown (about 10 seconds on my 4GB RAM laptop). As RAM capacities increase and the speeds of storage media do not (hopefully they will as SSD penetrates consumer markets), this is only going to take longer and longer. But yeah, I believe hibernate is a decent substitute. I can't recall seeing anyone use it though and as a computer technician, I get lots of questions about, "Should I hibernate my system???". Computer novices are scared of it.
Also, granted, 10 or 20 seconds doesn't matter too much in a ~85,000 second day, but it would still be nice and I can think of a number of times it would have been helpful (like having to restart my businesses computer for a customer transaction after some funny behavior or restarting after some updates etc..).
Anyway, I can't really make a case for the importance of boot times for desktops, servers and such -- but I'm sure you'd agree with me that it's a positive thing and as such, perhaps you'd also agree that it is worthy of some consideration.
but that's what, once a month, once a year, once a decade if your server is in good health?
You seem to make the assumption that people keep their computers on 24x7.
I imagine *many* consumers want their computer to turn on instantly during a cold boot. That's obviously unrealistic for now. But even more certainly, *more* people would prefer it.
Now, I know you may not care much -- but if given the chance -- wouldn't you want faster boot times if possible? Why not? So if yes, why not try?
I don't believe an entirely open source, wiki-style government sounds appealing at all. That would be anarchy.
But that isn't what you're talking about... Just wanted to make that point first.
This is a stretch, but in a way -- on paper -- we already have an 'open source' government. You contribute by suggesting/complaining to your congress critter and they are supposed to represent you. The idea is that your contribution will be taken into consideration, expanded upon and eventually legislated. You elect these officials and the idea is that they are supposed to represent your ideals. These people are the management, in a sense.
The reality, of course, is it doesn't quite work that way. But I think that's the idea behind our system.
By 'open sourcing' the government more, I think we can improve this process. Our system is archaic, designed for people getting messages on horseback. We have all of these great, easy, instant ways to communicate now and lots of people have lots of ideas. While a pure OSS model might not work out so well -- opening up the government a little more, loosely based on OSS ideas and principles -- I theorize would be a good thing.
Commercial pilots are trained to work like a machine. I would be just as happy if they weren't there.
... if you happen to know anyone who can design an autopilot system that can account for nearly as many external/environmental variables as a human being -- I would too.
Unlike the Arctic (which is just frozen water), Antarctica is actually a continent.
Now -- I know I could be wrong -- but I always thought in order to be a continent, a land mass has to be... land? Am I wrong?
There is a simple fix to this whole issue from a cell companies perspective. Never offer 'unlimited' internet plans or charge huge amounts of money for them. Charge for every byte of data so that it no longer becomes viable to use skype over standard calling and now consumers are in a worse position. If you don't understand why skype should not be allowed to be run over the cell networks then I don't know what to tell you. It is not a corporate scam to steal money from consumers, that is for sure. Be careful what you wish for.
Thank you very much for your insight, Mr. Randall L. Stephenson.
Why the hell would you use voip on your phone if you are already paying for the phone connection?
International calls? Video in the future might be cool too. You really don't have to try too hard to come up with some decent reasons.
Please step away from the soap box... It's slippery up there and you might hurt yourself.
That's a pretty darn good deterrant and powerful control over the flow of information.
As the RIAA has found out - no it is not. I don't like the RIAA, but I think their inability to control 'the flow of information' despite their desperate attempts proves this point unlike any other entity can.
Copyright offers no 'control' -- It only offers recourse. DRM is almost entirely preventative. Copyright infringement these days happens on an International stage and data moves at light speed. It's quite impossible to enforce IP anymore and short of randomly suing people to scare (some) people, you have little recourse.
In short, you can't sue everyone in the world and everyone in the world knows that. And copyright doesn't prevent the material from being copied. How is it a powerful way to control the flow of information?
However, the current build only has support for IE â" it will compare rendering in IE6 with either IE7 or IE8, whichever is installed.
Well, that's not too bad, at least. Webkit and firefox seem to render the pages I design just as I expect. It's almost always IE6 that has the issues, so if I could pick one...
DRM'd data will be useless to future civilizations. Our "legacy" will die with it. JUST SAY NO for the good of mankind's future preservation!
I hope someone involved with DRM reads this and actually cares...
True, but how does causation ever get proven? Every day life doesn't exist in a lab and not all (or even most) variables can be controlled for. It's very much impossible to concretely prove causation within our populations for things that don't cause instantaneous death... Often times, the best we can hope for are very strong correlations and make a *reasonably* educated assumption.
Fantastic is an overstatement.
True, there are tons of buses and you can to most places using public transportation. The problem with LA public transit is it can be impractical to do so. This isn't a failing of the transit system necessarily, but because LA is the poster child for urban sprawl.
To get to work (an 18 mile drive) takes me just under 2 hours on the bus and I'd have to catch multiple buses. I can drive it in 30 mins -- with traffic.
Similarly, there are MANY miles of tracks for the Metro rail system too, but again, LA is too big and the accessibility of the rail system is limited at best. For example, the rail almost completely ignores West LA (where I live).
there is no way to know if its real or not.
If that's the case, sounds pretty good to me. I'm going to start doing my shopping on eBay. ;)
I don't consider myself much of a capitalist, but I find it interesting that a company can have a product that another company reproduces for less (at the same quality), but can't compete with them. Why is that? I know regulations help level the playing field, but in a cold way, the consumer wins if another company can create the same product for less. I think typically though, products like this are of inferior quality - maybe the product itself, support etc...