I cannot vote for a 3rd party member because there really is no point. C'mon guys, really.
You're falling for the same fallacy that the Republicans and Democrats have used for years to deny the third parties from gaining any significant power base. Yes, in the decision between the predisental candidates, your vote for a 3rd party candidate probably won't matter. However, in your decision on whose policies that you feel would be best suited for this country for the next 4 years, that vote can be rather important.
Did you know that there are 257 presidental candidates this year? According to NPR yesterday, there's this many. Of course, some are running on rather narrow platforms, such as the guy that wants to impliment triple couple Saturdays, or the one that wants to reinstate Pete Rose to MLB. Most know they can't win, but it's not the point of their campaign: they want to make sure that their issue is heard by a large number of people and to try to rally their votes towards that. If a significant number of votes are gotten to at least make a blip on the radar, government leaders would be lax if they didn't at least investigate what that issue was.
Which is why most of the 3rd party candidates have rather narrow platforms: they are trying to spearhead small but significant set of issues at the government. Nader, for example, wants to fight the corruption in the government by outside influences and fix the financal situation of this country. If you want any of the interviews with Nader, when he's asked about an issue that is off of this agenda but is important to Bush and Gore, such as health care and drug plans, he's got an answer, but he's rather terse with it and wants to talk about other issues. From what I've seen of the other 3rd party candidates, they are running similar campaigns, trying to be narrow instead of broad.
So if you are going to vote, vote for the person that you feel will handle the issues that you feel are important to you best. Whether that is Bush or Gore or any third party candidate. Any other voting selection is a wasted vote.
Ok, let's throw away all the synchotrons, super-colliders, et al. Shoot down the hubble, kill SETI, and stop looking into space.
Seriously, there *are* fundamental basic studies that need to continue that are several steps down from public use but if funded right, may lead to something big. Understanding what the next smallest division of matter is may lead to improved energy sources, new materials, etc, as an example.
But there are studies that are also mostly curiosity issues - finding the nth digit of pi where n is anything larger than 100 is a good example. It is necessary to know pi to decent accurracy for "large" fp calculations (large in decimal places), and in most scientific calculations, pi is multipled or divided into a measument value, which will probably, by our current standards, no more accurate than 10 to 12 digits of accuracy , which means that any digit beyond the 12th of Pi is lost in measurement error.
The only thing, based on what I've read on pi, that interests mathemations is trying to determine if pi is completely irrational (can't be expressed as a fraction of two integers) -- if there's any point where the digits in pi repeat ad infinitum, pi becomes rational, and most of the current foundation of advanced number theory will have to be rewritten. Seems silly, sure, but what happens if SETI returns a definite signal? It's like the question that 'Contact' raises, if we don't look for it, we may be missing something.
So while multi-billion dollar budgets shouldn't be spent researching the nth digit of pi, there should be a small but dedicated effort to continue that search. And by going to distributed cycle systems like SETI@home (I do believe there was one for pi), it becomes trival to maintain such a project.
Difference between on-campus and off- publication
on
Student Gossip Sites
·
· Score: 3
The article refers to a significant SC ruling that schools can censor student-run newspapers that include, at some point, school resources. So the school newspaper, or a underground paper printed off site but distributed strictly in school, would fall under this ruling. However, here we are talking about web pages and such that are, for the most part, run off ISPs not related to the school, and can be accessed by anyone. These sites, since the school has no control of any part of the distribution, should be free of this SC decision, and as the article points out, this is pretty much been true. On the other hand, if the school provides student home pages, and one student uses it to have disfavorable gossip about the school, I do think the school has a right to step in and censor it, under this ruling.
This is a case where, unless misreported, this guy is clearly within his rights as the original domain holder to hold on to his domain: he's not
abusing it, nor trying to sell it, and it actually is a commercial venture earning the.com TLD. And as the article points out, new TLDs will be appropriate for what SA wants to do with the site (a travel-info site).
However, WIPO has ruled in the past for "famous name" people, such as Madonna, etc. If this case was basically equal save for the name "South Africa" instead of a celebrity, I would think WIPO would rule in favor of SA. The key difference, however, is that the guy, according to the report, has never attempted to sell the domain, thus he's not 'squatting' as those other cases turned out to be. Again, reasonably, it's in the current holder's favor, but WIPO is very unpredictable; this could easily go either way.
The actions of this registar indicates that they expect the new domains (whatever they might be) to be completely opne, and given ICANN, I wouldn't be too surprised. But if the new TLDs had strong resistrictions on who can register a domain in those TLDs, such that trademark owner do NOT have a first shot at those domains, then this pre-registration thing wouldn't be a problem.
But of course, ICANN will screw this up, and the domain anem situation will be as bad as it was before.
If, hypothetically, galaxies moved at any significant fraction of the speed of light, I would suspect that we wouldn't *have* any galaxies; gravity would work so slowly that agglomeration would never occur save for the rare head-on collision of two stars. Or, to put it more interestingly, your galaxy would now behave more like a gas at conditions where fusion is possible.
Heck, at 0.9c, would stars even exist? Cold, hard planets, maybe, but I think even a small gas giant would be impossible.
Even if galaxies could stay together at this speed, relatively won't matter; the probably outcomes of a galaxy that is moving at another at 0.9c (fixed reference point) is probably the same as both galaxies moving at each other at 0.9c (fixed reference point) (which in this case is simply as if one galaxy as moving at the other at 0.9x c assuming the other galaxy was fixed in space). Exactly the outcome probably is dependant on if it's a direct hit or close shave.
You've got the competition from the momentum generated from the Big Bang, which slowly decreases over time due to 'friction', and gravitational acceration from the galaxies, which also slowly declines (in most cases) with increasing distances between galaxies. While within the first few nanoseconds after the BB, all trajectories of all particals were away from point zero, gravity began to overtake the momentum forces and lead to agglomeration of particles. In the case of galaxies at this point in time, some are close enough to have gravity overcome the increasing distances between galaxies, while others are too
Which is why we're not sure if there will be a big crunch or if the universe simply wimpers out spread out over an amazing distance. The balance between momentum and gravity is not well understood and without being able to accurate map all major bodies in space, there's no way to easily predict it.
And when the galaxies are done colliding, there's a lot of outcomes (I remember a good segment in Cosmos) -- One could 'eat' the other, as the picture in this article shows (where the core of one would be destroyed), they could combine cores if their movement vectors are slow enough, or both could completely kill each other leaving only a dense core of stars and several more flying away from each other and the core well above the rate which gravity could recapture them.
To me, what's amazing is the fact that there are no significant stellar events associated with the collision: no novas or the like, though I'm sure any local solar systems are majorly distributed.
Many of the assumptions made here assume that Linux is like a business, that it will respond to market demands as they change (such as the suggestion that as Linux's advantage over NT4 dwindles from new 2000 installs, Linux will adopt to improve itself). And while there are businesses based on Linux, Linux itself is not a business and therefore will not act like one.
Therefore, it's impossible to make predictions about how Linux behaves, only on how Linux may be used by others.
The current presidental election is also going to play big on timezone differences too.
The swing states are all in EST or CST (Wis, Michigan, Penn, Florida), so assuming that by 8pm CST, all polls in these states have been closed and the votes counted, and assuming no surprises in CA or OR, then the next president could have already been determined, thus effectively nullifying any west coast voted that tries to vote after 6pm their time. Yet we have CA which has moved from Gore to somewhat swinging, and OR where Nader's got hugh forces, and if the race is close, these states could adjust their voting plans to win the race, based on the poll results in the east (Namely, if Bush looks like he's winning, Nader supporters might swing to Gore).
There's no way to effectively have the polls open all at the same time and be fair to all the Americans (most open before 7am and close after 6pm local times to allow commuters to vote), so the better solution would be to keep all broadcasting of election results (both airwaves and internet) to nil until the last polling station in Hawaii is closed - which yes, you won't know the night of election day who won, but this would be fair for all voters across the nation.
I realize that the court decision could be as limited as "Napster's an ISP, they can't be liable". But as I mentioned, Napster's defence is the non-commercial trading aspect. If the judges that handle this case have enough technological foresight, they might go as far to set the boundaries to prevent future lawsuits and/or clarify the law.
In either case, the RIAA has to risk a favorable or limited decision over no decision whatsoever.
I know it seems obvious, but the lawsuit with the 4 other companies is still pending, with the court to pass it's decision any day now. Specifically: is it ok to trade copyrighted materials for non-commercial uses?
Think about that.
If the court finds in favor of Napster, this opens up a lot of potental to 'free' IP that has otherwise been sat on. Copying CDs to MP3 and posting on the net? Legal. Copying DVDs to VCD format, and posting freely on the net? Legal. Copying ebook text and posting to the net? Legal.
(Of course, assuming you didn't hack any copyright controls).
Think about that from RIAA, MPAA, e-book publishers pov for a moment.
This is a very scary and eye-opening case. I can see two things happening. Either the remaining RIAA groups feel they have a win that they will stick it out and make sure to get a ruling, or they will drop the case and join BMG in the service. In the former case, if they get the win, it would be unlikely that Napster would win in the SC, and RIAA would be able to relax. However, if they lose, and on any appeals, the entire structure for how RIAA, MPAA, and those others make money is gone. And given their actions, they are aging, and may not be able to survive such a blow. [*] In the latter case, with the threat of such a decision gone for the moment until they figure out how to sue Gnutella, that situation of IP opening up will not come to pass and they can rest easier. If I were RIAA, I know which way I would go. In addition, current law offices that specialize in copyright and music industries indicate that Napster's defense is very strong, including the fact that non-commercial sharing is specifically referred to and protected in the DMCA.
[*] Mind you, the decision could specific relate only to musical works. Movies and such may not be covered, but even with a little break like music, the other art forms are only another lawsuit away.
I'm excited about a member-based Napster, I'd gladly pay a small fee to get high quality recordings. But there is something to be said about opening up the IP that is controlled by a few, and I would be willing to have that over the member-based Napster.
The free (as in beer) Napster client, as been reported around, will be more promotional - probably tracks either at low quality or similar to the BNL's "ad-in-a-mp3" trick. Or maybe just snippets of the songs. Will you still be able to trade your mp3's on it? That's up in the air, but I bet you the answer is "no", at least, you only get servers 'blessed' by the RIAA-groups and not all p2p servers.
I agree to an extent - this election has been much more interesting that the last several that I've been able to vote in. We have two candidates that are about as even in the polls as you can get, plus a third party candidate that is threatening to unbalance that tie. The two main candidates are pushing issues that I know in 20 years or so I will be worried about and are currently much more important than encryption and asteriod defence (issues like medicare, health care, and the environment), which have usually been swept under the rug in past elections but with the threat of the aging boomer society, have to be dealt with in the next 4 years. For all the heated debating, there's been a lot less mudslinging, at least in terms of the candidates' private life, which makes for a more *intelligent* campaign. And because of that third party, there's going to be, if not already, some effect of that third party in later elections. Compare this during at election in the last 20 years where we weren't voting for the encumbent, and it was nearly always heavily in one side's favor by this point.
Now, I do thing that Gore and Bush are too close in ideals that after you add the Congress to it, they will probably have about the same effectiveness on American policy.
(even if it is Bush with a Rep-controlled Congress). I am getting tired of hearing the same stump speeches, and the treatment of Nader, etc etc. But this is also a result of how close this election is -- if it were already a landslide, I can tell you that the media would be half as interested in the election speeches as they are now. And this is not bad, as it gives voters more input to make a well-informed decision. But it does lead to a lot of repetition : I'm ready to vote, and vote now.
You can't easily limit the term on one catagory without limiting the terms on all, as then the spin doctor patent writers will adjust the patent to move it into a longer term patent catagory. For example, if you say software patents are 3 years, and business practices are 5, a software patent such as the one here in question could easily be written as a business practice one ("a method to speed delievery of data to customers by compression of the data stream"), and gain 2 years. There are also patents that classify into 2 or more of these 'catagories' so what would you do then?
The better solution is to invalid any software and business practice patents, or limit the terms of all patents to 5-10 years.
Re:pot calling the kettle black?
on
Patent Warfare
·
· Score: 2
Some clones died that fast, but most of them suffered when Jobs came back into power and pulled the plug on licensing the ROMs altogether, effectively killing the clone market. I would suspect that if the clone market were continuing, PowerComputing would have some sweet clones based on the G4 but with more PC-ish support in terms of cards, ports, and the like.
The guy ruling the country only has 26% support? That's the stuff revolutions are made of, and this is the type of thing a limited party system avoids. Trust me, it's very intentional.
Do realize that a 26% vote would not win in the electoral college. Even those cases where the majority candidate based on popular vote would not win in the electoral college is where the voting %s are around 50%. However, the current system of "one vote, one candidate" is not good if we did have several small parties as opposed to limited major ones. The rank vote that ICANN used and suggested here is one possible solution.
Also, the two-party system is around because it makes things simpler. Who has the time to research a field of 45 candidates, none of whom can be easily categorized? Only a select few.
If you the American Voter cannot take the time to digest all the various issues that are important to use and judge all the available candidates based on that, such that you can vote in the most important person on the planet (practically) for the next 4 years, maybe you shouldn't have the right to vote. Running for office *should* not be the same as running for senior class president; it's not a issue of popularity, but how the fundamental issues the country runs on will be affected by this person. Now, sure, if we took the media of today and tried to apply that in the multiple party race, it wouldn't work; current media would be too biased, and it would be very hard to get all the info you need. But with the advent of the internet, and other new media, it is possible to have unbiased and biased reporting on all candidates with equal coverage, and thus you can research them all you want.
Under the system we have, without looking into things at all you can get a general sense of what each guy stands for, just by the fact that one guy has an elephant next to his name and the other guy has a donkey. We Americans are busy people, with a lot on our minds. We need our simplicity now and then.
However, this year we get parties that have both moved towards the middle; the concepts that Democrates typcially stand for are not all in force this year, and the same with Republicans. If Joe 6-Pack just came out of his mountain shack with no news and wants to vote Democratic, he might be surprised at all the issues that the Democrates are favoring. Again, it's the fact that you need to read up appropriately on these candidates before you make a once-in-a-4year choice; that's your responsibility as a voter.
A better system? Remove the party affliation from ballots, ditch the primaries and caucuses and conventions. Implement a rank vote as opposed to one choice. Remove soft-money contributions, only allow equal federal funding for each candidate. The problem is is that these all go against status quo, and people will not accept these changes today, though they would be better off in the long run with them.
Ok, I know that hitting the topic of religon can set off a flamewar, but I'm not attacking any religon over another.
However, there's a scary comparision between politics and religion as played around the world: both areas assume that your ideologies (political or faiths) are so in-line with a large group of people that you should belong to that group. If you can't align your (political|religious) beliefs with these groups, you are generally treated with less respect and possibly are attacked by the system. Thus, both politics and religion lead to a mass mind-control system that can be used effectively to keep independent and enlightened members of a society down.
Look at the Spanish Inquistion (not the Monty Python sketch, but the real thing) -- they threatened people to convert to Christianity under penalty of death. The prosecution of
non-Catholics under the Roman Catholic church of the mid 1500s (IIRC) until Martin Luther nailed a declaration of rights to the church door. The recent proclaimation by the Vatican that other religions are 'valid', but only Catholism will get you eternal salvation.
Similar trends in politics happen today. The continual pidgeonholing of everyone into Rep or Dem, and the stronghold of maintaining a unbreakable 2 party system; the crying of a vote for Nader is a vote for Bush, and trying to kill any 3rd party successes. Even the constant swaying that Shrub and Gore are trying to convience the undecided voters to vote Democratic or Republican.
Does it work? Certainly, even in today's age. I know people that follow their religion down to the letter, even though they don't feel a certain aspect of it is right (example, the recent slamming of the gay community by Southern Baptists left many a member questioning that judgement but felt that they had to stay with the church and joined in the slamming reluctantly). If you can't believe 100% in the ideals of that religion, then how can it be your religion? Similarly, if you are a Republican, save for the issue of abortion rights, how can you consider yourself a Republican? The answers easy for most people, however: it's easier and requires much less 'work' to go with the flow. Are you Lutherian? Then the church tells you to follow this, that, and that other thing without questioning why, and you get eternal salvation. Are you Democratic? Then you simply vote every D on the ballot without researching the candidates, and you get more Democratic party-like government support.
Now, in both cases, there has been times where the status quo has been challenged by enlightened folks, such as Martin Luther and the Founding Fathers of American for religion, and those successful third party candidates like Ross Perot and Jesse Ventura. But it's hard to have these people achieve success when those in power want to keep it down. But there has been successess in religon: while not universal, the right to practice any religion with question is granted in many countries. However, while we have the 'right' to vote any way we want, there is still prosecution at a mental level for any independant voter or third party candidate.
What this boils down to is the fact that I cannot believe that every person can say that they believe every ideal that a limited number of religious or political choices can offer. Some can, but the majority can't; they only like to make the choice that aligns closer with their views such that they don't have to worry about anything else and makes their life easier. Those that do try to find something else are typically prosecuted and treated as lower class until they do align with something. And while the religion side has come to realize that they can't speak for everyone, politics still tries to mind-control everyone they can.
First off, IMO, Napster's case is weak, given the history of Napster (being developed and mostly used by college students). It *was* developed original to trade copyrighted songs, and the idea of non-infringing uses came later as a legal barrier, albeit weak. Regardless of how Napster succeeds in the appeals courts (BMG's only one of the suits, there's 6 more to go), it has been beneficial in the push to make digital music available online.
IMO, a membership model that is reasonably priced [*] will be the ideal way for Napster to go. Pay $10 a month to access anyone else that has subscribed as well as possibly the major studio's 'Napster' areas. It'll generate profits for the studios, and would help to boost CD sales, so that's only more money for RIAA and others. It would also benefit the users, as now the trading of digital music would be legitamized, and you can get the latest tunes with minimal fees.
There are definitely security issues; needless to say is the issue of SDMI-like protocols to prevent music that may be distributed by official channels which is only meant to registered users of the Napster client from getting to non-members, without infringing on user's fair use. If Napster does go to the member-based system, you then need to secure the central server, to make sure only registered clients may connect, and this means that new versions of the Napster client would have to be written and hopefully blessed by the RIAA for all OSes (This may require them to distribute a specialized MP3 player that is the only one that will play those MP3s from the membership Napster, which is a very bad solution, but quite possible in the RIAA's eyes). The RIAA may also want to have accountability in the various transfers -- adding a bit of info to each MP3 as it's distributed by this new client so they can tell the history of any MP3 from any server, which is very dangerous in terms of privacy. While some of these issues are definitely for the protection of RIAA's profits, I think the fact that BMG is working out a deal indicates that they may be willing to cooperate to some extent for the end user.
[*] There ought to be a few levels of monthly payments, depending on bandwidth type and expected usage; those with dialups aren't going to want to pay the same price as those with broadband connections, and some will only want maybe a half-dozen songs a month, while others might leech. Prices ought to range from $5 to $20/month to make this fair on all sides.
I remember back before WIPO and the term 'cybersquatting' was developed, there were legitamit registered sites that had the typoed domains for large sites, and on those domains simply had a 15 second redirect and a link to the real site, with the only 'advertizing' was that this service was brough to you by such and such. No banner ads or anything else like framing the other site. These types of sites were cool before we were engrained with knowing the domains explicitly, and they got only minimal advertizing dollars for that $35/yr for registering the name. <P> Here, obviously, the group registered the domains in bad faith, hoping to make some money with the domains, and other WIPO cases of late have been a similar nature with those that did specifically grab typo sites trying to make big cash off of them. <P> But let's say I know of a popular site X, and whenever I go there by typing in the domain name, 5% of the time I mistype and go to a "domain not found" error page. I decide to register that domain, and simply do the same redirect and link as was done originally, and I let site X know about it, and being the 'white hat' that I am, I suck the costs for simply maintaining that site, with the only stipulation that I have a link to my own web site so that people know who helped out here. Could that, under some of the more extreme WIPO rules, be considered squatting? I hope not, but I'd like to see something a bit more concrete on the squatting rules. <P>
It's usually not the video card's fault for incorrectly guessing the resolution of the monitor; blame the monitor detection scheme and/or database. It generally underestimates by lots, usually going to 60 or so Hz on 1024x768 (which is why I avoid going down the computer system aisles in any store - flicker!!).
A good program that fixes this is PowerStrip, not free but nagware, but all you need to do once (and then any time you reinstall) is ask it to first get the best rates for your monitor, then store those in the registery, so that you can pick and choose the refresh rates to use for that particular resolution. This will work with nearly all video cards. It's also got various tweaks, but best to go with card-specific tweaking programs for that.
I'm assuming that you're talking if the truck up-turned it's load onto the highway, thus damaging you or your car. In this case, that's neglicence on the truck driver's fault, and you could sue.
On the other hand, if a rock is bumped off the truck due to poor roads or shocks or whatever, and dings your windshield as you tailgated the truck, you don't have a strong case - there's traffic safety issues, and the fact that the truck has posted cautionary signs reduces their liability. Now if the load was improperly secured (maybe the truck could have been covered?) as determined by applicable law, then you have a case, but otherwise, you're SOLed.
At least in this case, the 'contract' is more solid than those offered by software companies. Even in cases where the company knew that the software would crash and cause damage and did not take sufficient steps to fix that problem, (analogous to the truck dumping the rocks on you), they have been able to avoid all liability.
"We are not responsible to any damage that our program may cause".
If UTICA gets passed as it is in all 50 states, weird statements like this in software license will actually be enforcable. More to the point,
a company could say that you could not discuss any negative points of it's software anywhere, and you'd be held truly liable, at least until UTICA is deemed unconsistitional.
We already know that a company can write a license that is *signed* by both parties that limits free speech in exchange for products/services (in the forms of NDAs). When UTICA passes, it then allows those click-thrus to be just an enforcable too, so by clicking through an install you could forfeit your rights on that piece of software forever.
I'm hoping Orcale stays on the ball and defends this all the way in court; a software license cannot trump 1st Amendment rights.
Screw the D&D movie....
on
D&D Trailer
·
· Score: 2
...I'm waiting for the Rolemaster one!
I'd pay good money to see how they visualize each '66' on the critical damage tables:D
My 'Air-powered' Car experience
on
Air-Powered Cars
·
· Score: 2
This is from my days as a grader for an intro chem eng class; we asked the students to take a 'touchy-feely' approach to solving some problem as by chemical engineering. One group took the problems with combustion engines. There solution was, as we say, unique.
The idea was to use reverse electrosis to product energy (that is, hydrogen gas plus oxygen plus spark -> water and lots of energy). So you have to store oxygen and hydrogen on board for this to work. So far, not too unreasonable (though r.e. has long be discounted as a possible fuel source).
The hydrogen tank, since it's very flammable, couldn't be stored in hazardous places in the car, so they had suggested redesigning the car as to use up the trunk space for the H2 tank, moving the chassis up off the group a bit, and having the space underneath the car for where you could put your "groceries or babies or stuff".
They suggested a similar thing with the oxygen tank but had a better suggestion - instead of having oxygen onboard, it could be pulled from the air and separated out from the nitrogen, then used in their engine. To do the separation of
oxygen from nitrogen in air, they suggested a distillation column be installed on the car. I did a quick calculation and found out that they would need at least an 80ft tall column to be able to achieve this.
So this group is proposing a car design that is 80ft tall, but you stuff all your possessions underneath it as you go along.
Slashdot Mirror
You're falling for the same fallacy that the Republicans and Democrats have used for years to deny the third parties from gaining any significant power base. Yes, in the decision between the predisental candidates, your vote for a 3rd party candidate probably won't matter. However, in your decision on whose policies that you feel would be best suited for this country for the next 4 years, that vote can be rather important.
Did you know that there are 257 presidental candidates this year? According to NPR yesterday, there's this many. Of course, some are running on rather narrow platforms, such as the guy that wants to impliment triple couple Saturdays, or the one that wants to reinstate Pete Rose to MLB. Most know they can't win, but it's not the point of their campaign: they want to make sure that their issue is heard by a large number of people and to try to rally their votes towards that. If a significant number of votes are gotten to at least make a blip on the radar, government leaders would be lax if they didn't at least investigate what that issue was.
Which is why most of the 3rd party candidates have rather narrow platforms: they are trying to spearhead small but significant set of issues at the government. Nader, for example, wants to fight the corruption in the government by outside influences and fix the financal situation of this country. If you want any of the interviews with Nader, when he's asked about an issue that is off of this agenda but is important to Bush and Gore, such as health care and drug plans, he's got an answer, but he's rather terse with it and wants to talk about other issues. From what I've seen of the other 3rd party candidates, they are running similar campaigns, trying to be narrow instead of broad.
So if you are going to vote, vote for the person that you feel will handle the issues that you feel are important to you best. Whether that is Bush or Gore or any third party candidate. Any other voting selection is a wasted vote.
Seriously, there *are* fundamental basic studies that need to continue that are several steps down from public use but if funded right, may lead to something big. Understanding what the next smallest division of matter is may lead to improved energy sources, new materials, etc, as an example.
But there are studies that are also mostly curiosity issues - finding the nth digit of pi where n is anything larger than 100 is a good example. It is necessary to know pi to decent accurracy for "large" fp calculations (large in decimal places), and in most scientific calculations, pi is multipled or divided into a measument value, which will probably, by our current standards, no more accurate than 10 to 12 digits of accuracy , which means that any digit beyond the 12th of Pi is lost in measurement error.
The only thing, based on what I've read on pi, that interests mathemations is trying to determine if pi is completely irrational (can't be expressed as a fraction of two integers) -- if there's any point where the digits in pi repeat ad infinitum, pi becomes rational, and most of the current foundation of advanced number theory will have to be rewritten. Seems silly, sure, but what happens if SETI returns a definite signal? It's like the question that 'Contact' raises, if we don't look for it, we may be missing something.
So while multi-billion dollar budgets shouldn't be spent researching the nth digit of pi, there should be a small but dedicated effort to continue that search. And by going to distributed cycle systems like SETI@home (I do believe there was one for pi), it becomes trival to maintain such a project.
However, WIPO has ruled in the past for "famous name" people, such as Madonna, etc. If this case was basically equal save for the name "South Africa" instead of a celebrity, I would think WIPO would rule in favor of SA. The key difference, however, is that the guy, according to the report, has never attempted to sell the domain, thus he's not 'squatting' as those other cases turned out to be. Again, reasonably, it's in the current holder's favor, but WIPO is very unpredictable; this could easily go either way.
Heck, at 0.9c, would stars even exist? Cold, hard planets, maybe, but I think even a small gas giant would be impossible.
Even if galaxies could stay together at this speed, relatively won't matter; the probably outcomes of a galaxy that is moving at another at 0.9c (fixed reference point) is probably the same as both galaxies moving at each other at 0.9c (fixed reference point) (which in this case is simply as if one galaxy as moving at the other at 0.9x c assuming the other galaxy was fixed in space). Exactly the outcome probably is dependant on if it's a direct hit or close shave.
Which is why we're not sure if there will be a big crunch or if the universe simply wimpers out spread out over an amazing distance. The balance between momentum and gravity is not well understood and without being able to accurate map all major bodies in space, there's no way to easily predict it.
And when the galaxies are done colliding, there's a lot of outcomes (I remember a good segment in Cosmos) -- One could 'eat' the other, as the picture in this article shows (where the core of one would be destroyed), they could combine cores if their movement vectors are slow enough, or both could completely kill each other leaving only a dense core of stars and several more flying away from each other and the core well above the rate which gravity could recapture them.
To me, what's amazing is the fact that there are no significant stellar events associated with the collision: no novas or the like, though I'm sure any local solar systems are majorly distributed.
The swing states are all in EST or CST (Wis, Michigan, Penn, Florida), so assuming that by 8pm CST, all polls in these states have been closed and the votes counted, and assuming no surprises in CA or OR, then the next president could have already been determined, thus effectively nullifying any west coast voted that tries to vote after 6pm their time. Yet we have CA which has moved from Gore to somewhat swinging, and OR where Nader's got hugh forces, and if the race is close, these states could adjust their voting plans to win the race, based on the poll results in the east (Namely, if Bush looks like he's winning, Nader supporters might swing to Gore).
There's no way to effectively have the polls open all at the same time and be fair to all the Americans (most open before 7am and close after 6pm local times to allow commuters to vote), so the better solution would be to keep all broadcasting of election results (both airwaves and internet) to nil until the last polling station in Hawaii is closed - which yes, you won't know the night of election day who won, but this would be fair for all voters across the nation.
In either case, the RIAA has to risk a favorable or limited decision over no decision whatsoever.
Think about that.
If the court finds in favor of Napster, this opens up a lot of potental to 'free' IP that has otherwise been sat on. Copying CDs to MP3 and posting on the net? Legal. Copying DVDs to VCD format, and posting freely on the net? Legal. Copying ebook text and posting to the net? Legal. (Of course, assuming you didn't hack any copyright controls).
Think about that from RIAA, MPAA, e-book publishers pov for a moment.
This is a very scary and eye-opening case. I can see two things happening. Either the remaining RIAA groups feel they have a win that they will stick it out and make sure to get a ruling, or they will drop the case and join BMG in the service. In the former case, if they get the win, it would be unlikely that Napster would win in the SC, and RIAA would be able to relax. However, if they lose, and on any appeals, the entire structure for how RIAA, MPAA, and those others make money is gone. And given their actions, they are aging, and may not be able to survive such a blow. [*] In the latter case, with the threat of such a decision gone for the moment until they figure out how to sue Gnutella, that situation of IP opening up will not come to pass and they can rest easier. If I were RIAA, I know which way I would go. In addition, current law offices that specialize in copyright and music industries indicate that Napster's defense is very strong, including the fact that non-commercial sharing is specifically referred to and protected in the DMCA.
[*] Mind you, the decision could specific relate only to musical works. Movies and such may not be covered, but even with a little break like music, the other art forms are only another lawsuit away.
I'm excited about a member-based Napster, I'd gladly pay a small fee to get high quality recordings. But there is something to be said about opening up the IP that is controlled by a few, and I would be willing to have that over the member-based Napster.
Now, I do thing that Gore and Bush are too close in ideals that after you add the Congress to it, they will probably have about the same effectiveness on American policy. (even if it is Bush with a Rep-controlled Congress). I am getting tired of hearing the same stump speeches, and the treatment of Nader, etc etc. But this is also a result of how close this election is -- if it were already a landslide, I can tell you that the media would be half as interested in the election speeches as they are now. And this is not bad, as it gives voters more input to make a well-informed decision. But it does lead to a lot of repetition : I'm ready to vote, and vote now.
The better solution is to invalid any software and business practice patents, or limit the terms of all patents to 5-10 years.
Some clones died that fast, but most of them suffered when Jobs came back into power and pulled the plug on licensing the ROMs altogether, effectively killing the clone market. I would suspect that if the clone market were continuing, PowerComputing would have some sweet clones based on the G4 but with more PC-ish support in terms of cards, ports, and the like.
Do realize that a 26% vote would not win in the electoral college. Even those cases where the majority candidate based on popular vote would not win in the electoral college is where the voting %s are around 50%. However, the current system of "one vote, one candidate" is not good if we did have several small parties as opposed to limited major ones. The rank vote that ICANN used and suggested here is one possible solution.
Also, the two-party system is around because it makes things simpler. Who has the time to research a field of 45 candidates, none of whom can be easily categorized? Only a select few.
If you the American Voter cannot take the time to digest all the various issues that are important to use and judge all the available candidates based on that, such that you can vote in the most important person on the planet (practically) for the next 4 years, maybe you shouldn't have the right to vote. Running for office *should* not be the same as running for senior class president; it's not a issue of popularity, but how the fundamental issues the country runs on will be affected by this person. Now, sure, if we took the media of today and tried to apply that in the multiple party race, it wouldn't work; current media would be too biased, and it would be very hard to get all the info you need. But with the advent of the internet, and other new media, it is possible to have unbiased and biased reporting on all candidates with equal coverage, and thus you can research them all you want.
Under the system we have, without looking into things at all you can get a general sense of what each guy stands for, just by the fact that one guy has an elephant next to his name and the other guy has a donkey. We Americans are busy people, with a lot on our minds. We need our simplicity now and then.
However, this year we get parties that have both moved towards the middle; the concepts that Democrates typcially stand for are not all in force this year, and the same with Republicans. If Joe 6-Pack just came out of his mountain shack with no news and wants to vote Democratic, he might be surprised at all the issues that the Democrates are favoring. Again, it's the fact that you need to read up appropriately on these candidates before you make a once-in-a-4year choice; that's your responsibility as a voter.
A better system? Remove the party affliation from ballots, ditch the primaries and caucuses and conventions. Implement a rank vote as opposed to one choice. Remove soft-money contributions, only allow equal federal funding for each candidate. The problem is is that these all go against status quo, and people will not accept these changes today, though they would be better off in the long run with them.
However, there's a scary comparision between politics and religion as played around the world: both areas assume that your ideologies (political or faiths) are so in-line with a large group of people that you should belong to that group. If you can't align your (political|religious) beliefs with these groups, you are generally treated with less respect and possibly are attacked by the system. Thus, both politics and religion lead to a mass mind-control system that can be used effectively to keep independent and enlightened members of a society down.
Look at the Spanish Inquistion (not the Monty Python sketch, but the real thing) -- they threatened people to convert to Christianity under penalty of death. The prosecution of non-Catholics under the Roman Catholic church of the mid 1500s (IIRC) until Martin Luther nailed a declaration of rights to the church door. The recent proclaimation by the Vatican that other religions are 'valid', but only Catholism will get you eternal salvation.
Similar trends in politics happen today. The continual pidgeonholing of everyone into Rep or Dem, and the stronghold of maintaining a unbreakable 2 party system; the crying of a vote for Nader is a vote for Bush, and trying to kill any 3rd party successes. Even the constant swaying that Shrub and Gore are trying to convience the undecided voters to vote Democratic or Republican.
Does it work? Certainly, even in today's age. I know people that follow their religion down to the letter, even though they don't feel a certain aspect of it is right (example, the recent slamming of the gay community by Southern Baptists left many a member questioning that judgement but felt that they had to stay with the church and joined in the slamming reluctantly). If you can't believe 100% in the ideals of that religion, then how can it be your religion? Similarly, if you are a Republican, save for the issue of abortion rights, how can you consider yourself a Republican? The answers easy for most people, however: it's easier and requires much less 'work' to go with the flow. Are you Lutherian? Then the church tells you to follow this, that, and that other thing without questioning why, and you get eternal salvation. Are you Democratic? Then you simply vote every D on the ballot without researching the candidates, and you get more Democratic party-like government support.
Now, in both cases, there has been times where the status quo has been challenged by enlightened folks, such as Martin Luther and the Founding Fathers of American for religion, and those successful third party candidates like Ross Perot and Jesse Ventura. But it's hard to have these people achieve success when those in power want to keep it down. But there has been successess in religon: while not universal, the right to practice any religion with question is granted in many countries. However, while we have the 'right' to vote any way we want, there is still prosecution at a mental level for any independant voter or third party candidate.
What this boils down to is the fact that I cannot believe that every person can say that they believe every ideal that a limited number of religious or political choices can offer. Some can, but the majority can't; they only like to make the choice that aligns closer with their views such that they don't have to worry about anything else and makes their life easier. Those that do try to find something else are typically prosecuted and treated as lower class until they do align with something. And while the religion side has come to realize that they can't speak for everyone, politics still tries to mind-control everyone they can.
IMO, a membership model that is reasonably priced [*] will be the ideal way for Napster to go. Pay $10 a month to access anyone else that has subscribed as well as possibly the major studio's 'Napster' areas. It'll generate profits for the studios, and would help to boost CD sales, so that's only more money for RIAA and others. It would also benefit the users, as now the trading of digital music would be legitamized, and you can get the latest tunes with minimal fees.
There are definitely security issues; needless to say is the issue of SDMI-like protocols to prevent music that may be distributed by official channels which is only meant to registered users of the Napster client from getting to non-members, without infringing on user's fair use. If Napster does go to the member-based system, you then need to secure the central server, to make sure only registered clients may connect, and this means that new versions of the Napster client would have to be written and hopefully blessed by the RIAA for all OSes (This may require them to distribute a specialized MP3 player that is the only one that will play those MP3s from the membership Napster, which is a very bad solution, but quite possible in the RIAA's eyes). The RIAA may also want to have accountability in the various transfers -- adding a bit of info to each MP3 as it's distributed by this new client so they can tell the history of any MP3 from any server, which is very dangerous in terms of privacy. While some of these issues are definitely for the protection of RIAA's profits, I think the fact that BMG is working out a deal indicates that they may be willing to cooperate to some extent for the end user.
[*] There ought to be a few levels of monthly payments, depending on bandwidth type and expected usage; those with dialups aren't going to want to pay the same price as those with broadband connections, and some will only want maybe a half-dozen songs a month, while others might leech. Prices ought to range from $5 to $20/month to make this fair on all sides.
I remember back before WIPO and the term 'cybersquatting' was developed, there were legitamit registered sites that had the typoed domains for large sites, and on those domains simply had a 15 second redirect and a link to the real site, with the only 'advertizing' was that this service was brough to you by such and such. No banner ads or anything else like framing the other site. These types of sites were cool before we were engrained with knowing the domains explicitly, and they got only minimal advertizing dollars for that $35/yr for registering the name.
<P>
Here, obviously, the group registered the domains in bad faith, hoping to make some money with the domains, and other WIPO cases of late have been a similar nature with those that did specifically grab typo sites trying to make big cash off of them.
<P>
But let's say I know of a popular site X, and whenever I go there by typing in the domain name, 5% of the time I mistype and go to a "domain not found" error page. I decide to register that domain, and simply do the same redirect and link as was done originally, and I let site X know about it, and being the 'white hat' that I am, I suck the costs for simply maintaining that site, with the only stipulation that I have a link to my own web site so that people know who helped out here. Could that, under some of the more extreme WIPO rules, be considered squatting? I hope not, but I'd like to see something a bit more concrete on the squatting rules.
<P>
A good program that fixes this is PowerStrip, not free but nagware, but all you need to do once (and then any time you reinstall) is ask it to first get the best rates for your monitor, then store those in the registery, so that you can pick and choose the refresh rates to use for that particular resolution. This will work with nearly all video cards. It's also got various tweaks, but best to go with card-specific tweaking programs for that.
On the other hand, if a rock is bumped off the truck due to poor roads or shocks or whatever, and dings your windshield as you tailgated the truck, you don't have a strong case - there's traffic safety issues, and the fact that the truck has posted cautionary signs reduces their liability. Now if the load was improperly secured (maybe the truck could have been covered?) as determined by applicable law, then you have a case, but otherwise, you're SOLed.
At least in this case, the 'contract' is more solid than those offered by software companies. Even in cases where the company knew that the software would crash and cause damage and did not take sufficient steps to fix that problem, (analogous to the truck dumping the rocks on you), they have been able to avoid all liability. "We are not responsible to any damage that our program may cause".
We already know that a company can write a license that is *signed* by both parties that limits free speech in exchange for products/services (in the forms of NDAs). When UTICA passes, it then allows those click-thrus to be just an enforcable too, so by clicking through an install you could forfeit your rights on that piece of software forever.
I'm hoping Orcale stays on the ball and defends this all the way in court; a software license cannot trump 1st Amendment rights.
I'd pay good money to see how they visualize each '66' on the critical damage tables :D
The idea was to use reverse electrosis to product energy (that is, hydrogen gas plus oxygen plus spark -> water and lots of energy). So you have to store oxygen and hydrogen on board for this to work. So far, not too unreasonable (though r.e. has long be discounted as a possible fuel source).
The hydrogen tank, since it's very flammable, couldn't be stored in hazardous places in the car, so they had suggested redesigning the car as to use up the trunk space for the H2 tank, moving the chassis up off the group a bit, and having the space underneath the car for where you could put your "groceries or babies or stuff".
They suggested a similar thing with the oxygen tank but had a better suggestion - instead of having oxygen onboard, it could be pulled from the air and separated out from the nitrogen, then used in their engine. To do the separation of oxygen from nitrogen in air, they suggested a distillation column be installed on the car. I did a quick calculation and found out that they would need at least an 80ft tall column to be able to achieve this.
So this group is proposing a car design that is 80ft tall, but you stuff all your possessions underneath it as you go along.
Needless to say, they didn't get an 'A'.