Why? What is gained by allowing a phone to split in half?
This is a serious question: I can't RTFA because the web site is apparently overloaded at present. (And I can't listen to the video as I have no headset or speakers).
In other words, the technology is X-ray, but it electronically combines many images from many angles to build up a 3D image of what's inside the patient.
By the way, CT scans and MRIs are somewhat complementary to each other. Which one is "better" depends on what you are looking for:
CT uses X-rays, which I beleive (to my limited understanding) essentially measure density. Denser matter stops more X-rays, less dense matter lets more through.
MRI on the other hand uses magnetic resonance, which senses water concentration by alligning the magnetic dipole moments of water neuclei, and then "pinging" them and watching them resonate. Water concentration in the wrong place can indicate ruptured cell walls found in tumors, for example. Depending on exactly what you're hoping to spot, one may be better technology than the other.
(Disclaimer, I am not a doctor. Just someone with too many friends and relatives with cancer, unfortunately).
Diagnostic mode reports no problems. (Except when the Ipod is hung -- at which time I have no idea what diagnostic mode would say, since I can't run it).
When it hangs, nothing, not even a reset, helps. The only thing that gets it out of the hang seems to be putting it on the shelf and coming back and trying a reset a few days later.
I did reseat all the cables, and it does work some of the time. Just unreliable enough to be annoying. Not (yet) unreliable enough to have me out visiting Best Buy in search of a replacement.
About your suggestion to replace the hard disk: Why throw good money after bad? Consider:
It's a gamble, I won't get a refund on the hard disk if it doesn't solve the problem.
This ipod model is notoriously unreliable anyway (just google it -- battery problems, mechanical problems, connectors, etc), so the repair probably woudn't help for very long.
After the repair, I'd still have an HD-based iPod. If the problem, as you suggest, is that HDs are too flimsy for portable use, I'd be setting myself up for a repeat of the problem.
I've got better things to do with my time. Once a piece of consumer electronics requires me to open it up and mess inside, it's proved itsself to be junk, and it's not worth wasting my time on.
As for whether it's an ipod specific problem... Apple were the ones who designed it and sold it -- that makes it an Apple problem. I do share your opinion that their choice to use a hard disk was a contributing factor, so I'll also avoid hard-disk based portables in future, regardless of brand name. But the fact that Apple designed and shipped such a piece of junk tells me that Apple's QC is a problem. When I buy a flash-based replacement, why even consider Apple? You pay top dollar for an iPod, you expect top quality. Apple have already disappointed me in that expectation twice. I won't give them a third chance.
Bottom line, my next portable player will not be an Apple product, AND it will not contain a hard disk.
please don't claim that your problems represent a statistically relevant sample.
Of course not. I'd never claim such a stupid thing.
But the experience is quite enough to convince me not to gamble yet another $300 on an ipod.
We all frequently make buying decisions based on my own prior experiences of products, or those of our friends or acquaintances. We don't always have the luxury of access to unbiassed, statistically valid studies on the products we buy. Sometimes, common sense is enough. For me, two lemons in a row is enough to convince me not to buy a third.
The following study bears out the claim that ipod have pretty dismal reliablity, and the 40GB model that I own is indeed the worst:
What's the draw? It's not the quality or reliability! That's for sure.
My wife's Ipod died after only 11 months. They replaced it with a refurb, because it was under warranty, although they did not make the process easy.
My own Ipod died after 13 months. It was out of warranty -- and I was out of luck. I managed to get it sort-of working again myself, but now it's intermitent... It locks up solid in hot or cold weather, sometimes pauses for several seconds in the middle of a piece of music, sometimes freezes for several seconds while scrolling the menus. I've also had to re-flash it's firmware several times.
Averaged between our two Ipods, we've achieved a 1year MTBF. A product with 1 year MTBF, a 1 year warranty, and a $300 price tag. Never again!
There are some very nice, reasonably-priced non-Apple flash-based mp3 players on the market now. I'll miss the hard-disk capacity, but I'll gladly trim my portable music collection to fit, so as not to have to deal with the portable-hard-disk reliability problems again.
Well, since this discussion started, we've learned that it wasn't actually a Citabria, but rather a Super Decathalon. (Not that that makes a huge difference, although personally if I was planning on landing out in the rough, I'd prefer a Citab over a Decath).
Your scenario sounds likely, but there's one detail I keep coming back to. Why no ELT? We know the plane was ELT equipped, and ELTs can be manually triggered. If it was a safe landing, he might have delayed triggering it for quite a while, while he explored other possibilities of escape. But surely he'd have eventually done so?
My understanding is that ELTs can be observed by sattelite, so no matter how deep steep the mountain or deep the gorge, a triggered ELT would have been detected by now. Is that not so?
Sorry to nitpick, but it's not a Citaborea, it's a Citabria. It's "airbatic" spelt backwards, not "aerobatic".
And I _very_ much doubt your claim that Steve Fossett is inexperienced in Aerobatics. On the contrary, 5 minutes browsing his biography will convince you that this man's aeronautical experience is immensely broad. It's inconceivable that someone with his tremendous breadth of flying experience and appetite for adventure never bothered to train in aerobatics.
Just consider the number of experimental/prototype/one-of-a-kind planes he has test flown and then set records in. You don't test-fly these things without a substantial background in aerobatics.
And I doubt that his intent for the Citabria flight involved aerobatics. Despite the name, those planes are barely capable of aerobatics at all. A Citabria is about the last choice someone of Steve's wealth and experience is likely to choose for aerobatics. Much more likely, he chose to fly a Citarbria because of the things it's _good_ for: Slow, low, relaxed, sightseeing flight, short-field takeoff and landing, etc.
(PS I'm speaking as an aerobatic pilot myself, and also a former Citabria owner).
... instead there's a term for it "uslovnaya edinitsa" which translates roughly as "conventional unit".
Is this very recent? When I was in Russia 2.5 years ago, I saw almost all prices quoted in rubles, with only a few in dollars. And not a single mention of uslovnaya edinitsa anywhere.
In practice, the two currencies were completely interchangable: whichever currency was asked, they'd gladly accept the other at a widely agreed exchange rate. I forget what the rate was, but there was never any arguement over it -- whichever direction you applied it, everybody agreed on the same number. Now, this was only in 2 cities and only over a space of 2 weeks, so I'm sure YMMV.
One big surprise was that dollars were NOT at a premium. Everyone would gladly accept either currency, give you change in whichever currency you requested, etc. I'd heard stories of how much more motivated people would be to accept dollars than rubles, but I guess that was a thing of the past, by then.
Oh, and further nitpicking the grandparent post... I don't think there's such a thing as a kopek anymore. At least, I don't _recall_ any fractional rouble coins. Perhaps my memory is faulty?
Or you could just go to the library and copy it there.
You must have access to much better libraries than I do. Can you name a single library anywhere other than in one of the world's major capitals, that carries the complete works of Mozart? Or even 20% of that?
Actually, there's a significant amount of truly free sheet music around the internet, not just Mutopia.
A significant amount, yes.
A significant fraction of the entire works of Mozart (or any other major composer)? No way.
Oh, nonsense. Mozart's works are out of copyright and are free. And they are available free in many places, both on-line and off-line. Furthermore, there are many low-cost editions based on out-of-copyright originals.
I guess those must all be in university libraries, or other such places that are pretty much inaccessible to me... given that I don't happen to live near one. I look exclusively on the Internet, local music stores, and the local public library, since that's what's available where I live. Based on those sources, free Mozart is pretty near impossible to find.
As for online, well, I guess I must be an internet dunce, then. I sure can't find any online public domain editions of 90% of the music I want to play. And I've sure spent a lot of time with Google, Mutopia, and others.
If what you say is really true: that out-of-copyright classical editions are so freely available on the internet, here's a challenge for you: It's just one piece that I happen to be looking for right now, and not Mozart. But, if you can show me where I can get a public domain edition on line, then I'll beleive your thesis. Find me an online edition including the 1st and 2nd violin parts (or an entire orchestera score) for Beethoven's Emperor Piano Concerto. (Sure it's not Mozart, only because I don't happen to be looking for any Mozart scores right now. But it's also very famous, well known classical music by a composer who has been dead long enough that all his work ought to be freely available in the public domain.)
What these people have made available free-as-in-beer is the commentaries and editorial work on Mozart's music; it's just that they linked it up so inextricably with Mozart's own work that they end up putting restrictions on Mozart's work in the process.
Maybe that's how a lawyer would look at it -- someone who only thinks of this development as a copyright issue. But forget copyright for a minute. Think how this effects a musician from a _practical_ standpoint. Yesterday, I could not easily look at 90% of Mozart's works. I'd have to travel to the nearest town with a major school of music, negotiate library priveleges, hope that they have what I want, hope that it's not out on loan, and then spend an hour at a photocopier. And even then I'd probably still be able to find only a small fraction of Mozart's work. Today I can browse it all in one place, download it with a click of the mouse, even see works I didn't even know existed and certainly wouldn't have known to look for on my library expedition.
This is not how music should be treated 200 years after a composer's death, in particular in the day and age of the Internet.
I agree. And I'd like as much as the next person to see the complete Mozart truly free, "as in speech". But that does not negate the fact that this is a very significant event. I agree that it isn't free as in "free speech", only as in "free beer". But before today, it was free in neither sense.
This is still a HUGE step in the right direction. As a violinist, for all practical purposes, I have the complete Mozart available to me. Even if I can't perform from these scores in public (I don't know if that's the case, just guessing), at least I can _get_ these scores. I can practice them. I can study them. I can even memorize them. And for the tiny percentage that I even want to perform in public, my orchestera will still have to pay up to rent the scores, as they've always done.
Well, geez, you already could copy the music under those principles before.
You'd first have to get your hands on them.
Sure, you can argue that my rights under copyright haven't changed, versus previously-available versions. I could, under "fair use", xerox a printed edition that I'd purchassed, and use it in the same way that I can now use a download from this site. True in theory, but I'd still have to pony up literally hundreds of dollars for a half-decent edition of a complete score for a major work such as a symphony. In practice, it was prohibitively expensive to get your hands on this stuff before today, and impossible in a lot of cases. Now, it's a mouse click away.
And before you remind me of Mutopia and others, just take a browse through them. Mutopia, for example, has about 60 hits for Mozart. Even if we assume each one is a complete score to a unique opus in original instrumentation, with all parts included -- a highly optimistic assumption! -- that's still less than 10% of Mozart's works.
This is a _big_ deal.
Think about how this impacts a musician's opportunities to learn music. Right now, if I hear a piece that I like, there's essentially no way to just take a look at the score, play with it for a few hours. Decide whether it's right for me and whether to go ahead and purchase the score. Before I can see a single measure, I have to make a major financial commitment. True, if the piece is the solo of a very popular concerto or work for solo instrument, there _might_ be an arangement in the local music store, that's authentic enough to get a taste of it. But, if it's, say, a violin part for a symphony, or some such, you are totally out of luck. Short of springing hundreds of dollars, you can't even get to look at it. But now, if it's a Mozart piece, you CAN take a look. This is great.
Postscript: I agree with the parent posting, by the way. It is a shame that public domain doesn't exist (for all practical purposes), even for 250 year-old compositions. I just want to point out that this announcement is still wonderful news for all Mozart-loving musicians.
Before anyone gets too excited -- there are plenty of public-domain editions of Mozart.
I disagree.
This is _very_ exciting news. There are indeed some public-domain editions of a very tiny subset of Mozart's compelete works. Mutopia is the best example, but even there, a keyword search on "Mozart" gives only about 60 hits -- for Leopold and Wolfgang combined. Well, Wolfgang composed 626+ opusses, so at best Mutopia has 10%. In fact far less becase many are incomplete scores (fragments, extracted parts, arrangements for particular instrument groupings, etc.), and many are duplications (the same work arranged for different instrument groupings).
What's more exciting is that these are high quality, authentic scores for original instrumentation. That's hard to find, even if you're prepared to pay top dollar. And consider that a symphony or voilin concerto complete score (all orchestral parts plus soloist) is likely to set you back many hundreds of dollars -- just for a single opus.
As a violinist, for me this is just truly wonderful news. Oh, if only t'were true of more composers. Dare we hope? Hmmm Beethoven's 250th birthday is 2020.:-)
Much to my surprise, when I voted this morning (Boulder, Colorado), I was offered a choice: I could choose to vote by paper ballot or by machine. I chose paper.
Some general comments on my experience:
Almost everyone was choosing paper. I saw only one person use the machine. The sign-in log had a column where voters circled "paper" or "machine", and I didn't see a single entry where "machine" was circled.
There were 6 paper voting booths, and only one machine booth. So, the preference for paper may have been due to expediency.
The voting machine booth was poorly set up for voter privacy. The screen was vertical, and it was very easy for people standing in line to vote to see over the shoulder of the person using the machine. This could have easily been rectified by turning the booth 180 degrees so that the booth was back-to-the-wall. The paper voting booths were much better set-up, but still could have afforded better privacy by rotating them 180 degrees.
Voter turnout seemed good in my precinct. It was before noon, and it it appeared that about half of the log entries had been signed.
... generally they applied towards tickets in the ten cent per mile price. (25,000 frequent flier miles for a round trip ticket of approximately $2500 peak value -- the average seat cost being based on the highest available fare for that seat type
But that's a bogus comparision: Frequent flyer miles can't be redeemed to get the equivalent of the highest avavilable fare for that seat type. They can only be redeemed to get the junk seats that are left over on the unpopular schedules, usually on an indirect route with multiple stops. (For comparison: If you are really prepared to pay the highest available fare for your seat type, you'll usually get on the most direct flight, at the time you want, on the day you want, by the most direct route possible, and with the minimum of restrictions about cancellation and alteration.)
At best, FF redemption tickets are barely better in convenience, availability, and service than the cheapest bargain tickets you can buy for the route. When you use that number in your comparison, you'll see that FF miles have already suffered significant inflation.
On a side note: Frequent-flyer-redemption tickets aren't exactly free. You still pay the fees and taxes, and they are a significant percentage of the cost of your ticket. I recently paid over $60 to redeem FF miles for DEN-ATL, where the normal discount price (think lowest thing on Travelocity booked weeks in advance) would be about $225 (both figures include all taxes and fees, and both are for internet-booked tickets). The out-of-pocket portion of a FF-redemption trip has increased over the years, and this is another form of FF-currency inflation.
So, can somebody tell me why you would have a patent if you are not going to enforce it?
One reason is to preempt anybody else from patenting the same idea.
Of course, you could do the same thing by just publishing the idea. But filing a patent buys you time. Publish the data without patenting it, and anyone can use it right away. Patent it, and keep your options open -- you can always decide to open up royalty-free licencing later.
(I'm not suggesting this is MS's reason. Just giving an example of one reason for doing this.)
That I'm not sure of. But for _infrequent_ callers, the EU is _definitely_ cheaper than the US. I know that because I'm an infrequent caller in both. In the UK, anyway, you can still buy a prepaid card with reasonably long shelf-life and use the minutes only when you need them. (In the US, that's impossible. You have to keep paying to keep the phone alive regardless of whether you chose a prepaid or monthly plan). Of course, I may be overgeneralizing to the whole of Europe. I only really know about a few countries first hand, and only the UK recently.
> but now you also have to show the certificate that you got when you registered your > residence in germany in the town-hall of your hometown.
I hadn't heard that before. That's quite alarming. You can't have a local cell phone unless you're a resident of the country! If that idea spreads to other countries, it's curtains for affordable communications while travelling. What a terrible, tourism-hostile policy! You described it as a "regulation", so I assume it's a law, rather than just a misguided dumb decision by one carrier?
Do you know if this is a German regulation, or is it something to do with the EU government, in which case it will apply all over Europe?
Not sure about the cell-vs-landline comparison, but European mobile prices sure seem cheap compared to US ones.
Comparing per-minute costs is very misleading. For many users like myself, per-minute costs are almost irrelevant, because the monthly fees (or expired unused minutes in the case of prepaid) dominate. When you take all costs into account, European prices are _WAY_ lower, even though the European per-minute domestic airtime prices are much higher than their US counterparts. At least for my usage pattern.
I use local prepaid SIM cards when I travel to Europe and Africa, and find them remarkably cheap compared to the US. In the US, because prepaid plans here have very short shelf-lives on their minutes, I'm forced to use a monthly plan.
The main difference I see is that in Europe (a) Monthly rates are somewhat lower than the US, for the same number of included minutes, (b) Monthly rates have a lower entry-level than the US (i.e. you can pay less if you only need fewer minutes, if you wish), and (c) prepaid minutes have a much longer shelf-life, if you choose your carrier carefully, so you can actually use them up before you have to pay for more(*).
All of the above make European mobile usage far cheaper than the US at least for users like me who don't make a lot of calls every month.
Of course, this is not applicable to everyone: I guess there may be some high usage levels at which US prices reach parity with Europe, or even drop below European prices. But certainly not for me.
(*) US cell providers have a trick to guarantee a constant stream of revenue from prepaid users. They offer minutes in bundles of various sizes. Only the very largest bundles have decent shelf-lives (typically 6-12 months) and relatively low cost per minute (say 12c). All smaller bundles have _very_ short shelf lives (say 30-60 days), and much higher cost per minute (say 50c). This makes pre-paid pretty much useless in the US for anyone who uses their phone infrequently, because of the high cost of paying for all those minutes they never use.
"We hypothesize that these predecessor neurons may be a transient population involved in determining the number of functional radial units including the human specific regions of the cerebral cortex mediating higher cognitive functions..." Is that a fancy way of saying the neurons are a boot loader?
I'm no lawyer, but the first question that comes to my mind is this:
Seems like just about every update from windows update has a click-through licence. Don't know what's in them, I've never read one. But, by definition, a click through gives you the choice of agreeing (installing the update), or disagreeing (and continuing to use the non-updated software under the original, unmodified EULA licence).
But the description of WGA in the original post sounds like it's a mandatory update, i.e. either you accept it, or you stop running windows. If there's also a click-through licence associated with it, that's equivalent to Microsoft saying: "You must agree to modify the licence agreement, or we won't uphold our side of the original licence (i.e. let you use the software you paid for)."
Isn't this coercing acceptance of a contract under threat of unilaterally breeching an earlier contract? How is it legal?
I suppose it's possible that WGA is an exception to the rule, and doesn't have it's own click-thru licence. But that seems highly unlikely. I've yet to see _any_ update from windows update that doesn't require a new click through.
While I doubt mariners will ever stop being taught compass and celestial navigation (tradition is important), I can't imagine either will be needed 100 years from now, much less a thousand.
Ok, so my gig is aviation, not marination (is that a word?!). But the principles are the same, and I'll say this with certainty: I'd give up every other navigational aid before I'd give up my magnetic compass. I'll happily fly without a GPS, without VORs and NDBs, without Loran. And it's NOT just about tradition. There's a very fundamental reason why a compass will _always_ be the primary navigational aid.
The magnetic compass is SIMPLE, and it is RELIABLE. A permanent magnet suspended in fluid. Probability of inflight failure: just about zero. I've lost radios in flight. I've had antennas get damaged. I've had electrical shorts, and alternators die, stopwatch jam, gyros tumble, I've even lost a map overboard. But I've _never_ had a sudden magnetic compass failure. Sure, they fail gradually over the space of months, usually due to gradual magnetisation of nearby metal, but that can easily be dealt with. They don't just suddenly let you down.
Compass, map, and dead reconing will always be the principal navigational skills, or at least the primary fallback.
(Oh, and compass also tells you things that GPS doesn't. Like your heading. GPS can tell you your track, but not your heading.)
I did the Pimsleur Russian course. It's tape or CD-based, with only a minimal written suplement to help you deal with the written form, and the Cyrillic alphabet.
Highly recommended, but subject to a few caveats:
1. It's very expensive.
2. There's a full course, but they also sell various abbreviated introductory courses: Make sure you get the full course. You'll know you have the right one if it comes in 3 levels, each consisting of about 16 cassettes. The levels are also sold separately. (I used casettes, but I expect the CD version is similar. Not sure how many disks in the Spainish series, but at any rate if you get only a handful of tapes/CDs, you've bought the "toy" version, not the full course.)
3. Even the full course with it's 48 or so disks or casettes will only take you so far. Once you've completed it, it's the perfect time to travel to the country for a little practice.
Slashdot Mirror
Why? What is gained by allowing a phone to split in half?
This is a serious question: I can't RTFA because the web site is apparently overloaded at present. (And I can't listen to the video as I have no headset or speakers).
It's a CT scanner.
In other words, the technology is X-ray, but it electronically combines many images from many angles to build up a 3D image of what's inside the patient.
By the way, CT scans and MRIs are somewhat complementary to each other. Which one is "better" depends on what you are looking for:
CT uses X-rays, which I beleive (to my limited understanding) essentially measure density. Denser matter stops more X-rays, less dense matter lets more through.
MRI on the other hand uses magnetic resonance, which senses water concentration by alligning the magnetic dipole moments of water neuclei, and then "pinging" them and watching them resonate. Water concentration in the wrong place can indicate ruptured cell walls found in tumors, for example. Depending on exactly what you're hoping to spot, one may be better technology than the other.
(Disclaimer, I am not a doctor. Just someone with too many friends and relatives with cancer, unfortunately).
Diagnostic mode reports no problems. (Except when the Ipod is hung -- at which time I have no idea what diagnostic mode would say, since I can't run it).
When it hangs, nothing, not even a reset, helps. The only thing that gets it out of the hang seems to be putting it on the shelf and coming back and trying a reset a few days later.
It's a 40G Ipod photo.
About your suggestion to replace the hard disk: Why throw good money after bad? Consider:
As for whether it's an ipod specific problem... Apple were the ones who designed it and sold it -- that makes it an Apple problem. I do share your opinion that their choice to use a hard disk was a contributing factor, so I'll also avoid hard-disk based portables in future, regardless of brand name. But the fact that Apple designed and shipped such a piece of junk tells me that Apple's QC is a problem. When I buy a flash-based replacement, why even consider Apple? You pay top dollar for an iPod, you expect top quality. Apple have already disappointed me in that expectation twice. I won't give them a third chance.
Bottom line, my next portable player will not be an Apple product, AND it will not contain a hard disk.
please don't claim that your problems represent a statistically relevant sample.
Of course not. I'd never claim such a stupid thing.
But the experience is quite enough to convince me not to gamble yet another $300 on an ipod.
We all frequently make buying decisions based on my own prior experiences of products, or those of our friends or acquaintances. We don't always have the luxury of access to unbiassed, statistically valid studies on the products we buy. Sometimes, common sense is enough. For me, two lemons in a row is enough to convince me not to buy a third.
The following study bears out the claim that ipod have pretty dismal reliablity, and the 40GB model that I own is indeed the worst:
http://www.macintouch.com/reliability/ipodfailures.html
What's the draw?
It's not the quality or reliability! That's for sure.
My wife's Ipod died after only 11 months. They replaced it with a refurb, because it was under warranty, although they did not make the process easy.
My own Ipod died after 13 months. It was out of warranty -- and I was out of luck. I managed to get it sort-of working again myself, but now it's intermitent... It locks up solid in hot or cold weather, sometimes pauses for several seconds in the middle of a piece of music, sometimes freezes for several seconds while scrolling the menus. I've also had to re-flash it's firmware several times.
Averaged between our two Ipods, we've achieved a 1year MTBF. A product with 1 year MTBF, a 1 year warranty, and a $300 price tag. Never again!
There are some very nice, reasonably-priced non-Apple flash-based mp3 players on the market now. I'll miss the hard-disk capacity, but I'll gladly trim my portable music collection to fit, so as not to have to deal with the portable-hard-disk reliability problems again.
Well, since this discussion started, we've learned that it wasn't actually a Citabria, but rather a Super Decathalon. (Not that that makes a huge difference, although personally if I was planning on landing out in the rough, I'd prefer a Citab over a Decath).
Your scenario sounds likely, but there's one detail I keep coming back to. Why no ELT? We know the plane was ELT equipped, and ELTs can be manually triggered. If it was a safe landing, he might have delayed triggering it for quite a while, while he explored other possibilities of escape. But surely he'd have eventually done so?
My understanding is that ELTs can be observed by sattelite, so no matter how deep steep the mountain or deep the gorge, a triggered ELT would have been detected by now. Is that not so?
Touche!
Sorry to nitpick, but it's not a Citaborea, it's a Citabria. It's "airbatic" spelt backwards, not "aerobatic".
And I _very_ much doubt your claim that Steve Fossett is inexperienced in Aerobatics. On the contrary, 5 minutes browsing his biography will convince you that this man's aeronautical experience is immensely broad. It's inconceivable that someone with his tremendous breadth of flying experience and appetite for adventure never bothered to train in aerobatics.
Just consider the number of experimental/prototype/one-of-a-kind planes he has test flown and then set records in. You don't test-fly these things without a substantial background in aerobatics.
And I doubt that his intent for the Citabria flight involved aerobatics. Despite the name, those planes are barely capable of aerobatics at all. A Citabria is about the last choice someone of Steve's wealth and experience is likely to choose for aerobatics. Much more likely, he chose to fly a Citarbria because of the things it's _good_ for: Slow, low, relaxed, sightseeing flight, short-field takeoff and landing, etc.
(PS I'm speaking as an aerobatic pilot myself, and also a former Citabria owner).
... instead there's a term for it "uslovnaya edinitsa" which translates roughly as "conventional unit".
Is this very recent? When I was in Russia 2.5 years ago, I saw almost all prices quoted in rubles, with only a few in dollars. And not a single mention of uslovnaya edinitsa anywhere.
In practice, the two currencies were completely interchangable: whichever currency was asked, they'd gladly accept the other at a widely agreed exchange rate. I forget what the rate was, but there was never any arguement over it -- whichever direction you applied it, everybody agreed on the same number. Now, this was only in 2 cities and only over a space of 2 weeks, so I'm sure YMMV.
One big surprise was that dollars were NOT at a premium. Everyone would gladly accept either currency, give you change in whichever currency you requested, etc. I'd heard stories of how much more motivated people would be to accept dollars than rubles, but I guess that was a thing of the past, by then.
Oh, and further nitpicking the grandparent post... I don't think there's such a thing as a kopek anymore. At least, I don't _recall_ any fractional rouble coins. Perhaps my memory is faulty?
Or you could just go to the library and copy it there.
You must have access to much better libraries than I do. Can you name a single library anywhere other than in one of the world's major capitals, that carries the complete works of Mozart? Or even 20% of that?
Actually, there's a significant amount of truly free sheet music around the internet, not just Mutopia.
A significant amount, yes.
A significant fraction of the entire works of Mozart (or any other major composer)? No way.
Oh, nonsense. Mozart's works are out of copyright and are free. And they are available free in many places, both on-line and off-line. Furthermore, there are many low-cost editions based on out-of-copyright originals.
I guess those must all be in university libraries, or other such places that are pretty much inaccessible to me... given that I don't happen to live near one. I look exclusively on the Internet, local music stores, and the local public library, since that's what's available where I live. Based on those sources, free Mozart is pretty near impossible to find.
As for online, well, I guess I must be an internet dunce, then. I sure can't find any online public domain editions of 90% of the music I want to play. And I've sure spent a lot of time with Google, Mutopia, and others.
If what you say is really true: that out-of-copyright classical editions are so freely available on the internet, here's a challenge for you: It's just one piece that I happen to be looking for right now, and not Mozart. But, if you can show me where I can get a public domain edition on line, then I'll beleive your thesis. Find me an online edition including the 1st and 2nd violin parts (or an entire orchestera score) for Beethoven's Emperor Piano Concerto. (Sure it's not Mozart, only because I don't happen to be looking for any Mozart scores right now. But it's also very famous, well known classical music by a composer who has been dead long enough that all his work ought to be freely available in the public domain.)
What these people have made available free-as-in-beer is the commentaries and editorial work on Mozart's music; it's just that they linked it up so inextricably with Mozart's own work that they end up putting restrictions on Mozart's work in the process.
Maybe that's how a lawyer would look at it -- someone who only thinks of this development as a copyright issue. But forget copyright for a minute. Think how this effects a musician from a _practical_ standpoint. Yesterday, I could not easily look at 90% of Mozart's works. I'd have to travel to the nearest town with a major school of music, negotiate library priveleges, hope that they have what I want, hope that it's not out on loan, and then spend an hour at a photocopier. And even then I'd probably still be able to find only a small fraction of Mozart's work. Today I can browse it all in one place, download it with a click of the mouse, even see works I didn't even know existed and certainly wouldn't have known to look for on my library expedition.
D.
Oh Hi, Ben. Didn't recognise you from that other forum.
D Minor.
This is not how music should be treated 200 years after a composer's death, in particular in the day and age of the Internet.
I agree. And I'd like as much as the next person to see the complete Mozart truly free, "as in speech". But that does not negate the fact that this is a very significant event. I agree that it isn't free as in "free speech", only as in "free beer".
But before today, it was free in neither sense.
This is still a HUGE step in the right direction. As a violinist, for all practical purposes, I have the complete Mozart available to me. Even if I can't perform from these scores in public (I don't know if that's the case, just guessing), at least I can _get_ these scores. I can practice them. I can study them. I can even memorize them. And for the tiny percentage that I even want to perform in public, my orchestera will still have to pay up to rent the scores, as they've always done.
Well, geez, you already could copy the music under those principles before.
You'd first have to get your hands on them.
Sure, you can argue that my rights under copyright haven't changed, versus previously-available versions. I could, under "fair use", xerox a printed edition that I'd purchassed, and use it in the same way that I can now use a download from this site. True in theory, but I'd still have to pony up literally hundreds of dollars for a half-decent edition of a complete score for a major work such as a symphony. In practice, it was prohibitively expensive to get your hands on this stuff before today, and impossible in a lot of cases. Now, it's a mouse click away.
And before you remind me of Mutopia and others, just take a browse through them. Mutopia, for example, has about 60 hits for Mozart. Even if we assume each one is a complete score to a unique opus in original instrumentation, with all parts included -- a highly optimistic assumption! -- that's still less than 10% of Mozart's works.
This is a _big_ deal.
Think about how this impacts a musician's opportunities to learn music. Right now, if I hear a piece that I like, there's essentially no way to just take a look at the score, play with it for a few hours. Decide whether it's right for me and whether to go ahead and purchase the score. Before I can see a single measure, I have to make a major financial commitment. True, if the piece is the solo of a very popular concerto or work for solo instrument, there _might_ be an arangement in the local music store, that's authentic enough to get a taste of it. But, if it's, say, a violin part for a symphony, or some such, you are totally out of luck. Short of springing hundreds of dollars, you can't even get to look at it. But now, if it's a Mozart piece, you CAN take a look. This is great.
Postscript: I agree with the parent posting, by the way. It is a shame that public domain doesn't exist (for all practical purposes), even for 250 year-old compositions. I just want to point out that this announcement is still wonderful news for all Mozart-loving musicians.
Before anyone gets too excited -- there are plenty of public-domain editions of Mozart.
:-)
I disagree.
This is _very_ exciting news. There are indeed some public-domain editions of a very tiny subset of Mozart's compelete works. Mutopia is the best example, but even there, a keyword search on "Mozart" gives only about 60 hits -- for Leopold and Wolfgang combined. Well, Wolfgang composed 626+ opusses, so at best Mutopia has 10%. In fact far less becase many are incomplete scores (fragments, extracted parts, arrangements for particular instrument groupings, etc.), and many are duplications (the same work arranged for different instrument groupings).
What's more exciting is that these are high quality, authentic scores for original instrumentation. That's hard to find, even if you're prepared to pay top dollar. And consider that a symphony or voilin concerto complete score (all orchestral parts plus soloist) is likely to set you back many hundreds of dollars -- just for a single opus.
As a violinist, for me this is just truly wonderful news. Oh, if only t'were true of more composers. Dare we hope? Hmmm Beethoven's 250th birthday is 2020.
Wasn't North Concourse at Stapleton?
Don't think the poster was referring to Stapleton. Wasn't Stapleton decomissioned several years before the birth of the wireless internet era?
DIA had already replaced Stapleton by Dec 1995, I know. Think it happened a few years before.
But that's a bogus comparision: Frequent flyer miles can't be redeemed to get the equivalent of the highest avavilable fare for that
seat type. They can only be redeemed to get the junk seats that are left over on the unpopular schedules, usually on an indirect route
with multiple stops. (For comparison: If you are really prepared to pay the highest available fare for your seat type, you'll usually get
on the most direct flight, at the time you want, on the day you want, by the most direct route possible, and with the minimum of
restrictions about cancellation and alteration.)
At best, FF redemption tickets are barely better in convenience, availability, and service than the cheapest bargain tickets you can
buy for the route. When you use that number in your comparison, you'll see that FF miles have already suffered significant inflation.
On a side note: Frequent-flyer-redemption tickets aren't exactly free. You still pay the fees and taxes, and they are a significant
percentage of the cost of your ticket. I recently paid over $60 to redeem FF miles for DEN-ATL, where the normal discount price (think
lowest thing on Travelocity booked weeks in advance) would be about $225 (both figures include all taxes and fees, and both are for
internet-booked tickets). The out-of-pocket portion of a FF-redemption trip has increased over the years, and this is another
form of FF-currency inflation.
So, can somebody tell me why you would have a patent if you are not going to enforce it?
One reason is to preempt anybody else from patenting the same idea.
Of course, you could do the same thing by just publishing the idea. But filing a patent buys you time. Publish the data without patenting it, and anyone can use it right away. Patent it, and keep your options open -- you can always decide to open up royalty-free licencing later.
(I'm not suggesting this is MS's reason. Just giving an example of one reason for doing this.)
> For frequent callers, the EU might be cheaper,
That I'm not sure of. But for _infrequent_ callers, the EU is _definitely_ cheaper than the US. I know that because I'm an infrequent caller in both. In the UK, anyway, you can still buy a prepaid card with reasonably long shelf-life and use the minutes only when you need them. (In the US, that's impossible. You have to keep paying to keep the phone alive regardless of whether you chose a prepaid or monthly plan). Of course, I may be overgeneralizing to the whole of Europe. I only really know about a few countries first hand, and only the UK recently.
> but now you also have to show the certificate that you got when you registered your
> residence in germany in the town-hall of your hometown.
I hadn't heard that before. That's quite alarming. You can't have a local cell phone unless you're a resident of the country! If that idea spreads to other countries, it's curtains for affordable communications while travelling. What a terrible, tourism-hostile policy! You described it as a "regulation", so I assume it's a law, rather than just a misguided dumb decision by one carrier?
Do you know if this is a German regulation, or is it something to do with the EU government, in which case it will apply all over Europe?
Not sure about the cell-vs-landline comparison, but European mobile prices sure seem cheap compared to US ones.
Comparing per-minute costs is very misleading. For many users like myself, per-minute costs are almost irrelevant, because the monthly fees (or expired unused minutes in the case of prepaid) dominate. When you take all costs into account, European prices are _WAY_ lower, even though the European per-minute domestic airtime prices are much higher than their US counterparts. At least for my usage pattern.
I use local prepaid SIM cards when I travel to Europe and Africa, and find them remarkably cheap compared to the US. In the US, because prepaid plans here have very short shelf-lives on their minutes, I'm forced to use a monthly plan.
The main difference I see is that in Europe (a) Monthly rates are somewhat lower than the US, for the same number of included minutes, (b) Monthly rates have a lower entry-level than the US (i.e. you can pay less if you only need fewer minutes, if you wish), and (c) prepaid minutes have a much longer shelf-life, if you choose your carrier carefully, so you can actually use them up before you have to pay for more(*).
All of the above make European mobile usage far cheaper than the US at least for users like me who don't make a lot of calls every month.
Of course, this is not applicable to everyone: I guess there may be some high usage levels at which US prices reach parity with Europe, or even drop below European prices. But certainly not for me.
(*) US cell providers have a trick to guarantee a constant stream of revenue from prepaid users. They offer minutes in bundles of various sizes. Only the very largest bundles have decent shelf-lives (typically 6-12 months) and relatively low cost per minute (say 12c). All smaller bundles have _very_ short shelf lives (say 30-60 days), and much higher cost per minute (say 50c). This makes pre-paid pretty much useless in the US for anyone who uses their phone infrequently, because of the high cost of paying for all those minutes they never use.
"We hypothesize that these predecessor neurons may be a transient population involved in determining the number of functional radial units including the human specific regions of the cerebral cortex mediating higher cognitive functions..."
Is that a fancy way of saying the neurons are a boot loader?
I'm no lawyer, but the first question that comes to my mind is this:
Seems like just about every update from windows update has a click-through licence. Don't know what's in them, I've never read one. But, by definition, a click through gives you the choice of agreeing (installing the update), or disagreeing (and continuing to use the non-updated software under the original, unmodified EULA licence).
But the description of WGA in the original post sounds like it's a mandatory update, i.e. either you accept it, or you stop running windows. If there's also a click-through licence associated with it, that's equivalent to Microsoft saying: "You must agree to modify the licence agreement, or we won't uphold our side of the original licence (i.e. let you use the software you paid for)."
Isn't this coercing acceptance of a contract under threat of unilaterally breeching an earlier contract? How is it legal?
I suppose it's possible that WGA is an exception to the rule, and doesn't have it's own click-thru licence. But that seems highly unlikely. I've yet to see _any_ update from windows update that doesn't require a new click through.
Anyone know the answer?
While I doubt mariners will ever stop being taught compass and celestial navigation (tradition is important), I can't imagine either will be needed 100 years from now, much less a thousand.
Ok, so my gig is aviation, not marination (is that a word?!). But the principles are the same, and I'll say this with certainty: I'd give up every other navigational aid before I'd give up my magnetic compass. I'll happily fly without a GPS, without VORs and NDBs, without Loran. And it's NOT just about tradition. There's a very fundamental reason why a compass will _always_ be the primary navigational aid.
The magnetic compass is SIMPLE, and it is RELIABLE. A permanent magnet suspended in fluid. Probability of inflight failure: just about zero. I've lost radios in flight. I've had antennas get damaged. I've had electrical shorts, and alternators die, stopwatch jam, gyros tumble, I've even lost a map overboard. But I've _never_ had a sudden magnetic compass failure. Sure, they fail gradually over the space of months, usually due to gradual magnetisation of nearby metal, but that can easily be dealt with. They don't just suddenly let you down.
Compass, map, and dead reconing will always be the principal navigational skills, or at least the primary fallback.
(Oh, and compass also tells you things that GPS doesn't. Like your heading. GPS can tell you your track, but not your heading.)
I did the Pimsleur Russian course. It's tape or CD-based, with only a minimal written suplement to help you deal with the written form, and the Cyrillic alphabet.
Highly recommended, but subject to a few caveats:
1. It's very expensive.
2. There's a full course, but they also sell various abbreviated introductory courses: Make sure you get the full course. You'll know you have the right one if it comes in 3 levels, each consisting of about 16 cassettes. The levels are also sold separately. (I used casettes, but I expect the CD version is similar. Not sure how many disks in the Spainish series, but at any rate if you get only a handful of tapes/CDs, you've bought the "toy" version, not the full course.)
3. Even the full course with it's 48 or so disks or casettes will only take you so far. Once you've completed it, it's the perfect time to travel to the country for a little practice.
Good luck and have fun. I did.
D