First, try BWI.com. There you can various types of boards that use the Transmeta CPUs (though Efficeon is probably not there yet). The most reasonably priced ones are made by Wincomm; but for some reason they aren't linked off BWI's main site any more. Last time I looked, I was still able to get the listing of Wincomm products by using their search function. Some projects such as the CharmIT wearable computer were based on the Boser HS-1600 board, which seems to be a popular choice. It costs something like $800-$1000. I have no idea why the things are so bloody expensive. Bear in mind that you are usually getting built-in memory and LCD controllers, video, sound, etc. It's almost a complete system. You still need a power supply, keyboard, mouse, and monitor. Also, the chip is soldered to the board, so it's not a true CPU-mobo solution. Clips for the Crusoe do exist, it's just that the board makers haven't used them. I seem to recall having stumbled across one, but it was by a manufacturer that's not well known and I lost the link... Sorry. Oh, I almost forgot the best thing about BWI: They quote prices for onesies and twosies right there on the website. No need to call sales. What a refreshing approach!
The other site is All American There you can actually get Transmeta CPUs, but without a mobo to plug them into this is only of interest to you if you license the reference design from Transmeta and contract for the fabrication of your own boards. Technicly that's not nearly as daunting as it sounds. With the proper files, you can usually send these things off to be prototyped for not too much money, and of course volume production is even cheaper. It's just that the startup cost is high--licensing from Transmeta, and expensive proprietary packages to manipulate the designs if you want to customize them.
It's rather ironic that Linus is associated with a company that throws up so many barriers to hackers. And I'm saying this as someone who owns Transmeta shares and is disgusted with the way this is handled, but I'm just like the guy on teh commercial who "owns Nike". My stake is so small that nobody would listen to me. So I vent this stuff on Yahoo's finance board, and sometimes here.
I wonder how many people work for Slashdot and own shares in Transmeta, which is coming out with the TM8000 right now, and is announcing earnings tomorrow. Full disclosure: I own Transmeta shares too.
Now, usually Slashdot greets these RSN products with glee and neglects to mention that they are vapor. Not this time, nosiree. Why? Because if it were true it would compete with Transmeta.
Not accusing anybody of anything wrong here... just... well... I've drawn my conclusions. You draw yours.
Ummm... someone gets a virus on my box, then convinces my ISP that I dowloaded a whole bunch of crap, then I get a huge bill, then I have to prove I didn't download?
No Thanks.
If that's going to work, the ISP had d*** well better be sure they are filtering packets on a per user basis, so that I can't download anything through the Kazaa port unless I really am a registered Kazaa user, and they had better make sure that if "I" try to do that they flag it as a virus and not a new signup or something. No other way.
Look.
The ISP billing right now is "pure". I get billed for connectivity and that's it. The last thing I need is for my connection to turn into something like the POTS line, where kids in the house could "dial" the equivalent of a 900 number.
...reporting on it. All over the worl there are tribal people killing eachother, and none of the conflicts get as much attention as the Arab-Israeli conflict. Neither Israel nor Palestine are of strategic importance to the West or to the Arab worlds.
By mutual agreement both the Western and Arab press should just stop reporting on it, and stop giving money to the respective sides.
Think of the benefits--unrest in the region would no longer affect our markets. Foreign policy resources could be devoted to solving other issues.
As for the people that inhabit the region, once they realize they aren't that important, they would have to lear how to work together and establish a true secular democracy with respect for the rights of all.
Additionally, the temple mount could be comdemned with the cooperation of religious leaders from both sides. Nobody would be allowed to set foot on it. Why, that would make it even more sacred, wouldn't it?
Then, land could be set aside for a new temple and a new mosque to replace the old run-down ones that are there now. Since the Dome of the Rock is still in pretty good shape though, they should probably be allowed to move it.
Then the people who live there would all have to get real jobs.
As a person of Jewish ancestry I understand the feelings that swirl around the region, but frankly as an American and a convert to Christianity I see nothing but folly there. The "Holy Land" has become a joke. Maybe this is what Revelation is about--fires, brimstone, etc. Perhaps God will destroy that land with some kind of natural disaster... let's say a fault opens up and a huge volcano erupts, covering the entire region with ash like Pompei.
That would be the best thing that could happen
Really.
I'm just sick and tired of hearing about it.
When these people are old and grey, and look back on their lives consumed with revenge over some 2000 year family fued (Jews and Arabs are brothers!) what will they think they have accomplished with their lives?
Any blue collar worker in the US who payed off his mortgage and raised a family has accomplished far more than the most respected leader from either camp.
That's a very short sighted statement. Rush was prescribed Oxycontin for post-operative pain. Learn more about Oxycontin. Notice, it does not appear that anybody has kept statistics on what percentage of patients prescribed Oxycontin by doctors went on to become addicts. However, the marketers of this product (oxycontin is not a new drug, it's a different form of delivery for a synthetic opiate) have been criticized for over aggressive marketing to physicians (who really ought not to be swayed by marketing, but they're human too).
The bottom line? You too may someday be prescribed an opiate, get "used to it" and then find yourself begging for a "script" or seeking out a corrupt doctor who will "cash your script".
Don't forget: "Pride comes before a fall".
So, treat these drugs with the caution they deserve. Don't take them unless you absolutely have to. Start at the lowest dose possible. Always follow prescribed dosing, etc...
Of course you would never become an addict. You don't write code with bugs in it either.:)
When will they get it through their heads that the construction of the bill won't every solve counterfeiting? Anything they can make, others can make too. Last time, the Russian mafia had excellent fakes out almost before most people in the US had the new bills in their pockets!
The only practical solution is to surveil the money (not the people). What do I mean by "surveil the money?". Well, each bill already has a serial number. You don't have to track every bill either, just most bills. Scanners at banks, convenience stores, and other common cash exchange points would transmit the location of the bill, as well as validate the bill.
To catch a counterfeiter, just watch for the following inconsistancies: Bills moving at hypersonic speeds accross the US, serial numbers that aren't in the database, two bills with the same number in different locations, etc.
Then, just pull up the surveilance tapes from the stores where the bills are passed. Match faces. If a suspicious bill is passed by the same person more than once, you have just cause. Get warrant. Search house. You've got them.
A few crooks would still slip through now and then, but high-volume operations would be extremely difficult because the odds would catch up with these guys. They would have to control the valid bill to prevent the dupe flag from being raised, or conspire to hack the database, or launder money through stores that didn't participate in the system--activities which are much easier to investigate and track.
Thanks to Google for archiving my struggle against AT&T.
Not sure if I mentioned it in the USENET postings, but I just started documenting things around Oct. 1, when DNC was supposed to go into effect. We registered our number almost as soon as DNC was available. In reality there were at least 10, perhaps even 15 calls to me from AT&T "Advantage" wireless, and even without the DNC they are still not supposed to be telemarketing me after I've informed them that I don't want to be called.
I have no prior business relationship with AT&T.
So. What did they do? They started asking for my father. He owns the land line in our house, and has AT&T long distance. Notice, that doesn't excuse AT&T--they were asking for *me*.
So today I got a call (not documented on USENET yet) and what did they do? They asked for my father. Serves them right. My father is 80 yrs old and hard of hearing. He has to ask them twice sometimes before he understands what they are saying and then of course he has no desire to get a wireless phone.
What's really funny is that half the time the calls sound like they are coming from the bottom of a well filled with sand paper and angry bees. Yeah. (sarcasm on)I really want wireless from these guys(sarcasm off).
Anyway, I didn't think/. would become the forum for me to vent my rage at AT&T, but now it is. Great. Let me reiterate: If you have AT&T "Advantage" Wirelesss, drop it and go with somebody else. If you are thinking of getting wireless, don't get AT&T. When you cancel your AT&T wireless, tell them it's because istartedi told you he hates being called.
Now, if I could just convince my father to get AT&T LD off our land line...
Slashdot still needs a RSN category (see my previous post) but this flight is certainly a lot more likely than a 20 fold improvement in solar cell efficiency.
Only trouble is, I proposed that the icon for the RSN Promis Fulfilled category be a cash register with vapor coming out of it. Since the Chinese aren't selling anything here (yet) that seems inappropriate now.
Then again, if this succeeds they will eventually get all kinds of economic spinoffs from it.
From the bitterness department: How much longer would this have taken if Bill Clinton and some dirty associates at Loral Systems hadn't sold classified missile technology? The Clinton admin did on a smaller scale what the German rocket scientists did for the US. They should name their first space station after Bill Clinton.
From the Wall Street department: This continues to prove that the "China as export market" theory used by Free Traders is full of holes. China is so large that it can create its own home grown industries in just about anything now. Yes, there will be some opportunities, but not nearly as much as some predicted. Yes. You can stop drooling about the "billion customers" because you will be competing with Local Industry that gets there first, and has a distinct advantage. Not that it can't be done mind you. There's not too much to stop the US from doing to China what Japan did to the US in the 70s with cars, but it's not as easy as just "opening China". We actually have to make something that the Chinese can afford and will be willing to buy. Imagine that!
To elaborate further, this will really be a kick to the whole Chinese aerospace industry. Could there be a Chinese answer to Boeing in the future? If I were an aerospace incumbent, I'd be quaking in my boots right now. I'd probably even offer discounts to the Chinese just to keep them from competing in aerospace. Boeing, Airbus, etc... If the Chinese go into that business then short, Short, SHORT the aerospace stocks!
I'll be glad when memetics is out of fashion. I'm sick of hearing about it.
Nothing against you personally, but memetic arguments always seem to come off as 1. pretentious 2. absolving oneself of personal responsability 3. a "I have a hammer so everything is a nail" approach. In this case, the hammer is genetics, evolution, and an overblown analogy.
Now, if memetics proves to be a viral idea, does that invalidate memetics or prove it? Quite a paradox, eh? I suppose it's entirely possible for memetics to be valid; it's just that it may not be valid for people to think about it!
If the record companies can force you to lost quality through a digital-to-analog-to-digital conversion process,
But can they even do that? Ultimately, everything has to be heard. If you acousticly couple (wow, there's something I thought was dead) a hi-fi speaker to a hi-fi mic, and average the analog readings, can you back out the digital signal with perfect fidelity, or with fidelity such that comparison with others (via p2p networks of course) would allow you to collectively arrive at a faithful reproduction of the digital work?
Obviously you can get very good audio with this techniqe, but purists will insist on digital perfection.
First, can it be done? Second, can it be done with reasonably priced hardware?
In other words, how big is the analog loophole? Big enough to drive a truck through, or smaller than the eye of a needle?
I don't know what you were getting paid as an entry level programmer, but whatever it was, I'll bet you that much that it's more than an entry-level teacher gets in your school district
Well, why didn't I get a better job, you ask? Well, I had a
These whining teachers get the whole Summer off. I never got that. Or, they can work Summer school and pull in an average of 50+k.
You're rebuttal about "average accross the profession" just doesn't compute. Somebody has to make up the other side of that average, which means that experienced teachers are making a lot more than the average. Perhaps there is an experienced teacher making 58k for every entry-level teacher making 30k.
That still sounds like d*** good money to me. Maybe that's because I don't eat out every night, drive a Mercedes, live in a box mansion, or buy every new disposable gadget that comes down the pike.
The bottom line? Teachers make enough. End of story.
If they don't like their jobs, they are free to quit.
Don't go trotting out your anecdote of some teacher who's poor either. I could have whined too, but I made my choices for reasons external to the job. Odds are that's what the teachers have done too. I wager most of them have spouses in other professions and they can't move to some other district because their combined income would be less. Well guess what? Life ain't fair. Get over it.
Bad news, Mr. Jones: I'm afraid the mitochondria in the 35th from the last cell at the end of the 14th cappilary on the backside of your left pinky have to come out.
Well, I googled around a bit and found a commodity price for some kinds of steel to be $200/ton. Iron is less refined than steel and might be cheaper. OTOH, "art quality" iron might convey a premium. So. He could buy $500/ton premium metal and make something that weights 1000 tons, or cheap scrap at $100/ton and make something that weighs 5000 tons. That may sound like a lot, but iron is 7.86 times as dense as water. Oh... and the quotes were in metric tons which IIRC is 1000kg. So... umm... hopefully I'm doing this right... umm.... 5000*1000kg/7.86 = a volume of iron the same as 636k liters of water. A liter is 1/1000 cubic meter. So, that's 636 cubic meters of iron. Or, a cube of iron about 8.6 meters on a side. That's a solid cube about 25 feet on a side. Solid.
It would probably kill the grass and make a pretty good dent in your lawn, to say the least.:)
How long has it been since a teacher got a decent raise?
Not nearly as long as most people think. 44k average nationwide isn't bad at all. It's more than I made in tech support or programming.
The starving teacher myth is yet another bit of Leftist propoganda served up some people in the media, and it's a very persistant myth. It's almost as persistant as the starving elderly myth. I wager the elderly are, on average, actually the wealthiest segment of society. Lobbying groups like the AARP and pandering politicians want you to believe these interest groups are "starving". It just isn't true.
Of course there are exceptions. There always are. It's just that the "starving arborists" don't have a lobbying group like the NEA or AARP.
Patents run out. Yeah, I know... it takes a long time, but it's not nearly as long as copyright. For something like printers, the technology will still be useful. I mean, paper will still be paper in 2030, or whenever the patent runs out.
Also, the patent should disclose enough details to make the thing. Although the manufacturing processes probably involve trade secrets, they are probably not too difficult to figure out.
Some of the early inkjet technologies must be getting reasonably close to losing patent protection by now. Who will step forward and commoditize this technology for us? How hard would that be to do? Don't tell me there's no money in it either. Just ask anybody who is involved with making generic drugs.
You sorta missed the point. Of course I didn't mean that judges would be deciding every fine detail. They would use their judgement to um... judge when that's appropriate.
In the cause of auto theft, no sane judge lets someone walk on grand theft auto because the thief says "I thought it was sculpture, not an auto".
I can see how you thought I was advocating for judicial decisions on all the fine points, because I focused on judges and juries; but there is a larger world where this applies. The appropriate use of judgement would result in judges tossing out frivolous attempts to collect compulsory licensing fees (as in the bit-barf example) as well as judges expediting egregious attempts to deny licensing fees (as in the example of someone who thinks a rap CD isn't music).
In other words, good judgement is a close ally of "common sense" and would not result in the kind of over litigious society we see today. In other words, I think we're just hung up on semantics and inference here; which is notoriously difficult to arbitrate no Slashdot and other online forums...
In a conversation, you could have interjected and we would have resolved this very quickly... On Slashdot, it takes a whole day and we probably still don't understand eachother completely!
How about requiring "musicians" to perform before they can copyright music?
A "musician" is a person or group of people, not a machine.
To "performance" is when the musician(s) perform physical actions on the instruments that produce a work that the audience recognizes as being disctinct from other copyrighted works.
An "instrument" is a device that is designed to produce sound when acted upon by a musician. A song must have a minimum number of "notes" to be copyrighted. There must be at least one physical action on the part of the musician to create each note. Thus, a computer is not an instrument because it has purposes other than producing sound. It's perfectly OK for the musician to enhance his music with a computer, but there must still be an instrument hooked to the computer. The musician cannot simply hit one key on his MIDI keyboard and use it to trigger bit-barf on his computer. That would be a one-note song and thus not copyrightable.
Furthermore, a "musician" must have had several paid performances of the work, indoors at an establishment that serves food and/or a concert hall, and there must be no kickbacks from artist to venue. Works that fail to meet these criteria would still be protected by copyright; they just wouldn't get compulsory license fees.
A piece of "music" must be distinguishable from other pieces of "music" by a jury.
There might still be some loopholes in this, but I think that covers it pretty well. You can't license bit-barf under these rules. Nobody will come to hear it.
Hey, guess what? You have to use judgement. In fact, they actually have people in court called judges. You know. Those guys and gals in the funny black dresses and/or wigs depending on where you hail from. Last I heard the judges--get this--actually have to judge things. They haven't been replaced by referees who simply follow the rules as written. We know that because they aren't wearing black and white striped shirts, and they don't blow whistles (or whatever it is refs do in other games and countries besides USA football).
Of course there are guidelines. Personally I'd say anything that can be played live and sound enough like the recording for a jury to identify the tune as unique from other tunes, and to name that tune, is music.
Thus, bit barf dumped to a.wav file is not music because nobody can play it on an instrument, and most bit barf would sound very similar to the jury.
But of course you'd have to use judgement. Some wrapper stopping and starting bit barf while bragging about his sexual conquests might fall into the grey area, but if enough people testify that they find it entertaining and prefer Cornrow Groovy bit-barf fine ladies to other works of the same genre, then guess what: It's music.
But the bottom line is that somebody will have to make up their minds, it may be subjective, and the loser will have to live with the answer.
Slashdot needs a Real Soon Now and/or Vaporware icon/category. Come on, guys, fire up your favorite graphics program and make a nice whisp of steam or something.
To balance that out, we also need an "on sale now" category for cool technology that was not only promised but also delivered. Perhaps a cash register with smoke coming out of it to let us know that what was once vapor is not only available but "red hot".
Oh, BTW, I've got a car that gets 200 mpg. OK, OK, It's just something I'd like to do so I've established a club which consists of me and 6 other guys who drink beer, play poker, and talk about cars. However, since Slashdot doesn't seem to know the difference between that and an actual product you can buy, we were wondering if you'd give us a $100,000. You know. For beer and car parts and stuff. The 200 mpg care is beer-powered. That's the best part. Honestly.
Why does Peta want to byte them? Do they wear fur?/me ducks...
Linux AV software writers? Maybe they should team up with the Maytag repairman.
Oh, and for good measure... ummm... I dunno, pour some hot grits on that, make a Beowulf cluster. You're all smart guys, I'm sure you'll think of something.
$2-$6 a game? I pumped more than that into some of these machines in one afternoon when I was a kid. Especially Defender and Tempest. Grr... I just gave up on that on those a while. I someone had time-traveled back and told me that unlimited play would cost no more than $6, I wouldn't have believed them. If they had... well... I would have played anyway. I was adicted. Besides. Who wants to play games when their over 30 anyway. Oh. I forgot. This is Slashdot.
The Washington Post says Verizon just announced they are rolling out high-speed wireless internet for $80/mo in Washington DC and San Diego. Industry analysts are skeptical that Verizon can make any money. Hmmmm... <sarcasm>I wonder why.</sarcasm>
Worse yet, some Indian general might have gone off half-cocked and nuked Pakistan in "retaliation". AFAIK though, don't the Indians have something like NORAD that can analyze the trajectory of incoming objects and determine that the angle was inconsistant with a Pakistani missile? I hope.
Slashdot Mirror
First, try BWI.com. There you can various types of boards that use the Transmeta CPUs (though Efficeon is probably not there yet). The most reasonably priced ones are made by Wincomm; but for some reason they aren't linked off BWI's main site any more. Last time I looked, I was still able to get the listing of Wincomm products by using their search function. Some projects such as the CharmIT wearable computer were based on the Boser HS-1600 board, which seems to be a popular choice. It costs something like $800-$1000. I have no idea why the things are so bloody expensive. Bear in mind that you are usually getting built-in memory and LCD controllers, video, sound, etc. It's almost a complete system. You still need a power supply, keyboard, mouse, and monitor. Also, the chip is soldered to the board, so it's not a true CPU-mobo solution. Clips for the Crusoe do exist, it's just that the board makers haven't used them. I seem to recall having stumbled across one, but it was by a manufacturer that's not well known and I lost the link... Sorry. Oh, I almost forgot the best thing about BWI: They quote prices for onesies and twosies right there on the website. No need to call sales. What a refreshing approach!
The other site is All American There you can actually get Transmeta CPUs, but without a mobo to plug them into this is only of interest to you if you license the reference design from Transmeta and contract for the fabrication of your own boards. Technicly that's not nearly as daunting as it sounds. With the proper files, you can usually send these things off to be prototyped for not too much money, and of course volume production is even cheaper. It's just that the startup cost is high--licensing from Transmeta, and expensive proprietary packages to manipulate the designs if you want to customize them.
It's rather ironic that Linus is associated with a company that throws up so many barriers to hackers. And I'm saying this as someone who owns Transmeta shares and is disgusted with the way this is handled, but I'm just like the guy on teh commercial who "owns Nike". My stake is so small that nobody would listen to me. So I vent this stuff on Yahoo's finance board, and sometimes here.
I wonder how many people work for Slashdot and own shares in Transmeta, which is coming out with the TM8000 right now, and is announcing earnings tomorrow. Full disclosure: I own Transmeta shares too.
Now, usually Slashdot greets these RSN products with glee and neglects to mention that they are vapor. Not this time, nosiree. Why? Because if it were true it would compete with Transmeta.
Not accusing anybody of anything wrong here... just... well... I've drawn my conclusions. You draw yours.
Ummm... someone gets a virus on my box, then convinces my ISP that I dowloaded a whole bunch of crap, then I get a huge bill, then I have to prove I didn't download?
No Thanks.
If that's going to work, the ISP had d*** well better be sure they are filtering packets on a per user basis, so that I can't download anything through the Kazaa port unless I really am a registered Kazaa user, and they had better make sure that if "I" try to do that they flag it as a virus and not a new signup or something. No other way.
Look.
The ISP billing right now is "pure". I get billed for connectivity and that's it. The last thing I need is for my connection to turn into something like the POTS line, where kids in the house could "dial" the equivalent of a 900 number.
...reporting on it. All over the worl there are tribal people killing eachother, and none of the conflicts get as much attention as the Arab-Israeli conflict. Neither Israel nor Palestine are of strategic importance to the West or to the Arab worlds.
By mutual agreement both the Western and Arab press should just stop reporting on it, and stop giving money to the respective sides.
Think of the benefits--unrest in the region would no longer affect our markets. Foreign policy resources could be devoted to solving other issues.
As for the people that inhabit the region, once they realize they aren't that important, they would have to lear how to work together and establish a true secular democracy with respect for the rights of all.
Additionally, the temple mount could be comdemned with the cooperation of religious leaders from both sides. Nobody would be allowed to set foot on it. Why, that would make it even more sacred, wouldn't it?
Then, land could be set aside for a new temple and a new mosque to replace the old run-down ones that are there now. Since the Dome of the Rock is still in pretty good shape though, they should probably be allowed to move it.
Then the people who live there would all have to get real jobs.
As a person of Jewish ancestry I understand the feelings that swirl around the region, but frankly as an American and a convert to Christianity I see nothing but folly there. The "Holy Land" has become a joke. Maybe this is what Revelation is about--fires, brimstone, etc. Perhaps God will destroy that land with some kind of natural disaster... let's say a fault opens up and a huge volcano erupts, covering the entire region with ash like Pompei.
That would be the best thing that could happen
Really.
I'm just sick and tired of hearing about it.
When these people are old and grey, and look back on their lives consumed with revenge over some 2000 year family fued (Jews and Arabs are brothers!) what will they think they have accomplished with their lives?
Any blue collar worker in the US who payed off his mortgage and raised a family has accomplished far more than the most respected leader from either camp.
end, rant.
Because he's an idiot
That's a very short sighted statement. Rush was prescribed Oxycontin for post-operative pain. Learn more about Oxycontin. Notice, it does not appear that anybody has kept statistics on what percentage of patients prescribed Oxycontin by doctors went on to become addicts. However, the marketers of this product (oxycontin is not a new drug, it's a different form of delivery for a synthetic opiate) have been criticized for over aggressive marketing to physicians (who really ought not to be swayed by marketing, but they're human too).
The bottom line? You too may someday be prescribed an opiate, get "used to it" and then find yourself begging for a "script" or seeking out a corrupt doctor who will "cash your script".
Don't forget: "Pride comes before a fall".
So, treat these drugs with the caution they deserve. Don't take them unless you absolutely have to. Start at the lowest dose possible. Always follow prescribed dosing, etc...
Of course you would never become an addict. You don't write code with bugs in it either. :)
When will they get it through their heads that the construction of the bill won't every solve counterfeiting? Anything they can make, others can make too. Last time, the Russian mafia had excellent fakes out almost before most people in the US had the new bills in their pockets!
The only practical solution is to surveil the money (not the people). What do I mean by "surveil the money?". Well, each bill already has a serial number. You don't have to track every bill either, just most bills. Scanners at banks, convenience stores, and other common cash exchange points would transmit the location of the bill, as well as validate the bill.
To catch a counterfeiter, just watch for the following inconsistancies: Bills moving at hypersonic speeds accross the US, serial numbers that aren't in the database, two bills with the same number in different locations, etc.
Then, just pull up the surveilance tapes from the stores where the bills are passed. Match faces. If a suspicious bill is passed by the same person more than once, you have just cause. Get warrant. Search house. You've got them.
A few crooks would still slip through now and then, but high-volume operations would be extremely difficult because the odds would catch up with these guys. They would have to control the valid bill to prevent the dupe flag from being raised, or conspire to hack the database, or launder money through stores that didn't participate in the system--activities which are much easier to investigate and track.
Thanks to Google for archiving my struggle against AT&T.
Not sure if I mentioned it in the USENET postings, but I just started documenting things around Oct. 1, when DNC was supposed to go into effect. We registered our number almost as soon as DNC was available. In reality there were at least 10, perhaps even 15 calls to me from AT&T "Advantage" wireless, and even without the DNC they are still not supposed to be telemarketing me after I've informed them that I don't want to be called.
I have no prior business relationship with AT&T.
So. What did they do? They started asking for my father. He owns the land line in our house, and has AT&T long distance. Notice, that doesn't excuse AT&T--they were asking for *me*.
So today I got a call (not documented on USENET yet) and what did they do? They asked for my father. Serves them right. My father is 80 yrs old and hard of hearing. He has to ask them twice sometimes before he understands what they are saying and then of course he has no desire to get a wireless phone.
What's really funny is that half the time the calls sound like they are coming from the bottom of a well filled with sand paper and angry bees. Yeah. (sarcasm on)I really want wireless from these guys(sarcasm off).
Anyway, I didn't think /. would become the forum for me to vent my rage at AT&T, but now it is. Great. Let me reiterate: If you have AT&T "Advantage" Wirelesss, drop it and go with somebody else. If you are thinking of getting wireless, don't get AT&T. When you cancel your AT&T wireless, tell them it's because istartedi told you he hates being called.
Now, if I could just convince my father to get AT&T LD off our land line...
Slashdot still needs a RSN category (see my previous post) but this flight is certainly a lot more likely than a 20 fold improvement in solar cell efficiency.
Only trouble is, I proposed that the icon for the RSN Promis Fulfilled category be a cash register with vapor coming out of it. Since the Chinese aren't selling anything here (yet) that seems inappropriate now.
Then again, if this succeeds they will eventually get all kinds of economic spinoffs from it.
From the bitterness department: How much longer would this have taken if Bill Clinton and some dirty associates at Loral Systems hadn't sold classified missile technology? The Clinton admin did on a smaller scale what the German rocket scientists did for the US. They should name their first space station after Bill Clinton.
From the Wall Street department: This continues to prove that the "China as export market" theory used by Free Traders is full of holes. China is so large that it can create its own home grown industries in just about anything now. Yes, there will be some opportunities, but not nearly as much as some predicted. Yes. You can stop drooling about the "billion customers" because you will be competing with Local Industry that gets there first, and has a distinct advantage. Not that it can't be done mind you. There's not too much to stop the US from doing to China what Japan did to the US in the 70s with cars, but it's not as easy as just "opening China". We actually have to make something that the Chinese can afford and will be willing to buy. Imagine that!
To elaborate further, this will really be a kick to the whole Chinese aerospace industry. Could there be a Chinese answer to Boeing in the future? If I were an aerospace incumbent, I'd be quaking in my boots right now. I'd probably even offer discounts to the Chinese just to keep them from competing in aerospace. Boeing, Airbus, etc... If the Chinese go into that business then short, Short, SHORT the aerospace stocks!
I'll be glad when memetics is out of fashion. I'm sick of hearing about it.
Nothing against you personally, but memetic arguments always seem to come off as 1. pretentious 2. absolving oneself of personal responsability 3. a "I have a hammer so everything is a nail" approach. In this case, the hammer is genetics, evolution, and an overblown analogy.
Now, if memetics proves to be a viral idea, does that invalidate memetics or prove it? Quite a paradox, eh? I suppose it's entirely possible for memetics to be valid; it's just that it may not be valid for people to think about it!
If the record companies can force you to lost quality through a digital-to-analog-to-digital conversion process,
But can they even do that? Ultimately, everything has to be heard. If you acousticly couple (wow, there's something I thought was dead) a hi-fi speaker to a hi-fi mic, and average the analog readings, can you back out the digital signal with perfect fidelity, or with fidelity such that comparison with others (via p2p networks of course) would allow you to collectively arrive at a faithful reproduction of the digital work?
Obviously you can get very good audio with this techniqe, but purists will insist on digital perfection.
First, can it be done? Second, can it be done with reasonably priced hardware?
In other words, how big is the analog loophole? Big enough to drive a truck through, or smaller than the eye of a needle?
I don't know what you were getting paid as an entry level programmer, but whatever it was, I'll bet you that much that it's more than an entry-level teacher gets in your school district
I was making 29. Starting salaries for teachers in Fairfax County appear to be at least 30, or maybe 36 but I'm getting crappy routing to those sites.
So pay up sucka.
Well, why didn't I get a better job, you ask? Well, I had a
These whining teachers get the whole Summer off. I never got that. Or, they can work Summer school and pull in an average of 50+k.
You're rebuttal about "average accross the profession" just doesn't compute. Somebody has to make up the other side of that average, which means that experienced teachers are making a lot more than the average. Perhaps there is an experienced teacher making 58k for every entry-level teacher making 30k.
That still sounds like d*** good money to me. Maybe that's because I don't eat out every night, drive a Mercedes, live in a box mansion, or buy every new disposable gadget that comes down the pike.
The bottom line? Teachers make enough. End of story.
If they don't like their jobs, they are free to quit.
Don't go trotting out your anecdote of some teacher who's poor either. I could have whined too, but I made my choices for reasons external to the job. Odds are that's what the teachers have done too. I wager most of them have spouses in other professions and they can't move to some other district because their combined income would be less. Well guess what? Life ain't fair. Get over it.
Bad news, Mr. Jones: I'm afraid the mitochondria in the 35th from the last cell at the end of the 14th cappilary on the backside of your left pinky have to come out.
That'll be $1500.
Just think how much iron $500,000 will buy!
Well, I googled around a bit and found a commodity price for some kinds of steel to be $200/ton. Iron is less refined than steel and might be cheaper. OTOH, "art quality" iron might convey a premium. So. He could buy $500/ton premium metal and make something that weights 1000 tons, or cheap scrap at $100/ton and make something that weighs 5000 tons. That may sound like a lot, but iron is 7.86 times as dense as water. Oh... and the quotes were in metric tons which IIRC is 1000kg. So... umm... hopefully I'm doing this right... umm.... 5000*1000kg/7.86 = a volume of iron the same as 636k liters of water. A liter is 1/1000 cubic meter. So, that's 636 cubic meters of iron. Or, a cube of iron about 8.6 meters on a side. That's a solid cube about 25 feet on a side. Solid.
It would probably kill the grass and make a pretty good dent in your lawn, to say the least. :)
How long has it been since a teacher got a decent raise?
Not nearly as long as most people think. 44k average nationwide isn't bad at all. It's more than I made in tech support or programming.
The starving teacher myth is yet another bit of Leftist propoganda served up some people in the media, and it's a very persistant myth. It's almost as persistant as the starving elderly myth. I wager the elderly are, on average, actually the wealthiest segment of society. Lobbying groups like the AARP and pandering politicians want you to believe these interest groups are "starving". It just isn't true.
Of course there are exceptions. There always are. It's just that the "starving arborists" don't have a lobbying group like the NEA or AARP.
Patents run out. Yeah, I know... it takes a long time, but it's not nearly as long as copyright. For something like printers, the technology will still be useful. I mean, paper will still be paper in 2030, or whenever the patent runs out.
Also, the patent should disclose enough details to make the thing. Although the manufacturing processes probably involve trade secrets, they are probably not too difficult to figure out.
Some of the early inkjet technologies must be getting reasonably close to losing patent protection by now. Who will step forward and commoditize this technology for us? How hard would that be to do? Don't tell me there's no money in it either. Just ask anybody who is involved with making generic drugs.
They're trying to be cool. Everybody knows that's not cool. What a bunch of dorks.
You sorta missed the point. Of course I didn't mean that judges would be deciding every fine detail. They would use their judgement to um... judge when that's appropriate.
In the cause of auto theft, no sane judge lets someone walk on grand theft auto because the thief says "I thought it was sculpture, not an auto".
I can see how you thought I was advocating for judicial decisions on all the fine points, because I focused on judges and juries; but there is a larger world where this applies. The appropriate use of judgement would result in judges tossing out frivolous attempts to collect compulsory licensing fees (as in the bit-barf example) as well as judges expediting egregious attempts to deny licensing fees (as in the example of someone who thinks a rap CD isn't music).
In other words, good judgement is a close ally of "common sense" and would not result in the kind of over litigious society we see today. In other words, I think we're just hung up on semantics and inference here; which is notoriously difficult to arbitrate no Slashdot and other online forums...
In a conversation, you could have interjected and we would have resolved this very quickly... On Slashdot, it takes a whole day and we probably still don't understand eachother completely!
How about requiring "musicians" to perform before they can copyright music?
A "musician" is a person or group of people, not a machine.
To "performance" is when the musician(s) perform physical actions on the instruments that produce a work that the audience recognizes as being disctinct from other copyrighted works.
An "instrument" is a device that is designed to produce sound when acted upon by a musician. A song must have a minimum number of "notes" to be copyrighted. There must be at least one physical action on the part of the musician to create each note. Thus, a computer is not an instrument because it has purposes other than producing sound. It's perfectly OK for the musician to enhance his music with a computer, but there must still be an instrument hooked to the computer. The musician cannot simply hit one key on his MIDI keyboard and use it to trigger bit-barf on his computer. That would be a one-note song and thus not copyrightable.
Furthermore, a "musician" must have had several paid performances of the work, indoors at an establishment that serves food and/or a concert hall, and there must be no kickbacks from artist to venue. Works that fail to meet these criteria would still be protected by copyright; they just wouldn't get compulsory license fees.
A piece of "music" must be distinguishable from other pieces of "music" by a jury.
There might still be some loopholes in this, but I think that covers it pretty well. You can't license bit-barf under these rules. Nobody will come to hear it.
Hey, guess what? You have to use judgement. In fact, they actually have people in court called judges. You know. Those guys and gals in the funny black dresses and/or wigs depending on where you hail from. Last I heard the judges--get this--actually have to judge things. They haven't been replaced by referees who simply follow the rules as written. We know that because they aren't wearing black and white striped shirts, and they don't blow whistles (or whatever it is refs do in other games and countries besides USA football).
Of course there are guidelines. Personally I'd say anything that can be played live and sound enough like the recording for a jury to identify the tune as unique from other tunes, and to name that tune, is music.
Thus, bit barf dumped to a .wav file is not music because nobody can play it on an instrument, and most bit barf would sound very similar to the jury.
But of course you'd have to use judgement. Some wrapper stopping and starting bit barf while bragging about his sexual conquests might fall into the grey area, but if enough people testify that they find it entertaining and prefer Cornrow Groovy bit-barf fine ladies to other works of the same genre, then guess what: It's music.
But the bottom line is that somebody will have to make up their minds, it may be subjective, and the loser will have to live with the answer.
Yeah, that's tough. Nothing's perfect.
Patient: I don't feel so good.
Doctor: I've got good news and bad news.
Patient: Give me the good news first.
Doctor: You're cancer free.
Patient: Wow! That's great. What's the bad news?
Doctor: You've got worms, and you seem to have caught a nasty virus.
Slashdot needs a Real Soon Now and/or Vaporware icon/category. Come on, guys, fire up your favorite graphics program and make a nice whisp of steam or something.
To balance that out, we also need an "on sale now" category for cool technology that was not only promised but also delivered. Perhaps a cash register with smoke coming out of it to let us know that what was once vapor is not only available but "red hot".
Oh, BTW, I've got a car that gets 200 mpg. OK, OK, It's just something I'd like to do so I've established a club which consists of me and 6 other guys who drink beer, play poker, and talk about cars. However, since Slashdot doesn't seem to know the difference between that and an actual product you can buy, we were wondering if you'd give us a $100,000. You know. For beer and car parts and stuff. The 200 mpg care is beer-powered. That's the best part. Honestly.
Why does Peta want to byte them? Do they wear fur? /me ducks...
Linux AV software writers? Maybe they should team up with the Maytag repairman.
Oh, and for good measure... ummm... I dunno, pour some hot grits on that, make a Beowulf cluster. You're all smart guys, I'm sure you'll think of something.
$2-$6 a game? I pumped more than that into some of these machines in one afternoon when I was a kid. Especially Defender and Tempest. Grr... I just gave up on that on those a while. I someone had time-traveled back and told me that unlimited play would cost no more than $6, I wouldn't have believed them. If they had... well... I would have played anyway. I was adicted. Besides. Who wants to play games when their over 30 anyway. Oh. I forgot. This is Slashdot.
The Washington Post says Verizon just announced they are rolling out high-speed wireless internet for $80/mo in Washington DC and San Diego. Industry analysts are skeptical that Verizon can make any money. Hmmmm... <sarcasm>I wonder why.</sarcasm>
Worse yet, some Indian general might have gone off half-cocked and nuked Pakistan in "retaliation". AFAIK though, don't the Indians have something like NORAD that can analyze the trajectory of incoming objects and determine that the angle was inconsistant with a Pakistani missile? I hope.