Ok, so they're trying this "protection" out on the music tracks for the movie "Fast and the Furious".
So, now that its hit SlashDot, I expect hundreds (to thousands?) of curious geeks may travel out to their local music store, and buy a CD of a pretty awful movie that they (the readers) most likely would not have purchased under normal circumstances.
So, you're all going to head out in the name of science, and dump $20 on a CD, and plug it into your computer/DVD player. 80% of you will probably be using older drives/hardware (I still own a 2x IDE drive) that wont listen when this CD sends the copy-controls crap, and most likely you'll be able to read it like a normal CD. Or, wait a week for software upgrade, and you will. In any case, sooner or later you'll be able to rip it like normal, and the stores sure as hell won't be giving refunds.
Well, you're now stuck with a CD, and Universal just got a nice surge of capital to work on the development of "NeverCopyCD v2".
Show your anger by not buying it! Better yet, don't buy anything put out by Universal this Christmas, that'll shock them a lot more...
Since you posted that AirSnort link, I was curious, so I popped over to sourceforge and downloaded it. Part of their documentation says: "For a key length of 128 bits, this translates to about 1500 packets." then it goes on to describe how you can search for certain constants (starts with 0xAA, etc) within the packet to see which random keys were successful. Interesting stuff, and definitely a clever way to decode: thanks to flaws in the logic, every bit rate can be reduced to 8-bit encryption.
However, once you've collected your packets and broken the key, you now have a decoded packet. Well, what does that mean? You have the framing information (packet length, header) and the message body (which is just raw data).
I'd bet a 7-day park-hopper pass that the data in the packet's body is encrypted a second time with a more reliable scheme. If there's one thing Disney knows how to do well, its make money, and they can't risk the bad PR for this to foul up.
Low Priority for SOME phone builders, not all...
on
New Nokia Phone
·
· Score: 1
Funny, on Wednesday of last week I submitted a story to SlashDot (which was denied) about how VoiceStream announced (press release) that they've just completed their nationwide upgrade to GSM/GPRS. But I guess since they're not AT&T, noone noticed.
VoiceStream's new iStream network can run at speeds up to 56 kilobits per second and averages up to 40 kilobits per second, comparable to what customers experience from a home dial-up connection, compared to 9.6 kbps limits on most other wireless networks.
VoiceStream's iStream data network is based on GPRS (General Packet Radio Services) technology - an extension of VoiceStream's GSM based wireless network. VoiceStream operates the largest GSM network in the United States, serving over 6,000 cities, and is the first carrier to offer customers access to its high-speed data services while traveling anywhere on its network nationwide.
When you look at politics, always trace the money trail.
Why are some of the states not "signing on"? Perhaps they, like many of SlashDot's audience, are unhappy that Microsoft won't be paying out as much cash as hoped...
States like Massachusetts depend a lot on tax money. Like it or not, it's a by-product of their liberal government style, big promises means big governement costs, and like businesses, government always passes its costs on to its "consumers", i.e. taxpayers. But, raising taxes is not "in vogue", so they are constantly scrambling to find other cash sources to pump their constituents full of pay-ou... err, entitlements.
Here we have Microsoft, the ultimate Tech cash cow, and they did a BAD thing, so naturally our government stepped to punish them. We cheer that the government recognized that they were acting against market forces, but government is cheering for new-found cash...
Compare this to the government's recent lawsuit on Big Tobacco. They lost, the people won, right? The corporations were forced to pay millions for bad advertisements, and that money was supposed to go to the states for education, right? Where did that money go? Studies show at most 10% of the states have actually created anti-smoking programs with the money, everyone else threw it into the "general fund" so they could pad their pet projects.
Don't be surprised that some states are "holding out", just understand that they aren't doing it for the reasons you think.
"But but but... its cheaper to build solar panels on the ground!"
1. There is no nighttime in space. There are no clouds in space, no atmosphere to dilute the sun's energy, no birds to fly by and crap on the panels. That means 24h efficiency.
2. Yes, you COULD build a 10-square-mile solar panel farm in New Mexico, but you wouldn't even be able to get the current out of state before line-losses, frequency problems, and other transmission problems ate all of your energy.
Its like you could build several dozen nuclear plants in Nevada, enough to power the ENTIRE North America on nuclear alone, but you couldn't build a power grid transmission system strong enough to move the power to where it is consumed.
1. All Mars planetary exploration missions would be contracted out to colleges and universities. It would be NASA's job to get the equipment there, but academia's job to figure out what to do once there.
2. International Space Station: Complete the project as currently spec'ed, so Clinton has something for his legacy. 5 years after completion, implement plans to move and land the ISS on the Moon, and set up a permanent base of operations.
3. Create an official robotics division, take on (corporate) sponsors from colleges and tech companies. Implement robotic material gatherers to "mine" the moon, starting on the far side. Use the material gathered on the moon to create more structures, or tunnels, or whatnot. Once sufficient "warehouse" type buildings are set up, allow corporate funding of "factories" to keep the projects going. Low gravity manufacturing has incredible promise for efficiencies, but the bottleneck is transportation...
4. Which means its time to revise the space shuttle vs reuseable launch vehicle argument.
5. Create more partnerships with media outlets, through telemetry-controlled robots, or other projects. Make it "fun" for kids to get interested in science again.
Our current conversion in "the industry" is:
11 MW : 10 million people
... but that's at USA's rate of consumption. So, assume that on your island home, assume you need half the energy, so you can serve twice the people.
So, in one square mile, you've powered approximately 35 million USA citizens, or say 60 million DR citizens.
Before you say "Thats Great!", you can produce the same energy with a combustion turbine in 1/4th an acre... thats a self-contained, indoor, weather-proof weather-independant generator. No worries with cells breaking in a hurricane, and you can control your line frequency! (something that's difficult to do with solar) Yes, we love 60HZ! Modern United States AC electronics crap out if the frequency drops 59HZ, and typically, we control the grid to run between 59.997 and 60.003 HZ... our control can be that precise over 2/3rds of the continent!
When I first saw the title, I saw "diagonal" chips, and in my mind, I imagined layers of silicon wafers stacked in 3D like//// with interconnections between layers running \\\\.
But no, all they did was decide that instead of the time-tested grid format, we'll just run our interconnection wires 45 degrees diagonally accross the chip, but still pretend there are grid "nodes" for automation purposes. (for those not in the know, interconnect are the higher-level wiring that connects "blocks" of circuits together, such as connecting adders to multiplexers)
Building 3D layered chips is a whole 'nother beast.
Just remember, they're only saving wiring only at corner-type junctions, and even then, only what can be optimized to fit within the existing wiring mesh. Still, saving wiring is a big improvement; as we should all know, excess wiring causes heat, voltage, and frequency problems (due to line charging effects). On the other hand, most modern toolkits are written to optimize to a 2-D grid, not to mention most modern lithograph manufacturing tools. But, thats the point of the "discovery".
For anyone who's gone through advanced chip design, you learn that there are advantages and disadvantages to designing chips in asynchronous modes. But then again, isn't that the case with all technologies.
The most common "clock-less" model is designing the circuit as a Finite State Machine, where the circuit is constantly checking "inputs" to determine when to move to the next step. This solves many timing issues: you send out a trigger pulse that activates a sub-circuit, and wait for a pulse on a return line to tell you when that piece is done computing. What you end up with is a complex system of Strobes and Acknologments, and lots of edge-sensitive circuitry (as opposed to Hi and Lo that is the basis of CMOS)
Also, some types of designs run better as async circuits: FFT and Division circuits if I recall, you just trigger it to start and let it the whole bundle cascade itself to completion. Also, bus circuitry in modern motherboards works in Async mode already (theres this nifty thing called IRQ...)
That reminded me of a genetic algorithms class I had once, where the object was to write code to emulate a flock of birds (aka boids).
Every object in the worldspace updated in its own independant cycle; the trick was to adjust the bird's forward angle to move towards other birds only if the distance between them was outside a set of bounds (if its too far, move closer; if its too close, turn away)
The result? Flocking behaviour. Another example of a seemingly complex natural system reduced to a small set of rules.
Ok, I've heard that the day that Congress voted for the DMCA, they used a voice vote such that the results of the vote couldn't be tracked to any one person. Any truth to this?
Is there any written record of who was present that day the law was voted into effect? Did anyone tape C-Span that morning?
Personally, I would hold them all responsible until each individual sentor/congress-person could prove their dissent (innocent until proven guilty need not apply). I also think its (faintly) amusing that the issues of "copyright" and "fair use" aren't making their way to public discussion, what with the election year and all. But then again, why should the television stations give any dissenting opinion (given that they are owned by the same "Big Media" who pushed for the DMCA)?
Lets see, you dress up all crazy, walk into the mother of all protests, mouth off to the police, go and hide behind a "legal observer", and complain you were arrested. If you're going to walk the walk, you gotta talk the talk.
I have the advantage of living in Philadelphia, and I must say we're all incredibly proud of how the police conducted themselves, given the sheer amount of imported stupidity that arrived to "protest" in our streets. Last time I checked, "protesting" does not involve flipping the bird at police, tipping over dumpsters in the middle of the streets, or throwing mystery liquids (water? soap? piss?) into the faces of cops.
If you want to protest "big business", then get your groups together, and camp outside the front gates of Ford, Exon, Microsoft, Time-Warner or IBM. Oh, and if you think you're going to get any better reception at the Democrat's convetion, you're in for a surprise...
Ahem, last time I checked, not 5 years ago, the MP3 had just arrived on the scene, and noone could play them because processor speeds were so low (heck, math coproccessors weren't even standard in the Intel line [SX/DX] until the Pentium I) The first mp3 encoders were command-line (anyone remember l3enc?), and yet look at all the apps that are available today..
All I have to say is look how the world has changed since then; computers are now standard issue college equipement, and we have 100 times the willing manpower (programmer power, especially those with a strong sharing ethic) to speed up development of new "standards". We live in interesting times...
... but "The Wall" in the Philadelphia area stopped doing it also. And I don't think "Sam Goody" ever did.
But know what pisses me off? That I go to the store, and look at the shelves for Black Tape for a Blue Girl, and instead, find an empty marker and 40 copies of Black Sabbath right next to it.
And the guy behind the counter says "We dont have the shelf room to have a copy of everything." Maybe thats because they only stock what the RIAA tells them should be "popular".
Sorry, its just that too many people equate the networks with being the only reporters of information... True, you didn't explicitly mention the internet in your original post, but I felt that it was a point some people may need to be reminded of.
As to being too cynical, I'll fully admit that I'm way too cynical for my age; maybe there's something about engineering and sciences that pulls the shrouds away from our eyes, that lets us see through the crap that is modern media and what passes for culture.
Just because the big networks would "go away", doesn't mean that the Web has to...
Do you trust Slashdot? Its not a "major" network, it has a tiny staff that does a small amount of field reporting compared to the networks, and 95% of its news is delivered from untested sources. And yet we trust it because they've developed a reputation of having reliable news.
So, we lose WB, CNN, and (MS)NBC, BMG and Columbia House. But if there's one thing that the Internet (should have) taught us, its that distributed sources can work just as well as a few monopolistic ones. Buy your music from smaller labels! Watch more independant films, or anime, or whatver. MTV wont be shoveling "hipness" at us, but then again, who put them in the position to tell us whats cool or not? The world will go on, as it has before.
Hmm... why does this sound like an excerpt from an Obviousman comic?
Another part of the story was that the one scientist had accidentally killed his daughter in a "careless smoking" accident. His wife obsessed over the daughter, never knowing it was the husband who accidentally burned down the house... and he dreaded the release of the product, knowing his wife would one day re-live the daughter's life right up to the moment she died... and learn why.
Its funny, because I distinctly remember reading a short story in 1988 (which was written in the '70s) about this very same topic. Shall I share:
An inventor had developed a viewing-machine that let the user look into the past, by tracing tachyons or some residual radiation, etc etc, the idea being that they could tune the machine to ancient Rome and learn what actually happened at these events that modern history had blurred (because he was being funded by some museum). It also talked a bit about how he was forced to add filters on behalf of the Catholic Church, such that the device could never look at year 0 and verify (or disprove) the existance of Christ. But at the end of the story, the scientist is visited by the NSA, who try to sieze all of his work...
but the hero has outsmarted them, because in an Open Source fashion, he had mailed a copy of the plans to all of the major newspapers the day before. Then the government employee explains to him how his device could not only look on the far past, but at the near, 1 second ago past, and he was personally responsible for inventing the ultimate scrying device.
As to the blurb, I'm sure that you've all ready Harlequin and the Tick Tock Man? If not, why not?
You know, Orrin Hatch already tried to run for President 2000, but he received so little public support that he withdrew months ago.
Which is sad, because Hatch seems a lot more techno-savvy than Al Gore, who for the life of him can't seem to manage his emails... can you say tape backup? I can...
Maybe I'm biased because I work for the "Power Grid", but I think the Media is vastly over-rating the danger. Here at PJM, we have an estimated 18,000 MW in our Queue A - that's new generation in the final planning stages - and we're getting new generators added to our pool every day.
There is always concern because of the growth in home electronics over the past few years; I'm definitely guilty of adding to the demand... Last summer caught us by surprise, not because of lack of generation, but because of reactive power modeling errors, but that event, not to mention Y2K, made us take a hard look, and all of our models are correct to the best of our knowledge.
As to the NIMBY phenomena, I point you to our Queue A map as to where new (planned) generation is scheduled to be built in our zone. Its a double-edged sword; everyone wants the electricity, but noone wants the plant in their county.. But if you put the plant too far away, then you have the added problems with transmission...
Keep in mind that the CNET article was entirely about CalISO (which is only a few years old and not as developed yet as the east coast) which is only one piece of the entire puzzle. And I'm sure "HomePower" thanks you for the free advertisement, but I hope next time you at Slashdot try to cover the other angles in the story first, other than the pop-answer. Rememeber, one Nuclear plant generates over 1100 MW of power, thats 1,100,000,000 Watts, or about 167,000 times the output of the lead article on HomePower, and those people are the exception, not the rule.
-- Scott
Oh, btw, if it gets back to me, I'm not an official representative of PJM LLC. Thats what Customer Relations is for.
Have you heard of Moby? I found MP3's of this guy in 1995, because someone put 2 of his MP3's on the LAN. I went out and (over the course of a year) bought 5 CDs because of it, and I think a lot of others have also, because now his songs are (finally) making it to the Top 20's.
Or how about Delerium? These folks put about 3 album's worth of MP3's on their webpage, and now their songs are appearing in movies and television ads, which generate a lot more money for them... It's a darn good cooincidence to me...
Exposure. Thats what generates money in this age, and nothing does it better than the Internet. Its a perfect parallel to the 1980's casette tape (please tell me you know what these are) craze , where everyone and their neighbor traded their favorites. To the record companies, it's short term loss for long term gain.
And ever notice who's doing all the complaining? Its the old-school groups like Metallica and Dr. Dre, who realize that, hey, if the public can listen to new bands that do the same genre we do, then they might not listen to us anymore, so lets kill off their means of exposure, since we already have ours.
Why the rucus? Because the establishment isn't making money. They realize that the MPAA/etc. can't be the middle-man anymore, so they don't get a cut of the profit. It used to be that MTV and the Record Labels told us what we could listen to, but it doesn't have to be that way anymore, and they're scared.
Without MP3's, how many of you would even know that Techno (all the flavors) and/or Goth exists? Or would you still be listening to InSync and Backstreet Boys, because thats all the Radio tells us is out there?
I read in this week's Newsweek that Michael Eisner, CEO of Disney (since you mentioned it) earned a salary of ~$860 million in 1998.
Sure, the company acts vicious to keep consumers from skimping them out of a $25 DVD or a $18 CD (both of which are priced WAY above cost), but look where the money goes! Not to the developers, the thinkers, who are skimping by at ~$30k a year...
That's why your "worker-bee"s don't care... and those workers are still consumers themselves...
Slashdot Mirror
Ok, so they're trying this "protection" out on the music tracks for the movie "Fast and the Furious".
So, now that its hit SlashDot, I expect hundreds (to thousands?) of curious geeks may travel out to their local music store, and buy a CD of a pretty awful movie that they (the readers) most likely would not have purchased under normal circumstances.
So, you're all going to head out in the name of science, and dump $20 on a CD, and plug it into your computer/DVD player. 80% of you will probably be using older drives/hardware (I still own a 2x IDE drive) that wont listen when this CD sends the copy-controls crap, and most likely you'll be able to read it like a normal CD. Or, wait a week for software upgrade, and you will. In any case, sooner or later you'll be able to rip it like normal, and the stores sure as hell won't be giving refunds.
Well, you're now stuck with a CD, and Universal just got a nice surge of capital to work on the development of "NeverCopyCD v2".
Show your anger by not buying it! Better yet, don't buy anything put out by Universal this Christmas, that'll shock them a lot more...
Since you posted that AirSnort link, I was curious, so I popped over to sourceforge and downloaded it. Part of their documentation says: "For a key length of 128 bits, this translates to about 1500 packets." then it goes on to describe how you can search for certain constants (starts with 0xAA, etc) within the packet to see which random keys were successful. Interesting stuff, and definitely a clever way to decode: thanks to flaws in the logic, every bit rate can be reduced to 8-bit encryption.
However, once you've collected your packets and broken the key, you now have a decoded packet. Well, what does that mean? You have the framing information (packet length, header) and the message body (which is just raw data).
I'd bet a 7-day park-hopper pass that the data in the packet's body is encrypted a second time with a more reliable scheme. If there's one thing Disney knows how to do well, its make money, and they can't risk the bad PR for this to foul up.
Funny, on Wednesday of last week I submitted a story to SlashDot (which was denied) about how VoiceStream announced (press release) that they've just completed their nationwide upgrade to GSM/GPRS. But I guess since they're not AT&T, noone noticed.
VoiceStream's new iStream network can run at speeds up to 56 kilobits per second and averages up to 40 kilobits per second, comparable to what customers experience from a home dial-up connection, compared to 9.6 kbps limits on most other wireless networks.
VoiceStream's iStream data network is based on GPRS (General Packet Radio Services) technology - an extension of VoiceStream's GSM based wireless network. VoiceStream operates the largest GSM network in the United States, serving over 6,000 cities, and is the first carrier to offer customers access to its high-speed data services while traveling anywhere on its network nationwide.
When you look at politics, always trace the money trail.
Why are some of the states not "signing on"? Perhaps they, like many of SlashDot's audience, are unhappy that Microsoft won't be paying out as much cash as hoped...
States like Massachusetts depend a lot on tax money. Like it or not, it's a by-product of their liberal government style, big promises means big governement costs, and like businesses, government always passes its costs on to its "consumers", i.e. taxpayers. But, raising taxes is not "in vogue", so they are constantly scrambling to find other cash sources to pump their constituents full of pay-ou... err, entitlements.
Here we have Microsoft, the ultimate Tech cash cow, and they did a BAD thing, so naturally our government stepped to punish them. We cheer that the government recognized that they were acting against market forces, but government is cheering for new-found cash...
Compare this to the government's recent lawsuit on Big Tobacco. They lost, the people won, right? The corporations were forced to pay millions for bad advertisements, and that money was supposed to go to the states for education, right? Where did that money go? Studies show at most 10% of the states have actually created anti-smoking programs with the money, everyone else threw it into the "general fund" so they could pad their pet projects.
Don't be surprised that some states are "holding out", just understand that they aren't doing it for the reasons you think.
"But but but... its cheaper to build solar panels on the ground!"
1. There is no nighttime in space. There are no clouds in space, no atmosphere to dilute the sun's energy, no birds to fly by and crap on the panels. That means 24h efficiency.
2. Yes, you COULD build a 10-square-mile solar panel farm in New Mexico, but you wouldn't even be able to get the current out of state before line-losses, frequency problems, and other transmission problems ate all of your energy.
Its like you could build several dozen nuclear plants in Nevada, enough to power the ENTIRE North America on nuclear alone, but you couldn't build a power grid transmission system strong enough to move the power to where it is consumed.
2. International Space Station: Complete the project as currently spec'ed, so Clinton has something for his legacy. 5 years after completion, implement plans to move and land the ISS on the Moon, and set up a permanent base of operations.
3. Create an official robotics division, take on (corporate) sponsors from colleges and tech companies. Implement robotic material gatherers to "mine" the moon, starting on the far side. Use the material gathered on the moon to create more structures, or tunnels, or whatnot. Once sufficient "warehouse" type buildings are set up, allow corporate funding of "factories" to keep the projects going. Low gravity manufacturing has incredible promise for efficiencies, but the bottleneck is transportation...
4. Which means its time to revise the space shuttle vs reuseable launch vehicle argument.
5. Create more partnerships with media outlets, through telemetry-controlled robots, or other projects. Make it "fun" for kids to get interested in science again.
11 MW : 10 million people
So, in one square mile, you've powered approximately 35 million USA citizens, or say 60 million DR citizens.
Before you say "Thats Great!", you can produce the same energy with a combustion turbine in 1/4th an acre... thats a self-contained, indoor, weather-proof weather-independant generator. No worries with cells breaking in a hurricane, and you can control your line frequency! (something that's difficult to do with solar) Yes, we love 60HZ! Modern United States AC electronics crap out if the frequency drops 59HZ, and typically, we control the grid to run between 59.997 and 60.003 HZ... our control can be that precise over 2/3rds of the continent!
But no, all they did was decide that instead of the time-tested grid format, we'll just run our interconnection wires 45 degrees diagonally accross the chip, but still pretend there are grid "nodes" for automation purposes. (for those not in the know, interconnect are the higher-level wiring that connects "blocks" of circuits together, such as connecting adders to multiplexers)
Building 3D layered chips is a whole 'nother beast.
Just remember, they're only saving wiring only at corner-type junctions, and even then, only what can be optimized to fit within the existing wiring mesh. Still, saving wiring is a big improvement; as we should all know, excess wiring causes heat, voltage, and frequency problems (due to line charging effects). On the other hand, most modern toolkits are written to optimize to a 2-D grid, not to mention most modern lithograph manufacturing tools. But, thats the point of the "discovery".
-- Scott
... who should be working
The most common "clock-less" model is designing the circuit as a Finite State Machine, where the circuit is constantly checking "inputs" to determine when to move to the next step. This solves many timing issues: you send out a trigger pulse that activates a sub-circuit, and wait for a pulse on a return line to tell you when that piece is done computing. What you end up with is a complex system of Strobes and Acknologments, and lots of edge-sensitive circuitry (as opposed to Hi and Lo that is the basis of CMOS)
Also, some types of designs run better as async circuits: FFT and Division circuits if I recall, you just trigger it to start and let it the whole bundle cascade itself to completion. Also, bus circuitry in modern motherboards works in Async mode already (theres this nifty thing called IRQ...)
Every object in the worldspace updated in its own independant cycle; the trick was to adjust the bird's forward angle to move towards other birds only if the distance between them was outside a set of bounds (if its too far, move closer; if its too close, turn away)
The result? Flocking behaviour. Another example of a seemingly complex natural system reduced to a small set of rules.
-- Scott
Is there any written record of who was present that day the law was voted into effect? Did anyone tape C-Span that morning?
Personally, I would hold them all responsible until each individual sentor/congress-person could prove their dissent (innocent until proven guilty need not apply). I also think its (faintly) amusing that the issues of "copyright" and "fair use" aren't making their way to public discussion, what with the election year and all. But then again, why should the television stations give any dissenting opinion (given that they are owned by the same "Big Media" who pushed for the DMCA)?
I have the advantage of living in Philadelphia, and I must say we're all incredibly proud of how the police conducted themselves, given the sheer amount of imported stupidity that arrived to "protest" in our streets. Last time I checked, "protesting" does not involve flipping the bird at police, tipping over dumpsters in the middle of the streets, or throwing mystery liquids (water? soap? piss?) into the faces of cops.
If you want to protest "big business", then get your groups together, and camp outside the front gates of Ford, Exon, Microsoft, Time-Warner or IBM. Oh, and if you think you're going to get any better reception at the Democrat's convetion, you're in for a surprise...
All I have to say is look how the world has changed since then; computers are now standard issue college equipement, and we have 100 times the willing manpower (programmer power, especially those with a strong sharing ethic) to speed up development of new "standards". We live in interesting times...
But know what pisses me off? That I go to the store, and look at the shelves for Black Tape for a Blue Girl, and instead, find an empty marker and 40 copies of Black Sabbath right next to it.
And the guy behind the counter says "We dont have the shelf room to have a copy of everything." Maybe thats because they only stock what the RIAA tells them should be "popular".
As to being too cynical, I'll fully admit that I'm way too cynical for my age; maybe there's something about engineering and sciences that pulls the shrouds away from our eyes, that lets us see through the crap that is modern media and what passes for culture.
Oh well.
Just because the big networks would "go away", doesn't mean that the Web has to...
Do you trust Slashdot? Its not a "major" network, it has a tiny staff that does a small amount of field reporting compared to the networks, and 95% of its news is delivered from untested sources. And yet we trust it because they've developed a reputation of having reliable news.
So, we lose WB, CNN, and (MS)NBC, BMG and Columbia House. But if there's one thing that the Internet (should have) taught us, its that distributed sources can work just as well as a few monopolistic ones. Buy your music from smaller labels! Watch more independant films, or anime, or whatver. MTV wont be shoveling "hipness" at us, but then again, who put them in the position to tell us whats cool or not? The world will go on, as it has before.
Hmm... why does this sound like an excerpt from an Obviousman comic?
Another part of the story was that the one scientist had accidentally killed his daughter in a "careless smoking" accident. His wife obsessed over the daughter, never knowing it was the husband who accidentally burned down the house... and he dreaded the release of the product, knowing his wife would one day re-live the daughter's life right up to the moment she died... and learn why.
That'll learn me for walking away without hitting submit... by the time I got back, my story had been posted 3 times =)
An inventor had developed a viewing-machine that let the user look into the past, by tracing tachyons or some residual radiation, etc etc, the idea being that they could tune the machine to ancient Rome and learn what actually happened at these events that modern history had blurred (because he was being funded by some museum). It also talked a bit about how he was forced to add filters on behalf of the Catholic Church, such that the device could never look at year 0 and verify (or disprove) the existance of Christ. But at the end of the story, the scientist is visited by the NSA, who try to sieze all of his work...
but the hero has outsmarted them, because in an Open Source fashion, he had mailed a copy of the plans to all of the major newspapers the day before. Then the government employee explains to him how his device could not only look on the far past, but at the near, 1 second ago past, and he was personally responsible for inventing the ultimate scrying device.
As to the blurb, I'm sure that you've all ready Harlequin and the Tick Tock Man? If not, why not?
Which is sad, because Hatch seems a lot more techno-savvy than Al Gore, who for the life of him can't seem to manage his emails... can you say tape backup? I can...
a = b = c
is C's a = ( b == c ), not b=c,a=b;
There is always concern because of the growth in home electronics over the past few years; I'm definitely guilty of adding to the demand... Last summer caught us by surprise, not because of lack of generation, but because of reactive power modeling errors, but that event, not to mention Y2K, made us take a hard look, and all of our models are correct to the best of our knowledge.
As to the NIMBY phenomena, I point you to our Queue A map as to where new (planned) generation is scheduled to be built in our zone. Its a double-edged sword; everyone wants the electricity, but noone wants the plant in their county.. But if you put the plant too far away, then you have the added problems with transmission...
Other ISO's:
California
New England
New York
Keep in mind that the CNET article was entirely about CalISO (which is only a few years old and not as developed yet as the east coast) which is only one piece of the entire puzzle. And I'm sure "HomePower" thanks you for the free advertisement, but I hope next time you at Slashdot try to cover the other angles in the story first, other than the pop-answer. Rememeber, one Nuclear plant generates over 1100 MW of power, thats 1,100,000,000 Watts, or about 167,000 times the output of the lead article on HomePower, and those people are the exception, not the rule.
-- Scott
Oh, btw, if it gets back to me, I'm not an official representative of PJM LLC. Thats what Customer Relations is for.
Or how about Delerium? These folks put about 3 album's worth of MP3's on their webpage, and now their songs are appearing in movies and television ads, which generate a lot more money for them ... It's a darn good cooincidence to me...
Exposure. Thats what generates money in this age, and nothing does it better than the Internet. Its a perfect parallel to the 1980's casette tape (please tell me you know what these are) craze , where everyone and their neighbor traded their favorites. To the record companies, it's short term loss for long term gain.
And ever notice who's doing all the complaining? Its the old-school groups like Metallica and Dr. Dre, who realize that, hey, if the public can listen to new bands that do the same genre we do, then they might not listen to us anymore, so lets kill off their means of exposure, since we already have ours.
Why the rucus? Because the establishment isn't making money. They realize that the MPAA/etc. can't be the middle-man anymore, so they don't get a cut of the profit. It used to be that MTV and the Record Labels told us what we could listen to, but it doesn't have to be that way anymore, and they're scared.
Without MP3's, how many of you would even know that Techno (all the flavors) and/or Goth exists? Or would you still be listening to InSync and Backstreet Boys, because thats all the Radio tells us is out there?
Sure, the company acts vicious to keep consumers from skimping them out of a $25 DVD or a $18 CD (both of which are priced WAY above cost), but look where the money goes! Not to the developers, the thinkers, who are skimping by at ~$30k a year...
That's why your "worker-bee"s don't care... and those workers are still consumers themselves...
I submitted a copy of the Verant/StarWars story 8 hours earlier (than the final cut), except whoever rejected it felt it wasn't news at the time.
Que sera, sera...