DVDs are beginning to come up short in backups, but Taiyo-Yuden makes high-quality recordable DVD media that should last you at least a couple of decades if kept in reasonable environments (mostly what you would find in a common home). It's a little more expensive, but it's worth it for backups.
Henry Ford mass-produced the automobile because he thought he could get rich on it. Edison worked day and night inventing things because he thought he could get rich on it. Both were correct.
Before Ford, various inventors worked on the concept of a horseless carriage because they thought they could get rich from it, making transportation faster and more efficient and removing the need for animals in environments where they were difficult to maintain.
For those that don't want two-way communication, they need only add a CableCard to their recent TVs. Older sets are stuck with cable boxes, but cable companies must, under FCC mandate, allow third-party systems like TiVo to access their networks, provided they use an authenticating technology (CableCard or tru2way, in this case). I believe that even the new cable boxes being bought by cable companies are required to use these technologies, though they can still use older inventory to replace existing installations.
I've been desperately holding onto my Moxi system (holdover from Adelphia) pending the release of the TiVo Series 4, which is waiting on tru2way to be completed, even though it's starting to have some recording glitches, because the standard TW DVR is a maddeningly frustrating beast which will never come into my home. Series 4 has an uncertain delivery time frame, but I will gladly give up my existing DVR and pay more monthly for the TiVo (I get the DVR now for $12 per month, and the TiVo, presuming a $400 box and a $299, three-year subscription works out to just a little shy of $20 each month).
It is about making money. But they're making no money if the customer refuses to buy the service because it's either too onerous or because they can find a better deal elsewhere, such as satellite or telcos.
Greed led to the telegraph, telephone, electric light, automobile, airplane, and integrated circuit.
If things stay as they are we will never see a Star Trek like civilization because we are too wrapped up in making money and actually engineering things to NOT last so they can sell more.
Computers are lasting longer these days because the software curve is slowing. It used to be that many people would replace their systems every 2-3 years; that has slowed to 3-5 years. Cars are frequently coming standard with 6- and 10-year warranties. Even the military is holding onto things far longer. During much of the Cold War, the lifespan of most aircraft was less than a decade of front-line service; today, the F-15 and F-16 form the backbone of the USAF fighter complement, and the designs are more than 30 years old.
I know ppl working in the oilfield who are paid to research old wells so they can go back and try to drill deeper even though the vast majority of the time they find NOTHING.
I was working in the oil industry a decade ago, when the price of oil was a fifth of what it is now, and they had people researching old wells even then. The equipment was often still in place, so it was cheaper than drilling new wells, and the payoff happened often enough to just about balance out the costs. What was more important, though, was correlating the data received from the sensors and the results from the additional drilling. This helped to understand current and future oilfield yields and what could be done to improve current yields and placement of future wells.
If you bring in your own jukebox to the diner (irrespective of the owner's wishes), then either you (as the jukebox owner) or the diner (as the owner of a place of public gathering) owe fees related to the public performance of a work or works. There are no exceptions to this other than works that have fallen entirely -- music, lyrics, and performance -- into the public domain (precious few of those that there are).
I'm speaking only from a legal perspective here. Whether or not you arrange with the licensing groups beforehand, a public performance requires, by law, the payment of associated licensing fees. If the diner is a mile off of the highway in the outer reaches of Nebraska, ASCAP (not the RIAA) may never notice. But that does not -- legally speaking -- excuse them from the obligation to pay the mandated fees.
At home, it's a private performance, and not subject to the licensing structure required for public performance. No matter what they want to do, ASCAP cannot make you pay fees for a private playback, as defined in copyright law.
I agree that the business model is poor. I won't do it (I buy most of my music as CDs), and I expect it to fail miserably. But comparing this to a jukebox isn't quite accurate, as the copyright laws covering the two situations are different.
There's a difference between the jukebox at the diner (played for public consumption) and playback in one's home, car, bike, etc (played for private consumption). The intention is the differentiating factor: even if you can hear it outside the house, it's intended primarily for the people in the house, and therefore a private playback.
They've actually rejected a number of symbols over the years, some of them for religious reasons, such as the Red Swastika, rejected in the '20s for being a sectarian organization.
The Red Crystal is made from a portion of the Red Star of David. Place three of the former over each other at sixty-degree intervals, and you get the latter symbol.
But the reason none of them should have supported this is that the result can and will drive up the cost of health care for everyone.
How does it change the status quo? Insurers have been working on the basis of averages without genetic information for a very long time. There are factors driving up the cost of healthcare, but a lack of access to genetic information doesn't seem to be a major one.
Re:Enormous congratulations to them all
on
The Phoenix Has Landed
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Define what a "real" scientific advancement would be, please.
It's not recognized by the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement, and hence not used in an official capacity outside of Israel. MGA uses the Red Crystal on operations in other countries.
-kyz misread the financial statement, and quoted from the wrong year. Checking their financials, J&J had a gross profit of $38.2 billion in 2006, when they also posted a net profit of $14.6 billion, and income after tax of $11 billion.
The poster got the numbers and year wrong, but the point essentially remains -- $5 million is a lot less than $11 billion. (I'm not saying that I disagree or agree with it, as I don't know what J&J's other charitable contributions may be, nor whether the $5 million included whatever arrangement was present beforehand for use of the mark.)
There have been some sleep-skipping studies, most of them by the military, where subjects have stayed awake using modafinil for up to about four days, and seem to be fully recovered after 8-9 hours of sleep, judging by various mental and physical tests. These haven't lasted for more than a few weeks, to my knowledge, so there may be other issues down the line, but it's still intriguing research.
My dad takes melatonin for insomnia. It's made him much easier to be around, though he is almost always in bed by 8:30pm.
I have a somewhat opposite issue. If I stop moving much and don't have to pay close attention to something active, I stand a good chance of falling asleep. I don't have this issue while driving, eating, typing, or reading websites, which tend to change on a rapid basis (switching tabs, browsing to new sites, etc), but reading books or sitting down to watch TV is difficult for me -- I can be out in a few minutes of TV, or in less than a page of a book. This makes studying and reading technical books -- already not terribly exciting -- tremendously difficult for me. I've been pondering asking about modafinil for about two years now to deal with it, but that means making an appointment with the doctor, and while it's not difficult to get in to see him, it's inconvenient, and so I keep putting it off.
Ritalin is methylphenidate. Speed is amphetamine (and sometimes methamphetamine, but that more commonly goes by other names). They work in different ways and have different effects.
I've wondered about the personal ethics of such drugs. I'm intrigued by them, especially the possibility of skipping a night or two of sleep each week, but are there ethical concerns with taking a drug that allows me, for example, to read an extra technical book every week, thus perhaps soaring past my colleagues?
From a work standpoint, if my employer begins to depend on my ability to stay far ahead of others (maybe competitors, maybe just the tech industry in general), if I stop taking them, is it ethical for me to be disciplined because I chose to stop taking an optional drug?
Phone numbers drop to patterns, where you may have a number of friends with a prefix of 995 and you only have to recall the last four digits, or where a pattern is available on the digit pad. The memory that they're discussing is being provided a random string of digits with a short time to memorize them, and then being asked at some point in the future (minutes or hours, sometimes longer) or while performing another task to recite the string of digits in order.
There's a gigantic difference between drugs like amphetamine and methamphetamine and drugs like modafinil (Provigil). They work in different ways, and decades of use by narcoleptic patients shows no significant addictiveness for modafinil (or its predecessor adrafinil, which metabolizes to modafinil). Amphetamine and methamphetamine have strong addictive potential as well as significant side-effects, including jumpiness, jitters, and irritability that are not found in modafinil. (That's not to say there are no side-effects to modafinil, but they are rare or uncommon.)
It was a big "maybe" when explorers started into the Gulf of Mexico, drilling in ever-deeper waters under ever-deeper layers of sediment and rock. I suspect that in the next few years, we're going to hear about significant discoveries beyond the continental shelves, especially in the Western Hemisphere, but also to some extent off the coast of Asia. Oil production may hold steady or even dip in the short term, but I think it's likely that it's going to increase over the next ten years.
I'm not at all sold on peak oil. Given the profit margins available in oil these days, exploration has been happening in places it was rarely considered before due to cost.
Venezuela recently announced the addition of 30 billion additional barrels of proven reserves, and is expecting to add up to another hundred billion barrels over the next two years as exploration expands.
More importantly, Brazil has announced the addition of between 10 billion and 16 billion barrels of oil to its reserves courtesy of the Tupi and Jupiter oil fields, and they may be able to size those up once analysis is complete. Those deep water, under-salt drilling techniques will be applicable to broad swaths of the area off of the Atlantic coast of South America, and may be applicable to enormous sections of ocean all over the world. There may be trillions of additional barrels available under the salt layers around the world.
They get a $1 per gallon renewable energy credit thanks to some legislation passed in 2006 that took effect on 01 Jan 2007. Even at $80, though, with diesel prices nearing $5 per gallon in my area, I think there's profit to be made ($5 * 42 gallons per barrel = $210, including all taxes). Profit was much more problematic when diesel was $2 or less per gallon.
Bicycles do not work the upper body sufficiently to avoid going to the gym, if you're interested in a whole-body workout. They are, like running, primarily a cardio exercise.
Speaking on a technical basis for the law, isn't the use of homemade biodiesel in vehicles used on public roads a violation of tax law? I'm very much in favor of a pluggable hybrid, but it's crossed my mind that the widespread use of these will have some impact on the tax base used to maintain the roads. Widespread use of homemade biodiesel could also do this, though I suspect that the number of people willing to undertake the process will never be high enough to have to worry about it.
(Ironically, the push by some to force higher-mileage cars in some states, such as California and Oregon, has resulted in road tax revenues falling short of predictions, leading some to consider mileage-based taxes through GPS, something covered by Slashdot in the past.)
Slashdot Mirror
DVDs are beginning to come up short in backups, but Taiyo-Yuden makes high-quality recordable DVD media that should last you at least a couple of decades if kept in reasonable environments (mostly what you would find in a common home). It's a little more expensive, but it's worth it for backups.
Henry Ford mass-produced the automobile because he thought he could get rich on it. Edison worked day and night inventing things because he thought he could get rich on it. Both were correct.
Before Ford, various inventors worked on the concept of a horseless carriage because they thought they could get rich from it, making transportation faster and more efficient and removing the need for animals in environments where they were difficult to maintain.
CableLabs has been the standard for almost the last 20 years. It was founded to standardize cable television and data technology.
For those that don't want two-way communication, they need only add a CableCard to their recent TVs. Older sets are stuck with cable boxes, but cable companies must, under FCC mandate, allow third-party systems like TiVo to access their networks, provided they use an authenticating technology (CableCard or tru2way, in this case). I believe that even the new cable boxes being bought by cable companies are required to use these technologies, though they can still use older inventory to replace existing installations.
I've been desperately holding onto my Moxi system (holdover from Adelphia) pending the release of the TiVo Series 4, which is waiting on tru2way to be completed, even though it's starting to have some recording glitches, because the standard TW DVR is a maddeningly frustrating beast which will never come into my home. Series 4 has an uncertain delivery time frame, but I will gladly give up my existing DVR and pay more monthly for the TiVo (I get the DVR now for $12 per month, and the TiVo, presuming a $400 box and a $299, three-year subscription works out to just a little shy of $20 each month).
It is about making money. But they're making no money if the customer refuses to buy the service because it's either too onerous or because they can find a better deal elsewhere, such as satellite or telcos.
They run it due to greed, period.
Greed led to the telegraph, telephone, electric light, automobile, airplane, and integrated circuit.
If things stay as they are we will never see a Star Trek like civilization because we are too wrapped up in making money and actually engineering things to NOT last so they can sell more.
Computers are lasting longer these days because the software curve is slowing. It used to be that many people would replace their systems every 2-3 years; that has slowed to 3-5 years. Cars are frequently coming standard with 6- and 10-year warranties. Even the military is holding onto things far longer. During much of the Cold War, the lifespan of most aircraft was less than a decade of front-line service; today, the F-15 and F-16 form the backbone of the USAF fighter complement, and the designs are more than 30 years old.
I know ppl working in the oilfield who are paid to research old wells so they can go back and try to drill deeper even though the vast majority of the time they find NOTHING.
I was working in the oil industry a decade ago, when the price of oil was a fifth of what it is now, and they had people researching old wells even then. The equipment was often still in place, so it was cheaper than drilling new wells, and the payoff happened often enough to just about balance out the costs. What was more important, though, was correlating the data received from the sensors and the results from the additional drilling. This helped to understand current and future oilfield yields and what could be done to improve current yields and placement of future wells.
If you bring in your own jukebox to the diner (irrespective of the owner's wishes), then either you (as the jukebox owner) or the diner (as the owner of a place of public gathering) owe fees related to the public performance of a work or works. There are no exceptions to this other than works that have fallen entirely -- music, lyrics, and performance -- into the public domain (precious few of those that there are).
I'm speaking only from a legal perspective here. Whether or not you arrange with the licensing groups beforehand, a public performance requires, by law, the payment of associated licensing fees. If the diner is a mile off of the highway in the outer reaches of Nebraska, ASCAP (not the RIAA) may never notice. But that does not -- legally speaking -- excuse them from the obligation to pay the mandated fees.
At home, it's a private performance, and not subject to the licensing structure required for public performance. No matter what they want to do, ASCAP cannot make you pay fees for a private playback, as defined in copyright law.
I agree that the business model is poor. I won't do it (I buy most of my music as CDs), and I expect it to fail miserably. But comparing this to a jukebox isn't quite accurate, as the copyright laws covering the two situations are different.
There's a difference between the jukebox at the diner (played for public consumption) and playback in one's home, car, bike, etc (played for private consumption). The intention is the differentiating factor: even if you can hear it outside the house, it's intended primarily for the people in the house, and therefore a private playback.
They've actually rejected a number of symbols over the years, some of them for religious reasons, such as the Red Swastika, rejected in the '20s for being a sectarian organization.
The Red Crystal is made from a portion of the Red Star of David. Place three of the former over each other at sixty-degree intervals, and you get the latter symbol.
But the reason none of them should have supported this is that the result can and will drive up the cost of health care for everyone.
How does it change the status quo? Insurers have been working on the basis of averages without genetic information for a very long time. There are factors driving up the cost of healthcare, but a lack of access to genetic information doesn't seem to be a major one.
Define what a "real" scientific advancement would be, please.
It's not recognized by the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement, and hence not used in an official capacity outside of Israel. MGA uses the Red Crystal on operations in other countries.
-kyz misread the financial statement, and quoted from the wrong year. Checking their financials, J&J had a gross profit of $38.2 billion in 2006, when they also posted a net profit of $14.6 billion, and income after tax of $11 billion.
The poster got the numbers and year wrong, but the point essentially remains -- $5 million is a lot less than $11 billion. (I'm not saying that I disagree or agree with it, as I don't know what J&J's other charitable contributions may be, nor whether the $5 million included whatever arrangement was present beforehand for use of the mark.)
There have been some sleep-skipping studies, most of them by the military, where subjects have stayed awake using modafinil for up to about four days, and seem to be fully recovered after 8-9 hours of sleep, judging by various mental and physical tests. These haven't lasted for more than a few weeks, to my knowledge, so there may be other issues down the line, but it's still intriguing research.
My dad takes melatonin for insomnia. It's made him much easier to be around, though he is almost always in bed by 8:30pm.
I have a somewhat opposite issue. If I stop moving much and don't have to pay close attention to something active, I stand a good chance of falling asleep. I don't have this issue while driving, eating, typing, or reading websites, which tend to change on a rapid basis (switching tabs, browsing to new sites, etc), but reading books or sitting down to watch TV is difficult for me -- I can be out in a few minutes of TV, or in less than a page of a book. This makes studying and reading technical books -- already not terribly exciting -- tremendously difficult for me. I've been pondering asking about modafinil for about two years now to deal with it, but that means making an appointment with the doctor, and while it's not difficult to get in to see him, it's inconvenient, and so I keep putting it off.
Adrafinil is legal to import for personal use. It is not legal to sell OTC (at least in the US).
Ritalin is methylphenidate. Speed is amphetamine (and sometimes methamphetamine, but that more commonly goes by other names). They work in different ways and have different effects.
I've wondered about the personal ethics of such drugs. I'm intrigued by them, especially the possibility of skipping a night or two of sleep each week, but are there ethical concerns with taking a drug that allows me, for example, to read an extra technical book every week, thus perhaps soaring past my colleagues?
From a work standpoint, if my employer begins to depend on my ability to stay far ahead of others (maybe competitors, maybe just the tech industry in general), if I stop taking them, is it ethical for me to be disciplined because I chose to stop taking an optional drug?
Phone numbers drop to patterns, where you may have a number of friends with a prefix of 995 and you only have to recall the last four digits, or where a pattern is available on the digit pad. The memory that they're discussing is being provided a random string of digits with a short time to memorize them, and then being asked at some point in the future (minutes or hours, sometimes longer) or while performing another task to recite the string of digits in order.
There's a gigantic difference between drugs like amphetamine and methamphetamine and drugs like modafinil (Provigil). They work in different ways, and decades of use by narcoleptic patients shows no significant addictiveness for modafinil (or its predecessor adrafinil, which metabolizes to modafinil). Amphetamine and methamphetamine have strong addictive potential as well as significant side-effects, including jumpiness, jitters, and irritability that are not found in modafinil. (That's not to say there are no side-effects to modafinil, but they are rare or uncommon.)
It was a big "maybe" when explorers started into the Gulf of Mexico, drilling in ever-deeper waters under ever-deeper layers of sediment and rock. I suspect that in the next few years, we're going to hear about significant discoveries beyond the continental shelves, especially in the Western Hemisphere, but also to some extent off the coast of Asia. Oil production may hold steady or even dip in the short term, but I think it's likely that it's going to increase over the next ten years.
I'm not at all sold on peak oil. Given the profit margins available in oil these days, exploration has been happening in places it was rarely considered before due to cost.
Venezuela recently announced the addition of 30 billion additional barrels of proven reserves, and is expecting to add up to another hundred billion barrels over the next two years as exploration expands.
More importantly, Brazil has announced the addition of between 10 billion and 16 billion barrels of oil to its reserves courtesy of the Tupi and Jupiter oil fields, and they may be able to size those up once analysis is complete. Those deep water, under-salt drilling techniques will be applicable to broad swaths of the area off of the Atlantic coast of South America, and may be applicable to enormous sections of ocean all over the world. There may be trillions of additional barrels available under the salt layers around the world.
They get a $1 per gallon renewable energy credit thanks to some legislation passed in 2006 that took effect on 01 Jan 2007. Even at $80, though, with diesel prices nearing $5 per gallon in my area, I think there's profit to be made ($5 * 42 gallons per barrel = $210, including all taxes). Profit was much more problematic when diesel was $2 or less per gallon.
Bicycles do not work the upper body sufficiently to avoid going to the gym, if you're interested in a whole-body workout. They are, like running, primarily a cardio exercise.
Speaking on a technical basis for the law, isn't the use of homemade biodiesel in vehicles used on public roads a violation of tax law? I'm very much in favor of a pluggable hybrid, but it's crossed my mind that the widespread use of these will have some impact on the tax base used to maintain the roads. Widespread use of homemade biodiesel could also do this, though I suspect that the number of people willing to undertake the process will never be high enough to have to worry about it.
(Ironically, the push by some to force higher-mileage cars in some states, such as California and Oregon, has resulted in road tax revenues falling short of predictions, leading some to consider mileage-based taxes through GPS, something covered by Slashdot in the past.)