How about taking the demagoguery elsewhere? No one has to protect invalid business models (listening, RIAA?). If people want the products, the sales will be generated anyway. If people don't want the products, then the sales are improper. The numbers come from the ATA itself and are very very suspect.
Actually, at 36,000 km from earth, objects take a day, not a year to complete a full orbit.
Well, sure, to orbit the Earth. The article was clearly talking about the full year it would take the space elevator -- anchored to the Earth -- to complete a full orbit around the Sun. Duh.
to date there has never been another Michaelangelo, Mozart, Machiavelli, Homer, etc.
There can never be "another" one of any of those, for a reason you make almost frighteningly obvious: They are held up as paragons and avatars now beyond the reach of human ken. It's crap, of course. Much more important is the relative size of the memspace and of course the sheer distance in time. You don't think a Monet or a Steinbeck is going to eventually rate in the exclusive club you've mentioned?
To date there haven't even been projects of those magnitudes [meaning pyramids, Easter Island, etc.]
Um, hello? The Apollo missions were exactly a project of that (relative) magnitude and sweep. Heck, the Hoover dam or the Brooklyn Bridge are engineering projects of equal grandeur. The Chunnel was a challenge stretching the bounds of our abilities, except of course it was actually useful and not the vainglorious expression of one man's power. We'll leave aside less obvious and concrete (literally) examples, such as say the elimination of smallpox.
easter island (which reminds me, does anyone notice the mouths are all in binary like format one opened one close, etc.)
A mouth has two states, open and closed. Anything with two states will look like a "binary format". Tulip bulbs can be either open or closed -- are you proposing that the plants are trying to communicate in machine code?
One thing a woman wants is to feel that her man values her more highly than all other things. And she needs a proof of this that is unambiguous and readily demonstrable to her friends/family... (1) the man gets no utility from it, (2) it not a dual-use item that might have been bought for its practical value, (3) it is portable.
Exactly! That's why you should invest in the status indicator par excellence, a brightly-colored monstrously-huge plumage...
Sorry, but your description sounded exactly like the theories behind the peacock's tail.
On average, 1400 W of sunlight fall on every square meter on Earth. The Earth has about 1.8 x 10^17 J every second; put another way, that's a power input of 1.8x10^5 TW. The energy consumption of human civilization is about 12.5 TW (from here). In other words, about 15,000 times more energy falls on the Earth than we consume. We could be pretty inefficient and still make out like bandits.
OK, OK, so it's probably not a good idea to absorb all the sunlight falling on Earth and turn it into electricity. Age of darkness, neverending winter, dead plants and all that. Fine. So we string the satellites out in the same orbit as Earth and get the same per-meter power -- and this sunlight would have just been wasted radiating into interstellar space. As you need more power, set up non-ecliptic orbits. Eventually you can get basically the entire output of the Sun, about 10^21 TW of power. (By the way, this is the original "Dyson's Sphere", Trek notwithstanding.)
We don't lack for energy. We do lack the willpower to collect it.
Same thing with the housing prices and health care costs in the United States. Aritificially inflated
I just went to the dentist today. Now they have a digital X-ray that can take a full mouth set of images in about three minutes. When I was growing up, you sat in front of the machine for something like fifteen or tweny minutes total, punctuated by the technician jamming really painful film strips into your mouth. That's progress. Do you think it was free?
Health care costs are rising, in large part, because better and more extensive care is available -- but it is also more expensive. It used to be that getting cancer was cheap: Nothing could be done, so you just died. Now we have drugs and other interventions -- but they didn't pop out of the ether spontaneously and they aren't particularly cheap to manufacture, either.
Don't get me wrong. I'm sure there's a fair bit of padding in the medical industry. But there are also real reasons why costs have gone up.
Seriously. I just had dinner with a friend who won't marry her boyfriend because she doesn't want to spend so much on a ring, but won't go through it without it.
Um, the only religion that absolutely requires a diamond ring is, IIRC, the First Church of American Consumerism. They could go with simple iron rings, or even forgo the ring entirely, and still be married.
In my opinion CI Host are scum... Don't be to quick to defend them.
I find this a frightening attitude. Often it is the least desirable who need the most protection of the law. In other words: What value is a legal system that defends only the popular and righteous? After all, if you're popular, you're not going to need defending. A true civilization defends the weak, the unpopular, the undesirable, and yes, even the unsavory.
All that should matter here is the merits of the case. Your experience with CI Host might lead you to believe that they're playing fast-and-loose, and maybe that'd be right. We can agree that a slimy company shouldn't be rewarded for slimy actions.
If their beef with AOL is legitimate -- and heaven knows, I'm not fit to judge that -- but if it is, then of course they deserve whatever relief the court can offer. And of course, it's the court's role to make that determination.
I'll defend anyone who legitimately needs it -- past behavior notwithstanding. We all should.
None of the other sounds in movie's are "realistic". It's all about communicating a mood or concept through audio.
You're confusing "realistic" with "real". Yes, almsot all sound on a soundtrack is dubbed in after the fact -- including, even, the dialog. (That's what ADR stands for, I think: additional dialog recording.) But when someone drops a glass and they add the shatter sounds, that is "realistic" -- it's the proper sound and it's what you'd heard if you were located at a place that would give the same optical POV as the camera. But explosions in space are not realistic, because you wouldn't hear anything. (I don't buy any of those "vaporized hull shockwaves" rectons, either.)
Such a level where choosen by the founding fathers becuase they discovered that the the intellectual property is vital to a growing economy.
Yeah, let me be the first to call "BS" on that. Jefferson has a famous quote that ends, "Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property." And if the Founders thought that intellectual property should be protected "at the same level" as real property, why then does it expire? Real property never expires; your property rights in, say, your house or your car never go away with the simple passage of time. But your "intellectual property" rights have a clock ticking from the moment you receive them. (No one ever seems to admit or deal with this curious distinction...)
The Founder were clear and emphatic: Things like copyright were useful to spur creation of new works. They almost certainly did not conceive of it as a way to spur the economy, as the contribution of IP to the total economy in 1787 was nearly nil. They thought that prosperity came from real estate. On the other hand, copyright and patent law could help give an incentive to authors and inventors. But they also recognized -- having suffered under the restrictive British system and having seen its negative effects -- that "intellectual property" law could also stifle and destroy the public domain. That's why copyright expires... precisely because the Founders recognized that it was not "property" like a parcel of land or a musket.
even more reason to photograph the area again to settle it once and for all
No, this issue will never be "settled once and for all". The people who believe in the Face on Mars already believe it against photographic evidence, and they do not trust NASA. So why should they believe more proof from the "worldwide scientific conspiracy"?
Things like the Face cult are just the background noise we pay for having the ability to dream and to believe.
I had a 1541 that wouldn't stay aligned for more than a couple of hours. One day, I smacked the drive in pure frustration while it was gronking away - and the sonofabitch loaded.
A friend of mine in high school used to love (IIRC) Gunship but it had this nasty copy protection scheme that wallopped the heck out of the C=1541 as the game loaded. Whenever he finished with the game, he found he couldn't use his drive anymore, because the copy protection scheme had screwed up the alignment. But -- true story -- if he then re-loaded the game, it whacked the drive back into alignment and his other disks worked.
I can write a floppy on one machine, go to the next machine and have read errors. The floppy is still quite readable in the original machine.
Ahhh, any veteran of the Commodore 1541 floppy drive can tell you what this is: alignment errors. You see, the head is moved using these little step-motors. With use, the motors drift out of alignment, meaning the head moves somewhat less (or more) per "kick" than it's supposed to. As long as it's the same motor, that error occurs on every operation, so there's no net effect. (That is, sure, the data's in the wrong place. But during read-out, the head will seek to the (same) wrong place. So no error.) But move that disk to another machine, whose step-motor has a different alignment, and BAM! read errors.
Fans of the C1541 will remember what happens when that drive found an alignment error: CLACKETY-CLACKETY-CLACKETY-CLACKETY-CLACKETY-CLACK ETY-mmmm- ERR! And of course all that bumping generally forced the drive even further out of alignment.
And unlike the US there was never a Florida voting scam.
While as disgusted by the whole Florida debacle as any freedom-loving person would be, I have to say: Until the last presidential election, the US hadn't had a Florida-sized failure, either. In other words, Europe might be doing it right or they might have just been luckier.
I'm not sure if games are too "complicated" lately. But I've noticed a trend wherein the designers force you to do certain tasks in order to emphasize how clever(?) the game designers are. Two examples (although both are PS/2, at least for me):
Enter the Matrix has fixed save points, and they aren't particularly well chosen. Too often you have to walk through meaninglessly easy -- but time-consuming -- parts of the game to get to the more challenging stuff. Then, if you fail at the challenging stuff, you die and have to walk through the boring stuff again. I personally believe that games should allow you to save whenever you want.
A racing game called "HSX: Hypersonic Extreme". It is a so-so racing game but comes with (what looks like) a nifty Track Editor so that you can build your own physics-defying tracks. Unfortunately all of the cool track features begin "locked" and must be unlocked by playing the standard tracks and coming in third or higher. I think the game designers erred tremendously, as the editor is not linearly connected to your prowess on the standard tracks and should not have been tied to it. It's just a case of the designers insisting I pay homage to their creativity, rather than allowing me free rein to explore my own.
Anyway, that's my two millisovereigns and I'm sticking by 'em.
Sort of like Wizard of Oz and that one CD (something by Pink Floyd, was it?).
You're thinking of Dark Side of the Rainbow, the pairing of Wizard of Oz with Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon. Synchronize your DVD player and CD player such that the album begins on the third roar of the MGM lion and you'll see... Well, actually, you'll see that this works much better with illegal substances coursing through your veins. Watched sober, it doesn't really line up.
And even if I could, I shouldn't NEED to; my computer serves me, I do not serve my computer.
Well, we're rapidly heading toward the day when your computer serves the various corporate interests that have slipped their fingers into it. The day of computers being for the end user are pretty much numbered.
Are we still allowed to copy nature? I thought reverse engineering was made illegal under the DMCA.
No, no, you misunderstand. Ruthlessly exploiting Nature, much like ruthlessly exploiting the public domain, is peachy-keen under the DMCA. Once some giant faceless corporation has learned the secret of the sponge, though, then that gets the full draconian protection.
If we did it your way, how ever would our cartels prosper?
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, and then the terrorists win...
How about taking the demagoguery elsewhere? No one has to protect invalid business models (listening, RIAA?). If people want the products, the sales will be generated anyway. If people don't want the products, then the sales are improper. The numbers come from the ATA itself and are very very suspect.
Well, sure, to orbit the Earth. The article was clearly talking about the full year it would take the space elevator -- anchored to the Earth -- to complete a full orbit around the Sun. Duh.
Just in case:
But your post would be ranked "F" because (for example) you don't use apostrophes when needed. The validity of your ideas would carry no weight...
There can never be "another" one of any of those, for a reason you make almost frighteningly obvious: They are held up as paragons and avatars now beyond the reach of human ken. It's crap, of course. Much more important is the relative size of the memspace and of course the sheer distance in time. You don't think a Monet or a Steinbeck is going to eventually rate in the exclusive club you've mentioned?
Um, hello? The Apollo missions were exactly a project of that (relative) magnitude and sweep. Heck, the Hoover dam or the Brooklyn Bridge are engineering projects of equal grandeur. The Chunnel was a challenge stretching the bounds of our abilities, except of course it was actually useful and not the vainglorious expression of one man's power. We'll leave aside less obvious and concrete (literally) examples, such as say the elimination of smallpox.
A mouth has two states, open and closed. Anything with two states will look like a "binary format". Tulip bulbs can be either open or closed -- are you proposing that the plants are trying to communicate in machine code?
Hmmm.
Disney -==- ABC
Viacom -==- CBS
Paramount -==- UPN
Warner Bros. -==- the WB
Universal -==- NBC (if GE buys Vivendi)
It seems to me that movie studios have a lot to do with the TV networks. Chalk up another victory for media consolidation!
Exactly! That's why you should invest in the status indicator par excellence, a brightly-colored monstrously-huge plumage...
Sorry, but your description sounded exactly like the theories behind the peacock's tail.
On average, 1400 W of sunlight fall on every square meter on Earth. The Earth has about 1.8 x 10^17 J every second; put another way, that's a power input of 1.8x10^5 TW. The energy consumption of human civilization is about 12.5 TW (from here).
In other words, about 15,000 times more energy falls on the Earth than we consume. We could be pretty inefficient and still make out like bandits.
OK, OK, so it's probably not a good idea to absorb all the sunlight falling on Earth and turn it into electricity. Age of darkness, neverending winter, dead plants and all that. Fine. So we string the satellites out in the same orbit as Earth and get the same per-meter power -- and this sunlight would have just been wasted radiating into interstellar space. As you need more power, set up non-ecliptic orbits.
Eventually you can get basically the entire output of the Sun, about 10^21 TW of power. (By the way, this is the original "Dyson's Sphere", Trek notwithstanding.)
We don't lack for energy. We do lack the willpower to collect it.
I just went to the dentist today. Now they have a digital X-ray that can take a full mouth set of images in about three minutes. When I was growing up, you sat in front of the machine for something like fifteen or tweny minutes total, punctuated by the technician jamming really painful film strips into your mouth. That's progress. Do you think it was free?
Health care costs are rising, in large part, because better and more extensive care is available -- but it is also more expensive. It used to be that getting cancer was cheap: Nothing could be done, so you just died. Now we have drugs and other interventions -- but they didn't pop out of the ether spontaneously and they aren't particularly cheap to manufacture, either.
Don't get me wrong. I'm sure there's a fair bit of padding in the medical industry. But there are also real reasons why costs have gone up.
I admire your optimism (or is it naivete?), that people dying will make a difference...
Um, the only religion that absolutely requires a diamond ring is, IIRC, the First Church of American Consumerism. They could go with simple iron rings, or even forgo the ring entirely, and still be married.
I find this a frightening attitude. Often it is the least desirable who need the most protection of the law. In other words: What value is a legal system that defends only the popular and righteous? After all, if you're popular, you're not going to need defending. A true civilization defends the weak, the unpopular, the undesirable, and yes, even the unsavory.
All that should matter here is the merits of the case. Your experience with CI Host might lead you to believe that they're playing fast-and-loose, and maybe that'd be right. We can agree that a slimy company shouldn't be rewarded for slimy actions.
If their beef with AOL is legitimate -- and heaven knows, I'm not fit to judge that -- but if it is, then of course they deserve whatever relief the court can offer. And of course, it's the court's role to make that determination.
I'll defend anyone who legitimately needs it -- past behavior notwithstanding. We all should.
You're confusing "realistic" with "real". Yes, almsot all sound on a soundtrack is dubbed in after the fact -- including, even, the dialog. (That's what ADR stands for, I think: additional dialog recording.) But when someone drops a glass and they add the shatter sounds, that is "realistic" -- it's the proper sound and it's what you'd heard if you were located at a place that would give the same optical POV as the camera. But explosions in space are not realistic, because you wouldn't hear anything. (I don't buy any of those "vaporized hull shockwaves" rectons, either.)
Yeah, let me be the first to call "BS" on that. Jefferson has a famous quote that ends, "Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property." And if the Founders thought that intellectual property should be protected "at the same level" as real property, why then does it expire? Real property never expires; your property rights in, say, your house or your car never go away with the simple passage of time. But your "intellectual property" rights have a clock ticking from the moment you receive them. (No one ever seems to admit or deal with this curious distinction...)
The Founder were clear and emphatic: Things like copyright were useful to spur creation of new works. They almost certainly did not conceive of it as a way to spur the economy, as the contribution of IP to the total economy in 1787 was nearly nil. They thought that prosperity came from real estate. On the other hand, copyright and patent law could help give an incentive to authors and inventors. But they also recognized -- having suffered under the restrictive British system and having seen its negative effects -- that "intellectual property" law could also stifle and destroy the public domain. That's why copyright expires
No, this issue will never be "settled once and for all". The people who believe in the Face on Mars already believe it against photographic evidence, and they do not trust NASA. So why should they believe more proof from the "worldwide scientific conspiracy"?
Things like the Face cult are just the background noise we pay for having the ability to dream and to believe.
You mean like, say, the web server market, where Apache holds dominance? Hmmm... seems most of the attacks still focus on Microsoft products...
A friend of mine in high school used to love (IIRC) Gunship but it had this nasty copy protection scheme that wallopped the heck out of the C=1541 as the game loaded. Whenever he finished with the game, he found he couldn't use his drive anymore, because the copy protection scheme had screwed up the alignment. But -- true story -- if he then re-loaded the game, it whacked the drive back into alignment and his other disks worked.
That's a scary piece of engineering, IMHO.
Ahhh, any veteran of the Commodore 1541 floppy drive can tell you what this is: alignment errors. You see, the head is moved using these little step-motors. With use, the motors drift out of alignment, meaning the head moves somewhat less (or more) per "kick" than it's supposed to. As long as it's the same motor, that error occurs on every operation, so there's no net effect. (That is, sure, the data's in the wrong place. But during read-out, the head will seek to the (same) wrong place. So no error.) But move that disk to another machine, whose step-motor has a different alignment, and BAM! read errors.
Fans of the C1541 will remember what happens when that drive found an alignment error: CLACKETY-CLACKETY-CLACKETY-CLACKETY-CLACKETY-CLAC
Um, doesn't that mean they'll have to wait until someone invents a time machine?
While as disgusted by the whole Florida debacle as any freedom-loving person would be, I have to say: Until the last presidential election, the US hadn't had a Florida-sized failure, either. In other words, Europe might be doing it right or they might have just been luckier.
Enter the Matrix has fixed save points, and they aren't particularly well chosen. Too often you have to walk through meaninglessly easy -- but time-consuming -- parts of the game to get to the more challenging stuff. Then, if you fail at the challenging stuff, you die and have to walk through the boring stuff again. I personally believe that games should allow you to save whenever you want.
A racing game called "HSX: Hypersonic Extreme". It is a so-so racing game but comes with (what looks like) a nifty Track Editor so that you can build your own physics-defying tracks. Unfortunately all of the cool track features begin "locked" and must be unlocked by playing the standard tracks and coming in third or higher. I think the game designers erred tremendously, as the editor is not linearly connected to your prowess on the standard tracks and should not have been tied to it. It's just a case of the designers insisting I pay homage to their creativity, rather than allowing me free rein to explore my own.
Anyway, that's my two millisovereigns and I'm sticking by 'em.
You're thinking of Dark Side of the Rainbow, the pairing of Wizard of Oz with Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon. Synchronize your DVD player and CD player such that the album begins on the third roar of the MGM lion and you'll see...
Well, actually, you'll see that this works much better with illegal substances coursing through your veins. Watched sober, it doesn't really line up.
Well, we're rapidly heading toward the day when your computer serves the various corporate interests that have slipped their fingers into it. The day of computers being for the end user are pretty much numbered.
Like humanity has ever needed a reason to drive another species to extinction...
No, no, you misunderstand. Ruthlessly exploiting Nature, much like ruthlessly exploiting the public domain, is peachy-keen under the DMCA. Once some giant faceless corporation has learned the secret of the sponge, though, then that gets the full draconian protection.
If we did it your way, how ever would our cartels prosper?