I do know that the drive isn't in operation while on the bus. Most likely while in operation the drive will deteriorate slowly, but because these are mp3's here, the listener will never notice unless he or she tries to format the drive and install linux or windoze.
Consider the Iomega HipZip. Currently the disks only hold 38.6 MB but the idea is good. Use removable disks, but include a small amount of RAM to hold 4 MB or so of data. Increase the scale, and you could be talking about Zip disks holding 100 MB or a Castlewood ORB drive holding 2 GB. The player could access the drive every 10 MB or so, if there weren't too many G's on straining the drive. The system isn't perfect, but it beats buying 256 MB flash memory cards.
I don't think most hard drives get to the computer store or manufacturer like Dell by plane, that would imply the drives got there by truck or perhaps train. At some point though the drive will be subjected to bumps from the road. Therefore the drive must be built to take some whacks and keep on ticking.
So you're implying that a married couple will be more intelligent and financially capable of bringing up children than a single mother or father? Are you forgeting about the rampant level of poverty and low education rates in the United States and the world? This poverty leads millions to marry at a young age so the parents can get a kid out of the house, thereby saving some money. These two newelyweds (being Christian) immediately go to bed and she gets pregnant. He goes off in search of some low paying job, or perhaps keeps working on a family farm. He being eternally horny, (read: most males) keeps getting her pregnant because he can't stop himself or afford condoms. (yet affording another child is no problem, yeah right) If they live on a farm then the more children the better since children make for cheap labor. Too poor to send the kids to school, the children grow up until they marry off and it starts all over again.
I would guess there are many more out of wedlock births to smart, caring parents, who are ready, or at least better prepared and financially able to raise a child.
I've heard the argument that all encryption is eventually breakable, I assume you have as well. What I suggest is that sometime within the next 10 years there will be enough bandwidth for everyone to have this work. My idea is when you double click on metallica.scr or whatever secure format is chosen, the player connects to bmg.com and gets an authorization key to play the music. I'm sure it will eventually be possible to crack the key and the player, but it might take a while. I was also suggesting that most people will go along with a new format if it is fair. Most people will not jump through all the hoops needed to do what you suggest. They will be content to play thier copy of Enter Sandman on the way to work while their youngest kid listens to it on his way to school, but the oldest kid has to pay for his/her own copy at college because the license says only two copies may play at the same time.
BMG doesn't have to sell you the music, and you don't have to buy it. If the agreement says only one or two copies can play at one time then you either honor it or you don't get to download any more music. Perhaps BMG gets to fine your credit card or the like. Big labels came about because they could pay struggling bands more than the smaller ones and could spend more in marketing. A revolution against them would probably ensure the likes of Green Day would never have been known outside of the San Fracisco Bay Area. The same is true for most bands.
Don't be so sure most everyone will abandon Napster if they change the format. What is important are the restrictions placed on the format. If the format is changed, will people still be able to keep a copy on their hard drive, but also on their Rio? Will they be able to listen to "their" songs on their laptop in Cancun while the original sits on a desktop? What matters most is how fairly or unfairly the restrictions are placed.
Sometime within the next ten years the internet and its users will have advanced enough for nearly everyone to stream any song they want to where ever they are. It will also be possible, to "own" a permanent "license" on a song downloaded from BMG.com.
Given this scenario, what really is fair use? Fair use is Listening to that song from your laptop in Cancun or in your car mp3 player on your way to work. When you listen to that song, the player could tell BMG.com you are listening to that song, and lock out someone from playing it on your computer at home. Is this really so unfair? I think its hard to argue it is fair to burn ten copies of a CD today and give them to friends to listen to while you listen to your original. Perhaps the folks at BMG.com could even be so nice as to allow two copies of a song to play at the same time?
Most people want convenience and ease of use. Most people don't want to screw artists. So long as restrictions aren't unfair, people will embrace another format.
The PS2 is most definitely a disappointment. Now everybody go buy Dreamcasts to screw Sony! Call, email and fax their movie division and tell those bastards that Blair Witch 2 sucks ass and get back to making Men In Black 2 and Ghostbusters 3, which Sony CANNED because they thought they could make more money from low budget stink bombs like Blair Witch 2!
I agree that what you put in your body is your own goddamn business. But are you prepared to argue that you're entitiled to drive stoned or drunk? Are you entitled to reduce your faculties and increase the risk of killing my brother or anyone else? If you kill someone because you were doing your goddamn business, it instantly becomes MY business, and SOCIETIES business.
Do you have any idea how many people think they can drive drunk or while on drugs and not fuck up any easier? If people would agree to get stoned at their friends house, with their friends, and then spend the night there or until the effects wore off, I would be OK with what you want. But people DO NOT and WILL NOT.
Perhaps a better solution is to legalize many drugs, and spend those hundreds of billions of dollars on more cops with radar, officers on the beat, and planes watching overhead. Just think of how much burglary, rape, murder, public drunkeness, just about every crime, will go down!
O.K., I postulated the system is only designed to deal with 2 cars, itself and the human its hypothetically racing against at the same time. There will be no pack of drivers competing. I also postulate it will be updating its data on the environment outside the car i.e. WALLS, the road, the other driver, about 500 times a second or as fast as the sensors can pass on the information should that be less than 500 frames per second.
Currently in computer games, when another car crashes the competition attempts to steer around it. This doesn't always happen realistically but that's the intention of the programmers. I would like to point out that the computer would have NO sudden realization the car ahead is sideways. Any intelligent programmer would not only include a physics model of how to drive and keep from crashing, but would include instructions on what to do IF something went wrong.
If the rear right tire loses traction, the AI would know what to do about it. If the car is entering a spin, - same thing. Now suppose the AI is monitoring the human car ahead and sees the rear of the car sliding towards the wall as the driver is turning. The intelligent programmer will have the AI constantly monitoring the human car. After all, how else can it BEAT the human unless it pays attention? WHEN it calculates that the rear of the car could not possibly move that way unless it had lost traction, the AI will have been programmed to know what the human is likely to do to correct this.
Now if the data says the human car is screwed and is going to roll, the AI will compute the path of the roll and steer the hell out of the way.
I do not suggest it is possible for the programmers to instruct the AI with every possible malfunction. So the AI will be on its own if a meteor slams into the human's engine, or a psycho fan throws a hammer onto the track, but otherwise in three years this race is highly possible.
Finally, how much CPU power does it take to convert visual data into object tracking? MIT and other researchers have been doing it for years. Are these folks using supercomputers? I think not. Perhaps the human car could be painted neon green to help the computer distinguish it from the track and walls. Don't get the idea it is necessary to have 20 camera's either, that's bull. Stereoscopic vision only takes 2 and the robot could use as many as five or six to give it a full field of vision. Perhaps the robot could even turn it's "head" if monitoring the rear view mirror wasn't providing enough information.
So who remembers the definition of "Ultimate"?
on
The Ultimate Monitor
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· Score: 1
Last I heard something was the "ultimate" if it could never be improved. Without checking I'm pretty damn sure there has been another "THIS IS THE ULTIMATE MONITOR!" article on Slashdot before. Just wait another year before a five panel wraparound flat screen, even higher resolution-per-monitor display becomes available. So Toys and or CmdrTaco, quit mangling the english language before you reach ULTIMATE zerohood.
I really don't see why everyone thinks this will need such massive computing power that it can't fit in the car.
Start with racing simulator computer games. How much computing power actually is used to run the physics engine? How much goes to the graphics. Now remove graphics. Now consider what the engine is modeling. Probably the game was designed to calculate 10, 20 cars all using the same physics model. Now remove all but two cars. Now consider the hardware its running on. PC games simply never come close to the limits of the system with opimal code because the game has to function on so many configurations that many optimizations get left out. This program can run to the limit.
Consider the calculations per second necessary in a game. I'll say 30 to 60. Lets say this system will do 1000. Remember however that the X-29, the first forward-sweeping winged plane to exceed Mach 1 had to be flown with a computer interpreting and actualizing the pilots commands due to the inherent instability of a forward-sweeping wing. Now how many time a second did the wonder adjust? The computer adjusted the plane only 40 times per second. How many times per second is really necessary for this race? 1000 perhaps since its a nice big round number with no real logic behind its choosing. I dare say there will be negligible difference at 500 adjustments per second.
Obviously the physics model of a racing sim isn't as good as it need to be. Already modeled however are the most of the car and its connection to the road. Gravity and most of the laws of physics exist. What is missing? Probably the effects of wind, random uneveness in pavement, fault tolerances in general, AI to deal with real loss of traction, tire wear, road conditions...I know I'm forgetting some other things.
My conclusion is: If three years ago the best computer available ran 333MHz, three years from now 4GHz may well be reality. If the computer doesn't have to worry about graphics and 18 other cars, while the code has been written down to the metal, there is an excellent chance an AI car can handle 200 Mph with more aplomb than any of us can at 60.
The chess match was to see if AI and computational power could beat the best chess brain on Earth. While the robot ought to have to manipulate the same controls and fit in the same space, it ought to get radar and all other kinds of sensors, short of a hole in the floor. The robot ought to go up against one other human driver. The test will then be can the AI be programmed well enough to run the tightest line possible but still deal with another driver.
I'm pretty sure he knows it was watts and not hertz. The joke was that he wanted to crow about how much power it has. Power = watts = GHz in this joke.
The market is those persons you already described. They need the 2GHz chips. I assume you read the article where it went into detail about Intel's plans for the Celeron? Since you read the article you know that the vast majority of consumers will never buy a box costing more than $2000. These people will be perfectly happy with the low end of the market, which is just the high end of the market trickling down in price. WindozeMe will slow any computer down about 100MHz. Consumers who want to buy another PC will then one with a faster chip.
I would guess that it is probably about as cheap for Intel to fabricate 600MHz Celerons as it was to fab 400MHz versions six months ago.
The price stays the same but the power increases.
Was it you a year ago crying that there was no market for 1GHz chips? You'd be foolish to say that now. Excuse me now, I'm going to go play Quake III at 1024x768 on HIGH while downloading game demos using Getright and keeping Netscape and ICQ open for the convenience.
Of course you're forgetting why corporations were set up. To let business grow and prosper. Without a corporation pretending to be a person, the owner faces unlimited liability and can be sued until he/she is destitute on the street without even a home. I'm sure without corporations there are plenty of businesses that nobody would ever have dared start out of fear for their financial safety. Do you really think Linus Torvalds would have started Transmeta if he knew that failure will result in his personal bancrupcy and not just the dissolution of the company?
You're quite right that KMart isn't interested in selling me just one piece of gum yet. When I use Napster though, I am showing RIAA that I will not buy any gum at all until they change how they sell gum.
What I am doing is illegal and ethically wrong compared to alternatives, but what evidence is there that RIAA will ever offer single mp3s for download if I stop using Napster? If RIAA makes more money from CDs and their filler tracks then my protest will not make any difference.
RIAA will not change its distribution system unless forced to. I am in favor of helping force it to change as fast as possible.
Hey, sometimes these 40 ton gorillas just need some shoving to get them moving.
Speaking for myself and not everybody else; This IS about making RIAA change its ways. I want to purchase mp3s on the net for a buck a piece. RIAA isn't going to change its distribution methods because people want them too unless it has incentives. The primary incentive is economic. RIAA makes millions charging for CD's that have filler tracks; tracks that most people do not like and would never pay for on their own. These tracks do not get played on the radio because they often suck.
I want to make RIAA offer mp3s for download, and I'll pay for them too. I'll pay for my 900 illegal mp3s. 900 dollars. I expect for there to be restrictions on how I can use these music files of course, such as no simultaneous playing of one file in two places, but that is fair as I haven't payed for two copies.
What money RIAA loses from not selling its filler tracks it can make up in not having to give me any physical media. Even if RIAA still does not make as much money compared to the current system, I shed no tears for RIAA, because this is the RIGHT way to distribute music. Currently RIAA charges more for CD's than tapes, this could be chalked up to supply and demand, but I want my music formatted digitally and compressed. Protesting economically with Napster will help me bring this about.
It is illegal to have any portion of the "egg" song contain the copyrighted work. If those making eggs used the real song they could be banned and are just as guilty of breaking the law as any other user.
Write to Senator Orin Hatch: senator_hatch@hatch.senate.gov
Dear Senator Hatch,
Thank you very much for your excellently conducted hearing about mp3 and fair use. I read a detailed article about it on-line. The evening news is pitifully lacking in actual content and quotes.
I firmly agree personal copies should be allowed or for sharing a file over a network. Mp3.com's "Beam-It" software ought to be legal for those who own the CD they want to remotely listen to.
The technology and alternative formats to mp3 exist for music companies to take advantage of. Instead they are trying to put so many restrictions on copying and use that I fear no one will ever pay for it or tolerate the inconvinences. RIAA may well try to use this as justification when their attempts fail.
I encourage you to sponsor legislation which helps define fair use, and helps music artists receive the revenue they deserve through rationally protected file formats.
Right on brother! It doesn't matter what political party one belongs to, to see injustice (the DMCA abuse) happening. I encourage EVERYONE to WRITE to Orin Hatch at senator_hatch@hatch.senate.gov and offer their encouragement and views in CONCISE language. Let someone who 'gets it' know how we feel.
Terminator2 is the best pinball I've ever played. No stupid story that's in too many computer pinball games these days. Just pure points. Fire the ball with the gun trigger and during the game on the orange and black screen to get massive points. Gradually increasing challenges keep it fresh, but I choose what to do, no evil story keeping me trying to hit one tiny part of the machine over and over.
Listening to music over the net is a great start, but does not address the more complex copyright issue.
Buying a CD should be buying a Restricted License giving me permission to copy the songs to my hard drive. If the CD breaks, under the license I should be able to download and burn a new copy for myself. If I am at a hotel room five thousand miles from my CD collection, I should have the license to stream my songs through the net to my laptop. If I am at my friends house I should be able to download the song through Napster to his hard drive. He should also be required to delete the song after I leave.
The license should NOT allow me to listen to a burned copy of my CD while my room mate listens to the mp3's I made on my computer. The license should allow copying, but only one copy can be in use. If I sell the CD the license gets transferred to the buyer.
Most if not all of this is technologically feasible. There are weaknesses in this system for abuse and copying, as there are in the current one. There will be piracy and abuse of any system. My solution encourages the spread of music to new ears, which will increase sales, while preserving the control of artists and labels over their property. _
It is NOT simple to change your user name. I was banned and have not figured out how to reregister. Uninstalling Napster, deleting all files with "napster" in the title, deleting all items in Windoze's registry does not work. I am on a modem as well so I had a different IP when I tried to reregister. Anyone who knows how to reregister please speak up because I don't feel like formating my HD or lying to Napster. Well actually I do feel like lying to Napster and Metallica, I just don't like the idea of getting caught.
Slashdot Mirror
Intermediate - 59 seconds
I don't think I ever had the patience to beat it on Expert, or if I did, I don't have a faster time.
I would guess there are many more out of wedlock births to smart, caring parents, who are ready, or at least better prepared and financially able to raise a child.
BMG doesn't have to sell you the music, and you don't have to buy it. If the agreement says only one or two copies can play at one time then you either honor it or you don't get to download any more music. Perhaps BMG gets to fine your credit card or the like. Big labels came about because they could pay struggling bands more than the smaller ones and could spend more in marketing. A revolution against them would probably ensure the likes of Green Day would never have been known outside of the San Fracisco Bay Area. The same is true for most bands.
Sometime within the next ten years the internet and its users will have advanced enough for nearly everyone to stream any song they want to where ever they are. It will also be possible, to "own" a permanent "license" on a song downloaded from BMG.com.
Given this scenario, what really is fair use? Fair use is Listening to that song from your laptop in Cancun or in your car mp3 player on your way to work. When you listen to that song, the player could tell BMG.com you are listening to that song, and lock out someone from playing it on your computer at home. Is this really so unfair? I think its hard to argue it is fair to burn ten copies of a CD today and give them to friends to listen to while you listen to your original. Perhaps the folks at BMG.com could even be so nice as to allow two copies of a song to play at the same time?
Most people want convenience and ease of use. Most people don't want to screw artists. So long as restrictions aren't unfair, people will embrace another format.
Do you have any idea how many people think they can drive drunk or while on drugs and not fuck up any easier? If people would agree to get stoned at their friends house, with their friends, and then spend the night there or until the effects wore off, I would be OK with what you want. But people DO NOT and WILL NOT.
Perhaps a better solution is to legalize many drugs, and spend those hundreds of billions of dollars on more cops with radar, officers on the beat, and planes watching overhead. Just think of how much burglary, rape, murder, public drunkeness, just about every crime, will go down!
Currently in computer games, when another car crashes the competition attempts to steer around it. This doesn't always happen realistically but that's the intention of the programmers. I would like to point out that the computer would have NO sudden realization the car ahead is sideways. Any intelligent programmer would not only include a physics model of how to drive and keep from crashing, but would include instructions on what to do IF something went wrong.
If the rear right tire loses traction, the AI would know what to do about it. If the car is entering a spin, - same thing. Now suppose the AI is monitoring the human car ahead and sees the rear of the car sliding towards the wall as the driver is turning. The intelligent programmer will have the AI constantly monitoring the human car. After all, how else can it BEAT the human unless it pays attention? WHEN it calculates that the rear of the car could not possibly move that way unless it had lost traction, the AI will have been programmed to know what the human is likely to do to correct this.
Now if the data says the human car is screwed and is going to roll, the AI will compute the path of the roll and steer the hell out of the way.
I do not suggest it is possible for the programmers to instruct the AI with every possible malfunction. So the AI will be on its own if a meteor slams into the human's engine, or a psycho fan throws a hammer onto the track, but otherwise in three years this race is highly possible.
Finally, how much CPU power does it take to convert visual data into object tracking? MIT and other researchers have been doing it for years. Are these folks using supercomputers? I think not. Perhaps the human car could be painted neon green to help the computer distinguish it from the track and walls. Don't get the idea it is necessary to have 20 camera's either, that's bull. Stereoscopic vision only takes 2 and the robot could use as many as five or six to give it a full field of vision. Perhaps the robot could even turn it's "head" if monitoring the rear view mirror wasn't providing enough information.
Start with racing simulator computer games. How much computing power actually is used to run the physics engine? How much goes to the graphics. Now remove graphics. Now consider what the engine is modeling. Probably the game was designed to calculate 10, 20 cars all using the same physics model. Now remove all but two cars. Now consider the hardware its running on. PC games simply never come close to the limits of the system with opimal code because the game has to function on so many configurations that many optimizations get left out. This program can run to the limit.
Consider the calculations per second necessary in a game. I'll say 30 to 60. Lets say this system will do 1000. Remember however that the X-29, the first forward-sweeping winged plane to exceed Mach 1 had to be flown with a computer interpreting and actualizing the pilots commands due to the inherent instability of a forward-sweeping wing. Now how many time a second did the wonder adjust? The computer adjusted the plane only 40 times per second. How many times per second is really necessary for this race? 1000 perhaps since its a nice big round number with no real logic behind its choosing. I dare say there will be negligible difference at 500 adjustments per second.
Obviously the physics model of a racing sim isn't as good as it need to be. Already modeled however are the most of the car and its connection to the road. Gravity and most of the laws of physics exist. What is missing? Probably the effects of wind, random uneveness in pavement, fault tolerances in general, AI to deal with real loss of traction, tire wear, road conditions...I know I'm forgetting some other things.
My conclusion is: If three years ago the best computer available ran 333MHz, three years from now 4GHz may well be reality. If the computer doesn't have to worry about graphics and 18 other cars, while the code has been written down to the metal, there is an excellent chance an AI car can handle 200 Mph with more aplomb than any of us can at 60.
I would guess that it is probably about as cheap for Intel to fabricate 600MHz Celerons as it was to fab 400MHz versions six months ago.
The price stays the same but the power increases.
Was it you a year ago crying that there was no market for 1GHz chips? You'd be foolish to say that now. Excuse me now, I'm going to go play Quake III at 1024x768 on HIGH while downloading game demos using Getright and keeping Netscape and ICQ open for the convenience.
What I am doing is illegal and ethically wrong compared to alternatives, but what evidence is there that RIAA will ever offer single mp3s for download if I stop using Napster? If RIAA makes more money from CDs and their filler tracks then my protest will not make any difference.
RIAA will not change its distribution system unless forced to. I am in favor of helping force it to change as fast as possible.
Hey, sometimes these 40 ton gorillas just need some shoving to get them moving.
I want to make RIAA offer mp3s for download, and I'll pay for them too. I'll pay for my 900 illegal mp3s. 900 dollars. I expect for there to be restrictions on how I can use these music files of course, such as no simultaneous playing of one file in two places, but that is fair as I haven't payed for two copies.
What money RIAA loses from not selling its filler tracks it can make up in not having to give me any physical media. Even if RIAA still does not make as much money compared to the current system, I shed no tears for RIAA, because this is the RIGHT way to distribute music. Currently RIAA charges more for CD's than tapes, this could be chalked up to supply and demand, but I want my music formatted digitally and compressed. Protesting economically with Napster will help me bring this about.
Dear Senator Hatch,
Thank you very much for your excellently conducted hearing about mp3 and fair use. I read a detailed article about it on-line. The evening news is pitifully lacking in actual content and quotes.
I firmly agree personal copies should be allowed or for sharing a file over a network. Mp3.com's "Beam-It" software ought to be legal for those who own the CD they want to remotely listen to.
The technology and alternative formats to mp3 exist for music companies to take advantage of. Instead they are trying to put so many restrictions on copying and use that I fear no one will ever pay for it or tolerate the inconvinences. RIAA may well try to use this as justification when their attempts fail.
I encourage you to sponsor legislation which helps define fair use, and helps music artists receive the revenue they deserve through rationally protected file formats.
Sincerely,
Right on brother! It doesn't matter what political party one belongs to, to see injustice (the DMCA abuse) happening. I encourage EVERYONE to WRITE to Orin Hatch at senator_hatch@hatch.senate.gov and offer their encouragement and views in CONCISE language. Let someone who 'gets it' know how we feel.
Terminator2 is the best pinball I've ever played. No stupid story that's in too many computer pinball games these days. Just pure points. Fire the ball with the gun trigger and during the game on the orange and black screen to get massive points. Gradually increasing challenges keep it fresh, but I choose what to do, no evil story keeping me trying to hit one tiny part of the machine over and over.
Listening to music over the net is a great start, but does not address the more complex copyright issue.
Buying a CD should be buying a Restricted License giving me permission to copy the songs to my hard drive. If the CD breaks, under the license I should be able to download and burn a new copy for myself. If I am at a hotel room five thousand miles from my CD collection, I should have the license to stream my songs through the net to my laptop. If I am at my friends house I should be able to download the song through Napster to his hard drive. He should also be required to delete the song after I leave.
The license should NOT allow me to listen to a burned copy of my CD while my room mate listens to the mp3's I made on my computer. The license should allow copying, but only one copy can be in use. If I sell the CD the license gets transferred to the buyer.
Most if not all of this is technologically feasible. There are weaknesses in this system for abuse and copying, as there are in the current one. There will be piracy and abuse of any system. My solution encourages the spread of music to new ears, which will increase sales, while preserving the control of artists and labels over their property.
_
It is NOT simple to change your user name. I was banned and have not figured out how to reregister. Uninstalling Napster, deleting all files with "napster" in the title, deleting all items in Windoze's registry does not work. I am on a modem as well so I had a different IP when I tried to reregister. Anyone who knows how to reregister please speak up because I don't feel like formating my HD or lying to Napster. Well actually I do feel like lying to Napster and Metallica, I just don't like the idea of getting caught.