T-Mobile's prepaid plan is a total rip-off. I was using it for a while but it was costing me an arm and a leg for minutes. I had the unlimited sms with it because I used them more often than talking on the phone but it cost $1 a day for access and $.15 a min for calls. your best bet is to get their "Flexpay" account which is very similar where you pay in advance but you can get unlimited everything (calls,sms and net) for $49.99 a month. It is a much better deal if you use your phone even a moderate amount of time.
Your usage is nowhere close to appropriate for most prepaid plans. 30 text messages a day? 30 minutes a day? No kidding the unlimited plans are better for use like that.
On the other hand, my wife and I use, combined, perhaps 200-400 minutes/month and a few dozen text messages. We went from a shared 700 minute plan on Verizon to two T-Mobile prepaid phones (both unlocked, and hers is a cheap Nokia smartphone that has useful wifi features and games for $150). Our monthly bill went from ~$80 (with tax and a text message plan for my wife's phone) to $20-30. The phones paid for themselves within a few months, and now we save a ton of money.
It's not perfect - T-Mobile's coverage is terrible, and roaming doesn't seem very reliable in some areas. The prepaid plans work in Mexico and Canada (I think), but not Europe (at least not when we went to the UK), but with unlocked phones you can always buy a cheap European SIM.
Prepaid plans make sense for those of us who use relatively few minutes and text messages. I actually use substantially more text messages now because my old Verizon plan charged $0.20 for them! The basic answer is that you need to figure out how much you'll want to use your phone and go from there. If you're the sort of person who's often around a wifi connection like we are, there are cheap smartphones which are useful (e.g. text chatting, voip, browsing and email) even without a data plan.
Right now the NYT's pricing model is really strange. The website is available freely (with ads not much worse than when I dropped my subscription to the WSJ years ago). The iphone app is free, and I've heard it's pretty good. The Kindle version isn't complete and is $14/mo (it was supposed to drop to $10/mo for DX users, but that hasn't happened yet). Until just a few days ago, the nook price was an unbelievable $25/mo (now matched $14/mo). Sure, you pay for the convenience of it delivered to you "free" via the cell networks, but the iphone/ipod touch vs. Kindle pricing is really strange.
The WSJ is also strange. Online only is $2/week, print is $2.30/week, and both is $2.70/week. The online-only price seems pretty expensive relative to the cost of delivering a copy to me 6 days a week. Are print ads just that much more lucrative than online ads? I quit my subscription years back because I was tired of paying ~$100/yr for content with just as much ads as the NYT where the news was always free. The Kindle version is $15/mo - more expensive than the online and print subscription!
It's too bad TFA indicates the NYTimes is probably not going with the metered approach of X free articles before being asked to subscribe. Outside linking seems crucial to keeping your market share, and I've seen a small fraction of WSJ links compared to NYTimes links over the years. Offering a small number of ad-supported articles before needing to subscribe guarantees that the casual reader will still be able to get content and perhaps view relatively more ads, while more regular readers (and the hope that casual readers decide to become regular readers) subscribe and get unrestricted access. Bonus points for offering some amenities - reduced ads (how about text only? That'd be awesome). A substantial discount on ebook versions would be nice too. $14/mo is too high, especially for ebook versions which can't display all content due to the eink tech as it stands.
If nothing else, maybe these new devices will put some pressure on Amazon to do one or more of:
1.) Add PDF annotation and/or zoom support. These are important for those with lots of PDF documents/articles to read.
2.) Add a touch screen (helps with selecting text and general navigation)
3.) Lower the $489 price (looks rather silly if this device can offer a second LCD screen and both be touch screens at the same price point, though the Kindle has cell access)
Example 1: 1600x1200 next to 1024x768, Gnome, year:2009. Failed. Took me a few hours until I found a filed bug, that Xorg would not accept a higher resolution of the virtual desktop than 2048x2048. Placing 1600x1200 above 1024x768 finally worked; based on Gnome's GUI. Still not good.
If I had to guess, you have a somewhat old Intel chipset (945?). They have hardware limitations which prevent the total virtual screen from being > 2048x2048. It's not so much a bug as an inherent limitation. My old laptop had such a chipset, but my "new" one (Thinkpad T61 with Intel 965) works just fine. I'm running 1440x900 next to 1920x1200.
That's not to say there aren't issues. xrandr manually works great, but the Ubuntu/GNOME display panel/system forgets if you want your primary screen to the right of your secondary screen. Still, this latest setup is the first time I've ever had dual monitors correctly configured with a GUI. KDE 4, at least in some distros, still lacks any xrandr type configuration of multiple monitors.
Let's assume I don't have a Kill a watt, which I don't -- can you link me to some study defending your point?
Just about any thorough review of any modern processor will list power consumption under idle and under load. For basically the first result I found in Google, containing some older processors and some newer ones, see this page. It appears common to have a 70+ watt difference between idle and full load.
Depending on the season and the availability of air conditioning, cooling costs come into play as well. If the machines/room are improperly cooled they can also slightly shorten the expected lifespan of some components. On an individual basis these costs are small, but for 5,000 computers these things add up.
If this guy really cared about distributed computing (perhaps not SETI@home, but folding@home or something), he should have worked to make this a learning experience. Have the school district take credit for the computing power, and teach kids about distributed computing. Still, given the power costs that's an expensive lesson.
Wanting a low DPI monitor is the absolute wrong answer to an important question - how do we make our computers easier to read if we don't have good eyesight?
Sure, low DPI monitors will make everything look large, but the correct solution is a vector-scalable desktop environment. I want more DPI crammed into my desktop (to make it closer to my laptop), not less. The higher the DPI, the less we depend on hacks like antialiasing and sub-pixel font rendering to make our fonts appear smooth.
Once you obtain a monitor of appropriate physical size and reasonably large DPI, the problem is entirely within software. Windows XP had somewhat limited options, though you can play with font DPIs and such. Older versions of KDE and GNOME used bitmapped images for icons, making them ugly if you scale them. Newer versions (at least of KDE) use SVG everywhere. Then it's a matter of finding themes with sufficiently large buttons, scroll wheels, etc. A little work, but relatively do-able in Linux. Hopefully newer versions of Windows also provide more flexibility here, or perhaps with some add-on software. I haven't tried messing with Mac OS X's accessibility options too much.
That said, there are always issues. Emacs for me doesn't grab the DPI setting from GNOME to set its font size, so when I dock my laptop and X reports a DPI change, my fonts also change. I have some code in my.emacs file to detect the system DPI and set the font to something reasonable, but I haven't yet tested it in docked mode yet.
But the bottom line is that we've reached about the limit of reasonable desktop screen sizes. These screens are also pretty cheap (much cheaper than similarly-sized CRTs ever were). That means that the source of improvement is in native resolution, viewing angle, color accuracy, etc. I'd absolutely love a 300 dpi monitor and have antialiasing need to do little or nothing to make my fonts look spectacular. Phone screens are getting there, then will come laptop screens, and hopefully in a few years we'll have 200 dpi+ monitors as the OSes will all support scaling everything appropriately.
You are kidding right? I love Coke, I mean I love it. If it was the only liquid on earth I would be perfectly content. Diet Code is bad, Coke Zero is OK not great, but the people who worked on Caffeine-free Coke belong in a special hell. Its awful! I would rather have a nice tall frosty glass of 120 weight gear oil.
Umm, what's to work on? You simply don't add the caffeine. Caffeine free coke has just as much sugar, etc. Caffeine adds two things: its (mild) stimulant properties (which pales in comparison to the caffeine quantity in coffee and energy drinks) and a bit of a bitter flavor. You must really like that bitterness to find caffeine free coke worse than Coke Zero or Diet Coke. I bet most people couldn't tell the difference in a blind taste test. Heck, there are lots of stories about people being switched to decaf without their knowledge, though if people notice it's often because they feel caffeine withdrawal.
On the other hand, decaf coffee has the caffeine removed in a process which degrades the complex flavor. This means that aside from the bitterness factor, you need to spend more money on decaf coffee than regular coffee to get the same general quality flavor.
I'm not doubting your claim about hating caffeine free, but I am surprised that someone who is so sensitive to bitterness prefers it there rather than absent.
One thing that's often confused me is the exact relationship between the GPL and interpreted languages. For example, if I write a perl script which calls perl functionality which is part of the base interpreter, my script need not be distributed under the terms of the GPL. This is akin to using a GPL word processor or other software, where the output of a program is not subject to the GPL.
If, on the other hand, my script calls a perl function which is itself written in perl (licensed under the GPL), the FSF argues that this constitutes a derivative work akin to dynamic linking. Thus, my script (if distributed) must be distributed under a GPL-compatible license.
I can see it both ways. On the one hand, calling a function written in the same interpreted language is very much like calling a function in a library from a compiled binary. On the other, it's strange to think that there's a distinction based on whether the function being called is written as part of the interpreter (in, for example, C) versus the interpreted language itself. In addition, there seems to be disagreement about whether the GPL really binds like the FSF claims. Lots of interpreted code gets released as the GPL when it seems likely that the LGPL is what the authors really intend; that is, they do not want to restrict scripts and functions which call the code.
A good example of this is R This statistical language has fairly small interpreter and a large set of both included and downloadable packages, themselves written in R (and licensed under the GPL). Clearly most of the primary authors do not intend for all R scripts using the most basic of functionality to be released in a GPL compatible way; for one, they make the header files necessary for writing C-based libraries for use in R LGPL to explicitly allow such libraries to be non-free. In addition, they are fine with a large number of downloadable packages which restrict commercial use (obviously not allowed under the GPL). Their interpretation of the GPL seems at odds with the FSF. Even if you want to release all your code in a GPL-compatible way, it may be (IANAL) that you cannot call both code restricted from commercial use and GPL-licensed code (basically unavoidable) in the same project.
I'd be inclined to agree with you, but unfortunately those taxes very rarely, if ever, go towards covering the costs society bears for that activity.
This actually isn't necessary. Raising the cost of goods with negative externalities tends to reduce their consumption, bringing the market closer to the efficient consumption point (given some assumptions about social costs versus private costs). The general idea is that if you have to get tax revenue from somewhere, get it by taxing things we don't like.
Thus one proposal for a carbon tax is to actually rebate the money to individuals lump-sum, without regard to their income or energy usage. This way bad behavior (using carbon-emitting energy) is discouraged, but the each person receives the average tax collected. Of course, politics and government revenues being what they are, I wouldn't expect any climate change bill to really rebate all the money collected. But depending on your views, a carbon tax can be a lot better way to obtain revenue than an income tax, for example.
Basically, my core point is that a lot of correlation studies lack rigour of the most basic kind, and are just a number thrown out to make a point. The more I learn about the subject, the more convinced of this point I become.
The real issue here is the lack of rigour, not the statistical tool in particular. I find it ironic that you dislike studies with correlations because sloppy studies often (mis)use correlations.
As with any statistical tools, you need to know what they mean and how (and when) to apply them. Correlations are a very useful tool, especially early in a particular research agenda.
Correlation is NOT Causation. Correlation proves nothing. Saturn is correlated to the S&P 500 with r=0.88. And don't think there a correlation so profoundly stupid that someone won't publish a "scientific" paper on it.
This correlation is entirely due to both series being upward-trending. Either the author (presumably you, from your nick) knew this or was being sloppy. To be fair, sloppy statistics are misleading, but this extends to more than just correlations.
Helpfully, the author provided the data. Applying the simplest linear detrending, I obtain a correlation of 0.0371, rather than the 0.8778 without detrending.
This same point was made more clearly by the correlation of pirates and global warming; there, it's obvious that the mistake is to look at general trending variables and infer some sort of correlation, because countless variables trend over time and you'll get a significant positive or negative correlation. With this example, it's more misleading because it might be possible that the deviations from these upward trends actually are correlated, based on the picture. But they aren't.
The true purpose of patents are not so much to act as incentives to innovate, that will happen anyway as long as innovation can produce a profit though the innovation becomes a trade secret.
I disagree. Not all industries can be effectively protected by trade secrets. While I agree that one purpose of the patent system that we have is to encourage openness (especially, it seems, in pharmaceuticals), it's not a fundamental misunderstanding to think that our copyright and patent systems are to encourage innovation.
From the U.S. Constitution itself (article 1, section 8): "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;". Now, "promote" can mean to spur innovation directly and to spur innovation via openness, but the former interpretation is at least as equally valid as the latter.
Nonetheless, I just remain amazed that they didn't put this out earlier, right on top of the news curve, along with giving every person involved a free copy of a legit rendition of the book(s) they had bought. It would not have been terribly expensive, and would have been incredible PR: yes, we screwed up, you already got your refund, here's the book for free anyway.
A simpler solution would be to negotiate with the publishers. Perhaps not to have distribution rights in the future, but retroactive distribution rights. Offer them 100% of the money paid for the Kindle versions out there, or 110% or something. What publisher is really going to stand their ground in the face of a nice check without giving away any future rights? Then nobody knows anything happened, except the book is no longer available for purchase. Instead, this bad PR could cost them quite a bit of Kindle purchases and Kindle book purchases.
Yes, but is a document that you embed the photo into a derivative work?
I wondered about this. Here's how CC defines "adaptation" in the legal text of the CC-BY-SA license:
"Adaptation" means a work based upon the Work, or upon the Work and other pre-existing works, such as a translation, adaptation, derivative work, arrangement of music or other alterations of a literary or artistic work, or phonogram or performance and includes cinematographic adaptations or any other form in which the Work may be recast, transformed, or adapted including in any form recognizably derived from the original, except that a work that constitutes a Collection will not be considered an Adaptation for the purpose of this License. For the avoidance of doubt, where the Work is a musical work, performance or phonogram, the synchronization of the Work in timed-relation with a moving image ("synching") will be considered an Adaptation for the purpose of this License.
They explicitly say that adding a soundtrack to a video is an adaptation. It seemed to me (also as a non-lawyer) that a photo in a document is similar. I take your point about Wikipedia's past use (though didn't the GFDL get modified explicitly to allow Wikipedia to transition to CC-BY-SA?). Googling around for some discussion seems to indicate that having a photo in a larger work is a "collection", and that distribution of a newspaper or magazine entitles the recipient to use of the image but not the surrounding text. I haven't found any expert opinions on the matter yet, and even still it's probably not settled law (as with so much in copyright law). Still, the prevailing opinion seems to be yours, so I stand corrected.
If a freely licensed version on Wikipedia exists, then many publishers would simply take the wikipedia photo.
The standard license on Wikipedia is CC-BY-SA. It's my understanding (as a non-lawyer) that if you upload an image to Wikipedia also as ShareAlike, then anyone who uses your image is bound by the creative commons license (or a compatible alternative) for any derivative works (similar in spirit to the GPL).
This would automatically rule out many uses that photographers might want restricted; major publishers of books, magazines, and newspapers will not be interested in licensing the derivative work under a creative commons license. As the original copyright owner, the photographer will be able to dual-license the photo on a case by case basis. That means that you can upload your photo to Wikipedia for use with CC-licensed works, while getting exposure of your work from potential commercial buyers. Just make sure that when you upload to WP you use CC-BY-SA, and not one of the less restrictive licenses. Sounds like a win-win to me.
I've heard of needing to get -permission- to do something out of the ordinary at a workplace. But to 'shell out hundreds of dollars for a permit'?
This actually seems fairly common in places like art museums, zoos, etc. Sure, the painting may be old enough to be in the public domain, but museums can still restrict your ability to take a commercial photo of it (physically). I imagine zoos see the potential for a few hundred easy bucks in exchange for the inconvenience of a pro setting up equipment and possibly getting in the way of other people.
Granted, I would prefer these terms didn't exist, but they stem from being able to restrict physical access to what you want to photograph. What really annoys me more are restrictions people try to place on photos taken from public places. The Eiffel Tower during the day is okay, but the modern lighting at night is "copyrighted", and any commercial image of the Eiffel Tower at night requires payment (last I heard). Absolutely obnoxious.
I seriously considered getting a Kindle DX, but after a little digging I found that it's not quite there yet for my use. So while I don't have personal experience with one, I did spend some time looking into it.
I'd love to eliminate the need to print PDF documents (like journal articles) for comfortable reading away from my computer. Once I heard that the Kindle DX supports PDF natively and has a large screen, I thought it might be perfect. Before prices were announced, I actually expected it to launch for $600 (comparable to the iRex Iliad). To my surprise, the price was cheaper.
As an added bonus, the free Whispernet (Sprint network) Wikipedia access has been expanded to include a rudimentary web browser. It would be unwise to buy a Kindle expecting this feature to remain free, though.
What's not made clear is that the PDF support has drawbacks. It cannot zoom, except to turn the device into landscape mode, which provides a small magnification. Fortunately, the software does automatically eliminate margins, making the screen about the right size for most documents. What's worse is that all of the annotation features available for ebooks and other documents do not work with PDFs; no highlighting, no note-taking, etc. I think it supports bookmarking, but that's it. For me, this is a deal breaker (at least until the price drops much further). I'm hoping that since this is a software limitation, it might be fixed with an update. I've learned not to count on feature additions in firmware until I see them, though, so I'm holding off on the purchase. Hopefully the price will drop before the end of the year anyway.
More strange is the method of firmware update. Apparently the Kindle 2 gets an update automatically if you leave Whispernet on long enough (usually overnight). I realize Amazon is doing this because they don't want users to need a computer and want to make things as simple as possible, but I would still strongly prefer user pull to Amazon push of content like software updates. Perhaps this behavior is configurable, I'm not sure.
I found it interesting that (at least some) newspaper subscriptions were made cheaper with the DX. If you save $4/mo on two subscriptions each, in about 18 months that will pay for the price difference between the Kindle 2 and Kindle DX. Since neither unit is sold retail, I don't have a very good sense of how comfortable they are to read from, or how annoying I would find the screen wipes (as the eink screens refresh the content). The good news is that the return policy from Amazon seems pretty reasonable, and you can return an opened unit within a few weeks for a full refund. If it supported annotations (and zooming might be important on some documents), that's how I would try it out. Until that's supported, or the price drops substantially, I'll just wait.
Some people are clearly worried that Google is getting so big. I doubt we'll see too many companies even attempt to do the massive book scan that Google is. If/when Google tries to abuse its digital monopoly power over these books, antitrust regulators will almost certainly step in and force Google to license the data to competitors. Worrying about their potential monopoly power is hardly good reason to try to stop them at this point; some access through Google is certainly better than none.
Seems a bit unlikely, but he says he paid contractors to do it.. that tells me he's not a programmer - a phone based puzzle game doesn't require multiple developers (and I'd love to know how they stretched development time to 6 months)
Except TFA indicates that he is a programmer:
[...]paying myself a very small salary (akin to what I made as a junior front-end programmer when I first started in the industry).
Having not seen the game, I can only speculate on what contractors might have done. Perhaps a nice-looking splash screen, and he's not a graphic designer? Maybe a custom bit of music? Maybe he did share some of the coding?
The summary doesn't make it clear, but the article mentions that it also works with the iPod touch. Considering the touch is smaller, lighter, and much cheaper than both the iPhone and the Kindle, this application might give a significant boost to readers looking for a (relatively) inexpensive reader.
Having read long books on old Palm PDAs, the size of the screen is only a minor annoyance. Those PDAs, though, were not backlit LCDs. Some people might find an iPod screen too fatiguing for long reading.
...go take some pictures of some nice copyrighted work like a Disney movie, post them on Facebook, and then ring up Michael Eisner and tell them Facebook is claiming copyright on Disney material.
Not that I agree with what Facebook is doing, but they are not claiming copyright to material submitted to Facebook. They are claiming (nonexclusive) rights to redistribute material. This, of course, is only valid if the Facebook user had the rights to upload the copyrighted material in the first place.
Oh, and Michael Eisner hasn't had anything to do with Disney since 2005.
All of this was possible under the Indiana University "Site License" with Microsoft. In a way yes the software was subsidized with student tuition (or tax payer funds depending on how you look at it) but it wasn't directly subsidized. IU wasn't having to pay full retail or even a fraction of it per copy. They had to pay X dollars per year, per contract duration, whatever and all students could benefit.
Ah, but these contracts come up for renewal eventually. I strongly suspect that Microsoft takes into consideration how many students have been licensing the cheap copies of Office, etc. when deciding how much to charge the university for their next site license contract. It may not be directly subsidized per copy in the short run, but in the long run it probably is effectively.
Of course, it also wouldn't surprise me if part of the contract is that they can't reveal the terms publicly so other universities can compare. Just speculation on my part, but it would help explain why the submitter had a hard time finding pricing info.
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Your usage is nowhere close to appropriate for most prepaid plans. 30 text messages a day? 30 minutes a day? No kidding the unlimited plans are better for use like that.
On the other hand, my wife and I use, combined, perhaps 200-400 minutes/month and a few dozen text messages. We went from a shared 700 minute plan on Verizon to two T-Mobile prepaid phones (both unlocked, and hers is a cheap Nokia smartphone that has useful wifi features and games for $150). Our monthly bill went from ~$80 (with tax and a text message plan for my wife's phone) to $20-30. The phones paid for themselves within a few months, and now we save a ton of money.
It's not perfect - T-Mobile's coverage is terrible, and roaming doesn't seem very reliable in some areas. The prepaid plans work in Mexico and Canada (I think), but not Europe (at least not when we went to the UK), but with unlocked phones you can always buy a cheap European SIM.
Prepaid plans make sense for those of us who use relatively few minutes and text messages. I actually use substantially more text messages now because my old Verizon plan charged $0.20 for them! The basic answer is that you need to figure out how much you'll want to use your phone and go from there. If you're the sort of person who's often around a wifi connection like we are, there are cheap smartphones which are useful (e.g. text chatting, voip, browsing and email) even without a data plan.
Right now the NYT's pricing model is really strange. The website is available freely (with ads not much worse than when I dropped my subscription to the WSJ years ago). The iphone app is free, and I've heard it's pretty good. The Kindle version isn't complete and is $14/mo (it was supposed to drop to $10/mo for DX users, but that hasn't happened yet). Until just a few days ago, the nook price was an unbelievable $25/mo (now matched $14/mo). Sure, you pay for the convenience of it delivered to you "free" via the cell networks, but the iphone/ipod touch vs. Kindle pricing is really strange.
The WSJ is also strange. Online only is $2/week, print is $2.30/week, and both is $2.70/week. The online-only price seems pretty expensive relative to the cost of delivering a copy to me 6 days a week. Are print ads just that much more lucrative than online ads? I quit my subscription years back because I was tired of paying ~$100/yr for content with just as much ads as the NYT where the news was always free. The Kindle version is $15/mo - more expensive than the online and print subscription!
It's too bad TFA indicates the NYTimes is probably not going with the metered approach of X free articles before being asked to subscribe. Outside linking seems crucial to keeping your market share, and I've seen a small fraction of WSJ links compared to NYTimes links over the years. Offering a small number of ad-supported articles before needing to subscribe guarantees that the casual reader will still be able to get content and perhaps view relatively more ads, while more regular readers (and the hope that casual readers decide to become regular readers) subscribe and get unrestricted access. Bonus points for offering some amenities - reduced ads (how about text only? That'd be awesome). A substantial discount on ebook versions would be nice too. $14/mo is too high, especially for ebook versions which can't display all content due to the eink tech as it stands.
If nothing else, maybe these new devices will put some pressure on Amazon to do one or more of:
1.) Add PDF annotation and/or zoom support. These are important for those with lots of PDF documents/articles to read.
2.) Add a touch screen (helps with selecting text and general navigation)
3.) Lower the $489 price (looks rather silly if this device can offer a second LCD screen and both be touch screens at the same price point, though the Kindle has cell access)
If I had to guess, you have a somewhat old Intel chipset (945?). They have hardware limitations which prevent the total virtual screen from being > 2048x2048. It's not so much a bug as an inherent limitation. My old laptop had such a chipset, but my "new" one (Thinkpad T61 with Intel 965) works just fine. I'm running 1440x900 next to 1920x1200.
That's not to say there aren't issues. xrandr manually works great, but the Ubuntu/GNOME display panel/system forgets if you want your primary screen to the right of your secondary screen. Still, this latest setup is the first time I've ever had dual monitors correctly configured with a GUI. KDE 4, at least in some distros, still lacks any xrandr type configuration of multiple monitors.
Just about any thorough review of any modern processor will list power consumption under idle and under load. For basically the first result I found in Google, containing some older processors and some newer ones, see this page. It appears common to have a 70+ watt difference between idle and full load.
Depending on the season and the availability of air conditioning, cooling costs come into play as well. If the machines/room are improperly cooled they can also slightly shorten the expected lifespan of some components. On an individual basis these costs are small, but for 5,000 computers these things add up.
If this guy really cared about distributed computing (perhaps not SETI@home, but folding@home or something), he should have worked to make this a learning experience. Have the school district take credit for the computing power, and teach kids about distributed computing. Still, given the power costs that's an expensive lesson.
Wanting a low DPI monitor is the absolute wrong answer to an important question - how do we make our computers easier to read if we don't have good eyesight?
Sure, low DPI monitors will make everything look large, but the correct solution is a vector-scalable desktop environment. I want more DPI crammed into my desktop (to make it closer to my laptop), not less. The higher the DPI, the less we depend on hacks like antialiasing and sub-pixel font rendering to make our fonts appear smooth.
Once you obtain a monitor of appropriate physical size and reasonably large DPI, the problem is entirely within software. Windows XP had somewhat limited options, though you can play with font DPIs and such. Older versions of KDE and GNOME used bitmapped images for icons, making them ugly if you scale them. Newer versions (at least of KDE) use SVG everywhere. Then it's a matter of finding themes with sufficiently large buttons, scroll wheels, etc. A little work, but relatively do-able in Linux. Hopefully newer versions of Windows also provide more flexibility here, or perhaps with some add-on software. I haven't tried messing with Mac OS X's accessibility options too much.
That said, there are always issues. Emacs for me doesn't grab the DPI setting from GNOME to set its font size, so when I dock my laptop and X reports a DPI change, my fonts also change. I have some code in my .emacs file to detect the system DPI and set the font to something reasonable, but I haven't yet tested it in docked mode yet.
But the bottom line is that we've reached about the limit of reasonable desktop screen sizes. These screens are also pretty cheap (much cheaper than similarly-sized CRTs ever were). That means that the source of improvement is in native resolution, viewing angle, color accuracy, etc. I'd absolutely love a 300 dpi monitor and have antialiasing need to do little or nothing to make my fonts look spectacular. Phone screens are getting there, then will come laptop screens, and hopefully in a few years we'll have 200 dpi+ monitors as the OSes will all support scaling everything appropriately.
Umm, what's to work on? You simply don't add the caffeine. Caffeine free coke has just as much sugar, etc. Caffeine adds two things: its (mild) stimulant properties (which pales in comparison to the caffeine quantity in coffee and energy drinks) and a bit of a bitter flavor. You must really like that bitterness to find caffeine free coke worse than Coke Zero or Diet Coke. I bet most people couldn't tell the difference in a blind taste test. Heck, there are lots of stories about people being switched to decaf without their knowledge, though if people notice it's often because they feel caffeine withdrawal.
On the other hand, decaf coffee has the caffeine removed in a process which degrades the complex flavor. This means that aside from the bitterness factor, you need to spend more money on decaf coffee than regular coffee to get the same general quality flavor.
I'm not doubting your claim about hating caffeine free, but I am surprised that someone who is so sensitive to bitterness prefers it there rather than absent.
I used perl because that's the example the FSF uses. I know it's dual-licensed, but all perl libraries in CPAN aren't.
One thing that's often confused me is the exact relationship between the GPL and interpreted languages. For example, if I write a perl script which calls perl functionality which is part of the base interpreter, my script need not be distributed under the terms of the GPL. This is akin to using a GPL word processor or other software, where the output of a program is not subject to the GPL.
If, on the other hand, my script calls a perl function which is itself written in perl (licensed under the GPL), the FSF argues that this constitutes a derivative work akin to dynamic linking. Thus, my script (if distributed) must be distributed under a GPL-compatible license.
I can see it both ways. On the one hand, calling a function written in the same interpreted language is very much like calling a function in a library from a compiled binary. On the other, it's strange to think that there's a distinction based on whether the function being called is written as part of the interpreter (in, for example, C) versus the interpreted language itself. In addition, there seems to be disagreement about whether the GPL really binds like the FSF claims. Lots of interpreted code gets released as the GPL when it seems likely that the LGPL is what the authors really intend; that is, they do not want to restrict scripts and functions which call the code.
A good example of this is R This statistical language has fairly small interpreter and a large set of both included and downloadable packages, themselves written in R (and licensed under the GPL). Clearly most of the primary authors do not intend for all R scripts using the most basic of functionality to be released in a GPL compatible way; for one, they make the header files necessary for writing C-based libraries for use in R LGPL to explicitly allow such libraries to be non-free. In addition, they are fine with a large number of downloadable packages which restrict commercial use (obviously not allowed under the GPL). Their interpretation of the GPL seems at odds with the FSF. Even if you want to release all your code in a GPL-compatible way, it may be (IANAL) that you cannot call both code restricted from commercial use and GPL-licensed code (basically unavoidable) in the same project.
This actually isn't necessary. Raising the cost of goods with negative externalities tends to reduce their consumption, bringing the market closer to the efficient consumption point (given some assumptions about social costs versus private costs). The general idea is that if you have to get tax revenue from somewhere, get it by taxing things we don't like.
Thus one proposal for a carbon tax is to actually rebate the money to individuals lump-sum, without regard to their income or energy usage. This way bad behavior (using carbon-emitting energy) is discouraged, but the each person receives the average tax collected. Of course, politics and government revenues being what they are, I wouldn't expect any climate change bill to really rebate all the money collected. But depending on your views, a carbon tax can be a lot better way to obtain revenue than an income tax, for example.
See Pigouvian tax.
The real issue here is the lack of rigour, not the statistical tool in particular. I find it ironic that you dislike studies with correlations because sloppy studies often (mis)use correlations.
As with any statistical tools, you need to know what they mean and how (and when) to apply them. Correlations are a very useful tool, especially early in a particular research agenda.
This correlation is entirely due to both series being upward-trending. Either the author (presumably you, from your nick) knew this or was being sloppy. To be fair, sloppy statistics are misleading, but this extends to more than just correlations.
Helpfully, the author provided the data. Applying the simplest linear detrending, I obtain a correlation of 0.0371, rather than the 0.8778 without detrending.
This same point was made more clearly by the correlation of pirates and global warming; there, it's obvious that the mistake is to look at general trending variables and infer some sort of correlation, because countless variables trend over time and you'll get a significant positive or negative correlation. With this example, it's more misleading because it might be possible that the deviations from these upward trends actually are correlated, based on the picture. But they aren't.
I disagree. Not all industries can be effectively protected by trade secrets. While I agree that one purpose of the patent system that we have is to encourage openness (especially, it seems, in pharmaceuticals), it's not a fundamental misunderstanding to think that our copyright and patent systems are to encourage innovation.
From the U.S. Constitution itself (article 1, section 8): "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;". Now, "promote" can mean to spur innovation directly and to spur innovation via openness, but the former interpretation is at least as equally valid as the latter.
See also Gamer. Movies like this do tend to come in clusters it seems...
A simpler solution would be to negotiate with the publishers. Perhaps not to have distribution rights in the future, but retroactive distribution rights. Offer them 100% of the money paid for the Kindle versions out there, or 110% or something. What publisher is really going to stand their ground in the face of a nice check without giving away any future rights? Then nobody knows anything happened, except the book is no longer available for purchase. Instead, this bad PR could cost them quite a bit of Kindle purchases and Kindle book purchases.
I wondered about this. Here's how CC defines "adaptation" in the legal text of the CC-BY-SA license:
They explicitly say that adding a soundtrack to a video is an adaptation. It seemed to me (also as a non-lawyer) that a photo in a document is similar. I take your point about Wikipedia's past use (though didn't the GFDL get modified explicitly to allow Wikipedia to transition to CC-BY-SA?). Googling around for some discussion seems to indicate that having a photo in a larger work is a "collection", and that distribution of a newspaper or magazine entitles the recipient to use of the image but not the surrounding text. I haven't found any expert opinions on the matter yet, and even still it's probably not settled law (as with so much in copyright law). Still, the prevailing opinion seems to be yours, so I stand corrected.
The standard license on Wikipedia is CC-BY-SA. It's my understanding (as a non-lawyer) that if you upload an image to Wikipedia also as ShareAlike, then anyone who uses your image is bound by the creative commons license (or a compatible alternative) for any derivative works (similar in spirit to the GPL).
This would automatically rule out many uses that photographers might want restricted; major publishers of books, magazines, and newspapers will not be interested in licensing the derivative work under a creative commons license. As the original copyright owner, the photographer will be able to dual-license the photo on a case by case basis. That means that you can upload your photo to Wikipedia for use with CC-licensed works, while getting exposure of your work from potential commercial buyers. Just make sure that when you upload to WP you use CC-BY-SA, and not one of the less restrictive licenses. Sounds like a win-win to me.
This actually seems fairly common in places like art museums, zoos, etc. Sure, the painting may be old enough to be in the public domain, but museums can still restrict your ability to take a commercial photo of it (physically). I imagine zoos see the potential for a few hundred easy bucks in exchange for the inconvenience of a pro setting up equipment and possibly getting in the way of other people.
Granted, I would prefer these terms didn't exist, but they stem from being able to restrict physical access to what you want to photograph. What really annoys me more are restrictions people try to place on photos taken from public places. The Eiffel Tower during the day is okay, but the modern lighting at night is "copyrighted", and any commercial image of the Eiffel Tower at night requires payment (last I heard). Absolutely obnoxious.
I seriously considered getting a Kindle DX, but after a little digging I found that it's not quite there yet for my use. So while I don't have personal experience with one, I did spend some time looking into it.
I'd love to eliminate the need to print PDF documents (like journal articles) for comfortable reading away from my computer. Once I heard that the Kindle DX supports PDF natively and has a large screen, I thought it might be perfect. Before prices were announced, I actually expected it to launch for $600 (comparable to the iRex Iliad). To my surprise, the price was cheaper.
As an added bonus, the free Whispernet (Sprint network) Wikipedia access has been expanded to include a rudimentary web browser. It would be unwise to buy a Kindle expecting this feature to remain free, though.
What's not made clear is that the PDF support has drawbacks. It cannot zoom, except to turn the device into landscape mode, which provides a small magnification. Fortunately, the software does automatically eliminate margins, making the screen about the right size for most documents. What's worse is that all of the annotation features available for ebooks and other documents do not work with PDFs; no highlighting, no note-taking, etc. I think it supports bookmarking, but that's it. For me, this is a deal breaker (at least until the price drops much further). I'm hoping that since this is a software limitation, it might be fixed with an update. I've learned not to count on feature additions in firmware until I see them, though, so I'm holding off on the purchase. Hopefully the price will drop before the end of the year anyway.
More strange is the method of firmware update. Apparently the Kindle 2 gets an update automatically if you leave Whispernet on long enough (usually overnight). I realize Amazon is doing this because they don't want users to need a computer and want to make things as simple as possible, but I would still strongly prefer user pull to Amazon push of content like software updates. Perhaps this behavior is configurable, I'm not sure.
I found it interesting that (at least some) newspaper subscriptions were made cheaper with the DX. If you save $4/mo on two subscriptions each, in about 18 months that will pay for the price difference between the Kindle 2 and Kindle DX. Since neither unit is sold retail, I don't have a very good sense of how comfortable they are to read from, or how annoying I would find the screen wipes (as the eink screens refresh the content). The good news is that the return policy from Amazon seems pretty reasonable, and you can return an opened unit within a few weeks for a full refund. If it supported annotations (and zooming might be important on some documents), that's how I would try it out. Until that's supported, or the price drops substantially, I'll just wait.
On the Media, a weekly NPR show, had an interview with Robert Darnton last week.
Some people are clearly worried that Google is getting so big. I doubt we'll see too many companies even attempt to do the massive book scan that Google is. If/when Google tries to abuse its digital monopoly power over these books, antitrust regulators will almost certainly step in and force Google to license the data to competitors. Worrying about their potential monopoly power is hardly good reason to try to stop them at this point; some access through Google is certainly better than none.
Except TFA indicates that he is a programmer:
Having not seen the game, I can only speculate on what contractors might have done. Perhaps a nice-looking splash screen, and he's not a graphic designer? Maybe a custom bit of music? Maybe he did share some of the coding?
The summary doesn't make it clear, but the article mentions that it also works with the iPod touch. Considering the touch is smaller, lighter, and much cheaper than both the iPhone and the Kindle, this application might give a significant boost to readers looking for a (relatively) inexpensive reader.
Having read long books on old Palm PDAs, the size of the screen is only a minor annoyance. Those PDAs, though, were not backlit LCDs. Some people might find an iPod screen too fatiguing for long reading.
Not that I agree with what Facebook is doing, but they are not claiming copyright to material submitted to Facebook. They are claiming (nonexclusive) rights to redistribute material. This, of course, is only valid if the Facebook user had the rights to upload the copyrighted material in the first place.
Oh, and Michael Eisner hasn't had anything to do with Disney since 2005.
Ah, but these contracts come up for renewal eventually. I strongly suspect that Microsoft takes into consideration how many students have been licensing the cheap copies of Office, etc. when deciding how much to charge the university for their next site license contract. It may not be directly subsidized per copy in the short run, but in the long run it probably is effectively.
Of course, it also wouldn't surprise me if part of the contract is that they can't reveal the terms publicly so other universities can compare. Just speculation on my part, but it would help explain why the submitter had a hard time finding pricing info.
At some point I would imagine the university subsidizes the purchase, which in turn comes out of tuition.