AFAIK, Apple is the one keeping prices up. If you look at third party Mac sellers, they will often give you a memory upgrade, HD increase, free accessories, etc., but almost never a price break. My guess would be that Apple exerts similar influence regarding price controls of other product lines, too.
If you want a cheaper ipod, your best bet is most likely going to be eBay.
However, as its name implies, the X(3872) particle is peculiar in that it does not easily fit into any known particle scheme and, as a result, has attracted a considerable amount of attention from the world's physics community.
I'd say the Standard Model would fall under "any known particle scheme"... so yes, if their results are real and reproducable, this particle would violate the Standard Model.
This just goes to show that you haven't been paying attention lately. Most all of the bills backed by the (MP|RI)AA lately have been to criminalize copyright violations. The rest have been to set criminally high fines on civil offenses ($150k/song and the like).
... is patent DDoSs, then extort, er... I mean, charge licensing fees, to anyone invoking a DDoS against a site. I mean, isn't that what US patents are good for these days?
Well, there's about 285 million people, and IIRC, the 2000 presidential vote was about 50M each for Bush and Gore... That's where I got my number from... it's more than 10 million, less than 1 billion... thus it's 100 million... That's my physics background talking!
1) We don't want to have to pay someone to tally all the votes. If its not computerized, someone has to count them all up. When there's around 100 million votes for president, that's a lot of minimum wage hours right there!
2) The US has turned into a nation full of people with a) no patience and b) a very short attention span. We want what we want, and we want it now! And dammit, if other countries can have computerized voting systems, so should we.
My thought is that we should all vote on those bubble sheets that are used for every standardized test given throughout our public school system. Everyone who came through the public schools will be familiar with them, and those that didn't are most likely products of private schools/home schooling and thus smart enough to figure it out!
Ah, but IIRC, only one bottle in three pepsis will have a free track under the cap. And that's limited to 300 million bottles (100M tracks), which will probably all be gone in the next 6 months...
Ever hear of pre-emptive patenting? You patent something before someone else comes along and patents it, then offers to license it to you for a truckload of money? Just because someone obtains a patent on something doesn't mean they're out to squeeze every dollar out of it. Sometimes a patent is obtained, then freely licensed to everyone just to make sure the knowledge is freely available.
But until you actually get the patent, you're an idiot if you let the cat out of the bag, so to speak.
I, for one, am not happy... I stupidly let applecare lapse on my ibook... now it needs a new logic board ($500 repair job). I don't have the $$$ for Panther right now, and I'm extremely upset about the immediate lack of support for old OS versions.
But really, would my excessive ranting and whining on/. really make a difference? No. There's no point to it, so I'll spare myself the energy for more enjoyable pursuits. Like nethack:)
Funny you chose the first line of 1984... that was the very first search I did there! The second was to look for the phrase 'color of a television, tuned to a dead channel', which is part of the first sentence of Gibson's Neuromancer. No luck. Of course, search for Neuromancer, and you're taken right to it.
I think you're spot on with the observation that there is a lack of participation by fiction authors.
... and? If you like a song, you like a song. It doesn't matter if you think everything else someone has done is crap. The fact of the matter is that you LIKE THAT SONG. Downloadable music for $0.99/track a) avoids paying $12-17 for a whole album, b) gets you the song you actually like, and c) is legal.
For instance, as a general rule, I loath hip-hop/rap/r&b/etc. but every once in a while (like, say, every 5 years) a song comes along that I really like. Now I can pay $0.99 for it an go merrily on my way.
Try spending less time in your sheltered little black and white world. There's a wealth of shades of gray out here!
... double-click an X11 app in Finder, and X11 automatically starts up, then opens your app. And yes, X11 is installed by default when you install Panther. Check it out here!
Dude, I HAVE an iBook... I think I know what fits into it: 1 128 MB DIMM soldered to the motherboard, 1 SODIMM slot supporting up to 512 MB. 128 + 512 = 640...
Availability of superdrive Max 1.25 GB RAM, compared to 640 MB on ibook Built-in bluetooth 512 K L2 cache, compared to 256 K for ibook Mini-DVI out, not Mini-SVGA out Allows for monitor spanning, not just mirroring
The 15" and 17" models also have gigabit ethernet, FW800, widescreen aspect ratio, and backlit keyboards...
Of course, it's up to you to decide if these features are worth it or not.
Just copying the information from the websites... yes, you are restricted in the s/w you can use to play protected tracks, but you are given far more rights with iTMS downloaded tracks than other services offer. Instead of picking nits, make valid counter-arguments... nope... didn't think so.
My point was you only have 1 choice of OS (more options with iTMS, and no, WinME, WinXP, Win2K, etc. don't count as more than one choice) and you only have 1 choice of browser (no browser required at all with iTMS) with the PC only services.
...yet with iTMS, you have far MORE rights than you do with any other major online music purchasing site. The whole point is that the masses want a method of buying music without either a) going to the store and dropping change for a physical disc, or b) buying a CD online and waiting 1-7 days for delivery.
The iTMS restrictions are a) no more than 10 burns of a playlist containing an iTMS track (fine, make a different playlist), b) sharing iTMS tracks with no more than 3 (or is it 5) other computers on your local network, c) no sharing over external networks, d) no direct conversion to another format (gotta burn to disc, then re-rip in another format). What about that is so awful? No, it doesn't allow for wholesale piracy, I mean sharing. Yes, the tracks are in protected AAC/MPEG4 format. How is this better/worse from protected WMA format? Have you looked at the restrictions on tracks from buymusic.com? Many (most? all?) of the other sites restrict your use of the purchased tracks to the machine to which you originally downloaded the tracks. That's it...
Checking a select few sites:
napster.com (pressplay.com is a redirect here) requires Windows, requires IE5+, requires WMP7+.
buymusic.com requires IE5+ and Windows (not using IE, I don't get any further than that requirement page... I'm sure WMP is required).
iTMS requires iTunes. Now, there is no restriction to Mac only, and an external browser is not needed at all. This seems less restrictive than other sites (fine, bitch all you want about no linux/*BSD/etc. support).
I do wish the quality was a bit higher, since the price of an full iTMS album is relatively similar to the price of a CD, but it's a trade off. You get (almost) what you want, when you want it, and you have more control over iTMS tracks than any legally downloadable music.
That's right, your beloved TiVos would become illegal devices because they allow for time shifting of public performances (ie television broadcasts). What am I yammering on about? Read for yourselves at this site.
Specifically, quoting the Chapter on Intellectual Property Rights, Section 3, Article 8:
[8.1. The author, or his successors in title where applicable, shall have the exclusive right to carry out, authorize or prohibit the communication of the work to the public by any means serving to convey the words, signs, sounds or images thereof. Communication to the public shall be understood to mean any act by which two or more persons, whether or not gathered together in the same place, may have access to the work without the prior distribution of copies to each one of them, and especially the following: ...
k) The making available to the public of their works, in such a way that members of the public may access them from a place and at a time individually chosen by them.]
Chopping out the tiresome definitions in the middle, this reads that the author or representative has the exclusive right to permit or prohibit communication of the work to the public when said members of the public have the ability to space or time shift the performance.
You want your TiVo to record the latest episode of The Simpsons for you to watch at a later date? Better ask Fox for permission once the FTAA goes into effect... Of course, this flies directly in the face of The US Supreme Court case SONY CORP. v. UNIVERSAL CITY STUDIOS, INC., 464 U.S. 417 (1984) in which time shifting was found to fall squarely under fair use and not a violation of copyrights.
Reading the full text of this chapter is sure to give me nightmares for quite some time.
WHAT??? I'm no taller than that geeky little putz? I always have these nice dreams of towering over him, shoving stuffed penguins down his puny little throat, then squishing him... just like grape. Now you've gone and ruined it!
Uh... mebbe because Apple has agreements with the RIAA... that's Recording Industry Association of America, and like it or not, an unqualified America is (almost) universally accepted to mean the USA. Most of the music available on iTMS is controlled by the RIAA. It's easier to restrict non-US access than try to figure out on a track-by-track basis who can access it.
Of course, this entire post is ironic given my sig.
I believe the feds should hang their heads in shame for being overzealous and making the mistake in the first place, but should be commended for admitting the mistake.
Right... let's see if you still feel the same way when the feds admit they fucked up one day after having [a family member|close friend|you] executed for a murder you didn't commit. OK, yah, I'm being sensationalistic here, but the point is the same. Do you really think he feels better after 16 months in the federal pokey to hear the feds say "Oops... sorry about that. Friends?"
I don't remember the specifics, but an estimate of 5 H/cubic meter would seem to be appropriate for IGM density, as opposed to the 1 H/cc standard for ISM. The ISM figure is a total number density and is not based on visible luminosity calculations. Also, IIRC, the estimates are 8e+11 stars (800 hundred billion) in M104, not 8e+10. Finally, I don't think you remember your molecular cloud densities properly. Some of my collegues were simulating SNR shock waves impacting molecular clouds (to study the efficacy of SNRs as catalysts to stellar formation) in which a value of 10^6 H/cc (10^12 H/cubic meter, not 10^21) was used.
When I was a grad student, I did numerical simulations of supernova remnant evolution. These blasts were simulated expanding into an interstellar region of H density 1 per cc. I imagine dust clouds would be anywhere between 100 to 1000 times more dense than the "normal interstellar medium".
1 per cubic meter is FAR too low of an estimate (a million times less dense than I used, and my figure was based on published articles in The Astrophysical Journal), meaning there is probably a billion times more mass tied up in the dust clouds of M104 than your estimate. That a whole bloody, freaking, massive, gigantic, tremendous, enormous lot of dust!
Um, from the front page of the DNC registry, it says that, if you registered between June 27 - August 31, 2003, the DNC registration took effect October 1, 2003. The 3 month waiting period is for registrations that took place on or after September 1, 2003.
Slashdot Mirror
AFAIK, Apple is the one keeping prices up. If you look at third party Mac sellers, they will often give you a memory upgrade, HD increase, free accessories, etc., but almost never a price break. My guess would be that Apple exerts similar influence regarding price controls of other product lines, too.
If you want a cheaper ipod, your best bet is most likely going to be eBay.
However, as its name implies, the X(3872) particle is peculiar in that it does not easily fit into any known particle scheme and, as a result, has attracted a considerable amount of attention from the world's physics community.
I'd say the Standard Model would fall under "any known particle scheme"... so yes, if their results are real and reproducable, this particle would violate the Standard Model.
This just goes to show that you haven't been paying attention lately. Most all of the bills backed by the (MP|RI)AA lately have been to criminalize copyright violations. The rest have been to set criminally high fines on civil offenses ($150k/song and the like).
... is patent DDoSs, then extort, er... I mean, charge licensing fees, to anyone invoking a DDoS against a site. I mean, isn't that what US patents are good for these days?
Well, there's about 285 million people, and IIRC, the 2000 presidential vote was about 50M each for Bush and Gore... That's where I got my number from... it's more than 10 million, less than 1 billion... thus it's 100 million... That's my physics background talking!
Two reasons:
1) We don't want to have to pay someone to tally all the votes. If its not computerized, someone has to count them all up. When there's around 100 million votes for president, that's a lot of minimum wage hours right there!
2) The US has turned into a nation full of people with a) no patience and b) a very short attention span. We want what we want, and we want it now! And dammit, if other countries can have computerized voting systems, so should we.
My thought is that we should all vote on those bubble sheets that are used for every standardized test given throughout our public school system. Everyone who came through the public schools will be familiar with them, and those that didn't are most likely products of private schools/home schooling and thus smart enough to figure it out!
(Tongue only partially planted in cheek)...
Ah, but IIRC, only one bottle in three pepsis will have a free track under the cap. And that's limited to 300 million bottles (100M tracks), which will probably all be gone in the next 6 months...
Now, would -ANYONE- confuse this with the real Fox News?
Sadly, yes...
Ever hear of pre-emptive patenting? You patent something before someone else comes along and patents it, then offers to license it to you for a truckload of money? Just because someone obtains a patent on something doesn't mean they're out to squeeze every dollar out of it. Sometimes a patent is obtained, then freely licensed to everyone just to make sure the knowledge is freely available.
But until you actually get the patent, you're an idiot if you let the cat out of the bag, so to speak.
I, for one, am not happy... I stupidly let applecare lapse on my ibook... now it needs a new logic board ($500 repair job). I don't have the $$$ for Panther right now, and I'm extremely upset about the immediate lack of support for old OS versions.
/. really make a difference? No. There's no point to it, so I'll spare myself the energy for more enjoyable pursuits. Like nethack :)
But really, would my excessive ranting and whining on
Funny you chose the first line of 1984... that was the very first search I did there! The second was to look for the phrase 'color of a television, tuned to a dead channel', which is part of the first sentence of Gibson's Neuromancer. No luck. Of course, search for Neuromancer, and you're taken right to it.
I think you're spot on with the observation that there is a lack of participation by fiction authors.
... and? If you like a song, you like a song. It doesn't matter if you think everything else someone has done is crap. The fact of the matter is that you LIKE THAT SONG. Downloadable music for $0.99/track a) avoids paying $12-17 for a whole album, b) gets you the song you actually like, and c) is legal.
For instance, as a general rule, I loath hip-hop/rap/r&b/etc. but every once in a while (like, say, every 5 years) a song comes along that I really like. Now I can pay $0.99 for it an go merrily on my way.
Try spending less time in your sheltered little black and white world. There's a wealth of shades of gray out here!
... double-click an X11 app in Finder, and X11 automatically starts up, then opens your app. And yes, X11 is installed by default when you install Panther. Check it out here!
Dude, I HAVE an iBook... I think I know what fits into it: 1 128 MB DIMM soldered to the motherboard, 1 SODIMM slot supporting up to 512 MB. 128 + 512 = 640...
The PB line has:
Availability of superdrive
Max 1.25 GB RAM, compared to 640 MB on ibook
Built-in bluetooth
512 K L2 cache, compared to 256 K for ibook
Mini-DVI out, not Mini-SVGA out
Allows for monitor spanning, not just mirroring
The 15" and 17" models also have gigabit ethernet, FW800, widescreen aspect ratio, and backlit keyboards...
Of course, it's up to you to decide if these features are worth it or not.
Just copying the information from the websites... yes, you are restricted in the s/w you can use to play protected tracks, but you are given far more rights with iTMS downloaded tracks than other services offer. Instead of picking nits, make valid counter-arguments... nope... didn't think so.
My point was you only have 1 choice of OS (more options with iTMS, and no, WinME, WinXP, Win2K, etc. don't count as more than one choice) and you only have 1 choice of browser (no browser required at all with iTMS) with the PC only services.
...yet with iTMS, you have far MORE rights than you do with any other major online music purchasing site. The whole point is that the masses want a method of buying music without either a) going to the store and dropping change for a physical disc, or b) buying a CD online and waiting 1-7 days for delivery.
The iTMS restrictions are a) no more than 10 burns of a playlist containing an iTMS track (fine, make a different playlist), b) sharing iTMS tracks with no more than 3 (or is it 5) other computers on your local network, c) no sharing over external networks, d) no direct conversion to another format (gotta burn to disc, then re-rip in another format). What about that is so awful? No, it doesn't allow for wholesale piracy, I mean sharing. Yes, the tracks are in protected AAC/MPEG4 format. How is this better/worse from protected WMA format? Have you looked at the restrictions on tracks from buymusic.com? Many (most? all?) of the other sites restrict your use of the purchased tracks to the machine to which you originally downloaded the tracks. That's it...
Checking a select few sites:
napster.com (pressplay.com is a redirect here) requires Windows, requires IE5+, requires WMP7+.
buymusic.com requires IE5+ and Windows (not using IE, I don't get any further than that requirement page... I'm sure WMP is required).
iTMS requires iTunes. Now, there is no restriction to Mac only, and an external browser is not needed at all. This seems less restrictive than other sites (fine, bitch all you want about no linux/*BSD/etc. support).
I do wish the quality was a bit higher, since the price of an full iTMS album is relatively similar to the price of a CD, but it's a trade off. You get (almost) what you want, when you want it, and you have more control over iTMS tracks than any legally downloadable music.
Specifically, quoting the Chapter on Intellectual Property Rights, Section 3, Article 8:
Chopping out the tiresome definitions in the middle, this reads that the author or representative has the exclusive right to permit or prohibit communication of the work to the public when said members of the public have the ability to space or time shift the performance.
You want your TiVo to record the latest episode of The Simpsons for you to watch at a later date? Better ask Fox for permission once the FTAA goes into effect... Of course, this flies directly in the face of The US Supreme Court case SONY CORP. v. UNIVERSAL CITY STUDIOS, INC., 464 U.S. 417 (1984) in which time shifting was found to fall squarely under fair use and not a violation of copyrights. Reading the full text of this chapter is sure to give me nightmares for quite some time.
And a slightly garbled Simpsons reference:
I, for one, welcome our new corporate overlords
WHAT??? I'm no taller than that geeky little putz? I always have these nice dreams of towering over him, shoving stuffed penguins down his puny little throat, then squishing him... just like grape. Now you've gone and ruined it!
Dammit...
Uh... mebbe because Apple has agreements with the RIAA... that's Recording Industry Association of America, and like it or not, an unqualified America is (almost) universally accepted to mean the USA. Most of the music available on iTMS is controlled by the RIAA. It's easier to restrict non-US access than try to figure out on a track-by-track basis who can access it.
Of course, this entire post is ironic given my sig.
Right... let's see if you still feel the same way when the feds admit they fucked up one day after having [a family member|close friend|you] executed for a murder you didn't commit. OK, yah, I'm being sensationalistic here, but the point is the same. Do you really think he feels better after 16 months in the federal pokey to hear the feds say "Oops... sorry about that. Friends?"
I don't remember the specifics, but an estimate of 5 H/cubic meter would seem to be appropriate for IGM density, as opposed to the 1 H/cc standard for ISM. The ISM figure is a total number density and is not based on visible luminosity calculations. Also, IIRC, the estimates are 8e+11 stars (800 hundred billion) in M104, not 8e+10. Finally, I don't think you remember your molecular cloud densities properly. Some of my collegues were simulating SNR shock waves impacting molecular clouds (to study the efficacy of SNRs as catalysts to stellar formation) in which a value of 10^6 H/cc (10^12 H/cubic meter, not 10^21) was used.
When I was a grad student, I did numerical simulations of supernova remnant evolution. These blasts were simulated expanding into an interstellar region of H density 1 per cc. I imagine dust clouds would be anywhere between 100 to 1000 times more dense than the "normal interstellar medium".
1 per cubic meter is FAR too low of an estimate (a million times less dense than I used, and my figure was based on published articles in The Astrophysical Journal), meaning there is probably a billion times more mass tied up in the dust clouds of M104 than your estimate. That a whole bloody, freaking, massive, gigantic, tremendous, enormous lot of dust!
Um, from the front page of the DNC registry, it says that, if you registered between June 27 - August 31, 2003, the DNC registration took effect October 1, 2003. The 3 month waiting period is for registrations that took place on or after September 1, 2003.