I have an archos. It fits in my jeans pockets nicely (and I wear tight jeans). Smaller would be nicer, but smaller isn't worth the smaller range of features, lower capacity and higher cost of an ipod. But when the ipod gets better, in a year or two, I might be buying...:-)
You're forgetting one thing. Apple Computer is made up of elitists. They hold the opinion that the best, highest quality products aren't for everyone.
Heh, while I'm sure you're absolutely correct, it's kind of an interesting way to phrase it considering so much of their stuff is aimed at lowest-common-denomenator users. (Please don't misunderstand - I don't mean that as a slur on users, just that a lot of the design principles of Apple have been about changing or sacrificing some things in order to make products that are usable by tech-clueless (a good thing). Wheras "elitest" would suggest to me making products that demand much from the users but because of this they answer to no-one, (making no sacrifices for simplicity), requiring really clued up power users. Sort of like what SGI used to be - SGI might be what comes to mind when someone says "elitist" regarding computer companies. Apple is elitist in a different sense to what I would think of, but yeah, you're right. If Apple had the lion's market share, enthusiests would have have an ever harder time buying into that "I'm a rebel, I'm special, I think different(ly)" stuff that people either love or hate:-)
How about setting up this configuration, not with an LCD screen, but an old CRT monitor? Would the output be too dim? Could you crank the brightness, or would you then loose contrast?
A guy I know has done this. Yes, it works. Yes, it's too dim to make very much bigger than the CRT.
He used it to project the visual swirly displays things of mp3 players onto the ceiling (dark room) at a party. That's probably the best use for it. Cheap and easy though - all you need is a fresnal lense:-)
Anyways, nice to see articles like that, but LCD sucks, DLP is the way to go for video projectors
I've also been looking into buying one, and everything seems to agree that LCD had the edge over DLP - DLP is smaller, lighter, cheaper, but (a good) LCD apparently has the edge in image quality. The best projectors seem to be LCD, though there are pro's and cons to each. (Eg, LCD has space between pixels, while DLP colours seperate when your eye cicades from one one area of the picture to another because they use a spinning colour wheel instead of 3 seperate chips) and so on.
Since DLP projectors seem significantly cheaper than LCD, it'd be great if they were better - so please tell me what you've heard.
I'm thinking that even if LCD is better for some things, what I want a projector for is (1) Quake & (2) DVDs, so if DLP is as good or better than LCD for just those things, that would rock. (I can only afford one of these - so I have to get the choice right BEFORE I buy)
Maybe I'm missing something, as this seems too obvious.
The problem is not future technologically-advanced cultures, who understand radiation, have the means to notice it, etc etc, but cultures that have no such knowledge or understanding. So make something for that eventuality in mind.
Now, the salt-flat geology (unchanged for 230,000,000 years so far) seems pretty stable, so the stuff can be buried deep enough that it is not damgerous to those on the surface. Leave it unmarked, and chances are no-one (or very few) will go there anyway - no fantastic monument to inevitably create the Tourist Industry of Doom.
Solution: the monument is also deep underground. Like the monolith on the moon in 2001 Space Oddyssey, the very act of finding the monument is highly compelling evidence of advanced intelligence and technology. (ground-scans, geological magnetic mapping, other technologies).
Any culture capable of detecting the monument must already know enough about radiation that warnings will be fairly quickly understood.
Any culture that couldn't detect the monument is (a) the high-risk group, and (b) likely to turn any visible monument into a tourist attraction (or place of spiritual significance) anyway.
Thus, for those for whom any monument would be worse than no monument, there is no monument and we hope that if the obfuscation fails, the storage depth will still suffice.
If the ground shifts and the storage site comes up to the surface, it is marked by a warning monument.
If the site is found by an advanced culture, the monument can actually work because the threat is describes will be understood as a reference to known phenomina, not some intriguing mystical curse.
If an asteroid strikes the salt flat, well, you have bigger problems to worry about.
That said, I feel that the practise of superficially lowering our living expenses (cheaper energy) by passing the cost onto future generations is unethical and immoral - we should bite the bullet and pay the full price of what we consume, as we consume it. Currently, paying a small premium for "green" power is not difficult. If the price is a problem, I feel it's better to tighten one's own belt than to continue living beyond my means and forcing other people to pick up your tab. I also think more people should think the same way. But everyone thinks that.:-)
There is no shortage of energy. There is a shortage of energy that is as cheap as energy sources that we don't pay the full price for, but instead inflict on others in the name of greater goods (good for us, anyway).
What we need is a real technological solution, not a political solution to prevent this intrusion of our privacy - and even more it should be something doable in the USA
Funny you should mention that, as the lead story in todays wired is this: A leash for carnavore
It's an open source system a guy has developed that encrypts all customer records, such that 1) No one can access them without an encryption key. 2) The only way it will provide a decryption key is upon being presented with an electronic request digitally signed by a judge. 3) The key it provides will ONLY decrypt the information specified by the judge and nothing more. No more abusing genuine warrents for overbroad fishing expeditions.
It's a great concept. It allows law enforcement all the data they are entitled to, and preclude rights-violations. And for this reason, law enforcement will probably fight it tooth and nail, and make sure it never gets used.
But an ISP in the USA that sells "secure, private" net access as a premium service could use this system as one hell of a selling point, and perhaps get the ball rolling. No overseas severs needed.
Most poeple have less than 200 CD's (which the iPod can store).
It depends. I have far fewer CDs than that on my (archos) player and are past 10gig - since my player has a digital output, thus can drive a decent home sound system without degrading it through the less-than-amazing analogue systems necessitated by portability, suddenly the bitrates that are more than sufficient for portable listening are not quite enough for listening under situations so much closer to ideal. But the ipod doesn't offer optical or coax digital output (from memory), so it's apples and oranges anyway.
But more to the point, I have several gig of data files on my player also. So 10gig is just too small for a lot of people, but the ipod is still a fantastic unit, and I find that I recommend it to more people than the archos. (Eg, I wouldn't recommend archos to my grandmother:).
Yeah, the size of the nomad is crappy. I understand why people like the ipod player, and I understand why people like the (later-model) archos players and recorders, but I just don't really get what people see in the nomad. And it seems to be one of the more crippled brands as well (though nothing next to sony's digital rubbish - utterly fantastic technology, but insultingly crippled and proprietary. What a shame.)
True, but it's GUI sucks and it doesn't support playlists or ID3 tags. I have yet to see a test of the sound output quality.
You seem to be confused - you're probably thinking of the ancient Archos mp3 player insead of the 20GB recorder he was talking about. Not only does it support ID3 and playlists (you can even make new ones in the field, or drag and drop your fav winamp playlists from your computer), and have a great GUI, it has a digital output! That means that as wellas using it as a portable player, when I get home I can plug it into my home theatre system directly via the digital, and the results are amazing compared to connecting any other portable CD, MD, or mp3 player I've ever had (because portable units by neccessity don't have fantastic analogue systems, and normally you have to connect them via analogue jack - and with a good sound system, this is more apparent than portable listening in heavy traffic).
On top of that, it has both analogue and digital input (it records), fits in your pocket (unlike the Nomad), and unlike the iPod it has replaceable batteries (so you can take it camping) and upgradable HDD. The upgradable HDD is important because of the digital output - when you're using this unit with a home sound system, then 128bps (more than enough for portable listening) doesn't cut it anymore, and you'll want space for bigger files.
Actually, I lie, I think you void your warrentee by upgrading it yourself, but that didn't stop me jumping to 30gig:-)
Oh, and it's the least crippled HDD mp3 player that I know of. I think copyright compliance is the responsibility of the user, and should not be enforced by function and feature cripples in the unit. So I boycott crippleware.
That said, I wouldn't recommend it to everyone. But for what I want, it's great. I'm mainly writing this because you posted mistakenly.
I know it's chic to bash Bill Gates and Microsoft on/. but Bill Gates has donated more money to fight disease and suffering in third world countries than any single indivudual. I think Gates and Carnegie deserver graves side by side personally.
I don't think I agree. I know nothing about Carnegie, but it sounds like he gave his fortune away to help others. Bill is doing no such thing. Certainly, he is giving away vastly more money, but is he sacrificing anything? Or simply giving the money away because, well, there is absolutely NOTHING else left that he can possibly do with it.
Think about it - once you have a few billion, what can you do with more money? Can you buy your kids a better education? Nope. Can you take more holidays? Nope. Can you buy a better fleet of cars than you already could? Nope. A better personal jet? Nope. More power and influence? Nope. Once you have more money than you can spend on yourself, the rest becomes irrelevant. And morally speaking, virtue of character is affected by personal sacrifice for another more than it is by happening to be in a situation whereby you can make a bigger difference at no cost to yourself.
Of course BillG's situation isn't luck, but is largely of his own making. (but made largely via unethical and illegal means.) And of course, some would argue that giving away ill-gotten gains is no virtue at all.
But however you argue it, while Bill's actions might be powerhouse force for good in the world, that does not, necessarily, suggest that his character is worthy to be held up as an example of virtue. Or that his person should be buried next to people who genuinely are those things.
For those of you who actually purchased copies of the MP3s you listen to, congratualtions, I'm sure you'll have nothing to worry about in court.
Speaking as one of these people, I think I have a lot to worry about - the ridiculous findings so far suggest the US courts are almost as PWN3D as congress. Not to mention the likelyhood of mp3 players being banned outright by Hollywood-sockpuppet-Hollings.
I might not be so worried about doing actual hard jail time, but I'm certainly worried about the loss of rights, merely so that luddite lobbiests get their corporate welfare.
Actually, for-pay services have a chance (at least to get my money) for two reasons: 1) Guaranteed quality.
Don't you mean guaranteed LACK of quality? Last I checked, the highest quality music that I could buy from a for-pay service was about 128bps MP3. For some songs, that doesn't cut it. Yet on an illegimiate service, I could get anything up to insane 320bps FBR MP3.
Also note - the recording industry does not want high quality digital files in public hands AT ALL. Hi quality analog is fine, but the idea that the unwashed masses can access near-studio-quality recordings sends chills doen the spines of studio execs due to the potential for lossless reproduction without the middleman.
2) Easy browsing.
Again, surely it's the opposite that is true. Illegimiate services will pull up the song you want. A search on a for-pay system very, VERY rarely seems to tuen up the song I want, because each system only offers a fraction of the artists.
You (understatingly) note that for-play services fail to meet requirement 3, (while illegimate system are fine in this regard)
I think for-pay services are doomed to fail for one reason - the MPAA wants them to fail. Pressplay isn't a serious attempt at selling via the internet. It is (among other things) an attempt to manufacture evidence that Napster-like services cannot be legitimately competed with and thus must be shut down or the world will end. Else why is it so utterly useless to 99.98% of music consumers? If they were serious about selling online, Pressplay wouldn't be such an insultingly rediculous POS.
Or maybe they're just too stupid to realise that the old tricks (making you buy a couple of albums to get the songs you want) are not going to cut it in the digital world, and they actually have to do what every other business does - sell what the consumer wants to buy, rather than use their monopoly powers to ruthlessly dictate to both artist and consumer who is allowed to do what.
Why would you want to pay $450 for an mp3 harddrive when you could buy an mp3/cd player for around $100 and be able to burn mp3's onto cd's from any persons house.
Personally, I don't understand why anyone want to waste time burning, carrying, inserting, ejecting, swapping, mp3 CDs when you could have a HDD player - ALL your music, ready to play. Without fuss.
So I guess it depends on the person. Personally, I wouldn't buy this either - I have a portable pocket-sized HDD mp3 player (only 30 gig, since it uses a slimline laptop drive, but that's still 10 times my music collection), and that can both drive a car stereo, or be slipped into a pocket in my jeans to go wherever I go. I wouldn't want my music chained to the car. But some people want their car system to be stand-alone and shit hot. In which case this thing is great - but wireless download would make it better!:-) Each to his own.
So tell me - what are you GTA fans thinking when you watch blood pool around a dead bystander's head in GTA3? Is it really necessary for the game to be THAT violent? How does it make the experience more enjoyable?
Like your post, this isn't a troll, but might sound like one. The violence doesn't make the game more fun, in fact, the game simply isn't violent in ways you describe - it's consistant. If you choose to beat up an old lady, why should the game intervene, stop you, and say "hey - that's not nice, you can't do that"? In other words, it's just like counterstrike, Halo etc - an artifact of creating a consistant world.
I haven't played all that far into GTA3, but from all that I have seen, you are NEVER required to beat up an old lady to progress or finish a mission. In fact, if you are so violently inclined as to use your weapons on an old lady, you're much more likely to have a run-in with the police, ending your game.
That's the interesting thing about GTA3 - unlike most games, there are serious consequences if the player commits random acts of violence. When you first get the game, it might be fun to try and rack up as many stars as you can get, but when you're actually playing it, you try pretty hard to avoid hurting people, else the police response makes it almost impossible to progress.
So in a sense, I see GTA3 as less violent than the shoot-everything-in-sight games, even though both might be very graphic. That said, there are some pretty dodgy missions (though you still get to decide whether or not you want to do them). (I really didn't like the idea of being muscle for a protection racket for example. I was glad when it turned out to be a trap:) GTA is also needlessly gratutious. The prostitute thing for example. (Not to mention - the idea that sex with a prostitute makes you healthier is somewhat counter to reality:-) and I think this exaggerates the feeling that it's violent.
I agree that it goes over the top, I just wanted to make the point that the game discourages violence - it seems more violent because whenever someone starts playing it, they discover that they are in a consistant world in which they be as violent as they want. And thus the PLAYER rips loose, NOT the game. When they start playing properly, it's completely different.
I think it would be a tragedy if game tech was retarded on the premise that offering a consistant world is too violent.
Smuggling such illegal goods shall be declared an act of terrorism. You'll get live imprisonment if caught. Who will take such a risk?
The same types of people who smuggle drugs now.
Game over. The future looks bleak. The unregulated PC becomes the new drug. Underground tech-runners sell at enormous mark-up to anyone unfortunate enough to need the advantages of an open OS. Being caught means jail. But Joe Public is happy with his lobotimised PC - he never uses it for anything other than typing documents, watching movies, and playing games anyway. And he resents that movies cost so much to watch per play, and blames those evil pirates for the high price - "bust the bastards good!" is all he can say when the news reports another ring of uncrippled-tech sellers has been broken. He doesn't know what the phrase "intellectual commons" means.
But this scenario takes place a full decade after freedom was targeted and destroyed by the industry. Right now, the game is almost finished. Only a couple more nails needed to finished the coffin, and the trap will be utterly inescapable.
I wonder how they plan to protect against those of us that buy and assemble our own hardware and run Linux on that.
Simple. If the hardware isn't compliant, no-one may sell it in the USA - that's what the proposed SSCAA (or whatever it's called) bill is for. That means you can't buy it and your linux is toast. Thus the entire world becomes compliant overnight, as the Taiwanese manufacturers need the large US domestic market and so must comply, and those few that do continue to produce uncrippled products are not allowed to sell them in the USA.
That means you need to make friends in other countries, and have them buy your components and mail them to you, and hope like hell that it doesn't get stopped at customs and you get $2000 of hard earned gear confiscated before you ever saw it.
Note that customs is already doing just this to a line of mod-chips because the corporation making the console that they mod invoked the DMCA against them.
Nearly all the pieces are in place. And once the trap closes, it's game over. The only way to have a free PC will be to become an outlaw and face imprisonment.
Welcome to the land of the free. (Please leave all your civil and human rights at border when entering - we don't hold with that sort of nonsense here).
In some countries, such as New Zealand, it's illegal to sell DVD players that honour region coding, as it's against Fair Trade laws
I'm from NZ, and a friend of mine looked into this, and as far as we can tell, the best that could be said is that zoning might be illegal under some circumstances - and that no-one has really looked into it. I do know that consumers currently have every right to correct this flaw in their DVD players, however even that might change now that the USA is strong-arming the rest of the world to copy the DMCA.
But at the end of the day, I'm pretty sure it is perfectly legal to sell a zoned DVD player in NZ, leaving the purchaser to get it chipped elsewhere (assuming they even grasp the concept of zoning). More to the point, you can walk into almost any store and buy a zoned DVD players right off the shelf - you usually pay a little extra to get it de-zoned.
I wish someone WOULD look into it. Every trade agency seemed to assume it would fall under someone else's jurisdiction. DRM cripples like this are an illegal trade barrier by any definition I can think of. Maybe the WTO can the opportunity to demonstrate that it's not always the bad guy. Yeah right.
BTw, regarding the minidiscs. I upgraded to a 6gig MP3 recorder and player that fits into my jeans pocket comfortably. (Then I replaced its laptop HDD for a 30 gig drive). And that was the end of Sony in my life. Haven't bought a sony product since. I'll not have them spend my hard-earned* dollars on funding new ways to corrupt audio CDs.
The mp3 player is a little bigger than a small minidisc, and a fair bit heavier (thus less able to survive drops...), but a hell of a lot better. Digital input AND output. No cripples. SCMS has a work-around. Realtime recording via digital, analogue, or built-in mic (which is a piece of crap, but it's there:) Hook it up to the digital port of your Sony amp and you'll get better sound than from a minidisc.
No matter where I am, no matter which mood, the exact song I want to listen to is in my pocket. Custom playlists, no changing discs, no carrying additional discs. Amazing.
(Well, I thought so. I've been addicted to it for months now:)
Why am I saying this? Because I found minidisc so good compared to the other options that I put up with Sony's crap. But now there is a new option, and it kicks minidisc. So I don't have to put up with sony anymore. And so if there is anyone out there like - this is for you - You don't have to put up with Sony anymore!
I wouldn't say what they make is crap - the problem is that they deliberately cripple what it can do. I would say they are extremely good at making stuff - part of the legacy of their roots, but there is not a consumer electronics manufacturer out there as dedicated to crippling their products as Sony is, and Sony is getting good at concealing their cripples.
An amp is not relevant to content - it does not record content, it does not play content, it is an in-between for devices that deal with content. As such, sure, it probably is safe to buy a home-theatre amp from Sony - they'll make a kick-ass amp. But buy the devices that plug into the amp that Do deal with content, that's getting riskier...
I own a couple of ultra-small minidisc recorders also. They were part of what put me off Sony. The actual minidisc tech is fabulous. The cripples and propritary crap is not. And since Sony owns the format, competitors have to license it under Sony's terms.
Your digital connection is only allowed by Sony after mp3 players and the like were looking to imminently kill the minidisc format in the marketplace, due to fast music transfer and other features Sony prohibited in their hardware. Seriously - the format faltered and for a short time it looked like it would die forever, because Sony wouldn't allow the features that genuine product manufacturers would, and mp3 players were taking their marketshare.
That the marketplace eventually forced Sony to relax a cripple doesn't change the point that they crippled it in the first place. And that, when it became apparent that this wasn't cutting the mustard any longer, they tried to disguise an analogue audio transfer as a direct computer connection (when a direct connection would have been cheaper hardware!) is even more damning yet.
There will be hardware divisions of Sony reletively unaffected by the shift in priority, but anything to do with digital content - run! Run away while you still can!
it won't be long before Sony, Panasonic, etc. will make players and CD-ROM drives that can read these disks.
Have you had your head in the sand?!? Sony IS the RIAA! Many years ago Sony used to make consumer electronics. They made good stuff. That's all in the past. Today, Sony makes their money from content (Sony Music, Sony Pictures, Sony Playstation titles, etc), and they build their hardware to maximize THOSE profits, at the expense of features.
Sony equipment has more cripples than any other brand. They have a string of failed product lines because the cripples and proprietary restrictions were so blatant even Joe Consumer clued on. (Memory stick mp3-player-like devices that would not actually play mp3s, but only locked-down DRM shit instead. DVD players that are SERIOUS about implementing zone cripples and output restrictions as bulletproof as possible, while no-name brands do the mininum crippling that licensing requires of them, and sometimes not even that. Minidiscs packaged with "digital" USB connection devices that were not, in fact, digital connecters, but digital to analogue converters, ensuring that any transfer to or from the minidisc was via analogue, even though both machines have digital. Not to mention the prevention/removal of digital output jacks from consumer minidisc recorders to begin with, despite them already being SCMS compliant...). I shudder to think what kind of cripples a sony-brand HDTV system is loaded with...
Sony doesn't make hardware, they make content. And they design that hardware to sell their content.
Not only will Sony not make players to play corrupted CDs (unless every other company is doing it already), they are actively funding the developement of these corruption systems and will spend buckets of $$$ to get them the court's and congress's blessings.
Know thine enemy. Sony is not the knight in shining armour waiting to take on the labels. Sony is the labels, masquerading as its previous business as an electronics manufacturer to fool the unwary.
Don't ever buy sony products - after those failed products, they are getting very, very good at hiding the cripples. Better than we are at spotting them before purchase.
Since it is a settlement, can this case be used as leverage against Universal or others planning the same thing?
No. A settlement gives no precedent at all. What I'm wondering is whether those ten points agreed too were haggled over or whether the label simply agreed to all the damands. My suspicion is that they knew they had over-stepped the bounds with this one (due to those blatant privacy violations that consumers could not opt-out of), and so if it went to court, they would likely lose on at least some points AND as a result have a precedent set that could cripple further attempts at corrupting CDs in the future. So what they perhaps did is "lost" out of court (ie agreed to the demands) to avoid a precedent being set, and will continue to sell corrupt CDs until such a time as they have the tech working better, the issues nailed down a bit more, and THEN they'll let it go to court, and they'll win. A precedent will be set establishing that they have the right to sell corrupt CDs under certain conditions.
I'm thinking this matter will get to a courtroom only when the labels are sure they're going to win a precedent in their favour. The bastards.
I think the unique ID refers to a different ID on every single disc. So the disc I buy has a different number from the disc my friend buys. Obviously, this can be used for all sorts of evil. Of course, the IDs could incorporate zone data and other cripples, like DVDs, but there also seems to be potential there for things like discs that will only play a set number of times in your player, pay-per-view systems, and if the players have "features" that involve any kind of net connection (eg, maybe something like what the TIVO players do), then the possibilities are frightening/awesome (depending on whether you're a user or a dealer)
Structures require what is known as maintenance. Sometimes they are even scrapped due to age. The "global warming", if it is in fact happening, is happening so slowly that normal maintenance and abandonment will take care of it.
Was it New York that had to spend billions a year of very real $$$ on aerial spraying when a disease-spreading mosquito was able to establish itself there?
Whatever, if the climate changed, the reach of maleria for example would also change, and (most likely) enlarge. Possibly greatly. While the reverse (decrease maleria) is a far more remote possibility. Maintenance just isn't relevant. The costs in money and human life and misery would be very real. Sure, we're dealing in probabilies, but that's no excuse for ignoring well-established successful methods of risk management.
If it turns out that global warming is happening but that the major causes are natural, then we're still better off if we've done everything we can to stop making things worse.
No, we aren't. In that case it's been a monumental waste of effort
?!?!? That sounds insane. Judging from what might be expected to result from artifical greenhouse gases, our contribution might be the difference between mostly inconvenient climate change and something only a whisker short of complete disaster.
You don't add fuel to the fire unless you want it to burn hotter/brighter/longer, and, well, we don't really want that:)
more efficient transportation, better insulated houses, and a cleaner planet with greater fossil fuel reserves to pass on to our children.
Is that all there is to giving them a quality life?
Absolutely. Fewer resources wasted making a product means more reasources left over to make a luxary product. More efficient processes mean less labour involved. Thus more people employed making the really good things in life rather than the mundane necessities.
Or, alternative, allowing less time to be spent working in the first place, meaning more quality time with your loved ones.
The entire technologically progress of humanity has been about finding more efficient ways to do stuff, thus leaving more for the Good Stuff.
There is a reason that people don't light fires with flint and rocks any more - we've found more efficient methods. Why would you want to stop the technological clock now? (Other than having a large financial stake in an outdated technology:)
Global Warming is bunk. We only have about 100 years worth of weather data. HOW IN THE WORLD CAN YOU SAY HUMANS CAUSE THIS WITH THIS DATA! It isn't enough!
It's easy - you've just got the scientific method all backwards.
Global warming ISN'T about looking at the weather data and saying "Uh-oh - this looks like a bad trend...". It's about looking at the easily measureable artificial increase in atmospheric greenhouse gases and saying "if the physics inside the lab also applies outside the lab, we can expect that climate change will result from the known increase of these gases in the atmosphere". IE, the weather data has nothing to do with the climate predictions - people are looking to it as a way to check the validity of the predictions, NOT as the basis of the prediction. (Unless they're dippy media sensationalists)
We don't have anywhere near enough data to prove global warming.
We also apparently don't have enough data to prove the Creationists and Flat Earth Society wrong (or so they tell us). Science isn't about proof, it's about evidence. And the evidence suggests it is very foolish to continue indulging some of our current excesses in the she'll-be-right-mate belief that nothing can happen.
In terms of risk management, I'd say the evidence points towards changing some of our bad habits. And that we will technologically benefit from this in the long run anyway suggests we should do it anyway. What the climate change risk adds is an imperative to do it NOW, and an incentive to tackle the change harder (ie more painfully) than we might otherwise choose. But we didn't seem to interested in changing for the better at all before environmental issues appeared.
Whatever copy protection they invent, there will always be a workaround...
If we can crack DVD, why wouldn't we be able to crack this new cd-protection?
This thinking is both incorrect and dangerious IMHO. It works in their favour.
First of all, one MAJOR reason we could crack DVD was that in order to comply with US crypto export law, the encryption was pathetically weak.
Next format, we'll be up against serious armour, PGP-strength crypto built into the hardware. Thus breaking the crypto won't be an option - we'll probably have to hack to the hardware.
Law changes are in the works aiming at making it illegal in the USA to aquire ANY digital device that doesn't have copy-controls and cripples built in, and it's already illegal to tamper with the cripples. Naturally, you then won't be able to buy hardware that doesn't lock you out.
So if we keep thinking that we can just break whatever they come up with, we might just end up in a situation where you need a soldering iron and a shitload of illegal knowledge to remove the cripples, and you become criminally liable in the process, and you have to go through the work of soldering and chipping for each and every playback device to wish to liberate - no instant copies of DeCSS source here - but sheer manual labour from highly skilled individuals who risk their careers and livelyhoods with each crack.
In other words, we've got to prevent phase two of the RIAA/MPAA hijack of copyright law - if we sit back with the assumption that whatever they come up with we can crack, then we run the risk of being dreadfully wrong.
Also, IMHO, if joe average on the street can't make a personal copy, it doesn't matter if you or I or other "tech elites" can - the cartels have won and our defense of the copyright balance will increasing come to be viewed as illegal hacking (and economic terrorism if the RIAA gets their way:) by ordinary citizens.
"You're recording a movie being played on HDTV? Isn't that illegal? My digital-VCR tells me that recording is disabled for the sunday night movie on digital TV. What happens if they catch you?"
You go to jail.
Don't lie back in overconfident belief that you can thwart whatever they come up with. You might just be wrong.
(The differently-humoured please note: That was a JOKE people, no need to take it personally or flame off about it. As it happens, I also live in the USA. And I feel somewhat depressed that I should feel like I should probably write this kind of disclaimer on/.:-)
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I have an archos. It fits in my jeans pockets nicely (and I wear tight jeans). Smaller would be nicer, but smaller isn't worth the smaller range of features, lower capacity and higher cost of an ipod. But when the ipod gets better, in a year or two, I might be buying... :-)
You're forgetting one thing. Apple Computer is made up of elitists.
:-)
They hold the opinion that the best, highest quality products aren't for everyone.
Heh, while I'm sure you're absolutely correct, it's kind of an interesting way to phrase it considering so much of their stuff is aimed at lowest-common-denomenator users. (Please don't misunderstand - I don't mean that as a slur on users, just that a lot of the design principles of Apple have been about changing or sacrificing some things in order to make products that are usable by tech-clueless (a good thing). Wheras "elitest" would suggest to me making products that demand much from the users but because of this they answer to no-one, (making no sacrifices for simplicity), requiring really clued up power users. Sort of like what SGI used to be - SGI might be what comes to mind when someone says "elitist" regarding computer companies. Apple is elitist in a different sense to what I would think of, but yeah, you're right. If Apple had the lion's market share, enthusiests would have have an ever harder time buying into that "I'm a rebel, I'm special, I think different(ly)" stuff that people either love or hate
How about setting up this configuration, not with an LCD screen, but an old CRT monitor? Would the output be too dim? Could you crank the brightness, or would you then loose contrast?
:-)
A guy I know has done this. Yes, it works. Yes, it's too dim to make very much bigger than the CRT.
He used it to project the visual swirly displays things of mp3 players onto the ceiling (dark room) at a party. That's probably the best use for it. Cheap and easy though - all you need is a fresnal lense
Anyways, nice to see articles like that, but LCD sucks, DLP is the way to go for video projectors
I've also been looking into buying one, and everything seems to agree that LCD had the edge over DLP - DLP is smaller, lighter, cheaper, but (a good) LCD apparently has the edge in image quality.
The best projectors seem to be LCD, though there are pro's and cons to each. (Eg, LCD has space between pixels, while DLP colours seperate when your eye cicades from one one area of the picture to another because they use a spinning colour wheel instead of 3 seperate chips) and so on.
Since DLP projectors seem significantly cheaper than LCD, it'd be great if they were better - so please tell me what you've heard.
I'm thinking that even if LCD is better for some things, what I want a projector for is (1) Quake & (2) DVDs, so if DLP is as good or better than LCD for just those things, that would rock.
(I can only afford one of these - so I have to get the choice right BEFORE I buy)
Maybe I'm missing something, as this seems too obvious.
:-)
The problem is not future technologically-advanced cultures, who understand radiation, have the means to notice it, etc etc, but cultures that have no such knowledge or understanding. So make something for that eventuality in mind.
Now, the salt-flat geology (unchanged for 230,000,000 years so far) seems pretty stable, so the stuff can be buried deep enough that it is not damgerous to those on the surface. Leave it unmarked, and chances are no-one (or very few) will go there anyway - no fantastic monument to inevitably create the Tourist Industry of Doom.
Solution: the monument is also deep underground. Like the monolith on the moon in 2001 Space Oddyssey, the very act of finding the monument is highly compelling evidence of advanced intelligence and technology. (ground-scans, geological magnetic mapping, other technologies).
Any culture capable of detecting the monument must already know enough about radiation that warnings will be fairly quickly understood.
Any culture that couldn't detect the monument is (a) the high-risk group, and (b) likely to turn any visible monument into a tourist attraction (or place of spiritual significance) anyway.
Thus, for those for whom any monument would be worse than no monument, there is no monument and we hope that if the obfuscation fails, the storage depth will still suffice.
If the ground shifts and the storage site comes up to the surface, it is marked by a warning monument.
If the site is found by an advanced culture, the monument can actually work because the threat is describes will be understood as a reference to known phenomina, not some intriguing mystical curse.
If an asteroid strikes the salt flat, well, you have bigger problems to worry about.
That said, I feel that the practise of superficially lowering our living expenses (cheaper energy) by passing the cost onto future generations is unethical and immoral - we should bite the bullet and pay the full price of what we consume, as we consume it.
Currently, paying a small premium for "green" power is not difficult. If the price is a problem, I feel it's better to tighten one's own belt than to continue living beyond my means and forcing other people to pick up your tab. I also think more people should think the same way.
But everyone thinks that.
There is no shortage of energy. There is a shortage of energy that is as cheap as energy sources that we don't pay the full price for, but instead inflict on others in the name of greater goods (good for us, anyway).
What we need is a real technological solution, not a political solution to prevent this intrusion of our privacy - and even more it should be something doable in the USA
Funny you should mention that, as the lead story in todays wired is this:
A leash for carnavore
It's an open source system a guy has developed that encrypts all customer records, such that
1) No one can access them without an encryption key.
2) The only way it will provide a decryption key is upon being presented with an electronic request digitally signed by a judge.
3) The key it provides will ONLY decrypt the information specified by the judge and nothing more. No more abusing genuine warrents for overbroad fishing expeditions.
It's a great concept. It allows law enforcement all the data they are entitled to, and preclude rights-violations. And for this reason, law enforcement will probably fight it tooth and nail, and make sure it never gets used.
But an ISP in the USA that sells "secure, private" net access as a premium service could use this system as one hell of a selling point, and perhaps get the ball rolling. No overseas severs needed.
Great idea.
Most poeple have less than 200 CD's (which the iPod can store).
:).
It depends. I have far fewer CDs than that on my (archos) player and are past 10gig - since my player has a digital output, thus can drive a decent home sound system without degrading it through the less-than-amazing analogue systems necessitated by portability, suddenly the bitrates that are more than sufficient for portable listening are not quite enough for listening under situations so much closer to ideal. But the ipod doesn't offer optical or coax digital output (from memory), so it's apples and oranges anyway.
But more to the point, I have several gig of data files on my player also. So 10gig is just too small for a lot of people, but the ipod is still a fantastic unit, and I find that I recommend it to more people than the archos. (Eg, I wouldn't recommend archos to my grandmother
Yeah, the size of the nomad is crappy. I understand why people like the ipod player, and I understand why people like the (later-model) archos players and recorders, but I just don't really get what people see in the nomad. And it seems to be one of the more crippled brands as well (though nothing next to sony's digital rubbish - utterly fantastic technology, but insultingly crippled and proprietary. What a shame.)
Strange.
True, but it's GUI sucks and it doesn't support playlists or ID3 tags. I have yet to see a test of the sound output quality.
:-)
You seem to be confused - you're probably thinking of the ancient Archos mp3 player insead of the 20GB recorder he was talking about. Not only does it support ID3 and playlists (you can even make new ones in the field, or drag and drop your fav winamp playlists from your computer), and have a great GUI, it has a digital output!
That means that as wellas using it as a portable player, when I get home I can plug it into my home theatre system directly via the digital, and the results are amazing compared to connecting any other portable CD, MD, or mp3 player I've ever had (because portable units by neccessity don't have fantastic analogue systems, and normally you have to connect them via analogue jack - and with a good sound system, this is more apparent than portable listening in heavy traffic).
On top of that, it has both analogue and digital input (it records), fits in your pocket (unlike the Nomad), and unlike the iPod it has replaceable batteries (so you can take it camping) and upgradable HDD. The upgradable HDD is important because of the digital output - when you're using this unit with a home sound system, then 128bps (more than enough for portable listening) doesn't cut it anymore, and you'll want space for bigger files.
Actually, I lie, I think you void your warrentee by upgrading it yourself, but that didn't stop me jumping to 30gig
Oh, and it's the least crippled HDD mp3 player that I know of. I think copyright compliance is the responsibility of the user, and should not be enforced by function and feature cripples in the unit. So I boycott crippleware.
That said, I wouldn't recommend it to everyone. But for what I want, it's great. I'm mainly writing this because you posted mistakenly.
I know it's chic to bash Bill Gates and Microsoft on /. but Bill Gates has donated more money to fight disease and suffering in third world countries than any single indivudual. I think Gates and Carnegie deserver graves side by side personally.
I don't think I agree. I know nothing about Carnegie, but it sounds like he gave his fortune away to help others. Bill is doing no such thing. Certainly, he is giving away vastly more money, but is he sacrificing anything? Or simply giving the money away because, well, there is absolutely NOTHING else left that he can possibly do with it.
Think about it - once you have a few billion, what can you do with more money? Can you buy your kids a better education? Nope. Can you take more holidays? Nope. Can you buy a better fleet of cars than you already could? Nope. A better personal jet? Nope. More power and influence? Nope.
Once you have more money than you can spend on yourself, the rest becomes irrelevant. And morally speaking, virtue of character is affected by personal sacrifice for another more than it is by happening to be in a situation whereby you can make a bigger difference at no cost to yourself.
Of course BillG's situation isn't luck, but is largely of his own making. (but made largely via unethical and illegal means.) And of course, some would argue that giving away ill-gotten gains is no virtue at all.
But however you argue it, while Bill's actions might be powerhouse force for good in the world, that does not, necessarily, suggest that his character is worthy to be held up as an example of virtue. Or that his person should be buried next to people who genuinely are those things.
For those of you who actually purchased copies of the MP3s you listen to, congratualtions, I'm sure you'll have nothing to worry about in court.
Speaking as one of these people, I think I have a lot to worry about - the ridiculous findings so far suggest the US courts are almost as PWN3D as congress. Not to mention the likelyhood of mp3 players being banned outright by Hollywood-sockpuppet-Hollings.
I might not be so worried about doing actual hard jail time, but I'm certainly worried about the loss of rights, merely so that luddite lobbiests get their corporate welfare.
Actually, for-pay services have a chance (at least to get my money) for two reasons:
1) Guaranteed quality.
Don't you mean guaranteed LACK of quality? Last I checked, the highest quality music that I could buy from a for-pay service was about 128bps MP3. For some songs, that doesn't cut it. Yet on an illegimiate service, I could get anything up to insane 320bps FBR MP3.
Also note - the recording industry does not want high quality digital files in public hands AT ALL. Hi quality analog is fine, but the idea that the unwashed masses can access near-studio-quality recordings sends chills doen the spines of studio execs due to the potential for lossless reproduction without the middleman.
2) Easy browsing.
Again, surely it's the opposite that is true. Illegimiate services will pull up the song you want. A search on a for-pay system very, VERY rarely seems to tuen up the song I want, because each system only offers a fraction of the artists.
You (understatingly) note that for-play services fail to meet requirement 3, (while illegimate system are fine in this regard)
I think for-pay services are doomed to fail for one reason - the MPAA wants them to fail. Pressplay isn't a serious attempt at selling via the internet. It is (among other things) an attempt to manufacture evidence that Napster-like services cannot be legitimately competed with and thus must be shut down or the world will end. Else why is it so utterly useless to 99.98% of music consumers? If they were serious about selling online, Pressplay wouldn't be such an insultingly rediculous POS.
Or maybe they're just too stupid to realise that the old tricks (making you buy a couple of albums to get the songs you want) are not going to cut it in the digital world, and they actually have to do what every other business does - sell what the consumer wants to buy, rather than use their monopoly powers to ruthlessly dictate to both artist and consumer who is allowed to do what.
Why would you want to pay $450 for an mp3 harddrive when you could buy an mp3/cd player for around $100 and be able to burn mp3's onto cd's from any persons house.
:-)
Personally, I don't understand why anyone want to waste time burning, carrying, inserting, ejecting, swapping, mp3 CDs when you could have a HDD player - ALL your music, ready to play. Without fuss.
So I guess it depends on the person.
Personally, I wouldn't buy this either - I have a portable pocket-sized HDD mp3 player (only 30 gig, since it uses a slimline laptop drive, but that's still 10 times my music collection), and that can both drive a car stereo, or be slipped into a pocket in my jeans to go wherever I go. I wouldn't want my music chained to the car. But some people want their car system to be stand-alone and shit hot. In which case this thing is great - but wireless download would make it better!
Each to his own.
So tell me - what are you GTA fans thinking when you watch blood pool around a dead bystander's head in GTA3? Is it really necessary for the game to be THAT violent? How does it make the experience more enjoyable?
:) :-) and I think this exaggerates the feeling that it's violent.
Like your post, this isn't a troll, but might sound like one. The violence doesn't make the game more fun, in fact, the game simply isn't violent in ways you describe - it's consistant. If you choose to beat up an old lady, why should the game intervene, stop you, and say "hey - that's not nice, you can't do that"? In other words, it's just like counterstrike, Halo etc - an artifact of creating a consistant world.
I haven't played all that far into GTA3, but from all that I have seen, you are NEVER required to beat up an old lady to progress or finish a mission. In fact, if you are so violently inclined as to use your weapons on an old lady, you're much more likely to have a run-in with the police, ending your game.
That's the interesting thing about GTA3 - unlike most games, there are serious consequences if the player commits random acts of violence. When you first get the game, it might be fun to try and rack up as many stars as you can get, but when you're actually playing it, you try pretty hard to avoid hurting people, else the police response makes it almost impossible to progress.
So in a sense, I see GTA3 as less violent than the shoot-everything-in-sight games, even though both might be very graphic.
That said, there are some pretty dodgy missions (though you still get to decide whether or not you want to do them). (I really didn't like the idea of being muscle for a protection racket for example. I was glad when it turned out to be a trap
GTA is also needlessly gratutious. The prostitute thing for example. (Not to mention - the idea that sex with a prostitute makes you healthier is somewhat counter to reality
I agree that it goes over the top, I just wanted to make the point that the game discourages violence - it seems more violent because whenever someone starts playing it, they discover that they are in a consistant world in which they be as violent as they want. And thus the PLAYER rips loose, NOT the game. When they start playing properly, it's completely different.
I think it would be a tragedy if game tech was retarded on the premise that offering a consistant world is too violent.
Smuggling such illegal goods shall be declared an act of terrorism. You'll get live imprisonment if caught. Who will take such a risk?
The same types of people who smuggle drugs now.
Game over. The future looks bleak. The unregulated PC becomes the new drug. Underground tech-runners sell at enormous mark-up to anyone unfortunate enough to need the advantages of an open OS. Being caught means jail. But Joe Public is happy with his lobotimised PC - he never uses it for anything other than typing documents, watching movies, and playing games anyway. And he resents that movies cost so much to watch per play, and blames those evil pirates for the high price - "bust the bastards good!" is all he can say when the news reports another ring of uncrippled-tech sellers has been broken. He doesn't know what the phrase "intellectual commons" means.
But this scenario takes place a full decade after freedom was targeted and destroyed by the industry. Right now, the game is almost finished. Only a couple more nails needed to finished the coffin, and the trap will be utterly inescapable.
I wonder how they plan to protect against those of us that buy and assemble our own hardware and run Linux on that.
Simple. If the hardware isn't compliant, no-one may sell it in the USA - that's what the proposed SSCAA (or whatever it's called) bill is for. That means you can't buy it and your linux is toast.
Thus the entire world becomes compliant overnight, as the Taiwanese manufacturers need the large US domestic market and so must comply, and those few that do continue to produce uncrippled products are not allowed to sell them in the USA.
That means you need to make friends in other countries, and have them buy your components and mail them to you, and hope like hell that it doesn't get stopped at customs and you get $2000 of hard earned gear confiscated before you ever saw it.
Note that customs is already doing just this to a line of mod-chips because the corporation making the console that they mod invoked the DMCA against them.
Nearly all the pieces are in place. And once the trap closes, it's game over. The only way to have a free PC will be to become an outlaw and face imprisonment.
Welcome to the land of the free. (Please leave all your civil and human rights at border when entering - we don't hold with that sort of nonsense here).
In some countries, such as New Zealand, it's illegal to sell DVD players that honour region coding, as it's against Fair Trade laws
I'm from NZ, and a friend of mine looked into this, and as far as we can tell, the best that could be said is that zoning might be illegal under some circumstances - and that no-one has really looked into it. I do know that consumers currently have every right to correct this flaw in their DVD players, however even that might change now that the USA is strong-arming the rest of the world to copy the DMCA.
But at the end of the day, I'm pretty sure it is perfectly legal to sell a zoned DVD player in NZ, leaving the purchaser to get it chipped elsewhere (assuming they even grasp the concept of zoning). More to the point, you can walk into almost any store and buy a zoned DVD players right off the shelf - you usually pay a little extra to get it de-zoned.
I wish someone WOULD look into it. Every trade agency seemed to assume it would fall under someone else's jurisdiction. DRM cripples like this are an illegal trade barrier by any definition I can think of.
Maybe the WTO can the opportunity to demonstrate that it's not always the bad guy. Yeah right.
BTw, regarding the minidiscs. I upgraded to a 6gig MP3 recorder and player that fits into my jeans pocket comfortably. (Then I replaced its laptop HDD for a 30 gig drive). And that was the end of Sony in my life. Haven't bought a sony product since. I'll not have them spend my hard-earned* dollars on funding new ways to corrupt audio CDs.
:)
:)
The mp3 player is a little bigger than a small minidisc, and a fair bit heavier (thus less able to survive drops...), but a hell of a lot better.
Digital input AND output. No cripples. SCMS has a work-around. Realtime recording via digital, analogue, or built-in mic (which is a piece of crap, but it's there
Hook it up to the digital port of your Sony amp and you'll get better sound than from a minidisc.
No matter where I am, no matter which mood, the exact song I want to listen to is in my pocket. Custom playlists, no changing discs, no carrying additional discs. Amazing.
(Well, I thought so. I've been addicted to it for months now
Why am I saying this? Because I found minidisc so good compared to the other options that I put up with Sony's crap. But now there is a new option, and it kicks minidisc. So I don't have to put up with sony anymore. And so if there is anyone out there like - this is for you - You don't have to put up with Sony anymore!
Yay!
:-)
I wouldn't say what they make is crap - the problem is that they deliberately cripple what it can do. I would say they are extremely good at making stuff - part of the legacy of their roots, but there is not a consumer electronics manufacturer out there as dedicated to crippling their products as Sony is, and Sony is getting good at concealing their cripples.
An amp is not relevant to content - it does not record content, it does not play content, it is an in-between for devices that deal with content. As such, sure, it probably is safe to buy a home-theatre amp from Sony - they'll make a kick-ass amp. But buy the devices that plug into the amp that Do deal with content, that's getting riskier...
I own a couple of ultra-small minidisc recorders also. They were part of what put me off Sony. The actual minidisc tech is fabulous. The cripples and propritary crap is not. And since Sony owns the format, competitors have to license it under Sony's terms.
Your digital connection is only allowed by Sony after mp3 players and the like were looking to imminently kill the minidisc format in the marketplace, due to fast music transfer and other features Sony prohibited in their hardware. Seriously - the format faltered and for a short time it looked like it would die forever, because Sony wouldn't allow the features that genuine product manufacturers would, and mp3 players were taking their marketshare.
That the marketplace eventually forced Sony to relax a cripple doesn't change the point that they crippled it in the first place. And that, when it became apparent that this wasn't cutting the mustard any longer, they tried to disguise an analogue audio transfer as a direct computer connection (when a direct connection would have been cheaper hardware!) is even more damning yet.
There will be hardware divisions of Sony reletively unaffected by the shift in priority, but anything to do with digital content - run! Run away while you still can!
it won't be long before Sony, Panasonic, etc. will make players and CD-ROM drives that can read these disks.
Have you had your head in the sand?!? Sony IS the RIAA! Many years ago Sony used to make consumer electronics. They made good stuff. That's all in the past. Today, Sony makes their money from content (Sony Music, Sony Pictures, Sony Playstation titles, etc), and they build their hardware to maximize THOSE profits, at the expense of features.
Sony equipment has more cripples than any other brand. They have a string of failed product lines because the cripples and proprietary restrictions were so blatant even Joe Consumer clued on. (Memory stick mp3-player-like devices that would not actually play mp3s, but only locked-down DRM shit instead. DVD players that are SERIOUS about implementing zone cripples and output restrictions as bulletproof as possible, while no-name brands do the mininum crippling that licensing requires of them, and sometimes not even that. Minidiscs packaged with "digital" USB connection devices that were not, in fact, digital connecters, but digital to analogue converters, ensuring that any transfer to or from the minidisc was via analogue, even though both machines have digital. Not to mention the prevention/removal of digital output jacks from consumer minidisc recorders to begin with, despite them already being SCMS compliant...). I shudder to think what kind of cripples a sony-brand HDTV system is loaded with...
Sony doesn't make hardware, they make content. And they design that hardware to sell their content.
Not only will Sony not make players to play corrupted CDs (unless every other company is doing it already), they are actively funding the developement of these corruption systems and will spend buckets of $$$ to get them the court's and congress's blessings.
Know thine enemy.
Sony is not the knight in shining armour waiting to take on the labels. Sony is the labels, masquerading as its previous business as an electronics manufacturer to fool the unwary.
Don't ever buy sony products - after those failed products, they are getting very, very good at hiding the cripples. Better than we are at spotting them before purchase.
Since it is a settlement, can this case be used as leverage against Universal or others planning the same thing?
No. A settlement gives no precedent at all.
What I'm wondering is whether those ten points agreed too were haggled over or whether the label simply agreed to all the damands. My suspicion is that they knew they had over-stepped the bounds with this one (due to those blatant privacy violations that consumers could not opt-out of), and so if it went to court, they would likely lose on at least some points AND as a result have a precedent set that could cripple further attempts at corrupting CDs in the future. So what they perhaps did is "lost" out of court (ie agreed to the demands) to avoid a precedent being set, and will continue to sell corrupt CDs until such a time as they have the tech working better, the issues nailed down a bit more, and THEN they'll let it go to court, and they'll win. A precedent will be set establishing that they have the right to sell corrupt CDs under certain conditions.
I'm thinking this matter will get to a courtroom only when the labels are sure they're going to win a precedent in their favour. The bastards.
I think the unique ID refers to a different ID on every single disc. So the disc I buy has a different number from the disc my friend buys.
Obviously, this can be used for all sorts of evil.
Of course, the IDs could incorporate zone data and other cripples, like DVDs, but there also seems to be potential there for things like discs that will only play a set number of times in your player, pay-per-view systems, and if the players have "features" that involve any kind of net connection (eg, maybe something like what the TIVO players do), then the possibilities are frightening/awesome (depending on whether you're a user or a dealer)
Structures require what is known as maintenance. Sometimes they are even scrapped due to age. The "global warming", if it is in fact happening, is happening so slowly that normal maintenance and abandonment will take care of it.
:)
:)
Was it New York that had to spend billions a year of very real $$$ on aerial spraying when a disease-spreading mosquito was able to establish itself there?
Whatever, if the climate changed, the reach of maleria for example would also change, and (most likely) enlarge. Possibly greatly. While the reverse (decrease maleria) is a far more remote possibility. Maintenance just isn't relevant. The costs in money and human life and misery would be very real. Sure, we're dealing in probabilies, but that's no excuse for ignoring well-established successful methods of risk management.
If it turns out that global warming is happening but that the major causes are natural, then we're still better off if we've done everything we can to stop making things worse.
No, we aren't. In that case it's been a monumental waste of effort
?!?!? That sounds insane. Judging from what might be expected to result from artifical greenhouse gases, our contribution might be the difference between mostly inconvenient climate change and something only a whisker short of complete disaster.
You don't add fuel to the fire unless you want it to burn hotter/brighter/longer, and, well, we don't really want that
more efficient transportation, better insulated houses, and a cleaner planet with greater fossil fuel reserves to pass on to our children.
Is that all there is to giving them a quality life?
Absolutely. Fewer resources wasted making a product means more reasources left over to make a luxary product. More efficient processes mean less labour involved. Thus more people employed making the really good things in life rather than the mundane necessities.
Or, alternative, allowing less time to be spent working in the first place, meaning more quality time with your loved ones.
The entire technologically progress of humanity has been about finding more efficient ways to do stuff, thus leaving more for the Good Stuff.
There is a reason that people don't light fires with flint and rocks any more - we've found more efficient methods. Why would you want to stop the technological clock now? (Other than having a large financial stake in an outdated technology
Global Warming is bunk. We only have about 100 years worth of weather data. HOW IN THE WORLD CAN YOU SAY HUMANS CAUSE THIS WITH THIS DATA! It isn't enough!
It's easy - you've just got the scientific method all backwards.
Global warming ISN'T about looking at the weather data and saying "Uh-oh - this looks like a bad trend...". It's about looking at the easily measureable artificial increase in atmospheric greenhouse gases and saying "if the physics inside the lab also applies outside the lab, we can expect that climate change will result from the known increase of these gases in the atmosphere". IE, the weather data has nothing to do with the climate predictions - people are looking to it as a way to check the validity of the predictions, NOT as the basis of the prediction. (Unless they're dippy media sensationalists)
We don't have anywhere near enough data to prove global warming.
We also apparently don't have enough data to prove the Creationists and Flat Earth Society wrong (or so they tell us). Science isn't about proof, it's about evidence. And the evidence suggests it is very foolish to continue indulging some of our current excesses in the she'll-be-right-mate belief that nothing can happen.
In terms of risk management, I'd say the evidence points towards changing some of our bad habits. And that we will technologically benefit from this in the long run anyway suggests we should do it anyway. What the climate change risk adds is an imperative to do it NOW, and an incentive to tackle the change harder (ie more painfully) than we might otherwise choose. But we didn't seem to interested in changing for the better at all before environmental issues appeared.
Whatever copy protection they invent, there will always be a workaround...
:) by ordinary citizens.
If we can crack DVD, why wouldn't we be able to crack this new cd-protection?
This thinking is both incorrect and dangerious IMHO. It works in their favour.
First of all, one MAJOR reason we could crack DVD was that in order to comply with US crypto export law, the encryption was pathetically weak.
Next format, we'll be up against serious armour, PGP-strength crypto built into the hardware. Thus breaking the crypto won't be an option - we'll probably have to hack to the hardware.
Law changes are in the works aiming at making it illegal in the USA to aquire ANY digital device that doesn't have copy-controls and cripples built in, and it's already illegal to tamper with the cripples. Naturally, you then won't be able to buy hardware that doesn't lock you out.
So if we keep thinking that we can just break whatever they come up with, we might just end up in a situation where you need a soldering iron and a shitload of illegal knowledge to remove the cripples, and you become criminally liable in the process, and you have to go through the work of soldering and chipping for each and every playback device to wish to liberate - no instant copies of DeCSS source here - but sheer manual labour from highly skilled individuals who risk their careers and livelyhoods with each crack.
In other words, we've got to prevent phase two of the RIAA/MPAA hijack of copyright law - if we sit back with the assumption that whatever they come up with we can crack, then we run the risk of being dreadfully wrong.
Also, IMHO, if joe average on the street can't make a personal copy, it doesn't matter if you or I or other "tech elites" can - the cartels have won and our defense of the copyright balance will increasing come to be viewed as illegal hacking (and economic terrorism if the RIAA gets their way
"You're recording a movie being played on HDTV? Isn't that illegal? My digital-VCR tells me that recording is disabled for the sunday night movie on digital TV. What happens if they catch you?"
You go to jail.
Don't lie back in overconfident belief that you can thwart whatever they come up with. You might just be wrong.
English is not your first language, then?
:-)
/. :-)
He's probably American
--- ---
(The differently-humoured please note: That was a JOKE people, no need to take it personally or flame off about it. As it happens, I also live in the USA. And I feel somewhat depressed that I should feel like I should probably write this kind of disclaimer on