This is really nothing new -- I remember back in the '80s when this first was brought up, except of the culprit being a cell phone, it was a Amateur Radio HT (like a walkie-talkie for all you non hams out there) unit up next to your ear. There was a concern that talking into the HT with the antenna up next to your head would cause cancer. We are talking 300 milliwatts up to about 2 watts into a small antenna on the 2 Meter, 1.25 Meter, or 70 cm bands. Cell phones are typically 300-500 milliwatts at around the 30 cm band.
I never knew of anyone who ended up with brain cancer because of using an HT, even those who had their HTs constantly with them and were talking on them "all of the time." No one that I know of has their cell phone (or HT) up to their head constantly 24/7. Even those who talk on the phone a lot put their phone in their pocket between calls -- therefore the brain is only in close proximity to the antenna only a small percentage of the time.
I could see there being a potential problem if a HT or Cellphone was constantly next to the head constantly transmitting at full power next to the brain, but I don't see the average (or even above average user) having to worry.
We might not be able to decrypt an alien encrypted transmission, but it would still be detectable. For example, look at a radio scanner. If the local police encrypts all of their communications, you will not be able to listen in unless you have a scanner that can decrypt their transmissions, and the proper key. However, as long as your scanner picks up the frequency that the police use, there will be a signal there. It may just sound like noise, but that transmission will be different from the normal background noise.
Now, if the aliens use the equivalent of spread spectrum transmission, it will be more difficult to find the signal (encrypted or not), but there will still be a signal that can be detected by the proper equipment. It may be difficult or impossible to decrypt an alien signal, but encryption doesn't make the signal disappear.
Second, their manufacturing costs are much lower because they produce in *large* quantities. unsold albums do not stay in the pipe anymore. Walmart's inventory control system ensures that they don't overbuy product, so they landfill very little of it. This means that the record labels produce much smaller batches, which increases costs. The sad truth is that there is little demand for music older than 5 years.
Devil's advocate (and I am not actually disputing what you are saying) -- If the typical CD makes most of the money it will ever make in 5 years, then why does the RIAA insist on pushing copyright out to ridiculous time periods? It seems to me that the recording industry slit their own throat back in 2001 when it sued Napster and ended up creating the massive P2P revolution that resulted. They should have bought out Napster and grabbed the digital music revolution by the horns. If they had done that, perhaps they wouldn't be under Walmart's thumb today. They could have made the bulk of their money with the new stuff on CD and milked the long tail for the older stuff by selling mp3s for $0.50 or so. There would still be piracy, but it would not have been a major issue.
Instead, they made about every mistake possible, almost like they wanted to kill the music industry, then complain when it is slowly dieing...
This is different. They didn't go out and buy real Gibson guitars and hook them into the game. They went to Gibson and licensed the right to create plastic guitar that looks like a Gibson. There was an agreement signed and Gibson gets some kind of cut. Guitar Hero could of created a generic guitar and not had to do this, but they wanted the Gibson look.
The same thing applies to computers. If I put together my own computers and sell them, I am free to go and buy whatever mouse and keyboard I want and include them with the computer. I am also free to design and build my own mouse or keyboard design. If I want to make a keyboard that resembles say a Datamancer Aviator and sell it as such, then I would need an agreement with Datamancer. Of course, I could always buy a keyboard from them or use a generic keyboard and avoid the need for licensing.
Thank you! I have looked up my house using Google maps and I can still see my in-laws Camper and Truck sitting in my driveway. They sold both several years ago. So unless Google has bought some satellites and has started doing real time of selected cities, I don't think we need to worry quite yet. I would be more worried about cities networked with cameras (like London) where the powers-that-be can follow you around the city. I don't think those cameras are hooked up to Google (yet)instead of a van going through one time per x months and taking video of the streets. When (and if) the THOSE cameras are hooked into Google, then it may be time to worry.
I grew up near Allentown, PA -- where in the summer it was dark by 9:00 PM, and in the dead of winter dark by 5:00 PM. Now I live in Louisville, KY (about 1.5 hours south of Indy and a little more east) and in June there is still just a little light in the sky close to 10 pm, and dark by 6:00 PM in winter. I like having the light in the evening, especially in the summer, of course it is darker in the morning (most noticeable in December when it doesn't get light out until 7:30 or so). If we were on Central time, we would have close to the same relative sunrises and sunsets as Allentown.
When Indianapolis was on year-round Eastern Standard Time, the time was the same in Indy and Louisville during the winter, but Indy was an hour behind us in the summer -- now Indy and Louisville are on the same time year round. From what I remember, the decision to go with Eastern time (except for a few counties) was made because it was thought that from a business prospective, that Eastern was the better time zone. I don't see where you are really screwed (other than having to reset your clocks twice a year) -- you already had the late sunrise in the winter. Sunrise is an hour later, in the summer, but you now get more light in the evening.
That brings back the memories -- when I was in 10th grade, our High School had an account on the Lehigh University mainframe. After we finished loading our programming assignments (we typed them on paper tape offline, then loaded them online after the Teacher logged on), we would play Star Trek. I don't remember all of the commands now, but basically one would move from sector to sector. After each turn, a text-based grid map would be printed showing starbases, planets, Klingons, etc. Imagine waiting for the map to be printed at 110 baud after each turn...
I also remember the text based adventures, especially the maze of twisty passages.
When I was at college, Pac Man and Dungeons & Dragons were the big thing. I spent many an hour playing D&D with a cold beer at my side to keep me safe....good times.
Put a drive like this into a laptop like the Toughbook, and you would have a machine that could take quite a bit of abuse. No worries about a hard drive crash if the unit is dropped while the machine is running. A drive like this also takes less power, so battery life would be increased.
The only question I have is what is the lifetime (namely number of read/write cycles) of NAND memory. The article also asked this question, so it sounds like this may be a question that still needs to be answered, at least for a real-world product.
Much of the stuff in my mystery box comes from work -- I wait until it goes into the garbage, then it is fair game. USB cables, CAT-5 cables, laptop pieces, and even an old keyboard. The best part is that the company doesn't mind -- in fact the best time was about 4 or 5 years ago when they had to clean out their storage area in the basement and made a bunch of old equipment available for free. I still have an old office chair that I picked up that day.
Until the late '70s / early '80s, things were designed to be fixable. I remember going to the store with my Dad to get a cord for my Mom's clothes iron. The iron was designed so it could be opened up so that the old cord could be replaced. The power cord would fray from use over time and need to be replaced, but the iron itself was designed to last for years.
Now the iron is designed to be disposable. There is no way to replace the cord even if the iron would last longer than the cord. Forget the waste -- it is more profitable to make you buy a whole new (cheap) iron instead of a cord. The extra waste in the landfill is not the corporation's problem.
Rinse and repeat for most consumer products today -- most products are designed with to be replaces after x amount of time instead of lasting for years so that people with be forced to throw away the old and buy the new. I hope this will change, but I am not holding my breath.
I pulled up Varios Um's site on Estudio Livre, and I must say his music is interesting, IMHO definitely worth the time to take a listen. This music may not be for everyone, but part of the fun (and one of the reason I like these kind of articles on/.) is following someone's suggestion, and seeing if it is any good or not. The best part is if I don't like the music, I'm not out $10 - $18 as I would be if I picked up an interesting looking CD from one of the RIAA artists and found out I didn't like it.
If it does the job well (and I have no problems with/.), then why keep running on the upgrade treadmill? Get the most life you can out of your equipment and software, only upgrade when needed. This is what most businesses do -- it saves money and (usually) allows a more stable environment.
Exactly. Not only do some of the languages contain information we would lose if the language is lost (i.e. the knowledge of the medicinal use of rain forest plants), but many of these languages are not written, so once all of the speakers disappear, so does the knowledge.
Ancient Egyptian was a lost language, but because it was written (and thanks to the Rosetta stone), we can still understand it, and the Egyptian people. Many Native American languages had no written version, but now have a written form. Cherokee is an example -- thanks to Sequoyah aka George Guess (thanks Wikipedia), it has a written form, and stories and knowledge can be saved.
All of these old languages tell a story about where the Human Race has come from, and serves as a store of knowledge gained through experience. It would be a shame to completely lose these languages, even if they are no longer spoken in daily life.
A game produced by a small shop or in the case of Naked War shouldn't need that big of a percentage of gamers to make money. Naked War appears to be a subscription based game at $19.99 (I didn't dig in enough to see if that is per year or month, so I will assume a year). Let assume that the 2 programmers want to make $100,000 each per year and there will be $100,000 per year in expenses for a total of $300,000 per year. At $19.99 per year, they would have to sell 15,000 subscriptions to meet their expenses. It may take some work, but if the game is original, well done, and fun, it should be possible between grass-roots marketing and word of mouth to get those 15,000 accounts.
Of course, there's the chance that the game will be a bust, but that's part of being in business. It is also possible to be a success -- look at the 2 brothers who started Jib Jab. They turned some little political spoofs made in Flash into a full time business. It can be done, it just takes talent, timing, and luck.
If this happens, I have 2 choices -- either ignore the new laws or cut back/eliminate the consumption of media. I only have so much money available per month for entertainment, and with the cost of fuel and everything else going up (but not my salary), entertainment will be the first to go. I can live just fine without big Media -- there are still books, and that big room with the real high blue ceiling that I can reach through my front and back doors.
If big media wins, they lose. I (and many others on this planet) cannot just create more money every time someone wants more $ for the same or less service and/or product.
People tend to ignore laws that are unreasonable or unjust -- sometimes out of Civil Disobedience (i.e. Rosa Parks), or just because it is a real PITA (the 55 mph speed limit). In the case of the Birmingham, AL bus company, the color green ($) ended up being more important than the Jim Crow laws, and in the case of the 55 mph speed limit, compliance was so low that Reagan added the 65 mph zones, then Clinton later eliminated the nation speed limits completely.
Laws are only as good as society wants them to be. Right now the content industry is in the middle of coping with the changes that the Internet has brought. As much as they want to keep control and put the Genie back in the bottle, it isn't going to work. Yes, there may be a few people (like in this article) that are scared, but most people either ignore stupid laws or find a way around them so that they can get on with their lives. That is why the DMCA and the RIAA lawsuits are failing to make a real dent in the way people use media.
Until the content industry attempts to meet the customer at least half way, the current battles will continue. The longer the industry waits, the harder it will be to win the customer back.
The only problem I see with this is the DMCA. Since almost all movies on DVD produced by the MPAA companies use CSS copy protection, the MPAA can claim that those movies were illegally copied. The only ways I can think of to bypass the DMCA is to have made the copy of the movie from a laser disk (no copy protection that I know of), or perhaps a VCR tape (I don't think that Macrovision on analog tapes is covered by the DMCA, but I may be wrong). I would guess that an ISO file of the original DVD that you own might pass since copy protection was not broken. Copies of your CDs on PC are generally not a problem since most CDs do not contain any effective form of copy protection.
That said, I think the DMCA and this whole copyright war is dumb, and the industry would be better off creating a real site like this and competing. Charge a fair price, offer decent download times and no DRM, and people would use it. Free is good, but most people are willing to pay a fair price for convenience. It may be too late at this point to do this, seven years after the closing of Napster, p2p is quick and easy.
If the RIAA would have bought out the original Napster and charged a fair price for using the service, this whole mess might of been avoided.
The scary thing is that Fundamentalism is making a comeback on this planet. Here we have the Christian Fundamentalists pushing their beliefs and in the Middle East we have Islamic Fundamentalism pushing their beliefs. IMHO both are equally evil and dangerous, and if either one (or both) win, this planet is in for a new Dark Ages.
I have always believed that the creation story in the Bible was simplified for the audience at the time it was written. In Genesis, first the universe is created, then the Sun, then the Earth, Oceans, Land, plants, animal, and last Man. Seven days was a logical way to explain complex theory in a way that is easily understood. I never took it to mean a literal 7 calendar days starting sometime in 40xx B.C. The job of Science is to reverse-engineer the process so that Humanity understands how everything was put together -- what has been discovered is a lot more beautiful, interesting, and complex than anything that the Fundys have suggested.
The best thing every Geek can do is to fight any type of religious Fundamentalism. If we can win, then we can avoid another Dark Ages. If we lose, then Humanity has a long, hard, road ahead.
The Monkees were a "group" that was mainly created to monkey around on a TV show. The group and the show made their money off of the popularity of the Beatles. They also made money by touring since they were/are fairly decent musicians.
The show (and the group) lasted a few years, then went into reruns and took the last train to Clarksville. But that was then, and this is now, and the Labels shameless manufacture most of the acts that they put out now, and wonder why sales are tanking.
I'm glad that Nat had to use Vista Home Premium in most of his examples -- I imagine that most people would want Home Premium if they were going to use Vista.
I also wonder what the price difference would be if XP Media Edition or XP Pro were still available.
The nice thing about Ubuntu for the home user is that most everything you need is either available or easy to install. I have been using Ubuntu dual boot with XP Pro on my laptop, and the only complaints I have is that wireless support could be better (although this has improved with 7.04), and that Linux drivers are not available for everything. I'm glad that Dell is offering Ubuntu as an option -- I think Vista could use some competition, especially on the price.
OS/2 was originally designed to be the successor to DOS back when Microsoft and IBM were working together. Microsoft and IBM then had a falling out and both companies went their own ways. IBM owned OS/2, so Microsoft pushed out Windows 3.0, which was not a DOS replacement, but a windowing system that ran on top of DOS 6.
Microsoft had to go back and develop Windows NT to replace DOS, and DOS did not actually go away until Windows XP ended the Windows 9x/ME line which were technically running on top of DOS.
IBM continued to develop OS/2 (remember OS/2 Warp), but while IBM may have owned the mainframe world, Microsoft owned the PC desktop. Windows won, and OS/2 was eventually retired.
This may be a dumb question, but could independent "label" sites such as CD Baby or DMusic (home of boycott-riaa.com, not to be confused with Emusic) set up an easy way to allow internet radio stations to play music from their artists at a better price? It would be a pain in the ass to have to contact every band or singer that you want to play on your internet radio station, but being able to play any group from say CD Baby and pay them directly would be doable. The site could even create weekly or monthly play lists of songs that are approved if they wanted to give their Artists the option to allow or not allow their songs on internet radio at the site rate.
If this is legal and practical, then it seems like the Independent Musician could flourish while the RIAA can have all the control over their crap that they want. I would love to see the RIAA (and SoundExchange) suffer due to their greed and miserly ways, but not at the expense of the real Musicians.
How about it CD Baby, DMusic (and others)? Is this a legal option?
An interesting book about Jesus and his times (around 8 BC to maybe 50 AD) is The Jesus Papers: Exposing the Greatest Cover-Up in History by Michael Baigent. He is one of the Authors of The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail, the book that the Authors claimed Dan Brown "stole" the idea for The Da Vinci Code from (they lost the lawsuit, thank goodness).
Speaking of the Bible, I never have believed that the 6 days of creation (7 including the day of rest) were supposed to be literal 24 hours days -- it was supposed to be a history of the creation of the universe written to be easily understood. If you read it it makes sense -- the universe was created first, then stars, then the earth. After the earth was created, Oceans formed, then land, plants, and animals. Man came last in the scheme of things. Genesis was never meant to be a scientific account of the history of the universe up to the time man came along -- it was meant to be easy for someone back in those times to understand.
I'm glad they found these fossils in Vermilion County, Illinois -- it was where my Dad grew up and his side of the family still lives.
For those who have ordered new computers, 100% of them have said they will be erasing and putting XP on the new machine.
The only thing about that is that Microsoft still gets to count each of those PCs as a Vista Sale and those dollars will go into their till. If they buy a copy of XP to put on those machines, then Microsoft wins again. Even if Vista is wiped and Ubuntu is put on the machine, the Vista sale still goes into the books.
The only way to avoid paying the "Vista tax" is to buy or build a PC without an operating system or with XP installed.
Slashdot Mirror
Not on my fine China, AC!
This is really nothing new -- I remember back in the '80s when this first was brought up, except of the culprit being a cell phone, it was a Amateur Radio HT (like a walkie-talkie for all you non hams out there) unit up next to your ear. There was a concern that talking into the HT with the antenna up next to your head would cause cancer. We are talking 300 milliwatts up to about 2 watts into a small antenna on the 2 Meter, 1.25 Meter, or 70 cm bands. Cell phones are typically 300-500 milliwatts at around the 30 cm band.
I never knew of anyone who ended up with brain cancer because of using an HT, even those who had their HTs constantly with them and were talking on them "all of the time." No one that I know of has their cell phone (or HT) up to their head constantly 24/7. Even those who talk on the phone a lot put their phone in their pocket between calls -- therefore the brain is only in close proximity to the antenna only a small percentage of the time.
I could see there being a potential problem if a HT or Cellphone was constantly next to the head constantly transmitting at full power next to the brain, but I don't see the average (or even above average user) having to worry.
We might not be able to decrypt an alien encrypted transmission, but it would still be detectable. For example, look at a radio scanner. If the local police encrypts all of their communications, you will not be able to listen in unless you have a scanner that can decrypt their transmissions, and the proper key. However, as long as your scanner picks up the frequency that the police use, there will be a signal there. It may just sound like noise, but that transmission will be different from the normal background noise.
Now, if the aliens use the equivalent of spread spectrum transmission, it will be more difficult to find the signal (encrypted or not), but there will still be a signal that can be detected by the proper equipment. It may be difficult or impossible to decrypt an alien signal, but encryption doesn't make the signal disappear.
Second, their manufacturing costs are much lower because they produce in *large* quantities. unsold albums do not stay in the pipe anymore. Walmart's inventory control system ensures that they don't overbuy product, so they landfill very little of it. This means that the record labels produce much smaller batches, which increases costs. The sad truth is that there is little demand for music older than 5 years.
Devil's advocate (and I am not actually disputing what you are saying) -- If the typical CD makes most of the money it will ever make in 5 years, then why does the RIAA insist on pushing copyright out to ridiculous time periods? It seems to me that the recording industry slit their own throat back in 2001 when it sued Napster and ended up creating the massive P2P revolution that resulted. They should have bought out Napster and grabbed the digital music revolution by the horns. If they had done that, perhaps they wouldn't be under Walmart's thumb today. They could have made the bulk of their money with the new stuff on CD and milked the long tail for the older stuff by selling mp3s for $0.50 or so. There would still be piracy, but it would not have been a major issue.
Instead, they made about every mistake possible, almost like they wanted to kill the music industry, then complain when it is slowly dieing...
This is different. They didn't go out and buy real Gibson guitars and hook them into the game. They went to Gibson and licensed the right to create plastic guitar that looks like a Gibson. There was an agreement signed and Gibson gets some kind of cut. Guitar Hero could of created a generic guitar and not had to do this, but they wanted the Gibson look.
The same thing applies to computers. If I put together my own computers and sell them, I am free to go and buy whatever mouse and keyboard I want and include them with the computer. I am also free to design and build my own mouse or keyboard design. If I want to make a keyboard that resembles say a Datamancer Aviator and sell it as such, then I would need an agreement with Datamancer. Of course, I could always buy a keyboard from them or use a generic keyboard and avoid the need for licensing.
Thank you! I have looked up my house using Google maps and I can still see my in-laws Camper and Truck sitting in my driveway. They sold both several years ago. So unless Google has bought some satellites and has started doing real time of selected cities, I don't think we need to worry quite yet. I would be more worried about cities networked with cameras (like London) where the powers-that-be can follow you around the city. I don't think those cameras are hooked up to Google (yet)instead of a van going through one time per x months and taking video of the streets. When (and if) the THOSE cameras are hooked into Google, then it may be time to worry.
I grew up near Allentown, PA -- where in the summer it was dark by 9:00 PM, and in the dead of winter dark by 5:00 PM. Now I live in Louisville, KY (about 1.5 hours south of Indy and a little more east) and in June there is still just a little light in the sky close to 10 pm, and dark by 6:00 PM in winter. I like having the light in the evening, especially in the summer, of course it is darker in the morning (most noticeable in December when it doesn't get light out until 7:30 or so). If we were on Central time, we would have close to the same relative sunrises and sunsets as Allentown.
When Indianapolis was on year-round Eastern Standard Time, the time was the same in Indy and Louisville during the winter, but Indy was an hour behind us in the summer -- now Indy and Louisville are on the same time year round. From what I remember, the decision to go with Eastern time (except for a few counties) was made because it was thought that from a business prospective, that Eastern was the better time zone. I don't see where you are really screwed (other than having to reset your clocks twice a year) -- you already had the late sunrise in the winter. Sunrise is an hour later, in the summer, but you now get more light in the evening.
That brings back the memories -- when I was in 10th grade, our High School had an account on the Lehigh University mainframe. After we finished loading our programming assignments (we typed them on paper tape offline, then loaded them online after the Teacher logged on), we would play Star Trek. I don't remember all of the commands now, but basically one would move from sector to sector. After each turn, a text-based grid map would be printed showing starbases, planets, Klingons, etc. Imagine waiting for the map to be printed at 110 baud after each turn...
I also remember the text based adventures, especially the maze of twisty passages.
When I was at college, Pac Man and Dungeons & Dragons were the big thing. I spent many an hour playing D&D with a cold beer at my side to keep me safe....good times.
Put a drive like this into a laptop like the Toughbook, and you would have a machine that could take quite a bit of abuse. No worries about a hard drive crash if the unit is dropped while the machine is running. A drive like this also takes less power, so battery life would be increased.
The only question I have is what is the lifetime (namely number of read/write cycles) of NAND memory. The article also asked this question, so it sounds like this may be a question that still needs to be answered, at least for a real-world product.
Much of the stuff in my mystery box comes from work -- I wait until it goes into the garbage, then it is fair game. USB cables, CAT-5 cables, laptop pieces, and even an old keyboard. The best part is that the company doesn't mind -- in fact the best time was about 4 or 5 years ago when they had to clean out their storage area in the basement and made a bunch of old equipment available for free. I still have an old office chair that I picked up that day.
Until the late '70s / early '80s, things were designed to be fixable. I remember going to the store with my Dad to get a cord for my Mom's clothes iron. The iron was designed so it could be opened up so that the old cord could be replaced. The power cord would fray from use over time and need to be replaced, but the iron itself was designed to last for years.
Now the iron is designed to be disposable. There is no way to replace the cord even if the iron would last longer than the cord. Forget the waste -- it is more profitable to make you buy a whole new (cheap) iron instead of a cord. The extra waste in the landfill is not the corporation's problem.
Rinse and repeat for most consumer products today -- most products are designed with to be replaces after x amount of time instead of lasting for years so that people with be forced to throw away the old and buy the new. I hope this will change, but I am not holding my breath.
I pulled up Varios Um's site on Estudio Livre, and I must say his music is interesting, IMHO definitely worth the time to take a listen. This music may not be for everyone, but part of the fun (and one of the reason I like these kind of articles on /.) is following someone's suggestion, and seeing if it is any good or not. The best part is if I don't like the music, I'm not out $10 - $18 as I would be if I picked up an interesting looking CD from one of the RIAA artists and found out I didn't like it.
If it does the job well (and I have no problems with /.), then why keep running on the upgrade treadmill? Get the most life you can out of your equipment and software, only upgrade when needed. This is what most businesses do -- it saves money and (usually) allows a more stable environment.
Exactly. Not only do some of the languages contain information we would lose if the language is lost (i.e. the knowledge of the medicinal use of rain forest plants), but many of these languages are not written, so once all of the speakers disappear, so does the knowledge.
Ancient Egyptian was a lost language, but because it was written (and thanks to the Rosetta stone), we can still understand it, and the Egyptian people. Many Native American languages had no written version, but now have a written form. Cherokee is an example -- thanks to Sequoyah aka George Guess (thanks Wikipedia), it has a written form, and stories and knowledge can be saved.
All of these old languages tell a story about where the Human Race has come from, and serves as a store of knowledge gained through experience. It would be a shame to completely lose these languages, even if they are no longer spoken in daily life.
A game produced by a small shop or in the case of Naked War shouldn't need that big of a percentage of gamers to make money. Naked War appears to be a subscription based game at $19.99 (I didn't dig in enough to see if that is per year or month, so I will assume a year). Let assume that the 2 programmers want to make $100,000 each per year and there will be $100,000 per year in expenses for a total of $300,000 per year. At $19.99 per year, they would have to sell 15,000 subscriptions to meet their expenses. It may take some work, but if the game is original, well done, and fun, it should be possible between grass-roots marketing and word of mouth to get those 15,000 accounts.
Of course, there's the chance that the game will be a bust, but that's part of being in business. It is also possible to be a success -- look at the 2 brothers who started Jib Jab. They turned some little political spoofs made in Flash into a full time business. It can be done, it just takes talent, timing, and luck.
If this happens, I have 2 choices -- either ignore the new laws or cut back/eliminate the consumption of media. I only have so much money available per month for entertainment, and with the cost of fuel and everything else going up (but not my salary), entertainment will be the first to go. I can live just fine without big Media -- there are still books, and that big room with the real high blue ceiling that I can reach through my front and back doors.
If big media wins, they lose. I (and many others on this planet) cannot just create more money every time someone wants more $ for the same or less service and/or product.
People tend to ignore laws that are unreasonable or unjust -- sometimes out of Civil Disobedience (i.e. Rosa Parks), or just because it is a real PITA (the 55 mph speed limit). In the case of the Birmingham, AL bus company, the color green ($) ended up being more important than the Jim Crow laws, and in the case of the 55 mph speed limit, compliance was so low that Reagan added the 65 mph zones, then Clinton later eliminated the nation speed limits completely.
Laws are only as good as society wants them to be. Right now the content industry is in the middle of coping with the changes that the Internet has brought. As much as they want to keep control and put the Genie back in the bottle, it isn't going to work. Yes, there may be a few people (like in this article) that are scared, but most people either ignore stupid laws or find a way around them so that they can get on with their lives. That is why the DMCA and the RIAA lawsuits are failing to make a real dent in the way people use media.
Until the content industry attempts to meet the customer at least half way, the current battles will continue. The longer the industry waits, the harder it will be to win the customer back.
The only problem I see with this is the DMCA. Since almost all movies on DVD produced by the MPAA companies use CSS copy protection, the MPAA can claim that those movies were illegally copied. The only ways I can think of to bypass the DMCA is to have made the copy of the movie from a laser disk (no copy protection that I know of), or perhaps a VCR tape (I don't think that Macrovision on analog tapes is covered by the DMCA, but I may be wrong). I would guess that an ISO file of the original DVD that you own might pass since copy protection was not broken. Copies of your CDs on PC are generally not a problem since most CDs do not contain any effective form of copy protection.
That said, I think the DMCA and this whole copyright war is dumb, and the industry would be better off creating a real site like this and competing. Charge a fair price, offer decent download times and no DRM, and people would use it. Free is good, but most people are willing to pay a fair price for convenience. It may be too late at this point to do this, seven years after the closing of Napster, p2p is quick and easy.
If the RIAA would have bought out the original Napster and charged a fair price for using the service, this whole mess might of been avoided.
The scary thing is that Fundamentalism is making a comeback on this planet. Here we have the Christian Fundamentalists pushing their beliefs and in the Middle East we have Islamic Fundamentalism pushing their beliefs. IMHO both are equally evil and dangerous, and if either one (or both) win, this planet is in for a new Dark Ages.
I have always believed that the creation story in the Bible was simplified for the audience at the time it was written. In Genesis, first the universe is created, then the Sun, then the Earth, Oceans, Land, plants, animal, and last Man. Seven days was a logical way to explain complex theory in a way that is easily understood. I never took it to mean a literal 7 calendar days starting sometime in 40xx B.C. The job of Science is to reverse-engineer the process so that Humanity understands how everything was put together -- what has been discovered is a lot more beautiful, interesting, and complex than anything that the Fundys have suggested.
The best thing every Geek can do is to fight any type of religious Fundamentalism. If we can win, then we can avoid another Dark Ages. If we lose, then Humanity has a long, hard, road ahead.
The Monkees were a "group" that was mainly created to monkey around on a TV show. The group and the show made their money off of the popularity of the Beatles. They also made money by touring since they were/are fairly decent musicians.
The show (and the group) lasted a few years, then went into reruns and took the last train to Clarksville. But that was then, and this is now, and the Labels shameless manufacture most of the acts that they put out now, and wonder why sales are tanking.
I'm glad that Nat had to use Vista Home Premium in most of his examples -- I imagine that most people would want Home Premium if they were going to use Vista.
I also wonder what the price difference would be if XP Media Edition or XP Pro were still available.
The nice thing about Ubuntu for the home user is that most everything you need is either available or easy to install. I have been using Ubuntu dual boot with XP Pro on my laptop, and the only complaints I have is that wireless support could be better (although this has improved with 7.04), and that Linux drivers are not available for everything. I'm glad that Dell is offering Ubuntu as an option -- I think Vista could use some competition, especially on the price.
OS/2 was originally designed to be the successor to DOS back when Microsoft and IBM were working together. Microsoft and IBM then had a falling out and both companies went their own ways. IBM owned OS/2, so Microsoft pushed out Windows 3.0, which was not a DOS replacement, but a windowing system that ran on top of DOS 6.
Microsoft had to go back and develop Windows NT to replace DOS, and DOS did not actually go away until Windows XP ended the Windows 9x/ME line which were technically running on top of DOS.
IBM continued to develop OS/2 (remember OS/2 Warp), but while IBM may have owned the mainframe world, Microsoft owned the PC desktop. Windows won, and OS/2 was eventually retired.
This may be a dumb question, but could independent "label" sites such as CD Baby or DMusic (home of boycott-riaa.com, not to be confused with Emusic) set up an easy way to allow internet radio stations to play music from their artists at a better price? It would be a pain in the ass to have to contact every band or singer that you want to play on your internet radio station, but being able to play any group from say CD Baby and pay them directly would be doable. The site could even create weekly or monthly play lists of songs that are approved if they wanted to give their Artists the option to allow or not allow their songs on internet radio at the site rate.
If this is legal and practical, then it seems like the Independent Musician could flourish while the RIAA can have all the control over their crap that they want. I would love to see the RIAA (and SoundExchange) suffer due to their greed and miserly ways, but not at the expense of the real Musicians.
How about it CD Baby, DMusic (and others)? Is this a legal option?
An interesting book about Jesus and his times (around 8 BC to maybe 50 AD) is The Jesus Papers: Exposing the Greatest Cover-Up in History by Michael Baigent. He is one of the Authors of The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail, the book that the Authors claimed Dan Brown "stole" the idea for The Da Vinci Code from (they lost the lawsuit, thank goodness).
Speaking of the Bible, I never have believed that the 6 days of creation (7 including the day of rest) were supposed to be literal 24 hours days -- it was supposed to be a history of the creation of the universe written to be easily understood. If you read it it makes sense -- the universe was created first, then stars, then the earth. After the earth was created, Oceans formed, then land, plants, and animals. Man came last in the scheme of things. Genesis was never meant to be a scientific account of the history of the universe up to the time man came along -- it was meant to be easy for someone back in those times to understand.
I'm glad they found these fossils in Vermilion County, Illinois -- it was where my Dad grew up and his side of the family still lives.
For those who have ordered new computers, 100% of them have said they will be erasing and putting XP on the new machine.
The only thing about that is that Microsoft still gets to count each of those PCs as a Vista Sale and those dollars will go into their till. If they buy a copy of XP to put on those machines, then Microsoft wins again. Even if Vista is wiped and Ubuntu is put on the machine, the Vista sale still goes into the books.
The only way to avoid paying the "Vista tax" is to buy or build a PC without an operating system or with XP installed.