Am I missing something on fuel standards? I had an 89 Honda CRX which looks like it was bigger than a smart car and it got 50mpg even when I had run 250000+ miles on it. I now have a BMW 328i sport coupe that gets in the high 30s and has 267hp. Why would I want a little car like that if I only get 40? Other than it is cheap and cute. But just purely on economic and enviromental impact, I don't get it.
On the internet you see articles about photographer's rights and freedoms. The general advice is that you are free to take a picture of anything on publich property or even anything FROM public property. Why do people get so bent out of shape being photographed in public. You have no expectation of privacy in a public place. A Big Brother society would be one in which you are photographed by the government in PRIVATE places, which has never happened and there is no slippery slope leading that direction. Camera are just a tool to extend the range of limited police manpower. I don't see an issue.
Difference between physical and intellectual property? Mark Halperin is known for making ridiculous claims based on naive and overly simplistic logic in order to create attention. In this case, his basic premise seems to be that my intellectual property is treated differently than my physical property and that is not right. His secondary premise is that the Constitution uses the word "times" which allows for perpetual copyright.
As to the second: Everyone knows that our system is not formed based on what the framers of the Constitution intended; it is based on the volume of precedent accumulated as INTERPRETATION over the years. He cannot argue with the semantics of the wording. It is only the interpretive rulings that matter.
As to the first:
The forms of property are treated differently and they should not be. Currently property of substantial value, particularly business value (Mr Author) is taxed. Copyrights are held indefinitely and are tax-free. Physical property may be seized at anytime if it is seen to be in the public interest. In, fact the supreme court recently ruled that your property can be siezed and turned over to someone else who can make better use of it for the public interest. This sounds a great deal like the Supreme Court has realized not that property should not held in perpetuity, but that it should always be used for the public good. This make it sound like physical property should be treated more like the original copyright law rather than vice versa. Physical property is taxed. Copyrights are tax-free. Perhaps we could revert to the equivalent to the original copyright system AND satisfy the simplistic logic of Mr. Halperin if we simply taxed all copyrights and patents according to their market value. If you fail to pay your taxes then the copyright would be siezed and entered into the public domain (just like physical property). This system would meet the original intent of the copyright system in that either your patent is contributing tax money or societal value. One could get a tax deductioin for entering valuable works into the public domain. Of course value determination would be an issue, but it has been solved before. This system would also make it undesirable to sit on unused intellecutal property. Intellecutal property is more widely (though not necessarily immediately) valuable to the public. So why should it not be siezed more regulary than physical property (which is already regulary siezed under eminent domain). It is much more efficient to simply make copyrights expire and further the public good than creating a liberal taxation system to effectively accomplish the same thing. Be simple, be minimal, accomplish your goal without expanding government.
I imagine most stores have not done this because of bandwidth issues, but Amazon has a massive and low priced network infrastructure. The only reason for them not to do it is to distinguish the product from (the frequently cheaper) and higher quality CDs they aleady cell.
Sales of vinyl have been increasing year-over-year for the last 10 years according to several music mags. It is a small percentage, but it is increasing.
The customs guys do frequently think I'm trying to bring in pods for the black market. I just have to explain. One is for jazz, one is for metal, one is for other, and one is for video and audio books.... THe scary thing is that the TSA guys never ask about all the gear in my carryons.
I have four ipods (80g) I want most of my music library nearby. I think my blackberry is the perfect phone. Unless those two can converge into something will all the same capabilities at the same size, I only see a converged product as a loss. Besides I want an ipod with me all the time, I don't like being attached to the blackberry all the time.
I have 6000+ albums on vinyl and CD. I don't buy DRM music online. I shop around online (Amazon etc) until I find CDs at less than 11.99, usually less than 10. I don't buy CDs with DRM. I frequently buy them used for about 5. I'm a happy customer with no issues and have not been or expect to be driven to privacy. I have no pirated CDs. I suspect the whole industry issue is not with DRM; I don't think piracy hurts them that much. What they want is to eliminate the right of resale, where people get their music.
of it. This is not some fancy targeted new drug. They simply injected capsiacin to block the pain nerves leading into the pancrease. Capsaicin blocks the k receptor which is why the topical capsaicin pain creams work so well. They noticed a similarity in the nerves leading into the pancrease and other pain nerve clusters so they made a simple inject. I would say it is a long way from a treatment, but it changed the paradigm of how to target diabetes drugs in a simple logical way. That is why this is interesting.
Actually it depends on how you define your test metric. In our industry we define the failure as ppm in the final unit for a particular test (color, shape, weight, hardnes). In a complete report you would different ppm failure rates for different aspects of the process.
Actually 1-2ppm defects is a common goal and easily obtainable with proper controls. 18ppm would be unacceptable in some regulated industries and considered an out-of-control process.
Highest perfformance requires talent and
on
The Expert Mind
·
· Score: 1
extremely hard work. Extremely hard work without talent may lead to a pleasing and/or competent-to-the-layman result, but will NEVER be as good as the talented, hard working professional. I am a scientist because I played musical instrumnets for 20 years but was never able to acheive what I considered an acceptable level of competence, even though I was a much better "technician" on the instrumnet than most people because I worked hard at it. I could play higher, lower, faster than most people, but could never really make music... you need talent for that. Of course it could be stated that you need talent to recognuze talent and to the untalented your performance may seem "expert". That is why there are so many "Geek Squad" types working on computers.
DVD-Audio format requires a DVD-A player, of which most DVD players are not. The sound off a regular DVD would one of the same compressed formats used for movies and should not be better than CD, unlike DVD-A and SACD are (where there is a clear audible improvement in the sound over the CD). I could understand this tack by the audio industry if they were offering a high quality DVD-A album with a pre-ripped lower quality files along side it. I wouldn't buy it, but I'd understand it. I don't understand offering two formats, drm'd, on a disc with no corresponding increase in sound quality.
The article keeps referring to pre-ripped tracks that are separate from the "dvd-audio" tracks. However I would expect that there are no DVD-Audio format (higher than cd quality) on the disc, only regular cd audio on that has been stored on a DVD. Consumers didn't want the higher quality DVD audio even though it had tracks that could be played on a a regular DVD player. Why would they want a DVD with lower quality tracks that won't play in the cd player. This makes no sense on so many levels. It's so complicated that even knowledgable audio people will have to stare at the stupid package and read the fine print just figure out what they are supposed to be buying. If I can't rip the disc to lossess flac for playing on the home system, then I don't want it... although I'm sure I could rip it if I really wanted to...
I have spent a lot of time near the area where the ipods are manufactured. It is a huge city that is almost entirely industrial park as far as the eye can see. It is a repeating pattern of factory, dorm, factory, dorm, on and on. The workers seem to make about a dollar a day and from the plant owners I talked to there is a labor shortage and they have to bid against other factories to get the better workers, the result of that bidding is about a dollar a day right now. That is why companies are starting to leave China and farm out work to other countries with cheaper labor. On they whole though, although the people live in dorms, they seemed to have a reasonable amount of buying power. At the plants I saw, it was not required that they lived in the dorms, but it was the cheapest way for them to live. All the consumer goods in China cost absolutely nothing so I would assume the people could buy a reasonable amount on a dollar a day. It sounds like the ipod plants are normal market-competative employers for the area.
If it is a true lossless format then you can convert it into anything. So you can play it on the ipod in any format you want. You aren't locked into anything. The ipod will play apple's lossess format, aiff, wav, and (with firmware replacement) flac.
Mindawn.com, magnatune.com, studiodownloads.net, disclogic.com, digitalsoundboard.net. There are many more. All work on the ipod. All lossess or (compressed if you want that) no drm. Admittedly the selections is small, but I'd rather have a thousand stores with lossess music and no drm than one store with a large selection.
commentary. Amazing how he can say such insightful and meaningful things about Microsoft while only being able to generate moronic, hyperbolic tripe about Apple. Yes, I'm kidding...
Re:Some artists just want to be heard...
on
CRIA Falling Apart?
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
A creation does have perpetual value. Whether that is monetary or not is another question. Personally I would be for very short copyright 25 years or so, analagous to patents on new drugs (16 years to make your money). In exchange for the shortened copyright, I would fully criminalize copyright violations so that they consitute theft (legally and not just morally) and are punishable by police action and not just civil action. That system would increase value to the copyright holder in that it would be more stictly enforced and increase value to the society in that the works would be widely available for public benefit sooner. The modifications to the law would also need to include provisions that intermediate agencies could not benefit without explicit contracts from the copyright holder, in other words no money should be collected except that going to the holder, minus some small fee for the collection, but that would need to be spelled out by contract.
Re:Some artists just want to be heard...
on
CRIA Falling Apart?
·
· Score: 1
A service only has value as a service, that is why artist only get paid once for a concert. A creation has perpetual value. Doctor's get paid once to treat a patient, they get paid for long after that patient's death if they create something (a textbook, a device, a therapy) from that patient's treatment.
Don't get me wrong. I understand the philosophy and it is very important to me. I just think if the product is clearly excellent and aimed at practical ends, everyone will get the philosophy by default. Another poster used a Pepsi analogy. If Pepsi tasted like carbonated vinegar, no amount of "Choice of a New Generation" advertising will make people beleive it. All along the development of FSF Stallman has forsaken practicality for philosophy and that doesn't make any sense to me. Admittedly we need people saying extreme things to keep us all thinking, but saying exteme things won't ever lead to good usable software. It will take practical people.
is that in order to truly spread the "philosophy" the product must succeed on its own without the "philosophy" attached. When the product succeeds because it is a good product then the philosophy will inherently spread. That is why it is good to call it Linux and not GNU/Linux. That way people will buy into just because its good and not because it is a physical manifestation of RMS's philosophy. This is analagous to all those people who bought American cars in teh 70-80's even though they were crap because they philosophically thought it was important to buy American cars. Therefore the product got worse and worse. He gets it exactly wrong by saying that it must be called GNU/Linux to spread the philosphy. I'm not looking for a philosophy; I'm looking for an OS.
His main issue seems to be the fragility of HDD based players versus MD hardware. I have had both and I am brutal on "pocketable" hardware. I have dropped my ipod on the hardwood floors of my house, I have sweated all over it, it has deep gouges from being dropped in parking lots and accidently kicked on its face across the parking lot. Hard drives seem to be much more solid that they once were, and the hard drive is the only moving part in the ipod. My MD player on the other hand, has had a much more gentle life, but has needed much more work. It has a motor that turns the disk, at least one that moves the little reading head, it has springs and latches that open the door and lock the disk in. Compared to a HDD it is a virtual Rube-Goldberg contraption. Mine has had to be serviced several times. My initial reason for decreased use of the MD is that ATRAC format is the most audibly unpleasant compression format I have ever heard. Apparently the new MD players can record losslessly which would be great for live recording although there are some cheaper HD recorders specifically designed for music, (phantom power etc) that are better for taping. If I want 150 lossless albums on my ipod, no problem, if I want 150 lossless albums on a MD player I have to carry 150 discs.
As far as bettery life. I recently flew from Hong Kong to Atlanta (~17 hours) and the two year old ipod played for 14 with some left to spare. I had a small extra external battery but it was not needed.
In short, I don't think fragility is an issue, there are better music specific recorders, storage is far better in many ways than the MD, and battery life while not as good on an ipod, is perfectly adequate, even for long trips. There just aren't enough positives to keep the MD in the game. Particularly since hte bulk of his article seems to be trashing the interface.
Slashdot Mirror
Am I missing something on fuel standards? I had an 89 Honda CRX which looks like it was bigger than a smart car and it got 50mpg even when I had run 250000+ miles on it. I now have a BMW 328i sport coupe that gets in the high 30s and has 267hp. Why would I want a little car like that if I only get 40? Other than it is cheap and cute. But just purely on economic and enviromental impact, I don't get it.
On the internet you see articles about photographer's rights and freedoms. The general advice is that you are free to take a picture of anything on publich property or even anything FROM public property. Why do people get so bent out of shape being photographed in public. You have no expectation of privacy in a public place. A Big Brother society would be one in which you are photographed by the government in PRIVATE places, which has never happened and there is no slippery slope leading that direction. Camera are just a tool to extend the range of limited police manpower. I don't see an issue.
Difference between physical and intellectual property? Mark Halperin is known for making ridiculous claims based on naive and overly simplistic logic in order to create attention. In this case, his basic premise seems to be that my intellectual property is treated differently than my physical property and that is not right. His secondary premise is that the Constitution uses the word "times" which allows for perpetual copyright.
As to the second:
Everyone knows that our system is not formed based on what the framers of the Constitution intended; it is based on the volume of precedent accumulated as INTERPRETATION over the years. He cannot argue with the semantics of the wording. It is only the interpretive rulings that matter.
As to the first:
The forms of property are treated differently and they should not be. Currently property of substantial value, particularly business value (Mr Author) is taxed. Copyrights are held indefinitely and are tax-free.
Physical property may be seized at anytime if it is seen to be in the public interest. In, fact the supreme court recently ruled that your property can be siezed and turned over to someone else who can make better use of it for the public interest. This sounds a great deal like the Supreme Court has realized not that property should not held in perpetuity, but that it should always be used for the public good. This make it sound like physical property should be treated more like the original copyright law rather than vice versa.
Physical property is taxed. Copyrights are tax-free. Perhaps we could revert to the equivalent to the original copyright system AND satisfy the simplistic logic of Mr. Halperin if we simply taxed all copyrights and patents according to their market value. If you fail to pay your taxes then the copyright would be siezed and entered into the public domain (just like physical property). This system would meet the original intent of the copyright system in that either your patent is contributing tax money or societal value. One could get a tax deductioin for entering valuable works into the public domain. Of course value determination would be an issue, but it has been solved before. This system would also make it undesirable to sit on unused intellecutal property.
Intellecutal property is more widely (though not necessarily immediately) valuable to the public. So why should it not be siezed more regulary than physical property (which is already regulary siezed under eminent domain).
It is much more efficient to simply make copyrights expire and further the public good than creating a liberal taxation system to effectively accomplish the same thing. Be simple, be minimal, accomplish your goal without expanding government.
I imagine most stores have not done this because of bandwidth issues, but Amazon has a massive and low priced network infrastructure. The only reason for them not to do it is to distinguish the product from (the frequently cheaper) and higher quality CDs they aleady cell.
Sales of vinyl have been increasing year-over-year for the last 10 years according to several music mags. It is a small percentage, but it is increasing.
homosexualtiy,
poverty,
medical care,
education,
and the government would be obligated to fix... everything...
The customs guys do frequently think I'm trying to bring in pods for the black market. I just have to explain. One is for jazz, one is for metal, one is for other, and one is for video and audio books.... THe scary thing is that the TSA guys never ask about all the gear in my carryons.
I have four ipods (80g) I want most of my music library nearby. I think my blackberry is the perfect phone. Unless those two can converge into something will all the same capabilities at the same size, I only see a converged product as a loss. Besides I want an ipod with me all the time, I don't like being attached to the blackberry all the time.
I have 6000+ albums on vinyl and CD. I don't buy DRM music online. I shop around online (Amazon etc) until I find CDs at less than 11.99, usually less than 10. I don't buy CDs with DRM. I frequently buy them used for about 5. I'm a happy customer with no issues and have not been or expect to be driven to privacy. I have no pirated CDs. I suspect the whole industry issue is not with DRM; I don't think piracy hurts them that much. What they want is to eliminate the right of resale, where people get their music.
of it. This is not some fancy targeted new drug. They simply injected capsiacin to block the pain nerves leading into the pancrease. Capsaicin blocks the k receptor which is why the topical capsaicin pain creams work so well. They noticed a similarity in the nerves leading into the pancrease and other pain nerve clusters so they made a simple inject. I would say it is a long way from a treatment, but it changed the paradigm of how to target diabetes drugs in a simple logical way. That is why this is interesting.
Actually it depends on how you define your test metric. In our industry we define the failure as ppm in the final unit for a particular test (color, shape, weight, hardnes). In a complete report you would different ppm failure rates for different aspects of the process.
Actually 1-2ppm defects is a common goal and easily obtainable with proper controls. 18ppm would be unacceptable in some regulated industries and considered an out-of-control process.
extremely hard work. Extremely hard work without talent may lead to a pleasing and/or competent-to-the-layman result, but will NEVER be as good as the talented, hard working professional. I am a scientist because I played musical instrumnets for 20 years but was never able to acheive what I considered an acceptable level of competence, even though I was a much better "technician" on the instrumnet than most people because I worked hard at it. I could play higher, lower, faster than most people, but could never really make music... you need talent for that. Of course it could be stated that you need talent to recognuze talent and to the untalented your performance may seem "expert". That is why there are so many "Geek Squad" types working on computers.
DVD-Audio format requires a DVD-A player, of which most DVD players are not. The sound off a regular DVD would one of the same compressed formats used for movies and should not be better than CD, unlike DVD-A and SACD are (where there is a clear audible improvement in the sound over the CD). I could understand this tack by the audio industry if they were offering a high quality DVD-A album with a pre-ripped lower quality files along side it. I wouldn't buy it, but I'd understand it. I don't understand offering two formats, drm'd, on a disc with no corresponding increase in sound quality.
The article keeps referring to pre-ripped tracks that are separate from the "dvd-audio" tracks. However I would expect that there are no DVD-Audio format (higher than cd quality) on the disc, only regular cd audio on that has been stored on a DVD. Consumers didn't want the higher quality DVD audio even though it had tracks that could be played on a a regular DVD player. Why would they want a DVD with lower quality tracks that won't play in the cd player. This makes no sense on so many levels. It's so complicated that even knowledgable audio people will have to stare at the stupid package and read the fine print just figure out what they are supposed to be buying. If I can't rip the disc to lossess flac for playing on the home system, then I don't want it... although I'm sure I could rip it if I really wanted to...
I have spent a lot of time near the area where the ipods are manufactured. It is a huge city that is almost entirely industrial park as far as the eye can see. It is a repeating pattern of factory, dorm, factory, dorm, on and on. The workers seem to make about a dollar a day and from the plant owners I talked to there is a labor shortage and they have to bid against other factories to get the better workers, the result of that bidding is about a dollar a day right now. That is why companies are starting to leave China and farm out work to other countries with cheaper labor. On they whole though, although the people live in dorms, they seemed to have a reasonable amount of buying power. At the plants I saw, it was not required that they lived in the dorms, but it was the cheapest way for them to live. All the consumer goods in China cost absolutely nothing so I would assume the people could buy a reasonable amount on a dollar a day. It sounds like the ipod plants are normal market-competative employers for the area.
If it is a true lossless format then you can convert it into anything. So you can play it on the ipod in any format you want. You aren't locked into anything. The ipod will play apple's lossess format, aiff, wav, and (with firmware replacement) flac.
Mindawn.com, magnatune.com, studiodownloads.net, disclogic.com, digitalsoundboard.net. There are many more. All work on the ipod. All lossess or (compressed if you want that) no drm. Admittedly the selections is small, but I'd rather have a thousand stores with lossess music and no drm than one store with a large selection.
probably just practice for dealing with the new legislation that's coming in the US? Geeze, the US is falling behind in everything now....
commentary. Amazing how he can say such insightful and meaningful things about Microsoft while only being able to generate moronic, hyperbolic tripe about Apple. Yes, I'm kidding...
A creation does have perpetual value. Whether that is monetary or not is another question. Personally I would be for very short copyright 25 years or so, analagous to patents on new drugs (16 years to make your money). In exchange for the shortened copyright, I would fully criminalize copyright violations so that they consitute theft (legally and not just morally) and are punishable by police action and not just civil action. That system would increase value to the copyright holder in that it would be more stictly enforced and increase value to the society in that the works would be widely available for public benefit sooner. The modifications to the law would also need to include provisions that intermediate agencies could not benefit without explicit contracts from the copyright holder, in other words no money should be collected except that going to the holder, minus some small fee for the collection, but that would need to be spelled out by contract.
A service only has value as a service, that is why artist only get paid once for a concert. A creation has perpetual value. Doctor's get paid once to treat a patient, they get paid for long after that patient's death if they create something (a textbook, a device, a therapy) from that patient's treatment.
Don't get me wrong. I understand the philosophy and it is very important to me. I just think if the product is clearly excellent and aimed at practical ends, everyone will get the philosophy by default. Another poster used a Pepsi analogy. If Pepsi tasted like carbonated vinegar, no amount of "Choice of a New Generation" advertising will make people beleive it. All along the development of FSF Stallman has forsaken practicality for philosophy and that doesn't make any sense to me. Admittedly we need people saying extreme things to keep us all thinking, but saying exteme things won't ever lead to good usable software. It will take practical people.
is that in order to truly spread the "philosophy" the product must succeed on its own without the "philosophy" attached. When the product succeeds because it is a good product then the philosophy will inherently spread. That is why it is good to call it Linux and not GNU/Linux. That way people will buy into just because its good and not because it is a physical manifestation of RMS's philosophy. This is analagous to all those people who bought American cars in teh 70-80's even though they were crap because they philosophically thought it was important to buy American cars. Therefore the product got worse and worse. He gets it exactly wrong by saying that it must be called GNU/Linux to spread the philosphy. I'm not looking for a philosophy; I'm looking for an OS.
His main issue seems to be the fragility of HDD based players versus MD hardware. I have had both and I am brutal on "pocketable" hardware. I have dropped my ipod on the hardwood floors of my house, I have sweated all over it, it has deep gouges from being dropped in parking lots and accidently kicked on its face across the parking lot. Hard drives seem to be much more solid that they once were, and the hard drive is the only moving part in the ipod. My MD player on the other hand, has had a much more gentle life, but has needed much more work. It has a motor that turns the disk, at least one that moves the little reading head, it has springs and latches that open the door and lock the disk in. Compared to a HDD it is a virtual Rube-Goldberg contraption. Mine has had to be serviced several times. My initial reason for decreased use of the MD is that ATRAC format is the most audibly unpleasant compression format I have ever heard. Apparently the new MD players can record losslessly which would be great for live recording although there are some cheaper HD recorders specifically designed for music, (phantom power etc) that are better for taping. If I want 150 lossless albums on my ipod, no problem, if I want 150 lossless albums on a MD player I have to carry 150 discs.
As far as bettery life. I recently flew from Hong Kong to Atlanta (~17 hours) and the two year old ipod played for 14 with some left to spare. I had a small extra external battery but it was not needed.
In short, I don't think fragility is an issue, there are better music specific recorders, storage is far better in many ways than the MD, and battery life while not as good on an ipod, is perfectly adequate, even for long trips. There just aren't enough positives to keep the MD in the game. Particularly since hte bulk of his article seems to be trashing the interface.