I hope that the services introduces Bloom County to a new generation of readers. The strip had a depth seldom seen on the daily comic page. Well developed deep characters, relatively long story arcs, appropriate political satire, and very good drawings, particularly in the later strips and Outland.
Some of the specifics may be lost on those who did not live through it, but generalities are always funny. For instance when Rosebud was outed as female, Cutter John and the crew of the Enterpoop, Bill the Cat for president or as a fundamentalist preacher. On more serious sides we have the eternal physiological truths of searching for one's mother or trying to get acceptance from ones father(the later is a theme of King of the Hill).
I really hope this encourages the development of new strips that are self aware and humble. I think a comic should be more than just a contrived excuse for a punchline.
U.S. Downloaders Do So To Sample Music, And Believe Their Activities Are Benign
I think that is they key statement. In the U.S., most of the time the things we think are wrong are the things that harm the innocent. We have no problem breaking all sorts of laws when we drive, because we do not think it is likely we will do harm to innocent victims. Industry and government knows this which is why they try to show, for example, the damage that drunk driving causes, or link illegal drugs to terrorism. Of course, some of these links are more valid than others, and such ads do backfire when the assertions are bogus.
Which is of course what is going on with the music industry. The industry wants us to believe we are stealing from artist, even though the artists I talk to say most of the money is made off t-shirts and sometimes concerts. They want us to believe we are harming the local retailer, even though the local retailer is harmed more by Wal-Mart and online sales than by copying. They have thus far resisted the urge to tell us that the high level executes are going to forced to sell their Escalades and give up their trophy spouses if we continue to trade music. They might have a better chance by citing the number of people the industry employs, but in a time when unemployment continues to rise with no end in sight, and no leadership to control it, I do not see that even that will get much sympathy.
To reinvent TV to the degree that Farscape would be viable, one would have to change the model that drives all media. That model, for magazines, tv, radio, even public media, delivers demographics of consumers to advertisers. The quality of the show only matters is as much as it brings free publicity to the network, usually through awards. The only major nomination for Farscape appears to be an emmy for costumes. As we learned with 'Northern Exposure' and countless others, a respectable rating and a few awards are irrelevant if demographics are not delivered.
And we are not in the world of 'Norther Exposure'. We are in a world where networks have to make TiVo a non issue by delivering programs that people want to watch at the time it is broadcast, complete with embedded advertising, and cheap enough to make so that a profit can be made by one or two broadcast. The most common model is the reality show.
This seems like the classic arm chair explorer versus the unnecessarily expensive go out there and explore arguments. One on hand, we have A Priori argument where things are assumed true because other things are true. On the other hand we A Posteriori where we look at things and then figure out why they happen. Both of these have their places, but the former keeps people locked to their armchairs and TVs, while the later send people out to the frontier.
The romantic side of exploration is a contrivance to compensate for the fact that most returns are so long term as to be uneconomical and so dangerous as to beyond a sane person's capability. What makes the adventure worthwhile is the practical knowledge gained from the act of doing, and the application of that knowledge. We cannot get the practical knowledge without being there.
If we do as you say and junk everything to start over, all we will get is the loss of years of practical experience and a set of whole new problems. We can't think of everything, even when we know these things exist. The system is too complex, the interactions too numerous. I was on one project that was crippled by two well known effects. The problem was that we just did not have the experience to know how those effects would affect our science. That knowledge is now available. It was expensive and painful to acquire, but I believe there was no cheaper way to acquire it.
We need to build new LEO infrastructure. We need to build other delivery vehicles. We also need practical experience so we can make those new technologies as practical and useful as possible. We cannot sit in front of our computer running simulations and thinking about how wonderful it would be in space. Simulations are fun because they never knocks us down and tell us we are wrong. Real life is hard because it does.
The question is why compromise security to get a bit of convenience and possibly reliability. We have very cheap very anonymous very thing cash cards. These require the user to slide the card into a reader. The act of sliding the card in a reader is an explicit act to acknowledge the user wishes to have the fare amount deducted. The act takes a few seconds. The cards are extremely durable. I wish we had a standard card so we could use these cards at retailers for small purchases.
Contrast this with RF car. I see all sorts of problems. The least of these problems is there is not explicit act needed, other than to just walk into a room, to have a fare removed. A bigger problem is a thief with a bit of equipment at the street corner stealing money from the card. If this were an automated task, and cards were in wide use, a thief could transfer a dollar from each card into his account, and empty his account by the end of the day before anyone was the wiser. I realize that there safeguards that may make it difficult for the thief to actually get the cash, but that does not help the people that were robbed. If a retailer were to be the theif, say radomly deducting money from browsers cash cards, we would have real problems.
one can also look to the other side of the pacific rim, namely South America. Many very old stone building, roads, etc. These are made to survive earthquakes intact.
Microsoft doesn't need to kill VPC for damage to be done. All they need to do is carry on with the nromal MS model. MS is horrible at keeping standards, making sure that their code plays well with others, and keeping focused on core objectives. The core task of VPC is to emulate a x86 and let the Mac run other OS.
One can imagine MS including the usually excessive number of bells and whistles, and optimizing code for the latest version of windows. A fortunate consequence might be that VPC that will only run the latest version of Windows. In response to the criticism, MS will state it is only meeting customer demand for faster emulation. Anti-competitive behavior has nothing to do with the motivation. The only way they can have Linux run on VPC is to comprise performance and stability, and users would not like that. And allowing users to run old versions of Windows is a disservice to the customers.
So the point is that criminal gangs run counterfeiting operations, make money, and use the money to fund terrorism. This statement may almost be a tautology. When terrorism and support of terrorism is defined broadly enough, everyone supports and encourages terrorism.
For instance, both Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols received their training in the U.S. army, does that make the U.S. army a terrorist organization? The U.S. trained most of the high level participant of the mass murders in central and south America, particularly during the Reagan/Bush administration. Does that make Reagan a terrorist? There are several countries that would love to see Kissinger brought up on crimes against humanity charges.
In this country and in this world we love to buy diamonds and emeralds. Both come from parts of the world where so-called terrorist operate. The sale of both, but particularly diamonds, likely directly benefit organizations that commit act of terror, not because they receive donations, but because they control the supply chain.
Of course we buy oil directly from the people that we accuse of being the terrorists.
Of course some people might say all the examples are for legal trade, and it is ok to support terrorism if the product is legal. For instance it is perfectly ok to support your local church even if your local church terrorizes children, doctors, minorities, or expectant mothers. This may be true.
OTOH, it is still clear we pick and choose those things we wish to link with terrorism. For instance, in the U.S. Cuba is certainly considered a terrorist county. Whether we agree with it or not, it is the one country we seriously boycott. When left wing fanatics go to visit, the right wing fanatics call them supporters of terrorism. So why is it, then, that Cuban cigars are not linked to support of terrorism, even though they are illegal in the U.S? Why is it that Cigar Aficionado can run articles praising the cigars? Why is it that we do not have hearing in Washington to include Cuban Cigars in our war on drugs, and punish the possessors of such illegal drugs as we would any other addict? Why isn't Cigar Aficionado labeled a supporter of terrorism in hearing on the hill?
Why is it that we are so jaded that we are more concerned with using death and destruction as a political tool rather than trying to stop death and destruction?
I don't remember when the asteroid theory of dinosaur extinction was recognized as a good possibility, but it must have late 80s. At that time we didn't know if was one or many. I know that in the early 90s the the Yucatan crater was identified as the most likely culprit, as it was big enough and contemporaneous with the extinction which put the single asteroid extinction at the forefront.
So, through most of the 90's we accepted that a single impact event wiped out the dinosaurs. Now, however, more impact craters are being found to have been formed within the crucial 65 million time frame (a search on multiple impact and dinosaur extinction). This is good news because perhaps a single big asteroid might not be fatal, and we may be more able to detect a swarm of meteors.
Anyway, science is a self correcting system, and at this point is may be best just to say it is likely that at least one asteroid hit the earth and was a major contributor to the extinction of the dinosaur. But I know that is too long for a soundbyte.
But the service will not likely be targeted to the tech crowd. It will be targeted to the business or perhaps student that want to do some work or play on their palm or iBook. As you say, the customer can sit, eat, and check email or surf. You are correct to say that McD is not a place you go to sit and work and chat, but it is a place that people go and sit for a finite time. During that time, they can, if they wish to, be online.
I think that people are missing the implications of the wired world. With a small laptop and widely available wireless net, it becomes practical to surf anywhere. Instead of bringing a newspaper with, you read the newspaper on line. Instead of talking on your cell phone, you IM.
McD is a company that is good at giving the masses what they want. They food is adequate, but no longer different from all the other fast food joints. They try to compete on price, but consumers seem to have decided it still is not the best value. This wireless thing is a way for them to differentiate themselves at a very reasonable cost. Compare the cost outfitting a store with wireless to the few hundred thousand it recently cost to redo the kitchen for make on demand foodstuff. This could be the beginning of standard wireless everywhere.
I really like is answer to "Is Science Fiction healthy" and the related NASA basing. The fact is that science fiction is a very large category which can include extremely serious stories such as "Ringworld", as well as the Heinlein sex commentary "To Sail Beyond the Sunset" and Pohl's semi-historical novel "Chernobyl". To say this or that is real science fiction is a conceit.
As far as space is concerned, when it is part of the science fiction story, it is mostly just a plot device. The story could just as easily be about Homer lost at sea or Huck floating down a river. This is especially true for most so-called science fiction TV shows. In fact, when a show tries to talk about (of course with many errors, inaccuracies, annoyances, but this is fiction) humans journey into space, or the commercialization of space, they get canceled quickly.
I think the interesting thing is that science fiction tends to promote understanding, knowledge, and then exploration. This is what NASA and other organizations are doing a very good job at. However, people get caught up in the idea of adventure and danger, which NASA is not do good at providing, nor should it be their job.
The love the odd space opera. OTOH, sometimes just thinking about what might happen if someone could predict the time of a persons death is enough for a wonderful sci-fi yarn.
This just goes to show that anything invented after a person is 16 is weird, and anything invented after 30 is just wrong. Increasingly cell phones, SMS, etc are as necessary for teens and young adults as land line phones were for those of us that are much older. How many of young people without land phones had social lives in the 80's. How many young people without e-mail have social lives now.
Increasingly, especially for young people, dates are being made online. For friends, there is no reason to plan things out days in advance. Just call each other up at the spur of the moment and see who available to party. Is this good or bad? Not really either.
I have all this technology. People can request my attention using a number of methods. However, I do consider all of these requests. It is my choice to answer phone, reply to email, whatever. This pisses people off. Just because someone asks for my attention, am I for some reason required to drop everything and respond? I think not. Rather than showing our age and railing against rational uses of technology, I think we should accept those uses and teach how to use technology rather than have technology use you.
There was a time when people would come to your house, and, if there was time, you would put out some biscuits and make some tea and have a good sit down. This was obviously inefficient and complicated. However, I am still more inclined to talk to someone who would come to my apartment for a chat rather than randomly pick up phone and call me. OTOH, there are some conversations that are better on the phone and email. For instance, i remeber the first time a girl broke up with a friend of mine over email. It saved a useless conversation.
Really the microwave is just a small part of the food (non) cooking revolution. In fact this revolution has more to do with advancement in chemical processing than the microwave. The ability to restore overly proccsed and frozen food flavor with chemical additives and package the food in appropriate polymers that allows the food to remain edible on the shelf until the consumer can reheat it. Many of these developments started long before the microwave was in wide use.
In fact, if we did not have microwave oven the other technologies would probably still have been developed, and would be optimized for self heating elements, or rapid heating in the convection oven.
First, I think we need an update to clarify the feature. For instance, I understand the first bullet item, but the second is vague. Does it mean that this feature is available only after your ad-free page runs out? Is this a features not so much for subscribers, but subscribers who also view ads? If one is paying a subscription, then why should one also have to see ads to get this feature? This needs to made clear in the FAQ so people know what to expect.
Second, and I am sure you are looking into this, this might be a good way to get rid of dups. Since the stories have not been officially posted, if the subscriber base sees a dup perhaps the story can be pulled. I am not sure how to implement this. Perhaps a 'dup' button that alerts the poster of the story if a certain number of users report with it.
Third, I recently added a journal entry on moderation suggestions. One suggestion is non-linear variable moderation values. Perhaps one perk for subscribers is that they get a bit power in moderation, i.e. extra power in a single moderation, or extra moderation counts.
It is interesting to look at past predictions of the future because they can tell us how difficult it is for us to truly think creatively. In most cases, we are so limited by out prejudices and assumptions, that we can't really predict anything past next Thursday. I really believe the value of these predictions is to remind us of who we were, rather than tell us who we are going to be. For instance in many mid 20th century science fiction, the 'simple' tasks of cooking and cleaning were handled by robots, but the 'complex' tasks of navigation still had to be done.
OTOH, exhibits like this speak to the great optimism of human nature. Though it took Europe five hundred years from the time of Marco Polo to the time that they colonized a new continent, we were in the mid 20th century certain that we could conquer the solar system in fifty years. The same holds true for helicopters, jet packs, and everything else.
Compare drink ads to ads for drugs, i.e. cigarette, prescription, etc. Even more than clothes , these ads sell lifestyle improvement. This is especially true for red bull and mountain dew, both which are crap.
In fact, for many albums it seems this is the case. An album has a couple songs for the radio/broad market, a couple songs that the artists seems to be genuinely interested in, and the rest are 'filler' because the album has to have N tracks, N>10, so the consumer does not feel ripped off.
The two radio tracks have to exist to promote the album. The rest are sufficient, the label hopes, to make consumer feel the money was well spent. This is not new. It has been the way some artists have made albums for at least 20 years. When I find an artist that uses this tactic, I do not buy any more albums. There are enough artists out there that care about their product, and are deserving of my support, that I do not need to support those artists that don't. I have no problem paying $10-15 dollars for a well made music. I have paid multiples of that for well made sets, mostly classical music.
So, your scenario may come to pass, and will just exacerbate and already bad situation. Or, perhaps, artist will realize that half an album is not good enough and try to figure out how to meet market demand. Perhaps this means that they can't put out an album a year. Perhaps that means that they have to go back to playing small clubs. I don't know.
Also, as some people hare pointed out, sometimes an album tanks because the artist is trying to do something too new; though the quality is there, the market is not. My response to that is that if you are going to produce a mass market album, much like if you wish produce mass market food, you can't do anything too wild. My hope is that music services such as this can create a market for such wild music, in the same way that local clubs and festivals do.
Just a warning. This reply is going to be very cynical, and should be interpreted as such.
The sender pays model is a solution for the ISP. It does not provide a solution for the end user. It is my belief that all legitimate commercial email is paid for at the ISP, i.e. these commercial entities have purchased commercial accounts, and they are sending out what they believe are reasonable information to existing customers. If there is a problem, it is that these commercial entities do not use confirmed opt in, and that ISPs do not have confirmed opt in as part of their commercial use policy.
Furthermore, as we saw, I believe it was earthlink, ISPs are more than happy to negotiate with less than thasn legitimate commercial entities if the ISP can negotiate a profitable deal the with to-be spammer.
As far as black lists are concerned, the answer was a cop out. Major ISPs, if they were serious, could create a consortium to implement and manage a black list. If any member had a veto (that was public), and the rules for addition and removal were fair (i.e. a grace period for removal of first time offenders, guaranteed time to reinstate), we could come up with a method that would not punish so much as encourage users to be good netizens. Those that refused to be tamed can be banned. I am sure there are legal issues her, but a clear and consistant use policy can minimize them.
I suppose that when an ISP is talking about the spammer pays what they may actually be saying is they want the ability to sue the originating server for the cost of transmitting the packets. This would help the ISP recover some costs. I suppose it might also encourage some ISPs to follow the rules. I do not see how it would work for an open relay in Moldova. In other words, I don't see how it would solve the problem.
We will have commercial email on the net. It will always be more than many would desire. If someone gets a single naughty email, they will feel it necessary to raise hell with their ISP. This obviously causes problems for the ISP. OTOH, since ISPs are not implemented the simple solutions that would make a dent in spam, and I have seen solutions in which 99.9% of UCE comes in marked as 'SPAM', one wonders if the ISP is actually losing as much money as they imply. Yes, it costs them bandwidth. Yes, it aggravates their customers. But that is a long way from saying that they actually lost money in the deal.
This may be why most of the implemented solutions we see are PR gimmicks, while the real solutions are labeled as 'impractical'. It is like the telephone company playing fast and loose with the caller ID features. Now, I am not saying that the ISPs are irresponsible or dishonest. There are genuine competing interests here, and plenty of room for reasonable disagreement. OTOH, when I read something like this I wonder why there is a need to be so single minded and unwilling to find broad compromise solutions.
If this information is accurate, I think this kind of shows the profitability of spamming. England has around 50 million people. If the 419 spammer send email to 2% of those people, then that would be 1 million persons. If only 150 responded, then this is a 0.015% response. In other words, the spammers need one gullible person out of 6000 to make this a rather profitable industry. This is 1/100th the rate that one would need if doing a direct postal mail campaign. One can imagine this kind of money supporting several hundred nigerians.
Spam is profitable. Current laws allow it to be nearly anonymous. Current laws encourage spammers to lie, cheat, and steal because there is very little chance of repercussions. This goes on through traditional channels, but it often easier to file lawsuits and change behavior because of the tracking of traditional channels. All the filtering in the world in not going to help. It is just like illegal drug or animal trafficking. It is not a problem if 90% of the payload is intercepted. You will make a profit on just the other 10%. We need to apply the rational rules to commercial email that we apply to other commercial speech.
I like godaddy, and I have my domain there. I do not like the current registration procedures. Before one is actually able to buy a domain, one has to go through a couple of screens turning down the purchase of additional domains and services. I wonder if this actually increases their sales enough to justify the inconvenience to the customer. I mean if I go to low life fast food restaurant I expect to be asked if I want fries with that, but even there they will only ask me once.
I never understood these magazines like Red Herring, Wired and the like(not to mention forbes, et al). I bought a few copies over the years, just for grins, but never saw what the fuss was about. The main points seemed to be that the world had changed, past models were no longer valid, and everyone could be rich without doing much work.
Which of course was silly. Most of us saw it then, and everyone knows it now. New technology does make a few very rich, a few more somewhat rich, but leaves most people about the same or worse off. That is history. I think I benefitted from the bubble, but I didn't take advantage of it or treat it a genie to grant all my wishes. I worked as hard when I was doing.com work as I did when I was doing other work, and did not get paid that much more. That is the way it should be.
Of course it is important to remember that it wasn't just the technology sector that was in an unreality field. All of the Enron finances, one amoung many now defunct or troubled traditional companies, depended on the stock never falling. Many law firms are in trouble because they thought that bankruptcy practices would never again be profitable or needed. Schools districts are cutting staff or days because the tax model assumed that property values would never fall. In other words, good riddance to the media that perpetuated these myths.
I have had used a Newton since the original Messagepad and now use a 2100. I also use a Palm V. I like both, and see that each has a place.
That said, the Newton is an awesome machine. The problem, for me at least, was not price, form factor, or any hardware issue. The only problem was that, out of the box, it did not synch with other software. That, I believe was the stupidest mistake Apple has ever made. It turned a truly great machine into something that was as pain to use. Yes it would synch, after a fashion, but it was never acceptable. When I needed PDA for business, and extreme portability was necessary, I had to go with the Palm V.
The Palm was primitive in comparison to the 2100 it replaced. Small screen, data entry through a child's script, no ethernet connection, small memory, no simple modem. The list goes on. The Palm was functional but not elegant beyond the data synch. When the palm broke, I went back to the 2100. My data, unfortunately, is once again fragmented, but the Newton is powerful enough to my primary agenda.
The synch situation is getting better. I can see using the newton for the foreseeable future. It does everything I need. I can write and edit significant pieces using it, something that I could never to on a palm or other PDAs I have tried. One thing I like about Apple is that the technology does not tend to become obsolete as quickly as others.
Which I why I don't understand why this is of any interest at all. SMG has been threatening to leave ever since the series moved to UPN. She has professional but not passionate in her acting for the past three seasons. The loss Head messed up the dynamics even more. The show has obviously been trying to figure out how to stay relevant and continue without SMG, first with Dawn and now the slayer zoo, but with no success. Obviously without Buffy there is no show.
I find the interesting question is if we can have a successful spin-off. To me this is not a question of the quality of the show, but whether the networks want a show. Think about it. Would angel have survived in this world of reality tv. Firefly was not so bad, but networks are increasingly centering their programming around unscripted shows or simple narritives like 'Law and Order', the CSI fungus, and to a lesser extent 'The Practice' and the revived 'Dragnet'.
So you are correct, and it is not so outlandish. We may well get a show where Willow and Xander read the newspaper and search for vampires. After all, we have shows where miracles are reality.
All NASA ever wanted, all they ever said, was to that they needed time to figure out what happened and the baseless speculation of the media did not help the process. They did not at the time of accident have enough information to say it was the foam. Remember that it took them a few hours to get enough information to say it was even an accident? NASA has a problem that it works slowly and thoroughly, and such slowness is not consistent with the impatient public and leeches of the media.
Soon after the accident, some people were correcting news casters that this would was not accident, but, like the Challenger, a failure of process. The media has been harking on certain reports that long ago reported the danger of certain tile damage. There are likely many reports on many of the shuttle systems that vulnerable under certain circumstances. Unlike many place, NASA does not hide it's head in the sand. It actively looks for problems and tries to solve them, if necessary. If the process works this makes the space travel safer. When the process does not work, as in Challenger, people die.
I have no doubt that whatever the cause of the accident, some report exists somewhere detailing the scenario. That does not necessarily mean NASA was negligent, just that NASA is thorough. Space travel is dangerous and as much as they might try, the process cannot be made so perfect as to catch and solve every problem. As many people have already said, you solve identify the problem, figure out the best way to solve it, and move on.
I would like to add one personal note. In my experience NASA is very focused on identifying problems, solving problems, and moving on. The step they don't do, and the step that many firms would do well to leave out the process, is the scape goating. It is as waste of time. In some companies in which I have work, fully half the time is spent figuring out how to blame other people for your fuck ups, and then participating in the ensuing punishment. It is inefficient and does nothing to create better products.
And one more thing. Under the the rules of the Clinton administration, all government agencies were required to do al they could to release documents requested under the Freedom of Information Act. Under the Bush administration, John Ashcroft has request the agencies do all they can NOT to release document requested under the FOIA. The implication of this is that the rapid release of document requested from NASA under the FOIA is totally voluntary. If they wanted to hide thing, Ashcroft has given them permission to do so.
This article is actual very well written. OTOH, the comments to the article indicates, unfortunately, that most peoples primary response is emotional rather than logical.
Case in point is the outcry over the survey that indicated that only 3% of consumers thinks the price is too high. First, if a survey is reported and technical details of the survey is not, then the survey is mostly a marketing ploy and must be taken with a grain of salt. We all know this. The interesting thing is that the number, in some sense, is probably not unreasonable. As the article mentions the value of music recorded on a CD is some small number approaching zero. Additionally the article states that some people will buy a CD, make copies, and sell the copies to their friends. I totally believe this. When I was in school, people would do this with computer software. There are clearly many people who still buy CDs, but we can assume that most of these are older people who traditionally have bought music, or younger people who will recoup the investment through piracy. From this we can postulate three groups of people: those that currently buy CDs, those that buy copy music, and those that do without because they cannot afford it. The last group is very small as the vast majority of people will copy or buy music they want. The second group is irreverent because to them the value of music on CD is near zero, and the labels would have to give music away. So, we are only left with people in the first group. Furthermore, we probably are only left with people in the first group that buy at full retail rather than value shop. This is conceivable quite a small percentage.
The article brings up several other good points. Consumers want to procure music online. It is not known if consumers will pay for music online, but the labels have done very little to effectively deal with this demand. The article states that the labels have dropped the ball on this, retailers are trying to figure out how to meet demand, but without label support it is difficult. In general, one would expect manufacturers that ignore entire areas of demand to fail.
There are other good points. Consumers are also disenchanted with hidden copy protection schemes that cause CDs to fail on standard consumer equipment. Labels are doing nothing to enhance the product to make it more appealing and increase the value to consumers. When they do increase the value of the product to consumers, they jack up the price far beyond what an average consumer can pay, and then complain that no one is buying the new technology.
Probably the only big issue the article missed was that most download services, even if they had the music, are too complicated, the download formats too confusing. Furthermore, they tend to target people who currently get music for free rather than cosumers who pay for music.
Again, the article clearly lays the decline of CD sales on the labels front door, The article is balanced in the sense that it acknowledges that music executives have limited ability to make sweeping changes to business plan and product models. For instance, it would make a lot of sense to ship music on DVDs with additional content, but how can one justify the capital expenditure in a declining market?
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Some of the specifics may be lost on those who did not live through it, but generalities are always funny. For instance when Rosebud was outed as female, Cutter John and the crew of the Enterpoop, Bill the Cat for president or as a fundamentalist preacher. On more serious sides we have the eternal physiological truths of searching for one's mother or trying to get acceptance from ones father(the later is a theme of King of the Hill).
I really hope this encourages the development of new strips that are self aware and humble. I think a comic should be more than just a contrived excuse for a punchline.
I think that is they key statement. In the U.S., most of the time the things we think are wrong are the things that harm the innocent. We have no problem breaking all sorts of laws when we drive, because we do not think it is likely we will do harm to innocent victims. Industry and government knows this which is why they try to show, for example, the damage that drunk driving causes, or link illegal drugs to terrorism. Of course, some of these links are more valid than others, and such ads do backfire when the assertions are bogus.
Which is of course what is going on with the music industry. The industry wants us to believe we are stealing from artist, even though the artists I talk to say most of the money is made off t-shirts and sometimes concerts. They want us to believe we are harming the local retailer, even though the local retailer is harmed more by Wal-Mart and online sales than by copying. They have thus far resisted the urge to tell us that the high level executes are going to forced to sell their Escalades and give up their trophy spouses if we continue to trade music. They might have a better chance by citing the number of people the industry employs, but in a time when unemployment continues to rise with no end in sight, and no leadership to control it, I do not see that even that will get much sympathy.
And we are not in the world of 'Norther Exposure'. We are in a world where networks have to make TiVo a non issue by delivering programs that people want to watch at the time it is broadcast, complete with embedded advertising, and cheap enough to make so that a profit can be made by one or two broadcast. The most common model is the reality show.
The romantic side of exploration is a contrivance to compensate for the fact that most returns are so long term as to be uneconomical and so dangerous as to beyond a sane person's capability. What makes the adventure worthwhile is the practical knowledge gained from the act of doing, and the application of that knowledge. We cannot get the practical knowledge without being there.
If we do as you say and junk everything to start over, all we will get is the loss of years of practical experience and a set of whole new problems. We can't think of everything, even when we know these things exist. The system is too complex, the interactions too numerous. I was on one project that was crippled by two well known effects. The problem was that we just did not have the experience to know how those effects would affect our science. That knowledge is now available. It was expensive and painful to acquire, but I believe there was no cheaper way to acquire it.
We need to build new LEO infrastructure. We need to build other delivery vehicles. We also need practical experience so we can make those new technologies as practical and useful as possible. We cannot sit in front of our computer running simulations and thinking about how wonderful it would be in space. Simulations are fun because they never knocks us down and tell us we are wrong. Real life is hard because it does.
Contrast this with RF car. I see all sorts of problems. The least of these problems is there is not explicit act needed, other than to just walk into a room, to have a fare removed. A bigger problem is a thief with a bit of equipment at the street corner stealing money from the card. If this were an automated task, and cards were in wide use, a thief could transfer a dollar from each card into his account, and empty his account by the end of the day before anyone was the wiser. I realize that there safeguards that may make it difficult for the thief to actually get the cash, but that does not help the people that were robbed. If a retailer were to be the theif, say radomly deducting money from browsers cash cards, we would have real problems.
one can also look to the other side of the pacific rim, namely South America. Many very old stone building, roads, etc. These are made to survive earthquakes intact.
One can imagine MS including the usually excessive number of bells and whistles, and optimizing code for the latest version of windows. A fortunate consequence might be that VPC that will only run the latest version of Windows. In response to the criticism, MS will state it is only meeting customer demand for faster emulation. Anti-competitive behavior has nothing to do with the motivation. The only way they can have Linux run on VPC is to comprise performance and stability, and users would not like that. And allowing users to run old versions of Windows is a disservice to the customers.
For instance, both Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols received their training in the U.S. army, does that make the U.S. army a terrorist organization? The U.S. trained most of the high level participant of the mass murders in central and south America, particularly during the Reagan/Bush administration. Does that make Reagan a terrorist? There are several countries that would love to see Kissinger brought up on crimes against humanity charges.
In this country and in this world we love to buy diamonds and emeralds. Both come from parts of the world where so-called terrorist operate. The sale of both, but particularly diamonds, likely directly benefit organizations that commit act of terror, not because they receive donations, but because they control the supply chain.
Of course we buy oil directly from the people that we accuse of being the terrorists.
Of course some people might say all the examples are for legal trade, and it is ok to support terrorism if the product is legal. For instance it is perfectly ok to support your local church even if your local church terrorizes children, doctors, minorities, or expectant mothers. This may be true.
OTOH, it is still clear we pick and choose those things we wish to link with terrorism. For instance, in the U.S. Cuba is certainly considered a terrorist county. Whether we agree with it or not, it is the one country we seriously boycott. When left wing fanatics go to visit, the right wing fanatics call them supporters of terrorism. So why is it, then, that Cuban cigars are not linked to support of terrorism, even though they are illegal in the U.S? Why is it that Cigar Aficionado can run articles praising the cigars? Why is it that we do not have hearing in Washington to include Cuban Cigars in our war on drugs, and punish the possessors of such illegal drugs as we would any other addict? Why isn't Cigar Aficionado labeled a supporter of terrorism in hearing on the hill?
Why is it that we are so jaded that we are more concerned with using death and destruction as a political tool rather than trying to stop death and destruction?
So, through most of the 90's we accepted that a single impact event wiped out the dinosaurs. Now, however, more impact craters are being found to have been formed within the crucial 65 million time frame (a search on multiple impact and dinosaur extinction). This is good news because perhaps a single big asteroid might not be fatal, and we may be more able to detect a swarm of meteors.
Anyway, science is a self correcting system, and at this point is may be best just to say it is likely that at least one asteroid hit the earth and was a major contributor to the extinction of the dinosaur. But I know that is too long for a soundbyte.
I think that people are missing the implications of the wired world. With a small laptop and widely available wireless net, it becomes practical to surf anywhere. Instead of bringing a newspaper with, you read the newspaper on line. Instead of talking on your cell phone, you IM.
McD is a company that is good at giving the masses what they want. They food is adequate, but no longer different from all the other fast food joints. They try to compete on price, but consumers seem to have decided it still is not the best value. This wireless thing is a way for them to differentiate themselves at a very reasonable cost. Compare the cost outfitting a store with wireless to the few hundred thousand it recently cost to redo the kitchen for make on demand foodstuff. This could be the beginning of standard wireless everywhere.
As far as space is concerned, when it is part of the science fiction story, it is mostly just a plot device. The story could just as easily be about Homer lost at sea or Huck floating down a river. This is especially true for most so-called science fiction TV shows. In fact, when a show tries to talk about (of course with many errors, inaccuracies, annoyances, but this is fiction) humans journey into space, or the commercialization of space, they get canceled quickly.
I think the interesting thing is that science fiction tends to promote understanding, knowledge, and then exploration. This is what NASA and other organizations are doing a very good job at. However, people get caught up in the idea of adventure and danger, which NASA is not do good at providing, nor should it be their job.
The love the odd space opera. OTOH, sometimes just thinking about what might happen if someone could predict the time of a persons death is enough for a wonderful sci-fi yarn.
Increasingly, especially for young people, dates are being made online. For friends, there is no reason to plan things out days in advance. Just call each other up at the spur of the moment and see who available to party. Is this good or bad? Not really either.
I have all this technology. People can request my attention using a number of methods. However, I do consider all of these requests. It is my choice to answer phone, reply to email, whatever. This pisses people off. Just because someone asks for my attention, am I for some reason required to drop everything and respond? I think not. Rather than showing our age and railing against rational uses of technology, I think we should accept those uses and teach how to use technology rather than have technology use you.
There was a time when people would come to your house, and, if there was time, you would put out some biscuits and make some tea and have a good sit down. This was obviously inefficient and complicated. However, I am still more inclined to talk to someone who would come to my apartment for a chat rather than randomly pick up phone and call me. OTOH, there are some conversations that are better on the phone and email. For instance, i remeber the first time a girl broke up with a friend of mine over email. It saved a useless conversation.
In fact, if we did not have microwave oven the other technologies would probably still have been developed, and would be optimized for self heating elements, or rapid heating in the convection oven.
Second, and I am sure you are looking into this, this might be a good way to get rid of dups. Since the stories have not been officially posted, if the subscriber base sees a dup perhaps the story can be pulled. I am not sure how to implement this. Perhaps a 'dup' button that alerts the poster of the story if a certain number of users report with it.
Third, I recently added a journal entry on moderation suggestions. One suggestion is non-linear variable moderation values. Perhaps one perk for subscribers is that they get a bit power in moderation, i.e. extra power in a single moderation, or extra moderation counts.
OTOH, exhibits like this speak to the great optimism of human nature. Though it took Europe five hundred years from the time of Marco Polo to the time that they colonized a new continent, we were in the mid 20th century certain that we could conquer the solar system in fifty years. The same holds true for helicopters, jet packs, and everything else.
Compare drink ads to ads for drugs, i.e. cigarette, prescription, etc. Even more than clothes , these ads sell lifestyle improvement. This is especially true for red bull and mountain dew, both which are crap.
The two radio tracks have to exist to promote the album. The rest are sufficient, the label hopes, to make consumer feel the money was well spent. This is not new. It has been the way some artists have made albums for at least 20 years. When I find an artist that uses this tactic, I do not buy any more albums. There are enough artists out there that care about their product, and are deserving of my support, that I do not need to support those artists that don't. I have no problem paying $10-15 dollars for a well made music. I have paid multiples of that for well made sets, mostly classical music.
So, your scenario may come to pass, and will just exacerbate and already bad situation. Or, perhaps, artist will realize that half an album is not good enough and try to figure out how to meet market demand. Perhaps this means that they can't put out an album a year. Perhaps that means that they have to go back to playing small clubs. I don't know.
Also, as some people hare pointed out, sometimes an album tanks because the artist is trying to do something too new; though the quality is there, the market is not. My response to that is that if you are going to produce a mass market album, much like if you wish produce mass market food, you can't do anything too wild. My hope is that music services such as this can create a market for such wild music, in the same way that local clubs and festivals do.
The sender pays model is a solution for the ISP. It does not provide a solution for the end user. It is my belief that all legitimate commercial email is paid for at the ISP, i.e. these commercial entities have purchased commercial accounts, and they are sending out what they believe are reasonable information to existing customers. If there is a problem, it is that these commercial entities do not use confirmed opt in, and that ISPs do not have confirmed opt in as part of their commercial use policy.
Furthermore, as we saw, I believe it was earthlink, ISPs are more than happy to negotiate with less than thasn legitimate commercial entities if the ISP can negotiate a profitable deal the with to-be spammer.
As far as black lists are concerned, the answer was a cop out. Major ISPs, if they were serious, could create a consortium to implement and manage a black list. If any member had a veto (that was public), and the rules for addition and removal were fair (i.e. a grace period for removal of first time offenders, guaranteed time to reinstate), we could come up with a method that would not punish so much as encourage users to be good netizens. Those that refused to be tamed can be banned. I am sure there are legal issues her, but a clear and consistant use policy can minimize them.
I suppose that when an ISP is talking about the spammer pays what they may actually be saying is they want the ability to sue the originating server for the cost of transmitting the packets. This would help the ISP recover some costs. I suppose it might also encourage some ISPs to follow the rules. I do not see how it would work for an open relay in Moldova. In other words, I don't see how it would solve the problem.
We will have commercial email on the net. It will always be more than many would desire. If someone gets a single naughty email, they will feel it necessary to raise hell with their ISP. This obviously causes problems for the ISP. OTOH, since ISPs are not implemented the simple solutions that would make a dent in spam, and I have seen solutions in which 99.9% of UCE comes in marked as 'SPAM', one wonders if the ISP is actually losing as much money as they imply. Yes, it costs them bandwidth. Yes, it aggravates their customers. But that is a long way from saying that they actually lost money in the deal.
This may be why most of the implemented solutions we see are PR gimmicks, while the real solutions are labeled as 'impractical'. It is like the telephone company playing fast and loose with the caller ID features. Now, I am not saying that the ISPs are irresponsible or dishonest. There are genuine competing interests here, and plenty of room for reasonable disagreement. OTOH, when I read something like this I wonder why there is a need to be so single minded and unwilling to find broad compromise solutions.
Spam is profitable. Current laws allow it to be nearly anonymous. Current laws encourage spammers to lie, cheat, and steal because there is very little chance of repercussions. This goes on through traditional channels, but it often easier to file lawsuits and change behavior because of the tracking of traditional channels. All the filtering in the world in not going to help. It is just like illegal drug or animal trafficking. It is not a problem if 90% of the payload is intercepted. You will make a profit on just the other 10%. We need to apply the rational rules to commercial email that we apply to other commercial speech.
I like godaddy, and I have my domain there. I do not like the current registration procedures. Before one is actually able to buy a domain, one has to go through a couple of screens turning down the purchase of additional domains and services. I wonder if this actually increases their sales enough to justify the inconvenience to the customer. I mean if I go to low life fast food restaurant I expect to be asked if I want fries with that, but even there they will only ask me once.
Which of course was silly. Most of us saw it then, and everyone knows it now. New technology does make a few very rich, a few more somewhat rich, but leaves most people about the same or worse off. That is history. I think I benefitted from the bubble, but I didn't take advantage of it or treat it a genie to grant all my wishes. I worked as hard when I was doing .com work as I did when I was doing other work, and did not get paid that much more. That is the way it should be.
Of course it is important to remember that it wasn't just the technology sector that was in an unreality field. All of the Enron finances, one amoung many now defunct or troubled traditional companies, depended on the stock never falling. Many law firms are in trouble because they thought that bankruptcy practices would never again be profitable or needed. Schools districts are cutting staff or days because the tax model assumed that property values would never fall. In other words, good riddance to the media that perpetuated these myths.
That said, the Newton is an awesome machine. The problem, for me at least, was not price, form factor, or any hardware issue. The only problem was that, out of the box, it did not synch with other software. That, I believe was the stupidest mistake Apple has ever made. It turned a truly great machine into something that was as pain to use. Yes it would synch, after a fashion, but it was never acceptable. When I needed PDA for business, and extreme portability was necessary, I had to go with the Palm V.
The Palm was primitive in comparison to the 2100 it replaced. Small screen, data entry through a child's script, no ethernet connection, small memory, no simple modem. The list goes on. The Palm was functional but not elegant beyond the data synch. When the palm broke, I went back to the 2100. My data, unfortunately, is once again fragmented, but the Newton is powerful enough to my primary agenda.
The synch situation is getting better. I can see using the newton for the foreseeable future. It does everything I need. I can write and edit significant pieces using it, something that I could never to on a palm or other PDAs I have tried. One thing I like about Apple is that the technology does not tend to become obsolete as quickly as others.
I find the interesting question is if we can have a successful spin-off. To me this is not a question of the quality of the show, but whether the networks want a show. Think about it. Would angel have survived in this world of reality tv. Firefly was not so bad, but networks are increasingly centering their programming around unscripted shows or simple narritives like 'Law and Order', the CSI fungus, and to a lesser extent 'The Practice' and the revived 'Dragnet'.
So you are correct, and it is not so outlandish. We may well get a show where Willow and Xander read the newspaper and search for vampires. After all, we have shows where miracles are reality.
Soon after the accident, some people were correcting news casters that this would was not accident, but, like the Challenger, a failure of process. The media has been harking on certain reports that long ago reported the danger of certain tile damage. There are likely many reports on many of the shuttle systems that vulnerable under certain circumstances. Unlike many place, NASA does not hide it's head in the sand. It actively looks for problems and tries to solve them, if necessary. If the process works this makes the space travel safer. When the process does not work, as in Challenger, people die.
I have no doubt that whatever the cause of the accident, some report exists somewhere detailing the scenario. That does not necessarily mean NASA was negligent, just that NASA is thorough. Space travel is dangerous and as much as they might try, the process cannot be made so perfect as to catch and solve every problem. As many people have already said, you solve identify the problem, figure out the best way to solve it, and move on.
I would like to add one personal note. In my experience NASA is very focused on identifying problems, solving problems, and moving on. The step they don't do, and the step that many firms would do well to leave out the process, is the scape goating. It is as waste of time. In some companies in which I have work, fully half the time is spent figuring out how to blame other people for your fuck ups, and then participating in the ensuing punishment. It is inefficient and does nothing to create better products.
And one more thing. Under the the rules of the Clinton administration, all government agencies were required to do al they could to release documents requested under the Freedom of Information Act. Under the Bush administration, John Ashcroft has request the agencies do all they can NOT to release document requested under the FOIA. The implication of this is that the rapid release of document requested from NASA under the FOIA is totally voluntary. If they wanted to hide thing, Ashcroft has given them permission to do so.
Case in point is the outcry over the survey that indicated that only 3% of consumers thinks the price is too high. First, if a survey is reported and technical details of the survey is not, then the survey is mostly a marketing ploy and must be taken with a grain of salt. We all know this. The interesting thing is that the number, in some sense, is probably not unreasonable. As the article mentions the value of music recorded on a CD is some small number approaching zero. Additionally the article states that some people will buy a CD, make copies, and sell the copies to their friends. I totally believe this. When I was in school, people would do this with computer software. There are clearly many people who still buy CDs, but we can assume that most of these are older people who traditionally have bought music, or younger people who will recoup the investment through piracy. From this we can postulate three groups of people: those that currently buy CDs, those that buy copy music, and those that do without because they cannot afford it. The last group is very small as the vast majority of people will copy or buy music they want. The second group is irreverent because to them the value of music on CD is near zero, and the labels would have to give music away. So, we are only left with people in the first group. Furthermore, we probably are only left with people in the first group that buy at full retail rather than value shop. This is conceivable quite a small percentage.
The article brings up several other good points. Consumers want to procure music online. It is not known if consumers will pay for music online, but the labels have done very little to effectively deal with this demand. The article states that the labels have dropped the ball on this, retailers are trying to figure out how to meet demand, but without label support it is difficult. In general, one would expect manufacturers that ignore entire areas of demand to fail.
There are other good points. Consumers are also disenchanted with hidden copy protection schemes that cause CDs to fail on standard consumer equipment. Labels are doing nothing to enhance the product to make it more appealing and increase the value to consumers. When they do increase the value of the product to consumers, they jack up the price far beyond what an average consumer can pay, and then complain that no one is buying the new technology.
Probably the only big issue the article missed was that most download services, even if they had the music, are too complicated, the download formats too confusing. Furthermore, they tend to target people who currently get music for free rather than cosumers who pay for music.
Again, the article clearly lays the decline of CD sales on the labels front door, The article is balanced in the sense that it acknowledges that music executives have limited ability to make sweeping changes to business plan and product models. For instance, it would make a lot of sense to ship music on DVDs with additional content, but how can one justify the capital expenditure in a declining market?