The only reason iTunes has DRM in the first place is because the major labels insist on it: they like their paying customers to have more restrictions than the folks that are getting it for free, makes sense right?
I love that logic. I think Apple's DRM is the least odious of what's out there, but it's still too restrictive for me. Adding any arbitrary constraints just seems so... ludicrous in terms of the customer's ability to enjoy the product.
I stick with Emusic, b/c the price is reasonable (40/month / $10/month -> $0.25 per song), and there are no DRMs (just MP3s of decent quality). Of course, you've never heard of most of the artists (with a few notable exceptions- George Carlin comes to mind), but there's a lot of good stuff there. I don't widely share what I download- why would I bother when it's available at a reasonable price?
In terms of $, I currently spend much more at Emusic than I do for any other source of music, and am reasonably happy with it.
And why should that family be expected to pay $6 a pair for socks just to keep a local business open? If all you are doing is selling me socks, you shouldn't be making more than minimum wage anyway. Go learn a skill.
Different example: hardware store. There's one in downtown Concord, MA, that's been in business for 100 years this year. It's tiny, but has excellent service and is part of the downtown area that helps keep Concord from being a soul-less commuter town (being the home to the start of the Revolutionary War and Thoreau et al. helps too). There's an Ace less than a mile away, and a Home Despot not too far away.
If it disappeared b/c of these competitors, Concord would lose some character (keeps the property values up, thanks), and I (who work and live nearby) would lose a convenient place to buy batteries and get advice. So that's why I go there as much as possible (it's actually cheaper, too, as I don't have to drive there).
E-Ink was founded in 1997 by a few MIT geeks. I think they had the name before they had a marketing department. This was pre e- and i- nuttiness.
I remember interviewing with E-Ink in 2000, I think with Barrett Comiskey, one of the founders, in the Toscanini's (ice cream store) at MIT. Wicked smart. Too bad I shanked on the interview!
It is worth noting that Newton's comment was meant in part as a jab at his (short) rival, Robert Hooke.
FOSS software is so great precisely because you are able to build on the work of others, in much the same way that scientific research is (on the whole) open.
If you want non-brand-name music for $0.25 a song, try http://www.emusic.com, which offers 40 songs for $10 a month. It used to be unlimited, but they cut back awhile ago.
You have to hunt for the good stuff, but overall, Emusic isn't bad. No DRM, either.
... because OLEDs are immature, and fluorescents have many limitations- they tend to be bulky (even the compact ones), they arguably don't have great color, they contain some mercury...
My sister's roomate did succeed in attaching a laser pointer to my sister's cat's head for a few minutes; apparently, it was quite a sight (cats love to chase laser pointers).
My wife's OS X is set up to randomly show different pictures of our kids (twin boys) every 5 seconds or so, with a nice fade-in/out. Not exactly a productivity feature, but it makes us happy while we work.
My point is, the book would appear to be, to some degree, a marketing tool for selling Mathematica. And the online book is primarily a tool for selling the book (and Mathematica).
So we have:
Read online book -> buy paper book -> buy Mathematica
or
Read online book -> buy Mathematica -> buy paper book
Please note that I'm not saying that any of this is necessarily bad; I just question how altruistic Wolfram is really being by offering the online book in this form.
Props to Wolfram for this, but it looks like clever marketing- as far as I can tell, you can't, say, download a pdf of a chapter; you pretty much have to go page by page. So on a practical level, it's a big ad.
Also, you need Mathematica to run the programs.
So, if you get hooked by the online text, Wolfram can count on 1 book sale, and maybe 1 Mathematica license (if, like me, you don't study/work somewhere with a site license).
Actually, global warming was first predicted over 100 years ago by
Svante Arrhenius, he of the Arrhenius equation.
Now, there are a lot of things that we don't know about how our planet's climate works. But we do know that:
CO2, CH4, etc., do trap longwave radiation (the greenhouse effect)
Atmospheric concentrations of these gases are increasing due to human activity
Yes, there are a lot of uncertainties in the temperature data, and the signal-to-noise ratio of human-induced effects is low, and there are a lot of potential feedback mechanisms (e.g. cloud formation) and ancillary effects (e.g. aerosols) that we don't understand, but to completely write off human-induced global warming as a myth is pretty dumb and very much indicative of a different a political agenda.
It's also not noted very often that, as much of our emitted CO2 ends up in the oceans (by increasing atmospheric concentrations we introduce an imbalance in the carbon cycle), we are lowering the pH of the ocean (CO2 + H20 -> H2CO3 -> HCO3- + H+. Expect it to drop by 0.5pH or so over the next century or so (that figure is from memory, I may be off, but not by a lot). That scares the crap out of me.
Speculation is very risky; investing is somewhat risky.
The difference between the two is well described here.
In short, investors are interested in a company's intrinsic value (as reflected in its business fundamentals); speculators are interested in how other people will value a company (as reflected in the stock price).
Someone buying SCOX is either a speculator or a (most likely) deluded investor.
Re:yeah right
on
Global Dimming
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Look, while there are plenty of documented cases of faking data, I think this is the exception, rather than the rule. Most scientists aren't in it for the money; if they were, they wouldn't bother being scientists- they'd become sell-outs like myself, or study a more lucrative field like economics.
As for your logic that this doesn't make sense, consider the possibility that the increase in global sulphur emissions from, say, 1940 to 1990, induced enough reduced sunlight to roughly offset the potential warming effect of CO2 emissions, but since 1990 CO2 emissions have increased more rapidly as advanced economies move to less carbon-intensive (coal->oil->nat. gas) fuels. I don't have the data to back this up, but it's one possible reason that the observed warming patterns don't match what you might expect from increased CO2 concentrations alone (global warming critics love to point out that there was disproportionately more warming in the 1st half of the century than the 2nd).
I admit that this is a half-cocked theory. But my point is that you failed to understand all of the factors at hand. Climate science is complicated; that's whay no one knows for sure what the f--- is going on.
"Clear Skies" Initiative
on
Global Dimming
·
· Score: 0, Troll
Great. It may be that the easiest way to counteract the warming effects of CO2 emissions is to *not* cut back on the other nasties generated by burning fossil fuels.
G.W., you are indeed a visionary with your assault on the Clean Air Act. And all this time, I thought you didn't care.
Slashdot Mirror
I thought all you had to do to get fusion (though not break-even yet, I think) is shake some heavy acetone.
The only reason iTunes has DRM in the first place is because the major labels insist on it: they like their paying customers to have more restrictions than the folks that are getting it for free, makes sense right?
I love that logic. I think Apple's DRM is the least odious of what's out there, but it's still too restrictive for me. Adding any arbitrary constraints just seems so... ludicrous in terms of the customer's ability to enjoy the product.
I stick with Emusic, b/c the price is reasonable (40/month / $10/month -> $0.25 per song), and there are no DRMs (just MP3s of decent quality). Of course, you've never heard of most of the artists (with a few notable exceptions- George Carlin comes to mind), but there's a lot of good stuff there. I don't widely share what I download- why would I bother when it's available at a reasonable price?
In terms of $, I currently spend much more at Emusic than I do for any other source of music, and am reasonably happy with it.
Agreed. We'll see how it plays out, but won't it be interesting if Novell revives itself by pursuing an open-source strategy.
And why should that family be expected to pay $6 a pair for socks just to keep a local business open? If all you are doing is selling me socks, you shouldn't be making more than minimum wage anyway. Go learn a skill.
Different example: hardware store. There's one in downtown Concord, MA, that's been in business for 100 years this year. It's tiny, but has excellent service and is part of the downtown area that helps keep Concord from being a soul-less commuter town (being the home to the start of the Revolutionary War and Thoreau et al. helps too). There's an Ace less than a mile away, and a Home Despot not too far away.
If it disappeared b/c of these competitors, Concord would lose some character (keeps the property values up, thanks), and I (who work and live nearby) would lose a convenient place to buy batteries and get advice. So that's why I go there as much as possible (it's actually cheaper, too, as I don't have to drive there).
E-Ink was founded in 1997 by a few MIT geeks. I think they had the name before they had a marketing department. This was pre e- and i- nuttiness.
I remember interviewing with E-Ink in 2000, I think with Barrett Comiskey, one of the founders, in the Toscanini's (ice cream store) at MIT. Wicked smart. Too bad I shanked on the interview!
It is worth noting that Newton's comment was meant in part as a jab at his (short) rival, Robert Hooke.
FOSS software is so great precisely because you are able to build on the work of others, in much the same way that scientific research is (on the whole) open.
If you want non-brand-name music for $0.25 a song, try http://www.emusic.com, which offers 40 songs for $10 a month. It used to be unlimited, but they cut back awhile ago.
You have to hunt for the good stuff, but overall, Emusic isn't bad. No DRM, either.
... because OLEDs are immature, and fluorescents have many limitations- they tend to be bulky (even the compact ones), they arguably don't have great color, they contain some mercury...
Here are you hints:
/.
Groklaw
SCO
(Richard) Stallman
With apologies, these names should ring a bell to anyone who occasionally visits
I'm feeling lucky
My sister's roomate did succeed in attaching a laser pointer to my sister's cat's head for a few minutes; apparently, it was quite a sight (cats love to chase laser pointers).
It doesn't matter; the laser is not of "frickin'" spec.
and the questionable "science" surrounding CFCs and ozone
Yeah, that bastard Molina really pulled one over on the Nobel committee.
My wife's OS X is set up to randomly show different pictures of our kids (twin boys) every 5 seconds or so, with a nice fade-in/out. Not exactly a productivity feature, but it makes us happy while we work.
My point is, the book would appear to be, to some degree, a marketing tool for selling Mathematica. And the online book is primarily a tool for selling the book (and Mathematica).
So we have:
Read online book -> buy paper book -> buy Mathematica
or
Read online book -> buy Mathematica -> buy paper book
Please note that I'm not saying that any of this is necessarily bad; I just question how altruistic Wolfram is really being by offering the online book in this form.
That's true, for some percentage of the target audience, this is not a problem.
But the site is not intended to make for easy reading (which I define, for example, as chapters downloadable in pdf).
Props to Wolfram for this, but it looks like clever marketing- as far as I can tell, you can't, say, download a pdf of a chapter; you pretty much have to go page by page. So on a practical level, it's a big ad.
Also, you need Mathematica to run the programs.
So, if you get hooked by the online text, Wolfram can count on 1 book sale, and maybe 1 Mathematica license (if, like me, you don't study/work somewhere with a site license).
Yes, I too pine for the days of leaded gasoline, lead pipes, CCA-treated lumber and asbestos!
And really, boiling down the two shuttle failures to material replacements? Perhaps a more important factor is its design.
This was a very clever work, but for an epic like this, I really would have gone with dactylic hexameter myself...
Extinction is natural. But an extinction rate that may be several orders of magnitude above the historical rate is, frankly, probably not a good thing.
- CO2, CH4, etc., do trap longwave radiation (the greenhouse effect)
- Atmospheric concentrations of these gases are increasing due to human activity
Yes, there are a lot of uncertainties in the temperature data, and the signal-to-noise ratio of human-induced effects is low, and there are a lot of potential feedback mechanisms (e.g. cloud formation) and ancillary effects (e.g. aerosols) that we don't understand, but to completely write off human-induced global warming as a myth is pretty dumb and very much indicative of a different a political agenda.It's also not noted very often that, as much of our emitted CO2 ends up in the oceans (by increasing atmospheric concentrations we introduce an imbalance in the carbon cycle), we are lowering the pH of the ocean (CO2 + H20 -> H2CO3 -> HCO3- + H+. Expect it to drop by 0.5pH or so over the next century or so (that figure is from memory, I may be off, but not by a lot). That scares the crap out of me.
It's not investing, it's speculation.
Speculation is very risky; investing is somewhat risky.
The difference between the two is well described here.
In short, investors are interested in a company's intrinsic value (as reflected in its business fundamentals); speculators are interested in how other people will value a company (as reflected in the stock price).
Someone buying SCOX is either a speculator or a (most likely) deluded investor.
Look, while there are plenty of documented cases of faking data, I think this is the exception, rather than the rule. Most scientists aren't in it for the money; if they were, they wouldn't bother being scientists- they'd become sell-outs like myself, or study a more lucrative field like economics.
As for your logic that this doesn't make sense, consider the possibility that the increase in global sulphur emissions from, say, 1940 to 1990, induced enough reduced sunlight to roughly offset the potential warming effect of CO2 emissions, but since 1990 CO2 emissions have increased more rapidly as advanced economies move to less carbon-intensive (coal->oil->nat. gas) fuels. I don't have the data to back this up, but it's one possible reason that the observed warming patterns don't match what you might expect from increased CO2 concentrations alone (global warming critics love to point out that there was disproportionately more warming in the 1st half of the century than the 2nd).
I admit that this is a half-cocked theory. But my point is that you failed to understand all of the factors at hand. Climate science is complicated; that's whay no one knows for sure what the f--- is going on.
Great. It may be that the easiest way to counteract the warming effects of CO2 emissions is to *not* cut back on the other nasties generated by burning fossil fuels.
G.W., you are indeed a visionary with your assault on the Clean Air Act. And all this time, I thought you didn't care.
I suspect this is because neither country has a reputation (deserved or not) for incredible timeliness or efficiency.