Havn't studied much child psychology eh? Young children view their parents as God, it is clear that you have now, as an adult, transferred this parental nature onto your belief of a supernatural God.
I am fairly sure that Jesus' quote "Our Father which art in Heaven" came long before there was such a field as Child Psychology. In other words, Christians have been thinking of God as a "Heavenly Father" for a very long time. Personally I believe that Jesus used that analogy simply because it was very apt. God is very much like an extremely competent Father.
Besides, what kind of sick fuck tapes his kid to the wall.
That's precisely my point. Just like it would be evil to duct-tape my daughter to the wall it would be wrong for God to control us like so many automatons. In other words, you can't blame the actions of humans on God, he isn't responsible for them.
Personally I doubt that any honest, good-hearted person will end up in "Hell" regardless of their beliefs. Not all Christians believe the same way I do, but then again it isn't what Christians believe (or what anyone believs, for that matter) that makes a difference, it's what God decides:).
I just didn't want to write a treaty on the subject. Of course God answers our prayers. He wants us to succeed just like I want my children to succeed. I am actually glad I didn't write more, because what you had to say was well said.
If we weren't free to do horrible things, then we likewise wouldn't be free to do wonderful ones. The problem is that you are looking at this from much too close a perspective. If you believe that our earth life is the end all and be all of existence then of course you can't help but look at the plan as screwed up. Bad things happen to good people, innocents often suffer, etc. etc. However, if you consider this earth life as merely a small blink in an eternal existence then you see that what happens to us here is of no more consequence than getting a blister or skinning a knee. Who cares what happens to us here on this earth if the life after death lasts forever?
The purpose of this life is to give us a chance to choose for ourselves what we want to do with the eternities that follow. And just like my daughter tends to be very obedient when I am watching over her, we also would be very obedient if God was more obvious in his control of this world.
I have a three-year-old daughter. Now, I could duct-tape her to a wall in her bedroom and guarantee that she never did anything that I didn't want her to do. However, that isn't my goal as a parent. Instead I allow her to use her free agency to learn and grow.
In other words, your problem is that you misunderstand God's purpose. We aren't here because God was bored and wanted a really fancy electric train set. We are here because God loves us, and he wants us to learn and grow. God could, if he wanted to, control our actions, and even our thoughts, but instead he has given us the ability to make choices for ourselves. What you do with that ability is up to you.
As long as the hardware device continues to play MP3s there is little risk to the manufacturer. They'll pay no royalties to use either the format or the Tremor software, all they need is a tiny amount of extra space.
Personally I am in the market for a portable Ogg player. In fact, I considered purchasing the Zaurus simply because it is the only portable device that I am aware of that plays Ogg files. However, I already have a PDA that I am happy with, and if I could get a less expensive gizmo that still played Ogg files I would snatch it up in an instant.
In short, the Ogg format wouldn't cost much to support, and it might swing potential buyers towards your device instead of a competitor's player.
The problem with this approach (at least as far as Hollywood is concerned) is that both the hardware and the software companies have vested interests in making Hollywood's content available on their platforms. Witness the DVD player phenomenon. Despite Hollywood's protests there isn't a single DVD manufacturer (well maybe Sony) that doesn't have methods that allow for disabling region encoding and the other Hollywood induced crap. In fact, Apex has actually gained a following and an impressive marketshare by making this sort of thing easy to do. Apple also makes a living making ripping CDs easy to do. They even have devoted whole advertising campaigns to this concept.
Microsoft is a somewhat different case. Microsoft has a big enough user base that they are trying to push Hollywood into using their proprietary formats. Their idea is to get Hollywood to use Microsoft formats exclusively, and they promise to protect Hollywood's content if they do. This way you will have to use Windows to view Hollywood content. This isn't likely to work either, however, because there are simply too many legacy devices to switch formats, and (as you said yourself) digital medium is the great equalizer.
Yes, there will always be software MP3 decoders, they might even continue to compile with new compilers on modern operating systems. But if Ogg becomes the new standard and MP3 becomes a legacy format then MP3 enthusiasts will find it hard to find MP3 hardware. Your new stereo will understand the Ogg format, but not MP3, for example. If you only use your computer to listen to your MP3s, then you are safe, otherwise the future standard for digital music matters.
He's just cranky because Thomson is doing its level best to kill MP3 so that they can replace it with MP3Pro, and along comes the Ogg format which is both better and cheaper (and now available on FP-less processors).
If Ogg really catches on, future hardware might not support MP3, and those folks with large MP3 collections will be in the same boat as people with large 8-track collections.
The problem with this is that congress is happy to pass stupid laws (like the DMCA) if the group that is impacted is relatively small (Linux users who want to watch DVDs), but this is going to affect a much larger group of people. When the voters realize that their congressman or senator is pushing a bill that is likely to triple the price of the average PC and make it less useful in the process you can bet there will be repercussions. No amount of Hollywood contributions are likely to keep such a politician in office. Politicians can yank around fringe groups (again, like Linux users), but they can't afford to tick off the millions of voters that simply want to make home movies and email them to Grandma.
Not to mention the fact that the last thing that Microsoft wants to see is a rise in the price of computers. The lower the prices are for PCs, the more PCs get sold, and since Microsoft gets their royalties on a per PC basis, they want to see hardware prices that are as low as possible.
If you had read Janis' articles you would see that she is pretty optimistic long-term, and I am too, especially if the technology folks make it impossible to easily make "home recordings."
The reason behind this is simple. Most folks understand the entertainment industry's desire to control copying. So as long as the effected groups are small (like people who want to play DVDs on their Linux boxes) then they aren't likely to get too upset. However, if the entertainment industry starts getting in the way of people emailing their home movies to Grandma, then all hell is likely to break loose. No amount of RIAA money is likely to save candidates that make it impossible to make recordings of your own original works.
Now, I still think that DRM has a very good chance of becoming widespread (mostly because of the dominance of Windows), but I would guess that you will still be able to save your own creations in an unencrypted format. Congress isn't going to push for laws requiring DRM on home recordings, and Microsoft isn't going to require that all media have DRM. Otherwise Microsoft will likely lose another generation of artists to the Macintosh (or Linux).
First of all, the announcement said that applications developed for the government would need to be licensed under the GPL. Since the government is footing the bill, they should be able to pick the license. The government can still use software developed under other licenses, they just won't accept programming contracts from developers who are unwilling to license the software under the GPL.
And yes, there are "gaps" in what Free Software can do. However, instead of spending money on expensive foreign software Venezuela is apparently planning on building their own development community. It almost certainly would be cheaper for Venezuela to build their own applications than to pay expensive U.S. programmers to do so. Labor, even highly skilled labor, is much less expensive in South America.
You can bet that in Venezuela business types are going to at least standardize on StarOffice/OpenOffice, if not go whole hog and switch to Linux. The reason for this is simple. They will want to be compatible with the folks in the government. After all, when the government asks you for a form in OpenOffice format, MS Word format isn't going to be particularly useful. At least in Venezuela the whole document conversion problem is going to be on the other foot. OpenOffice is going to be the de-facto standard, and everyone else is going to have to emulate it.
My guess, from my experience living in Chile and Peru, is that the businessfolks in Venezuela will probably run StarOffice on a Windows machine (because they can get the OS for free), but this is still a big start.
Well said. My take would be to go with whoever is cheapest, and switch if you don't feel you are getting your money's worth. Setup MRTG (or whatever) to monitor your router, and then keep track of your traffic. If it appears that you are topping out before your 1.5Mb (especially at busy times of the day), then complain.
Otherwise pocket the dough and be happy.
Re:Let me get this straight
on
Mr Anti-Google
·
· Score: -1, Flamebait
It is news to Salon (and to/. apparently). Of course, liberals tend to be highly suspicious of successful enterprises. The believe that all power should come via government fiat, and so companies that become powerful by making their customers happy are immediately suspect.
Exactly. I know lots of people that are actually downgrading to one of the hourly ISPs because they came to the realization that they only needed about 10 hours a month of online time. Fact of the matter is that the killer application for the Internet is still plain-text email.
That's an easy one. Most folks pay far more attention to the speed of a computer's processor than to the amount of memory the computer has. Blame this on Intel's very effective marketing campaigns. The processor speed of a computer gets top billing, and the amount of ram ends up somewhere just below the speed of the CD Rom drive.
Needless to say, most people would be far better off purchasing more memory, but the memory industry has too tight of margins and too much competition to really spend money advertise this fact, and you can bet that the guy working at Circuit City isn't telling that to his customers.
unless Microsoft decides to add the $0.75 cost of the player to the OS cost, pay the license fee(s) and be done with it.
Ah yes... but Microsoft is busy pimpint WMA as the heir apparent to MP3. Microsoft wants MP3 dead, and they aren't above using excuses like this to kill it. It's no different than disabling Netscape style plugins in IE, except for the fact that a lot of corporate customers actually cared about Netscape style plugins. I know it hit us pretty bad.
Just wait, MP3 has just become a legacy format, it just hasn't realize it yet.
Of course Corel is charging less for PerfectOffice than MS Works. Otherwise why switch?
That's the beauty of the whole situation. The computer industry has finally got to the point where the hardware OEMs have no choice but to start cutting costs in the one area where prices have refused to drop, software. HP and Dell have historically been too scared of Microsoft to switch to the less expensive software vendors, but now these companies don't really have much of a choice. The fight between Dell and HPaq has gotten so fierce that they no longer care what Microsoft does. Besides, if Microsoft pushes too hard both of these companies might become interested in really ramping up their Linux efforts.
The article you mentioned (nice article BTW) didn't mention anything about fingerprinting, but it did have quotes from a couple of local residents that applauded the initiative, including a young man that had his picture taken by the police. The young man in question wished they did a background check on the spot, but he applauded the effort otherwise. I would certainly agree that there should be a way to get your name off of the list.
It also sounds like the database is being used by a relatively small group of policemen, and it is basically being used for intimidation purposes. The police want the dealers to know that they have been marked. I can't help but think that if I lived in a high crime area that I would actually welcome the police taking a more active role in preventing crime. If this type of action scared the criminals into taking their business elsewhere then in my book that is a good thing.
Now, if this file were being shared with police in different cities or states then that would be a different story altogether, but it isn't.
The problem isn't the MP3 players you have now, the problems occur when you want to buy a replacement MP3 player in the future. With new more costly MP3 licensing hardware companies may well rethink their support of the format. This is especially true since there are better formats that are less expensive. And the software guys are going to feel the pinch even more. Most MP3 players can be downloaded for free.
Now, I am not saying that MP3 players are going to disappear overnight. But there are better formats available, and at least one of those formats (ogg) isn't patent encumbered. I would be surprised if the folks making MP3 players didn't start pushing towards other formats. I don't need to tell you what will happen if the industry decides to move on to new formats. You will have hundreds of CDs worth of music that is not useable in the new players.
The funny thing is that I was trolling. There are a ton of people here on/. that feel that MP3 is going to continue to be standard despite the fact that the MP3 patent holders want to see it killed dead (they would rather pimp MP3Pro).
With this one stroke, however, MP3 has become a legacy format. New players will avoid the MP3 format, new encoders will avoid the MP3 format, and new hardware will avoid the MP3 format. So all of you that have spent time encoding in the MP3 format make sure you hang onto the original CDs, because your next hardware player won't play MP3s, and neither will the next update of your software. And you fools that use Windows update probably have already lost the ability to play MP3s and you just haven't realized it yet.
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I am fairly sure that Jesus' quote "Our Father which art in Heaven" came long before there was such a field as Child Psychology. In other words, Christians have been thinking of God as a "Heavenly Father" for a very long time. Personally I believe that Jesus used that analogy simply because it was very apt. God is very much like an extremely competent Father.
That's precisely my point. Just like it would be evil to duct-tape my daughter to the wall it would be wrong for God to control us like so many automatons. In other words, you can't blame the actions of humans on God, he isn't responsible for them.
Personally I doubt that any honest, good-hearted person will end up in "Hell" regardless of their beliefs. Not all Christians believe the same way I do, but then again it isn't what Christians believe (or what anyone believs, for that matter) that makes a difference, it's what God decides :).
I just didn't want to write a treaty on the subject. Of course God answers our prayers. He wants us to succeed just like I want my children to succeed. I am actually glad I didn't write more, because what you had to say was well said.
If we weren't free to do horrible things, then we likewise wouldn't be free to do wonderful ones. The problem is that you are looking at this from much too close a perspective. If you believe that our earth life is the end all and be all of existence then of course you can't help but look at the plan as screwed up. Bad things happen to good people, innocents often suffer, etc. etc. However, if you consider this earth life as merely a small blink in an eternal existence then you see that what happens to us here is of no more consequence than getting a blister or skinning a knee. Who cares what happens to us here on this earth if the life after death lasts forever?
The purpose of this life is to give us a chance to choose for ourselves what we want to do with the eternities that follow. And just like my daughter tends to be very obedient when I am watching over her, we also would be very obedient if God was more obvious in his control of this world.
I have a three-year-old daughter. Now, I could duct-tape her to a wall in her bedroom and guarantee that she never did anything that I didn't want her to do. However, that isn't my goal as a parent. Instead I allow her to use her free agency to learn and grow.
In other words, your problem is that you misunderstand God's purpose. We aren't here because God was bored and wanted a really fancy electric train set. We are here because God loves us, and he wants us to learn and grow. God could, if he wanted to, control our actions, and even our thoughts, but instead he has given us the ability to make choices for ourselves. What you do with that ability is up to you.
If it comes standard with vi, it's UNIX enough for me.
As long as the hardware device continues to play MP3s there is little risk to the manufacturer. They'll pay no royalties to use either the format or the Tremor software, all they need is a tiny amount of extra space.
Personally I am in the market for a portable Ogg player. In fact, I considered purchasing the Zaurus simply because it is the only portable device that I am aware of that plays Ogg files. However, I already have a PDA that I am happy with, and if I could get a less expensive gizmo that still played Ogg files I would snatch it up in an instant.
In short, the Ogg format wouldn't cost much to support, and it might swing potential buyers towards your device instead of a competitor's player.
The problem with this approach (at least as far as Hollywood is concerned) is that both the hardware and the software companies have vested interests in making Hollywood's content available on their platforms. Witness the DVD player phenomenon. Despite Hollywood's protests there isn't a single DVD manufacturer (well maybe Sony) that doesn't have methods that allow for disabling region encoding and the other Hollywood induced crap. In fact, Apex has actually gained a following and an impressive marketshare by making this sort of thing easy to do. Apple also makes a living making ripping CDs easy to do. They even have devoted whole advertising campaigns to this concept.
Microsoft is a somewhat different case. Microsoft has a big enough user base that they are trying to push Hollywood into using their proprietary formats. Their idea is to get Hollywood to use Microsoft formats exclusively, and they promise to protect Hollywood's content if they do. This way you will have to use Windows to view Hollywood content. This isn't likely to work either, however, because there are simply too many legacy devices to switch formats, and (as you said yourself) digital medium is the great equalizer.
Yes, there will always be software MP3 decoders, they might even continue to compile with new compilers on modern operating systems. But if Ogg becomes the new standard and MP3 becomes a legacy format then MP3 enthusiasts will find it hard to find MP3 hardware. Your new stereo will understand the Ogg format, but not MP3, for example. If you only use your computer to listen to your MP3s, then you are safe, otherwise the future standard for digital music matters.
And then the FSF could come out with a Free Version named GROFF. Oh wait...
He's just cranky because Thomson is doing its level best to kill MP3 so that they can replace it with MP3Pro, and along comes the Ogg format which is both better and cheaper (and now available on FP-less processors).
If Ogg really catches on, future hardware might not support MP3, and those folks with large MP3 collections will be in the same boat as people with large 8-track collections.
The problem with this is that congress is happy to pass stupid laws (like the DMCA) if the group that is impacted is relatively small (Linux users who want to watch DVDs), but this is going to affect a much larger group of people. When the voters realize that their congressman or senator is pushing a bill that is likely to triple the price of the average PC and make it less useful in the process you can bet there will be repercussions. No amount of Hollywood contributions are likely to keep such a politician in office. Politicians can yank around fringe groups (again, like Linux users), but they can't afford to tick off the millions of voters that simply want to make home movies and email them to Grandma.
Not to mention the fact that the last thing that Microsoft wants to see is a rise in the price of computers. The lower the prices are for PCs, the more PCs get sold, and since Microsoft gets their royalties on a per PC basis, they want to see hardware prices that are as low as possible.
In short, this is a project designed to fail.
If you had read Janis' articles you would see that she is pretty optimistic long-term, and I am too, especially if the technology folks make it impossible to easily make "home recordings."
The reason behind this is simple. Most folks understand the entertainment industry's desire to control copying. So as long as the effected groups are small (like people who want to play DVDs on their Linux boxes) then they aren't likely to get too upset. However, if the entertainment industry starts getting in the way of people emailing their home movies to Grandma, then all hell is likely to break loose. No amount of RIAA money is likely to save candidates that make it impossible to make recordings of your own original works.
Now, I still think that DRM has a very good chance of becoming widespread (mostly because of the dominance of Windows), but I would guess that you will still be able to save your own creations in an unencrypted format. Congress isn't going to push for laws requiring DRM on home recordings, and Microsoft isn't going to require that all media have DRM. Otherwise Microsoft will likely lose another generation of artists to the Macintosh (or Linux).
First of all, the announcement said that applications developed for the government would need to be licensed under the GPL. Since the government is footing the bill, they should be able to pick the license. The government can still use software developed under other licenses, they just won't accept programming contracts from developers who are unwilling to license the software under the GPL.
And yes, there are "gaps" in what Free Software can do. However, instead of spending money on expensive foreign software Venezuela is apparently planning on building their own development community. It almost certainly would be cheaper for Venezuela to build their own applications than to pay expensive U.S. programmers to do so. Labor, even highly skilled labor, is much less expensive in South America.
You can bet that in Venezuela business types are going to at least standardize on StarOffice/OpenOffice, if not go whole hog and switch to Linux. The reason for this is simple. They will want to be compatible with the folks in the government. After all, when the government asks you for a form in OpenOffice format, MS Word format isn't going to be particularly useful. At least in Venezuela the whole document conversion problem is going to be on the other foot. OpenOffice is going to be the de-facto standard, and everyone else is going to have to emulate it.
My guess, from my experience living in Chile and Peru, is that the businessfolks in Venezuela will probably run StarOffice on a Windows machine (because they can get the OS for free), but this is still a big start.
Well said. My take would be to go with whoever is cheapest, and switch if you don't feel you are getting your money's worth. Setup MRTG (or whatever) to monitor your router, and then keep track of your traffic. If it appears that you are topping out before your 1.5Mb (especially at busy times of the day), then complain.
Otherwise pocket the dough and be happy.
It is news to Salon (and to /. apparently). Of course, liberals tend to be highly suspicious of successful enterprises. The believe that all power should come via government fiat, and so companies that become powerful by making their customers happy are immediately suspect.
Exactly. I know lots of people that are actually downgrading to one of the hourly ISPs because they came to the realization that they only needed about 10 hours a month of online time. Fact of the matter is that the killer application for the Internet is still plain-text email.
That's an easy one. Most folks pay far more attention to the speed of a computer's processor than to the amount of memory the computer has. Blame this on Intel's very effective marketing campaigns. The processor speed of a computer gets top billing, and the amount of ram ends up somewhere just below the speed of the CD Rom drive.
Needless to say, most people would be far better off purchasing more memory, but the memory industry has too tight of margins and too much competition to really spend money advertise this fact, and you can bet that the guy working at Circuit City isn't telling that to his customers.
Well said! That's an excellent analogy.
Ah yes... but Microsoft is busy pimpint WMA as the heir apparent to MP3. Microsoft wants MP3 dead, and they aren't above using excuses like this to kill it. It's no different than disabling Netscape style plugins in IE, except for the fact that a lot of corporate customers actually cared about Netscape style plugins. I know it hit us pretty bad.
Just wait, MP3 has just become a legacy format, it just hasn't realize it yet.
Of course Corel is charging less for PerfectOffice than MS Works. Otherwise why switch?
That's the beauty of the whole situation. The computer industry has finally got to the point where the hardware OEMs have no choice but to start cutting costs in the one area where prices have refused to drop, software. HP and Dell have historically been too scared of Microsoft to switch to the less expensive software vendors, but now these companies don't really have much of a choice. The fight between Dell and HPaq has gotten so fierce that they no longer care what Microsoft does. Besides, if Microsoft pushes too hard both of these companies might become interested in really ramping up their Linux efforts.
The article you mentioned (nice article BTW) didn't mention anything about fingerprinting, but it did have quotes from a couple of local residents that applauded the initiative, including a young man that had his picture taken by the police. The young man in question wished they did a background check on the spot, but he applauded the effort otherwise. I would certainly agree that there should be a way to get your name off of the list.
It also sounds like the database is being used by a relatively small group of policemen, and it is basically being used for intimidation purposes. The police want the dealers to know that they have been marked. I can't help but think that if I lived in a high crime area that I would actually welcome the police taking a more active role in preventing crime. If this type of action scared the criminals into taking their business elsewhere then in my book that is a good thing.
Now, if this file were being shared with police in different cities or states then that would be a different story altogether, but it isn't.
The problem isn't the MP3 players you have now, the problems occur when you want to buy a replacement MP3 player in the future. With new more costly MP3 licensing hardware companies may well rethink their support of the format. This is especially true since there are better formats that are less expensive. And the software guys are going to feel the pinch even more. Most MP3 players can be downloaded for free.
Now, I am not saying that MP3 players are going to disappear overnight. But there are better formats available, and at least one of those formats (ogg) isn't patent encumbered. I would be surprised if the folks making MP3 players didn't start pushing towards other formats. I don't need to tell you what will happen if the industry decides to move on to new formats. You will have hundreds of CDs worth of music that is not useable in the new players.
The funny thing is that I was trolling. There are a ton of people here on /. that feel that MP3 is going to continue to be standard despite the fact that the MP3 patent holders want to see it killed dead (they would rather pimp MP3Pro).
With this one stroke, however, MP3 has become a legacy format. New players will avoid the MP3 format, new encoders will avoid the MP3 format, and new hardware will avoid the MP3 format. So all of you that have spent time encoding in the MP3 format make sure you hang onto the original CDs, because your next hardware player won't play MP3s, and neither will the next update of your software. And you fools that use Windows update probably have already lost the ability to play MP3s and you just haven't realized it yet.