I agree, sort of. This could present other options to Napster far beyond what it seems though. If a small record label wanted their fair share, they could register with Napster. Mabey a payment-per-download system for non RIAA musicians. Napster, could in effect, nullify the Big Five when the contract expires. Musicans could just sign with Napster, with no contractural obligations, (other than Napsters agreement to pay the musicians), allow their music to be distributed on Napster, and still keep whatever other sponsors and promotors they would like to manage things like concerts and the like, and never have to deal with the RIAA co's to gain notoriety or distribution. Napster, in many ways, could become the next Big Five. If they do things right, they could stand to gain an awfull lot of power in the music business. And yes, I am sure that if some musicians didn't want to participate in the deal, some sort of settlement could be reached. I don't doubt Napster would still spend considerable time in court, but at $5.00-$1.67x50,000,000users, I'm sure they will be able to work something out. Almost all large corporations are constantly in court for some reason or another. Big money becomes a big target. That's just how things go. But I still see Napster as somewhat of a revolution. Music has been around for a lot longer than copyrights, RIAA, and recordable media. It will continue be around. But it will change, no doubt. The Big Five labels, like most companies, come and go in time. Their time is ending. Things are going to change. How they do, I don't think anybody can answer in detail right now. Napster and Napster-like services are the future of music distrobution. After the legal battles die down, and the smoke clears, I think we will be looking at something totally different than what we have today.
"Everything that can be invented has been invented."
And here we thought that Seti was the "Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence." Now we all know, it is to detect "Stolen Entertainment and Television Information."
"Everything that can be invented has been invented."
The problem is, many people associate video games with kids, not realizing that there are adult oriented video games, and that adults are actually serious gamers. I think some different marketing would go a long way, perhaps even organizing the games in stores according to age level. And bright yellow stickers on the boxes blatently advertising that the game is not for children may also help to inform the rest of the world that all games are not childrens games. Yes, I don't like it either, but if it shuts up the whiners, so be it. Then parents/polititions/whoever would have no one to blame but themselves if their children are playing Q3. Somewhere along the line, these people need to actually do some parenting. I think that the suggestions I have made would make it easy enough for them to do so. Besides, a bright yellow sticker on the box would make it easier to find the games I like *grin*
"Everything that can be invented has been invented."
Yes, as I said a few posts up, a simple javascript app could ask the browser wich version it wanted. You could leave your Palm browser on "simple" all the time, so it would be transparent to you. I'm not implying at all that the user would have to do anything special to access this content.
"Everything that can be invented has been invented."
Actually, it wouldn't make maintaining a second page much harder at all. Some type of special WYSIWYG editor or similar program could insert the text only into a preconfigured standard page layout in the page for the disabled. Or, a server side script could just extract the text portions out of a CSS (wich will always have the text in the same place) when a request for a simple page comes in. By standardizing the page layout for the entire site, no additional work would be required. This is nothing new, even/. can be loaded in a simple, plain text version. And I know Taco doesn't maintain two seperate pages, the spelling errors between the two are always the same.
"Everything that can be invented has been invented."
Because we are talking about goverment pages now, wich, by law, MUST be accessable to the blind and other wise disabled. This is not to say that the pages cannot still look good, just simplified a little. Or even better yet, a cross-browser standard (not that THAT will ever happen) so that two versions of the same page can be written, and a simple javascript app can ask the browser wich version to load.
"Everything that can be invented has been invented."
No, dynamic content such as Flash, Shock, blinking shit, and javascript menus are for people with eyes. In case you didn't notice, you can still write PLAIN TEXT pages with HTML4 that can be read by a text-to-speach program on a disabled persons computer.
"Everything that can be invented has been invented."
So when does IBM sue Sony over the "PS/2" designation? I am sick of large corperations acting like they have exclusive rights over everything. This is right on par with Apple stopping an Aqua-like interface for the open source community, after basing their most recent OS on and open source OS. Take, take, take.
"Everything that can be invented has been invented."
I agree, strict control of OEM hardware and semi-strict controll over third party hardware is largely responsable for Apple's stability and performance. x86 developers must develop for nearly infinate hardware configurations, wich decreases performance, increases potential for errors, and contributes to bloat. This is what M$ is trying to do now with W2k, (license hardware vendors) although M$ want's everyone to belive it was their idea.
"Everything that can be invented has been invented."
I don't see it happening
on
OS X on x86?
·
· Score: 2
If Apple released their OS for x86 machines, they would loose sales. Apple is very careful about protecting it's identity, and maintaining it. Their identity is what keeps them in business. As cool as it would be, if they did they might as well ditch hardware and become a software company. Although that may not be so bad after all.
"Everything that can be invented has been invented."
"Everything that can be invented has been invented."
Re:Why not? If you wanna be safe, get off the net.
on
Kid Clicks For Sale
·
· Score: 2
Really most *kids* will stay out of that stuff, and whats the point of blocking it out a school if the kids can just go
home and look it up there?
Schools have a legal responsability to control what is in schools. This goes beyond the internet. That goes for language, smoking, drugs, actions, clothing, etc. Parents have a moral responsability for supervising their kids. Although I suppose it is technically "illegal" for parents to allow minors to view pornography and things like it, the chances of a parent getting sued for thousands (millions?) of dollars for that are much smaller than if a parent found out that students were able to view pornography on the 'net.
As far as direct supervision, that may be OK in grade schools, where computer time will almost always be in a classroom environment, but middle school and high school students are more likely to be alone, in a study hall, library, or some other similar environment.
One more reason that filtering is not a bad idea in schools... typos. Lets see, got to look up something on the president. Go to www.whitehouse.com, right? Try it sometime. It may take you to one of Clinton's favorite sites, but it's definitly NOT the whitehouse.
"Everything that can be invented has been invented."
It looks like the SparcPlug was made back in '96 by a company named Ross, now defunct. Here is an article from Byte with a review of the product shortly after its release. It appears that a comany named DataMaster International still sells them here. No price is listed, but they do take quotes.
"Everything that can be invented has been invented."
Probably because IRC is too 1337 for the average AIM user. AIM is stupid easy to set up, all their "AOL" friends are on it, and a good deal of AIM users have migrated from AOL because they got broadband, or went to college and have full time connections (and they can leave their answering machine on 24/7)etc. and still want to chat with their AOL friends. It's easy, it's free, and it does what they need it to do. And AOL has even written a Linux version of AIM, albeit with a quater of the functionality of the Win version, and IMHO doesn't hold a candle to GAIM. Not that there is anything inherently wrong with IRC, it's great really. But compared to AIM, it requires too much effort for the average user.
"Everything that can be invented has been invented."
As you have to use distributed permanent (=low power) magnets, the torque cannot be increased much (compared to
classical e-motors with exclusively electro-magnets)
Perhaps a battery, capacitor, or something of that nature could be used inside the ball, along with a coil of sorts, so that induction could power internal electromagnets. The coil would input the energy into the battery/capacitor, (with a AC to DC rectifier) wich in turn would smooth the current flow, then on from there to the coils inside the sphere. There surely has to be a way to do that without interfering with the magnetic fields associated with motion. A high frequency switching between the motion magnets and the charging magnets perhaps? That may even allow the electromagnets themselves to recharge the battery, a regenerative system of sorts. As the AC current switches between posative and negative current, a simple diode could allow one way to charge the battery, and the other swing to charge the magnets. I suppose that some inefficency has to be accounted for, that would be almost like perpetual motion, so some coils could do double duty while others are strictly charging coils, and could provide current to the battery/capacitor on both cycles.
It may help extract more torque from the system, but without some sort of physical gear reduction, it will probably still consume high power while having the ability to do very little work. Still and all, it's range of motion and accuracy may prove to be more important in many applications than sheer power.
"Everything that can be invented has been invented."
Slashdot Mirror
"Everything that can be invented has been invented."
expect
    failure();
"Everything that can be invented has been invented."
A.Yahoo
"Everything that can be invented has been invented."
"Everything that can be invented has been invented."
"Everything that can be invented has been invented."
"Everything that can be invented has been invented."
"Everything that can be invented has been invented."
"Everything that can be invented has been invented."
"Everything that can be invented has been invented."
"Everything that can be invented has been invented."
"Everything that can be invented has been invented."
"Everything that can be invented has been invented."
"Everything that can be invented has been invented."
"Everything that can be invented has been invented."
"Everything that can be invented has been invented."
"Everything that can be invented has been invented."
"Everything that can be invented has been invented."
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"Everything that can be invented has been invented."
Schools have a legal responsability to control what is in schools. This goes beyond the internet. That goes for language, smoking, drugs, actions, clothing, etc. Parents have a moral responsability for supervising their kids. Although I suppose it is technically "illegal" for parents to allow minors to view pornography and things like it, the chances of a parent getting sued for thousands (millions?) of dollars for that are much smaller than if a parent found out that students were able to view pornography on the 'net.
As far as direct supervision, that may be OK in grade schools, where computer time will almost always be in a classroom environment, but middle school and high school students are more likely to be alone, in a study hall, library, or some other similar environment.
One more reason that filtering is not a bad idea in schools... typos. Lets see, got to look up something on the president. Go to www.whitehouse.com, right? Try it sometime. It may take you to one of Clinton's favorite sites, but it's definitly NOT the whitehouse.
"Everything that can be invented has been invented."
"Everything that can be invented has been invented."
"Everything that can be invented has been invented."
"Everything that can be invented has been invented."
"Everything that can be invented has been invented."
Perhaps a battery, capacitor, or something of that nature could be used inside the ball, along with a coil of sorts, so that induction could power internal electromagnets. The coil would input the energy into the battery/capacitor, (with a AC to DC rectifier) wich in turn would smooth the current flow, then on from there to the coils inside the sphere. There surely has to be a way to do that without interfering with the magnetic fields associated with motion. A high frequency switching between the motion magnets and the charging magnets perhaps? That may even allow the electromagnets themselves to recharge the battery, a regenerative system of sorts. As the AC current switches between posative and negative current, a simple diode could allow one way to charge the battery, and the other swing to charge the magnets. I suppose that some inefficency has to be accounted for, that would be almost like perpetual motion, so some coils could do double duty while others are strictly charging coils, and could provide current to the battery/capacitor on both cycles.
It may help extract more torque from the system, but without some sort of physical gear reduction, it will probably still consume high power while having the ability to do very little work. Still and all, it's range of motion and accuracy may prove to be more important in many applications than sheer power.
"Everything that can be invented has been invented."
"Everything that can be invented has been invented."