I guessing the elliptical basis PRNG was only included to allow for a checkmark to be put on a list for the requirements - "ensure there is a simple method to bypass security for agencies that have clearance to do so" or similar. This smacks of a top-down request, mathematically, it's a ludicrous concept to rely on for practical considerations - if not because of its strength but for its speed in current implementations.
No - Comcast simply chose to outsource the solution. The solution is draconian, not nuanced. Why? Because the "product" they're using is not going to look at usage patterns or history, it is configured by corporate. This is what happens when you give the PHB's the keys to the company car, they don't pick any else up.
If the folks behind the solution were true admins, they'd know that shaping is to remain invisible. Once that wall crumbles, the company is now risking common-carrier status, neutrality sentiment, and market opinion.
2008 may be the year ATT, Verizon and Comcast start to intermingle their service areas, forced by press like this Comcast mess. I'd be more than happy to pay double if someone else offered in my market.
Not to be outdone by the resurgence in vinyl, CD makers have recently banded together to deliver a digital version of the "warmth" given by vinyl.
The next generation of players will be able to accurately mimic warble, speed fluctuation, hiss, scratches, and even (for some top end players), "stomp skip" that mimics a record player's skipping effect when jostled. The degradation of frequency response from vinyl from needle friction over time was not listed among the features.
Anticipating several other nostalgic endeavors, the industry is packaging such add-ons also with the ability to reproduce tape wow and flutter (for several widths of tape), mechanical noise from wax cylinders and terrible reproductive qualities of dull needles, magnetized heads and tiny speakers. Look for all these effects in the latest players, including MP3 players, usually in the form of a "plug-in" or aftermarket feature.
Vinyl pressing sources state that they are already planning the next move: digital encoding of the sound onto their albums using high-rate, high-level sampling. As long as the player can decide between the "on" and "off" of each bit read (and some auto-correction encoding and re-reading capabilities of some players), the sound quality should never degrade. They are also exploring ways to make vinyl more portable by previewing "portables" - small carts that one can drag behind you, wagon-like, to keep your music with you as you travel outside. There are rumors of a hand-cranked turntable just around the corner, starting in Q2 '08.
Stay tuned, the world of music is suddenly going to explode with possibilities!
I agree. I've been programming (mostly cmd line style) for almost 15 years straight and the 3 or 4 times i get to the rock gym are excellent relievers for poor posture, store joints, etc.
The construction of a plane is nowhere nearly hardy enough for typical road use. If you end up hitting just a bit of potholes, speedbumps, etc, are you ready to that vehicle in the air? Hell, cars these days are build with crash bumpers that are supposed to take a 5mph bump without driveability-affecting damage - no planes have them. The undercarriage of a car includes some of the world's most advanced engineering tuned for stability, handling, suspension and road noise - which adds significant weight. A plane has a few wheels (one that turns) and struts, nothing so complicated - because its light and just durable enough for landing on the runway. TFA mentions drivetrain and wing storage as two other clashing designs, but there are several more (road worthiness, air worthiness, strength, durability, luxury, maintenance).
It comes down to tuning for the target environment. A car is not a boat. A plane is not a car. Shoes are not wheels. Targeting two has predictable results: Everyone is let down.
Key of software design - if you need animations to know what you're doing, then perhaps your interface isn't communicating what that button intends to do when you press it.
Why buy more machine to power ever-more animations? If I start a build, or start a processor-intensive task, I'm not interested in my Alt-Tabbing doing a little dance.
They're fine to have built-in, just being able to turn them off is key. I'd like it even more if it detected choppiness and turned them off temporarily.
Say I release an OS that does RT raytracing desktops, for simply "awesome graphics". You want to go any buy a 32core chip (from only one manufacturer) that'll power that? Wouldn't you think that says a little about the OS maker about pushing the market into a false need? I mean, Aero stuff is pretty but if an existing machine cannot handle it, then so what.
And none of this addresses my original point: Out of the box, users get a small bit of handholding to guide them through XP's detailed permissions. Either it's the dumb-down interface or the whole kaboodle. XP is a solid OS for stability.
Look, I'm coding up a large office Automation server and get to enjoy their help files like this. No office app designed for multi-user, server-based hosting. Nice. The MVC pattern is what, 15 years old now?
As to the rest of my rant, I see your retort explains everything. Perhaps you like XP's GDI, Win32. Funny sense of design, you. Vista is a necessary upgrade - it was simply done wrong.
Look, XP is a nightmare of permissions and a free-for-all single-user system. The GUI is a raster dinosaur. Kernel support for multi-core is spotty and clustering is limited.
SO, there's definitely a need to get a new kernel.
DRM in the OS is a no no. Techies know this, but who's going to bother using MSs DRM'd products when there's way better sources as a techie? So you get your music and video elsewhere. Still, one can use the vista OS in a corporate environment.
User Permissions are also a stupid implementation. There's a simple way around it: Make the OS actually secure by simply disallowing until done through an appropriate role. All this poppingupping to let grandma know that she's not root is perhaps fine, but for any user beyond 1 week of experience, that shite's gotta go.
However, in entirety, vista may have more to offer if it simply adjusted a bit:
- The "rainbow of flavors" has to disappear (I hope the EU will take care of that with unbundling).
- DRM can stay since MS's media-wrappers are a nonstarter in the market. Everyone using should this OS should expect HD support to be poor. Who cares why.
- Permissions need to disappear. Strip it to *works* or *error* with one checkbox somewhere. The rest is the magic of security role configuration. Nothing can replace that.
- Tighten up all the speed issues. Re-release the journaled FS. Lower the bar for virtualization and media programming.
- For godsakes - provide a desktop UI that doesn't zip and whirl like a carnival. Mac or Windows, I don't want animations. I want feedback as fast as my keystrokes.
- DROP backwards compatability already! Sheesh - MS in 2010 will still allow the freakin' 1987 3.1 apps to run. Comon! Who needs to bring all the skeletons in the closet when you move to a newly-built house? Win32 is a unbelievably ugly creature that needs to be buried. Carrying that says "keep developing on it" to your market. Stupid. Scared of losing market share? Then perhaps dropping XP is a bad idea! So support two OSes - two platforms. All this smearing is WHY YOU NEEDED TO REWRITE IN THE FIRST PLACE.
Get back to products, not platform.
still have it, still play it
on
The Making of Thief
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
When someone not interesting in FPS games is around and I have a machine up, I fire up Thief and let them wander around a bit. It's still a great way to introduce someone to the concept of creating a sense of place within a game. Darkness, large screen and powerful box helps deliver a good immersion. The fan missions are interesting, but after the 3rd in the series, the setting becomes a bit tiresome.
Rig your microwave oven to work with door off and you have something equally lethal (probably short range). The fact that we've not weaponized Xray, Microwave, etc technology (well, at least at this scale) is surprising.
And as with all weapons, there will be countermeasures. Since these are "specifically tuned" for nerve endings, one could build a suit that reflected at these frequencies and thus you have a crowd-wearing random dispersal reflector. Not unlike the use of gas in combat.
I'm wondering if skin numbing agents can fight the effects of this ray. Not that I'm volunteering.
Methinks that this will be considered a weapon that breaks Geneva Convention guidelines. But it'll probably take a war to decide that first, as history proves.
The market has already spoken. Listening to music free online has been done 1000's of times...with little profit. Folks want to own the music and move it where they like. Sitting at your computer is good for free tunes - but sadly, there's plenty of free online music already.
People want music that fits their lifestyle, which is mobile. Earbuds are ok, but for a real shared experience, they want to hear it in a car or over a friend's house without any trouble. line jacks and FM receivers are the norm for this. Copying a file works for the technical, but for the most part the market is (1) buying CDs or iPods and (2) making sure they play in cars. This scheme ain't gonna change that - hell it can't even leave the PC you downloaded it onto!
If they approve the OOXML spec with request to change it, or deny it standardization altogether, MS doesn't really need to care. This entire exercise is a bone thrown at the market. MS may be trying to placate the government entities and business partners that are tired of Office vOld.1 no longer working in their archives, but MS hasn't lost share of the desktop office productivity market because of their proprietary formats. Just like IE, they can shove OOXML down our throats anyway.
I hate to admit this simple fact, but even if MS apps saved their documents as bloated, mangled, insecure and limited capability formats, they'd have plenty of buyers. Like now.
Get ready for the onslaught of OOXML to ODF converter needs.
Breaks?
Thrust reversal would reverse the engines or fanblades - not quite possible without a gear and clutch system and would take quite a bit of wear (and time) to activate.
Airbrakes akin to a reusable parachute only work related to surface area and strength. Not much room on these little things to hide a panel to slow from a 100mph smooth machine.
Most likely, the machine would try to brake by tilting backwards and splitting the downward thrust with backward. However, this means switching to hover mode quickly, not really possible without something to throw the engines hard and fast, which would add weight to the control motors. In all, its a balance of capabilities that makes the lightest resolution equal to "no brakes".
I believe Moller hired a few guys and did a a few week's worth of calculations and came up with a fitting design, modeled it and found out that certain behaviors were severely sacrificed - years ago. Since then, he's been forgetting to mention those concepts and simply built larger models. One crane and insurance policy later, you're on every "beyond the future" TV spot for years and years. Boring.
That crane in the background proves it's safety to me. 1 year away from "fly saucers everywhere" and the owner of the company won't take it out for a demo ride? S C A M
No failures yet! Money still rolling in. I wonder if the 90k comes with a personal crane. Flies 3m off the ground, in a small circle decided by the crane operator
Hint: Go to the fair and give them a dollar...You too can ride in the SKYCAR!
I'm not quite seeing the wings working at speeds under WayWayFast. Realize that the highest investigation of efficiency, maneuverability and speed has gone into combat aircraft, and I simply don't see the Moller Skycar turning in any direction in a small radius. Think of modern fighter jets, where they need control surfaces to pull themselves around turns. Moller needs to push with fans instead.
Even the V-22 Osprey had a long development time, but in the end did not deviate far from either heli or aiplane aerodynamics. Frankly, the fans offer the sexy promise of Harrier-like delicacy in maneuvering (which isn't so delicate), but they'll burn fuel at a rapid rate that demands an auto-landing sequence based on burn rate. So instead of a fireball we'll have slowly-lowering skycars almost out of fuel. Perhaps Moller is planing to create a fleet of fuel trucks to rescue all the hapless pilots that didn't pay attention to the gages!
Moller's been pushing this nonsense since his first snowmobile engine modifications in the 70's. He has been collecting investment money for decades promising VTOL vehicles to the masses. There's a whole sky full of problems with this. First, getting into the sky is a series of tests and checks and licenses here in the US because, essentially, many people don't really want every Tom Dick and Harry flying over our heads. The skies are a-crowded already, from a management point of view.
Second, while the technology may be sound and there were doubters to the helicopter and "aeroplane" alike, this design seems a bit more like rocketry than either of the prior two. Ducted or directed fan technology is hugely inefficient compared to wing technology. Coolness aside, there's something of an "experimental" quality of these machines that they cannot seem to shake. If I'm watching YouTube videos of the Moller employees coming and going in these contraptions, then perhaps my doubts will be alleviated, but until then, I keep picturing a screwball in an oversized frisbee darting over the park and eventually plowing into the trees.
The internet captures a lot of eyes, but that doesn't mean it's required for a business to stay viable. I hate to break it to ad pushers, but if you go out of business because nobody sees your blinkenflashen, you may not have a strong enough product. If folks read all your information but block your ads, then perhaps your *core readership* is much smaller than you realize. The rest of them, the ad-blockers, couldn't care less if you lived or died. I believe people wouldn't mind if most sites died out from overcrowding, bad design, stale information or simply boredom.
If folks never opened to the page of the telephone book that had their ads, were these people stealing? If they did, disliked the ad, and ripped that page out, was it stealing? If mean, those businesses PAID to be in that book, funding it's creation and delivery.
TFA assumes that the content is the value, but as we all know - a business need to actually *do something* besides display ads to be a real player. Even if that "something" is information munging, akin to/. its model will survive because of interest, and interest alone.
There are many examples of this on the web. Wikipedia is funded from donations, not ads. If wikipedia either began to charge views outright, or began to throttle, the public will either prop it up or let it die. So far, it's not dead AFAIK.
Slashdot Mirror
I guessing the elliptical basis PRNG was only included to allow for a checkmark to be put on a list for the requirements - "ensure there is a simple method to bypass security for agencies that have clearance to do so" or similar. This smacks of a top-down request, mathematically, it's a ludicrous concept to rely on for practical considerations - if not because of its strength but for its speed in current implementations.
2x weekly, 3 different lotteries available here = 6 chances to win @ $1 per ticket each week.
Money saved by not buying a ticket since I turned 18? $11,232
Now thats an emotional high I can enjoy every day!
No - Comcast simply chose to outsource the solution. The solution is draconian, not nuanced. Why? Because the "product" they're using is not going to look at usage patterns or history, it is configured by corporate. This is what happens when you give the PHB's the keys to the company car, they don't pick any else up.
If the folks behind the solution were true admins, they'd know that shaping is to remain invisible. Once that wall crumbles, the company is now risking common-carrier status, neutrality sentiment, and market opinion.
2008 may be the year ATT, Verizon and Comcast start to intermingle their service areas, forced by press like this Comcast mess. I'd be more than happy to pay double if someone else offered in my market.
Not to be outdone by the resurgence in vinyl, CD makers have recently banded together to deliver a digital version of the "warmth" given by vinyl.
The next generation of players will be able to accurately mimic warble, speed fluctuation, hiss, scratches, and even (for some top end players), "stomp skip" that mimics a record player's skipping effect when jostled. The degradation of frequency response from vinyl from needle friction over time was not listed among the features.
Anticipating several other nostalgic endeavors, the industry is packaging such add-ons also with the ability to reproduce tape wow and flutter (for several widths of tape), mechanical noise from wax cylinders and terrible reproductive qualities of dull needles, magnetized heads and tiny speakers. Look for all these effects in the latest players, including MP3 players, usually in the form of a "plug-in" or aftermarket feature.
Vinyl pressing sources state that they are already planning the next move: digital encoding of the sound onto their albums using high-rate, high-level sampling. As long as the player can decide between the "on" and "off" of each bit read (and some auto-correction encoding and re-reading capabilities of some players), the sound quality should never degrade. They are also exploring ways to make vinyl more portable by previewing "portables" - small carts that one can drag behind you, wagon-like, to keep your music with you as you travel outside. There are rumors of a hand-cranked turntable just around the corner, starting in Q2 '08.
Stay tuned, the world of music is suddenly going to explode with possibilities!
I agree. I've been programming (mostly cmd line style) for almost 15 years straight and the 3 or 4 times i get to the rock gym are excellent relievers for poor posture, store joints, etc.
One word: stairs
She's 13! And no, she's not a developerdeveloperdeveloper! Do you have to throw everything around?
Eh, here. Throw this $200 video card i bought six months ago.
Oh! Wait its starting...Shiny!
The construction of a plane is nowhere nearly hardy enough for typical road use. If you end up hitting just a bit of potholes, speedbumps, etc, are you ready to that vehicle in the air? Hell, cars these days are build with crash bumpers that are supposed to take a 5mph bump without driveability-affecting damage - no planes have them. The undercarriage of a car includes some of the world's most advanced engineering tuned for stability, handling, suspension and road noise - which adds significant weight. A plane has a few wheels (one that turns) and struts, nothing so complicated - because its light and just durable enough for landing on the runway. TFA mentions drivetrain and wing storage as two other clashing designs, but there are several more (road worthiness, air worthiness, strength, durability, luxury, maintenance).
It comes down to tuning for the target environment. A car is not a boat. A plane is not a car. Shoes are not wheels. Targeting two has predictable results: Everyone is let down.
There has long been research suggesting that total heartbeats in a lifetime is constant for a large number of animals (and plants!).
Your key phrase is "a lot of frames/sec"
Key of software design - if you need animations to know what you're doing, then perhaps your interface isn't communicating what that button intends to do when you press it.
Why buy more machine to power ever-more animations? If I start a build, or start a processor-intensive task, I'm not interested in my Alt-Tabbing doing a little dance.
They're fine to have built-in, just being able to turn them off is key. I'd like it even more if it detected choppiness and turned them off temporarily.
Say I release an OS that does RT raytracing desktops, for simply "awesome graphics". You want to go any buy a 32core chip (from only one manufacturer) that'll power that? Wouldn't you think that says a little about the OS maker about pushing the market into a false need? I mean, Aero stuff is pretty but if an existing machine cannot handle it, then so what.
Riiight.. Remote desktop? Piece of cake! Howabout hacking the non-Server termsrv.dll? Terminal Server? For what? Office? Have 10MB of RAM per user ready. Ouch. Virtual Server? Not ready for production.
And none of this addresses my original point: Out of the box, users get a small bit of handholding to guide them through XP's detailed permissions. Either it's the dumb-down interface or the whole kaboodle. XP is a solid OS for stability.
Look, I'm coding up a large office Automation server and get to enjoy their help files like this. No office app designed for multi-user, server-based hosting. Nice. The MVC pattern is what, 15 years old now?
As to the rest of my rant, I see your retort explains everything. Perhaps you like XP's GDI, Win32. Funny sense of design, you. Vista is a necessary upgrade - it was simply done wrong.
Look, XP is a nightmare of permissions and a free-for-all single-user system. The GUI is a raster dinosaur. Kernel support for multi-core is spotty and clustering is limited.
SO, there's definitely a need to get a new kernel.
DRM in the OS is a no no. Techies know this, but who's going to bother using MSs DRM'd products when there's way better sources as a techie? So you get your music and video elsewhere. Still, one can use the vista OS in a corporate environment.
User Permissions are also a stupid implementation. There's a simple way around it: Make the OS actually secure by simply disallowing until done through an appropriate role. All this poppingupping to let grandma know that she's not root is perhaps fine, but for any user beyond 1 week of experience, that shite's gotta go.
However, in entirety, vista may have more to offer if it simply adjusted a bit:
- The "rainbow of flavors" has to disappear (I hope the EU will take care of that with unbundling).
- DRM can stay since MS's media-wrappers are a nonstarter in the market. Everyone using should this OS should expect HD support to be poor. Who cares why.
- Permissions need to disappear. Strip it to *works* or *error* with one checkbox somewhere. The rest is the magic of security role configuration. Nothing can replace that.
- Tighten up all the speed issues. Re-release the journaled FS. Lower the bar for virtualization and media programming.
- For godsakes - provide a desktop UI that doesn't zip and whirl like a carnival. Mac or Windows, I don't want animations. I want feedback as fast as my keystrokes.
- DROP backwards compatability already! Sheesh - MS in 2010 will still allow the freakin' 1987 3.1 apps to run. Comon! Who needs to bring all the skeletons in the closet when you move to a newly-built house? Win32 is a unbelievably ugly creature that needs to be buried. Carrying that says "keep developing on it" to your market. Stupid. Scared of losing market share? Then perhaps dropping XP is a bad idea! So support two OSes - two platforms. All this smearing is WHY YOU NEEDED TO REWRITE IN THE FIRST PLACE.
Get back to products, not platform.
When someone not interesting in FPS games is around and I have a machine up, I fire up Thief and let them wander around a bit. It's still a great way to introduce someone to the concept of creating a sense of place within a game. Darkness, large screen and powerful box helps deliver a good immersion. The fan missions are interesting, but after the 3rd in the series, the setting becomes a bit tiresome.
Rig your microwave oven to work with door off and you have something equally lethal (probably short range). The fact that we've not weaponized Xray, Microwave, etc technology (well, at least at this scale) is surprising.
And as with all weapons, there will be countermeasures. Since these are "specifically tuned" for nerve endings, one could build a suit that reflected at these frequencies and thus you have a crowd-wearing random dispersal reflector. Not unlike the use of gas in combat.
I'm wondering if skin numbing agents can fight the effects of this ray. Not that I'm volunteering.
Methinks that this will be considered a weapon that breaks Geneva Convention guidelines. But it'll probably take a war to decide that first, as history proves.
The market has already spoken. Listening to music free online has been done 1000's of times...with little profit. Folks want to own the music and move it where they like. Sitting at your computer is good for free tunes - but sadly, there's plenty of free online music already.
People want music that fits their lifestyle, which is mobile. Earbuds are ok, but for a real shared experience, they want to hear it in a car or over a friend's house without any trouble. line jacks and FM receivers are the norm for this. Copying a file works for the technical, but for the most part the market is (1) buying CDs or iPods and (2) making sure they play in cars. This scheme ain't gonna change that - hell it can't even leave the PC you downloaded it onto!
If they approve the OOXML spec with request to change it, or deny it standardization altogether, MS doesn't really need to care. This entire exercise is a bone thrown at the market. MS may be trying to placate the government entities and business partners that are tired of Office vOld.1 no longer working in their archives, but MS hasn't lost share of the desktop office productivity market because of their proprietary formats. Just like IE, they can shove OOXML down our throats anyway.
I hate to admit this simple fact, but even if MS apps saved their documents as bloated, mangled, insecure and limited capability formats, they'd have plenty of buyers. Like now.
Get ready for the onslaught of OOXML to ODF converter needs.
They don't use soap - they apply "like cures like" and wash dirty dishes in half-done compost.
Breaks?
Thrust reversal would reverse the engines or fanblades - not quite possible without a gear and clutch system and would take quite a bit of wear (and time) to activate.
Airbrakes akin to a reusable parachute only work related to surface area and strength. Not much room on these little things to hide a panel to slow from a 100mph smooth machine.
Most likely, the machine would try to brake by tilting backwards and splitting the downward thrust with backward. However, this means switching to hover mode quickly, not really possible without something to throw the engines hard and fast, which would add weight to the control motors. In all, its a balance of capabilities that makes the lightest resolution equal to "no brakes".
I believe Moller hired a few guys and did a a few week's worth of calculations and came up with a fitting design, modeled it and found out that certain behaviors were severely sacrificed - years ago. Since then, he's been forgetting to mention those concepts and simply built larger models. One crane and insurance policy later, you're on every "beyond the future" TV spot for years and years. Boring.
That crane in the background proves it's safety to me. 1 year away from "fly saucers everywhere" and the owner of the company won't take it out for a demo ride? S C A M
add in a few more degrees of freedom, dude. Like a sphere's worth of lights.
No failures yet! Money still rolling in. I wonder if the 90k comes with a personal crane. Flies 3m off the ground, in a small circle decided by the crane operator
Hint: Go to the fair and give them a dollar...You too can ride in the SKYCAR!
I'm not quite seeing the wings working at speeds under WayWayFast. Realize that the highest investigation of efficiency, maneuverability and speed has gone into combat aircraft, and I simply don't see the Moller Skycar turning in any direction in a small radius. Think of modern fighter jets, where they need control surfaces to pull themselves around turns. Moller needs to push with fans instead.
Even the V-22 Osprey had a long development time, but in the end did not deviate far from either heli or aiplane aerodynamics. Frankly, the fans offer the sexy promise of Harrier-like delicacy in maneuvering (which isn't so delicate), but they'll burn fuel at a rapid rate that demands an auto-landing sequence based on burn rate. So instead of a fireball we'll have slowly-lowering skycars almost out of fuel. Perhaps Moller is planing to create a fleet of fuel trucks to rescue all the hapless pilots that didn't pay attention to the gages!
Moller's been pushing this nonsense since his first snowmobile engine modifications in the 70's. He has been collecting investment money for decades promising VTOL vehicles to the masses. There's a whole sky full of problems with this. First, getting into the sky is a series of tests and checks and licenses here in the US because, essentially, many people don't really want every Tom Dick and Harry flying over our heads. The skies are a-crowded already, from a management point of view.
Second, while the technology may be sound and there were doubters to the helicopter and "aeroplane" alike, this design seems a bit more like rocketry than either of the prior two. Ducted or directed fan technology is hugely inefficient compared to wing technology. Coolness aside, there's something of an "experimental" quality of these machines that they cannot seem to shake. If I'm watching YouTube videos of the Moller employees coming and going in these contraptions, then perhaps my doubts will be alleviated, but until then, I keep picturing a screwball in an oversized frisbee darting over the park and eventually plowing into the trees.
The internet captures a lot of eyes, but that doesn't mean it's required for a business to stay viable. I hate to break it to ad pushers, but if you go out of business because nobody sees your blinkenflashen, you may not have a strong enough product. If folks read all your information but block your ads, then perhaps your *core readership* is much smaller than you realize. The rest of them, the ad-blockers, couldn't care less if you lived or died. I believe people wouldn't mind if most sites died out from overcrowding, bad design, stale information or simply boredom.
If folks never opened to the page of the telephone book that had their ads, were these people stealing? If they did, disliked the ad, and ripped that page out, was it stealing? If mean, those businesses PAID to be in that book, funding it's creation and delivery.
TFA assumes that the content is the value, but as we all know - a business need to actually *do something* besides display ads to be a real player. Even if that "something" is information munging, akin to
There are many examples of this on the web. Wikipedia is funded from donations, not ads. If wikipedia either began to charge views outright, or began to throttle, the public will either prop it up or let it die. So far, it's not dead AFAIK.
Hmm. Keep yer money. You're certainly not going to be getting any more music from them.