The more publicity it gets, the worse the problem is going to become. For the RIAA to sue Napster is like a grieving family suing Ferrari just because they made a car that can exceed the speed limit, and someone killed themselves going very fast and lost control. If thats hard to understand, by design, its not napster's problem the people who utilize their program have pirated MP3 music. Just because you *can* do something, doesn't mean that you *should* do something (like going 190 MPH in a ferrari) This suit is akin to the tobacco lawsuits that have been rewarding billions of dollars to the families of sick or dead smokers. Personal responsibility is dead. If a company manufactures a product (i.e. cigarettes) that someone can potentially do damage (i.e. contract lung cancer) then the company is deemed responsible for causing the problem. Judges and juries nowadays don't seem to think the end-user has much to do with anything. Just find the companies at fault for marketing a potentially harmful product, and ream them in the ass. Blah.
you little commie Anonymous Coward-i dont want people to see what my real name is so they wont make fun of me because I have no valid points to back my arguments up Biotch!
Open source does NOT facilitate criminals. Just because it decentralizes control (or, rather, eliminates control) over a certain product does not mean that it's automatically going to facilitate illegal activity.
It's true, a program with decentralized servers, such as Napster, definitely makes trading MP3's easier. If they were all located on a central server, it wouldn't have gotten past infancy before the RIAA had lawyers all over their asses. Record company executives and their lawyers aren't getting the big picture, and neither are you. I have a cable internet connection, a cd-burner, and a rather large collection of MP3's. Guess what? I still buy traditional, purchased-from-Tower CD's. Like 2 a week. Most of the stuff I buy is music I never would have heard before if it weren't for the evils of pirated music. I live in the middle of bumf0cked Egypt, and there's no way I would have heard most of the music I like to listen to had it not been for getting music off the net.
Wow man, I just ripped into you. I feel so much better for getting that out of my system.
Yes, i suppose it could be done, filling power lines with liquid nitrogen to create a superconductive power line, however, the line has to be made of a special metal blend, and by the time the electricity gets to the end-user, it will wind up costing 2-5x more than it did using standard transmission techniques.
Nope, sorry, there was no magic carburetor developed. Even if the guy were paid off by oil companies to shut up, something that could be that beneficial to the public couldnt be kept a secret that long.
As I see things now, hydrogen is probably our most promising replacement for the standard gasoline ICE. Think about it. Even if manufacturers were able to come up with an affordable electric car that had a range of 250-400 miles between rechargings, the energy to create the electricity STILL has to come from somewhere (i.e. oil burning elec. plants, coal-fired plants, natural gas, whatever nuclear plants are left...forget wind or solar, those are still VERY expensive and can't provide a large amount of power to a large amount of people) well, the hydrogen idea is simple. 2H2 + O2 = 2H2O. We're left with pure water as our only by-product. The thing is, how do we get a portable source of hydrogen..Large tanks of pure compressed hydrogen not only are very expensive, wont last very long, and if they would get ruptured in an accident, would cause your car to explode like the Hindenburg. Not pretty. The best idea I've seen so far is from Powerball Technologies, which uses a solid ball of sodium hydride, covered in a thin polyethylene shield. A device installed in the automobile slices the ball in half, and when the NaH is dropped in water creates the products NaOH + H2. The only problem with this is the large amount of sodium hydroxide, which can be collected at "powerball stations" and reformed into NaH and O2. Here's the link: http://www.powerball.net/ I think its a darn good idea. Let me know.
Thats absurd. While the total population of Europe has approximately 1 billion people, the United States (with population of approximately 250 million) has roughly the same number of automobiles. If you look at the total number of miles driven, the US *FAR* exceeds the european total. So, what I'm saying is, if the European governments have to impose hundreds-of-percent taxes upon gasoline, it's actually that astronomical number of miles that we Americans drive that keeps that figure in check, because the US doesn't have to tax as much to collect a reasonable amount of funding for public road maintenance.
while that may be true, if you figure we've used up anywhere between 10-75% of the world's crude oil supply in the last 100 years, your astute observation becomes quite worthless. Sure, in another 300 million years, the world will be brimming with oil again. Crude oil is made up of just about any organic matter that's been decomposed under pressure, so, just think, in another few million years, the very same atoms that make you up today might be spit into the engine of some futuristic SUV.
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Yea bitch! that your original?
The more publicity it gets, the worse the problem is going to become. For the RIAA to sue Napster is like a grieving family suing Ferrari just because they made a car that can exceed the speed limit, and someone killed themselves going very fast and lost control. If thats hard to understand, by design, its not napster's problem the people who utilize their program have pirated MP3 music. Just because you *can* do something, doesn't mean that you *should* do something (like going 190 MPH in a ferrari) This suit is akin to the tobacco lawsuits that have been rewarding billions of dollars to the families of sick or dead smokers. Personal responsibility is dead. If a company manufactures a product (i.e. cigarettes) that someone can potentially do damage (i.e. contract lung cancer) then the company is deemed responsible for causing the problem. Judges and juries nowadays don't seem to think the end-user has much to do with anything. Just find the companies at fault for marketing a potentially harmful product, and ream them in the ass. Blah.
well....I dont know if the bank will approve me for a loan THAT big...
you little commie Anonymous Coward-i dont want people to see what my real name is so they wont make fun of me because I have no valid points to back my arguments up Biotch!
Open source does NOT facilitate criminals. Just because it decentralizes control (or, rather, eliminates control) over a certain product does not mean that it's automatically going to facilitate illegal activity.
It's true, a program with decentralized servers, such as Napster, definitely makes trading MP3's easier. If they were all located on a central server, it wouldn't have gotten past infancy before the RIAA had lawyers all over their asses. Record company executives and their lawyers aren't getting the big picture, and neither are you. I have a cable internet connection, a cd-burner, and a rather large collection of MP3's. Guess what? I still buy traditional, purchased-from-Tower CD's. Like 2 a week. Most of the stuff I buy is music I never would have heard before if it weren't for the evils of pirated music. I live in the middle of bumf0cked Egypt, and there's no way I would have heard most of the music I like to listen to had it not been for getting music off the net.
Wow man, I just ripped into you. I feel so much better for getting that out of my system.
Yes, i suppose it could be done, filling power lines with liquid nitrogen to create a superconductive power line, however, the line has to be made of a special metal blend, and by the time the electricity gets to the end-user, it will wind up costing 2-5x more than it did using standard transmission techniques.
Nope, sorry, there was no magic carburetor developed. Even if the guy were paid off by oil companies to shut up, something that could be that beneficial to the public couldnt be kept a secret that long.
As I see things now, hydrogen is probably our most promising replacement for the standard gasoline ICE. Think about it. Even if manufacturers were able to come up with an affordable electric car that had a range of 250-400 miles between rechargings, the energy to create the electricity STILL has to come from somewhere (i.e. oil burning elec. plants, coal-fired plants, natural gas, whatever nuclear plants are left...forget wind or solar, those are still VERY expensive and can't provide a large amount of power to a large amount of people) well, the hydrogen idea is simple. 2H2 + O2 = 2H2O. We're left with pure water as our only by-product. The thing is, how do we get a portable source of hydrogen..Large tanks of pure compressed hydrogen not only are very expensive, wont last very long, and if they would get ruptured in an accident, would cause your car to explode like the Hindenburg. Not pretty. The best idea I've seen so far is from Powerball Technologies, which uses a solid ball of sodium hydride, covered in a thin polyethylene shield. A device installed in the automobile slices the ball in half, and when the NaH is dropped in water creates the products NaOH + H2. The only problem with this is the large amount of sodium hydroxide, which can be collected at "powerball stations" and reformed into NaH and O2. Here's the link: http://www.powerball.net/ I think its a darn good idea. Let me know.
Thats absurd. While the total population of Europe has approximately 1 billion people, the United States (with population of approximately 250 million) has roughly the same number of automobiles. If you look at the total number of miles driven, the US *FAR* exceeds the european total. So, what I'm saying is, if the European governments have to impose hundreds-of-percent taxes upon gasoline, it's actually that astronomical number of miles that we Americans drive that keeps that figure in check, because the US doesn't have to tax as much to collect a reasonable amount of funding for public road maintenance.
while that may be true, if you figure we've used up anywhere between 10-75% of the world's crude oil supply in the last 100 years, your astute observation becomes quite worthless. Sure, in another 300 million years, the world will be brimming with oil again. Crude oil is made up of just about any organic matter that's been decomposed under pressure, so, just think, in another few million years, the very same atoms that make you up today might be spit into the engine of some futuristic SUV.