You mean that young brains, when confronted with a familiar, engaging audio-visual medium stimulated more of the brain than when they tested elderly subjects who had essentially no concept of the depth of information that was available in that medium.
I am shocked with this discovery. Shocked, I tell you. We should spend much more on this research - maybe with animals - to determine the extent of this effect. Do you suppose these guys produce a newsletter?
The right tends to prefer less regulation, and to let the markets work as efficiently as possible. Deregulation - generally led by the right and approved by both major political parties - occurs over the course of many years. This deregulation often leads to growth and an increase in prosperity, especially for those with substantial money to invest - i.e. those who don't work for a living. The right suspects that with the increase in private funds, fewer social programs are needed and they save money. This is, to an extent, true - as insurance companies do well with investments, their rates for covering the insured tends to drop (real insurance, not healthcare - which is more of a maintenance contract for most people)
At some point, the market finds dicier and dicier ways of making greater profits - trying to outdo the last quarter/year. This is, of course, demanded by those who invest, and is an inherent part of human nature. At some point, the wave hits it peak and crashes. The longer the overall deregulation cycle, the harder the crash.
What happens next? The left steps in and tries to "fix" things by adding back all the regulations which were removed, and new ones to patch the holes where "innovative" financial products have been created. No matter who you let clean up the mess, the economy is going to be lousy for a few years, and all the private money which helped out communities will dry up. The left sees that as an invitation to help, and the put in the social programs which weren't needed. Everybody remembers how bad it was when the left was in power, and how good it was when the right was in power, with little thought about the transition period.
What lesson can we learn? Neither side is doing their job properly. Because markets are not perfectly efficient, and humans are programmed to hit the big score, the government really does need to keep an even hand on regulation. Have you ever seen a regulation that caused the wholesale failure of an entire industry? We've just seen a deregulation which has done it. Step back and consider that regulation - the verb, not the noun - is essential to practically every natural process. It prevents overheating and out-of-control processes from becoming dangerous. It should also prevent stagnation and the loss of momentum. If the government could learn to regulate without smothering or ignoring flare-ups _everyone_ in society would benefit. This is not some socialist rhetoric; under good regulation, everyone has a chance to succeed, and the best will indeed outstrip the common. What it will do is reduce the negative impact that the few irresponsible have on society as a whole.
Actually, the "better" businesses in most fields know where the good people come from. For example, if you're in engineering (and it depends which field, obviously) you know that MIT and Berkley are flashy, but if you want guys who are sharp and ready to hit the ground running, you'll like a the likes of Georgia Tech, Cal Poly SLO, Virginia Tech, and Penn State. They're going to be the ones who "got it" in college and had some real hands on work, and are ready to settle doen and get shit done. No asking "when's the coffee break" and other silly stuff I've seen pulled by grad from "prestigious" but not technically-centered schools. Not to say that there aren't losers from those schools, nor that there aren't good students from other schools, but you've got to focus your recruiting where you can get the best, most reliable selection when you're in need of solid talent.
If you can go both positive and negative, and in a subtle way, you might see this applied to still photos (or perhaps video eventually) of the various candidates - a little bump up for yours, a little bump down for theirs. It already happens; this would just push the envelope a little farther. Most people will never see the candidates up close an personal, so it's likely to go mostly unnoticed if done well.
Once you get your first job, where you graduated from (name recognition) is less important than the intelligence of the student and what you're really done. Don't get me wrong, you should probably consider one of the "top 20" in your field, but you're just as likely to get a good (or better) answer from people in your future industry than from a magazine. There are exceptions to the rule, of course, but unless you happen to be in one of the few snobby professions it doesn't matter. Finding a good "fit" for college is almost as important as the curriculum itself.
Now, if you're going on to do something great (and almost all of you can put your hands down - you either weren't born with the brain or the parents; I'm included in that class, too, fwiw) you should consider finding the top graduate program in your field. Not one of the top, THE top, as judged by your peers. Then school will matter, because when you get near the top, snobbery is almost everything. Your parents, your intellegence, your charisma, and your degree for the "three of four" ticket to stardom. You can need at least three and get to the top. Actually, I think you can only have three - if you get all four your competition will be jealous and cut you down like a dog.
Actually, they wanted to lynch Rep. Boucher (who happens to be from my district) for adding back the fair use and other exceptions. They were hoping for a wholesale runaround of that part of previous legal rulings. And, of course, it doesn't apply to mobile phone contracts; it's the non-contractual nature of commercial sales of media products (computer software if you presume EULAs are illegal, audiovisual recordings) that matters.
Re:Within a single device...
on
DMCA Exemption Time
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
No, the law is very specific in preserving existing fair use rights. What it prevents is anyone providing the means for circumvention to exercise those rights. So if you are allowed, under fair use, to format shift then you are allowed to do so for a DRM encrypted file as well. The only challenge is that it is illegal for anyone to sell software to crack the encryption. Note that I didn't say that it was illegal to buy cracking software - only to sell it. It's like telling you that you can drink as much as you want, but it is illegal for anyone to give or sell you anything to drink. You can't even pay someone to dig a well for you, or sell you a pump - you have to do it yourself, or find someone who is outside of US jurisdiction to do it.
No, that requires you have a friend who will help you. Sure, it means OSS can be used, but many (most?) people would rather spend the money and get a commercial piece of software where they can send tech support questions. Forums don't count. Of course, I'm thinking specifically of Slysoft here, which does a pretty good job of keeping up with the various methods - something that DVDdecrypter can no longer do.
Fix the public trade problem and then individuals can ignore the rest of the law - fair use is both available and practical.
So is the patent more like the windows "start" menu, which collects icons for frequently used programs, the "tray" which collects icons for frequently used programs which are loaded into memory, or the "quicklaunch" bar (which I know nothing about since I use the start menu for such things)?
Hey, I loved my TiVos too (and prefer them to the DirecTV injustice I have to endure).
Seriously, though, the reason TiVo did it first is because back when they did it, 10GB of hard drive space was both huge and expensive. They happened to implement these features _on a hard drive_ first. VCRs could do everything a TiVo could do except during live TV. It's not for lack of want or idea, but the simple fact that they area sequential access medium. One might say that the 7 second tape delay used in radio stations was a precursor to just about anything TiVo did.
They may, indeed, have unique items in their patent portfolio, but I'm not sure FF, pause, and Rew "on a hard drive" makes it to the level of patent protection.
Public trade in circumvention devices or software are allowed for the personal, non-redistributable use of the purchaser of a consumer product including, but not limited to, format shifting, provided that the reproduction already falls under the fair use provisions of the DMCA.
It doesn't change the letter of the DMCA exemptions, except to make the exemptions available to all citizens - not just those who can crack and code.
Re:Within a single device...
on
DMCA Exemption Time
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
It already exists. The problem is that it's illegal to sell, trade, or give away any program or information which helps the end user circumvent the protection for any purpose, including fair use. It's like making guns legal, but outlawing the manufacture and publication of instructions on how to make guns, ammunition, and propellants.
Politics aside, Michael Griffin has been in the space business a long time and is a very intelligent person. He also happens to be borderline rabid on Mars. I took a class on space guidance and navigation (basically a graduate level orbital mechanics class) and our part of our final exam was a Mars mission flight. I was long gone from NASA before he took over, so he could be an administrative nightmare, but he does know his stuff.
As for the Bush promise - yeah, but anyone who understood what was necessary knew he was blowing smoke. I put the mars mission at about $2T, based on previous high profile projects; I might have underestimated by a hair, but I don't think I'm too far off. And, of course, you should never trust any project for which the substantial portion of money will be spent _after_ the politician is certain to be out of office.
Would that be anything like getting all of the 10,000 (almost exclusively conservative) Liberty University (liberty.edu) students to register to vote and cancelling classes on election day. Convenient that Virginia happens to be a battleground state for the first time in many elections, and recent statewide offices have been decided by a few thousand votes.
There's no magic - you "get out the vote" with people who are sympathetic to your cause. You can promise the homeless better shelters and care, you can promise the high-net-worth constituents fewer taxes, you can promise the zealots you'll codify their beliefs into law. Then again, if we had 100% voter turnout, none of this would matter.
It's been bouncing around in my head now for a month, and reading that just made the light turn on. She sounds a lot like Johnny Depp's portrayal of Willy Wonka in the 2005 remake of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Scary. Now all we need is the 7up guy (Geoffrey Holder) doing voice over in the political ads.
This sounds good, but it's definitely going to be a limited usage technology. Putting in backhauls to a remote telco might be a real option. The biggest concerns are:
1. this seems to be line of sight only, so no broadcasting HDTV from a closet to the TV 2. point to point means backhaul only, distribution would still be by copper/fiber/wifi 3. mm waves are subject to attenuation by atmospherics, so "rain fade" might be a stumbling block 4. line of sight limits maximum distance between receiver/transmitters due to earth curvature
All in all it's a great leap to get higher bit density over wireless, but this is clearly a commercial-level component...us peons won't get to use it.
Depends. In the UK, the VAT is 17.5%. That's a pretty big hurdle, and they have a whole slew of other taxes as well. The other, admittedly speculative, problem I have is that it is a sales tax, and no matter how many times they say it will replace the income tax I don't believe it. The tax will creep up. In FL, don't you also have an intangable assets tax? I always presumed that was the flip side of the income tax - too many residents with assets but no earned income (that whole "God's waiting room" thing).
I do agree that its hard to hide from a sales tax.
He didn't call it (which would presume he anticipated a future event), he observed it. He is correct. The problem isn't how to lower our corporate taxes, necessarily, but to more evenly spread the taxes amongst those benefiting from the US system and to guarantee that those who should be paying taxes do.
Simply reducing them for reductions sake won't work. Unless the government happens to stop spending money, in which case you can lower them right down to what we spend.
Hell, I'd like to see congress send a bill to every household in the US for $2000 per person for the Iraq war and $3000 per person for the bailout. For my family that's be $15,000. But it might just shock some folks into how much the congress is spending above and beyond the "normal" budget.
The fair tax penalizes people for spending money. That is, without a doubt, a bad thing for the economy as a whole.
I'd prefer a gross receipts tax on every TIN (that's taxpayer identification number, aka SSN for individuals and TIN for corps). A small percentage (3-4%) of every dollar you receive goes to the government. I'm even okay with a 2087xFMW (annual min wage salary) against any receipts. It sounds like the fair tax, but it's essentially a "fee" for all transactions in the US. Think of them as real estate agents...just cheaper. Spending costs you "nothing" extra. Multi-level corporate schemes cost the tax rate x the number of layered corporations. Yes, it will "double tax" S-corps. Big deal - you want the protection of a corporation - a Government institution - you pay the fee. I happen to get all my income from an S corp, so I would be affected. Sole Propriatorship or Partnership avoids that tax, and it makes all the officers liable for any screwups they do. That can hardly be seen as a bad thing. It also rewards short distributor chains (or, rather, punishes large chains) so items made an sold locally directly from the source have the lowest tax (i.e. it's "green"...but don't tell anyone).
I heartily agree. The only good reason I can see for swap is gone - expensive memory. The first PC I bought out of college memory cost me $40/MB and I bought 8MB so I could run NT. With memory costs so low, there's practically no excuse for not getting enough memory to run the system without requiring swapping by the OS. When I got my current laptop (which is almost 4 years old), I put in 2GB of memory so that I could run without a swapfile. With any data intensive operation, unless you happen to be swapping out unused processes (which is likely 10% of your base memory), any desktop/workstation machine will become useless when having to use HDD space as memory.
Heck, I can't even imagine editing photos (save maybe a hassleblad) that would actually take up enough space to need more than 4GB of RAM. Even at 16bits and 24MP, you can hold 8 copies of the photo in memory with 75% left to run other things. Even in CAD, if you're producing files which are larger than a Gig, you're probably one of the 0.1% of hard-core CAD professionals or you're being too complicated with your model.
Maybe linux isn't as graceful, but windows will tell you when you're near the limits of memory (it's happened to me once with a runaway photoshop process while I had several cad files and a 100+ page architectural PDF open in the background). Take that as a suggestion to go clean out all the wasted processes that are running, or close down some of the redundant files you've got open. Or go buy more memory.
Slashdot Mirror
You mean that young brains, when confronted with a familiar, engaging audio-visual medium stimulated more of the brain than when they tested elderly subjects who had essentially no concept of the depth of information that was available in that medium.
I am shocked with this discovery. Shocked, I tell you. We should spend much more on this research - maybe with animals - to determine the extent of this effect. Do you suppose these guys produce a newsletter?
Best /. post in a long time. And without a car analogy. Very good, indeed. Shame I blew my last mod point on a troll this morning.
Does that mean the Slashdot is more responsible than Verizon?
Because XP MCE is an abandoned child, and if you want specific functionality in Windows on a media center you need a windows box.
The right tends to prefer less regulation, and to let the markets work as efficiently as possible. Deregulation - generally led by the right and approved by both major political parties - occurs over the course of many years. This deregulation often leads to growth and an increase in prosperity, especially for those with substantial money to invest - i.e. those who don't work for a living. The right suspects that with the increase in private funds, fewer social programs are needed and they save money. This is, to an extent, true - as insurance companies do well with investments, their rates for covering the insured tends to drop (real insurance, not healthcare - which is more of a maintenance contract for most people)
At some point, the market finds dicier and dicier ways of making greater profits - trying to outdo the last quarter/year. This is, of course, demanded by those who invest, and is an inherent part of human nature. At some point, the wave hits it peak and crashes. The longer the overall deregulation cycle, the harder the crash.
What happens next? The left steps in and tries to "fix" things by adding back all the regulations which were removed, and new ones to patch the holes where "innovative" financial products have been created. No matter who you let clean up the mess, the economy is going to be lousy for a few years, and all the private money which helped out communities will dry up. The left sees that as an invitation to help, and the put in the social programs which weren't needed. Everybody remembers how bad it was when the left was in power, and how good it was when the right was in power, with little thought about the transition period.
What lesson can we learn? Neither side is doing their job properly. Because markets are not perfectly efficient, and humans are programmed to hit the big score, the government really does need to keep an even hand on regulation. Have you ever seen a regulation that caused the wholesale failure of an entire industry? We've just seen a deregulation which has done it. Step back and consider that regulation - the verb, not the noun - is essential to practically every natural process. It prevents overheating and out-of-control processes from becoming dangerous. It should also prevent stagnation and the loss of momentum. If the government could learn to regulate without smothering or ignoring flare-ups _everyone_ in society would benefit. This is not some socialist rhetoric; under good regulation, everyone has a chance to succeed, and the best will indeed outstrip the common. What it will do is reduce the negative impact that the few irresponsible have on society as a whole.
We're simultaneously so amazing, and yet so obtuse.
I see you've been following the US election cycle closely.
Actually, the "better" businesses in most fields know where the good people come from. For example, if you're in engineering (and it depends which field, obviously) you know that MIT and Berkley are flashy, but if you want guys who are sharp and ready to hit the ground running, you'll like a the likes of Georgia Tech, Cal Poly SLO, Virginia Tech, and Penn State. They're going to be the ones who "got it" in college and had some real hands on work, and are ready to settle doen and get shit done. No asking "when's the coffee break" and other silly stuff I've seen pulled by grad from "prestigious" but not technically-centered schools. Not to say that there aren't losers from those schools, nor that there aren't good students from other schools, but you've got to focus your recruiting where you can get the best, most reliable selection when you're in need of solid talent.
If you can go both positive and negative, and in a subtle way, you might see this applied to still photos (or perhaps video eventually) of the various candidates - a little bump up for yours, a little bump down for theirs. It already happens; this would just push the envelope a little farther. Most people will never see the candidates up close an personal, so it's likely to go mostly unnoticed if done well.
Once you get your first job, where you graduated from (name recognition) is less important than the intelligence of the student and what you're really done. Don't get me wrong, you should probably consider one of the "top 20" in your field, but you're just as likely to get a good (or better) answer from people in your future industry than from a magazine. There are exceptions to the rule, of course, but unless you happen to be in one of the few snobby professions it doesn't matter. Finding a good "fit" for college is almost as important as the curriculum itself.
Now, if you're going on to do something great (and almost all of you can put your hands down - you either weren't born with the brain or the parents; I'm included in that class, too, fwiw) you should consider finding the top graduate program in your field. Not one of the top, THE top, as judged by your peers. Then school will matter, because when you get near the top, snobbery is almost everything. Your parents, your intellegence, your charisma, and your degree for the "three of four" ticket to stardom. You can need at least three and get to the top. Actually, I think you can only have three - if you get all four your competition will be jealous and cut you down like a dog.
Actually, they wanted to lynch Rep. Boucher (who happens to be from my district) for adding back the fair use and other exceptions. They were hoping for a wholesale runaround of that part of previous legal rulings. And, of course, it doesn't apply to mobile phone contracts; it's the non-contractual nature of commercial sales of media products (computer software if you presume EULAs are illegal, audiovisual recordings) that matters.
No, the law is very specific in preserving existing fair use rights. What it prevents is anyone providing the means for circumvention to exercise those rights. So if you are allowed, under fair use, to format shift then you are allowed to do so for a DRM encrypted file as well. The only challenge is that it is illegal for anyone to sell software to crack the encryption. Note that I didn't say that it was illegal to buy cracking software - only to sell it. It's like telling you that you can drink as much as you want, but it is illegal for anyone to give or sell you anything to drink. You can't even pay someone to dig a well for you, or sell you a pump - you have to do it yourself, or find someone who is outside of US jurisdiction to do it.
No, that requires you have a friend who will help you. Sure, it means OSS can be used, but many (most?) people would rather spend the money and get a commercial piece of software where they can send tech support questions. Forums don't count. Of course, I'm thinking specifically of Slysoft here, which does a pretty good job of keeping up with the various methods - something that DVDdecrypter can no longer do.
Fix the public trade problem and then individuals can ignore the rest of the law - fair use is both available and practical.
So is the patent more like the windows "start" menu, which collects icons for frequently used programs, the "tray" which collects icons for frequently used programs which are loaded into memory, or the "quicklaunch" bar (which I know nothing about since I use the start menu for such things)?
Hey, I loved my TiVos too (and prefer them to the DirecTV injustice I have to endure).
Seriously, though, the reason TiVo did it first is because back when they did it, 10GB of hard drive space was both huge and expensive. They happened to implement these features _on a hard drive_ first. VCRs could do everything a TiVo could do except during live TV. It's not for lack of want or idea, but the simple fact that they area sequential access medium. One might say that the 7 second tape delay used in radio stations was a precursor to just about anything TiVo did.
They may, indeed, have unique items in their patent portfolio, but I'm not sure FF, pause, and Rew "on a hard drive" makes it to the level of patent protection.
Public trade in circumvention devices or software are allowed for the personal, non-redistributable use of the purchaser of a consumer product including, but not limited to, format shifting, provided that the reproduction already falls under the fair use provisions of the DMCA.
It doesn't change the letter of the DMCA exemptions, except to make the exemptions available to all citizens - not just those who can crack and code.
It already exists. The problem is that it's illegal to sell, trade, or give away any program or information which helps the end user circumvent the protection for any purpose, including fair use. It's like making guns legal, but outlawing the manufacture and publication of instructions on how to make guns, ammunition, and propellants.
Politics aside, Michael Griffin has been in the space business a long time and is a very intelligent person. He also happens to be borderline rabid on Mars. I took a class on space guidance and navigation (basically a graduate level orbital mechanics class) and our part of our final exam was a Mars mission flight. I was long gone from NASA before he took over, so he could be an administrative nightmare, but he does know his stuff.
As for the Bush promise - yeah, but anyone who understood what was necessary knew he was blowing smoke. I put the mars mission at about $2T, based on previous high profile projects; I might have underestimated by a hair, but I don't think I'm too far off. And, of course, you should never trust any project for which the substantial portion of money will be spent _after_ the politician is certain to be out of office.
Would that be anything like getting all of the 10,000 (almost exclusively conservative) Liberty University (liberty.edu) students to register to vote and cancelling classes on election day. Convenient that Virginia happens to be a battleground state for the first time in many elections, and recent statewide offices have been decided by a few thousand votes.
There's no magic - you "get out the vote" with people who are sympathetic to your cause. You can promise the homeless better shelters and care, you can promise the high-net-worth constituents fewer taxes, you can promise the zealots you'll codify their beliefs into law. Then again, if we had 100% voter turnout, none of this would matter.
It's been bouncing around in my head now for a month, and reading that just made the light turn on. She sounds a lot like Johnny Depp's portrayal of Willy Wonka in the 2005 remake of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Scary. Now all we need is the 7up guy (Geoffrey Holder) doing voice over in the political ads.
This sounds good, but it's definitely going to be a limited usage technology. Putting in backhauls to a remote telco might be a real option. The biggest concerns are:
1. this seems to be line of sight only, so no broadcasting HDTV from a closet to the TV
2. point to point means backhaul only, distribution would still be by copper/fiber/wifi
3. mm waves are subject to attenuation by atmospherics, so "rain fade" might be a stumbling block
4. line of sight limits maximum distance between receiver/transmitters due to earth curvature
All in all it's a great leap to get higher bit density over wireless, but this is clearly a commercial-level component...us peons won't get to use it.
Depends. In the UK, the VAT is 17.5%. That's a pretty big hurdle, and they have a whole slew of other taxes as well. The other, admittedly speculative, problem I have is that it is a sales tax, and no matter how many times they say it will replace the income tax I don't believe it. The tax will creep up. In FL, don't you also have an intangable assets tax? I always presumed that was the flip side of the income tax - too many residents with assets but no earned income (that whole "God's waiting room" thing).
I do agree that its hard to hide from a sales tax.
He didn't call it (which would presume he anticipated a future event), he observed it. He is correct. The problem isn't how to lower our corporate taxes, necessarily, but to more evenly spread the taxes amongst those benefiting from the US system and to guarantee that those who should be paying taxes do.
Simply reducing them for reductions sake won't work. Unless the government happens to stop spending money, in which case you can lower them right down to what we spend.
Hell, I'd like to see congress send a bill to every household in the US for $2000 per person for the Iraq war and $3000 per person for the bailout. For my family that's be $15,000. But it might just shock some folks into how much the congress is spending above and beyond the "normal" budget.
The fair tax penalizes people for spending money. That is, without a doubt, a bad thing for the economy as a whole.
I'd prefer a gross receipts tax on every TIN (that's taxpayer identification number, aka SSN for individuals and TIN for corps). A small percentage (3-4%) of every dollar you receive goes to the government. I'm even okay with a 2087xFMW (annual min wage salary) against any receipts. It sounds like the fair tax, but it's essentially a "fee" for all transactions in the US. Think of them as real estate agents...just cheaper. Spending costs you "nothing" extra. Multi-level corporate schemes cost the tax rate x the number of layered corporations. Yes, it will "double tax" S-corps. Big deal - you want the protection of a corporation - a Government institution - you pay the fee. I happen to get all my income from an S corp, so I would be affected. Sole Propriatorship or Partnership avoids that tax, and it makes all the officers liable for any screwups they do. That can hardly be seen as a bad thing. It also rewards short distributor chains (or, rather, punishes large chains) so items made an sold locally directly from the source have the lowest tax (i.e. it's "green"...but don't tell anyone).
I'm truly sorry, but you know somebody had to say it.
I heartily agree. The only good reason I can see for swap is gone - expensive memory. The first PC I bought out of college memory cost me $40/MB and I bought 8MB so I could run NT. With memory costs so low, there's practically no excuse for not getting enough memory to run the system without requiring swapping by the OS. When I got my current laptop (which is almost 4 years old), I put in 2GB of memory so that I could run without a swapfile. With any data intensive operation, unless you happen to be swapping out unused processes (which is likely 10% of your base memory), any desktop/workstation machine will become useless when having to use HDD space as memory.
Heck, I can't even imagine editing photos (save maybe a hassleblad) that would actually take up enough space to need more than 4GB of RAM. Even at 16bits and 24MP, you can hold 8 copies of the photo in memory with 75% left to run other things. Even in CAD, if you're producing files which are larger than a Gig, you're probably one of the 0.1% of hard-core CAD professionals or you're being too complicated with your model.
Maybe linux isn't as graceful, but windows will tell you when you're near the limits of memory (it's happened to me once with a runaway photoshop process while I had several cad files and a 100+ page architectural PDF open in the background). Take that as a suggestion to go clean out all the wasted processes that are running, or close down some of the redundant files you've got open. Or go buy more memory.