Ethanol is viable, and it's already a reality here at Brazil. My car can run on both ethanol and gasoline, but since Ethanol is about 30% CHEAPER I almost never put gasoline on it.
And since E85 gas gets about 30% less MPG than gasoline, the price per mile is about the same. Since straight ethenol is even lower MPG, your cost per mile may be slightly more for ethenol than gasoline. Run a tank of each and calculate the cost per mile instead of the cost per gallon/liter and post the results.
In low light it is going to be difficult to get a high-quality images without extra light (obvious you are monitoring them) or a really, really expensive camera which is vulnerable to spray-painting or vandalism itself.
Built in IR is not good for color. A motion yard light is the norm and is often not thought of in conjuction with a security camera. A well lit area and cameras is an area often avoided, but a motion light is often ignored in backyards. Get good color photos. Color logos on clothing and other identification is good to get. Keep the IR in addition as many motion sensors have reachable bulbs that are often removed. By then you have photos of the perp, but you still need evidence of the crime after the light is out.
Much of the limitation on the speed and size of the newer generation of chips is related to the wavelength of light in the lithography process. The race is to use shorter and shorter wavelengths to make smaller and smaller transistors. If you can put this energy into a space 20 times smaller than the wavelength, then Moore's law lives on. Wow, think of the next generation of lithography and chip manufacturing. Anybody converted the tech from microwave to short wavelength light yet? If not, get busy. There is a patent for the first to demonstrate it in lithography.
the summary didn't say if this was a MS SQL or My SQL attack. Picking on the MS server is the sub story. The attack was a SQL exploit. The data in the headline was pretty thin. It almost looks like a MS IIS server bash attempt instead of a story about an SQL exploit. How about better reporting?
Reading to the bottom of the article is the important stuff that should have been at the top.
"UPDATE: We've been receiving some questions on the platform and operating systems affected by this attack. So far we've only seen websites using Microsoft IIS webserver and Microsoft SQL Server being hit. "
It is MS SQL on IIS server that is the attack.
so to answer your question "does it run on Linux?"; the answer is it runs on Microsoft IIS server and Microsoft SQL Server.
No, really. It's OLD news, really old news... really..
If you are into Christianity, they already knew about this, but it had something to do with a guy named Noah and his family. Other items of interest is most world religions have some story of a great flood. This drought, is this before or after the great flood?
"In 1998, William Ryan and Walter Pitman, geologists from Columbia University, published evidence that a massive flood through the Bosporus occurred about 5600 BC" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Sea_deluge_theory
so I'm not sure what you were implying by the context you posted this in.
Point well taken. I was using the context that the in-tank fuel pump in my car is replaceable, but not everyone has the tools so I would probably hire someone to do it who has the tools and skill.
Well, if you consider that "user replaceable" then so is the iPod's battery.
I didn't say user replaceable. I said replaceable. It is replaceable by anyone with the soldering skills. I even followed with a link to replacement parts.
If you don't solder, you may be able to find someone who can.
Yes, and as such those who can't afford the drugs may die.
And if nobody paid for the R & D, it is unlikely anyone will research, manufacture, get FDA approval, and market the drug. Then nobody can get it, even those who would pay for it. Please balance your observation. Scalping the market is a problem, and I recognize that. Much of it is for a war chest for the class action lawsuits that hit many new drugs on the market.
Sometimes drugs are prescribed when they are not needed. A correction is needed, but drugs are not. For example;
I have a friend who had chest pains. Went to the hospital and found it wasn't a heart attack, but was due to a potassium shortage. Pills were prescribed. Instead of picking up the prescription, we went to the supermarket and picked up potassium chloride and put it on a batch of popcorn. Saved a bundle and fixed the problem.
Bill gates may disagree with the GPL. I disagree with any software license that prohibits installation on both my desktop, laptop, wife's desktop, and laptop. In the free market, guess which one I install on everything. It's the one where the license permits me to use the software anywhere.
Nothing wrong with greedy. Just, when you're competing with 'free' you better bring a lot to the table.
I can't even conceive of a threat to national security larger than this!
It's a good thing you can't see the R & D planss on my private Facebook page. They are secure there and only my close circle of engineers can view it to help develop the virus and it's vaccine.
Lucky you. The mommyboard battery on the older Compaq Deskpro I have at home is spot-welded in place.:-(
Most of those are not spot welded in place. After working in a repair shop for many years, I noticed it was common for many of the coin cells to have spot welded terminals which are then simply soldered onto the PCB. A soldering iron replaces these with ease if you have any soldering skill. Often a standard coin cell socket will go in it's place. Leaving out the socket is a cost cutting move an is seen only on the lowest quality boards made. The battery is replaceable, but not by breaking off it's terminals. Congratulations on getting one of these cheap motherboards. Many of these expect a battery life of about 5 years which is past warranty.
Now let me run, because being this slashdot, I see the hordes of nerds come with the torches and pitchforks =oP.
Not everyone here is in attack mode but are part of a community to promote and improve the product. I meant to put this in my other response but hit send too soon. It's easier to attract with honey than with sour. Promoting FOSS anytime.
Oh, if you have a problem, post a request for help instead of a criticism. The hordes of nerds still come running, but with suggestions instead of pitchforks unlike closed source software problems.
Try criticizing the MS product license which permits installation on only one of your PC's instead of Open Office's GPL license which permits installation on all your PC's. The hordes defending the MS license with pitchforks will appear instead of the nerds who will help. One can be fixed, the other can't.
Not only that, but I also would love to have decent wireless support with wep and wpa configuration which is easy to use and *gasp* actually works.
It's actually quite easy. If the OS doesn't support it yet, use hardware that does. Let me explain how easy it is.
Pick up any modern access point that supports client mode. Configure it as a client using any secure protocol you wish. Plug the CAT 5 cable into your laptop NIC. Surf. In testing this, I even tried it with a Windows 95 laptop which has no USB (not supported under Windows 95) and a 16 bit cardbus adapter. The laptop has no built in NIC. Using a NE2000 compatible 16 bit PCMCIA card, I was able to connect to a WPA router with Windows 95. It also works with Linux.
Many manufactures are unwilling to release driver specs because the power, frequency and other paramaters are regulated by the FCC or other regulations. 3rd party software may put the device into illegal operation, for example using settings for Japan while in the USA would be illegal and only limited by the version of the driver shipped to the American market.
Oh, and decent audio, open source should really make up its mind and create a good/stable/usable audio stack. Between oss/alsa/pulse/artsd/esd.. you can not make one that works.
Correction.. Try the one that does work great. Look up Ubuntu Studio. I use it for a low latency multi-track recorder instead of a high latency Windows version.
As always, use proper sound hardware. On the cheap (under $50), the Behringer UAC series is plug and play for a reasonable quality USB sound interface. SB anything has serious hardware limitations if you are trying for recording at various bitrates and resolutions. Read the forums. before buying audio hardware. Firewire is also not a good linux choice at this time.
Audacity with a good mixer board and the USB adapter gives CD or DAT quality recordings. We use it for demo and practice CDs. Windows requires long buffers so playback while recording is a problem. Ubuntu Studio uses low latency so layered multi-track recording is easy. Record the rhythm track, lay down the lead guitar track, then the keyboard track and bass guitar, and finish with the lead vocal. Now it's ready for the post production mix and adding the wet tracks with reverb, chorus, etc.
They don't hear or don't care about DRM, about the RIAA, or about the loudness war.
True, these are the people voting against me in my boycott of anything DRM. It's the only reason Apple sells any DRM music. It's just not bad enough to be totally broken. It is incompatible enough to severly slow sales, which is why they have the higher quality DRM free stuff, with a higher price. The higher price is to slow the sales to prevent killing all DRM sales. They need to keep DRM revelant to keep single vendor lock-in going. They are not letting DRM free tunes undercut the incompatible DRM interoperability with non-iPod players. Use our players and you can have the music at a discount.. Um not discount, but you don't need the higher priced music.
The reason: I already OWN all the good music that I want. There is NOTHING out there new that I want.
On the other hand there are lots of us who have an album or two of artists we like and didn't buy the rest because of the price 30 years ago. We would still like to complete the collections but can't justify the package price. Get a clue. Much of the stuff on BT is the oldies but goodies. The kids are downloading the pop junk and the oldies as they find the good stuff. I have 2 teens at home. I have backed up their 30 Gig players. About half of their stuff is over 15 years old. They have everything from rap, metal, screamers, and techno to Queen, Louis Armstrong and Chubby Checker.
Not a single radio station in our area even considers playing that variety.
9. People have better means to sample all music these days, and no longer need to deafly buy music they think maybe they might like, but actually do not like (once they play it). So now they buy only what they know they like.
Nice argument for why CD sales should be higher.. The more music you hear that the local radio station doesn't play, the more albums you consider buying. But with the prices high, it seldom progresses to a sale. Sampling with the price right on the CD's, could be good for sales, but the price isn't right. People just cherry pick the few songs worth buying on iTunes instead.
As a record store owner, My business faces ruin. CD sales have dropped through the floor. People aren't buying half as many CDs as they did just a year ago. Revenue is down and costs are up. My store has survived for years, but I now face the prospect of bankruptcy. Every day I ask myself why this is happening.
The product has become dangerous. We used to buy 12 inch LP's, cut tapes for the car, play them with slides, etc. They have gotten the word out that most of these activities are now a legal liability that can cost you thousands of dollars. My peak piracy days 30 years ago was my peak purchasing days. The average then for the population was 2 LP purchases / year per capita in the USA.
My kids have grown up with iPods and the like. The music prices haven't changed. They have 30 Gig players and you still charge dribble prices for content. If the petrolium industry sold gas like you sell music, we would be arriving with empty 16 gallon tanks and finding the stuff in pretty packages that will fit nicely in your shirt pocket. Alternative fuel is the order of the day just like alternative distribution. The players have changed. The product value has changed. Back catalog is sold at full retail. There is no exchange or upgrade path for worn media. Care to exchange some 8 track tapes and Compact Cassette tapes? I have the full license to play them, but you don't back the license to ensure I am able to enjoy it.
Why is no one buying CDs?
That one is simple. I'm supprised you had to ask, but in no paticular order... 1 The loudness war 2 High prices for little content 3 Competition for the entertainment dollar (pay TV, satelite radio, cell phones, computer games, MP3 players, and others that had no or little presense 30 years ago.) 4 Retaliation for the industry's nukes on student's finances. 5 DRM on CD's makes them incompatible and dangerous to use. I don't keep a list of safe to play CD's. The lack of the Philip's Compact Disc logo on the good bad and ugly makes shopping by the cover very difficult. 6 Free music online (not piracy) 7 Piracy (fueled by all of the above) 8 Restrictions on use... Can't leagaly do the Carson Williams light show legaly unless you buy one of the approved for use licenses from Lights-o-Rama or play it in public at a reception, etc. No weekend DJ'ing for me. 8 ?? did I miss anything?
In summary, the product is compressed, possibly won't be transferrable to the kids iPod, can't be used with a Power Point Slideshow for a wedding, can't be used for the reception dance, super expensive to keep a current library for the above, and is a very expensive legal liability if your kids post it. The product is expensive, may be defective with no recourse, and a legal liability.
"When the kids went to bed, my wife asked me, "Will we be able to keep the house, David?""
I used to work in the VCR and TV repair business. When 20 inch color TV's were $400 and VHS VCR's were $600, people would pay the rate for a couple hours it took to repair them. Now purchase prices are near what a repair used to cost. I kept my house, but found a new line of work. Your field isn't the only one hit by distribution channels providing a cheaper product.
As long as your supplier is stuck on dribbling out product and sitting on back catalog and fighting hard to keep the ASP high, the demand in going to be small. Get used to it.
If your supplier was smart, they could sell compilation CD's of high quality MP3's of back catalog. They would be iPod, Zen, Zune ready, high quality and affordable. I would pay good money for high quality collections of Chicago, Pink Floyd, Styx, Led Zepplin, etc. Toss the restrictions on use and sell collections of 50's, 60's, & 70's dance music with permission to DJ the stuff may sell a bunch more. Many DJ consoles now play MP3's instead of CD's. Make loading the MP3's on the device hard drive legal instead of a legal liability.
That's pretty surprising. What's the purpose of allowing access through that proxy server, but not full blown access?
Students need to log into school servers to use school resources. The www proxy is often not under that umbrella. Try it. An Ubuntu live CD works fine for a zero fingerprint session. Boot, set the browser to use autoproxy, and surf. No login ID or finerprints are left on the machine. BT and an external USB drive work fine.
On some universities, the login is simply for the campus network.
Users are typically registered. Usually in universities, this is accomplished through a captive portal which records the MAC and username (authenticated with a password.) This ties the MAC to the user. From there, it's trivial to tie the packets to the MAC--spoofing IP addresses is trivial on most networking equipment in use by universities (i.e. we're not talking crappy Linksys routers, here.) MAC spoofing is rare, but also quite easy to block on the switch, long before any damning traffic occurred.
Many of them will permit a connection to the WWW proxy server without a login. (I know, I tried) Having an unregisered and un-logged in machine running BT may be the way to go. You have a clean machine with login and another machine on a router.
I have a solution. The solution is available in packs of 100 for ten dollars.
I have a better solution that is working just fine. Boycott DRM. If it fails in the marketplace, it will go away. We have a vote. It's the dollar. Vote wisely and often.
I have no PC at home using WGA. Sometimes you get outvoted for the mainstream product, but you don't have to buy it.
Is there any chance they will do the right thing and provide a conversion utility to convert the DRM songs into non-DRM songs so the purchaser doesn't have the songs stolen back from them. If not, I smell a lawsuit..
I can't recall the last presentation where someone actually used one as anything other than a fidget-widget.
Get out of the classroom more often and hang with some engineers. Pointing out the corrosion on a sprinkler head, AC water drip source, cable chafing in the over head tray, etc are everyday uses for me. It's easier to point with a pocket pointer than carry a 12 foot pointer. Other uses include measuring cable tray sag and checking the slope on the drain lines on the AC units. There is a reason one leaks all the time, and it can be fixed, but you need to document it first.
How the explitive deleted am I suppose to explicitive deleted land when I have some asshole trying blind me?
Most issues is with green pointers. Have you considered picking up a pair of laser safety goggles for green lasers? Many narrow band goggles will almost completely block the wavelength so you don't even see it. Demo here;
I don't think it's applicable to hand-held pointers or laser/pen combos (ie, most of what you can actually buy anyway).
Check your pocket. I have a couple $3 pen pointer sets collecting dust. They are all IIIa devices. I don't have a single class II pointer.. Do they really have a class II laser pointer? I don't have any.
Slashdot Mirror
Ethanol is viable, and it's already a reality here at Brazil. My car can run on both ethanol and gasoline, but since Ethanol is about 30% CHEAPER I almost never put gasoline on it.
And since E85 gas gets about 30% less MPG than gasoline, the price per mile is about the same. Since straight ethenol is even lower MPG, your cost per mile may be slightly more for ethenol than gasoline. Run a tank of each and calculate the cost per mile instead of the cost per gallon/liter and post the results.
Here is a link to a test between 10% and 85% ethenol blended in gasoline.
http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/cars/new-cars/news/2006/ethanol-10-06/tests-of-ethanol-vs.-gasoline/1006_ethanol_test_1.htm
In low light it is going to be difficult to get a high-quality images without extra light (obvious you are monitoring them) or a really, really expensive camera which is vulnerable to spray-painting or vandalism itself.
Built in IR is not good for color. A motion yard light is the norm and is often not thought of in conjuction with a security camera. A well lit area and cameras is an area often avoided, but a motion light is often ignored in backyards. Get good color photos. Color logos on clothing and other identification is good to get. Keep the IR in addition as many motion sensors have reachable bulbs that are often removed. By then you have photos of the perp, but you still need evidence of the crime after the light is out.
Much of the limitation on the speed and size of the newer generation of chips is related to the wavelength of light in the lithography process. The race is to use shorter and shorter wavelengths to make smaller and smaller transistors. If you can put this energy into a space 20 times smaller than the wavelength, then Moore's law lives on. Wow, think of the next generation of lithography and chip manufacturing. Anybody converted the tech from microwave to short wavelength light yet? If not, get busy. There is a patent for the first to demonstrate it in lithography.
the summary didn't say if this was a MS SQL or My SQL attack. Picking on the MS server is the sub story. The attack was a SQL exploit. The data in the headline was pretty thin. It almost looks like a MS IIS server bash attempt instead of a story about an SQL exploit. How about better reporting?
Reading to the bottom of the article is the important stuff that should have been at the top.
"UPDATE: We've been receiving some questions on the platform and operating systems affected by this attack. So far we've only seen websites using Microsoft IIS webserver and Microsoft SQL Server being hit. "
It is MS SQL on IIS server that is the attack.
so to answer your question "does it run on Linux?"; the answer is it runs on Microsoft IIS server and Microsoft SQL Server.
No, really. It's OLD news, really old news... really..
If you are into Christianity, they already knew about this, but it had something to do with a guy named Noah and his family. Other items of interest is most world religions have some story of a great flood. This drought, is this before or after the great flood?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deluge_(mythology)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noah
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flood_geology
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deucalion
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epic_of_Gilgamesh
"In 1998, William Ryan and Walter Pitman, geologists from Columbia University, published evidence that a massive flood through the Bosporus occurred about 5600 BC"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Sea_deluge_theory
so I'm not sure what you were implying by the context you posted this in.
Point well taken. I was using the context that the in-tank fuel pump in my car is replaceable, but not everyone has the tools so I would probably hire someone to do it who has the tools and skill.
Well, if you consider that "user replaceable" then so is the iPod's battery.
I didn't say user replaceable. I said replaceable. It is replaceable by anyone with the soldering skills. I even followed with a link to replacement parts.
If you don't solder, you may be able to find someone who can.
Yes, and as such those who can't afford the drugs may die.
And if nobody paid for the R & D, it is unlikely anyone will research, manufacture, get FDA approval, and market the drug. Then nobody can get it, even those who would pay for it. Please balance your observation. Scalping the market is a problem, and I recognize that. Much of it is for a war chest for the class action lawsuits that hit many new drugs on the market.
Sometimes drugs are prescribed when they are not needed. A correction is needed, but drugs are not. For example;
I have a friend who had chest pains. Went to the hospital and found it wasn't a heart attack, but was due to a potassium shortage. Pills were prescribed. Instead of picking up the prescription, we went to the supermarket and picked up potassium chloride and put it on a batch of popcorn. Saved a bundle and fixed the problem.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salt_substitute Getting the same prescribed dose of potassium was easy.
Bill gates may disagree with the GPL. I disagree with any software license that prohibits installation on both my desktop, laptop, wife's desktop, and laptop. In the free market, guess which one I install on everything. It's the one where the license permits me to use the software anywhere.
Nothing wrong with greedy. Just, when you're competing with 'free' you better bring a lot to the table.
FOSS brought a lot to the table. Thanks!
I can't even conceive of a threat to national security larger than this!
It's a good thing you can't see the R & D planss on my private Facebook page. They are secure there and only my close circle of engineers can view it to help develop the virus and it's vaccine.
What you are looking for probably looks like this, if you are looking for a direct replacement.
http://store.batteryspecialists.com/cr2450ft21.html
or this;
http://store.batteryspecialists.com/cr2032ft42.html
They come either in edge mount or flat. The flat one can often be replaced by a socket.
Lucky you. The mommyboard battery on the older Compaq Deskpro I have at home is spot-welded in place. :-(
Most of those are not spot welded in place. After working in a repair shop for many years, I noticed it was common for many of the coin cells to have spot welded terminals which are then simply soldered onto the PCB. A soldering iron replaces these with ease if you have any soldering skill. Often a standard coin cell socket will go in it's place. Leaving out the socket is a cost cutting move an is seen only on the lowest quality boards made. The battery is replaceable, but not by breaking off it's terminals. Congratulations on getting one of these cheap motherboards. Many of these expect a battery life of about 5 years which is past warranty.
Now let me run, because being this slashdot, I see the hordes of nerds come with the torches and pitchforks =oP.
Not everyone here is in attack mode but are part of a community to promote and improve the product. I meant to put this in my other response but hit send too soon. It's easier to attract with honey than with sour. Promoting FOSS anytime.
Oh, if you have a problem, post a request for help instead of a criticism. The hordes of nerds still come running, but with suggestions instead of pitchforks unlike closed source software problems.
Try criticizing the MS product license which permits installation on only one of your PC's instead of Open Office's GPL license which permits installation on all your PC's. The hordes defending the MS license with pitchforks will appear instead of the nerds who will help. One can be fixed, the other can't.
Not only that, but I also would love to have decent wireless support with wep and wpa configuration which is easy to use and *gasp* actually works.
.. you can not make one that works.
It's actually quite easy. If the OS doesn't support it yet, use hardware that does. Let me explain how easy it is.
Pick up any modern access point that supports client mode. Configure it as a client using any secure protocol you wish. Plug the CAT 5 cable into your laptop NIC. Surf. In testing this, I even tried it with a Windows 95 laptop which has no USB (not supported under Windows 95) and a 16 bit cardbus adapter. The laptop has no built in NIC. Using a NE2000 compatible 16 bit PCMCIA card, I was able to connect to a WPA router with Windows 95. It also works with Linux.
Many manufactures are unwilling to release driver specs because the power, frequency and other paramaters are regulated by the FCC or other regulations. 3rd party software may put the device into illegal operation, for example using settings for Japan while in the USA would be illegal and only limited by the version of the driver shipped to the American market.
Oh, and decent audio, open source should really make up its mind and create a good/stable/usable audio stack. Between oss/alsa/pulse/artsd/esd
Correction.. Try the one that does work great. Look up Ubuntu Studio. I use it for a low latency multi-track recorder instead of a high latency Windows version.
http://ubuntustudio.org/
As always, use proper sound hardware. On the cheap (under $50), the Behringer UAC series is plug and play for a reasonable quality USB sound interface. SB anything has serious hardware limitations if you are trying for recording at various bitrates and resolutions. Read the forums. before buying audio hardware. Firewire is also not a good linux choice at this time.
Audacity with a good mixer board and the USB adapter gives CD or DAT quality recordings. We use it for demo and practice CDs.
Windows requires long buffers so playback while recording is a problem. Ubuntu Studio uses low latency so layered multi-track recording is easy. Record the rhythm track, lay down the lead guitar track, then the keyboard track and bass guitar, and finish with the lead vocal. Now it's ready for the post production mix and adding the wet tracks with reverb, chorus, etc.
Audacity is easy to learn.
They don't hear or don't care about DRM, about the RIAA, or about the loudness war.
True, these are the people voting against me in my boycott of anything DRM. It's the only reason Apple sells any DRM music. It's just not bad enough to be totally broken. It is incompatible enough to severly slow sales, which is why they have the higher quality DRM free stuff, with a higher price. The higher price is to slow the sales to prevent killing all DRM sales. They need to keep DRM revelant to keep single vendor lock-in going. They are not letting DRM free tunes undercut the incompatible DRM interoperability with non-iPod players. Use our players and you can have the music at a discount.. Um not discount, but you don't need the higher priced music.
The reason: I already OWN all the good music that I want. There is NOTHING out there new that I want.
On the other hand there are lots of us who have an album or two of artists we like and didn't buy the rest because of the price 30 years ago. We would still like to complete the collections but can't justify the package price. Get a clue. Much of the stuff on BT is the oldies but goodies. The kids are downloading the pop junk and the oldies as they find the good stuff. I have 2 teens at home. I have backed up their 30 Gig players. About half of their stuff is over 15 years old. They have everything from rap, metal, screamers, and techno to Queen, Louis Armstrong and Chubby Checker.
Not a single radio station in our area even considers playing that variety.
9. People have better means to sample all music these days, and no longer need to deafly buy music they think maybe they might like, but actually do not like (once they play it). So now they buy only what they know they like.
Nice argument for why CD sales should be higher.. The more music you hear that the local radio station doesn't play, the more albums you consider buying. But with the prices high, it seldom progresses to a sale. Sampling with the price right on the CD's, could be good for sales, but the price isn't right. People just cherry pick the few songs worth buying on iTunes instead.
As a record store owner, My business faces ruin. CD sales have dropped through the floor. People aren't buying half as many CDs as they did just a year ago. Revenue is down and costs are up. My store has survived for years, but I now face the prospect of bankruptcy. Every day I ask myself why this is happening.
The product has become dangerous. We used to buy 12 inch LP's, cut tapes for the car, play them with slides, etc. They have gotten the word out that most of these activities are now a legal liability that can cost you thousands of dollars. My peak piracy days 30 years ago was my peak purchasing days. The average then for the population was 2 LP purchases / year per capita in the USA.
My kids have grown up with iPods and the like. The music prices haven't changed. They have 30 Gig players and you still charge dribble prices for content. If the petrolium industry sold gas like you sell music, we would be arriving with empty 16 gallon tanks and finding the stuff in pretty packages that will fit nicely in your shirt pocket. Alternative fuel is the order of the day just like alternative distribution. The players have changed. The product value has changed. Back catalog is sold at full retail. There is no exchange or upgrade path for worn media. Care to exchange some 8 track tapes and Compact Cassette tapes? I have the full license to play them, but you don't back the license to ensure I am able to enjoy it.
Why is no one buying CDs?
That one is simple. I'm supprised you had to ask, but in no paticular order...
1 The loudness war
2 High prices for little content
3 Competition for the entertainment dollar (pay TV, satelite radio, cell phones, computer games, MP3 players, and others that had no or little presense 30 years ago.)
4 Retaliation for the industry's nukes on student's finances.
5 DRM on CD's makes them incompatible and dangerous to use. I don't keep a list of safe to play CD's. The lack of the Philip's Compact Disc logo on the good bad and ugly makes shopping by the cover very difficult.
6 Free music online (not piracy)
7 Piracy (fueled by all of the above)
8 Restrictions on use... Can't leagaly do the Carson Williams light show legaly unless you buy one of the approved for use licenses from Lights-o-Rama or play it in public at a reception, etc. No weekend DJ'ing for me.
8 ?? did I miss anything?
In summary, the product is compressed, possibly won't be transferrable to the kids iPod, can't be used with a Power Point Slideshow for a wedding, can't be used for the reception dance, super expensive to keep a current library for the above, and is a very expensive legal liability if your kids post it. The product is expensive, may be defective with no recourse, and a legal liability.
"When the kids went to bed, my wife asked me, "Will we be able to keep the house, David?""
I used to work in the VCR and TV repair business. When 20 inch color TV's were $400 and VHS VCR's were $600, people would pay the rate for a couple hours it took to repair them. Now purchase prices are near what a repair used to cost. I kept my house, but found a new line of work. Your field isn't the only one hit by distribution channels providing a cheaper product.
As long as your supplier is stuck on dribbling out product and sitting on back catalog and fighting hard to keep the ASP high, the demand in going to be small. Get used to it.
If your supplier was smart, they could sell compilation CD's of high quality MP3's of back catalog. They would be iPod, Zen, Zune ready, high quality and affordable. I would pay good money for high quality collections of Chicago, Pink Floyd, Styx, Led Zepplin, etc. Toss the restrictions on use and sell collections of 50's, 60's, & 70's dance music with permission to DJ the stuff may sell a bunch more. Many DJ consoles now play MP3's instead of CD's. Make loading the MP3's on the device hard drive legal instead of a legal liability.
See any trend here. Piracy i
That's pretty surprising. What's the purpose of allowing access through that proxy server, but not full blown access?
Students need to log into school servers to use school resources. The www proxy is often not under that umbrella. Try it. An Ubuntu live CD works fine for a zero fingerprint session. Boot, set the browser to use autoproxy, and surf. No login ID or finerprints are left on the machine. BT and an external USB drive work fine.
On some universities, the login is simply for the campus network.
Users are typically registered. Usually in universities, this is accomplished through a captive portal which records the MAC and username (authenticated with a password.) This ties the MAC to the user. From there, it's trivial to tie the packets to the MAC--spoofing IP addresses is trivial on most networking equipment in use by universities (i.e. we're not talking crappy Linksys routers, here.) MAC spoofing is rare, but also quite easy to block on the switch, long before any damning traffic occurred.
Many of them will permit a connection to the WWW proxy server without a login. (I know, I tried) Having an unregisered and un-logged in machine running BT may be the way to go. You have a clean machine with login and another machine on a router.
I have a solution. The solution is available in packs of 100 for ten dollars.
I have a better solution that is working just fine. Boycott DRM. If it fails in the marketplace, it will go away. We have a vote. It's the dollar. Vote wisely and often.
I have no PC at home using WGA. Sometimes you get outvoted for the mainstream product, but you don't have to buy it.
Is there any chance they will do the right thing and provide a conversion utility to convert the DRM songs into non-DRM songs so the purchaser doesn't have the songs stolen back from them. If not, I smell a lawsuit..
I can't recall the last presentation where someone actually used one as anything other than a fidget-widget.
Get out of the classroom more often and hang with some engineers. Pointing out the corrosion on a sprinkler head, AC water drip source, cable chafing in the over head tray, etc are everyday uses for me. It's easier to point with a pocket pointer than carry a 12 foot pointer. Other uses include measuring cable tray sag and checking the slope on the drain lines on the AC units. There is a reason one leaks all the time, and it can be fixed, but you need to document it first.
How the explitive deleted am I suppose to explicitive deleted land when I have some asshole trying blind me?
Most issues is with green pointers. Have you considered picking up a pair of laser safety goggles for green lasers? Many narrow band goggles will almost completely block the wavelength so you don't even see it. Demo here;
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gagEdCVgRhY
They work well.
I don't think it's applicable to hand-held pointers or laser/pen combos (ie, most of what you can actually buy anyway).
Check your pocket. I have a couple $3 pen pointer sets collecting dust. They are all IIIa devices. I don't have a single class II pointer.. Do they really have a class II laser pointer? I don't have any.