Both XM and Sirius are bleeding money right now and that can't last forever. If the the industry allowed them both to go under that would counterproductive to helping competition.
They are both priced beyond what joe sixpack will subscribe to. They went for the profitable low hanging fruit and tried to charge cable TV rates, but not enough people live in their car, so they got long haul truckers that got tired of going out of range of a good station. City dwellers don't have any incentive to part with a grand and a half every year for low fi (compressed) sound when the local station does better for free. They are competing with local radio and are priced so they can only attract the low hanging fruit, but that market is too limited to support them.
They need to get aggressive and double their income by slashing prices 90% to increase their market 20X.
At current rates, I would rather spend the grand and a half each year on a new laptop. This is their problem.
Um, not really. There are many colors plants don't use and some which are harmful to plants. Sunlight properly filtered is much better for plants. In Japan many years ago they did some fiber optic light pipe experiments for growing tomatoes. The filtering they used for preventing decay of the fiber optics was fantastic for the tomatoes and they got a huge crop.
Black body radiators producing high color temperatures produce a fair amount of UV which should be filtered. They also produce a fair amount of IR and heat, which is useless to harmful.
Yes, but it's not much use if you don't have a driver for your network card!
Most CAT5 network cards are supported with very few exceptions. If the PCMCIA built in card doesn't work, most of the slide in aftermarket anthos chipset cards work fine. If you fail there, an access point that supports client mode works fine. My very old Windows 95 without USB or a 32 bit card slot works fine on an access point on a 16 bit cardbus NIC.
Don't laugh. I still use it for my MIDI stuff and GPS TOPO maps. It has built in MPU401 MIDI port and a real RS232 port for my GPS. It is not used for general online applications for obvious reasons. It's my backwoods NAV unit and piano tutor.
It's wouldn't OR couldn't. For example, I would love to have a copy of Photshop CS 3. It is $650 [adobe.com]. I could afford that but would never spend that much money on it (i.e. I wouldn't ever buy it at that price). So, if I pirate it they have not lost a sale to me.
I used to think that way when it was either PC DOS or MS DOS. I have since changed my ways for the better. There are several advantages. This supports monopolistic providers. It eliminates market competition and produces a monoculture.
I was faced with the Photoshop issue and resolved to find an alternative when the BSA started making noise. When they started getting really nasty, I knew it was time to comply with their demands while at the same time not supporting them in a free market. I bought a digital camera which came bundled with ArcSoft's photo editor. It did the touch-up stuff I needed to do including cropping, red eye removal, and changing the resolution for a web page. It was legal and did the job. Now I am an avid Gimp user.
My photo editing has been followed by OS choice, Office suite choice and other choices. The end result is now instead of insanely priced monopoly products, the market is filled with viable alternatives with few exceptions. As the alternatives grow, the high priced stuff retires or is repriced into more attractive price points. For example, have you seen the price for PhotoShop Elements? They are still trying to hold on to the cash cow, but it is being eroded, not by piracy, but by the competition. MS is having the same problem with buggy Vista, OSX and Ubuntu. MS Office and Open Office, etc.
Don't pirate and support the monopoly vendor's products. Use the alternatives and make a rich field of usable products.
When I first got into stage lighting, I loved the demo of Martin's Procenieum. At $2500 a copy, it was out of the question. It is now NLA for good reason. Instead I use FreeStyler with a $60 USB interface.
http://www.digimedia-mls.com/dmxplus/ This died with Windows 95. At a good price point, this could have grown into a great product. The clones ate it for lunch.
Manolator is a pared down version of Procenium that also rocks. A lightshow on a DMX lighting system instead of buying the Lights-o-Rama package is possible if you already have DMX dimmers. Load up your song in Winamp, set the events to time to the music and rock on. This also uses inexpensive interfaces or you can build your own.
Avoiding piracy and shopping for good alternatives is legal and sticks the high prices right where it counts. Overpriced simple software quickly becomes surrounded by clones. If you want a full featured DMX software desk, there are many packages from about $200 to several grand. Only spend the money if the competition won't do the job. Don't pirate it.
My guess is, most people wouldn't care whether you shared their internet access or not. Not unless you ran so much traffic over it 24/7 that you caused their access to be degraded. At that point I'd think they might want to kick you off.
My guess is follow the money. Look to see if Comcast or Verizon are sponsoring the bill so everyone has to buy their own connection instead of leaching off a neighbor.
Pardon me while I adjust my tin foil hat. It keeps getting in my eyes.
You can still fill the whole drive with zeros (or better - random noise) but the science concerning recovery of overwritten data from flash memory is nonexistent - nobody knows if whether it can or can't be done.
Getting old data off my flash drive is just as reliable as looking at my bathroom light switch to see if it was on last night at 3 AM. You may be able to detect that the switch at one time or another was in the on position simply from wear patterns and the currently parked position, but as a high use switch that flips often, past data recovery is not possible. The same thing is true for my flash drive for the same reason. It gets loaded up with MP3's for the car on a regular basis. Data from last week is overwritten several times as I fully load the drive. You may able to tell a bit was not always a 1, but finding out the data string from last week simply isn't recoverable. The drive is used for temporary transport of data. Using a hammer on the drives is a waste of money. Load them full of MP3's a couple times and call it good.
There is another issue with those who carry their bank spreadsheet and address book on a flash drive. Unencrypted, this is a problem.
Here is a quote from a user; "This par can is 10 times brighter than their traditional par can. It works great for long distances, also it is a 6 channel light with built in color scroll. The white light has also improved with the RGB mixing and there is no more pale grey!"
I remember the days when LED's were only good for digital watches, calculators and indicator lights because they would never be bright enough for anything else. Don't be too stuck on yesterday's tech. Tech moves on.
you're going to be better off using regular old gels to change the colors of your lights.
That used to be true. Many LED fixtures now provide as much light as filtered PAR lights. As a bonus, there is no IR and UV contamination. Gel's tend to be fairly wide in their response, so some artistic shots with very saturated colors can't beat LED fixtures for rich color. For example, take the original story and look at the red/green room. Conventional gel's can't produce that stunning color. Good effects can be had with off the shelf DMX 512 LED wash lights. Controllers are getting dirt cheap with many under $150 that can control a dozen multi-channel RGB fixtures.
I for one would like to wave goodbye to our RIAA overlords.
Read the last pages of the PDF. There is a request for a public trial. I hope they post the dates and place. I would make the trip to sit in on it and as you suggest, wave goodbye. More important, I want to shake her hand.
Instead of being loaded with nagware, crippleware, and crapware that needs removed, it comes loaded with fully functional applications. It doesn't require paid upgrades to burn ISO's, use AV, create music CD's, use an office suite, etc.
So, what about VHF? I realize the majority of DTV broadcasts are UHF, but a few are in the VHF range.
Ugh, it's research time. As I understood it, all VHF is going away. There is some VHF DTV now so studios can get DTV stuff tested and ready for the transition. When the switch is flipped, the analog UHF stations will go away and the VHF DTV stations will move to UHF. Does anybody know for sure? Investing in VHF antenna stuff may be a waste of resources.
Does anyone know the plan? Will there be any VHF DTV after the analog switch-off?
but apart from that the nearest stations are all serving Indianapolis.
I have been using a UHF yagi for quite a while. They are broad enough to pick up the lower UHF just fine and have a narrow beamwidth. If the stations you want to pick up are all clustered on a far hilltop, I have had great luck line of sight at 85 miles. Finding a UHF only yagi is a little hard, or build your own. The ARRL Antenna handbook is a great place to start.
Here is a great article on fringe area UHF reception including some extreme stacked high gain antennas including manufacture information including model number. The antenna I am using is about 30 elements long and is from the 1970's.
I think the suppliers are trying to dump their VHF/UHF/FM stock as most everything is old stock. If you are in a fringe area and most stations are distant in one direction (big city hilltop nearby) then a narrow beam high gain yagi may be what you need.
"It's not actually legalizing it, it's just their way getting more money."
Wanna bet? What is not legalized is uploading. What is legal is making copies of your own CD's so you have copies for the car, boom box, etc. I use music CD's for MP3 archives.
Let's try again. Monsanto owns the copyright on popcorn seeds. Only Monsanto can grow popcorn. Some farmers in China managed to copy a couple of seeds and are growing their own popcorn.
Someone else drives a harvester through Monsanto's field and steals their popcorn crop.
Which is theft and which is a copyright violation? Get it right. In one case Monsanto still has a field of popcorn. In another, it has been stolen.
It boils down to protecting a single popcorn growers monopoly on the popcorn market. This isn't about theft. It's about copies of a product.
If you can only buy popcorn at Regal Cinemas at $8.00 a tub, that is a monopoly. Fortunately I can legally buy popcorn seed to grow my own, or buy bulk seed and pop my own.
I used the Monsanto company as an example as they are into genetic engineering and are suing the neighborhood farmers who happen to be the unlucky recipients of cross pollination from the designer varieties. They are trying to litigate the competition out of business. The above "We own the copyright on popcorn is becoming reality.
The DRM is deemed to be costly and useless, and is promptly abandoned.
Almost right.. DRM kills sales cutting into revenue. There fixed it.
DRM introduces vendor lock-in. By nature, this is a compatibility problem, a backup problem and a hardware upgrade replacement cycle problem. These problems make it a sales problem. I don't buy media with an expiration date. Music or other content tied to only one of my pieces of hardware which can't be backed up, and the hardware can't be upgraded or replaced is for the birds.
Apple with the iPods has addressed some of these issues. DRM free MP3's has addressed the rest. e-readers haven't come nearly as far yet.
The, it will play on my Sony reader but won't play on it's replacement is the problem. The problem is killing sales.
Also informing people that what goes down the toilet goes in your drinking water.
Some peoples drinking water.. There fixed it for you.
Some people get their drinking water from ground water. Treated and untreated septic water ends up in the groundwater. Some people get their drinking water from rainwater. Some cities get their drinking water from protected mountain watersheds (no sewage). As a good example of a city with good drinking water, Portland Oregon uses the Bull Run Watershed.
"This unfiltered surface water source is Portland's primary drinking water source. The Bull Run watershed is an integral part of the region's heritage and legacy. Because of its outstanding water quality and level of protection, the Bull Run has been listed among a handful of outstanding sources of water in the United States for more than a century."
defining an act as legal/illegal solely based on physical location is, by and large, nonsensical.
On the surface, that appears to be the case, but, some regional location based law makes lots of sense. If I am in the woods with a deer tag and a loaded deer rifle, this is fine. Doing the same thing at my local bank is not. Look beyond the obvious.
In the US, it is illegal to posess endangered sea turtle shells. In the Cayman Islands, to protect the species, they breed them. To pay the cost, the turtle farm is authorized to sell turtle products. (turtle stew is delicious). I can buy endangered turtle products, but I can't bring them into the US.
"Since the Farm has begun local turtle releases, the sightings of green sea turtles by divers and residents living along the coast have been common. To fully assess the re-establishment of a Cayman turtle population, the Farm, with the cooperation of the Cayman Islands Government, has initiated both aerial and ground level surveys of the beaches and waters surrounding the islands. The public has cooperated by providing information on turtle sightings and nestings. Because of observed dog and crab predation and increased public use of all beaches, reported nests are relocated to the Cayman Turtle Farm's hatchery for incubation. All hatchlings are then returned to the collection beach for release."
Here is the reference to the sale of turtle products;
"The new owners intended to operate the farm more as a non profit organization, funnelling any profits from the sale of products back into sea turtle conservation and protection projects, using the site as an international sea turtle research facility. However, export restrictions continued and sufficient revenue could not be generated to maintain the approximately 100,000 turtles on hand."
Due to the export restrictions, I only bought edible turtle products, as when I left, it would have been illegal to take the souvenirs home. In the US they made it illegal to possess turtle parts to reduce poaching. In the caymans, they made it legal for the Turtle Farm to raise them and sell products to replenish the endangered species with great success.
Get a warrant for one computer, get a warrant for all computers worldwide that happen to be on the Internet.
Not a problem. They are free to search any internet connected computer on the internet now. Most will display public web pages and login pages. Going beyond the internet connected public space and trying to intercept encrypted content will be a problem with any and all protected content servers such as any e-commerce, and DRM content site.
Think iTunes will let them in? how about Amazon,.gov sites, thepiratebay, or MSN Hotmail? This isn't going very far. It attempts to reach globally outside their jurisdiction which is where it falls apart.
Perhaps a dialog box should pop up asking if they want the first or second occurence of 02:21am.
Some smart programmer for one enterprise, to prevent that kind of problem, had another solution. To back up the clocks by one hour, simply slow the clocks 25% for 4 hours (normal speed time). Then time never repeated. It worked like a charm and only took 3 hours from 01:00 to 04:00.;-)
Slashdot Mirror
Both XM and Sirius are bleeding money right now and that can't last forever. If the the industry allowed them both to go under that would counterproductive to helping competition.
They are both priced beyond what joe sixpack will subscribe to. They went for the profitable low hanging fruit and tried to charge cable TV rates, but not enough people live in their car, so they got long haul truckers that got tired of going out of range of a good station. City dwellers don't have any incentive to part with a grand and a half every year for low fi (compressed) sound when the local station does better for free. They are competing with local radio and are priced so they can only attract the low hanging fruit, but that market is too limited to support them.
They need to get aggressive and double their income by slashing prices 90% to increase their market 20X.
At current rates, I would rather spend the grand and a half each year on a new laptop. This is their problem.
trying to force them off XP is going to represent an opportunity for someone else
We noticed
http://arstechnica.com/journals/apple.ars/2008/01/01/mac-os-x-market-share-sets-new-record-at-the-end-of-2007
http://gizmodo.com/340117/mac-os-x-market-share-at-731-and-rising
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+bug/1 The #1 bug is being worked on as we speak.
http://itmanagement.earthweb.com/osrc/article.php/12068_3719096_1
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080104-evaluating-prospects-for-linux-growth-in-2008.html
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20071205-microsoft-feeling-heat-from-linux-in-budget-flash-pc-market.html
For me, I am enjoying Ubuntu Studio.
Perfect for my indoor marijuana plantation.... :-)
Um, not really. There are many colors plants don't use and some which are harmful to plants. Sunlight properly filtered is much better for plants. In Japan many years ago they did some fiber optic light pipe experiments for growing tomatoes. The filtering they used for preventing decay of the fiber optics was fantastic for the tomatoes and they got a huge crop.
At the bottom of this page is a great overview of the wavelengths plants like and which are toxic.
http://www.littlegreenhouse.com/guide3.shtml
Black body radiators producing high color temperatures produce a fair amount of UV which should be filtered. They also produce a fair amount of IR and heat, which is useless to harmful.
Yes, but it's not much use if you don't have a driver for your network card!
Most CAT5 network cards are supported with very few exceptions. If the PCMCIA built in card doesn't work, most of the slide in aftermarket anthos chipset cards work fine. If you fail there, an access point that supports client mode works fine. My very old Windows 95 without USB or a 32 bit card slot works fine on an access point on a 16 bit cardbus NIC.
Don't laugh. I still use it for my MIDI stuff and GPS TOPO maps. It has built in MPU401 MIDI port and a real RS232 port for my GPS. It is not used for general online applications for obvious reasons. It's my backwoods NAV unit and piano tutor.
It's wouldn't OR couldn't. For example, I would love to have a copy of Photshop CS 3. It is $650 [adobe.com]. I could afford that but would never spend that much money on it (i.e. I wouldn't ever buy it at that price). So, if I pirate it they have not lost a sale to me.
I used to think that way when it was either PC DOS or MS DOS. I have since changed my ways for the better. There are several advantages. This supports monopolistic providers. It eliminates market competition and produces a monoculture.
I was faced with the Photoshop issue and resolved to find an alternative when the BSA started making noise. When they started getting really nasty, I knew it was time to comply with their demands while at the same time not supporting them in a free market. I bought a digital camera which came bundled with ArcSoft's photo editor. It did the touch-up stuff I needed to do including cropping, red eye removal, and changing the resolution for a web page. It was legal and did the job. Now I am an avid Gimp user.
My photo editing has been followed by OS choice, Office suite choice and other choices. The end result is now instead of insanely priced monopoly products, the market is filled with viable alternatives with few exceptions. As the alternatives grow, the high priced stuff retires or is repriced into more attractive price points. For example, have you seen the price for PhotoShop Elements? They are still trying to hold on to the cash cow, but it is being eroded, not by piracy, but by the competition. MS is having the same problem with buggy Vista, OSX and Ubuntu. MS Office and Open Office, etc.
Don't pirate and support the monopoly vendor's products. Use the alternatives and make a rich field of usable products.
When I first got into stage lighting, I loved the demo of Martin's Procenieum. At $2500 a copy, it was out of the question. It is now NLA for good reason. Instead I use FreeStyler with a $60 USB interface.
http://www.digimedia-mls.com/dmxplus/ This died with Windows 95. At a good price point, this could have grown into a great product. The clones ate it for lunch.
http://users.pandora.be/freestylerdmx/ Freestyler Rocks and is free.
http://www.dmxcontrol.de/joomla/?lang=en DMX control another freeware console rocks, but has some language translation problems.
Manolator is a pared down version of Procenium that also rocks. A lightshow on a DMX lighting system instead of buying the Lights-o-Rama package is possible if you already have DMX dimmers. Load up your song in Winamp, set the events to time to the music and rock on. This also uses inexpensive interfaces or you can build your own.
http://www.freedmx.com/
An here is a free drop-in replacement for the $2500 software. Nice easy to use console. Free....
http://www.chromakinetics.com/DMX/StageConsole.html#screenshot Screenshot.. Requires giving an email address to receive.
http://www.chromakinetics.com/DMX/StageConsole.html
Avoiding piracy and shopping for good alternatives is legal and sticks the high prices right where it counts.
Overpriced simple software quickly becomes surrounded by clones.
If you want a full featured DMX software desk, there are many packages from about $200 to several grand. Only spend the money if the competition won't do the job. Don't pirate it.
My guess is, most people wouldn't care whether you shared their internet access or not. Not unless you ran so much traffic over it 24/7 that you caused their access to be degraded. At that point I'd think they might want to kick you off.
My guess is follow the money. Look to see if Comcast or Verizon are sponsoring the bill so everyone has to buy their own connection instead of leaching off a neighbor.
Pardon me while I adjust my tin foil hat. It keeps getting in my eyes.
You can still fill the whole drive with zeros (or better - random noise) but the science concerning recovery of overwritten data from flash memory is nonexistent - nobody knows if whether it can or can't be done.
Getting old data off my flash drive is just as reliable as looking at my bathroom light switch to see if it was on last night at 3 AM. You may be able to detect that the switch at one time or another was in the on position simply from wear patterns and the currently parked position, but as a high use switch that flips often, past data recovery is not possible. The same thing is true for my flash drive for the same reason. It gets loaded up with MP3's for the car on a regular basis. Data from last week is overwritten several times as I fully load the drive. You may able to tell a bit was not always a 1, but finding out the data string from last week simply isn't recoverable. The drive is used for temporary transport of data. Using a hammer on the drives is a waste of money. Load them full of MP3's a couple times and call it good.
There is another issue with those who carry their bank spreadsheet and address book on a flash drive. Unencrypted, this is a problem.
And that pack of LED fixtures you linked is VERY dim compared to, say, a standard theatrical lighting fixture.
True, but, because my link didn't include high lux stuff, don't take it as it doesn't exist.
The brighter stuff is a little more money.
http://trinorthlighting.com/Store/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=94&products_id=209&zenid=2a8a1cf1566b956af5a7df6bf5b92f23
"at 3 feet this can produces 10,530 lux, at 15 feet this can produces 864 lux."
Here is a quote from a user;
"This par can is 10 times brighter than their traditional par can. It works great for long distances, also it is a 6 channel light with built in color scroll. The white light has also improved with the RGB mixing and there is no more pale grey!"
I remember the days when LED's were only good for digital watches, calculators and indicator lights because they would never be bright enough for anything else. Don't be too stuck on yesterday's tech. Tech moves on.
They look great as a replacement for outdoor floodlights. They might not replace your 750 to 1,000 watt PAR 64's, but they will replace the smaller PAR lamps with no problem and have full DMX control.
http://trinorthlighting.com/Store/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=94&products_id=1073
Here is 1,800 Lumens for you. Bring your checkbook.
PDF info... http://www.svlighting.com/support/pdf/Brochures/SAVIPowerFlood100_brochure.pdf
you're going to be better off using regular old gels to change the colors of your lights.
That used to be true. Many LED fixtures now provide as much light as filtered PAR lights. As a bonus, there is no IR and UV contamination. Gel's tend to be fairly wide in their response, so some artistic shots with very saturated colors can't beat LED fixtures for rich color. For example, take the original story and look at the red/green room. Conventional gel's can't produce that stunning color. Good effects can be had with off the shelf DMX 512 LED wash lights. Controllers are getting dirt cheap with many under $150 that can control a dozen multi-channel RGB fixtures.
http://www.music123.com/Chauvet-DMX-40B-DMX-512-Controller-801517-i1176897.Music123?source=ZWWRWXGB
Here is a 6pack of PAR RGB LED fixtures for under $100 each.
http://cgi.ebay.com/6-x-LED-RGB-Par-CANS-DMX-Oboard-1300-Lux-15m-0S-H_W0QQitemZ300207441774QQihZ020QQcategoryZ29944QQcmdZViewItem
I for one would like to wave goodbye to our RIAA overlords.
Read the last pages of the PDF. There is a request for a public trial. I hope they post the dates and place. I would make the trip to sit in on it and as you suggest, wave goodbye. More important, I want to shake her hand.
My favorite is not on the list.
Instead of being loaded with nagware, crippleware, and crapware that needs removed, it comes loaded with fully functional applications. It doesn't require paid upgrades to burn ISO's, use AV, create music CD's, use an office suite, etc.
One of the biggie things to tell your boss that seems to be missed.
It's much less a legal risk.
http://www.news.com/2008-1082_3-5065859.html
Having nothing to do with the BSA, WGA, DRM, and a whole alphabet soup of legal problems is a good reason to tell your boss.
So, what about VHF? I realize the majority of DTV broadcasts are UHF, but a few are in the VHF range.
Ugh, it's research time. As I understood it, all VHF is going away. There is some VHF DTV now so studios can get DTV stuff tested and ready for the transition. When the switch is flipped, the analog UHF stations will go away and the VHF DTV stations will move to UHF. Does anybody know for sure? Investing in VHF antenna stuff may be a waste of resources.
Does anyone know the plan? Will there be any VHF DTV after the analog switch-off?
but apart from that the nearest stations are all serving Indianapolis.
I have been using a UHF yagi for quite a while. They are broad enough to pick up the lower UHF just fine and have a narrow beamwidth. If the stations you want to pick up are all clustered on a far hilltop, I have had great luck line of sight at 85 miles. Finding a UHF only yagi is a little hard, or build your own. The ARRL Antenna handbook is a great place to start.
Here is a great article on fringe area UHF reception including some extreme stacked high gain antennas including manufacture information including model number. The antenna I am using is about 30 elements long and is from the 1970's.
http://www.geocities.com/toddemslie/UHF-TV-DX.html
I think the suppliers are trying to dump their VHF/UHF/FM stock as most everything is old stock. If you are in a fringe area and most stations are distant in one direction (big city hilltop nearby) then a narrow beam high gain yagi may be what you need.
"It's not actually legalizing it, it's just their way getting more money."
Wanna bet? What is not legalized is uploading. What is legal is making copies of your own CD's so you have copies for the car, boom box, etc. I use music CD's for MP3 archives.
You're hurting the poor popcorn farmer.
Almost right.
Let's try again. Monsanto owns the copyright on popcorn seeds. Only Monsanto can grow popcorn. Some farmers in China managed to copy a couple of seeds and are growing their own popcorn.
Someone else drives a harvester through Monsanto's field and steals their popcorn crop.
Which is theft and which is a copyright violation? Get it right. In one case Monsanto still has a field of popcorn. In another, it has been stolen.
It boils down to protecting a single popcorn growers monopoly on the popcorn market. This isn't about theft. It's about copies of a product.
If you can only buy popcorn at Regal Cinemas at $8.00 a tub, that is a monopoly. Fortunately I can legally buy popcorn seed to grow my own, or buy bulk seed and pop my own.
http://www.popcornpopperdirect.com/popcornsupplies.html
50 lbs of seed (4 ea 12.5 lb sacks) for under $40.
You can plant it if you wish. This is enough for about 4 acres of land.
http://www.wildlifetrends.com/deer.cfm
I used the Monsanto company as an example as they are into genetic engineering and are suing the neighborhood farmers who happen to be the unlucky recipients of cross pollination from the designer varieties. They are trying to litigate the competition out of business. The above "We own the copyright on popcorn is becoming reality.
http://www.i-sis.org.uk/MonsantovsFarmers.php
Monsanto VS Farmers
The DRM is deemed to be costly and useless, and is promptly abandoned.
Almost right.. DRM kills sales cutting into revenue. There fixed it.
DRM introduces vendor lock-in. By nature, this is a compatibility problem, a backup problem and a hardware upgrade replacement cycle problem. These problems make it a sales problem. I don't buy media with an expiration date. Music or other content tied to only one of my pieces of hardware which can't be backed up, and the hardware can't be upgraded or replaced is for the birds.
Apple with the iPods has addressed some of these issues. DRM free MP3's has addressed the rest. e-readers haven't come nearly as far yet.
The, it will play on my Sony reader but won't play on it's replacement is the problem. The problem is killing sales.
Also informing people that what goes down the toilet goes in your drinking water.
Some peoples drinking water.. There fixed it for you.
Some people get their drinking water from ground water. Treated and untreated septic water ends up in the groundwater. Some people get their drinking water from rainwater. Some cities get their drinking water from protected mountain watersheds (no sewage). As a good example of a city with good drinking water, Portland Oregon uses the Bull Run Watershed.
Pure water doesn't need filters and heavy treatment.
http://www.portlandonline.com/water/index.cfm?c=cjhie
"This unfiltered surface water source is Portland's primary drinking water source.
The Bull Run watershed is an integral part of the region's heritage and legacy. Because of its outstanding water quality and level of protection, the Bull Run has been listed among a handful of outstanding sources of water in the United States for more than a century."
Where does your drinking water come from?
They can just use their discretionary power to reach however far they want.
Reaching cross borders and through firewalls may be a problem. They don't have the keys and the locals may resist the intrusion.
I count three:
1. terrorism (boogedy-boogedy!)
2. kiddie pr0n (think of the children!)
3. fraud (oh no, my precious inbox is filled with spam!)
What's number four?
4. Hacking - buffer overflow exploits, botnets.
defining an act as legal/illegal solely based on physical location is, by and large, nonsensical.
On the surface, that appears to be the case, but, some regional location based law makes lots of sense. If I am in the woods with a deer tag and a loaded deer rifle, this is fine. Doing the same thing at my local bank is not. Look beyond the obvious.
In the US, it is illegal to posess endangered sea turtle shells. In the Cayman Islands, to protect the species, they breed them. To pay the cost, the turtle farm is authorized to sell turtle products. (turtle stew is delicious). I can buy endangered turtle products, but I can't bring them into the US.
http://turtle.ky/
"Since the Farm has begun local turtle releases, the sightings of green sea turtles by divers and residents living along the coast have been common. To fully assess the re-establishment of a Cayman turtle population, the Farm, with the cooperation of the Cayman Islands Government, has initiated both aerial and ground level surveys of the beaches and waters surrounding the islands. The public has cooperated by providing information on turtle sightings and nestings. Because of observed dog and crab predation and increased public use of all beaches, reported nests are relocated to the Cayman Turtle Farm's hatchery for incubation. All hatchlings are then returned to the collection beach for release."
Here is the reference to the sale of turtle products;
"The new owners intended to operate the farm more as a non profit organization, funnelling any profits from the sale of products back into sea turtle conservation and protection projects, using the site as an international sea turtle research facility. However, export restrictions continued and sufficient revenue could not be generated to maintain the approximately 100,000 turtles on hand."
Due to the export restrictions, I only bought edible turtle products, as when I left, it would have been illegal to take the souvenirs home.
In the US they made it illegal to possess turtle parts to reduce poaching. In the caymans, they made it legal for the Turtle Farm to raise them and sell products to replenish the endangered species with great success.
Get a warrant for one computer, get a warrant for all computers worldwide that happen to be on the Internet.
.gov sites, thepiratebay, or MSN Hotmail? This isn't going very far. It attempts to reach globally outside their jurisdiction which is where it falls apart.
Not a problem. They are free to search any internet connected computer on the internet now. Most will display public web pages and login pages. Going beyond the internet connected public space and trying to intercept encrypted content will be a problem with any and all protected content servers such as any e-commerce, and DRM content site.
Think iTunes will let them in? how about Amazon,
nice idea but also totally non standard and therefore likely to confuse people.
Very true, but it prevented automated systems from double processing. Starts of automated steps were simply delayed.
Perhaps a dialog box should pop up asking if they want the first or second occurence of 02:21am.
;-)
Some smart programmer for one enterprise, to prevent that kind of problem, had another solution. To back up the clocks by one hour, simply slow the clocks 25% for 4 hours (normal speed time). Then time never repeated. It worked like a charm and only took 3 hours from 01:00 to 04:00.
Follow the money here,
http://www.opensecrets.org/