gee... i wonder why they agreed to drop legal action against imeem.
What I wondered is how much it costs an advertiser per page view. A bunch of kids that never buy anything could prove to be expensive to an advertiser. Remember the free Net Zero? I expect the content providers to squeeze the middle pretty hard. They overcharge for any use of their product. This will be no exception. Advertisers payments will go directly to the record companies and the website will go broke. Nobody providing RIAA content is making a lot of money and negotiations often bread down. Look at the fees they were trying to charge webcasters and the higher fees they were trying to push on iTunes. This outfit is next in line for the squeeze. They will be squeezed to the point they have to raise advertising rates to the point the advertisers demand more in your face exposure for the money or they go bye bye.
"these 30 sec peview are dumb u cant even steal songs from here how is ti possible to download. plus these are intended to have em in our page we can never put dem in our ipods and such ya know. get rid of da 30 sec limit quick or da 50 cent guy below u will be right about losing alot of members"
Clipped right from a song sample page...
"You must be logged in to hear the full song. Click here to create an account."
You can listen to the entire song.. With an account. That is why there is so much Google information of how to cheat the system and download the songs. Nobody wants a bunch of 30 second clips of songs except as ringtones.
I did this once, and shortly after the signs saying "$10 min. card purchases" was removed.
I've noticed. It's been replaced with the Notice due to rising CC charges by our bank we now have to charge a 0.45 to $2.50 transaction fee. Some places no longer take credit cards. It is cash or debit only and debit has a transaction fee.
don't see the issue here. No question of privacy really, people can choose to do this or not, and it's openly the catch. Microsoft probably wants to watch people's use of it to see what people have trouble with and what they can improve..
Funny thing is they may find people never use ebay, paypal, or online banking. (Would you log into any of these on a monitored computer?)
Could MediaSentry commit blatant computer trespass and still leave some citizen on the hook for egregious statutory damages?
Unfortunately due to the advertising to the public that Kazaa does, the analogy would be more like having your custom street rod stolen and then you found it for sale on ebay complete with the VIN. You show up with the cops to recover the stolen property and the guy claims that you and the law can't browse online for the stolen property. The door was left open with the goods in plain view. Taking a look hardly counts as computer trespass. Listing the songs by title and artist in MP3 format is about the same a advertising a stolen car by it's make, model, customization, and VIN.
"Spirit and its twin rover Opportunity have remained on Mars for much longer than originally planned. "
I never knew they were ever planning on leaving Mars.;-) I think the reporter should have said the rovers have functioned longer on Mars than originally planned.
HINT: One CD worth of MP3's fits rather nicely on a cheap 1Gb thumb drive.
With lots of left over space. One CD worth of lossless WAV files fit nicely on a cheap 1 GB thumb drive. 15 CD's worth of MP3's fit nicely on a cheap 1 Gig thumb drive. http://www.advicenators.com/qview.php?q=474232
I may not be an electrician but I do know that water and electricity don't mix and you can't effectively/safely beam the power in wirelessly so you gotta run a biiiiig cord with a lotttt of amps running through it through the ocean.
Properly done, the work well together and last for years. "Finally, in 1951, the Bonneville Power Administration laid a submarine power cable from Anacortes to the San Juan Islands and Lime Kiln Lighthouse was converted to electricity. " http://www.historylink.org/essays/output.cfm?file_id=7704
"The proposed transmission lines would cross the international border beneath the Strait of Juan de Fuca, linking Vancouver Island, British Columbia, with the Olympic Peninsula in Washington State.
The Feasibility Study has indicated that without additional upgrades made to the regional system, and following the construction of the first project (550 megawatts), approximately 400 MW of transmission capacity could be available on a "south to north" routing from the Olympic Peninsula to Vancouver Island on a "pre-contingency" basis." http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0EIN/is_2005_April_6/ai_n13558803
They do sometimes fail, but protection circuits simply power down the faulted section with no major impact. "Recently, when one of the existing 30-year-old submarine cables failed, BPA decided to replace it. This was considered the preferred investment option, because the existing "wet design" cable had reached it's design life and because of the problems involved in repairing a cable sited in deep water." http://tdworld.com/mag/power_underwater_cables_cross/
Note, most of the rest of the cables are over 30 years old. There is even a 115KV cable. "Cable No. 4, a 115-kV, three-core, low-pressure fluid-filled cable with a single layer of PE-insulated galvanized armor wires and cathodic protection rated 150 MVA, was installed in 1982. Polarization cells were installed in 1985, and this cable has afforded fault-free service for more that 20 years."
What is the big problem for the RIAA is that a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy of the original imperfect digital copy is the same as the original imperfect digital copy. It does not pick up imperfections in each generation of the copy. Video tape and Cassette Tapes were not too much of a problem as a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy was pretty much lacking in any fidelity. Automatic gain control in audio recorders and video peaking in video recorders pretty much ensured that a 5th generation copy was junk.
To speed up the process on video tape, most recorders line input has a sensitivity of -20 dB, but an output level of -6DB. This ensured that a multiple generation will have full volume tape hiss in the quiet parts of the movie.
In addition to a video stabelizer for the picture, an attenuator for the audio to disable AGC in the audio was a requirement for multi-generation recording. Multi-generation copies of videotapes often had car crashes, screaming sports fans, and bedroom whispers all at the same level, much like a modern CD. To get good dynamic range nowdays, you need to go to THX certified DVD's.
It's hard to find these VCR specs nowdays outside a service manual. Now all the consumer level spec's state is the jacks are RCA and are on the front or back.
Most VHS VCR's were input level -20 dB, output level -6 dB. This 14 dB boost from copy to copy hit the AGC hard and soon raised the noise level up to full volume.
Is this some folder that allows people outside one's home network to get at the contents via a series of magical fairy tubes? Do things in it automatically become available via some P2P protocol?
Yes. That's how he got caught. They were in this folder that automatically became available via some P2P protocol. If you have a P2P program installed and have items in it's shared folder, your personal files are no longer personal, but shared. Then they are no longer personal or authorised.
From the PDF; "Did Defendant Howell admit on the record that he is responsible for the Plaintiff's copyrighted material appearing in his Kazaa shared folder?"
This case appears to be an absolutely clear fair use case.
Maybe not. I think the important item was left in plain type so most missed it's importance. I'll highlight it..
"Once Defendant converted Plaintiffs' recordings into the compressed.mp3 format and they are in his shared folder , they are no longer the authorized copies...'"
The moment you share it, it is unauthorized. If it was in a private folder, it should have been fine. As with most copyright violations, including GPL, a violation of the terms terminates the rights to use the work. The magic word was "Shared".
I may be on to something, or I may be way out in left field on this one. Let me know.
Power failures are caused mostly by ruptured transmission lines, not by knocking out the actual power source.
Not anymore. After an earthquake the down power lines cause fires and secondary hazzards. As a safety upgrade many power plants are designed to shutdown in an earthquake, not to protect the generation plant, but to protect the city.
"When the earthquake struck, Intermountain's two 800-million-watt stations at the Delta plant automatically shut down, cutting off 50 percent of the power for the cities of Burbank, Anaheim, Glendale, Pasadena and Riverside. Intermountain's system is designed to shut down automatically in such incidents to avoid flooding Los Angeles with electricity that would have nowhere to go, causing the remaining generating stations in Utah to burn up because so many facilities and transmission lines would be down and the generators would speed up. "
The simplest way would be to make them provide a non-standard output, and make it clear in the news that the generators are completely useless for anything but running a cell tower.
I like it. Cell towers should simply be configured to use 440 volt 3 phase power. I can see someone with a stolen generator connecting one phase to ground thinking it's nutral and connecting their loads up to the other 2 phases.. Can you say instant smoke?
Many people have a generator that they never consider using. It's called a car. Unlike a standby generator, it is most likely have been recently serviced, has a working battery, fresh fuel and oil, and tested in the last week. Dig out your pocket inverter, and extension cord and laptop. Fire up the car once in a while to recharge the battery.
I wanted more power than a lighter socket inverter will provide so I installed a trunk mount inverter.
I have a Prius. It takes care of shutting down the engine when the traction battery is charged and restarting it when it is drawn down. I use that at my advantage. My Prius is my emergency genertator. I picked up one of these from Costco and trunk mounted it.
It's a bargin at under $70.00 I have used it camping and for emergencies. I use about 1/4 tank of gas/weekend. It beats filling a portable noisy generator every 3-8 hours. It has enough surge capacity to start my fridge as well as run a few CF lights, and my computer. In using the car for emergency power, it typicaly runs for about 5 minutes, then it shuts down for about 1/2 hour and then repeats the cycle.
Here is the actual project including how it works (Pizo) photos of both prototypes, the light and dark one, and detail on the robotics in it. It includes 3 videos including the walking on water video.
Piracy does help them to a certain extent, it pushes their products into markets where people cannot afford them, or just flat out don't want to pay for it, which still ultimatley counts towards their market share.
The real wake up call was not the fact that a few copies sold that would have otherwise been pirated. The wake up call was that the kill switch was a reliablity issue for many who avoided using it purchased or not and using something else more reliable.
They had a problem. On the one hand you have piracy.. It eats into sales. On the other hand you have competition. A buggy product (Activation issues) kills sales.. Now it boils down to how to keep market share and reduce piracy. It's a tough balancing act. It was better when they were the monopoly. For those not locked into Windows, the sales figures are up. So is the distribution of free alternatives.
http://arstechnica.com/journals/apple.ars/2007/11/13/october-leopard-sales-outpace-windows-in-japan "Though Apple has only seen a "modest" increase in Mac shipments to Japan lately, sales of Mac OS X Leopard has reportedly leapfrogged past Windows in the country. It now claims 53.9 percent of Japan's OS-only market in October, according to Japan's Business Computer News. Mac OS X sales increased from 15.5 to 60.5 percent year-over-year, while Windows suffered a sudden drop from 75.3 to 28.7 percent over the same period. "
http://seekingalpha.com/article/53450-first-weekend-leopard-sales-on-par-with-initial-vista-sales "Apple (AAPL) Thursday announced that it sold two million copies or about a million a day of Mac OS X Leopard in the first weekend. I tried to find similar statistics for the Microsoft (MSFT) Vista launch, but the best I could come up with was that Vista sold 20 million copies in the first month (February), resulting in an average sales rate of 714,000 a day. Both numbers reflect pre-orders and machine installs, not just upgrades. So at least for now, Leopard is running neck and neck with the Windows Vista install rate."
So, in conclusion, the GP was right, but looking from a different angle.
Correct. The utilities got screwed. They sold power that under deregulation, were prohibited from generating. Enron got into the generation and natural gas speculation and squeezed the supply. Southern California Edison and Pacific Gas & Electric got stuck having to buy power at well over 15 cents a KWH and rising but had the retail price fixed at 6.7 cents/KWH. It didn't take long to go bust. From the linked Wikipedia article;
"As a result of the actions of electricity wholesalers, Southern California Edison (SCE) and Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) were buying from a spot market at very high prices but were unable to raise retail rates. A product that the IOU's used to produce for about three cents per kilowatt hour of electricity, they were paying eleven cents, twenty cents, fifty cents or more; and, yet, they were capped at 6.7 cents per kilowatt hours in terms of what they could charge their retail customers. As a result, PG&E filed bankruptcy, and Southern California Edison worked diligently on a workout plan with the State of California to save their company from the same fate.[8] PG&E and SoCalEd had racked up US$20 Billion in debt by Spring of 2001 and their credit ratings were reduced to junk status. The financial crisis meant that PG&E and SoCalEd were unable to purchase power on behalf of their customers."
Enron smiled and made sure the shortage in contractable delivery of fuel and electric power would run up the spot market for private generation, some of which Enron had, and Natural Gas which Enron also controlled. The Government's attention focused on the bottleneck much to the dismay of Enron. Much of the speculation deals were back-room secrets until the investigation. Then the scandal and shredding started.
"One of the energy wholesalers that became notorious for "gaming the market" and reaping huge speculative profits was Enron Corporation. Enron CEO Ken Lay mocked the efforts by the California State government to thwart the practices of the energy wholesalers, saying, "In the final analysis, it doesn't matter what you crazy people in California do, because I got smart guys who can always figure out how to make money." The original statement was made in a phone conversation between David Freeman (Chairman of the California Power Authority) and Kenneth Lay (CEO of Enron) in 2000, according to the statements made by Freeman to the Senate Subcommittee on Consumer Affairs, Foreign Commerce and Tourism in April[10] and May[11] 2002."
here is a spicy bit regarding the generation shortage in the area; "Traditional NUG contracts do not provide capacity value for the plant unless it meets stringent availability criteria during on peak periods. The plants owned by the "Big Five" not only failed to generate near their capacity during system emergencies, they only averaged operating rates of 50% to 60% during emergency conditions." http://www.mresearch.com/pdfs/76.pdf
The brownouts we're mainly hot air. First off, very few actually happened. Secondly, they were artificial- caused by manipulations of the power grid by energy providers for profit. There was no energy shortage.
Bzzzt... Wrong.
The energy shortage was real and localized. In the Enron days, California capped electricity rates as a consumer protection move. As a result, Enron in a move to cut losses from expensive generation and as a leverage tool to negotiate new rates, took the oppertunity when fuel prices spiked to shut down a lot of ineffecient generation plants for maitenance. This was followed by a heat wave which put a spike in demand for AC. A line tripped offline. It was either blackout time as systems cascaded carrying the overload or simply drop part of the load and leave the rest of the sytem up.
http://tdworld.com/mag/power_world_technology_update_2/ "California Energy Crisis Reaches Stage Three Electrical Emergency Already under a Stage Three Electrical Emergency due to scant resources, the California Independent System Operator (California ISO) encountered a significant and sudden loss of transmission capacity Jan. 21, 2001, that forced municipal utilities in Northern California, U.S. to endure a brief 20-min transmission-related outage."
"The California ISO issued the controlled outage to keep the ac lines from overloading at Path 15, a group of high-voltage lines in central California already at their limit because of low resources in the northern part of the state."
There was a blackout because there was not enough in area generation online. The capacity of the system was stressed. A line failed. The already loaded lines couldn't take on the replacement load. Part of the area was shut off to preserve the remaining area. It was small blackout time of watch the entire area go dark as the system collapsed.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_electricity_crisis "Due to price controls, utility companies were paying more for electricity than they were allowed to charge customers forcing the bankruptcy of Pacific Gas and Electric and the public bail out of Southern California Edison. This led to a shortage in energy and therefore, blackouts. Rolling blackouts began in June 2000 and recurred several times in the following 12 months."
"Energy price regulation forced suppliers to ration their electricity supply rather than expand production. This scarcity created opportunities for market manipulation by energy speculators."
If you need any more proof that price controls cause shortages, just re-read the above. You can mandate $1/gallon for gasoline, but don't expect to find it for sale anywhere.
Read between the lines.. they didn't pay high prices for fuel for ineffecient plants.
"Despite the action, PG&E said it still is having trouble getting gas suppliers to comply with the emergency order originally issued January 19. PG&E has said it has enough gas in storage to make up for the lost supply under such a scenario until the first week in February. According to a company spokesperson, PG&E's storage currently is well below 50% full, or less than 16 Bcf and depleting rapidly by about 500 MMcf/d to 1 Bcf/d."
They used their reserve fuel, but could only buy fuel at a loss due to price caps and high fuel cost. Gas suppliers were not selling below market. They sold at market rates, a price the utilites could not afford.
Expensive to run generation plants were shut down for upgrades and maitenance while they waited out the high fuel prices. The spike in demand caused the inevetible. The lines into the area could provide only part of the cheaper power from elsewhere.
Pffft. Lots of luck with government enforcement, especially when just about everyone is doing it. Don't they get it?
For those who think "I don't copy copyrighted material so I'm immune" should think again.
Have you ever right clicked on a webpage and picked "Save Photo As..."??
Congratulations you have committed a copyright violation unless the owner explicitly gave permission. This goes beyond simply making available on P-P. If you have copyrighted stuff on your computer without the copyright owners permission, you are in violation.
Finding infringers is as simple as finding computers.
Just where did your desktop art come from? Saved any photos from a news story? NASA photo? Clipped any text? The top part of my post is directly cut and pasted from another author. I didn't ask permission. Is it fair use?
The only upside from a manned mission is that we feel all warm and fuzzy when our heroes return from the voyage. Big deal.
I don't know of any fuel on this planet that will take a large enough payload of fuel to Mars for the return trip. Who said they would ever return? At current tech, it's a one way ticket.
You haven't seen any probes sent with enough fuel to return. You won't see it anytime soon. Fuel that is light enough to take, but has enough mass to provide thrust to escape Mars orbital velocity doesn't exist. Nuke has a limitation, as you use the fuel, it drops below critical mass. Shielding the travelers is a problem. Getting enough initial thrust to launch off Mars, then reaching escape velocity without overheating is a problem.
Got any working ideas. Before you post, check the physics involved. A quick crash course in the basics is here. http://webcast.berkeley.edu/course_details.php?seriesid=1906978373 Watch or listen to Gravity and Satellites 1 & 2. When you understand the amount of energy required to take enough energy and mass to Mars for the return trip with passengers, then feel free to post. Don't forget you need more than just enough fuel to escape Mars, but also enough to slow down to reach Earth. Earth is in a lower orbit. To reach this orbit, you need to slow down.
Deceleration to orbital speeds is required for survivable re-entry. Leaving Mars to return to Earth does include going from an higher solar orbit to a lower orbit and the requirement to reduce kinetic energy to reach the lower orbit. In other words, you will expend fuel just to slow down.
The Moon mission had the advantage of the Moon and Earth are in the same Solar Orbit and return from the moon required only a little energy because of the low lunar gravity. To get to the Moon, there was not the requirement to leave Earths orbit. Going to Mars has none of these advantages. Mars does have lower gravity than Earth, but the requirement to leave Earth Orbit, increase kinetic energy to reach the outer orbit of Mars, land, and relaunch (with atmospheric resistance), reduce kinetic energy, to reach Earth orbit, and reduce kinetic energy for re-entry is simply a physics problem for energy of magnitudes greater proportion than visiting the Moon and returning. The Mars mission can not be done like the Moon mission. They carry way too little fuel.
The map in my Prius seems to be based on the truck routes. It seldom routes me through a neighborhood as a shortcut. It tries to keep me on main routes which can be a pain when I am trying to get out of gridlock and cut through.
The big telltale is there is a truck bypass on I5 in the Twilliger curves in Portland. It tells me to take the truck exit instead of just staying on the main freeway.
In the US I often find the Nav is aimed at trucking, not passanger cars.
Slashdot Mirror
gee... i wonder why they agreed to drop legal action against imeem.
What I wondered is how much it costs an advertiser per page view. A bunch of kids that never buy anything could prove to be expensive to an advertiser. Remember the free Net Zero? I expect the content providers to squeeze the middle pretty hard. They overcharge for any use of their product. This will be no exception. Advertisers payments will go directly to the record companies and the website will go broke. Nobody providing RIAA content is making a lot of money and negotiations often bread down. Look at the fees they were trying to charge webcasters and the higher fees they were trying to push on iTunes. This outfit is next in line for the squeeze. They will be squeezed to the point they have to raise advertising rates to the point the advertisers demand more in your face exposure for the money or they go bye bye.
"these 30 sec peview are dumb u cant even steal songs from here how is ti possible to download. plus these are intended to have em in our page we can never put dem in our ipods and such ya know. get rid of da 30 sec limit quick or da 50 cent guy below u will be right about losing alot of members"
Clipped right from a song sample page...
"You must be logged in to hear the full song. Click here to create an account."
You can listen to the entire song.. With an account. That is why there is so much Google information of how to cheat the system and download the songs. Nobody wants a bunch of 30 second clips of songs except as ringtones.
I did this once, and shortly after the signs saying "$10 min. card purchases" was removed.
I've noticed. It's been replaced with the Notice due to rising CC charges by our bank we now have to charge a 0.45 to $2.50 transaction fee. Some places no longer take credit cards. It is cash or debit only and debit has a transaction fee.
don't see the issue here. No question of privacy really, people can choose to do this or not, and it's openly the catch. Microsoft probably wants to watch people's use of it to see what people have trouble with and what they can improve..
Funny thing is they may find people never use ebay, paypal, or online banking. (Would you log into any of these on a monitored computer?)
Could MediaSentry commit blatant computer trespass and
still leave some citizen on the hook for egregious
statutory damages?
Unfortunately due to the advertising to the public that Kazaa does, the analogy would be more like having your custom street rod stolen and then you found it for sale on ebay complete with the VIN. You show up with the cops to recover the stolen property and the guy claims that you and the law can't browse online for the stolen property. The door was left open with the goods in plain view. Taking a look hardly counts as computer trespass. Listing the songs by title and artist in MP3 format is about the same a advertising a stolen car by it's make, model, customization, and VIN.
From the article;
;-) I think the reporter should have said the rovers have functioned longer on Mars than originally planned.
"Spirit and its twin rover Opportunity have remained on Mars for much longer than originally planned. "
I never knew they were ever planning on leaving Mars.
I don't normaly feed the troll, but...
Oregon is tired of supplying California with electricity.
Oregon is not tired of collecting money from California. There fixed it for you.
HINT: One CD worth of MP3's fits rather nicely on a cheap 1Gb thumb drive.
With lots of left over space. One CD worth of lossless WAV files fit nicely on a cheap 1 GB thumb drive. 15 CD's worth of MP3's fit nicely on a cheap 1 Gig thumb drive.
http://www.advicenators.com/qview.php?q=474232
I may not be an electrician but I do know that water and electricity don't mix and you can't effectively/safely beam the power in wirelessly so you gotta run a biiiiig cord with a lotttt of amps running through it through the ocean.
Properly done, the work well together and last for years.
"Finally, in 1951, the Bonneville Power Administration laid a submarine power cable from Anacortes to the San Juan Islands and Lime Kiln Lighthouse was converted to electricity. "
http://www.historylink.org/essays/output.cfm?file_id=7704
"The proposed transmission lines would cross the international border beneath the Strait of Juan de Fuca, linking Vancouver Island, British Columbia, with the Olympic Peninsula in Washington State.
The Feasibility Study has indicated that without additional upgrades made to the regional system, and following the construction of the first project (550 megawatts), approximately 400 MW of transmission capacity could be available on a "south to north" routing from the Olympic Peninsula to Vancouver Island on a "pre-contingency" basis."
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0EIN/is_2005_April_6/ai_n13558803
They do sometimes fail, but protection circuits simply power down the faulted section with no major impact.
"Recently, when one of the existing 30-year-old submarine cables failed, BPA decided to replace it. This was considered the preferred investment option, because the existing "wet design" cable had reached it's design life and because of the problems involved in repairing a cable sited in deep water."
http://tdworld.com/mag/power_underwater_cables_cross/
Note, most of the rest of the cables are over 30 years old. There is even a 115KV cable.
"Cable No. 4, a 115-kV, three-core, low-pressure fluid-filled cable with a single layer of PE-insulated galvanized armor wires and cathodic protection rated 150 MVA, was installed in 1982. Polarization cells were installed in 1985, and this cable has afforded fault-free service for more that 20 years."
Just because a folder is shared does not mean the contents are available to a third party.
A KaZaa shared folder is available to a third party. That's how Media Sentry found it.
What is an MP3 except an imperfect digital copy?
What is the big problem for the RIAA is that a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy of the original imperfect digital copy is the same as the original imperfect digital copy. It does not pick up imperfections in each generation of the copy. Video tape and Cassette Tapes were not too much of a problem as a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy was pretty much lacking in any fidelity. Automatic gain control in audio recorders and video peaking in video recorders pretty much ensured that a 5th generation copy was junk.
To speed up the process on video tape, most recorders line input has a sensitivity of -20 dB, but an output level of -6DB. This ensured that a multiple generation will have full volume tape hiss in the quiet parts of the movie.
In addition to a video stabelizer for the picture, an attenuator for the audio to disable AGC in the audio was a requirement for multi-generation recording. Multi-generation copies of videotapes often had car crashes, screaming sports fans, and bedroom whispers all at the same level, much like a modern CD. To get good dynamic range nowdays, you need to go to THX certified DVD's.
It's hard to find these VCR specs nowdays outside a service manual. Now all the consumer level spec's state is the jacks are RCA and are on the front or back.
Spec sheets that include technical stuff like this are hard to find anymore;
http://www.mcintoshlabs.com/mcprod/..%5Cdata%5Cbrochures%5CMVP871.1.28.07.pdf
"Output Level: 2 Vms (1kHz, 0dB)
Output Connectors: 2 RCA Jacks,"
Most VHS VCR's were input level -20 dB, output level -6 dB.
This 14 dB boost from copy to copy hit the AGC hard and soon raised the noise level up to full volume.
Is this some folder that allows people outside one's home network to get at the contents via a series of magical fairy tubes? Do things in it automatically become available via some P2P protocol?
Yes. That's how he got caught. They were in this folder that automatically became available via some P2P protocol. If you have a P2P program installed and have items in it's shared folder, your personal files are no longer personal, but shared. Then they are no longer personal or authorised.
From the PDF;
"Did Defendant Howell admit on the record that he is responsible for the Plaintiff's copyrighted material appearing in his Kazaa shared folder?"
This case appears to be an absolutely clear fair use case.
.mp3 format and they are in his shared folder , they are no longer the authorized copies...'"
Maybe not. I think the important item was left in plain type so most missed it's importance. I'll highlight it..
"Once Defendant converted Plaintiffs' recordings into the compressed
The moment you share it, it is unauthorized. If it was in a private folder, it should have been fine. As with most copyright violations, including GPL, a violation of the terms terminates the rights to use the work. The magic word was "Shared".
I may be on to something, or I may be way out in left field on this one. Let me know.
Power failures are caused mostly by ruptured transmission lines, not by knocking out the actual power source.
Not anymore. After an earthquake the down power lines cause fires and secondary hazzards. As a safety upgrade many power plants are designed to shutdown in an earthquake, not to protect the generation plant, but to protect the city.
"When the earthquake struck, Intermountain's two 800-million-watt stations at the Delta plant automatically shut down, cutting off 50 percent of the power for the cities of Burbank, Anaheim, Glendale, Pasadena and Riverside. Intermountain's system is designed to shut down automatically in such incidents to avoid flooding Los Angeles with electricity that would have nowhere to go, causing the remaining generating stations in Utah to burn up because so many facilities and transmission lines would be down and the generators would speed up. "
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9E06E0DB1630F93BA25752C0A962958260
The simplest way would be to make them provide a non-standard output, and make it clear in the news that the generators are completely useless for anything but running a cell tower.
I like it. Cell towers should simply be configured to use 440 volt 3 phase power. I can see someone with a stolen generator connecting one phase to ground thinking it's nutral and connecting their loads up to the other 2 phases.. Can you say instant smoke?
Maybe he has a generator.
Many people have a generator that they never consider using. It's called a car. Unlike a standby generator, it is most likely have been recently serviced, has a working battery, fresh fuel and oil, and tested in the last week. Dig out your pocket inverter, and extension cord and laptop. Fire up the car once in a while to recharge the battery.
I wanted more power than a lighter socket inverter will provide so I installed a trunk mount inverter.
I have a Prius. It takes care of shutting down the engine when the traction battery is charged and restarting it when it is drawn down. I use that at my advantage. My Prius is my emergency genertator. I picked up one of these from Costco and trunk mounted it.
http://www.costco.com/Browse/Product.aspx?Prodid=11240887&whse=BC&Ne=4000000&eCat=BC|3960|21273|59839&N=4018442&Mo=5&pos=8&No=3&Nr=P_CatalogName:BC&cat=59839&Ns=P_Price|1||P_SignDesc1&lang=en-US&Sp=C&ec=BC-EC10613-Cat21269&topnav=
It's a bargin at under $70.00 I have used it camping and for emergencies. I use about 1/4 tank of gas/weekend. It beats filling a portable noisy generator every 3-8 hours.
It has enough surge capacity to start my fridge as well as run a few CF lights, and my computer. In using the car for emergency power, it typicaly runs for about 5 minutes, then it shuts down for about 1/2 hour and then repeats the cycle.
I hunted for the video. In my search I came upon the original site, not the article talking about the site.
http://nanolab.me.cmu.edu/projects/waterstrider/
Here is the actual project including how it works (Pizo) photos of both prototypes, the light and dark one, and detail on the robotics in it.
It includes 3 videos including the walking on water video.
Market share is a big part of the drive.
Piracy does help them to a certain extent, it pushes their products into markets where people cannot afford them, or just flat out don't want to pay for it, which still ultimatley counts towards their market share.
The real wake up call was not the fact that a few copies sold that would have otherwise been pirated. The wake up call was that the kill switch was a reliablity issue for many who avoided using it purchased or not and using something else more reliable.
They had a problem. On the one hand you have piracy.. It eats into sales. On the other hand you have competition. A buggy product (Activation issues) kills sales.. Now it boils down to how to keep market share and reduce piracy. It's a tough balancing act. It was better when they were the monopoly. For those not locked into Windows, the sales figures are up. So is the distribution of free alternatives.
http://arstechnica.com/journals/apple.ars/2007/11/13/october-leopard-sales-outpace-windows-in-japan
"Though Apple has only seen a "modest" increase in Mac shipments to Japan lately, sales of Mac OS X Leopard has reportedly leapfrogged past Windows in the country. It now claims 53.9 percent of Japan's OS-only market in October, according to Japan's Business Computer News. Mac OS X sales increased from 15.5 to 60.5 percent year-over-year, while Windows suffered a sudden drop from 75.3 to 28.7 percent over the same period. "
http://seekingalpha.com/article/53450-first-weekend-leopard-sales-on-par-with-initial-vista-sales
"Apple (AAPL) Thursday announced that it sold two million copies or about a million a day of Mac OS X Leopard in the first weekend. I tried to find similar statistics for the Microsoft (MSFT) Vista launch, but the best I could come up with was that Vista sold 20 million copies in the first month (February), resulting in an average sales rate of 714,000 a day. Both numbers reflect pre-orders and machine installs, not just upgrades. So at least for now, Leopard is running neck and neck with the Windows Vista install rate."
http://robitaille.wordpress.com/2006/12/30/ubuntu-now-has-over-8-millions-users/
"Q: What about growth in adoption rates, any kind of numbers that you can give me?
A: We know now that there are probably at least 8 million [Ubuntu] users."
So, in conclusion, the GP was right, but looking from a different angle.
Correct. The utilities got screwed. They sold power that under deregulation, were prohibited from generating. Enron got into the generation and natural gas speculation and squeezed the supply. Southern California Edison and Pacific Gas & Electric got stuck having to buy power at well over 15 cents a KWH and rising but had the retail price fixed at 6.7 cents/KWH. It didn't take long to go bust. From the linked Wikipedia article;
"As a result of the actions of electricity wholesalers, Southern California Edison (SCE) and Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) were buying from a spot market at very high prices but were unable to raise retail rates. A product that the IOU's used to produce for about three cents per kilowatt hour of electricity, they were paying eleven cents, twenty cents, fifty cents or more; and, yet, they were capped at 6.7 cents per kilowatt hours in terms of what they could charge their retail customers. As a result, PG&E filed bankruptcy, and Southern California Edison worked diligently on a workout plan with the State of California to save their company from the same fate.[8] PG&E and SoCalEd had racked up US$20 Billion in debt by Spring of 2001 and their credit ratings were reduced to junk status. The financial crisis meant that PG&E and SoCalEd were unable to purchase power on behalf of their customers."
Enron smiled and made sure the shortage in contractable delivery of fuel and electric power would run up the spot market for private generation, some of which Enron had, and Natural Gas which Enron also controlled. The Government's attention focused on the bottleneck much to the dismay of Enron. Much of the speculation deals were back-room secrets until the investigation. Then the scandal and shredding started.
"One of the energy wholesalers that became notorious for "gaming the market" and reaping huge speculative profits was Enron Corporation. Enron CEO Ken Lay mocked the efforts by the California State government to thwart the practices of the energy wholesalers, saying, "In the final analysis, it doesn't matter what you crazy people in California do, because I got smart guys who can always figure out how to make money." The original statement was made in a phone conversation between David Freeman (Chairman of the California Power Authority) and Kenneth Lay (CEO of Enron) in 2000, according to the statements made by Freeman to the Senate Subcommittee on Consumer Affairs, Foreign Commerce and Tourism in April[10] and May[11] 2002."
here is a spicy bit regarding the generation shortage in the area;
"Traditional NUG contracts do not provide capacity value for the plant unless it meets stringent availability criteria during on peak periods. The plants owned by the "Big Five" not only failed to generate near their capacity during system emergencies, they only averaged operating rates of 50% to 60% during emergency conditions."
http://www.mresearch.com/pdfs/76.pdf
The brownouts we're mainly hot air. First off, very few actually happened. Secondly, they were artificial- caused by manipulations of the power grid by energy providers for profit. There was no energy shortage.
Bzzzt... Wrong.
The energy shortage was real and localized. In the Enron days, California capped electricity rates as a consumer protection move. As a result, Enron in a move to cut losses from expensive generation and as a leverage tool to negotiate new rates, took the oppertunity when fuel prices spiked to shut down a lot of ineffecient generation plants for maitenance. This was followed by a heat wave which put a spike in demand for AC. A line tripped offline. It was either blackout time as systems cascaded carrying the overload or simply drop part of the load and leave the rest of the sytem up.
http://tdworld.com/mag/power_world_technology_update_2/
"California Energy Crisis Reaches Stage Three Electrical Emergency Already under a Stage Three Electrical Emergency due to scant resources, the California Independent System Operator (California ISO) encountered a significant and sudden loss of transmission capacity Jan. 21, 2001, that forced municipal utilities in Northern California, U.S. to endure a brief 20-min transmission-related outage."
"The California ISO issued the controlled outage to keep the ac lines from overloading at Path 15, a group of high-voltage lines in central California already at their limit because of low resources in the northern part of the state."
There was a blackout because there was not enough in area generation online. The capacity of the system was stressed. A line failed. The already loaded lines couldn't take on the replacement load. Part of the area was shut off to preserve the remaining area. It was small blackout time of watch the entire area go dark as the system collapsed.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_electricity_crisis
"Due to price controls, utility companies were paying more for electricity than they were allowed to charge customers forcing the bankruptcy of Pacific Gas and Electric and the public bail out of Southern California Edison. This led to a shortage in energy and therefore, blackouts. Rolling blackouts began in June 2000 and recurred several times in the following 12 months."
"Energy price regulation forced suppliers to ration their electricity supply rather than expand production. This scarcity created opportunities for market manipulation by energy speculators."
If you need any more proof that price controls cause shortages, just re-read the above. You can mandate $1/gallon for gasoline, but don't expect to find it for sale anywhere.
Read between the lines.. they didn't pay high prices for fuel for ineffecient plants.
"Despite the action, PG&E said it still is having trouble getting gas suppliers to comply with the emergency order originally issued January 19. PG&E has said it has enough gas in storage to make up for the lost supply under such a scenario until the first week in February. According to a company spokesperson, PG&E's storage currently is well below 50% full, or less than 16 Bcf and depleting rapidly by about 500 MMcf/d to 1 Bcf/d."
They used their reserve fuel, but could only buy fuel at a loss due to price caps and high fuel cost. Gas suppliers were not selling below market. They sold at market rates, a price the utilites could not afford.
Expensive to run generation plants were shut down for upgrades and maitenance while they waited out the high fuel prices. The spike in demand caused the inevetible. The lines into the area could provide only part of the cheaper power from elsewhere.
http://www.usbr.gov/dataweb/html/pninter.html This is the list of the lines from Oregon into California and their capacities.
Pffft. Lots of luck with government enforcement, especially when just about everyone is doing it. Don't they get it?
For those who think "I don't copy copyrighted material so I'm immune" should think again.
Have you ever right clicked on a webpage and picked "Save Photo As..."??
Congratulations you have committed a copyright violation unless the owner explicitly gave permission. This goes beyond simply making available on P-P. If you have copyrighted stuff on your computer without the copyright owners permission, you are in violation.
Finding infringers is as simple as finding computers.
Just where did your desktop art come from? Saved any photos from a news story? NASA photo? Clipped any text? The top part of my post is directly cut and pasted from another author. I didn't ask permission. Is it fair use?
The only upside from a manned mission is that we feel all warm and fuzzy when our heroes return from the voyage. Big deal.
I don't know of any fuel on this planet that will take a large enough payload of fuel to Mars for the return trip. Who said they would ever return? At current tech, it's a one way ticket.
You haven't seen any probes sent with enough fuel to return. You won't see it anytime soon. Fuel that is light enough to take, but has enough mass to provide thrust to escape Mars orbital velocity doesn't exist. Nuke has a limitation, as you use the fuel, it drops below critical mass. Shielding the travelers is a problem. Getting enough initial thrust to launch off Mars, then reaching escape velocity without overheating is a problem.
Got any working ideas. Before you post, check the physics involved. A quick crash course in the basics is here.
http://webcast.berkeley.edu/course_details.php?seriesid=1906978373 Watch or listen to Gravity and Satellites 1 & 2. When you understand the amount of energy required to take enough energy and mass to Mars for the return trip with passengers, then feel free to post. Don't forget you need more than just enough fuel to escape Mars, but also enough to slow down to reach Earth. Earth is in a lower orbit. To reach this orbit, you need to slow down.
Deceleration to orbital speeds is required for survivable re-entry. Leaving Mars to return to Earth does include going from an higher solar orbit to a lower orbit and the requirement to reduce kinetic energy to reach the lower orbit. In other words, you will expend fuel just to slow down.
The Moon mission had the advantage of the Moon and Earth are in the same Solar Orbit and return from the moon required only a little energy because of the low lunar gravity. To get to the Moon, there was not the requirement to leave Earths orbit. Going to Mars has none of these advantages. Mars does have lower gravity than Earth, but the requirement to leave Earth Orbit, increase kinetic energy to reach the outer orbit of Mars, land, and relaunch (with atmospheric resistance), reduce kinetic energy, to reach Earth orbit, and reduce kinetic energy for re-entry is simply a physics problem for energy of magnitudes greater proportion than visiting the Moon and returning. The Mars mission can not be done like the Moon mission. They carry way too little fuel.
http://www.muller.lbl.gov/teaching/Physics10/PffP.html
You might make it to Mars, but I doubt you will be returning in my lifetime.
FYI, those "pipe-grated things" are called cattle grids.
Nice guess, but I guess not many Slashdotters grew up on a farm..
You can buy them here;
http://www.barnworld.com/sa/c/Cattle_Guards_3434.htm
The link to the curve is here;
http://maps.google.com/maps?ie=UTF8&ll=45.44282,-122.737069&spn=0.006925,0.013497&t=h&z=16&om=1
The truck bypass is the straighter single lane road in the inside of the curve for the Northbound traffic which merges with the 99W to I5 ramp.
The map in my Prius seems to be based on the truck routes. It seldom routes me through a neighborhood as a shortcut. It tries to keep me on main routes which can be a pain when I am trying to get out of gridlock and cut through.
The big telltale is there is a truck bypass on I5 in the Twilliger curves in Portland. It tells me to take the truck exit instead of just staying on the main freeway.
In the US I often find the Nav is aimed at trucking, not passanger cars.