or you can do what I did and buy a turnkey untangle system on a nice little Atom system.
The guys at logic supply make a great system at a reasonable price. For around 350 bucks you can get a small formfactor case and 180 gig drive and a system that does everything you could want it to.
I can vouch for untangle as well. The access control is top notch, you can limit internet access by time and machine and the web based configuration is second to none.
I replaced an aging celeron based ipcop system and I was initially a little leery about switching but I have been on untangle now for the last two months and its great
I can tell you this, DON'T try to roll your own distro, even using one of the many existing products can be an exercise in patience, trying to do it all from scratch is masochistic unless you do this for a living....and even then....I am not sure you would want to do it on your off time.
The segment of the population most susceptible to the sort of attacks this is designed to combat are not the kind of people that use sleep/suspend or keep their machines on for months at end.
The obvious problems of social engineering/bait and switch on the physical media notwithstanding, I think this is a pretty cool idea and a fantastic example of the many uses for Linux. Regardless of how its done, it still exposes people to Linux as an alternative to windows. It would be really neat if the LiveCD allowed for them to install ubuntu if they liked it.
Remember, this isn't directed at techies or people who are reasonably internet savvy. Its for the mothers and grandmothers of the world. It makes it easy and more secure for them.
Mod Parent Up.
Seriously, this argument could be said about ALL REQUESTS FOR INFORMATION.
OBVIOUSLY its available, because when you get a warrant, they look it up and provide it. DUH.
I second this, however I will add some more to it.
Contact your local astronomy groups, if you are in a semi-rural area look to the nearest large cities.
As an amateur astronomer I love doing outreach events where I not only get to enjoy a darker sky than I normally see from my suburban home, but I also get to share the wonder of the universe with people. It also generally means you will have one or more scopes of varying size with someone to operate it there as well.
Stellarium can be an excellent tool to figure out what you may or may not be able to see from your area. Its free, runs on a variety of hardware and operating systems and has a fairly robust object set.
More information about the scope would also be useful as not all telescopes are created equal. A 4" reflector, is most likely nowhere near as good of a scope as a 4 in refractor would be simply because of the mechanics involved. I am going to assume that its probably one of the very common 4" newtonians that are out there like a meade DS1114 or one of the smaller Celestrons.
Assuming a 4" reflector, with a few exceptions I would avoid deepspace objects (nebulae, galaxies, and clusters) as they are generally difficult to locate and may be difficult to view with a 4" scope. Your mileage may vary due to local conditions/light pollution. There are a few exceptions.
For the Northern Hemisphere right now, you have a couple very nice objects to look at.
Andromeda (M31) is directly overhead at dusk for much of northamerica this time of year, Just south of Andromeda, the Pleiades can be found (Also called the seven sisters, M45, or Subaru in case you ever wondered why the car has stars on its logo). East of the Pleiades you can find Orion the hunter and the great nebula (M42). These three objects are visible to the naked eye even from my yard which lies under the flightpath for the major airport in my area (seattle), although I will admit that andromeda is a challenge. Just to the east of Orion lies Castor and Pollux in Gemini which I believe is about where Mars is right now.
You can also check out the moon, and there may be some double stars worth looking at as well. Its a little late for Alberio which is a really nice Blue/gold doublestar in Cygnus, but you may still be able to get Gamma Andromedae.
As far as links go, I would recommend observing.skyhound.com. He has some Excellent resources for stargazing and tends to have a wide variety of objects on deck each season for all skill levels. I especially like his comet hunting pages, although I have not had much personal success finding them.
I don't know the details of your situation, but you could also ask parents to participate in observing events and ask them to bring binoculars. You would be surprised at what you can see with a pair of mid-range binoculars.
wow....you completely missed my point and assume too much.
My point is this.
DRM is touted as needed because of piracy and DRM doesn't affect piracy one bit. DRM only punishes the consumer that plays by the rules. The only problem is that most consumers don't understand the implications of some of the proposed draconian DRM schemes which was my point from the beginning.
I'll use myself as an example. I purchased a shiny new PC with blu-ray/hd-dvd drive. I spent additional money to purchase an HDCP compliant video card. Also purchased brand new shiny Receiver, also HDCP compliant. Bought HDCP compliant projector. I get it all hooked up and lo and behold, Vista will not let me play any disc. It says I am not allowed to. Hmmm interesting I think to myself....let me play this AVI I just recorded off my digital camera...imagine my surprise when it would not let me play that either. Now....mister DRM man....is that how its supposed to work? I am screwed because microsoft blames Nvidia and Denon, Denon wants nothing to do with me and insists that its a software problem from microsoft. So now I have to go buy software, which if it were up to you, would be completely illegal and not available just so I can watch a movie on my bigscreen.
The companies involved could care less about me and now I am screwed because I don't have enough money to take them to court. DRM? Bah! eff that. DRM makes me want to steal it on principle because its not there to make my life better, it just complicates it.
I can't count the number of times I have had to dink around with the setup just to get it to work when some new form comes around. Mind you I am just trying to watch the damn thing. I shouldn't have to jump through 21 flaming hoops of death just so I can watch legally acquired content in my home theater.
I know I am feeding a troll here who isn't interested in understanding the other side because he thinks the other side are a bunch of punks who want to steal shit, but the reality is those punks don't care about DRM at all because it ISN'T AN ISSUE FOR THEM. You aren't going to stop them ever. Until you can control what my eyes and ears deliver to my brain, you will not be able to stop piracy.
Prohibition doesn't work. What you have to do is lower the price point and increase accessibility until its just easier to buy it through appropriate channels than it is to risk malware and virii on the internet's dark underbelly.
Also I think mister Becksteads weak ass sauce one liner replies are pathetic. He wants people to be adults but can't even invest more than 30 seconds writing a reply...oh and the blogs are also VERY weak sauce....full of links to online poker and get rich quick schemes.
I got news for ya, if the wheel was patented when it was invented, civilization would have died before it started.
We understand that you want everything for free and you want to freeload off the backs of the artists. Clear as a bell. Property isn't what it used to be. The digital world is different and your model of the world is gone. Get over it.
And so is your model.
Lets take a step back and ask, what is an idea?. Is it the paper its printed on? the CD its pressed onto? no. Its information pure and simple.
Back in the old days, the information was bound by the media it was distributed on, and duplicating said media or information from said media was not only difficult and time consuming, it resulted in a product which was inferior to the original.
Supply was limited to the number of physical objects produced, duplication was cost prohibitive, thus the status quo of the supply and demand curve was maintained through limited supply.
Fast forward to the digital age and now supply is infinite, which means production costs eventually reach "zero" (now I know this isn't completely true, but stay with me) once the initial production costs are recouped.
The consumer says "sure I don't mind hooking you up with a copy of that song, or that book, or that movie because its not like loaning out a book, cd, or dvd that might get damaged or lost, and I lose nothing." We were raised (well some of us were raised)to believe that sharing is a good thing, the only downside to sharing is that we have less of that which is shared....oh wait...no we don't in this case.
Joe Executive,because lets be honest...its not the artists, actors, directors, writers who are driving this, its corporations and associations designed to control the markets in which they operate. Personally I think it would be interesting to see some RICO probes into hollywood and motown. I think people might be shocked at what turns up, however that's an entirely different discussion. He thinks here I have this thing which costs x amount to create, but ongoing production costs are comparatively nothing which means once you reach the break even on creation costs, you rake in the profits from continued sales. They then think, there's no way to enforce licensing restrictions that limit resale on physical media, but hey digital is something different, if I can come up with a system that I control who can and can't access the file, then I can make them pay me if they want to sell the content like they would a used CD. Then it gets really scary because they start talking about use tax and ways to make consumers pay for every consumption much in the way you pay every time you goto a concert or movie theater....I don't think I have to explain why this a terrible thing for the consumer.
Don't get me wrong. I am not deluded enough to think that I deserve everything for free just because the cost involved in ripping a dvd is negligible. But I also don't think that a company should be able to control what I can and can't do with legally acquired content. As far as broadcast TV goes....I already pay for it both through my cable company and through purchasing things which are advertised on the shows I watch. It seems as though folks forget that just because I can pick something up with an antenna without paying a monthly fee, doesn't mean its free nor is my recording of that content stealing. I think that tv series on disc is a fad and will disappear once on demand services start carrying more vintage content.
So just for the record....your world isn't what it used to be either.
The biggest problem is that people don't understand what DRM actually means and how it can impact them.
Things like this shed light on the pitfalls of DRM.
I am not a proponent of piracy, however I have had more than my fair share of DRM related issues in my home theater and as a result I vehemently oppose DRM schemes.
Snafus like this really opens the eyes of the public and hopefully informs a few of them while we still have a chance to understand the problem and vote with our dollars(or euros).
Laws change from time to time and if people had to pass a semi regular class in order to maintain their licenses it would not only be a refresher for the stuff they should be doing anyways, but also an effective avenue to ensure that people are up to date on the current laws which apply to driving.
Course, that doesn't mean it will stop the accidents.
Sometimes, As another poster pointed out, I am watching shows while I am doing something else.
in fact, it is a rare occasion where I am watching something and NOT doing something else.
sometimes I catch the commercials because I am "sleeping at the controls".
I also have a harmony remote which allows me to use the skip option on my DVR without having to dink around with the remote
You may want to read the petition first, then, because it's supporting a referendum to REPEAL civil unions in Washington.
Actually no.
You are incorrect.
The referendum puts the Civil Union law that was enacted by the state legislature to public vote on repealing the law.
The petition was to put the Civil Union laws on the ballot and let the people choose.
Granted the sponsor of the referendum is opposed to civil unions but the thing you have to remember is the petition was not to repeal the law, it was to put it up to the voters.
Reading it the way you wrote it implies that voting for the referendum would repeal the law and that is not the case.
I am more concerned with the opening sentence of the story "The NY Times reports that as the number of swine flu cases grows to levels unprecedented for this time of year, health officials predict a shortfall in the supply of swine flu vaccine
this implies that they have swine flu stats for many years, enough to imply that the levels are outside of normal....
If I have to choose between balloon boy hoaxes or swine flu as the "look at the monkey" diversion story to keep us off the ACTA scent or health care.......I'll turn the TV off..
Multi-touch is fantastic for a handheld mobile computing device, smart phone, etc.
I don't think touch screens, multitouch interfaces, or anything else will supplant the keyboard and mouse on a workstation.
Touchtyping accurately and quickly is extremely difficult on a virtual keyboard with no tactile feedback.
Not saying it can't be done, just saying I don't know anyone that would want to do that all day at work.
that said, multitouch is the killer app for things like the multifunction kitchen computer, or information kiosk, kids computers, mobile devices, smart phones, tablets, etc. Maybe even gaming but the bottom line is our fingers are big old meat sticks. Try editing a photo with a touchscreen. There's a reason we have things like pencils, pens and paintbrushes, the resolution of a finger is very low.
there will always be a new way of interacting with computers but I think that until we get implants and can think our commands, the keyboard and mouse will stay the defacto standard way of interacting with our workstations. Both because of the entrenched nature of the technology as well as physiological reasons.
I have already paid for it to be produced because my tax dollars funded the work.
Since digital replication is essentially free, there are no ongoing production costs for a digital edition beyond the initial work and annual updates (which one would assume are covered by additional public funding)
Sure you can argue that bandwidth costs money, and disk space costs money, but the reality is that the cost per unit is so low, it would cost more in transaction fees than the actual cost resulting in a net loss on the transaction.
I am more than happy to cover the printing costs on a hard copy provided they are the actual printing costs and not some inflated figure that the publisher wants to charge
Say what you want about e-readers, eventually they will supplant books in mainstream society. I am not saying that it's going to happen in this or the next generation but perhaps in three generations we may see people who will prefer an electronic book to the "real thing".
Just like there are folks who like to dress up in victorian era clothing, there will always be people who prefer "real books" to an e-book.
Bottom line, we are with ebooks very close to where we were with MP3's a decade ago.
They (MP3's) did not really gain popularity until the devices to play them became readily available and affordable.
Until we can make the jump to digital textbooks, regardless of where the money comes from, I don't think changing the licensing is going to make enough of the difference to shift the paradigm to more affordable/available textbooks.
Besides, it doesn't matter if you read the material or did the coursework. If you don't pay for the privilege of going to school, you don't get a degree and it doesn't change the statistics one bit.
SpaceX has been profitable since last year according to the website.
OrbitalSciences also looks as though its been profitable for a while (NYSE:ORB)
The space industry is going to move faster than I think anyone expects. We have China and India getting into the mix pretty heavily now as well. I think we could see space become bigger than it was in the 60's both politically and commercially.
***gets out the bag of troll food***
What the hell are you talking about?
did you even READ the article?
The company is based in the mojave desert in CALIFORNIA! Just because the people they choose to employ are former members of the russian cosmonaut program does not mean this is a product of a "russian free market"
As a matter of fact, AFAIK so far all the MAJOR private space ventures are HQ'd in the US precisely because of the freedom afforded by the market.
Take your politics elsewhere or save them for political topics. This is about commercial spaceflight.
To be quite honest the post reeks of astroturf probably trying to capitalize on the recent annoucements from SpaceX and Orbital Sciences regarding COTS contracts for ISS resupply.
Also with SpaceX coming off the successful launch of RazakSat in July, and the upcoming Falcon9 test sometime this month(sept 2009 according the to website), the whole submission reeks of "me too" and from what I can tell, InterOrbital has not launched any mission hardware as of yet.
So the more I think about it, I think they are getting a little ahead of themselves here. I suspect that SpaceX will launch Dragon before 2011.
In short, I'll get excited about InterOrbital once they have some actual launches. I don't see how they can expect to get from "we're building the rocket" in 2009 to "we're sending people into space" two years later. Seems unrealistic considering the product life-cycle.
As a self-righteous vegan, I too am superior to everyone else. And, like you, I don't hesitate to let everyone within earshot know it whenever possible. Thanks for enlightening us filthy, TV-watching heathen. Your wisdom is like bacon, guiding us down the path to our salvation.
Slashdot Mirror
The guys at logic supply make a great system at a reasonable price. For around 350 bucks you can get a small formfactor case and 180 gig drive and a system that does everything you could want it to.
I can vouch for untangle as well. The access control is top notch, you can limit internet access by time and machine and the web based configuration is second to none.
I replaced an aging celeron based ipcop system and I was initially a little leery about switching but I have been on untangle now for the last two months and its great
I can tell you this, DON'T try to roll your own distro, even using one of the many existing products can be an exercise in patience, trying to do it all from scratch is masochistic unless you do this for a living....and even then....I am not sure you would want to do it on your off time.
The segment of the population most susceptible to the sort of attacks this is designed to combat are not the kind of people that use sleep/suspend or keep their machines on for months at end.
The obvious problems of social engineering/bait and switch on the physical media notwithstanding, I think this is a pretty cool idea and a fantastic example of the many uses for Linux. Regardless of how its done, it still exposes people to Linux as an alternative to windows. It would be really neat if the LiveCD allowed for them to install ubuntu if they liked it.
Remember, this isn't directed at techies or people who are reasonably internet savvy. Its for the mothers and grandmothers of the world. It makes it easy and more secure for them.
This has to be the brainchild of a spammer or someone who hasn't been a domain owner for very long (if at all).
The parent has a VERY good point about scammers and spammers scraping whois for personal information to use for whatever nefarious purpose.
Consider also that for the many people who register their own domains, the address listed is their personal physical address.
Anyone who ISN'T using an anonymizer is opening the floodgates for scamming and spamming.
Mod Parent Up. Seriously, this argument could be said about ALL REQUESTS FOR INFORMATION. OBVIOUSLY its available, because when you get a warrant, they look it up and provide it. DUH.
Contact your local astronomy groups, if you are in a semi-rural area look to the nearest large cities.
As an amateur astronomer I love doing outreach events where I not only get to enjoy a darker sky than I normally see from my suburban home, but I also get to share the wonder of the universe with people. It also generally means you will have one or more scopes of varying size with someone to operate it there as well.
Stellarium can be an excellent tool to figure out what you may or may not be able to see from your area. Its free, runs on a variety of hardware and operating systems and has a fairly robust object set.
More information about the scope would also be useful as not all telescopes are created equal. A 4" reflector, is most likely nowhere near as good of a scope as a 4 in refractor would be simply because of the mechanics involved. I am going to assume that its probably one of the very common 4" newtonians that are out there like a meade DS1114 or one of the smaller Celestrons.
Assuming a 4" reflector, with a few exceptions I would avoid deepspace objects (nebulae, galaxies, and clusters) as they are generally difficult to locate and may be difficult to view with a 4" scope. Your mileage may vary due to local conditions/light pollution. There are a few exceptions.
For the Northern Hemisphere right now, you have a couple very nice objects to look at.
Andromeda (M31) is directly overhead at dusk for much of northamerica this time of year, Just south of Andromeda, the Pleiades can be found (Also called the seven sisters, M45, or Subaru in case you ever wondered why the car has stars on its logo). East of the Pleiades you can find Orion the hunter and the great nebula (M42). These three objects are visible to the naked eye even from my yard which lies under the flightpath for the major airport in my area (seattle), although I will admit that andromeda is a challenge. Just to the east of Orion lies Castor and Pollux in Gemini which I believe is about where Mars is right now.
You can also check out the moon, and there may be some double stars worth looking at as well. Its a little late for Alberio which is a really nice Blue/gold doublestar in Cygnus, but you may still be able to get Gamma Andromedae.
As far as links go, I would recommend observing.skyhound.com. He has some Excellent resources for stargazing and tends to have a wide variety of objects on deck each season for all skill levels. I especially like his comet hunting pages, although I have not had much personal success finding them.
I don't know the details of your situation, but you could also ask parents to participate in observing events and ask them to bring binoculars. You would be surprised at what you can see with a pair of mid-range binoculars.
Since then I have been hesitant to try it again but it did work very well.
My point is this.
DRM is touted as needed because of piracy and DRM doesn't affect piracy one bit. DRM only punishes the consumer that plays by the rules. The only problem is that most consumers don't understand the implications of some of the proposed draconian DRM schemes which was my point from the beginning.
He works for a company developing DRM.
This is the problem from the consumer standpoint.
I'll use myself as an example. I purchased a shiny new PC with blu-ray/hd-dvd drive. I spent additional money to purchase an HDCP compliant video card. Also purchased brand new shiny Receiver, also HDCP compliant. Bought HDCP compliant projector. I get it all hooked up and lo and behold, Vista will not let me play any disc. It says I am not allowed to. Hmmm interesting I think to myself....let me play this AVI I just recorded off my digital camera...imagine my surprise when it would not let me play that either. Now....mister DRM man....is that how its supposed to work? I am screwed because microsoft blames Nvidia and Denon, Denon wants nothing to do with me and insists that its a software problem from microsoft. So now I have to go buy software, which if it were up to you, would be completely illegal and not available just so I can watch a movie on my bigscreen.
The companies involved could care less about me and now I am screwed because I don't have enough money to take them to court. DRM? Bah! eff that. DRM makes me want to steal it on principle because its not there to make my life better, it just complicates it.
I can't count the number of times I have had to dink around with the setup just to get it to work when some new form comes around. Mind you I am just trying to watch the damn thing. I shouldn't have to jump through 21 flaming hoops of death just so I can watch legally acquired content in my home theater.
I know I am feeding a troll here who isn't interested in understanding the other side because he thinks the other side are a bunch of punks who want to steal shit, but the reality is those punks don't care about DRM at all because it ISN'T AN ISSUE FOR THEM. You aren't going to stop them ever. Until you can control what my eyes and ears deliver to my brain, you will not be able to stop piracy.
Prohibition doesn't work. What you have to do is lower the price point and increase accessibility until its just easier to buy it through appropriate channels than it is to risk malware and virii on the internet's dark underbelly.
Also I think mister Becksteads weak ass sauce one liner replies are pathetic. He wants people to be adults but can't even invest more than 30 seconds writing a reply...oh and the blogs are also VERY weak sauce....full of links to online poker and get rich quick schemes.
I got news for ya, if the wheel was patented when it was invented, civilization would have died before it started.
We understand that you want everything for free and you want to freeload off the backs of the artists. Clear as a bell. Property isn't what it used to be. The digital world is different and your model of the world is gone. Get over it.
And so is your model.
Lets take a step back and ask, what is an idea?. Is it the paper its printed on? the CD its pressed onto? no. Its information pure and simple.
Back in the old days, the information was bound by the media it was distributed on, and duplicating said media or information from said media was not only difficult and time consuming, it resulted in a product which was inferior to the original.
Supply was limited to the number of physical objects produced, duplication was cost prohibitive, thus the status quo of the supply and demand curve was maintained through limited supply.
Fast forward to the digital age and now supply is infinite, which means production costs eventually reach "zero" (now I know this isn't completely true, but stay with me) once the initial production costs are recouped.
The consumer says "sure I don't mind hooking you up with a copy of that song, or that book, or that movie because its not like loaning out a book, cd, or dvd that might get damaged or lost, and I lose nothing." We were raised (well some of us were raised)to believe that sharing is a good thing, the only downside to sharing is that we have less of that which is shared....oh wait...no we don't in this case.
Joe Executive ,because lets be honest...its not the artists, actors, directors, writers who are driving this, its corporations and associations designed to control the markets in which they operate. Personally I think it would be interesting to see some RICO probes into hollywood and motown. I think people might be shocked at what turns up, however that's an entirely different discussion. He thinks here I have this thing which costs x amount to create, but ongoing production costs are comparatively nothing which means once you reach the break even on creation costs, you rake in the profits from continued sales. They then think, there's no way to enforce licensing restrictions that limit resale on physical media, but hey digital is something different, if I can come up with a system that I control who can and can't access the file, then I can make them pay me if they want to sell the content like they would a used CD. Then it gets really scary because they start talking about use tax and ways to make consumers pay for every consumption much in the way you pay every time you goto a concert or movie theater....I don't think I have to explain why this a terrible thing for the consumer.
Don't get me wrong. I am not deluded enough to think that I deserve everything for free just because the cost involved in ripping a dvd is negligible. But I also don't think that a company should be able to control what I can and can't do with legally acquired content. As far as broadcast TV goes....I already pay for it both through my cable company and through purchasing things which are advertised on the shows I watch. It seems as though folks forget that just because I can pick something up with an antenna without paying a monthly fee, doesn't mean its free nor is my recording of that content stealing. I think that tv series on disc is a fad and will disappear once on demand services start carrying more vintage content.
So just for the record....your world isn't what it used to be either.
Infact it couldn't be more ON topic.
The biggest problem is that people don't understand what DRM actually means and how it can impact them.
Things like this shed light on the pitfalls of DRM.
I am not a proponent of piracy, however I have had more than my fair share of DRM related issues in my home theater and as a result I vehemently oppose DRM schemes.
Snafus like this really opens the eyes of the public and hopefully informs a few of them while we still have a chance to understand the problem and vote with our dollars(or euros).
Laws change from time to time and if people had to pass a semi regular class in order to maintain their licenses it would not only be a refresher for the stuff they should be doing anyways, but also an effective avenue to ensure that people are up to date on the current laws which apply to driving.
Course, that doesn't mean it will stop the accidents.
Sometimes, As another poster pointed out, I am watching shows while I am doing something else.
in fact, it is a rare occasion where I am watching something and NOT doing something else.
sometimes I catch the commercials because I am "sleeping at the controls".
I also have a harmony remote which allows me to use the skip option on my DVR without having to dink around with the remote
You may want to read the petition first, then, because it's supporting a referendum to REPEAL civil unions in Washington.
Actually no.
You are incorrect.
The referendum puts the Civil Union law that was enacted by the state legislature to public vote on repealing the law.
The petition was to put the Civil Union laws on the ballot and let the people choose.
Granted the sponsor of the referendum is opposed to civil unions but the thing you have to remember is the petition was not to repeal the law, it was to put it up to the voters.
Reading it the way you wrote it implies that voting for the referendum would repeal the law and that is not the case.
"The NY Times reports that as the number of swine flu cases grows to levels unprecedented for this time of year, health officials predict a shortfall in the supply of swine flu vaccine
this implies that they have swine flu stats for many years, enough to imply that the levels are outside of normal....
If I have to choose between balloon boy hoaxes or swine flu as the "look at the monkey" diversion story to keep us off the ACTA scent or health care.......I'll turn the TV off..
Perhaps you're just seeing more Priuses (Priusi?)
I believe the word you were looking for was Priai.
Multi-touch is fantastic for a handheld mobile computing device, smart phone, etc.
I don't think touch screens, multitouch interfaces, or anything else will supplant the keyboard and mouse on a workstation.
Touchtyping accurately and quickly is extremely difficult on a virtual keyboard with no tactile feedback.
Not saying it can't be done, just saying I don't know anyone that would want to do that all day at work.
that said, multitouch is the killer app for things like the multifunction kitchen computer, or information kiosk, kids computers, mobile devices, smart phones, tablets, etc.
Maybe even gaming but the bottom line is our fingers are big old meat sticks.
Try editing a photo with a touchscreen.
There's a reason we have things like pencils, pens and paintbrushes, the resolution of a finger is very low.
there will always be a new way of interacting with computers but I think that until we get implants and can think our commands, the keyboard and mouse will stay the defacto standard way of interacting with our workstations.
Both because of the entrenched nature of the technology as well as physiological reasons.
I have already paid for it to be produced because my tax dollars funded the work.
Since digital replication is essentially free, there are no ongoing production costs for a digital edition beyond the initial work and annual updates (which one would assume are covered by additional public funding)
Sure you can argue that bandwidth costs money, and disk space costs money, but the reality is that the cost per unit is so low, it would cost more in transaction fees than the actual cost resulting in a net loss on the transaction.
I am more than happy to cover the printing costs on a hard copy provided they are the actual printing costs and not some inflated figure that the publisher wants to charge
Say what you want about e-readers, eventually they will supplant books in mainstream society. I am not saying that it's going to happen in this or the next generation but perhaps in three generations we may see people who will prefer an electronic book to the "real thing".
Just like there are folks who like to dress up in victorian era clothing, there will always be people who prefer "real books" to an e-book.
Bottom line, we are with ebooks very close to where we were with MP3's a decade ago.
They (MP3's) did not really gain popularity until the devices to play them became readily available and affordable.
Until we can make the jump to digital textbooks, regardless of where the money comes from, I don't think changing the licensing is going to make enough of the difference to shift the paradigm to more affordable/available textbooks.
Besides, it doesn't matter if you read the material or did the coursework. If you don't pay for the privilege of going to school, you don't get a degree and it doesn't change the statistics one bit.
This is a poorly written submission with extraneous "information" that has little to nothing to do with the actual story
Frankly I am tired of the wallwart era, especially when USB is so ubiquitous. Its an ideal candidate for a universal charging spec.
R&D and MIT media lab aside ( I wouldn't call that sort of thing IT even though there is some overlap)
When I hear IT I think of my corporate support staff.
As far as I am concerned there has never been any glory in that thankless job.
I mean how glorious can a job be where the only recognition you'll get is when you screw something up?
When you are good at your job in IT nobody notices you since the goal of most IT shops is to be transparent to the user....
I almost had that recipe but I got outrolled by a damn gnome..... I heard the mats for that were obscene though.
OrbitalSciences also looks as though its been profitable for a while (NYSE:ORB)
The space industry is going to move faster than I think anyone expects. We have China and India getting into the mix pretty heavily now as well. I think we could see space become bigger than it was in the 60's both politically and commercially.
did you even READ the article?
The company is based in the mojave desert in CALIFORNIA! Just because the people they choose to employ are former members of the russian cosmonaut program does not mean this is a product of a "russian free market"
As a matter of fact, AFAIK so far all the MAJOR private space ventures are HQ'd in the US precisely because of the freedom afforded by the market.
Take your politics elsewhere or save them for political topics. This is about commercial spaceflight.
To be quite honest the post reeks of astroturf probably trying to capitalize on the recent annoucements from SpaceX and Orbital Sciences regarding COTS contracts for ISS resupply.
Also with SpaceX coming off the successful launch of RazakSat in July, and the upcoming Falcon9 test sometime this month(sept 2009 according the to website), the whole submission reeks of "me too" and from what I can tell, InterOrbital has not launched any mission hardware as of yet.
So the more I think about it, I think they are getting a little ahead of themselves here. I suspect that SpaceX will launch Dragon before 2011.
In short, I'll get excited about InterOrbital once they have some actual launches. I don't see how they can expect to get from "we're building the rocket" in 2009 to "we're sending people into space" two years later. Seems unrealistic considering the product life-cycle.
Oh SHUT UP!
As a self-righteous vegan, I too am superior to everyone else. And, like you, I don't hesitate to let everyone within earshot know it whenever possible. Thanks for enlightening us filthy, TV-watching heathen. Your wisdom is like bacon, guiding us down the path to our salvation.
There....fixed that for you.