Please show me one person that has EVER been sued for using their music the way the want, as long as they don't distribute it, that is.
It's not a matter of suing people for using their music the way they want, it's a matter of using technology to prevent them from doing it.
I'll talk about music in a minute, but with movies the example is obvious. DVD's won't let me use the movie in the way I want. I'd like to put a few of my child's favorite videos on the computer for easy viewing (and for a back-up), and I'd like to be able to skip the damn FBI warning for the 123rd time, too. These are two obvious examples of things I'd like to do with the media that I purchased, but the technology (not laws, exactly) won't let me.
Now, I suppose if I was really smart, and had a lot of time on my hand, I could figure out a way around these technological hurdles. If I could figure it out on my own, it would be perfect legal for me to do so. Now, let's say, some kid in Europe has done it for me, and he is happy to show me how. Now here's where the law gets involved. If he tells me what to do, he is breaking the law, thanks to the DMCA. Therefore, for all practical purposes I cannot get around these technology hurdles without someone breaking the law. (And we already know from example that that someone will probably get sued). You see the law alone doesn't prohibit me from using the media the way I want, instead a combination of law and technology does.
With music, fortunately we have an older format which has no encryption. As long as they need to remain compitable with this format, they have had trouble putting such limitations on the media. Of course with newer formats, they are going to try to put limitations on it, and we are seeing the same thing occur now with itunes music that we saw with DVD's. (I haven't kept track. Has DVD Jon been sued for Fairplay, yet)?
As a sidebar, thought experiment... I feel that the illegal music trading that going on is clearly wrong, and has only given fuel to the media companies' fire when they try to get worse laws passed. On the other hand, if this trading didn't occur, which one of these 3 things do you think would have occured by now-
1 - i-tunes would exist just as it does now. 2 - i-tunes would exist without any DRM 3 - i-tunes (or something like it) wouldn't exist at all.
My guess is, it would be # 3, since without on-line trading there would be no reason for the companies to change the status quo. (And this is a big loss for us). #1 is a distict possibility, but this would prove that the reason given for DRM - to prevent on-line trading - is bunk. I somehow can't imagine #2 occuring, despite the fact that this is what consumers want.
You see, DRM is not about keeping us from breaking the law, it's about the media companies controlling things beyond what they are allowed to by law.
by the way, let say i do not like the GPL license. should i: 1. not use GPL software or 2. use, and violate it because i do not like it.
Except, as far as I understand it, you can use GPL software anyway you want, without having to worry about the licence. As long as you don't distribute it, that is. You see, the licence doesn't try to take away the fair use rights you have. What the licence does say, is that if you go beyond what is permitted by fair use, (i.e. modifying and redistributing), you have to play by the GPL rules.
What DRM tries to do is take away your fair use rights. I suppose you could argue that you are agreeing to a contract when you download/click a EULA, etc., but I think that's bunk. The reason that's bunk is we've already agreed to a contract that gives them the monopoly rights over the distrubution of their material. That agreement is copyright law and it lays out the rules over what is theirs and what is ours. They shouldn't get to leverage their monopoly rights to get even more out of the bargain. They are essentially saying, "You need to abide by the former contract when it benefits us, but we don't need to abide when it doesn't".
Now there is a case we're I'm OK with DRM. That's when it comes to rentals (or rental-like, such as pay-per-view). Here you are not making a purchase, but you are instead being lent material for a set time (or # of uses). It's OK under these circumstances to place restrictions on how I use something, since I did not outright purchase it. (Even here, though, we need to be careful, or we could find ourselves in a world where everything becomes pay-per-view/listen, if the technology allows it). In the case of i-tunes, you are clearly making a purchase.
Having said that I don't approve of this piece of software. The reason I don't approve of it, is because it interacts with Apple's store, and Apple has a right to restrict what software interacts with their store. However, software such as Fairplay I think is OK, because that software only interacts with data on your computer.
My take on all of this is that Broadband is unlikely to kill off DVD, mainly for the reason you and others state in one way or another: people like to own things. This is somewhat emotional, but to a large degree it is because owning something gives it permanence. Having bits on a computer somewhere lacks this.
However, Broadband might (heck I say will, eventually), kill the movie rental market. When you rent, you have no expectation of permanence. The question then becomes will people want 2 formats: one for purchase (a hardcopy), and one for rental (bits somewhere). As long as the cost is low enough for the hardware, this won't be a problem.
Let's see, a 3000 lumen projector onto a 100" screen is about 100 ft-candle. A typically brightly lit room is about 10 ft-candle. So, yes, a 3000 lumen projector would be plenty bright in a such a room. But, you are still loosing contrast, since the brightest part of the screen is only 10 times the darkest.
The only disadvantage of a projector is that it can be a little noisy
Actually, the biggest disadvantage of a front projector is that they are only good in dim to dark rooms. The white screen necessary to reflect the projected light also reflects all the other light in the room. Perhaps if Sony's ChromaVue screen becomes readily available, this will change.
Actually, the seller has every right to put whatever restrictions they want on the use of the product. The user's only right is to refuse those restrictions and not use the product. The problem and illegality comes when the user wants to use the product AND not abide by the restrictions.
Unless the two parties (seller and buyer) enter into some sort of legally binding contract, why is this true? I guess you are making the arguement that the seller has the right to have you sign such a contract, but when's the last time you've signed anything (besides your credit card approval) to buy a CD? I'm sorry but EULAs don't count, at least not yet. The law is still fuzzy on the enforcability/restrictions on those things.
Wow, what a great argument for... not going into Iraq.
Agreed. I never thought Iraq was a threat to our safety.
I guess that makes the argument for going into Iran that almost any not particularly friendly Islamic country may be harboring these crazy people who care not a whit about their lives.
That's a lot of blood. And y'know, it probably won't make a dent.
Yes, pretty much the only way we'd ever get rid of most of the terrorists is to commit genocide. I'm not in favor of genocide, so it looks like with have to put up with those lunatics for a while. All we can really do is try to contain them and limit what damage they can do.
I think you misinterpreted his analogy. I believe all the GP was trying to say was that North Korea is acting in an at least somewhat sane manner, and is unlikely to provoke the US by a direct attack - even a low budget one such as 9/11. As crazy as Kim might be, he is interested in his own survival and maintaining his power. If North Korea is reduced to a parking lot, he looses, no matter how many Americans he can take on the way.
The Islamic fundamentalists don't have this concern. They don't represent any nation-state so there is no effective way to retaliate against their supporting population. Many are less concerned about their own survival than their cause. This makes it impossible to discourage behaviour that will be bad for everyone if they preceive that the behavour will help their cause.
No, I am not concerned about North Korea using an atomic bomb. What I am concerned about is a cash starved North Korea and a rich, bomb starved Islamic fundamentalist getting together.
As you said, if the Mac Mini is successful, its success will be, to a large extent, due to its price. To add to this, one quote in the article says a lot...
HP found that pricing its small PCs even as little as $50 more than standard machines turned buyers off, Anderson said.
To some extent this is why cool looking/small PC's fail. If a PC looks good but costs more than a similar PC, most people will just skip it. However, Apple's only competition comes from PC's which are a somewhat different product. Apple doesn't have to worry about someone buying off-the-shelf pieces and putting together a cheaper low end Apple which doesn't look as nice.
I wish I still had mod points to mod you up. (Although I have no idea if your "300" number is correct or not).
This is definitely part of TiVo's problem. SageTV makes software for the PC that compares pretty well with TiVo, and the company is all of 2 people! OK, SageTV takes advantage of drivers written by others, and they buy the guide from Zap2it, but I still don't understand what TiVo is doing with their money.
OK, it's impossible to beat the integrated solutions (like DirectTiVo) with a separate box. Of course, this explains why TiVo is in trouble. DirectTV is dropping TiVo (or at least making their own box, and you can guess what that means for the future). TiVo's deal with Comcast fell through. So, pretty soon the only way to get TiVo will be the stand alone unit. If you make the comparison between a stand alone TiVo and a Myth TV box, then things change considerably.
The high index contrast of silicon (n=3.4) vs. its cladding (usually oxide - n=1.45) means that the evanescent field drops off pretty rapidly. A spacing of about 5 um is sufficient to eliminate crosstalk.
As others have pointed out, yes, integrated optics has existed for some time, but that doesn't mean that the field is so mature that important breakthroughs can't occur. The field of integrated optics includes lots of things - III-V devices, (GaAs and InP), silica and silicon devices, polymers, etc. The thing they all have in common is that the devices are fabricated monolithically on a substrate.
You can generally break up the field into 2 catagories: materials that have great properties, but are a pain to process (GaAs, InP, LiNO3), and materials that are easy to process but aren't as great optically (Silica, silicon, polymers). Silicon is attractive because there is such a large amount of infrastructure available, and the hope is to be able to put CMOS and optics on the same chip. However, silicon has an indirect band-gap (this was sort of mentioned in the article by Because of silicon's crystalline makeup, energy from stimulated electrons is released as heat and vibration.). So, this means lasers can't be made by normal methods. In addition, modulators and detectors (for wavelengths longer than 1 um) are hard to do.
The solution for making a laser done by Intel here (and done earlier by Jalali at UCLA and even earlier by Osgood at Colombia) uses Raman scattering. Unfortunately, what the article leaves out is that you need another laser to pump the silicon laser. In addition, this laser is not just an ordinary diode laser, because you need very short pulses to get the peak power necessary for a non-linear effect such as Raman scattering. (The same limitation also occurs with the all optical switch done by Lipson at Cornell and mentioned here on Slashdot a few months ago). So this may be useful for some applications, but it's not a solution to the general problem of creating a light source in silicon.
Yes, it seems pretty brain dead to me, too. But once the broadcast flag goes into effect this may become the only way to make a recording of a digital broadcast. It's the ability to record a digital broadcast that will become the added functionality.
(OK, there will still be ways to do it by using older equipment and converting the digital broadcast to analog and back again, but this will cause a loss of quality. In addition, over time they may throw more roadblocks, like macrovision, in our way).
First, CA just approved a multi-billion dollar fund for this research as a way to attract companies.
Good for CA. Still most basic research (embryotic stem cell research is not advanced enough to be considered applied), is NIH funded, particularly at Universities. The current rules basically kill this traditional source of funding (except for the conditions already noted).
It appears from what you and others say that adult stem cell research is both easier and further along. Therefore it's more likely to give medical treatments first, regardless of funding restrictions. That's fine, but many in the scientific medical community believe that the embryotic stem cells have the potential to be even more useful than adult cells. It would therefore seem logical to explore both methods.
You make a clever analogy about walking before you fly, but I have no idea if it applies. Do you? It is quite likely that researching embryotic stem cells now will give us head start for applying the knowledge from adult cells. I am a scientist, but not in this field. I know enough to know that I don't know a whole lot about this. I don't know your background, but I suspect you don't a whole a lot about the science here either. We are both pulling most of this out of our asses.
Thank you for a good post explaining why you feel the way you do. You demonstrate good and consistant morals.
Since we do, it is my opinion (based on my religious beliefs) that we should bring it to term, not destroy it.
You point out that your opinion is based on your religious beliefs. There's nothing wrong with that, but our society compromises many religions (including the absense thereof), and our country believes in a separation of church and state. Therefore, deciding right and wrong for the whole society is very different. We cannot transfer the morals of one religion on to our society as a whole.
Are you accepting of the fact that it's legal to do invitro fertillization. I understand that you don't think it's ethical, but do you think it should be banned? If you don't think it should be banned, then what do you think about embryonic stem cells? Either way, embryos are being created and later destroyed.
Embyronic stem cells have more potential due to their undifferentiated nature but they pose significantly greater problems than do adult stem cells.
Perhaps, but the research is in an early stage. It's really too early to know, and many scientists seemed very eager to research embyronic stem cells. I really think the decisions about what research should be done be determined by scientific merit. (OK, ethics need to enter the equation, too, but that's not the arguement you are making here). If you think Mr. Bush's decision was based on scientific merit, then you are kidding yourself.
Now, repeat after me: There is no ban on embryonic stem cell research.
No, what there is a ban on federal funding unless certain conditions (using existing cell lines) are met. Almost all funding of such basic research is federal, and apparently those cell lines are of limited use. So again, if you don't think this isn't a huge limitation on what research can be done then you are kidding yourself.
I pretty much agree with you, but it's an interesting discussion, so I'll continue...
That said, when you compare this fragile, limited application, closed system to the modular, flexible, redundant realty of the interstate highway system you see how remarkably un-scalable and simplistic the train approach is.
You threw out a lot of adjectives without much explanation, so let me analyze them one by one:
cons for this: fragile: who's to say? It sounds like they have some ideas for handling units that fail on the track.
limited application: absolutely. But that doesn't mean it isn't useful when it applies.
closed: I'm not sure what you mean by this. Perhaps the fact they you have to use a different car for the highways and roads than this? I won't argue. It sounds like a minor thing to get out of your car to get into this thing, but it is a major problem. You now need huge parking lots, plus it wastes time.
Pros for the highway: modular - yes, we each have our own cars. The proposed method here gets around some of that, by at least having many cars go to many destinations. (But except for special intracity cases, you'll still need another method of transport).
flexible - yes, lots of different vehicles use roads. This is an incredible amount of value.
redundant - perhaps, but I've seen plenty of multiple hour backups on the highway from an accident to know that roads aren't great here. The approach here, with a web of paths, could be as good if not better as far as reliablity goes.
So, so far the idea seems OK - not perfect, but maybe useful. Then there's one more thing you said:
scalable: This to me is the big problem with this new idea. How many cars/people can it realistically transport in a given time. I mentioned the unloading/loading issue, but there's also an issue of # of cars on the tracks. If you think about the # of cars travelling on a highway or road when the road is in heavy use (but not jammed) it's a huge number. Simiarly those subways and commuter trains are packed during peak times. I think it would take an astronomical number of tracks and cars to compete or even put a dent in the way we get around.
Trains are cool, but why do people automatically see rails and assume they are looking at efficient transportation. When are people going to realize that wheels simply work better on tar roads than they do on metal rails.
Wheels on tar roads are great. It means that if I decide to make a left turn at any time, I can. Unfortunately, that means that every one else on the road has to worry that I might make a left turn at any time. This, of course, is an exageration, since I wouldn't make a left turn into on-coming traffic unless I was an idiot or crazy. But the point is that this lack of control over what everyone is doing creates a lot of inefficiencies. One advantage of this system is that it eliminate these inefficiencies by having everything controlled by a central computer. Cars are all driving the same speed and the computer knows when they are going to turn.
Perhaps a bigger savings is the elevation of cross traffic. No more intersections, since the rail is so light it is easy to elevate above other tracks and the road.
My biggest concern is capacity. Loading and unloading is not necessarily terribly quick when done sequentially by a large number of people. We could have stations that have lines rivalling the worst rides at Disney.
Original SB: Adding a gameport and DAC to the ADLIB FM synthesizer. This product was an incredible success, and got them very rich. Unfortunately they haven't done anything since besides let others innovate and then buy them out.
First PCI soundcard with SB compatibility was made by Ensoniq. Creative bought them out to get this technology.
First decent 3D soundcards were made by Aureal, which you already covered.
The chip in the SBLive was developed by EMU, which Creative bought out.
The Soundworks speakers had nothing to do with Creative until they bought them out.
The Aureal is still basically the same technology that's in the SBLive. I guess they ran out of innovative companies to buy out.
Unfortunately for Creative they can't exactly buy out Apple, so I'd say they're in trouble.
From what I read BeyondTV is perhaps even more polished, but SageTV supports the hardware decoder of the PVR-350, which was important to me.
My gripes have been it's been challenging to set up, and displaying the user interface on the PVR-350 is problematic. (The PVR-350 problems are almost certainly the driver's fault, not SageTV's. Other software that puts a UI on the PVR-350, MythTV and GB-PVR, have the same problems).
The advantages to this setup over other TiVo or MCE, is that the files can easily be edited and burned to DVD for safe keeping, plus you can use your computer to play games, view pictures, downloaded moview, etc.
There are no religious issues inherent to the debate over abortion rights. Abortion is the consideration of the rights of the unborn person versus the right of the parent over their body.
Actually, central to the issue of abortion is the question of "when does life begin"? It's obvious that you consider life to begin at conception, but this is not the only possible answer. It's hard, or perhaps impossible, to give an scientific answer to this question, so religion inevitably enters the equation.
Deadly corporeal punishment could be argued to be beneficial to society when the convicted has shown that they constitute a clear danger to others through their actions.
Locking someone up provides the same benefit of security to the vast majority of the population. (I.e., everyone not working in a jail). Deadly corporeal punishment removes the possibility of delivering any justice to those who were falsely executed. We are human, and therefore fallible, and therefore such injustices will (and have) occur. You are right, though, religion doesn't really need to enter into the arguement.
Interesting view on marriage. I can't say you're wrong in the idea that government should get out of the business of marriage. It's just that you are suggesting something that is so different from the status quo that it is impossible to consider it becoming reality.
What you say is probably true, about why the agents were there. However, let's imagine the story going a little differently...
Agents from the "US Trademark Enforcement" office call up this same lady asking that the toy be removed. The lady would probably answer back: "What are you nuts? Go get a court order. Or at least talk to the manufacturer of the toy first; I only sell the things".
So the real issue isn't that the agents weren't doing their job. The issue is that trademark enforcement apparently now falls under the juristiction the Department of Homeland Security. The agents can threaten this store owner and get their way without due process. All they need to do is mention which department they are with and hint that they might somehow invoke the terrorism card (which there is almost no defense against).
I don't think most of what of what you say will be a problem. Mechanical parts at this size scale are very robust, and there are probably easy ways to keep the dust out. RF intereference shouldn't be a serious issue either (devices are way smaller than the wavelength). If the device is always suspended then surface tension shouldn't be an issue. I don't know whether static electricity would be any worse here than CMOS.
However...
But what about reading/writing it? It's going to take not only power, but several transistors per bit.
That one you nailed, and that's why this will may never be practical.
Oops, I don't think you are referencing the right article. The article you point to is on "Nanodrive". It's essentially a scanning probe mircroscope (like an AFM), but with a large # of probes reading and writing simulataneously. It's an interesting device, but not the one discused here.
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Please show me one person that has EVER been sued for using their music the way the want, as long as they don't distribute it, that is.
It's not a matter of suing people for using their music the way they want, it's a matter of using technology to prevent them from doing it.
I'll talk about music in a minute, but with movies the example is obvious. DVD's won't let me use the movie in the way I want. I'd like to put a few of my child's favorite videos on the computer for easy viewing (and for a back-up), and I'd like to be able to skip the damn FBI warning for the 123rd time, too. These are two obvious examples of things I'd like to do with the media that I purchased, but the technology (not laws, exactly) won't let me.
Now, I suppose if I was really smart, and had a lot of time on my hand, I could figure out a way around these technological hurdles. If I could figure it out on my own, it would be perfect legal for me to do so. Now, let's say, some kid in Europe has done it for me, and he is happy to show me how. Now here's where the law gets involved. If he tells me what to do, he is breaking the law, thanks to the DMCA. Therefore, for all practical purposes I cannot get around these technology hurdles without someone breaking the law. (And we already know from example that that someone will probably get sued). You see the law alone doesn't prohibit me from using the media the way I want, instead a combination of law and technology does.
With music, fortunately we have an older format which has no encryption. As long as they need to remain compitable with this format, they have had trouble putting such limitations on the media. Of course with newer formats, they are going to try to put limitations on it, and we are seeing the same thing occur now with itunes music that we saw with DVD's. (I haven't kept track. Has DVD Jon been sued for Fairplay, yet)?
As a sidebar, thought experiment... I feel that the illegal music trading that going on is clearly wrong, and has only given fuel to the media companies' fire when they try to get worse laws passed. On the other hand, if this trading didn't occur, which one of these 3 things do you think would have occured by now-
1 - i-tunes would exist just as it does now.
2 - i-tunes would exist without any DRM
3 - i-tunes (or something like it) wouldn't exist at all.
My guess is, it would be # 3, since without on-line trading there would be no reason for the companies to change the status quo. (And this is a big loss for us). #1 is a distict possibility, but this would prove that the reason given for DRM - to prevent on-line trading - is bunk. I somehow can't imagine #2 occuring, despite the fact that this is what consumers want.
You see, DRM is not about keeping us from breaking the law, it's about the media companies controlling things beyond what they are allowed to by law.
by the way, let say i do not like the GPL license. should i:
1. not use GPL software
or
2. use, and violate it because i do not like it.
Except, as far as I understand it, you can use GPL software anyway you want, without having to worry about the licence. As long as you don't distribute it, that is. You see, the licence doesn't try to take away the fair use rights you have. What the licence does say, is that if you go beyond what is permitted by fair use, (i.e. modifying and redistributing), you have to play by the GPL rules.
What DRM tries to do is take away your fair use rights. I suppose you could argue that you are agreeing to a contract when you download/click a EULA, etc., but I think that's bunk. The reason that's bunk is we've already agreed to a contract that gives them the monopoly rights over the distrubution of their material. That agreement is copyright law and it lays out the rules over what is theirs and what is ours. They shouldn't get to leverage their monopoly rights to get even more out of the bargain. They are essentially saying, "You need to abide by the former contract when it benefits us, but we don't need to abide when it doesn't".
Now there is a case we're I'm OK with DRM. That's when it comes to rentals (or rental-like, such as pay-per-view). Here you are not making a purchase, but you are instead being lent material for a set time (or # of uses). It's OK under these circumstances to place restrictions on how I use something, since I did not outright purchase it. (Even here, though, we need to be careful, or we could find ourselves in a world where everything becomes pay-per-view/listen, if the technology allows it). In the case of i-tunes, you are clearly making a purchase.
Having said that I don't approve of this piece of software. The reason I don't approve of it, is because it interacts with Apple's store, and Apple has a right to restrict what software interacts with their store. However, software such as Fairplay I think is OK, because that software only interacts with data on your computer.
My take on all of this is that Broadband is unlikely to kill off DVD, mainly for the reason you and others state in one way or another: people like to own things. This is somewhat emotional, but to a large degree it is because owning something gives it permanence. Having bits on a computer somewhere lacks this.
However, Broadband might (heck I say will, eventually), kill the movie rental market. When you rent, you have no expectation of permanence. The question then becomes will people want 2 formats: one for purchase (a hardcopy), and one for rental (bits somewhere). As long as the cost is low enough for the hardware, this won't be a problem.
Let's see, a 3000 lumen projector onto a 100" screen is about 100 ft-candle. A typically brightly lit room is about 10 ft-candle. So, yes, a 3000 lumen projector would be plenty bright in a such a room. But, you are still loosing contrast, since the brightest part of the screen is only 10 times the darkest.
A Rush fan, eh?
The only disadvantage of a projector is that it can be a little noisy
Actually, the biggest disadvantage of a front projector is that they are only good in dim to dark rooms. The white screen necessary to reflect the projected light also reflects all the other light in the room. Perhaps if Sony's ChromaVue screen becomes readily available, this will change.
Actually, the seller has every right to put whatever restrictions they want on the use of the product. The user's only right is to refuse those restrictions and not use the product. The problem and illegality comes when the user wants to use the product AND not abide by the restrictions.
Unless the two parties (seller and buyer) enter into some sort of legally binding contract, why is this true? I guess you are making the arguement that the seller has the right to have you sign such a contract, but when's the last time you've signed anything (besides your credit card approval) to buy a CD? I'm sorry but EULAs don't count, at least not yet. The law is still fuzzy on the enforcability/restrictions on those things.
Wow, what a great argument for... not going into Iraq.
Agreed. I never thought Iraq was a threat to our safety.
I guess that makes the argument for going into Iran that almost any not particularly friendly Islamic country may be harboring these crazy people who care not a whit about their lives.
That's a lot of blood. And y'know, it probably won't make a dent.
Yes, pretty much the only way we'd ever get rid of most of the terrorists is to commit genocide. I'm not in favor of genocide, so it looks like with have to put up with those lunatics for a while. All we can really do is try to contain them and limit what damage they can do.
I think you misinterpreted his analogy. I believe all the GP was trying to say was that North Korea is acting in an at least somewhat sane manner, and is unlikely to provoke the US by a direct attack - even a low budget one such as 9/11. As crazy as Kim might be, he is interested in his own survival and maintaining his power. If North Korea is reduced to a parking lot, he looses, no matter how many Americans he can take on the way.
The Islamic fundamentalists don't have this concern. They don't represent any nation-state so there is no effective way to retaliate against their supporting population. Many are less concerned about their own survival than their cause. This makes it impossible to discourage behaviour that will be bad for everyone if they preceive that the behavour will help their cause.
No, I am not concerned about North Korea using an atomic bomb. What I am concerned about is a cash starved North Korea and a rich, bomb starved Islamic fundamentalist getting together.
As you said, if the Mac Mini is successful, its success will be, to a large extent, due to its price. To add to this, one quote in the article says a lot...
HP found that pricing its small PCs even as little as $50 more than standard machines turned buyers off, Anderson said.
To some extent this is why cool looking/small PC's fail. If a PC looks good but costs more than a similar PC, most people will just skip it. However, Apple's only competition comes from PC's which are a somewhat different product. Apple doesn't have to worry about someone buying off-the-shelf pieces and putting together a cheaper low end Apple which doesn't look as nice.
I wish I still had mod points to mod you up. (Although I have no idea if your "300" number is correct or not).
This is definitely part of TiVo's problem. SageTV makes software for the PC that compares pretty well with TiVo, and the company is all of 2 people! OK, SageTV takes advantage of drivers written by others, and they buy the guide from Zap2it, but I still don't understand what TiVo is doing with their money.
OK, it's impossible to beat the integrated solutions (like DirectTiVo) with a separate box. Of course, this explains why TiVo is in trouble. DirectTV is dropping TiVo (or at least making their own box, and you can guess what that means for the future). TiVo's deal with Comcast fell through. So, pretty soon the only way to get TiVo will be the stand alone unit. If you make the comparison between a stand alone TiVo and a Myth TV box, then things change considerably.
The high index contrast of silicon (n=3.4) vs. its cladding (usually oxide - n=1.45) means that the evanescent field drops off pretty rapidly. A spacing of about 5 um is sufficient to eliminate crosstalk.
As others have pointed out, yes, integrated optics has existed for some time, but that doesn't mean that the field is so mature that important breakthroughs can't occur. The field of integrated optics includes lots of things - III-V devices, (GaAs and InP), silica and silicon devices, polymers, etc. The thing they all have in common is that the devices are fabricated monolithically on a substrate.
You can generally break up the field into 2 catagories: materials that have great properties, but are a pain to process (GaAs, InP, LiNO3), and materials that are easy to process but aren't as great optically (Silica, silicon, polymers). Silicon is attractive because there is such a large amount of infrastructure available, and the hope is to be able to put CMOS and optics on the same chip. However, silicon has an indirect band-gap (this was sort of mentioned in the article by Because of silicon's crystalline makeup, energy from stimulated electrons is released as heat and vibration.). So, this means lasers can't be made by normal methods. In addition, modulators and detectors (for wavelengths longer than 1 um) are hard to do.
The solution for making a laser done by Intel here (and done earlier by Jalali at UCLA and even earlier by Osgood at Colombia) uses Raman scattering. Unfortunately, what the article leaves out is that you need another laser to pump the silicon laser. In addition, this laser is not just an ordinary diode laser, because you need very short pulses to get the peak power necessary for a non-linear effect such as Raman scattering. (The same limitation also occurs with the all optical switch done by Lipson at Cornell and mentioned here on Slashdot a few months ago). So this may be useful for some applications, but it's not a solution to the general problem of creating a light source in silicon.
Yes, it seems pretty brain dead to me, too. But once the broadcast flag goes into effect this may become the only way to make a recording of a digital broadcast. It's the ability to record a digital broadcast that will become the added functionality.
(OK, there will still be ways to do it by using older equipment and converting the digital broadcast to analog and back again, but this will cause a loss of quality. In addition, over time they may throw more roadblocks, like macrovision, in our way).
First, CA just approved a multi-billion dollar fund for this research as a way to attract companies.
Good for CA. Still most basic research (embryotic stem cell research is not advanced enough to be considered applied), is NIH funded, particularly at Universities. The current rules basically kill this traditional source of funding (except for the conditions already noted).
It appears from what you and others say that adult stem cell research is both easier and further along. Therefore it's more likely to give medical treatments first, regardless of funding restrictions. That's fine, but many in the scientific medical community believe that the embryotic stem cells have the potential to be even more useful than adult cells. It would therefore seem logical to explore both methods.
You make a clever analogy about walking before you fly, but I have no idea if it applies. Do you? It is quite likely that researching embryotic stem cells now will give us head start for applying the knowledge from adult cells. I am a scientist, but not in this field. I know enough to know that I don't know a whole lot about this. I don't know your background, but I suspect you don't a whole a lot about the science here either. We are both pulling most of this out of our asses.
Thank you for a good post explaining why you feel the way you do. You demonstrate good and consistant morals.
Since we do, it is my opinion (based on my religious beliefs) that we should bring it to term, not destroy it.
You point out that your opinion is based on your religious beliefs. There's nothing wrong with that, but our society compromises many religions (including the absense thereof), and our country believes in a separation of church and state. Therefore, deciding right and wrong for the whole society is very different. We cannot transfer the morals of one religion on to our society as a whole.
Are you accepting of the fact that it's legal to do invitro fertillization. I understand that you don't think it's ethical, but do you think it should be banned? If you don't think it should be banned, then what do you think about embryonic stem cells? Either way, embryos are being created and later destroyed.
Embyronic stem cells have more potential due to their undifferentiated nature but they pose significantly greater problems than do adult stem cells.
Perhaps, but the research is in an early stage. It's really too early to know, and many scientists seemed very eager to research embyronic stem cells. I really think the decisions about what research should be done be determined by scientific merit. (OK, ethics need to enter the equation, too, but that's not the arguement you are making here). If you think Mr. Bush's decision was based on scientific merit, then you are kidding yourself.
Now, repeat after me: There is no ban on embryonic stem cell research.
No, what there is a ban on federal funding unless certain conditions (using existing cell lines) are met. Almost all funding of such basic research is federal, and apparently those cell lines are of limited use. So again, if you don't think this isn't a huge limitation on what research can be done then you are kidding yourself.
I pretty much agree with you, but it's an interesting discussion, so I'll continue...
That said, when you compare this fragile, limited application, closed system to the modular, flexible, redundant realty of the interstate highway system you see how remarkably un-scalable and simplistic the train approach is.
You threw out a lot of adjectives without much explanation, so let me analyze them one by one:
cons for this:
fragile: who's to say? It sounds like they have some ideas for handling units that fail on the track.
limited application: absolutely. But that doesn't mean it isn't useful when it applies.
closed: I'm not sure what you mean by this. Perhaps the fact they you have to use a different car for the highways and roads than this? I won't argue. It sounds like a minor thing to get out of your car to get into this thing, but it is a major problem. You now need huge parking lots, plus it wastes time.
Pros for the highway:
modular - yes, we each have our own cars. The proposed method here gets around some of that, by at least having many cars go to many destinations. (But except for special intracity cases, you'll still need another method of transport).
flexible - yes, lots of different vehicles use roads. This is an incredible amount of value.
redundant - perhaps, but I've seen plenty of multiple hour backups on the highway from an accident to know that roads aren't great here. The approach here, with a web of paths, could be as good if not better as far as reliablity goes.
So, so far the idea seems OK - not perfect, but maybe useful. Then there's one more thing you said:
scalable: This to me is the big problem with this new idea. How many cars/people can it realistically transport in a given time. I mentioned the unloading/loading issue, but there's also an issue of # of cars on the tracks. If you think about the # of cars travelling on a highway or road when the road is in heavy use (but not jammed) it's a huge number. Simiarly those subways and commuter trains are packed during peak times. I think it would take an astronomical number of tracks and cars to compete or even put a dent in the way we get around.
Trains are cool, but why do people automatically see rails and assume they are looking at efficient transportation. When are people going to realize that wheels simply work better on tar roads than they do on metal rails.
Wheels on tar roads are great. It means that if I decide to make a left turn at any time, I can. Unfortunately, that means that every one else on the road has to worry that I might make a left turn at any time. This, of course, is an exageration, since I wouldn't make a left turn into on-coming traffic unless I was an idiot or crazy. But the point is that this lack of control over what everyone is doing creates a lot of inefficiencies. One advantage of this system is that it eliminate these inefficiencies by having everything controlled by a central computer. Cars are all driving the same speed and the computer knows when they are going to turn.
Perhaps a bigger savings is the elevation of cross traffic. No more intersections, since the rail is so light it is easy to elevate above other tracks and the road.
My biggest concern is capacity. Loading and unloading is not necessarily terribly quick when done sequentially by a large number of people. We could have stations that have lines rivalling the worst rides at Disney.
This is Creative's history of innovation...
Original SB:
Adding a gameport and DAC to the ADLIB FM synthesizer. This product was an incredible success, and got them very rich. Unfortunately they haven't done anything since besides let others innovate and then buy them out.
First PCI soundcard with SB compatibility was made by Ensoniq. Creative bought them out to get this technology.
First decent 3D soundcards were made by Aureal, which you already covered.
The chip in the SBLive was developed by EMU, which Creative bought out.
The Soundworks speakers had nothing to do with Creative until they bought them out.
The Aureal is still basically the same technology that's in the SBLive. I guess they ran out of innovative companies to buy out.
Unfortunately for Creative they can't exactly buy out Apple, so I'd say they're in trouble.
How is Sage TV?
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I like it. The interface is pretty polished, and it can do anything I expect a PVR to do. I've written extensively about it over at www.byopvr.com. http://www.byopvr.com/Journal+index-jop-browse-mo
From what I read BeyondTV is perhaps even more polished, but SageTV supports the hardware decoder of the PVR-350, which was important to me.
My gripes have been it's been challenging to set up, and displaying the user interface on the PVR-350 is problematic. (The PVR-350 problems are almost certainly the driver's fault, not SageTV's. Other software that puts a UI on the PVR-350, MythTV and GB-PVR, have the same problems).
The advantages to this setup over other TiVo or MCE, is that the files can easily be edited and burned to DVD for safe keeping, plus you can use your computer to play games, view pictures, downloaded moview, etc.
There are no religious issues inherent to the debate over abortion rights. Abortion is the consideration of the rights of the unborn person versus the right of the parent over their body.
Actually, central to the issue of abortion is the question of "when does life begin"? It's obvious that you consider life to begin at conception, but this is not the only possible answer. It's hard, or perhaps impossible, to give an scientific answer to this question, so religion inevitably enters the equation.
Deadly corporeal punishment could be argued to be beneficial to society when the convicted has shown that they constitute a clear danger to others through their actions.
Locking someone up provides the same benefit of security to the vast majority of the population. (I.e., everyone not working in a jail). Deadly corporeal punishment removes the possibility of delivering any justice to those who were falsely executed. We are human, and therefore fallible, and therefore such injustices will (and have) occur. You are right, though, religion doesn't really need to enter into the arguement.
Interesting view on marriage. I can't say you're wrong in the idea that government should get out of the business of marriage. It's just that you are suggesting something that is so different from the status quo that it is impossible to consider it becoming reality.
What you say is probably true, about why the agents were there. However, let's imagine the story going a little differently...
Agents from the "US Trademark Enforcement" office call up this same lady asking that the toy be removed. The lady would probably answer back: "What are you nuts? Go get a court order. Or at least talk to the manufacturer of the toy first; I only sell the things".
So the real issue isn't that the agents weren't doing their job. The issue is that trademark enforcement apparently now falls under the juristiction the Department of Homeland Security. The agents can threaten this store owner and get their way without due process. All they need to do is mention which department they are with and hint that they might somehow invoke the terrorism card (which there is almost no defense against).
I don't think most of what of what you say will be a problem. Mechanical parts at this size scale are very robust, and there are probably easy ways to keep the dust out. RF intereference shouldn't be a serious issue either (devices are way smaller than the wavelength). If the device is always suspended then surface tension shouldn't be an issue. I don't know whether static electricity would be any worse here than CMOS.
However...
But what about reading/writing it? It's going to take not only power, but several transistors per bit.
That one you nailed, and that's why this will may never be practical.
Oops, I don't think you are referencing the right article. The article you point to is on "Nanodrive". It's essentially a scanning probe mircroscope (like an AFM), but with a large # of probes reading and writing simulataneously. It's an interesting device, but not the one discused here.