Richard Clark has shown himself to be a good man. He was regularly trotted out during the Bush years to decry what was going on. I see his name at the top of the list as a good thing.
"Weight is still determined by calories in and calories out."
Not true. Weight is determined by the insulin response triggered by an increase in blood sugar. Calories in/calories out is a good rough guide but Adkins adherents (and the previous low carb diets that have preceded it, starting with the Banting diet) have known for a long time that the endocrine system is the major player in weight gain/loss.
Gary Taubes has done a lot of tremendous writing in covering this topic.
I'm not sure about the uploading speeds but downloading speeds are around what Time Warner offers in their cable Internet package. It's around 15mbps right now on average. I saw that last night in another article while I was googling around on the topic.
And for all the tin-foil hat types, you'll love this bit:
"Wilmington Mayor Bill Saffo said the white space network enables the city's police department to install surveillance cameras at a fraction of the cost of installing one using cables and other wires necessary to reach a signal."
I'm reading this book and am about 60% through it... up to the part about entropy.
I get that the reader was looking for equations. But I found the history of everything to be wonderfully helpful in understanding the general concepts. I'm confused as to why he's confused that Gleick is giving a history of Information Theory and not a discourse on it.
I give the book 4 out of 5 and the reviewer 2 out of 5.
A buddy of mine and I recently decided to start collaborating together to try to learn what we could about web usability. We're posting articles and a weekly podcast about what we're finding at betteruserexperience.wordpress.com.
#7 They have too many natural predators #6 They can't take the heat #5 They can't handle the cold #4 Biting is a terrible way to spread disease #3 They can't heal from day to day damage #2 The landscape is full of zombie-proof barriers #1 Weapons and the people who use them
I was going to say the same thing. I'm reading it now and it's kinda hard to take any alien stuff seriously after he gets done making the comparisons between it and the things people described demons doing during the Inquisition.
Just a quick counter-argument. I'm not trolling, but I am playing devil's advocate.
Did you know that those same copyright protections apply to you too? Why get all upset because you can't legally use Mickey Mouse (since you brought up Disney) when you could create your own intellectual property and then leverage it for your own gain? You have all the freedom in the world to give your music away... or not. You are choosing to do so because it's a good marketing strategy. If things were as they were 10 years ago before you had the ability to distribute online you'd be trading tapes. But you'd also be sending demos to labels. Because that was the way the system worked. They were the arbiters of culture. But with the Internet, that's no longer true.
So while you're busy giving away your music, you might also look into music licensing and other ways of monetizing things. If you're leaving money on the table, willingly, that's on you. If it makes you feel good to give your music away then congrats - that feeling was brought to you by copyright law. Because you had the OPTION to give it away. You also have the ability to sell it, to make money from future covers of your, to draw royalties on your work, and to deny others the right to record your work (say, a political candidate you disagree with). You also have the option to sue, should somebody take your music without compensation.
This is an important right. Surely you won't argue that an artist shouldn't have the right to sue to protect their own intellectual property. So what we're talking about here is duration and damages. The way it's setup now -- it's plain to see that the duration is too long and the damages are too high. But that's what courts do: they decide what's appropriate. It doesn't matter what the labels say. Because Limewire probably says they want to go home scot-free with their attorney's fees paid for. How is that any less of a total over-reach? The right answer is some place in-between. And that place will be decided by the courts.
Now if you want to complain about courts that's a whole different topic.
Like it or not, the economic system we have here isn't going away. The stuff you're saying - I more or less agree with, but I saw the same stuff being written a decade ago about the exact same thing. Certainly copyright is a pain in the ass. Certainly it's being leveraged by large multi-nationals for their own profit and nothing else. But these aren't outsider positions anymore to say these things. It's just the general position of those who think they're getting fucked.
All I know is that a decade ago I had to go to Blockbuster and rent a video for $4 if I wanted to watch something. If I wanted to listen to a song I had to spend $15 and buy the whole CD it came on and just hope for more good songs on the disc. Now between Netflix and iTunes (not even counting torrents) all of that stuff is available to me in a more convenient fashion for less money. So how exactly is the consumer losing here?
In that TED Talk he speaks of wanting to take a one way trip to the moon to mine hydrogen.
He sees a fueling station on the moon as being a launching pad to exploring space more fully.
Money quote:
The traditional approach to space exploration has been that you carry all the fuel you need to get everybody back in case of an emergency. If you try to do that for the moon you're going to burn a billion dollars in fuel alone sending a crew out there. But if you send a mining team there without the return propellant first. Did any of you guys hear the story of Cortez? This is not like that, I'm much more like Scotty. I like this equipment, you know, and I really value it, so we're not going to burn it. But, if you were truly bold you could get it there, manufacture it and it would be the most dramatic demonstration that you could do something worthwhile off this planet that has ever been done.
There's a myth that you can't do anything in space for less than a trillion dollars and twenty years. That's not true. In seven years we could pull off an industrial mission to Shackleton and demonstrate that you could provide commercial reality out of this in low-earth orbit.
We're living in one of the most exciting times in history. We're at a magical confluence where private wealth and imagination are driving the demand for access to space. The orbital refueling stations I've just described could create an entirely new industry and provide the final key for opening space to general exploration.
To bust the paradigm a radically different approach is needed. We can do it by jump-starting with an industrial Louis and Clark expedition to Shackleton Crater to mine the moon for resources and demonstrate they can form the basis for a profitable business on orbit.
Talk about space always seems to be hung on ambiguities of purpose and timing. I would like to close here by putting a stake in the sand at TED. I intend to lead that expedition.
Watch the talk and you may change your mind about whether qualified people are willing to take one way trips to space.
That's a bit of an extreme position to take. After all, how is that kid going to make money when his stuff is pirated too?
The question is, how profitable is intellectual property? Yes, I know, information wants to be free. But does that mean that folks who want to make a living by creating intellectual property are just going to have to suck it up and make due? It's not a clear cut good vs. bad situation.
It's understandable to feel like it's the People vs. the Borg when the RIAA is brought into the discussion but in a larger sense, the RIAA isn't the issue.
The issue is the same thing that was discussed way back in 1994 by John Perry Barlow (co-founder of the EFF) in Wired magazine in an article titled "The Economy of Ideas".
"Throughout the time I've been groping around cyberspace, an immense, unsolved conundrum has remained at the root of nearly every legal, ethical, governmental, and social vexation to be found in the Virtual World. I refer to the problem of digitized property. The enigma is this: If our property can be infinitely reproduced and instantaneously distributed all over the planet without cost, without our knowledge, without its even leaving our possession, how can we protect it? How are we going to get paid for the work we do with our minds? And, if we can't get paid, what will assure the continued creation and distribution of such work?"
"You should interview Steven Chu," the scientist at the Joint Genome Institute in Walnut Creek, Calif., told me. "He already has one Nobel Prize. He wants to get a second one for solving the energy crisis."
That was two years ago, and I sorely regret not following through and landing an interview with Chu, a physicist who has dedicated his post-Nobel Prize career to the development of alternative sources of energy. Because as Barack Obama's nominee for secretary of energy, Steven Chu is going to get a chance to make his dreams come true, with the full backing of the U.S. government.
Since 2004, Chu has served as the director of the University of California-managed Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, spearheading, among other things, a massive research effort in solar power. To get a sense of the man's interests, here's the second sentence of his bio at the LBNL Web site. (LBNL, located in Berkeley, Calif., should be distinguished from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, which does weapons research for the U.S. government.)
Chu, an early advocate for finding scientific solutions to climate change, has guided Berkeley Lab on a new mission to become the world leader in alternative and renewable energy research, particularly the development of carbon-neutral sources of energy.
Environmentalists and climate change activists are understandably delighted. Consider this: For eight years the United States has boasted an Energy Department that for all intents and purposes was a subsidiary of the U.S. oil industry. Now, should he be confirmed, a Nobel Prize-winning physicist who specializes in climate change and renewable energy and already knows how to run a decent-size bureaucracy is going to be in charge of realizing Obama's bold promises to lead the United States toward an energy-sustainable future. Symbolically speaking, one would be hard put to draw a sharper contrast between the Bush and Obama eras than what is achieved by this single appointment.
That said, Steven Chu is no stranger to Big Oil. He was instrumental in helping U.C. Berkeley land one of the biggest corporate bonanzas ever -- $500 million from British Petroleum to establish the Energy Biosciences Institute, an ambitious joint venture that has been controversial from the get-go at Berkeley because of its plans to use oil money to do research and development into energy crops and other biofuel wizardry.
And, as I noted after seeing him talk in early 2007 at a symposium titled "Domestic Bioenergy: Weaning Ourselves From Foreign Oil Addiction," held at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, he is on record as being a bit hyperbolic as to the potential of biofuels.
There is enough marginal, unused agricultural land in the United States to generate the biomass necessary to reach the one-third goal [of displacing annual American gasoline consumption with biofuels,] without displacing food production, said Steven Chu, the Nobel physics prize winner who runs the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. And the laws of thermodynamics won't need to be broken -- there is more than enough energy hitting the earth every day as sunlight to supply all of humanity's energy needs.
It's written by Jeffery M. Schwartz, a doctor who works with severe OCD patients. He ties free will to quantum mechanics and shows how free will from "outside the body" allows OCD patients to make different decisions that allow them control their OCD. These decisions also literally rewire the brain.
Remember that/. story a few weeks ago "Your Mashup is Probably Legal?" It talked of a group of copyright experts who issued Fair Use guidelines for the use of copyrighted material in videos. In it, they issued 6 guidelines. Quoting:
FOUR: REPRODUCING, REPOSTING, OR QUOTING IN ORDER TO MEMORIALIZE, PRESERVE, OR RESCUE AN EXPERIENCE, AN EVENT, OR A CULTURAL PHENOMENON
DESCRIPTION: Repurposed copyrighted material is central to this kind of video. For instance, someone may record their favorite performance or document their own presence at a rock concert. Someone may post a controversial or notorious moment from broadcast television or a public event (a Stephen Colbert speech, a presidential address, a celebrity blooper). Someone may reproduce portions of a work that has been taken out of circulation, unjustly in their opinion. Gamers may record their performances. (emphasis mine)
PRINCIPLE: Video makers are using new technology to accomplish culturally positive functions that are widely acceptedâ"or even celebratedâ"in the analog information environment. In other media and platforms, creators regularly recollect, describe, catalog, and preserve cultural expression for public memory. Written memoirs for instance are valued for the specificity and accuracy of their recollections; collectors of ephemeral material are valued for creating archives for future users. Such memorializing transforms the original in various waysâ"perhaps by putting the original work in a different context, perhaps by putting it in juxtaposition with other such works, perhaps by preserving it. This use also does not impair the legitimate market for the original work.
LIMITATION: Fair use reaches its limits when the entertainment content is reproduced in amounts that are disproportionate to purposes of documentation, or in the case of archiving, when the material is readily available from authorized sources.
There is a misconception that the copyright belongs to the artist. That is rarely the case at a major record label. The "people are living longer" argument is a straw man. Corporations don't die, their board members do. A corporation doesn't need a 401k or IRA because it isn't about retirement. It's about getting as much money for as little investment as possible.
Did you see the story last week about how the RIAA wants to lower the mechanical royalty rate (the amount the artist gets paid) from 11.9 cents a song to 9 cents a song? Distributors have always controlled the music business, and Apple, the new gatekeepers of digital media want 4 cents a song. One could argue that Apple and the RIAAs stance on the issue is underscored by the realities of needing to sell music at cheaper prices. Lowing the mechanical royalty rate could be seen as the label's attempt to get artists to share the burden of cheaper music and "piracy" (rolls eyes).
I don't know enough about the issue to say with confidence whether there is sound economic reasoning behind lowering the mechanical royalty rate, but extending copyright in the EU sounds like a money grab. It's interesting to note, and I'm surprised nobody else has caught this, but even if the EU did extend copyright to 95 years, it would just be getting into the same atmosphere as the US. The US has the Sony Bono Copyright Extension Act of 1998 which according to Wikipedia increased the length of copyright by 20 years making the total length of copyright to be the life of the author plus 70 years and 120 years for works of corporate authorship or 95 years after its publication, whichever comes first.
Since the major labels span the globe, this really sounds to me like a global unification of copyright law. Which, if the case, sucks because the law essentially does away with the public domain. But, you can see why a multinational industry would want such a thing.
American farmers, spurred by ethanol frenzy, are planting the largest corn crop in more than 50 years.The demand is so high, reports Farm News, that seed companies are running out of the most popular varieties of corn seed.
At the top of the list are "triple stack hybrids" sold mostly by Monsanto-owned subsidiaries. A triple stack hybrid combines genetic modifications that result in three different "traits." In this case, the corn comes with built-in resistance to Monsanto's Roundup herbicide, and built-in insecticides that target two of the corn plant's most fearsome foes, the dreaded corn borer and the equally devastating corn rootworm. (The corn borer and corn rootworm toxins are derived from two different subspecies of the soil bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis -- triple stack hybrids thus include two different "Bt" genetic modification "events.")
For Monsanto, the apparent popularity of triple stack hybrid corn seed is an opportunity to tout the market's embrace of its latest products. For critics of GM corn, the rush to such varieties presages a future filled with weeds that evolve to resist Roundup and new generations of corn borers and rootworms that shrug off Bt toxins.
No doubt Monsanto plans to come up with new, "improved" corn seed products that will target new, improved pests, and will be able to resist new, improved herbicides. That is the treadmill that the human race has put itself on, and whether we'll ever be able to get off of it seems a highly doubtful proposition, unless food prices rise so high that biofuels become politically impossible. But that dreary quagmire is not the point of this post.
For some time, How the World Works has been convinced that the rush to biofuels will significantly boost the ongoing rollout of genetically modified organisms. There's just too much money at stake in the energy business for it to be otherwise. The popularity of the latest biotech crops is a perfect illustration of this. These seeds aren't cheap -- they are top-of-the-line products. But for well-financed farmers and industrial-scale agribusinesses aiming to cash in on ethanol demand, seed costs are not a significant barrier. It seems reasonable to expect, in the not-too-distant future, quadruple- and quintuple- and sextuple-stacked hybrids that do all kinds of fancy things such as incorporate herbicide resistance, targeted pesticides, and modifications that make the corn cheaper and easier to industrially transform into ethanol.
As more and more modifications are incorporated into a single organism, our ability to understand and predict how wide-scale proliferation of those organisms will affect the greater environment will become even more difficult than it already is. So maybe "treadmill" isn't the best metaphor to describe the current dynamic. A rocket launch into territory unknown might offer a more appropriate analogy.
I get your point. It's fun to try to kick a little Slashdot ass. But I'll take your question seriously and try to answer it.
The idea of putting a laptop in the hands of somebody who can't afford the technology is very appealing. We like it. It makes us feel good. It makes us feel like we want to be part of that. Look at the other posts that say they'd spend $500 to buy one for themselves if they'd also send one to the originally intended recipients. That's a very strong statement of support. If the price goes to $175... well, who can really fault us for not willing to take back that we like the idea that low cost computers are being given to people who could really really could use them.
It wouldn't matter who made the mp3 player. Nobody wants to hear about a significant price increase on a plentiful commodity like an mp3 player. There's too much competition and Microsoft, explicitly, has a long history of credibility problems with delivering on their marketing claims in their product in the first place.
Aren't there a host of things missing from Vista? Aren't we all aware that the "revolutionary" new file structure got cut and that DRM was a priority? For Microsoft, you reap what you sow.
So I reject your comparison. We're not assholes (as your suggest - or at least, not for this reason), we just want to see the OLPC thing succeed.
The president of NBC was interviewed on MSNBC by Keith Olbermann the other night (I believe it was Wednesday) and said that the profitable thing for them to do would be to keep him on the air. The reason he was sacked is because the "nappy headed hos" story caused the network to look at the body of work that Don Imus had and heard enough complaints internally (read: internal political battle) that he had to go.
I'm the first one to get the hair on the back of their neck up about infringements to freedom of speech but just speaking personally - his show was terrible. Nappy Headed Ho-gate essentially proved that. What that phrase proved was that it was so _ordinary_ to him that its ordinariness made it extraordinary.
I think Imus has the right to say what he wants. I also think NBC and CBS can decide to fire him if they want.
The profit motive angle you're working though, it doesn't agree with what the NBC president had to say.
First of all, like everything else we like to bitch about here on Slashdot, it comes down to money. There's gold in them thar hills! What you're actually hearing is the gearing up of industry to support products that are "environmentally friendly". Not that there's anything wrong with that.
The problem with this question and the increasing vocalization of man made climate change die hards is this:
1. Regardless of the causation of climate change, there seems to be universal agreement that it is happening. To the degree that we don't want to be like the vast majority of critters that have ever been on this planet and become extinct, we should focus on ways of planning to adapt to the possible outcomes of climate change. Arguing over who is responsible, at some level, is simply counterproductive.
2. Once man made global warming becomes politically attractive we will begin to spend lots of tax payer money to reduce our impact on the environment. This invariably will siphon away money from other places or prevent that money from being used for something that could do more good. I don't mean to sound cold or uncaring, or even worse, ignorant on the subject of climate change. What I am suggesting is that there are a limited amount of funds to be used for what amounts to public works projects. Will funding for reducing man's impact on the environment do more good than, say, AIDS prevention? Folks smarter than me with more letters after their name than I have suggest that it will not.
Bottom line: There are more rational ways to go about this process of identifying problems and developing solutions but causes have always needed some flash and sizzle to sell to your average American. Right now, man made climate change is about as sexy an idea as you can think of that has many supporters in the scientific community. Think about it, you have natural disasters, money hungry multinational corporations, underdog scientists, Hurricane Katrina, talk of cute animals going extinct, Al Gore, dramatic film clips, the idea that the big corps are fucking it up for the common man, themes of Armageddon, etc. It actually sounds like it has elements of every thrill movie ever made. I mean, goddammit! That's a show!
So can we sit down, be rational, and allow scientists to conduct their research without having to deal with the celebrity of what they're researching? 'Fraid not.
You have to think about how the whole Google ad system works. On the publisher side you have AdSense, on the advertiser side you have AdWords. To tie it all together you have Google Analytics. The goal of Google would be to sell leads or sales: the freaking holy grail if you're me and managing client accounts. If I can set a max price on what a sale is worth to me and have it delivered for that amount then the nirvana of advertising is upon us. I'd be willing to drop some Google Analytics code onto my site to track its usage. As a part of that I'd also set up goals to track sales or leads and use Google Analytics' revenue tracking tool. Many of my clients do that already and they're already tracking new vs. returning visitor CPV and revenue by search engine and search type and by dozens of other meaningful but anonymous statistics through Google Analytics. Trust me, fraud isn't going to be a drop in the bucket because if it worked you'd have every advertiser beating down a path to Google to pay up for some of that Step 3: profit!
I think you're being a little harsh on Tivo here. I've been a Tivo owner for several years and see that they want to do cool things. Unfortunately, the need to be profitable and the fact that they're dabbling in a realm that's already got its share of giants (content companies) so they really can't just do what they want with reckless abandon.
If you've been keeping up with the companies financials at all, you'll see that they've been teetering on the brink for awhile. The institution of a service contract only occurred because enough people wouldn't pay the monthly fee to allow them to be profitable. Obviously, they think that even though it's a dick move, really, it will still end up being better for them financially.
Personally, I think anybody who buys a Tivo and doesn't take advantage of their lifetime subscription ($300 when I got it) - is a dolt. I've had my Tivo for 3 years and would have long since paid my $300 to them in monthly charges.
So give Tivo a break. They're a company with a cool technology that's easy to use. They make the best remote control I've ever used for anything, and they've never been dicks about people modding their boxes. They aren't out to screw over their customers (that's the RIAA, remember), they're just trying to stay in business. Time will tell if this move is successful or not.
I guess what I'm trying to say is, it's not personal. Enjoy the MythTV box. I didn't have the fortitude or the time to build and nurse that system. That's why I have a Tivo. Best of luck...
I've had a Tivo for years and have nothing but good things to say about it. But if pressed, I'll tell you my only real problem. They need to build their boxes with two TV tuners. In 2005, recording one channel while watching another should be a no-brainer. Yes, Tivo tells you how to wire a workaround with a cable splitter but the way I see it, if I'm buying the box, let the box do the work. Other than that, I love the thing. I considered your 9 DIY points (among others) when I first bought my Tivo and here's what conclusions I came to:
1)I hate monthly fees. I refuse to pay them. I'd rather pay $100 up front than5 a month in fees.
Me too. That's why I paid $300 up front for lifetime service. The break even point was 17 months. I've had the service for over 2 years now.
2)Expandability. Want more RAM or another encoder? DIY just add it. Tivo- time to buy another Tivo
As far as I know, Tivo encourages hacking their boxes and plenty of people have dropped bigger drives into their Tivo.
3)No comercials- Tivo is playing with adding commercials. My number 1 reason for buying one would be to kill commercials.
I suppose you could find some software (or write your own) that looks for the black fade ins and outs to cut the commercials on the fly - but chances are, you're still going to see a commercial here and there with your own system. For Tivo, for my tastes, they've reduced the commercials to a level that I find acceptible. I don't need the complete lack of commercials to enjoy TV - I just need the ability to blow right by them. Look at it this way, Tivo *asked me* if I wanted to record the King Kong world premiere of the trailer. You can call that invasive advertising if you want, but *damn right* I wanted to see it. And yes, it ruled.
4)More (and easily expandable) storage. Add a RAID for reliability.
Personally, anything I want to save, I use Tivo ToGo and move it to my PC. There's a hack that automates turning a.tivo file into a.mpg file - so transferring is painless and I'm not locked into their (admittedly PITA) DRM. Oh, it goes without saying that I can then use whatever setup I chose to store my data... RAID, whatever.
5)Additional features. You can pull any new feature when you want, and Myth is more than just a DVR (MythPhone, MythGames, etc)
At some point, I pull over on the feature highway and just want my DVR to be a kickass DVR with the best remote I've ever used. Tivo is that for me. My computer is 5 feet from my Tivo. I think I can manage VOIP and games on my computer. And honestly, wouldn't you rather use your TV with a game console? It's the old mobile phone idea. We all want easy simple mobile phones that are great at being mobile phones. I don't need a half assed PDA attached to it. Same thing goes for my DVR.
6)The ability to do illegal stuff- like rent DVDs, and rip them to your hard drive for permanent sorage.
Again, why not just do this on your PC?
7)The ability to network it and add a file server. You may now watch your movie collection anywhere.
Tivo offers that with Tivo ToGo.
8)The ability to use 1 program for all media- music, video, and images.
Tivo allows you to put music and videos in a shared file so you can view them on your Tivo.
9)No loss of features- you won't see disappearing features like 30 second skip.
As far as I know, Tivo doesn't really lose features. Though I don't lurk on Tivo messageboards either. I know that Tivo doesn't allow a 30 second skip, but I also know that they built in an easy remote control command to enable it. It's a hack, but it's an official hack.
All in all, I see your points. It comes down to wanting one box to do it all vs. being happy that I have a computer and have some game consoles and a Tivo and can use them all for their intended purpose. If the point is to record TV and not to turn said recording into a hobby, then Tivo is clearly the best option. However, if you enjoy DIY - then that's really the only reason you need to go that route.
I tend to agree with you. If it's your party, you should be able to secure it however you want to. The irksome thing about the Olympics is that cameras exist not only at the games, but largely throughout Athens. For my own taste, that's when it intrudes too much into the daily lives of those that live there. If I were a resident, I would feel violated.
Slashdot Mirror
Richard Clark has shown himself to be a good man. He was regularly trotted out during the Bush years to decry what was going on. I see his name at the top of the list as a good thing.
"Weight is still determined by calories in and calories out."
Not true. Weight is determined by the insulin response triggered by an increase in blood sugar. Calories in/calories out is a good rough guide but Adkins adherents (and the previous low carb diets that have preceded it, starting with the Banting diet) have known for a long time that the endocrine system is the major player in weight gain/loss.
Gary Taubes has done a lot of tremendous writing in covering this topic.
Check this article out if you're interested for more.
I'm not sure about the uploading speeds but downloading speeds are around what Time Warner offers in their cable Internet package. It's around 15mbps right now on average. I saw that last night in another article while I was googling around on the topic.
I live in Wilmington and here's a bit of a better article from the local newspaper, the Star News.
And for all the tin-foil hat types, you'll love this bit:
"Wilmington Mayor Bill Saffo said the white space network enables the city's police department to install surveillance cameras at a fraction of the cost of installing one using cables and other wires necessary to reach a signal."
I'm reading this book and am about 60% through it... up to the part about entropy.
I get that the reader was looking for equations. But I found the history of everything to be wonderfully helpful in understanding the general concepts. I'm confused as to why he's confused that Gleick is giving a history of Information Theory and not a discourse on it.
I give the book 4 out of 5 and the reviewer 2 out of 5.
A buddy of mine and I recently decided to start collaborating together to try to learn what we could about web usability. We're posting articles and a weekly podcast about what we're finding at betteruserexperience.wordpress.com.
Here's a link to the article. Once, again, Cracked to the rescue!
http://www.cracked.com/article_18683_7-scientific-reasons-zombie-outbreak-would-fail-quickly.html
#7 They have too many natural predators
#6 They can't take the heat
#5 They can't handle the cold
#4 Biting is a terrible way to spread disease
#3 They can't heal from day to day damage
#2 The landscape is full of zombie-proof barriers
#1 Weapons and the people who use them
Also interesting, (and also from Cracked) "5 Scientific Reasons a Zombie Apocalypse Could Actually Happen"
I was going to say the same thing. I'm reading it now and it's kinda hard to take any alien stuff seriously after he gets done making the comparisons between it and the things people described demons doing during the Inquisition.
Just a quick counter-argument. I'm not trolling, but I am playing devil's advocate.
Did you know that those same copyright protections apply to you too? Why get all upset because you can't legally use Mickey Mouse (since you brought up Disney) when you could create your own intellectual property and then leverage it for your own gain? You have all the freedom in the world to give your music away... or not. You are choosing to do so because it's a good marketing strategy. If things were as they were 10 years ago before you had the ability to distribute online you'd be trading tapes. But you'd also be sending demos to labels. Because that was the way the system worked. They were the arbiters of culture. But with the Internet, that's no longer true.
So while you're busy giving away your music, you might also look into music licensing and other ways of monetizing things. If you're leaving money on the table, willingly, that's on you. If it makes you feel good to give your music away then congrats - that feeling was brought to you by copyright law. Because you had the OPTION to give it away. You also have the ability to sell it, to make money from future covers of your, to draw royalties on your work, and to deny others the right to record your work (say, a political candidate you disagree with). You also have the option to sue, should somebody take your music without compensation.
This is an important right. Surely you won't argue that an artist shouldn't have the right to sue to protect their own intellectual property. So what we're talking about here is duration and damages. The way it's setup now -- it's plain to see that the duration is too long and the damages are too high. But that's what courts do: they decide what's appropriate. It doesn't matter what the labels say. Because Limewire probably says they want to go home scot-free with their attorney's fees paid for. How is that any less of a total over-reach? The right answer is some place in-between. And that place will be decided by the courts.
Now if you want to complain about courts that's a whole different topic.
Like it or not, the economic system we have here isn't going away. The stuff you're saying - I more or less agree with, but I saw the same stuff being written a decade ago about the exact same thing. Certainly copyright is a pain in the ass. Certainly it's being leveraged by large multi-nationals for their own profit and nothing else. But these aren't outsider positions anymore to say these things. It's just the general position of those who think they're getting fucked.
All I know is that a decade ago I had to go to Blockbuster and rent a video for $4 if I wanted to watch something. If I wanted to listen to a song I had to spend $15 and buy the whole CD it came on and just hope for more good songs on the disc. Now between Netflix and iTunes (not even counting torrents) all of that stuff is available to me in a more convenient fashion for less money. So how exactly is the consumer losing here?
Joh, meet Bill Stone. Here's his bio.
Now, watch his talk at TED.
In that TED Talk he speaks of wanting to take a one way trip to the moon to mine hydrogen.
He sees a fueling station on the moon as being a launching pad to exploring space more fully.
Money quote:
Watch the talk and you may change your mind about whether qualified people are willing to take one way trips to space.
That's a bit of an extreme position to take. After all, how is that kid going to make money when his stuff is pirated too?
The question is, how profitable is intellectual property? Yes, I know, information wants to be free. But does that mean that folks who want to make a living by creating intellectual property are just going to have to suck it up and make due? It's not a clear cut good vs. bad situation.
It's understandable to feel like it's the People vs. the Borg when the RIAA is brought into the discussion but in a larger sense, the RIAA isn't the issue.
The issue is the same thing that was discussed way back in 1994 by John Perry Barlow (co-founder of the EFF) in Wired magazine in an article titled "The Economy of Ideas".
"Throughout the time I've been groping around cyberspace, an immense, unsolved conundrum has remained at the root of nearly every legal, ethical, governmental, and social vexation to be found in the Virtual World. I refer to the problem of digitized property. The enigma is this: If our property can be infinitely reproduced and instantaneously distributed all over the planet without cost, without our knowledge, without its even leaving our possession, how can we protect it? How are we going to get paid for the work we do with our minds? And, if we can't get paid, what will assure the continued creation and distribution of such work?"
Obama's pick to solve the energy crisis
"You should interview Steven Chu," the scientist at the Joint Genome Institute in Walnut Creek, Calif., told me. "He already has one Nobel Prize. He wants to get a second one for solving the energy crisis."
That was two years ago, and I sorely regret not following through and landing an interview with Chu, a physicist who has dedicated his post-Nobel Prize career to the development of alternative sources of energy. Because as Barack Obama's nominee for secretary of energy, Steven Chu is going to get a chance to make his dreams come true, with the full backing of the U.S. government.
Since 2004, Chu has served as the director of the University of California-managed Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, spearheading, among other things, a massive research effort in solar power. To get a sense of the man's interests, here's the second sentence of his bio at the LBNL Web site. (LBNL, located in Berkeley, Calif., should be distinguished from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, which does weapons research for the U.S. government.)
Environmentalists and climate change activists are understandably delighted. Consider this: For eight years the United States has boasted an Energy Department that for all intents and purposes was a subsidiary of the U.S. oil industry. Now, should he be confirmed, a Nobel Prize-winning physicist who specializes in climate change and renewable energy and already knows how to run a decent-size bureaucracy is going to be in charge of realizing Obama's bold promises to lead the United States toward an energy-sustainable future. Symbolically speaking, one would be hard put to draw a sharper contrast between the Bush and Obama eras than what is achieved by this single appointment.
That said, Steven Chu is no stranger to Big Oil. He was instrumental in helping U.C. Berkeley land one of the biggest corporate bonanzas ever -- $500 million from British Petroleum to establish the Energy Biosciences Institute, an ambitious joint venture that has been controversial from the get-go at Berkeley because of its plans to use oil money to do research and development into energy crops and other biofuel wizardry.
And, as I noted after seeing him talk in early 2007 at a symposium titled "Domestic Bioenergy: Weaning Ourselves From Foreign Oil Addiction," held at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, he is on record as being a bit hyperbolic as to the potential of biofuels.
You can find plenty of scientists who will dispute such assertions, right
I would check out the book "The Mind and the Brain: Neuroplasticity and the Power of Mental Force".
It's written by Jeffery M. Schwartz, a doctor who works with severe OCD patients. He ties free will to quantum mechanics and shows how free will from "outside the body" allows OCD patients to make different decisions that allow them control their OCD. These decisions also literally rewire the brain.
It's a fascinating read.
Remember that /. story a few weeks ago "Your Mashup is Probably Legal?" It talked of a group of copyright experts who issued Fair Use guidelines for the use of copyrighted material in videos. In it, they issued 6 guidelines. Quoting:
FOUR: REPRODUCING, REPOSTING, OR QUOTING IN ORDER TO MEMORIALIZE, PRESERVE, OR RESCUE AN EXPERIENCE, AN EVENT, OR A CULTURAL PHENOMENON
DESCRIPTION: Repurposed copyrighted material is central to this kind of video. For instance, someone may record their favorite performance or document their own presence at a rock concert. Someone may post a controversial or notorious moment from broadcast television or a public event (a Stephen Colbert speech, a presidential address, a celebrity blooper). Someone may reproduce portions of a work that has been taken out of circulation, unjustly in their opinion. Gamers may record their performances. (emphasis mine)
PRINCIPLE: Video makers are using new technology to accomplish culturally positive functions that are widely acceptedâ"or even celebratedâ"in the analog information environment. In other media and platforms, creators regularly recollect, describe, catalog, and preserve cultural expression for public memory. Written memoirs for instance are valued for the specificity and accuracy of their recollections; collectors of ephemeral material are valued for creating archives for future users. Such memorializing transforms the original in various waysâ"perhaps by putting the original work in a different context, perhaps by putting it in juxtaposition with other such works, perhaps by preserving it. This use also does not impair the legitimate market for the original work.
LIMITATION: Fair use reaches its limits when the entertainment content is reproduced in amounts that are disproportionate to purposes of documentation, or in the case of archiving, when the material is readily available from authorized sources.
There is a misconception that the copyright belongs to the artist. That is rarely the case at a major record label. The "people are living longer" argument is a straw man. Corporations don't die, their board members do. A corporation doesn't need a 401k or IRA because it isn't about retirement. It's about getting as much money for as little investment as possible.
Did you see the story last week about how the RIAA wants to lower the mechanical royalty rate (the amount the artist gets paid) from 11.9 cents a song to 9 cents a song? Distributors have always controlled the music business, and Apple, the new gatekeepers of digital media want 4 cents a song. One could argue that Apple and the RIAAs stance on the issue is underscored by the realities of needing to sell music at cheaper prices. Lowing the mechanical royalty rate could be seen as the label's attempt to get artists to share the burden of cheaper music and "piracy" (rolls eyes).
I don't know enough about the issue to say with confidence whether there is sound economic reasoning behind lowering the mechanical royalty rate, but extending copyright in the EU sounds like a money grab. It's interesting to note, and I'm surprised nobody else has caught this, but even if the EU did extend copyright to 95 years, it would just be getting into the same atmosphere as the US. The US has the Sony Bono Copyright Extension Act of 1998 which according to Wikipedia increased the length of copyright by 20 years making the total length of copyright to be the life of the author plus 70 years and 120 years for works of corporate authorship or 95 years after its publication, whichever comes first.
Since the major labels span the globe, this really sounds to me like a global unification of copyright law. Which, if the case, sucks because the law essentially does away with the public domain. But, you can see why a multinational industry would want such a thing.
American farmers, spurred by ethanol frenzy, are planting the largest corn crop in more than 50 years.The demand is so high, reports Farm News, that seed companies are running out of the most popular varieties of corn seed.
At the top of the list are "triple stack hybrids" sold mostly by Monsanto-owned subsidiaries. A triple stack hybrid combines genetic modifications that result in three different "traits." In this case, the corn comes with built-in resistance to Monsanto's Roundup herbicide, and built-in insecticides that target two of the corn plant's most fearsome foes, the dreaded corn borer and the equally devastating corn rootworm. (The corn borer and corn rootworm toxins are derived from two different subspecies of the soil bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis -- triple stack hybrids thus include two different "Bt" genetic modification "events.")
For Monsanto, the apparent popularity of triple stack hybrid corn seed is an opportunity to tout the market's embrace of its latest products. For critics of GM corn, the rush to such varieties presages a future filled with weeds that evolve to resist Roundup and new generations of corn borers and rootworms that shrug off Bt toxins.
No doubt Monsanto plans to come up with new, "improved" corn seed products that will target new, improved pests, and will be able to resist new, improved herbicides. That is the treadmill that the human race has put itself on, and whether we'll ever be able to get off of it seems a highly doubtful proposition, unless food prices rise so high that biofuels become politically impossible. But that dreary quagmire is not the point of this post.
For some time, How the World Works has been convinced that the rush to biofuels will significantly boost the ongoing rollout of genetically modified organisms. There's just too much money at stake in the energy business for it to be otherwise. The popularity of the latest biotech crops is a perfect illustration of this. These seeds aren't cheap -- they are top-of-the-line products. But for well-financed farmers and industrial-scale agribusinesses aiming to cash in on ethanol demand, seed costs are not a significant barrier. It seems reasonable to expect, in the not-too-distant future, quadruple- and quintuple- and sextuple-stacked hybrids that do all kinds of fancy things such as incorporate herbicide resistance, targeted pesticides, and modifications that make the corn cheaper and easier to industrially transform into ethanol.
As more and more modifications are incorporated into a single organism, our ability to understand and predict how wide-scale proliferation of those organisms will affect the greater environment will become even more difficult than it already is. So maybe "treadmill" isn't the best metaphor to describe the current dynamic. A rocket launch into territory unknown might offer a more appropriate analogy.
-- Andrew Leonard
I have mod points but you're already at +5. That's the cleverest thing I've read all day. :D
I get your point. It's fun to try to kick a little Slashdot ass. But I'll take your question seriously and try to answer it.
The idea of putting a laptop in the hands of somebody who can't afford the technology is very appealing. We like it. It makes us feel good. It makes us feel like we want to be part of that. Look at the other posts that say they'd spend $500 to buy one for themselves if they'd also send one to the originally intended recipients. That's a very strong statement of support. If the price goes to $175... well, who can really fault us for not willing to take back that we like the idea that low cost computers are being given to people who could really really could use them.
It wouldn't matter who made the mp3 player. Nobody wants to hear about a significant price increase on a plentiful commodity like an mp3 player. There's too much competition and Microsoft, explicitly, has a long history of credibility problems with delivering on their marketing claims in their product in the first place.
Aren't there a host of things missing from Vista? Aren't we all aware that the "revolutionary" new file structure got cut and that DRM was a priority? For Microsoft, you reap what you sow.
So I reject your comparison. We're not assholes (as your suggest - or at least, not for this reason), we just want to see the OLPC thing succeed.
*sigh*
The president of NBC was interviewed on MSNBC by Keith Olbermann the other night (I believe it was Wednesday) and said that the profitable thing for them to do would be to keep him on the air. The reason he was sacked is because the "nappy headed hos" story caused the network to look at the body of work that Don Imus had and heard enough complaints internally (read: internal political battle) that he had to go.
I'm the first one to get the hair on the back of their neck up about infringements to freedom of speech but just speaking personally - his show was terrible. Nappy Headed Ho-gate essentially proved that. What that phrase proved was that it was so _ordinary_ to him that its ordinariness made it extraordinary.
I think Imus has the right to say what he wants. I also think NBC and CBS can decide to fire him if they want.
The profit motive angle you're working though, it doesn't agree with what the NBC president had to say.
First of all, like everything else we like to bitch about here on Slashdot, it comes down to money. There's gold in them thar hills! What you're actually hearing is the gearing up of industry to support products that are "environmentally friendly". Not that there's anything wrong with that.
The problem with this question and the increasing vocalization of man made climate change die hards is this:
1. Regardless of the causation of climate change, there seems to be universal agreement that it is happening. To the degree that we don't want to be like the vast majority of critters that have ever been on this planet and become extinct, we should focus on ways of planning to adapt to the possible outcomes of climate change. Arguing over who is responsible, at some level, is simply counterproductive.
2. Once man made global warming becomes politically attractive we will begin to spend lots of tax payer money to reduce our impact on the environment. This invariably will siphon away money from other places or prevent that money from being used for something that could do more good. I don't mean to sound cold or uncaring, or even worse, ignorant on the subject of climate change. What I am suggesting is that there are a limited amount of funds to be used for what amounts to public works projects. Will funding for reducing man's impact on the environment do more good than, say, AIDS prevention? Folks smarter than me with more letters after their name than I have suggest that it will not.
Bottom line: There are more rational ways to go about this process of identifying problems and developing solutions but causes have always needed some flash and sizzle to sell to your average American. Right now, man made climate change is about as sexy an idea as you can think of that has many supporters in the scientific community. Think about it, you have natural disasters, money hungry multinational corporations, underdog scientists, Hurricane Katrina, talk of cute animals going extinct, Al Gore, dramatic film clips, the idea that the big corps are fucking it up for the common man, themes of Armageddon, etc. It actually sounds like it has elements of every thrill movie ever made. I mean, goddammit! That's a show!
So can we sit down, be rational, and allow scientists to conduct their research without having to deal with the celebrity of what they're researching? 'Fraid not.
If you feel I've said things that are provocative, watch the TED Talks lectures from the brilliant physicist David Deutsch and the thought provoking economist Bjorn Lomborg for more information.
You have to think about how the whole Google ad system works. On the publisher side you have AdSense, on the advertiser side you have AdWords. To tie it all together you have Google Analytics. The goal of Google would be to sell leads or sales: the freaking holy grail if you're me and managing client accounts. If I can set a max price on what a sale is worth to me and have it delivered for that amount then the nirvana of advertising is upon us. I'd be willing to drop some Google Analytics code onto my site to track its usage. As a part of that I'd also set up goals to track sales or leads and use Google Analytics' revenue tracking tool. Many of my clients do that already and they're already tracking new vs. returning visitor CPV and revenue by search engine and search type and by dozens of other meaningful but anonymous statistics through Google Analytics. Trust me, fraud isn't going to be a drop in the bucket because if it worked you'd have every advertiser beating down a path to Google to pay up for some of that Step 3: profit!
I think you're being a little harsh on Tivo here. I've been a Tivo owner for several years and see that they want to do cool things. Unfortunately, the need to be profitable and the fact that they're dabbling in a realm that's already got its share of giants (content companies) so they really can't just do what they want with reckless abandon.
If you've been keeping up with the companies financials at all, you'll see that they've been teetering on the brink for awhile. The institution of a service contract only occurred because enough people wouldn't pay the monthly fee to allow them to be profitable. Obviously, they think that even though it's a dick move, really, it will still end up being better for them financially.
Personally, I think anybody who buys a Tivo and doesn't take advantage of their lifetime subscription ($300 when I got it) - is a dolt. I've had my Tivo for 3 years and would have long since paid my $300 to them in monthly charges.
So give Tivo a break. They're a company with a cool technology that's easy to use. They make the best remote control I've ever used for anything, and they've never been dicks about people modding their boxes. They aren't out to screw over their customers (that's the RIAA, remember), they're just trying to stay in business. Time will tell if this move is successful or not.
I guess what I'm trying to say is, it's not personal. Enjoy the MythTV box. I didn't have the fortitude or the time to build and nurse that system. That's why I have a Tivo. Best of luck...
I've had a Tivo for years and have nothing but good things to say about it. But if pressed, I'll tell you my only real problem. They need to build their boxes with two TV tuners. In 2005, recording one channel while watching another should be a no-brainer. Yes, Tivo tells you how to wire a workaround with a cable splitter but the way I see it, if I'm buying the box, let the box do the work. Other than that, I love the thing. I considered your 9 DIY points (among others) when I first bought my Tivo and here's what conclusions I came to:
.tivo file into a .mpg file - so transferring is painless and I'm not locked into their (admittedly PITA) DRM. Oh, it goes without saying that I can then use whatever setup I chose to store my data... RAID, whatever.
1)I hate monthly fees. I refuse to pay them. I'd rather pay $100 up front than5 a month in fees.
Me too. That's why I paid $300 up front for lifetime service. The break even point was 17 months. I've had the service for over 2 years now.
2)Expandability. Want more RAM or another encoder? DIY just add it. Tivo- time to buy another Tivo
As far as I know, Tivo encourages hacking their boxes and plenty of people have dropped bigger drives into their Tivo.
3)No comercials- Tivo is playing with adding commercials. My number 1 reason for buying one would be to kill commercials.
I suppose you could find some software (or write your own) that looks for the black fade ins and outs to cut the commercials on the fly - but chances are, you're still going to see a commercial here and there with your own system. For Tivo, for my tastes, they've reduced the commercials to a level that I find acceptible. I don't need the complete lack of commercials to enjoy TV - I just need the ability to blow right by them. Look at it this way, Tivo *asked me* if I wanted to record the King Kong world premiere of the trailer. You can call that invasive advertising if you want, but *damn right* I wanted to see it. And yes, it ruled.
4)More (and easily expandable) storage. Add a RAID for reliability.
Personally, anything I want to save, I use Tivo ToGo and move it to my PC. There's a hack that automates turning a
5)Additional features. You can pull any new feature when you want, and Myth is more than just a DVR (MythPhone, MythGames, etc)
At some point, I pull over on the feature highway and just want my DVR to be a kickass DVR with the best remote I've ever used. Tivo is that for me. My computer is 5 feet from my Tivo. I think I can manage VOIP and games on my computer. And honestly, wouldn't you rather use your TV with a game console? It's the old mobile phone idea. We all want easy simple mobile phones that are great at being mobile phones. I don't need a half assed PDA attached to it. Same thing goes for my DVR.
6)The ability to do illegal stuff- like rent DVDs, and rip them to your hard drive for permanent sorage.
Again, why not just do this on your PC?
7)The ability to network it and add a file server. You may now watch your movie collection anywhere.
Tivo offers that with Tivo ToGo.
8)The ability to use 1 program for all media- music, video, and images.
Tivo allows you to put music and videos in a shared file so you can view them on your Tivo.
9)No loss of features- you won't see disappearing features like 30 second skip.
As far as I know, Tivo doesn't really lose features. Though I don't lurk on Tivo messageboards either. I know that Tivo doesn't allow a 30 second skip, but I also know that they built in an easy remote control command to enable it. It's a hack, but it's an official hack.
All in all, I see your points. It comes down to wanting one box to do it all vs. being happy that I have a computer and have some game consoles and a Tivo and can use them all for their intended purpose. If the point is to record TV and not to turn said recording into a hobby, then Tivo is clearly the best option. However, if you enjoy DIY - then that's really the only reason you need to go that route.
well said, my hat is off to you...
I tend to agree with you. If it's your party, you should be able to secure it however you want to. The irksome thing about the Olympics is that cameras exist not only at the games, but largely throughout Athens. For my own taste, that's when it intrudes too much into the daily lives of those that live there. If I were a resident, I would feel violated.