True, except that the fat pipe won't be quite restriction-free. Instead of the cable co's restrictions, it will have Microsoft's restrictions, which are even worse, and are encoded into hardware by Intel and AMD.
Some people do have principles. You'll find rich left-wingers who think that everybody should be equal, and are willing to put their money with tehir mouths are by paying more taxes. You'll also find poor right-wingers, who think that the government doesn't have the right to play Robin Hood, even though they would personally benefit from redistribution.
But most people don't fall into either of these categories. People's political opinions depend largely on self-interest, which means that rightists tend to be rich and leftists tend to be poor. (Even the exceptions are often determined by perceived self-interest: lots of poor people believe that they will some day become rich, and so support the right-wing, while many wealthy people want a social safety net in case they should become poor, and so support the left-wing.) The rich have more money, so right-wing media can charge both their customers and advertisers more (as the audience represents a higher-spending demographic). That's why Salon is struggling.
It could recharge in the same way as those watches that charge themselves using the motion of the user's wrist. There are always small movements and vibrations around a person's body, particularly the mouth.
The article just goes on about Wi-Fi, with almost no description of the service itself, but it sounds like MMDS --- the same thing that Sprint and AT&T dropped in the US about six months ago, after they were told that they could switch the spectrum over to 3G mobile instead.
Good to see a free trial, though. Sounds like the company's actually trying to get the service right before it starts charging people, unlike so many other broadband or wireless services.
It's not just for that. I use my bathroom Internet connection (well, a laptop with an 802.11 card, so I can take it anywhere) to listen to streaming radio stations while I'm in the shower.
The money goes towards the cable company's profits, of course. (Or more accurately, towards mitigating the losses from the company's stupid investments during the bubble.) It's a monopoly, so they charge what they like.
And the "free cable" described here isn't really piracy, as other posters have pointed out. The broadband customers are paying a bit more than those who just want basic cable, and the "free" cable is part of the deal. In fact, this is another reason why the basic bill is so much: The company wants the incremental cost of extra services (Net access, premium channels, etc.) to be so low compared to the $40 you're already paying that you will choose to buy them.
Even that is too optimistic for GPRS. No-one has actually made an 8-slot GPRS terminal, because each slot requires as much bandwidth (and more importantly, as much energy, leading to overheating) as a regular voice channel. The fastest is 57.6k (4-slot) down, 43.2k (3-slot) up.
Of course, GPRS can cover several miles, whereas W-Fi's range is around 100m. There's always a trade-off.
He's against proprietary software. It's that simple. The per-seat licensing has nothing to do with it.
RMS and the FSF want all software to be Free (as in speech and beer), and they would prefer that GPL'd software not be distributed or run with non-Free software. Note, however, that this is only their preference, and the user or vendor is free to do whatever they like provided that they comply with the GPL.
It looks like some companies are exercising their right to do this. In turn, RMS and the FSF are exercising their right to criticize the practice. That's freedom.
But the creator is a lot less likely to be killed by the "pirate", or even to know that the "piracy" has happeened, than a shopkeeper who is shot by a robber or an old lady who is hit by a purse-snatcher.
Anyway, plenty of real thefts take place without any physical contact between the thief and the victim: burglars who case out houses waiting for the owner to go on vacation, spammers that DoS my mailbox, and most of all almost every type of fraudster.
Why convert DC to AC to DC?
on
Do-it-yourself UPS
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· Score: 4, Interesting
A major part of the description on the site (and the cost of a "real" UPS) is how to convert the DC output of a UPS to the AC power required by most PCs.
Of course, PCs don't actually use AC power: there's a big box in the back that converts all the AC input back to DC. So why not save some money and bypass this, by running the PC straight off the battery (like a laptop)?
Intel obviously doesn't want to say that the chip costs have fallen due to competition, because that would remind people that AMD exists and is usually better value than Intel. So it attributes the cut to the lower cost of manufacturing.
Manufacturing costs are falling, of course, as is the need to recoup development costs, but this has little to do with Intel's prices. It charges whatever it thinks the market will bear (as does AMD).
Telemarketers are also making unauthorized use of a person's and/or a company's property. They cause damage in at least three ways: tieing up a phone line, using a person's time, and consuming electricity used to make the phone ring.
AOL simply refuses to take "cancel" requests seriously. When I cancelled my AOL account, they continued to bill my credit card, even listing an 800 number on my credit card bill.
Naturally, I called the number, connected me to a sales agent: "Are you sure you really want to cancel?" She even offered to let me have another month free, and tried to haggle. I threatened to call my credit card company for a chargeback, at which point they agreed to (really) cancel it, and refund the additional bill.
This is hilarious. The worrying thing is that the magazine it appears in will say exactly the same things in defence of evil regimes here on Earth, but be taken seriously.
The article calls for a new dedicated spectrum band for wireless networking, that can't be shut down by other users who have a higher priority. But the author doesn't seem to realize that there already is such a band: it's called the Unlicensed National Information Infrastructure band, at 5GHz., and is intended for 802.11a wireless LANs (as well as 802.16 wireless local loop).
In the medium term, 802.11a will replace 802.11b/Wi-Fi. As well as lack of interference, the U-NII is simply larger, allowing a lot more networks to co-exist in the same airwaves.
But isn't the whole point of voice dictation that humans shouldn't have to adapt? Speech is, except for the deaf and a a very small minority of extreme geeks, still much more natural than typing or reading.
This article is interesting. The ideal interface might use speech for input (though that is still a long way off) and visual output, because we can speak faster than we type and read faster than we listen. But today's primitve speech recognition systems simply don't work. Everyone hates IVR.
...if Macromedia had actually ripped off work that Adobe had put a lot of time and effort into, then shared with the public. (This is what the patent system is for: inventors share their work, and in return get a monopoly for twenty years, after which the work passes into the public domain.)
Unfortunately, this doesn't seem to be the case. The patent is over "tabbed palettes", a type of user interface design. So it's not an invention, just a ludicrous software patent.
Many years ago, Apple tried to sue Microsoft for copyright infringement over their user-interface. Had they (ab)used the patent system instead, they might have won, and there would be no Windows.
Commericals always sound louder than regular programming. (The actual volume isn't higher, but quiter soudns are amplified so that they're closer to the peak volume.) A VCR could detect this, though I guess it would also risk skipping out on loud sound effects, etc. during a program. Maybe it could average the sound level for a minute or two, then retroactively apply some kind of mark to the recording taht would later be used for skipping.
I admit it, I actually have a few Weird Al records (bought long ago, obviously --- vinyl, back in the good old days when I didn't have to boycott the evil RIAA). On (for example) Eat It, the credit actually says "By Michael Jackson and Weird Al Yanokivic," meaning that Jackson did the music and Yankovic did the words.
Parodies might be able to get away with using something that sounds a bit like the original, but Weird Al prefers to stay on good terms with the targets of his parodies, at least as singles. He'll frequently perform other stuff at concerts that the original artist hasn't given him permission to release.
The IRS isn't necessarilly run entirely to bring in money for the government. It's also there to benefit lawyers (as are a lot of laws) and acoountants. They actively lobby to make these things more complicated, so that people will have to pay them rather than do it themselves.
Even the software industry is now getting in the act. Quicken, for example, argues that simplifying the tax code will be an unfair attack on its business of selling programs that calculate your tax for you.
It's a bit early to say that he's actually learned this. (He's still proposing the CBDTPA, after all.) But, we should continue to try to teach him, and other senators.
Politicians are definitely showing some encouraging signs of ethics and/or intelligence when it comes to tech issues, though most still have a lot further to go. Remember, every Senator voted for the DMCA. Some have already come out against the CBDTPA.
Their change in position isn't always because they were evil and are now good, or even because they have calculated that pissing off millions of voters can be even worse than pissing off a major compaign contributor. It's often because they simply didn't think about tech issues at all, and are now being forced to.
Unfortunately, it isn't the wireless providers that pay the fees. They collect the fees, but the customer pays them.
Most companies trey to pass costs on to their customers in some way, of course, but this is more than that. The fee actually appears as a separate item on the phone bill, and is never included in the advertised prices. Customers don't know how large it will be until they get the bill (and with a cell phone, the long contract length makes it then too late to change).
What's even worse is that many phone companies actually like to collect this tax, because a loophole in the law allows them to tack on an arbitrary collection fee (pure profit), which is not distinguished from the tax itself on the bill. This makes the tax appear to be even higher than it really is.
It's exactly the same as if the grocery store decided to charge you double sales tax, and you didn't find out about it till after you got your receipt.
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For non-monarchs, it's usually "Your Royal Highness", just to nitpick further. Hence the title HRH (His/Her Royal Highness).
True, except that the fat pipe won't be quite restriction-free. Instead of the cable co's restrictions, it will have Microsoft's restrictions, which are even worse, and are encoded into hardware by Intel and AMD.
But most people don't fall into either of these categories. People's political opinions depend largely on self-interest, which means that rightists tend to be rich and leftists tend to be poor. (Even the exceptions are often determined by perceived self-interest: lots of poor people believe that they will some day become rich, and so support the right-wing, while many wealthy people want a social safety net in case they should become poor, and so support the left-wing.) The rich have more money, so right-wing media can charge both their customers and advertisers more (as the audience represents a higher-spending demographic). That's why Salon is struggling.
It could recharge in the same way as those watches that charge themselves using the motion of the user's wrist. There are always small movements and vibrations around a person's body, particularly the mouth.
Good to see a free trial, though. Sounds like the company's actually trying to get the service right before it starts charging people, unlike so many other broadband or wireless services.
It's not just for that. I use my bathroom Internet connection (well, a laptop with an 802.11 card, so I can take it anywhere) to listen to streaming radio stations while I'm in the shower.
And the "free cable" described here isn't really piracy, as other posters have pointed out. The broadband customers are paying a bit more than those who just want basic cable, and the "free" cable is part of the deal. In fact, this is another reason why the basic bill is so much: The company wants the incremental cost of extra services (Net access, premium channels, etc.) to be so low compared to the $40 you're already paying that you will choose to buy them.
Of course, GPRS can cover several miles, whereas W-Fi's range is around 100m. There's always a trade-off.
RMS and the FSF want all software to be Free (as in speech and beer), and they would prefer that GPL'd software not be distributed or run with non-Free software. Note, however, that this is only their preference, and the user or vendor is free to do whatever they like provided that they comply with the GPL.
It looks like some companies are exercising their right to do this. In turn, RMS and the FSF are exercising their right to criticize the practice. That's freedom.
Anyway, plenty of real thefts take place without any physical contact between the thief and the victim: burglars who case out houses waiting for the owner to go on vacation, spammers that DoS my mailbox, and most of all almost every type of fraudster.
Of course, PCs don't actually use AC power: there's a big box in the back that converts all the AC input back to DC. So why not save some money and bypass this, by running the PC straight off the battery (like a laptop)?
Manufacturing costs are falling, of course, as is the need to recoup development costs, but this has little to do with Intel's prices. It charges whatever it thinks the market will bear (as does AMD).
The prison industry (actually the unions representing prison guards, even moreso than the corporations) is lobbying hard for ever-harsher laws, including a mandatory life sentence for possession of drugs.
Telemarketers are also making unauthorized use of a person's and/or a company's property. They cause damage in at least three ways: tieing up a phone line, using a person's time, and consuming electricity used to make the phone ring.
Naturally, I called the number, connected me to a sales agent: "Are you sure you really want to cancel?" She even offered to let me have another month free, and tried to haggle. I threatened to call my credit card company for a chargeback, at which point they agreed to (really) cancel it, and refund the additional bill.
This is hilarious. The worrying thing is that the magazine it appears in will say exactly the same things in defence of evil regimes here on Earth, but be taken seriously.
In the medium term, 802.11a will replace 802.11b/Wi-Fi. As well as lack of interference, the U-NII is simply larger, allowing a lot more networks to co-exist in the same airwaves.
No, Al Gore invented the Al-gor-ithm.
This article is interesting. The ideal interface might use speech for input (though that is still a long way off) and visual output, because we can speak faster than we type and read faster than we listen. But today's primitve speech recognition systems simply don't work. Everyone hates IVR.
Unfortunately, this doesn't seem to be the case. The patent is over "tabbed palettes", a type of user interface design. So it's not an invention, just a ludicrous software patent.
Many years ago, Apple tried to sue Microsoft for copyright infringement over their user-interface. Had they (ab)used the patent system instead, they might have won, and there would be no Windows.
Commericals always sound louder than regular programming. (The actual volume isn't higher, but quiter soudns are amplified so that they're closer to the peak volume.) A VCR could detect this, though I guess it would also risk skipping out on loud sound effects, etc. during a program. Maybe it could average the sound level for a minute or two, then retroactively apply some kind of mark to the recording taht would later be used for skipping.
Parodies might be able to get away with using something that sounds a bit like the original, but Weird Al prefers to stay on good terms with the targets of his parodies, at least as singles. He'll frequently perform other stuff at concerts that the original artist hasn't given him permission to release.
Even the software industry is now getting in the act. Quicken, for example, argues that simplifying the tax code will be an unfair attack on its business of selling programs that calculate your tax for you.
Politicians are definitely showing some encouraging signs of ethics and/or intelligence when it comes to tech issues, though most still have a lot further to go. Remember, every Senator voted for the DMCA. Some have already come out against the CBDTPA.
Their change in position isn't always because they were evil and are now good, or even because they have calculated that pissing off millions of voters can be even worse than pissing off a major compaign contributor. It's often because they simply didn't think about tech issues at all, and are now being forced to.
Most companies trey to pass costs on to their customers in some way, of course, but this is more than that. The fee actually appears as a separate item on the phone bill, and is never included in the advertised prices. Customers don't know how large it will be until they get the bill (and with a cell phone, the long contract length makes it then too late to change).
What's even worse is that many phone companies actually like to collect this tax, because a loophole in the law allows them to tack on an arbitrary collection fee (pure profit), which is not distinguished from the tax itself on the bill. This makes the tax appear to be even higher than it really is.
It's exactly the same as if the grocery store decided to charge you double sales tax, and you didn't find out about it till after you got your receipt.