If the industry is forced to do their DRM in an interoperable way it will be better
than the present situation where DRMed content is practically not interoperable at all.
And how do you propose we grant iPods the ability to "know" the intent of their users?
Because truly "interoperable", transparent DRM would require exactly that. A Zune would need to
know whether you mean for that particular copy to go to a machine you own as a backup, or to a
random stranger's machine as a time-limited "sample". And it can't just ask you, because
you could conceivably lie.
I do, however, agree with you on one point - If we can get a single form of DRM codified
as international law, then when we crack that one, we'll finally have won the war rather than
just another battle in an ongoing war.
IMO, "break once copy everywhere" provides the only truly long-term solution to the
artifically-imposed DRM "problem".
Even if such a system did exist, it would be utterly useless
due to the number of false positives it would produce.
You mean, kinda like a really vague list of nearly a million names,
on the basis of which they deny the right to travel to such terrorists
as babies and US senators?
Was the economy different enough back then that somebody making $48k/equiv. could, for example, buy a house?
I make in that range now, and can afford really quite a nice house in my area, on land measured in "acres" rather
than square feet, with a 20% downpayment (so no playing along with the PMI scam!) and basically optimal terms on
a 15-year note.
I won't call myself "upper" middle class, but if you'd sneeze at $48k, get the hell
out of the cities - Better for your wallet, your health, and your soul.
Your time? Are you an employee somehow affected by this,
or are you just flaming?
Countless open-source developers (a category in which I consider myself
a member) have contributed their "time" (deliberately or not) to the
OLPC project. Somehow I doubt many did so intending to give Jepsen a
stepping stone to fame-n'-fortune (or in this case, notoriety and
thirty pieces of silver).
As for why people consider my original post in this thread as flamebait,
I can appreciate that I worded it a bit harshly, but I mean every word
of it. She betrayed people interested in a charitable project.
since I'm not seeing anything being removed from OLPC
Except control of key IP related to the project. You ignore that
little detail at the risk of seeing another fiaSCO when her "commercial
effort" finds itself in direct competition with the "infringing"
OLPC project.
I remember as a kid making New Year's resolutions, and forgetting about them usually before
the end of the night.
I don't think I've even bothered to make one for the past 15-20 years.
So "scientific approach" to keeping them aside - Do people actually make resolutions
they ever intend to keep, or do these just amount to 30 seconds of introspection to
observe a flaw about yourself, only to forget it a few minutes later? Do you
actually say to yourself, "This year, I will get that promotion", and mean
it in any way more concrete than mere wishful thinking?
Just because you and the GP are thinking it doesn't mean everyone is thinking it.
So I suppose you wish her well in her new endeavor - Making money off "her" IP that OUR donations
of time, money, and goodwill, subsidized the creation of?
Hey, deny it if you want, or put it more delicately if you fear some form of retribution,
but she's shown her true colors; and I, for one, have no reservation about calling a spade,
a spade. I have nothing against making money - I wouldn't mind doing so myself, someday.
But to (try to) do so with a bait-and-switch involving 3rd world kids... You just can't
get a whole lot lower than that.
People said far worse things about those running bogus charities post-Katrina, and
those involved far less deliberation and systematic lying to their donors.
Since no one else has said it yet, let me spell it out for you:
"Jepsen, you money-grubbing whore, we know what you've done, and god help
you when this fails (because first-worlders, ie those with money,
mostly don't want what you have) and you have to come crawling to apply for
a job somewhere one of us, those you betrayed, works. We will look down gleefully
on you as you starve to death, mocking you to eat the pathetic patent portfolio
that meant so much to us all, and so little to you besides another way to make a
buck. Mary Lou, fuck off and die".
The columns in the PDF document are: ...
How this is useful safety information is left as an excersize for the reader
Well, it doen't take a genius to draw a few conclusions. Looking
at some "coincidences":
We have 25360 two-column rows (745 +30/34 pages at 34/page) with no clear ordering.
From the magnitude of the hours, I would suspect it has a base unit of at least
one month, and probably more (due to the presence of a few high numbers such as 300
hours).
We have 25308 "career hours" rows (744 +12/34 pages at 34/page), in increasing
order from 3 to 80,000 with what looks like an inflection at around 25k; This most
likely refers to flight-time of the pilot rather than the plane, as 80k would translate
into 40 years of 250 8-hour days (I know pilots don't work standard business days,
but as a rough approximation...).
We also have 25360 twelve-column rows (745 +30/34 pages at 34/page) with no clear
ordering. The % hours add up to 100, making this a breakdown of time spent in
each plane type rather than a summary of miss-types (disappointing, I think we
would all have preferred the latter).
For the first set, hours divided by legs gives the time per leg, which we could
use to come up with a pretty good estimate of the distances involved here (mostly
long-haul, mostly nearby city-hopping, etc). However, I do notice a few anomalies
in that interpretation, such as one row with 40 hours over one leg. That data
set also contains a number of non-numeric values, however, so it may simply contain
entry errors.
For a first-to-third set comparison, at a rough glance, the number of planes seems
to correlate (line-by-line) positively with the number of flight legs. More legs,
more planes. This makes me suspect the sections match linewise, which would also
suggest a similar match with the second section; As the second section has fewer
rows, that would suggest that most pilots under consideration made only one
entry, while a small number made two (or possibly more).
The third section doesn't appear to relate to any sort of "incidents". Rather,
it just documents the hours summarized in section one with a percent-wise
breakdown.
IF we presume that each record corresponds to a "near miss", we
can then calculate a few summary statistics such as whether new or old
pilots make more errors; a breakdown of incidents by plane type; whether
flying one type of plane or a variety helps or hurts; and whether fatigue
(too many flight hours) plays an important role or if "these things just
happen" regardless of experience and fatigue.
One additional bit of information that would help us interpret this, which
we don't need NASA to tell us, just any pilot that particupated - What did
they actually ask?
As it actually stands the defendant isn't being sued over CD ripping, but for 'old-fashioned' song downloading.
Still wrong.
They sued him over uploading, or at least, having the files in question in his Kazaa shared folder.
Yes, they may have "taken the gloves off" regarding their terminology, but this case has the exact same
underlying "offense" as the thousands of other RIAA lawsuits we've heard about in the past few years.
This research helps us understand how knotty arrangements in various molecules lead to biological patterns, as in certain proteins.
Because He reached out his noodly appendage and put the spark of life in our universe.
"And the earth was without form, and void; and straightness was upon
the face of the pan. And His Noodly Appendage moved upon the face of the
sauce.
And FSM said, Let there be knots: and there were knots.
And FSM saw the knots, that they were good: and FSM divided the knots
from the straightness as happens when you boil short and long pasta at
the same time.
And FSM called the knots Spaghetti, and the straightness he called Ziti.
And the strands and tubes were the first course."
Also, remember back when the President was on TV and was asked what was on his iPod...
Beatles. The only way it got there was if he (by the RIAA definition) pirated it.
Why do you hate America?
Clearly he didn't "rip" the music. He "liberated" all those poor oppressed bits from the
tyrrany of an undemocratically-elected plastic disc.
which has put them into overdrive with their accessibility efforts.
No offense to those who need "accessibility" features, but for the rest
of us, that phrase translates to "we spent far too much effort putting in crap
that 99.9% of our users have no use for, often sacrificing real
functionality because it wouldn't play well with screenreaders or braille TTYs".
Thanks, but no thanks - Call me callous, but I simply don't care about "accessibility".
Call me sociocentric, but I don't care about i18n. Call me an FSF heathen, but I don't
care about binary modules (as long as they work) or the legality of using Windows
codecs. Call me Ishmael, but just get me that goddamned whale!
I just want what most of us want - Results; An OS that works for me, a
speaker of English with a fully-working set of human senses and a collection of media
files that includes QT, RM, and yes, even a bit of WM.
To clarify the summary, the biggest issue is not the spying on users; the biggest issue is the deceptive server name
No. The "biggest issue" here comes from the fact that a software vendor has the arrogance to think they have some
"right" to use my network connection in an app having no business connecting to the internet in the first place.
The actual address just raises a few red flags, but I'd consider it just as unkosher if they connected directly to "www.adobe.com".
If they want to download some form of legitimate update or additional content, their bloatware can damned well ask for
my permission. Otherwise, I consider this no less than theft of service on Adobe's (or whatever company you want
to pick, since we tolerate far too many of them doing this crap) part.
Okay, now cue the trolls and apoligists who will quote part of a EULA that not even its own author ever read.
The only way it would benefit me much is if I had a reciprocal agreement with
someone in a different time zone who had light when I need power and I had light
when they needed power.
Or, say, your own employer during the hours you work - Thus we have net
(or "reverse") metering to let you do exactly what you suggest.
So if storage isn't really an issue, then solar power doesn't buy me a thing.
You don't own a refrigerator? That alone quite likely accounts for a third to half of your
electric bill, particularly if you take care to reduce your waste elsewhere (such as with
CF lighting, zoned AC, room occupancy sensors, hard cutoffs on high "standby" draw devices
like TVs, etc). Personally, I've calculated my fridge as an unavoidable power drain that accounts
for almost two thirds of my electric bill, but I don't claim myself as typical in that regard.
I have no problem with the WGA sticking it to the studios - If the "rights"-holders have no one to write
Rocky LVXII, perhaps they won't subject us to it.
I don't care about A-list actors - In most cases, I prefer second-string actors, for whom "hunger"
still keeps "ego" in check.
I love the idea of distribution outside MPAA control, for reasons obvious to any Slashdotter.
But... Going back to my Rocky LVXII, I also have little sympathy for the hacks who keep trying to
feed us the same trite watered-down simplistic plots week after week after week and summer after summer.
So in all this mess, I don't worry about the actual "writers". I'll buy their books, and
perhaps someday go see how badly Hollywood butchers them. But when rehashed All In The Family episodes
(which already borrowed extensively from the long-dead classic authors) dominate the tube, with a black
lesbian thrown in here and a Jewish skinhead there just to make it seem "new", I fail to see why these
people deserve more than token compensation.
I can only imagine applying that to my own profession - "Look! I wrote a hello world program where
an animated stoned cat spells it out using poop! Pay me forever for the online distribution rights!"
OK, that's fine - now after that 5.5 hours how did you store that energy?
Or are you just done for the day? Does the battery system last 20 years as well?
Second, do you have a refridgerator? AC or heat for a significant part of the year? A home
file server or even just an always-on DVR? Anyone home during even a portion of normal daylight hours,
such as a child after school, or yourself on weekends?
I originally posted on this topic to refute an all-too-common myth. You, however, have just
brought up another - The "all or nothing" straw-man.
You don't need to go off-grid to benefit from solar power. You can reduce your electric bill,
even if just by a third (most people don't use a lot of power in their sleep), without going
all the way to granola-crunchy-llama-breeding insanity.
The argument I made applies to the myth that solar cells take more energy to
create than they will ever produce. While you make a few good points, they
don't really apply to supporting or refuting my argument.
On average, maybe, but it doesn't make NY or Washington get as much sun as Texas.
True... but you could also look at the flipside of that - In a Southern state, you'd do
considerably better than the average.
Is that taking into account hail storms and other forms of damage that happen in non-ideal conditions?
I haven't seen "real" (ie, damage-causing) hail since 1980 or 1981, and when it does happen, it tends to happen
over a small area. I'd call that a low enough probability event to ignore. As for the more general "accidental
damage" category - Well, does your house have windows? Do you need to replace them all every few years due to
baseballs or hail or meteorite damage?
I'd imagine they'd also be pretty useless when they're covered with snow during the winter.
Snow tends to melt within a few days when it lands on dark objects - Thus you don't often see roofs
with all that much snow on them except right after a storm. And in the worst case, you could always
clean them off.
All of that will need to be factored into the cost per watt too.
True, but that only affects the overall viability of photovoltaics as a home power
source, not of the panels themselves.
Don't get me wrong, I don't currently advocate everyone going out and
buying solar panels. If I lived in a Southern state, I probably would do so
myself, but as a Northerner, the hassle would most likely exceed the payback for
me - Although it would cost me somewhat less than paying the electric company,
all that you mention and more makes it not really worth it, to me, to save a few
hundred bucks over the next 20 years.
Now, when the cost per watt drops to below a certain level (the recent
announcement of $1/Watt would certainly do it, though good luck getting any of
those for the next few years), I'll probably tile my roof in panels. For now,
though, I'll watch and wait.
How much non-renewable energy does it take to produce each solar tree?
I presume you meant to try to revive the tired old myth that solar cells take more energy
to manufacture than they produce over their lifetime?
Simple argumentum ad absurdum:
We (the continental US, but this applies to most places on Earth) receive 5.5 useful sunlight hours per day, on average.
Modern solar panels have an effective lifespan of at least 20 years.
That gives 40k hours over which a given panel can repay its initial cost, or 40kWh per Watt of panel.
The cheapest commercially-manufactured home solar panels currently cost
$3 per Watt.
At $3 per panel, 40kWh costs $0.075/kWh.
I currently pay $0.174/kWh.
Thus, for every $3.00 Watt's worth of solar panel I buy, the manufacturer effectively gives me
the panel plus $3.96 worth of energy they must have put into that panel's creation.
Not really the best business model, I'd have to say...
No one has ever been raped, beaten or contracted a sexually-transmitted disease on the internet.
I think that statement's a little too broad to be taken as true.
Really? Can you point me to someone raped on the internet? Beaten on the internet?
Who contracted an STD on the internet?
Meeting people in person after meeting them online doesn't count. Having your sad little avatar
abused by mean people doesn't count.
Until we have domestic sexbots subject to control by remote attackers, you simply can't
rape or beat someone over the internet. And even once we have sexbots, you'll never get an
STD from it (without some other real-world condition applying, such as someone breaking in to tamper
with it to inject you with something).
Too damned many laws "for the kids". At 5YO, I knew not to talk to or take presents from strangers,
and never, ever to get in the car or go somewhere alone with one. Why does it seem so hard for modern
parents to teach their kids the same? That one lesson overrides the need for almost every other
"protective" law possible.
Interesting? Try "sick" - And not for the underaged-sex aspect of it.
Crap like that shows just what utter BS every single bit of "for the kids"
legislation amount to. Kids may well need some legal protection
from adult predators, but from similarly aged kids engaging in consensual
behavior???
Everyone raise your hand who didn't play "doctor" or some variant well
before the age of 14.
<chirp> <chirp>
Yeah, thought so.
As for the law relevant to TFA, again, I absolutely oppose most "sex offender"
laws because they demonstrate our real level of freedom.
No "cruel and unusual" punishments? I'd call forced homelessness due to the density of schools,
churches, and parks in many areas "cruel".
Equal protection under the law?
Can you point me to the "convicted CEOs who screwed employees out of billions"
registry list?
No ex post facto laws? Suuuuure, so NJ only intends to
apply this restriction to new offenders, I suppose?
No one (usually not even the ones who do it) supports child molesting
or rape. But we need laws applied fairly and rationally, or we may as
well go back a system of "justice" where the grand high poobah of Allah orders
rape victems whipped for their immodesty.
It is not just buying another drive
$300/TB, currently.
power for the drive(s)
Approaching zero (minus a few hours per year for making a copy) if you store them offline.
power for the server(s) using the drive(s)
Ditto.
costs of the backup architecture for DR
A minimum-wage drive-jockey and a handful of PCs with EZ-Swap drive cages.
costs of cooling the datacenter housing all of the above
AKA "the dry and somewhat temperature controlled (40-110F) basement of
any office building in the world"
maintenance agreement costs for all of the above
See "minimum-wage drive jockey" and add a broom.
costs related to the admins who manage all of the above (salary, benefits, etc.)
See "minimum-wage drive jockey".
And that presumes they use HDDs and make a new copy once a year (keeping a few years as
redundant backups and "working" masters)... Although I normally consider tape drives a
waste of time and money, in this situation, they seem even more ideal than HDDs. The
"handful of PCs" cost goes up, but the cost-per-copy drops drastically.
Even if you replace "minumum-wage drive jockey" with "qualified IT professional or three",
I can't see how you'd get anywhere near $12k per year.
No, it's not a replacement for real exercise, but as a replacement for sitting
on your butt, eating cheetos, and pushing buttons, it's an improvement.
I think you've hit on the real advantage to the Wii's more active style of
game control - Sitting and eating.
Sure, in a controlled environment, with a non-exercise-oriented game, you may only
burn 60 calories more (as an aside, merely standing vs sitting burns an extra 40
calories per hour). But in a normal living-room environment with cheetos regularly
available, how much less crap do you consume using a Wii?
I would expect to see a much, much bigger difference if they took that into
consideration for hte study. Although exercise itself does matter,
simply not eating more calories than you burn matters a lot more.
That's assuming they would even allow that in the first place.
If they allow HTTP, I'd like to see 'em block it...
You can tunnel anything over anything. As long as they allow any
connections to non-whitelisted addresses, we can tunnel over it.
That said - I wouldn't necessarily count on the condition I just gave holding
true... When the airlines say "internet access", they may well mean "you can load
our portal and any trusted (aka "paid sponsorship") sites to which we link directly".
As soon as they announced that electronic devices could be used, at least half the plane (packed MD80)
pulled out laptops. From what I could tell, most were business users. They couldn't go 30 minutes without
working on their spreadsheets and powerpoints.
I don't think you should necessarily presume they wanted to "work". I too have flown as a
business traveller, and also pull out my laptop as soon as they let me.
I then fired up an SNES emulator and passed the next two hours playing Super Metroid.
I already work (at least) a few unpaid hours every week - Why the hell would I do more?
Slashdot Mirror
If the industry is forced to do their DRM in an interoperable way it will be better than the present situation where DRMed content is practically not interoperable at all.
And how do you propose we grant iPods the ability to "know" the intent of their users?
Because truly "interoperable", transparent DRM would require exactly that. A Zune would need to know whether you mean for that particular copy to go to a machine you own as a backup, or to a random stranger's machine as a time-limited "sample". And it can't just ask you, because you could conceivably lie.
I do, however, agree with you on one point - If we can get a single form of DRM codified as international law, then when we crack that one, we'll finally have won the war rather than just another battle in an ongoing war.
IMO, "break once copy everywhere" provides the only truly long-term solution to the artifically-imposed DRM "problem".
Even if such a system did exist, it would be utterly useless due to the number of false positives it would produce.
You mean, kinda like a really vague list of nearly a million names, on the basis of which they deny the right to travel to such terrorists as babies and US senators?
Yeah. They care. Cry 'em a river, terrorist scum.
Was the economy different enough back then that somebody making $48k/equiv. could, for example, buy a house?
I make in that range now, and can afford really quite a nice house in my area, on land measured in "acres" rather than square feet, with a 20% downpayment (so no playing along with the PMI scam!) and basically optimal terms on a 15-year note.
I won't call myself "upper" middle class, but if you'd sneeze at $48k, get the hell out of the cities - Better for your wallet, your health, and your soul.
Your time? Are you an employee somehow affected by this, or are you just flaming?
Countless open-source developers (a category in which I consider myself a member) have contributed their "time" (deliberately or not) to the OLPC project. Somehow I doubt many did so intending to give Jepsen a stepping stone to fame-n'-fortune (or in this case, notoriety and thirty pieces of silver).
As for why people consider my original post in this thread as flamebait, I can appreciate that I worded it a bit harshly, but I mean every word of it. She betrayed people interested in a charitable project.
since I'm not seeing anything being removed from OLPC
Except control of key IP related to the project. You ignore that little detail at the risk of seeing another fiaSCO when her "commercial effort" finds itself in direct competition with the "infringing" OLPC project.
I remember as a kid making New Year's resolutions, and forgetting about them usually before the end of the night.
I don't think I've even bothered to make one for the past 15-20 years.
So "scientific approach" to keeping them aside - Do people actually make resolutions they ever intend to keep, or do these just amount to 30 seconds of introspection to observe a flaw about yourself, only to forget it a few minutes later? Do you actually say to yourself, "This year, I will get that promotion", and mean it in any way more concrete than mere wishful thinking?
Just because you and the GP are thinking it doesn't mean everyone is thinking it.
So I suppose you wish her well in her new endeavor - Making money off "her" IP that OUR donations of time, money, and goodwill, subsidized the creation of?
Hey, deny it if you want, or put it more delicately if you fear some form of retribution, but she's shown her true colors; and I, for one, have no reservation about calling a spade, a spade. I have nothing against making money - I wouldn't mind doing so myself, someday. But to (try to) do so with a bait-and-switch involving 3rd world kids... You just can't get a whole lot lower than that.
People said far worse things about those running bogus charities post-Katrina, and those involved far less deliberation and systematic lying to their donors.
I don't see the problem with this.
Since no one else has said it yet, let me spell it out for you:
"Jepsen, you money-grubbing whore, we know what you've done, and god help you when this fails (because first-worlders, ie those with money, mostly don't want what you have) and you have to come crawling to apply for a job somewhere one of us, those you betrayed, works. We will look down gleefully on you as you starve to death, mocking you to eat the pathetic patent portfolio that meant so much to us all, and so little to you besides another way to make a buck. Mary Lou, fuck off and die".
Too subtle?
The columns in the PDF document are:
...
How this is useful safety information is left as an excersize for the reader
Well, it doen't take a genius to draw a few conclusions. Looking at some "coincidences":
We have 25360 two-column rows (745 +30/34 pages at 34/page) with no clear ordering. From the magnitude of the hours, I would suspect it has a base unit of at least one month, and probably more (due to the presence of a few high numbers such as 300 hours).
We have 25308 "career hours" rows (744 +12/34 pages at 34/page), in increasing order from 3 to 80,000 with what looks like an inflection at around 25k; This most likely refers to flight-time of the pilot rather than the plane, as 80k would translate into 40 years of 250 8-hour days (I know pilots don't work standard business days, but as a rough approximation...).
We also have 25360 twelve-column rows (745 +30/34 pages at 34/page) with no clear ordering. The % hours add up to 100, making this a breakdown of time spent in each plane type rather than a summary of miss-types (disappointing, I think we would all have preferred the latter).
For the first set, hours divided by legs gives the time per leg, which we could use to come up with a pretty good estimate of the distances involved here (mostly long-haul, mostly nearby city-hopping, etc). However, I do notice a few anomalies in that interpretation, such as one row with 40 hours over one leg. That data set also contains a number of non-numeric values, however, so it may simply contain entry errors.
For a first-to-third set comparison, at a rough glance, the number of planes seems to correlate (line-by-line) positively with the number of flight legs. More legs, more planes. This makes me suspect the sections match linewise, which would also suggest a similar match with the second section; As the second section has fewer rows, that would suggest that most pilots under consideration made only one entry, while a small number made two (or possibly more).
The third section doesn't appear to relate to any sort of "incidents". Rather, it just documents the hours summarized in section one with a percent-wise breakdown.
IF we presume that each record corresponds to a "near miss", we can then calculate a few summary statistics such as whether new or old pilots make more errors; a breakdown of incidents by plane type; whether flying one type of plane or a variety helps or hurts; and whether fatigue (too many flight hours) plays an important role or if "these things just happen" regardless of experience and fatigue.
One additional bit of information that would help us interpret this, which we don't need NASA to tell us, just any pilot that particupated - What did they actually ask?
As it actually stands the defendant isn't being sued over CD ripping, but for 'old-fashioned' song downloading.
Still wrong.
They sued him over uploading, or at least, having the files in question in his Kazaa shared folder.
Yes, they may have "taken the gloves off" regarding their terminology, but this case has the exact same underlying "offense" as the thousands of other RIAA lawsuits we've heard about in the past few years.
This research helps us understand how knotty arrangements in various molecules lead to biological patterns, as in certain proteins.
Because He reached out his noodly appendage and put the spark of life in our universe.
"And the earth was without form, and void; and straightness was upon the face of the pan. And His Noodly Appendage moved upon the face of the sauce.
And FSM said, Let there be knots: and there were knots.
And FSM saw the knots, that they were good: and FSM divided the knots from the straightness as happens when you boil short and long pasta at the same time.
And FSM called the knots Spaghetti, and the straightness he called Ziti. And the strands and tubes were the first course."
Duh?
Also, remember back when the President was on TV and was asked what was on his iPod... Beatles. The only way it got there was if he (by the RIAA definition) pirated it.
Why do you hate America?
Clearly he didn't "rip" the music. He "liberated" all those poor oppressed bits from the tyrrany of an undemocratically-elected plastic disc.
which has put them into overdrive with their accessibility efforts.
No offense to those who need "accessibility" features, but for the rest of us, that phrase translates to "we spent far too much effort putting in crap that 99.9% of our users have no use for, often sacrificing real functionality because it wouldn't play well with screenreaders or braille TTYs".
Thanks, but no thanks - Call me callous, but I simply don't care about "accessibility". Call me sociocentric, but I don't care about i18n. Call me an FSF heathen, but I don't care about binary modules (as long as they work) or the legality of using Windows codecs. Call me Ishmael, but just get me that goddamned whale!
I just want what most of us want - Results; An OS that works for me, a speaker of English with a fully-working set of human senses and a collection of media files that includes QT, RM, and yes, even a bit of WM.
To clarify the summary, the biggest issue is not the spying on users; the biggest issue is the deceptive server name
No. The "biggest issue" here comes from the fact that a software vendor has the arrogance to think they have some "right" to use my network connection in an app having no business connecting to the internet in the first place.
The actual address just raises a few red flags, but I'd consider it just as unkosher if they connected directly to "www.adobe.com".
If they want to download some form of legitimate update or additional content, their bloatware can damned well ask for my permission. Otherwise, I consider this no less than theft of service on Adobe's (or whatever company you want to pick, since we tolerate far too many of them doing this crap) part.
Okay, now cue the trolls and apoligists who will quote part of a EULA that not even its own author ever read.
The only way it would benefit me much is if I had a reciprocal agreement with someone in a different time zone who had light when I need power and I had light when they needed power.
Or, say, your own employer during the hours you work - Thus we have net (or "reverse") metering to let you do exactly what you suggest.
So if storage isn't really an issue, then solar power doesn't buy me a thing.
You don't own a refrigerator? That alone quite likely accounts for a third to half of your electric bill, particularly if you take care to reduce your waste elsewhere (such as with CF lighting, zoned AC, room occupancy sensors, hard cutoffs on high "standby" draw devices like TVs, etc). Personally, I've calculated my fridge as an unavoidable power drain that accounts for almost two thirds of my electric bill, but I don't claim myself as typical in that regard.
I am certainly a major trekkie myself
...
;-)
IT IS A FLIPPING GREEN TRANSLUCENT VISOR!
Well proven, my friend!
I have to admit, I know the episode, but couldn't actually have described the visor off the top of my head.
I have no problem with the WGA sticking it to the studios - If the "rights"-holders have no one to write Rocky LVXII, perhaps they won't subject us to it.
I don't care about A-list actors - In most cases, I prefer second-string actors, for whom "hunger" still keeps "ego" in check.
I love the idea of distribution outside MPAA control, for reasons obvious to any Slashdotter.
But... Going back to my Rocky LVXII, I also have little sympathy for the hacks who keep trying to feed us the same trite watered-down simplistic plots week after week after week and summer after summer.
So in all this mess, I don't worry about the actual "writers". I'll buy their books, and perhaps someday go see how badly Hollywood butchers them. But when rehashed All In The Family episodes (which already borrowed extensively from the long-dead classic authors) dominate the tube, with a black lesbian thrown in here and a Jewish skinhead there just to make it seem "new", I fail to see why these people deserve more than token compensation.
I can only imagine applying that to my own profession - "Look! I wrote a hello world program where an animated stoned cat spells it out using poop! Pay me forever for the online distribution rights!"
OK, that's fine - now after that 5.5 hours how did you store that energy? Or are you just done for the day? Does the battery system last 20 years as well?
First, see my other response in this thread.
Second, do you have a refridgerator? AC or heat for a significant part of the year? A home file server or even just an always-on DVR? Anyone home during even a portion of normal daylight hours, such as a child after school, or yourself on weekends?
I originally posted on this topic to refute an all-too-common myth. You, however, have just brought up another - The "all or nothing" straw-man.
You don't need to go off-grid to benefit from solar power. You can reduce your electric bill, even if just by a third (most people don't use a lot of power in their sleep), without going all the way to granola-crunchy-llama-breeding insanity.
Is that just the panel cost?
The argument I made applies to the myth that solar cells take more energy to create than they will ever produce. While you make a few good points, they don't really apply to supporting or refuting my argument.
On average, maybe, but it doesn't make NY or Washington get as much sun as Texas.
True... but you could also look at the flipside of that - In a Southern state, you'd do considerably better than the average.
Is that taking into account hail storms and other forms of damage that happen in non-ideal conditions?
I haven't seen "real" (ie, damage-causing) hail since 1980 or 1981, and when it does happen, it tends to happen over a small area. I'd call that a low enough probability event to ignore. As for the more general "accidental damage" category - Well, does your house have windows? Do you need to replace them all every few years due to baseballs or hail or meteorite damage?
I'd imagine they'd also be pretty useless when they're covered with snow during the winter.
Snow tends to melt within a few days when it lands on dark objects - Thus you don't often see roofs with all that much snow on them except right after a storm. And in the worst case, you could always clean them off.
All of that will need to be factored into the cost per watt too.
True, but that only affects the overall viability of photovoltaics as a home power source, not of the panels themselves.
Don't get me wrong, I don't currently advocate everyone going out and buying solar panels. If I lived in a Southern state, I probably would do so myself, but as a Northerner, the hassle would most likely exceed the payback for me - Although it would cost me somewhat less than paying the electric company, all that you mention and more makes it not really worth it, to me, to save a few hundred bucks over the next 20 years.
Now, when the cost per watt drops to below a certain level (the recent announcement of $1/Watt would certainly do it, though good luck getting any of those for the next few years), I'll probably tile my roof in panels. For now, though, I'll watch and wait.
How much non-renewable energy does it take to produce each solar tree?
I presume you meant to try to revive the tired old myth that solar cells take more energy to manufacture than they produce over their lifetime?
Simple argumentum ad absurdum:
We (the continental US, but this applies to most places on Earth) receive 5.5 useful sunlight hours per day, on average.
Modern solar panels have an effective lifespan of at least 20 years.
That gives 40k hours over which a given panel can repay its initial cost, or 40kWh per Watt of panel.
The cheapest commercially-manufactured home solar panels currently cost $3 per Watt.
At $3 per panel, 40kWh costs $0.075/kWh.
I currently pay $0.174/kWh.
Thus, for every $3.00 Watt's worth of solar panel I buy, the manufacturer effectively gives me the panel plus $3.96 worth of energy they must have put into that panel's creation.
Not really the best business model, I'd have to say...
Really? Can you point me to someone raped on the internet? Beaten on the internet? Who contracted an STD on the internet?
Meeting people in person after meeting them online doesn't count. Having your sad little avatar abused by mean people doesn't count.
Until we have domestic sexbots subject to control by remote attackers, you simply can't rape or beat someone over the internet. And even once we have sexbots, you'll never get an STD from it (without some other real-world condition applying, such as someone breaking in to tamper with it to inject you with something).
Too damned many laws "for the kids". At 5YO, I knew not to talk to or take presents from strangers, and never, ever to get in the car or go somewhere alone with one. Why does it seem so hard for modern parents to teach their kids the same? That one lesson overrides the need for almost every other "protective" law possible.
This one makes for an interesting turn of events.
Interesting? Try "sick" - And not for the underaged-sex aspect of it.
Crap like that shows just what utter BS every single bit of "for the kids" legislation amount to. Kids may well need some legal protection from adult predators, but from similarly aged kids engaging in consensual behavior???
Everyone raise your hand who didn't play "doctor" or some variant well before the age of 14.
<chirp> <chirp>
Yeah, thought so.
As for the law relevant to TFA, again, I absolutely oppose most "sex offender" laws because they demonstrate our real level of freedom.
No "cruel and unusual" punishments? I'd call forced homelessness due to the density of schools, churches, and parks in many areas "cruel".
Equal protection under the law? Can you point me to the "convicted CEOs who screwed employees out of billions" registry list?
No ex post facto laws? Suuuuure, so NJ only intends to apply this restriction to new offenders, I suppose?
No one (usually not even the ones who do it) supports child molesting or rape. But we need laws applied fairly and rationally, or we may as well go back a system of "justice" where the grand high poobah of Allah orders rape victems whipped for their immodesty.
It is not just buying another drive
$300/TB, currently.
power for the drive(s)
Approaching zero (minus a few hours per year for making a copy) if you store them offline.
power for the server(s) using the drive(s)
Ditto.
costs of the backup architecture for DR
A minimum-wage drive-jockey and a handful of PCs with EZ-Swap drive cages.
costs of cooling the datacenter housing all of the above
AKA "the dry and somewhat temperature controlled (40-110F) basement of any office building in the world"
maintenance agreement costs for all of the above
See "minimum-wage drive jockey" and add a broom.
costs related to the admins who manage all of the above (salary, benefits, etc.)
See "minimum-wage drive jockey".
And that presumes they use HDDs and make a new copy once a year (keeping a few years as redundant backups and "working" masters)... Although I normally consider tape drives a waste of time and money, in this situation, they seem even more ideal than HDDs. The "handful of PCs" cost goes up, but the cost-per-copy drops drastically.
Even if you replace "minumum-wage drive jockey" with "qualified IT professional or three", I can't see how you'd get anywhere near $12k per year.
No, it's not a replacement for real exercise, but as a replacement for sitting on your butt, eating cheetos, and pushing buttons, it's an improvement.
I think you've hit on the real advantage to the Wii's more active style of game control - Sitting and eating.
Sure, in a controlled environment, with a non-exercise-oriented game, you may only burn 60 calories more (as an aside, merely standing vs sitting burns an extra 40 calories per hour). But in a normal living-room environment with cheetos regularly available, how much less crap do you consume using a Wii?
I would expect to see a much, much bigger difference if they took that into consideration for hte study. Although exercise itself does matter, simply not eating more calories than you burn matters a lot more.
That's assuming they would even allow that in the first place.
If they allow HTTP, I'd like to see 'em block it...
You can tunnel anything over anything. As long as they allow any connections to non-whitelisted addresses, we can tunnel over it.
That said - I wouldn't necessarily count on the condition I just gave holding true... When the airlines say "internet access", they may well mean "you can load our portal and any trusted (aka "paid sponsorship") sites to which we link directly".
As soon as they announced that electronic devices could be used, at least half the plane (packed MD80) pulled out laptops. From what I could tell, most were business users. They couldn't go 30 minutes without working on their spreadsheets and powerpoints.
I don't think you should necessarily presume they wanted to "work". I too have flown as a business traveller, and also pull out my laptop as soon as they let me.
I then fired up an SNES emulator and passed the next two hours playing Super Metroid.
I already work (at least) a few unpaid hours every week - Why the hell would I do more?