Yea.... but besides holding the infamous picture what would it do? Maybe we could get it to piggyback a signal onto the hubble signal. I'd probably pay to see NASA release a statement reguarding a massive space penguin that appeared to be eating the Crab Nebula.
This has been another useless post from....
do_rant(Census)
{
It never ceases to amaze me how so many really smart people on here can overlook the basic point.
People bitch and moan about credit card companies wanting to know this that and the other. We bitch and moan about internet surveys that we fill out to register for a free service or even one we pay for.
We get upset and afraid of the US Census asking us the same questions. Why?
When Visa, or the New York times wants to get all that information they ask for it. We can decline to give it to them. Sure, we don't get The Times or we don't get our credit card, but we don't HAVE to give them the information.
We are required by law to tell the US Census these things. That's really very terrifying. Sure, the penality for not filling out this that and the other is 100 bucks. But what's to keep Congress from deciding that the penality needs to be stiffer? The voters? The public? The concerned citizen?
Oh please.
As much as I'd like to say that these things make a difference they don't. Election participation is in the toilet. Those that do participate vote (for the most part) party line tickets and blindly follow a party because that's what they've always done.
There's an escape. There always is. But the problems we face now are a symptom of letting democracy slip from the hands of the many into the hands of the few. The Census can do this... well... great. Who does it benefit? It benefits the companies who get access to the data.
The US Census: Marketing Department. Your tax dollars at work.
While porn will be one of the first commercial applications of the technology, imagine what this will do if they can get it to pick up x-ray wavelengths, to say nothing of the benefits of a commercialy viable holographic system.
This has been another useless post from....
You're both right. Law is a lot like edewkashon. You get out of it what you put in. Consequently, the Napster decision is indeed open to interpretation. A judge who feels that the high ideals of free information should prevail will be able to turn that ruling against the record companies, saying that bascily all Napster needs to do is make it so string literal searches that say Metalica will be blocked. And users will name their failes Acilatem and go on trading.
On the other hand, a judge who thinks that Napster is a company run by a buch of ex-hippie drug crazed idealists that gives its service away to freeloading copyright infringing criminals will be able to say that if Napster can't stop the trafficing of some files it must shut down.
This case provides ample ammo for both sides. Much like Antietam/Sharpsburg, everyone can claim this as a victory, though a bloody one.
We keep discussing the hardware and the encryption as if that's going to be the be all and end all of free music.
I'm in my early 20s. When I was still discovering the worderfull world of music back in the early 1990s digital music (mp3s and like) were but a pipe dream and I got all my bootleg music on tapes etc.
Well, what's to stop that from happening again? If the record executives produce the media, then eventualy the public will get their hands on the same kind of technology. Just as DVD burners are becoming available now whatever They use to record will find its way to the mainstream market.
Encryption be damned. Cracking encryption in real time? That's hard stuff. But it won't take Mr Turing to crack this stuff and produce a legit looking duplicate.
It's simple capitalism. As long as it's cheeper to pirate the music people will pirate the music. I have unlimited faith in how far some people will go to save a buck.
Please excuse spelling, I had a hard enough time with it in 7th grade.
This has been another useless post from....
Re:Artificial Black Holes
on
Stop, Light.
·
· Score: 1
I don't follow the whole black hole logic. Primordal black holes, while a pet theory of Prof Hawking have yet to be actualy proven to exist.
That nonwithstanding, I don't see how light, even slowed to a stop could create a black hole. Hmmm... let me see if I can explain. Einstein reasoned that the reason "c" was the universal speed limit was due to an increase in mass as speed increased. I.E. an object moving at light speeds will have an infinite mass, consequently, the ammount of energy needed to accelerate it TO light speeds is also infinite.
Now we reverse the logic. Partical wave duality is something we all (should) have learned in highschool. For our younger readers, this states that light behaves both as a wave form and as a partical under some conditions. Photons are interesting because they behave as both a wave and a partical and are thus exempt (through some legal technicality) from being ticketed by the physics police. So we can consider a photon to have, rather than a mass of zero, an infinitely small mass.
The difference allows the photons to behave as particals and waves. My question would be, however, do the photons retain their duality when stoped. If so, this entire rant is for naught as it would demonstrate that the duality is velocity independent.
I've got a laptop with a no name CD ROM drive, and while I'm hesitant to accuse Sony of this crime, it does strike me as possible.
Some CD-Rs are physicaly heavier then others. I don't know why this is, but it seems to be the case. Either way, two equily sized objects with different densities spun by two equal forces (say, a CD-ROM or DVD motor) won't spin at the same rate. This FUBARs the data feed, and kerplow, the CD-R dosn't work.
I've verified this by being amazed that some brands of CD-R don't work in my laptop but do work in my desktop. Could this be a case of Sony skimping on the motor?
I think there is more to this then we're allowing. Many of us have raised Cain about the fact that we "leave our rights at the door" when we (as students) enter a public school. This is because the school takes on the role of the guardian from the moment the student walks in the door to the moment the student gets home. While certain legal parentheticals exist in this, thereby creating minor exceptions to this rule (corporal punishment for example) the vast majority of the schools authority derives from this basic assumption
The teacher is an employee of the school and the school system. His role is also that of a guardian. While there are examples of teachers smoking up with their students and numerous other breaches of protocol within nations schools, these are pretty universaly reguarded as a "Bad Thing"(tm).
All in all, the teacher does assume responcibility for the control he has over his students and for the instructions he gives to his students. High School students are (for the most part) under the age of 18. Consequently we do not expect them to have as sophisticated a sence of right and wrong as we expect from adults. Hence we try them as minors, not adults, in a court of law. The same applies here, the teacher does, to a certain degree, set down the moral standards. This is doubly so in a moral question as complicated as computer security (we all agree that murder is, no pun intended, pretty cut and dry?).
Lastly, we must take into account the legalities of the entire question. Did the student do any damage? No. Did the student access any files he was not supposed to read or in any way breach confidentiality? No. Is legal action being pressed against the student? Not as far as we know. All that's happened is the kid is suspended. In short, the school is enforcing its rules and regulations on a student. However, the student was told, by a representitive of the school, that his actions were within the scope of his course and were not condemned by the school.
How is this different than a store owner saying "Oh, you can have that, its free" and then calling the cops as soon as you walk out the door with it, accusing you of shoplifting?
Bottom line, the teacher screwed up. His actions were totaly unprofessional and demonstrate a real lack of forthought. He should be fired immediately. The student's suspension should be revoked without further delay, and the school should issue a formal appology, both to the student and the student body as a whole.
When the system values itself above the needs and rights of those it serves it is corrupt and earns the distrust and contempt of its masters.
Abandonware becomes a problem simply because of the differences in the expectations of the corporate authors and that of the end users.
The entire point of intellectual property, from a corporate point of view, is to allow a company to continualy gather profits from something even after its been left abandoned (eg Sim Earth).
As an end user I would --love-- to be able to buy a copy of Sim Earth, especialy one designed to take advantage of hardware/software developments in the last 10 years or so. Unfortunately, Sim Earth was abandoned.
Now we end users have built into our minds this concept of depreciation. Go to www.geeks.com and check out the price on a 386 processor, less than a dollar! It sure was a hell of a lot more expensive than Sim Earth was at the time wasn't it?
What it really boils down to is that we're willing to pay for software that the "owners" are willing to keep up to date. Software depreciates just like hardware does.
Sell this stuff at a price that reflects its age, keep it up to date, or give it away for free. I think those are the only options that will fly with this readership.
Slashdot Mirror
Yea.... but besides holding the infamous picture what would it do? Maybe we could get it to piggyback a signal onto the hubble signal. I'd probably pay to see NASA release a statement reguarding a massive space penguin that appeared to be eating the Crab Nebula.
This has been another useless post from....
do_rant(Census)
{
It never ceases to amaze me how so many really smart people on here can overlook the basic point.
People bitch and moan about credit card companies wanting to know this that and the other. We bitch and moan about internet surveys that we fill out to register for a free service or even one we pay for.
We get upset and afraid of the US Census asking us the same questions. Why?
When Visa, or the New York times wants to get all that information they ask for it. We can decline to give it to them. Sure, we don't get The Times or we don't get our credit card, but we don't HAVE to give them the information.
We are required by law to tell the US Census these things. That's really very terrifying. Sure, the penality for not filling out this that and the other is 100 bucks. But what's to keep Congress from deciding that the penality needs to be stiffer? The voters? The public? The concerned citizen?
Oh please.
As much as I'd like to say that these things make a difference they don't. Election participation is in the toilet. Those that do participate vote (for the most part) party line tickets and blindly follow a party because that's what they've always done.
There's an escape. There always is. But the problems we face now are a symptom of letting democracy slip from the hands of the many into the hands of the few. The Census can do this... well... great. Who does it benefit? It benefits the companies who get access to the data.
The US Census: Marketing Department. Your tax dollars at work.
return;
}
This has been another useless post from....
While porn will be one of the first commercial applications of the technology, imagine what this will do if they can get it to pick up x-ray wavelengths, to say nothing of the benefits of a commercialy viable holographic system.
This has been another useless post from....
You're both right. Law is a lot like edewkashon. You get out of it what you put in. Consequently, the Napster decision is indeed open to interpretation. A judge who feels that the high ideals of free information should prevail will be able to turn that ruling against the record companies, saying that bascily all Napster needs to do is make it so string literal searches that say Metalica will be blocked. And users will name their failes Acilatem and go on trading.
On the other hand, a judge who thinks that Napster is a company run by a buch of ex-hippie drug crazed idealists that gives its service away to freeloading copyright infringing criminals will be able to say that if Napster can't stop the trafficing of some files it must shut down.
This case provides ample ammo for both sides. Much like Antietam/Sharpsburg, everyone can claim this as a victory, though a bloody one.
This has been another useless post from....
We keep discussing the hardware and the encryption as if that's going to be the be all and end all of free music.
I'm in my early 20s. When I was still discovering the worderfull world of music back in the early 1990s digital music (mp3s and like) were but a pipe dream and I got all my bootleg music on tapes etc.
Well, what's to stop that from happening again? If the record executives produce the media, then eventualy the public will get their hands on the same kind of technology. Just as DVD burners are becoming available now whatever They use to record will find its way to the mainstream market.
Encryption be damned. Cracking encryption in real time? That's hard stuff. But it won't take Mr Turing to crack this stuff and produce a legit looking duplicate.
It's simple capitalism. As long as it's cheeper to pirate the music people will pirate the music. I have unlimited faith in how far some people will go to save a buck.
Please excuse spelling, I had a hard enough time with it in 7th grade.
This has been another useless post from....
I don't follow the whole black hole logic. Primordal black holes, while a pet theory of Prof Hawking have yet to be actualy proven to exist.
That nonwithstanding, I don't see how light, even slowed to a stop could create a black hole. Hmmm... let me see if I can explain. Einstein reasoned that the reason "c" was the universal speed limit was due to an increase in mass as speed increased. I.E. an object moving at light speeds will have an infinite mass, consequently, the ammount of energy needed to accelerate it TO light speeds is also infinite.
Now we reverse the logic. Partical wave duality is something we all (should) have learned in highschool. For our younger readers, this states that light behaves both as a wave form and as a partical under some conditions. Photons are interesting because they behave as both a wave and a partical and are thus exempt (through some legal technicality) from being ticketed by the physics police. So we can consider a photon to have, rather than a mass of zero, an infinitely small mass.
The difference allows the photons to behave as particals and waves. My question would be, however, do the photons retain their duality when stoped. If so, this entire rant is for naught as it would demonstrate that the duality is velocity independent.
I've got a laptop with a no name CD ROM drive, and while I'm hesitant to accuse Sony of this crime, it does strike me as possible.
Some CD-Rs are physicaly heavier then others. I don't know why this is, but it seems to be the case. Either way, two equily sized objects with different densities spun by two equal forces (say, a CD-ROM or DVD motor) won't spin at the same rate. This FUBARs the data feed, and kerplow, the CD-R dosn't work.
I've verified this by being amazed that some brands of CD-R don't work in my laptop but do work in my desktop. Could this be a case of Sony skimping on the motor?
I think there is more to this then we're allowing. Many of us have raised Cain about the fact that we "leave our rights at the door" when we (as students) enter a public school. This is because the school takes on the role of the guardian from the moment the student walks in the door to the moment the student gets home. While certain legal parentheticals exist in this, thereby creating minor exceptions to this rule (corporal punishment for example) the vast majority of the schools authority derives from this basic assumption
The teacher is an employee of the school and the school system. His role is also that of a guardian. While there are examples of teachers smoking up with their students and numerous other breaches of protocol within nations schools, these are pretty universaly reguarded as a "Bad Thing"(tm).
All in all, the teacher does assume responcibility for the control he has over his students and for the instructions he gives to his students. High School students are (for the most part) under the age of 18. Consequently we do not expect them to have as sophisticated a sence of right and wrong as we expect from adults. Hence we try them as minors, not adults, in a court of law. The same applies here, the teacher does, to a certain degree, set down the moral standards. This is doubly so in a moral question as complicated as computer security (we all agree that murder is, no pun intended, pretty cut and dry?).
Lastly, we must take into account the legalities of the entire question. Did the student do any damage? No. Did the student access any files he was not supposed to read or in any way breach confidentiality? No. Is legal action being pressed against the student? Not as far as we know. All that's happened is the kid is suspended. In short, the school is enforcing its rules and regulations on a student. However, the student was told, by a representitive of the school, that his actions were within the scope of his course and were not condemned by the school.
How is this different than a store owner saying "Oh, you can have that, its free" and then calling the cops as soon as you walk out the door with it, accusing you of shoplifting?
Bottom line, the teacher screwed up. His actions were totaly unprofessional and demonstrate a real lack of forthought. He should be fired immediately. The student's suspension should be revoked without further delay, and the school should issue a formal appology, both to the student and the student body as a whole.
When the system values itself above the needs and rights of those it serves it is corrupt and earns the distrust and contempt of its masters.
Yea my spelling is wretched. Deal with it.
Abandonware becomes a problem simply because of the differences in the expectations of the corporate authors and that of the end users.
The entire point of intellectual property, from a corporate point of view, is to allow a company to continualy gather profits from something even after its been left abandoned (eg Sim Earth).
As an end user I would --love-- to be able to buy a copy of Sim Earth, especialy one designed to take advantage of hardware/software developments in the last 10 years or so. Unfortunately, Sim Earth was abandoned.
Now we end users have built into our minds this concept of depreciation. Go to www.geeks.com and check out the price on a 386 processor, less than a dollar! It sure was a hell of a lot more expensive than Sim Earth was at the time wasn't it?
What it really boils down to is that we're willing to pay for software that the "owners" are willing to keep up to date. Software depreciates just like hardware does.
Sell this stuff at a price that reflects its age, keep it up to date, or give it away for free. I think those are the only options that will fly with this readership.