I think the distinction most people are missing here is she is arguing that the ability to pick and choose, on the fly as it were, means that a photographer's possible "agenda" has a lot more potential impact on what ends up getting selected. The photographer has more ability to decide what (s)he thinks the pictures should be, and as a result, pictures that posterity (or even merely the photographer, less in the heat of the moment) might decide are important could be lost. She's saying there is some perhaps unperceived value in the imposed waiting time of film.
This being said I still think the argument is weak. I think it is worthwhile to confront the assumption that everything about the digital camera - including instantaneous editing - is good. But I can come up with a lot more reasons why you could lose images with a film camera - a bad roll of film, running out of film with a roll half full of garbage pictures, left the lens cap on, didn't realize your light meter had gone off calibration and everything is wiped out - you get the point. I think the assertion that not being able to see what you just shot will preserve more valuable pictures than being able to see what you just shot is pretty shaky.
I for one agree with you. But I think the consideration is that most people wouldn't know a boolean search if it bit them on the ass. You probably have some similar background to me- as a student and later doing research I hacked tons of boolean expressions in engines like chemical abstracts and lexis nexis - powerful comprehensive content that would overwhelm you if you didn't chop them down with well honed nested boolean search modifiers. Well, them days is gone and Google is playing its audience, working the best solution to the average person who is just going to enter a bunch of words and hope for the best. But like you, I wish I had the option to use proper boolean expressions for the finer tune.
Is this a troll? Of course you can make money off a search engine; in one of three ways: you can sell targetted advertising that appears adjunct to the search results, you can sell searching functionality to other internet content providers, and you can sell preferential treatment in searches. Google relies largely on the first two for revenue, A-V on the third. Just another reason why Google rose to the top.
These things cost money and interfere with business, and the perpetrators need to be treated as criminals in kind - vandals, basically, or theives.
But at a time when the word terrorism has an exceptionally heavy load of connotations and emotional overtones, when our government has declared a formal war on its existence, it is irresponsible in typical, egomaniacal Microsoft fashion to choose that term to describe a kind of mischief (and I'm sorry but all the recent worms and virii are mere mischief compared to, oh, I don't know, say crashing a plane into a building full of people) that it is universally recognized they and their customers make themselves unecessarily vulnerable to.
It can't get much more simple than this: whoever they ask for is never home, I, the call answerer, can't make any decisions of any nature about anything, and if they ask when the best time to call would be I give them the hours I'm at work. I don't remember the last time I spoke to a telemarketer for more than 15 seconds. There's absolutely nothing they can do about this simple tactic.
To paraphrase a Tom Tomorrow cartoon, if I have to choose between a painful root canal and a potentially fatal abcess, I take the root canal. Life is full of choices that suck, but I try to make the best choice I know how nonetheless.
Maybe the definition of the "slashdot effect" should be changed to mean making something apply to computer geekdm even when it really isn't relevant at all.
What's the basis for the statement that it is failure to compete with the digital camera that is the cause of Polaroid's financial woes? Well, there is none, except of course that in Slashdot world, the digital realm is the cause and explanation of everything.
We're talking totally different markets, basically: For one thing, digital cameras are at least on the scale of an order of magnitude more expensive than Polaroids, and while Polaroid film is rather expensive, the dollars you'll spend on the computer and printer you need to get a physical artifact out of your digital camera would buy a whole lotta film for your Joycam. Polaroids new little cams did quite well, last time I heard. And for that matter, Polaroid is in the digital market, both hardware and software.
Polaroid's financial fumbling is just bad business decisions and a sluggish economy. Digital has next to nothing to do with it (yet)
In a democracy influencing the political process is a collective and long process. It may be frustrating to write letters to your representatives and get a minimal or form response, but keep contacting them at the most personal level you have time for, and vote based on their response. How many of us have better or worse experiences with our policitacl representatives, and at election time end up voting Democrat or Republican down the line? I used to be this way but now I vote strategically, focusing only on my political objectives. There are plenty of Democrats who would pass as Republicans in a different constituency and vice versa.
I regularly write Paul Wellstone and Mark Dayton in the Senate and Martin Sabo in the House. Wellstone ususally sends a fairly relevant form reply, Dayton has yet to get back to me (although he also gets less from me because he doesn't have e-mail (!) available). Sabo always sends me a letter in the mail that addresses the issue a raise, and explains how he voted on relevant legislation and why - even when he voted contrary to the position I state. I admire that a lot.
Vote in primaries. Vote in elections. If your representative dissapoints you and fails to respond to your concerns, make sure they know you will be voting against them in the next primary and why. Just you doing that won't change the world. But just a few thousand people in your state doing it could have a huge effect on the actions of congress. We all know the Religious Right is politically quite powerful compared to its absolute size. Why? Because they are active and unified. That's all. I don't like their issues or tactics but their political technique is rock solid and represents democracy in action.
There are two distinct technologies here and their feasibility needs to be discussed separately. The first is a novel engine design for converting power into locomotion. I don't have the engineering knowledge to judge this, but there do seem to be some people who ought to know saying the concept is solid.
But it should be noted this isn't anything new. The internal combustion engine is innefficient by nature. It takes a spherical force (an explosion), redirects that into a vector force (up and down in a straight line), redirects that into a circular force, which is redirected into another circular force, finally driving the car. Each of those redirections wastes energy. Moreover, the fact that you have carbon monoxide and other hydrocarbon emissions is a sign of innefficient combustion: complete combustion of a carbon molecule goes all the way to carbon dioxide. There are plenty of legitimate projects to find a better way. Ben Rosen, chairman of Compaq, has envisioned the automotive powertrain market becoming like microprocessors, with independent companies competing to supply the most efficient engine. His Rosen Motors produced a working prototype of a hybrid-electric motor; they've since been taken over but I forget by whom.
Of course, a serious problem is the huge combustion engine and gasoline infrastructure. Even a much better product is not going to take over overnight. The internal combustion infrastructure would keep the economics of conventional motors attractive for decades, barring a serious kink in the gasoline supply.
It is a myth, though, that the automotive manufacturers are blocking this kind of thing. They're all doing research of their own. There is nothing a manufacturer wants more than to obsolete their own product and give everyone a reason to buy the next big thing.
The other technology discussed here is photovoltaic (solar-electric) conversion of water to hydrogen for combustion. I think this is far more theoretical. Not that you can't very simply and reliably bang an electric current through water and get combustible hydrogen and oxygen. But from what I know (and I do have some knowledge on this subject) I seriously doubt whether existing photovoltaic cells are efficient enough to supply the power for even a very efficient automotive engine by splitting water. It should be noted that like anything else, this conversion of electrical power into chemical power represents a loss of efficiency, so the purpose for doing this is to get the benefit of a combustible fuel.
Direct solar cleavage of water to H and O is one of the holy grails of both hydrogen power and solar research; this photochemical process is at the heart of how plants utilize the energy of the sun and hence the source of most energy on earth including all fossil fuels. We aren't there yet. It can be done but it isn't sufficiently efficient to be practical. There are tons of novel catalytic techniques being experimented with, where rather than go through a photovoltaic cell (the conversion of sunlight to electricity of course represents another inefficiency), sunlight is used as the power source to directly, catalytically cleave water. I think within a few decades this kind of thing will start to make significant inroads, provided countries like Iceland and companies like Daimler Chrysler continue to pursue hydrogen research and a hydrogen energy economy.
I don't see anything in the article, however, that suggest this motor could only run on hydrogen. So it may be a valid concept that it much closer to commercial reality.
I'm not certain but I think it's just muddy syntax - I assume they just mean perpendicular. Orthoganl in this context I would assume means at right angles, and implies the mutually part - so yeah, sort of redundant or just badly stated.
Although I'm a little disturbed to see people reproducing these industry exec "quotes" as if they were undeniably real (I don't find phrases like "sources close to the..." to be particularly convincing somehow), the "grain of salt"/conspiracy theory aspect of this article shouldn't blind us to the fact that this is unquestionably the kind of world the Content Kings want - the tail of intellectual property rights wags the dog of telecommunications and these fuckers basically end up dictating the standards of FTP so they can protect their property. Watermarking and similar technologies are just a means to the end of reaching the conclusion that it is simply too dangerous to give consumers a copy of anything - so hey presto, it's all pay per play, and you have to take up the approved proprietary hole so that the government-certified spyware can make sure you aren't enjoying forbidden upload. Company network, company song, playing on the company software on the company computer. D'you think it'll be more or less versatile? Looked for RCA in-out jacks on the back of a new boombox lately?
I say this every time one of these stories come out, there is no avoiding this crummy future without an organized resistance in the form of unencumbered digital content, consisting of material specifically created for the purpose of presenting an alternative by artists dedicated to empowering themselves and consumers against this limiting and innefficient model of distribution.
If anyone is REALLY interested in discussing alternatives for musicians and consumers please drop me a line. I'm thinking of publishing some thoughts and maybe even organizing/presenting ideas for getting real about fighting the content kings.
I'd like to know where you get this. It certainly isn't in the article. So either you are in fact an afficianado of the Web Service in question (in which case you're a hypocrite) or elese you're just another one of the thousands on Slashdot who don't see any necessary connection between arguing a point and learning the facts. In either case, it's still irrelevant: if it was an issue of illegal activities, then it would be a case for criminal prosecution, not a zoning dispute. You suck.
You have a point: Growing up in a rural area I am very aware that even grain dust can be a considerable explosion risk - grain elevator explosions are part of the reality of agriculture. As I state in my comment, though maybe not clearly enough, the explosive potential of Hydrogen is entirely dependent on how well it is mixed with oxygen. A flame thrust into an container of pure hydrogen would go out - hydrogen alone does not support combustion.
If you read the actual case (there's a link in the NY Times article you'd find that this is really a reasonable interpretation. What's going on here is that some people want to shut down this house because they don't like the fact that someone is filming naked girls there, so they tried to use the letter of some zoning laws (specifying that a premise cannot make a public commerce offering of a sexual nature) to get the business thrown out. The business objected that the house is just a "filming/staging area" and that the actual commerce occurs remotely. The judge (rightly, I think) agreed: The spirit of the zoning law in question is about the public in the physical sense coming to do commerce at a specific local location. The judge is saying this zoning law cannot impact non-public activities, even if they are sexual in nature and carried out for the purpose of commerce. This is actually a precedent saying the internet IS like any other form of communication. Just because a transmission of data occurs in real time over telecommunications lines, the judge is saying it is no different than if they taped some naked girls and then mailed that tape to a customer. By the way those protesting the business were interpreting the law, that would be illegal too - as would making an adult film, or running an adult chat line from one's home, or writing a dirty story for Penthouse, for that matter.
I can only thank my lucky stars that "ignorant" judges like these ones are deciding legal precedents instead of people like you who don't bother to synthesize the facts.
Once again we see that the majority of people (including the people that come up with and approve the articles) are too busy sounding brilliant about the "implications" to read the articles and try to figure out what actually happened. The judiciary in this point made what I agree to be a valid estimation: That the activities that DID occur in the house (basically young ladies getting paid to walk around naked indoors) were legal under the spirit of zoning statutes (preventing visible business/activities likely to have a negative impact on the neighborhood) and that the "sexual commerce" aspect of the business occurred at locations remote to the actual house in question. In fact, this can be seen as affirming the notion that cyberspace activities occur at the "point of sale" so to speak - the judge's point is that the nasty men everyone objects to are jogging it in the privacy of their homes or offices, not in this uptight little Florida community that's so horrified that there are naked girls in a house in their pristine little suburb.
The "cyberspace is a whole other world" interpretation is just being slapped on this narrow decision. It won't hold up as a precedent in a case with broader implications.
The blimp issue is not relevant. It is a completely different issue because of the storage and combustion dynamics involved. Hydrogen is flammable and potentially explosive. Compressed in a tank, it is generally viewed as a low explosion risk. This is because hydrogen needs to be well-mixed with oxygen to explode. This has been supported by experimental vehicle crash research. However, if a tank is ruptured, there is an ongoing fire/explosion hazard as hydrogen is released and mixes with oxygen in the air. But you would be much less likely to see the instant giant flame-ball you saw in the WTC crashes. There is ongoing experimentation with fixing hydrogen on some kind of solid substrate. There have been some promising storage experiments with graphite and carbon nanotube materials. Potentially these techniques could make hydrogen fuel much less vulnerable to fire.
I don't know how feasible powering a plane with hydrogen is - I sort of follow hydrogen energy news and don't recall ever coming across any prototype jets or prop planes. I don't know that hydrogen could power a jet sufficiently. Storage methods (tanks etc.) are heavy, possibly too heavy for economical flight. I question whether this is a realistic scenario or just wild speculation.
The big problems with hydrogen are cost, lack of a production infrastructure, lack of a distribution infrastructure, difficulty of storage, and the unlikllihood of a widespread manufacture of any kind of hydrogen vehicle lacking resolution of all these other issues. Making a plane fly on hydrogen would certainly not be a simple "retrofit". This would be a transition from a liquid to a gasseous fuel with totally different combustion characteristics.
Hydrogen is clean to burn either chemically (fuel cell) or through combustion and simple (if not easy or necessarily efficient) to generate, and therefore may become a valid way to transform renewable forms of energy into a storable fuel, and to make energy from conventional fuels more efficeintly and cleanly. But I doubt very much it will be the fuel of choice in planes any time soon
"Who is falling for all this and patronizing the sites that trap you like this?"
Well, I'm not a big fan of the word addict, but I gotta assume that people with at the least a "problem" with porn and/or gambling are doing the work, wouldn't you think?
It's hard for normal people like us to imagine, but yeah, I gotta assume there are people out there for whom a porn or gambling pop-up is basically like sitting a needle full of smack in front of a junkie.
"They are free to screw up the audio files and use proprietary formats if they want to. I just want to be informed of that fact on the label. I will then choose to not buy it based on an informed decision."
Now THAT I agree with 100%. And I've said this several times before, but Indie Labels and Independent musicians need to start labelling their CDs as NOT copy impaired - hell, how often does the small business find itself in the situation of being able to ADD VALUE to their product by AVOIDING an expensive additional production step?!
This is just the tip of the iceberg - and demonstrates, among more positive things, that one thing all the little guys need is better methods of cataloguing and connecting music lovers to music they'll love. Nonetheless, if you're in the mood for a bit of an oddessy...
A mixed bag with a little bit of everything: http://www.music.indiana.edu/music_resources/recin d.html
Just a whole big bunch of labels: http://www.insounds.freeuk.com/links.htm
A catalogue system for finding specific artists: http://www.pan.com/indie/
An independent media portal: http://www.digitalindependence.org/
Google's record label information directory: http://directory.google.com/Top/Arts/Music/Record_ Labels/
Labels of all shapes and sizes: http://www.bandguru.com/labels.htm
There's a book called The Ultimate Guide to Independent Record Labels and Artists : An A-To-Z Source of Great Music by Norman Schreiber
Otherwise, entering a favorite style along with the words independent record label is bound to get you somewhere. Or research who favorite major label artists were with before they got signed - a lot of musicians start with indies before they hit a big contract. Indies that distributed one artist you like may very well handle more.
As the copyright owner they have the right to present any information they want to. If this information happens to be screwed up audio files and compressed files in proprietary formats that's their right. None of your "rights" have been violated. There's nothing in the concept of fair use that says a copyright owner has to make life easy for you. Most every VHS movie sold or rented has copyright protection on it.
It's time for all of us to stop acting as if music is some magic potion that these mean old major lables are doling out in an increasingly stingy manner. Producing, duplicating and distributing music is more in the grasp of the individual or small business every day - if Sony, BMG and Warner are no longer giving you the product the way you want it then they're doing their business poorly. The question is, who's going to come in and pick up their slack?
Garbage. He's not asserting some right, he's simply pointing out the facts: that this format is tied to a proprietary operating system and that means it doesn't play on his equipment. Explain to me why you think this is a good thing.
I am getting so sick of the attitude being expressed regarding pieces like this that this is just some grave injustice being handed down by the Music Gods. BMG, Warner and Sony are not the beginning and the end of music (well they might be the end...)
What new technologies (and the constantly increasing accessibility at any scale of technologies like burning CDs) present musicians and consumers alike with is the possibility of ditching the fat cat middlemen entirely, which would be fine since they do nothing for music but try to make everything a hit which turns 99.9% of everything they sell into indistinguishable, homogenized crap.
When you consider the global marketing potential that a little fearlessness when it comes to digital audio files and the internet presents the individual artist or band with, and the enormity of the cut that the parasitic media distribution conglomerates suck up between artists and consumers, it becomes clear that for artists and consumers alike copy protection is irrelevant.
All the industry frenzy over this issue has nothing to do with lost sales (which have been negligible) and everything to do with preventing independent concerns from commercializing and popularizing effective digital music distribution tools. Don't like this copy-impaired, we'll pick your compression format (and quality, natch) garbage? Write to your favorite INDIE record label or better yet your favorite unsigned, self- distributing or about-to-be-released-from-contract artists and tell THEM how you feel. They might actually give a rats ass and do something about it.
Re:I'm sure the point will be made a thousand time
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Ah, well I'm a bit touchy too... But I should say I agree with the basic principle you're espousing. One problem of this monumental act of murder is that it significantly shrinks the space the recognition of grey areas affords. I get nervous when my congress starts turning out unanimous votes. I'm leery of the with us or against us rhetoric. So, sorry for the nasty reply.
Slashdot Mirror
This being said I still think the argument is weak. I think it is worthwhile to confront the assumption that everything about the digital camera - including instantaneous editing - is good. But I can come up with a lot more reasons why you could lose images with a film camera - a bad roll of film, running out of film with a roll half full of garbage pictures, left the lens cap on, didn't realize your light meter had gone off calibration and everything is wiped out - you get the point. I think the assertion that not being able to see what you just shot will preserve more valuable pictures than being able to see what you just shot is pretty shaky.
I for one agree with you. But I think the consideration is that most people wouldn't know a boolean search if it bit them on the ass. You probably have some similar background to me- as a student and later doing research I hacked tons of boolean expressions in engines like chemical abstracts and lexis nexis - powerful comprehensive content that would overwhelm you if you didn't chop them down with well honed nested boolean search modifiers. Well, them days is gone and Google is playing its audience, working the best solution to the average person who is just going to enter a bunch of words and hope for the best. But like you, I wish I had the option to use proper boolean expressions for the finer tune.
Is this a troll? Of course you can make money off a search engine; in one of three ways: you can sell targetted advertising that appears adjunct to the search results, you can sell searching functionality to other internet content providers, and you can sell preferential treatment in searches. Google relies largely on the first two for revenue, A-V on the third. Just another reason why Google rose to the top.
But at a time when the word terrorism has an exceptionally heavy load of connotations and emotional overtones, when our government has declared a formal war on its existence, it is irresponsible in typical, egomaniacal Microsoft fashion to choose that term to describe a kind of mischief (and I'm sorry but all the recent worms and virii are mere mischief compared to, oh, I don't know, say crashing a plane into a building full of people) that it is universally recognized they and their customers make themselves unecessarily vulnerable to.
Hey I was just asking man. It seemed like an unlikely error, but on the other hand, spelling "tolernace" with an s...
'Cause, like, if it is a joke, you know - it isn't a very funny one, or is that just me?
Referring to it as irony is, ah, perhaps going a bit far?
When you see one of those "Genius At Work" signs with the "e" written backwards, I can just see you chuckling to yourself, "Oh, the irony!"
What about that old classic, "Pobody's Nerfect?" Exquisite irony!
You need to lighten up, man. Irony is alive and well, though humor is certainly looking a bit anemic on Slashdot.
Hey mensa, is it, like, a joke that you've mispelled tolerance in your sig?
It can't get much more simple than this: whoever they ask for is never home, I, the call answerer, can't make any decisions of any nature about anything, and if they ask when the best time to call would be I give them the hours I'm at work. I don't remember the last time I spoke to a telemarketer for more than 15 seconds. There's absolutely nothing they can do about this simple tactic.
To paraphrase a Tom Tomorrow cartoon, if I have to choose between a painful root canal and a potentially fatal abcess, I take the root canal. Life is full of choices that suck, but I try to make the best choice I know how nonetheless.
What's the basis for the statement that it is failure to compete with the digital camera that is the cause of Polaroid's financial woes? Well, there is none, except of course that in Slashdot world, the digital realm is the cause and explanation of everything.
We're talking totally different markets, basically: For one thing, digital cameras are at least on the scale of an order of magnitude more expensive than Polaroids, and while Polaroid film is rather expensive, the dollars you'll spend on the computer and printer you need to get a physical artifact out of your digital camera would buy a whole lotta film for your Joycam. Polaroids new little cams did quite well, last time I heard. And for that matter, Polaroid is in the digital market, both hardware and software.
Polaroid's financial fumbling is just bad business decisions and a sluggish economy. Digital has next to nothing to do with it (yet)
I regularly write Paul Wellstone and Mark Dayton in the Senate and Martin Sabo in the House. Wellstone ususally sends a fairly relevant form reply, Dayton has yet to get back to me (although he also gets less from me because he doesn't have e-mail (!) available). Sabo always sends me a letter in the mail that addresses the issue a raise, and explains how he voted on relevant legislation and why - even when he voted contrary to the position I state. I admire that a lot.
Vote in primaries. Vote in elections. If your representative dissapoints you and fails to respond to your concerns, make sure they know you will be voting against them in the next primary and why. Just you doing that won't change the world. But just a few thousand people in your state doing it could have a huge effect on the actions of congress. We all know the Religious Right is politically quite powerful compared to its absolute size. Why? Because they are active and unified. That's all. I don't like their issues or tactics but their political technique is rock solid and represents democracy in action.
But it should be noted this isn't anything new. The internal combustion engine is innefficient by nature. It takes a spherical force (an explosion), redirects that into a vector force (up and down in a straight line), redirects that into a circular force, which is redirected into another circular force, finally driving the car. Each of those redirections wastes energy. Moreover, the fact that you have carbon monoxide and other hydrocarbon emissions is a sign of innefficient combustion: complete combustion of a carbon molecule goes all the way to carbon dioxide. There are plenty of legitimate projects to find a better way. Ben Rosen, chairman of Compaq, has envisioned the automotive powertrain market becoming like microprocessors, with independent companies competing to supply the most efficient engine. His Rosen Motors produced a working prototype of a hybrid-electric motor; they've since been taken over but I forget by whom.
Of course, a serious problem is the huge combustion engine and gasoline infrastructure. Even a much better product is not going to take over overnight. The internal combustion infrastructure would keep the economics of conventional motors attractive for decades, barring a serious kink in the gasoline supply.
It is a myth, though, that the automotive manufacturers are blocking this kind of thing. They're all doing research of their own. There is nothing a manufacturer wants more than to obsolete their own product and give everyone a reason to buy the next big thing.
The other technology discussed here is photovoltaic (solar-electric) conversion of water to hydrogen for combustion. I think this is far more theoretical. Not that you can't very simply and reliably bang an electric current through water and get combustible hydrogen and oxygen. But from what I know (and I do have some knowledge on this subject) I seriously doubt whether existing photovoltaic cells are efficient enough to supply the power for even a very efficient automotive engine by splitting water. It should be noted that like anything else, this conversion of electrical power into chemical power represents a loss of efficiency, so the purpose for doing this is to get the benefit of a combustible fuel.
Direct solar cleavage of water to H and O is one of the holy grails of both hydrogen power and solar research; this photochemical process is at the heart of how plants utilize the energy of the sun and hence the source of most energy on earth including all fossil fuels. We aren't there yet. It can be done but it isn't sufficiently efficient to be practical. There are tons of novel catalytic techniques being experimented with, where rather than go through a photovoltaic cell (the conversion of sunlight to electricity of course represents another inefficiency), sunlight is used as the power source to directly, catalytically cleave water. I think within a few decades this kind of thing will start to make significant inroads, provided countries like Iceland and companies like Daimler Chrysler continue to pursue hydrogen research and a hydrogen energy economy.
I don't see anything in the article, however, that suggest this motor could only run on hydrogen. So it may be a valid concept that it much closer to commercial reality.
I'm not certain but I think it's just muddy syntax - I assume they just mean perpendicular. Orthoganl in this context I would assume means at right angles, and implies the mutually part - so yeah, sort of redundant or just badly stated.
I say this every time one of these stories come out, there is no avoiding this crummy future without an organized resistance in the form of unencumbered digital content, consisting of material specifically created for the purpose of presenting an alternative by artists dedicated to empowering themselves and consumers against this limiting and innefficient model of distribution.
If anyone is REALLY interested in discussing alternatives for musicians and consumers please drop me a line. I'm thinking of publishing some thoughts and maybe even organizing/presenting ideas for getting real about fighting the content kings.
>They were having sex for money
I'd like to know where you get this. It certainly isn't in the article. So either you are in fact an afficianado of the Web Service in question (in which case you're a hypocrite) or elese you're just another one of the thousands on Slashdot who don't see any necessary connection between arguing a point and learning the facts. In either case, it's still irrelevant: if it was an issue of illegal activities, then it would be a case for criminal prosecution, not a zoning dispute. You suck.
You have a point: Growing up in a rural area I am very aware that even grain dust can be a considerable explosion risk - grain elevator explosions are part of the reality of agriculture. As I state in my comment, though maybe not clearly enough, the explosive potential of Hydrogen is entirely dependent on how well it is mixed with oxygen. A flame thrust into an container of pure hydrogen would go out - hydrogen alone does not support combustion.
I can only thank my lucky stars that "ignorant" judges like these ones are deciding legal precedents instead of people like you who don't bother to synthesize the facts.
The "cyberspace is a whole other world" interpretation is just being slapped on this narrow decision. It won't hold up as a precedent in a case with broader implications.
I don't know how feasible powering a plane with hydrogen is - I sort of follow hydrogen energy news and don't recall ever coming across any prototype jets or prop planes. I don't know that hydrogen could power a jet sufficiently. Storage methods (tanks etc.) are heavy, possibly too heavy for economical flight. I question whether this is a realistic scenario or just wild speculation.
The big problems with hydrogen are cost, lack of a production infrastructure, lack of a distribution infrastructure, difficulty of storage, and the unlikllihood of a widespread manufacture of any kind of hydrogen vehicle lacking resolution of all these other issues. Making a plane fly on hydrogen would certainly not be a simple "retrofit". This would be a transition from a liquid to a gasseous fuel with totally different combustion characteristics.
Hydrogen is clean to burn either chemically (fuel cell) or through combustion and simple (if not easy or necessarily efficient) to generate, and therefore may become a valid way to transform renewable forms of energy into a storable fuel, and to make energy from conventional fuels more efficeintly and cleanly. But I doubt very much it will be the fuel of choice in planes any time soon
Well, I'm not a big fan of the word addict, but I gotta assume that people with at the least a "problem" with porn and/or gambling are doing the work, wouldn't you think?
It's hard for normal people like us to imagine, but yeah, I gotta assume there are people out there for whom a porn or gambling pop-up is basically like sitting a needle full of smack in front of a junkie.
And yes, it's very sad.
Now THAT I agree with 100%. And I've said this several times before, but Indie Labels and Independent musicians need to start labelling their CDs as NOT copy impaired - hell, how often does the small business find itself in the situation of being able to ADD VALUE to their product by AVOIDING an expensive additional production step?!
Australia: http://www.air.org.au/
New Zealand: http://unearthing.net/
European: http://www.shef.ac.uk/misc/rec/ps/efi/elabels.html
US: http://www.musicisland.com/home.htm
World, Roots, Folk, Blues: http://www.newpages.com/npguides/music.htm
A mixed bag with a little bit of everything: http://www.music.indiana.edu/music_resources/recin d.html
Just a whole big bunch of labels: http://www.insounds.freeuk.com/links.htm
A catalogue system for finding specific artists: http://www.pan.com/indie/
An independent media portal: http://www.digitalindependence.org/
Google's record label information directory: http://directory.google.com/Top/Arts/Music/Record_ Labels/
Labels of all shapes and sizes: http://www.bandguru.com/labels.htm
There's a book called The Ultimate Guide to Independent Record Labels and Artists : An A-To-Z Source of Great Music by Norman Schreiber
Otherwise, entering a favorite style along with the words independent record label is bound to get you somewhere. Or research who favorite major label artists were with before they got signed - a lot of musicians start with indies before they hit a big contract. Indies that distributed one artist you like may very well handle more.
It's time for all of us to stop acting as if music is some magic potion that these mean old major lables are doling out in an increasingly stingy manner. Producing, duplicating and distributing music is more in the grasp of the individual or small business every day - if Sony, BMG and Warner are no longer giving you the product the way you want it then they're doing their business poorly. The question is, who's going to come in and pick up their slack?
Garbage. He's not asserting some right, he's simply pointing out the facts: that this format is tied to a proprietary operating system and that means it doesn't play on his equipment. Explain to me why you think this is a good thing.
What new technologies (and the constantly increasing accessibility at any scale of technologies like burning CDs) present musicians and consumers alike with is the possibility of ditching the fat cat middlemen entirely, which would be fine since they do nothing for music but try to make everything a hit which turns 99.9% of everything they sell into indistinguishable, homogenized crap.
When you consider the global marketing potential that a little fearlessness when it comes to digital audio files and the internet presents the individual artist or band with, and the enormity of the cut that the parasitic media distribution conglomerates suck up between artists and consumers, it becomes clear that for artists and consumers alike copy protection is irrelevant.
All the industry frenzy over this issue has nothing to do with lost sales (which have been negligible) and everything to do with preventing independent concerns from commercializing and popularizing effective digital music distribution tools. Don't like this copy-impaired, we'll pick your compression format (and quality, natch) garbage? Write to your favorite INDIE record label or better yet your favorite unsigned, self- distributing or about-to-be-released-from-contract artists and tell THEM how you feel. They might actually give a rats ass and do something about it.
Ah, well I'm a bit touchy too... But I should say I agree with the basic principle you're espousing. One problem of this monumental act of murder is that it significantly shrinks the space the recognition of grey areas affords. I get nervous when my congress starts turning out unanimous votes. I'm leery of the with us or against us rhetoric. So, sorry for the nasty reply.