If theory A predicts one thing and theory B predicts another then they can't both be right. You don't need an experiment to tell you that, logic is sufficient. Unfortunately, the situations in which they disagree are ones that we cannot easily reproduce or observe in nature. Until we do find such evidence we won't know exactly how they are wrong, or the correct way the reconcile them, but it doesn't preclude us from knowing that they are incomplete.
but neither of those means general relativity is broken, necessarily. They could be indications that general relativity needs some elaboration
Now you're just playing semantic games. Yeah, few established theories are ever shown to be completely wrong, just simplifications that only work in certain circumstances. As far as science is concerned "broken" and incomplete mean the same thing.
the surface has to be highly reflective for this to work. If it absorbed the photons, then it's temperature would increase, and if it was transparent the photons wouldn't interact with the material very much, and thus would not be able to cool it.
Yes, the plan is to retain the Palm OS API, in addition to whatever new APIs the create. Of course they've been talking about this for years, so I'll believe it when I see it.
The problem isn't the device, but the low quality of the videos purchased on iTMS. If you were to go through the hassle of ripping from DVD, you wouldn't have this problem. Which really gets down to the issue of why this device is so underwelming - it desperately needs more/better sources of content. There are many ways they could achieve this:
* Add a TV tuner and make it a PVR. * Improve the format options for people with existing collections. * Vastly extend amount of content at the iTunes store, increase compression quality * Extend the iTunes video store to include pay-per-view. * Allow purchases derictly from the device.
While a lot of people have been calling for the first, I think Apple is smart by staying out of that game. First off, the vast majority of people that want PVR's get them from their cable companies, and everyone else buys a Tivo, which is a very well polished product. Secondly, CableCard support has been a mess, making it a pain for third party PVR's, and limiting the service that they can provide to their customers. Between these two issues I really don't see what Apple could do to make themselves stand-out the way they have in other markets where the competition couldn't provide a good interface to save themselves. Lastly, cable television as we know it is on it's way out. It is going to take a while, but the future is internet distribution, and now is the time for them to get on that bandwagon if they want to be a major player. So jumping into an overcrowded market that will quickly be entering into decline isn't a very good idea.
The fact that you have buy songs on a computer is a major pain, and something they could have fixed today, but in the end whether you allow purchases to be made from the couch or not, you will still need to link it to a computer that has more hard-drive space than the Apple TV. This is one of the reasons that I think that set-top boxes work better for pay-per-view / rental than for purchased media, but apparently that is not something that Apple wants to get into. Whatever they decide, Apple really needs to get the ball with their online video distribution, because their current offering are pathetic.
I know that slashdotters like to dig on Debian for having slow releases, but sarge is the only one that took a ridiculously long amount of time to get out the door:
Radiosity is definitely used in games, because while the straight-forward algorithm is slower than raytracing, you can do some fancy tricks with precalculating certain characteristics of the scene, that makes it possible to do in realtime. Here is an article that explains it in detail. Don't know what Black & White was using.
If you want to add scripting functionality to an existing application Lua is by far the easiest way to do so, and it has an added benifit being more efficient (both in terms of memory consumption and execution speed) than python or ruby. It is fairly easy for power-users to learn, as it is simular to javascript in many ways, and yet is also powerfull, as it is a complete functional language. For these reasons, you are seeing it being used more and more in open source desktop applications as well as many big name games such as WoW.
I don't know that I would go out of my way to learning it just to learn it, but I would love to see it become the defacto scripting language for linux desktop apps.
EMI: We'll let you sell non-DRM tracks, but only if you pay us more. Jobs: Hmm, customers won't like this price jump, better do something to increase the value of the non-DRM tracks. I know - the same people that complain about DRM also complain about the compression, so lets increase the non-DRM'd songs to 256kbps. But we better keep the old 99 cent tracks around for people who don't want to pay more.
You aren't paying 30 cents more for higher bitrate, you are paying an extra 30 cents for the priviledge of being able to exercise your fair use rights, the bitrate is just an inexpensive value add-on.
The summary and article aren't clear on this. Will people who distribute files still be liable for damages if found to be infringing upon copyrights in a civil lawsuit? If so, I don't think that it is accurate to call private file sharing legal, it just isn't criminal.
As far as I am concerned it is all about the difference between purchase and a service. If I buy something, then I should have every right to use it however I want, as long as I do not distribute or publically perform the work. In my opinion, not only is DRM unacceptable, but I think the law should be changed so that a purchace comes with an implied license to copy for any reason. That would cover almost all of the consumer rights issues that are currently up in the air with regard to fair use. (Producer rights, like parody, criticism, education would still have to be dealt with seperately.)
On the otherhand, broadcast and rental are very nice business models for some types of media. As far as music goes, I prefer buying, but I almost never buy movies or anime - the replay value just isn't high enough for me to justify paying 5x the rental price and have more junk cluttering up my apartment. Without some sort of DRM, rental is impossible in the digital relm, and I really don't care if my devices make it difficult to copy something that I rented because I never had the right to do so to begin with. As long as the implementation is convienient I don't have any fundamental problems with DRM on rentals, and other services.
DRM is a complete failure when it comes to preventing piracy, and always will be for basic fundamental reasons. However, when it comes to rental/broadcast the purpose of DRM isn't to prevent piracy but theft of service. For that purposes DRM actually works fairly well. Because you control the stream, it is easy to change keys whenever one is cracked, as opposed to static media and players which cannot be changed after they are sold. This is why AACS was effectively broken within weeks, while the DRM for digital satallite is still secure after years. This is a situation where "Open" DRM (licened under RAND terms) can be valid and useful, much along the lines of the CableCard standard.
That said I would hate to see the situation where media is locked up and only provided as a service, and never made available for purchase. But as long as we don't get to that extreme have think both non-DRM sales and DRM'd services can coexist peacefully.
I am having trouble finding links right now, but IIRC most reasonable estimates of US uranium reserves say that we could provide all electricity needs in the US for about 100 years given current practices. If we start recycling our waste, as most european countries do, multiply that number by about 8. Add the fact nuclear will never be the sole source of power, and an even 1000 years is a good back-of-the-envelope estimation for uranium.
From reading the summary it makes it sound like we are running out of natural supplies of uranium. This is not the case, and if we implement breeder or burner reactors, will not be the case for a very long time. The problem is that we don't have much uranium mining and processing capability in this country, since the outlook for future growth of nuclear power has been low the last couple decades for political reasons. So that would have to be ramped significantly as we build new plants, and MIT is worried that it is not happening at a fast enough rate, and may hamper further growth.
That blog post is almost two years old. The first two bullet items will be done by October. I don't know whether the Amarok Roadmap is reliable (it is a wiki) but it says:
Version 2.0
Estimated Release Date: The same day or slightly before KDE 4.0 is released
Will be Released on Linux, Windows and Mac.
Will kick all other media player arse:-).
1) The code must be *somewhere* freely available. Profiting off people's ignorance of where to get it for free, is fine. For example, selling Firefox in a regular software box at Best Buy for $35 + sales tax would be within the GPL, as long as you can download it somewhere for free.
No it doesn't. It is perfectly legitimate for someone to distribute source by mail order only, as long as the price is reasonable as you mentioned. You could make a modified version of firefox, say iceweasel, and sell it at for $2000, without making the source availiable to anyone except your customers, and then only if they paid for shipping and handling and a small fee. Of course, you cannot prevent someone from redistributing the source for free once they get it from you, but you are only required to make it available to the people that you distributed the binaries to, at reasonable price.
GNOME is Free Software and part of the GNU project, dedicated to giving users and developers the ultimate level of control over their desktops, their software, and their data. Find out more about the GNU project and Free Software at gnu.org.
So, yes GNU did create the GNU Network Object Model Environment, as much as any other GNU project.
The tenative release date for KDE 4 (unix) is around the end of October. The developers hope for the Windows port to be runnable (technology preview / alpha quality) at that time. I know, I am chomping at the bit myself:)
Note that he never actually said that he thought that the goals or methods of the DMCA were a bad idea and never apologized to the public for passing it - he simply pointed out that it failed to achieve those goals. In other words, his repeated attempts to pander to the RIAA failed because the RIAA members refused to help themselves.
When the GPU client first came out, it was pointed out that it was actually using different work units than the normal PC version and so the numbers weren't directly comaparable. I don't know what the situation is for the PS3, but it may not be using the same work units as either the GPU version or the PC version, and thus not directly comparable to either.
Slashdot Mirror
the surface has to be highly reflective for this to work. If it absorbed the photons, then it's temperature would increase, and if it was transparent the photons wouldn't interact with the material very much, and thus would not be able to cool it.
Yes, the plan is to retain the Palm OS API, in addition to whatever new APIs the create. Of course they've been talking about this for years, so I'll believe it when I see it.
The problem isn't the device, but the low quality of the videos purchased on iTMS. If you were to go through the hassle of ripping from DVD, you wouldn't have this problem. Which really gets down to the issue of why this device is so underwelming - it desperately needs more/better sources of content. There are many ways they could achieve this:
* Add a TV tuner and make it a PVR.
* Improve the format options for people with existing collections.
* Vastly extend amount of content at the iTunes store, increase compression quality
* Extend the iTunes video store to include pay-per-view.
* Allow purchases derictly from the device.
While a lot of people have been calling for the first, I think Apple is smart by staying out of that game. First off, the vast majority of people that want PVR's get them from their cable companies, and everyone else buys a Tivo, which is a very well polished product. Secondly, CableCard support has been a mess, making it a pain for third party PVR's, and limiting the service that they can provide to their customers. Between these two issues I really don't see what Apple could do to make themselves stand-out the way they have in other markets where the competition couldn't provide a good interface to save themselves. Lastly, cable television as we know it is on it's way out. It is going to take a while, but the future is internet distribution, and now is the time for them to get on that bandwagon if they want to be a major player. So jumping into an overcrowded market that will quickly be entering into decline isn't a very good idea.
The fact that you have buy songs on a computer is a major pain, and something they could have fixed today, but in the end whether you allow purchases to be made from the couch or not, you will still need to link it to a computer that has more hard-drive space than the Apple TV. This is one of the reasons that I think that set-top boxes work better for pay-per-view / rental than for purchased media, but apparently that is not something that Apple wants to get into. Whatever they decide, Apple really needs to get the ball with their online video distribution, because their current offering are pathetic.
I know that slashdotters like to dig on Debian for having slow releases, but sarge is the only one that took a ridiculously long amount of time to get out the door:
1.1 - 1.2: 6 months
1.2 - 1.3: 6 months
1.3 - 2.0: 13 months
2.0 - 2.1: 8 months
2.1 - 2.2: 17 months
2.2 - 3.0: 23 months
3.0 - 3.1: 35 months
3.1 - 4.0: 20 months
I think that 18 months is a reasonable amount of time between stable releases. If Debian can stick close to that in the future then I will be happy.
Radiosity is definitely used in games, because while the straight-forward algorithm is slower than raytracing, you can do some fancy tricks with precalculating certain characteristics of the scene, that makes it possible to do in realtime. Here is an article that explains it in detail. Don't know what Black & White was using.
If you want to add scripting functionality to an existing application Lua is by far the easiest way to do so, and it has an added benifit being more efficient (both in terms of memory consumption and execution speed) than python or ruby. It is fairly easy for power-users to learn, as it is simular to javascript in many ways, and yet is also powerfull, as it is a complete functional language. For these reasons, you are seeing it being used more and more in open source desktop applications as well as many big name games such as WoW.
I don't know that I would go out of my way to learning it just to learn it, but I would love to see it become the defacto scripting language for linux desktop apps.
EMI: We'll let you sell non-DRM tracks, but only if you pay us more.
Jobs: Hmm, customers won't like this price jump, better do something to increase the value of the non-DRM tracks. I know - the same people that complain about DRM also complain about the compression, so lets increase the non-DRM'd songs to 256kbps. But we better keep the old 99 cent tracks around for people who don't want to pay more.
You aren't paying 30 cents more for higher bitrate, you are paying an extra 30 cents for the priviledge of being able to exercise your fair use rights, the bitrate is just an inexpensive value add-on.
we had Cobol on Cobble Stones and we were grateful.
Jullianne doesn't have single mole on her beautiful body.
The summary and article aren't clear on this. Will people who distribute files still be liable for damages if found to be infringing upon copyrights in a civil lawsuit? If so, I don't think that it is accurate to call private file sharing legal, it just isn't criminal.
As far as I am concerned it is all about the difference between purchase and a service. If I buy something, then I should have every right to use it however I want, as long as I do not distribute or publically perform the work. In my opinion, not only is DRM unacceptable, but I think the law should be changed so that a purchace comes with an implied license to copy for any reason. That would cover almost all of the consumer rights issues that are currently up in the air with regard to fair use. (Producer rights, like parody, criticism, education would still have to be dealt with seperately.)
On the otherhand, broadcast and rental are very nice business models for some types of media. As far as music goes, I prefer buying, but I almost never buy movies or anime - the replay value just isn't high enough for me to justify paying 5x the rental price and have more junk cluttering up my apartment. Without some sort of DRM, rental is impossible in the digital relm, and I really don't care if my devices make it difficult to copy something that I rented because I never had the right to do so to begin with. As long as the implementation is convienient I don't have any fundamental problems with DRM on rentals, and other services.
DRM is a complete failure when it comes to preventing piracy, and always will be for basic fundamental reasons. However, when it comes to rental/broadcast the purpose of DRM isn't to prevent piracy but theft of service. For that purposes DRM actually works fairly well. Because you control the stream, it is easy to change keys whenever one is cracked, as opposed to static media and players which cannot be changed after they are sold. This is why AACS was effectively broken within weeks, while the DRM for digital satallite is still secure after years. This is a situation where "Open" DRM (licened under RAND terms) can be valid and useful, much along the lines of the CableCard standard.
That said I would hate to see the situation where media is locked up and only provided as a service, and never made available for purchase. But as long as we don't get to that extreme have think both non-DRM sales and DRM'd services can coexist peacefully.
English major ... types poorly ... four digit slashdot UID
*blink*
Did you buy that off ebay? :)
I am having trouble finding links right now, but IIRC most reasonable estimates of US uranium reserves say that we could provide all electricity needs in the US for about 100 years given current practices. If we start recycling our waste, as most european countries do, multiply that number by about 8. Add the fact nuclear will never be the sole source of power, and an even 1000 years is a good back-of-the-envelope estimation for uranium.
From reading the summary it makes it sound like we are running out of natural supplies of uranium. This is not the case, and if we implement breeder or burner reactors, will not be the case for a very long time. The problem is that we don't have much uranium mining and processing capability in this country, since the outlook for future growth of nuclear power has been low the last couple decades for political reasons. So that would have to be ramped significantly as we build new plants, and MIT is worried that it is not happening at a fast enough rate, and may hamper further growth.
It must be Tuesday. I could never get the hang of Tuesdays.
Those crazy Saturnians are trying to initiate the Third Impact!
The tenative release date for KDE 4 (unix) is around the end of October. The developers hope for the Windows port to be runnable (technology preview / alpha quality) at that time. I know, I am chomping at the bit myself :)
Note that he never actually said that he thought that the goals or methods of the DMCA were a bad idea and never apologized to the public for passing it - he simply pointed out that it failed to achieve those goals. In other words, his repeated attempts to pander to the RIAA failed because the RIAA members refused to help themselves.
When the GPU client first came out, it was pointed out that it was actually using different work units than the normal PC version and so the numbers weren't directly comaparable. I don't know what the situation is for the PS3, but it may not be using the same work units as either the GPU version or the PC version, and thus not directly comparable to either.
Ah okay, for multiple TVs it would definitely be easier and probably less expensive. That makes sense. Thanks.
Why would you want to play your videos on another device rather than on the MythTV box? Just out of curiosity.