Universal Music, the world's largest music company, has agreed to back a new venture that will allow consumers to download songs for free and instead rely on advertising for its revenues.
During the last year of the dot-com boom I worked in midtown Manhattan (in the Empire State Building, actually). My co-workers loved to order junk from Kozmo.com; I indulged occasionally myself. Even if you ordered a candy bar and a Coke, they'd send a guy on a bike across town with it!
Ridiculous business model. But as I liked to say, "If venture capitalists want to subsidize this, that's fine with me!"
One morning I ordered a disposable Polaroid camera from Kozmo. A couple hours later, I noticed that the website was no longer accessible. In fact, the company had shut down minutes after I placed my order! I never got my camera. Kozmo still owes me $10!
Whether you believe in steady state growth (Dyson's assumption in 1960), or exponential growth as "The Singularity" concept proposes the bottom line is that it seems very unlikely that a civilization would actively choose to remain at our state of development (i.e. zero growth for millions or billions of years). If you choose the steady state model the time to develop to a Dyson Shell is measured in a few hundred to a few thousand years. If you choose the singularity model then the time to develop a Matrioshka Brain (also here) is measured in decades. Once either of those states is reached the star goes "dark". So the star list is useless (to either the TPF mission or SETI) for identifying locations of intelligent civilizations with capabilities even slightly beyond our own.
I can't help but notice the high proportion of sheer speculation, verging on superstition, that you rely on in your post. So much talk about SETI is based on completely untested assumptions that "experts" have expounded, and that others have decided to take as gospel, lacking any hard data.
Examples:
- "The Singularity": This is a whopping big superstition, sometimes referred to as "the Rapture for atheists". The idea that we're all going to transcend our current bodies / technology / civilization / mortality within the next several generations is no more than a hopeful myth. There is no real proof that any such thing is inevitable or even likely -- it just fulfills a longing for immortality and transformation that many people feel, and that used to be fulfilled by religion, or Marxism (the idea of "History" as a transcendent force that would eventually produce a heaven on earth).
- The Dyson shell: Dyson's idea is intriguing, but seriously, why would any race decide to build such a bizarre artifact? You can make arguments for it, but the notion that this is somehow a probable development of any intelligent civilization is, again, speculative to the point of superstition. Even if there are millions of intelligent, technologically advanced races out there, we have no way of knowing that ANY of them would ever build a giant sphere of matter around their star. It's just a pipe dream.
- The 5,000-year window: This is also a myth, even more questionable because it is based on other myths, including the two above. The real truth is, we have no idea how our own civilization will progress in the coming centuries and millennia, and certainly no clue at all what path a completely alien one might follow.
I mention all this simply to make the point that a large part of accepted wisdom in the SETI field is sheer science fiction, and should never be mistaken for science fact. The reality is that we have almost no data to go on, and while it is tempting to speculate, our speculations should not be elevated to the status of established truth.
Tracktion is a brilliant program -- I just switched over to it from ACID. I'm not exaggerating when I say it's one of the best software apps of any kind I've ever used... easy to learn, elegantly designed, extremely powerful, extremely stable (except for one weird crash the first day I used it, it's been rock-solid). And it's made by a tiny little independent shop, not a giant corporate titan! A Linux port will greatly enhance the attractiveness and usability of Linux for musicians.
I've played with Audacity; it'll do in a pinch, but it's a toy next to Tracktion. Kudos to Jules for embracing Linux.
Check out the micro-etched data disks used by the Rosetta Project. Their goal is to create a long-lasting archive of the basic elements of 1,000 different languages. The storage medium they're using involves etching readable words on to metal disks. The words are not readable by the naked eye, but all you need to read them is a decent optical microscope -- no special hardware or software.
The Rosetta Project's customized "Rosetta Disk" adds another clever innovation: naked-eye-readable words around the edge of the disk get smaller as they spiral inward, making it clear to anyone who might find this disk in the future that there is more information to be read at greater magnifications.
He came up with the broad story, but the actual script was the last major work written by Leigh Brackett, an amazing sci-fi, screenplay, and crime writer from the Golden Age of American film and science fiction.
The CIA and FBI are not part of the Dept. of Homeland Security, nor are there any current serious plans to move them to the DHS. It was talked about a few years ago, but those agencies resisted.
But with this statement I agree:
This is a BIG change... it's the most signifigant restructuring of the US government in the last 50 years.
The shows are still owned by Paramount. But they may have multi-year syndication contracts with the channels that are showing them. And anyway, they are probably making as much or more money off of the re-runs as they have been making from Enterprise and other "new" Trek product.
The answer is to let the re-runs continue to air for several years without competition. Eventually they will start to seem more dated (altho I personally think the best TNG was timeless, and will remain entertaining for years). Then there will start to be an "itch" among fans and the general public for more Trek.
Metrocards have saved the system a lot of money. It's no longer necessary to process tens of millions of metal tokens. I'm glad I can carry a thin plastic card around instead of a pocketful of tokens.
However, there is a Big Brother aspect to it. I get my Metrocards thru a discount program at my company (I can buy them using my pre-tax income). This means they are identified with me, and I can in theory be tracked. Anyone who buys a card this way, or who buys one at a vending machine using an ATM or credit card, can also be tracked thru the subway and bus systems.
In fact, the police have already used Metrocard tracking to apprehend suspects. I think they tend to check on the usage records of cards found on suspects they've picked up, in order to verify their movements -- rather than tracing cards back to their purchasers using purchase info. But it's all pretty Orwellian.
I am sometimes tempted to only buy cards from human beings at token booths, using cash. But instead, I take the slight discount and allow myself to be tracked...
The reason the L line (which I use every day) has been down on the weekends is precisely BECAUSE they've been installing this computer system.
So it will only "solve" the problem because its installation is the source of the problem.
I agree with all the people who have pointed out that:
1. The current system, while low-tech, works pretty damn well. It is a certainty that the new tech will have more bugs (because it's new) and more things that can go wrong (because it's far more expensive and complex).
2. Conductors do not just serve as announcers and door operators -- they are also a pair of eyes that can spot any "human" problems on or around the train. The MTA recently closed hundreds of token booths at less-used station entrances. Now they're eliminating conductors. God help us if NYC experiences another crime wave.
The real reason they are going to computer control is to cram more trains thru the system in the same amount of time. In theory, this will shorten waits, crowding, and ride times... assuming that the new gadgetry works, and that you don't get mugged.
Scaled Composite's X Prize winner was also designed to be aerodynamically stable during re-entry. No steering, control surfaces, or attitude jets required.
I used to put my cell next to my monitor at work. When my phone would ring, I'd see a slight flickering of the monitor (which would actually start a second before the phone rang).
But what weirded me out was that every so often -- at least every 2 hours, if not more frequently -- the monitor would flicker in the same way, but the phone wouldn't ring. My phone display showed that I was in an area with strong cell coverage, so it wasn't a call that was being dropped. It was some kind of communication between the phone and the network that was not a call.
I assume that most cell phones "check in" with their networks periodically to see if there is new voice mail, etc. But who knows? Increasingly, our technology contains features we can't control, don't know the various uses of, and may not even know about at all.
It left me with the impression that this is little more than Asimov fanfic.
Or Asimov/Vinge fanfic.
The author's incorporating Asimov's Laws and the Singularity into the story indicates to me that he doesn't have a lot of original ideas.
Good SF is supposed to present new and challenging ideas -- which those ideas were when Asimov and Vinge conceived of them. But using them as the basis for a potboiler plot is not good SF writing. It's more like space opera.
It's like Lucas' use of SF fixtures like spaceships, hyperdrive, etc. He's not presenting a single new idea, just using ideas concieved of by others to create a melodramatic plot. And there's a place for that (if it's done well).
I personally don't go in so much for that stuff, tho. Give me something intellectually challenging and original, as well as entertaining (and hopefully, characters with some emotional depth, and a writing style that is polished or at least not irritatingly bad).
It's possible that Ashcroft will seek the use of this and other types of remote imaging technology in the future. But for now, he can't use them without a warrant.
Surprisingly, the Supreme Court ruled last year -- in an opinion written by Scalia (conservative) and joined by Souter (moderate) and Thomas (conservative), as well as Ginsburg and Breyer (both liberal) -- that the use of thermal imaging to detect marijuana grow lamps inside a house was illegal:
The District Court [had previously] ruled that the thermal imaging device "is a non-intrusive device which emits no rays or beams and shows a crude visual image of the heat being radiated from the outside of the house"; it "did not show any people or activity within the walls of the structure" it "cannot penetrate walls or windows to reveal conversations or human activities"; and "(n)o intimate details of the home were observed."
The Court of Appeals initially reversed this ruling, but reversed itself, ruling that Kyllo has shown no expectation of privacy because he had made no attempt to conceal the heat escaping from his home, and even if he had, there was no reasonable expectation of privacy because the imager "did not expose any intimate details of Kyllo's life," only "amorphous 'hot spots' on the roof and exterior wall."
The U. S. Supreme Court reversed the decision of the Court of Appeals. Justice Scalia's decision pointed out that the Fourth Amendment provides that "(t)he right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreason able searches and seizures shall not be violated." It cited a 1961 ruling, Silverman v. United States, ruling, "At the very core" of the Fourth Amendment "stands the right of a man to retreat into his own home and there be free from unreasonable governmental intrusion." It held that with few exceptions, the question whether a warrantless search of a home is reasonable and hence constitutional must be answered no.
The decision discussed at length the change in technology availing the government of visual surveillance, and the historic tie of visual surveillance to trespass. However, the court observed, visual surveillance has been historically lawful, because the eye cannot be guilty of trespass. The decision referred back to the 1986 Ciraolo case where the Supreme Court ruled that aerial surveillance with the naked eye was permissible without a search warrant, even if the police were looking at plants growing within the back yard, which known legally as being within the "curtilage" of the home.
In his discussion of the effect of the evolution of technology on privacy rights, Justice Scalia stated that technology enabling human flight has uncovered portions of the house and its curtilage that once were private. But, he held, the Kyllo case had to confront the limits on the power of technology to shrink the realm of guaranteed privacy.
What the court concluded is that a search is permissible without a search warrant if the surveillance was normally available to the public without additional technology. Thus, looking down from an airplane is permissible, but using an eavesdropping device is not.
The distinction that "off-the-wall observations" could be permissible while "through the wall" surveillance could be impermissible would lead to a trap as technology advances. The court held that any other approach "would leave the homeowner at the mercy of advancing technology-including imaging technology that could discern all human activity in the home."
It looks to me like terahertz imaging would fall under this ruling, and thus be illegal without a warrant. For now, anyway...
You lose all your points for using the obnoxious "BZZZT!" and "Sparky".
We already can convert raw material into turkey
on
Christmas in 2050
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
...by feeding it to a small turkey, until said turkey is big enough to eat.
A real "advance" would be the growth of free range and organic farming -- doing away with industrial farming techniques that involve shutting animals into crates, cramming them with chemical- and antibiotic-laden feed, and generally turning them into objects instead of living beings.
Many people who now object to eating meat might change their minds, if they felt that the animals they consumed were raised in a healthy manner and treated humanely.
I eat some meat, but try to steer clear of the more factory-farmed stuff in favor of organic/free-range products. It's preferable in so many ways: hygeinically, nutritionally, ethically, etc.
Slashdot Mirror
Someone's offering me free music! It must be an evil plot by Big Brother to take my rights away!
Hilarious. A record company finally offers free downloads, and what responses do we see on /.?
"Horrors! I won't sit thru ADS to get free music!"
"It's encumbered with DRM! Help, I'm being repressed!"
"Bah -- the artist selection sucks!"
Ever heard the saying, "Don't look a gift horse in the mouth"?
RTFA, please. At least the first sentence:
Universal Music, the world's largest music company, has agreed to back a new venture that will allow consumers to download songs for free and instead rely on advertising for its revenues.
This is a big deal.
I was one of their last customers -- I never got the order I placed the day they went under.
Oh well. It was nice having VCs subsidize our candy bars for a while there.
During the last year of the dot-com boom I worked in midtown Manhattan (in the Empire State Building, actually). My co-workers loved to order junk from Kozmo.com; I indulged occasionally myself. Even if you ordered a candy bar and a Coke, they'd send a guy on a bike across town with it!
Ridiculous business model. But as I liked to say, "If venture capitalists want to subsidize this, that's fine with me!"
One morning I ordered a disposable Polaroid camera from Kozmo. A couple hours later, I noticed that the website was no longer accessible. In fact, the company had shut down minutes after I placed my order! I never got my camera. Kozmo still owes me $10!
P.S. I was not aware of the "Matrioshka Brain" concept until now, but file that in the pseudo-scientific myth category as well.
Whether you believe in steady state growth (Dyson's assumption in 1960), or exponential growth as "The Singularity" concept proposes the bottom line is that it seems very unlikely that a civilization would actively choose to remain at our state of development (i.e. zero growth for millions or billions of years). If you choose the steady state model the time to develop to a Dyson Shell is measured in a few hundred to a few thousand years. If you choose the singularity model then the time to develop a Matrioshka Brain (also here) is measured in decades. Once either of those states is reached the star goes "dark". So the star list is useless (to either the TPF mission or SETI) for identifying locations of intelligent civilizations with capabilities even slightly beyond our own.
I can't help but notice the high proportion of sheer speculation, verging on superstition, that you rely on in your post. So much talk about SETI is based on completely untested assumptions that "experts" have expounded, and that others have decided to take as gospel, lacking any hard data.
Examples:
- "The Singularity": This is a whopping big superstition, sometimes referred to as "the Rapture for atheists". The idea that we're all going to transcend our current bodies / technology / civilization / mortality within the next several generations is no more than a hopeful myth. There is no real proof that any such thing is inevitable or even likely -- it just fulfills a longing for immortality and transformation that many people feel, and that used to be fulfilled by religion, or Marxism (the idea of "History" as a transcendent force that would eventually produce a heaven on earth).
- The Dyson shell: Dyson's idea is intriguing, but seriously, why would any race decide to build such a bizarre artifact? You can make arguments for it, but the notion that this is somehow a probable development of any intelligent civilization is, again, speculative to the point of superstition. Even if there are millions of intelligent, technologically advanced races out there, we have no way of knowing that ANY of them would ever build a giant sphere of matter around their star. It's just a pipe dream.
- The 5,000-year window: This is also a myth, even more questionable because it is based on other myths, including the two above. The real truth is, we have no idea how our own civilization will progress in the coming centuries and millennia, and certainly no clue at all what path a completely alien one might follow.
I mention all this simply to make the point that a large part of accepted wisdom in the SETI field is sheer science fiction, and should never be mistaken for science fact. The reality is that we have almost no data to go on, and while it is tempting to speculate, our speculations should not be elevated to the status of established truth.
Haven't you seen Buckaroo Banzai?
Tracktion is a brilliant program -- I just switched over to it from ACID. I'm not exaggerating when I say it's one of the best software apps of any kind I've ever used... easy to learn, elegantly designed, extremely powerful, extremely stable (except for one weird crash the first day I used it, it's been rock-solid). And it's made by a tiny little independent shop, not a giant corporate titan! A Linux port will greatly enhance the attractiveness and usability of Linux for musicians.
I've played with Audacity; it'll do in a pinch, but it's a toy next to Tracktion. Kudos to Jules for embracing Linux.
Check out the micro-etched data disks used by the Rosetta Project. Their goal is to create a long-lasting archive of the basic elements of 1,000 different languages. The storage medium they're using involves etching readable words on to metal disks. The words are not readable by the naked eye, but all you need to read them is a decent optical microscope -- no special hardware or software.
The Rosetta Project's customized "Rosetta Disk" adds another clever innovation: naked-eye-readable words around the edge of the disk get smaller as they spiral inward, making it clear to anyone who might find this disk in the future that there is more information to be read at greater magnifications.
He came up with the broad story, but the actual script was the last major work written by Leigh Brackett, an amazing sci-fi, screenplay, and crime writer from the Golden Age of American film and science fiction.
The CIA and FBI are not part of the Dept. of Homeland Security, nor are there any current serious plans to move them to the DHS. It was talked about a few years ago, but those agencies resisted.
But with this statement I agree:
This is a BIG change... it's the most signifigant restructuring of the US government in the last 50 years.
The shows are still owned by Paramount. But they may have multi-year syndication contracts with the channels that are showing them. And anyway, they are probably making as much or more money off of the re-runs as they have been making from Enterprise and other "new" Trek product.
The answer is to let the re-runs continue to air for several years without competition. Eventually they will start to seem more dated (altho I personally think the best TNG was timeless, and will remain entertaining for years). Then there will start to be an "itch" among fans and the general public for more Trek.
Oh, and KEEP BERMAN AND BRAGA OUT OF IT.
The easiest way to illustrate this peacock argument is to take a bushman from the jungle and get them to figure out what a computer does.
Why would a bushman be in the jungle?
Bushmen live in the bush, i.e. the Kalahari Desert.
Metrocards have saved the system a lot of money. It's no longer necessary to process tens of millions of metal tokens. I'm glad I can carry a thin plastic card around instead of a pocketful of tokens.
However, there is a Big Brother aspect to it. I get my Metrocards thru a discount program at my company (I can buy them using my pre-tax income). This means they are identified with me, and I can in theory be tracked. Anyone who buys a card this way, or who buys one at a vending machine using an ATM or credit card, can also be tracked thru the subway and bus systems.
In fact, the police have already used Metrocard tracking to apprehend suspects. I think they tend to check on the usage records of cards found on suspects they've picked up, in order to verify their movements -- rather than tracing cards back to their purchasers using purchase info. But it's all pretty Orwellian.
I am sometimes tempted to only buy cards from human beings at token booths, using cash. But instead, I take the slight discount and allow myself to be tracked...
The reason the L line (which I use every day) has been down on the weekends is precisely BECAUSE they've been installing this computer system.
So it will only "solve" the problem because its installation is the source of the problem.
I agree with all the people who have pointed out that:
1. The current system, while low-tech, works pretty damn well. It is a certainty that the new tech will have more bugs (because it's new) and more things that can go wrong (because it's far more expensive and complex).
2. Conductors do not just serve as announcers and door operators -- they are also a pair of eyes that can spot any "human" problems on or around the train. The MTA recently closed hundreds of token booths at less-used station entrances. Now they're eliminating conductors. God help us if NYC experiences another crime wave.
The real reason they are going to computer control is to cram more trains thru the system in the same amount of time. In theory, this will shorten waits, crowding, and ride times... assuming that the new gadgetry works, and that you don't get mugged.
Scaled Composite's X Prize winner was also designed to be aerodynamically stable during re-entry. No steering, control surfaces, or attitude jets required.
I've just propagated the meme here.
I used to put my cell next to my monitor at work. When my phone would ring, I'd see a slight flickering of the monitor (which would actually start a second before the phone rang).
But what weirded me out was that every so often -- at least every 2 hours, if not more frequently -- the monitor would flicker in the same way, but the phone wouldn't ring. My phone display showed that I was in an area with strong cell coverage, so it wasn't a call that was being dropped. It was some kind of communication between the phone and the network that was not a call.
I assume that most cell phones "check in" with their networks periodically to see if there is new voice mail, etc. But who knows? Increasingly, our technology contains features we can't control, don't know the various uses of, and may not even know about at all.
Can I get an amen?
It left me with the impression that this is little more than Asimov fanfic.
Or Asimov/Vinge fanfic.
The author's incorporating Asimov's Laws and the Singularity into the story indicates to me that he doesn't have a lot of original ideas.
Good SF is supposed to present new and challenging ideas -- which those ideas were when Asimov and Vinge conceived of them. But using them as the basis for a potboiler plot is not good SF writing. It's more like space opera.
It's like Lucas' use of SF fixtures like spaceships, hyperdrive, etc. He's not presenting a single new idea, just using ideas concieved of by others to create a melodramatic plot. And there's a place for that (if it's done well).
I personally don't go in so much for that stuff, tho. Give me something intellectually challenging and original, as well as entertaining (and hopefully, characters with some emotional depth, and a writing style that is polished or at least not irritatingly bad).
Surprisingly, the Supreme Court ruled last year -- in an opinion written by Scalia (conservative) and joined by Souter (moderate) and Thomas (conservative), as well as Ginsburg and Breyer (both liberal) -- that the use of thermal imaging to detect marijuana grow lamps inside a house was illegal: It looks to me like terahertz imaging would fall under this ruling, and thus be illegal without a warrant. For now, anyway...
You lose all your points for using the obnoxious
"BZZZT!" and "Sparky".
...by feeding it to a small turkey, until said turkey is big enough to eat.
A real "advance" would be the growth of free range and organic farming -- doing away with industrial farming techniques that involve shutting animals into crates, cramming them with chemical- and antibiotic-laden feed, and generally turning them into objects instead of living beings.
Many people who now object to eating meat might change their minds, if they felt that the animals they consumed were raised in a healthy manner and treated humanely.
I eat some meat, but try to steer clear of the more factory-farmed stuff in favor of organic/free-range products. It's preferable in so many ways: hygeinically, nutritionally, ethically, etc.
Is the Florida Unified Ballistic Railway (FUBAR).
:)
It borrows its propulsion system from Jules Verne. Let's just say it takes the idea of a "bullet" train quite literally.
Note the "artist's conception" pic, with the sign that says "WARNING: EXTREME DANGER - STAY BACK 1000 METERS."