Certainly newsworthy, if only because it's somewhat related to one of the biggest US stories of the last few years, so It's appropriate that/. posts it.
But, this is very early. It will take a while to play out, and there will be more news to come.
Before any of this can even get off the ground, there's Privacy Legislation to consider. Not a one of these ISPs can comply with the demand for names (even if they are suspected of wanting to, such as some have said about Videotron) unless they vet the order with whole bunch of lawyers.
Chances are the lawyers will nix it right there; the penalties for complying if it violates the Privacy Act are very serious, and will be assessed on the ISPs themselves.
Certainly CIRA is not a law-enforcement agency, and John Law won't be investigating any part of a civil complaint. So, a court order will have to compel the ISPs to provide any information before any of this can start.
Canadian courts can consider judgments from any jurisdiction, so although it won't be a legal precedent that must be followed, the recent US cases denying the names to the RIAA will almost certainly be part of the ISPs arguments against complying.
Then there's the matter of violations of the Copyright Act. It's quite clear that uploading music is against the law (there are quite a few paragraphs in the legislation that spells out a wide variety of specific examples), so not much problem there.
Finally, there's the matter of penalties. This is where it gets kind of strange. CIRA can't hope to get much money from anyone it successfully sues; there's no statutory penalty scheme as in the US and even if there were, Canadian law requires penalties to fit the level of harm.
The penalty phase would be pure speculation, but as food for thought I expect the courts are going to value the cost of uploading a song in mp3 format as worth perhaps 99 cents if they base it on market value (PressPlay online music store in Canada). That's 99 cents once. Next song, next 99 cents.
I would be shocked if they value it higher without any financial gain from the defendant; cases of "true piracy" (1) don't extend much beyond confiscation and a fine loosely based on the value of goods duplicated.
Certainly I could be wrong, but I don't see anyone getting dinged for anything even remotely approaching the statutory penalty for a single instance of infringement in the US.
CIRA can hope to get some favorable rulings, and wave that around as a warning to others. But the cost of each prosecution is going to vastly exceed the value of a judgment, although they might be awarded costs as well.
And there's great danger in a precedent that doesn't advance CIRA's position (starting with the Privacy Law obstacle). It's risky for them to start this stuff up, but since they have, we can assume they're willing to accept the risk.
(1) I've used the definition of Piracy used by IFPA, the umbrella organization for such national agencies as CIRA and the RIAA. They define Piracy as commercial copying and sales of CDs; essentially what legislatures refer to as Counterfeit duplication. By their own definiton, sharing music is not Piracy, which is why I used the phrase "true piracy" here.
I'm well aware that the term Piracy itself is somewhat controversial, but I take the position that English is a living language and definitions are as much about use as references in dictionaries.
"... nearly every workstation needs to have QB installed so we can get our job done...."
If that's true, then you need QuickBooks and Windows on your desktops.
But, I as you... is it really true? Do you need Quickbooks on every workstation? Because if it isn't true, then you have a world of options.
QuickBooks is a glorified database. A database could be described as essentially the oldest application use for desktop computing; it was around on the Apple ][ and is on the list of the first 3 apps you need to launch a platform. Everybody's got one.
What do you use? QuickBooks. If you look at it that way, it's the only answer.
What do you do? Aha. Way different. You are using a database to manage your business. Now you can move to damn near any platform, including Linux, and get "double-click" functionality. It's all how you look at it.
Make sure you ask the right questions, and you get the right answers.
I definitely did the math and noticed it as much as you did.
Having said that, I'm not particularly familiar with what they do (I know from the article they're an "Energy Company") and what would be standard in such an organization. It seems obvious that since uptime seems critical to them that they would have a lot of support staff; every box counts and every box should be up.
I do know that there's a big difference between a University environment and a critical infrastructure environment. What would be useful would be to know the industry norms, but I think it's fair to say they know what they need and what their competitors are doing.
Databases are not always or automatically subject to copyright. Pure factual information (ie the telephone book) has no creative or interpretive value added to it; it's not an "original work", just a list of factual information.
For the purpose of this I'm going to limit most of this to the information itself in the form of pure text, and won't wade too deeply into the details like the "design" of the database form and fields if it were presented in a GUI format.
There is a grey area where purely factual information is not publicly available, and the unauthorized use of it may be actionable, but usually not on the basis of copyright. What would be the deciding factor would be based on how it was copied; ie word for word including the format, page numbers, annotations, etc would probably be copyright infringement.
If it was limited to the factual information only, an action would probably be based on theft of proprietary information. Should that information be posted publicly, it by definition becomes public from that point on, so fair game from then on. Not to say that a court wouldn't have to rule as such; but posting it publicly would be the basis the ruling would hinge upon.
However, keep in mind that you can't photocopy the phone book and expect to avoid breaking copyright law; you could however enter all the information found in a phone book in your own database and publish that info in a "phone book" that factually is identical to the original.
What is different is you copied the design of the phone book in the first instance (the creative component is the design, with the design incorporating in part some factual information) but just the information it contained in the second (no creative component; just the facts).
Another example; if the database contains original work, even if this only amounts to a field where someone writes something like:
"Bob is an engineer; he and his wife Patty have 3 kids. The whole family loves dogs."... then the copyright stuff can come into play, but again only if that field's text was distributed verbatim.
You could use it as pure information by, for example, putting "Engineer" in a "occupation" field you create and you would be OK.
The pure factual information remains non-copyrightable so one must limit the use to that information only.
There are many instances of factual information that is not subject to copyright itself; even though it might be incorporated into a work subject to rights; for example the title of a song itself is not copyrightable while the title and lyrics together are.
I'm frankly not sure where to start. Let's start at the end.
"Shouldn't cost any more than getting [uranium ore] in the first place."
And what do you suppose mining uranium costs? Yellowcake currently sells for about $10 a pound, and at that price the world's uranium producers are making a very decent profit.
I know many dozens of people in the industry from exploration crews to miners to management.
By "Reversing the mining process" I assume you mean burying it in the ground. Well, that's exactly what they're trying to do, but they do run up against a few probems. For example, if you don't use uranium ore for something, there's no point in mining it in the first place.
But, if you do use it, you inevitably turn it into something much, much more radioactive than the stuff we get out of the ground.
North Korea isn't trying to make bombs out of the stuff that goes IN to the reactor, they make it out of the stuff that comes OUT after they're done using it to boil water and run a steam generator to make electricity.
Different reactor designs vary so the quality of the waste varies as well. But, it's always more dangerous than the stuff that comes out of the ground.
There is more than one type of power-generating reactor that eat uranium, breathe electricity, and shits weapons-grade plutonium two years later. (Thankfully N Korea doesn't have one of those designs, so they have to jump through a few hoops first. But, they have a good start with the waste fuel from the type of power reactors they do have).
There is one sure-fire way to make radioactive material safe. It's called the passage of time. Ever handle a piece of lead? Well, a couple of billion years ago, it was uranium. All uranium eventually turns into lead.
So, if I understand you right, you're saying we wait a billion years until the waste we have is more-or-less the same as the stuff we took out (by then plutonium might decay enough to be similar to yellowcake), and then we bury it.
The author of the story really doesn't know what tubes are used for. The US Department of Defense considers vacuum tube manufacturers a strategic industry, but not for the reasons mentioned.
Standard solid-state electronics can be radiation and Elecromagnetic Pulse (the nuclear thing) hardened with current technology and that's what the military does do.
Radar, now for that you need a high power transmitting tube. They're also used for some other military and scientific applications (mostly to do with particle accelerators and the like), but it's due to the properties (that transistors can't match) for specific uses.
The fact that they're more-or-less immune to EMP is interesting but it's not the real reason the US Military uses them. Instead it's for the very practical reason that they're best suited for some jobs and are the only option for others. Even the Russians are abandoning tubes for much of their military applications now that they can get advanced semiconductor devices.
Do you have a sentimental response to your microwave oven or the radar that keeps your airplane from crashing into another one?
Vacuum tubes all the way, and neither is likely to be replaced by transistors anytime soon (semiconductors don't have the right properties to do the job).
Kind-of-sort-of mentioned in the top ten list though; incandescent light bulbs can be thought of as very simple vacuum tubes; the very first tube that could be used in an electronic circuit was a modified Edison bulb.
So, it's not the PPC chip itself that makes for bad emulated games, it's the way Connectix chose to emulate the hardware. All MS has to to is allow the legacy games to call directly to the video chipset instead of Connectix's solution which was to emulate video as well.
Since MS's xBox2 will have a fixed video system (ie no worries trying to deal with a plethora of user-installable video cards) that shouldn't be a big problem to fix. The emulator will be simpler as well (less hardware to emulate).
Although some games do work under x86 emulation, you're right that many do not really perform all that well.
However, it's obvious why this is if you look at the two issues behind it:
VPC for PPC does not really use the Mac's video card. For versions up to VPC5 it emulates onboard shared video, and sends that to the Mac to deal with by drawing the Windows desktop inside an ordinary application window.
In fact, the video card must draw both the Mac desktop and the Windows desktop in real time. Any game that expects to see a PCI/AGP card sees only an el-cheapo PC with 4MB of onboard (shared in RAM) video.
So, right from the get-go, the emulator is not compatible with most games any more than it would be with a bare-bones PC with no video card installed and game performance would be properly compared to such a PC. Anyone who's serious about games on x86 uses a decent video card to help things along.
VPC 6 does emulate a PCI/AGP card, but again it's in emulation; the video card in the Mac is never detected as such and doesn't get the hardware calls it would with an actual x86 box. Video is processed by the PPC CPU and ordinary motherboard RAM in the emulator, then sent to the video card to be drawn onscreen.
The other issue which isn't as big a deal with XP (it's not allowed, really) but is a big deal with Win95/98 games is that many games make "sneaky" calls to the hardware to overcome various bottlenecks in Windows itself. Games who make those calls to the emulator don't find what they expect to see (not real hardware) and fail.
VPC has always been a business/productivity solution and never a game solution; Connectix's sales literature, product boxes, and web sites always said quite openly that it's not recommended as a solution for x86 gaming and game issues are not supported.
VPC7 will support G5s and is expected to ship by mid-year. That's a long way away from the launch date of the next xBox, so I don't see a big issue with that.
It would also seem that emulating the 1st generation xBox with it's closed hardware would be simpler than emulating a complete Intel-based computer (onboard AC97 sound, onboard video or virtual PCI/AGP video with VPC6, networking cards, i/o, etc) which is what VPC does. An x86 application in PPC/VPC sees everything as if it really existed in hardware, complete with the expected drivers.
Finally, Connectix has long shipped VPC for x86 along with it's PPC variant (it's what MS really wanted in the first place, Connectix was MS's second choice; they would have preferred not to have to send VPC to the MacBU at all).
So, I think most of the pieces are there already, or awfully close to being there very soon.
Cable is reliable, assuming your local provider is above the sham level. If you're a "bring it on and I don't want to deal with it" kind of guy, you'll prefer cable.
Satellite has advantages, mostly in the way of programming choices over cable. With cable you're stuck with whatever deal your local provider offers; sat offers choice and in my humble opinion should be seen as programming options rather than service options.
Number one, as always, is cost. Where I'm from, cable and sat are pretty much identical; so it's a push. If that's not the case with your providers, it's gotta be a consideration.
Sat can be unreliable if the dish isn't installed properly.
The sat companies tend to underplay the installation issues. "Buy the dish, throw it up damn near anywhere, you're good to go" is the mantra. They're lying.
You want a solid dish mount. The sat companies tend to suggest that you can just use the cheezy mount that comes in the box and go. In my experience, a handy person can do better and it pays off. My sat is stabilized with "aircraft cable" and turnbuckles, and doesn't move a fraction of an inch in 60 mph winds. It's also mounted on a pole that puts it above power lines and the neighbors. The mount/dish they give you will wallow like jello in a decent wind and you will notice it.
Sat is a kind of digital link, in that as long as you get 55% or so signal, it's fine. Drop below that even a bit and it starts to crap out, and in a digital sort of way it's all good or it's all crap. I get 85% plus and in a 60 mph gale or solid downpour I still get over 60%.
Even if they swear the little dish they give you is fine, you can always do better with a bigger dish. The improvement in signal strength really matters if trouble-free is important to you. Spring for a larger dish and you will never regret it; it does make a big difference.
People who lose reception due to snow, rain and obstructions are people who bought the party line and use the dish that comes with the cheapest bundle, and mounted it the way the instructions said to. I live in a heavy snow zone and it's less of a problem than rain or wind. You can buy a cover that is signal-transparent but keeps snow and rain off the dish. They work fine.
Don't believe their lies (and by "their" I mean the dish networks, not the users, who, after all, just trusted the sat company to tell it like it is).
If that's too much trouble or not a viable option due to your location or whatever, then go with cable. Personally I despise the cable company, but I'm not too proud to suck it up when they're the best option. If I lived in an apartment I'd go cable without a second thought.
The EU could assess a maximum fine of 2.5 billion Euros if Microsoft is found to have engaged in anti-competitive behavior.
Without regard for what many believe to be MS's list of anti-competitive actions, the EU complaint centers on two issues and those issues alone determine the findings and penalty (if any):
Microsoft is accused by the EU of trying to squelch rival products to its Windows Media Player, such as RealPlayer and Apple QuickTime.
Microsoft has also been accused of trying to squeeze out other firms in the market for "low-end servers" -- computers that provide e-mail and other services to multiple users and might run rival open-source software.
Anything else, no matter how guilty MS is of doing so, isn't part of the complaint and is moot.
The remedy proposed by the EU will almost certainly contain other conditions besides monetary penalties. As in the US judgment against MS, it's these conditions which will probably impact MS's future business and income, not the fine.
It is also widely believed that Microsoft will almost certainly appeal any decision that doesn't vindicate the company; estimates vary but all generally agree a final decision and remedy is years away.
The Pro version costs money because it includes licensed codecs (which Apple has to pay for). They already pay licenses for codecs included in the free version.
So, if you really hate Apple, download QT but don't use it; you'll make them cut another check to someone, and it won't cost you a dime.
And, for the last time, the Nag is gone with QT6 and won't be back.
All it does is launch and play, like all players should.
What is unusual is they admit that they knew what the outcome would be before they paid to have an "independant" person study the very areas they had already assessed.
And since they paid for the research, they get to limit the scope of that research. It's a bit beyond declining to publish the bad news.
"... Dan Leach, group product manager for the Microsoft Office System, was asked at the time whether Microsoft would have publicized the results if they hadn't been positive. He answered that he had been so confident in the software's benefits that it "was never going to be a question."..."
It practically proves that only positive studies will be cited; at a minimum it means that only comparisons they are confident of "winning" would form the scope of a study.
You can use either British or US spelling, as you please. Just don't mix one with the other in the same text (like I'm about to do now; it's OK though, because I'm doing it to illustrate an example).
So, if I said color is spelled without a U, fine.
I can also say colour is spelt with a U. Fine again.
Although this is just a bit beyond free, you might find it worthwhile to go to a hobby store (craft store) and buy a box of silica gel. It's cheap (less than $5) and there's enough in one box to equal about a thousand of the little packages.
Keep away from children and your dog. It can cause major problems if the eat it. Any air-permeable container is fine; for example a film container with a few holes punched in it. If you or someone you know can sew, then little bags can be sewn up. Throw one in with every "bag" of stuff you want to keep dry.
Silica gel is re-useable; it will go brownish when it no longer can absorb any more moisture. Pop it into the oven at moderately warm temperature for a bit (say, 140F at 20 minutes) and it will change back to it's original color and work just fine again. That works for the little packages too.
It's essentially what much archival storage consists of. It's best if you can dedicate a 'fridge to the job; that way you can set the temperature a little higher than what works for food. A properly set up fridge is cool, dark, and low in humidity; just what the doctor ordered. It might even survive a fire if you're lucky.
The spindle thing I would question, though. Close contact isn't a good idea. Try slim jewel cases, stored upright in a box, and cover the box with a garbage bag taped up. If you must use spindles, store them so the disks are upright.
If for some reason you need access to the disks, take the box out of the fridge, rip off the tape, and let it sit on the counter for a half-day or so to acclimatize.
You can store photographs, slides, important documents, rare books, and heirlooms there as well. Upright is usually better.
CDs and magnetic tape don't like it too cold; the rest love it, but any lowering of the temperature helps. Around 40F is probably a good compromise.
In answer to your first question; yes it's "real gold" (fake gold, whatever that is, wouldn't have the properties that make gold an appropriate medium for archival purposes).
Of course you're assuming it's a lot of gold, and therefore should cost like gold jewelry. It is a very thin layer, and costs little; it just costs a bit more than a very thin layer of silver or aluminum. You might be getting, say, a dollar's worth (probably much less).
An extra dime or dollar a disk is too much for Wall-Mart's buyers to swallow; you won't see them there.
Resellers whose customers include photographers, research, libraries, content creators, and certain corporate users will stock it.
Well I don't think we're coming from the same place. I was being a bit tongue-in-cheek. But, since you went to the effort of replying, so will I.
Honesty about Past Behavior and Future Intentions happens now, with decent relationships. There was no reason to drag out the lie detector then, and there isn't now.
Dating can be fun, exciting or terribly boring. Small talk, flirting, all that stuff are essentially lies, although they're not harmful lies because everybody (in this case, "everybody" equals exactly two) is in on it. When those same two people start believing those little lies, then we say they're in love.
I would dump a person instantly if I found out they were filtering my sweet, meaningless phone calls through a love & lie detector. Life's too short to spend the rest of my days with someone like that.
Advertising? My latest edition of the Economist (it was sitting right here) has this zinger:
"20/20 Warfare. Only Northrop Grumman has the vision and technology to transfer the chaos of warfare into clarity." ONLY them. Wow. I suppose we should give then a network or something, so they could enlighten us with their perfect wisdom.
How's this one: "And in the ubiquitous networked society of the near future, you'll be connected to everyone and everything, anytime and anyplace. Even your Cat." I swear I did not make that up. Hitachi did.
Politicians, especially good ones but bad ones as well, don't deal with knowledge. They deal with issues of their constituents.
If I have an issue with lie detectors, I don't expect my representative to know about them. I expect him to listen to me and put one of his staff lackies on it so he can be briefed about whatever they find out.
And after he's been briefed and they've decided on a course of action or a position, he'll only know enough to defend that. He doesn't need to know more.
Now his staff, there's a bunch who would know too much and would have plenty to lie about. They'd have to hide out somewhere till the next election lest someone ask them a pointed question.
Keep in mind that these tests rely solely on the teller's belief in them. If I honestly believe in something implausible or downright untrue, it won't trigger an alarm with these systems; it could even be said such a device "proves it's true". So much for accuracy.
In closing I must say that your assessment of the openness and accuracy of what goes for information today is vastly more optimistic than mine.
But I wonder; exactly when was it that the "citizenry's sources of information" were not in control of an elite? Before Hearst's time, perhaps?
Thanks again for taking the time to reply. Regards.
The underlying technology for the device is produced by Nemisysco of Israel. If you go to their site you see that the eyeglasses use their "Entertainment" class detection engine.
"... The more professional the investigation is, and the more risk is in stake, the sensitivity of the test must be reduced to avoid "White Noise"..."
All the investigative level engines use low or auto-adjustable sensitivity. The Entertainment-level devices use "Normal" sensitivity (ie less accurate).
The only "High" sensitivity software listed is for an Entertainment-level device aimed at children.
So I think we can safely assume that "Normal" sensitivity is really "High" since a kid's toy would be a just-for-fun device that could be demonstrated in use, by kids, to be wrong enough of the time that it's still cool to play with.
Whew. Not only doesn't it work, but the software developers actually say as much.
Slashdot Mirror
Certainly newsworthy, if only because it's somewhat related to one of the biggest US stories of the last few years, so It's appropriate that /. posts it.
But, this is very early. It will take a while to play out, and there will be more news to come.
Before any of this can even get off the ground, there's Privacy Legislation to consider. Not a one of these ISPs can comply with the demand for names (even if they are suspected of wanting to, such as some have said about Videotron) unless they vet the order with whole bunch of lawyers.
Chances are the lawyers will nix it right there; the penalties for complying if it violates the Privacy Act are very serious, and will be assessed on the ISPs themselves.
Certainly CIRA is not a law-enforcement agency, and John Law won't be investigating any part of a civil complaint. So, a court order will have to compel the ISPs to provide any information before any of this can start.
Canadian courts can consider judgments from any jurisdiction, so although it won't be a legal precedent that must be followed, the recent US cases denying the names to the RIAA will almost certainly be part of the ISPs arguments against complying.
Then there's the matter of violations of the Copyright Act. It's quite clear that uploading music is against the law (there are quite a few paragraphs in the legislation that spells out a wide variety of specific examples), so not much problem there.
Finally, there's the matter of penalties. This is where it gets kind of strange. CIRA can't hope to get much money from anyone it successfully sues; there's no statutory penalty scheme as in the US and even if there were, Canadian law requires penalties to fit the level of harm.
The penalty phase would be pure speculation, but as food for thought I expect the courts are going to value the cost of uploading a song in mp3 format as worth perhaps 99 cents if they base it on market value (PressPlay online music store in Canada). That's 99 cents once. Next song, next 99 cents.
I would be shocked if they value it higher without any financial gain from the defendant; cases of "true piracy" (1) don't extend much beyond confiscation and a fine loosely based on the value of goods duplicated.
Certainly I could be wrong, but I don't see anyone getting dinged for anything even remotely approaching the statutory penalty for a single instance of infringement in the US.
CIRA can hope to get some favorable rulings, and wave that around as a warning to others. But the cost of each prosecution is going to vastly exceed the value of a judgment, although they might be awarded costs as well.
And there's great danger in a precedent that doesn't advance CIRA's position (starting with the Privacy Law obstacle). It's risky for them to start this stuff up, but since they have, we can assume they're willing to accept the risk.
(1) I've used the definition of Piracy used by IFPA, the umbrella organization for such national agencies as CIRA and the RIAA. They define Piracy as commercial copying and sales of CDs; essentially what legislatures refer to as Counterfeit duplication. By their own definiton, sharing music is not Piracy, which is why I used the phrase "true piracy" here.
I'm well aware that the term Piracy itself is somewhat controversial, but I take the position that English is a living language and definitions are as much about use as references in dictionaries.
" ... nearly every workstation needs to have QB installed so we can get our job done. ..."
... is it really true? Do you need Quickbooks on every workstation? Because if it isn't true, then you have a world of options.
If that's true, then you need QuickBooks and Windows on your desktops.
But, I as you
QuickBooks is a glorified database. A database could be described as essentially the oldest application use for desktop computing; it was around on the Apple ][ and is on the list of the first 3 apps you need to launch a platform. Everybody's got one.
What do you use? QuickBooks. If you look at it that way, it's the only answer.
What do you do? Aha. Way different. You are using a database to manage your business. Now you can move to damn near any platform, including Linux, and get "double-click" functionality. It's all how you look at it.
Make sure you ask the right questions, and you get the right answers.
I definitely did the math and noticed it as much as you did.
Having said that, I'm not particularly familiar with what they do (I know from the article they're an "Energy Company") and what would be standard in such an organization. It seems obvious that since uptime seems critical to them that they would have a lot of support staff; every box counts and every box should be up.
I do know that there's a big difference between a University environment and a critical infrastructure environment. What would be useful would be to know the industry norms, but I think it's fair to say they know what they need and what their competitors are doing.
Interesting, but not an argument either way.
Databases are not always or automatically subject to copyright. Pure factual information (ie the telephone book) has no creative or interpretive value added to it; it's not an "original work", just a list of factual information.
... then the copyright stuff can come into play, but again only if that field's text was distributed verbatim.
For the purpose of this I'm going to limit most of this to the information itself in the form of pure text, and won't wade too deeply into the details like the "design" of the database form and fields if it were presented in a GUI format.
There is a grey area where purely factual information is not publicly available, and the unauthorized use of it may be actionable, but usually not on the basis of copyright. What would be the deciding factor would be based on how it was copied; ie word for word including the format, page numbers, annotations, etc would probably be copyright infringement.
If it was limited to the factual information only, an action would probably be based on theft of proprietary information. Should that information be posted publicly, it by definition becomes public from that point on, so fair game from then on. Not to say that a court wouldn't have to rule as such; but posting it publicly would be the basis the ruling would hinge upon.
However, keep in mind that you can't photocopy the phone book and expect to avoid breaking copyright law; you could however enter all the information found in a phone book in your own database and publish that info in a "phone book" that factually is identical to the original.
What is different is you copied the design of the phone book in the first instance (the creative component is the design, with the design incorporating in part some factual information) but just the information it contained in the second (no creative component; just the facts).
Another example; if the database contains original work, even if this only amounts to a field where someone writes something like:
"Bob is an engineer; he and his wife Patty have 3 kids. The whole family loves dogs."
You could use it as pure information by, for example, putting "Engineer" in a "occupation" field you create and you would be OK.
The pure factual information remains non-copyrightable so one must limit the use to that information only.
There are many instances of factual information that is not subject to copyright itself; even though it might be incorporated into a work subject to rights; for example the title of a song itself is not copyrightable while the title and lyrics together are.
I'm frankly not sure where to start. Let's start at the end.
"Shouldn't cost any more than getting [uranium ore] in the first place."
And what do you suppose mining uranium costs? Yellowcake currently sells for about $10 a pound, and at that price the world's uranium producers are making a very decent profit.
I know many dozens of people in the industry from exploration crews to miners to management.
By "Reversing the mining process" I assume you mean burying it in the ground. Well, that's exactly what they're trying to do, but they do run up against a few probems. For example, if you don't use uranium ore for something, there's no point in mining it in the first place.
But, if you do use it, you inevitably turn it into something much, much more radioactive than the stuff we get out of the ground.
North Korea isn't trying to make bombs out of the stuff that goes IN to the reactor, they make it out of the stuff that comes OUT after they're done using it to boil water and run a steam generator to make electricity.
Different reactor designs vary so the quality of the waste varies as well. But, it's always more dangerous than the stuff that comes out of the ground.
There is more than one type of power-generating reactor that eat uranium, breathe electricity, and shits weapons-grade plutonium two years later. (Thankfully N Korea doesn't have one of those designs, so they have to jump through a few hoops first. But, they have a good start with the waste fuel from the type of power reactors they do have).
There is one sure-fire way to make radioactive material safe. It's called the passage of time. Ever handle a piece of lead? Well, a couple of billion years ago, it was uranium. All uranium eventually turns into lead.
So, if I understand you right, you're saying we wait a billion years until the waste we have is more-or-less the same as the stuff we took out (by then plutonium might decay enough to be similar to yellowcake), and then we bury it.
Gotcha.
It's not there on my copy, and I definitely didn't upgrade to QT Pro (Windows XP and Win98SE boxes checked to verify).
However I think I've got to the bottom of the confusion:
QuickTime v6.4 kills the nag. Earlier versions of QT6 still have it.
Current version is QT v6.5.
The author of the story really doesn't know what tubes are used for. The US Department of Defense considers vacuum tube manufacturers a strategic industry, but not for the reasons mentioned.
Standard solid-state electronics can be radiation and Elecromagnetic Pulse (the nuclear thing) hardened with current technology and that's what the military does do.
Radar, now for that you need a high power transmitting tube. They're also used for some other military and scientific applications (mostly to do with particle accelerators and the like), but it's due to the properties (that transistors can't match) for specific uses.
The fact that they're more-or-less immune to EMP is interesting but it's not the real reason the US Military uses them. Instead it's for the very practical reason that they're best suited for some jobs and are the only option for others. Even the Russians are abandoning tubes for much of their military applications now that they can get advanced semiconductor devices.
Do you have a sentimental response to your microwave oven or the radar that keeps your airplane from crashing into another one?
Vacuum tubes all the way, and neither is likely to be replaced by transistors anytime soon (semiconductors don't have the right properties to do the job).
Kind-of-sort-of mentioned in the top ten list though; incandescent light bulbs can be thought of as very simple vacuum tubes; the very first tube that could be used in an electronic circuit was a modified Edison bulb.
I meant to add:
So, it's not the PPC chip itself that makes for bad emulated games, it's the way Connectix chose to emulate the hardware. All MS has to to is allow the legacy games to call directly to the video chipset instead of Connectix's solution which was to emulate video as well.
Since MS's xBox2 will have a fixed video system (ie no worries trying to deal with a plethora of user-installable video cards) that shouldn't be a big problem to fix. The emulator will be simpler as well (less hardware to emulate).
Although some games do work under x86 emulation, you're right that many do not really perform all that well.
However, it's obvious why this is if you look at the two issues behind it:
VPC for PPC does not really use the Mac's video card. For versions up to VPC5 it emulates onboard shared video, and sends that to the Mac to deal with by drawing the Windows desktop inside an ordinary application window.
In fact, the video card must draw both the Mac desktop and the Windows desktop in real time. Any game that expects to see a PCI/AGP card sees only an el-cheapo PC with 4MB of onboard (shared in RAM) video.
So, right from the get-go, the emulator is not compatible with most games any more than it would be with a bare-bones PC with no video card installed and game performance would be properly compared to such a PC. Anyone who's serious about games on x86 uses a decent video card to help things along.
VPC 6 does emulate a PCI/AGP card, but again it's in emulation; the video card in the Mac is never detected as such and doesn't get the hardware calls it would with an actual x86 box. Video is processed by the PPC CPU and ordinary motherboard RAM in the emulator, then sent to the video card to be drawn onscreen.
The other issue which isn't as big a deal with XP (it's not allowed, really) but is a big deal with Win95/98 games is that many games make "sneaky" calls to the hardware to overcome various bottlenecks in Windows itself. Games who make those calls to the emulator don't find what they expect to see (not real hardware) and fail.
VPC has always been a business/productivity solution and never a game solution; Connectix's sales literature, product boxes, and web sites always said quite openly that it's not recommended as a solution for x86 gaming and game issues are not supported.
VPC7 will support G5s and is expected to ship by mid-year. That's a long way away from the launch date of the next xBox, so I don't see a big issue with that.
It would also seem that emulating the 1st generation xBox with it's closed hardware would be simpler than emulating a complete Intel-based computer (onboard AC97 sound, onboard video or virtual PCI/AGP video with VPC6, networking cards, i/o, etc) which is what VPC does. An x86 application in PPC/VPC sees everything as if it really existed in hardware, complete with the expected drivers.
Finally, Connectix has long shipped VPC for x86 along with it's PPC variant (it's what MS really wanted in the first place, Connectix was MS's second choice; they would have preferred not to have to send VPC to the MacBU at all).
So, I think most of the pieces are there already, or awfully close to being there very soon.
Cable is reliable, assuming your local provider is above the sham level. If you're a "bring it on and I don't want to deal with it" kind of guy, you'll prefer cable.
Satellite has advantages, mostly in the way of programming choices over cable. With cable you're stuck with whatever deal your local provider offers; sat offers choice and in my humble opinion should be seen as programming options rather than service options.
Number one, as always, is cost. Where I'm from, cable and sat are pretty much identical; so it's a push. If that's not the case with your providers, it's gotta be a consideration.
Sat can be unreliable if the dish isn't installed properly.
The sat companies tend to underplay the installation issues. "Buy the dish, throw it up damn near anywhere, you're good to go" is the mantra. They're lying.
You want a solid dish mount. The sat companies tend to suggest that you can just use the cheezy mount that comes in the box and go. In my experience, a handy person can do better and it pays off. My sat is stabilized with "aircraft cable" and turnbuckles, and doesn't move a fraction of an inch in 60 mph winds. It's also mounted on a pole that puts it above power lines and the neighbors. The mount/dish they give you will wallow like jello in a decent wind and you will notice it.
Sat is a kind of digital link, in that as long as you get 55% or so signal, it's fine. Drop below that even a bit and it starts to crap out, and in a digital sort of way it's all good or it's all crap. I get 85% plus and in a 60 mph gale or solid downpour I still get over 60%.
Even if they swear the little dish they give you is fine, you can always do better with a bigger dish. The improvement in signal strength really matters if trouble-free is important to you. Spring for a larger dish and you will never regret it; it does make a big difference.
People who lose reception due to snow, rain and obstructions are people who bought the party line and use the dish that comes with the cheapest bundle, and mounted it the way the instructions said to. I live in a heavy snow zone and it's less of a problem than rain or wind. You can buy a cover that is signal-transparent but keeps snow and rain off the dish. They work fine.
Don't believe their lies (and by "their" I mean the dish networks, not the users, who, after all, just trusted the sat company to tell it like it is).
If that's too much trouble or not a viable option due to your location or whatever, then go with cable. Personally I despise the cable company, but I'm not too proud to suck it up when they're the best option. If I lived in an apartment I'd go cable without a second thought.
The EU could assess a maximum fine of 2.5 billion Euros if Microsoft is found to have engaged in anti-competitive behavior.
Without regard for what many believe to be MS's list of anti-competitive actions, the EU complaint centers on two issues and those issues alone determine the findings and penalty (if any):
Microsoft is accused by the EU of trying to squelch rival products to its Windows Media Player, such as RealPlayer and Apple QuickTime.
Microsoft has also been accused of trying to squeeze out other firms in the market for "low-end servers" -- computers that provide e-mail and other services to multiple users and might run rival open-source software.
Anything else, no matter how guilty MS is of doing so, isn't part of the complaint and is moot.
The remedy proposed by the EU will almost certainly contain other conditions besides monetary penalties. As in the US judgment against MS, it's these conditions which will probably impact MS's future business and income, not the fine.
It is also widely believed that Microsoft will almost certainly appeal any decision that doesn't vindicate the company; estimates vary but all generally agree a final decision and remedy is years away.
The Pro version costs money because it includes licensed codecs (which Apple has to pay for). They already pay licenses for codecs included in the free version.
So, if you really hate Apple, download QT but don't use it; you'll make them cut another check to someone, and it won't cost you a dime.
And, for the last time, the Nag is gone with QT6 and won't be back.
All it does is launch and play, like all players should.
If your annoying popup is referring to the "QuickTime Pro" nag, it's gone, and has been for a while. Try QT6x.
You are using British spelling, just like they do in Hong Kong, Australia, Jamaica and every other Commonwealth Country.
In Canadian colleges, you can uses either for an essay. But mix one with the other, and your Prof will dock you marks for spelling/punctuation.
Read the whole sentence. It's called "context".
Of course we expect MS to cite positive research.
What is unusual is they admit that they knew what the outcome would be before they paid to have an "independant" person study the very areas they had already assessed.
And since they paid for the research, they get to limit the scope of that research. It's a bit beyond declining to publish the bad news.
You don't hear that kind of admission every day.
I just love the last paragraph:
... Dan Leach, group product manager for the Microsoft Office System, was asked at the time whether Microsoft would have publicized the results if they hadn't been positive. He answered that he had been so confident in the software's benefits that it "was never going to be a question." ..."
"
It practically proves that only positive studies will be cited; at a minimum it means that only comparisons they are confident of "winning" would form the scope of a study.
It's called consistency.
You can use either British or US spelling, as you please. Just don't mix one with the other in the same text (like I'm about to do now; it's OK though, because I'm doing it to illustrate an example).
So, if I said color is spelled without a U, fine.
I can also say colour is spelt with a U. Fine again.
Although this is just a bit beyond free, you might find it worthwhile to go to a hobby store (craft store) and buy a box of silica gel. It's cheap (less than $5) and there's enough in one box to equal about a thousand of the little packages.
Keep away from children and your dog. It can cause major problems if the eat it. Any air-permeable container is fine; for example a film container with a few holes punched in it. If you or someone you know can sew, then little bags can be sewn up. Throw one in with every "bag" of stuff you want to keep dry.
Silica gel is re-useable; it will go brownish when it no longer can absorb any more moisture. Pop it into the oven at moderately warm temperature for a bit (say, 140F at 20 minutes) and it will change back to it's original color and work just fine again. That works for the little packages too.
It's essentially what much archival storage consists of. It's best if you can dedicate a 'fridge to the job; that way you can set the temperature a little higher than what works for food. A properly set up fridge is cool, dark, and low in humidity; just what the doctor ordered. It might even survive a fire if you're lucky.
The spindle thing I would question, though. Close contact isn't a good idea. Try slim jewel cases, stored upright in a box, and cover the box with a garbage bag taped up. If you must use spindles, store them so the disks are upright.
If for some reason you need access to the disks, take the box out of the fridge, rip off the tape, and let it sit on the counter for a half-day or so to acclimatize.
You can store photographs, slides, important documents, rare books, and heirlooms there as well. Upright is usually better.
CDs and magnetic tape don't like it too cold; the rest love it, but any lowering of the temperature helps. Around 40F is probably a good compromise.
In answer to your first question; yes it's "real gold" (fake gold, whatever that is, wouldn't have the properties that make gold an appropriate medium for archival purposes).
Of course you're assuming it's a lot of gold, and therefore should cost like gold jewelry. It is a very thin layer, and costs little; it just costs a bit more than a very thin layer of silver or aluminum. You might be getting, say, a dollar's worth (probably much less).
An extra dime or dollar a disk is too much for Wall-Mart's buyers to swallow; you won't see them there.
Resellers whose customers include photographers, research, libraries, content creators, and certain corporate users will stock it.
Well I don't think we're coming from the same place. I was being a bit tongue-in-cheek. But, since you went to the effort of replying, so will I.
Honesty about Past Behavior and Future Intentions happens now, with decent relationships. There was no reason to drag out the lie detector then, and there isn't now.
Dating can be fun, exciting or terribly boring. Small talk, flirting, all that stuff are essentially lies, although they're not harmful lies because everybody (in this case, "everybody" equals exactly two) is in on it. When those same two people start believing those little lies, then we say they're in love.
I would dump a person instantly if I found out they were filtering my sweet, meaningless phone calls through a love & lie detector. Life's too short to spend the rest of my days with someone like that.
Advertising? My latest edition of the Economist (it was sitting right here) has this zinger:
"20/20 Warfare. Only Northrop Grumman has the vision and technology to transfer the chaos of warfare into clarity."
ONLY them. Wow. I suppose we should give then a network or something, so they could enlighten us with their perfect wisdom.
How's this one:
"And in the ubiquitous networked society of the near future, you'll be connected to everyone and everything, anytime and anyplace. Even your Cat."
I swear I did not make that up. Hitachi did.
Politicians, especially good ones but bad ones as well, don't deal with knowledge. They deal with issues of their constituents.
If I have an issue with lie detectors, I don't expect my representative to know about them. I expect him to listen to me and put one of his staff lackies on it so he can be briefed about whatever they find out.
And after he's been briefed and they've decided on a course of action or a position, he'll only know enough to defend that. He doesn't need to know more.
Now his staff, there's a bunch who would know too much and would have plenty to lie about. They'd have to hide out somewhere till the next election lest someone ask them a pointed question.
Keep in mind that these tests rely solely on the teller's belief in them. If I honestly believe in something implausible or downright untrue, it won't trigger an alarm with these systems; it could even be said such a device "proves it's true". So much for accuracy.
In closing I must say that your assessment of the openness and accuracy of what goes for information today is vastly more optimistic than mine.
But I wonder; exactly when was it that the "citizenry's sources of information" were not in control of an elite? Before Hearst's time, perhaps?
Thanks again for taking the time to reply. Regards.
The underlying technology for the device is produced by Nemisysco of Israel. If you go to their site you see that the eyeglasses use their "Entertainment" class detection engine.
... The more professional the investigation is, and the more risk is in stake, the sensitivity of the test must be reduced to avoid "White Noise" ..."
"
All the investigative level engines use low or auto-adjustable sensitivity. The Entertainment-level devices use "Normal" sensitivity (ie less accurate).
The only "High" sensitivity software listed is for an Entertainment-level device aimed at children.
So I think we can safely assume that "Normal" sensitivity is really "High" since a kid's toy would be a just-for-fun device that could be demonstrated in use, by kids, to be wrong enough of the time that it's still cool to play with.
Whew. Not only doesn't it work, but the software developers actually say as much.