This will be modded into flamebait hell, but I wonder: How many of the "I don't want to give any money to the RIAA mafia" and "the RIAA screws artists" crowd have sent their favorite band a few dollar bills in an envelope for the non-DRM encumbered music they downloaded of a torrent? Not every band, but just a single dollar to the band that is most prominent on their mp3 player.
You can do it anonymously, just put a dollar bill in an envelope, wipe off the finger prints and drop in a mail box at lease a mile from your house. Maybe that would convince more band to see a monetary advantage in making their songs available for download outside the labels.
Actually, the decision goes further than this: the court decided that a judge cannot issue a search warrant that would allow hacking into a suspects computer. They basically say that since it is a clandestine police operation, it has to follow the much stricter wiretapping rules. According to the German Constitutional Court, this limits wiretapping to crimes that are punishable by at least 5 years of jail. In other words, the police will have a much harder time getting approval for hacking into a suspects computer, than getting a search warrant that lets them go and impound the computer.
Hey, I agree and I disagree at the same time. THAAD or any anti-missile system that works would be a boon to a state like Israel which has limited strike back capabilities. Or for troops in the field. And it's definitely a more humane option than MAD. But if you believe for one minute that any US government would not turn a country that just nuked LA into a large sheet of glass, I have a nice beach in Arizona that you might be interested in.
The Wikipedia article is pretty misleading, but your translation is worse. As stated in the first paragraph of the Wikipedia article, the GEMA has about 70,000 paying members (artists, publishers, authors), these paying members decide how the royalties are being distributed. This is German law and very similar to the US: to take part in decisions, you have to be a member of the organization. Try electing a union, HOA or club president without being part of the union, HOA or club.
Now, of course the most popular ones make the most money. Similar to the US where someone who sells 10 million CDs gets more money from their music than a local band who is happy to sell 5000. What the article actually says is that 10% of the members get 70% of the royalties. M0st probably, 1% will get 50% of the royalties, not because of some grand conspiracy, but because they sell more CDs or books than the rest combined.
But thinkers is not what most employers want in the freshly graduated engineers they hire. They want someone they can put onto project x using software y or tool z on day one, no matter how much their CEOs might talk about how they want "thinker" and "pioneers". There are some exceptions, but "I can layout amplifier circuits in ORCAD, program in Matlab and have never looked at anything except radar" will get you into the door at, say, Raytheon much faster than "I learned that I am good at problem solving". Now, it's a different story for engineering masters or PhD grads, but still most HR people prefer the skills match, be it Matlab or AutoCad, over the intangible qualities. This is at least partly due to the fact that you can't easily judge them in a resume and a short interview, but also because the engineering manager tells them "I need someone who can fill the place of the AutoCAD monkey who quit last week.
Creativity and "thinking" probably makes you advance faster once you have a job, or when you apply for your second job, but out of college, it's not the most looked for quality.
Disclaimer: I got a software job immediately after graduating in nuclear physics.
If humans in 3406 don't know how to repackage radioactive waste into new containers using 2006 or later technology, I think they have bigger problems than leaky plutonium containers.
I'm not trying to be facetious or callous here, but we would have a problem if the MTBF was 1000 years, but this means that some time in the next 1000+ years someone needs to do something that's entirely possible and done every day with current technology. So where precisely is the problem? Just make sure to put a marker somewhere.
I still amazes me that here in the Bay Area, the following lead to immediate gridlock:
-Exits. Even if it's on the right of a seven lane freeway, half to people slow down to 20, a quarter tries to exit by cutting across six lanes, and the rest stops to ask for directions. -Parallel parking. Four lane city street, parkee swings out into left lane (or the first of the opposite lanes), backs up to the curb at right angle, hits the curb, gets out of the car--which now blocks both lanes causing other drivers to pass across the center divider effectively shutting down both directions--to assess the situation, asks a few pedestrians for their opinion, gets back into the car, maneuvers back and forth a bit more, gives up, and cedes the spot to a city bus which fits easily. -45 degree parking. Should be easy, right? Well, most Cali drivers miss the spot on the first few tries necessitating backing up across two lanes of traffic a couple of times.
I think he should loose his job over something like this. They put out data that clearly bordered on fraudulent--if the sample size and method you quote is correct. Unfortunately, the report is not public, so I can't verify that. He should even more loose his job over the blog posting: Hehe, this is very funny, not our fault at all, it's everyone else who's wrong. Screwing up is one thing, gloating about it and blaming everybody else, including his customer, is another.
Now, most analysts are completely wrong some of the time (Gartner's and IDG's projections on the Itanuim come to mind), but this is just about the first time that I've seen any analysts doing the Nanananana Dance after being caught out.
And if he really belived that his sample and methodology--again, as described by you--is valid, someone should revoke his statistics degree and publically whip all his instructors.
Maybe in his mind, but the last time I checked, SCOTUS still decides what constitutional law is and isn't. I don't play a lawyer on TV, but if the judge rules against Take 2, one of the first arguments of their lawyers will be first amendment case law. Unless there are even better causes for appeal in Florida law.
Even if there are, though, I would probably go and try to get a Federal court to take jurisdiction under all kinds of statutes.
So I RTFA (first mistake). What Jonathan seems to be blogging is not that the centralized data storage would go out the window, but the glass walled, polished showcase data center on the main floor. You know, the impressive early Hackers datacenter. Already, at many companies, the servers are utilities like the generator or the PBX--stowed away in a room somewhere.
Now if 20 connected server racks in 20 rooms is better than the big room might be a good question. But I don't think anyone seriously suggests to link all the wireless drill bits from the Gulf of Mexico to Siberia in real time.
I am too TGIF brain fried to run through Magnus-Tetens calculations today, but at 30cents/gallon--or $3 as you probably correctly guesstimate--this might be even less efficient than cooling a hunk of metal and blowing cool air over it.
Oh, you mean "Californians Against Higher Taxes, a group of firefighters, first responders, concerned citizens, and Chevron Corporation"?
It's interesting to see how many firefighters and first responders funded this grassroots movement. If you don't want to bother with the link, out of the $52 million they raised, 99% comes from oil producers with Chevron and Aera Energy Llp picking up most of the tab.
By the way, why does every freaking campaign ad in California have a firefighter in it????
Joke well taken, but aiming a fan at a sail from the deck would actually work. The air gets deflected backwards by the sail creating thrust which propels the boat forward. The inertia--ok, it's Bugs Bunny, so lets call it recoil--from the fan goes into a closed system as long as Bugs doesn't fall of the bench or the boat gets pulled apart.
For a non-cartoon, real world application, see thrust vectoring.
The article is still fairly obvious nonsense. Obvious enough that New Scientist should have caught this very early in the editing process.
That's exactly why people bash them. They are "very dense and very scholarly works"--absolutely unlike LoTR and The Hobbit. Which is fine, but most readers expect another LoTR when they purchase them, and the publishers and Christopher Tolkien do nothing to dispel that assumption. A bit shady at best, false advertising at the worst.
And yes, I've read most of them at some time or another in the last 20 years. And they fall somewhere between Ulysses and Finnegan's Wake in difficulty. Unfortunately, they are less fun to read--and far less funny--than either.
Slashdot Mirror
This will be modded into flamebait hell, but I wonder: How many of the "I don't want to give any money to the RIAA mafia" and "the RIAA screws artists" crowd have sent their favorite band a few dollar bills in an envelope for the non-DRM encumbered music they downloaded of a torrent? Not every band, but just a single dollar to the band that is most prominent on their mp3 player.
You can do it anonymously, just put a dollar bill in an envelope, wipe off the finger prints and drop in a mail box at lease a mile from your house. Maybe that would convince more band to see a monetary advantage in making their songs available for download outside the labels.
Actually, the decision goes further than this: the court decided that a judge cannot issue a search warrant that would allow hacking into a suspects computer. They basically say that since it is a clandestine police operation, it has to follow the much stricter wiretapping rules. According to the German Constitutional Court, this limits wiretapping to crimes that are punishable by at least 5 years of jail. In other words, the police will have a much harder time getting approval for hacking into a suspects computer, than getting a search warrant that lets them go and impound the computer.
You forget one important thing: Germany is not GWB's America. ;-)
Hey, I agree and I disagree at the same time. THAAD or any anti-missile system that works would be a boon to a state like Israel which has limited strike back capabilities. Or for troops in the field. And it's definitely a more humane option than MAD. But if you believe for one minute that any US government would not turn a country that just nuked LA into a large sheet of glass, I have a nice beach in Arizona that you might be interested in.
The Wikipedia article is pretty misleading, but your translation is worse. As stated in the first paragraph of the Wikipedia article, the GEMA has about 70,000 paying members (artists, publishers, authors), these paying members decide how the royalties are being distributed. This is German law and very similar to the US: to take part in decisions, you have to be a member of the organization. Try electing a union, HOA or club president without being part of the union, HOA or club.
Now, of course the most popular ones make the most money. Similar to the US where someone who sells 10 million CDs gets more money from their music than a local band who is happy to sell 5000. What the article actually says is that 10% of the members get 70% of the royalties. M0st probably, 1% will get 50% of the royalties, not because of some grand conspiracy, but because they sell more CDs or books than the rest combined.
But thinkers is not what most employers want in the freshly graduated engineers they hire. They want someone they can put onto project x using software y or tool z on day one, no matter how much their CEOs might talk about how they want "thinker" and "pioneers". There are some exceptions, but "I can layout amplifier circuits in ORCAD, program in Matlab and have never looked at anything except radar" will get you into the door at, say, Raytheon much faster than "I learned that I am good at problem solving". Now, it's a different story for engineering masters or PhD grads, but still most HR people prefer the skills match, be it Matlab or AutoCad, over the intangible qualities. This is at least partly due to the fact that you can't easily judge them in a resume and a short interview, but also because the engineering manager tells them "I need someone who can fill the place of the AutoCAD monkey who quit last week.
Creativity and "thinking" probably makes you advance faster once you have a job, or when you apply for your second job, but out of college, it's not the most looked for quality.
Disclaimer: I got a software job immediately after graduating in nuclear physics.
If humans in 3406 don't know how to repackage radioactive waste into new containers using 2006 or later technology, I think they have bigger problems than leaky plutonium containers.
I'm not trying to be facetious or callous here, but we would have a problem if the MTBF was 1000 years, but this means that some time in the next 1000+ years someone needs to do something that's entirely possible and done every day with current technology. So where precisely is the problem? Just make sure to put a marker somewhere.
Damn commies.
------------
And screw the lameness filter, I want to be lame right now.
I still amazes me that here in the Bay Area, the following lead to immediate gridlock:
-Exits. Even if it's on the right of a seven lane freeway, half to people slow down to 20, a quarter tries to exit by cutting across six lanes, and the rest stops to ask for directions.
-Parallel parking. Four lane city street, parkee swings out into left lane (or the first of the opposite lanes), backs up to the curb at right angle, hits the curb, gets out of the car--which now blocks both lanes causing other drivers to pass across the center divider effectively shutting down both directions--to assess the situation, asks a few pedestrians for their opinion, gets back into the car, maneuvers back and forth a bit more, gives up, and cedes the spot to a city bus which fits easily.
-45 degree parking. Should be easy, right? Well, most Cali drivers miss the spot on the first few tries necessitating backing up across two lanes of traffic a couple of times.
..with the militray knockoffs some nitwits in Richmond, CA used to pump 50 rounds into a car last night.
Lets face it, all of this could have been developed faster and cheaper if we'd put the $350,000,000,000 spent in Iraq on civilian research.
I think he should loose his job over something like this. They put out data that clearly bordered on fraudulent--if the sample size and method you quote is correct. Unfortunately, the report is not public, so I can't verify that. He should even more loose his job over the blog posting: Hehe, this is very funny, not our fault at all, it's everyone else who's wrong. Screwing up is one thing, gloating about it and blaming everybody else, including his customer, is another.
Now, most analysts are completely wrong some of the time (Gartner's and IDG's projections on the Itanuim come to mind), but this is just about the first time that I've seen any analysts doing the Nanananana Dance after being caught out.
And if he really belived that his sample and methodology--again, as described by you--is valid, someone should revoke his statistics degree and publically whip all his instructors.
"for as long as the United States remains a republic."--So, what does he want to do with data created after 1/21/2001?
FTFA: "Certified Wireless USB setups are still going to involve a lot of cables"
;)
Actually, in the first iteration, it's going to involve twice as many cables as wired USB.
Maybe in his mind, but the last time I checked, SCOTUS still decides what constitutional law is and isn't. I don't play a lawyer on TV, but if the judge rules against Take 2, one of the first arguments of their lawyers will be first amendment case law. Unless there are even better causes for appeal in Florida law.
Even if there are, though, I would probably go and try to get a Federal court to take jurisdiction under all kinds of statutes.
So I RTFA (first mistake). What Jonathan seems to be blogging is not that the centralized data storage would go out the window, but the glass walled, polished showcase data center on the main floor. You know, the impressive early Hackers datacenter. Already, at many companies, the servers are utilities like the generator or the PBX--stowed away in a room somewhere.
Now if 20 connected server racks in 20 rooms is better than the big room might be a good question. But I don't think anyone seriously suggests to link all the wireless drill bits from the Gulf of Mexico to Siberia in real time.
Did you ever try QR Powder?
I am too TGIF brain fried to run through Magnus-Tetens calculations today, but at 30cents/gallon--or $3 as you probably correctly guesstimate--this might be even less efficient than cooling a hunk of metal and blowing cool air over it.
Star Trek Number Nine
Attempt to reap more money
It will suck and blow
Grammar -- F
Design -- D
Technical understanding -- F
Orthography -- D-
Yeah, that's gonna be a huge success.
What is this "landline" that you are talking about?
Oh, you mean "Californians Against Higher Taxes, a group of firefighters, first responders, concerned citizens, and Chevron Corporation"?
It's interesting to see how many firefighters and first responders funded this grassroots movement. If you don't want to bother with the link, out of the $52 million they raised, 99% comes from oil producers with Chevron and Aera Energy Llp picking up most of the tab.
By the way, why does every freaking campaign ad in California have a firefighter in it????
The article is still fairly obvious nonsense. Obvious enough that New Scientist should have caught this very early in the editing process.
That's exactly why people bash them. They are "very dense and very scholarly works"--absolutely unlike LoTR and The Hobbit. Which is fine, but most readers expect another LoTR when they purchase them, and the publishers and Christopher Tolkien do nothing to dispel that assumption. A bit shady at best, false advertising at the worst.
And yes, I've read most of them at some time or another in the last 20 years. And they fall somewhere between Ulysses and Finnegan's Wake in difficulty. Unfortunately, they are less fun to read--and far less funny--than either.
Short attention spans, and loss of short term memory.
I already wrote some comments about the inanity of that article over on Salon, so I'll skip it here.
It's old, not very funny, and has been beaten to death.
But it is a Slashdot tradition, damnit!!!!
Wireless.
More space than a nomad.
Cool.