heh. I'd like to see you breathe in cloud of salt and stay just fine:)
If the salt didn't choke you outright, the dessication of your lungs would probably be not so good for your prolonged existence.
And water? ever dropped sodium into it? Or ever run a big current through it, and lit a match?
Okay, so the water part is cheating, as you'd be just re-separating it. And your point really is valid.
Perhaps it would better to phrase it this way:
Many substances are quite corrosive, explosive, or dangerous, due to inherent reactivity, stability, or other such atomic properties. However, making them into compounds often can bind them in a form which is much less harmful.
Actually, now that I think of it, there is a flaw in your point. Alloys are usually mixtures, not compounds. Here is the difference:
Water is a compound. You take hydrogen and oxygen, mix them together, and light a match. Boom. You get H2O. Many molecules of H2O replace many molecules of H and many molecules of O.
Steel is an alloy. This, given that I remember correctly, is a mixture. You melt iron. You mix in stuff, like carbon and trace elements. You let it cool. No chemical change occurs.
So it would seem that in an alloy, any inherently dangerous property of the original substances are retained.
The hit counters have been going nuts and the e-mail has suddenly taken a huge jump! I don't know what's happening yet...
This guy just made my day:)
Its one thing to be slashdotted, but its another thing entirely to have no clue that it is happening, and wonder at the sudden popularity of your website.
'Some small American newspapers frequently fabricate offbeat news to trick people into noticing them, with the aim of making money,' the paper said. 'This is what the Onion does.'"
"As opposed to how some small Chinese newspapers frequently print patently false stories without investigating them in order to trick people into noticing them, with the aim of making political propaganda. This is what the Beijing Evening news does."
Okay, so maybe 1 million in circulation is not a 'small newspaper.' Then again, china has how many people in it?
And we *should* cut these people some slack. After all, they live in a country where supporters of a religion can be executed, and where criminals serve as involuntary organ donors.
OK. Right now.za is effectively controlled, along with everything else, by ICANN. And the problem in this case is that ICANN see fit to delegate this responsibility to a particular individual.
That may be good, that may be bad. Actually in this case it is good, because this guy has done a great job for quite a while (and for free), while south africa has royally fscked things up in their own country quite a bit. Furthermore, this guy is a good guy. He has been asking for someone to take the job off his hands for a while. And south africa are being jerks. The fogeys in the gov't decided to make this man's actions illegal, by means of passing a law causing anyone who controlls state "stuff" to be a criminal.
But the above is irrelevant. ICANN shouldn't decide who controlls top level domain names! thats the job for governements. Or maybe the united nations!
Actually, it is ICANN's jobs. The United States of America created something called "ARPAnet", the departement of defense created a computer netowork in order to survive a nuclear attack. And then it blossomed into the internet, a very american and commercial enterprise. And so the gov't, and some other people, made ICANN.
now, ICANN has some 'issues', but they most certainly do their job. And it is most certainly their job. South africa, if they really care, can make their own internet. They can call it "ZANet," which is somewhat catchy. That would be the governemet's job.
However, until the gov't demonstrates that they can successfully administer.za, they should not be allowed to try. Why break something if it works?
And finally, I get to what I am really ranting about. Geopolitical issues and the internet. I think that it is really stupid that any country should be able to control someone in another country because they can access their data. China and censorship. France and that nazi stuff they were trying to censor. Frankly, I think that if the stuff is hosted here, our laws apply. If someone starts a new country, lets call it "bastardlawsuitland," and then makes a law that slashdot is illegal, can they sue slashot because slashdot didn't make itself inaccessible to them in their country?
By the current laws, which admittedly are very very vague, the answer is yes. And that pisses me off to no end.
Oh, I have karma to burn, by the way. But I am pissed off and this is relevant.
Homework: go find a 1" x 2" x 30" piece of wood. Grasp it on one end. Out of doors, throw the wood in a level plane, attempting to induce much spin in it (like a boomerang). up.
Interesting...
When you let go, that piece of wood will start rolling and spinning, and will generate lift. It'll generate an audible hum, and toward the end of your throw, it'll stop moving forward, but the spinning and rolling will continue. The piece of wood will fall gently down to earth.
So far, so good...
We used to play a game of catch with a piece of wood like this in my neighborhood as kids. Some yardsticks work, but they have to be heavy enough,
::thinks about throwing a heavy piece of wood::
::thinks about heavy piece of wood flying through the air::
::thinks about kid standing right in the trajectory of heavy piece of wood::
Though I don't think anyone as yet has made this point, it is (quite obviously) the crux of Apple's strategy with these software purchases.
Step 1: Purchase a company that makes widely used software and sells it for ridiculous prices. Step 2: Make only minor changes to the software, and create a macintosh port. Step 3: Release a very mac-optimized version, that takes advantage of everything macintosh. After a while, drop the price a whole bunch, and cut support for non-mac versions, or alternatively, just don't cut the price for the non-mac versions.
Now, what this effectively does is make it so that the people who used to shell out big bucks for the software product now have two choices: find a new piece of software, or spend less money than they priviously wold have spent on an upgrade, and buy a powermac and the mac version of the software.
This is actually quite a brilliant strategy. Think of it this way: I use product x. Product x costs $20,000 and an upgrade costs $5,000. Product x is the core of my business. I use windows PCs to run product x. Now apple buys company x, who makes product x. Nothing changes for a few years. Product x's windows support is phased out, and the mac version's price is dropped to $2,000 for a new product, and $999 for an upgrade. I can now purchase a powermac for $5,000 and a product x upgrade to mac for $999 and end up spending only slightly more than I would have otherwise. Furthermore, in the future, upgrades will be very very cheap. Or, if I don't like apple, I can stop using product x, and instead use product y, which, since I never used it before, now costs $20,000, and has an entirely different interface...
I understand your point, but, in practice, your example is very rare. It is pretty much human nature to compose short passwords of one or two words, and it is wise to put non-alpha characters in there just to mix things up. Even a properly chosen 6 or 8-character password is hard to crack, and to do so properly would require obtaining a shadow password file (I hope this isn't trivial, either).
As many have pointed out, "nidump passwd." does that. Any user at all can do that. Which is why I was pissed about the 8 digit limit.
its rather nice that you doubt this. actually, I said "bullshit" directly to the face of the person who told me about this.
The problem is that the problem is very real, and quite substantiated. Here is how to prove it:
Step 1: Get a box with Mac OS X (okay, so this might not be possible for you, you'll just have to trust someone who does)
Step 2: Make a new user. call him "bullshit" or whatever you want (actually, it was "root" in my case, which kind of makes this more upsetting).
Step 3: Make this user's password something bigger than eight characters.
Step 4: go to log in as this user. A quick way would be to go to the terminal, and type in "ssh user@localhost"
Step 5: try typing in only the first eight digits of the users password. It will log in.
Step 6: try typing in only the first eight digits of the user's password, followed by an entire dictionary full of garbage... again, it will log in.
Step 7: Get pissed off at apple.
Now, you can believe me or not. Its up to you. But ask anyone with a mac box to try this, and you will see...
However, as an aside, I hear that apple may be fixing this in Mac OS X 10.2, aka Jaguar. This is because jaguar is supposed to unfiy the BSD core of Mac OS X with a fairly current BSD, like 4.4 or whatever. But, since I do not have jaguar, I really can't say either way. However, I know this is not a general (current) berkeley stantard distribution problem, so updating the BSD used by Mac OS X would probably fix this.
I have always looked at windup-power sources as having a very limited market.
The thing is, batteries are just fine for most people. The only situations where batteries are not good enough would be:
a) when its in storage for such a long time, the battery might die (and this really almost doesn't apply to most modern batteries)
b) when you need so many batterys worth of charge, and its just not feasible to buy more (like hiking, being on a boat, etc)
c) when you absolutely need reliability, and if you use a battery, it could die, and then you would be fscked for some reason or another (again, like camping...)
So it seems to me the only people who would want this sort of thing are people using it in very remote areas, or disaster survivalists.
And here's the problem with those markets. Cell phones are inherently based on having a lot of neaarby infrastructure. You need an operating phone network, an operating nearby tower, and so on and so forth. And when you are in a remote are, those things often just aren't going to be available. The same applies to a nuclear holocaust sort of situation.
See, the success of the freeplay radios and flashlights has been basically because, though they are bulkier and less convinient, they allow for a great deal of freedom. You don't need to have batteries, you don't need infrastructure around you, etc.
And cell phones definately are not "free" in any sense of the word. chances are, anywhere where a cell phone would work, you can find a place to rechange your batteries. So this is an almost paradoxical product. I have a fair degree of difficulty in thinking up any situation where this would be useful. and finally, unlike the flashlight (which, by the way, I own), you would not be able to stop whatever you are doing, recharge, and start again, due to the nature of cell phone calls.
So, aside from the "coolness" factor (which is pretty nifty;), I can't really see a market for this.
I think that the best laws
on
Fair IP Laws?
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· Score: 1
In my opinion the best times for IP laws were when computers were first introduced to the public. (By computers I mean PCs, and by public I mean at prices less than $10K)
It was generally accepted that some pirating would occur, yet companies let you copy (once) their media for "backup" purposes, et etc. And none of this futzing around with rights management. The users were innocent until proven guilty.
Furthermoe, free speech prevailed. If someone wanted to reverse engineer a BIOS (like, say, IBM's), they could do it without being prosecuted. They could even distribute that knowledge around. They could even sell that reverse-engineering work (like, say, compaq).
So times were simpler and better then. Its a pity I remember it, because otherwise I wouldn't be able to realise how bad things are now.
And one other restriction might be nice: If ALL IP was relinquished after 14 years, in a method similiar to patents. For all software. THis is not such a bad idea--before you go screaming "NoOoOoOo. No-one will work! No incentive!" remember that patents work a similiar way. And plenty of people patent stuff. Furthermore, given the rapid pace of change in the computer industry, don't you think that 14 year old stuff wouldn't be a giant competitive advantage? If it was going to succeed, it already did.
This would also apply to copyrighted stuff--To get a copyright, you'd have to agree to release the material in its entirety to public domain (though copyrights might be more, like 30 years, since books and so forth are relevant longer)
Imagine Bach today. Would he demand licensing fees for all his music being used in movies? Would he demand that people distributing his "source code, or musical scores, be prosecuted? Would he demand that anyone infringing on his style of classical music be prosecuted? Would people just laugh at him?
Now consider the computer and media industries. Pretend they were Bach. While Bach's stuff was obsolete in 100 years (but still wildly popular), their products will be obsolete in 20 years. Is what I suggest that preposterous?
Most people with worths between 500K and 1000K would be insane to pay 100 grand for a sub-orbital flight.
Think about it this way: Most people's equity is in their house, which, for "wealthy" families, usually costs around 500K.
So maybe they have their mortgage half-paid-off (which is uncommon). That leaves 250K-750K of money. Again, most, i'd say 75% or so, of that is in a retirement account, or some other form of non-liquid asset.
So you have somewhere between 60K and 190K of liquid assets. Do you really want to spend half-to-all of your assets on a sub-orbital flight lasting several minutes, at most?
In my book, you'd have to be insane.
The "wealthy people" discussed here are probably in double digits of million dollars of assets, or at least $5M or so.
Either that, or the "researchers" just asked "would you do this if you had the cash?" which is, pretty much, a bull-shit question. Its like saying "would you buy 30 houses, if you had the cash?" The people who *actually* have the cash still don't consider themselves "rich" enough to have it, as wealthy people tend to invest their money.
As noted in the excellent book "The millionaire next door," high income, and especially high expenditures and consumption, or a "rich" lifestyle, almost never correlate to a large amount of assets. People who live such a lifestyle usually never save up enough to maintain a large amount of assets.
Still am sure there are thousands of people who would pay for this stuff. But it is definately NOT the incredibly large amount of people they make it out to be.
Gosh, I'm glad this is about WWII...
on
Enigma
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· Score: 0, Insightful
When I read the beginning of the review on the main page, i thought it was some nightmarish procution dreamed up by the DMCA nazis in the music/viedo industry. Actually, I got pretty worked up about by the time i clecked "Read More..." I was all ready to post a giant rant about the MPAA, the RIAA, and how they suck ass.
While I am sure that this serves as a terrific attention-getting device, in the future try not to have such blatantly BS and non-factual headlines. Its deception for the purpose of getting hits, something I didn't think slashdot would stoop to. And its "Bait and Switch," kinda, in that you come expecting something, see the add, then actually read something else.
That said, it looks like a great film. Maybe I'll go see it, though I am pretty well read on the enigma story as it is. Of course, I saw LoTR, so thats a cheesy argument;)
More people probably play neo geo games via emulator than own the console...
I mean, its like saying that Windows 3.1 is an amzingly viable OS right now just because some programs run in it/are used in XP under the compatibility layer.
It seems that "usability" and "playability" is always the argument brought up by die-hard fanatical supporters of dying/dead platforms. And I would know, as a mac user, that this doesn't buy crap in the real world. If the hardware, and more importantly, the games, are crap, then no-one will think even once about buying it. And right now, games with 3d are what people want. I just feel like laughing at whoever would be willing to pay the price to actually buy one of these things, especially when the dreamcast is ultra-cheap. (Now there is a decent 'dead' console. Don't give me that 80's crap)
Of course, I could give you a great deal on an old Amiga, if you're interested;-)
at the advice of Emperor^H^H^H^H^H^H^H Supreme Chancellor Palpatine
lol! Either thats a hilarious mistake with cntrl-h and deletage, or its clever and purposeful way of saying "Emperor, wait, i mean supreme chancellor Palpatine":D
But seriously, who the heck would want to read the book before the movie? Especially since the book was based on the movie (rather than the other way around)... its just plain plot spoilage. I guess you could make the argument that the book is faster to download than the movie (assuming pirated copies of both), but thats about it.
The movie looks to be decent. Thus, I will wait until it comes out to see it. I will not read a cheesy version of the script, written so it looks like a novel (but is really just the script. I mean, its kind of obvious when a "book" includes choreography...)
But this seems like a brilliant way to make money for Lucas. All he had to do was give the script for the movie to some schmoe author and say "Remove the stage directions, and make it look like a novel." No work, and I am sure they'll get some decent royalties from people buying the book to get a preview of the movie.
Buckminster Fuller designed the geodesic dome, which is supposed to be an ultra-stable, aesthetically pleasing dome structure.
Then they discovered C60, which looked remerkably like of of buckminsterfuller's domes. And, being fans, the researchers named it after him. Its a cooler name than "diamond.":) (diamond is another form of carbon. Graphite is, too. Its all about how the carbon is arranged)
Of course, considering how crucial C60's formation and structure is to carbon nanotubules research, one would think that all the companies making money off (or planning to) it would at least be generous enough to support its namesake. But thats neither here nor there.
2ndly. In the short run its cheaper to use a water cooling, but long run its cheaper to make all mobile chips be more power efficient. This is b/c you do research once. (fab costs aren't higher for more power efficient chips) Whereas every laptop has to come with water cooling, so it costs more.
you might be able to use a water cooled laptop as a steam engine: kind of like a nuclear powerplant, the steam generated by the heat would turn a turbine, then would condense and recycle.
The problem is that it would have to get pretty hot for that to work. Hot enough to fry your legs. And the watercooling rig would have to be pretty bulky. To shield you from the heat, you would have to put in a bunch of heavy shielding. So you'd end up with something the size of a deksotp.
Another option for heat would be to utilize a heat gradient for energy via some kind of advanced circuit-kind of like a solar panel. But I have no clue how that would work.
One could always inspire computer makers to simply develop more heat-efficient chips...
This has the added benefit of increasing battery life, as in most cases heat emission is proportional to power draw (all that energy has to go somewhere, and it usually comes out as heat).
Motorola has done a pretty good job, probably b/c their main market is for embedded systems. This has the result that Apple laptops are remarkably power efficient and give off little heat. My iBook's fan has *never* turned on since I bought it about a year ago. It has gotten warm, but the fan hasn't ever needed to turn on. tiBooks have G4 chips, which are less "cool" while running, so PowerBook G4 fans turn on more often. And I imagine the transmeta Crusoe is similiar, though i've never used a Crusoe laptop
But still, one would imagine it would be cheaper to develop more energy-efficient chips, rather than simply finding ways to vent that energy. Of course, If venting must be done, I am all for fractal-geometry heatsinks at the nano-level (maximizes surface area in which heat venting can occur, for a lot less price than water cooling, not to mention being very nice and quiet), but thats a topic for another post:)
Anyways, my point is that it might be better to develop a solution at the chip level, rather than have to compensate for power-guzzling chips by having obnoxiously loud and edxpensive cooling solutions.
It is actually illegal to "dump" software at below cost in order tpo undercut the competition.
Which is basically what microsoft is doing. Sure, their actualy cost per license is almost nil ($1, maybe, tops), but you have to figure that regular users have to pay a price that includes development costs, etc.... And smaller competitors, like Apple, can't afford to count on an enormous revenue base of OEMs and users to finance their takeover of the education market.
Microsoft can afford to take a loss on some stuff, if it leads to total dominance in market share. In fact, the education market is one of those few market where microsoft doesn't have said total dominance. So you can be pretty sure they would try to achieve it. And one of the best ways is to underprice the competition, in particular by offering virtually "free" products.
Make the default install the most secure
and
Make Microsoft resposnible for damages if they don't.
I am morally opposed to the second (it smakcs of the crap companies have been pulling with regards to the DMCA) but the first is great, and easily implementable.
Diable all built in web servers. Disable all built in Auto-execution of scripts. In other words, "Disable all built in security holes," no matter how feature packed those holes may be.
Mac OS X does this. Some linux distros do this (NB linux doesn't need this, really, as most of its users are not the stupid kind that leave the defaults in place. One of the problems with windows is that the users do leave the defaults in place, so the defualts had better be secure). Its really not that hard.
It's ridiculously funny how email apps (outlook in particular) spread virii.
Think back on a bunch of the copyright issues. Basically, one of the problems is that you are in trouble if your work can be used in illegal ways with great ease. Thats why napster got busted--the courts found that their system was often used for illegaly violating copyright laws, and that they didn't do enough about it (saying "Don't steal music != enough).
well, I am seeing potential lawsuits against microsoft here. Clearly their software is commonly used for spreading virii, and clearly they, too, aren't doing enough about it.
Suuuuuure. They say that security is a "focus," but nothing has really changed. So they obviously are condoning, even promoting, virus writing! Microsoft must be sued to stop them from spreading email virii. It's for the good of the country that this evil corporation must be kept from promoting the internet terrorism which costs taxpayers millions every year.
The inherent issue here is not actually copyright law, but the failure of the political system.
Here we have an issue that is disliked by everyone that knows about it, and fundamentally runs against several precepts of the constitution (and the original idea behind copyright law).
Yet it is law. Why? Because it allows media companies to increase their profits. Yet even that is debatable. A better description of the DMCA is that it allows media companies to think that they are increasing their profits.
And because of the money involved, these companies have a bunch of cash to blow on lobbyists. Media companies are very very large, and, as a result, have an enormous financial intrest in Washington.
So only the little guys are left. Librarians, Internet activists, and some tech companies (some. Microsoft seems to back the DMCA. Most try to be DRM neutral.). The problem is that the little guys don't have enough cash to buy the best politicians. Yes, buy politicians. So we have to find semi-honest politicians who agree with the cause. Which is near-hopeless.
Of course, the ban on soft money should help, but the underlying problem is the same. Washington is dominated by corporate interests. The only real fix is to make digital rights management and the abhorration that is the DMCA a public issue. Only then will people look at a politicians record vis a vis copy protection come november. And only then will justice finally be done.
Just because slasdhot's readers mainly use linux doesn't mean that we need to almost facetiously notify readers of all the patches et etc.
I mean, most people would complain, wouldn't they, if slashdot ran a headline "Microsoft releases Windows update--adds minro functionality change and stability" or "Apple release new MacOS X change. Nothing much new". Just because its "news for nerds" doesn't mean the editors should ignore the "stuff that matters" part.
The vast majority of people who read slashdot are probably more interested in things like NASA, copyright law developments, et etc. It might be nice if there were a slashdot page specifically for linux kernel, distro, et etc updates. ala apple.slashdot.org, perhaps.
Well, maybe not great, but I think that this turn of events is properly termed a "Really Good Thing!"
After they finish with napster (if ever) the media companies seem to have set their sights on TiVo as their next target. What with the "PVR=illegal" comment by Jamie Kellner, and the disapproval in general of being able to record and store media, its not a wonder the lawsuits haven't already begun.
Having AOL Time Warner throw their weight behind TiVo (if only partially), will at least make most companies think twice before going after TiVo, not to mention add a veneer of legitamacy to the whole PVR movement.
Plus, since Jamie Kellner is CEO of turner broadcasting (owned by AOL Time Warner), maybe his superiors will get him to shut up:).
Slashdot Mirror
If the salt didn't choke you outright, the dessication of your lungs would probably be not so good for your prolonged existence.
And water? ever dropped sodium into it? Or ever run a big current through it, and lit a match?
Okay, so the water part is cheating, as you'd be just re-separating it. And your point really is valid.
Perhaps it would better to phrase it this way: Actually, now that I think of it, there is a flaw in your point. Alloys are usually mixtures, not compounds. Here is the difference:
So it would seem that in an alloy, any inherently dangerous property of the original substances are retained.
Its one thing to be slashdotted, but its another thing entirely to have no clue that it is happening, and wonder at the sudden popularity of your website.
Okay, so maybe 1 million in circulation is not a 'small newspaper.' Then again, china has how many people in it?
And we *should* cut these people some slack. After all, they live in a country where supporters of a religion can be executed, and where criminals serve as involuntary organ donors.
OK. Right now .za is effectively controlled, along with everything else, by ICANN. And the problem in this case is that ICANN see fit to delegate this responsibility to a particular individual.
.za, they should not be allowed to try. Why break something if it works?
That may be good, that may be bad. Actually in this case it is good, because this guy has done a great job for quite a while (and for free), while south africa has royally fscked things up in their own country quite a bit. Furthermore, this guy is a good guy. He has been asking for someone to take the job off his hands for a while. And south africa are being jerks. The fogeys in the gov't decided to make this man's actions illegal, by means of passing a law causing anyone who controlls state "stuff" to be a criminal.
But the above is irrelevant. ICANN shouldn't decide who controlls top level domain names! thats the job for governements. Or maybe the united nations!
Actually, it is ICANN's jobs. The United States of America created something called "ARPAnet", the departement of defense created a computer netowork in order to survive a nuclear attack. And then it blossomed into the internet, a very american and commercial enterprise. And so the gov't, and some other people, made ICANN.
now, ICANN has some 'issues', but they most certainly do their job. And it is most certainly their job. South africa, if they really care, can make their own internet. They can call it "ZANet," which is somewhat catchy. That would be the governemet's job.
However, until the gov't demonstrates that they can successfully administer
And finally, I get to what I am really ranting about. Geopolitical issues and the internet. I think that it is really stupid that any country should be able to control someone in another country because they can access their data. China and censorship. France and that nazi stuff they were trying to censor. Frankly, I think that if the stuff is hosted here, our laws apply. If someone starts a new country, lets call it "bastardlawsuitland," and then makes a law that slashdot is illegal, can they sue slashot because slashdot didn't make itself inaccessible to them in their country?
By the current laws, which admittedly are very very vague, the answer is yes. And that pisses me off to no end.
Oh, I have karma to burn, by the way. But I am pissed off and this is relevant.
ouch!!!
Now, what this effectively does is make it so that the people who used to shell out big bucks for the software product now have two choices: find a new piece of software, or spend less money than they priviously wold have spent on an upgrade, and buy a powermac and the mac version of the software.
This is actually quite a brilliant strategy. Think of it this way: I use product x. Product x costs $20,000 and an upgrade costs $5,000. Product x is the core of my business. I use windows PCs to run product x. Now apple buys company x, who makes product x. Nothing changes for a few years. Product x's windows support is phased out, and the mac version's price is dropped to $2,000 for a new product, and $999 for an upgrade. I can now purchase a powermac for $5,000 and a product x upgrade to mac for $999 and end up spending only slightly more than I would have otherwise. Furthermore, in the future, upgrades will be very very cheap. Or, if I don't like apple, I can stop using product x, and instead use product y, which, since I never used it before, now costs $20,000, and has an entirely different interface...
See why Apple's strategy is smart?
The problem is that the problem is very real, and quite substantiated. Here is how to prove it: Now, you can believe me or not. Its up to you. But ask anyone with a mac box to try this, and you will see...
However, as an aside, I hear that apple may be fixing this in Mac OS X 10.2, aka Jaguar. This is because jaguar is supposed to unfiy the BSD core of Mac OS X with a fairly current BSD, like 4.4 or whatever. But, since I do not have jaguar, I really can't say either way. However, I know this is not a general (current) berkeley stantard distribution problem, so updating the BSD used by Mac OS X would probably fix this.
I have always looked at windup-power sources as having a very limited market.
:
;), I can't really see a market for this.
The thing is, batteries are just fine for most people. The only situations where batteries are not good enough would be
a) when its in storage for such a long time, the battery might die (and this really almost doesn't apply to most modern batteries)
b) when you need so many batterys worth of charge, and its just not feasible to buy more (like hiking, being on a boat, etc)
c) when you absolutely need reliability, and if you use a battery, it could die, and then you would be fscked for some reason or another (again, like camping...)
So it seems to me the only people who would want this sort of thing are people using it in very remote areas, or disaster survivalists.
And here's the problem with those markets. Cell phones are inherently based on having a lot of neaarby infrastructure. You need an operating phone network, an operating nearby tower, and so on and so forth. And when you are in a remote are, those things often just aren't going to be available. The same applies to a nuclear holocaust sort of situation.
See, the success of the freeplay radios and flashlights has been basically because, though they are bulkier and less convinient, they allow for a great deal of freedom. You don't need to have batteries, you don't need infrastructure around you, etc.
And cell phones definately are not "free" in any sense of the word. chances are, anywhere where a cell phone would work, you can find a place to rechange your batteries. So this is an almost paradoxical product. I have a fair degree of difficulty in thinking up any situation where this would be useful. and finally, unlike the flashlight (which, by the way, I own), you would not be able to stop whatever you are doing, recharge, and start again, due to the nature of cell phone calls.
So, aside from the "coolness" factor (which is pretty nifty
In my opinion the best times for IP laws were when computers were first introduced to the public. (By computers I mean PCs, and by public I mean at prices less than $10K)
It was generally accepted that some pirating would occur, yet companies let you copy (once) their media for "backup" purposes, et etc. And none of this futzing around with rights management. The users were innocent until proven guilty.
Furthermoe, free speech prevailed. If someone wanted to reverse engineer a BIOS (like, say, IBM's), they could do it without being prosecuted. They could even distribute that knowledge around. They could even sell that reverse-engineering work (like, say, compaq).
So times were simpler and better then. Its a pity I remember it, because otherwise I wouldn't be able to realise how bad things are now.
And one other restriction might be nice: If ALL IP was relinquished after 14 years, in a method similiar to patents. For all software. THis is not such a bad idea--before you go screaming "NoOoOoOo. No-one will work! No incentive!" remember that patents work a similiar way. And plenty of people patent stuff. Furthermore, given the rapid pace of change in the computer industry, don't you think that 14 year old stuff wouldn't be a giant competitive advantage? If it was going to succeed, it already did.
This would also apply to copyrighted stuff--To get a copyright, you'd have to agree to release the material in its entirety to public domain (though copyrights might be more, like 30 years, since books and so forth are relevant longer)
Imagine Bach today. Would he demand licensing fees for all his music being used in movies? Would he demand that people distributing his "source code, or musical scores, be prosecuted? Would he demand that anyone infringing on his style of classical music be prosecuted? Would people just laugh at him?
Now consider the computer and media industries. Pretend they were Bach. While Bach's stuff was obsolete in 100 years (but still wildly popular), their products will be obsolete in 20 years. Is what I suggest that preposterous?
Most people with worths between 500K and 1000K would be insane to pay 100 grand for a sub-orbital flight.
Think about it this way: Most people's equity is in their house, which, for "wealthy" families, usually costs around 500K.
So maybe they have their mortgage half-paid-off (which is uncommon). That leaves 250K-750K of money. Again, most, i'd say 75% or so, of that is in a retirement account, or some other form of non-liquid asset.
So you have somewhere between 60K and 190K of liquid assets. Do you really want to spend half-to-all of your assets on a sub-orbital flight lasting several minutes, at most?
In my book, you'd have to be insane.
The "wealthy people" discussed here are probably in double digits of million dollars of assets, or at least $5M or so.
Either that, or the "researchers" just asked "would you do this if you had the cash?" which is, pretty much, a bull-shit question. Its like saying "would you buy 30 houses, if you had the cash?" The people who *actually* have the cash still don't consider themselves "rich" enough to have it, as wealthy people tend to invest their money.
As noted in the excellent book "The millionaire next door," high income, and especially high expenditures and consumption, or a "rich" lifestyle, almost never correlate to a large amount of assets. People who live such a lifestyle usually never save up enough to maintain a large amount of assets.
Still am sure there are thousands of people who would pay for this stuff. But it is definately NOT the incredibly large amount of people they make it out to be.
When I read the beginning of the review on the main page, i thought it was some nightmarish procution dreamed up by the DMCA nazis in the music/viedo industry. Actually, I got pretty worked up about by the time i clecked "Read More..." I was all ready to post a giant rant about the MPAA, the RIAA, and how they suck ass.
;)
While I am sure that this serves as a terrific attention-getting device, in the future try not to have such blatantly BS and non-factual headlines. Its deception for the purpose of getting hits, something I didn't think slashdot would stoop to. And its "Bait and Switch," kinda, in that you come expecting something, see the add, then actually read something else.
That said, it looks like a great film. Maybe I'll go see it, though I am pretty well read on the enigma story as it is. Of course, I saw LoTR, so thats a cheesy argument
More people probably play neo geo games via emulator than own the console...
;-)
I mean, its like saying that Windows 3.1 is an amzingly viable OS right now just because some programs run in it/are used in XP under the compatibility layer.
It seems that "usability" and "playability" is always the argument brought up by die-hard fanatical supporters of dying/dead platforms. And I would know, as a mac user, that this doesn't buy crap in the real world. If the hardware, and more importantly, the games, are crap, then no-one will think even once about buying it. And right now, games with 3d are what people want. I just feel like laughing at whoever would be willing to pay the price to actually buy one of these things, especially when the dreamcast is ultra-cheap. (Now there is a decent 'dead' console. Don't give me that 80's crap)
Of course, I could give you a great deal on an old Amiga, if you're interested
But seriously, who the heck would want to read the book before the movie? Especially since the book was based on the movie (rather than the other way around)... its just plain plot spoilage. I guess you could make the argument that the book is faster to download than the movie (assuming pirated copies of both), but thats about it.
The movie looks to be decent. Thus, I will wait until it comes out to see it. I will not read a cheesy version of the script, written so it looks like a novel (but is really just the script. I mean, its kind of obvious when a "book" includes choreography...)
But this seems like a brilliant way to make money for Lucas. All he had to do was give the script for the movie to some schmoe author and say "Remove the stage directions, and make it look like a novel." No work, and I am sure they'll get some decent royalties from people buying the book to get a preview of the movie.
its the other way around.
:) (diamond is another form of carbon. Graphite is, too. Its all about how the carbon is arranged)
Buckminster Fuller designed the geodesic dome, which is supposed to be an ultra-stable, aesthetically pleasing dome structure.
Then they discovered C60, which looked remerkably like of of buckminsterfuller's domes. And, being fans, the researchers named it after him. Its a cooler name than "diamond."
Of course, considering how crucial C60's formation and structure is to carbon nanotubules research, one would think that all the companies making money off (or planning to) it would at least be generous enough to support its namesake. But thats neither here nor there.
can't resist....
1stly. No mac comes in fruity colors. Ha.
2ndly. In the short run its cheaper to use a water cooling, but long run its cheaper to make all mobile chips be more power efficient. This is b/c you do research once. (fab costs aren't higher for more power efficient chips) Whereas every laptop has to come with water cooling, so it costs more.
you might be able to use a water cooled laptop as a steam engine: kind of like a nuclear powerplant, the steam generated by the heat would turn a turbine, then would condense and recycle.
The problem is that it would have to get pretty hot for that to work. Hot enough to fry your legs. And the watercooling rig would have to be pretty bulky. To shield you from the heat, you would have to put in a bunch of heavy shielding. So you'd end up with something the size of a deksotp.
Another option for heat would be to utilize a heat gradient for energy via some kind of advanced circuit-kind of like a solar panel. But I have no clue how that would work.
One could always inspire computer makers to simply develop more heat-efficient chips...
:)
This has the added benefit of increasing battery life, as in most cases heat emission is proportional to power draw (all that energy has to go somewhere, and it usually comes out as heat).
Motorola has done a pretty good job, probably b/c their main market is for embedded systems. This has the result that Apple laptops are remarkably power efficient and give off little heat. My iBook's fan has *never* turned on since I bought it about a year ago. It has gotten warm, but the fan hasn't ever needed to turn on. tiBooks have G4 chips, which are less "cool" while running, so PowerBook G4 fans turn on more often. And I imagine the transmeta Crusoe is similiar, though i've never used a Crusoe laptop
But still, one would imagine it would be cheaper to develop more energy-efficient chips, rather than simply finding ways to vent that energy. Of course, If venting must be done, I am all for fractal-geometry heatsinks at the nano-level (maximizes surface area in which heat venting can occur, for a lot less price than water cooling, not to mention being very nice and quiet), but thats a topic for another post
Anyways, my point is that it might be better to develop a solution at the chip level, rather than have to compensate for power-guzzling chips by having obnoxiously loud and edxpensive cooling solutions.
This could be bad news. Very bad news.
It is actually illegal to "dump" software at below cost in order tpo undercut the competition.
Which is basically what microsoft is doing. Sure, their actualy cost per license is almost nil ($1, maybe, tops), but you have to figure that regular users have to pay a price that includes development costs, etc.... And smaller competitors, like Apple, can't afford to count on an enormous revenue base of OEMs and users to finance their takeover of the education market.
Microsoft can afford to take a loss on some stuff, if it leads to total dominance in market share. In fact, the education market is one of those few market where microsoft doesn't have said total dominance. So you can be pretty sure they would try to achieve it. And one of the best ways is to underprice the competition, in particular by offering virtually "free" products.
And that is "dumping." Which is patently illegal.
the two biggest things are these:
Make the default install the most secure
and
Make Microsoft resposnible for damages if they don't.
I am morally opposed to the second (it smakcs of the crap companies have been pulling with regards to the DMCA) but the first is great, and easily implementable.
Diable all built in web servers. Disable all built in Auto-execution of scripts. In other words, "Disable all built in security holes," no matter how feature packed those holes may be.
Mac OS X does this. Some linux distros do this (NB linux doesn't need this, really, as most of its users are not the stupid kind that leave the defaults in place. One of the problems with windows is that the users do leave the defaults in place, so the defualts had better be secure). Its really not that hard.
It's ridiculously funny how email apps (outlook in particular) spread virii.
:)
Think back on a bunch of the copyright issues. Basically, one of the problems is that you are in trouble if your work can be used in illegal ways with great ease. Thats why napster got busted--the courts found that their system was often used for illegaly violating copyright laws, and that they didn't do enough about it (saying "Don't steal music != enough).
well, I am seeing potential lawsuits against microsoft here. Clearly their software is commonly used for spreading virii, and clearly they, too, aren't doing enough about it.
Suuuuuure. They say that security is a "focus," but nothing has really changed. So they obviously are condoning, even promoting, virus writing! Microsoft must be sued to stop them from spreading email virii. It's for the good of the country that this evil corporation must be kept from promoting the internet terrorism which costs taxpayers millions every year.
Just a thought to keep you smiling.
The inherent issue here is not actually copyright law, but the failure of the political system.
Here we have an issue that is disliked by everyone that knows about it, and fundamentally runs against several precepts of the constitution (and the original idea behind copyright law).
Yet it is law. Why? Because it allows media companies to increase their profits. Yet even that is debatable. A better description of the DMCA is that it allows media companies to think that they are increasing their profits.
And because of the money involved, these companies have a bunch of cash to blow on lobbyists. Media companies are very very large, and, as a result, have an enormous financial intrest in Washington.
So only the little guys are left. Librarians, Internet activists, and some tech companies (some. Microsoft seems to back the DMCA. Most try to be DRM neutral.). The problem is that the little guys don't have enough cash to buy the best politicians. Yes, buy politicians. So we have to find semi-honest politicians who agree with the cause. Which is near-hopeless.
Of course, the ban on soft money should help, but the underlying problem is the same. Washington is dominated by corporate interests. The only real fix is to make digital rights management and the abhorration that is the DMCA a public issue. Only then will people look at a politicians record vis a vis copy protection come november. And only then will justice finally be done.
Just because slasdhot's readers mainly use linux doesn't mean that we need to almost facetiously notify readers of all the patches et etc.
;)
I mean, most people would complain, wouldn't they, if slashdot ran a headline "Microsoft releases Windows update--adds minro functionality change and stability" or "Apple release new MacOS X change. Nothing much new". Just because its "news for nerds" doesn't mean the editors should ignore the "stuff that matters" part.
The vast majority of people who read slashdot are probably more interested in things like NASA, copyright law developments, et etc. It might be nice if there were a slashdot page specifically for linux kernel, distro, et etc updates. ala apple.slashdot.org, perhaps.
Just a thought (not a flame.)
Oh, and BTW, I'm going to download 7.3 now
Well, maybe not great, but I think that this turn of events is properly termed a "Really Good Thing!"
:).
After they finish with napster (if ever) the media companies seem to have set their sights on TiVo as their next target. What with the "PVR=illegal" comment by Jamie Kellner, and the disapproval in general of being able to record and store media, its not a wonder the lawsuits haven't already begun.
Having AOL Time Warner throw their weight behind TiVo (if only partially), will at least make most companies think twice before going after TiVo, not to mention add a veneer of legitamacy to the whole PVR movement.
Plus, since Jamie Kellner is CEO of turner broadcasting (owned by AOL Time Warner), maybe his superiors will get him to shut up