You seem to be forgetting that most cars have an actual cost of about $0.50/mile by the time you factor in gas, maintainance (oil, tires, brakes, regularly scheduled tuneups, etc) and depreciation. Many cars actually end up with operating costs closer to $1.00/mile.
You mean I've sunk $130,000 into my Honda Civic??? I had no idea. Time to dust off my bicycle!
Here's a thing not really talked about. If a moon of a large planet harbours life, they'd have to be orbiting in a perpindicular plane to the rest of the solar system to sustain it. Pretty unlikely. And if they weren't, they'd disappear behind the planet every 'night' for long periods. Hence, you've got a moon with huge long nights, freezing the planet, and long hot days. The only way round it is an incredibly fast orbit, which would stuff everything up.
I don't think this is an issue for a couple of reasons.
First of all, gas giants are massive, and hence the satellites will orbit pretty quickly. Io is about the same distance from Jupiter as the moon is from the earth, and its orbital period is about two days. It would only be in eclipse for a few hours. And that would only affect the Jupiter-facing side. The other side would have a normal day/night cycle.
Secondly, the amount of time spent in the gas giant's shadow is dependent on the planet's axial tilt. Jupiter is at 3 degrees, so the Galilean satellites go into eclipse pretty much on every orbit. (Callisto may be an exception near the solstices). Saturn's tilt is 27 degrees, so the only time a satellite would go into eclipse is if it's close to the equinox, or if it's really close, in which case it would be torn up into rings.
I would worry about the radiation around gas giants. If a satellite is close in, it would get bombarded by a lot of radiation, unless it had a strong magnetic field. If it was far away, it would rotate slowly and I don't know how that would affect the day/night temperatures.
Another thing to worry about is getting hit by meteors - the gas giant has a huge gravity well and will be pulling stuff towards it all of the time. Catastrophic impacts probably wouldn't be too uncommon.
Last fall, Congress adopted the library's recommendation that when the copyright safeguards malfunction on "literary works, including computer programs and databases," that an individual has legally purchased, the person be allowed to use technology like the software Mr. Sklyarov developed to regain reading access to the work.
Can this be used as an argument for DeCSS? The encryption on DVDs is so weak that it "malfunctioned"?
I always think it's funny when people say MS "doesn't get it". They get it. They get it just fine. They are where they are because they get it better than Apple, or IBM, or Sun, or whoever else you care to name.
What is "it"? "It" is making as much money as possible. Period. "It" is not "empowering people with great software" or whatever their mission statement is. "It" is not interoperability, or allowing you to get your work done efficiently, or anything except for their bottom line.
If a particular course of action turns out to look bad for them, they will ratchet it back to something that *most* people can live with. They'll probably do this with XP registration to make it less intrusive, and then they'll look like paragons of sensitivity.
I don't know if it's luck or brilliance on their part that everybody keeps giving them the benefit of the doubt.
We need to drive home that they screwed up. They need the thousand watt lightbulb experience on this. They need to get it. Wrist slap penalties do
not do this.
That's exactly why Jackson was viewed as biased! He said something to the effect of "if you need to get a mule's attention, whack him on the head with a 2-by-4". Hence the break-up order.
If the DOJ isn't careful here (and I think they won't be), MS will get off with a wrist-slap, declare a victory for apple pie and the American way, and go back to "innovating".
Let AOL and MS duke it out on the Windows desktop. Windows will become so unusable due to the constant popups, hundreds of extraneous icons, and lack of program compatibility that noone will want to use it. Maybe then people will finally look at the alternatives.
How long will it be before the alternatives are clogged with ads?
Maybe we should keep this whole "leenux" thing quiet...
Journals do actually do quite a bit of work. You submit a paper to them. Then they need to decide if they want to publish it, first of all. That takes some expertise to begin with.
Then they need to find other scientists in the field with the expertise to review it. This requires that the journal has staff members who are up on the current research in the field, and who's doing what.
Once the reviews come back, and you respond to the reviewer's comments (which often involves some disagreement), the journal needs to make a decision regarding the readiness of the paper to be published. If not, either it goes through another reviewer iteration, or it gets rejected. Again, this requires scientific expertise by the journal's staff.
Finally, it gets published on paper and sent out to subscribers.
All of this takes effort, and much of it is non-trivial. Granted, the scientist does the science, and writes it up, but the journal provides a service. Some journals have exorbitant subscription rates because they have few subscribers (libraries, usually).
Scientists could get together and run their own free journals with quality research in them, but that's that much less time spent doing science. And as many scientists will tell you, much of their time is already spent doing non-science activities like sitting on committees and writing grant proposals.
Not to diminish journals in any way, but "the world needs ditchdiggers, too!"
Making sure that all the world's children go to bed with a full stomach is more important
than, say, learning the chemical composition of the Jovian atmospehere.
The amount of money spent on learning the chemical composition of the Jovian atmosphere wouldn't put a dent into solving world hunger.
Maybe 99% of scientific research is completely obscure and leads nowhere. But the remaining 1%
might lead us to solving world hunger, or cancer, or AIDS through directions that are completely orthogonal to "conventional wisdom". Who knows? It's worth it to me.
Shouldn't they wait for the
release, then if it still overrides their settings and they're absolutely sure its not a malfunction in their install process, then they should consider legal action.
Yes, Kodak tested on a beta of XP.
Just like people using DR-DOS tried to test a beta of Windows. Of course MS fixed that "bug" in time for the release but by then the damage was done, wasn't it?
There's no way Microsoft will fix this without a lot of noise/threats from Kodak now.
I do agree with the author's conclusion - I think a serious lobbying effort is now or will soon be underway to bar institutions receiving federal funds (read: universities) from releasing GPL'ed code.
My God I hate Microsoft, but... don't they have a point here? Our tax dollars are being spent by government agencies such as NASA. That federally funded work belongs to the American people (IF it's released at all; I'm not saying the FBI/CIA/NSA should release their code to the public). Why shouldn't anyone be able to take that code and use it any way they wish?
Requiring a BSD-style license on any federally funded code that's released to the public seems reasonable to me.
Face it, Jackson was a fucking incompetent. Far from being an impartial judge, he ranted and raved about Microsoft to anyone who
would hold still long enough for him to get going.
Funny for a Slashdot post to be critical of someone bashing Microsoft!
But I agree with you; he should have known better.
DMCA exists for one reason: to protect intellectual property.
No. Intellectual property was already protected; if Disney can show that you're infringing on its copyrighted material, they can take you to court. That has nothing to do with the DMCA.
The RIAA has been very clear in communicating to everyone that they have no intention to sue Professor Felten.
The Secure Digital Music Initiative Foundation (SDMI) does not - nor did it ever - intend to bring any legal action against Professor Felten or his co-authors.
Right. They waved a big baseball bat in his face and then said "Oh this? We weren't going to hit you with it. Honest."
The RIAA realized in hindsight that the threat made them look bad and backpedaled. I'm with the smartass on this one.
One of the most thought provoking photgraphs I ever saw was a picture of the interior of Albert Einstein's house when he was living in Princeton NJ. The picture showed a bookcase, desk with papers and open books, and a piano.
You're right, in the grand scheme of things encrypted TV signals are not so important.
But was Einstein's right to play his piano important to him? What if there was a law like the DMCA telling him what he could and could not do with his piano?
The studios argue that they would never have distributed movies in digital format without the DMCA. The truth is, most people *like* DVD movies, with the special features and sound and sharpness. And they don't care if their fair use rights are being denied because most people are satisfied with the uses they *do* get from their DVD.
So is the DMCA a good thing? It is an unfair law, but for most people, they get a nice movie format thanks to it, and the only real downside is they have to listen to their geek friends denounce the DMCA and the MPAA whenever the word "DVD" is mentioned.
And to bring Microsoft into this...
You know how people often defend Microsoft's model of forcing OEM's to preload Windows by saying "well, it ends up being cheaper for most people"? In other words, having Windows preloaded on your computer for $10 is preferable for the vast majority of people rather than buying a computer and paying $15 for Windows. And Microsoft would never have done this unless the OEM's agreed to put Windows on *every* computer they sell.
But even though it's unfair, it's beneficial for the vast majority of people.
All that being said, I don't use windows, and I don't buy DVD movies. I've written my representatives in Congress about the DMCA. I'm very happy that we have some distinguished legal minds arguing our side. But I suspect most people are happy with the way things are and would rather have the DMCA than not.
The opposite of love, and of hate, is apathy. It's not caring, in the least.
What I see in most messages is that everyone cares enough about Microsoft to hate them...
Well, if everyone were apathetic towards Microsoft and their tactics, we'd have Microsoft innovations shoved down our throats in no time and have no choice about it.
I read this article in 1998, and it pissed me off then. It pissed me off this morning too!
Some of us code because it's *fun*. I resent the author saying I'm an incompetent coder because I haven't made a dime off of the free software I've released.
Some of us are employed as software engineers because we write software to provide a specific service. I don't see this ever going away.
What really struck a nerve with me is how this guy equates $$$ with competence and turning this into a moral argument; that if someone writes software as a hobby, he's a bad (or at least socially irresponsible) person.
Slashdot Mirror
"Technology should compete on its merits in a free market."
:)
Gosh, he won't last long at Microsoft thinking like that
Is this true? I thought one of the many horrible things about the DMCA is that it criminalizes copyright infringement for digital media.
"if my article had a moral, it should be that piracy is illegal",
he meant to say
"if my article had a moral, it should be that privacy is illegal"
You mean I've sunk $130,000 into my Honda Civic??? I had no idea. Time to dust off my bicycle!
I don't think this is an issue for a couple of reasons.
First of all, gas giants are massive, and hence the satellites will orbit pretty quickly. Io is about the same distance from Jupiter as the moon is from the earth, and its orbital period is about two days. It would only be in eclipse for a few hours. And that would only affect the Jupiter-facing side. The other side would have a normal day/night cycle.
Secondly, the amount of time spent in the gas giant's shadow is dependent on the planet's axial tilt. Jupiter is at 3 degrees, so the Galilean satellites go into eclipse pretty much on every orbit. (Callisto may be an exception near the solstices). Saturn's tilt is 27 degrees, so the only time a satellite would go into eclipse is if it's close to the equinox, or if it's really close, in which case it would be torn up into rings.
I would worry about the radiation around gas giants. If a satellite is close in, it would get bombarded by a lot of radiation, unless it had a strong magnetic field. If it was far away, it would rotate slowly and I don't know how that would affect the day/night temperatures.
Another thing to worry about is getting hit by meteors - the gas giant has a huge gravity well and will be pulling stuff towards it all of the time. Catastrophic impacts probably wouldn't be too uncommon.
Last fall, Congress adopted the library's recommendation that when the copyright safeguards malfunction on "literary works, including computer programs and databases," that an individual has legally purchased, the person be allowed to use technology like the software Mr. Sklyarov developed to regain reading access to the work.
Can this be used as an argument for DeCSS? The encryption on DVDs is so weak that it "malfunctioned"?
It's a stretch, I know.
I always think it's funny when people say MS "doesn't get it". They get it. They get it just fine. They are where they are because they get it better than Apple, or IBM, or Sun, or whoever else you care to name.
What is "it"? "It" is making as much money as possible. Period. "It" is not "empowering people with great software" or whatever their mission statement is. "It" is not interoperability, or allowing you to get your work done efficiently, or anything except for their bottom line.
If a particular course of action turns out to look bad for them, they will ratchet it back to something that *most* people can live with. They'll probably do this with XP registration to make it less intrusive, and then they'll look like paragons of sensitivity.
I don't know if it's luck or brilliance on their part that everybody keeps giving them the benefit of the doubt.
That's exactly why Jackson was viewed as biased! He said something to the effect of "if you need to get a mule's attention, whack him on the head with a 2-by-4". Hence the break-up order.
If the DOJ isn't careful here (and I think they won't be), MS will get off with a wrist-slap, declare a victory for apple pie and the American way, and go back to "innovating".
Let AOL and MS duke it out on the Windows desktop. Windows will become so unusable due to the constant popups, hundreds of extraneous icons, and lack of program compatibility that noone will want to use it. Maybe then people will finally look at the alternatives.
How long will it be before the alternatives are clogged with ads?
Maybe we should keep this whole "leenux" thing quiet...
Journals do actually do quite a bit of work. You submit a paper to them. Then they need to decide if they want to publish it, first of all. That takes some expertise to begin with.
Then they need to find other scientists in the field with the expertise to review it. This requires that the journal has staff members who are up on the current research in the field, and who's doing what.
Once the reviews come back, and you respond to the reviewer's comments (which often involves some disagreement), the journal needs to make a decision regarding the readiness of the paper to be published. If not, either it goes through another reviewer iteration, or it gets rejected. Again, this requires scientific expertise by the journal's staff.
Finally, it gets published on paper and sent out to subscribers.
All of this takes effort, and much of it is non-trivial. Granted, the scientist does the science, and writes it up, but the journal provides a service. Some journals have exorbitant subscription rates because they have few subscribers (libraries, usually).
Scientists could get together and run their own free journals with quality research in them, but that's that much less time spent doing science. And as many scientists will tell you, much of their time is already spent doing non-science activities like sitting on committees and writing grant proposals.
Not to diminish journals in any way, but "the world needs ditchdiggers, too!"
So far ...
...
Judge 1: You're guilty. And you suck.
MS: You're wrong. I want to ask Judge 2.
Judge 2: You're guilty. Judge 1, that "you suck" was out of line.
MS: What a victory! Now, Judge 2, we still think you're wrong. Can you reconsider?
My prediction
Judge 2: You're guilty. And you know what? You do suck.
The amount of money spent on learning the chemical composition of the Jovian atmosphere wouldn't put a dent into solving world hunger.
Maybe 99% of scientific research is completely obscure and leads nowhere. But the remaining 1% might lead us to solving world hunger, or cancer, or AIDS through directions that are completely orthogonal to "conventional wisdom". Who knows? It's worth it to me.
Yes, Kodak tested on a beta of XP.
Just like people using DR-DOS tried to test a beta of Windows. Of course MS fixed that "bug" in time for the release but by then the damage was done, wasn't it?
There's no way Microsoft will fix this without a lot of noise/threats from Kodak now.
My God I hate Microsoft, but ... don't they have a point here? Our tax dollars are being spent by government agencies such as NASA. That federally funded work belongs to the American people (IF it's released at all; I'm not saying the FBI/CIA/NSA should release their code to the public). Why shouldn't anyone be able to take that code and use it any way they wish?
Requiring a BSD-style license on any federally funded code that's released to the public seems reasonable to me.
Funny for a Slashdot post to be critical of someone bashing Microsoft!
But I agree with you; he should have known better.
Phone: KL5-3226 Ahoy hoi?
I think what a lot of people fail to realize is that Microsoft has just as much right as anyone else to set standards.
Of course they have a right to propose standards for everyone to use. The trouble is, what they call a "standard" is usually a moving target.
MacOSX: we're better because of A, B, and C.
Windows rebuttal: Your OS sucks because of A, B, and C.
Windows: We have D, E, and F.
MacOSX rebuttal: Your OS sucks because of D, E, and F.
Lather, rinse, repeat.
DMCA exists for one reason: to protect intellectual property.
No. Intellectual property was already protected; if Disney can show that you're infringing on its copyrighted material, they can take you to court. That has nothing to do with the DMCA.
The RIAA has been very clear in communicating to everyone that they have no intention to sue Professor Felten.
The Secure Digital Music Initiative Foundation (SDMI) does not - nor did it ever - intend to bring any legal action against Professor Felten or his co-authors.
Right. They waved a big baseball bat in his face and then said "Oh this? We weren't going to hit you with it. Honest."
The RIAA realized in hindsight that the threat made them look bad and backpedaled. I'm with the smartass on this one.
One of the most thought provoking photgraphs I ever saw was a picture of the interior of Albert Einstein's house when he was living in Princeton NJ. The picture showed a bookcase, desk with papers and open books, and a piano.
You're right, in the grand scheme of things encrypted TV signals are not so important.
But was Einstein's right to play his piano important to him? What if there was a law like the DMCA telling him what he could and could not do with his piano?
The studios argue that they would never have distributed movies in digital format without the DMCA. The truth is, most people *like* DVD movies, with the special features and sound and sharpness. And they don't care if their fair use rights are being denied because most people are satisfied with the uses they *do* get from their DVD.
...
So is the DMCA a good thing? It is an unfair law, but for most people, they get a nice movie format thanks to it, and the only real downside is they have to listen to their geek friends denounce the DMCA and the MPAA whenever the word "DVD" is mentioned.
And to bring Microsoft into this
You know how people often defend Microsoft's model of forcing OEM's to preload Windows by saying "well, it ends up being cheaper for most people"? In other words, having Windows preloaded on your computer for $10 is preferable for the vast majority of people rather than buying a computer and paying $15 for Windows. And Microsoft would never have done this unless the OEM's agreed to put Windows on *every* computer they sell.
But even though it's unfair, it's beneficial for the vast majority of people.
All that being said, I don't use windows, and I don't buy DVD movies. I've written my representatives in Congress about the DMCA. I'm very happy that we have some distinguished legal minds arguing our side. But I suspect most people are happy with the way things are and would rather have the DMCA than not.
What I see in most messages is that everyone cares enough about Microsoft to hate them...
Well, if everyone were apathetic towards Microsoft and their tactics, we'd have Microsoft innovations shoved down our throats in no time and have no choice about it.
I, for one, would hate that.
I think Mundie does get it. His audience, however, does not. Mundie and his employer just want to keep it that way.
I read this article in 1998, and it pissed me off then. It pissed me off this morning too!
Some of us code because it's *fun*. I resent the author saying I'm an incompetent coder because I haven't made a dime off of the free software I've released.
Some of us are employed as software engineers because we write software to provide a specific service. I don't see this ever going away.
What really struck a nerve with me is how this guy equates $$$ with competence and turning this into a moral argument; that if someone writes software as a hobby, he's a bad (or at least socially irresponsible) person.