If all geeks continue to say that 'the media that music travels is changing', then we shouldn't be mad or insulted that job losses are occouring. If less and less Shiny Discs are needed, less and less jobs are needed. Everyone who packages and distributes shiny discs will lose a job. everyone who manages or arranges to have discs produced and marketed loses a job. Don't take it to mean I think its a bad thing. Jobs are lost (or rather, shifted) when new technology arrives. Bowling pin setters are now automatic, etc.
If the 'music should be free as in beer' (tm) crowd really means what they say, then they should expect job losses.
Maybe if Boston bars were open later than 1:30, this would apply. But Since we're a puritanical blue-law-happy city, our subway shuts down at 12:30 and our bars close at 2, latest.
New York City, now there's a city where public urination is possible!
it has nothing to do with that. Really. Music takes time to make. Yes, it takes zero time and money to produce the medium that music comes from. I agree that the last 50 years have made this so.
But it still takes years to learn how to play an instrument, and years composing a song, and years to perfect it. Good art is hard to make. Its always been that way, it will always be that way. Artists need to spend hours and hours a day to make art. they do it full time. since it is full time, they need a way to pay for their food and clothing and shelter. they need to own the rights to their work. they can then trade in contract legitimate uses of their work or distribution. This ensures that an artist can devote his time and livelyhood and seek trade with people even though his product is without value with regards to the media it is recorded on or the method of transmission.
Re:Concerts.
on
TMBG on DRM
·
· Score: 3, Informative
if only this were true.
bands might play a show every other night. Depends where and when they get there, if they own a touring van, and what nights will yield decent dough. As as idea, clubs usually take an obscene amount of 'the take' of a concert. After traveling and paying monkeys to set up their stuff, bands are lucky to come out on top. TMBG has a good draw, and earned it from trucking around and playing for 20+ years. But honestly, only a small subset of artists will make real money performing professionally. Most major artists tour to promote the album, not release an album to promote the tour.
As for the last paragraph, I'm just going to ignore it. I've better things to do today, like, eh, burn some more McDonalds outlets to the ground. BURN RONALD, BURN
I would say that if Americans greatest sin is pride and boastfulness, then that sin hardly compares to that of burning clowns.
or, if i were being serious, our sin of pride is one we wear proudly, when we know what we believe, and know it to be right, and are not filled with fear, skepticism and doubt about our own convictions. furthermore, why do you have mcdonalds? chicken nuggets. all white meat.
the primary purpose is exploration of high speed in-atmosphere travel, with potential for cheap suborbital / orbital flights. the secondary idea is furthering military knowledge of highspeed travel, aka developing greater tolerance aircraft.
A lot of times government research across aerospace travel is one of those 'there's a cool idea floating around, which could benefit lots of government branches, lets allocate some funds'.
I hate to admit it, but to be really honest, fighter/bomber aircraft are obsolete for nuclear delivery. I don't think they want to be able to bring nuclear weapons anywhere any faster. But there is a school of military thought that would say that this technology could be helpful. I really think that this might have use for conventional bombs for highly targeted roles where time is of the essense. For example, say an unmanned predator drone spots Osama Bin Laden or some other high profile 'kill-on-sight' target. But it is in a nation that is not for the war on terror as much as we'd like. We can bring an uninterceptable jet to attack the target and spend minimal time in foreign airspace. Another scenario might include stolen nuclear weapons material detected by satellite. We need to get a pilot in the area quick to confirm the movement as hostile.
Remember that the fastest production military plane in the US was the SR-71 Blackbird, which was not meant to drop nuclear weapons, but rather be a reconnainse craft.
I suppose you're right in that bombs are on the mind of lots of people. But the Aerospace initiative has real and tangible aerospace science goals, as in learning about traveling in atmosphere at outrageous speeds. Remember also that Ron Sega is a former astronaut with the Space Shuttle. His desire, I believe, is to benefit cheap orbital insertion flights w/ a reusable craft and use military/government money to do it.
I agree. Baseball is one of the most mathematical sports around. It is mired in statistics, and choices based on past performances. Stats drive baseball for a lot of coaches.
Bobby Fischer has been swindled out of a "vast fortune" in royalties by book publishers, movie studios, and clock manufacturers (yes, clock manufacturers), who have brazenly pilfered his brand name, patents, and copyrights.
Oh no! Bobby fischer is a geek, so slashdot should love him, but he believes in copyrights, so slashdot should hate him! OMG contradiction!
I can see thousands of geeks' heads spinning.
Re:Changed the view of the US?
on
Bobby Fischer Found
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
It's certainly not considered that now (or in 2001). By Whom?
The United States won the biggest brainiac contest in 1969 when we beat the entire world to the Moon. (although there was only one contender) The United States invented the motorized aircraft, the polio vaccinne, the internet, the light bulb, the movie camera. They discovered how to harness the atom bomb. We have a lot of intellectual achievement under our belt. Whether we won a chess tournament shouldn't contribute to that; I admire chess as a game or sport, but it is hardly an indicator of the intellectual capacity of a nation.
I know what you're really saying; the rest of the world thinks we are loud, crass, and uncivil. They think so because we come with more common sense and know-how, and we call things like they are. Most Americans refuse to buy into the socialist dreams of the intellectuals of Europe. In Europe both the popular opinion and the opinion of the 'intellectuals' is one of self-sacrifice, egalitarianism, and anti-capitalism. In the US it is only our intellectuals. Our 'common folk' still believe in hard work and the self-made man, its why we've got a majority of the intellectual achievements of the last two centuries under our belts.
With our submarine and airbases being so diversley spread out, we can deliver via aircraft a nuke in under an hour to 90% of the planet. 100% of the planet using ICBMs. (which, by the way, there are no treaties outlawing them for the US, considering China is believed to have a transcontinental missle system, and Russia has a whole host of them) Plus, if it truly is being pursued for your reasoning, then the program wouldn't be cancelled, instead extended.
How horribly wrong. To say we know 'nothing' about the universe is just false. We know TONS about it, especially the most important parts that directly affect us, such as Newtonian Physics. We know enough to escape orbit from our planet. The rest we can learn along the way.
I really hate it when people, standing on the shoulders of giants, have the nerve to say we know nothing. please speak for yourself.
it would be nice if cellphones didn't have to file downtime reports, not because of terrorist threats, but that would mean that cellular phones are less regulated by the FCC. Personally, I think the FCC is an overgrown monster that forces communications companies to jump through hundred of hoops to even consider being a successful business. this drives up startup costs and means that national/largess companies end up running things, and rely on government to keep the other guys out.
The reason why cellphones have been successful and proliferated is because they aren't local telcos. they don't have to put a tower everywhere. they can refuse business to customers. they don't have to share their networks if they don't want to. they don't have to lease their lines like local telcos.
the less the government tries to run corporations, the better. look how they manage their own budget / affairs? they buy $800 hammers and expect to be able to dictate how to run a successful company? please.
or stand anywhere any other member of the general public has the right to go or stand.
Incorrect. Too many people in a public building can be a fire hazard. Too many people too close to the president can be an assasination hazard. Your right to free speech only goes as far as when you don't interfere with the rights of others. Regarding private property, it is just that, and its owners can deem who and how assembly can take place on it. Public property is available for use by the public for whatever, protest, etc, but only to the degree that safety can be assured. Not that protesters would throw stuff (even though violence has been a part of major protests worldwide), but that if they could go into a situation where the police cannot ensure the safety of all, they have a right to restrict behavior in a reasonable manner.
Also, communities have a right to peace and quiet. Thats why permits are required for certain things.
What I really meant, and I bet I wasn't that clear in my original post, is:
can i get my pc w/ a free OS alternative? if so, even if I blow the linux distro install away and install my copy of winXP pro which I already own, that would mean I wouldn't have to pay for two OS licenses. So, if my MoBo died and I want a quick and easy replacement PC, can I use my existing license?
PCs w/o windows licenses can benefit already existing windows customers. FYI I am a windows customer *and* a linux customer.
Wait a minute, please don't pass your pragmatism on to the rest of the world. Humans can know. Very rarely do they get blindsided. The more technology we achieve, the better we can plan our exploration. We can run simulations and tests and batteries and whatever we need. in fact, the reason we don't test nuclear explosions in the US is because we can simulate them via computer.
Electronically controlled stepper motors are what come to mind initially. These motors have variable 'limit switches' which prevent them from moving beyond a certain point. When I worked in the semiconductor industry, we had probe stations which had x/y/z dimension movement functions... this platform had to have a very small movement tolerance, and through software you could set what size wafer you were working on / how far the table could move. there's a way in software you can set the movement size to be very small, so the motor would only move very slightly. otherwise, there's a braking system in the motor that provides resistance to being moved beyond that point.
so with microprocessors you could have a motor which has a very large movement range, but when signalled by the lasertag equip sets the movement range to nil. if the motor is made correctly (strong enough) it should prevent the joints in a suit (say aluminum rods running through a jumpsuit) from bending.
however, building a suit with those kinds of universal joints would be expensive and heavy.
of the materials i referred to before, I don't know of one specifically, however, I'm sure one exists. Also, instead of molten metal, if i were to use nature, i'd use a thin layer of water in a plastic suit, with an insulated liner. then use CO2 or liquid nitrogen to freeze the water.
There are easier ways to do this. Instead of molten metal, try
electronically limited motors. these joints would be connected to low voltage electronics, like lazer tag sensors. these motors would provide slight resistance to your normal movement, but would 'lock up' if you sent an electrical signal to them.
I'm sure there's a material out there that becomes stiff and rigid when electricity is applied (or not), and fluid and moveable when not. and could work with a lot less energy than the solution you propose.
I know. I was at hope on friday night and Saturday. (I didn't pay because I was a friend of a speaker.)
However, i think the thing that really bothered me was how it seemed to be a geek t-shirt fashion show. what webcomic or internet joke does your t-shirt represent?
I wish I stayed longer and had a chance to hear about the 'how to hack an ipod' talk. all I heard before was hackers reminiscing about inside jokes I didn't get.
You think that's bad... the real crime is charging $50 a head to hear him spout his rubbish. Seriously, all H.O.P.E. was was an excuse to sell t-shirts and get drunk in New York for people like him.
Be specific. This means that the popup window not initiated by a user link-click will be dead. Popups still work if you clicked a link to spawn that new window.
Although, at the software company I work at, we are actively eliminating popup windows from our web apps because of the direction that users are taking in blocking popups. (some user programs can be set to block all, even link-clicked)
I have XP service pack 2 beta or whatever its called. Its nice being able to whitelist sites and such.
Slashdot Mirror
AMTRAK is federally owned and funded, pretty much. How does this law make the recording industry federally funded?
If all geeks continue to say that 'the media that music travels is changing', then we shouldn't be mad or insulted that job losses are occouring. If less and less Shiny Discs are needed, less and less jobs are needed. Everyone who packages and distributes shiny discs will lose a job. everyone who manages or arranges to have discs produced and marketed loses a job. Don't take it to mean I think its a bad thing. Jobs are lost (or rather, shifted) when new technology arrives. Bowling pin setters are now automatic, etc.
If the 'music should be free as in beer' (tm) crowd really means what they say, then they should expect job losses.
Maybe if Boston bars were open later than 1:30, this would apply. But Since we're a puritanical blue-law-happy city, our subway shuts down at 12:30 and our bars close at 2, latest.
New York City, now there's a city where public urination is possible!
it has nothing to do with that. Really. Music takes time to make. Yes, it takes zero time and money to produce the medium that music comes from. I agree that the last 50 years have made this so.
But it still takes years to learn how to play an instrument, and years composing a song, and years to perfect it. Good art is hard to make. Its always been that way, it will always be that way. Artists need to spend hours and hours a day to make art. they do it full time. since it is full time, they need a way to pay for their food and clothing and shelter. they need to own the rights to their work. they can then trade in contract legitimate uses of their work or distribution. This ensures that an artist can devote his time and livelyhood and seek trade with people even though his product is without value with regards to the media it is recorded on or the method of transmission.
if only this were true.
bands might play a show every other night. Depends where and when they get there, if they own a touring van, and what nights will yield decent dough. As as idea, clubs usually take an obscene amount of 'the take' of a concert. After traveling and paying monkeys to set up their stuff, bands are lucky to come out on top. TMBG has a good draw, and earned it from trucking around and playing for 20+ years. But honestly, only a small subset of artists will make real money performing professionally. Most major artists tour to promote the album, not release an album to promote the tour.
As for the last paragraph, I'm just going to ignore it. I've better things to do today, like, eh, burn some more McDonalds outlets to the ground. BURN RONALD, BURN
I would say that if Americans greatest sin is pride and boastfulness, then that sin hardly compares to that of burning clowns.
or, if i were being serious, our sin of pride is one we wear proudly, when we know what we believe, and know it to be right, and are not filled with fear, skepticism and doubt about our own convictions. furthermore, why do you have mcdonalds? chicken nuggets. all white meat.
There are two purposes of this program.
the primary purpose is exploration of high speed in-atmosphere travel, with potential for cheap suborbital / orbital flights. the secondary idea is furthering military knowledge of highspeed travel, aka developing greater tolerance aircraft.
A lot of times government research across aerospace travel is one of those 'there's a cool idea floating around, which could benefit lots of government branches, lets allocate some funds'.
I hate to admit it, but to be really honest, fighter/bomber aircraft are obsolete for nuclear delivery. I don't think they want to be able to bring nuclear weapons anywhere any faster. But there is a school of military thought that would say that this technology could be helpful. I really think that this might have use for conventional bombs for highly targeted roles where time is of the essense. For example, say an unmanned predator drone spots Osama Bin Laden or some other high profile 'kill-on-sight' target. But it is in a nation that is not for the war on terror as much as we'd like. We can bring an uninterceptable jet to attack the target and spend minimal time in foreign airspace. Another scenario might include stolen nuclear weapons material detected by satellite. We need to get a pilot in the area quick to confirm the movement as hostile.
Remember that the fastest production military plane in the US was the SR-71 Blackbird, which was not meant to drop nuclear weapons, but rather be a reconnainse craft.
I suppose you're right in that bombs are on the mind of lots of people. But the Aerospace initiative has real and tangible aerospace science goals, as in learning about traveling in atmosphere at outrageous speeds. Remember also that Ron Sega is a former astronaut with the Space Shuttle. His desire, I believe, is to benefit cheap orbital insertion flights w/ a reusable craft and use military/government money to do it.
I agree. Baseball is one of the most mathematical sports around. It is mired in statistics, and choices based on past performances. Stats drive baseball for a lot of coaches.
So how come an American didn't invent the telephone,
Alexander Graham Bell?
Speaking of anti-intellectual... jeez.
From the article:
Bobby Fischer has been swindled out of a "vast fortune" in royalties by book publishers, movie studios, and clock manufacturers (yes, clock manufacturers), who have brazenly pilfered his brand name, patents, and copyrights.
Oh no! Bobby fischer is a geek, so slashdot should love him, but he believes in copyrights, so slashdot should hate him! OMG contradiction!
I can see thousands of geeks' heads spinning.
It's certainly not considered that now (or in 2001).
By Whom?
The United States won the biggest brainiac contest in 1969 when we beat the entire world to the Moon. (although there was only one contender) The United States invented the motorized aircraft, the polio vaccinne, the internet, the light bulb, the movie camera. They discovered how to harness the atom bomb. We have a lot of intellectual achievement under our belt. Whether we won a chess tournament shouldn't contribute to that; I admire chess as a game or sport, but it is hardly an indicator of the intellectual capacity of a nation.
I know what you're really saying; the rest of the world thinks we are loud, crass, and uncivil. They think so because we come with more common sense and know-how, and we call things like they are. Most Americans refuse to buy into the socialist dreams of the intellectuals of Europe. In Europe both the popular opinion and the opinion of the 'intellectuals' is one of self-sacrifice, egalitarianism, and anti-capitalism. In the US it is only our intellectuals. Our 'common folk' still believe in hard work and the self-made man, its why we've got a majority of the intellectual achievements of the last two centuries under our belts.
With our submarine and airbases being so diversley spread out, we can deliver via aircraft a nuke in under an hour to 90% of the planet. 100% of the planet using ICBMs. (which, by the way, there are no treaties outlawing them for the US, considering China is believed to have a transcontinental missle system, and Russia has a whole host of them) Plus, if it truly is being pursued for your reasoning, then the program wouldn't be cancelled, instead extended.
How horribly wrong. To say we know 'nothing' about the universe is just false. We know TONS about it, especially the most important parts that directly affect us, such as Newtonian Physics. We know enough to escape orbit from our planet. The rest we can learn along the way.
I really hate it when people, standing on the shoulders of giants, have the nerve to say we know nothing. please speak for yourself.
it would be nice if cellphones didn't have to file downtime reports, not because of terrorist threats, but that would mean that cellular phones are less regulated by the FCC. Personally, I think the FCC is an overgrown monster that forces communications companies to jump through hundred of hoops to even consider being a successful business. this drives up startup costs and means that national/largess companies end up running things, and rely on government to keep the other guys out.
The reason why cellphones have been successful and proliferated is because they aren't local telcos. they don't have to put a tower everywhere. they can refuse business to customers. they don't have to share their networks if they don't want to. they don't have to lease their lines like local telcos.
the less the government tries to run corporations, the better. look how they manage their own budget / affairs? they buy $800 hammers and expect to be able to dictate how to run a successful company? please.
these days you can append 'open source' to pretty much anything and it works.
I'm still waiting for open source sex and an open source girlfriend.
or stand anywhere any other member of the general public has the right to go or stand.
Incorrect. Too many people in a public building can be a fire hazard. Too many people too close to the president can be an assasination hazard. Your right to free speech only goes as far as when you don't interfere with the rights of others. Regarding private property, it is just that, and its owners can deem who and how assembly can take place on it. Public property is available for use by the public for whatever, protest, etc, but only to the degree that safety can be assured. Not that protesters would throw stuff (even though violence has been a part of major protests worldwide), but that if they could go into a situation where the police cannot ensure the safety of all, they have a right to restrict behavior in a reasonable manner.
Also, communities have a right to peace and quiet. Thats why permits are required for certain things.
What I really meant, and I bet I wasn't that clear in my original post, is:
can i get my pc w/ a free OS alternative? if so, even if I blow the linux distro install away and install my copy of winXP pro which I already own, that would mean I wouldn't have to pay for two OS licenses. So, if my MoBo died and I want a quick and easy replacement PC, can I use my existing license?
PCs w/o windows licenses can benefit already existing windows customers. FYI I am a windows customer *and* a linux customer.
Because it comes with the Linux distro pre-installed, is the computer $99 less because it hasn't paid the 'microsoft tax'?
its a good marketing move to sell to people who don't want to buy / have Windows XP.
No one can possibly know for sure.
Wait a minute, please don't pass your pragmatism on to the rest of the world. Humans can know. Very rarely do they get blindsided. The more technology we achieve, the better we can plan our exploration. We can run simulations and tests and batteries and whatever we need. in fact, the reason we don't test nuclear explosions in the US is because we can simulate them via computer.
Electronically controlled stepper motors are what come to mind initially. These motors have variable 'limit switches' which prevent them from moving beyond a certain point. When I worked in the semiconductor industry, we had probe stations which had x/y/z dimension movement functions... this platform had to have a very small movement tolerance, and through software you could set what size wafer you were working on / how far the table could move. there's a way in software you can set the movement size to be very small, so the motor would only move very slightly. otherwise, there's a braking system in the motor that provides resistance to being moved beyond that point.
so with microprocessors you could have a motor which has a very large movement range, but when signalled by the lasertag equip sets the movement range to nil. if the motor is made correctly (strong enough) it should prevent the joints in a suit (say aluminum rods running through a jumpsuit) from bending.
however, building a suit with those kinds of universal joints would be expensive and heavy.
of the materials i referred to before, I don't know of one specifically, however, I'm sure one exists. Also, instead of molten metal, if i were to use nature, i'd use a thin layer of water in a plastic suit, with an insulated liner. then use CO2 or liquid nitrogen to freeze the water.
Paintball has the nice tendancies of having regulated fields and protective gear. its also highly 'moddable'.
also, paintball guns hold about 200 rounds per standard hopper, go about 1000 shots per 20 oz of CO2, and you can 'tell' when someone is hit.
There are easier ways to do this. Instead of molten metal, try
electronically limited motors. these joints would be connected to low voltage electronics, like lazer tag sensors. these motors would provide slight resistance to your normal movement, but would 'lock up' if you sent an electrical signal to them.
I'm sure there's a material out there that becomes stiff and rigid when electricity is applied (or not), and fluid and moveable when not. and could work with a lot less energy than the solution you propose.
I know. I was at hope on friday night and Saturday. (I didn't pay because I was a friend of a speaker.)
However, i think the thing that really bothered me was how it seemed to be a geek t-shirt fashion show. what webcomic or internet joke does your t-shirt represent?
I wish I stayed longer and had a chance to hear about the 'how to hack an ipod' talk. all I heard before was hackers reminiscing about inside jokes I didn't get.
You think that's bad...
the real crime is charging $50 a head to hear him spout his rubbish. Seriously, all H.O.P.E. was was an excuse to sell t-shirts and get drunk in New York for people like him.
Be specific. This means that the popup window not initiated by a user link-click will be dead. Popups still work if you clicked a link to spawn that new window.
Although, at the software company I work at, we are actively eliminating popup windows from our web apps because of the direction that users are taking in blocking popups. (some user programs can be set to block all, even link-clicked)
I have XP service pack 2 beta or whatever its called. Its nice being able to whitelist sites and such.