If you want a good place to see some authentic PCC streetcars still in active service, visit San Francisco -- they purchased a bunch from Philadelphia for tourist attraction.
Or, better yet, come to Boston and ride the Mattapan High Speed Line. Down at the end of the Ashmont Branch of the red line, there's a 2 mile line that uses PCC cars. These are all Wartime (WWII) PCC cars from the Green Line. Some have received renovations over the past few years, and have been repainted to the orange colors of the old MTA. Others still retain the Green MBTA paint schemes. The roll signs have destinations that no longer exist like "Arborway", and "Oak Square", and "Scollay Square". It's pretty cool.
(I don't accept any email that contains the word sex, espescially in the address)
And slashdotters wonder why they're single. I, on the other hand, allow the word "sex" in e-mails, and because of this, have gotten numerous e-mails from eastern european girls who want to marry me or from lonely housewives who want to chat when their husbands are away. Now, which one to choose...
Should samples be protected by copyright, or should artists/musicians have the right to manipulate the old into the new?"
Well, first of all, this is a useless question. Something can be protected by copyright, but you can still obtain the rights to manipulate the old into the new. Now if you mean "should they have the unrestricted right...", that's something else.
I'm not going to get into whether or not it should be copyrighted, but I believe the artist should have some say in whether or not their song gets used in someone else's song. I'm not going to get into how that could be enforced, since I don't know. But consider this:
You're David Bowie. You right this really cool song with Queen called "Under Pressure". It has a really distinctive bass line. It's a very popular song. Then, a generation later, this punk-ass, no talent retard called "Vanilla Ice" uses that part of your song in his song "Ice Ice Baby", which ceases to be popular after about two weeks. Suddently, your radio airtime goes down, since people hear that bass line, think it's Vanilla Ice, and shut the radio off. (Don't laugh - I've seen people do this - anyone who was a kid or teenager in the '90s associates that line with Vanilla Ice before David Bowie) How would you feel about that?
Now, you can say, "Well, he shouldn't have let them use it", but did he have any control? I don't think so. Ice probably just paid money to some copyright clearinghouse, and they let him use that sample. I wonder if David Bowie actually cares....
Tablets are alive and probably replacing a laptop near you.
With all due respect, bullshit.
I test drove two tablet PCs recently (one from Motion Computing, the other I can't remember) for about a week each. They were certainly cool, and they invoked much drooling and exclamations of "ooh, shiny!" from my co-workers, but boy did they suck for daily work.
Here's a brief summary of my testing:
Pros:
no flip-up screen to break
handwriting recognition is quite good
excellent for "Note taking", where you draw right on the screen, and then later either save it as an image, for printing, or have it attempt to recognize the handwriting
Cons:
handwriting recognition is predictive (ie: it differentiates between a captial I, lowercase L, and numerial 1 by the characters that came before or after). In random sequences (read: good passwords), this fails miserably. I was forced to use the pickboard (a picture of a keyboard on the screen, and you use the stylus to press the buttons) for passwords, and boy did it suck. I had to have my SSH client save my password (which is insecure, but the tablet was kept in a locked drawer when not in use, so whatever).
Handwriting recognition is still too slow compared to a keyboard
graphics programs (photoshop, etc) are a dead loss without a mouse and keyboard shortcuts.
configuring things is really slow. It took forever to enter the PPP config for my ISP.
Of course, they don't run Linux (there is some testing going on, and I found one person who got a kernel to boot, but no usable distros yet), but that's not that big of a deal for me. I'm concerned with usability primarily, and tablets failed that test.
They will not replace laptops anytime soon. What might replace laptops are those laptops that double as tablets (where the monitor rotates, and then folds, so the laptop is closed, but the monitor faces out). Those might catch on. But laptops will not be replaced by tablets until handwriting recognition becomes just as fast (if not faster) than typing, with reduced errors.
What tablets will replace are notepads (the dead tree kind, I mean) and legal pads and the like. The one use I found for the tablet was for taking notes in meetings. I can go back and write on the upper part of the screen, if there's something I missed, rather than having to PgUp and delete and re-type. I can then digitize the notes later, or print them out as images. Tablets are great for that. I predict they'll be used mostly by PHB types or folks who attend lots of meetings and need to take notes. They will not replace conventional laptops for a long, long time, if ever.
Also Texas Instruments doesn't just make calculators, either..
Sure. They also make the Speak N Spell, which, when combined with an umbrella, a circular saw blade, and a phonograph, allow you to send exta-terrestrial messages. Yeesh. Didn't anyone see E.T.?:-)
that would be 888 703 0010. Calling the other number gets some family's answering machine. Please mod the parent down so these poor folks can stop getting calls that aren't for them.
No. It takes a hell of a lot more effort (and money) to accept international orders than it does to accept domestic ones. Why do you think so many of the smaller vendors (like those on pricewatch) won't take non-U.S. orders.
And besides, this is a pilot. If it takes off, I'm sure Apple will start accepting international orders about when they release a windows version.
...my ISP makes me ...I need something from a site with only an IPv6 address ...hell freezes over ...they run out of addresses ...they pry my IPv4 address out of my cold dead hands ...CowboyNeal assigns my IPv6 addresses.
Ah, I see I've been modded down to troll, merely for asking for clarification on what the GPL permits and what it doesn't permit. And since my comment was at score 3 for a long time, I can only assume that the three successive troll mods in a row must have come from an editor. Ah, censorship. Gotta love/.
I know the subject might sound like flamebait, but really, I'm confused. Debian is released under the GPL, right? (It is GNU/Linux, after all) And, I thought that if you have a product using the GPL (as opposed to the LGPL), anything derived from that project has to be released as GPL? Now, maybe these folks wrote their own installer from scratch, and that's fine, then they don't have to release that. But they talk about integrating and streamlining other GPL'd software. So where is the source? Is this a GPL violation? Or am I just not seeing the clause where it says this is allowed. Certainly they're allowed to charge for support, and they're allowed a nominal distribution charge. However, $39.95 is not what I'd call a distribution charge. Can someone please explain, without flaming, whether this company has or has not violated the GPL, and why?
...but unfortunately, it appears that you can't, at least not without paying. They're pretty crafty about it too, adding both a "Buy" and "Download" link, however the "Download" link merely takes you to a page where you can choose to purchase the downloadable version for anywhere from $39.95 (student) to $104.95 (Institution), or you can purchase the previous (2.7) version for ($24.95). If there's a place where you can try it for free, it's not linked from their site.
Now, this is not to say there's anything wrong with trying to make money from Linux. However, it's truly unfortunate that there's no way to check out this distro without shelling out some money. RedHat lets you download for free, as do all the other major distros. However, they'll also take your money if you want the box version or if you want support. Libranet can't seriously hope people will shell out money to switch to this without being given a risk-free chance to experience it.
And, since they basically took Debian, modified it, and made it not-free as in beer, I'm wondering why they just got free publicity on Slashdot.
Use IPsec or something similar to provide security and run a few drops to link the access points to wherever the telecom comes in the building.
That's fine for clueful types, but setting up IPsec is non-trivial for the most part. Unless you want to get into the user support business, this sounds like the wrong way.
That and doing a good wireless network from scratch is hard. It's not a matter of throwing a couple of APs out there. You have to get a bunch of APs, figure out where dead spots are, fix those, but still design it so that the access points don't fight with each other, and so the user isn't in a location where the card is constantly swapping access points. Then you have people with poor cards that can't get good access (read: G4 powerbooks), but they're paying money for it. It's a big honking mess.
Impressive considering the connection problems people were having.
Sorry, which connection problems? I don't seem to recall any. Nor does anyone else I talked to who used it on the first day it came out and continued using it through now. Seems to work fine for me. Largely because the content is hosted on Akamai. Of course, if you're on a 56k dialup line and your ISP doesn't have an Akamai box deployed, then, well, you probably did notice connection problems. But you'd notice those for any content served via Akamai.
Just once, I'd like to see an Apple article on Slashdot that doesn't include some flippant remark about how Apple sucks.
If I put a water fountain out in the front of my building, could I then have passers-by who stopped to take a sip arrested for "theft of water?"
No, however if someone filled up their water bottle from your hose connection, you could have them arrested for that. The same with someone who plugs in to an outlet you have on the outside of your house. Do you have hose taps and electrical outlets outside? Do you lock them up? Of course not, because it's expected that people understand they're not free for public use.
Any word on pricing per album?.99 a song is cool if I only want a few songs but it becomes moot if an album is 15 songs.
Right, then it becomes $15, which means you might as well buy the actual CD, since that's about the same price. I think this service is designed for the "I don't want to pay $15 for one good song, so I'll get it off Kazaa" folks. They end up paying a couple of bucks, and it's perfectly legal.
# play bought tunes on a non-iPod player such as Archos or Rio
Uh, there are other players that support (or will soon support) the.aac format. It's only a matter of time. And that argument is not terribly useful. You can't play VHS tapes on a Beta machine either, and I don't see anyone bitching.
# stream bought tunes to a SliMP3 or Audiotron
How many people have those? Not all of us can afford all this new shit. Don't you have a regular audio CD player? You can burn these songs to audio CD (no DRM there)
# play bought tunes on your Windows or Linux PC
Uh, Apple has already released the iPod for Windows. If the service takes off, I imagine there will be Windows versions in the future. And does your computer have a CD-ROM drive? If so, (assuming you RTFA'd), you can use the unlimited cd burning feature and burn to a CD.
# burn bought tunes on an MP3-CD for use in the car or a DVD player
You can burn to audio CD. I have yet to see a DVD player which can play MP3 CDs but cannot play Audio CDs. If you know of such a brand, I'd like to hear about it. Ditto for the MP3-CD in the car thing. Many of us don't even have regular CD players in the car, let along MP3-CD ones. And also, find me an MP3-CD player that cannot play regular audio CDs.
# switch to another client other than iTunes (e.g. Audion) for your Mac music experience
Well, duh. Apple's not going to invest money in helping someone else's business. And really, iTunes is an excellent client, with or without this feature. And it's free. What more do you need?
# broadcast bought tunes using Shoutcast
You can broadcast them with iTunes. Is that so terrible? You can also burn a CD, rip it to MP3, and broadcast those.
Seems like you're going out of your way to find arguments against this, instead of realizing that this is a compromise, and if it takes off, there will be far less clamoring from the RIAA for Microsoft-style DRM and crippled CDs.
Can anyone explain the economics of the current line/poll implementation?
Why aren't lines buried to be less obtrusive, better insulated, and non-problematic in ice storms?
Well, you basically identified the issue in your question. It's all about economics. Pylons are just plain cheaper. I have a book that claims the cost of 1 mile of electric cable underground is 1 million pounds sterling vs about 400,000 or 500,000 for pylons. (This book was published in the UK, but I bet the ratio is the same between the two methods). The electric company chooses the cheaper method so that rates don't go through the roof.
Also, most places you find electric conduits underground, it's because there's simply no space above ground. Like in cities, for example. And underground conduits are by no means perfect. Where I used to live, New York Telephone buried the phone cables, even though it was a rural area. And for the most part, it was like using two Dixie cups and a string. And during times when we had several days of rain in a row (read: Spring), the phones would just plain stop working. This was the case all over the village (yes, it wasn't even a town.) And the phone lines were less than ten years old. However, in the next town, where the lines were on poles, they never had this problem. (Of course, they had trees fall on them, but that's a different issue)
an anyone explain the economics of the current line/poll implementation?
Why aren't lines buried to be less obtrusive, better insulated, and non-problematic in ice storms?
Well, you basically identified the issue in your question. It's all about economics. Pylons are just plain cheaper. I have a book that claims the cost of 1 mile of electric cable underground is 1 million pounds sterling vs about 400,000 or 500,000 for pylons. (This book was published in the UK, but I bet the ratio is the same between the two methods). The electric company chooses the cheaper method so that rates don't go through the roof.
Also, most places you find electric conduits underground, it's because there's simply no space above ground. Like in cities, for example. And underground conduits are by no means perfect. Where I used to live, New York Telephone buried the phone cables, even though it was a rural area. And for the most part, it was like using two Dixie cups and a string. And during times when we had several days of rain in a row (read: Spring), the phones would just plain stop working. This was the case all over the village (yes, it wasn't even a town.) And the phone lines were less than ten years old. However, in the next town, where the lines were on poles, they never had this problem. (Of course, they had trees fall on them, but that's a different issue)
It's a rotary dial, like on the iPOD, or those old telephones.
I don't think it is. I know what the title of the patent application says, but reading the description, it doesn't make sense that it's an actual dial like the iPod. The description says that the user can push it side to side or up and down. That's 4 directions. The iPod dial only goes in two directions. Up and down. (it's basically a scroll wheel turned on its side) To navigate "left" and "right", you use the other buttons on the iPod (Forward, back, etc). And it's certainly nothing like a telephone dial, which is spring loaded and can only go in one directon.
I think it's more like a joystick, but instead of moving a handgrip, you move this round pad. Sony has something kind of like it on the remote for their home theater receivers.
Guess we'll just have to wait and see.
If there is a Stanley Blizter at MIT, he doesn't exist in the Faculty Directory, nor does he have an Athena Account. The parent is a troll. Whoever modded it up to 5 is an idiot.
I know in Tennessee, there was/is a 1 or 2 dollar charge per month for having a touch tone instead of a rotary tone.
Here in the Boston area, I get charged $0.44 per month for TouchTone service. Which is ridiculous, since with today's digital equipment, it probably takes more effort to understand pulse signals than DTMF tones. A couple of folks I know have sucessfully gotten that canceled on the grounds that they don't use TouchTone. I've been fighting with Verizon for a few months now (I have 2 phones in my apartment - one is rotary, and another is electronic pulse only), but I've had no such luck.
However, GNUCash [gnucash.org] will run on all the platforms listed, and is free.
First of all, GNUcash does not run on Windows without much frobbing. Yes, I know we don't like Windows 'round these parts, but there are plenty of folks who do. Secondly, GNUcash is not designed to be a drop-in replacement for Quicken. This program clearly is. I just downloaded the Windows version, and I'm happy with it. I'll never use MS Money or Quicken again.
If we want Linux to succeed, we have to acknowledge that there is room for proprietary software. (Linus has the right idea - leave it up to the users to decide what they want to use it for). If you don't like proprietary software, don't use it. But Free Software is about Freedom. Kind of like the Freedom to run whatever programs you want. If GNUcash is a better program than Moneydance, then Moneydance will die, without any assistance from the zealots. If, OTOH, Moneydance fills another niche, then both will survive.
Like it or not, software like this is vital to getting Linux on the desktop. If people want to pay, let them pay. But let them decide which they like better - don't presume to dictate their software choice to them. GNUcash takes effort to set up, especially on some MacOS X and Windows. Sure, it's not a _LOT_ of effort, but it's more than the standard "double click install.exe" that folks are used to.
I'm getting tired of seeing responses to every non-free Linux program mentioned on/. along the lines of "Boo, it's proprietary, use $bar instead". If you know of and use a better, l33ter program to accomplish the same task, then maybe, just maybe, you're not the intended audience of the new piece of software. In that case, don't use it. But why disparage it in front of potential users? Sure, there are some things to be worried about. Like when MS releases Office and Windows Media Player for Linux, I'll start to get nervous, and recommened OpenOffice and Mplayer instead. But when a company comes along with a good product, and sells it for a reasonable price, don't bitch just for the sake of bitching.
Lastly, let's not forget the goal of this program. A drop in replacement for Quicken, available for Linux, OS X, and Windows. The last platform is perhaps the MOST important. The installation on Windows is as easy as any other Windows program. And it reads QIF files. And it has most Quicken features. But it's not Quicken. And this is excellent. Because guess who makes Quicken? Our good friends at Intuit, makers of the wonderful TurboTax with activiation that we were all bitching about a while back. If Intuit can lose some market share because of this program, it's still a good thing. Because it's taking people away from a company that treats their customers like criminals.
Would Ivy League schools slap a quota on these people to fend off the enraged parents of the "normal majority?
So what. Instead, they can go to a school somewhere in Westchester County, NY. There they can be taught to harness their powers and use them for good. And if they excel in that school, they might just have a chance to join a special team that can save the world from the evil plots of Magneto and... uh... nevermind.
The really sad part? The US government can still use OpenBSD, even though they basically flipped them the bird. It would have been better if they had just never
offered the funding at all.
Just as Microsoft can use Linux. Part of the risk you take in distributing Free Software (TM) is that someone you hate might use it. Don't like that? You're perfectly capable of changing the license to say "This Software may be used only be readers of Slashdot." or "This Software may not be used by employees of any government." But that's not the case.
This definately makes DARPA and the US Government look bad.
Indeed it does. I won't debate that point. However....
Bastion of freedom of speech my ass.
How has this restricted Free Speech? Theo is still able to work on OpenBSD. So are other people. There is no law that prevents that. The money just has to come from somewhere else.
I'll post this here, since lots of people seem to be confused:
Ammendment I. Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people
peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.
The First Ammendment has NOT been violated here. No laws prevent the OpenBSD project from moving forward. In fact, if that last portion about petitioning the government had been followed, we probably wouldn't have had this problem. If Theo had said "Look, I'd really like to accept this grant, but I have the following concerns, is there anything you can do appease them?", there probably would have been some converstaions in DARPA offices, which would have resulted in either a compromise, or Theo beeing unable to morally and ethically accept, and that would have been the end of it.
Freedom of Speech does NOT mean Freedom from Consequences. Freedom of Speech is a right, but rights are not something to be used lightly. If you don't believe in your viewpoint enough to make sacrifices, then maybe you should reconsider whether you want to make your viewpoint public.
Was this whole DARPA thing handled poorly? Yes. Does it make the government look like a bunch of jerks? Yes. Is it a violation of the First Ammendment? Nope.
Slashdot Mirror
Or, better yet, come to Boston and ride the Mattapan High Speed Line. Down at the end of the Ashmont Branch of the red line, there's a 2 mile line that uses PCC cars. These are all Wartime (WWII) PCC cars from the Green Line. Some have received renovations over the past few years, and have been repainted to the orange colors of the old MTA. Others still retain the Green MBTA paint schemes. The roll signs have destinations that no longer exist like "Arborway", and "Oak Square", and "Scollay Square". It's pretty cool.
And slashdotters wonder why they're single. I, on the other hand, allow the word "sex" in e-mails, and because of this, have gotten numerous e-mails from eastern european girls who want to marry me or from lonely housewives who want to chat when their husbands are away. Now, which one to choose...
Well, first of all, this is a useless question. Something can be protected by copyright, but you can still obtain the rights to manipulate the old into the new. Now if you mean "should they have the unrestricted right...", that's something else.
I'm not going to get into whether or not it should be copyrighted, but I believe the artist should have some say in whether or not their song gets used in someone else's song. I'm not going to get into how that could be enforced, since I don't know. But consider this:
You're David Bowie. You right this really cool song with Queen called "Under Pressure". It has a really distinctive bass line. It's a very popular song. Then, a generation later, this punk-ass, no talent retard called "Vanilla Ice" uses that part of your song in his song "Ice Ice Baby", which ceases to be popular after about two weeks. Suddently, your radio airtime goes down, since people hear that bass line, think it's Vanilla Ice, and shut the radio off. (Don't laugh - I've seen people do this - anyone who was a kid or teenager in the '90s associates that line with Vanilla Ice before David Bowie) How would you feel about that?
Now, you can say, "Well, he shouldn't have let them use it", but did he have any control? I don't think so. Ice probably just paid money to some copyright clearinghouse, and they let him use that sample. I wonder if David Bowie actually cares....
With all due respect, bullshit.
I test drove two tablet PCs recently (one from Motion Computing, the other I can't remember) for about a week each. They were certainly cool, and they invoked much drooling and exclamations of "ooh, shiny!" from my co-workers, but boy did they suck for daily work.
Here's a brief summary of my testing:
Pros:
Cons:
Of course, they don't run Linux (there is some testing going on, and I found one person who got a kernel to boot, but no usable distros yet), but that's not that big of a deal for me. I'm concerned with usability primarily, and tablets failed that test.
They will not replace laptops anytime soon. What might replace laptops are those laptops that double as tablets (where the monitor rotates, and then folds, so the laptop is closed, but the monitor faces out). Those might catch on. But laptops will not be replaced by tablets until handwriting recognition becomes just as fast (if not faster) than typing, with reduced errors.
What tablets will replace are notepads (the dead tree kind, I mean) and legal pads and the like. The one use I found for the tablet was for taking notes in meetings. I can go back and write on the upper part of the screen, if there's something I missed, rather than having to PgUp and delete and re-type. I can then digitize the notes later, or print them out as images. Tablets are great for that. I predict they'll be used mostly by PHB types or folks who attend lots of meetings and need to take notes. They will not replace conventional laptops for a long, long time, if ever.
Sure. They also make the Speak N Spell, which, when combined with an umbrella, a circular saw blade, and a phonograph, allow you to send exta-terrestrial messages. Yeesh. Didn't anyone see E.T.? :-)
that would be 888 703 0010. Calling the other number gets some family's answering machine. Please mod the parent down so these poor folks can stop getting calls that aren't for them.
No. It takes a hell of a lot more effort (and money) to accept international orders than it does to accept domestic ones. Why do you think so many of the smaller vendors (like those on pricewatch) won't take non-U.S. orders.
And besides, this is a pilot. If it takes off, I'm sure Apple will start accepting international orders about when they release a windows version.
Ah, I see I've been modded down to troll, merely for asking for clarification on what the GPL permits and what it doesn't permit. And since my comment was at score 3 for a long time, I can only assume that the three successive troll mods in a row must have come from an editor. Ah, censorship. Gotta love /.
I know the subject might sound like flamebait, but really, I'm confused. Debian is released under the GPL, right? (It is GNU/Linux, after all) And, I thought that if you have a product using the GPL (as opposed to the LGPL), anything derived from that project has to be released as GPL? Now, maybe these folks wrote their own installer from scratch, and that's fine, then they don't have to release that. But they talk about integrating and streamlining other GPL'd software. So where is the source? Is this a GPL violation? Or am I just not seeing the clause where it says this is allowed. Certainly they're allowed to charge for support, and they're allowed a nominal distribution charge. However, $39.95 is not what I'd call a distribution charge. Can someone please explain, without flaming, whether this company has or has not violated the GPL, and why?
Now, this is not to say there's anything wrong with trying to make money from Linux. However, it's truly unfortunate that there's no way to check out this distro without shelling out some money. RedHat lets you download for free, as do all the other major distros. However, they'll also take your money if you want the box version or if you want support. Libranet can't seriously hope people will shell out money to switch to this without being given a risk-free chance to experience it.
And, since they basically took Debian, modified it, and made it not-free as in beer, I'm wondering why they just got free publicity on Slashdot.
That's fine for clueful types, but setting up IPsec is non-trivial for the most part. Unless you want to get into the user support business, this sounds like the wrong way.
That and doing a good wireless network from scratch is hard. It's not a matter of throwing a couple of APs out there. You have to get a bunch of APs, figure out where dead spots are, fix those, but still design it so that the access points don't fight with each other, and so the user isn't in a location where the card is constantly swapping access points. Then you have people with poor cards that can't get good access (read: G4 powerbooks), but they're paying money for it. It's a big honking mess.
Sorry, which connection problems? I don't seem to recall any. Nor does anyone else I talked to who used it on the first day it came out and continued using it through now. Seems to work fine for me. Largely because the content is hosted on Akamai. Of course, if you're on a 56k dialup line and your ISP doesn't have an Akamai box deployed, then, well, you probably did notice connection problems. But you'd notice those for any content served via Akamai.
Just once, I'd like to see an Apple article on Slashdot that doesn't include some flippant remark about how Apple sucks.
No, however if someone filled up their water bottle from your hose connection, you could have them arrested for that. The same with someone who plugs in to an outlet you have on the outside of your house. Do you have hose taps and electrical outlets outside? Do you lock them up? Of course not, because it's expected that people understand they're not free for public use.
Right, then it becomes $15, which means you might as well buy the actual CD, since that's about the same price. I think this service is designed for the "I don't want to pay $15 for one good song, so I'll get it off Kazaa" folks. They end up paying a couple of bucks, and it's perfectly legal.
Uh, there are other players that support (or will soon support) the .aac format. It's only a matter of time. And that argument is not terribly useful. You can't play VHS tapes on a Beta machine either, and I don't see anyone bitching.
# stream bought tunes to a SliMP3 or Audiotron
How many people have those? Not all of us can afford all this new shit. Don't you have a regular audio CD player? You can burn these songs to audio CD (no DRM there)
# play bought tunes on your Windows or Linux PC
Uh, Apple has already released the iPod for Windows. If the service takes off, I imagine there will be Windows versions in the future. And does your computer have a CD-ROM drive? If so, (assuming you RTFA'd), you can use the unlimited cd burning feature and burn to a CD.
# burn bought tunes on an MP3-CD for use in the car or a DVD player
You can burn to audio CD. I have yet to see a DVD player which can play MP3 CDs but cannot play Audio CDs. If you know of such a brand, I'd like to hear about it. Ditto for the MP3-CD in the car thing. Many of us don't even have regular CD players in the car, let along MP3-CD ones. And also, find me an MP3-CD player that cannot play regular audio CDs.
# switch to another client other than iTunes (e.g. Audion) for your Mac music experience
Well, duh. Apple's not going to invest money in helping someone else's business. And really, iTunes is an excellent client, with or without this feature. And it's free. What more do you need?
# broadcast bought tunes using Shoutcast
You can broadcast them with iTunes. Is that so terrible? You can also burn a CD, rip it to MP3, and broadcast those.
Seems like you're going out of your way to find arguments against this, instead of realizing that this is a compromise, and if it takes off, there will be far less clamoring from the RIAA for Microsoft-style DRM and crippled CDs.
Well, you basically identified the issue in your question. It's all about economics. Pylons are just plain cheaper. I have a book that claims the cost of 1 mile of electric cable underground is 1 million pounds sterling vs about 400,000 or 500,000 for pylons. (This book was published in the UK, but I bet the ratio is the same between the two methods). The electric company chooses the cheaper method so that rates don't go through the roof.
Also, most places you find electric conduits underground, it's because there's simply no space above ground. Like in cities, for example. And underground conduits are by no means perfect. Where I used to live, New York Telephone buried the phone cables, even though it was a rural area. And for the most part, it was like using two Dixie cups and a string. And during times when we had several days of rain in a row (read: Spring), the phones would just plain stop working. This was the case all over the village (yes, it wasn't even a town.) And the phone lines were less than ten years old. However, in the next town, where the lines were on poles, they never had this problem. (Of course, they had trees fall on them, but that's a different issue)
Why aren't lines buried to be less obtrusive, better insulated, and non-problematic in ice storms?
Well, you basically identified the issue in your question. It's all about economics. Pylons are just plain cheaper. I have a book that claims the cost of 1 mile of electric cable underground is 1 million pounds sterling vs about 400,000 or 500,000 for pylons. (This book was published in the UK, but I bet the ratio is the same between the two methods). The electric company chooses the cheaper method so that rates don't go through the roof.
Also, most places you find electric conduits underground, it's because there's simply no space above ground. Like in cities, for example. And underground conduits are by no means perfect. Where I used to live, New York Telephone buried the phone cables, even though it was a rural area. And for the most part, it was like using two Dixie cups and a string. And during times when we had several days of rain in a row (read: Spring), the phones would just plain stop working. This was the case all over the village (yes, it wasn't even a town.) And the phone lines were less than ten years old. However, in the next town, where the lines were on poles, they never had this problem. (Of course, they had trees fall on them, but that's a different issue)
I don't think it is. I know what the title of the patent application says, but reading the description, it doesn't make sense that it's an actual dial like the iPod. The description says that the user can push it side to side or up and down. That's 4 directions. The iPod dial only goes in two directions. Up and down. (it's basically a scroll wheel turned on its side) To navigate "left" and "right", you use the other buttons on the iPod (Forward, back, etc). And it's certainly nothing like a telephone dial, which is spring loaded and can only go in one directon. I think it's more like a joystick, but instead of moving a handgrip, you move this round pad. Sony has something kind of like it on the remote for their home theater receivers. Guess we'll just have to wait and see.
If there is a Stanley Blizter at MIT, he doesn't exist in the Faculty Directory, nor does he have an Athena Account. The parent is a troll. Whoever modded it up to 5 is an idiot.
Here in the Boston area, I get charged $0.44 per month for TouchTone service. Which is ridiculous, since with today's digital equipment, it probably takes more effort to understand pulse signals than DTMF tones. A couple of folks I know have sucessfully gotten that canceled on the grounds that they don't use TouchTone. I've been fighting with Verizon for a few months now (I have 2 phones in my apartment - one is rotary, and another is electronic pulse only), but I've had no such luck.
First of all, GNUcash does not run on Windows without much frobbing. Yes, I know we don't like Windows 'round these parts, but there are plenty of folks who do. Secondly, GNUcash is not designed to be a drop-in replacement for Quicken. This program clearly is. I just downloaded the Windows version, and I'm happy with it. I'll never use MS Money or Quicken again.
If we want Linux to succeed, we have to acknowledge that there is room for proprietary software. (Linus has the right idea - leave it up to the users to decide what they want to use it for). If you don't like proprietary software, don't use it. But Free Software is about Freedom. Kind of like the Freedom to run whatever programs you want. If GNUcash is a better program than Moneydance, then Moneydance will die, without any assistance from the zealots. If, OTOH, Moneydance fills another niche, then both will survive.
Like it or not, software like this is vital to getting Linux on the desktop. If people want to pay, let them pay. But let them decide which they like better - don't presume to dictate their software choice to them. GNUcash takes effort to set up, especially on some MacOS X and Windows. Sure, it's not a _LOT_ of effort, but it's more than the standard "double click install.exe" that folks are used to.
I'm getting tired of seeing responses to every non-free Linux program mentioned on /. along the lines of "Boo, it's proprietary, use $bar instead". If you know of and use a better, l33ter program to accomplish the same task, then maybe, just maybe, you're not the intended audience of the new piece of software. In that case, don't use it. But why disparage it in front of potential users? Sure, there are some things to be worried about. Like when MS releases Office and Windows Media Player for Linux, I'll start to get nervous, and recommened OpenOffice and Mplayer instead. But when a company comes along with a good product, and sells it for a reasonable price, don't bitch just for the sake of bitching.
Lastly, let's not forget the goal of this program. A drop in replacement for Quicken, available for Linux, OS X, and Windows. The last platform is perhaps the MOST important. The installation on Windows is as easy as any other Windows program. And it reads QIF files. And it has most Quicken features. But it's not Quicken. And this is excellent. Because guess who makes Quicken? Our good friends at Intuit, makers of the wonderful TurboTax with activiation that we were all bitching about a while back. If Intuit can lose some market share because of this program, it's still a good thing. Because it's taking people away from a company that treats their customers like criminals.
So what. Instead, they can go to a school somewhere in Westchester County, NY. There they can be taught to harness their powers and use them for good. And if they excel in that school, they might just have a chance to join a special team that can save the world from the evil plots of Magneto and... uh... nevermind.
"censure" (what I said) is not the same as "censor". They aren't even the same word.
To censure someone is to publicly condem what they say. To censor someone is to prevent others from hearing them. They are not equivalent.
Just as Microsoft can use Linux. Part of the risk you take in distributing Free Software (TM) is that someone you hate might use it. Don't like that? You're perfectly capable of changing the license to say "This Software may be used only be readers of Slashdot." or "This Software may not be used by employees of any government." But that's not the case.
This definately makes DARPA and the US Government look bad.
Indeed it does. I won't debate that point. However....
Bastion of freedom of speech my ass.
How has this restricted Free Speech? Theo is still able to work on OpenBSD. So are other people. There is no law that prevents that. The money just has to come from somewhere else.
I'll post this here, since lots of people seem to be confused:
The First Ammendment has NOT been violated here. No laws prevent the OpenBSD project from moving forward. In fact, if that last portion about petitioning the government had been followed, we probably wouldn't have had this problem. If Theo had said "Look, I'd really like to accept this grant, but I have the following concerns, is there anything you can do appease them?", there probably would have been some converstaions in DARPA offices, which would have resulted in either a compromise, or Theo beeing unable to morally and ethically accept, and that would have been the end of it.Freedom of Speech does NOT mean Freedom from Consequences. Freedom of Speech is a right, but rights are not something to be used lightly. If you don't believe in your viewpoint enough to make sacrifices, then maybe you should reconsider whether you want to make your viewpoint public. Was this whole DARPA thing handled poorly? Yes. Does it make the government look like a bunch of jerks? Yes. Is it a violation of the First Ammendment? Nope.