This reminds me of when my current employer went through UL certification. It was truly eye opening experience for what those little stickers mean.
To begin with, the UL techs had very little clue about what it was they were certifying, they spent more time ensuring that all of the hardware we used had UL certifications. After that, they bascially re-wrote the spec's around our system. In the end we passed, of course. It would have been kinda tough to fail when the spec was being modified to fit our system, not the other way around.
After that wonderful experience, I came to realize just how big of a con the UL is pulling on all of us. Its bunk, it doesn't even prove that there is a decent level of quality behind a product. As an example, one of our system configurations requires an ethernet serial provider (ESP), for use with a modem and remote managment software. Easy enough, we've done this for years. But, the ESP we used was not UL listed, so we had to change manufacturers. When we finally found one we discovered that it would not work with a modem and the remote managment software, even had the manufacturer tell us as much! So now we are scrambling, trying to find another supplier. All because of some stupid little UL sticker.
I can say with confidence, the UL certification is a con. Also, I've dealt with ISO certification, its a con as well (yes, we have documentation on all of our procedures, just ignore that it is very loose and only ensures that we do roughly the same thing every time, and gets universally ignored, we're a custom shop after all, doing the same thing every time is impossible). And I would bet that this common criteria cert is a con, you pay them, play around for a few days to make the inspectors happy, and they sign off on your system.
What happens when it becomes easy to get a whole CD from the Internet? You are relying on a technical accident. Once this problem is fixed, downloading mp3s isn't like airtime. If you hear a song you like, you download the rest of the CD. What would be your view then?
Hopefully, this "accident" will be fixed by the record labels making their music available in a good downloadable format, for which they charge a fee. By good, I mean a non-crippled, non-time limited format. Then its just a matter of the fee being reasonable. Reasonable will probably be defined as what the market will bear. In the end, there will still be piracy, with the ease and realative amnominty of the web, that is a feature that is, very likely, here to stay.
Of course, the above is a rather utopian solution, not likely to be implemented. To begin with, since the record labels are so caught up on stopping piracy, they are not likely to relase the new hit singles in a good downloadable format. Second, between competition, and possible anti-trust violations (as if the RIAA isn't one), there will be no convient, single, source from which to get music. Next, the price would have to be too low for the labels to want. Since, in my solution, they would allow me to buy just the one or two tracks that I really want, they would not be able to charge me for foisting the other crap on me.
In my opinion there are really just two possible outcomes from this:
1. The government props up the music industry, and maintains the status quo.
2. We spend the next few years watching the slow and painful death of the music industry as we know it.
The music industry cannot survive as it currently is, free advertising or not, as bandwidth gets cheaper and the tech ability of the population grows, more people are going to download music. It may not be hurting much now, but in the end it will cut into the bottom line for most labels. Without some sort of artificial prop, and no shift in business model, the current large companies will begin finding it harder to make a profit. They will either resort to incresing prices, or changing distribution models (e.g. crippled CDs). Either of these actions will further alienate customers, and drive them to piracy, driving the labels profits down further, and starting the cycle again.
Unless they figure out a way to adapt they are stuck relying on a government prop, thus the DMCA, CDPBTA, etc. And even that will probably exist only as a stop-gap, eventually it will be removed. In the end the labels are going to have to compete against the p2p networks, both by getting them shut down, and by offering an alternative to them that is worth paying for. Is this right, should a company have to compete against piracy? No, but our world does not always operate on the pricipals of what is right or wrong, sometimes in the game of life, you are dealt a shit hand.
I just drove on the Washington D.C. Beltway for a couple of hours to get from Alexandria to Rockville. Are you saying that the Club of Rome was wrong?
Come visit the West coast some time. I can drive at 90mph for nearly 2 hours on some parts of the I-15 freeway and not see any sign of human habitation. There is a railroad and the freeway, other than that its barren desert. While I will agree that the Eastern US is pretty densly populated, the Western US has a lot of empty space. For an example, I drive 30 miles to work each morning, and that is considered a short commute. I have several co-workers that drive nearly 70 miles to work. Things are just a bit more spread out here.
Term limits would be incredibly helpful to reduce this dependence on goverment. Then we'd have enough turnover to avoid the little fiefdoms that show up in the House and Senate. But where are we going to find a Congress that will vote for THAT? And let's not even get started on legislating from the courts...
We tried this, it failed. IIRC, a couple of years ago, we the people, here in California, passed a propisition that would enforce congressional term limits. It was stuck down as "unconstitutional" by the courts. Funny thing that, the president has a defined limit on the number of terms he can serve, but it would be "unconstitutional" for senators and house reps.
I'm not disagreeing that term limits are what we need, but the only way its going to happen , is if we have a really carefully crafted law, passed by the people, which the courts don't kill, or if we can force a constitutional amendment. I'm all for it, and would vote for either, but I don't see it comming any time soon.
For $200, I'd say that the trouble to plug it in each night, pull it out in the morning and press a button is fine. Assuming I don't buy one beforehand this is definetly on my christmas list.
I wonder if they'll even cover the "Sharky" story at the end, or if the movie will end in a climactic victory over Sauron.
I really hope they put that in, its probably my favorite part of the series. I just love the scene where the Sherrifs try to arrest Frodo and company, and Merry and Pippin all but laugh at them.
I've been doing this for awhile myself. Every time I get some sort of junk mail, I rip it up and put it in the pre-paid return envelope. It may not do much, but its still a few cents more in costs for these companies. Now if I could just get enough people to follow suit...
Unfortunatly, it seems to be too much of a hassle for most people. Come on, people, its a minute or two of your life, and if there are enough of us doing it, it might actually make a dent.
Thank you for the answers, I'm not a programmer, and so don't really understand what Palladium encompasses, most of the info published on this sort of thing goes right over my head.
1. Will it be possible, as a home user, to create and digitally sign a creative piece of work? Such as, a home movie?
2. What ramifications will this have on digital content created before the introduction of Palladium? Will it still play?
3. Will the information necessary to create a Palladium enabled viewer be available to public? Or will we only be able to use Windows Media Player to play Palladium enabled content? What are the projected licesing costs for a company that wishes to create a viewer that is able to view Palladium enabled content?
4. Will hardware that requires a signature be able to run content that does not have one? (if yes) Will this then mean that any software that pre-dates the hardware must be upgraded? (if no) Then how will this system differentiate between a desired, older, program, and a virus?
What exactly prevents the US administration from treating other human beings with dignity. Does the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights count for nothing in the Land of the Free?
As a slightly disaffected American, I have to ask, when was the last time the US government paid any attention to the UN's resolutions?
They probably had to reverse engineer it- as would the modders - I would find it difficult to beleive they used MS-Source code and not reverse engineered the compiled code(beleive me two very different things).
I agree, if it was reverse engineered, that's one thing, and in my mind perfectly legit. My understanding of the situation was that MS code had been used, if I am mistaken, then that would certainly change my opinion of the situation.
As for "stealing" the linux source code- how could you- its open already or havent you heard?
Yes, its open source, but if I take the source, modify it and then sell it as a closed source product, am I not violating the GPL? And wouldn't that be a Bad Thing?
I agree, reverse engineering should be allow, its just when someone copies source code, without the permission of the author, that bugs me.
I don't think that the article is quite as enlighted as the poster would have us belive. The article seems to miss a subtle difference between the XBox mod chips and the Couterstrike mod for Half-Life. The difference is that in the HL-CS mod, the source code was made freely available to the public to use, though I would guess that there were certain licensing terms attached to it. With the Xbox mod chip, there was some use of MS source code, which MS did not authorize. Same with the dancing Abio mod. You are not allowed to plagerize source code, even before the DMCA that was a crime.
If you want to add a mod chip to the Xbox, fine, that's not a problem, but if you make a mod chip by plagerizing some of MS's code, then you are commiting a crime, and if you sell that chip, with plagerized code, then I don't feel any sympathy for you when MS nails you in court.
Consider what would happen if we turned this type of thing around. Imagine that I was to take some of the Linux source code, dump it in my own program, and then sell that program. To start with, I have violated the license that allowed me to have that code. Second I have commited plagerism by copying that code. I should get nailed to the wall for it. Moreover, the/. community would be in an uproar about somone 'stealing' the Linux source code. But when its the other way around its ok? No, get real, if you copy source code, you are commiting a crime, period.
That's where you're wrong. Fossil fuels (oil, coal, and their derivatives) can deliver more useful energy than it takes to produce them. It's a cost-effective equation. If, as you claim, it took more energy to produce them then they deliver, we'd be in a sorry state indeed, and would have abandoned their use many years ago.
I think you missed part of my point. It will always take more energy to produce a fuel than it releases. (See Thermodynamics: Law of Conservation of Energy.) We have just gotten used to having most of the energy being put in by natural processes. Which, is also a possibility in using hydrogen, it is currently known that hydrogen exists in large quantities, trapped in sub-surface rocks. (it is mentioned by NASA here.) And, as such could be mined (just like oil). So in the end, we could get H2 in large quantities, with about the same trouble as oil. Moreover, according to the same article mentioned above, the supply would renew itself, quickly, and as such, would not run into the same supply problem we are headed for with oil.
I still say that diesel engines are a much better means of pollution reduction today than hydrogen.
This might be true, though, it would still face the problem that is getting in the way of cleaner technologies today: the consumer. People are comfortable with what they have, and don't want to switch. By the time you get everyone to switch over to diesel, hydrogen power will be available to the public, and then you are facing the same fight all over again. With the advent of such things as the GM concept car and the Ballard Field Tests, I think Fuel Cells are just about ready to mature into widespread use. It'd be better to wait the extra couple of years and only fight to get people to switch once.
Especially since all of the people who tout hydrogen are relying upon the magical appearance of cheap, effective solar power. If we had cheap, effective solar power today, we'd be running our electricity grid off of that instead of producing it by burning coal. Wouldn't that be a nice thing?
There have actually been a number of very successful experiments with solar power, unfortunatly, it only really has a chance in places that get a lot of sunlight. Plus it takes up a large amount of space. Problem is, its not as effiecent as burning coal (or commonly natural gas). So, it hasn't attacted much investment. Also, there is the problem that most power companies already have coal/NG power stations built, it makes terrible business sense to abandon a plant in the middle of its useful life cycle. Even if solar was cheap and effective, they are not going to shutter thier coal plants and build solar plants just because its cleaner, they would lose tons of money in the process, and that is what they care about.
Solar power in sufficient quantities to run even a moderate amount of the automotive traffic in the US is probably decades away. Diesel vehicles could be available today.
I will agree that the amount of solar power needed to run the traffic in the US is a ways away, though I don't think it will be the decades you claim. And yes, diesel is available today, in fact it is available in the US already, people just don't buy it. (VW Golf TDI).
I will agree that someone looking to buy a car today, would be well advised to look into getting a diesel vehicle, if they are looking for eviromentally friendly. Personally though I think they would be better servered holding out for a couple of years and getting an H2 powered car.
I'm a bit too lazy to look it up at the moment, but I seem to recall a study some time back where they tried to radio carbon date a reacently dead (i.e. year or two at most) sea lion and got some wacky results. Thus my comment about not working for recent stuff. As for the 40k-50k max, I'll take your word on it. I know there are other radio isotopes they look at now (which are pulled from the surrounding rock), just didn't feel like delving into it in my post.
Most likely its from some form of radio-carbon dating. While I've heard that its not increadably accutare for short periods of time, its probably good enough for fossils that are in the range of millions of years old. Sure it won't tell us exactly when it died, but we can be reasonably certain that it was within a few thousand years of the number the radio carbon dating came up with.
Overall, hydrogen costs energy to produce. You can't just go dig it up out of the ground. You have to produce it somewhere, and then store it, transport it, and eventually burn it. By the time you do all that, you've used considerably more energy than just using the electricity, or heat, or whatever energy source you used to create the hydrogen.
That it takes more energy to produce the hydrogen, than is recovered from it is not new. This fact is true of any fuel source. We've just gotten used to having most of the work done for us.
If you want to see more effecient, cleaner burning engines on the road, you should start pressuring the auto manufacturers to bring over more of the small diesel engines that are running in Europe.
This still will not solve the problem of pollution. All it will do is give temporary relif. Diesel still pollutes, and also kicks out lots of soot, which is staring to be linked to developmental lung problems. This is the big advantage of Hydrogen fuel cells, they only directly produce water, which is usually linked to drinking and water-fights. As for the indirect effects, this is just a matter of working up the supply chain to create a cleaner source. For example:
We fixed the cars at this point, and the H2 stations would be much cleaner (no more fuel tanks leaking gasoline, just H2 which disapates in the atmosphere harmlessly.)
The delivery trucks that bring the H2 to the stations could be H2 powered themselves, so little pollution there.
The H2 producing factories would be the only thing left, and those could be solar powered. And unlike solar cars, they could be placed in areas that have very high amount of sunlight (Arizona is pretty empty, so is much of Nevada). And bigger usually means more efficent in power production.
In the end we have an end to end solution that is cleaner than what we currently have. It may not be as effiecent, but it is cleaner, and that is what we are after at the moment.
Having been an infrequent buyer on ebay and Yahoo auctions, I would say that even with the seller ratings its a case of cavet imptor or buyer beware. Nearly all of the purchases I have made have gone smoothly. Pay them with paypal (BTW, I have not and will not register a bank account with them, they have one of my credit card numbers to charge, and that is more than enough) and in a while receive the item. The only real problem I had was with a speaker system I bought in an auction. When I received it, it was DOA, no power (and they clamied it was tested on the auction info). I contacted the seller and they agreed to replace it, and even pay for ground shipping. Being somewhat impatient I asked if I could pay for 2-day delivery (it was cross-country about a week and a half each way), and they refused. In the end I said the hell with it, cracked open the power supply and replaced the blown fuse. In the end, everything work out ok, but receiving a DOA unit left a bit of a bad taste in my mouth.
The point of all this? Online auctions are ok, but be careful. Always pay with a credit card (not a check card) that way, in the case of fraud, you have one more layer of protection between the criminal and your money. And of course, always make up your mind what something is worth to you before you start bidding. Unless its unique or so rare that it may never be seen again, it will be in an auction again eventually. I've had several items that I really wanted to buy, but they were above the price I was willing to pay for them, so I didn't. Later I was able to pick it up for less than my max, when a similar item went up for auction.
Damn, and that was a really enjoyable bubble you just burst.
On the other hand though, how long before someone figures out that an ad-free shirt system would be a viable way to make money, sure I have to pay $100 for it, but to have it ad-free...
Also, there is alway hacking. Though I guess that might be a DMCA/CBDTPA/LOSLAWMANBWTOSMCTTALN violation. I can see it now, "Sir, you are under arrest for removing the GAP logo from your shirt."
The clothes company will start saying that we need to close the analog hole, "People are buys shirts with embroidered logos and then using rippers to remove the stitching. This is to the clothes companies what the Boston Stragler is to a woman alone at night!"
Legal battles will ensue, laws will be written and tossed out of courts, in the end people will lose thier right to wear what they want...
Ok, that's just silly, but I think we'll be able to to get a logo/commercial free shirt, if we are willing to pay for it.
P.S. LOSLAWMANBWTOSMCTTALN (Lots Of Stupid Legal Acronyms Which Mean Absolutly Nothing But When Typed Out Sound Much Catchier Than The Actual Law's Name)
In an August 26 letter to Pugh, the Dole campaign said that its e-mails are not commercial and thus do not fall under the anti-spam law.
As much as I would love to say Bullshit, spam is spam is spam, I know that I would be ultimatly proven wrong. This law was probably written and enacted by politicians, and I doubt that they would have been so allturistic as to stop political spam Though one possibly good outcome of this legal battle will be publicity. Let the world know that E. Dole is a supporter and user of spam. Maybe it'll even get some sort of backlash against the whole idea, but that is probably just wishful thinking again. And maybe, just maybe, this will raise a bit of awareness in our congress-critters, that we the people really hate spam. (By way of quick disclosure, I usually find myself voting Republican, but this type of thing is a good way for a cadidate to alienate me real quick.) In a way I now hope that Dole loses and this incident is cited as a part of the reason for it.
Maybe its just the technophile in me, but that is cool. No more being a slave to what someone else thinks is cool and silkscreens on a shirt, now I can just download a new picture/saying/logo whatever to my shirt.
I'll never have to change my shirt again!!
Well ok, that might start to smell a bit, but it would be a nice cheap way to have a shirt with my own design on it. Not to mention that most of the shirts with decent artwork on them are little more than styalized company logos. Is it just me or does it seem silly to pay a lot of money to advertise for a company? I mean, they want me to pay them $20 to become a walking billboard for thier logo/slogan, WTF?
Also with this same technology and a good vidoe capture card and I could make some good wall scrolls.
NO, that is the point. As a private citizen, I have paid for the right to know who is calling before I pick it up. If Ma Bell charges me for that right, then they should not give away for free the ability for someone else to subvert what I have paid for.
Personally I think that there is a nice happy medium between the right to privacy of citizens and the desire to know if the person calling you is a tele-marketer.
We just need to place a requirement on businesses that, if you are calling to market a product and/or solicit dontaions/votes/etc. That you must have your company name and telephone number appear in caller-id. Simple as that, if you are a private citizen, you can block caller ID. If you are a company/organization making a phone call as part of your business, then you must openly proclaim yourself as such.
But then, I'm sure that the lawyers would screw even this simple of an idea up.
which brings us to our next point. The base station is not anchored in space, it is anchored in earth. There is NO leverage from which to pull things (never mind, that you would have to pull them at escape velocity to in the first place.
Again, not a big deal. The 'elevator' climbs the cable to the station. Yes, we still have Newton's laws, meaning that the cable is pulled down. But, the angular acceleration of the station (remember, its being spun in a big circle, and pretty fast to boot) will keep the station from being pulled back to Earth. Sure, there will be a limit to the amount of mass you can haul up this thing, as you will have to keep the inward force on the cable less than the 'centrifugal force' (yes, I know its ficticious, but its a useful concept in this case). Too heavy of a load and it will just pull the cable in, anything less than that and it will just climb.
As for needing to get to 'escape velocity'... Not true. escape velocity is only for a ballistic projectile. Or, more simply, one that does not have the benefit of continious force. Imagine climbing a ladder, do you hit EV to make it from one rung to the next? No, what if that ladder extended to the altitude of Geosyncronious orbit? Would you need to hit EV to keep going up the rungs? No, it would take a large amount of energy to climb, but you would never need to be going that fast. Technically, one can make it into space traveling at 1 m/s, as long they have some way to keep being pushed up.
The people on board the elevator at the time might argue with that statement...:-/
na, they would be flung into a higher orbit. IIRC, This whole rig is pulling on the base station. It wants to be in a higher orbit, but the tether keeps it where it is. So if the tether snaps, the station would move into a higher orbit, more in line with its velocity, while the thether would float back to earth, much like paper.
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This reminds me of when my current employer went through UL certification. It was truly eye opening experience for what those little stickers mean.
To begin with, the UL techs had very little clue about what it was they were certifying, they spent more time ensuring that all of the hardware we used had UL certifications. After that, they bascially re-wrote the spec's around our system. In the end we passed, of course. It would have been kinda tough to fail when the spec was being modified to fit our system, not the other way around.
After that wonderful experience, I came to realize just how big of a con the UL is pulling on all of us. Its bunk, it doesn't even prove that there is a decent level of quality behind a product. As an example, one of our system configurations requires an ethernet serial provider (ESP), for use with a modem and remote managment software. Easy enough, we've done this for years. But, the ESP we used was not UL listed, so we had to change manufacturers. When we finally found one we discovered that it would not work with a modem and the remote managment software, even had the manufacturer tell us as much! So now we are scrambling, trying to find another supplier. All because of some stupid little UL sticker.
I can say with confidence, the UL certification is a con. Also, I've dealt with ISO certification, its a con as well (yes, we have documentation on all of our procedures, just ignore that it is very loose and only ensures that we do roughly the same thing every time, and gets universally ignored, we're a custom shop after all, doing the same thing every time is impossible). And I would bet that this common criteria cert is a con, you pay them, play around for a few days to make the inspectors happy, and they sign off on your system.
What happens when it becomes easy to get a whole CD from the Internet? You are relying on a technical accident. Once this problem is fixed, downloading mp3s isn't like airtime. If you hear a song you like, you download the rest of the CD. What would be your view then?
Hopefully, this "accident" will be fixed by the record labels making their music available in a good downloadable format, for which they charge a fee. By good, I mean a non-crippled, non-time limited format. Then its just a matter of the fee being reasonable. Reasonable will probably be defined as what the market will bear. In the end, there will still be piracy, with the ease and realative amnominty of the web, that is a feature that is, very likely, here to stay.
Of course, the above is a rather utopian solution, not likely to be implemented. To begin with, since the record labels are so caught up on stopping piracy, they are not likely to relase the new hit singles in a good downloadable format. Second, between competition, and possible anti-trust violations (as if the RIAA isn't one), there will be no convient, single, source from which to get music. Next, the price would have to be too low for the labels to want. Since, in my solution, they would allow me to buy just the one or two tracks that I really want, they would not be able to charge me for foisting the other crap on me.
In my opinion there are really just two possible outcomes from this:
1. The government props up the music industry, and maintains the status quo.
2. We spend the next few years watching the slow and painful death of the music industry as we know it.
The music industry cannot survive as it currently is, free advertising or not, as bandwidth gets cheaper and the tech ability of the population grows, more people are going to download music. It may not be hurting much now, but in the end it will cut into the bottom line for most labels. Without some sort of artificial prop, and no shift in business model, the current large companies will begin finding it harder to make a profit. They will either resort to incresing prices, or changing distribution models (e.g. crippled CDs). Either of these actions will further alienate customers, and drive them to piracy, driving the labels profits down further, and starting the cycle again.
Unless they figure out a way to adapt they are stuck relying on a government prop, thus the DMCA, CDPBTA, etc. And even that will probably exist only as a stop-gap, eventually it will be removed. In the end the labels are going to have to compete against the p2p networks, both by getting them shut down, and by offering an alternative to them that is worth paying for. Is this right, should a company have to compete against piracy? No, but our world does not always operate on the pricipals of what is right or wrong, sometimes in the game of life, you are dealt a shit hand.
I just drove on the Washington D.C. Beltway for a couple of hours to get from Alexandria to Rockville. Are you saying that the Club of Rome was wrong?
Come visit the West coast some time. I can drive at 90mph for nearly 2 hours on some parts of the I-15 freeway and not see any sign of human habitation. There is a railroad and the freeway, other than that its barren desert. While I will agree that the Eastern US is pretty densly populated, the Western US has a lot of empty space. For an example, I drive 30 miles to work each morning, and that is considered a short commute. I have several co-workers that drive nearly 70 miles to work. Things are just a bit more spread out here.
Term limits would be incredibly helpful to reduce this dependence on goverment. Then we'd have enough turnover to avoid the little fiefdoms that show up in the House and Senate. But where are we going to find a Congress that will vote for THAT? And let's not even get started on legislating from the courts...
We tried this, it failed. IIRC, a couple of years ago, we the people, here in California, passed a propisition that would enforce congressional term limits. It was stuck down as "unconstitutional" by the courts. Funny thing that, the president has a defined limit on the number of terms he can serve, but it would be "unconstitutional" for senators and house reps.
I'm not disagreeing that term limits are what we need, but the only way its going to happen , is if we have a really carefully crafted law, passed by the people, which the courts don't kill, or if we can force a constitutional amendment. I'm all for it, and would vote for either, but I don't see it comming any time soon.
For $200, I'd say that the trouble to plug it in each night, pull it out in the morning and press a button is fine. Assuming I don't buy one beforehand this is definetly on my christmas list.
I wonder if they'll even cover the "Sharky" story at the end, or if the movie will end in a climactic victory over Sauron.
I really hope they put that in, its probably my favorite part of the series. I just love the scene where the Sherrifs try to arrest Frodo and company, and Merry and Pippin all but laugh at them.
I've been doing this for awhile myself. Every time I get some sort of junk mail, I rip it up and put it in the pre-paid return envelope. It may not do much, but its still a few cents more in costs for these companies. Now if I could just get enough people to follow suit...
Unfortunatly, it seems to be too much of a hassle for most people. Come on, people, its a minute or two of your life, and if there are enough of us doing it, it might actually make a dent.
Thank you for the answers, I'm not a programmer, and so don't really understand what Palladium encompasses, most of the info published on this sort of thing goes right over my head.
1. Will it be possible, as a home user, to create and digitally sign a creative piece of work? Such as, a home movie?
2. What ramifications will this have on digital content created before the introduction of Palladium? Will it still play?
3. Will the information necessary to create a Palladium enabled viewer be available to public? Or will we only be able to use Windows Media Player to play Palladium enabled content? What are the projected licesing costs for a company that wishes to create a viewer that is able to view Palladium enabled content?
4. Will hardware that requires a signature be able to run content that does not have one? (if yes) Will this then mean that any software that pre-dates the hardware must be upgraded? (if no) Then how will this system differentiate between a desired, older, program, and a virus?
What exactly prevents the US administration from treating other human beings with dignity. Does the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights count for nothing in the Land of the Free?
As a slightly disaffected American, I have to ask, when was the last time the US government paid any attention to the UN's resolutions?
They probably had to reverse engineer it- as would the modders - I would find it difficult to beleive they used MS-Source code and not reverse engineered the compiled code(beleive me two very different things).
I agree, if it was reverse engineered, that's one thing, and in my mind perfectly legit. My understanding of the situation was that MS code had been used, if I am mistaken, then that would certainly change my opinion of the situation.
As for "stealing" the linux source code- how could you- its open already or havent you heard?
Yes, its open source, but if I take the source, modify it and then sell it as a closed source product, am I not violating the GPL? And wouldn't that be a Bad Thing?
I agree, reverse engineering should be allow, its just when someone copies source code, without the permission of the author, that bugs me.
I don't think that the article is quite as enlighted as the poster would have us belive. The article seems to miss a subtle difference between the XBox mod chips and the Couterstrike mod for Half-Life. The difference is that in the HL-CS mod, the source code was made freely available to the public to use, though I would guess that there were certain licensing terms attached to it. With the Xbox mod chip, there was some use of MS source code, which MS did not authorize. Same with the dancing Abio mod. You are not allowed to plagerize source code, even before the DMCA that was a crime. If you want to add a mod chip to the Xbox, fine, that's not a problem, but if you make a mod chip by plagerizing some of MS's code, then you are commiting a crime, and if you sell that chip, with plagerized code, then I don't feel any sympathy for you when MS nails you in court. /. community would be in an uproar about somone 'stealing' the Linux source code. But when its the other way around its ok? No, get real, if you copy source code, you are commiting a crime, period.
Consider what would happen if we turned this type of thing around. Imagine that I was to take some of the Linux source code, dump it in my own program, and then sell that program. To start with, I have violated the license that allowed me to have that code. Second I have commited plagerism by copying that code. I should get nailed to the wall for it. Moreover, the
That's where you're wrong. Fossil fuels (oil, coal, and their derivatives) can deliver more useful energy than it takes to produce them. It's a cost-effective equation. If, as you claim, it took more energy to produce them then they deliver, we'd be in a sorry state indeed, and would have abandoned their use many years ago.
I think you missed part of my point. It will always take more energy to produce a fuel than it releases. (See Thermodynamics: Law of Conservation of Energy.) We have just gotten used to having most of the energy being put in by natural processes. Which, is also a possibility in using hydrogen, it is currently known that hydrogen exists in large quantities, trapped in sub-surface rocks. (it is mentioned by NASA here.) And, as such could be mined (just like oil). So in the end, we could get H2 in large quantities, with about the same trouble as oil. Moreover, according to the same article mentioned above, the supply would renew itself, quickly, and as such, would not run into the same supply problem we are headed for with oil.
I still say that diesel engines are a much better means of pollution reduction today than hydrogen.
This might be true, though, it would still face the problem that is getting in the way of cleaner technologies today: the consumer. People are comfortable with what they have, and don't want to switch. By the time you get everyone to switch over to diesel, hydrogen power will be available to the public, and then you are facing the same fight all over again. With the advent of such things as the GM concept car and the Ballard Field Tests, I think Fuel Cells are just about ready to mature into widespread use. It'd be better to wait the extra couple of years and only fight to get people to switch once.
Especially since all of the people who tout hydrogen are relying upon the magical appearance of cheap, effective solar power. If we had cheap, effective solar power today, we'd be running our electricity grid off of that instead of producing it by burning coal. Wouldn't that be a nice thing?
There have actually been a number of very successful experiments with solar power, unfortunatly, it only really has a chance in places that get a lot of sunlight. Plus it takes up a large amount of space. Problem is, its not as effiecent as burning coal (or commonly natural gas). So, it hasn't attacted much investment. Also, there is the problem that most power companies already have coal/NG power stations built, it makes terrible business sense to abandon a plant in the middle of its useful life cycle. Even if solar was cheap and effective, they are not going to shutter thier coal plants and build solar plants just because its cleaner, they would lose tons of money in the process, and that is what they care about.
Solar power in sufficient quantities to run even a moderate amount of the automotive traffic in the US is probably decades away. Diesel vehicles could be available today.
I will agree that the amount of solar power needed to run the traffic in the US is a ways away, though I don't think it will be the decades you claim. And yes, diesel is available today, in fact it is available in the US already, people just don't buy it. (VW Golf TDI).
I will agree that someone looking to buy a car today, would be well advised to look into getting a diesel vehicle, if they are looking for eviromentally friendly. Personally though I think they would be better servered holding out for a couple of years and getting an H2 powered car.
I'm a bit too lazy to look it up at the moment, but I seem to recall a study some time back where they tried to radio carbon date a reacently dead (i.e. year or two at most) sea lion and got some wacky results. Thus my comment about not working for recent stuff. As for the 40k-50k max, I'll take your word on it. I know there are other radio isotopes they look at now (which are pulled from the surrounding rock), just didn't feel like delving into it in my post.
Probably just the current political situation. I wouldn't exactly want to go looking around Kashmir for fossils right now, would you?
Most likely its from some form of radio-carbon dating. While I've heard that its not increadably accutare for short periods of time, its probably good enough for fossils that are in the range of millions of years old. Sure it won't tell us exactly when it died, but we can be reasonably certain that it was within a few thousand years of the number the radio carbon dating came up with.
Overall, hydrogen costs energy to produce. You can't just go dig it up out of the ground. You have to produce it somewhere, and then store it, transport it, and eventually burn it. By the time you do all that, you've used considerably more energy than just using the electricity, or heat, or whatever energy source you used to create the hydrogen.
That it takes more energy to produce the hydrogen, than is recovered from it is not new. This fact is true of any fuel source. We've just gotten used to having most of the work done for us.
If you want to see more effecient, cleaner burning engines on the road, you should start pressuring the auto manufacturers to bring over more of the small diesel engines that are running in Europe.
This still will not solve the problem of pollution. All it will do is give temporary relif. Diesel still pollutes, and also kicks out lots of soot, which is staring to be linked to developmental lung problems. This is the big advantage of Hydrogen fuel cells, they only directly produce water, which is usually linked to drinking and water-fights. As for the indirect effects, this is just a matter of working up the supply chain to create a cleaner source. For example:
We fixed the cars at this point, and the H2 stations would be much cleaner (no more fuel tanks leaking gasoline, just H2 which disapates in the atmosphere harmlessly.)
The delivery trucks that bring the H2 to the stations could be H2 powered themselves, so little pollution there.
The H2 producing factories would be the only thing left, and those could be solar powered. And unlike solar cars, they could be placed in areas that have very high amount of sunlight (Arizona is pretty empty, so is much of Nevada). And bigger usually means more efficent in power production.
In the end we have an end to end solution that is cleaner than what we currently have. It may not be as effiecent, but it is cleaner, and that is what we are after at the moment.
Having been an infrequent buyer on ebay and Yahoo auctions, I would say that even with the seller ratings its a case of cavet imptor or buyer beware. Nearly all of the purchases I have made have gone smoothly. Pay them with paypal (BTW, I have not and will not register a bank account with them, they have one of my credit card numbers to charge, and that is more than enough) and in a while receive the item. The only real problem I had was with a speaker system I bought in an auction. When I received it, it was DOA, no power (and they clamied it was tested on the auction info). I contacted the seller and they agreed to replace it, and even pay for ground shipping. Being somewhat impatient I asked if I could pay for 2-day delivery (it was cross-country about a week and a half each way), and they refused. In the end I said the hell with it, cracked open the power supply and replaced the blown fuse. In the end, everything work out ok, but receiving a DOA unit left a bit of a bad taste in my mouth.
The point of all this? Online auctions are ok, but be careful. Always pay with a credit card (not a check card) that way, in the case of fraud, you have one more layer of protection between the criminal and your money. And of course, always make up your mind what something is worth to you before you start bidding. Unless its unique or so rare that it may never be seen again, it will be in an auction again eventually. I've had several items that I really wanted to buy, but they were above the price I was willing to pay for them, so I didn't. Later I was able to pick it up for less than my max, when a similar item went up for auction.
Damn, and that was a really enjoyable bubble you just burst.
On the other hand though, how long before someone figures out that an ad-free shirt system would be a viable way to make money, sure I have to pay $100 for it, but to have it ad-free...
Also, there is alway hacking. Though I guess that might be a DMCA/CBDTPA/LOSLAWMANBWTOSMCTTALN violation. I can see it now, "Sir, you are under arrest for removing the GAP logo from your shirt."
The clothes company will start saying that we need to close the analog hole, "People are buys shirts with embroidered logos and then using rippers to remove the stitching. This is to the clothes companies what the Boston Stragler is to a woman alone at night!"
Legal battles will ensue, laws will be written and tossed out of courts, in the end people will lose thier right to wear what they want...
Ok, that's just silly, but I think we'll be able to to get a logo/commercial free shirt, if we are willing to pay for it.
P.S. LOSLAWMANBWTOSMCTTALN (Lots Of Stupid Legal Acronyms Which Mean Absolutly Nothing But When Typed Out Sound Much Catchier Than The Actual Law's Name)
In an August 26 letter to Pugh, the Dole campaign said that its e-mails are not commercial and thus do not fall under the anti-spam law.
As much as I would love to say Bullshit, spam is spam is spam, I know that I would be ultimatly proven wrong. This law was probably written and enacted by politicians, and I doubt that they would have been so allturistic as to stop political spam Though one possibly good outcome of this legal battle will be publicity. Let the world know that E. Dole is a supporter and user of spam. Maybe it'll even get some sort of backlash against the whole idea, but that is probably just wishful thinking again. And maybe, just maybe, this will raise a bit of awareness in our congress-critters, that we the people really hate spam. (By way of quick disclosure, I usually find myself voting Republican, but this type of thing is a good way for a cadidate to alienate me real quick.) In a way I now hope that Dole loses and this incident is cited as a part of the reason for it.
Maybe its just the technophile in me, but that is cool. No more being a slave to what someone else thinks is cool and silkscreens on a shirt, now I can just download a new picture/saying/logo whatever to my shirt.
I'll never have to change my shirt again!!
Well ok, that might start to smell a bit, but it would be a nice cheap way to have a shirt with my own design on it. Not to mention that most of the shirts with decent artwork on them are little more than styalized company logos. Is it just me or does it seem silly to pay a lot of money to advertise for a company? I mean, they want me to pay them $20 to become a walking billboard for thier logo/slogan, WTF?
Also with this same technology and a good vidoe capture card and I could make some good wall scrolls.
Nah.
It's Generation 'Why?'
No, its Generation 'Whine'.
NO, that is the point. As a private citizen, I have paid for the right to know who is calling before I pick it up. If Ma Bell charges me for that right, then they should not give away for free the ability for someone else to subvert what I have paid for.
Personally I think that there is a nice happy medium between the right to privacy of citizens and the desire to know if the person calling you is a tele-marketer.
We just need to place a requirement on businesses that, if you are calling to market a product and/or solicit dontaions/votes/etc. That you must have your company name and telephone number appear in caller-id. Simple as that, if you are a private citizen, you can block caller ID. If you are a company/organization making a phone call as part of your business, then you must openly proclaim yourself as such.
But then, I'm sure that the lawyers would screw even this simple of an idea up.
which brings us to our next point. The base station is not anchored in space, it is anchored in earth. There is NO leverage from which to pull things (never mind, that you would have to pull them at escape velocity to in the first place.
Again, not a big deal. The 'elevator' climbs the cable to the station. Yes, we still have Newton's laws, meaning that the cable is pulled down. But, the angular acceleration of the station (remember, its being spun in a big circle, and pretty fast to boot) will keep the station from being pulled back to Earth. Sure, there will be a limit to the amount of mass you can haul up this thing, as you will have to keep the inward force on the cable less than the 'centrifugal force' (yes, I know its ficticious, but its a useful concept in this case). Too heavy of a load and it will just pull the cable in, anything less than that and it will just climb.
As for needing to get to 'escape velocity'... Not true. escape velocity is only for a ballistic projectile. Or, more simply, one that does not have the benefit of continious force. Imagine climbing a ladder, do you hit EV to make it from one rung to the next? No, what if that ladder extended to the altitude of Geosyncronious orbit? Would you need to hit EV to keep going up the rungs? No, it would take a large amount of energy to climb, but you would never need to be going that fast. Technically, one can make it into space traveling at 1 m/s, as long they have some way to keep being pushed up.
The people on board the elevator at the time might argue with that statement... :-/
na, they would be flung into a higher orbit. IIRC, This whole rig is pulling on the base station. It wants to be in a higher orbit, but the tether keeps it where it is. So if the tether snaps, the station would move into a higher orbit, more in line with its velocity, while the thether would float back to earth, much like paper.