Yes, I had a problem with that too - seems like 5 minutes of screen time could have brought them from fresh cadets to having some kind of experience that would have made Kirk in command a little more reasonable.
Sadly, it is rare. Or at least not as common as it should be. A lot of urban areas in the US suffer from sprawl - communities built around car-scaled sizes and distances. The "American Dream" is a house with yard, two cars in the garage. It is fueled by cheap gas. In the interior cities, where there aren't any significant geographical impediments, the suburbs stretch for miles and miles and the only practical way to get around is by car.
In my own defense, it is not only "recently" that I've investigated transit options. The last two times I've moved span over 20 years - before that I was a student living next to school so it was only when I had to regularly get to somewhere outside of walking distance that I had to start paying attention.
I see attitudes changing - but slowly. Those high gas prices were really great for bringing awareness to the problem.
For me it is simply a question of time - time spent behind the wheel of a car is wasted time as far as I'm concerned. On transit I can sleep, read, email/browse on the blackberry, even get out a laptop. I've made it a point the last couple times I've moved to make sure I have good access to transit options.
Let me preface by saying I'm a huge Kindle fan - I love mine!
BUT as wonderful as ebook novels are, I don't think any ebook reader I've ever seen would be very useful as text books - at least with current tech. No electronic bookmarking system can compare to a sticky stuck in a book - or even fingers when you need to flip back and forth between a couple different sections to work out a problem. Even the DX screen is small compared to most texts. And pictures/diagrams/drawings? No way - completely inadequate on a Kindle.
For lit & philosophy classes, sure, I'll take the kindle any day. For calculus, engineering, biology - no way!
I keep my phone in my pocket now because there isn't any reason not to. If I were able to charge it via solar, I would look for opportunities to take it out and do so. So I think it isn't 100% gimmick.
And why, exactly, is that a problem? They'll still have to buy the book in order to listen to it.
Yeah - I have the same question for the author's guild -- if a person buys the book why can't they read it however they want?
I was just trying to guess what they might be thinking. Audio books are generally more expensive than paper books which are more expensive than kindle versions. I don't know what the various profit margins are, but once an audio book is produced, they are cheap and easy to reproduce so I would guess they have a reasonable margin.
Who knows - maybe it is just the knee-jerk reaction of a typical intellectual property industry moron. But whatever their reasons, I'll bet you a dollar it has to do with money!
Realistically, I think they are worried about audio book sales. I know lots of commuters that churn through a lot of audio books. The read-aloud feature of the Kindle might make a dent in those sales.
I don't think they are on very good legal ground - we shall see.
That has not been my experience - new best-seller books are typically 9.99. Older paper-back stuff is between used books store and new prices - $3.50 or $4 for stuff I like. Certainly there are books outside this range - but for my reading tastes the cost per book is definitely cheaper than dead tree.
To say nothing of project Gutenberg texts - for free.
I doubt I have saved enough to pay for the initial cost - but the convenience is great. I'm also a gadget hound so that is just par for the course... I'm a happy kindle user!
Put your baby's cord blood where it will do the most good - let your baby have it! There is no reason to clip the umbilical cord so quickly as is done in most hospital births - let it pulse for a minute or two. There is a natural reaction to cold air that will clamp off the umbilical birth. That is what has been going on for millions of years - let the baby have the blood!
Yes, the declaration of independence. Whatever, it clearly states the values of the founding fathers was that EVERYONE should be free and be treated equally. The constitution and the amendments go further to encode those values into law.
I am not making a legal statement, I am pointing out the hypocrisy in a system based on freedom and equality for all that systematically denies such considerations to groups of people.
For your Locke quote to be relevant, it seems you must make the case that everybody that was spied upon via the warrentless wiretap program was threatening the US with destruction. That is obviously patently absurd.
In other words, just because we CAN do something it doesn't mean we SHOULD. Warrentless wiretaps, even of non-US citizens, is clearly not in the spirit of the high values espoused by our founding fathers.
The original post said, "The American government and Constitution were founded on the idea that everyone has the same rights, whether they are citizens of the U.S. or not."
From the preamble:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
You are right that the US Constitution only applies to US citizens, but the spirit of the parent poster is right on - our values are based on the notion of equality for everyone. We should walk our talk.
I think there is a wider band between fuzzy analog vs no digital. Where I am I get slightly fuzzy, but perfectly watchable analog for all but one station. Getting those stations to watchable means rotating the antenna around and is sometimes affected by weather.
When we switch to the digital channel, we get super-crisp, beautiful HD - with an occasional blip of freeze or black. I would say much more watchable than the analog - and we no longer have to fiddle with the antenna and I have not noticed any adverse weather effects.
And that is with the low-power digital - I can't wait for full power. Maybe we'll even be able to pull in that last channel.
Re:blah the emporer has his new clothes on again.
on
The Walking House
·
· Score: 1
But it is a really cool gimmick! It is thought-provoking in a way that a wheeled solution isn't. Wheels generally require roads and designated places to park; wheeled vehicles are associated with fuel of some kind - i.e. you are still tied into the current concept of "modern civilization".
This concept, while I agree seems ungainly and not practical, breaks some of those pre-conceived notions that some, especially the urban type, might be locked into. For example the concept of having to prepare/pave an area before moving in or of having to own land, etc.
There is long precedent in the meat world of hardware requirements for operating systems. There are physical "PC architectures" than can't run some OSes. An extreme example, an IBM PS/2 isn't going to be able to run Vista. Less extreme - clever people can get OS X running on some non-Apple hardware, but not all.
A VM is just like another set of hardware - that may or may not satisfy the requirements of the OS and/or work as advertised.
I'm frankly impressed that they work so well! Even after years of using virtual machines, I still think it is fun to see a BIOS screen in a window on my desktop.
It isn't a "coincidence" - it is a cause and effect chain, as you yourself outlined (one aggregator picked up a story, spread to others, then noticed by people, who then took actions).
If there are no direct consequences, what will motivate the fixing of the problem?
"... and it won't happen again in the future." Seems wildly optimistic. One, I think an undated story isn't the only bug in the system. People of nefarious intent have now noticed how powerful this is - I'll bet we see more and more clever ways to get incorrectly dated stories picked up and promulgated in similar fashions.
But in general, I agree with the sentiment of the post. This isn't a "save the children" issue - nobody should go to jail and I don't think any legislation is necessary. But it does expose a dependency in our systems that we would be wise to try to deal with.
I have several computers, many of them I have updated and re-formatted - some more than once. Windows 9x, 2k, XP and even Vista. I am tech support for my family and have shepherded them from upgrades to new computers. Only once I had an issue with a windows license and a 5 minute phone call took care of that. I don't see how this will be a big deal for the vast majority of honest owners.
Seems like a lot of trouble for just 25 years. It isn't that long. I've still got access to my 25 year old data. In fact, my 22 year old Kaypro 1 still works (and I have an emulator). I have an old Sony Vaio laptop that originally came with Windows 95. I've replaced a lot of parts on it, including the CMOS battery - but that has lasted over half the time period. I think our tech is pretty tough - at least for a modest timeframe like 25 years.
These systems, however, have not been sealed in a box - to a greater or lesser extent they are actively maintained.
What about this as a method - it's a bit "outside the box" (ha ha): Encrypt the digital data, store it redundantly on many systems across the internet or wherever you want - make it your email sig! Put a hard-copy of the key and passphrase in the time capsule.
Data is perfectly preserved! I don't know if our current cryptography is capable of keeping it secure for 25 years - but you never know.
I don't agree that government regulations cause socialization of risk. Free market forces make things efficient, well written and enforced regulations make things fair. We need both efficiency and fairness.
Take, for example, "lemon laws" - I believe they vary state by state but basically if you buy a car that is a lemon, you can take it back. The cost of "dealing" with the lemon is naturally incorporated into the sales prices of other cars - the free market will see to that. But it does more - the cost of taking back and retro-fixing lemons for resale is not what gets spread around - what generally happens is that people figure out it is cheaper to make higher quality cars in the first place - and any extra cost that incurs is then spread to all buyers. That is not socialization of risk, that is paying for higher quality. What it is an example of is holding the benefactor of profits accountable for all his or her external costs. When you have regulations aimed at doing that, and you enforce them fairly across all producers/vendors - then market forces step in and make the process efficient and competitive.
Oil drilling is another good example - California sued the shit out of companies that spilled oil - basically held them accountable for cleaning up their mess. Oil companies learned that it is easier to not spill anything in the first place than to have to clean it up later.
Those things would not happen with market forces alone. Market forces create efficiency - it is naturally more efficient to reduce costs as much as is possible. Without government regulation, costs of things like environmental impact, consumer protections, worker protections, would be forced to a bare minimum - an unfair minimum. Whether the company responsible pays to deal with those costs or not, somebody eventually will - if it is not the company then that is socialization of risk: where profit and responsibility are not shared in equal measure.
But of course there can be too much government regulation - the California energy market comes immediately to mind. The cause is not simply "government regulation" - it is the *imbalance* of freedom and equality in the system. Every system is different and changes over time - we need to be thoughtful, not dogmatic, when we examine a system and determine its need for more or less regulation.
I bought a Kindle last week - after months and months of thinking about it. I have read eBooks on many many devices - from my trusty old Palm III to Clie's to iPAQs and now the Kindle.
As a reading experience - the Kindle blows them all out of the water. I'm pretty sure any eInk device would - it is great. Battery life, readability - awesome.
The reason I dithered so long was the DRM issue that has plagued eBooks from the start. What finally brought me over is that Kindle format is MobiPocket and it is possible for me to read my protected MobiPocket books on the Kindle. From comments I've heard from Amazon in terms of security and lock down, they seem realistic (if not even encouraging) of the kind of hacking that will make MobiPocket a defacto open, but DRM format. Kind of like the iTunes and Apple business.
I've not had trouble converting other formats to mobipocket (mobipocket provides software to do it, and Amazon has a service that will convert things to mobi format) - but I'm not really a stickler for getting tables of contents working. I read novels on my Kindle: I don't look at TOCs in real books any more than the Kindle - so it works great for me.
Anyway - I am hopeful that I have seen a sea change in the eBook DRM attitudes and that things will get better. If not, well, after a few years I'll have yet another handheld device to put in my box of dead toys.
Slashdot Mirror
... let alone the article. Why spoil a great headline? Heck, I just like the "Fluorescent Monkeys" part.
Yes, I had a problem with that too - seems like 5 minutes of screen time could have brought them from fresh cadets to having some kind of experience that would have made Kirk in command a little more reasonable.
Oh well - I still enjoyed it.
Sadly, it is rare. Or at least not as common as it should be. A lot of urban areas in the US suffer from sprawl - communities built around car-scaled sizes and distances. The "American Dream" is a house with yard, two cars in the garage. It is fueled by cheap gas. In the interior cities, where there aren't any significant geographical impediments, the suburbs stretch for miles and miles and the only practical way to get around is by car.
In my own defense, it is not only "recently" that I've investigated transit options. The last two times I've moved span over 20 years - before that I was a student living next to school so it was only when I had to regularly get to somewhere outside of walking distance that I had to start paying attention.
I see attitudes changing - but slowly. Those high gas prices were really great for bringing awareness to the problem.
For me it is simply a question of time - time spent behind the wheel of a car is wasted time as far as I'm concerned. On transit I can sleep, read, email/browse on the blackberry, even get out a laptop. I've made it a point the last couple times I've moved to make sure I have good access to transit options.
Let me preface by saying I'm a huge Kindle fan - I love mine!
BUT as wonderful as ebook novels are, I don't think any ebook reader I've ever seen would be very useful as text books - at least with current tech. No electronic bookmarking system can compare to a sticky stuck in a book - or even fingers when you need to flip back and forth between a couple different sections to work out a problem. Even the DX screen is small compared to most texts. And pictures/diagrams/drawings? No way - completely inadequate on a Kindle.
For lit & philosophy classes, sure, I'll take the kindle any day. For calculus, engineering, biology - no way!
Notice how much easier it is to cool off in a corner that isn't painted black and sitting out in the sun.
... I once received a gift certificate in a Christmas card that was delivered accidentally to my address, and I was able to go ahead and use it. ...
I think that is a crime. If not, it certainly makes you a jerk.
I keep my phone in my pocket now because there isn't any reason not to. If I were able to charge it via solar, I would look for opportunities to take it out and do so. So I think it isn't 100% gimmick.
And why, exactly, is that a problem? They'll still have to buy the book in order to listen to it.
Yeah - I have the same question for the author's guild -- if a person buys the book why can't they read it however they want?
I was just trying to guess what they might be thinking. Audio books are generally more expensive than paper books which are more expensive than kindle versions. I don't know what the various profit margins are, but once an audio book is produced, they are cheap and easy to reproduce so I would guess they have a reasonable margin.
Who knows - maybe it is just the knee-jerk reaction of a typical intellectual property industry moron. But whatever their reasons, I'll bet you a dollar it has to do with money!
Realistically, I think they are worried about audio book sales. I know lots of commuters that churn through a lot of audio books. The read-aloud feature of the Kindle might make a dent in those sales.
I don't think they are on very good legal ground - we shall see.
That has not been my experience - new best-seller books are typically 9.99. Older paper-back stuff is between used books store and new prices - $3.50 or $4 for stuff I like. Certainly there are books outside this range - but for my reading tastes the cost per book is definitely cheaper than dead tree.
To say nothing of project Gutenberg texts - for free.
I doubt I have saved enough to pay for the initial cost - but the convenience is great. I'm also a gadget hound so that is just par for the course... I'm a happy kindle user!
Put your baby's cord blood where it will do the most good - let your baby have it! There is no reason to clip the umbilical cord so quickly as is done in most hospital births - let it pulse for a minute or two. There is a natural reaction to cold air that will clamp off the umbilical birth. That is what has been going on for millions of years - let the baby have the blood!
Actually - I love that old 8mm sound!
Yes, the declaration of independence. Whatever, it clearly states the values of the founding fathers was that EVERYONE should be free and be treated equally. The constitution and the amendments go further to encode those values into law.
I am not making a legal statement, I am pointing out the hypocrisy in a system based on freedom and equality for all that systematically denies such considerations to groups of people.
For your Locke quote to be relevant, it seems you must make the case that everybody that was spied upon via the warrentless wiretap program was threatening the US with destruction. That is obviously patently absurd.
In other words, just because we CAN do something it doesn't mean we SHOULD. Warrentless wiretaps, even of non-US citizens, is clearly not in the spirit of the high values espoused by our founding fathers.
The original post said, "The American government and Constitution were founded on the idea that everyone has the same rights, whether they are citizens of the U.S. or not."
From the preamble:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
You are right that the US Constitution only applies to US citizens, but the spirit of the parent poster is right on - our values are based on the notion of equality for everyone. We should walk our talk.
I think there is a wider band between fuzzy analog vs no digital. Where I am I get slightly fuzzy, but perfectly watchable analog for all but one station. Getting those stations to watchable means rotating the antenna around and is sometimes affected by weather.
When we switch to the digital channel, we get super-crisp, beautiful HD - with an occasional blip of freeze or black. I would say much more watchable than the analog - and we no longer have to fiddle with the antenna and I have not noticed any adverse weather effects.
And that is with the low-power digital - I can't wait for full power. Maybe we'll even be able to pull in that last channel.
But it is a really cool gimmick! It is thought-provoking in a way that a wheeled solution isn't. Wheels generally require roads and designated places to park; wheeled vehicles are associated with fuel of some kind - i.e. you are still tied into the current concept of "modern civilization".
This concept, while I agree seems ungainly and not practical, breaks some of those pre-conceived notions that some, especially the urban type, might be locked into. For example the concept of having to prepare/pave an area before moving in or of having to own land, etc.
Anyway - cool gimmick!
A comic summary of your second paragraph:
http://www.sinfest.net/archive_page.php?comicID=2947
There is long precedent in the meat world of hardware requirements for operating systems. There are physical "PC architectures" than can't run some OSes. An extreme example, an IBM PS/2 isn't going to be able to run Vista. Less extreme - clever people can get OS X running on some non-Apple hardware, but not all.
A VM is just like another set of hardware - that may or may not satisfy the requirements of the OS and/or work as advertised.
I'm frankly impressed that they work so well! Even after years of using virtual machines, I still think it is fun to see a BIOS screen in a window on my desktop.
It isn't a "coincidence" - it is a cause and effect chain, as you yourself outlined (one aggregator picked up a story, spread to others, then noticed by people, who then took actions).
If there are no direct consequences, what will motivate the fixing of the problem?
"... and it won't happen again in the future." Seems wildly optimistic. One, I think an undated story isn't the only bug in the system. People of nefarious intent have now noticed how powerful this is - I'll bet we see more and more clever ways to get incorrectly dated stories picked up and promulgated in similar fashions.
But in general, I agree with the sentiment of the post. This isn't a "save the children" issue - nobody should go to jail and I don't think any legislation is necessary. But it does expose a dependency in our systems that we would be wise to try to deal with.
I have several computers, many of them I have updated and re-formatted - some more than once. Windows 9x, 2k, XP and even Vista. I am tech support for my family and have shepherded them from upgrades to new computers. Only once I had an issue with a windows license and a 5 minute phone call took care of that. I don't see how this will be a big deal for the vast majority of honest owners.
Seems like a lot of trouble for just 25 years. It isn't that long. I've still got access to my 25 year old data. In fact, my 22 year old Kaypro 1 still works (and I have an emulator). I have an old Sony Vaio laptop that originally came with Windows 95. I've replaced a lot of parts on it, including the CMOS battery - but that has lasted over half the time period. I think our tech is pretty tough - at least for a modest timeframe like 25 years.
These systems, however, have not been sealed in a box - to a greater or lesser extent they are actively maintained.
What about this as a method - it's a bit "outside the box" (ha ha): Encrypt the digital data, store it redundantly on many systems across the internet or wherever you want - make it your email sig! Put a hard-copy of the key and passphrase in the time capsule.
Data is perfectly preserved! I don't know if our current cryptography is capable of keeping it secure for 25 years - but you never know.
Why pay anything per year? If all you want is encryption between client and server then a self-signed cert is perfectly fine.
I don't agree that government regulations cause socialization of risk. Free market forces make things efficient, well written and enforced regulations make things fair. We need both efficiency and fairness.
Take, for example, "lemon laws" - I believe they vary state by state but basically if you buy a car that is a lemon, you can take it back. The cost of "dealing" with the lemon is naturally incorporated into the sales prices of other cars - the free market will see to that. But it does more - the cost of taking back and retro-fixing lemons for resale is not what gets spread around - what generally happens is that people figure out it is cheaper to make higher quality cars in the first place - and any extra cost that incurs is then spread to all buyers. That is not socialization of risk, that is paying for higher quality. What it is an example of is holding the benefactor of profits accountable for all his or her external costs. When you have regulations aimed at doing that, and you enforce them fairly across all producers/vendors - then market forces step in and make the process efficient and competitive.
Oil drilling is another good example - California sued the shit out of companies that spilled oil - basically held them accountable for cleaning up their mess. Oil companies learned that it is easier to not spill anything in the first place than to have to clean it up later.
Those things would not happen with market forces alone. Market forces create efficiency - it is naturally more efficient to reduce costs as much as is possible. Without government regulation, costs of things like environmental impact, consumer protections, worker protections, would be forced to a bare minimum - an unfair minimum. Whether the company responsible pays to deal with those costs or not, somebody eventually will - if it is not the company then that is socialization of risk: where profit and responsibility are not shared in equal measure.
But of course there can be too much government regulation - the California energy market comes immediately to mind. The cause is not simply "government regulation" - it is the *imbalance* of freedom and equality in the system. Every system is different and changes over time - we need to be thoughtful, not dogmatic, when we examine a system and determine its need for more or less regulation.
I bought a Kindle last week - after months and months of thinking about it. I have read eBooks on many many devices - from my trusty old Palm III to Clie's to iPAQs and now the Kindle.
As a reading experience - the Kindle blows them all out of the water. I'm pretty sure any eInk device would - it is great. Battery life, readability - awesome.
The reason I dithered so long was the DRM issue that has plagued eBooks from the start. What finally brought me over is that Kindle format is MobiPocket and it is possible for me to read my protected MobiPocket books on the Kindle. From comments I've heard from Amazon in terms of security and lock down, they seem realistic (if not even encouraging) of the kind of hacking that will make MobiPocket a defacto open, but DRM format. Kind of like the iTunes and Apple business.
I've not had trouble converting other formats to mobipocket (mobipocket provides software to do it, and Amazon has a service that will convert things to mobi format) - but I'm not really a stickler for getting tables of contents working. I read novels on my Kindle: I don't look at TOCs in real books any more than the Kindle - so it works great for me.
Anyway - I am hopeful that I have seen a sea change in the eBook DRM attitudes and that things will get better. If not, well, after a few years I'll have yet another handheld device to put in my box of dead toys.