My point wasn't that the odds of dying in a car accident are less or greater than dying in a shuttle accident (personally I think I need to worry more about the car but that's just me). The point is that in 25 years only 2 crews have been lost and significantly more have been lost to car related deaths so maybe we should be concerned that cars aren't 100% safe. If you want to look at acceptable risks than I guess I have to ask you, are you more likely to die in a shuttle accident or a car crash? Do you generally drive your car into orbit? How many pilots have died during aircraft test flights?
There will always be risks in live. I guess my main point is (which upon reflection didn't come across in my original post) that as long as the people that are taking the risk are doing so volutarily let them. Should we strive to minimize the risks? You bet. All I know is that if I were given the chance to take a shuttle flight into orbit just after the last accident knowing what the risks were I would have done so in a heart beat.
So in the roughly 25 years of Shuttle flights we have lost 2 crews. In this time period we have lost how may lives due to car crashes? I always find it funny that lives doen't seem to be important (or at least the risks of any particular item to life) until a spectacular death occurs. If the shuttle is so risky because 2 flights out of 25 years worth of flights ended in deaths than I guess we need to stop all car and truck transportation on earth immediately.
Besides buggy transportation is a proven technology and how many people have been killed in the last 25 years due to buggy accidents?
Don't let modern history blind you to the fact that the planet had been around of billions of years (and humans for several thousands) yet things were still invented. Inventions aren't a new idea.
Supposedly the sail can be rotated to angle the incoming light in such a way that the speed of the vehicle can be increased or decreased. The purpose of this test flight was to see if this could be achieved in practice.
The problem with interstellar travel is the there is no incoming light. The proposal is that one would use large lasers to generate the light force across these distances.
There was a very good interview with one of the people involved in this test flight on CBC radio's Quirks & Quarks last Saturday (link to show http://radio.cbc.ca/programs/quirks/archives/04-05/jun18.html).
Just to clarify a point for you. There was a resent court decision that now makes it legal to own a non-Canadian satelite system. In fact on a recent trip to Winnipeg I actually saw a sign on the roadside advertising DirecTV hookups.
No I call it "ignoring treaty obligations" when a ruling has gone against your policy and you ignore the ruling and continue the pactise. This isn't simply a matter "that deviates from the Canadian view of things". It is a matter that deviate from the ruling body that is set up to mediate disputes (a body made up of representatives from all parties involved I believe).
The way this works (to my understanding) is that a person can copy a CD for personal use but you can't get someone to copy the CD for you.
Now the question is who is making the copy when a song is downloaded from the Internet. Am I making the copy for personal use when I request the song (since the original file stays at the point of origin) or is the file sharer creating the copy? This is the modern version of the philosophic question about the forest and the tree.
The grey area in Canada is that every blank CD, tape, DVD, VHS, etc. has a music tariff on it. So, obtaining a copy of a song and burning it to CD could be considered legal since the compensation of the copyright holder was done when the CD was purchased.
Eliminate the tariffs on blank media and then your argument might work for me.
Ok, I'll bite.
How about NAFTA.
The US is still collecting tariffs on Canadian softwood lumber even though they have lost every decision on this issue. If this isn't ignoring treaty obligations I don't know what is.
The military is not "the only institution that can continue to pour money somewhere before it is profitable to do so". It is this mindset that had made this practice so prevelent in the past.
The space race of the 60's could have been looked at as a military exercise I suppose but it was really a civil exercise. There were no massive space weapon platforms launched at this time that I know of but you can correct me if I am mistaken.
The only thing that is needed for spending on non-military space exploration spending is the willingness of the US government. This isn't going to happen anytime soon though since the US government is locked into a military mindset.
It amazes me that there hasn't been more of an oppossition to the spending that is being poured into the Iraq invasion. Just a small portion of this funding would have provided YEARS of funding to the space program.
I guess that if by saying that "the only institution that can continue to pour money somewhere before it is profitable to do so is the military" is that they are the only ones currently able to get away with it than I guess I would have to agree. But if you ment that they are the only ones that are able to I would have to disagree.
Assuming that the constitution of the U.S. is valid and that works will eventually enter the public domain, what happens to the DRM material. I am not all that confident in the content providers to magically make a non-DRM version of the file available.
Of course I guess we could conceed that the idea of the public domain is dead. Copyright has become a vertual strangle hold on the entery of new material into the public domain as it is. I see no evidence that this will change anytime soon.
It is necessary for a version of any work to be available in an open non-restrictive form if the public domain is ever to succeed. If these works are locked away under DRM then we are about to enter a new dark age of humanity.
Am I totally out to lunch here. This is supposed to be the result of "a fun late-night coding jaunt"? This looks like a simple role over effect to me. I could probably whip up something quite simular, using one of a dozen or more web editors, in less than half an hour.
I didn't look at the pages source code so there might be something I'm missing but this doesn't look too hard to implement nor should it cause any legal problems from Apple or any one else.
Just as a point of claification. Most of the NAFTA rulings that I know of (soft wood lumber in particular) are actually decided in Canada's favour. The U.S. just ignores the rulings until the next round of inquiries are made.
That is really cleaver of you, become critical of someone for not having tried a TiVo and then shoot down their alternative without having tried it yourself. Talk about smug.
The biggest problem with this whole case is that the U.N. official wasn't even living in Ontario (or even Canada for that matter) when the article was posted. Just because the article is available still shouldn't change the fact that there is no logical reason that this ever even entered the Ontario court system.
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My point wasn't that the odds of dying in a car accident are less or greater than dying in a shuttle accident (personally I think I need to worry more about the car but that's just me). The point is that in 25 years only 2 crews have been lost and significantly more have been lost to car related deaths so maybe we should be concerned that cars aren't 100% safe. If you want to look at acceptable risks than I guess I have to ask you, are you more likely to die in a shuttle accident or a car crash? Do you generally drive your car into orbit? How many pilots have died during aircraft test flights? There will always be risks in live. I guess my main point is (which upon reflection didn't come across in my original post) that as long as the people that are taking the risk are doing so volutarily let them. Should we strive to minimize the risks? You bet. All I know is that if I were given the chance to take a shuttle flight into orbit just after the last accident knowing what the risks were I would have done so in a heart beat.
And only modern inventions "require enormous investment in time and equipment and materials"? Talk about absurdity arguments.
So in the roughly 25 years of Shuttle flights we have lost 2 crews. In this time period we have lost how may lives due to car crashes? I always find it funny that lives doen't seem to be important (or at least the risks of any particular item to life) until a spectacular death occurs. If the shuttle is so risky because 2 flights out of 25 years worth of flights ended in deaths than I guess we need to stop all car and truck transportation on earth immediately. Besides buggy transportation is a proven technology and how many people have been killed in the last 25 years due to buggy accidents?
Don't let modern history blind you to the fact that the planet had been around of billions of years (and humans for several thousands) yet things were still invented. Inventions aren't a new idea.
Supposedly the sail can be rotated to angle the incoming light in such a way that the speed of the vehicle can be increased or decreased. The purpose of this test flight was to see if this could be achieved in practice. The problem with interstellar travel is the there is no incoming light. The proposal is that one would use large lasers to generate the light force across these distances. There was a very good interview with one of the people involved in this test flight on CBC radio's Quirks & Quarks last Saturday (link to show http://radio.cbc.ca/programs/quirks/archives/04-05 /jun18.html).
Just to clarify a point for you. There was a resent court decision that now makes it legal to own a non-Canadian satelite system. In fact on a recent trip to Winnipeg I actually saw a sign on the roadside advertising DirecTV hookups.
No I call it "ignoring treaty obligations" when a ruling has gone against your policy and you ignore the ruling and continue the pactise. This isn't simply a matter "that deviates from the Canadian view of things". It is a matter that deviate from the ruling body that is set up to mediate disputes (a body made up of representatives from all parties involved I believe).
The way this works (to my understanding) is that a person can copy a CD for personal use but you can't get someone to copy the CD for you. Now the question is who is making the copy when a song is downloaded from the Internet. Am I making the copy for personal use when I request the song (since the original file stays at the point of origin) or is the file sharer creating the copy? This is the modern version of the philosophic question about the forest and the tree.
The grey area in Canada is that every blank CD, tape, DVD, VHS, etc. has a music tariff on it. So, obtaining a copy of a song and burning it to CD could be considered legal since the compensation of the copyright holder was done when the CD was purchased. Eliminate the tariffs on blank media and then your argument might work for me.
Ok, I'll bite. How about NAFTA. The US is still collecting tariffs on Canadian softwood lumber even though they have lost every decision on this issue. If this isn't ignoring treaty obligations I don't know what is.
I'm sorry but I just HAVE to respnd to this.
The military is not "the only institution that can continue to pour money somewhere before it is profitable to do so". It is this mindset that had made this practice so prevelent in the past.
The space race of the 60's could have been looked at as a military exercise I suppose but it was really a civil exercise. There were no massive space weapon platforms launched at this time that I know of but you can correct me if I am mistaken.
The only thing that is needed for spending on non-military space exploration spending is the willingness of the US government. This isn't going to happen anytime soon though since the US government is locked into a military mindset.
It amazes me that there hasn't been more of an oppossition to the spending that is being poured into the Iraq invasion. Just a small portion of this funding would have provided YEARS of funding to the space program.
I guess that if by saying that "the only institution that can continue to pour money somewhere before it is profitable to do so is the military" is that they are the only ones currently able to get away with it than I guess I would have to agree. But if you ment that they are the only ones that are able to I would have to disagree.
Assuming that the constitution of the U.S. is valid and that works will eventually enter the public domain, what happens to the DRM material. I am not all that confident in the content providers to magically make a non-DRM version of the file available. Of course I guess we could conceed that the idea of the public domain is dead. Copyright has become a vertual strangle hold on the entery of new material into the public domain as it is. I see no evidence that this will change anytime soon. It is necessary for a version of any work to be available in an open non-restrictive form if the public domain is ever to succeed. If these works are locked away under DRM then we are about to enter a new dark age of humanity.
Am I totally out to lunch here. This is supposed to be the result of "a fun late-night coding jaunt"? This looks like a simple role over effect to me. I could probably whip up something quite simular, using one of a dozen or more web editors, in less than half an hour. I didn't look at the pages source code so there might be something I'm missing but this doesn't look too hard to implement nor should it cause any legal problems from Apple or any one else.
Just as a point of claification. Most of the NAFTA rulings that I know of (soft wood lumber in particular) are actually decided in Canada's favour. The U.S. just ignores the rulings until the next round of inquiries are made.
That is really cleaver of you, become critical of someone for not having tried a TiVo and then shoot down their alternative without having tried it yourself. Talk about smug.
The biggest problem with this whole case is that the U.N. official wasn't even living in Ontario (or even Canada for that matter) when the article was posted. Just because the article is available still shouldn't change the fact that there is no logical reason that this ever even entered the Ontario court system.