Yes but maybe the argument that people who do it mainly do it because they want to try before they buy still hold.
PS. I'm not saying that I believe it. It will be interesting to see the stats in a month or so.
Use occam's razor and go with the simplest explanation: People pirate because they want free shit and it's easier in some cases than going to the store.
If you've ever seen the breakdown of law & order (Iraq right after invasion, New Orleans after Hurrican Katrina, LA after the riots, false Craiglist ads), you should know a lot of people are freeloading scavengers as soon as they don't think their actions have any consequences.
Do you think the internet, especially, which promotes the feeling of such an environment is immune from that? I don't think the explanation is complex at all.
OJ was able to get off because he hired an incredibly talented set of lawyers.
It makes sense that those with a lot of money would hire the best lawyers. Now that Obama chooses the cream of the crop, suddenly these guys are somehow no good?
It's cute defending your man to the last. I still have my Ron Paul sticker proudly displayed and can proudly say I did not vote one democrat or republican the last election. Yeah, my candidates lost, but at least I didn't buy into bullshit. Like George Carlin says, the people who run this country just don't give a fuck about you.
Google has a fundamental problem: except for search ads, nothing they do makes money.
That's a stupid way of looking at it. They are my central hub. Everything they do is gear toward information gather and making more money. Google maps? They know the spots I drive to with a simple search, I get directions in return. What benefit is that to them? More targeted ads, and selling info if they so choose.
Google has already dumped a few money-losing services, and they may well dump more of them.
May as well kill their search as well and call it a day.
Even the few non-ad products that bring in revenue, like the Google Search Appliance and the corporate version of GMail, aren't very successful. Google stock is down 50% from the peak in 2007, and most of that decline came before the recession. Investors are getting annoyed at the money draining products.
I wouldn't be surprised if Google dumps YouTube and starts charging for GMail.
That would kill Gmail. Gmail is also the only place where I have noticed their one line ads.
They dump services that aren't popular. That makes sense from both sides. Youtube is very popular, they would be extremely stupid to close shop on the #1 place people turn to videos on the internet. I would say the only problem with youtube is that it's poorly organized. "Channels" are basically clips in the order people submitted them, so you can't tie 10 minutes segments any other way (or any logical way - they need to fix that).
They also should work on ads, no longer than 10-15 seconds, to insert in front of videos randomly and allow revenue sharing. But to close shop would be like CBS/NBC/ABC all simultaneously killing their radio stations in the 1920s because it wasn't making money over fist right from the beginning.
I'm glad they went with an ad that didn't scream "Me too!" Out of necessity, Linux already copies Microsoft which copied Macintosh which copied Xerox in terms of GUIness and perhaps other programs. But it didn't need to do the same with commercials: copying Microsoft copying Apple.
The only thing bad is that unless you already know what linux is, the commercial doesn't exactly inform you, even visually, albeit a single cartoonishly animated mouse cursor. It might leave common people scratching their heads.
You know, I could see taxing alcohol and cigarettes in proportion to the societal burden it incurs and if it were applied in a systematic way to pay for healthcare, prevention and education programs, extra police, etcetera instead of being thrown in the general fund and cranked up everytime they "need" more money.
However, violent video games have a neglible (perhaps even positive as a cathartic release) societal burden. This is just a money grab on an unpopular group or easy scapegoat by the majority. The republic was made to protect the rights of the individual (in theory).
Yes, but no one is bringing up batteries - specifically the need to strip mine the material needed to manufacture them. A Prius, the battery is insured to like $8,000 (maybe more now) because of the material.
And you want that amount (or more) of material in all the cars on the road? You know how prices would jump?
What's innovative about the Aptera? They're only combining technologies already seen elsewhere. Even the form factor has been done before, more or less, in the distant past:)
You're right, but many new technologies are about new combinations of technologies seen elsewhere. And the form has indeed been done before, postwar-Messerschmitt KR200 comes to mind although there were many. However, no one has gotten the form in a compelling package before (at least to me), all the previous ones felt and were marketed as cheap man's transit rather than toward gas efficiency. Plus, charging the Tesla takes forever, something that just isn't easily overcome plus at speed, the mileage of the Tesla drops dramatically (and to be fair, all cars suffer) however they can't really afford less range. If you've ever seen the review on top gear: http://video.aol.com/video-detail/top-gear-reviews-the-tesla-roadster/4052367588
Aptera's first model actually is all electric, like the Tesla. It just doesn't interest me though. And I think the hybrid can go 60km before needing the engine to keep charge. The engine is nicer than towing it.
More seriously, the reciprocating ICE is a Bad Idea(tm); the best option IMO would be a small turbine ala 1960s Chrysler designs (tested and working designs, I might add) with a generator integrated into the turbine, using a series hybrid design. The turbine has vastly greater efficiency than an ICE (the most efficient ICE is a diesel container ship engine the size of a house -- at about 50% efficient) and the high RPMs are a perfect match for a generator.
Correct me if I'm not wrong, but isn't 50% efficiency the greatest theoretically efficiency of a carnot cycle engine? Diesel, as an established technology is nice because it can run on a variety of things, algae biodiesel if that ever takes off. However, don't turbines tend to be expensive because of precision required? Smaller turbines are coming down in price... There are companies that are investigating stirling engine, which should not be a bad mating for a hybrid.
Whatever the case, engines for hybrids can be smaller because peak loads are on the electrical motors. And most of the extra mpg in European cars (even between the same US vs European models) come from the simple fact that they are using smaller engines with less displacement - for instance, Mercedes C class here starts at 3.0 (3 liter displacement) while in Germany I have seen 1.6 liter models with an obvious increase in gas mileage.
We already have a more efficient way of coupling a small gasoline engine to the ground than using a big complicated transmission and long drivetrain like we use on a car, it's called a motorcycle with a sequential gearbox and a chain drive.
Heh, I was just looking at some shaft driven bicycles today (they're a bit less efficient, but have other benefits).
Tesla's business plan has always been to work their way down to an affordable car. They can only accomplish this by building some expensive ones first, because they don't have an outlet for large numbers of cars nor income from other lines to pay for the sunk costs of development.
If anything, we need to eliminate all subsidies and allow the major automakers to fail. Then we carve them up into smaller automakers, pat them on the back, and set them loose. This keeps them in business and in theory encourages innovation. GM is simply a balkanized tool of the status quo and it's incapable of turning a corner. The same is true of all of the major American and Japanese automakers. But if we are going to continue handing out money to failing automotive business models, we should certainly give some to Tesla motors in the hope that they can not fail to execute their business plan and after the luxury model, bring us a relatively affordable family car with a useful range.
This is just plain stupid. Look, Tesla wants to be "alternative" but in reality it's just a sportscar with an electrical motors and a shitload of batteries. That's their vision. What the hell is innovative about that? You use the similar amount of energy as any car, but now in electrical form. Whooptey doo. All it has going for it is eyecandy.
Aptera is much better. Mostly because they're actually affordable from the get go ($30k) and actually redefine an efficient car. All Tesla really does is offload the environmental footprint to the electric generation station, it doesn't aim to be all that much more efficient aerodynamically, going for the conventional look and along with that, similiar conventional all-around amount of power to push it. Aptera aims to be efficient overall (and the hybrids look to be rather usable). That's important when batteries are nasty things with chemicals/elements that need to be mined, Tesla' second weakness.
And the hybrid small gas engine feeding an electrical motor and batteries is time tested (diesel-electric trains) and makes more (environmental/economic) sense than batteries alone atm.
I think their best bet would be to name the node itself Serenity and name the actual urine recycling unit inside "Colbert".
I think the node should be called Colbert and the commode/urine_recycling_unit be named Serenity. Don't you want to experience Serenity on the Colbert as well?
I don't see people mentioning the economy but it should be taken into consideration. For many small businesses, asking if they'll upgrade to Windows 7 is the equivalent of asking if they'll buy new computers soon.
In addition, all the upgrade happy people have gotten burned with Vista. I don't find Vista bad, I use it and am happy with most of it except for the bloat. But a lot of people must feel slapped in the face by Microsoft when they paid for Vista and are asked to pay for Vista SP3 aka Windows 7 now so soon after Vista's release.
My boss got fired after he walked past his secretary and she smelled alcohol on his breath and reported that as sexual harassment. From beer. His friends took him out for his birthday during lunch.
The company didn't want to chance it. So welcome to America. Home of the free (to sue for every stupid little thing).
Perhaps this was what MS thought about. Personally, I think America has a relationship with alcohol that's beyond fucked up. Ever notice how the bars in some states (I hesitate to say all) have no windows/small windows and then with the shades pulled down? Welcome to the land where the Puritans settled. And no, those attitudes never went away completely.
I want a decent netbook but can't get the model I want. I don't want an eeePC 1000HA, which is slightly dated, I want the upgraded chipsets in the 1000HE or 1004DN that allow smooth HD playback, but right now both only come with Windows. One nice thing the 1000HA did was if you went with Linux, they upgraded your harddrive from a mechanical 80GB to a 64GB SSD. Not too bad.
The billionth app downloader will have his mother impregnated via divine insemination by Steve Jobs himself.
Henceforth this will be known as the iMac-culate Conception, and the offspring of the Holy iSpirit will be brought up as leader of the iFaithful to inherit the reins of Apple.
Someone's mother? Ah, I see, it's the slutty Version Mary.
None of these tactics will get people to buy more newspapers. I don't know what will, but I sure don't want Google to set a precedent for linking to asshats who can't be bothered to spend 3 minutes to edit their robots.txt if they hate it so much. But of course they won't do that. They don't want a solution, they just want money.
The problem is, as with organizations like the RIAA, once you pay them off, you just fund their lawyers to go after others who want to make use of fairuse. This is as big threat to a free internet as any national firewall or net neutrality.
Speaking of conscience, why is it that Slashdot is an oft-repeat offender in spreading anti-CFL nonsense?
Not just/., Digg and other places have its fair share. The cynic can say that a little knowlege is a dangerous thing, but perhaps it's that the techie people should know CFLs are better overall but just want to technically justify hanging on to incandescents with these kind of arguments. Or maybe they they tried a pack a while back and they all burned out. Who knows.
I only have one incandescent lamp left in my home, and that one is going to leave someday soon too.
I have no problems with incandescents myself, they'll be needed for ovens (and maybe refrigerators/freezers) long in the future. Along with a few other niches.
Even faster than Windows XP, most of the incentive to downgrade is gone and it'll just be a shrinking market.
The only thing I can think of is driver compatibility for that random device that they don't have Vista driver for yet or just something unsupported since then.
Craigslist isn't a place to buy stuff. It's a place to FIND stuff. You don't trust the #@$#!ing craigslist ad; you make a contact with a real person, and go from there.
ebay's kinda a joke --> used electronics, scams, and crap, all peddled by folks who only care about thin numbers that give themselves a veneer of respectability.
Craigslist tosses that, and the fees, and just connects the buyers and the sellers. It's the internet in its purest, and most open, form.
As much as I hate ebay, it doesn't limit me geographically. Craigslist is tedious in that I have to search city by city. It's good to find used stuff that everyone has (dishwashers, cars, etc), especially stuff that can't be readily shipped due to size. It's also okay (not good) for other local stuff like relationships.
But once you want something rare (say you collect vintage computers), good luck finding the specific things you want. Ebay or even google shopping is better for that. Part of the "internet in it's purest form" should be erasing geographic boundaries. Craigslist reinforces them.
Slashdot Mirror
Unless it's for rape/murder, does anyone else find this extremely disturbing?
And what if you're innocent, do they erase this data out of the system?
Use occam's razor and go with the simplest explanation: People pirate because they want free shit and it's easier in some cases than going to the store.
If you've ever seen the breakdown of law & order (Iraq right after invasion, New Orleans after Hurrican Katrina, LA after the riots, false Craiglist ads), you should know a lot of people are freeloading scavengers as soon as they don't think their actions have any consequences.
Do you think the internet, especially, which promotes the feeling of such an environment is immune from that? I don't think the explanation is complex at all.
No, John McCain was the republican nominee.
Write-ins don't get counted in my state. I held my nose and voted Bob Barr who was on the ballot.
First time I ever heard that. Does Boston College suddenly come out with their own Linux Distro?
How naive you are:
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-10024163-38.html
http://www.osnews.com/story/21190/Obama_s_DOJ_Sides_with_RIAA
It's cute defending your man to the last. I still have my Ron Paul sticker proudly displayed and can proudly say I did not vote one democrat or republican the last election. Yeah, my candidates lost, but at least I didn't buy into bullshit. Like George Carlin says, the people who run this country just don't give a fuck about you.
That's a stupid way of looking at it. They are my central hub. Everything they do is gear toward information gather and making more money. Google maps? They know the spots I drive to with a simple search, I get directions in return. What benefit is that to them? More targeted ads, and selling info if they so choose.
May as well kill their search as well and call it a day.
That would kill Gmail. Gmail is also the only place where I have noticed their one line ads.
They dump services that aren't popular. That makes sense from both sides. Youtube is very popular, they would be extremely stupid to close shop on the #1 place people turn to videos on the internet. I would say the only problem with youtube is that it's poorly organized. "Channels" are basically clips in the order people submitted them, so you can't tie 10 minutes segments any other way (or any logical way - they need to fix that).
They also should work on ads, no longer than 10-15 seconds, to insert in front of videos randomly and allow revenue sharing. But to close shop would be like CBS/NBC/ABC all simultaneously killing their radio stations in the 1920s because it wasn't making money over fist right from the beginning.
I'm glad they went with an ad that didn't scream "Me too!" Out of necessity, Linux already copies Microsoft which copied Macintosh which copied Xerox in terms of GUIness and perhaps other programs. But it didn't need to do the same with commercials: copying Microsoft copying Apple.
The only thing bad is that unless you already know what linux is, the commercial doesn't exactly inform you, even visually, albeit a single cartoonishly animated mouse cursor. It might leave common people scratching their heads.
You know, I could see taxing alcohol and cigarettes in proportion to the societal burden it incurs and if it were applied in a systematic way to pay for healthcare, prevention and education programs, extra police, etcetera instead of being thrown in the general fund and cranked up everytime they "need" more money.
However, violent video games have a neglible (perhaps even positive as a cathartic release) societal burden. This is just a money grab on an unpopular group or easy scapegoat by the majority. The republic was made to protect the rights of the individual (in theory).
Yes, but no one is bringing up batteries - specifically the need to strip mine the material needed to manufacture them. A Prius, the battery is insured to like $8,000 (maybe more now) because of the material.
And you want that amount (or more) of material in all the cars on the road? You know how prices would jump?
What? GTFO of here.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VUhPaxvhJCI
You're right, but many new technologies are about new combinations of technologies seen elsewhere. And the form has indeed been done before, postwar-Messerschmitt KR200 comes to mind although there were many. However, no one has gotten the form in a compelling package before (at least to me), all the previous ones felt and were marketed as cheap man's transit rather than toward gas efficiency. Plus, charging the Tesla takes forever, something that just isn't easily overcome plus at speed, the mileage of the Tesla drops dramatically (and to be fair, all cars suffer) however they can't really afford less range. If you've ever seen the review on top gear:
http://video.aol.com/video-detail/top-gear-reviews-the-tesla-roadster/4052367588
Aptera's first model actually is all electric, like the Tesla. It just doesn't interest me though. And I think the hybrid can go 60km before needing the engine to keep charge. The engine is nicer than towing it.
Correct me if I'm not wrong, but isn't 50% efficiency the greatest theoretically efficiency of a carnot cycle engine? Diesel, as an established technology is nice because it can run on a variety of things, algae biodiesel if that ever takes off. However, don't turbines tend to be expensive because of precision required? Smaller turbines are coming down in price... There are companies that are investigating stirling engine, which should not be a bad mating for a hybrid.
Whatever the case, engines for hybrids can be smaller because peak loads are on the electrical motors. And most of the extra mpg in European cars (even between the same US vs European models) come from the simple fact that they are using smaller engines with less displacement - for instance, Mercedes C class here starts at 3.0 (3 liter displacement) while in Germany I have seen 1.6 liter models with an obvious increase in gas mileage.
Heh, I was just looking at some shaft driven bicycles today (they're a bit less efficient, but have other benefits).
This is just plain stupid. Look, Tesla wants to be "alternative" but in reality it's just a sportscar with an electrical motors and a shitload of batteries. That's their vision. What the hell is innovative about that? You use the similar amount of energy as any car, but now in electrical form. Whooptey doo. All it has going for it is eyecandy.
Aptera is much better. Mostly because they're actually affordable from the get go ($30k) and actually redefine an efficient car. All Tesla really does is offload the environmental footprint to the electric generation station, it doesn't aim to be all that much more efficient aerodynamically, going for the conventional look and along with that, similiar conventional all-around amount of power to push it. Aptera aims to be efficient overall (and the hybrids look to be rather usable). That's important when batteries are nasty things with chemicals/elements that need to be mined, Tesla' second weakness.
And the hybrid small gas engine feeding an electrical motor and batteries is time tested (diesel-electric trains) and makes more (environmental/economic) sense than batteries alone atm.
http://www.aptera.com/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aptera_Motors
I think the node should be called Colbert and the commode/urine_recycling_unit be named Serenity. Don't you want to experience Serenity on the Colbert as well?
I don't see people mentioning the economy but it should be taken into consideration. For many small businesses, asking if they'll upgrade to Windows 7 is the equivalent of asking if they'll buy new computers soon.
In addition, all the upgrade happy people have gotten burned with Vista. I don't find Vista bad, I use it and am happy with most of it except for the bloat. But a lot of people must feel slapped in the face by Microsoft when they paid for Vista and are asked to pay for Vista SP3 aka Windows 7 now so soon after Vista's release.
My boss got fired after he walked past his secretary and she smelled alcohol on his breath and reported that as sexual harassment. From beer. His friends took him out for his birthday during lunch.
The company didn't want to chance it. So welcome to America. Home of the free (to sue for every stupid little thing).
Perhaps this was what MS thought about. Personally, I think America has a relationship with alcohol that's beyond fucked up. Ever notice how the bars in some states (I hesitate to say all) have no windows/small windows and then with the shades pulled down? Welcome to the land where the Puritans settled. And no, those attitudes never went away completely.
Yes, but I was hoping for the SSD upgrade instead!
I can't get Linux easily:(
I want a decent netbook but can't get the model I want. I don't want an eeePC 1000HA, which is slightly dated, I want the upgraded chipsets in the 1000HE or 1004DN that allow smooth HD playback, but right now both only come with Windows. One nice thing the 1000HA did was if you went with Linux, they upgraded your harddrive from a mechanical 80GB to a 64GB SSD. Not too bad.
As it stands, I would almost have gone with a Windows netbook simply for the hardware I want and be forced to install linux on it. But I decided on the ARM based Always Innovating when it comes out:
http://www.engadget.com/2009/03/02/touch-book-from-always-innovating-harbors-removable-tablet-netb/ [engadget.com]
It has a really nice 15 hour battery life, which for a true portable is one of the top considerations.
Someone's mother? Ah, I see, it's the slutty Version Mary.
None of these tactics will get people to buy more newspapers. I don't know what will, but I sure don't want Google to set a precedent for linking to asshats who can't be bothered to spend 3 minutes to edit their robots.txt if they hate it so much. But of course they won't do that. They don't want a solution, they just want money.
The problem is, as with organizations like the RIAA, once you pay them off, you just fund their lawyers to go after others who want to make use of fairuse. This is as big threat to a free internet as any national firewall or net neutrality.
Not just /., Digg and other places have its fair share. The cynic can say that a little knowlege is a dangerous thing, but perhaps it's that the techie people should know CFLs are better overall but just want to technically justify hanging on to incandescents with these kind of arguments. Or maybe they they tried a pack a while back and they all burned out. Who knows.
I have no problems with incandescents myself, they'll be needed for ovens (and maybe refrigerators/freezers) long in the future. Along with a few other niches.
Here is a good example of clean coal technology:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingston_Fossil_Plant_fly_ash_spill
http://www.snopes.com/medical/toxins/cfl.asp
Or you don't live near a Home Depot.
http://www6.homedepot.com/ecooptions/stage/pdf/cfl_recycle.pdf
Even faster than Windows XP, most of the incentive to downgrade is gone and it'll just be a shrinking market.
The only thing I can think of is driver compatibility for that random device that they don't have Vista driver for yet or just something unsupported since then.
As much as I hate ebay, it doesn't limit me geographically. Craigslist is tedious in that I have to search city by city. It's good to find used stuff that everyone has (dishwashers, cars, etc), especially stuff that can't be readily shipped due to size. It's also okay (not good) for other local stuff like relationships.
But once you want something rare (say you collect vintage computers), good luck finding the specific things you want. Ebay or even google shopping is better for that. Part of the "internet in it's purest form" should be erasing geographic boundaries. Craigslist reinforces them.