Another problem is that Xlibris paperbacks are way overpriced compared to larger publishers' paperbacks, especially for fiction. You might get a friend to pay $18 for your book, but most people won't look twice on their way to the $7.95 mass market shelves at Barnes & Noble. It's great that a service like this exists, but I can't imagine that more than a handful of Xlibris authors sell enough even to recoup their up front costs.
I would characterize it like this: pr0n exists because of demand-side forces (i.e. people want it and are willing to pay for it). Spam exists because of supply-side forces (i.e. businesses want to send it and are willing to pay to do so). The fundamentals are very similar; it's just a matter of which side of the supply/demand curve pays for it.
I could be running a totally unpatched client that's vulnerable six ways to Sunday, but if I don't surf to your site (or open a local infected file with the client) then I can't be infected.
True, but keep in mind that since Outlook/Outlook Express use IE to render HTML content, email is an attack vector for a lot of IE vulnerabilities. For example, check out the Technical Details sections of thesetwo security bulletins. This is pretty significant, as "open[ing] a local infected file" becomes very easy for the average user to do without realizing it.
Not true (on NT/2K, that is). Everyone gets Full Control NTFS permissions to the entire file system by default, but users have to be added to the Administrators group to get Administrator privileges to the OS itself.
$67.4M + $75.7M = 143.1M. As has been discussed above, the $75.7 million value of the CDs they will distribute to nonprofit groups is very likely the retail value, so the actual cost to the record companies is probably much closer to $67.4 million tham $143.1 million (ignoring legal costs and such).
Ok, this is pretty sketchy, but this study seems to show that CD sales are highly price elastic in Macedonia (yeah, I know, but this is the best I could find in 10 seconds of Googling). The page is excruciatingly slow to load, so here's the relevant data (prices in denars):
Of course, there are a bunch of things that could explain this (unpopular CDs priced higher to account for the lack of economies of scale, price increases as inventory dwindles, etc.) but it's kinda interesting anyway.
It's not so much a question of cost as it is one of manageability. If you're burning something to give to a friend or to transfer between non-networked computers it isn't a big deal, but when burning for archival purposes, 100 MB CDs mean that you'll have 6-7 times as many discs to keep track of than you would if you consolidated your data into 600+ MB collections.
The point of decentralized networks is to reduce the possibility of network-wide outages, while also making content censorship infeasible. Sure, this makes it easier to share copyrighted material illegally, but it also provides a platform for free speech. If just 0.0001% of the files on p2p file sharing networks consist of things like DeCSS source code or evidence of atrocities in China, I for one will defend them to my last breath.
If Amazon allows software companies to redirect affiliate rebates, the incentive for people to link to Amazon's catalog goes away. I can't imagine they won't shut down the accounts of vendors like Kazaa who circumvent the process, once the practice becomes public (as it now has).
However, DVD and CD speeds are not directly comparable. According to this page, 1x in DVD terms is 11.08 Mb/s, while 1x in CD terms is a well-known (150 KB/s = 1.2 Mb/s).
Assuming max burn speed, burn times for a full 4.7 GB DVD disc would translate as follows:
11.08 Mb/s = 1.385 MB/s
4,700 MB / 1.385 = 3393 seconds = 56.5 minutes @ 1x
This gives us ~28 minutes to burn a full DVD-RW @ 2x, ~23 minutes for a DVD+R/+RW @ 2.4x, or ~15 minutes for a DVD-R @ 4x
Translating the DVD speed ratings above into CD terms, we get the following CD-equivalent write speeds for the drive:
22x DVD+R/+RW, 36x DVD-R, 18x DVD-RW, 73x DVD-ROM Read.
Take these numbers with a grain of salt though. After calculating the above, I found this page which says 1x DVD = 1250 KB/s (= 10Mb/s using drive manufacturers' definition of 1MB = 1000KB). Whatever. Close enough.
Maybe it's just me, but I fail to see a single mention of the EULA, much less a statement that it changes when you apply this patch. Even when installing, the only dialog presented to the user is the "Do you want to install this update?" box. I'm as concerned as the next guy about Microsoft's propensity to sneak in unannounced EULA changes and automatic updates without telling you, but let's not point fingers where there's nothing to see.
once in a while I get it on sunday at 19:00, but never more than twice in a row
Wait 'til football season starts. If I were Matt Groening, I'd be seriously pissed about being shoehorned into a time slot that invariably gets stepped on by the 4:00 game.
My favorite part about Comcast Digital Cable is that the cable boxes they provide (at $15/month) don't have digital audio outs (however, they do have a Dolby Digital logo on the front just to piss you off further). When I called to complain, I was told "there are boxes with digital audio outputs, but we don't provide or support them because they cost more". Of course, the info on their website dances around the issue by saying it's easy to hook up to your stereo and it has high quality sound while stopping short of mentioning the fact that your audio is analog beyond the cable box. Pricks.
Good point. The main reason cash transactions draw scrutiny is because of their anonymous nature. Checks and debit cards, obviously, do not provide such anonyminity, and presumably such transactions would not draw the scrutiny of a series of large cash (as in coins and notes) transactions.
I didn't say there was anything wrong with using cash; nor did I say that the government is trying to eliminate it. I was merely pointing out that when the feds go building profiles of potential terrorists, somebody who pays for everything with cash is going to stick out like a sore thumb. With plane tickets in particular, expect to be singled out far more than usual for searches of your luggage and person if you pay in cash.
The simple fact of the matter is that in the affluent countries (US, EU, Japan, Australia) using cash for everything is a significant departure from normal behavior patterns, and if/when it is noticed that someone is doing it, they are likely to come under government scrutiny, especially in the current political climate.
You realize, of course, that paying cash for everything is one of the things the authorities now use as evidence of possible terrorist influence. I don't know about you, but I have no desire to give the federal government a reason to apply its newly expanded powers to investigate me.
Dark Age of Camelot and Everquest do this. I think Anarchy Online does too, but I'm not positive on that one. This allows the publisher to change the EULA on the fly, and presumably makes it more difficult for the user to claim ignorance since he has to explicitly accept the terms every time the program is run.
Mr. RAILSBACK. I guess, you know, I find a difference between home recording off the air of regular television programing and, say, somebody recording the pay -- say, somebody that has pay cable and, as you pointed out, there are a lot of homes that do not have access to cable. But I am just saying, even where somebody has cable and has subscribed to pay cable, at least in that case they have paid a fee or they have paid for the reception of that pay cable. It is a little bit different than recording, I think, something for which they haven't paid anything off the air.
Mr. VALENTI. Mr. Railsback, let me respond this way. What they paid for is the same thing you and I pay for when we go into a theater. We go into a theater; we pay $4 to see that movie, but you don't bring a recording instrument in with you.
You, the emperor only get so many command points a turn, regardless of the size of your empire. <snip> this fix[es] the per turn time difference in multiplayer turn based strategy games that make them boring in multiplayer...
Not unless they also implement a real-time turn clock. If they only limit the number of comnmand actions per turn, the natural result will be that players will take just as much time looking at every planet/unit/diplomatic screen and add to that the time required to choose which planets/units/opponents require the most attention.
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Another problem is that Xlibris paperbacks are way overpriced compared to larger publishers' paperbacks, especially for fiction. You might get a friend to pay $18 for your book, but most people won't look twice on their way to the $7.95 mass market shelves at Barnes & Noble. It's great that a service like this exists, but I can't imagine that more than a handful of Xlibris authors sell enough even to recoup their up front costs.
I would characterize it like this: pr0n exists because of demand-side forces (i.e. people want it and are willing to pay for it). Spam exists because of supply-side forces (i.e. businesses want to send it and are willing to pay to do so). The fundamentals are very similar; it's just a matter of which side of the supply/demand curve pays for it.
I could be running a totally unpatched client that's vulnerable six ways to Sunday, but if I don't surf to your site (or open a local infected file with the client) then I can't be infected.
True, but keep in mind that since Outlook/Outlook Express use IE to render HTML content, email is an attack vector for a lot of IE vulnerabilities. For example, check out the Technical Details sections of these two security bulletins. This is pretty significant, as "open[ing] a local infected file" becomes very easy for the average user to do without realizing it.
Not true (on NT/2K, that is). Everyone gets Full Control NTFS permissions to the entire file system by default, but users have to be added to the Administrators group to get Administrator privileges to the OS itself.
$67.4M + $75.7M = 143.1M. As has been discussed above, the $75.7 million value of the CDs they will distribute to nonprofit groups is very likely the retail value, so the actual cost to the record companies is probably much closer to $67.4 million tham $143.1 million (ignoring legal costs and such).
Ok, this is pretty sketchy, but this study seems to show that CD sales are highly price elastic in Macedonia (yeah, I know, but this is the best I could find in 10 seconds of Googling). The page is excruciatingly slow to load, so here's the relevant data (prices in denars):
Price Quantity
>250 71
250 103
200 159
180 243
120 360
100 463
80 690
Of course, there are a bunch of things that could explain this (unpopular CDs priced higher to account for the lack of economies of scale, price increases as inventory dwindles, etc.) but it's kinda interesting anyway.
It's not so much a question of cost as it is one of manageability. If you're burning something to give to a friend or to transfer between non-networked computers it isn't a big deal, but when burning for archival purposes, 100 MB CDs mean that you'll have 6-7 times as many discs to keep track of than you would if you consolidated your data into 600+ MB collections.
The point of decentralized networks is to reduce the possibility of network-wide outages, while also making content censorship infeasible. Sure, this makes it easier to share copyrighted material illegally, but it also provides a platform for free speech. If just 0.0001% of the files on p2p file sharing networks consist of things like DeCSS source code or evidence of atrocities in China, I for one will defend them to my last breath.
If Amazon allows software companies to redirect affiliate rebates, the incentive for people to link to Amazon's catalog goes away. I can't imagine they won't shut down the accounts of vendors like Kazaa who circumvent the process, once the practice becomes public (as it now has).
Yeah, but the latency is horrible. Last time I tried to download something from NetFlix it took two days before the first packet arrived.
I just moderate what I eat
Jelly doughnut = -1 Overweighted?
However, DVD and CD speeds are not directly comparable. According to this page, 1x in DVD terms is 11.08 Mb/s, while 1x in CD terms is a well-known (150 KB/s = 1.2 Mb/s).
Assuming max burn speed, burn times for a full 4.7 GB DVD disc would translate as follows:
11.08 Mb/s = 1.385 MB/s
4,700 MB / 1.385 = 3393 seconds = 56.5 minutes @ 1x
This gives us ~28 minutes to burn a full DVD-RW @ 2x, ~23 minutes for a DVD+R/+RW @ 2.4x, or ~15 minutes for a DVD-R @ 4x
Translating the DVD speed ratings above into CD terms, we get the following CD-equivalent write speeds for the drive:
22x DVD+R/+RW, 36x DVD-R, 18x DVD-RW, 73x DVD-ROM Read.
Take these numbers with a grain of salt though. After calculating the above, I found this page which says 1x DVD = 1250 KB/s (= 10Mb/s using drive manufacturers' definition of 1MB = 1000KB). Whatever. Close enough.
Maybe it's just me, but I fail to see a single mention of the EULA, much less a statement that it changes when you apply this patch. Even when installing, the only dialog presented to the user is the "Do you want to install this update?" box. I'm as concerned as the next guy about Microsoft's propensity to sneak in unannounced EULA changes and automatic updates without telling you, but let's not point fingers where there's nothing to see.
once in a while I get it on sunday at 19:00, but never more than twice in a row
Wait 'til football season starts. If I were Matt Groening, I'd be seriously pissed about being shoehorned into a time slot that invariably gets stepped on by the 4:00 game.
My favorite part about Comcast Digital Cable is that the cable boxes they provide (at $15/month) don't have digital audio outs (however, they do have a Dolby Digital logo on the front just to piss you off further). When I called to complain, I was told "there are boxes with digital audio outputs, but we don't provide or support them because they cost more". Of course, the info on their website dances around the issue by saying it's easy to hook up to your stereo and it has high quality sound while stopping short of mentioning the fact that your audio is analog beyond the cable box. Pricks.
And then, thanks to the /. crowd, we walk into Best Buy one day to find the shelves stocked with nothing but Goatse: the Game.
Good point. The main reason cash transactions draw scrutiny is because of their anonymous nature. Checks and debit cards, obviously, do not provide such anonyminity, and presumably such transactions would not draw the scrutiny of a series of large cash (as in coins and notes) transactions.
I didn't say there was anything wrong with using cash; nor did I say that the government is trying to eliminate it. I was merely pointing out that when the feds go building profiles of potential terrorists, somebody who pays for everything with cash is going to stick out like a sore thumb. With plane tickets in particular, expect to be singled out far more than usual for searches of your luggage and person if you pay in cash.
The simple fact of the matter is that in the affluent countries (US, EU, Japan, Australia) using cash for everything is a significant departure from normal behavior patterns, and if/when it is noticed that someone is doing it, they are likely to come under government scrutiny, especially in the current political climate.
You realize, of course, that paying cash for everything is one of the things the authorities now use as evidence of possible terrorist influence. I don't know about you, but I have no desire to give the federal government a reason to apply its newly expanded powers to investigate me.
Coffee brew complete. Enjoy.
Shouldn't that be Share and enjoy?
Dark Age of Camelot and Everquest do this. I think Anarchy Online does too, but I'm not positive on that one. This allows the publisher to change the EULA on the fly, and presumably makes it more difficult for the user to claim ignorance since he has to explicitly accept the terms every time the program is run.
Exactly:
Mr. RAILSBACK. I guess, you know, I find a difference between home recording off the air of regular television programing and, say, somebody recording the pay -- say, somebody that has pay cable and, as you pointed out, there are a lot of homes that do not have access to cable. But I am just saying, even where somebody has cable and has subscribed to pay cable, at least in that case they have paid a fee or they have paid for the reception of that pay cable. It is a little bit different than recording, I think, something for which they haven't paid anything off the air.
Mr. VALENTI. Mr. Railsback, let me respond this way. What they paid for is the same thing you and I pay for when we go into a theater. We go into a theater; we pay $4 to see that movie, but you don't bring a recording instrument in with you.
These are pretty funny too:
Mrs. SCHROEDER. Thank you very much. All I want to now is does that little machine take off political commercials, too. mean, this could be serious.
==========
Mrs. SCHROEDER. Maybe that is why we are here. Maybe we are creating jobs for lawyers
==========
Mr. OREAR. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. My name is Richard Orear and I would like to read my testimony here --
Mr. KASTENMEIER. Your testimony is short. It is only 4 1/2 pages.
You, the emperor only get so many command points a turn, regardless of the size of your empire. <snip> this fix[es] the per turn time difference in multiplayer turn based strategy games that make them boring in multiplayer...
Not unless they also implement a real-time turn clock. If they only limit the number of comnmand actions per turn, the natural result will be that players will take just as much time looking at every planet/unit/diplomatic screen and add to that the time required to choose which planets/units/opponents require the most attention.
I'm sure it was unintentional, but you seem to have left out your Slashdot password. Plz fix. Thx.