Just wait until all incoming visitors to the US must submit DNA as part of the recordkeeping. After all, we wouldn't want any visitors committing crimes, and then leaving the country wihout someway of tying physical evidence to the ingress/egress record, right? Next step after that is to have all US citizens leaving the country submit DNA as well... just in case you're leaving because you're on the run. We'll just have to screen it against all current open crimes...
Once this registry with very current info is established, expect everyone from the left to the right to start mining it - late on your car payments? Exit visa DENIED. Forget to turn in your library books on time? DENIED.
At a certain point in the future, you'd better have your papers in order when travelling from Chicago to LA...
An unjust peace is preferable to the most righteous of wars. - Cicero.
Even peace may be purchased at too high a price - Benjamin Franklin .
(I just read those two quotes together in a book VERY recently, and they stuck in my head. Does anyone remember what book it is??? Arrgh!)
I dunno what it is, but I've gone from 300 spams per day, to 400 pieces in the last week or so. Spammers trying to beat Jan 1st? Or a sudden increase in the number of relays that they've been able to use?
My question is whether the FTC is actually going to have the money to enforce anything. I guess we'll see, starting next week.
Good lord, you know how screwed up the information industry is, and you AREN'T WORRIED? What about all those David Nelsons who keep getting hassled when they travel because the name "David Nelson" ended up on a travel security advisory that was issued (half-assed) based on screwed up info?
The systems will improve, but the bad data lives on. In some cases this is good - in many cases, guess what - they'll err on the side of including everybody, instead of excluding everybody...
Better not to have the system to begin with. After all, once the system is in place, you start getting people who say, "Well, it's already there, we might as well use it." Gun registration -> confiscation comes to mind as an example. Combining your credit score (and social security number) with everything is another - if there was no SSN, would wholesale ID theft be such a problem in the US?
You forget highly urban markets where all of the available radio stations (both AM and FM) have been taken over by Clear Channel, and the available public radio stations have all gone NPR, or don't have enough power to reach your area (ie, their transmitter is in a valley.)
Ironically, XM is owned in part by Clear Channel - could it be they have a vested interest in making local radio so crappy, that people will HAVE to subscribe to XM?
Wardialing. It's illegal to do it, but just like spam and spam laws (and telemarketers using autodialing machines with recorded messages), it doesn't deter them in the slightest. Even worse, once they figure out your number has a fax machine attached to it, they then sell that number to all sorts of junk faxers. Soon you'll be getting all the toner, OTC stock tip, mortgage refinance, and free vacations in Florida junk faxes...
It's the Congressional Members duty to keep their constituents informed. In a representative government, our elected officials must promote two way communication.
Hmmm. So if I call up my congresscritter, I should be able to talk directly to him, instead of some wet-behind-the-ears intern looking at a cheat-sheet full of the current "positions" that the honorable congressman is taking on issues, right?
It'd be great if it were true. However, I smell something more along the lines of mass advertise until it becomes fashionable to pretend you're against it (ie, telemarketing.) What really galls me is that under the franking privilege, they're using OUR taxpayer money to spam US, the taxpayers.
Members would have to clearly identify emails sent to their constituents, with proper headers, From address, etc.
So what? Lots of commercial companies do this already - with addresses that nobody listens or responds to (and "legitimately" so, because of bounced mail.) What's to keep my congresscritter from just feeding everything into a LISP construct that matches keywords to the current position paper, spits out a "I am deeply aware of this issue, and also concerned about X - thank you for taking the time to share your views" form letter, in the same way that lame-ass "AI" tech support works?
What I want to see is an apartment complex with a centralized food storage/delivery system. Instead of going to the supermarket, the supermarket sends a delivery truck to stock up the apartment's central store. When your fridge runs low on milk, it orders some from the central store, and it gets delivered via a pneumatic system (either that, or some delivery guy just does rounds inside the building.) No need to stock sodas (taking up valuable fridge room) - if you suddenly have a bunch of extra guests, just dial up a few six packs. Want a DVD for the evening? Just punch up your terminal (internet, telephone, cable, or otherwise) and see what's in stock locally.
It boggles the mind that companies like Kozmo tried to do the pizza delivery thing (yes, we'll deliver a 90 cent pack of Junior Mints to your door... for free!), when they could have tried to partner with developers and supermarkets to implement this kind of system.
Oh, and in case some punk tries to patent this (assuming it hasn't been patented already), I declare this idea to be published and in the public domain!
Actually, it probably already has been patented, for use with hotel chains - they already have a hotel central store/kitchen, a delivery system (room service) and interactive controls (interactive cable, web console, or the good old menu and telephone.)
I have no doubt that we could send people there. After all, having a couple of human operators on the spot could do a lot to compensate for unknowns that might prove disasterous when diagnosed and treated over a long distance radio link. The problem isn't getting people there - it's getting them back in one piece.
The astronauts that go will be isolated for longer than any other space explorers, and out of range of any possible resupply or rescue attempt. Like the explorers of old, they'll need to rely on pre-cached supplies in order to make it back, while hazarding radiation, space dust, low-gravity, and the risks of landing on a planet that we still don't know very much about.
Let's get a couple of Lagrange refuling/resupply depots set up, and a Moonbase. Then we can talk about shipping men and women off to Mars, not to die, but to further human knowledge and enterprise.
For older ReplayTVs running version 4.x software or lower, the conflict resolution is almost nil. Guaranteed shows have priority over non-guaranteed shows (the unit will ask if you try and schedule two guaranteed shows in the same timeslot.) Non-guaranteed shows are ranked in order of age - the first show you schedule for a timeslot will alway override any other non-guaranteed show you schedule afterwards, and the unit WILL NOT TELL YOU IF THERE IS A CONFLICT BETWEEN NON-GUARANTEED SHOWS.
The newer ReplayTVs running 5.x software have a hidden conflict resolution function, where you can assign a numerical priority. I haven't used it, so I don't know how well it works.
Basically, TiVos are a LOT more intelligent about what to record and when (unless you specify a "channel" based on the name, the until will NOT automatically shift recording times if the show is rescheduled either temporarily or permanently.) For ReplayTV units, either have a big hard drive, or ALWAYS record guaranteed if you want to be notified of conflicts.
I've been happy for the most part with the two ReplayTV units that I own (both purchased used off of eBay.) The biggest problem I ran into for both units was that the hard drives had errors on them that would glitch the OS and crash the player if you recorded too much material. I was extremely pissed after the first couple of times that this happened, since the player reset itself after the last time - erasing all my existing recordings. Another unit freezed up completely and would no longer boot. Both problems were easily solved by taking the cover off, and replacing the hard drive - I haven't had any problems since (and I got Maxtor to replace both of the bad drives under warranty). Don't forget to use the "secret menu" - 243+replayzones to reset the unit to factory defaults after you're done (yes, you'll lose your shows.)
The best feature of the ReplayTV 4k and 5k units (aside from commercial skip, which only works intermittently these days) is the built-in 10/100 ethernet. I can run DVArchive on my win2K box, export all of my shows (Simpsons, Mr. Bean, Stargate SG-1) to my hard drive, edit them with VirtualDub, and burn em to VCD with TMPEnc. ReplayTVs record shows in MPEG2, at D1(?) resolution - 720x480 at high and medium quality, I think low quality is half D1 - I'm not sure, since I never record anything at low quality. High quality shows are recorded with 48khz audio, requiring downsampling before you reencode to VCD.
Bottom line, if you're comfortable disassembling consumer electronics and re-imaging hard drives using the ReplayTV Upgrade patch, you should be fine. Many "dead" units can be brought back to life by re-imaging the hard drive - the premise being that somehow the on-board OS got corrupted. For privacy advocates, buy a used 40xx unit (as I did), as these are pre-activated, so you don't have to provide any information. If you're not comfortable messing around with the innards of a $400+ machine, and taking the risk of frying both it, and your computer (if you need to re-image, you have to hook up the replacement drive to your computer), then don't get a ReplayTV.
If you're a super-uber geek, then you can try putting together a MythTV box (next on my list of stuff to do, after I build a MAME cabinet - I think I'll put the MythTV box into the MAME cabinet...)
Last tip - BACK UP YOUR REPLAYTV BOX. If ever you need a disk image for your box, and ReplayTV goes under, you'll be SOL unless you've got a current, clean (stable) backup.
To capture the market, this stuff has to either be:
1. Cheaper than flash or HDs. 2. More durable than flash or HDs (or even CD/DVDs) 3. Be faster than flash/HDs/optical media.
By the time this stuff comes out, trying to beat one of the three is going to be tough - by that time all of those existing technologies will be VERY mature. I'm already able to buy hard drives for super-cheap, so logically, flash is the intended target. The question is, by the time this stuff comes out, will hard drives become so tiny, cheap, and robust, that it's not flash that is the main competitor, but magnetic hard drives?
Of course, if IBM wants to give me petabytes of super-stable long-term storage that will fit in a shoebox, and only cost me a few hundred dollars, who am I to argue? At the very least, if it can replace tape, that might be enough to ensure a place for it, assuming optical hasn't totally displaced that market by then...
One thing I would really really like is access to the cover artwork and linear notes... none of the services seem to provide this.
I think iTunes will provide album art, but yes, liner notes would be a big plus.
Frankly, I wasn't impressed by eMusic - maybe my tastes are a bit antiquated, but their library was just as bad as iTunes when it came to older back-catalog recordings. No Four Freshmen, no Julie London, no Nat Cole for chrissakes (well, there was ONE compilation CD.) Getting high-quality MP3s is nice, and is a big selling point over iTunes. One other redeeming virtue of eMusic is that it does have more modern independents that aren't on iTunes' radar - they had Bill Elliott's Swing Orchestra for example. But no Jim Cullum, no Nina Ferro. Oh well.
Darl didn't make a mistake - he was desperate. He needed some way to justify/cover up the fact that SCO owes its lawyers close to $10 million, and that their short-term liabilities have almost quadrupled since last year. SCO is in serious trouble, and investors were expecting to see him pull a seriously big rabbit out of his hat after delaying the earnings announcement for several weeks.
That this is the best he could come up with means that SCO is going to have to pull a series of fast moves to try and keep the ball rolling in advance of the "show and tell" session that the court has ordered. Keep your eyes peeled for more incredible tales from the world of Canopy/SCO...
Another minus for shorting: you owe margin interest on the difference between the cash in your account, and the current value of the shares you've borrowed. Thus, for every dollar that SCOX rises, you owe that amount x no. of shares borrowed x current margin interest as charged by your broker. At 10%, this could get expensive if you short for a extended period, waiting for the stock to drop in order to cover and try and make a profit. Unless you have a hefty cash or margin position to counter balance the short, shorting this particular stock is a bad idea.
so long as you know how to spread glue out evenly and thinly
That's what spraymount is for. They sell it in spray cans, very popular with architecture and arts students on a super-tight deadline, who need to back a lot of paper very fast. Another alternative is to study some bookbinding techniques - you can use flour and pva glues with heavy card stock and thin leathers if you want an upscale look.
If you want your board to last, consider laminating the printed portion before mounting it to the backing board.
I remember watching an episode of NOVA on PBS. One of the things that astounded me was that in order to stabilize the earth to sink piles as part of the construction, they laid pipes into the ground in order to FREEZE IT. Man-made permafrost in downtown Boston - amazing stuff.
I'd argue that reason the US doesn't want the test reactor in France is because of:
1. Physical control of the test reactor. 2. Impact on local economy of all the international funds used in construction.
I suspect that #2 comes into play more than #1 - Japan is a valued political and economic partner that's currently still in the middle of a really bad economic slump. We'd rather reward them with the mega-bucks that will get pumped into the economy as a result of the construction and staffing of the reactor, rather than giving these lush proceeds to the French.
Why would 'Open Source Movie Making' automatically be better than Hollywood's current trend of designing by committe?
Because in Hollywood, only one entity can "own" the title, and as such, only one "official" version can be released. (ignoring for the moment, director's cuts, edits for television, restorations for DVDs, etc.) In such a collaborative process, everybody thrashes it out until there's consensus - or until someone in charge puts their foot down.
In an open source environment, everybody thrashes it out until there's consensus - or until somebody decides to fork. Even better, you can get people who use the project as a springboard to something totally different. A cast and crew doing an "open source" movie might conceivably spawn dozens of movies and shorts, from all sorts of genres, just based on the same actors and footage.
If you don't believe me, take a look at the shorts spawned from the footage of the star wars kid. And this was just based on some joke footage. Imagine what you could piece together if you had some input into what to shoot? Along those same lines, Roger Corman (the B movie king) made a career out of reusing footage other people had tossed (or reusing footage that he and his crew had shot from other movies). You probably won't get Academy Award material out of it, but then again, the big movie studios spend millions of dollars a year to deliver crap...
At $70 a month, it makes several concurrent accounts with netflix, and a pair of rabbit-ears look like a bargain. Sheesh, does anyone really watch that much TV?
If you don't patent it, some other bozo will. Then, instead of being able to help people, you get tied up in patent litigation to prove that you invented it first, and that it should be given away for free. Much easier to just patent it, so you OWN it, and once you OWN it, you can then declare that it is free for the world.
I keep running into incomplete albums when browsing Capitol Records artists, such as The Four Freshmen, and Doris Day. Annoys the hell out of me - I'm about to plunk down the $9.99 for an album when I discover that it's incomplete - and it's priced above $9.99.
Yes I'm a cheap bastard. But I'm thinking about getting an iPod anyways (used/refurb of course.) With the money that they earn from me, the original owner can go out and buy that shiny new iPod - a win-win situation. Apple sells a new iPod, and picks up a new customer that may trade up in the future (me). When they finally get a better selection of classic American music, they'll finally sell me some iTunes tracks as well.
An interesting side effect of the Baen Free Library - it has indirectly contributed to my buying a Sony Clie and a 256 mb compactflash card, just so I can store my books to read on the go when traveling. What happened? I downloaded one book by David Weber to start off (Mutineer's Moon) after reading about the free library on Slashdot. One thing led to another, and I became the owner of War of Honor, and later Hell's Faire, both of which have CD's containing a bunch of eBooks, completely free.
In addition to the random selection from the free library, I can now take advantage of Project Gutenberg titles, and I've been seriously considering signing up for Webscriptions just so I can get first crack at some of the new titles coming out.
So, more digital media for free not only helps to boost sales of physical copies (I also bought dead-tree versions of Sluggy Freelance as well - I got hooked on Sluggy after reading obscure references in John Ringo's "When the Devil Dances" and visiting the Sluggy website trying to figure out who "Torg", "Zoe", "Riff", and "Bun-Bun" were.)
So, just from trying out one free eBook, I went ahead and have bought:
(1) Clie NX60 [320x480 screen, a bit small, but very legible]
And a 256mb compactflash card [overkill, until you start putting MP3s on it]
That's several hundred dollars of spending on my part, and it cost Baen about 15mb worth of bandwidth for all the books that I've downloaded from the free library. For me, it's a great deal - lots of books for very little money. For Baen and their authors, it's a great deal - they get new customers (I never would have tried David Weber otherwise - now he's one of my favorite authors), and lots of good press (ie, Slashdot and word of mouth.) Incidentally, this happens with titles I check out from the library (I like a book or author, and end up buying books to add to my personal library), so there's preceedent for the sharing of "free" media.
I've never molested, assaulted, or robbed anyone. I know my picture is not in the database. Is yours?
Are you sure? Don't laugh, there have been instances where previous installs of face recognition systems had test data that wasn't wiped when the system was put into operation. It would suck horribly if you happened to be included in that test data set, and a positive ID had you pulled aside at the airport for an "exhaustive search". Unless you've actually looked at the database, you can't assume to know what is actually there.
They are not trying to track the movements of every American citizen.
No, of course not. That's still too expensive and technically difficult. The problem will be when the technology is commonly available, and so cheap that as a government interested in supressing crime, collecting taxes, and curtailing "suspicious behavior", you'd be stupid NOT to track everybody.
When they want to put the camera in my home, I'll be worried.
I hate to break it to you, but if it gets to that point, it will be too late for you to complain. Look at England - cameras everywhere.
Last point, effectiveness of the cameras will depend on where they are deployed. Unless the school district is going to invest in enough cameras to cover every entrance/exit to the campus (not just the main buildings) you will have plenty of ways to avoid being scanned. Unfortunately, if that is the case, all you've done is spent a ton of money, and possibly lulled the campus into a false sense of security.
And yes, it would cause more people to litter.. that's how people think.
Well, if you're going to treat me like a criminal anyway, I might as well force you to use that money to clean up after me, instead of allowing you to pocket it. Of course, the truly logical thing to do would be to find the SOB who introduced the ordinance, and remove his ass.
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Dang it, nevermind - those two quotes came from someone's sig:
I prefer the most unjust peace to the most righteous war. -- Cicero
Even peace may be purchased at too high a price. -- Poor Richard
Just wait until all incoming visitors to the US must submit DNA as part of the recordkeeping. After all, we wouldn't want any visitors committing crimes, and then leaving the country wihout someway of tying physical evidence to the ingress/egress record, right? Next step after that is to have all US citizens leaving the country submit DNA as well... just in case you're leaving because you're on the run. We'll just have to screen it against all current open crimes...
Once this registry with very current info is established, expect everyone from the left to the right to start mining it - late on your car payments? Exit visa DENIED. Forget to turn in your library books on time? DENIED.
At a certain point in the future, you'd better have your papers in order when travelling from Chicago to LA...
An unjust peace is preferable to the most righteous of wars. - Cicero.
Even peace may be purchased at too high a price - Benjamin Franklin .
(I just read those two quotes together in a book VERY recently, and they stuck in my head. Does anyone remember what book it is??? Arrgh!)
I dunno what it is, but I've gone from 300 spams per day, to 400 pieces in the last week or so. Spammers trying to beat Jan 1st? Or a sudden increase in the number of relays that they've been able to use?
My question is whether the FTC is actually going to have the money to enforce anything. I guess we'll see, starting next week.
Good lord, you know how screwed up the information industry is, and you AREN'T WORRIED? What about all those David Nelsons who keep getting hassled when they travel because the name "David Nelson" ended up on a travel security advisory that was issued (half-assed) based on screwed up info?
The systems will improve, but the bad data lives on. In some cases this is good - in many cases, guess what - they'll err on the side of including everybody, instead of excluding everybody...
Better not to have the system to begin with. After all, once the system is in place, you start getting people who say, "Well, it's already there, we might as well use it." Gun registration -> confiscation comes to mind as an example. Combining your credit score (and social security number) with everything is another - if there was no SSN, would wholesale ID theft be such a problem in the US?
You forget highly urban markets where all of the available radio stations (both AM and FM) have been taken over by Clear Channel, and the available public radio stations have all gone NPR, or don't have enough power to reach your area (ie, their transmitter is in a valley.)
Ironically, XM is owned in part by Clear Channel - could it be they have a vested interest in making local radio so crappy, that people will HAVE to subscribe to XM?
Wardialing. It's illegal to do it, but just like spam and spam laws (and telemarketers using autodialing machines with recorded messages), it doesn't deter them in the slightest. Even worse, once they figure out your number has a fax machine attached to it, they then sell that number to all sorts of junk faxers. Soon you'll be getting all the toner, OTC stock tip, mortgage refinance, and free vacations in Florida junk faxes...
It's the Congressional Members duty to keep their constituents informed. In a representative government, our elected officials must promote two way communication.
Hmmm. So if I call up my congresscritter, I should be able to talk directly to him, instead of some wet-behind-the-ears intern looking at a cheat-sheet full of the current "positions" that the honorable congressman is taking on issues, right?
It'd be great if it were true. However, I smell something more along the lines of mass advertise until it becomes fashionable to pretend you're against it (ie, telemarketing.) What really galls me is that under the franking privilege, they're using OUR taxpayer money to spam US, the taxpayers.
Members would have to clearly identify emails sent to their constituents, with proper headers, From address, etc.
So what? Lots of commercial companies do this already - with addresses that nobody listens or responds to (and "legitimately" so, because of bounced mail.) What's to keep my congresscritter from just feeding everything into a LISP construct that matches keywords to the current position paper, spits out a "I am deeply aware of this issue, and also concerned about X - thank you for taking the time to share your views" form letter, in the same way that lame-ass "AI" tech support works?
What I want to see is an apartment complex with a centralized food storage/delivery system. Instead of going to the supermarket, the supermarket sends a delivery truck to stock up the apartment's central store. When your fridge runs low on milk, it orders some from the central store, and it gets delivered via a pneumatic system (either that, or some delivery guy just does rounds inside the building.) No need to stock sodas (taking up valuable fridge room) - if you suddenly have a bunch of extra guests, just dial up a few six packs. Want a DVD for the evening? Just punch up your terminal (internet, telephone, cable, or otherwise) and see what's in stock locally.
It boggles the mind that companies like Kozmo tried to do the pizza delivery thing (yes, we'll deliver a 90 cent pack of Junior Mints to your door... for free!), when they could have tried to partner with developers and supermarkets to implement this kind of system.
Oh, and in case some punk tries to patent this (assuming it hasn't been patented already), I declare this idea to be published and in the public domain!
Actually, it probably already has been patented, for use with hotel chains - they already have a hotel central store/kitchen, a delivery system (room service) and interactive controls (interactive cable, web console, or the good old menu and telephone.)
I have no doubt that we could send people there. After all, having a couple of human operators on the spot could do a lot to compensate for unknowns that might prove disasterous when diagnosed and treated over a long distance radio link. The problem isn't getting people there - it's getting them back in one piece.
The astronauts that go will be isolated for longer than any other space explorers, and out of range of any possible resupply or rescue attempt. Like the explorers of old, they'll need to rely on pre-cached supplies in order to make it back, while hazarding radiation, space dust, low-gravity, and the risks of landing on a planet that we still don't know very much about.
Let's get a couple of Lagrange refuling/resupply depots set up, and a Moonbase. Then we can talk about shipping men and women off to Mars, not to die, but to further human knowledge and enterprise.
For older ReplayTVs running version 4.x software or lower, the conflict resolution is almost nil. Guaranteed shows have priority over non-guaranteed shows (the unit will ask if you try and schedule two guaranteed shows in the same timeslot.) Non-guaranteed shows are ranked in order of age - the first show you schedule for a timeslot will alway override any other non-guaranteed show you schedule afterwards, and the unit WILL NOT TELL YOU IF THERE IS A CONFLICT BETWEEN NON-GUARANTEED SHOWS.
The newer ReplayTVs running 5.x software have a hidden conflict resolution function, where you can assign a numerical priority. I haven't used it, so I don't know how well it works.
Basically, TiVos are a LOT more intelligent about what to record and when (unless you specify a "channel" based on the name, the until will NOT automatically shift recording times if the show is rescheduled either temporarily or permanently.) For ReplayTV units, either have a big hard drive, or ALWAYS record guaranteed if you want to be notified of conflicts.
I've been happy for the most part with the two ReplayTV units that I own (both purchased used off of eBay.) The biggest problem I ran into for both units was that the hard drives had errors on them that would glitch the OS and crash the player if you recorded too much material. I was extremely pissed after the first couple of times that this happened, since the player reset itself after the last time - erasing all my existing recordings. Another unit freezed up completely and would no longer boot. Both problems were easily solved by taking the cover off, and replacing the hard drive - I haven't had any problems since (and I got Maxtor to replace both of the bad drives under warranty). Don't forget to use the "secret menu" - 243+replayzones to reset the unit to factory defaults after you're done (yes, you'll lose your shows.)
The best feature of the ReplayTV 4k and 5k units (aside from commercial skip, which only works intermittently these days) is the built-in 10/100 ethernet. I can run DVArchive on my win2K box, export all of my shows (Simpsons, Mr. Bean, Stargate SG-1) to my hard drive, edit them with VirtualDub, and burn em to VCD with TMPEnc. ReplayTVs record shows in MPEG2, at D1(?) resolution - 720x480 at high and medium quality, I think low quality is half D1 - I'm not sure, since I never record anything at low quality. High quality shows are recorded with 48khz audio, requiring downsampling before you reencode to VCD.
Bottom line, if you're comfortable disassembling consumer electronics and re-imaging hard drives using the ReplayTV Upgrade patch, you should be fine. Many "dead" units can be brought back to life by re-imaging the hard drive - the premise being that somehow the on-board OS got corrupted. For privacy advocates, buy a used 40xx unit (as I did), as these are pre-activated, so you don't have to provide any information. If you're not comfortable messing around with the innards of a $400+ machine, and taking the risk of frying both it, and your computer (if you need to re-image, you have to hook up the replacement drive to your computer), then don't get a ReplayTV.
If you're a super-uber geek, then you can try putting together a MythTV box (next on my list of stuff to do, after I build a MAME cabinet - I think I'll put the MythTV box into the MAME cabinet...)
Last tip - BACK UP YOUR REPLAYTV BOX. If ever you need a disk image for your box, and ReplayTV goes under, you'll be SOL unless you've got a current, clean (stable) backup.
To capture the market, this stuff has to either be:
1. Cheaper than flash or HDs.
2. More durable than flash or HDs (or even CD/DVDs)
3. Be faster than flash/HDs/optical media.
By the time this stuff comes out, trying to beat one of the three is going to be tough - by that time all of those existing technologies will be VERY mature. I'm already able to buy hard drives for super-cheap, so logically, flash is the intended target. The question is, by the time this stuff comes out, will hard drives become so tiny, cheap, and robust, that it's not flash that is the main competitor, but magnetic hard drives?
Of course, if IBM wants to give me petabytes of super-stable long-term storage that will fit in a shoebox, and only cost me a few hundred dollars, who am I to argue? At the very least, if it can replace tape, that might be enough to ensure a place for it, assuming optical hasn't totally displaced that market by then...
One thing I would really really like is access to the cover artwork and linear notes ... none of the services seem to provide this.
I think iTunes will provide album art, but yes, liner notes would be a big plus.
Frankly, I wasn't impressed by eMusic - maybe my tastes are a bit antiquated, but their library was just as bad as iTunes when it came to older back-catalog recordings. No Four Freshmen, no Julie London, no Nat Cole for chrissakes (well, there was ONE compilation CD.) Getting high-quality MP3s is nice, and is a big selling point over iTunes. One other redeeming virtue of eMusic is that it does have more modern independents that aren't on iTunes' radar - they had Bill Elliott's Swing Orchestra for example. But no Jim Cullum, no Nina Ferro. Oh well.
Darl didn't make a mistake - he was desperate. He needed some way to justify/cover up the fact that SCO owes its lawyers close to $10 million, and that their short-term liabilities have almost quadrupled since last year. SCO is in serious trouble, and investors were expecting to see him pull a seriously big rabbit out of his hat after delaying the earnings announcement for several weeks.
That this is the best he could come up with means that SCO is going to have to pull a series of fast moves to try and keep the ball rolling in advance of the "show and tell" session that the court has ordered. Keep your eyes peeled for more incredible tales from the world of Canopy/SCO...
Another minus for shorting: you owe margin interest on the difference between the cash in your account, and the current value of the shares you've borrowed. Thus, for every dollar that SCOX rises, you owe that amount x no. of shares borrowed x current margin interest as charged by your broker. At 10%, this could get expensive if you short for a extended period, waiting for the stock to drop in order to cover and try and make a profit. Unless you have a hefty cash or margin position to counter balance the short, shorting this particular stock is a bad idea.
so long as you know how to spread glue out evenly and thinly
That's what spraymount is for. They sell it in spray cans, very popular with architecture and arts students on a super-tight deadline, who need to back a lot of paper very fast. Another alternative is to study some bookbinding techniques - you can use flour and pva glues with heavy card stock and thin leathers if you want an upscale look.
If you want your board to last, consider laminating the printed portion before mounting it to the backing board.
I remember watching an episode of NOVA on PBS. One of the things that astounded me was that in order to stabilize the earth to sink piles as part of the construction, they laid pipes into the ground in order to FREEZE IT. Man-made permafrost in downtown Boston - amazing stuff.
I'd argue that reason the US doesn't want the test reactor in France is because of:
1. Physical control of the test reactor.
2. Impact on local economy of all the international funds used in construction.
I suspect that #2 comes into play more than #1 - Japan is a valued political and economic partner that's currently still in the middle of a really bad economic slump. We'd rather reward them with the mega-bucks that will get pumped into the economy as a result of the construction and staffing of the reactor, rather than giving these lush proceeds to the French.
Why would 'Open Source Movie Making' automatically be better than Hollywood's current trend of designing by committe?
Because in Hollywood, only one entity can "own" the title, and as such, only one "official" version can be released. (ignoring for the moment, director's cuts, edits for television, restorations for DVDs, etc.) In such a collaborative process, everybody thrashes it out until there's consensus - or until someone in charge puts their foot down.
In an open source environment, everybody thrashes it out until there's consensus - or until somebody decides to fork. Even better, you can get people who use the project as a springboard to something totally different. A cast and crew doing an "open source" movie might conceivably spawn dozens of movies and shorts, from all sorts of genres, just based on the same actors and footage.
If you don't believe me, take a look at the shorts spawned from the footage of the star wars kid. And this was just based on some joke footage. Imagine what you could piece together if you had some input into what to shoot? Along those same lines, Roger Corman (the B movie king) made a career out of reusing footage other people had tossed (or reusing footage that he and his crew had shot from other movies). You probably won't get Academy Award material out of it, but then again, the big movie studios spend millions of dollars a year to deliver crap...
At $70 a month, it makes several concurrent accounts with netflix, and a pair of rabbit-ears look like a bargain. Sheesh, does anyone really watch that much TV?
If you don't patent it, some other bozo will. Then, instead of being able to help people, you get tied up in patent litigation to prove that you invented it first, and that it should be given away for free. Much easier to just patent it, so you OWN it, and once you OWN it, you can then declare that it is free for the world.
Add this:
4) Incomplete albums, and albums over $9.99.
I keep running into incomplete albums when browsing Capitol Records artists, such as The Four Freshmen, and Doris Day. Annoys the hell out of me - I'm about to plunk down the $9.99 for an album when I discover that it's incomplete - and it's priced above $9.99.
Yes I'm a cheap bastard. But I'm thinking about getting an iPod anyways (used/refurb of course.) With the money that they earn from me, the original owner can go out and buy that shiny new iPod - a win-win situation. Apple sells a new iPod, and picks up a new customer that may trade up in the future (me). When they finally get a better selection of classic American music, they'll finally sell me some iTunes tracks as well.
An interesting side effect of the Baen Free Library - it has indirectly contributed to my buying a Sony Clie and a 256 mb compactflash card, just so I can store my books to read on the go when traveling. What happened? I downloaded one book by David Weber to start off (Mutineer's Moon) after reading about the free library on Slashdot. One thing led to another, and I became the owner of War of Honor, and later Hell's Faire, both of which have CD's containing a bunch of eBooks, completely free.
In addition to the random selection from the free library, I can now take advantage of Project Gutenberg titles, and I've been seriously considering signing up for Webscriptions just so I can get first crack at some of the new titles coming out.
So, more digital media for free not only helps to boost sales of physical copies (I also bought dead-tree versions of Sluggy Freelance as well - I got hooked on Sluggy after reading obscure references in John Ringo's "When the Devil Dances" and visiting the Sluggy website trying to figure out who "Torg", "Zoe", "Riff", and "Bun-Bun" were.)
So, just from trying out one free eBook, I went ahead and have bought:
(2) Hardcover books from Baen, new
(7) Softcover Sluggy Freelance books from Plan Nine Publishing
(1) Clie NX60 [320x480 screen, a bit small, but very legible]
And a 256mb compactflash card [overkill, until you start putting MP3s on it]
That's several hundred dollars of spending on my part, and it cost Baen about 15mb worth of bandwidth for all the books that I've downloaded from the free library. For me, it's a great deal - lots of books for very little money. For Baen and their authors, it's a great deal - they get new customers (I never would have tried David Weber otherwise - now he's one of my favorite authors), and lots of good press (ie, Slashdot and word of mouth.) Incidentally, this happens with titles I check out from the library (I like a book or author, and end up buying books to add to my personal library), so there's preceedent for the sharing of "free" media.
I've never molested, assaulted, or robbed anyone. I know my picture is not in the database. Is yours?
Are you sure? Don't laugh, there have been instances where previous installs of face recognition systems had test data that wasn't wiped when the system was put into operation. It would suck horribly if you happened to be included in that test data set, and a positive ID had you pulled aside at the airport for an "exhaustive search". Unless you've actually looked at the database, you can't assume to know what is actually there.
They are not trying to track the movements of every American citizen.
No, of course not. That's still too expensive and technically difficult. The problem will be when the technology is commonly available, and so cheap that as a government interested in supressing crime, collecting taxes, and curtailing "suspicious behavior", you'd be stupid NOT to track everybody.
When they want to put the camera in my home, I'll be worried.
I hate to break it to you, but if it gets to that point, it will be too late for you to complain. Look at England - cameras everywhere.
Last point, effectiveness of the cameras will depend on where they are deployed. Unless the school district is going to invest in enough cameras to cover every entrance/exit to the campus (not just the main buildings) you will have plenty of ways to avoid being scanned. Unfortunately, if that is the case, all you've done is spent a ton of money, and possibly lulled the campus into a false sense of security.
And yes, it would cause more people to litter.. that's how people think.
Well, if you're going to treat me like a criminal anyway, I might as well force you to use that money to clean up after me, instead of allowing you to pocket it. Of course, the truly logical thing to do would be to find the SOB who introduced the ordinance, and remove his ass.