It's this kind of thing that will really make a concept like the iTunes Music Store fly, since a lot of teens share music, but don't have credit cards to buy it legally online (myself included). I don't think P2P will ever go away, especially since there really are legitimate uses for it -- RedHat ISOs and the like -- but it would certainly make using KaZaA less compelling. I think I would still download songs to test them out, but I'd then spring the buck a song to get whatever I decided I liked.
There is no question that the items in question are pirate devices. The fact that a small percentage of buyers did use them some people use them for legit purposes does not change the fact that virtually all of the purchasers were stealing signals.
Now where have I heard this before?
Ah, lovely. I remember now. Do you enjoy your job as the RIAA's personal whipping boy/mouthpiece?
There is clear legal precedent (Grokster, Limewire, et al) for the idea that possible illegal use of a technology does not make the technology itself illegal. Is it comfortable under your rock?
The proposed law also seeks to impose up to a 5 year jail term for registering a domain using false information... Bad stuff.
I noticed this, but didn't make the connection until now -- a lot of people register domain names with false e-mails and addresses to throw off spambots and stalkers. Are the Hon. Senators in the pockets of the "E-Mail Direct Marketing Industry" too?
Ever hear, "The business of government is business"? It's been part of the Republican party's platform since 1860... what's sad is that certain Democrats seem to be adopting Republicanism.
Or, try "What's good for General Motors is good for the federal government" on for size.:)
Current Japanese national debt is claimed to be in excess of 140% of their GDP, which the CIA World Factbook lists as $3.55 trillion, making their estimated debt about $4.97 trillion.
So, yeah, their economy is in bad shape, but ours is fast approaching similar straits and we *aren't* seeing the same kind of innovation the Japanese experience. While I agree that government regulation isn't necessarily the answer to this, I'm not sure if we can always trust free enterprise either. It certainly seems like Japanese companies are more interested in pushing the envelope than American companies are.
And I hardly think these technologies are being "forced down people's throats," either, since I would assume you have a choice whether or not you want to subscribe to broadband -- it's not like the cost is inextricably included with the cost of an apartment or something. Aren't a lot of Slashdotters (myself included) pining for the opportunity to vote with our hard-earned dollars *for* 12MB/s broadband? Since when have corporations listened to us?
Re:Just mentioned the Club...
on
The Big Kerplop
·
· Score: 2, Informative
I'll take the opportunity to tack Isaac Asimov's _Norby_ series (_Norby the Mixed-Up Robot_, _Norby's Other Secret_, etc. etc.) Yeah, the titles suck, but they were an absolute blast, are woefully out of print, and got me interested in science fiction. I actually noticed them because Boy's Life magazine did a serial comic of one of them.
Yeah, except _The Mouse that Roared_ was actually funny.
_SCO vs. IBM: The Final Conflict_ borders on the absurd. When SCO dies a horribly painful death at the hands of IBM's 1337 attack-ninja-lawyers, *then* it will be *hilarious*.
Mine was textbook. We did five of the recommended 12 labs, but never once used the slide microscopes -- selectively-permeable membranes, DNA fingerprinting, fruit fly genetics, spectral analysis of plant pigments (we used the spectral analyzers, too), transpiration, and heart rate/blood pressure. I guess we did more labs than I thought we did, but I would have appreciated a lot more hands-on learning and less textbook. I can't count the number of times I almost fell asleep in that class.
I really wish my physical sciences (chem, physics) teacher taught life sciences as well, because he was tough but very hands-on, demonstration-oriented. He only used the textbooks for background material and review exercises, and otherwise supplemented the material with handouts of his own. I have a 3" binder filled to the brim with stuff from Freshman Science, physics, and chemistry, while my bio folder has maybe ten or twenty pieces of paper in it.
The physical sciences teacher was also a little bit of a pyro, which made his classes interesting -- he would do things like drop a little methanol in a Culligan bottle, light it, and dash; or make gunpowder; or demonstrate how increased surface area through smaller particle sizes enables reactions by throwing raw sawdust into a Bunsen burner and then finely ground sawdust. Chem was a *fun* class. Other teachers have heard explosions from the lab and come running to make sure no one was hurt.:)
You might be surprised. In my Advanced Placement biology class this year, I used a microscope exactly twice: I used a dissecting scope in a lab to sort fruit flies, and I looked at a plant leaf for fun under a slide microscope on one of the last days of class.
I learned more about plant cells (and paramecia:) on that one for-fun day than I did the entire time I was learning the names and locations of all the parts. It was really a little disheartening, and I have no idea why we didn't even look at them when we were studying them, since it made it so much more understandable. I wasn't even sure you *could* see individual cells with a light microscope. And I must say I had a blast examining them, watching the chloroplasts circle around the cell, and looking at the different layers.
Argh, don't bother using Kazaa Lite under wine on Linux. You don't have enough time or hair, believe me. Get giFT, toss in the FastTrack plugin, and you're all set. Gnutella, OpenFT, and FastTrack, all with one daemon.
Good points. (Those % flour weights have thrown me for a loop a time or two.)
The thing with baking bread at home, especially if you do it *totally* by hand, sans bread machine or even mixer, is that you've got a lot of things that can go wrong with too much or too little yeast, bad rising conditions, not enough kneading or too much, and so on. It's a little arcane, especially if you're coming in cold without ever being exposed to it before. You're right, though, that "lost arts" is really a misnomer, since they *aren't* lost if people practice them. "Niche arts" would be a better term -- as you said, things that only a few people do anymore, making those activities "geekish".:)
Oh, and (at least if my local bakery is any indication), most homemade breads have a lot fewer preservatives, fortifiers, and random chemicals than even small-bakery bread, though if you've got a bakery that specializes in organic, preservative-free bread the processes would be a lot closer. There are people who find that a big plus.
Okay, FYI, I don't think the submitter meant "ready-to-bake" bread mixes or anything to do with bread machines when he mentioned baking. If you're going to be truly geeky about baking, your tools are an oven and a bread pan. You have to get the kneading right, and let it rise for long enough, and it's rather challenging, all told. In other words, it's the perfect geek activity.:)
(Though bread machines are *really* *really* nice, I have to say...)
Yes, but baking bread at home is an entirely different exercise than baking bread in a manufacturing plant, and the same goes for making cheese. Not to mention that many people may never bake a loaf of their own in their life, and I know of only two people I've met who make their own cheese -- I'd say their esoteric enough.
Also, the processes are touchy, time-consuming, and labor-intensive, which discourages average people from doing them... which makes them perfect for hackers and geeks.:)
Making fresh bread is wonderful... the smell, mmm....
Actually, you could argue that the "Renaissance Men/Women" never really went away, just changed with the times, to eventually become "hackers" in the best sense of the word, whether you're hacking computers or cells or concertos. Their visibility has varied over the past 400 years, but they've always been there, working beneath the surface.:)
Um. You did notice that Kodak (aka. Eastman-Kodak) is one of the big names in digital photography right now? As in, they're a major manufacturer of digital cameras (and good ones, too).
Run that by me again: _Daredevil_ (haven't seen it) is great because it's made to be dumb, but _Buffy_ (ditto) or _Reloaded_ (how long 'til November?) is t3h sux0rz because it's made to be dumb.
Watch it, buddy. While you're in Des Moines (pronounced Deh Moyn), check out the NetINS folks, who sponsored a class on the Internet back in 1995 where I first learned about SLIP, Trumpet Winsock, and Eudora, and knocked around on the "graphical Web" with NCSA Mosaic for a while, back when all we had was text-mode service. They've been at this game for a while, mmkay?
Do I have a clue in heck why they picked it up? No.
Does Northwest Iowa have more than fifteen anime fans? Probably not.
Do I care? *HECK* no!
I got to see it on a big screen with great sound in a language I can understand, and it was great! So, yeah, point being (not to gloat), there's hope for a Nashville showing yet. If Orange City can get an anime film, it can happen *anywhere*. (grin)
John Lasseter of Toy Story fame was involved with this rather heavily (he produced it), so I'm hoping against hope the dub will be good and will fill in the Japanese culture holes I missed in the fansub.
Hmmm... didn't know that about N. Korea. I guess the point I've been aiming at is, war ain't the freaking answer.
It sets a frightening precedent, and while Clinton obviously didn't *solve* the problems, he was working toward a solution (again, reference Korea and the Olympic games). Actually, it kind of ticked me off that Clinton was bombing Iraq sort of whenever he felt like it -- Bush at least is honest about "we're at war", though the PR campaign left a lot to be desired. And I applaud his efforts to get inspectors back in Iraq, but I wish he would have continued to pressure Iraq and continued to let the inspectors work instead of saying, "we're going in *now*", especially since they still don't have good evidence as to the extent of Saddam's WMD capabilities.
I guess it's not the administration's aims so much as the methods I disagree with, since if we're bombing Iraq for the WMDs they don't have we sure better bomb all the places that *do* have WMD next (though if Bush doesn't I won't complain:). It's Bush's callous disregard for truth, and his inability to see the US as anything other than the Good Guys in some Western. There were several editorials in my paper today *still* claiming Iraq is somehow linked with al-Quaeda by anything more than the slenderest of threads, and the "Axis of Evil" speech needlessly prevented N. Korea, Iraq, and Iran from even *thinking* about becoming moderate.
Oh, and Bush "got it done" with N. Korea or ObL? Last I heard, N. Korea was firing warning shots at our planes and ObL was hiding out somewhere in the Middle East. Yeah, "got it done"... uh huh.
If the world Clinton handed Bush was falling apart, Bush has certainly made sure it will stay that way for a while. Diplomacy is not his strong suit. I value people who speak their minds without fear for what others think, but this man takes it *way* *too* far, and pointless pissing-off of longtime allies and countries who might have moderated if he'd have *let* them isn't my idea of a Great Leader. *He* may very well see the world in black and white, but the rest of us are still stuck in the greys.
Anyhow, that's the view from *this* blithering idiot. (Sorry about the ranting and raving in my previous posts. I've been a little pissed lately.)
Slashdot Mirror
It's this kind of thing that will really make a concept like the iTunes Music Store fly, since a lot of teens share music, but don't have credit cards to buy it legally online (myself included). I don't think P2P will ever go away, especially since there really are legitimate uses for it -- RedHat ISOs and the like -- but it would certainly make using KaZaA less compelling. I think I would still download songs to test them out, but I'd then spring the buck a song to get whatever I decided I liked.
There is no question that the items in question are pirate devices. The fact that a small percentage of buyers did use them some people use them for legit purposes does not change the fact that virtually all of the purchasers were stealing signals.
Now where have I heard this before?
Ah, lovely. I remember now. Do you enjoy your job as the RIAA's personal whipping boy/mouthpiece?
There is clear legal precedent (Grokster, Limewire, et al) for the idea that possible illegal use of a technology does not make the technology itself illegal. Is it comfortable under your rock?
The proposed law also seeks to impose up to a 5 year jail term for registering a domain using false information... Bad stuff.
I noticed this, but didn't make the connection until now -- a lot of people register domain names with false e-mails and addresses to throw off spambots and stalkers. Are the Hon. Senators in the pockets of the "E-Mail Direct Marketing Industry" too?
Ever hear, "The business of government is business"? It's been part of the Republican party's platform since 1860... what's sad is that certain Democrats seem to be adopting Republicanism.
:)
Or, try "What's good for General Motors is good for the federal government" on for size.
This is a lesson they haven't learned yet in Japan where the national debt is HUGE and their economy is just barely staying afloat.
Current US national debt: (as of 15 July) $6.67 trillion
Current Japanese national debt is claimed to be in excess of 140% of their GDP, which the CIA World Factbook lists as $3.55 trillion, making their estimated debt about $4.97 trillion.
So, yeah, their economy is in bad shape, but ours is fast approaching similar straits and we *aren't* seeing the same kind of innovation the Japanese experience. While I agree that government regulation isn't necessarily the answer to this, I'm not sure if we can always trust free enterprise either. It certainly seems like Japanese companies are more interested in pushing the envelope than American companies are.
And I hardly think these technologies are being "forced down people's throats," either, since I would assume you have a choice whether or not you want to subscribe to broadband -- it's not like the cost is inextricably included with the cost of an apartment or something. Aren't a lot of Slashdotters (myself included) pining for the opportunity to vote with our hard-earned dollars *for* 12MB/s broadband? Since when have corporations listened to us?
I'll take the opportunity to tack Isaac Asimov's _Norby_ series (_Norby the Mixed-Up Robot_, _Norby's Other Secret_, etc. etc.) Yeah, the titles suck, but they were an absolute blast, are woefully out of print, and got me interested in science fiction. I actually noticed them because Boy's Life magazine did a serial comic of one of them.
I was going to feed the trolls, but they argued for so long about how to cook me that the sun came up and they turned to stone. :)
Perhaps because you had no knowledge IBM was (possibly) robbing a bank, and you were waiting out in the van for IBM to finish "using the bathroom"?
Yeah, except _The Mouse that Roared_ was actually funny.
_SCO vs. IBM: The Final Conflict_ borders on the absurd. When SCO dies a horribly painful death at the hands of IBM's 1337 attack-ninja-lawyers, *then* it will be *hilarious*.
Mine was textbook. We did five of the recommended 12 labs, but never once used the slide microscopes -- selectively-permeable membranes, DNA fingerprinting, fruit fly genetics, spectral analysis of plant pigments (we used the spectral analyzers, too), transpiration, and heart rate/blood pressure. I guess we did more labs than I thought we did, but I would have appreciated a lot more hands-on learning and less textbook. I can't count the number of times I almost fell asleep in that class.
:)
I really wish my physical sciences (chem, physics) teacher taught life sciences as well, because he was tough but very hands-on, demonstration-oriented. He only used the textbooks for background material and review exercises, and otherwise supplemented the material with handouts of his own. I have a 3" binder filled to the brim with stuff from Freshman Science, physics, and chemistry, while my bio folder has maybe ten or twenty pieces of paper in it.
The physical sciences teacher was also a little bit of a pyro, which made his classes interesting -- he would do things like drop a little methanol in a Culligan bottle, light it, and dash; or make gunpowder; or demonstrate how increased surface area through smaller particle sizes enables reactions by throwing raw sawdust into a Bunsen burner and then finely ground sawdust. Chem was a *fun* class. Other teachers have heard explosions from the lab and come running to make sure no one was hurt.
You might be surprised. In my Advanced Placement biology class this year, I used a microscope exactly twice: I used a dissecting scope in a lab to sort fruit flies, and I looked at a plant leaf for fun under a slide microscope on one of the last days of class.
:) on that one for-fun day than I did the entire time I was learning the names and locations of all the parts. It was really a little disheartening, and I have no idea why we didn't even look at them when we were studying them, since it made it so much more understandable. I wasn't even sure you *could* see individual cells with a light microscope. And I must say I had a blast examining them, watching the chloroplasts circle around the cell, and looking at the different layers.
I learned more about plant cells (and paramecia
Theory is great, but seeing is believing.
Argh, don't bother using Kazaa Lite under wine on Linux. You don't have enough time or hair, believe me. Get giFT, toss in the FastTrack plugin, and you're all set. Gnutella, OpenFT, and FastTrack, all with one daemon.
Good points. (Those % flour weights have thrown me for a loop a time or two.)
:)
The thing with baking bread at home, especially if you do it *totally* by hand, sans bread machine or even mixer, is that you've got a lot of things that can go wrong with too much or too little yeast, bad rising conditions, not enough kneading or too much, and so on. It's a little arcane, especially if you're coming in cold without ever being exposed to it before. You're right, though, that "lost arts" is really a misnomer, since they *aren't* lost if people practice them. "Niche arts" would be a better term -- as you said, things that only a few people do anymore, making those activities "geekish".
Oh, and (at least if my local bakery is any indication), most homemade breads have a lot fewer preservatives, fortifiers, and random chemicals than even small-bakery bread, though if you've got a bakery that specializes in organic, preservative-free bread the processes would be a lot closer. There are people who find that a big plus.
hmmm... methinks we have a newbie. or a troll.
Okay, FYI, I don't think the submitter meant "ready-to-bake" bread mixes or anything to do with bread machines when he mentioned baking. If you're going to be truly geeky about baking, your tools are an oven and a bread pan. You have to get the kneading right, and let it rise for long enough, and it's rather challenging, all told. In other words, it's the perfect geek activity. :)
(Though bread machines are *really* *really* nice, I have to say...)
Yes, but baking bread at home is an entirely different exercise than baking bread in a manufacturing plant, and the same goes for making cheese. Not to mention that many people may never bake a loaf of their own in their life, and I know of only two people I've met who make their own cheese -- I'd say their esoteric enough.
:)
Also, the processes are touchy, time-consuming, and labor-intensive, which discourages average people from doing them... which makes them perfect for hackers and geeks.
Making fresh bread is wonderful... the smell, mmm....
Actually, you could argue that the "Renaissance Men/Women" never really went away, just changed with the times, to eventually become "hackers" in the best sense of the word, whether you're hacking computers or cells or concertos. Their visibility has varied over the past 400 years, but they've always been there, working beneath the surface. :)
That's my thesis, and I'm sticking to it.
Good. That was the clarification I needed.
:)
Oh, and the Matrix is a pseudo-intellectual poorly-construed philisophical debate (with guns).
Um. You did notice that Kodak (aka. Eastman-Kodak) is one of the big names in digital photography right now? As in, they're a major manufacturer of digital cameras (and good ones, too).
Whaaaaa..................?
Run that by me again: _Daredevil_ (haven't seen it) is great because it's made to be dumb, but _Buffy_ (ditto) or _Reloaded_ (how long 'til November?) is t3h sux0rz because it's made to be dumb.
I'm obviously missing something. Right?
Uh... dude, haven't you heard of wget? I've got it in Quicktime format on my hard drive if anyone wants it. :)
Watch it, buddy. While you're in Des Moines (pronounced Deh Moyn), check out the NetINS folks, who sponsored a class on the Internet back in 1995 where I first learned about SLIP, Trumpet Winsock, and Eudora, and knocked around on the "graphical Web" with NCSA Mosaic for a while, back when all we had was text-mode service. They've been at this game for a while, mmkay?
Y'know, I said that too.
Then Spirited Away shows up at my little middle-of-nowhere two-bit fiveplex. It's one of only three theaters I know of in the entire friggin' *state* that are showing it. (scroll down to Iowa)
Do I have a clue in heck why they picked it up? No.
Does Northwest Iowa have more than fifteen anime fans? Probably not.
Do I care? *HECK* no!
I got to see it on a big screen with great sound in a language I can understand, and it was great! So, yeah, point being (not to gloat), there's hope for a Nashville showing yet. If Orange City can get an anime film, it can happen *anywhere*. (grin)
John Lasseter of Toy Story fame was involved with this rather heavily (he produced it), so I'm hoping against hope the dub will be good and will fill in the Japanese culture holes I missed in the fansub.
Hmmm... didn't know that about N. Korea. I guess the point I've been aiming at is, war ain't the freaking answer.
:). It's Bush's callous disregard for truth, and his inability to see the US as anything other than the Good Guys in some Western. There were several editorials in my paper today *still* claiming Iraq is somehow linked with al-Quaeda by anything more than the slenderest of threads, and the "Axis of Evil" speech needlessly prevented N. Korea, Iraq, and Iran from even *thinking* about becoming moderate.
It sets a frightening precedent, and while Clinton obviously didn't *solve* the problems, he was working toward a solution (again, reference Korea and the Olympic games). Actually, it kind of ticked me off that Clinton was bombing Iraq sort of whenever he felt like it -- Bush at least is honest about "we're at war", though the PR campaign left a lot to be desired. And I applaud his efforts to get inspectors back in Iraq, but I wish he would have continued to pressure Iraq and continued to let the inspectors work instead of saying, "we're going in *now*", especially since they still don't have good evidence as to the extent of Saddam's WMD capabilities.
I guess it's not the administration's aims so much as the methods I disagree with, since if we're bombing Iraq for the WMDs they don't have we sure better bomb all the places that *do* have WMD next (though if Bush doesn't I won't complain
Oh, and Bush "got it done" with N. Korea or ObL? Last I heard, N. Korea was firing warning shots at our planes and ObL was hiding out somewhere in the Middle East. Yeah, "got it done"... uh huh.
If the world Clinton handed Bush was falling apart, Bush has certainly made sure it will stay that way for a while. Diplomacy is not his strong suit. I value people who speak their minds without fear for what others think, but this man takes it *way* *too* far, and pointless pissing-off of longtime allies and countries who might have moderated if he'd have *let* them isn't my idea of a Great Leader. *He* may very well see the world in black and white, but the rest of us are still stuck in the greys.
Anyhow, that's the view from *this* blithering idiot. (Sorry about the ranting and raving in my previous posts. I've been a little pissed lately.)