How is it that Wednesday's story on a machine that purports to generate more energy than it consumes, replenishing its fuel, is posted to/. as bogus hoax poorly understood and reported by the (aparently defrauded) mainstream press, the/. story garnering over 900 comments. But this story on sending an electrical pulse is relegated to the Science section, gets under 20 posts, all of which seem to accept the claim at face value.
Note that both discoverers clearly noted that while the results seems fantastical, no fundemental rules of physics were broken (despite Michael's interpretation of the 'perpetual motion machine' inventors claims as being just that).
I accept that Applied Physics Letters is a much more repected source of science news than CNN, but why did the/. response have to be disparate? As far as I can tell the only difference is that the Perpetual Motion Machine inventor hasn't yet had a chance to publish their results, as the story was broken in the press based on a patent application before any thought of scientific publication could be pursued.
If the machine requires energy (my interpretation), then.. That doesn't mean that they arn't able to collect more energy than it took to set up in the long run from a source that seems limitless
Thank You!
I don't know why this was dismissed as a perpetual motion machine, since the inventors don't claim it is one. If it does 'work' then the most likely explanation is that it is collecting some form of energy that is supplied by the environment and converting to electricity. Other examples than the ones you cite might be the earth's magnetic field (there is current federally funded research into harnessing this as an energy source), gamma radiation, gravitational force, kinetic force of the earth's rotation, ambient heat, ambient air pressure, and likely many more that (not being a physicist) I would never think of.
Also, elsewhere it was noted that parts in the device 'wear out'. If it relied on alpha or beta particle decay (as was the claim for cold fusion) then the claim that the 'parts wear out' could be cover for the use of a radioactive compound that eventually stabilizes. The same would be true for a device that used a chemical catalyst to 'absorb' the electrical charge of a non-radioactive ionic compound/element.
"others think the selection process actually creates the MAPCs.
I don't think there is 'a cell' that is lurking there that can do this. I think that Catherine has found a way to produce a cell that can behave this way," says Neil Theise of New York University Medical School.
If this turns out to be the case rather than the cell naturally occurring in bone marrow, it has tremendous implications from a patent perspective. Since you cannot patent a naturally occuring object, anyone who could reverse engineer the selection process would be able to produce these cells. But if it is the process itself that transforms otherwise non stem-cell behaving cells into MAPC's then process itself would be patentable and I believe even if you reverse engineered it you would be expected pay royalties. Since claims like "cell lines have been growing for almost two years . ..with no signs of ageing" could herald this find as biomedical fountain of youth, the raoyalties could be astronomical, especially when used for non-life-threatening conditions.
WOW, who would have thought that the fountain of youth, and a source of infinite free power would be announced on the same day?
Normally, a company to company lawsuit over unfair competition will ask for damages due to lost sales. Just what are those damages when the price was $0.00?
Technically, there was a price for Netscape up until exactly four years ago today. You could use it for educational or non-profit use, but were expected to pay for it for personal or business use. Of course the problem was that you usually never had the same version long enough to be required to register it. Even MSIE was 'sold' to the public as part of MS Home, which was a bundle of IE, MSWorks, and I think MSMoney. IE, though available as a free download, was heavily advertised as the main value of the bundle.
Meanwhile, speaking of anti-competitive pricing, AOL also announced today that they are raising the price their BYOISP service from $9.95 to $14.95 per month. Which will likely force some small ISPs out of business, as currently you can save money by using a mom-and-POP ISP for your dial-up to connect to AOL, with the price increase, many dedicated AOL users will likely switch to a direct dialing AOL.
Heck, that means fitting a Segway in there would be pretty easy...
Why even bother with the vehicles to put the Segways into, when the vehicles thenselves could be Segways.
If you just fitted the Segways with GPS and/or wireless networking you could ensure that they staid on their designated routes and that they wouldn't 'accidentally' go astray.
Of course I have problems with the Segway design that would need to be addressed to convert them to this purpose, notably protection from the weather (bikes and motorcycles have the same problem). Also I think the 12 MPH limit of the Segways is a major drawback for a commuter vehicle. The technology that would keep them on predefined routes would make them safer to interact with pedestrians at higher speeds, since the locations where they shared right-of-way with pedestrians or crossed pedestrian rights-of-way would allow to go faster most of the and only slow down when they were in a pedestrian zone.
Also, knowledge of this feature is useful to administrators of systems where there is policy that the privacy of the users is to be protected.
For example, it is illegal for any federal website to collect personally identifable information about any of their website's users without their explicit permission. While there is an exemption for the temporary collection of browser info and IP found in server logs, since these in and of themselves are not very reliable at identifying individuals (and there are regulations in place to prevent their use without judicial guidance), the level of individual identification allowed by this feature/bug likely would not be allowed.
Without these privacy violations being widely announced, its likely that federal website administrators could unknowingly violate the privacy regulation.
I just want to congratulate dimator for getting a post modded +5 Troll, truly an astounding and well earned moderation. To get it he would need to be modded up at least four times, to make up for the -1 of the Troll moderation.
FYI to one of the AC responders to this post:
the bracketed domain name can be turned on and off in your user preferences. Others might still see brackets for links you make, but you don't have to se them in the posts you are reading. I the feature was added as a counter-measure to the numerous links to goatse.cx that were labeled as something else, though at least one of those posters knows how to get Google's cache to to bring the same site, so I find the brackets of little personal use.
You aren't free to not pay the taxes on blank media that they want (except by not buying blank media, but a lot of us have legitimate need for CDRs, etc).
Actually as far as CDR's are concerned you are free to avoid paying the tax, just buy Data CDRs instead of Music CDRs. There is virtually no difference between the media, except that Audio CD to CDR burners such as you might have in a audio component system, won't work with the Data CD. CDR burners for PCs don't care.
Of course making a copy of an audio CD onto a Data CDR would be a violation of the same act, but until the RIAA and the recording industry in general start complying, I can't see that they should have any expectation that consumers will.
Why is it that this hasn't come up before, and does anyone know how this act affects MP3's? Should they be considered legal as long as you burn them to media on which you have paid the royalty tax?
for IE5.5 for IE5.5:
http://download.microsoft.com/download/ie55sp2/s ec pac23/5.5_SP2/WIN98Me/EN-US/q313675.exe
Note, that is for IE 5.5 SP2 if you have SP1, or plain vanilla 5.5, you will first have to upgrade, so you may want to wait till a full release with the patches is available. SP2 is 17MB download.
Anyone know what the equivalent version is if you have the AOL version of IE? (not that I do) but you can imagine AOL will be slowed to a crawl if every single user must get an upgrade first to SP2 or IE6, then get this patch. When - oh - when will AOL finally become browser neutral or go entirely to Netscape/Mozilla?
Actually there is already a memorial to Sagan in Ithaca: The Carl Sagan Memorial Planet Walk. It consists of a model of the solar system laid out over downtown Ithaca. The sun is 30cm across and is featured prominently on the Ithaca Commons, a downtown shopping district. Pluto is close to the foot of Cayuga Lake at the Ithaca Science Center, over a kilometer away. At this scale the Earth is just a 1/10th of inch across, but they mount the planetary models so that they can be viewed through a magnifying lens.
If NASA really wanted to memorialize Sagan with a new research lab, then at least one of the buildings should be at Cornell where he spent his career, even after he could have left little Ithaca behind and gone to live in DC, or LA, or work at the JPL.
You can read the proposed Civil Settlement (pdf) and the responses as well. They also are pdf files being just scanned images of the letters recieved.
The responses are interesting, most of the ones I have read from School Districts indicate that they are afraid that they get very little value out of the settlement, since the software will be donated, and the hardware will be largely used requiring more maintenance than the benefit it provides. In efffect the schools are saying that they will be saddled with a much greater percentage of the total cost of ownership than Microsoft. So if the intention is to punish Microsoft and reward the schools this is the wrong way to go about it.
I have found the following general plot outlines at theforce.net describing plots for Episodes VI, VII, VIII, & IX attributed to episodes IV & V Producer Gary Kurz:
EPISODE VI: Leia was to be elected "Queen of her people" leaving her isolated. Han was to die. Luke confronted Vader and went on with his life alone. Leia was not to be Luke's sister.
EPISODE VII: Third trilogy was to focus on Luke's life as a Jedi, with very few details planned out.
EPISODE VIII: Luke's sister (not Leia) appears from another part of the galaxy.
EPISODE IX: First appearance of the Emperor.
But these all had conjecture on plots for eps I-III that were about as detailed and about as accurate. For example, only III was to deal with Anniken's life.
I live in a high rise. My windows are on the North, and in every other direction, including straight up, there's a lot of steel. Would I be able to receive XM signals? I can't get satellite TV, obviously.
The plan to have repeaters in big cities should help this. Unlike Satellite TV you would likely have a repeater within a couple of miles in direct line of site unless in you already on the far northern edge of the city.
If you want a more definitive answer you could try posting what neighborhood you live in and maybe someone can track down the exact location of nearby repeaters. Regardless, you could just purchase a receiver with a credit card and return if you don't get any signal.
If I was XM or Sirius I would have at least one station that you could get all the time without a subscription fee that would serve both as way to get lapsed subscribers to sign-up, and as sort of a channel guide. Plus it would let people test out their hardware without having to go through the new user registration stuff.
Speaking of user registration, anyone know how the two systems compare regarding listener privacy? I know Sirius has no ads, but that doesn't mean they are tracking the demographics of purchasers of the service. For XM, you have to exepct that part of the $3 discount is adverstisers knowing just what demographic groups are listening to what stations.
I would extend that thought to include wireless access to IP, and therefore eventual ability to have nonstop streaming of any mulitmedia content on the web coming from your car's dashboard.
When you can instantly access any song ever recorded, why would you still pay to subscribe to a service that only gives 100 streams where someone else is picking the songs?
Of course it will be long time before that is a realistic option in places like Montana. So for those areas, MP3 is a great option if you don't mind doing the downloads yourself, otherwise it might be worth $10/month to have someone else choosing your playlist for you.
You'll notice though that is a.COM address, not slashdot.org
As to historic posts relevant to SlashDot, I think this one is pretty important. In it John Norcross castigates Taco for running Ray Trace on Windows when he should really be running it under OS/2 or Linux. Then there are no other posts from Taco for 3-1/2 months after which he posts this saying how he is booting Linux from a floppy trying out a couple different kernels.
So thank you John Norcross for setting Rob Malda down the path to Open Source nirvana!
the Xbox is capable of 1920x1080 (HDTV), so there would need to be a special output adapter that connects to the back of the console to take full advantage of what your monitor can handle.
Actually this question was just posed on Ask SlashDot about 3 weeks ago here.
The problem you get is that HDTV though it uses a 15-pin mini-D connector, just like VGA, is that HDTV is YPrPb instead of RGB based. So to get the HDTV signal on your monitor, you would first need the XBox HDTV Adaptor, then you would have to convert the HDTV signal to VGA with another adaptor. A response to the previous Ask SlashDot story found this one but that costs $319.
If you go to the official Xbox homepage (as noted in my previous post last month), they'll just tell you flat out that it can't be done.
You can get a USB ethernet adaptor and then you can use broadband
This is one that isn't on the product support list for the iPaq, but it is only $22 through Buy.com. It's the COMPEX EU202 LINKPORT USB 10/100Mbps FAST ETHERNET USB ADAPTER, and it seems to have the smallest form factor of any of the USB Ethernet adapters I've looked at. It's the same form factor/size as one of USB memory drives, and doesn't hang off a cable like most of the others.
Anyone have experience with this adapter? Are their any Linux drivers that wil run it? From googling the web I found Linux drivers for the PCMCIA card version of it so it would seem that the chipset is likely the same and might work with Linux.
Actually, the formation of new nerve cells in the adult human brain has been observed for several years now. Your statement would have been taken as correct some years ago but is now known to be incorrect.
. . . in a paper published in the December 7th issue of Science, Dr. David R. Kornack of the University of Rochester in New York and Dr. Pasko Rakic of Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, report that they did not detect the growth of new neurons in the neocortex of adult macaques. . . Based on the findings, the researchers conclude that "neocortical neurons are not normally renewed during the life-span of macaque monkeys." The same may be true for people, they state.
My question is search engines. Does KPMG expect every search engine to "execute an agreement" in order to include: results in their database and subsequently provide the results to their users?
It seems that if, is actually intent on enforcing this policy, then they should require a userid and password to access every page, and then only provide the passwords to websites that have "executed" agreements. Personally, it looks to me like () is doing a good job of executing themeselves.
Rite Aid shareholders alleged that consulting fees figured in KPMG's relationship with the drugstore chain, according to their class-action lawsuit against the accounting firm.
Rite Aid acknowledged last year that it had overstated earnings by more than $1 billion over two years. Audit fees were less than 20 percent of what Rite Aid paid KPMG over a 2 1/2-year period in the late 1990s, the suit alleged.
At one point, the suit alleged, Rite Aid's then-chairman, Martin L. Grass, awarded KPMG consulting engagements worth more than $1.5 million "as a sweetener and to ensure the accounting firm's continued cooperation."
An attorney for Grass said the allegations were "wrong" and "grossly unfair." KPMG was given a contract to address weaknesses in Rite Aid's inventory-tracking system, not to ensure cooperation, lawyer Andrew Weissman said.
KPMG said that it was "victimized by company management" and that the consulting it did for Rite Aid was "insignificant to the overall professional relationship."
Take a look at this: http://www.gwu.edu/~econ270/Taejoon.html [gwu.edu] it's from 1996 but that's not too long ago to make it invalid. People in Shanghai make ~$1000/yr (USD) and nearly everyone else in the country is making less than $200. That's 5x the income. Per capita income in New York is not 5x that of Idaho - or anywhere else in the US - per capita income in New York is around 20% higher than the national average.
Well, for the US if you go by County data, (I'm afraid the 2000 census results aren't yet available in county by county detail, so we have to go by 1989 data) the per capita income is only $3,417 in Shannon county South Dakota (you were pretty close with the Idaho guess btw), but it was $27,862 in Manhattan (not actually the highest in the country which goes to Marin county CA at $28,381). The difference between Manhattan and Shannon, SD is over 8 fold. The national per capita income that year was $14,420, which is only slightly more than half of Manhattan or Marin.
If you want to go by 2000 state by state household income, then you find that the wealthiest state, MD at $51,695 has an average household income that is about 78% higher than the poorest state, its neighbor, West Virginia at $29,052. The State of New York is right about the same as the national average in the $41k/household range.
Actually yesterday's case is interesting in this context since the court found that selling one software program from a bundle was legal. If you consider the removal of CheckforOSX from the update disk to merely be the unbundling of undesired software (much as Apple argues along with everyone else that MS should bundle undesired s/w with their OS) then it seems reasonable that it would be legal to get the update CD from Apple, make ONE copy sans CheckforOSX, destroy the original and sell the newly burned CD on eBay. It seems all of those steps would be legal, but it may be illegal to actually use the new disk without a legal copy of OSX, so I don't recomend you buy such a disk from eBay.
I was just about to post that Actually this won't be a blue moon since the last full moon officially fell on Halloween. But I looked it up and it seems I am wrong. The press (including I beleive NPR) made a big deal about this year being the first time in decades that the Full Moon fell on Halloween, but it seems they were wrong, unless they meant it fell on Halloween night but after midnight.
Notice all the stuff you buy that says "This item part of a package. Not for resale" or something there-abouts. Why should software be any different?
As far as I know that only applies to food, since food has all these labelling requirements, if have a package inside (say on snickers bar in a ten pack) then you can avoid having to label each of the inner bars with this warning. As to the software companies bundling items, I think that is only binding between the software manufacturer and the bundler/retailer. If the purchaser is not party to the agreement, then why should they be bound by it. That's what this ruling is saying.
Now it could end up getting very complicated since you would have to be very clear what you are buying if someone is selling "Windows XP" it could be any of 8 differnt versions cepending on whehter it is the home or pro edition, upgrade or full version, or bundled full version sold off by enduser rejecting the EULA. MS has always made it clear that if you rejected the EULA you could return the software for a full refund, but they have never honored that. That puts them on pretty weak ground should they want to join with Adobe in fighting this ruling.
Since it it is in Federal court, whether or not a state has passed UCITA is irrelevant, as the decision doesn't involve state law of any kind. I would assume that for the time being it only applies to the district in which it was decided, but as it works its way through the Federal system it should apply to all residents within that jurisdiction. Presumably Adobe will apeal it to the 9th Circuit, but that tends to be a fairly liberal circuit and would likely side with SoftMan. So it would likely go to the Supreme Court that with its current makeup is more likely to side with Adobe both because the user agreed to it, and because the lower court has the appearance of making new law. Consumers would probably be best served if the Supremes decide not to hear it, since most major software companies are in the 9th circuit and would for all practical purposes be bound by any decision of the 9th circuit.
Slashdot Mirror
Well so far I only count seven, so here are a few more:
How is it that Wednesday's story on a machine that purports to generate more energy than it consumes, replenishing its fuel, is posted to
Note that both discoverers clearly noted that while the results seems fantastical, no fundemental rules of physics were broken (despite Michael's interpretation of the 'perpetual motion machine' inventors claims as being just that).
I accept that Applied Physics Letters is a much more repected source of science news than CNN, but why did the
If the machine requires energy (my interpretation), then .. That doesn't mean that they arn't able to collect more energy than it took to set up in the long run from a source that seems limitless
Thank You!
I don't know why this was dismissed as a perpetual motion machine, since the inventors don't claim it is one. If it does 'work' then the most likely explanation is that it is collecting some form of energy that is supplied by the environment and converting to electricity. Other examples than the ones you cite might be the earth's magnetic field (there is current federally funded research into harnessing this as an energy source), gamma radiation, gravitational force, kinetic force of the earth's rotation, ambient heat, ambient air pressure, and likely many more that (not being a physicist) I would never think of.
Also, elsewhere it was noted that parts in the device 'wear out'. If it relied on alpha or beta particle decay (as was the claim for cold fusion) then the claim that the 'parts wear out' could be cover for the use of a radioactive compound that eventually stabilizes. The same would be true for a device that used a chemical catalyst to 'absorb' the electrical charge of a non-radioactive ionic compound/element.
"others think the selection process actually creates the MAPCs.
.with no signs of ageing" could herald this find as biomedical fountain of youth, the raoyalties could be astronomical, especially when used for non-life-threatening conditions.
I don't think there is 'a cell' that is lurking there that can do this. I think that Catherine has found a way to produce a cell that can behave this way," says Neil Theise of New York University Medical School.
If this turns out to be the case rather than the cell naturally occurring in bone marrow, it has tremendous implications from a patent perspective. Since you cannot patent a naturally occuring object, anyone who could reverse engineer the selection process would be able to produce these cells. But if it is the process itself that transforms otherwise non stem-cell behaving cells into MAPC's then process itself would be patentable and I believe even if you reverse engineered it you would be expected pay royalties. Since claims like "cell lines have been growing for almost two years . .
WOW, who would have thought that the fountain of youth, and a source of infinite free power would be announced on the same day?
Normally, a company to company lawsuit over unfair competition will ask for damages due to lost sales. Just what are those damages when the price was $0.00?
Technically, there was a price for Netscape up until exactly four years ago today. You could use it for educational or non-profit use, but were expected to pay for it for personal or business use. Of course the problem was that you usually never had the same version long enough to be required to register it. Even MSIE was 'sold' to the public as part of MS Home, which was a bundle of IE, MSWorks, and I think MSMoney. IE, though available as a free download, was heavily advertised as the main value of the bundle.
Meanwhile, speaking of anti-competitive pricing, AOL also announced today that they are raising the price their BYOISP service from $9.95 to $14.95 per month. Which will likely force some small ISPs out of business, as currently you can save money by using a mom-and-POP ISP for your dial-up to connect to AOL, with the price increase, many dedicated AOL users will likely switch to a direct dialing AOL.
Heck, that means fitting a Segway in there would be pretty easy...
Why even bother with the vehicles to put the Segways into, when the vehicles thenselves could be Segways.
If you just fitted the Segways with GPS and/or wireless networking you could ensure that they staid on their designated routes and that they wouldn't 'accidentally' go astray.
Of course I have problems with the Segway design that would need to be addressed to convert them to this purpose, notably protection from the weather (bikes and motorcycles have the same problem). Also I think the 12 MPH limit of the Segways is a major drawback for a commuter vehicle. The technology that would keep them on predefined routes would make them safer to interact with pedestrians at higher speeds, since the locations where they shared right-of-way with pedestrians or crossed pedestrian rights-of-way would allow to go faster most of the and only slow down when they were in a pedestrian zone.
Also, knowledge of this feature is useful to administrators of systems where there is policy that the privacy of the users is to be protected.
For example, it is illegal for any federal website to collect personally identifable information about any of their website's users without their explicit permission. While there is an exemption for the temporary collection of browser info and IP found in server logs, since these in and of themselves are not very reliable at identifying individuals (and there are regulations in place to prevent their use without judicial guidance), the level of individual identification allowed by this feature/bug likely would not be allowed.
Without these privacy violations being widely announced, its likely that federal website administrators could unknowingly violate the privacy regulation.
I just want to congratulate dimator for getting a post modded +5 Troll, truly an astounding and well earned moderation. To get it he would need to be modded up at least four times, to make up for the -1 of the Troll moderation.
FYI to one of the AC responders to this post:
the bracketed domain name can be turned on and off in your user preferences. Others might still see brackets for links you make, but you don't have to se them in the posts you are reading. I the feature was added as a counter-measure to the numerous links to goatse.cx that were labeled as something else, though at least one of those posters knows how to get Google's cache to to bring the same site, so I find the brackets of little personal use.
You aren't free to not pay the taxes on blank media that they want (except by not buying blank media, but a lot of us have legitimate need for CDRs, etc).
Actually as far as CDR's are concerned you are free to avoid paying the tax, just buy Data CDRs instead of Music CDRs. There is virtually no difference between the media, except that Audio CD to CDR burners such as you might have in a audio component system, won't work with the Data CD. CDR burners for PCs don't care.
Of course making a copy of an audio CD onto a Data CDR would be a violation of the same act, but until the RIAA and the recording industry in general start complying, I can't see that they should have any expectation that consumers will.
Why is it that this hasn't come up before, and does anyone know how this act affects MP3's? Should they be considered legal as long as you burn them to media on which you have paid the royalty tax?
for IE5.5 for IE5.5:s ec pac23/5.5_SP2/WIN98Me/EN-US/q313675.exe
http://download.microsoft.com/download/ie55sp2/
Note, that is for IE 5.5 SP2 if you have SP1, or plain vanilla 5.5, you will first have to upgrade, so you may want to wait till a full release with the patches is available. SP2 is 17MB download.
Anyone know what the equivalent version is if you have the AOL version of IE? (not that I do) but you can imagine AOL will be slowed to a crawl if every single user must get an upgrade first to SP2 or IE6, then get this patch. When - oh - when will AOL finally become browser neutral or go entirely to Netscape/Mozilla?
Actually there is already a memorial to Sagan in Ithaca: The Carl Sagan Memorial Planet Walk. It consists of a model of the solar system laid out over downtown Ithaca. The sun is 30cm across and is featured prominently on the Ithaca Commons, a downtown shopping district. Pluto is close to the foot of Cayuga Lake at the Ithaca Science Center, over a kilometer away. At this scale the Earth is just a 1/10th of inch across, but they mount the planetary models so that they can be viewed through a magnifying lens.
If NASA really wanted to memorialize Sagan with a new research lab, then at least one of the buildings should be at Cornell where he spent his career, even after he could have left little Ithaca behind and gone to live in DC, or LA, or work at the JPL.
You can read the proposed Civil Settlement (pdf) and the responses as well. They also are pdf files being just scanned images of the letters recieved.
The responses are interesting, most of the ones I have read from School Districts indicate that they are afraid that they get very little value out of the settlement, since the software will be donated, and the hardware will be largely used requiring more maintenance than the benefit it provides. In efffect the schools are saying that they will be saddled with a much greater percentage of the total cost of ownership than Microsoft. So if the intention is to punish Microsoft and reward the schools this is the wrong way to go about it.
I live in a high rise. My windows are on the North, and in every other direction, including straight up, there's a lot of steel. Would I be able to receive XM signals? I can't get satellite TV, obviously.
The plan to have repeaters in big cities should help this. Unlike Satellite TV you would likely have a repeater within a couple of miles in direct line of site unless in you already on the far northern edge of the city.
If you want a more definitive answer you could try posting what neighborhood you live in and maybe someone can track down the exact location of nearby repeaters. Regardless, you could just purchase a receiver with a credit card and return if you don't get any signal.
If I was XM or Sirius I would have at least one station that you could get all the time without a subscription fee that would serve both as way to get lapsed subscribers to sign-up, and as sort of a channel guide. Plus it would let people test out their hardware without having to go through the new user registration stuff.
Speaking of user registration, anyone know how the two systems compare regarding listener privacy? I know Sirius has no ads, but that doesn't mean they are tracking the demographics of purchasers of the service. For XM, you have to exepct that part of the $3 discount is adverstisers knowing just what demographic groups are listening to what stations.
With in-car MP3,
I would extend that thought to include wireless access to IP, and therefore eventual ability to have nonstop streaming of any mulitmedia content on the web coming from your car's dashboard.
When you can instantly access any song ever recorded, why would you still pay to subscribe to a service that only gives 100 streams where someone else is picking the songs?
Of course it will be long time before that is a realistic option in places like Montana. So for those areas, MP3 is a great option if you don't mind doing the downloads yourself, otherwise it might be worth $10/month to have someone else choosing your playlist for you.
You'll notice though that is a
As to historic posts relevant to SlashDot, I think this one is pretty important. In it John Norcross castigates Taco for running Ray Trace on Windows when he should really be running it under OS/2 or Linux. Then there are no other posts from Taco for 3-1/2 months after which he posts this saying how he is booting Linux from a floppy trying out a couple different kernels.
So thank you John Norcross for setting Rob Malda down the path to Open Source nirvana!
the Xbox is capable of 1920x1080 (HDTV), so there would need to be a special output adapter that connects to the back of the console to take full advantage of what your monitor can handle.
Actually this question was just posed on Ask SlashDot about 3 weeks ago here.
The problem you get is that HDTV though it uses a 15-pin mini-D connector, just like VGA, is that HDTV is YPrPb instead of RGB based. So to get the HDTV signal on your monitor, you would first need the XBox HDTV Adaptor, then you would have to convert the HDTV signal to VGA with another adaptor. A response to the previous Ask SlashDot story found this one but that costs $319.
If you go to the official Xbox homepage (as noted in my previous post last month), they'll just tell you flat out that it can't be done.
You can get a USB ethernet adaptor and then you can use broadband
This is one that isn't on the product support list for the iPaq, but it is only $22 through Buy.com. It's the COMPEX EU202 LINKPORT USB 10/100Mbps FAST ETHERNET USB ADAPTER, and it seems to have the smallest form factor of any of the USB Ethernet adapters I've looked at. It's the same form factor/size as one of USB memory drives, and doesn't hang off a cable like most of the others.
Anyone have experience with this adapter? Are their any Linux drivers that wil run it? From googling the web I found Linux drivers for the PCMCIA card version of it so it would seem that the chipset is likely the same and might work with Linux.
Or perhaps not.
My question is search engines. Does KPMG expect every search engine to "execute an agreement" in order to include: results in their database and subsequently provide the results to their users?
It seems that if, is actually intent on enforcing this policy, then they should require a userid and password to access every page, and then only provide the passwords to websites that have "executed" agreements. Personally, it looks to me like () is doing a good job of executing themeselves.
BTW, if you would like to know more about
Take a look at this: http://www.gwu.edu/~econ270/Taejoon.html [gwu.edu] it's from 1996 but that's not too long ago to make it invalid. People in Shanghai make ~$1000/yr (USD) and nearly everyone else in the country is making less than $200. That's 5x the income. Per capita income in New York is not 5x that of Idaho - or anywhere else in the US - per capita income in New York is around 20% higher than the national average.
Well, for the US if you go by County data, (I'm afraid the 2000 census results aren't yet available in county by county detail, so we have to go by 1989 data) the per capita income is only $3,417 in Shannon county South Dakota (you were pretty close with the Idaho guess btw), but it was $27,862 in Manhattan (not actually the highest in the country which goes to Marin county CA at $28,381). The difference between Manhattan and Shannon, SD is over 8 fold. The national per capita income that year was $14,420, which is only slightly more than half of Manhattan or Marin.
If you want to go by 2000 state by state household income, then you find that the wealthiest state, MD at $51,695 has an average household income that is about 78% higher than the poorest state, its neighbor, West Virginia at $29,052. The State of New York is right about the same as the national average in the $41k/household range.
Actually yesterday's case is interesting in this context since the court found that selling one software program from a bundle was legal. If you consider the removal of CheckforOSX from the update disk to merely be the unbundling of undesired software (much as Apple argues along with everyone else that MS should bundle undesired s/w with their OS) then it seems reasonable that it would be legal to get the update CD from Apple, make ONE copy sans CheckforOSX, destroy the original and sell the newly burned CD on eBay. It seems all of those steps would be legal, but it may be illegal to actually use the new disk without a legal copy of OSX, so I don't recomend you buy such a disk from eBay.
I was just about to post that Actually this won't be a blue moon since the last full moon officially fell on Halloween. But I looked it up and it seems I am wrong. The press (including I beleive NPR) made a big deal about this year being the first time in decades that the Full Moon fell on Halloween, but it seems they were wrong, unless they meant it fell on Halloween night but after midnight.
Notice all the stuff you buy that says "This item part of a package. Not for resale" or something there-abouts. Why should software be any different?
As far as I know that only applies to food, since food has all these labelling requirements, if have a package inside (say on snickers bar in a ten pack) then you can avoid having to label each of the inner bars with this warning. As to the software companies bundling items, I think that is only binding between the software manufacturer and the bundler/retailer. If the purchaser is not party to the agreement, then why should they be bound by it. That's what this ruling is saying.
Now it could end up getting very complicated since you would have to be very clear what you are buying if someone is selling "Windows XP" it could be any of 8 differnt versions cepending on whehter it is the home or pro edition, upgrade or full version, or bundled full version sold off by enduser rejecting the EULA. MS has always made it clear that if you rejected the EULA you could return the software for a full refund, but they have never honored that. That puts them on pretty weak ground should they want to join with Adobe in fighting this ruling.
Of course IANAL, but:
Since it it is in Federal court, whether or not a state has passed UCITA is irrelevant, as the decision doesn't involve state law of any kind. I would assume that for the time being it only applies to the district in which it was decided, but as it works its way through the Federal system it should apply to all residents within that jurisdiction. Presumably Adobe will apeal it to the 9th Circuit, but that tends to be a fairly liberal circuit and would likely side with SoftMan. So it would likely go to the Supreme Court that with its current makeup is more likely to side with Adobe both because the user agreed to it, and because the lower court has the appearance of making new law. Consumers would probably be best served if the Supremes decide not to hear it, since most major software companies are in the 9th circuit and would for all practical purposes be bound by any decision of the 9th circuit.