10Gb 12km modules cost a lot less than $10,000 today. That doesn't change the truth you are pointing out: that the cost is not the fibre. Technology will probably reduce the cost of a pipe like that before technology creates the demand for a pipe like that. Seriously, with so many people still on dial-up, where is the need for OC-148 to homes?
The cable companies value revenue more than bandwidth. I don't think they will ever complain that there are too many people willing to pay $3 to watch Lilo and Stitch all at the same time. The alternative is that the money goes to TiVo or DirectTV or for DVD rental or purchase, or one guy records it on his PVR and shares it with 2,000 of his closest friends over a P2P network. A Video-On-Demand service is the best way to get that money to the cable companies instead.
I see no reason why Corporations or other artificial constructs should have a right to free speech.
And considering that Corporations wield very large amounts of wealth and that the article reveals that rich campaign donors buy favors, I see plenty of cause to exclude corporations from the political process.
The truth seems so obvious to me, and yet I have no idea how to get there from here. I despair.
"SUVs for example don't make you safer, they only make you feel safer"
Based on the deaths per million registered vehicles, one is more likely to die in an SUV than in a car, and pickups are even worse. As you said, SUVs do fare better than cars in multi-vehicle crashes by killing the people in the other vehicle, but they are still less safe. Further data inspection reveals that a truck's tendency to kill people in cars is a result of the design, not the mass as is usually assumed.
"The force involved is that they already have your money, and aren't willing to return your money if you don't agree to the EULA.
Since you can't negotiate the return of your funds for the return of all services, the EULA is void as a contract."
You can only use this justification: (1) if you really contacted Sony and tried to get them to refund your money and they refused AND (2) for the first 30 days that were included with your original purchase. After the first 30 days, you know what the terms and restrictions are and you are choosing to pay them a monthly fee for access to their servers. That looks like a valid contract to me.
"The problem of an unfair advantage aside I just don't see what grounds SOE has to stand on for attempting to legaly deny someone the right to know what information is comming or going into their machine from the outside world."
Well, I'll play devil's advocate for a moment here: they aren't denying the users oversight of their connection to the "outside world", only to the Sony EQ servers. And the grounds in this case is a real contract. This isn't the same as the EULAs companies try to impose on your use of software after you have purchased it. In this case you have purchased the client, and THEN you enter a contract where you pay a monthy fee for access to EQ servers under limited conditions which you are informed of when you enter the contract. So they DO have a right to tell you how you can connect to their server and to stipulate that you cannot monitor or manipulate the traffic between you.
IINAL and I am not saying that Sony should or shouldn't do anything, or how. I don't even play EQ.
I bought a set of Elsa Revalator glasses a while ago that use the same basic lcd shutter technology. They do "work" but the effect is underwhelming. You can't really use them for any First Person Shooter games because the crosshairs on your screen are also adjusted for each eye and the real impact point will be directly between them. Also, many games mix solids with planes, so for example the hallway will look 3-D but all the people in it will look like flat carboard cut-outs. The road will be 3-d but all the trees on the side will be flat. It turned out to be a far LESS immersive experience. I played with it for a couple days, then packed it away with other unused computer junk.
"Yeah it's a fine line, but I think mass-mailing voters with your (noncommercial) campaign message is acceptable, provided you don't lie about your address or identity, or otherwise interfere with my ability to block you, and follow other guidelines like honoring remove requests, and not sending more than one message a month, etc"
The Senator-elect DID send more than one message a month. Does that cross the line? What if her campaign sent one message per day, would that cross the line? What if they attached an AVI of her TV advertisement, every day, or maybe twice a day, is that still protected political speech libre?
I'm sure that you could draw "the line" in a place that would satisfy most people, but that would be dodging the larger question. The larger question is: "Is an email box a public forum, or private property?" Can a campaign "say" anything it wants using my resources at my expense, or are they tresspassing?
That should be modded 'funny', But seriously, what is so bad about Cruella, wouldn't a coat made from dalmations be really beautiful? I'm not trying to upset anyone who really loves dogs (I love dogs) but I trying to point out that most of us have a different standard for how cute animals should be treated. Many people who think the idea of a dalmation coat is icky don't think twice about eating chicken, or wearing leather. How in the world can we logically defend spending millions of dollars to rehabilitate Keiko the Orca from "Free Willy" when 18% of the children in my state live below the poverty level?
It would be a lot easier to just mix the dog breeds instead of starting over with wolves. If you start now with breeding a little wolf into dogs, your grandchildren or great-grandchildren might get a "good" dog out of it.
The problem with trying to make dog genes stronger though is that people don't want mutts or "mixed breed" dogs. People want pretty coats, and friendly, hard-working personalities. And breeding a dog to be healthy and live long doesn't win dog shows, which is where the money is for breeders.
"I bet the cell phone providers and manufacturers are getting paid to make sure that we can start viewing web ads on these phones ASAP."
By who? Who would do that? Websites don't have money. ISPs should see web-phones as competition. Advertisers just want the most for their money, so I don't think they are going to pay Nokia, Symbian, and Opera just to create a new advertising channel.
Sure, there probably is a conspiracy, but I just can't see it here.
IIRC, Uzi Nissan will not even discuss selling the domain to Nissan Motors. And he has spent a fortune trying to defend his right to the domain. Far in excess of it's monetary value to him. If he WERE willing to sell the domain, then Nissan Motors would probably just use that as evidence that he registered it in bad faith. He is NOT doing this for money.
"So Microsoft, having been found guilty of having a desktop operating system monopoly, is further digging a hole for itself by selling the XBox at a loss? Or is this too unrelated a business to fall under anti-trust supervision?"
There is a case to be made that selling any product below cost is unfair competition and/or predetory business practice. However, I don't think you will soon see the Justice Dept. rushing to the rescue for Japanese companies Nintendo and Sony. Nor do I think Nintendo or Sony will be taking Microsoft to court. The biggest reason is that the court system almost always acts too slowly to be of any real use in stopping anything but the most egregious cheating.
Our current Microsoft action is a pretty good example of the court's failure to stop cheating. It has been established as fact by the courts that Microsoft cheated, that they unfairly maintained and extended their monopoly, and profited from it at the expense of the public. But they won the browser war, and looking at the current "remedy" I don't see anything that would set that right, punish/discourage them from doing the same thing again given the chance, or discourage them from trying the same thing again in other areas. Crime Pays.
For that reason, it is unusual to see companies take other companies to court for naughty behavior, unless there is a contract involved, which speeds things up, or unless the suer has failed in the business space and needs to show the investors that "it isn't our fault, the other guys cheated." So it is usually the last resort of the desparate.
I have over 1400 songs that I ripped myself from legally acquired CD's that reside in an MP3 player slightly larger than my hand. It has changed the way that I listen to music. This convenience has become the singal most important factor in my music listening. I have bought more CD's since I got my MP3 player than in the previous 7 years combined. I'm not going back. I won't go back to vinyl or tapes, and I won't move forward to a new format or copy protected product that won't let me play music the way I want to listen to it. If independant artists are the only ones who release unencumbered music, then I'll buy from them.
By the way, if all RIAA studios switch to copy-protected CDs, does that mean we can repeal the "tax" on blank tapes and blank CD-Rs that "compensates" the major labels for the losses they will no longer be suffering?
South Korea sounds like a pretty good place, or even Japan. You do remember how North Korea shot missles over Japan and into the sea don't you? How about Taiwan? That might further discourage invasion/reuninification. If I were a "grunt" in a hot zone, I'd sleep better knowing one of these was defending the fort.
Yes, I had not considered that. And since most of Neptunes' moons were found by a probe as it streaked by, that is a plausible explanation. Of course something like the Hubble Telescope should be able to spot even pretty small moons of Neptune, but I don't know how much time HST has spent on Neptune.
That makes sense, but your example Triton orbits Neptune which only has 8 moons compared with 39 for Jupiter, 30 for Saturn, and 21 now for Uranus. It seems like Neptune should have more moons than Uranus, since it is a gas giant, it is larger, and it is further from the influences of the Sun and Jupiter. Uranus is also odd in that its orbit is twisted on its side, but most of its moons share the same plane, which leads me to believe that most of them were not captured. Can someone shed some light on this subject?
My only idea is that Triton, which is pretty big as moons go, and an order of magnitude more massive than anything around Uranus may have knocked smaller moons of Neptune out of orbit when it arrived. But what do I know.
"can we assume that anyone who accesses that page has some sort of unauthorized information?"
This word "unauthorized" seems to get thrown around whenever a company doesn't like how something is used. My objection to it is that its use supposes that the company has the power to grant or deny authority to us. Reuters doesn't need to be authorized by Intentia to try undocumented URLs, nor to view public html. We don't need Sony to authorize us to play imported games on consoles that they made but we own. We don't need a studio's authority to play DVD's from a different region. You don't need Microsoft's authority to load Linux onto your X-Box.
Unfortunately, courts and other powers seem far to willing to buy into it and rule against "unathorized" actions.
Isn't there an address that the camera seller has? If this is inter-state fraud doesn't that bring the FBI into the picture? Why rely on PayPal to give you justice?
Now of course, PayPal SHOULD have to be a bank to do what they do and should be responsible for the money entrusted to them that they allowed to be stolen, but just because they aren't I don't see how that is the end of it.
I thought Lagrange points collected a lot of dust, which would be bad for optics. Its not like you can vacuum that stuff up either. If you are 5/6ths of the way to the moon already, why not just go the rest of the way? A luna's gravity keeps the dust down and provides many other benefits. I expect Luna would also supply SOME building materials, like maybe 10 foot thick rock walls to stop cosmic rays, for example. The lunar gravity would be a disadvantage for launching other missions from there, but perhaps that could be compensated for.
If there are more informed people out there who see what I don't, I'd love to hear it.
"People Take Up Most of the Planet, U.S. Study Says"
That sounds materially different than "Humans have influenced 83% of the land that we chose to count." So if there are any roads or trails into a Wilderness Area, then it doesn't count as real wilderness. That is an interesting definition.
"Meanwhile, the Russians, the Japanese, the Chinese, the Pakistani, and basically anyone else with a clue (and alas, I don't live in such a country)..."
Let me get this straight, you are sad because you don't live in a country like Russia, Japan, China, or Pakistan? I think emigration is a lot more reliable way to regain your happiness than hoping the US will get a clue about it's space program.;-)
Slashdot Mirror
10Gb 12km modules cost a lot less than $10,000 today. That doesn't change the truth you are pointing out: that the cost is not the fibre. Technology will probably reduce the cost of a pipe like that before technology creates the demand for a pipe like that. Seriously, with so many people still on dial-up, where is the need for OC-148 to homes?
The cable companies value revenue more than bandwidth. I don't think they will ever complain that there are too many people willing to pay $3 to watch Lilo and Stitch all at the same time. The alternative is that the money goes to TiVo or DirectTV or for DVD rental or purchase, or one guy records it on his PVR and shares it with 2,000 of his closest friends over a P2P network. A Video-On-Demand service is the best way to get that money to the cable companies instead.
I see no reason why Corporations or other artificial constructs should have a right to free speech.
And considering that Corporations wield very large amounts of wealth and that the article reveals that rich campaign donors buy favors, I see plenty of cause to exclude corporations from the political process.
The truth seems so obvious to me, and yet I have no idea how to get there from here. I despair.
"SUVs for example don't make you safer, they only make you feel safer"
Based on the deaths per million registered vehicles, one is more likely to die in an SUV than in a car, and pickups are even worse. As you said, SUVs do fare better than cars in multi-vehicle crashes by killing the people in the other vehicle, but they are still less safe. Further data inspection reveals that a truck's tendency to kill people in cars is a result of the design, not the mass as is usually assumed.
"The force involved is that they already have your money, and aren't willing to return your money if you don't agree to the EULA. Since you can't negotiate the return of your funds for the return of all services, the EULA is void as a contract."
You can only use this justification: (1) if you really contacted Sony and tried to get them to refund your money and they refused AND (2) for the first 30 days that were included with your original purchase. After the first 30 days, you know what the terms and restrictions are and you are choosing to pay them a monthly fee for access to their servers. That looks like a valid contract to me.
"The problem of an unfair advantage aside I just don't see what grounds SOE has to stand on for attempting to legaly deny someone the right to know what information is comming or going into their machine from the outside world."
Well, I'll play devil's advocate for a moment here: they aren't denying the users oversight of their connection to the "outside world", only to the Sony EQ servers. And the grounds in this case is a real contract. This isn't the same as the EULAs companies try to impose on your use of software after you have purchased it. In this case you have purchased the client, and THEN you enter a contract where you pay a monthy fee for access to EQ servers under limited conditions which you are informed of when you enter the contract. So they DO have a right to tell you how you can connect to their server and to stipulate that you cannot monitor or manipulate the traffic between you.
IINAL and I am not saying that Sony should or shouldn't do anything, or how. I don't even play EQ.
I bought a set of Elsa Revalator glasses a while ago that use the same basic lcd shutter technology. They do "work" but the effect is underwhelming. You can't really use them for any First Person Shooter games because the crosshairs on your screen are also adjusted for each eye and the real impact point will be directly between them. Also, many games mix solids with planes, so for example the hallway will look 3-D but all the people in it will look like flat carboard cut-outs. The road will be 3-d but all the trees on the side will be flat. It turned out to be a far LESS immersive experience. I played with it for a couple days, then packed it away with other unused computer junk.
"Yeah it's a fine line, but I think mass-mailing voters with your (noncommercial) campaign message is acceptable, provided you don't lie about your address or identity, or otherwise interfere with my ability to block you, and follow other guidelines like honoring remove requests, and not sending more than one message a month, etc"
The Senator-elect DID send more than one message a month. Does that cross the line? What if her campaign sent one message per day, would that cross the line? What if they attached an AVI of her TV advertisement, every day, or maybe twice a day, is that still protected political speech libre?
I'm sure that you could draw "the line" in a place that would satisfy most people, but that would be dodging the larger question. The larger question is: "Is an email box a public forum, or private property?" Can a campaign "say" anything it wants using my resources at my expense, or are they tresspassing?
That should be modded 'funny', But seriously, what is so bad about Cruella, wouldn't a coat made from dalmations be really beautiful? I'm not trying to upset anyone who really loves dogs (I love dogs) but I trying to point out that most of us have a different standard for how cute animals should be treated. Many people who think the idea of a dalmation coat is icky don't think twice about eating chicken, or wearing leather. How in the world can we logically defend spending millions of dollars to rehabilitate Keiko the Orca from "Free Willy" when 18% of the children in my state live below the poverty level?
It would be a lot easier to just mix the dog breeds instead of starting over with wolves. If you start now with breeding a little wolf into dogs, your grandchildren or great-grandchildren might get a "good" dog out of it.
The problem with trying to make dog genes stronger though is that people don't want mutts or "mixed breed" dogs. People want pretty coats, and friendly, hard-working personalities. And breeding a dog to be healthy and live long doesn't win dog shows, which is where the money is for breeders.
Well, that IS funny, but so is that idea that advertising on Salon effects anything.
"I bet the cell phone providers and manufacturers are getting paid to make sure that we can start viewing web ads on these phones ASAP."
By who? Who would do that? Websites don't have money. ISPs should see web-phones as competition. Advertisers just want the most for their money, so I don't think they are going to pay Nokia, Symbian, and Opera just to create a new advertising channel.
Sure, there probably is a conspiracy, but I just can't see it here.
IIRC, Uzi Nissan will not even discuss selling the domain to Nissan Motors. And he has spent a fortune trying to defend his right to the domain. Far in excess of it's monetary value to him. If he WERE willing to sell the domain, then Nissan Motors would probably just use that as evidence that he registered it in bad faith. He is NOT doing this for money.
"So Microsoft, having been found guilty of having a desktop operating system monopoly, is further digging a hole for itself by selling the XBox at a loss? Or is this too unrelated a business to fall under anti-trust supervision?"
There is a case to be made that selling any product below cost is unfair competition and/or predetory business practice. However, I don't think you will soon see the Justice Dept. rushing to the rescue for Japanese companies Nintendo and Sony. Nor do I think Nintendo or Sony will be taking Microsoft to court. The biggest reason is that the court system almost always acts too slowly to be of any real use in stopping anything but the most egregious cheating.
Our current Microsoft action is a pretty good example of the court's failure to stop cheating. It has been established as fact by the courts that Microsoft cheated, that they unfairly maintained and extended their monopoly, and profited from it at the expense of the public. But they won the browser war, and looking at the current "remedy" I don't see anything that would set that right, punish/discourage them from doing the same thing again given the chance, or discourage them from trying the same thing again in other areas. Crime Pays.
For that reason, it is unusual to see companies take other companies to court for naughty behavior, unless there is a contract involved, which speeds things up, or unless the suer has failed in the business space and needs to show the investors that "it isn't our fault, the other guys cheated." So it is usually the last resort of the desparate.
It has been said before, but it bears repeating.
I have over 1400 songs that I ripped myself from legally acquired CD's that reside in an MP3 player slightly larger than my hand. It has changed the way that I listen to music. This convenience has become the singal most important factor in my music listening. I have bought more CD's since I got my MP3 player than in the previous 7 years combined. I'm not going back. I won't go back to vinyl or tapes, and I won't move forward to a new format or copy protected product that won't let me play music the way I want to listen to it. If independant artists are the only ones who release unencumbered music, then I'll buy from them.
By the way, if all RIAA studios switch to copy-protected CDs, does that mean we can repeal the "tax" on blank tapes and blank CD-Rs that "compensates" the major labels for the losses they will no longer be suffering?
South Korea sounds like a pretty good place, or even Japan. You do remember how North Korea shot missles over Japan and into the sea don't you? How about Taiwan? That might further discourage invasion/reuninification. If I were a "grunt" in a hot zone, I'd sleep better knowing one of these was defending the fort.
" We turn war into a fuckin' video game, and relegate them to attacking us with swords while riding their camels."
Well of course we do. Haven't you ever played a game of Civilization? Technology is king.
Yes, I had not considered that. And since most of Neptunes' moons were found by a probe as it streaked by, that is a plausible explanation. Of course something like the Hubble Telescope should be able to spot even pretty small moons of Neptune, but I don't know how much time HST has spent on Neptune.
That makes sense, but your example Triton orbits Neptune which only has 8 moons compared with 39 for Jupiter, 30 for Saturn, and 21 now for Uranus. It seems like Neptune should have more moons than Uranus, since it is a gas giant, it is larger, and it is further from the influences of the Sun and Jupiter. Uranus is also odd in that its orbit is twisted on its side, but most of its moons share the same plane, which leads me to believe that most of them were not captured. Can someone shed some light on this subject?
My only idea is that Triton, which is pretty big as moons go, and an order of magnitude more massive than anything around Uranus may have knocked smaller moons of Neptune out of orbit when it arrived. But what do I know.
"can we assume that anyone who accesses that page has some sort of unauthorized information?"
This word "unauthorized" seems to get thrown around whenever a company doesn't like how something is used. My objection to it is that its use supposes that the company has the power to grant or deny authority to us. Reuters doesn't need to be authorized by Intentia to try undocumented URLs, nor to view public html. We don't need Sony to authorize us to play imported games on consoles that they made but we own. We don't need a studio's authority to play DVD's from a different region. You don't need Microsoft's authority to load Linux onto your X-Box.
Unfortunately, courts and other powers seem far to willing to buy into it and rule against "unathorized" actions.
Isn't there an address that the camera seller has? If this is inter-state fraud doesn't that bring the FBI into the picture? Why rely on PayPal to give you justice?
Now of course, PayPal SHOULD have to be a bank to do what they do and should be responsible for the money entrusted to them that they allowed to be stolen, but just because they aren't I don't see how that is the end of it.
I thought Lagrange points collected a lot of dust, which would be bad for optics. Its not like you can vacuum that stuff up either. If you are 5/6ths of the way to the moon already, why not just go the rest of the way? A luna's gravity keeps the dust down and provides many other benefits. I expect Luna would also supply SOME building materials, like maybe 10 foot thick rock walls to stop cosmic rays, for example. The lunar gravity would be a disadvantage for launching other missions from there, but perhaps that could be compensated for.
If there are more informed people out there who see what I don't, I'd love to hear it.
It is especially bright when the shuttle is docked. If you have never seen it, it is really worth the effort.
"People Take Up Most of the Planet, U.S. Study Says"
That sounds materially different than "Humans have influenced 83% of the land that we chose to count." So if there are any roads or trails into a Wilderness Area, then it doesn't count as real wilderness. That is an interesting definition.
"Meanwhile, the Russians, the Japanese, the Chinese, the Pakistani, and basically anyone else with a clue (and alas, I don't live in such a country)..."
;-)
Let me get this straight, you are sad because you don't live in a country like Russia, Japan, China, or Pakistan? I think emigration is a lot more reliable way to regain your happiness than hoping the US will get a clue about it's space program.