"The Home Office's consultation on its ID (aka Entitlement) Card proposals closes today, amidst complaints from privacy campaigners that the government has broken its own rules in canvassing opinions on its controversial plans.
Human rights group Privacy International has lodged a complaint on the consultation process with the Parliamentary Ombudsman, due to several alleged breaches of the Government's own code of practice. "
An open letter has been sent complaining that the public was left out of the debate.
The government claim only 2000 responses have been received, yet Stand know that nearly 5000 people sent in concerns about ID cards via their website.
All British Slashdotters should Fax their MP and complain about this.
It worked last year when the stand/fax your mp campaign made the government change their minds about letting every UK agency have access to our private data.
It worked last time, and it will work again, spend 10 minutes writing a fax, and make your views and opinion of this whitewash heard.
So, I gotta stop my project for some unknown length of time. Good thing I'm not updating a medical drug interaction database, or an available transplant database, or a process flow control system or a hazardous atmosphere measurement system or a BUNCH of other possibilities.
"If it was anything important, you should be using the corporate edition (which doesn't have activation) and not the home edition."
Bingo. XP home edition production activation I hear is a raw deal, I wouldn't know, I use an enterprise level edition. No activation required, I can change any computer to any extent I want, and not require permission from MS.
Now, that's no comfort to home and small office users, and I certainly wouldn't like to use XP under the EULA MS offer the aforementioned users, but to claim medical or otherwise critical projects could be stopped is a troll, it's total nonsense.
I'm sorry but anyone with an important job in a major organisation will have XP Pro Enterprise, little Jimmy's new kidney will not rely on a call centre operator at MS. Because everyone in the medical IT centre will have a site licensed copy of XP which doesn't care if you change the MB,CPU,RAM,HDD,NIC and the graphics card every day just for the fun of it.
Re:Real and my PC
on
Real DRM
·
· Score: 3, Informative
in fact just having a brainwave, im going to use Norton to put the little tray icon thingo into quarantine. Take that! HAH!
Or you could simply uncheck the box in Quicktime preferences that says load into system tray at startup...
Re:USA - the world's biggest polluter. So what's n
on
Dow vs. Parody
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· Score: 3, Insightful
Yes, the US is the largest consumer of economic resources, and the largest polluter in the world. Be even if the US were to freeze it's CO2 emissions at 1990 levels, it would little to impact world CO2 levels or growth of those levels. That growth is coming from places outside the US
Nonsense.
According to the UN :
"China has, despite economic growth estimated at 36 per cent, managed to reduce it carbon dioxide emissions by 17 per cent since 1996/97. "
"A study by scientists at the Lawrence Berkley National Laboratory in California concludes that China's C02 emissions are already 400 to 900 million tonnes
below what was expected in 2000 which is approximately equivalent to all C02 emissions from Canada, at the low end of the range, or Germany, at the high end of the estimate. "
"In the United States, which at 23 per cent has the highest share of global C02 emissions, levels of the greenhouse gas have grown from 4.8 billion tonnes in 1990 to over 5.4 tonnes in 1998
China is doing all it can to reduce its emissions, the US is still increasing its pollution."
Like much of the world, China is doing something about C02, which is a good job, because the US's refusal to work with the Kyoto Protocol is embarrassing.
In every case I can think of where Microsoft took over a competitors marketshare it has been because the MS product line kept improving over time, whereas the competitor released a really crappy major upgrade.
While I know what you're saying, it's worth bearing in mind, that Wordperfect, Lotus etc complained at the time that MS apps were making API calls that were undocumented. In other words MS was making a superior product by exploiting its OS monopoly, using "hidden" features known only to MS to write better code.
Microsoft wasn't always a wealthy company, they became that way for a reason. Because they were willing to try things, and they were willing to risk failure.
They were willing to try things like theft - remember (to cite one of many examples) doublespace in DOS 6.1 ?
I have a MCSE, years ago I coded C++ for Win 3.1, I still use Windows on a daily basis, and like it, but I am not deluded in thinking MS innovates or got into their current position exclusively through great code and brilliant but not illegal corporate means.
the very first ding ZA reported came from a Microsoft IP address (I recognised the netblock, but also whois'd and confirmed it)
I have to say I've seen something similar, following a clean XP install, ZA installed immediately before DSL drivers, a full 5 minutes after using windows update to patch the system, I saw M$ trying to contact my PC - this was as I say, at least 5 minutes after the download had completed and installed, 20 minutes after the "we don't record any information - honest guvnor" - scan my computer for updates screen.
I also saw the weirdest alert, one I've never seen before or since - ZA alerted and said do you want xxx.exe (annoyingly I forgot to note the program name) to receive information from the internet. Not send, receive.
I'm in absolutely no doubt MS has hooks in the OS that any firewall can't block, because they'll use something like 21, 25 or 80 to bypass external walls, and sneak under application walls because they aren't behaving in a standard way.
Except that most Windows executables have the DLL path encoded (eg GetDllDirectory ) to avoid linking to the wrong version of the DLL. In theory you should only have one copy of each DLL on the drive, in reality coders know that isn't the case and avoid their app going t1ts up by specifying exactly where the DLLs they are using are to be found, in case there are multiple versions on the system.
So in theory, yes, it may be theoretically possible to trick ZA, but what firewall wouldn't be fooled in those circumstances ? And in reality, any decent app won't be corrupted in this way, because it will be looking at a specific location on the drive for the DLL. Trying to replace that DLL requires (a) Admin rights and (b) a probable reboot to unlock the DLL assuming the trusted app is active and using that library at the time.
I really doubt a marketing droid for a CD player is going to approve going to such extremes - which would be (IANAL) illegal (tampering with the safe running of your system) just to find out which Britney song is your favourite.
BTW, I can tell you firsthand that IE5.5 (as forcibly installed by TurboTax) and Frontpage98 both go around ZoneAlarm.
Only if you accept the default settings, which automatically allow IEXPLORE.EXE, svchost.exe and services.exe. You can custom setup and then IE 5.5 or frontpage will not access the net without permission.
And while the orginal parent post gets modded up, it would perhaps be more informative if he had actually used ZoneAlarm...
Copy (or contain) a copy of a trusted binary. Drop it into a directory somewhere. Drop a modified msvcrt.dll in the same directory, and let the program link to said DLL, and you've easily got untrusted code running within your "trusted" application.
A quick and simple test reveals that clicking on IEXPLORE.exe in the Program Files/Internet Explorer folder, allows internet access, (if ZA has been to set to allow it of course). Copying the exe into another folder - say My Documents, and running it, creates a ZoneAlarm alert asking if you want IEXPLORE.EXE to access the internet. Which reveals that ZA does indeed MD5 the binary PLUS the program path, making the script kiddy hack described above nigh on impossible.
As Zone Alarm themselves say, no firewall is perfect, but IMO ZoneAlarm is pretty damn good. It's simple enough for any one to use, which vital in today's harry home owner DSL world, the basic version is free as in free, which is vital to encourage all Windows users to use it, and it contains decent (but not perfect) protection at application level, vital to stop trivial hacks like the one described above.
It's the reason I haven't bothered contacting them. I really doubt they can touch Bonzi from the UK.
The ASA (rightly IMO) can't prosecute publishers for the ads they run, just the company who own the advert. So I can't argue it's UK jurisdiction because I saw the ad on a.co.uk site for example.
If they relocated to Korea or whereever, then they may (IANAL etc) still fall under US jurisdiction if the ad is then passed to a server like doubleclick.
Of course that's just a guess, hopefully a bankruptcy generating law suit may send the message out to others not to try it from any country. Who knows though ?
I've long been tempted to ask the UK Advertising Standards Agency (ASA) to investigate those banners.
I've lost count of the number of support calls both at work and from friends at home relating to them.
They are designed to be confused with genuine windows messages, rather than adverts, they are designed to install fear and confusion into the standard user, basically they are deliberately misleading and scaremongering adverts, which are illegal in the UK.
It's pathetic they can't get more funding - bandwidth is expensive but it how much cheap advertising does SETI offer ?
Why can't one of the big cash sponsors like IBM offer a server for free ? Why can't major bandwidth users offer some of their pipeline for free ?
It's a harmless and to be honest almost pointless task running SETI, but with the right sponsors it costs nothing to run and generates at worst indifferent PR (i.e. not politically/morally offensive, or shareholder unfriendly), at best great PR (your company linked with millions of PCs worldwide).
Internet companies offering support for SETI is like a dog food company supporting the local pet rescue centre, it costs next to nothing and can't help but generate good PR.
So if a BR child can have BR or RR offspring, and a RR child can only pass on RR genes, then the red gene cannot possibly die out ?
The black haired child has a 50-50 chance of producing red haired children, and the red haired child has 100 % chance of doing the same. So aren't the odds stacked in the red gene's favour ?
If black hair is the more dominant gene then how do you explain my family, parents red and black hair, 3 children all red ?
Or Prince Harry ?
Of the half dozen friends I know with red hair, they all come from one red one black hair parents, which to my (admittedly limited) gene knowledge, seems to indicate red hair is a dominant gene.
Got any links to go with the wild claim red hair is going to be extinct in 100 years ? Or were you just trolling ?
i the completely false claim that he changed his mind 3 times in 4 months is an example of your illogical frothing)
Hardly false - he has changed his mind twice in 2 months, has had 3 conflicting opinions on public record in 3 months.
Fantasising that I'm a P2P zealot won't get you anywhere, my disgust is based on his publicity seeking unscientific methods. Including his clear inability to look at a global picture before reaching conclusions - how can you claim P2P affects sales, when US record sales in countries without P2P are down too ? Shouldn't quality research take that into consideration ?
Those were rhetorical questions btw, I'm done with this thread.
Your 3 hour time line also assumes that the search for a complete album is instantaneous, and the download completes uninterrupted... It's even worse if you're a kid living with your parents-- they will not want you monopolising the phone line.
My 3 hour download time is based on practical experience of using Napster in its heyday, and unlike Stan, makes NO assumptions.
I'm basing the figure on an average of 15-20 minutes per track, totalling approximately 3 hours on completion.
You are assuming that is based on downloading an entire album in one go, which indicates your ignorance of common narrowband downloading practice. Tracks are downloaded one at a time - you search for the album, you click on a track you don't have and download it, you perhaps queue 2 or 3 songs up and leave it unattended to download them one at a time.
People using narrowband to download, predominately ARE children - using their phone access efficiently, perhaps 1 hour after school, which nets them 3 or 4 songs, perhaps sneakily downloading for a further hour during the family meal and so on.
Your post indicates ignorance of common unmetered usage narrowband techniques, as well as ignorance of P2P apps, you're certainly ignorant of what UK kids get up to (before lecturing, I was a teacher).
As I said before, you're now shifting the argument - it's no longer P2P, it's P2P with broadband. Which isn't what Stan is arguing. Which still doesn't explain why a global market has shown a drop in sales, except in a country that traditionally has never relied heavily on US artists for entertainment. Most of the countries that have seen a drop in sales, don't have great narrowband access (still pay per minute), let alone broadband, so how do you explain their drop ?
You're speculating. But like Liebowitz, I'm prepared to reevaluate my position if there is new data available that appears to contradict it.
Like Liebowitz, you're prepared to jump from conclusion to conclusion, U-Turning with each bit of data released, rather than evaluting the bigger global picture and all the data available, before reaching a logical conclusion - that current data is inconclusive. Inconclusive results don't generate good interviews and book promotion however.
in other words, he was re-considering his position. It is not clear that he changed his mind at all.
Actually if we're going to take the salon quote at face value, a more disturbing conclusion is reached
"he was questioning his own conclusions after having examined the numbers and finding little solid proof that file sharing was hurting CD sales."
In other words, if we're going to be pedantic (which you appear to want to be), this economist never bothered examining the numbers before publishing his paper. If he had, salon would state he was RE-examining the numbers.
the impact of broadband is not necessarily going to be the same in the UK as it is in the US.
In 2001 it used to take me 2 - 3 hours on an unmetered narrowband line to download an entire album, hardly a big deal. 128k Cable access was highly popular then too. Would waiting 2 - 3 hours have put people off ? Of course not, for one thing P2P and the internet was a novelty to most people, only having to wait 2 or 3 hours to get a free album would not have put stopped anyone, 3 hours would seem fast to the new user, just as 48kps internet is fast if you're used to 33k BBS systems.
But now you're shifting the argument, it's no longer the great demon P2P that is to blame for dropping US sales, it's the great demon P2P and his mysterious sidekick, ADSL. When record sales remain bouyant in the UK next year, following this summers broadband explosion, what excuse are you going to use then ?
People have been doing exercise with cassette players for years.
You obviously don't work out much - tapes get chewed, tapes jump, the heavy box bounces too much putting you off your timing, or it bounces right off your waistband and smashes on the floor. Solid State MP3 is the FIRST personal stereo system to truly cope with exercise regimes. As a previous poster states -
my vote right now goes for the Nike PSA120, which I'm looking at buying once I hit week 10 of my training program, as a reward. That thing's just perfect for runners, and even comes with an arm band to wear it on:)
He just said it looks unusual in the past 30 years -- 30 years which include recessions, splits in teenage income, and changes in mass appeal. He's already taking into account these things. Christ, you're stupid.
Loathe as I am to respond to flamebait - (if you want an intelligent response, calling someone an idiot, stupid and a moron isn't the way to go about it), I feel I must point out that CDs haven't been around for 30 years.
So, he isn't being accurate when stating that the "CD industry" has seen its "biggest decline in 30 years", when the industry is only 20 years old.
I think that speaks volumes for the quality of his research, if he can't even accurately describe the trend he is analysing. (Does he mean CD industry over its 20 year life, or record industry over an arbitrary sample of 30 years ?) I'm afraid, with such ambiguous phrasing, I have no time for his "research", whatever it "proves" this week.
And I'm afraid I must have too much free time today, if I'm bothering to respond to such pig ignorant flamers.
The submission/review process is quite lengthy. I would guess that it took about 6 months, and the research took a few months also. To the extent that he "changed his mind", he probably did so over the period of close to a year.
Except he changed his mind yet again, within 2 months - June - August. I don't expect him to stick dogmatically to one opinion - I do expect him to perhaps stop giving book sales boosting interviews if his research is so inconclusive as to cause him to change his mind every other month. Admitting you were wrong is laudable, admitting you were wrong, "no I wasn't", "Yes I was" "I was wrong about being wrong", "I was wrong about being wrong about being wrong" just makes you look stupid. A researcher not looking for regular press interviews would have reached the conclusion that research into this area is inconclusive.
It's not like he's doing a complete U-turn.
But he did offer a U-Turn, then U-Turned back, in the space of 2 months. . Re-evaluting your position is all well and good, but if you can change your opinion so easily and quickly and regularly, then perhaps a little more thought is needed before publically making a statement is required. I'm a lecturer, if I publish a paper, go on record as stating my paper is now wrong, then a few weeks later go on record as stating my previous statement about being wrong, is wrong, I am going to look like an idiot to my peers, it's going to look like I'm publishing before I'm ready, just to get press.
he crux of his argument is that this is not the case, or to be more precise, recessions hurt music sales, but they don't hurt them that much. Ranting on slashdot that it isn't so is not much of a rebuttal.
The crux of his argument is that MP3 downloading seriously damages sales. It isn't so.
Perhaps the BBC is "ranting" also ?
"The CD market in the UK has bucked the downward global trend and enjoyed a bumper year, with sales increasing by more than 5% in 2001".
As I stated - the UK had Napster, Guntella, WinMX, Musiccity and so on, yet UK sales increased by 5% last year. Or is Great Britain a statistical blip in Stan's ever changing world view ?
Yes, but this won't result in an increase in sales, because they could already buy albums to record for the purpose of jogging. The only difference is that there will be a new mediium. Or to put it another way, MP3s do not create a market that didn't already exist (or at least, you have not argued that this is the case)
Wrong.
As I previously stated - Solid state MP3 players allow people to jog or do violent exercise, where previous walkmans, discmans, mini-disc players and so forth would jump and skip.
Therefore, the MP3 player is a new medium, and music ideal for such activity - 140 BPM 4/4 beat techno, should see an increase in sales, based on his argument that a new medium results in new sales.
The fact is, for every RIAA sponsored study that states the MP3 format is killing music, another study will prove otherwise. An academic who changes his position with the changing of the seasons, openly plugging a book every time he does so, rather than arguing that research is currently inconclusive, is worthy of scorn.
Stan Liebowitz, author of an upcoming book (set for publication Sept. 7) titled "Rethinking the Network Economy," is digging hard for quantitative answers.
So, not looking for free publicity to boost book sales then.
In May, Liebowitz published a paper suggesting that the record industry would soon be seriously harmed by MP3s. But in June, by the time Salon caught up with him, he was questioning his own conclusions after having examined the numbers and finding little solid proof that file sharing was hurting CD sales. Two months later, he's changed his mind again
So, this respected researcher has changed his mind three times in 4 months . Perhaps he should think and formulate a well conceived, intelligent opinion before opening his mouth next time - is this guy the salon version of the first post trolls ?
You don't publish a paper, then change your mind about your own conclusions less than a month later, then change your mind yet again, and expect to be taken seriously.
If it were the case that there was a 9.8 percent drop on albums, when you look at the historical record of the ups and downs of the CD industry, [that's] a bigger decline than we've seen in 30 years. It starts to look unusual.
Except, that a) we're in a recession, b) teenage disposable income is now spilt between DVDs, Games and CDs c) bland mass appeal music always sees a drop in sales - see the RIAA's "Home taping is killing music" campaign in the late disco, pre punk era.
If he thinks the drop is unusual then he isn't checking his historical data correctly. In addition, how can he explain the INCREASE in CD sales in the UK last year ? We have Napster too yer know.
It's really amazing how (CD) prices have tracked so closely with inflation. It's almost as if the industry just bumps up prices with the inflation rate No shit Sherlock...
[What is clear is that] there's no evidence in the data that the tapes caused a decline.
MP3s wouldn't do the same thing. The reason cassettes led to growth was that before cassettes existed, you didn't have portable music. You couldn't play recorded music in your car, and you couldn't play it walking around, in a Walkman. It was the little cassette that basically allowed you to do that. To be technically correct, there were 8- track players prior to cassettes. But they didn't have quite the same penetration. My theory as to what went on is that [the rise in cassettes] coincides almost perfectly with the penetration rate of the portable, Walkman-type of thing. So it opened up this whole new market, which overwhelmed any copying that went on.
Oh dear.
Well 1) Most people didn't have recordable 8 tracks, so no, the 8 track WASN'T the same as musiccassettes. 2)We have new mediums now, such as the MP3 player, so according to your "theory" that should overwhelm any copying.
If people bought albums in the 80's specifically for the purpose of taping them for their new toy the walkman, then isn't the same going to happen now ? We should see an increase in up tempo running/jogging music, with the advent of solid state MP3 players which are finally immune to jumping, skipping and damage from violent movement.
So, either I'm going to see lots of hard cord techno stars from Germany and the UK become millionares as their record sales boom, or I'm going to see you change your mind about your pet theories yet again, probably just in time for the official release of your book.
Did Stan escape from Dallas University's, locked room, infinite monkeys on typewriters experiment ?
I fail to see why you can't cable it with fibre. For health and safety reasons they'll be bright red fire alarm boxes wired with tasteful orange cable, or covered with plastic trunking, all over the buildings already.
All national trust buildings are required to have modern electric cabling for normal lighting, power sockets (for the cleaners) as well as emergency exit lighting (to light the fire escape routes), which will be encased in trunking skirting the walls. Fibre optic or even Cat5 can be added to that trunking easily, and has been done on other historical sites.
Horseshit ? Most people who buy Dells do not have the knowledge to build their own PC.
Therefore a company like Walmart is a better option .
This thread is about buying a PC without Windows on it. Building your own PC is sometimes a better option, but this thread is discussing purchasing a non Windows PC out of the box, and which OEMs are prepared to supply them to individuals. You were completely flamebaiting/off topic with that reply.
Slashdot Mirror
The government claim only 2000 responses have been received, yet Stand know that nearly 5000 people sent in concerns about ID cards via their website.
All British Slashdotters should Fax their MP and complain about this.
It worked last year when the stand/fax your mp campaign made the government change their minds about letting every UK agency have access to our private data.
It worked last time, and it will work again, spend 10 minutes writing a fax, and make your views and opinion of this whitewash heard.
Bingo. XP home edition production activation I hear is a raw deal, I wouldn't know, I use an enterprise level edition. No activation required, I can change any computer to any extent I want, and not require permission from MS.
Now, that's no comfort to home and small office users, and I certainly wouldn't like to use XP under the EULA MS offer the aforementioned users, but to claim medical or otherwise critical projects could be stopped is a troll, it's total nonsense.
I'm sorry but anyone with an important job in a major organisation will have XP Pro Enterprise, little Jimmy's new kidney will not rely on a call centre operator at MS. Because everyone in the medical IT centre will have a site licensed copy of XP which doesn't care if you change the MB,CPU,RAM,HDD,NIC and the graphics card every day just for the fun of it.
Or you could simply uncheck the box in Quicktime preferences that says load into system tray at startup...
According to the UN : China is doing all it can to reduce its emissions, the US is still increasing its pollution."
Like much of the world, China is doing something about C02, which is a good job, because the US's refusal to work with the Kyoto Protocol is embarrassing.
Source
While I know what you're saying, it's worth bearing in mind, that Wordperfect, Lotus etc complained at the time that MS apps were making API calls that were undocumented. In other words MS was making a superior product by exploiting its OS monopoly, using "hidden" features known only to MS to write better code.
They were willing to try things like theft - remember (to cite one of many examples) doublespace in DOS 6.1 ?
I have a MCSE, years ago I coded C++ for Win 3.1, I still use Windows on a daily basis, and like it, but I am not deluded in thinking MS innovates or got into their current position exclusively through great code and brilliant but not illegal corporate means.
I also saw the weirdest alert, one I've never seen before or since - ZA alerted and said do you want xxx.exe (annoyingly I forgot to note the program name) to receive information from the internet. Not send, receive.
I'm in absolutely no doubt MS has hooks in the OS that any firewall can't block, because they'll use something like 21, 25 or 80 to bypass external walls, and sneak under application walls because they aren't behaving in a standard way.
Except that most Windows executables have the DLL path encoded (eg GetDllDirectory ) to avoid linking to the wrong version of the DLL. In theory you should only have one copy of each DLL on the drive, in reality coders know that isn't the case and avoid their app going t1ts up by specifying exactly where the DLLs they are using are to be found, in case there are multiple versions on the system.
So in theory, yes, it may be theoretically possible to trick ZA, but what firewall wouldn't be fooled in those circumstances ? And in reality, any decent app won't be corrupted in this way, because it will be looking at a specific location on the drive for the DLL. Trying to replace that DLL requires (a) Admin rights and (b) a probable reboot to unlock the DLL assuming the trusted app is active and using that library at the time.
I really doubt a marketing droid for a CD player is going to approve going to such extremes - which would be (IANAL) illegal (tampering with the safe running of your system) just to find out which Britney song is your favourite.
And while the orginal parent post gets modded up, it would perhaps be more informative if he had actually used ZoneAlarm...
A quick and simple test reveals that clicking on IEXPLORE.exe in the Program Files/Internet Explorer folder, allows internet access, (if ZA has been to set to allow it of course). Copying the exe into another folder - say My Documents, and running it, creates a ZoneAlarm alert asking if you want IEXPLORE.EXE to access the internet. Which reveals that ZA does indeed MD5 the binary PLUS the program path, making the script kiddy hack described above nigh on impossible.
As Zone Alarm themselves say, no firewall is perfect, but IMO ZoneAlarm is pretty damn good. It's simple enough for any one to use, which vital in today's harry home owner DSL world, the basic version is free as in free, which is vital to encourage all Windows users to use it, and it contains decent (but not perfect) protection at application level, vital to stop trivial hacks like the one described above.
I got married at Paris Las Vegas last month, it would have been Excalibur if I'd had any say in the matter.
Still, at least Paris has a geek friendly automated monorail system for getting the bride there on time!
Congrats to you both!
It's the reason I haven't bothered contacting them. I really doubt they can touch Bonzi from the UK.
.co.uk site for example.
The ASA (rightly IMO) can't prosecute publishers for the ads they run, just the company who own the advert. So I can't argue it's UK jurisdiction because I saw the ad on a
If they relocated to Korea or whereever, then they may (IANAL etc) still fall under US jurisdiction if the ad is then passed to a server like doubleclick.
Of course that's just a guess, hopefully a bankruptcy generating law suit may send the message out to others not to try it from any country. Who knows though ?
I've long been tempted to ask the UK Advertising Standards Agency (ASA) to investigate those banners.
I've lost count of the number of support calls both at work and from friends at home relating to them.
They are designed to be confused with genuine windows messages, rather than adverts, they are designed to install fear and confusion into the standard user, basically they are deliberately misleading and scaremongering adverts, which are illegal in the UK.
I hope Bonzi are bankrupted over this case.
Surely if it's audio only, why use Paul McGann and not the incredible Tom Baker ?
It's a story from his regeneration, his snow white hair doesn't matter with no pictures.
I like McGann, but Tom was the definitive Who.
Go here for a full list of what is good and bad to disable in the windows services screen.
It's pathetic they can't get more funding - bandwidth is expensive but it how much cheap advertising does SETI offer ?
Why can't one of the big cash sponsors like IBM offer a server for free ? Why can't major bandwidth users offer some of their pipeline for free ?
It's a harmless and to be honest almost pointless task running SETI, but with the right sponsors it costs nothing to run and generates at worst indifferent PR (i.e. not politically/morally offensive, or shareholder unfriendly), at best great PR (your company linked with millions of PCs worldwide).
Internet companies offering support for SETI is like a dog food company supporting the local pet rescue centre, it costs next to nothing and can't help but generate good PR.
Thanks for the informative reply.
So if a BR child can have BR or RR offspring, and a RR child can only pass on RR genes, then the red gene cannot possibly die out ?
The black haired child has a 50-50 chance of producing red haired children, and the red haired child has 100 % chance of doing the same. So aren't the odds stacked in the red gene's favour ?
If black hair is the more dominant gene then how do you explain my family, parents red and black hair, 3 children all red ?
Or Prince Harry ?
Of the half dozen friends I know with red hair, they all come from one red one black hair parents, which to my (admittedly limited) gene knowledge, seems to indicate red hair is a dominant gene.
Got any links to go with the wild claim red hair is going to be extinct in 100 years ? Or were you just trolling ?
Just like they didn't sit still for a cell phone ban, or a pager ban. Just like they didn't sit still for the smoking ban.
People will do anything an airline tells them to do in order to continue enjoying quick travel.
i the completely false claim that he changed his mind 3 times in 4 months is an example of your illogical frothing)
Hardly false - he has changed his mind twice in 2 months, has had 3 conflicting opinions on public record in 3 months.
Fantasising that I'm a P2P zealot won't get you anywhere, my disgust is based on his publicity seeking unscientific methods. Including his clear inability to look at a global picture before reaching conclusions - how can you claim P2P affects sales, when US record sales in countries without P2P are down too ? Shouldn't quality research take that into consideration ?
Those were rhetorical questions btw, I'm done with this thread.
Your 3 hour time line also assumes that the search for a complete album is instantaneous, and the download completes uninterrupted... It's even worse if you're a kid living with your parents-- they will not want you monopolising the phone line.
My 3 hour download time is based on practical experience of using Napster in its heyday, and unlike Stan, makes NO assumptions.
I'm basing the figure on an average of 15-20 minutes per track, totalling approximately 3 hours on completion.
You are assuming that is based on downloading an entire album in one go, which indicates your ignorance of common narrowband downloading practice. Tracks are downloaded one at a time - you search for the album, you click on a track you don't have and download it, you perhaps queue 2 or 3 songs up and leave it unattended to download them one at a time.
People using narrowband to download, predominately ARE children - using their phone access efficiently, perhaps 1 hour after school, which nets them 3 or 4 songs, perhaps sneakily downloading for a further hour during the family meal and so on.
Your post indicates ignorance of common unmetered usage narrowband techniques, as well as ignorance of P2P apps, you're certainly ignorant of what UK kids get up to (before lecturing, I was a teacher).
As I said before, you're now shifting the argument - it's no longer P2P, it's P2P with broadband. Which isn't what Stan is arguing.
Which still doesn't explain why a global market has shown a drop in sales, except in a country that traditionally has never relied heavily on US artists for entertainment. Most of the countries that have seen a drop in sales, don't have great narrowband access (still pay per minute), let alone broadband, so how do you explain their drop ?
You're speculating. But like Liebowitz, I'm prepared to reevaluate my position if there is new data available that appears to contradict it.
Like Liebowitz, you're prepared to jump from conclusion to conclusion, U-Turning with each bit of data released, rather than evaluting the bigger global picture and all the data available, before reaching a logical conclusion - that current data is inconclusive. Inconclusive results don't generate good interviews and book promotion however.
Actually if we're going to take the salon quote at face value, a more disturbing conclusion is reached
In other words, if we're going to be pedantic (which you appear to want to be), this economist never bothered examining the numbers before publishing his paper. If he had, salon would state he was RE-examining the numbers.
the impact of broadband is not necessarily going to be the same in the UK as it is in the US.
In 2001 it used to take me 2 - 3 hours on an unmetered narrowband line to download an entire album, hardly a big deal. 128k Cable access was highly popular then too. Would waiting 2 - 3 hours have put people off ?
Of course not, for one thing P2P and the internet was a novelty to most people, only having to wait 2 or 3 hours to get a free album would not have put stopped anyone, 3 hours would seem fast to the new user, just as 48kps internet is fast if you're used to 33k BBS systems.
But now you're shifting the argument, it's no longer the great demon P2P that is to blame for dropping US sales, it's the great demon P2P and his mysterious sidekick, ADSL. When record sales remain bouyant in the UK next year, following this summers broadband explosion, what excuse are you going to use then ?
People have been doing exercise with cassette players for years.
You obviously don't work out much - tapes get chewed, tapes jump, the heavy box bounces too much putting you off your timing, or it bounces right off your waistband and smashes on the floor. Solid State MP3 is the FIRST personal stereo system to truly cope with exercise regimes. As a previous poster states -
my vote right now goes for the Nike PSA120, which I'm looking at buying once I hit week 10 of my training program, as a reward. That thing's just perfect for runners, and even comes with an arm band to wear it on
Loathe as I am to respond to flamebait - (if you want an intelligent response, calling someone an idiot, stupid and a moron isn't the way to go about it), I feel I must point out that CDs haven't been around for 30 years.
So, he isn't being accurate when stating that the "CD industry" has seen its "biggest decline in 30 years", when the industry is only 20 years old.
I think that speaks volumes for the quality of his research, if he can't even accurately describe the trend he is analysing. (Does he mean CD industry over its 20 year life, or record industry over an arbitrary sample of 30 years ?) I'm afraid, with such ambiguous phrasing, I have no time for his "research", whatever it "proves" this week.
And I'm afraid I must have too much free time today, if I'm bothering to respond to such pig ignorant flamers.
Except he changed his mind yet again, within 2 months - June - August. I don't expect him to stick dogmatically to one opinion - I do expect him to perhaps stop giving book sales boosting interviews if his research is so inconclusive as to cause him to change his mind every other month. Admitting you were wrong is laudable, admitting you were wrong, "no I wasn't", "Yes I was" "I was wrong about being wrong", "I was wrong about being wrong about being wrong" just makes you look stupid. A researcher not looking for regular press interviews would have reached the conclusion that research into this area is inconclusive.
It's not like he's doing a complete U-turn.
But he did offer a U-Turn, then U-Turned back, in the space of 2 months. . Re-evaluting your position is all well and good, but if you can change your opinion so easily and quickly and regularly, then perhaps a little more thought is needed before publically making a statement is required. I'm a lecturer, if I publish a paper, go on record as stating my paper is now wrong, then a few weeks later go on record as stating my previous statement about being wrong, is wrong, I am going to look like an idiot to my peers, it's going to look like I'm publishing before I'm ready, just to get press.
he crux of his argument is that this is not the case, or to be more precise, recessions hurt music sales, but they don't hurt them that much. Ranting on slashdot that it isn't so is not much of a rebuttal.
The crux of his argument is that MP3 downloading seriously damages sales. It isn't so.
Perhaps the BBC is "ranting" also ?
As I stated - the UK had Napster, Guntella, WinMX, Musiccity and so on, yet UK sales increased by 5% last year. Or is Great Britain a statistical blip in Stan's ever changing world view ?
Yes, but this won't result in an increase in sales, because they could already buy albums to record for the purpose of jogging. The only difference is that there will be a new mediium. Or to put it another way, MP3s do not create a market that didn't already exist (or at least, you have not argued that this is the case)
Wrong.
As I previously stated - Solid state MP3 players allow people to jog or do violent exercise, where previous walkmans, discmans, mini-disc players and so forth would jump and skip. Therefore, the MP3 player is a new medium, and music ideal for such activity - 140 BPM 4/4 beat techno, should see an increase in sales, based on his argument that a new medium results in new sales.
The fact is, for every RIAA sponsored study that states the MP3 format is killing music, another study will prove otherwise. An academic who changes his position with the changing of the seasons, openly plugging a book every time he does so, rather than arguing that research is currently inconclusive, is worthy of scorn.
Stan Liebowitz, author of an upcoming book (set for publication Sept. 7) titled "Rethinking the Network Economy," is digging hard for quantitative answers.
So, not looking for free publicity to boost book sales then.
In May, Liebowitz published a paper suggesting that the record industry would soon be seriously harmed by MP3s. But in June, by the time Salon caught up with him, he was questioning his own conclusions after having examined the numbers and finding little solid proof that file sharing was hurting CD sales. Two months later, he's changed his mind again
So, this respected researcher has changed his mind three times in 4 months . Perhaps he should think and formulate a well conceived, intelligent opinion before opening his mouth next time - is this guy the salon version of the first post trolls ?
You don't publish a paper, then change your mind about your own conclusions less than a month later, then change your mind yet again, and expect to be taken seriously.
If it were the case that there was a 9.8 percent drop on albums, when you look at the historical record of the ups and downs of the CD industry, [that's] a bigger decline than we've seen in 30 years. It starts to look unusual.
Except, that a) we're in a recession, b) teenage disposable income is now spilt between DVDs, Games and CDs c) bland mass appeal music always sees a drop in sales - see the RIAA's "Home taping is killing music" campaign in the late disco, pre punk era.
If he thinks the drop is unusual then he isn't checking his historical data correctly. In addition, how can he explain the INCREASE in CD sales in the UK last year ? We have Napster too yer know.
It's really amazing how (CD) prices have tracked so closely with inflation. It's almost as if the industry just bumps up prices with the inflation rate
No shit Sherlock...
[What is clear is that] there's no evidence in the data that the tapes caused a decline.
MP3s wouldn't do the same thing. The reason cassettes led to growth was that before cassettes existed, you didn't have portable music. You couldn't play recorded music in your car, and you couldn't play it walking around, in a Walkman. It was the little cassette that basically allowed you to do that. To be technically correct, there were 8- track players prior to cassettes. But they didn't have quite the same penetration. My theory as to what went on is that [the rise in cassettes] coincides almost perfectly with the penetration rate of the portable, Walkman-type of thing. So it opened up this whole new market, which overwhelmed any copying that went on.
Oh dear.
Well 1) Most people didn't have recordable 8 tracks, so no, the 8 track WASN'T the same as musiccassettes. 2)We have new mediums now, such as the MP3 player, so according to your "theory" that should overwhelm any copying.
If people bought albums in the 80's specifically for the purpose of taping them for their new toy the walkman, then isn't the same going to happen now ? We should see an increase in up tempo running/jogging music, with the advent of solid state MP3 players which are finally immune to jumping, skipping and damage from violent movement.
So, either I'm going to see lots of hard cord techno stars from Germany and the UK become millionares as their record sales boom, or I'm going to see you change your mind about your pet theories yet again, probably just in time for the official release of your book.
Did Stan escape from Dallas University's, locked room, infinite monkeys on typewriters experiment ?
Front view
I fail to see why you can't cable it with fibre. For health and safety reasons they'll be bright red fire alarm boxes wired with tasteful orange cable, or covered with plastic trunking, all over the buildings already.
All national trust buildings are required to have modern electric cabling for normal lighting, power sockets (for the cleaners) as well as emergency exit lighting (to light the fire escape routes), which will be encased in trunking skirting the walls. Fibre optic or even Cat5 can be added to that trunking easily, and has been done on other historical sites.
Horseshit ? Most people who buy Dells do not have the knowledge to build their own PC.
Therefore a company like Walmart is a better option .
This thread is about buying a PC without Windows on it. Building your own PC is sometimes a better option, but this thread is discussing purchasing a non Windows PC out of the box, and which OEMs are prepared to supply them to individuals. You were completely flamebaiting/off topic with that reply.