There's no need for him to run as a third-party candidate. He would have to spend all his time, effort, and money just fighting to get on the ballots, and he would be excluded from all debates. Even so, he would probably only get 1-2 million votes in the general election. Also, if it's a close race in November, then no matter who loses, they would try to blame Ron Paul for siphoning off votes, from anti-war Dems if Hitlery loses or from constitutional Repubs if McCrazy loses.
By staying in, he gets to spread the message in more debates. The freedom movement needs all the exposure it can get. Additionally, he could still receive a million or more votes in November as a write-in candidate, without wasting a cent on a 3rd-party run.
Perhaps most important, he gets to run for his Congressional seat. If he runs for Pres. as a Libertarian he will alienate the Repubs in his home district. We need him in Congress (and many more like him).
The money I sent to his campaign was worth every cent. After 51 years, I got to vote for an honest politician. That alone was priceless. I hope to get that opportunity again.
This entire bill is a loophole. The auto companies don't have to do anything at all. They aren't required to do anything until 2020 and then they can request a waiver. This is like a lot of legislation in that it does nothing while allowing politicians to say they did something.
The stacks of cash can't help them. They are idea-poor. They're uncool. No buzz factor. They try to copy the hot trends, but it takes them 4 years to ship their version, and by then the buzz is gone and the world has moved on to something else. Linux and Firefox are eating their lunch, not necessarily with market share but with innovation, stability, privacy, and openness.
I think what will really kill them is DRM. It is so blatantly anti-user. They sold out to Hollywood, when they could have easily told Hollywood to go pee up a rope. What could Hollywood do if the platform used by 92% of the world refused to implement draconian copy controls? Nothing. Hollywood always threatened that if DRM wasn't there, they would refuse to release their content. So MSFT should have called their bluff. Don't release content, then. See how long your business lasts. Independent creators will fill the void.
-Red X (Close Button)- Some people were frustrated that Mozilla added a close button to every tab which resulted in an extension that removed those close buttons. Well, you no longer need to get an extension to remove those pesky X's, in fact there are multiple options that you can do now: display a close button on the active tab only, display close buttons on all tabs, don't display any close buttons, and display a single close button at the end of the tab strip (Firefox 1.x behavior). Here is how you can customize the placement:
1. Start Firefox.
2. In the Address Bar type "about:config" and press Enter.
3. Right-Click and select New->Integer.
4. A box requesting the Preference Name will popup and you should enter "browser.tabs.closeButtons" (without the quotes). Press OK to continue.
5. Now you need to select the type of close button you want: 0 - display a close button on the active tab only, 1 - display close buttons on all tabs, 2 - don't display any close buttons, and 3 - display a single close button at the end of the tab strip (Firefox 1.x behavior). After entering the value corresponding to your preference press OK again.
I think intermediate electric vehicles can help define a path toward cheap enough electric cars. I'm talking specifically about electric bikes and scooters. These are cheap to buy, have reasonable ranges of 15-30 miles and reasonable speeds of 20-30 MPH. There are some quality models like the $1200 Ego2 (www.egovehicles.com) that have sold in numbers and have millions of user miles on the design.
Of course these would not normally replace an automobile, except possibly in some small-town or inner-city applications. What they CAN do - now and cheaply - is help eliminate a lot of the traffic/pollution/noise/expense of the many small trips we take. The short runs to get take-out food, or to rent a video, swing by the grocery store, or drop by a friend's house. They can be used for commuting by people who live close enough to work.
There are hub motor kits that can "electrify" a normal bicycle for as little as $350. There are also some Vespa-sized electric scooters that have greater speed and range (think 35-40 miles range and similar MPH), and priced around $2000 - $3000. There is a full-sized electric motorcycle, the Vectrix (www.vectrixusa.com), which will retail for about $8000 and offers 50 mile range at an average 50 MPH (top speed is 63).
The point? Electric transportation is available now at reasonable prices and for reasonable uses. Sure there are limitations. Sure the battery technology is not mature. The only way to get there is to jump in and start using it. If even 10% of the car trips were replaced with electric bike or scooter trips, we would save money, save petrol, ease traffic, pollute less, enjoy our little errands more, and help create a market for innovation.
This $100 laptop has Billy Boy pooping his pants. Since the only hope for MSFT's continued dominance is to get people in developing countries to pay for a copy of Windows, he's toast. Instead of that, the UN wants to GIVE AWAY these laptops to every poor child in the world. The kids will grow up learning what a boon free software is, and how powerful collboration and cooperation can be in guiding their lives and reaching their goals.
MSFT doesn't get a cent from this, and when these kids are computer-savvy, they certainly won't look to MSFT for their next system's OS. The whole concept of BUYING software will be totally alien to them.
"How can RIAA/MPAA have any say in how electronic devices are made, and what they can support and can't?"
Here's one recent example. The AACS encryption scheme for playback of Blu-Ray discs. If you want to license AACS (to build a player) you have to agree to DOWNCONVERT the signal to the analog outputs.
If there comes a day that the major distributors of music, TV and films decide that it's in their best interest to release stuff that's easy to make unlimited copies of, they'll do so.
I think eventually the backlash against DRM, combined with cheap tools that allow individuals to create content, will result in an upheaval of content freedom, where producers want as many copies of their stuff out there as possible, and get paid various ways, like "tip jars" or holding back content until a certain amount of money is collected.
Let's face it, U2 doesn't need a record company. They could just run their own website and say, "We'll release our next album - FREE TO THE WORLD - as soon as we get $3 million in PayPal donations.
Business models that depend on artificial scarcity are doomed. There's no reason not to have a billion copies of a song out there. If only 1 person in 1000 donated a dollar to the artist, he'd make $1 million for writing a song!
Re:It's more then simply not liking it.
on
A Look at Google DRM
·
· Score: 2, Informative
Good post. Here's another example:
- After you spend $300 on a Blu-Ray player, a firmware hack is released on the net which circumvents the DRM. All players of that model are blacklisted by the authentication servers, and your player becoms non-functional.
Gates and Ballmer continue to display this obvious inferiority complex when it comes to Google. They are extremely jealous of what they like to call Google's "honeymoon phase", as if Google's popularity is about infatuation rather than technical excellence, respect for users, and price.
I like the story about the new, exclusive, Yuppified subdivision they built in Viginia about a decade ago - big, rambling homesites in a beautiful nature preserve - one of the big selling points was that they had left huge swatches of pristine forest among the homesites. That made it a haven for rich, liberal, environmentalist-types, who clearly saw that building a 30-room estate here was a way to preserve the land and the furry creatures who lived there.
Well, the big houses were built, with curved driveways, lush, rolling yards, and beautiful, tasteful landscaping. The thing about the expensive landscaping, though - the deer loved to eat it. A few deer could devour $6000 worth of landscaping in a night. It was a real problem. Nothing seemed able to deter the ravenous hunger of the deer - they would tear down fencing or jump over it.
After most of the new homeowners had replaced their landscaping 3 or 4 times, they'd finally had enough. The furry woodland creatures were public enemy #1. The Yuppie liberals hired PROFESSIONAL HUNTERS to clear out the deer from their woodland preserve. Yes, shoot to KILL those shrub-eatin' monsters! We cannot possibly bear the embarassment of over-nibbled Forsythia!
-- do all of the stuff I'm too dumb to come up with
Think of what a new, rich experience it will be to create documents, when embedded in Google Office are tools to access Google Earth, Wikipedia, Google Images, Google Video, your Gmail folders, and other online resources. You would only have to think of it - "gee, a sat image of the area would be perfect inserted right here" - and there it is. This is powerful stuff.
Same as always - make the maximum dollars on this week's overhyped buzz, then do it again next week. He'd love to charge $2.50 for the latest Britney song, because he knows the sales will drop like a stone when the next thing comes along.
And these Bozos have been corrupted by this bizarre idea of "ringtones". They figure if somebody's dumb enough to pay $1.99 for a 15-second,, lo-fi sample of a song, why can't they charge that much OR MORE for the same song at iTunes?
Ever notice on movies and TV when somebody's cell phone rings, it's always the default ring, not Coldplay or the theme from Phantom of the Opera? That's because ringtones are stupid
You nailed it. Gates and Ballmer like to talk about Google's "honeymoon", as if the buzz about Google is more about the hype of something new and not about providing great tools and a positive user experience.
Bill Gates said, "They have this slogan that they are going to organize the world's information. Our slogan is that we are going to give people tools to let them organize the world's information."
Notice how Bill said "we are going to GIVE people tools"? That is a lie. Microsoft wants to SELL people tools. Google is the one GIVING tools.
Stereophile, a high-end audio magazine, has done a complete test of the iPod, including sound quality issues. They didn't compare it to other portable players, though.
Users are becoming a market force, and if they don't like DRM, it will fall flat
I agree, except for one thing. To properly implement end-to-end DRM, the user needs a complete change of hardware and software, right? Well, that's exactly what Joe Average will get when he buys a new $399 system from Dell. It'll have DRM chips on the motherboard, Longhorn on the hard drive, and an encrypted link to the monitor.
Protected content will be sold only through these systems, and the market share will automatically increase as part of the natural upgrade cycle. Game over. It's the same old MS tactic of abusing the Windows monopoly. Why should they fear another slap on the wrist?
Your HDTV has component inputs? Lucky you. The only Hi-Def inputs on my 32" Princeton Graphics HDTV are RGB. Try finding a DVD player with RGB outputs.
you could have 4 250GB+ drives in your backup system. Using the slide-out trays, it is easy to move one or more drives to an offsite location. Then you'd have to decide whether to do full backups, incrementals, or a combination of both. In any case, backups are fast and it's easy to move the drives around or to replace a dead drive.
Peer Impact users can earn up to 10% of the price of shared tracks by becoming "NoiseMakers", music activists who pester others in chat rooms, email, message board postings, etc.
Slashdot Mirror
There's no need for him to run as a third-party candidate. He would have to spend all his time, effort, and money just fighting to get on the ballots, and he would be excluded from all debates. Even so, he would probably only get 1-2 million votes in the general election. Also, if it's a close race in November, then no matter who loses, they would try to blame Ron Paul for siphoning off votes, from anti-war Dems if Hitlery loses or from constitutional Repubs if McCrazy loses.
By staying in, he gets to spread the message in more debates. The freedom movement needs all the exposure it can get. Additionally, he could still receive a million or more votes in November as a write-in candidate, without wasting a cent on a 3rd-party run.
Perhaps most important, he gets to run for his Congressional seat. If he runs for Pres. as a Libertarian he will alienate the Repubs in his home district. We need him in Congress (and many more like him).
The money I sent to his campaign was worth every cent. After 51 years, I got to vote for an honest politician. That alone was priceless. I hope to get that opportunity again.
This entire bill is a loophole. The auto companies don't have to do anything at all. They aren't required to do anything until 2020 and then they can request a waiver. This is like a lot of legislation in that it does nothing while allowing politicians to say they did something.
Aptera
https://aptera.com/
All-electric version is $27,000, range of 120 miles, top speed of 95. This would be your around-town model.
Electric/gas hybrid is $30,000. Electric drive with a tiny combustion engine to charge the batteries. Unlimited range.
Plus, dig that Jetsonian interior!
The stacks of cash can't help them. They are idea-poor. They're uncool. No buzz factor. They try to copy the hot trends, but it takes them 4 years to ship their version, and by then the buzz is gone and the world has moved on to something else. Linux and Firefox are eating their lunch, not necessarily with market share but with innovation, stability, privacy, and openness.
I think what will really kill them is DRM. It is so blatantly anti-user. They sold out to Hollywood, when they could have easily told Hollywood to go pee up a rope. What could Hollywood do if the platform used by 92% of the world refused to implement draconian copy controls? Nothing. Hollywood always threatened that if DRM wasn't there, they would refuse to release their content. So MSFT should have called their bluff. Don't release content, then. See how long your business lasts. Independent creators will fill the void.
Any old PC + ClarkConnect = cheap, reliable home server.
Why spend a bunch of money for something that's locked down with DRM and other restrictions?
One problem with that. Any Dems or Reps listed on the ballot have already sold their souls.
Don't give me any malarky about voting for the "lesser of two evils". If you do that, you are VOTING FOR EVIL, and you deserve this broken government.
-Red X (Close Button)-
Some people were frustrated that Mozilla added a close button to every tab which resulted in an extension that removed those close buttons. Well, you no longer need to get an extension to remove those pesky X's, in fact there are multiple options that you can do now: display a close button on the active tab only, display close buttons on all tabs, don't display any close buttons, and display a single close button at the end of the tab strip (Firefox 1.x behavior). Here is how you can customize the placement:
1. Start Firefox.
2. In the Address Bar type "about:config" and press Enter.
3. Right-Click and select New->Integer.
4. A box requesting the Preference Name will popup and you should enter "browser.tabs.closeButtons" (without the quotes). Press OK to continue.
5. Now you need to select the type of close button you want: 0 - display a close button on the active tab only, 1 - display close buttons on all tabs, 2 - don't display any close buttons, and 3 - display a single close button at the end of the tab strip (Firefox 1.x behavior). After entering the value corresponding to your preference press OK again.
http://tech.cybernetnews.com/2006/08/31/download-t he-portable-version-of-firefox-2-beta-2/
You misspelled it. It isn't terrists. Our President pronounces it "teris". It's shorter and sweeter.
I think intermediate electric vehicles can help define a path toward cheap enough electric cars. I'm talking specifically about electric bikes and scooters. These are cheap to buy, have reasonable ranges of 15-30 miles and reasonable speeds of 20-30 MPH. There are some quality models like the $1200 Ego2 (www.egovehicles.com) that have sold in numbers and have millions of user miles on the design.
Of course these would not normally replace an automobile, except possibly in some small-town or inner-city applications. What they CAN do - now and cheaply - is help eliminate a lot of the traffic/pollution/noise/expense of the many small trips we take. The short runs to get take-out food, or to rent a video, swing by the grocery store, or drop by a friend's house. They can be used for commuting by people who live close enough to work.
There are hub motor kits that can "electrify" a normal bicycle for as little as $350. There are also some Vespa-sized electric scooters that have greater speed and range (think 35-40 miles range and similar MPH), and priced around $2000 - $3000. There is a full-sized electric motorcycle, the Vectrix (www.vectrixusa.com), which will retail for about $8000 and offers 50 mile range at an average 50 MPH (top speed is 63).
The point? Electric transportation is available now at reasonable prices and for reasonable uses. Sure there are limitations. Sure the battery technology is not mature. The only way to get there is to jump in and start using it. If even 10% of the car trips were replaced with electric bike or scooter trips, we would save money, save petrol, ease traffic, pollute less, enjoy our little errands more, and help create a market for innovation.
Great idea! Strip out all the stuff people don't use and turn MS Office into OO.o. Then offer it for free!
This $100 laptop has Billy Boy pooping his pants. Since the only hope for MSFT's continued dominance is to get people in developing countries to pay for a copy of Windows, he's toast. Instead of that, the UN wants to GIVE AWAY these laptops to every poor child in the world. The kids will grow up learning what a boon free software is, and how powerful collboration and cooperation can be in guiding their lives and reaching their goals.
MSFT doesn't get a cent from this, and when these kids are computer-savvy, they certainly won't look to MSFT for their next system's OS. The whole concept of BUYING software will be totally alien to them.
"How can RIAA/MPAA have any say in how electronic devices are made, and what they can support and can't?"
m l
Here's one recent example. The AACS encryption scheme for playback of Blu-Ray discs. If you want to license AACS (to build a player) you have to agree to DOWNCONVERT the signal to the analog outputs.
http://www.videobusiness.com/article/CA6300812.ht
Try Tiki Bar TV
http://tikibartv.blogspot.com/
I think eventually the backlash against DRM, combined with cheap tools that allow individuals to create content, will result in an upheaval of content freedom, where producers want as many copies of their stuff out there as possible, and get paid various ways, like "tip jars" or holding back content until a certain amount of money is collected.
Let's face it, U2 doesn't need a record company. They could just run their own website and say, "We'll release our next album - FREE TO THE WORLD - as soon as we get $3 million in PayPal donations.
Business models that depend on artificial scarcity are doomed. There's no reason not to have a billion copies of a song out there. If only 1 person in 1000 donated a dollar to the artist, he'd make $1 million for writing a song!
Good post. Here's another example:
- After you spend $300 on a Blu-Ray player, a firmware hack is released on the net which circumvents the DRM. All players of that model are blacklisted by the authentication servers, and your player becoms non-functional.
Gates and Ballmer continue to display this obvious inferiority complex when it comes to Google. They are extremely jealous of what they like to call Google's "honeymoon phase", as if Google's popularity is about infatuation rather than technical excellence, respect for users, and price.
I like the story about the new, exclusive, Yuppified subdivision they built in Viginia about a decade ago - big, rambling homesites in a beautiful nature preserve - one of the big selling points was that they had left huge swatches of pristine forest among the homesites. That made it a haven for rich, liberal, environmentalist-types, who clearly saw that building a 30-room estate here was a way to preserve the land and the furry creatures who lived there.
Well, the big houses were built, with curved driveways, lush, rolling yards, and beautiful, tasteful landscaping. The thing about the expensive landscaping, though - the deer loved to eat it. A few deer could devour $6000 worth of landscaping in a night. It was a real problem. Nothing seemed able to deter the ravenous hunger of the deer - they would tear down fencing or jump over it.
After most of the new homeowners had replaced their landscaping 3 or 4 times, they'd finally had enough. The furry woodland creatures were public enemy #1. The Yuppie liberals hired PROFESSIONAL HUNTERS to clear out the deer from their woodland preserve. Yes, shoot to KILL those shrub-eatin' monsters! We cannot possibly bear the embarassment of over-nibbled Forsythia!
Think of what a new, rich experience it will be to create documents, when embedded in Google Office are tools to access Google Earth, Wikipedia, Google Images, Google Video, your Gmail folders, and other online resources. You would only have to think of it - "gee, a sat image of the area would be perfect inserted right here" - and there it is. This is powerful stuff.
Same as always - make the maximum dollars on this week's overhyped buzz, then do it again next week. He'd love to charge $2.50 for the latest Britney song, because he knows the sales will drop like a stone when the next thing comes along.
And these Bozos have been corrupted by this bizarre idea of "ringtones". They figure if somebody's dumb enough to pay $1.99 for a 15-second,, lo-fi sample of a song, why can't they charge that much OR MORE for the same song at iTunes?
Ever notice on movies and TV when somebody's cell phone rings, it's always the default ring, not Coldplay or the theme from Phantom of the Opera? That's because ringtones are stupid
You nailed it. Gates and Ballmer like to talk about Google's "honeymoon", as if the buzz about Google is more about the hype of something new and not about providing great tools and a positive user experience.
Bill Gates said, "They have this slogan that they are going to organize the world's information. Our slogan is that we are going to give people tools to let them organize the world's information."
Notice how Bill said "we are going to GIVE people tools"? That is a lie. Microsoft wants to SELL people tools. Google is the one GIVING tools.
Stereophile, a high-end audio magazine, has done a complete test of the iPod, including sound quality issues. They didn't compare it to other portable players, though.
http://stereophile.com/mediaservers/934/
I agree, except for one thing. To properly implement end-to-end DRM, the user needs a complete change of hardware and software, right? Well, that's exactly what Joe Average will get when he buys a new $399 system from Dell. It'll have DRM chips on the motherboard, Longhorn on the hard drive, and an encrypted link to the monitor.
Protected content will be sold only through these systems, and the market share will automatically increase as part of the natural upgrade cycle. Game over. It's the same old MS tactic of abusing the Windows monopoly. Why should they fear another slap on the wrist?
Your HDTV has component inputs? Lucky you. The only Hi-Def inputs on my 32" Princeton Graphics HDTV are RGB. Try finding a DVD player with RGB outputs.
Using an inexpensive case like this:
f or-multiple-drives-4x.html
http://www.cooldrives.com/usb-external-enclosure-
you could have 4 250GB+ drives in your backup system. Using the slide-out trays, it is easy to move one or more drives to an offsite location. Then you'd have to decide whether to do full backups, incrementals, or a combination of both. In any case, backups are fast and it's easy to move the drives around or to replace a dead drive.
Peer Impact users can earn up to 10% of the price of shared tracks by becoming "NoiseMakers", music activists who pester others in chat rooms, email, message board postings, etc.