BS. Upgrade from a 12 MPG vehicle to a 15 MPG vehicle, and you save 1 gallon over 60 miles (5-to-4). Upgrade from a 30 MPG vehicle to a 60 MPG vehicle, and you save 1 gallon (2-to-1).
Fine. Now upgrade from a 12 MPG vehicle to a 60 MPG vehicle, and you save FOUR gallons over 60 miles (5-to-1). Now describe to me how that's "incremental"?
Saying we should just concentrate on 12-to-15 is, to use a word, stupid.
Right. Name one tech company that gets the same amount of press. Name one tech company whose press events are always packed. Name one tech company whose press events and keynote speeches are ALWAYS liveblogged.
That's advertising too, and it seems to be working.
We spent billions on the parts and on putting the thing up there. If nothing else break apart the truss and stick smaller motors (ion, rocket, or otherwise) on the individual pieces and boost them up to a higher orbit.
Maybe the first stage of a Mars mission would be grabbing a spare module or two and a couple of big solar panels.
"Eventually, probably within my lifetime, I expect all the "made in China" labels to revert back to "made in Rednecktown, USA" labels, just like the good ol' days."
Great. So people just have to spend fifty years or so waiting for their jobs to come back.
"It will work in reducing emissions provided there is a switch to renewables (USA, Austrailia can manage) and/or nuclear (more densely populated countries). Otherwise, not so much."
Actually, it's much easier to reduce emissions produced from a central source. Even from coal. Carting around hundreds of pounds of scrubbing and sequestration equipment in a motor vehicle is more than a little bit counter-productive.
Methinks you should study the differences between global effects and regional changes. Global warming could, for example, be the cause of a lot more snow during the winter months in England.
I'm not sure MS would want to do this, you understand, but there's nothing really stopping them from offering "Geek Squad" paid services.
If Best Buy can service Dells, HPs, and Acers, MS ought to be able to hire the same kind of techs to do those services. Could be some decent revenue in it too, charging you extra to clean your machine of the viruses and other malware Windows let take up residence.
Sort of like charging you extra for MS AV/Firewall software that it shouldn't need in the first place...
"I meant to say compatibility, in reference to backwards compatibility and standards compatibility."
Which is even more confusing. Backwards compatibility with what? Apps work for the 2G, 3G, and 3GS, so what's not backwards compatible? Much of the code, like that using Core Data, even works on the Mac.
And standards compatibility? HTML 4/5? CSS? JS? JPG? MP3? AAC? MP4? ICAL? VCARD? To which "standards compatibility" issues are we referring?
"The iphone will not die a slow painful death, it will be a quick emasculation as people begin to see how limited it is compared to the competition..."
Or, given the sales numbers for the G1 and the Pre, sales will skyrocket as people just how bad the competition really is. Look at the comments being made by Sprint's excecutives. They expected "millions" of people to drop Apple and AT&T and embrace the Pre as the original 2-year contracts ended. Didn't happen. All that hype and they only got 1/5th the sales of a mere "upgrade" phone.
And the ORIGINAL iPhone must have been horrendous by that logic, as a million people stood in line to buy the 3G when it was released, and then a million more when the 3GS was released. 50 million iPhones and iPod Touch's in just two years.
Yep. Poor poor Apple.
And more storage, faster processors, higher resolution screens, HD video, better cameras, better battery life, front-facing camera for video iChat, built-in hardware for photo/video editing, WiMax, 802.11n, games, navigation, larger pad-style devices.... yeah, the iPhone 3GS is definitely the end-all-and-be-all of iPhones.
"The same can't be said for a development studio. If you decide that you are going to commit resources to making an app, you are likely to want a guarantee that it can be released."
If you're a development house and you commit resources and create a console game, is there an ironclad GUARANTEE that Walmart or Best Buy or Gamestop is going to stock it? No. The game may suck. The game may crash. And so on.
Just like with music and books and video, just because you create it doesn't mean you're guarenteed to sell it.
Ummm... reread for comprehension and you'll note that peak/off-peak pricing plays a major part, as (and as you mention) does tying the chargers into the grid in such a way that all of them aren't vying for power all at the same time.
Besides, a car tends to be in the garage with its charger only at night, as most people seem to take 'em out and drive 'em around in the daytime. Amazing how well that works.
"Electric-only vehicles will be a huge drain on the power grid. "
This meme always pops up, and is untrue as the existing infrastructure is perfectly capable of handling millions of electric vehicles.
"Since utilities have built enough power plants to provide electricity when people are operating their air conditioners at full blast, they have excess generating capacity during off-peak hours. As a result, according to an upcoming report from the Pacific Northwestern National Laboratory (PNNL), a Department of Energy lab, there is enough excess generating capacity during the night and morning to allow more than 80 percent of today's vehicles to make the average daily commute solely using this electricity. If plug-in-hybrid or all-electric-car owners charge their vehicles at these times, the power needed for about 180 million cars could be provided simply by running these plants at full capacity."
There's another troubling aspect to this that's yet to be discussed, and one that's especially double-plus-ironic considering that one of the deleted books was Orwell's 1984.
If they can download a book, and if they can delete a book, then they certainly have the capability to REPLACE a book. Imagine that some night thousands of Kindle ebooks disappear and then reappear... altered.
We are at war with Eurasia. We've always been at war with Eurasia...
"Every day I get a whole bunch of oxygen for free...."
Fine. Did someone spend $200 million dollars creating that oxygen for you? No? Hmmmm. Oxygen is an abundant resource. The money, time, energy, and talent needed to create a $200 million dollar movie is not.
"The reason copyright infringement is illegal is not because people are getting something valuable for free, it's because someone (the creator) is not getting their due."
Reread please. I meant that pirates are getting something valuable for free, with little to no chance of retribution.
"The unauthorised copier is breaching an implicit contract with the artist that reads something like "I will create this work now for no money [up front] if everyone who hears or sees it promises to give me some money when [and if] they do."
Bingo. (Though I made a few corrections.) One should also note that it's in our better interests for the process to work this way, instead of, say, buying shares in some future property. The author makes an investment and takes a risk. We get to evaluate the results in many ways (reviews, recommendations) and then decide if it has enough value to us to be worth the asking "per copy" price. Enough people do so, and the risk is rewarded. If few do so, then the author goes back to greeting people at Walmart.
And as I said before, the "per copy cost" is largely irrelevant. Spend $200 million making a movie and a million pressing DVDs, and the million spent making copies isn't even a half percent of the whole. Insignificant from that perspective.
"...a question of the severity of the punishment fitting the gravity of the misdeed."
Many misdeeds are punished with a disproportionate response. Littering near where I live is subject to a $1,000 fine. You probably won't get caught dumping some trash, but if you do... Fines for speeding are much less, but so are the chances of getting caught and given a ticket. Not to mention the whole points/insurance thing.
Basically it's an exercise in deterrence theory. If I told you that downloading a song meant that you had one chance in 1,000 of being shot, would you still do so? No. The potential reward isn't worth the potential risk.
Besides, I have a much better solution that "three strikes"...
"... your $70 DVD will immediately become an expensive coaster..."
So? I have quite a few games in a box somewhere that only run on DOS or Windows 95 or won't run on modern hardware. Time has converted them into expensive coasters for me.
Still, as available bandwidth numbers rise, more and more games will be distributed digitally, probably downloaded securely and directly from the publisher into your Wii-Box 3.
When that happens, Gamestop will go out of business. Like Blockbuster's retail stores, Gamestop is a technological dead end.
"If no one wants to pay for them, no one wants them produced."
BS. If all of those songs, movies, and games weren't wanted, then the whole P2P thing wouldn't exist. Pirates WANT the games, they just don't want to pay for them.
Which means in my book that they're not pirates, but parasites.
"It could be through complete copyright reform..."
Doesn't matter. Even if they backed off copyright to, say, 14 years, people would just find some other rationalization for stealing.
The real problems is that can get valuable stuff FOR FREE, and NOT get caught or punished. Fixing things will require either that: a) it's no longer free; or b) doing so leads to a probable chance of getting caught and punished.
"We are sharing temporal garbage as far as either of us knows."
If all you want are packets full of static and garbage then download them. Unfortunately, you don't, and instead download packets containing the lastest song by the Black Eye Peas, The Dark Knight, and the current copy of Photoshop.
None of which sprang into being without someone (or a lot of someones) spending a significant amount of time, money, energy, and other resources to create them.
So in my book, the "per copy cost" is irrelevant. Spend $200 million making a movie and a million pressing DVDs, and the million spent making copies isn't even a half percent of the whole. Insignificant from that perspective.
Slashdot Mirror
"Because it's cheaper to pay for gas for your truck than to pay for a second car."
Buy a 50-60 MPG Prius and a 10-year old cheap-ass ($1,000) truck to cover that 5%. Problem solved.
There's a dozen or so at a lot near me if you're interested.
BS. Upgrade from a 12 MPG vehicle to a 15 MPG vehicle, and you save 1 gallon over 60 miles (5-to-4). Upgrade from a 30 MPG vehicle to a 60 MPG vehicle, and you save 1 gallon (2-to-1).
Fine. Now upgrade from a 12 MPG vehicle to a 60 MPG vehicle, and you save FOUR gallons over 60 miles (5-to-1). Now describe to me how that's "incremental"?
Saying we should just concentrate on 12-to-15 is, to use a word, stupid.
Right. Name one tech company that gets the same amount of press. Name one tech company whose press events are always packed. Name one tech company whose press events and keynote speeches are ALWAYS liveblogged.
That's advertising too, and it seems to be working.
We spent billions on the parts and on putting the thing up there. If nothing else break apart the truss and stick smaller motors (ion, rocket, or otherwise) on the individual pieces and boost them up to a higher orbit.
Maybe the first stage of a Mars mission would be grabbing a spare module or two and a couple of big solar panels.
Great idea! Ah... got a spare ion drive on you? I left mine at home.
"Eventually, probably within my lifetime, I expect all the "made in China" labels to revert back to "made in Rednecktown, USA" labels, just like the good ol' days."
Great. So people just have to spend fifty years or so waiting for their jobs to come back.
Not a solution.
"It will work in reducing emissions provided there is a switch to renewables (USA, Austrailia can manage) and/or nuclear (more densely populated countries). Otherwise, not so much."
Actually, it's much easier to reduce emissions produced from a central source. Even from coal. Carting around hundreds of pounds of scrubbing and sequestration equipment in a motor vehicle is more than a little bit counter-productive.
Methinks you should study the differences between global effects and regional changes. Global warming could, for example, be the cause of a lot more snow during the winter months in England.
I'm not sure MS would want to do this, you understand, but there's nothing really stopping them from offering "Geek Squad" paid services.
If Best Buy can service Dells, HPs, and Acers, MS ought to be able to hire the same kind of techs to do those services. Could be some decent revenue in it too, charging you extra to clean your machine of the viruses and other malware Windows let take up residence.
Sort of like charging you extra for MS AV/Firewall software that it shouldn't need in the first place...
"I meant to say compatibility, in reference to backwards compatibility and standards compatibility."
Which is even more confusing. Backwards compatibility with what? Apps work for the 2G, 3G, and 3GS, so what's not backwards compatible? Much of the code, like that using Core Data, even works on the Mac.
And standards compatibility? HTML 4/5? CSS? JS? JPG? MP3? AAC? MP4? ICAL? VCARD? To which "standards compatibility" issues are we referring?
"... comparability and engineering problems."
Comparability problems? The ability to be likened or compared to something else?
Oh, and if you really want engineering problems, check out the return numbers on the Pre.
"The iphone will not die a slow painful death, it will be a quick emasculation as people begin to see how limited it is compared to the competition..."
Or, given the sales numbers for the G1 and the Pre, sales will skyrocket as people just how bad the competition really is. Look at the comments being made by Sprint's excecutives. They expected "millions" of people to drop Apple and AT&T and embrace the Pre as the original 2-year contracts ended. Didn't happen. All that hype and they only got 1/5th the sales of a mere "upgrade" phone.
And the ORIGINAL iPhone must have been horrendous by that logic, as a million people stood in line to buy the 3G when it was released, and then a million more when the 3GS was released. 50 million iPhones and iPod Touch's in just two years.
Yep. Poor poor Apple.
And more storage, faster processors, higher resolution screens, HD video, better cameras, better battery life, front-facing camera for video iChat, built-in hardware for photo/video editing, WiMax, 802.11n, games, navigation, larger pad-style devices.... yeah, the iPhone 3GS is definitely the end-all-and-be-all of iPhones.
Idiot.
"The same can't be said for a development studio. If you decide that you are going to commit resources to making an app, you are likely to want a guarantee that it can be released."
If you're a development house and you commit resources and create a console game, is there an ironclad GUARANTEE that Walmart or Best Buy or Gamestop is going to stock it? No. The game may suck. The game may crash. And so on.
Just like with music and books and video, just because you create it doesn't mean you're guarenteed to sell it.
"Imagine that there are 100,000 great apps out there. If they publish, 50k then they've encouraged those. But they've also discouraged 50k."
Nice way to pull imaginary numbers out of your ***.
"I don't know about you but I don't like having a 3rd party decide what code I can and can't release, and when."
Try getting your widget-whatsit on the shelf at Walmart.
Pretty much every store has someone whose job it is to decide what goes on the shelf and what doesn't.
Ummm... reread for comprehension and you'll note that peak/off-peak pricing plays a major part, as (and as you mention) does tying the chargers into the grid in such a way that all of them aren't vying for power all at the same time.
Besides, a car tends to be in the garage with its charger only at night, as most people seem to take 'em out and drive 'em around in the daytime. Amazing how well that works.
"Electric-only vehicles will be a huge drain on the power grid. "
This meme always pops up, and is untrue as the existing infrastructure is perfectly capable of handling millions of electric vehicles.
"Since utilities have built enough power plants to provide electricity when people are operating their air conditioners at full blast, they have excess generating capacity during off-peak hours. As a result, according to an upcoming report from the Pacific Northwestern National Laboratory (PNNL), a Department of Energy lab, there is enough excess generating capacity during the night and morning to allow more than 80 percent of today's vehicles to make the average daily commute solely using this electricity. If plug-in-hybrid or all-electric-car owners charge their vehicles at these times, the power needed for about 180 million cars could be provided simply by running these plants at full capacity."
http://www.evpowersystems.com/PHEVs%20Save%20Grid.htm [evpowersystems.com]
Note when you read this that it INCLUDES California.
There's another troubling aspect to this that's yet to be discussed, and one that's especially double-plus-ironic considering that one of the deleted books was Orwell's 1984.
If they can download a book, and if they can delete a book, then they certainly have the capability to REPLACE a book. Imagine that some night thousands of Kindle ebooks disappear and then reappear... altered.
We are at war with Eurasia. We've always been at war with Eurasia...
"Every day I get a whole bunch of oxygen for free...."
Fine. Did someone spend $200 million dollars creating that oxygen for you? No? Hmmmm. Oxygen is an abundant resource. The money, time, energy, and talent needed to create a $200 million dollar movie is not.
"The reason copyright infringement is illegal is not because people are getting something valuable for free, it's because someone (the creator) is not getting their due."
Reread please. I meant that pirates are getting something valuable for free, with little to no chance of retribution.
"The unauthorised copier is breaching an implicit contract with the artist that reads something like "I will create this work now for no money [up front] if everyone who hears or sees it promises to give me some money when [and if] they do."
Bingo. (Though I made a few corrections.) One should also note that it's in our better interests for the process to work this way, instead of, say, buying shares in some future property. The author makes an investment and takes a risk. We get to evaluate the results in many ways (reviews, recommendations) and then decide if it has enough value to us to be worth the asking "per copy" price. Enough people do so, and the risk is rewarded. If few do so, then the author goes back to greeting people at Walmart.
And as I said before, the "per copy cost" is largely irrelevant. Spend $200 million making a movie and a million pressing DVDs, and the million spent making copies isn't even a half percent of the whole. Insignificant from that perspective.
"...a question of the severity of the punishment fitting the gravity of the misdeed."
Many misdeeds are punished with a disproportionate response. Littering near where I live is subject to a $1,000 fine. You probably won't get caught dumping some trash, but if you do... Fines for speeding are much less, but so are the chances of getting caught and given a ticket. Not to mention the whole points/insurance thing.
Basically it's an exercise in deterrence theory. If I told you that downloading a song meant that you had one chance in 1,000 of being shot, would you still do so? No. The potential reward isn't worth the potential risk.
Besides, I have a much better solution that "three strikes"...
"... your $70 DVD will immediately become an expensive coaster..."
So? I have quite a few games in a box somewhere that only run on DOS or Windows 95 or won't run on modern hardware. Time has converted them into expensive coasters for me.
Still, as available bandwidth numbers rise, more and more games will be distributed digitally, probably downloaded securely and directly from the publisher into your Wii-Box 3.
When that happens, Gamestop will go out of business. Like Blockbuster's retail stores, Gamestop is a technological dead end.
Don't buy stock.
"If no one wants to pay for them, no one wants them produced."
BS. If all of those songs, movies, and games weren't wanted, then the whole P2P thing wouldn't exist. Pirates WANT the games, they just don't want to pay for them.
Which means in my book that they're not pirates, but parasites.
"It could be through complete copyright reform..."
Doesn't matter. Even if they backed off copyright to, say, 14 years, people would just find some other rationalization for stealing.
The real problems is that can get valuable stuff FOR FREE, and NOT get caught or punished. Fixing things will require either that: a) it's no longer free; or b) doing so leads to a probable chance of getting caught and punished.
Just like shoplifting in a store.
"Digital mediums have very low upkeep cost (virtually non-existent on a per file basis)..."
Perhaps on a "per file basis", but in aggregate all of those little "upkeep costs" add up. Quickly.
Servers. Software. Maintenance. Hard drives. Switches. Routers. Power. Bandwidth. Lots and lots and lots of bandwidth.
"We are sharing temporal garbage as far as either of us knows."
If all you want are packets full of static and garbage then download them. Unfortunately, you don't, and instead download packets containing the lastest song by the Black Eye Peas, The Dark Knight, and the current copy of Photoshop.
None of which sprang into being without someone (or a lot of someones) spending a significant amount of time, money, energy, and other resources to create them.
So in my book, the "per copy cost" is irrelevant. Spend $200 million making a movie and a million pressing DVDs, and the million spent making copies isn't even a half percent of the whole. Insignificant from that perspective.