I don't think most authors of GPL-licensed software would have a problem with copyright term going back to what it was originally, instead of the now effectively infinite duration due to continual term extension. Therefore, protesting companies who abuse these extensions is not hypocritical.
I'm sure they would. My point was that it's hypocritical to download gigabytes of tracks off p2p networks then grouse about how some group is violating the GPL; if you want the law to protect your rights, that same law is going to protect somebody else's rights too.
Yeah, I strayed from the main point of the downloads violating copyright; I didn't mean to get into the "boycott the RIAA crap pushed out" because you're right, it IS in fact mainstream because people buy it/download it/demand it; it's a very subjective assertion that it's "crap."
Now, if only the general public realized they bring this on themselves by continuing to fund the **AAs with their purchases, maybe it'd actually make a difference...
Now, if only the general public realized they bring this on themselves by continuing to violate copyright (remember all you GPL fans, these are the same copyright laws that give the GPL substance*), maybe it'd actually make a difference...
You want to make a difference? Simply voting with your wallet by not purchasing tracks isn't enough. That's only part one.
Part two is STOP VIOLATING COPYRIGHT by downloading the tracks. The RIAA and record labels are after your money. First they try to get your money via sales of tracks (physical CDs or downloads from online resellers). If you don't buy the tracks but download from p2p networks, they will try to get your money via lawsuit. Either way, they get your money.
Once sales drop AND p2p downloads ALSO drop, the labels will get the idea that the product they push is crap and need to change in order to make it worthwhile. They would have to, since both revenue streams (via sales and litigation) would dry up.
* I'm not implying that GPL fans are also p2p downloaders; I'm pointing out that laws that protect your rights are the same laws that protect others' rights, and cannot be applied selectively.
Exactly. There is basically no security at all, apart from the requirement to have a big phat (and thus obvious...) transmitter. 30 meter antennae are somewhat hard to procure and hide, so anybody pulling such a stunt from an industrialized country would probably be caught within days. But do it from within a third-world country where nobody gives a damn, and you're free to air.
You are incorrect regarding antenna size. Satellite communications is possible using COTS equipment such as a Ku-band (about 14 GHz up, 11 GHz down) antenna about 1 m across. If you want to go C-band (6 Ghz/4 GHz), then a dish about 2.5 m across is sufficient. You only need about 100-400 W of power, again available in COTS equipment.
If you're not concerned with some of the requirements for your transmitted signal (particularly beamwidth), you can use dishes even smaller than these, provided you have sufficient transmitter power.
Such equipment must be available on the black market; if groups such as the Tamil Tigers can afford to buy black-market weapons, I can easily imagine the black-market availability of such technology for the right price.
OK, bad form to reply to one's own post, so sue me.
Later in the article, regarding Greasemonkey:
Greasemonkey
Hey, wait just a minute. Wasn't this on our list of best extensions? Well, yes it was. Greasemonkey is a really nifty extension to use, as long as you know what you're doing with it. It can potentially get you in trouble because it allows JavaScripts written by other people to run in Firefox. If one of those scripts is malicious, your system could be at risk.
Which is why you use NoScript!
To stay out of trouble, you should use Greasemonkey only with scripts you know are safe, either because you're familiar enough with JavaScript to satisfy yourself or because the script has enough comments at userscripts.org to indicate that people are using it with no ill effects.
OK, the author rips NoScript for blocking JavaScript, and then cuts into Greasemonkey for...wait for it...ALLOWING JavaScript!
Does NoScript make Firefox safer? Sure. Is it worth the hassle? No. For some reason, paranoia seems to be cool among Web geeks, but for the most part, it is totally unwarranted unless you're sending and receiving sensitive data. Most typical Web surfers who install this extension remove it after the novelty wears off.
Paranoia is not "cool among Web geeks,", it's an unfortunate necessity when wandering the jungle that is the World Wide Web. How many times do we hear about exploits using JavaScript? Too often, in my mind's eye. If a particular site that you trust needs JavaScript to run, then whitelist it, even if just temporarily, with two mouse clicks.
I don't call it "paranoid," I call it "due caution" and it is, in fact, worth the minor hassle.
Actually, I tend to save a couple of dollars every trip to the grocery store with it, and if the grocer knows my grocery habits, I really don't care. I'll spend time and energy protecting info that NEEDS protection, like bank account numbers and credit card numbers, not my preference for whole wheat bread over white or rye. If I don't want a particular purchase "remembered," I don't use the card and pay cash. There's a concern for privacy, and there's paranoia.
I'll agree with you though as far as Facebook/MySpace type sites go...before you post it on a web site, ask yourself this: Would you post it on a billboard along the freeway? Ask that, because that is exactly where it is going--on a billboard along the "Information Superhighway."
And you used to have to go to a page 2-3 times, whereas with an Intel Mac, you only have to go their once to get the same information. That would explain the drop in PowerPC Macs browser stats without a similar increase in Intel Macs.
Umm...huh?? Why does a PPC Mac have to visit a page more often than in Intel Mac? That makes zero sense to me.
Once you have tried Vista, I doubt you will want to use a Mac again. Don't take my word for it though. You should just try it for yourself.
I have done exactly that...and quickly restored my HP laptop to XP and felt thanks for having my OS X.
All the things I could do easily in XP were now an almightly trial in Vista. The interface in Vista has the feel of "change for the sake of change" instead of making anything more useful or easier to do. I won't go into the whole "You moved your mouse pointer, cancel or allow?" issue; I spent more time answering those *@*$*&%R dialog boxes than getting anything done.
No, I tried Vista and OS X side by side...Vista did not win me over.
Yes, previously releases except for WinME. Unfortunately, the manufacturers didn't remember that product, or they may have considered the possibility of Vista being another MS failure. Then again, they went for WinME full steam ahead, and forgot about MS BOB.
I think the manufacturers "forgot" about WinME out of self-preservation. The brain can "lock away" traumatic experiences to prevent one from going insane; the collective brains are doing the same thing here.
The ipod is a very successful product. Part of that comes down to not so much what features it has, but what was left out.
"Just pack it full of features" is a very easy and lazy way to define products. Add too much detail and you gunk up the UI. It is way harder and more important to figure out what to leave out to make it easier to use and "cleaner" for the target user base. There are huge numbers of features that could have been added to ipod, but some of its appeal comes from relative simplicity.
iPhone does not need huge numbers of features to be successful. So long as it does the functions that the target audience expects, it should do well.
True, true. I'll also toss this little tidbit in:
Even if it is left by the wayside as far as phones go, remember it is also a widescreen iPod. A widescreen, touchscreen iPod. If the phone flops as a phone, just pull the phone features from the firmware and hardware, add storage capacity, and it's still a widescreen iPod. No need to change the form factor.
In a way, by making it an iPod as well as a phone, Apple has hedged its bet regarding success in the cellular phone market.
Other OS - such as Linux or *BSD, that already have good support for running on slow read-only media (LiveCDs) for a long time, that don't need writing that much (except/var and/tmp, most of the rest of the installation can be read-only), and that support special file systems designed for lower wear (JFFS and such), may fare better : for example there are some Linux distribution that are tested for running from flash, like Damn Small Linux.
At the risk of asking a dumb question or missing an important point...Would you mitigate this wear by creating a RAM disk for items that are frequently read/written, and periodically (every few hours? When going to standby? Only on shutdown?) update the flash drive with the "temporary" contents. I can see the argument that a swap file in RAM is pointless (simulating virtual memory on a RAM disk would be silly--if you have the RAM for a swap file on a RAM disk, you have RAM to use as RAM directly) but things that get frequently written would be RAM disk candidates (home directories for example?)
A smart investor will not put his money in something that has the risk of becoming valueless. Evidently, Linden has made many people very confident that their world will be not just up and functioning but thriving for a long time to come, and therefore its land has legitimate value in the same way that anything else might.
The risk here isn't in that what you "purchase" would become valueless; that happens when you buy stock in a company that goes bankrupt.
The risk here is that you are buying virtual real estate (would that make it "virtual estate"?) If you buy a real piece of property and the real estate market dives, the value of your property dives, but it doesn't cease to exist. That plot of land may be worth 1/10 of the purchase price, but it still exists; it didn't vanish.
You buy property in SL, and if SL goes under, you have nothing. It seems to me that buying "property" in SL is more like buying stock in SL, symbolized by the virtual estate you own instead of stock certificates.
Wow, I read through the comments posted so far, and in 3-1/2 hours, only one talks about the Silverstein v. e360 lawsuit, which is the article posted (lending proof that Slashdotters don't RTFA):).
All the comments are on the e360 v. Spamhaus suit. Understandable, since the summary doesn't even talk about the linked article either.
The computer can only do what it is told, but you're not telling it everything. You don't control the CPU's microcode. You don't control the code on the video adapter. Et cetera.
This is true. However, the computer did not make a mistake. The code executed EXACTLY as it was written. Your portion of the code may be correct, but underlying code (interpreter/compiler, whatever) was incorrect as written/entered by the programmer responsible for it.
You're telling it "go forth and do some things; I will leave the details up to you".
No, you are telling it to "go forth and do some things; I will leave the details up to the programmer who wrote the OS or compiler or whatever other code is executing to support my instructions".
You are also correct in that it may not be your fault, but it's not the computer's fault either. The computer did not write the code it is executing, it is simply behaving as it is told, in a very exact manner.
You could compare it to the cheapest Toyota, sure...but that wouldn't be an equal comparison in the opposite direction. The Prius is going to have creature comforts and performance that are better than the econobox.
But if you want to compare Toyota's cheapest model to the Prius, we'll do that.
The 2007 Toyota Yaris; Toyota's cheapest model at about $11150 MSRP:
Fuel economy: 34 MPG city/39 HWY with the automatic transmission (manual gets 1 MPG better on HWY, city is same) from a 1.5L, 104 HP engine.
2007 Prius, $22175 MSRP: 60 MPG city/51 MPG HWY from a 1.5L, 76 HP engine
The hybrid premium appears to be about $11,000 which would take longer to recoup if deciding between the Prius and Yaris. But is it a good comparison? NO! The two cars are in completely different classes.
Prius dimensions: Overall height/width/length 58.7/67.9/175.0
Yaris dimensions: 60/60.7/150.6
Just on sheer size alone, there is simply more to a Prius than a Yaris. It's bigger in overall size (the Yaris gets a slight edge in headroom, but only by half an inch on average), more interior room, different amenities not available on the Yaris...in short, not a fair comparison. The hybrid premium could be as low as $1300, or as high as about $7800, based on the price comparisons of the Toyota Camry, as it comes in hybrid and conventional models which lends itself to a more direct comparison (which I don't have time to do).
If you have a car that gets 20 mpg (the majority do; even most trucks get over 15) then it will take you something like fifty years before you save a penny, and maybe longer before you save any energy, by replacing your vehicle with a hybrid.
How do you figure 50 years?
I did a little "back of the envelope" math and came up with the following:
Based on 20 MPG and $2.50/gallon, your car costs $0.125/mile in fuel.
My 2003 Prius gets 45 MPG, which equates to $0.055/mile.
That's a difference of $0.07/mile.
If you figure that the "break even" point where the premium for the hybrid (I used $5000, but it could be more) is saved in fuel costs, I got 71,429 miles. At 15,000 miles per year, that's 4.76 years.
A bit off from your 50 years isn't it?
Note that I didn't figure in costs such as repairs (ANY car can have expensive things go bad), I was just looking at the fuel cost, which seemed to be the focus of your "50 years" statement.
300,000 isn't a valid life expectancy for most cars, but it is at least possible for a gas engine to last that long. I've known such cars. On the other hand, you're _certainly_ replacing the battery pack in a Prius by 100,000 miles, and the battery pack is the nastiest thing to make.
Your source of this information?
My Prius is hitting the 100,000 mile mark. My dealer did a battery test at 90,000 miles, and it passed with flying colors. The WARRANTY is for 100,000 miles, but the battery is designed to be useful for the life of the car.
If you want to make an more even comparison, divide each one by the same expected lifetime.
Let's call that expected lifetime to be 200,000 miles==split the difference in this report. I come up with the following:
Prius (2005): $1.63/mile
(2006): $1.43/mile
Hummer: $2.93/mile
Any report that calls a car's expected lifetime to be only 100,000 miles is GROSSLY suspect in its calculations.
At issue are the royalty fees paid to royalty holders for broadcast music. The rates are going to drive Internet radio into the ground, and even major communications companies don't like it.
If you are a small station and don't want to/can't afford these new royalties, why not just drop the content entirely and support local talent instead?
There's lots of big talk about boycotting the big media companies due to heavy-handed tactics to protect their copyright and the lack of any good, new talent in mainstream media. If that's the case, I would think that more and more broadcasters would move to supporting local talent and dumping the dross that the major labels produce. After all, you don't pay royalties if you don't broadcast the content.
The royalties in question only apply to digital transmissions of music, such as through Web sites, and are paid to the performers of songs and record labels. Webcasters also pay additional royalties to the composers and publishers of music, similar to those also paid by over-the-air broadcasters.
Go independent, and I'd bet a lot of these fees go down, down, down and payment to the independent artist goes up, up, up. Isn't that what we all want in the first place?
Slashdot Mirror
I'm sure they would. My point was that it's hypocritical to download gigabytes of tracks off p2p networks then grouse about how some group is violating the GPL; if you want the law to protect your rights, that same law is going to protect somebody else's rights too.
Yeah, I strayed from the main point of the downloads violating copyright; I didn't mean to get into the "boycott the RIAA crap pushed out" because you're right, it IS in fact mainstream because people buy it/download it/demand it; it's a very subjective assertion that it's "crap."
Now, if only the general public realized they bring this on themselves by continuing to violate copyright (remember all you GPL fans, these are the same copyright laws that give the GPL substance*), maybe it'd actually make a difference...
You want to make a difference? Simply voting with your wallet by not purchasing tracks isn't enough. That's only part one.
Part two is STOP VIOLATING COPYRIGHT by downloading the tracks. The RIAA and record labels are after your money. First they try to get your money via sales of tracks (physical CDs or downloads from online resellers). If you don't buy the tracks but download from p2p networks, they will try to get your money via lawsuit. Either way, they get your money.
Once sales drop AND p2p downloads ALSO drop, the labels will get the idea that the product they push is crap and need to change in order to make it worthwhile. They would have to, since both revenue streams (via sales and litigation) would dry up.
* I'm not implying that GPL fans are also p2p downloaders; I'm pointing out that laws that protect your rights are the same laws that protect others' rights, and cannot be applied selectively.
You are incorrect regarding antenna size. Satellite communications is possible using COTS equipment such as a Ku-band (about 14 GHz up, 11 GHz down) antenna about 1 m across. If you want to go C-band (6 Ghz/4 GHz), then a dish about 2.5 m across is sufficient. You only need about 100-400 W of power, again available in COTS equipment.
If you're not concerned with some of the requirements for your transmitted signal (particularly beamwidth), you can use dishes even smaller than these, provided you have sufficient transmitter power.
Such equipment must be available on the black market; if groups such as the Tamil Tigers can afford to buy black-market weapons, I can easily imagine the black-market availability of such technology for the right price.
Later in the article, regarding Greasemonkey:
Which is why you use NoScript!
OK, the author rips NoScript for blocking JavaScript, and then cuts into Greasemonkey for...wait for it...ALLOWING JavaScript!
Call me confused.
Paranoia is not "cool among Web geeks,", it's an unfortunate necessity when wandering the jungle that is the World Wide Web. How many times do we hear about exploits using JavaScript? Too often, in my mind's eye. If a particular site that you trust needs JavaScript to run, then whitelist it, even if just temporarily, with two mouse clicks.
I don't call it "paranoid," I call it "due caution" and it is, in fact, worth the minor hassle.
Actually, I tend to save a couple of dollars every trip to the grocery store with it, and if the grocer knows my grocery habits, I really don't care. I'll spend time and energy protecting info that NEEDS protection, like bank account numbers and credit card numbers, not my preference for whole wheat bread over white or rye. If I don't want a particular purchase "remembered," I don't use the card and pay cash. There's a concern for privacy, and there's paranoia.
I'll agree with you though as far as Facebook/MySpace type sites go...before you post it on a web site, ask yourself this: Would you post it on a billboard along the freeway? Ask that, because that is exactly where it is going--on a billboard along the "Information Superhighway."
Umm...huh?? Why does a PPC Mac have to visit a page more often than in Intel Mac? That makes zero sense to me.
Nice recycling of a previous post from last month
Oh, and here too...not even on Slashdot October 2003
And here
Hell, I'm not going to point out more, go find them yourself
I have done exactly that...and quickly restored my HP laptop to XP and felt thanks for having my OS X.
All the things I could do easily in XP were now an almightly trial in Vista. The interface in Vista has the feel of "change for the sake of change" instead of making anything more useful or easier to do. I won't go into the whole "You moved your mouse pointer, cancel or allow?" issue; I spent more time answering those *@*$*&%R dialog boxes than getting anything done.
No, I tried Vista and OS X side by side...Vista did not win me over.
I think the manufacturers "forgot" about WinME out of self-preservation. The brain can "lock away" traumatic experiences to prevent one from going insane; the collective brains are doing the same thing here.
This was posted on the 31st...should have waited that extra half hour.
True, true. I'll also toss this little tidbit in:
Even if it is left by the wayside as far as phones go, remember it is also a widescreen iPod. A widescreen, touchscreen iPod. If the phone flops as a phone, just pull the phone features from the firmware and hardware, add storage capacity, and it's still a widescreen iPod. No need to change the form factor.
In a way, by making it an iPod as well as a phone, Apple has hedged its bet regarding success in the cellular phone market.
Really? There's advertising on web pages? I hadn't noticed.
Dammit I use a MacBook and don't have a drive light, you insensitive clod!
(I couldn't stop myself...sorry)
At the risk of asking a dumb question or missing an important point...Would you mitigate this wear by creating a RAM disk for items that are frequently read/written, and periodically (every few hours? When going to standby? Only on shutdown?) update the flash drive with the "temporary" contents. I can see the argument that a swap file in RAM is pointless (simulating virtual memory on a RAM disk would be silly--if you have the RAM for a swap file on a RAM disk, you have RAM to use as RAM directly) but things that get frequently written would be RAM disk candidates (home directories for example?)
Just a thought.
Or grant them civil rights
The risk here isn't in that what you "purchase" would become valueless; that happens when you buy stock in a company that goes bankrupt.
The risk here is that you are buying virtual real estate (would that make it "virtual estate"?) If you buy a real piece of property and the real estate market dives, the value of your property dives, but it doesn't cease to exist. That plot of land may be worth 1/10 of the purchase price, but it still exists; it didn't vanish.
You buy property in SL, and if SL goes under, you have nothing. It seems to me that buying "property" in SL is more like buying stock in SL, symbolized by the virtual estate you own instead of stock certificates.
Wow, I read through the comments posted so far, and in 3-1/2 hours, only one talks about the Silverstein v. e360 lawsuit, which is the article posted (lending proof that Slashdotters don't RTFA) :).
All the comments are on the e360 v. Spamhaus suit. Understandable, since the summary doesn't even talk about the linked article either.
This is true. However, the computer did not make a mistake. The code executed EXACTLY as it was written. Your portion of the code may be correct, but underlying code (interpreter/compiler, whatever) was incorrect as written/entered by the programmer responsible for it.
No, you are telling it to "go forth and do some things; I will leave the details up to the programmer who wrote the OS or compiler or whatever other code is executing to support my instructions".
You are also correct in that it may not be your fault, but it's not the computer's fault either. The computer did not write the code it is executing, it is simply behaving as it is told, in a very exact manner.
You could compare it to the cheapest Toyota, sure...but that wouldn't be an equal comparison in the opposite direction. The Prius is going to have creature comforts and performance that are better than the econobox.
But if you want to compare Toyota's cheapest model to the Prius, we'll do that.
The 2007 Toyota Yaris; Toyota's cheapest model at about $11150 MSRP:
Fuel economy: 34 MPG city/39 HWY with the automatic transmission (manual gets 1 MPG better on HWY, city is same) from a 1.5L, 104 HP engine.
2007 Prius, $22175 MSRP: 60 MPG city/51 MPG HWY from a 1.5L, 76 HP engine
The hybrid premium appears to be about $11,000 which would take longer to recoup if deciding between the Prius and Yaris. But is it a good comparison? NO! The two cars are in completely different classes.
Prius dimensions: Overall height/width/length 58.7/67.9/175.0
Yaris dimensions: 60/60.7/150.6
Just on sheer size alone, there is simply more to a Prius than a Yaris. It's bigger in overall size (the Yaris gets a slight edge in headroom, but only by half an inch on average), more interior room, different amenities not available on the Yaris...in short, not a fair comparison. The hybrid premium could be as low as $1300, or as high as about $7800, based on the price comparisons of the Toyota Camry, as it comes in hybrid and conventional models which lends itself to a more direct comparison (which I don't have time to do).
Fair enough--I thought the comparison was new-for-new.
How do you figure 50 years?
I did a little "back of the envelope" math and came up with the following:
Based on 20 MPG and $2.50/gallon, your car costs $0.125/mile in fuel.
My 2003 Prius gets 45 MPG, which equates to $0.055/mile.
That's a difference of $0.07/mile.
If you figure that the "break even" point where the premium for the hybrid (I used $5000, but it could be more) is saved in fuel costs, I got 71,429 miles. At 15,000 miles per year, that's 4.76 years.
A bit off from your 50 years isn't it?
Note that I didn't figure in costs such as repairs (ANY car can have expensive things go bad), I was just looking at the fuel cost, which seemed to be the focus of your "50 years" statement.
Your source of this information?
My Prius is hitting the 100,000 mile mark. My dealer did a battery test at 90,000 miles, and it passed with flying colors. The WARRANTY is for 100,000 miles, but the battery is designed to be useful for the life of the car.
If you want to make an more even comparison, divide each one by the same expected lifetime.
Let's call that expected lifetime to be 200,000 miles==split the difference in this report. I come up with the following:
Prius (2005): $1.63/mile
(2006): $1.43/mile
Hummer: $2.93/mile
Any report that calls a car's expected lifetime to be only 100,000 miles is GROSSLY suspect in its calculations.
At issue are the royalty fees paid to royalty holders for broadcast music. The rates are going to drive Internet radio into the ground, and even major communications companies don't like it.
If you are a small station and don't want to/can't afford these new royalties, why not just drop the content entirely and support local talent instead?
There's lots of big talk about boycotting the big media companies due to heavy-handed tactics to protect their copyright and the lack of any good, new talent in mainstream media. If that's the case, I would think that more and more broadcasters would move to supporting local talent and dumping the dross that the major labels produce. After all, you don't pay royalties if you don't broadcast the content.
From the Forbes article:
Go independent, and I'd bet a lot of these fees go down, down, down and payment to the independent artist goes up, up, up. Isn't that what we all want in the first place?