The current record for highest-altitude free-fall skydive was set back in the 60's by Joe Kittinger. He rode a balloon up to something over 100,000 feet and stepped out.
Let us take a moment to contemplate the balls required to do such a thing.
If I remember correctly-- I'm too lazy to google it at the moment-- Kittinger fell at terminal velocity, which means he was going as fast as a human being could go in the atmosphere. Skydiving from an even higher altitude probably wouldn't be that big a deal. Kittinger was already wearing a pressure suit, and since he reached terminal velocity, the only difference between his 100,000-foot skydive and a 200,000-foot skydive would be the duration of the free-fall.
The big deal with orbital skydiving, if I can call it that, would be shedding one's orbital velocity. You're going to be doing about 17,000 miles an hour when you hit the upper atmosphere. Kittinger's velocity when he bailed out of his balloon was zero, more or less, so he didn't have any friction-heating problems to worry about. The same would be true of any other skydiver who jumped from a balloon or other (relatively) stable platform.
But when you hit air at 17,000 miles an hour, friction heating is very much a problem. So you'd have to deal with (1) your excess velocity, and (2) the heat generated as a side-effect of dealing with your excess velocity. Once you slow down to something less than the speed of sound, it would probably be safe to pop the explosive bolts and skydive. Maybe. I guess.
The key is to find a stable configuration. The space shuttle orbiter is inherently unstable as it descends into the atmosphere; computer-controlled control surfaces (ugh; you know what I mean) are required to keep the orbiter's attitude correct. Personally I wouldn't be surprised if we ultimately conclude that the primary cause of Columbia's break-up was an attitude problem, possibly caused by increased drag on the left side of the airframe. The orientation of the orbiter got outside of the envelope, and the aerodynamic forces tore her apart.
But consider something like the Apollo capsule. Due to its shape, it was aerodynamically stable on the way down. It required no control surfaces to maintain its attitude. If something happened-- increased drag, or a shift in the cabin load, or something-- to throw the capsule out of the proper attitude, the aerodynamic forces would tend to push it back into the right attitude again. This is in contrast to the space shuttle, or in fact to any aircraft. If a lifting body or lifting wing aircraft gets out of the proper attitude, it will tend to fall further out of the envelope, either breaking apart due to aerodynamic forces or losing all lift and becoming an expensive brick.
That's why I suggested a rigid, egg-shaped enclosing structure, as opposed to the simple mylar bag that some other people have mentioned. A rigid structure could be build in a form that is aerodynamically stable on the way down, making the ride much more pleasant-- well, I don't know if "pleasant" is the word, exactly-- for the astronaut.
Since you're talking about re-entry pods, I assume you're against reusable craft. I agree.
No, no! I'm most definitely enamored with the idea of reusable spacecraft. I'd love to reach a point where getting from Earth to orbit and back again would be only slightly more dramatic than taking a ride in a 747. I'd love to reach a point where we can go to space not a dozen at once, but hundreds at a time. I'd love to reach a point where Howard Johnson has hotels in orbit, a la 2001.
I don't think that point of view is unique to Heinlein. The function of a soldier is to exert force and, if necessary, absorb retaliatory force. An army is, in a sense, an ablative shield.
And I'm saying that for a question like that, there is no objective answer
Sorry, don't buy it. You say, "My computer does X." I reply, "OS X or XP would do Y, which is superior to X." Repeat. The conclusion? Either OS X or XP is objectively better than Linux. It's easy.
But to say those are "better" for the task than Linux is to ignore the whole factor of user preference.
Yes, that's exactly right. I'm completely ignoring user preference for purposes of this discussion, in order to keep things objective. Personally, I don't like using Windows. I just don't care for it. I think it's ugly, and I find it inconsistent. But that's not an objective argument, so I'm just completely setting it aside. The fact is that both Windows XP and Mac OS X are approximately equivalent in terms of capabilities and capacities. Some tasks are easier to do on one versus the other, but the differences are minimal compared to the vast differences between either XP or OS X and Linux.
See? I'm trying to be objective here, and to prove to you that either XP or OS X is better than Linux. You keep saying you don't want to discuss it in those terms. As I said before, that's fine, but don't pretend that you're being honest or fair here.
Anti-aliased fonts? Pure style - nobody actually needs them
Demonstrably false. One the spectrum of ease on the eyes, you have bad anti-aliasing, no anti-aliasing, and good anti-aliasing. Good anti-aliasing reduces eye strain and fatigue, resulting in a demonstrable, measurable benefit to the user.
Vector-based icons? (The point of this story, in case we've forgotten.) Pure style, nobody needs to scale icons on the fly
Again, demonstrably false. Run your computer at a screen resolution of 3840x2400 (the QUXGA format, if you prefer those sorts of names). Without scalable UI elements, your interface will be unusable. Scalable UI provides a demonstrable, objective benefit to the user.
Not to mention benefits for the vision-impaired. Being able to scale the UI is not merely useful to those people; it's essential. Again, demonstrable, objective benefit.
The "you've got mail" wave file when you start AOL? Pure style.
Are we talking about notification in general, or that particular notification specifically? I couldn't give a damn about what AOL uses for notification, but notification in general obviously provides a demonstrable, objective benefit to the user.
Pretty, "cluelessness-resistant" OS install process? Pure style
So ease of use is, in your opinion, pure style? That's so obviously bullshit that I don't even know if it's worth responding. An easy installation process reduces the time required to get a new computer up and running, and reduces the likelihood of user error during the process. Demonstrable, objective benefit.
A HIG that does its level best to pretend the second mouse button never happened? Pure style
Except to people with limited range of movement, such as young children, older people with degenerative afflictions of the hands, people with repetitive stress injuries, and people (like myself) who hope to avoid repetitive stress injuries later in life. Hmm. That covers pretty much everybody, doesn't it? Kids, old people, people with bad hands, and people who want to avoid having bad hands. Demonstrable, objective benefit.
Why not? Because I have tried both ways and I prefer the one, dangit.
Remember, we're being objective here. I'm sticking to the rules; can you?
Because, for almost every graphics card I've ever used[*], the text modes look nicer and are easier on my eyes - and a lot faster to render, switch to/from, and update.
This says more about your lack of experience with modern hardware, I think, than it does about any objective facts.
What's that you say? I should try a higher-spec monitor? A nicer graphics card? A faster CPU? Nope, remember, we're talking about the computer I've got now.
First of all, if you've gone out of your way to assemble a computer that isn't functioning properly, that's your own fault. You just got through telling me that your computer has a Pentium 4 in it, so unless you've done something squirrely, you won't have any problems with your graphics card.
There is, objectively, nothing wrong with overlapping terminal windows with well-anti-aliased text. And you get demonstrable, objective benefits that your text-console-only system cannot provide, such as being able to see more than one console at the same time.
Getting the theme, here? Demonstrable, objective benefits.
Evidently not. Why would I? My opinions have not changed.
All you ever say is that tabbed browsing is bad, and everyone is simply ignorant who thinks otherwise.
Actually, a few weeks back I posted several extremely lengthy and thorough critiques of tabbed browsing, none of which received an intelligent response. I don't know if you people aren't reading them, or what.
Either shut-up or do a scientific study on the usability of tabbed browsing and report it!!!
Well, I won't claim it was scientific, but I most certainly did report my analyses. I guess nobody on Slashdot is interested in facts. They're more interested in checking that "post anonymously" button and accusing each other of being trolls.
Which is fine. I just don't like to play that game myself, that's all.
Getting people into orbit is a fairly easy proposition, if you can keep the lifting hardware from exploding. Getting people back down again safely is the much harder engineering problem. I'm personally kind of amazed that the shuttle was able to make as many successful and safe re-entries and landings as it did. When you think about the forces involved in re-entry... well, it just boggles the mind.
It was at this point that I started thinking. Ever read Starship Troopers? In that book, Heinlein advanced the idea of mobile infantry troopers being dropped from orbit to ground in their own individual little re-entry pods. I started thinking about this.
Picture an astronaut in his spacesuit. He's enclosed in an egg-shaped structure made of aluminum and ablative materials, just barely big enough to hold him. Maybe the structure has a small solid-fuel booster attached that's sufficient to execute a de-orbit burn. With nothing more than the mass of the astronaut and the shell to push around, you wouldn't need much energy to execute such a manuver in low Earth orbit. After the burn, the spent booster falls away (to burn up harmlessly in the atmosphere) and the shell, with astronaut inside, descends through the upper atmosphere, shedding heat through ablation. (In other words, the heat shield boils away on the way down.) At a reasonable altitude, say 100,000 feet or so, the shell opens via explosive bolts and the astronaut free-falls, Kittinger-style. At a suitable altitude, the parachute opens automatically and the astronaut touches down safely.
The advantages of such an orbit-to-Earth system seem kinda obvious to me. We know all about ablative heat shields, having used them for the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo programs as well as every ICBM ever built. A small, symmetrical re-entry structure would be relatively immune to the kind of atmospheric forces that may have destroyed Columbia. Finally, not to seem morbid, in the event of a failure, only one life would be lost instead of the lives of an entire crew.
Personally I'd like to see Apple put G3 processors in the refined 12" PowerBook enclosure-- trading aluminum for polycarbonate-- and continue the iBook line. The iBook is a great idea: a small, rugged laptop geared for consumers and students. I'd hate to see it go away. But the current iBook enclosure could be improved a bit, with the addition of things like the slot-loading CDROM and the new hinge.
Ideally, I'd like to see an iBook with about a 500 MHz IBM G3 processor and accelerated graphics-- a slower CPU plus hardware accelerated graphics adds up to a quite acceptable user experience with 10.2 and Quartz Extreme-- for about $799. But I don't know if there's enough market for a machine like that. I would hope that there is, but who knows.
Hopefully they will use WebKit in OW5 and get all of that work done for free by Apple and concentrate on making a great interface.
I don't actually think you have to use the word "hopefully" here. Just a day or two after Safari and WebCore were released, Case announced that OmniGroup would be using the WebCore foundation for the next major release of OmniWeb. Whether he's talking about WebKit or some kind of home-grown wrapper around WebCore is unclear, but the gist of it is that OmniGroup won't have to screw around with HTML rendering or JavaScript execution any more.
Case made the point really well in the very first interview question. He said that Safari is for people who use the default browser that comes with the OS, and that Apple is rightly trying to make that default browser as great as they can. OmniWeb, though, is aimed at people who aren't happy with the default browser. Two totally different points of focus.
Look, dude. I'm trying to be objective here. I've thrown down the gauntlet. I'm saying that either Mac OS X or Windows XP would do a better job of running your personal computer than Linux does. If you don't want to argue the point, that's fine. I respect that. But don't misrepresent my position. I'm being quite clear, here.
The one I'm thinking of right now is having about ten 144x72-cell text mode "virtual consoles" to switch between at the touch of a hotkey.
Works fine. It's called Terminal.app. And you can have as many consoles of as many sizes as you like, and you can switch between them with a key combination.
No, drawing a text window in graphics mode does not count.
Why not? I'm not arguing that either OS X or XP do exactly the same things in exactly the same way that Linux does them. I'm saying that both OS X and XP do the same job-- running your personal computer-- better than Linux does. If your goal is to have multiple text consoles, then I can tell you how to do that. But if you want to draw an arbitrary line and say, "If it doesn't do it in exactly this way then it's crap," that's fine by me, but don't pretend that you're being honest or fair when you do it. If you want to fall back on arbitrary conditions in order to make it look like Linux wins some kind of objective comparison, go right ahead. I don't think you're fooling anybody by doing so, however.
Of course they have low-end machines -- the 700mhz iMac is low-end relative to the dual-proc 1.4ghz G4.
Yes, the iMac is relatively inferior to the G4. But the iMac is not a low-end computer. It has built-in FireWire, wireless networking, and one of the best flat-panel displays I've ever seen, just to name three things. The most bare-bones, stripped-down computer Apple sells is equivalent to everybody else's mid-range machines.
and those Airport antennas? it's just a cable whip, it couldn't cost more than a couple bucks
Then why doesn't anybody else include them?
It's ridiculous for them to be shipping machines with 256mb, even on their low end.
Oh, great. Yet another Monday-morning CEO. Tell you what. When you start your computer company, you can ship machines with as much RAM as you like. Until then, kindly hush up.
(Incidentally, everybody knows that Apple sells computers with only the minimum amount of RAM because everybody buys less expensive third-party RAM to put in them. If Apple sold their machines with more RAM, Monday-morning CEO's like yourself would just bitch that you're being forced to buy overpriced memory. Yawn.)
Copy protected CD?s are probably illegal because they don?t allow this to occur
Wrong. There is no legal mandate for copyright holders to allow anybody to do anything with their works. Remember, kids, fair use is an exception, not a right.
General copyright law allows the user to record CD's for a variety of reasons (including time-shifting and space-shifting).
Also wrong. Copyright law does not allow anybody to make a copy of anything. That privilege is reserved exclusively for the copyright holder. The law does name a set of very narrow and specific exceptions, defining activities which are non-infringing. That's not the same thing at all.
It is an opinion from a biased source, and should not be treated as a fact.
Oh, for cryin' out loud. Find me any piece of US law that mentions fair use rights. Find me any piece of US law that prohibits a copyright holder from making it impossible for a consumer to make a copy of a copyrighted work. These are not opinions we're talking about here. These are not interpretations. These are facts, plain and simple, black and white.
The RIAA and MPAA believe they are entitled too much, much more
The RIAA is entitled to control copying and distribution of works for which they own the copyrights. The MPAA is entitled to control copying and distribution of works for which they own the copyrights. You are entitled to control copying and distribution of works for which you own the copyrights.
You are not entitled to control the copying and distribution of works for which you do not hold the copyrights.
Got it?
the majority of/. posts I?ve read (plus the actual copyright reformers I?ve met) are really protesting the massive give-away of our rights and money to large corporations.
Where did you get the idea that you have any kind of right related to somebody else's work? Did you read it on the back of a pamphlet or something? Because it is not true. You have no rights over other people's works. None. You are entitled to nothing.
Why is this so hard to understand? Why do you keep spouting vague remarks about "the massive give-away of our rights" when any reasonably intelligent person knows that there are no rights to give away here?
We, citizens and society, have been ripped-off, and that is not an entitlement issue.
I want something that is not mine, and I want it to be given to me for free. I feel that efforts to restrict my access to what I want amount to ripping me off. But this isn't an entitlement issue.
What is an easy (no cost) way to get my iMovie in to a low bandwidth streamable format that a windows person can view without them having to install quicktime.
I am aware of none. Maybe there's an easy and obvious way that I simply don't know anything about. I don't know jack about Windows media support. I just know that, for reasons that continue to escape me, Windows does not include QuickTime.
On the other hand, if you remove the "without having to install QuickTime" condition from your question, then the answer is easy. Just use the "Export" feature in iMovie. Choose "to QuickTime," and "Web Streaming" from the pop-up menu controls. Click "Export." Done.
Since anybody with Windows and an Internet connection can install QuickTime for free in a few minutes (varying depending on their connection), it seems like this is the right way for you to go. If there's anybody left out there who doesn't have QuickTime on their Windows box, they'll thank you for giving them the opportunity to install it.
If Apple really wants "switchers," they need to have a low-end machine for $500.
A common fallacy. Apple doesn't build low-end machines. Every machine they ship, for example, includes a built-in AirPort antenna. Hell, I think you can still buy bargain-basement PC's that don't come with Ethernet in them! Although God knows why you'd want to...
Apple really doesn't care about the low-end market. They care about selling high-end machine for good profit margins.
Has anyone here tried running Jag with 256mb?
You mean Jaguar? Yes. It runs just fine. If you run too many memory-hungry programs at once, you'll start swapping, but that's to be expected.
With the reduced pricing on the G4s lately it makes me wonder if Apple has finally picked a new flagship chip to use coming soon.
Uh... no. There is talk about the PowerPC 970, but it's at least 6 months away from being available for testing, much less for production.
The price cuts are for one reason and one reason only: Apple wants to move more units. Last quarter was more or less a break-even for Apple, and the pace of sales has slowed as the economy has gotten steadily worse over the past two years. So Apple has revised (nearly) every product in the line over the past month, and is cutting prices across the low end to encourage people who were sitting on the fence to buy now.
so then I'm guessing that "quicktime" in addition to defining a file format also defines a codec.
No. There is no such thing as a QuickTime codec. There are lots of codecs, none of which is called "QuickTime."
When you create a QuickTime file, you're given the opportunity to specify a codec. Different programs may have different defaults.
that is to say while a sorensen codec with mpeg-4 file format might be said to be a "quicktime file" it is merely in "quicktime format".
Um... that's not really right, either. Remember that the MPEG-4 file format is the QuickTime file format. So there's really no such thing as "MPEG-4 file format." It's QuickTime.
When a person says, "QuickTime file," he means "file in QuickTime format." The codec is hardly ever mentioned, because it just doesn't matter. QuickTime abstracts the codec away from the data structure on disk, so any QuickTime-savvy application can access media encoded with any codec in the QuickTime library transparently.
I want to find a format that generic Windows users can view by low bandwidth streaming video without having to download and install apples quicktime plugin.
Not going to happen. For reasons that baffle me to this day, Windows doesn't ship with QuickTime installed. If you want to use QuickTime media on Windows, you have to download QuickTime (for free) from Apple.
It's kinda insane, if you ask me. It would be like shipping an OS that doesn't include any support for TIFF images, or ASCII text files. QuickTime is the media standard format. I simply can't understand why Microsoft doesn't just bundle it.
even apples help for imovie 3 referes to a jpeg movie which seems to be absent feature.
No, a "JPEG movie" is just a movie where each frame is compressed with the JPEG codec. You can create one of those by exporting to a QuickTime movie and choosing the JPEG 2000 codec.
How can it be blindingly obvious that either Windows XP or Mac OS X would fit my needs better than the system I'm typing on now?
Because Windows XP and Mac OS X both do the job of running a personal computer better than Linux does. QED.
I guess you're making the assumption that every computer user wants basically the same thing out of a computer.
Yes, indeedy. Every computer user wants to fire up his computer, access peripherals, and run programs.
tell me, which of Windows XP or Mac OS X should I run on my Pentium 166 with its 64 MB of RAM?
XP. Mac OS X doesn't run on Pentiums.
How about features like a button, or an address bar, or pull-down menus, or hyperlinks that you activate by clicking on them?
Yes, Safari has those.
What about an animated graphic ("spinner") whose animation shows that a page has not completed loading?
Safari doesn't have that. It has a different sort of progress indicator, one you've never seen before. It's (gasp) innovative.
What about a config option for not loading images, or disabling Java?
By "config option," you mean "preference control," right? Remember, Safari is real software, not something you have to compile yourself in order to make work. Safari has a control for enabling Java, but no control for loading images.
I have never used Safari, but I'm willing to bet that it has all of these thoroughly non-innovative features.
Careful. Your ignorance is showing.
Oh, wait - Safari is open-source too.
There it goes again. Safari is not open-source.
Oops, unprovable statement.
No, it's not unproveable. Let's get into it. Name one thing your computer does better than mine. Let's see who wins.
the odd thing I have noticed is that quicktime format when compressed to the same level is superior to Mpeg-4. I find this odd. is not quicktime now mpeg-4 under the hood?
Hoo boy. This is going to get a little complicated.
See, there are two issues here: file format, and codec. A file format defines how bytes are arranged on disk to make up a movie file, or whatever. A very simply file format might consist of a 32-bit integer that's the length of the file data, then a whole lot of 32-bit integers that comprise the encoded video data.
A codec is basically an algorithm that takes uncompressed video (and audio) frames and encodes them for storage on disk. Most codecs include a compression algorithm, although it's not technically necessary-- "codec" used to mean "compressor/decompressor," but it's really come to mean "encoder/decdoer," which isn't the same thing.
So in order to have a media file on disk, you have to have two things: a file format, defining how the bytes are laid out, and a codec, defining how one turns uncompressed data into the bytes on disk and back again.
The MPEG forum adopted the QuickTime file format as the standard file format for MPEG-4. Read that sentence carefully: it's not that QuickTime is now MPEG-4; it's just the opposite. From the point of view of the file format, MPEG-4 is QuickTime.
The codec, on the other hand, is an entirely different question. The MPEG-4 standard defines a codec, and you can use that codec to generate MPEG-4 data files. But the MPEG-4 codec is not the only one. There are lots of them. There's Cinepak, H.263, Motion JPEG, and so on. What is widely considered to be the best codec out there for low-bit-rate applications is the Sorensen 3 video codec. But a QuickTime file can be encoded with any codec, including the MPEG-4 codec, and still be called a QuickTime file.
If you took high-resolution data, like DV data, and encoded it into a Sorensen 3 QuickTime file, then compared it to a similarly encoded MPEG-4 file, you would find that the Sorensen 3 file is superior. Both are QuickTime files. Technically, both are in the MPEG-4 file format, although you can't call a file MPEG-4 compliant if it doesn't use the MPEG-4 codec, but since the MPEG-4 format is the QuickTime format, you'd be technically right.
Clear as mud?;-)
What the heck is this lite weight 156K movie or why is the 4.4MB one so bloated.
If you look closely at the small QuickTime file inside your project directory, you'll see that it's in DVCPRO format. This movie is actually a representation of your project timeline. It's small because it consists largely of pointers to the movie files in your Media folder. The 4.4 MB movie is the rendered, self-contained file that you created when you exported your project.
We reinvent the wheel because the existing wheel vendors maintain a hands-off policy and don't let us improve existing wheels.
But that's kind of the point. You're making really crappy wheels, and then bragging about how revolutionary they are. The fact that your new triangular wheel improves on the old square wheel because it has one less bump is not something to be proud of when the rest of us are all rolling around on steel-belted whitewalls.
Who is insisting on using tools that are poor imitations at best? And imitations of what?
I am. Of the commercial products on which the Linux products were based or by which they were inspired.
I use whatever tools seem to fit my needs best
That's not really true, is it? Either Windows XP or OS X would fit your needs better than Linux. This is blindingly obvious. You use Linux for reasons other than pragmatism. Which is, of course, entirely fine, but don't argue that it's a rational choice.
You mention Safari - is it not an imitation of the many web browsers that have come and gone since 1992?
Nope. Features like the bookmark manager and the SnapBack function are entirely new. No imitation going on there.
And back to vendor dependence: you seem to be content to sit at your computer and trust that Microsoft, Apple, Adobe and Macromedia will spoon-feed you what you need when you need it.
Hee hee. Wrap it in whatever loaded language you like. The bottom line is that my computer works better than yours.
Uh hello, thanks to the DMCA, if I write a program that copies a file from location A to location B and I don't respect the "copyright protection" of every known file type (such as DVD's, fonts, etc.) I could get sued!
Holy crap! Thanks to the law, if I do something that's against the law, I could get in trouble! Holy crap!
In addition, it makes it illegal to distribute a program that breaks the copy protection on these new CD's that won't even play in computers.
Yup. Sure does. Seeing as how actually copying the CD's is illegal anyway, this is not a problem.
Obviously, you don't understand the direction the RIAA is taking the country.
Of course I do. The RIAA produces music that is generally really crappy, and that generally sells really well. They want to protect their investment. Unscrupulous people want to copy CD's rather than paying for them. This is against the law, but because people haven't been prevented from doing it, they do it anyway. Some people undoubtedly don't even realize that it's wrong, but most of them realize it and don't care. So the RIAA is taking steps to protect their investment, just like you or I would if we were being victimized by thieves. They're making CD's that (in theory) can't be played on computers, and that (in theory) can't be digitally copied.
Oh, you say, but this is infringing on my fair use rights! Guess what? You have no fair use rights. None. If you make certain uses of a work, those uses are defined by the law as being non-infringing. But that's an exception, not a right. If the copyright holder wants to use technological means to prevent you from exercising that exception, they're free to do so. And the law says you have to respect their wishes on that matter.
But here's the deal. The RIAA only cares about preventing digital copying. They only care if you try to make a digital copy of a CD, or to generate digital MP3's from that CD. They don't give a damn about analog copies. If you want to listen to a copy of a CD in your car, make an analog copy! Run RCA cables from your CD player to your CD recorder. Works like a charm. Sounds just fine, too, although it's not mathematically perfect. If you want to listen to the CD on your iPod, run an RCA cable to the sound-input jack on your computer and rip away. That works just fine, too, and the RIAA doesn't care, and it's permitted by law. Your fair use "rights?" Completely intact.
The culture of entitlement isn't satisfied with this arrangement, though. The culture of entitlement says that it's every American's God-given right to play CD's on his computer, and that it's every American's God-given right to make MP3's. The culture of entitlement can get stuffed.
Your arguments about chilling effects add up to a big fat zero. Sorry.
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The current record for highest-altitude free-fall skydive was set back in the 60's by Joe Kittinger. He rode a balloon up to something over 100,000 feet and stepped out.
Let us take a moment to contemplate the balls required to do such a thing.
If I remember correctly-- I'm too lazy to google it at the moment-- Kittinger fell at terminal velocity, which means he was going as fast as a human being could go in the atmosphere. Skydiving from an even higher altitude probably wouldn't be that big a deal. Kittinger was already wearing a pressure suit, and since he reached terminal velocity, the only difference between his 100,000-foot skydive and a 200,000-foot skydive would be the duration of the free-fall.
The big deal with orbital skydiving, if I can call it that, would be shedding one's orbital velocity. You're going to be doing about 17,000 miles an hour when you hit the upper atmosphere. Kittinger's velocity when he bailed out of his balloon was zero, more or less, so he didn't have any friction-heating problems to worry about. The same would be true of any other skydiver who jumped from a balloon or other (relatively) stable platform.
But when you hit air at 17,000 miles an hour, friction heating is very much a problem. So you'd have to deal with (1) your excess velocity, and (2) the heat generated as a side-effect of dealing with your excess velocity. Once you slow down to something less than the speed of sound, it would probably be safe to pop the explosive bolts and skydive. Maybe. I guess.
The key is to find a stable configuration. The space shuttle orbiter is inherently unstable as it descends into the atmosphere; computer-controlled control surfaces (ugh; you know what I mean) are required to keep the orbiter's attitude correct. Personally I wouldn't be surprised if we ultimately conclude that the primary cause of Columbia's break-up was an attitude problem, possibly caused by increased drag on the left side of the airframe. The orientation of the orbiter got outside of the envelope, and the aerodynamic forces tore her apart.
But consider something like the Apollo capsule. Due to its shape, it was aerodynamically stable on the way down. It required no control surfaces to maintain its attitude. If something happened-- increased drag, or a shift in the cabin load, or something-- to throw the capsule out of the proper attitude, the aerodynamic forces would tend to push it back into the right attitude again. This is in contrast to the space shuttle, or in fact to any aircraft. If a lifting body or lifting wing aircraft gets out of the proper attitude, it will tend to fall further out of the envelope, either breaking apart due to aerodynamic forces or losing all lift and becoming an expensive brick.
That's why I suggested a rigid, egg-shaped enclosing structure, as opposed to the simple mylar bag that some other people have mentioned. A rigid structure could be build in a form that is aerodynamically stable on the way down, making the ride much more pleasant-- well, I don't know if "pleasant" is the word, exactly-- for the astronaut.
Since you're talking about re-entry pods, I assume you're against reusable craft. I agree.
No, no! I'm most definitely enamored with the idea of reusable spacecraft. I'd love to reach a point where getting from Earth to orbit and back again would be only slightly more dramatic than taking a ride in a 747. I'd love to reach a point where we can go to space not a dozen at once, but hundreds at a time. I'd love to reach a point where Howard Johnson has hotels in orbit, a la 2001.
I'm just brainstorming is all.
I don't think that point of view is unique to Heinlein. The function of a soldier is to exert force and, if necessary, absorb retaliatory force. An army is, in a sense, an ablative shield.
And I'm saying that for a question like that, there is no objective answer
Sorry, don't buy it. You say, "My computer does X." I reply, "OS X or XP would do Y, which is superior to X." Repeat. The conclusion? Either OS X or XP is objectively better than Linux. It's easy.
But to say those are "better" for the task than Linux is to ignore the whole factor of user preference.
Yes, that's exactly right. I'm completely ignoring user preference for purposes of this discussion, in order to keep things objective. Personally, I don't like using Windows. I just don't care for it. I think it's ugly, and I find it inconsistent. But that's not an objective argument, so I'm just completely setting it aside. The fact is that both Windows XP and Mac OS X are approximately equivalent in terms of capabilities and capacities. Some tasks are easier to do on one versus the other, but the differences are minimal compared to the vast differences between either XP or OS X and Linux.
See? I'm trying to be objective here, and to prove to you that either XP or OS X is better than Linux. You keep saying you don't want to discuss it in those terms. As I said before, that's fine, but don't pretend that you're being honest or fair here.
Anti-aliased fonts? Pure style - nobody actually needs them
Demonstrably false. One the spectrum of ease on the eyes, you have bad anti-aliasing, no anti-aliasing, and good anti-aliasing. Good anti-aliasing reduces eye strain and fatigue, resulting in a demonstrable, measurable benefit to the user.
Vector-based icons? (The point of this story, in case we've forgotten.) Pure style, nobody needs to scale icons on the fly
Again, demonstrably false. Run your computer at a screen resolution of 3840x2400 (the QUXGA format, if you prefer those sorts of names). Without scalable UI elements, your interface will be unusable. Scalable UI provides a demonstrable, objective benefit to the user.
Not to mention benefits for the vision-impaired. Being able to scale the UI is not merely useful to those people; it's essential. Again, demonstrable, objective benefit.
The "you've got mail" wave file when you start AOL? Pure style.
Are we talking about notification in general, or that particular notification specifically? I couldn't give a damn about what AOL uses for notification, but notification in general obviously provides a demonstrable, objective benefit to the user.
Pretty, "cluelessness-resistant" OS install process? Pure style
So ease of use is, in your opinion, pure style? That's so obviously bullshit that I don't even know if it's worth responding. An easy installation process reduces the time required to get a new computer up and running, and reduces the likelihood of user error during the process. Demonstrable, objective benefit.
A HIG that does its level best to pretend the second mouse button never happened? Pure style
Except to people with limited range of movement, such as young children, older people with degenerative afflictions of the hands, people with repetitive stress injuries, and people (like myself) who hope to avoid repetitive stress injuries later in life. Hmm. That covers pretty much everybody, doesn't it? Kids, old people, people with bad hands, and people who want to avoid having bad hands. Demonstrable, objective benefit.
Why not? Because I have tried both ways and I prefer the one, dangit.
Remember, we're being objective here. I'm sticking to the rules; can you?
Because, for almost every graphics card I've ever used[*], the text modes look nicer and are easier on my eyes - and a lot faster to render, switch to/from, and update.
This says more about your lack of experience with modern hardware, I think, than it does about any objective facts.
What's that you say? I should try a higher-spec monitor? A nicer graphics card? A faster CPU? Nope, remember, we're talking about the computer I've got now.
First of all, if you've gone out of your way to assemble a computer that isn't functioning properly, that's your own fault. You just got through telling me that your computer has a Pentium 4 in it, so unless you've done something squirrely, you won't have any problems with your graphics card.
There is, objectively, nothing wrong with overlapping terminal windows with well-anti-aliased text. And you get demonstrable, objective benefits that your text-console-only system cannot provide, such as being able to see more than one console at the same time.
Getting the theme, here? Demonstrable, objective benefits.
Do you ever stop?
Evidently not. Why would I? My opinions have not changed.
All you ever say is that tabbed browsing is bad, and everyone is simply ignorant who thinks otherwise.
Actually, a few weeks back I posted several extremely lengthy and thorough critiques of tabbed browsing, none of which received an intelligent response. I don't know if you people aren't reading them, or what.
Either shut-up or do a scientific study on the usability of tabbed browsing and report it!!!
Well, I won't claim it was scientific, but I most certainly did report my analyses. I guess nobody on Slashdot is interested in facts. They're more interested in checking that "post anonymously" button and accusing each other of being trolls.
Which is fine. I just don't like to play that game myself, that's all.
Getting people into orbit is a fairly easy proposition, if you can keep the lifting hardware from exploding. Getting people back down again safely is the much harder engineering problem. I'm personally kind of amazed that the shuttle was able to make as many successful and safe re-entries and landings as it did. When you think about the forces involved in re-entry... well, it just boggles the mind.
It was at this point that I started thinking. Ever read Starship Troopers? In that book, Heinlein advanced the idea of mobile infantry troopers being dropped from orbit to ground in their own individual little re-entry pods. I started thinking about this.
Picture an astronaut in his spacesuit. He's enclosed in an egg-shaped structure made of aluminum and ablative materials, just barely big enough to hold him. Maybe the structure has a small solid-fuel booster attached that's sufficient to execute a de-orbit burn. With nothing more than the mass of the astronaut and the shell to push around, you wouldn't need much energy to execute such a manuver in low Earth orbit. After the burn, the spent booster falls away (to burn up harmlessly in the atmosphere) and the shell, with astronaut inside, descends through the upper atmosphere, shedding heat through ablation. (In other words, the heat shield boils away on the way down.) At a reasonable altitude, say 100,000 feet or so, the shell opens via explosive bolts and the astronaut free-falls, Kittinger-style. At a suitable altitude, the parachute opens automatically and the astronaut touches down safely.
The advantages of such an orbit-to-Earth system seem kinda obvious to me. We know all about ablative heat shields, having used them for the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo programs as well as every ICBM ever built. A small, symmetrical re-entry structure would be relatively immune to the kind of atmospheric forces that may have destroyed Columbia. Finally, not to seem morbid, in the event of a failure, only one life would be lost instead of the lives of an entire crew.
I don't know. It's just an idea.
Personally I'd like to see Apple put G3 processors in the refined 12" PowerBook enclosure-- trading aluminum for polycarbonate-- and continue the iBook line. The iBook is a great idea: a small, rugged laptop geared for consumers and students. I'd hate to see it go away. But the current iBook enclosure could be improved a bit, with the addition of things like the slot-loading CDROM and the new hinge.
Ideally, I'd like to see an iBook with about a 500 MHz IBM G3 processor and accelerated graphics-- a slower CPU plus hardware accelerated graphics adds up to a quite acceptable user experience with 10.2 and Quartz Extreme-- for about $799. But I don't know if there's enough market for a machine like that. I would hope that there is, but who knows.
Hopefully they will use WebKit in OW5 and get all of that work done for free by Apple and concentrate on making a great interface.
I don't actually think you have to use the word "hopefully" here. Just a day or two after Safari and WebCore were released, Case announced that OmniGroup would be using the WebCore foundation for the next major release of OmniWeb. Whether he's talking about WebKit or some kind of home-grown wrapper around WebCore is unclear, but the gist of it is that OmniGroup won't have to screw around with HTML rendering or JavaScript execution any more.
Case made the point really well in the very first interview question. He said that Safari is for people who use the default browser that comes with the OS, and that Apple is rightly trying to make that default browser as great as they can. OmniWeb, though, is aimed at people who aren't happy with the default browser. Two totally different points of focus.
Yeah "opening behind" is okay but Safari does that and no matter what, it's not tabbed browsing.
That is a good thing. Tabbed browsing is bad. You may think you like it, but that's just because you don't realize how truly horrible it is.
That's silly. You can't go by feature count.
Look, dude. I'm trying to be objective here. I've thrown down the gauntlet. I'm saying that either Mac OS X or Windows XP would do a better job of running your personal computer than Linux does. If you don't want to argue the point, that's fine. I respect that. But don't misrepresent my position. I'm being quite clear, here.
The one I'm thinking of right now is having about ten 144x72-cell text mode "virtual consoles" to switch between at the touch of a hotkey.
Works fine. It's called Terminal.app. And you can have as many consoles of as many sizes as you like, and you can switch between them with a key combination.
No, drawing a text window in graphics mode does not count.
Why not? I'm not arguing that either OS X or XP do exactly the same things in exactly the same way that Linux does them. I'm saying that both OS X and XP do the same job-- running your personal computer-- better than Linux does. If your goal is to have multiple text consoles, then I can tell you how to do that. But if you want to draw an arbitrary line and say, "If it doesn't do it in exactly this way then it's crap," that's fine by me, but don't pretend that you're being honest or fair when you do it. If you want to fall back on arbitrary conditions in order to make it look like Linux wins some kind of objective comparison, go right ahead. I don't think you're fooling anybody by doing so, however.
Of course they have low-end machines -- the 700mhz iMac is low-end relative to the dual-proc 1.4ghz G4.
Yes, the iMac is relatively inferior to the G4. But the iMac is not a low-end computer. It has built-in FireWire, wireless networking, and one of the best flat-panel displays I've ever seen, just to name three things. The most bare-bones, stripped-down computer Apple sells is equivalent to everybody else's mid-range machines.
and those Airport antennas? it's just a cable whip, it couldn't cost more than a couple bucks
Then why doesn't anybody else include them?
It's ridiculous for them to be shipping machines with 256mb, even on their low end.
Oh, great. Yet another Monday-morning CEO. Tell you what. When you start your computer company, you can ship machines with as much RAM as you like. Until then, kindly hush up.
(Incidentally, everybody knows that Apple sells computers with only the minimum amount of RAM because everybody buys less expensive third-party RAM to put in them. If Apple sold their machines with more RAM, Monday-morning CEO's like yourself would just bitch that you're being forced to buy overpriced memory. Yawn.)
Copy protected CD?s are probably illegal because they don?t allow this to occur
/. posts I?ve read (plus the actual copyright reformers I?ve met) are really protesting the massive give-away of our rights and money to large corporations.
Wrong. There is no legal mandate for copyright holders to allow anybody to do anything with their works. Remember, kids, fair use is an exception, not a right.
General copyright law allows the user to record CD's for a variety of reasons (including time-shifting and space-shifting).
Also wrong. Copyright law does not allow anybody to make a copy of anything. That privilege is reserved exclusively for the copyright holder. The law does name a set of very narrow and specific exceptions, defining activities which are non-infringing. That's not the same thing at all.
It is an opinion from a biased source, and should not be treated as a fact.
Oh, for cryin' out loud. Find me any piece of US law that mentions fair use rights. Find me any piece of US law that prohibits a copyright holder from making it impossible for a consumer to make a copy of a copyrighted work. These are not opinions we're talking about here. These are not interpretations. These are facts, plain and simple, black and white.
The RIAA and MPAA believe they are entitled too much, much more
The RIAA is entitled to control copying and distribution of works for which they own the copyrights. The MPAA is entitled to control copying and distribution of works for which they own the copyrights. You are entitled to control copying and distribution of works for which you own the copyrights.
You are not entitled to control the copying and distribution of works for which you do not hold the copyrights.
Got it?
the majority of
Where did you get the idea that you have any kind of right related to somebody else's work? Did you read it on the back of a pamphlet or something? Because it is not true. You have no rights over other people's works. None. You are entitled to nothing.
Why is this so hard to understand? Why do you keep spouting vague remarks about "the massive give-away of our rights" when any reasonably intelligent person knows that there are no rights to give away here?
We, citizens and society, have been ripped-off, and that is not an entitlement issue.
I want something that is not mine, and I want it to be given to me for free. I feel that efforts to restrict my access to what I want amount to ripping me off. But this isn't an entitlement issue.
Whatever, dude.
What is an easy (no cost) way to get my iMovie in to a low bandwidth streamable format that a windows person can view without them having to install quicktime.
I am aware of none. Maybe there's an easy and obvious way that I simply don't know anything about. I don't know jack about Windows media support. I just know that, for reasons that continue to escape me, Windows does not include QuickTime.
On the other hand, if you remove the "without having to install QuickTime" condition from your question, then the answer is easy. Just use the "Export" feature in iMovie. Choose "to QuickTime," and "Web Streaming" from the pop-up menu controls. Click "Export." Done.
Since anybody with Windows and an Internet connection can install QuickTime for free in a few minutes (varying depending on their connection), it seems like this is the right way for you to go. If there's anybody left out there who doesn't have QuickTime on their Windows box, they'll thank you for giving them the opportunity to install it.
If Apple really wants "switchers," they need to have a low-end machine for $500.
A common fallacy. Apple doesn't build low-end machines. Every machine they ship, for example, includes a built-in AirPort antenna. Hell, I think you can still buy bargain-basement PC's that don't come with Ethernet in them! Although God knows why you'd want to...
Apple really doesn't care about the low-end market. They care about selling high-end machine for good profit margins.
Has anyone here tried running Jag with 256mb?
You mean Jaguar? Yes. It runs just fine. If you run too many memory-hungry programs at once, you'll start swapping, but that's to be expected.
Now how about some hot new G4 iBooks for $999? Otherwise I will be forced to buy a 12-inch powerbook
Dude, the 12" PowerBook is the G4 iBook. Asking for it for $999 amounts to nothing more than whining, and will gain you no sympathy here.
Bwah-ha-ha-ha. ;-)
With the reduced pricing on the G4s lately it makes me wonder if Apple has finally picked a new flagship chip to use coming soon.
Uh... no. There is talk about the PowerPC 970, but it's at least 6 months away from being available for testing, much less for production.
The price cuts are for one reason and one reason only: Apple wants to move more units. Last quarter was more or less a break-even for Apple, and the pace of sales has slowed as the economy has gotten steadily worse over the past two years. So Apple has revised (nearly) every product in the line over the past month, and is cutting prices across the low end to encourage people who were sitting on the fence to buy now.
so then I'm guessing that "quicktime" in addition to defining a file format also defines a codec.
No. There is no such thing as a QuickTime codec. There are lots of codecs, none of which is called "QuickTime."
When you create a QuickTime file, you're given the opportunity to specify a codec. Different programs may have different defaults.
that is to say while a sorensen codec with mpeg-4 file format might be said to be a "quicktime file" it is merely in "quicktime format".
Um... that's not really right, either. Remember that the MPEG-4 file format is the QuickTime file format. So there's really no such thing as "MPEG-4 file format." It's QuickTime.
When a person says, "QuickTime file," he means "file in QuickTime format." The codec is hardly ever mentioned, because it just doesn't matter. QuickTime abstracts the codec away from the data structure on disk, so any QuickTime-savvy application can access media encoded with any codec in the QuickTime library transparently.
I want to find a format that generic Windows users can view by low bandwidth streaming video without having to download and install apples quicktime plugin.
Not going to happen. For reasons that baffle me to this day, Windows doesn't ship with QuickTime installed. If you want to use QuickTime media on Windows, you have to download QuickTime (for free) from Apple.
It's kinda insane, if you ask me. It would be like shipping an OS that doesn't include any support for TIFF images, or ASCII text files. QuickTime is the media standard format. I simply can't understand why Microsoft doesn't just bundle it.
even apples help for imovie 3 referes to a jpeg movie which seems to be absent feature.
No, a "JPEG movie" is just a movie where each frame is compressed with the JPEG codec. You can create one of those by exporting to a QuickTime movie and choosing the JPEG 2000 codec.
How can it be blindingly obvious that either Windows XP or Mac OS X would fit my needs better than the system I'm typing on now?
Because Windows XP and Mac OS X both do the job of running a personal computer better than Linux does. QED.
I guess you're making the assumption that every computer user wants basically the same thing out of a computer.
Yes, indeedy. Every computer user wants to fire up his computer, access peripherals, and run programs.
tell me, which of Windows XP or Mac OS X should I run on my Pentium 166 with its 64 MB of RAM?
XP. Mac OS X doesn't run on Pentiums.
How about features like a button, or an address bar, or pull-down menus, or hyperlinks that you activate by clicking on them?
Yes, Safari has those.
What about an animated graphic ("spinner") whose animation shows that a page has not completed loading?
Safari doesn't have that. It has a different sort of progress indicator, one you've never seen before. It's (gasp) innovative.
What about a config option for not loading images, or disabling Java?
By "config option," you mean "preference control," right? Remember, Safari is real software, not something you have to compile yourself in order to make work. Safari has a control for enabling Java, but no control for loading images.
I have never used Safari, but I'm willing to bet that it has all of these thoroughly non-innovative features.
Careful. Your ignorance is showing.
Oh, wait - Safari is open-source too.
There it goes again. Safari is not open-source.
Oops, unprovable statement.
No, it's not unproveable. Let's get into it. Name one thing your computer does better than mine. Let's see who wins.
You have to be the biggest idiot on /...
I think that title is already held by this guy.
the odd thing I have noticed is that quicktime format when compressed to the same level is superior to Mpeg-4. I find this odd. is not quicktime now mpeg-4 under the hood?
;-)
Hoo boy. This is going to get a little complicated.
See, there are two issues here: file format, and codec. A file format defines how bytes are arranged on disk to make up a movie file, or whatever. A very simply file format might consist of a 32-bit integer that's the length of the file data, then a whole lot of 32-bit integers that comprise the encoded video data.
A codec is basically an algorithm that takes uncompressed video (and audio) frames and encodes them for storage on disk. Most codecs include a compression algorithm, although it's not technically necessary-- "codec" used to mean "compressor/decompressor," but it's really come to mean "encoder/decdoer," which isn't the same thing.
So in order to have a media file on disk, you have to have two things: a file format, defining how the bytes are laid out, and a codec, defining how one turns uncompressed data into the bytes on disk and back again.
The MPEG forum adopted the QuickTime file format as the standard file format for MPEG-4. Read that sentence carefully: it's not that QuickTime is now MPEG-4; it's just the opposite. From the point of view of the file format, MPEG-4 is QuickTime.
The codec, on the other hand, is an entirely different question. The MPEG-4 standard defines a codec, and you can use that codec to generate MPEG-4 data files. But the MPEG-4 codec is not the only one. There are lots of them. There's Cinepak, H.263, Motion JPEG, and so on. What is widely considered to be the best codec out there for low-bit-rate applications is the Sorensen 3 video codec. But a QuickTime file can be encoded with any codec, including the MPEG-4 codec, and still be called a QuickTime file.
If you took high-resolution data, like DV data, and encoded it into a Sorensen 3 QuickTime file, then compared it to a similarly encoded MPEG-4 file, you would find that the Sorensen 3 file is superior. Both are QuickTime files. Technically, both are in the MPEG-4 file format, although you can't call a file MPEG-4 compliant if it doesn't use the MPEG-4 codec, but since the MPEG-4 format is the QuickTime format, you'd be technically right.
Clear as mud?
What the heck is this lite weight 156K movie or why is the 4.4MB one so bloated.
If you look closely at the small QuickTime file inside your project directory, you'll see that it's in DVCPRO format. This movie is actually a representation of your project timeline. It's small because it consists largely of pointers to the movie files in your Media folder. The 4.4 MB movie is the rendered, self-contained file that you created when you exported your project.
We reinvent the wheel because the existing wheel vendors maintain a hands-off policy and don't let us improve existing wheels.
But that's kind of the point. You're making really crappy wheels, and then bragging about how revolutionary they are. The fact that your new triangular wheel improves on the old square wheel because it has one less bump is not something to be proud of when the rest of us are all rolling around on steel-belted whitewalls.
Who is insisting on using tools that are poor imitations at best? And imitations of what?
I am. Of the commercial products on which the Linux products were based or by which they were inspired.
I use whatever tools seem to fit my needs best
That's not really true, is it? Either Windows XP or OS X would fit your needs better than Linux. This is blindingly obvious. You use Linux for reasons other than pragmatism. Which is, of course, entirely fine, but don't argue that it's a rational choice.
You mention Safari - is it not an imitation of the many web browsers that have come and gone since 1992?
Nope. Features like the bookmark manager and the SnapBack function are entirely new. No imitation going on there.
And back to vendor dependence: you seem to be content to sit at your computer and trust that Microsoft, Apple, Adobe and Macromedia will spoon-feed you what you need when you need it.
Hee hee. Wrap it in whatever loaded language you like. The bottom line is that my computer works better than yours.
why not in that case save three letters and go for "viri" which is more logical anyway?
Because it means "men."
Uh hello, thanks to the DMCA, if I write a program that copies a file from location A to location B and I don't respect the "copyright protection" of every known file type (such as DVD's, fonts, etc.) I could get sued!
Holy crap! Thanks to the law, if I do something that's against the law, I could get in trouble! Holy crap!
In addition, it makes it illegal to distribute a program that breaks the copy protection on these new CD's that won't even play in computers.
Yup. Sure does. Seeing as how actually copying the CD's is illegal anyway, this is not a problem.
Obviously, you don't understand the direction the RIAA is taking the country.
Of course I do. The RIAA produces music that is generally really crappy, and that generally sells really well. They want to protect their investment. Unscrupulous people want to copy CD's rather than paying for them. This is against the law, but because people haven't been prevented from doing it, they do it anyway. Some people undoubtedly don't even realize that it's wrong, but most of them realize it and don't care. So the RIAA is taking steps to protect their investment, just like you or I would if we were being victimized by thieves. They're making CD's that (in theory) can't be played on computers, and that (in theory) can't be digitally copied.
Oh, you say, but this is infringing on my fair use rights! Guess what? You have no fair use rights. None. If you make certain uses of a work, those uses are defined by the law as being non-infringing. But that's an exception, not a right. If the copyright holder wants to use technological means to prevent you from exercising that exception, they're free to do so. And the law says you have to respect their wishes on that matter.
But here's the deal. The RIAA only cares about preventing digital copying. They only care if you try to make a digital copy of a CD, or to generate digital MP3's from that CD. They don't give a damn about analog copies. If you want to listen to a copy of a CD in your car, make an analog copy! Run RCA cables from your CD player to your CD recorder. Works like a charm. Sounds just fine, too, although it's not mathematically perfect. If you want to listen to the CD on your iPod, run an RCA cable to the sound-input jack on your computer and rip away. That works just fine, too, and the RIAA doesn't care, and it's permitted by law. Your fair use "rights?" Completely intact.
The culture of entitlement isn't satisfied with this arrangement, though. The culture of entitlement says that it's every American's God-given right to play CD's on his computer, and that it's every American's God-given right to make MP3's. The culture of entitlement can get stuffed.
Your arguments about chilling effects add up to a big fat zero. Sorry.