4. Microsoft blocks your XBL account, which affects no one else on the network and will cost you $50 to change, and stops paying attention to your machine ID.
That's true of software, argulably music and movies, and possibly in the future computer hardware. The other 99% of things in the world you still own when you buy them.
P2P is not the new revolution, nor will it completely fade away. It'll just stop getting hyped and take its place alongside all the other revolutions that didn't cause a massive upheaval on the Internet but are still useful in some niches, like push technology or VNC or a dozen other techniques.
Joe lives on the top floor of his building. Every day, he gets in the elevator, pushes the button for the ground floor, rides down, and goes to work. But when he comes home, he gets in the elevator, pushes the button for the eighth floor, gets off there, and takes the stairs for the other 4,992 floors to reach his apartment. What's going on?
While you're reading books involving Mars changing color, check out the trilogy from Kim Stanley Robinson. Lots of good stuff about space elevators in there too.
Why waste money diddling with tiny bits of silicon? Vacuum tubes are good enough for radios and TVs. Plus you need to invest billions in fab plants just to get started. What a boondoggle.
The applications for a scientific advance often come only when the process is reliable, cheap, and available to all comers. When that's true of space operation, we'll come up with things we can't even imagine today.
The main problem I can see with the Zubrin plan is that it gets us to Mars, and nowhere else. This new plan is designed to give us the entire solar system (in theory); look at the parts about missions to the Moon, asteroids, the Lagrange points, and the establishment of a permanent orbital presence (and, one hopes, orbital manufacturing abilities). And we would need huge spaceships at some point anyway, if there's ever to be a nontrivial exchange of something besides information with any Mars base.
Note how precise the proposed milestones are. They've given up on a jack-of-all-trades vehicle like the shuttle and want to develop single-purpose vehicles. Also note how there's no mention of the Earth's surface; we'd need a permanent presence in orbit and, one assumes, a new surface-to-orbit vehicle to get the humans up there. Government support for the development of space-based manufacturing facilities would be very interesting for the far future.
No, it's a distribution nobody wants to *pay for*. Everyone's just downloading it for free, and those are the only people these ads will affect. If you want an ad-free install, you have to pay for it.
If your vehicle isn't transmitting, the gate doesn't register you. If you go through anyway, the camera goes off and you get a ticket in the mail (if they're nice) or you hit the barrier/gate/non-retracted STD device (if they're not nice).
Two things Apple does differently: First, 99% of their songs are available for individual purchase, which is not true of most CD catalogs. Secondly, album prices are capped at $10, even if they have more than 20 songs.
Second, Apple gets 35% off the top of each sale.
Got a source for any of these numbers?
Also, Apple seems to be pretty close to accepting independent music for publication on the iTunes store directly, which really would be a better deal.
Next, shareability
You can only loan that CD to one person at a time (during which time you do not have it), and you can't loan iTunes music at all because authorizing it to play on a computer requires your store ID and password. You used to be able to stream the song to a maximum of 5 people at a time, but that feature was abused and removed in iTunes 4.0.1.
Finally
If you want 44Khz PCM, feel free to buy the CD for $13. I can live with sound that is slightly lower quality than CD for $1 and 1 fewer trips to the music store. Be glad we have both options at the moment.
Civil disobedience isn't hiding in your room breaking the law. It's breaking the law in public, getting arrested, getting hit with unjust penalties, and getting it all on the evening news so the people can see it. You're not accomplishing anything if no one besides Slashdot knows about it.
There are hundreds of ways to store energy. Capacitors store raw charges, but batteries convert the electricity to chemical energy (in rechargables at least) and back on demand.
And what happened to all the promises made regarding storing power in flywheels?
Slashdot Mirror
You're supposed to joke about "Vulcan neuropressure" now, not just some vague "learning Vulcan".
4. Microsoft blocks your XBL account, which affects no one else on the network and will cost you $50 to change, and stops paying attention to your machine ID.
That's true of software, argulably music and movies, and possibly in the future computer hardware. The other 99% of things in the world you still own when you buy them.
P2P is not the new revolution, nor will it completely fade away. It'll just stop getting hyped and take its place alongside all the other revolutions that didn't cause a massive upheaval on the Internet but are still useful in some niches, like push technology or VNC or a dozen other techniques.
That reminds me of a classic brainteaser:
Joe lives on the top floor of his building. Every day, he gets in the elevator, pushes the button for the ground floor, rides down, and goes to work. But when he comes home, he gets in the elevator, pushes the button for the eighth floor, gets off there, and takes the stairs for the other 4,992 floors to reach his apartment. What's going on?
While you're reading books involving Mars changing color, check out the trilogy from Kim Stanley Robinson. Lots of good stuff about space elevators in there too.
Sorry, there's just something odd about using BitTorrent for a 2MB file. Maybe you should switch to BitSquirt?
Why waste money diddling with tiny bits of silicon? Vacuum tubes are good enough for radios and TVs. Plus you need to invest billions in fab plants just to get started. What a boondoggle.
The applications for a scientific advance often come only when the process is reliable, cheap, and available to all comers. When that's true of space operation, we'll come up with things we can't even imagine today.
The main problem I can see with the Zubrin plan is that it gets us to Mars, and nowhere else. This new plan is designed to give us the entire solar system (in theory); look at the parts about missions to the Moon, asteroids, the Lagrange points, and the establishment of a permanent orbital presence (and, one hopes, orbital manufacturing abilities). And we would need huge spaceships at some point anyway, if there's ever to be a nontrivial exchange of something besides information with any Mars base.
Note how precise the proposed milestones are. They've given up on a jack-of-all-trades vehicle like the shuttle and want to develop single-purpose vehicles. Also note how there's no mention of the Earth's surface; we'd need a permanent presence in orbit and, one assumes, a new surface-to-orbit vehicle to get the humans up there. Government support for the development of space-based manufacturing facilities would be very interesting for the far future.
No, it's a distribution nobody wants to *pay for*. Everyone's just downloading it for free, and those are the only people these ads will affect. If you want an ad-free install, you have to pay for it.
If your vehicle isn't transmitting, the gate doesn't register you. If you go through anyway, the camera goes off and you get a ticket in the mail (if they're nice) or you hit the barrier/gate/non-retracted STD device (if they're not nice).
What's really "exceedingly rare" is a technology that has absolutely zero military application.
I can explain part of that... Cats are crazy.
If they don't, who's going to make them?
Also, Apple seems to be pretty close to accepting independent music for publication on the iTunes store directly, which really would be a better deal. You can only loan that CD to one person at a time (during which time you do not have it), and you can't loan iTunes music at all because authorizing it to play on a computer requires your store ID and password. You used to be able to stream the song to a maximum of 5 people at a time, but that feature was abused and removed in iTunes 4.0.1. If you want 44Khz PCM, feel free to buy the CD for $13. I can live with sound that is slightly lower quality than CD for $1 and 1 fewer trips to the music store. Be glad we have both options at the moment.
Civil disobedience isn't hiding in your room breaking the law. It's breaking the law in public, getting arrested, getting hit with unjust penalties, and getting it all on the evening news so the people can see it. You're not accomplishing anything if no one besides Slashdot knows about it.
I believe you mean "The Rebirth of *BSD".
Don't forget that things like online order confirmations would also be tagged as commercial.
If the Hubble II doesn't have a flaw in the first place, it's *very* cost-effective :)
...forced to labor in our silk mines. They, for one, welcome their new human masters...
There are hundreds of ways to store energy. Capacitors store raw charges, but batteries convert the electricity to chemical energy (in rechargables at least) and back on demand.
And what happened to all the promises made regarding storing power in flywheels?
Does your toaster support hyperthreading? By which I mean cramming 2 slices of bread in the same slot...
***CHILD NEEDS FOOD BADLY
(anti-lameness filter crap goes here)