As in price fixing and collusion, then it could be open to all legal music purchasers. Where are the *cheap* legal downloads, and the much cheaper music on disks, that modern technology indicates is quite possible? And no, 99 cents for a few megs download is not cheap. They could have sidestepped most of this piracy nonsense if they would have radically dropped prices "per song unit" as technology changed and made it dramatically cheaper to "manufacture" and distribute digital copies.
A nickle or dime *tops* is a way more reasonable cost, and they could have been making their profit on much larger volume sales all along. And not annoy their customers. What's the sense of society developing our first real widespread sort of star trek level replicator technology if the consumer side of society doesn't get to benefit from it to the exact same degree as the producer side? Where is it carved in stone that old per unit last century pricing based on expensive tangible copies has to be maintained in the face of orders of magnitude cheaper new digital tech advances? The absence of much cheaper prices that reflect that from any of the majors smacks of collusion and wink wink nod nod price fixing.
Man just lived and existed, there was no idyllic eden like harmony. change occurs constantly, that ole evolution thing. Where man goes or is, change happens. Same as where these mammoths went (five tons of pachyderm beef can cause some localized disruption, just like elephants today cause deserts eventually by tearing down trees) We fought and killed and caused whoops forest fires and so on, made creeks run dirty from digging clams and mussels on the banks, caused erosion from harvesting tubers, changed the balance of the local flora by starting agriculture, took food from other animals by that same reason, ate the other animals, skinned critters to make our clothes and shelters, all of that stuff. If you mean just living feral as being in harmony, you still can, it's quite possible, just back away from the keyboard and go for it, I did it for several years, was quite a hoot actually. I consider it a large part of my education and what makes me appreciate life better and helped establish my sense of ethics and morals (not to get too schmaltzy about it). Took more than a few skills and some dam' good luck as well, nature plays no favs, you are allowed to screw up *badly* on occasion.
With that said,there are probably way more than a billion people still live close to totally feral around the planet still.
My short report on my "research experiment": The slickest thing in civilization today, one that most folks in the developed world take for granted and don't appreciate near enough, is clean running water from the tap. Everything else is nice, electricity is swell, gadgets are fun, supermarkets rock, but clean running water is *simply great*.
And I'd take a mammoth pair to add to my herd here, just give me year's notice so I can adjust the fencing a little better.....
It is illegal for companies to collude to fix prices, to keep them artificially high, the recent LCD screen manufacturers article is an example. Digital copies of music and movies and so on can be made by the billions for relatively cheap. No matter their upfront cost, even if it is 100 million dollars or whatever, copies of that can still be produced for micropennies at most. So,where in the legal market are the really cheap digital copies for sale?
It seems to be beyond obvious there is a "gentleman's agreement" across the entertainment industry, internationally, to keep prices artificially high, to maintain some vague "per unit" profit margin at the serious price gouging thousands of percent markup level, and extremely so for these contentious digital copies. When are all these governments going to address that, and where is a consumer advocate organization that would push for such investigations?
Perhaps there wouldn't be so much alleged piracy if the market regulations were enforced across the board more fairly and consumers had a place to legally get a copy of some song for a penny or two, which is beyond what it would cost to have a server serve you a copy. Even a nickle a song would be more than adequate, this 99 cents or whatever for example at itunes is still outrageously high. Why haven't prices dropped right along with technological advances, like you expect to see in every single other industry?
If they came out with the Mr. Fusion unit, and everyone knew that electric power was now ridiculously cheap to produce, would consumers still be forced to pay a dime to a quarter per kilowatt hour, just because that is what the electric companies used to get "per unit" pre Mr. Fusion?
Maybe we need a consumers "per megabyte" law, or define price gouging better, where there is a cap on how much some company can charge for transferring a megabyte of 1s and 0s, and that charge reflected technological and engineering reality, with a good enough profit margin, call it 100% markup over cost of serving. That would still be loads cheaper than what is out there now "legally", and what business could really argue that a 100% markup wasn't enough? And if that causes changes to the entire entertainment industry stack, well, too bad, that's the reality of technological change. Everyone else on the planet in every other possible form gets to deal with that as regards their job, so why are these entertainment people "special" and get to stay legally locked into mid 20th century pricing models, no matter engineering changes, at the point of the government's gun?
just to straighten something out here, and for whichever knee jerking mods who didn't notice anything either..check parent to my reply for a clue. YOU might want to improve your reading and forum surfing leet skilz. I was replying to the guy with the ties to bangladesh, *not* the maldives. And I was going from memory when I guessed at their population in bangladesh, which will be experiencing the same sort of widespread flooding if the oceans rise, so I just looked now, a scosh over 150 million, and they are real dang poor for the most part.
They could become the planet's first all ocean living nation, and start really developing that sort of tech (especially how to deal with more extreme ocean events...). Just start buying up old ships and refurb them to be floating houses, businesses, even little mini farms. Just a wild thought. I know if I lived there, I'd be trying to cob together a little floating miniark instead of building the traditional..whatever they got, hovel/shack. Just a house that could float if flood water rise, a big raft, oil drums and logs, whatever. I mean this exists already as expensive houseboats, that mostly just sit tethered to a marina slip, but no reason they need to be so elaborate and expensive, just float and not leak that bad. With that said, carrying the concept further, there are a lot of boats and ships scrapped all the time that perhaps could be recycled, even if it was just into being barges.
Another option is massive terraforming, take what is the swampiest land they have, dig out thousands of miles of canals, use the dredged out soil to build up what good and higher elevation parts of the land they want to save, and just skip land roads for the most part, use the canals for transportation. They could start small, literally with what manpower and equipment exists (example: china terracing entire mountains for farming using shovels and baskets mostly), just small ditch canals wide enough to pass two canoes next to each other, then gradually work that out bigger until it can handle normal decent boats, then onto real ships and barges of whatever size work out to be practical. Of course, that means salt water everywhere, but seeing as how this will happen anyway if the oceans really rise....might be an option short of trying to find some donor space for what, 150 million people someplace else? 150 thousand can go be refugees, 150 million might start to run into complications even more daunting than a nationwide land reclamation/canal/lotta boats project. I don't know much about that nation at all, I would guess being so low they already have a lot of existing water based transportation and access. Just move heavy that way more.
Here is the page for for Dr.Jim Berkland, director of the Syzygy project. He uses collated "odd animal" stats, spikes in pets lost and found postings (dogs and cats seem to either hide and cower or go nuts and run away before quakes), along with other stuff like tracking tidal influences and whatnot for earthquake predictions.
A long time ago before he hit it big obviously. When I said a ten foot backwall booth, that is the cheapest you can rent on a show. I worked tradeshows for 15 years, thousands of shows, so I don't recall the exact show now, sorry. I just remember that chair thing (must have been a prototype because this was some years ago), and another invention at the show, a hovercraft-like people mover to move patients from beds to gurneys, that was cool too. Pretty slick, real thin, just slipped under the patient, turn on a small air pump, they get picked up just a fraction of an inch making it easy to slide them on and off to another surface. Stuff like that I remember from most shows, because I always liked cool inventions, the rest is a big blur of wingnuts and rotating logo signs, sales weasels and booth babes...heh.
I guess he has enough loot now, but the rest of my points stand I think, he's just a way smart guy who can pull it-whatever wild "it" thing he thinks up- off to completion. And his ideas go to benefit people in general, help the sick and ill, as another pointed out, help the poor get clean water, etc. His segway idea was at least an attempt at something completely alternative to either big cars or mass transit, sort of give the benefits of both. Unfortunately, it really would take cities being designed around them for them to work as he intended.
I met the guy and talked to him for awhile at a medical tradeshow when he had a really cheap 10 foot backwall booth and the most amazing piece of gear on the whole show, beat the snot out of all the big blinkenlights booths and their stuff, the go most anyplace crawling, climbing wheelchair thing. He's opposite of marketing, just thinks 18 miles away from some box all the time..then builds it and it works. Whether or not it sells marvelously or not, the dude is a rare man, a combination far out pure research scientist and practical engineer, he figures out how to make sci fi stuff actually work. Our society *demands* marketing and short term megaprofits though, so he's stuck sometimes. He's the kind of guy just needs some billionaire to adopt him as a pet project and turn him loose, so he doesn't need to worry about funding ever again. If even one out of ten things he makes really takes off, I mean to the general public and outside of medical specialties, yes, it will be worth it.
Just a coincidence, but the tech writer at WaPo has an article up today about speech recognition software, FWIW. I used to use one that I have forgotten the name of unfortunatly on Mac classic..good for not much, but would open applications, that was fun enough "Computer! Open Netscape!" And that was about it. I imagine they have to be just a scosh better now. It's a goldmine though, if anyone really nails it, we have an aging population, the ones that have disposable income, who are getting arthritis in their fingers. Personally, I would like such a system for using the computer while doing some jobs, such as working on equipment and you get greasy hands, or say, you are fooling around on your bench and want to yak at the computer to display stuff because you have a hot iron in one hand and tweezers in the other. Very useful I think if it is ever perfected better.
...the on purpose business model of price gouging and imposed by law artificial scarcity in order to keep "per unit" profits high, at a simply astoundingly way above what it costs level to make a copy, which is in essence near zero. Digital copies are our first human product from a "replicator" star trek type society/potential, one where wants are eliminated cheaply and easily. And so far, we-business and governmental laws "we"- utterly fail it. These sorts of artificial scarcity laws are a war on the future and war on the the universal use of technology.
..always using that new fangled "lektrictee" stuff. Oh, makes it easier they say, it's more modern. Why, back in the day...after working 25 hours down to the mines, on the way to and from school, after stopping in for the mandatory beatings, we used our pet saber toothed badgers to open up our lunch of mammoth bones, and we liked it that way. Kept ya sharp!
GM did that with the EV1 electric car, you never even saw them at the dealers, then they went "see, no one wants an electric car!" And you couldn't even buy them, lease only with no purchase option at the end. And now they are a decade and change behind Toyota and the Prius, have to get billions in bailout money to keep from going bankrupt, and their bloatware Volt they claim they will be selling will cost twice as much (projected cost). Sometimes corporations are just epic fail dumb.
..as an alternative to those folks like me who can't get anything but dialup, and are looking forward to more competition in the wireless broadband market so it becomes more available and more affordable. Not everyone can get wired broadband in the US yet, nor is that likely to ever change, just some areas because of local geographics and population density are SOL when it comes to that, and currently, whatever the telco wireless guys have is "it" for an option, outside of satellite, which is expensive and quite limited as well.
Here's an idea for all these manufacturers, how about standard form factor laptops so they can be upgraded easily with a new mobo/cpu deal? Why is it this is completely common on the desktop, where you can just pick a case and go from there and assemble exactly what you want, and then upgrade components as you see fit and want to afford, but they act like it is an affront to civilization to be able to do this with laptops?
If I can use that as an analogy. There's not as much money to be made selling raw resources as there is in using the raw resources to construct a value added product. Example, trees. You can make some money selling logs, but there's more to be made turning logs into lumber then into something even more useful, like finished furniture ( I worked at a furniture factory that did just that, bought raw logs, had their own mill and kiln, then made furniture, they developed more of an economic vertical stack and were more profitable than most because their costs of production were lower and they had a better handle on supply, etc). Crude oil sells for so much a barrel raw, then it goes to a lot more after refining, because it has been compounded into a value added product. A bushel of corn is worth 4 bucks, but after milling and turned into corn flakes, it is worth a couple hundred a bushel.
The good universal money to be made with open source is the same way, treat the initial product as a raw resource, then use that to do something else, some other aspect of business where you need those raw resources. Here's a closer example, google uses open source, re-tweaks it to fit, then constructed an internet search engine, which in itself is still a raw resource, albeit of a higher technological value, because it is free to use..but it's getting closer now. They then go one more step/layer and sell relevant ads combined with offering the free search, and that then puts them over the top into sustainable profit.
If Canonical wants their development of Ubuntu to be profitable, they need to do something similar, even if it is just using their server model, and coming up with a server business, hosting or running the server farms for other companies, etc, similar to how google runs their own server farms. You have to compound your way to some bucks by adding value above the raw resource level, if that first level is not profitable yet. Treat open source as your starting point in a business solution on your way to making money,not the end point and it makes more sense and is easier to see. You want layers of value-added effort until you hit that layer that really will give you some market and money.
Math aside, I guess you could grow girlier pointy finger nails, but something like a thimble for each typing finger that came to a better shaped blunt and small tapered to a flat surface designed to fit *thing* might work on these little keyboards. Typing thimbles. Just a thought....
..US intel agencies have prepared another draft document that identifies other potential terrorist tools
Shovels-they can be used to plant bombs
Wheelbarrows-transport the bombs
sneakers-terrorists could be using sneakers on their feet to make it easy to walk around on the ground
clothing-terrorists could be wearing clothing so they could "blend in" with the civilian population and sneak around
talking to people-terrorists could infiltrate and meet each other and "talk"-communicate-with other terrorists
cars-terrorists, having blended into the civilian population, might use "cars" as transportation so they can go meet other terrorists and "talk"
grocery stores-terrorists might make use of grocery stores as part of a long supply train in order to get "food" for themselves and other terrorists in their secret underground cells
public drinking fountains-water is a necessity for terrorist operations, so they might make use of public drinking fountains and garner unauthorized water supplies
money-terrorists could make use of cash money in order to purchase supplies that they could use for terrorist operations, such as sneakers, clothing, shovels, wheelbarrows, food, etc
pencils and paper-terrorists might make use of easily available pencils and paper on the rogue "underground" black market, and use these devices as a communications medium. The report also suggests closing the "department store loophole" in order to combat this threat
videogames-terrorists might make use of videogames as a cheap way to get assymetrical warfare training, and to indoctrinate and brainwash their cadre into risking armed violent attacks by portraying it as "normal" and something that the civilian population would support. Some notice has been made by "deep cover" agents that the game "America's Army" apparently is a favorite with terrorists
sporting events=sporting events have been identified as a favorite terrorist meeting area, where they can get together and "talk"-or communicate- and engage in psychological "pumping up" efforts in order to bolster courage before going out on terrorism operations. Long range surveillance has noted that they "Chant" various phrases like "Kill 'em!" and "De-fense! De-fense!" and will also engage in ritualistic "hooting" which appears to be a secret call sign that identifies terrorists to their appropriate cell members. Different cells have different names, and the chants change to identify them.
It has been noted that some terrorists are male, and some are female, and they can come in all ages, so the modern warfighter has to take note when they see individuals or groups that are made up of males or females or combinations of such.
..and trust. Computerized voting verification is PhD level software AND hardware guys with electronic microscopes per every single machine per every single precinct and district and so on, to even start to verify. Paper ballots start to finish, anyone who can read and do simple arithmetic, ie, most of the voting public, and it can be verified. One group is pretty small and couldn't be done realistically, the other group is how we did it for hundreds of years and could still work just fine as long as there is a minimum interest in the results.
Any voter can be present at the end of the day to be a witness to the count with paper ballots, and you can volunteer to be an official as well, which means the group of people you need to trust is only one person, which is YOU, and the guy standing next to you only has to trust one person, himself, if he is a witness as well at the end of the day. Versus how many people could look at machine code or C code or any other obscure "language" and then how do you verify all the chips on the computer? Who guards those computers during the non voting period so they aren't tampered with, versus staring at an empty box? No guards needed on empty boxes, because it is unlocked and opened at the beginning of the day and anyone there in line can look at it, and typically the first person in line signs off on it, I have done that myself "yo, empty!".
NO ONE can just stare at a computer voting terminal and "verify" it without deep forensics, it can't be done, if anyone can do it they can apply to Randi for his million buck prize because you'd have to be 100% psychic to do that. And if you want to insure some vote using something similar to how we conduct electronic transactions with money, it throws the entire concept of anonymity out the window, because you must tie a vote to a single individual, then you still wind up with the machine count having to be verified and back to the forensics, it just adds a further level of complexity and possible points of compromise. Nuts.
KISS works for a lot of things, no need to rube goldberg it up just because it is possible. Voting is too important to trust it to being just a videogame. If people got spare time and want to code and can't come up with a project on their own, no problem! They can go check out sourceforge and find something else to work on.
Voting isn't a (*(&^ing nail, stop trying to throw your coding hammer at it! This has gotten to be an example of obsessive compulsive disorder with these schemes. This is crazy. Open source or not, unless there is an independent deep forensics investigation of every single computerized voting kiosk at the end of the vote period, including disassembling the chips on the machine and all that stuff, it can *not* be verified in a timely, cheap and thorough manner. Oh, a "paper trail"? Why yes, let's look at that "new idea" to "insure" and "verify" the computerized vote! A plain empty box CAN be verified at the start of the voting day by many people looking inside and going "yep, empty!" And a paper trail is exactly what you get start to finish with plain paper ballots, no stupid computer and expense needed. Yes, examples in the past of ballot box stuffing, still way easier to keep tabs on it then running everything through obfuscated layers of chips and code. Paper ballots and empty boxes are WAY MORE the lesser of (in)security evils when it comes to voting, let alone being loads cheaper when it comes to co$t$. Empty box per precinct=ten bucks max, what do these computerized schemes cost, and how much has been wasted on them so far and how much "irregularities" do we get to read about and enjoy before this sinks in as just a bad idea overall?
..and to me still the best example of a fine US car (engineering + style) during the muscle car/pony car era Avanti Scroll down, you'll see the references to some land speed records. Some other efforts were achieved with other models of Studebaker, just pop it into google, ton of hits.
If you are in Florida, it isn't too far to come up around north Atlanta and look at the boats on lake Lanier and Alatoona. With the drought or semi drought the past two years, plus the economy, there's a lot of deals on boats here. You'll pay to have them hauled back obviously, but there's the added bonus of no salt water rot in any of them.
..gives everyone more tools to use to go off and do *real business*, ie, "make money" if that is your goal. Because it eliminates one aspect of artificial scarcity, which then allows you to address real scarcity in real products and services and come up with something new and useful or make your existing business more efficient/whatever. This dude has no idea whatsoever about open source or shared content and how it works, the main basic raw theory. The closed off guilds and company store and town model and giant price fixing efforts through monopolies and cartels is from like centuries ago and has been proven to be a hindrance to progress and increasing wealth and prosperity. Now we still have remnants of it, and more work needs to be done there, but the trend is to share the basic stuff, then go off and work on the fine tuning for your particular niche that you use for business, either a product or service or both. I'll make it even simpler for this guy. I don't care how leet someone is coding, there's only so much a single dude can code. That is worth x. Say it is openly shared, and the dude takes back what other folks contribute and share, takes advantage of it. He now has at his disposal, x plus the combined output of a,b,c,d and etc, all the output from all the other millions of sharers so his "wealth pile" goes up way past whatever was his theoretical top limit on production. And that wealth is tools, to go on and do some real work with those tools. Look at the linux kernel for the primest of examples there.
And what people do for fun or hobbies etc., is just that, fun, and people will continue to do that no matter what, and pay for it, one way or the other, they always have. Hobbies have been around since the first cave dude figured out stringing clamshells on some rawhide and giving it to some cave chick was "productive and fun and a useful pursuit";)
As to "blogosphere" and discussion forums, just look how much easier it is to go find out stuff today when you have a real problem, look at the thousands of niche discussion forums where enthusiasts get together and share experiences and tip and tricks and so on. They are all much better off with being able to tap into this pool of people who are into this or that. And news is news, the scene there is a lot better than before, and people will and are "reporting" what they find out or see, then discuss (and cuss) it. Because we as humans like that stuff, it's fun and useful, else we wouldn't be doing it, so it will continue in one form or another, and the internet isn't going away. Maybe some website will go down, but others will be made, that's how that works..
As to the economy, heck ya a lot of jobs will become obsolete, whereas we have a ton of new jobs on the horizon, for example, alternate energy is booming and will continue to boom because of a simple fact. Old (and heavily centralized) energy is invest heavy in infrastructure, then continue to pay for fuel forever (plus all the speculators and monopolists and cartels profits way above cost of production into gouging land due to their fighting to maintain artificial scarcity). Alternate renewable and sustainable energy is invest heavy in infrastructure, then get free fuel forever, because there's no way anyone can cartel-ize the sun and wind and ocean waves..and there's not going to be any scarcity involved with those fuels. Which looks to be a better deal long range, and especially as things get more expensive the "old" way? And like everything else, there's a ton of computer work involved there that folks will need to be doing, then all the blue collar and now they call it "green collar" jobs that will be opening up because of it, and open source work will go to help that computer work get done, and open sharing of knowledge will help entrepreneurs figure out better ways of doing this "energy" thing. And that's just one example, it applies across the board, agriculture, manufacturing, health care, all over.
..what's called a charge controller for your solar panels BEFORE it feeds into the batteries, and then you might as well just then complete the rig with a charger/inverter device (here, check out xantrex company, they have some info and a product range). That's the proper way to do a solar rig with battery backup. You get the solar input when it is there, you get grid input when you might need it, both sources go to the batteries, the batteries feed back to the charger/inverter and that goes to your circuit box. Then it is seamless and automatic, mostly just do battery maintenance once a month or something, top off with distiled water. Direct connection solar panel to device is only for the most low powered gadgets with a a very small solar panel. And the reason is solar panels are unregulated voltage, the brighter/sunnier, the more you get, sometimes over 20 volts on a panel (conversely I have seen half a volt from a full moon!). There isn't much lost in a modern system, don't worry about it. If you really just want pure DC, with zero grid ties at all, that is doable, look for "off grid" or marine or RV packages/systems and how they are designed. You eliminate the inverter part, but keep the rest. They come in multiples of 12, 12 vdc, 24 and 48 are the most common. You *will* need the appropriate charge controller though, to sit between the panels and the batteries, or you will cook your batteries. And you can get 12 vdc power supplies designed for mini itx cheap enough if that sort of machine would work for you instead of the atx desktop.
Slashdot Mirror
As in price fixing and collusion, then it could be open to all legal music purchasers. Where are the *cheap* legal downloads, and the much cheaper music on disks, that modern technology indicates is quite possible? And no, 99 cents for a few megs download is not cheap. They could have sidestepped most of this piracy nonsense if they would have radically dropped prices "per song unit" as technology changed and made it dramatically cheaper to "manufacture" and distribute digital copies.
A nickle or dime *tops* is a way more reasonable cost, and they could have been making their profit on much larger volume sales all along. And not annoy their customers. What's the sense of society developing our first real widespread sort of star trek level replicator technology if the consumer side of society doesn't get to benefit from it to the exact same degree as the producer side? Where is it carved in stone that old per unit last century pricing based on expensive tangible copies has to be maintained in the face of orders of magnitude cheaper new digital tech advances? The absence of much cheaper prices that reflect that from any of the majors smacks of collusion and wink wink nod nod price fixing.
Man just lived and existed, there was no idyllic eden like harmony. change occurs constantly, that ole evolution thing. Where man goes or is, change happens. Same as where these mammoths went (five tons of pachyderm beef can cause some localized disruption, just like elephants today cause deserts eventually by tearing down trees) We fought and killed and caused whoops forest fires and so on, made creeks run dirty from digging clams and mussels on the banks, caused erosion from harvesting tubers, changed the balance of the local flora by starting agriculture, took food from other animals by that same reason, ate the other animals, skinned critters to make our clothes and shelters, all of that stuff. If you mean just living feral as being in harmony, you still can, it's quite possible, just back away from the keyboard and go for it, I did it for several years, was quite a hoot actually. I consider it a large part of my education and what makes me appreciate life better and helped establish my sense of ethics and morals (not to get too schmaltzy about it). Took more than a few skills and some dam' good luck as well, nature plays no favs, you are allowed to screw up *badly* on occasion.
With that said,there are probably way more than a billion people still live close to totally feral around the planet still.
My short report on my "research experiment": The slickest thing in civilization today, one that most folks in the developed world take for granted and don't appreciate near enough, is clean running water from the tap. Everything else is nice, electricity is swell, gadgets are fun, supermarkets rock, but clean running water is *simply great*.
And I'd take a mammoth pair to add to my herd here, just give me year's notice so I can adjust the fencing a little better.....
Airship Ventures
It is illegal for companies to collude to fix prices, to keep them artificially high, the recent LCD screen manufacturers article is an example. Digital copies of music and movies and so on can be made by the billions for relatively cheap. No matter their upfront cost, even if it is 100 million dollars or whatever, copies of that can still be produced for micropennies at most. So,where in the legal market are the really cheap digital copies for sale?
It seems to be beyond obvious there is a "gentleman's agreement" across the entertainment industry, internationally, to keep prices artificially high, to maintain some vague "per unit" profit margin at the serious price gouging thousands of percent markup level, and extremely so for these contentious digital copies. When are all these governments going to address that, and where is a consumer advocate organization that would push for such investigations?
Perhaps there wouldn't be so much alleged piracy if the market regulations were enforced across the board more fairly and consumers had a place to legally get a copy of some song for a penny or two, which is beyond what it would cost to have a server serve you a copy. Even a nickle a song would be more than adequate, this 99 cents or whatever for example at itunes is still outrageously high. Why haven't prices dropped right along with technological advances, like you expect to see in every single other industry?
If they came out with the Mr. Fusion unit, and everyone knew that electric power was now ridiculously cheap to produce, would consumers still be forced to pay a dime to a quarter per kilowatt hour, just because that is what the electric companies used to get "per unit" pre Mr. Fusion?
Maybe we need a consumers "per megabyte" law, or define price gouging better, where there is a cap on how much some company can charge for transferring a megabyte of 1s and 0s, and that charge reflected technological and engineering reality, with a good enough profit margin, call it 100% markup over cost of serving. That would still be loads cheaper than what is out there now "legally", and what business could really argue that a 100% markup wasn't enough? And if that causes changes to the entire entertainment industry stack, well, too bad, that's the reality of technological change. Everyone else on the planet in every other possible form gets to deal with that as regards their job, so why are these entertainment people "special" and get to stay legally locked into mid 20th century pricing models, no matter engineering changes, at the point of the government's gun?
just to straighten something out here, and for whichever knee jerking mods who didn't notice anything either..check parent to my reply for a clue. YOU might want to improve your reading and forum surfing leet skilz. I was replying to the guy with the ties to bangladesh, *not* the maldives. And I was going from memory when I guessed at their population in bangladesh, which will be experiencing the same sort of widespread flooding if the oceans rise, so I just looked now, a scosh over 150 million, and they are real dang poor for the most part.
They could become the planet's first all ocean living nation, and start really developing that sort of tech (especially how to deal with more extreme ocean events...). Just start buying up old ships and refurb them to be floating houses, businesses, even little mini farms. Just a wild thought. I know if I lived there, I'd be trying to cob together a little floating miniark instead of building the traditional ..whatever they got, hovel/shack. Just a house that could float if flood water rise, a big raft, oil drums and logs, whatever. I mean this exists already as expensive houseboats, that mostly just sit tethered to a marina slip, but no reason they need to be so elaborate and expensive, just float and not leak that bad. With that said, carrying the concept further, there are a lot of boats and ships scrapped all the time that perhaps could be recycled, even if it was just into being barges.
Another option is massive terraforming, take what is the swampiest land they have, dig out thousands of miles of canals, use the dredged out soil to build up what good and higher elevation parts of the land they want to save, and just skip land roads for the most part, use the canals for transportation. They could start small, literally with what manpower and equipment exists (example: china terracing entire mountains for farming using shovels and baskets mostly), just small ditch canals wide enough to pass two canoes next to each other, then gradually work that out bigger until it can handle normal decent boats, then onto real ships and barges of whatever size work out to be practical. Of course, that means salt water everywhere, but seeing as how this will happen anyway if the oceans really rise....might be an option short of trying to find some donor space for what, 150 million people someplace else? 150 thousand can go be refugees, 150 million might start to run into complications even more daunting than a nationwide land reclamation/canal/lotta boats project. I don't know much about that nation at all, I would guess being so low they already have a lot of existing water based transportation and access. Just move heavy that way more.
Here is the page for for Dr.Jim Berkland, director of the Syzygy project. He uses collated "odd animal" stats, spikes in pets lost and found postings (dogs and cats seem to either hide and cower or go nuts and run away before quakes), along with other stuff like tracking tidal influences and whatnot for earthquake predictions.
A long time ago before he hit it big obviously. When I said a ten foot backwall booth, that is the cheapest you can rent on a show. I worked tradeshows for 15 years, thousands of shows, so I don't recall the exact show now, sorry. I just remember that chair thing (must have been a prototype because this was some years ago), and another invention at the show, a hovercraft-like people mover to move patients from beds to gurneys, that was cool too. Pretty slick, real thin, just slipped under the patient, turn on a small air pump, they get picked up just a fraction of an inch making it easy to slide them on and off to another surface. Stuff like that I remember from most shows, because I always liked cool inventions, the rest is a big blur of wingnuts and rotating logo signs, sales weasels and booth babes...heh.
I guess he has enough loot now, but the rest of my points stand I think, he's just a way smart guy who can pull it-whatever wild "it" thing he thinks up- off to completion. And his ideas go to benefit people in general, help the sick and ill, as another pointed out, help the poor get clean water, etc. His segway idea was at least an attempt at something completely alternative to either big cars or mass transit, sort of give the benefits of both. Unfortunately, it really would take cities being designed around them for them to work as he intended.
I met the guy and talked to him for awhile at a medical tradeshow when he had a really cheap 10 foot backwall booth and the most amazing piece of gear on the whole show, beat the snot out of all the big blinkenlights booths and their stuff, the go most anyplace crawling, climbing wheelchair thing. He's opposite of marketing, just thinks 18 miles away from some box all the time..then builds it and it works. Whether or not it sells marvelously or not, the dude is a rare man, a combination far out pure research scientist and practical engineer, he figures out how to make sci fi stuff actually work. Our society *demands* marketing and short term megaprofits though, so he's stuck sometimes. He's the kind of guy just needs some billionaire to adopt him as a pet project and turn him loose, so he doesn't need to worry about funding ever again. If even one out of ten things he makes really takes off, I mean to the general public and outside of medical specialties, yes, it will be worth it.
Just a coincidence, but the tech writer at WaPo has an article up today about speech recognition software, FWIW. I used to use one that I have forgotten the name of unfortunatly on Mac classic..good for not much, but would open applications, that was fun enough "Computer! Open Netscape!" And that was about it. I imagine they have to be just a scosh better now. It's a goldmine though, if anyone really nails it, we have an aging population, the ones that have disposable income, who are getting arthritis in their fingers. Personally, I would like such a system for using the computer while doing some jobs, such as working on equipment and you get greasy hands, or say, you are fooling around on your bench and want to yak at the computer to display stuff because you have a hot iron in one hand and tweezers in the other. Very useful I think if it is ever perfected better.
...the on purpose business model of price gouging and imposed by law artificial scarcity in order to keep "per unit" profits high, at a simply astoundingly way above what it costs level to make a copy, which is in essence near zero. Digital copies are our first human product from a "replicator" star trek type society/potential, one where wants are eliminated cheaply and easily. And so far, we-business and governmental laws "we"- utterly fail it. These sorts of artificial scarcity laws are a war on the future and war on the the universal use of technology.
..always using that new fangled "lektrictee" stuff. Oh, makes it easier they say, it's more modern. Why, back in the day...after working 25 hours down to the mines, on the way to and from school, after stopping in for the mandatory beatings, we used our pet saber toothed badgers to open up our lunch of mammoth bones, and we liked it that way. Kept ya sharp!
...aviation shears. Works a charm.
GM did that with the EV1 electric car, you never even saw them at the dealers, then they went "see, no one wants an electric car!" And you couldn't even buy them, lease only with no purchase option at the end. And now they are a decade and change behind Toyota and the Prius, have to get billions in bailout money to keep from going bankrupt, and their bloatware Volt they claim they will be selling will cost twice as much (projected cost). Sometimes corporations are just epic fail dumb.
..as an alternative to those folks like me who can't get anything but dialup, and are looking forward to more competition in the wireless broadband market so it becomes more available and more affordable. Not everyone can get wired broadband in the US yet, nor is that likely to ever change, just some areas because of local geographics and population density are SOL when it comes to that, and currently, whatever the telco wireless guys have is "it" for an option, outside of satellite, which is expensive and quite limited as well.
Here's an idea for all these manufacturers, how about standard form factor laptops so they can be upgraded easily with a new mobo/cpu deal? Why is it this is completely common on the desktop, where you can just pick a case and go from there and assemble exactly what you want, and then upgrade components as you see fit and want to afford, but they act like it is an affront to civilization to be able to do this with laptops?
If I can use that as an analogy. There's not as much money to be made selling raw resources as there is in using the raw resources to construct a value added product. Example, trees. You can make some money selling logs, but there's more to be made turning logs into lumber then into something even more useful, like finished furniture ( I worked at a furniture factory that did just that, bought raw logs, had their own mill and kiln, then made furniture, they developed more of an economic vertical stack and were more profitable than most because their costs of production were lower and they had a better handle on supply, etc). Crude oil sells for so much a barrel raw, then it goes to a lot more after refining, because it has been compounded into a value added product. A bushel of corn is worth 4 bucks, but after milling and turned into corn flakes, it is worth a couple hundred a bushel.
The good universal money to be made with open source is the same way, treat the initial product as a raw resource, then use that to do something else, some other aspect of business where you need those raw resources. Here's a closer example, google uses open source, re-tweaks it to fit, then constructed an internet search engine, which in itself is still a raw resource, albeit of a higher technological value, because it is free to use..but it's getting closer now. They then go one more step/layer and sell relevant ads combined with offering the free search, and that then puts them over the top into sustainable profit.
If Canonical wants their development of Ubuntu to be profitable, they need to do something similar, even if it is just using their server model, and coming up with a server business, hosting or running the server farms for other companies, etc, similar to how google runs their own server farms. You have to compound your way to some bucks by adding value above the raw resource level, if that first level is not profitable yet. Treat open source as your starting point in a business solution on your way to making money,not the end point and it makes more sense and is easier to see. You want layers of value-added effort until you hit that layer that really will give you some market and money.
Math aside, I guess you could grow girlier pointy finger nails, but something like a thimble for each typing finger that came to a better shaped blunt and small tapered to a flat surface designed to fit *thing* might work on these little keyboards. Typing thimbles. Just a thought....
..US intel agencies have prepared another draft document that identifies other potential terrorist tools
Shovels-they can be used to plant bombs
Wheelbarrows-transport the bombs
sneakers-terrorists could be using sneakers on their feet to make it easy to walk around on the ground
clothing-terrorists could be wearing clothing so they could "blend in" with the civilian population and sneak around
talking to people-terrorists could infiltrate and meet each other and "talk"-communicate-with other terrorists
cars-terrorists, having blended into the civilian population, might use "cars" as transportation so they can go meet other terrorists and "talk"
grocery stores-terrorists might make use of grocery stores as part of a long supply train in order to get "food" for themselves and other terrorists in their secret underground cells
public drinking fountains-water is a necessity for terrorist operations, so they might make use of public drinking fountains and garner unauthorized water supplies
money-terrorists could make use of cash money in order to purchase supplies that they could use for terrorist operations, such as sneakers, clothing, shovels, wheelbarrows, food, etc
pencils and paper-terrorists might make use of easily available pencils and paper on the rogue "underground" black market, and use these devices as a communications medium. The report also suggests closing the "department store loophole" in order to combat this threat
videogames-terrorists might make use of videogames as a cheap way to get assymetrical warfare training, and to indoctrinate and brainwash their cadre into risking armed violent attacks by portraying it as "normal" and something that the civilian population would support. Some notice has been made by "deep cover" agents that the game "America's Army" apparently is a favorite with terrorists
sporting events=sporting events have been identified as a favorite terrorist meeting area, where they can get together and "talk"-or communicate- and engage in psychological "pumping up" efforts in order to bolster courage before going out on terrorism operations. Long range surveillance has noted that they "Chant" various phrases like "Kill 'em!" and "De-fense! De-fense!" and will also engage in ritualistic "hooting" which appears to be a secret call sign that identifies terrorists to their appropriate cell members. Different cells have different names, and the chants change to identify them.
It has been noted that some terrorists are male, and some are female, and they can come in all ages, so the modern warfighter has to take note when they see individuals or groups that are made up of males or females or combinations of such.
..and trust. Computerized voting verification is PhD level software AND hardware guys with electronic microscopes per every single machine per every single precinct and district and so on, to even start to verify. Paper ballots start to finish, anyone who can read and do simple arithmetic, ie, most of the voting public, and it can be verified. One group is pretty small and couldn't be done realistically, the other group is how we did it for hundreds of years and could still work just fine as long as there is a minimum interest in the results.
Any voter can be present at the end of the day to be a witness to the count with paper ballots, and you can volunteer to be an official as well, which means the group of people you need to trust is only one person, which is YOU, and the guy standing next to you only has to trust one person, himself, if he is a witness as well at the end of the day. Versus how many people could look at machine code or C code or any other obscure "language" and then how do you verify all the chips on the computer? Who guards those computers during the non voting period so they aren't tampered with, versus staring at an empty box? No guards needed on empty boxes, because it is unlocked and opened at the beginning of the day and anyone there in line can look at it, and typically the first person in line signs off on it, I have done that myself "yo, empty!".
NO ONE can just stare at a computer voting terminal and "verify" it without deep forensics, it can't be done, if anyone can do it they can apply to Randi for his million buck prize because you'd have to be 100% psychic to do that. And if you want to insure some vote using something similar to how we conduct electronic transactions with money, it throws the entire concept of anonymity out the window, because you must tie a vote to a single individual, then you still wind up with the machine count having to be verified and back to the forensics, it just adds a further level of complexity and possible points of compromise. Nuts.
KISS works for a lot of things, no need to rube goldberg it up just because it is possible. Voting is too important to trust it to being just a videogame. If people got spare time and want to code and can't come up with a project on their own, no problem! They can go check out sourceforge and find something else to work on.
Voting isn't a (*(&^ing nail, stop trying to throw your coding hammer at it! This has gotten to be an example of obsessive compulsive disorder with these schemes. This is crazy. Open source or not, unless there is an independent deep forensics investigation of every single computerized voting kiosk at the end of the vote period, including disassembling the chips on the machine and all that stuff, it can *not* be verified in a timely, cheap and thorough manner. Oh, a "paper trail"? Why yes, let's look at that "new idea" to "insure" and "verify" the computerized vote! A plain empty box CAN be verified at the start of the voting day by many people looking inside and going "yep, empty!" And a paper trail is exactly what you get start to finish with plain paper ballots, no stupid computer and expense needed. Yes, examples in the past of ballot box stuffing, still way easier to keep tabs on it then running everything through obfuscated layers of chips and code. Paper ballots and empty boxes are WAY MORE the lesser of (in)security evils when it comes to voting, let alone being loads cheaper when it comes to co$t$. Empty box per precinct=ten bucks max, what do these computerized schemes cost, and how much has been wasted on them so far and how much "irregularities" do we get to read about and enjoy before this sinks in as just a bad idea overall?
..and to me still the best example of a fine US car (engineering + style) during the muscle car/pony car era Avanti Scroll down, you'll see the references to some land speed records. Some other efforts were achieved with other models of Studebaker, just pop it into google, ton of hits.
If you are in Florida, it isn't too far to come up around north Atlanta and look at the boats on lake Lanier and Alatoona. With the drought or semi drought the past two years, plus the economy, there's a lot of deals on boats here. You'll pay to have them hauled back obviously, but there's the added bonus of no salt water rot in any of them.
..gives everyone more tools to use to go off and do *real business*, ie, "make money" if that is your goal. Because it eliminates one aspect of artificial scarcity, which then allows you to address real scarcity in real products and services and come up with something new and useful or make your existing business more efficient/whatever. This dude has no idea whatsoever about open source or shared content and how it works, the main basic raw theory. The closed off guilds and company store and town model and giant price fixing efforts through monopolies and cartels is from like centuries ago and has been proven to be a hindrance to progress and increasing wealth and prosperity. Now we still have remnants of it, and more work needs to be done there, but the trend is to share the basic stuff, then go off and work on the fine tuning for your particular niche that you use for business, either a product or service or both. I'll make it even simpler for this guy. I don't care how leet someone is coding, there's only so much a single dude can code. That is worth x. Say it is openly shared, and the dude takes back what other folks contribute and share, takes advantage of it. He now has at his disposal, x plus the combined output of a,b,c,d and etc, all the output from all the other millions of sharers so his "wealth pile" goes up way past whatever was his theoretical top limit on production. And that wealth is tools, to go on and do some real work with those tools. Look at the linux kernel for the primest of examples there.
And what people do for fun or hobbies etc., is just that, fun, and people will continue to do that no matter what, and pay for it, one way or the other, they always have. Hobbies have been around since the first cave dude figured out stringing clamshells on some rawhide and giving it to some cave chick was "productive and fun and a useful pursuit" ;)
As to "blogosphere" and discussion forums, just look how much easier it is to go find out stuff today when you have a real problem, look at the thousands of niche discussion forums where enthusiasts get together and share experiences and tip and tricks and so on. They are all much better off with being able to tap into this pool of people who are into this or that. And news is news, the scene there is a lot better than before, and people will and are "reporting" what they find out or see, then discuss (and cuss) it. Because we as humans like that stuff, it's fun and useful, else we wouldn't be doing it, so it will continue in one form or another, and the internet isn't going away. Maybe some website will go down, but others will be made, that's how that works..
As to the economy, heck ya a lot of jobs will become obsolete, whereas we have a ton of new jobs on the horizon, for example, alternate energy is booming and will continue to boom because of a simple fact. Old (and heavily centralized) energy is invest heavy in infrastructure, then continue to pay for fuel forever (plus all the speculators and monopolists and cartels profits way above cost of production into gouging land due to their fighting to maintain artificial scarcity). Alternate renewable and sustainable energy is invest heavy in infrastructure, then get free fuel forever, because there's no way anyone can cartel-ize the sun and wind and ocean waves..and there's not going to be any scarcity involved with those fuels. Which looks to be a better deal long range, and especially as things get more expensive the "old" way? And like everything else, there's a ton of computer work involved there that folks will need to be doing, then all the blue collar and now they call it "green collar" jobs that will be opening up because of it, and open source work will go to help that computer work get done, and open sharing of knowledge will help entrepreneurs figure out better ways of doing this "energy" thing. And that's just one example, it applies across the board, agriculture, manufacturing, health care, all over.
Eventually, all
..what's called a charge controller for your solar panels BEFORE it feeds into the batteries, and then you might as well just then complete the rig with a charger/inverter device (here, check out xantrex company, they have some info and a product range). That's the proper way to do a solar rig with battery backup. You get the solar input when it is there, you get grid input when you might need it, both sources go to the batteries, the batteries feed back to the charger/inverter and that goes to your circuit box. Then it is seamless and automatic, mostly just do battery maintenance once a month or something, top off with distiled water. Direct connection solar panel to device is only for the most low powered gadgets with a a very small solar panel. And the reason is solar panels are unregulated voltage, the brighter/sunnier, the more you get, sometimes over 20 volts on a panel (conversely I have seen half a volt from a full moon!). There isn't much lost in a modern system, don't worry about it. If you really just want pure DC, with zero grid ties at all, that is doable, look for "off grid" or marine or RV packages/systems and how they are designed. You eliminate the inverter part, but keep the rest. They come in multiples of 12, 12 vdc, 24 and 48 are the most common. You *will* need the appropriate charge controller though, to sit between the panels and the batteries, or you will cook your batteries. And you can get 12 vdc power supplies designed for mini itx cheap enough if that sort of machine would work for you instead of the atx desktop.