"Copyright should end at death, and be at most 30 years in length. 30 years seems like a reasonable amount of time to get money out of the monopoly on the expression of an idea."
No way. If that were permitted, you'd have hired goons killing the copyright owners so publishers could stop writing out royalty checks. I mean, c'mon, look at the history of the RIAA screwing living artists out of their checks, or the various motion picture companies cooking the books to wipe out percentage profits. To this day, Warner Bros. Pictures claims they haven't made a profit off 1989's Batman motion picture.
" Shame the Tolkein estate didn't have editorial control over those dreadful films." Yet I believe that Suess's wife had a good deal of control over both the Grinch and Cat in the Hat, so you never can tell."
I felt the problem with "The Cat in the Hat" was that it felt like the movie was slumming with Mike Myers in the role when it should've been Jim Carrey. At least that's what I thought through the entire pic. Mike's face didn't even look anything like the Cat's either...
"This always happens when you have an estate controlling the interests of an artist or writer. Estate holders only consider the money side of things, but most artists alive wish only to impact the world, by sharing their life-blood with the public -- forget the bottom line."
Really? The "artists" who control the Doctor Who character K-9 have often prevented the BBC from bringing the character back to WHO proper. And they aren't dead yet.
"Perhaps my meaning was misunderstood, I dont have any direct animosity toward Infogrames, I was more referring to the slapping an old school label on something as part of marketing. It doesn't feel right, and in the case of Commodore, its got a bogons flying out from every orifice."
True, but Commodore Business Machines built typewriters and calculators before they made their own computers. TI destroyed Commodore in the calculator business because they made all the chips and hiked the prices on what Commodore had to pay for them. That behavior influenced Jack Tramiel into buying MOS Technologies (the maker of the 6502 chip) and then returned the favor on TI, Apple, and Atari in the 8-bit computer market.
So in retrospect, the Commodore brand could be applied to a variety of components. The question is, will nostalgia actually sell modern products? Personally, I doubt the Commodore joystick will sell even a fraction of what the Atari or Namco branded ones have.
Is Dell really paying for the rebate or are they receiving monies from Microsoft? Call me a tin-foil hat wearer, but for some strange reason I have to question Microsoft's $7 billion expenditure on R&D. Me thinks some of that money goes toward their allies to weaken their "enemies." I wouldn't be surprised if Microsoft is funneling cash to Dell to pay for these rebates to lure customers away from the iPod and the iTunes Store and toward a Microsoft controlled relabeling of online distribution of Microsoft WMA files. Its like the U.S. (or the former U.S.S.R.) with its client states, only in this scenario, it is a client corporation.
"Am I the only one that sees this as cynically as the rebirth of Atari?"
What is wrong with the rebirth of Atari? Infogrames USA is a better company to use the name than JTS or Hasbro. It could also be argued that unlike the Tramiel Atari, at least this incarnation of the company understands the videogame industry. My only hope is that this new Atari will eventually acquire Midway so *all* of the Atari properties (such as post-1984 Atari coin-op titles) will be under a single entity. After all, Midway is the actual inheritor of the original Atari, that being the coin-op division (which now no longer exists).
"And note that the IIgs, while it debuted with a 2.8MHz capability (switchable to 1MHz), the Apple//e existed on the Apple price list longer than the IIgs. 1MHz forever!;-)"
That is ridiculous. Apple should've bumped up the clockspeed on that chip higher than that. The Atari Lynx (which debuted in 1989) had a 6502 microprocessor clocked at 16Mhz. But then Apple was stuck with not being able to offer the IIgs at a higher clockspeed than their Macintosh line, which had a Motorola 68000 (to my knowledge) at a clockspeed less than the Atari ST's 8Mhz 68000. If memory recalls, the Commodore Amiga was using a Motorola 68000 at 7.16Mhz which was the same chip used later in the Sega Geneis.
"This is British standard usage. Commodore, being a company, hence a group of people, takes the plural form of the verb. It's a choice made on lexical plurality, as opposed to morphological plurality. In the US, however, we typically only employ the plural forms of verbs with morphologically plural noun phrases in the subject position."
Possibly. But in the US, a corporation is considered a single legal entity like a person, except that the corporate citizen does not have a political franchise, i.e., a corporation does not have the right to vote for politicians. However, I won't touch the subject of campaign contributions.
"I thought it was more down to the result of the Apple vs Xerox court case, after all Lisa (fore runner to the Mac) was basically just a rip off of Star."
I thought Apple almost bought Xerox. That's the impression I got from Sculley's book. Then again, I read that several years ago and Sculley couldn't even distinguish between Atari and Commodore when referencing them as Macintosh competitors.
"When ONE guy comes up with a counter to them they go apeshit. There used to be civil discourse and some respect for the opinions of desenting voices in this country (Like Moore said, Dude, Where's My Country?). When Bill Clinton was in office they spewed their views and no one on the left really challenged them. Now that the shoe is on the other foot they attack anyone who doesn't agree with them. They are hypocrites of the worst magnitude and I agree when someone said that they are RINOS. They are "neocons" and radicals who are moving the Republican party so much to the left that it is going to backfire and they will all have to crawl into the holes they came out of."
You certainly have a short term memory. The alleged "liberally" biased media went out of their way to attack Presidents Reagan and Bush during their time(s) in office. Limbaugh got big nationally about the same time Clinton was "elected" into the Presidency with only 42% of the popular vote. His success is more of a testament to his format, his sensationalism, and the general publics disdain for talk radio (and television) hosts like Larry King and Phil Donahue who were well known to be liberals. You could even throw in Howard Stern whose politics have run rather conservative up until the current Bush Administration with the media crackdown. Bill Clinton was attacked and not successfully defended because most of the things he was attacked on were his own fault. The public did not support Hillary's health care plan even though the majority of the public wanted a public health care safety net instituted. The backlash against that complex bureaucratic scheme led to the Republicans sweeping out the Democratic majority in the Congress in the 1994 elections and ending a 50 year control streak. There were plenty of voices on the left defending Clinton throughout his presidency yet the thing is, they weren't successful. No matter how you look at Clinton's "affair" of sorts, he purgured himself in court and that has led to his disbarment after he left office. There wasn't a Republican right-wing conspiracy to bait Clinton with bimbos no matter how Hillary justifies her husband's behavior.
As for your assertion of the Republicans moving the party to the left, you must be smoking crack. The criticism is that the party is moving too far to the RIGHT.
The outrage over Moore has to do with the labeling of his film a *documentary* when it is an opinion piece. He does not check his facts enough, just as he named his last movie "Bowling for Columbine" because he thought the killers called in during their morning classes to go bowl when it didn't happen.
"and I'm sure most right-thinking people don't. But nore do I take Fox News at face value."
My solution is to ignore both Moore and Fox News. Call me crazy, but I do not see a "liberal" bias at CNN. And I wish Al Franken would hang up his politics and rejoin SNL and O'Reiley would go back to hosting Inside Edition. Come to think about it, I think Inside Edition had more credibility than O'Reiley's current program...:)
"Batman Begins will come out next June. Christopher Nolan (Memento) is directing it and Christian Bale (American Psycho) is starring. The IMDB trivia page is great. Other actors considered for the lead role include Ashton Kutcher, John Cusack, and David Duchovny."
That's missing a lot of info. David Boreanaz (of television's "Angel") was also one of the last actors to make the short list for the role. Screenwriter David Goyer even suggested Jake Gyllenhaal (of "Donnie Darko" fame), the boyfriend of Kirsten Dunst. That was a strange suggestion considering how freakishly close Gyllenhaal resembles Tobey McGuire, and also the fact that he came very close to replacing McGuire for the Spidey role due to the alleged back injury of McGuire's.
Back in 98, Kurt Russell was up for the role of Batman/Bruce Wayne.
As for referencing Bale, the best picture to see how he'd pull off Bruce Wayne/Batman would be his role in *Equilibrium* - the film that out-Matrixed the Matrix yet received almost no theatrical distribution. Check it out on DVD.
"In any case, bad directing can make even the best actor look bad. Natalie Portman, besides being achingly beautiful, is a fine actor, and let's consider just how wooden a performance she gave in Attack of the Clones. It'll be interesting 20 years from now to interview her about working with Lucas; I think she might be less than complimentary."
Portman deliberately acts wooden in the Star Wars films. She thinks she is better and shouldn't be in the films at this point. When I heard Lucasfilm toyed with the idea of replacing her with Keira Knightly for Episode III, I jumped up for joy because not only is Knightly a better actRESS, but she's also more attractive. And to think one of her first roles was playing Portman's double in Episode I.
"Konfabulator is not an original idea at all, sorry. Classic Mac OS had desk accessories since 1984, Windows 98 had its Active Desktop (which nobody ever used because it was too unstable, but did much the same thing). The only thing new here is using Javascript, and Windows did that almost a decade ago."
Same with the Atari ST via GEM circa 1985. T'was a drop down menu item. Of course, you could only have 4 installed at a time back then (and there were juggler programs to load certain ones up at boot up).:0
Hopefully, this was some of the IP that Atari licensed from Apple (they had a lawsuit way back when) because otherwise it would be Digital Research's IP. And we all know that SCO of today owns the IP of (Intergalactic) Digital Research.
"Yes, it is very nice looking, but how does it improve my interactions with the computer? The whole tilted window thing looks good but i dont think it'll be a huge bonus when it comes time to actually use it... I'd rather use those CPU cycles for something worthwhile i think..."
Are you serious? That's like someone sticking with Windows 3.1 (or early editions of KDE) because they claim the GUI in later editions became too complicated. Looking Glass is doing no more than adding to Linux/*NIX environments what the next edition of Mac OS X will probably have, and Longhorn too if Redmond ever ships it. I like what I see.
Alienware already has a patent-pending process to do SLI on their own motherboards, whether it is with an ATi or Nvidia based videocard. The two caveats are: 1. so far, this will only be through Alienware, and 2. the videocards have to be exactly the same card.
Alienware purchased a former 3dfx licensee who had outstanding patents on some of their own SLI tech. Alienware has wisely furthered the research and will be marketing it soon. And it doesn't require a Xeon processor...
Here's the press release:
http://www.alienware.com/press_release_pages/pre ss _release_template.aspx?FileName=press051204.asp
"Just like when the European's discovered life in America and all stopped fighting each other?"
Don't you think that's a little bit different? Finding humans on a different continent is a little different than finding intelligent non-human life in the cosmos. Sure, some Europeans and religious authorities tried claiming that the Native Americans weren't descended from Adam and Eve (unlike, say, Europeans) but from demons and the like, but successful interbreeding sorta put a damper on that theory. Unlike on Star Trek, interbreeding with a non-human extraterrestrial species is probably not easily possible. But on the opposite end of the spectrum, I will acknowledge that the Book of Genesis does indicate humans successfully interbred with angels so who knows.
"LOL.... you yanks make me laugh! So I guess non-yank humans would be Earth Aliens then right? See the irony? Nope, I guess not!"
Yes, here in the U.S., it is necessary to distinguish between common terms used for extraterrestrials versus say, illegal immigrants which are also referred to as "aliens." Of course, with the whole politically-correct (pc) movement, the term is supposed to now be "undocumented worker(s)" whether or not they actually work. In response to this PC biz, I wanted to refer to ugly people as the "attractively challenged." I'm surprised it hasn't caught on yet.
And watch who you call a "Yank." Us Californians are not Yanks. That's a term for those New England snobs.:)
"Because SETI might well find nothing, and if it DOES find something there will not be any immediate benefit from it. However odds are extremely good you or someone close to you will develop cancer, which is the focus of several folding projects."
True, but if SETI finds intelligent life out in the cosmos, perhaps they could easily cure cancer for us, as long as they don't have anything foolish like the Prime Directive to follow. So by using SETI@home, you would literally kill two birds with one stone. Theoretically of course...
"SETI seems like a bit of a waste of energy compared to Folding at Home. It's not that I don't believe in extraterrestrials or anything, I even think that SETI is a pretty worthwhile project but compared to curing some of the ailments folding works on...well yeah."
A waste of energy? Its an exploration of a scientific question for folks interested in hard science. How is that a waste of energy? That sounds like an argument people use when they claim that money spent on NASA should be spent on fixing the problems of "the real world" such as poverty.
Perhaps if mankind finds 100% proof (through SETI) that intelligent life exists out in space, us humans might actually try to live in peace with one another. Is that exploration a waste of time? Certainly with peace we could free up resources towards tackling diseases that plague our population. Then again, the counter argument is that most medical breakthroughs occur during conflict. Maybe we should be looking for hostile space aliens then...
By the way, you can use BOINC to choose what resources you want to spend on various shared distributed processing programs, such as between SETI and Folding. At least the Beta version did...
"however, i'm protected by the fact that i basically download european trance music for jogging purposes"
That's interesting. If someone in America downloads a B-Side track (of a famous band) that is only marketed overseas, how exactly could the RIAA nail you? Wouldn't the label's European or Japanese arm actually have to sue you?
Slashdot Mirror
"Copyright should end at death, and be at most 30 years in length. 30 years seems like a reasonable amount of time to get money out of the monopoly on the expression of an idea."
No way. If that were permitted, you'd have hired goons killing the copyright owners so publishers could stop writing out royalty checks. I mean, c'mon, look at the history of the RIAA screwing living artists out of their checks, or the various motion picture companies cooking the books to wipe out percentage profits. To this day, Warner Bros. Pictures claims they haven't made a profit off 1989's Batman motion picture.
" Shame the Tolkein estate didn't have editorial control over those dreadful films." Yet I believe that Suess's wife had a good deal of control over both the Grinch and Cat in the Hat, so you never can tell."
I felt the problem with "The Cat in the Hat" was that it felt like the movie was slumming with Mike Myers in the role when it should've been Jim Carrey. At least that's what I thought through the entire pic. Mike's face didn't even look anything like the Cat's either...
"This always happens when you have an estate controlling the interests of an artist or writer. Estate holders only consider the money side of things, but most artists alive wish only to impact the world, by sharing their life-blood with the public -- forget the bottom line."
Really? The "artists" who control the Doctor Who character K-9 have often prevented the BBC from bringing the character back to WHO proper. And they aren't dead yet.
"Perhaps my meaning was misunderstood, I dont have any direct animosity toward Infogrames, I was more referring to the slapping an old school label on something as part of marketing. It doesn't feel right, and in the case of Commodore, its got a bogons flying out from every orifice."
True, but Commodore Business Machines built typewriters and calculators before they made their own computers. TI destroyed Commodore in the calculator business because they made all the chips and hiked the prices on what Commodore had to pay for them. That behavior influenced Jack Tramiel into buying MOS Technologies (the maker of the 6502 chip) and then returned the favor on TI, Apple, and Atari in the 8-bit computer market.
So in retrospect, the Commodore brand could be applied to a variety of components. The question is, will nostalgia actually sell modern products? Personally, I doubt the Commodore joystick will sell even a fraction of what the Atari or Namco branded ones have.
Is Dell really paying for the rebate or are they receiving monies from Microsoft? Call me a tin-foil hat wearer, but for some strange reason I have to question Microsoft's $7 billion expenditure on R&D. Me thinks some of that money goes toward their allies to weaken their "enemies." I wouldn't be surprised if Microsoft is funneling cash to Dell to pay for these rebates to lure customers away from the iPod and the iTunes Store and toward a Microsoft controlled relabeling of online distribution of Microsoft WMA files. Its like the U.S. (or the former U.S.S.R.) with its client states, only in this scenario, it is a client corporation.
"Am I the only one that sees this as cynically as the rebirth of Atari?"
What is wrong with the rebirth of Atari? Infogrames USA is a better company to use the name than JTS or Hasbro. It could also be argued that unlike the Tramiel Atari, at least this incarnation of the company understands the videogame industry. My only hope is that this new Atari will eventually acquire Midway so *all* of the Atari properties (such as post-1984 Atari coin-op titles) will be under a single entity. After all, Midway is the actual inheritor of the original Atari, that being the coin-op division (which now no longer exists).
"And note that the IIgs, while it debuted with a 2.8MHz capability (switchable to 1MHz), the Apple //e existed on the Apple price list longer than the IIgs. 1MHz forever! ;-)"
That is ridiculous. Apple should've bumped up the clockspeed on that chip higher than that. The Atari Lynx (which debuted in 1989) had a 6502 microprocessor clocked at 16Mhz. But then Apple was stuck with not being able to offer the IIgs at a higher clockspeed than their Macintosh line, which had a Motorola 68000 (to my knowledge) at a clockspeed less than the Atari ST's 8Mhz 68000. If memory recalls, the Commodore Amiga was using a Motorola 68000 at 7.16Mhz which was the same chip used later in the Sega Geneis.
"This is British standard usage. Commodore, being a company, hence a group of people, takes the plural form of the verb. It's a choice made on lexical plurality, as opposed to morphological plurality. In the US, however, we typically only employ the plural forms of verbs with morphologically plural noun phrases in the subject position."
Possibly. But in the US, a corporation is considered a single legal entity like a person, except that the corporate citizen does not have a political franchise, i.e., a corporation does not have the right to vote for politicians. However, I won't touch the subject of campaign contributions.
"I thought it was more down to the result of the Apple vs Xerox court case, after all Lisa (fore runner to the Mac) was basically just a rip off of Star."
I thought Apple almost bought Xerox. That's the impression I got from Sculley's book. Then again, I read that several years ago and Sculley couldn't even distinguish between Atari and Commodore when referencing them as Macintosh competitors.
"When ONE guy comes up with a counter to them they go apeshit. There used to be civil discourse and some respect for the opinions of desenting voices in this country (Like Moore said, Dude, Where's My Country?). When Bill Clinton was in office they spewed their views and no one on the left really challenged them. Now that the shoe is on the other foot they attack anyone who doesn't agree with them. They are hypocrites of the worst magnitude and I agree when someone said that they are RINOS. They are "neocons" and radicals who are moving the Republican party so much to the left that it is going to backfire and they will all have to crawl into the holes they came out of."
You certainly have a short term memory. The alleged "liberally" biased media went out of their way to attack Presidents Reagan and Bush during their time(s) in office. Limbaugh got big nationally about the same time Clinton was "elected" into the Presidency with only 42% of the popular vote. His success is more of a testament to his format, his sensationalism, and the general publics disdain for talk radio (and television) hosts like Larry King and Phil Donahue who were well known to be liberals. You could even throw in Howard Stern whose politics have run rather conservative up until the current Bush Administration with the media crackdown. Bill Clinton was attacked and not successfully defended because most of the things he was attacked on were his own fault. The public did not support Hillary's health care plan even though the majority of the public wanted a public health care safety net instituted. The backlash against that complex bureaucratic scheme led to the Republicans sweeping out the Democratic majority in the Congress in the 1994 elections and ending a 50 year control streak. There were plenty of voices on the left defending Clinton throughout his presidency yet the thing is, they weren't successful. No matter how you look at Clinton's "affair" of sorts, he purgured himself in court and that has led to his disbarment after he left office. There wasn't a Republican right-wing conspiracy to bait Clinton with bimbos no matter how Hillary justifies her husband's behavior.
As for your assertion of the Republicans moving the party to the left, you must be smoking crack. The criticism is that the party is moving too far to the RIGHT.
The outrage over Moore has to do with the labeling of his film a *documentary* when it is an opinion piece. He does not check his facts enough, just as he named his last movie "Bowling for Columbine" because he thought the killers called in during their morning classes to go bowl when it didn't happen.
"and I'm sure most right-thinking people don't. But nore do I take Fox News at face value."
:)
My solution is to ignore both Moore and Fox News. Call me crazy, but I do not see a "liberal" bias at CNN. And I wish Al Franken would hang up his politics and rejoin SNL and O'Reiley would go back to hosting Inside Edition. Come to think about it, I think Inside Edition had more credibility than O'Reiley's current program...
p.s.
http://www.batmanbegins.com
"Batman Begins will come out next June. Christopher Nolan (Memento) is directing it and Christian Bale (American Psycho) is starring. The IMDB trivia page is great. Other actors considered for the lead role include Ashton Kutcher, John Cusack, and David Duchovny."
That's missing a lot of info. David Boreanaz (of television's "Angel") was also one of the last actors to make the short list for the role. Screenwriter David Goyer even suggested Jake Gyllenhaal (of "Donnie Darko" fame), the boyfriend of Kirsten Dunst. That was a strange suggestion considering how freakishly close Gyllenhaal resembles Tobey McGuire, and also the fact that he came very close to replacing McGuire for the Spidey role due to the alleged back injury of McGuire's.
Back in 98, Kurt Russell was up for the role of Batman/Bruce Wayne.
As for referencing Bale, the best picture to see how he'd pull off Bruce Wayne/Batman would be his role in *Equilibrium* - the film that out-Matrixed the Matrix yet received almost no theatrical distribution. Check it out on DVD.
"I liked Spiderman 1, but didn't think it was exceptional. Hellboy should have been called Dullboy."
I'm surprised the critics didn't flame Hellboy over the fact that its Act III matched almost exactly Act III from the original Blade film.
"In any case, bad directing can make even the best actor look bad. Natalie Portman, besides being achingly beautiful, is a fine actor, and let's consider just how wooden a performance she gave in Attack of the Clones. It'll be interesting 20 years from now to interview her about working with Lucas; I think she might be less than complimentary."
Portman deliberately acts wooden in the Star Wars films. She thinks she is better and shouldn't be in the films at this point. When I heard Lucasfilm toyed with the idea of replacing her with Keira Knightly for Episode III, I jumped up for joy because not only is Knightly a better actRESS, but she's also more attractive. And to think one of her first roles was playing Portman's double in Episode I.
"Konfabulator is not an original idea at all, sorry. Classic Mac OS had desk accessories since 1984, Windows 98 had its Active Desktop (which nobody ever used because it was too unstable, but did much the same thing). The only thing new here is using Javascript, and Windows did that almost a decade ago."
:0
Same with the Atari ST via GEM circa 1985. T'was a drop down menu item. Of course, you could only have 4 installed at a time back then (and there were juggler programs to load certain ones up at boot up).
Hopefully, this was some of the IP that Atari licensed from Apple (they had a lawsuit way back when) because otherwise it would be Digital Research's IP. And we all know that SCO of today owns the IP of (Intergalactic) Digital Research.
"Yes, it is very nice looking, but how does it improve my interactions with the computer? The whole tilted window thing looks good but i dont think it'll be a huge bonus when it comes time to actually use it... I'd rather use those CPU cycles for something worthwhile i think..."
Are you serious? That's like someone sticking with Windows 3.1 (or early editions of KDE) because they claim the GUI in later editions became too complicated. Looking Glass is doing no more than adding to Linux/*NIX environments what the next edition of Mac OS X will probably have, and Longhorn too if Redmond ever ships it. I like what I see.
Alienware already has a patent-pending process to do SLI on their own motherboards, whether it is with an ATi or Nvidia based videocard. The two caveats are: 1. so far, this will only be through Alienware, and 2. the videocards have to be exactly the same card.
e ss _release_template.aspx?FileName=press051204.asp
Alienware purchased a former 3dfx licensee who had outstanding patents on some of their own SLI tech. Alienware has wisely furthered the research and will be marketing it soon. And it doesn't require a Xeon processor...
Here's the press release:
http://www.alienware.com/press_release_pages/pr
One word: poorly.
My writing didn't require a wordy article to get to the kernel (pun intended) of truth. Perhaps the other author is paid per word printed.
"Just like when the European's discovered life in America and all stopped fighting each other?"
Don't you think that's a little bit different? Finding humans on a different continent is a little different than finding intelligent non-human life in the cosmos. Sure, some Europeans and religious authorities tried claiming that the Native Americans weren't descended from Adam and Eve (unlike, say, Europeans) but from demons and the like, but successful interbreeding sorta put a damper on that theory. Unlike on Star Trek, interbreeding with a non-human extraterrestrial species is probably not easily possible. But on the opposite end of the spectrum, I will acknowledge that the Book of Genesis does indicate humans successfully interbred with angels so who knows.
"LOL .... you yanks make me laugh! So I guess non-yank humans would be Earth Aliens then right? See the irony? Nope, I guess not!"
:)
Yes, here in the U.S., it is necessary to distinguish between common terms used for extraterrestrials versus say, illegal immigrants which are also referred to as "aliens." Of course, with the whole politically-correct (pc) movement, the term is supposed to now be "undocumented worker(s)" whether or not they actually work. In response to this PC biz, I wanted to refer to ugly people as the "attractively challenged." I'm surprised it hasn't caught on yet.
And watch who you call a "Yank." Us Californians are not Yanks. That's a term for those New England snobs.
"Because SETI might well find nothing, and if it DOES find something there will not be any immediate benefit from it.
However odds are extremely good you or someone close to you will develop cancer, which is the focus of several folding projects."
True, but if SETI finds intelligent life out in the cosmos, perhaps they could easily cure cancer for us, as long as they don't have anything foolish like the Prime Directive to follow. So by using SETI@home, you would literally kill two birds with one stone. Theoretically of course...
"SETI seems like a bit of a waste of energy compared to Folding at Home. It's not that I don't believe in extraterrestrials or anything, I even think that SETI is a pretty worthwhile project but compared to curing some of the ailments folding works on...well yeah."
A waste of energy? Its an exploration of a scientific question for folks interested in hard science. How is that a waste of energy? That sounds like an argument people use when they claim that money spent on NASA should be spent on fixing the problems of "the real world" such as poverty.
Perhaps if mankind finds 100% proof (through SETI) that intelligent life exists out in space, us humans might actually try to live in peace with one another. Is that exploration a waste of time? Certainly with peace we could free up resources towards tackling diseases that plague our population. Then again, the counter argument is that most medical breakthroughs occur during conflict. Maybe we should be looking for hostile space aliens then...
By the way, you can use BOINC to choose what resources you want to spend on various shared distributed processing programs, such as between SETI and Folding. At least the Beta version did...
SBC should be able to do better than that. Surewest Broadband here in Sacramento is fibre to the house. They hit 100Mbps.
Further proof that the dinosaur Bell telecos need to be taken out to the dustbin of American history once and for all.
"however, i'm protected by the fact that i basically download european trance music for jogging purposes"
That's interesting. If someone in America downloads a B-Side track (of a famous band) that is only marketed overseas, how exactly could the RIAA nail you? Wouldn't the label's European or Japanese arm actually have to sue you?