Well, there is an upside to all this DRM. If it all happens the way the content owners like, it may push more Americans to do things that don't involve movies and music, like going to the park, playing sports, making their own music and movies (really trivial to do nowadays), which could have positive effects like reduced obesity, increased creativity, more social interaction...
Gosh, now that I think about it, maybe this is a good idea.;-)
As the only significant population of sentient beings on the planet capable of widespread and/or purposeful modification of ecosystems, we act as "stewards" despite us not being granted that authority by anyone.
If we were like every other animal on the planet and had no ability to wreck global havok on the environment, then we could go about our merry lives just as they do: living for the moment and just focusing on the day-to-day struggle for survival.
However, we *do* have the capability and we *do* have the intelligence to consider the long-term consequences of our actions. Therefore, we must act like we are stewards even though nobody officially assigned us that title.
Like many toddlers, it's decorated...littered, really...with images and figures of wild animals -- polar bears, lions, tigers, gorillas, etc.
And she probably won't reach adulthood with all of these creatures still in existence in the wild.
Sure, we've celebrated them to the point of even surrounding our children with their virtual presence, yet we let them slide into extinction all the same.
We are poor, stupid, short-sighted stewards of this planet.
-- Fossils were made by Lucifer to tempt the wicked.
-- The sun revolves around the Earth.
-- Disease is caused by foul vapors in the blood -- a good bleeding via leeches is helpful...
And other arguments made by the dogmatically mind-numbed show how far (not at all) religion can get you down a path of scientific inquiry.
Even social policy doesn't have a great record when religion is the primary guide:
-- The Crusades
-- Salem witch trials
-- Slavery/segregation
-- Women as chattle in Middle East
And yeah, the Onion should have no problem defending this as their publication is a work of parody, much like all those Saturday Night Live sketches with someone standing behind a podium with the presidential seal on it.
Actually, the Greeks (esp. Pythagoras) figured out the world was round. It was only the Christian-based Europeans who rejected science for faith-based assumptions of how the physical world works (sound familiar?).
Now if we could somehow get a US company to pay Chinese workers $2 per hour to make Skype handsets for sale in China, then we might have a deal on our hands. Anyone?
ATA/133 has a theoretical max transfer rate of 133 MB/sec. USB 2.0 has a theoretical max transfer rate of about half that (~60 MB/sec). A decent USB 2.0 flash drive will have a transfer speed of 8-10 MB/sec. Given that seek times for the HDD probably aren't going to have significant impact on overall load time, these figures suggest that booting from the flash drive will be significantly slower, although probably less than a factor of 10. Just a hunch.
This should help speed the transition to Linux
on
The End of PalmOS?
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· Score: 1
As most who keep tabs on this stuff know, PalmSource has been working on moving Palm OS away from a proprietary kernel to a Linux kernel (and mostly Linux drivers as well) ever since they acquired China MobileSoft.
This acquisition of PalmSource by Access should help keep that transition going. But, I expect it to be somewhat disruptive and add some time to their roll-out schedule. That's not good, especially when everybody and their mother (except Microsoft) is jumping on the Mobile Linux bandwagon.
PalmSource had a chance for Palm OS to be the clear frontrunner for mobile/handheld Linux. Now it looks like they risk being an also-ran. Too bad.:-(
So, um, what will the hydrogen-powered Hummer be called?
The perfect device for the Bush administration
on
HOWTO: The Anti-Printer
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· Score: 4, Funny
Wow, this is what the White House have been wanting for a long time: a printer that will immediately shred everything it prints. No more pesky Freedom of Information Act requests, no sir!
Dearest Mods: No, this is not a troll, just a potentially lame attempt at humor. This is a troll.
While people certainly wear clothing proclaiming themselves to be a "slut" or "pervert", I seriously doubt a significant number of people would choose to wear an imitation "sexual offender" shirt if one were officially deigned by the local constabulatory for true SO's. Folks tend to like the off-beat/unexpected form of social self-degradation than one that's part of the government-approved system. Or at least that's my guess.
But, this discussion is pretty much moot since I can't believe even the Christian Right has enough power to reinstate the "Scarlet Letter" days.
I don't know why this isn't obvious to everyone, but if we have a problem with sexual offenders roaming around anonymously and using public computers to look up pr0n sites, then there's only one solution: make the offender wear a shirt or ID or something that shows everyone that he's not allowed to do certain things. For example, he could be forced to wear a bright orange "SO" t-shirt at all times when in public, just like those yellow drunk driver license plates some states have.
And yes, I'm totally kidding...don't mod me down for being sarcastic. Of course, now I might be modded down for pointing out my sarcasm, thereby negating the humor. Crap.
There are loads of alternate delivery mechanisms for the last-mile Internet service problem, and this is just one more. Granted, it sounds compelling, but between now and when it might get implemented, utilities and ISPs will be seduced/distracted by half a dozen newer/better/prettier/cheaper alternatives offered by various technology companies.
I've been using Current's BPL service for about a year now and it's been pretty decent. Except for fluctuating access speeds (range from 500kbps to 2.5mbps down), it's been fairly reliable and cheaper than RoadRunner.
The basis of the FCC is bureaucracy. Every rule that is created and every technology that is invented which *could* be governed by the FCC further solidifies its existence.
The FCC exists simply because Congress wills it -- it is only when the Congress itself is out of a job that the FCC will cease to be.
"What surprises me most, really, is that I have never come across a repository of free textbooks available in some standard electronic form - say PDF. If there were enough such books available and written by reputable professors there would be a movement towards making them the standard texts in classrooms."
The problem with your scenario there is that "reputable professors" (and even without much reputation) can make a handy living off writing textbooks for commercial publishers. College professors in general don't make a lot of money from their salaries, so textbook publishing is one of the few additional sources of income for most of them. I see few who would be eager to shut down that income stream just to replace it with a warm, fuzzy feeling they might get instead.
Utter ignorance is the total lack of information, or the complete absence of knowledge. We all know that nowledge is power, and power is force over time. Time is money, so knowledge is force over money. Ergo, someone who is ignorant has no force over money, which is certainly ironic given that the Nature article is entitled "Quantum Information: Putting certainty in the bank". Yes, poor people are easy to make fun of even in quantum states (which were formally known as blue states until the manic depressives complained about trademark infringement).
Years ago when I ran a dot.com (yes, when they were fashionable and profitable...at least some were), we had tons of content. CNET decided to start deep-linking to some of our downloads without sending anybody to our site (i.e., they put a link to our download on their site and only had a small plain-text attribution). They generated several GB of traffic each month, yet wouldn't remove their links even when asked. I even tried offering them a deal: retain the links, but xfer the visitor. They ignored me. I changed the link schema, and they FIXED the links, despite several letters from my lawyer and me. Amazing balls, those nitwits have. I enjoy seeing them twist a bit.
Slashdot Mirror
"Damn...I went over my alloted bandwidth in 3 seconds!"
Was there actually some sort of combustion in this impact? I thought the moon's atmosphere was inadequately oxygenated to support an "explosion".
Gosh, now that I think about it, maybe this is a good idea. ;-)
UC = University of Cincinnati, at least per the domain registry. www.uc.edu
If we were like every other animal on the planet and had no ability to wreck global havok on the environment, then we could go about our merry lives just as they do: living for the moment and just focusing on the day-to-day struggle for survival.
However, we *do* have the capability and we *do* have the intelligence to consider the long-term consequences of our actions. Therefore, we must act like we are stewards even though nobody officially assigned us that title.
And she probably won't reach adulthood with all of these creatures still in existence in the wild.
Sure, we've celebrated them to the point of even surrounding our children with their virtual presence, yet we let them slide into extinction all the same.
We are poor, stupid, short-sighted stewards of this planet.
-- Fossils were made by Lucifer to tempt the wicked.
-- The sun revolves around the Earth.
-- Disease is caused by foul vapors in the blood -- a good bleeding via leeches is helpful...
And other arguments made by the dogmatically mind-numbed show how far (not at all) religion can get you down a path of scientific inquiry.
Even social policy doesn't have a great record when religion is the primary guide:
-- The Crusades
-- Salem witch trials
-- Slavery/segregation
-- Women as chattle in Middle East
Wow, that's stupid.
And yeah, the Onion should have no problem defending this as their publication is a work of parody, much like all those Saturday Night Live sketches with someone standing behind a podium with the presidential seal on it.
This will be good...when the apes inherit the earth, at least they'll know the correct date and time.
Actually, the Greeks (esp. Pythagoras) figured out the world was round. It was only the Christian-based Europeans who rejected science for faith-based assumptions of how the physical world works (sound familiar?).
Now if we could somehow get a US company to pay Chinese workers $2 per hour to make Skype handsets for sale in China, then we might have a deal on our hands. Anyone?
ATA/133 has a theoretical max transfer rate of 133 MB/sec. USB 2.0 has a theoretical max transfer rate of about half that (~60 MB/sec). A decent USB 2.0 flash drive will have a transfer speed of 8-10 MB/sec. Given that seek times for the HDD probably aren't going to have significant impact on overall load time, these figures suggest that booting from the flash drive will be significantly slower, although probably less than a factor of 10. Just a hunch.
This acquisition of PalmSource by Access should help keep that transition going. But, I expect it to be somewhat disruptive and add some time to their roll-out schedule. That's not good, especially when everybody and their mother (except Microsoft) is jumping on the Mobile Linux bandwagon.
PalmSource had a chance for Palm OS to be the clear frontrunner for mobile/handheld Linux. Now it looks like they risk being an also-ran. Too bad. :-(
So, um, what will the hydrogen-powered Hummer be called?
Dearest Mods: No, this is not a troll, just a potentially lame attempt at humor. This is a troll.
I want to see them convert a shredder into a laser printer.
But, this discussion is pretty much moot since I can't believe even the Christian Right has enough power to reinstate the "Scarlet Letter" days.
And yes, I'm totally kidding...don't mod me down for being sarcastic. Of course, now I might be modded down for pointing out my sarcasm, thereby negating the humor. Crap.
Calculating Pi is good...but what FPS can it do in Battlefield 2?
I've been using Current's BPL service for about a year now and it's been pretty decent. Except for fluctuating access speeds (range from 500kbps to 2.5mbps down), it's been fairly reliable and cheaper than RoadRunner.
Shouldn't we try for something else? :-)
The FCC exists simply because Congress wills it -- it is only when the Congress itself is out of a job that the FCC will cease to be.
The problem with your scenario there is that "reputable professors" (and even without much reputation) can make a handy living off writing textbooks for commercial publishers. College professors in general don't make a lot of money from their salaries, so textbook publishing is one of the few additional sources of income for most of them. I see few who would be eager to shut down that income stream just to replace it with a warm, fuzzy feeling they might get instead.
Utter ignorance is the total lack of information, or the complete absence of knowledge. We all know that nowledge is power, and power is force over time. Time is money, so knowledge is force over money. Ergo, someone who is ignorant has no force over money, which is certainly ironic given that the Nature article is entitled "Quantum Information: Putting certainty in the bank". Yes, poor people are easy to make fun of even in quantum states (which were formally known as blue states until the manic depressives complained about trademark infringement).
Years ago when I ran a dot.com (yes, when they were fashionable and profitable...at least some were), we had tons of content. CNET decided to start deep-linking to some of our downloads without sending anybody to our site (i.e., they put a link to our download on their site and only had a small plain-text attribution). They generated several GB of traffic each month, yet wouldn't remove their links even when asked. I even tried offering them a deal: retain the links, but xfer the visitor. They ignored me. I changed the link schema, and they FIXED the links, despite several letters from my lawyer and me. Amazing balls, those nitwits have. I enjoy seeing them twist a bit.