I use MetroPCS, which provides exactly what you are descibing. For 55 dollars a month I get unlimited local and long distance calls,as well as unlimited text messages. I live in Atlanta and Metropcs is unable or unwilling to negotiate peering agreements with the majors to offer nationwide roaming. That's OK as I spend 99% of my time here and enjoy not having to worry about whether a certain call is going to cost me 40 cents a minute(!) when I've used up my alloted 600 minutes from t-mobile.
absolutely public data should be public, just not mine ; P Seriously, if taxpayer money is used, the public should be able to access the results of studies, etc. To a large extent, I would argue it's already like this. Many academic publications are available online at the local state university. Of course, not too many people use that resource. The real travesty is when public money is used to fund research that benefits the public, but the fruits of the research are appropriated and patented by corporate concerns like pharmaceutical companies. The USGS lockdown of some map data is another example of abuse of public knowledge. I also happen to think the national telecommuncations infrastructure should be nationalized, but that's another discussion . . . ; )
You might want to check out billmonk.com. I ran across the site a while ago and to tell the truth, haven't used it a bit. But the concept seems cool. You can use it to track loans (of CDs, books, money or clothes) among a community of friends. I haven't used it because I haven't enlisted any friends to sign up. It could be useful for your situation although I don't believe the software behind the site is extensible or that its possible to create groups or communities. (*sigh* web 3. where art thou?)
Growth in U.S. demand for gasoline slowed from an average 1.6 percent per year between 1990 and 2004 to 0.3 percent in 2005 and 1 percent in 2006, the report said.
Your 0.3% is right on, but it's consistently been 1.6% in the years before. Now are you sure it's noise?
The 0.3% figure the gp cited was for a reduction in miles driven. The 0.3 percent you mentioned was for an increase in gas demand. You seem to imply they are related. They are not. It is statistical noise.
i think your best option is to use devices that charge via usb as much as possible. my phone uses usb to charge and i thought ipods did as well (don't have one though.) I know there are cameras that use usb to replenish their batteries. incompatible chargers is an enourmously frustrating experience so i am happy to see that more devices seem to be focusing on using usb. i know that radio shack sells kits with different adapter sizes and voltage switching as i used one to charge my minidisc player a few years back. this is not as good of a solution to me as usb charging so i look for that in devices i want to purchase. i realize differnt devices have dfferent amperage requirements but why, oh why, must cell phone manufacturers make so many different interfaces and amperage settings for what is essentially the same device! can they possibly be making that much money ripping people off for chargers? anyway, demand usb charging and hopefully more manufaturers will get a clue.
if Blu Ray is a success because of the PS3 and/or vice versa
i'm willing to bet blue ray is as dead as beta. hard drive prices are plummeting and network speeds are greatly increasing. who wants a scratchable disc that holds ~25gb when hard drives are so cheap. portability? flash drives will be over 10gb before you know it and they're rewritable and smaller to boot. besides, what data do you really need to be portable in the blu-ray size range? movies, especially with h.264 compression look great at fairly small file sizes. the one case i could see for a blu-ray disc is for holding series of shows (simpsons, the blue planet, etc.) but when you're able to order tv shows from the back catalog on demand, what's the point of owning discs? and once cell phone networks get upgraded to 4g, forget about it. (this is happening faster than you may think)
well, windows mobile 5 sucks so much, and in so many novelly irritatating ways, that a simple list of its bad points could run into pages. Seriously, someone could write a dissertation on how not to design a mobile computing interface with winmobile 5 as the central example. I shudder to think what version 3 (or heaven forbid, 1) was like.
Using emulation is definitely a great idea, but it would seem that many legacy apps run on legacy/specialized hardware as well. Emulation might not work so well in such an environment, especially if the drivers or protocols for any specialized hardware are closed. Of course, as the cost of new computers plummets and the variety of USB enabled hardware spirals upwards, it may be a decision that makes sense for many businesses in the near future. Especially if the newer machines take the place of several older machines (thin clients, etc.)
I realize you must have a license to run older software in emulation environments. How does this work for corporate volume?
you may be interested in the nooron project. I came across nooron several years ago thinking along the same lines as you. if you read the paper "how to build a global brain" on the site you'll get an idea of the scope of this project. it looks like it may no longer be under active development. I called the creator, Shawn Murphy up sometime in 2003-4(?) to discuss the project. it seemed to fit an important niche--basically taking ideas like the recommendation system in amazon & "rate this seller" in ebay. Developing social trust networks. In my opinion, the XDI initiative seems to cover the next generation of identity solutions that would make this work optimally. Here's a good article explaining the protocol. Ironically, the w3c declined to work with the xdi folks, preferring to use existing protocols/hacks.
tagging is another important component of what i'm sure some genius will call web 3.0 in a couple of years. rss will also be integral. ultimately, as natural language processing improves, the way we will be able to search and organize data will be vastly improved. imagine being able to subscribe to feeds of searches based on criteria like reputation! it's an interesting field but it's late now . . .
YouTube is the best advertising vehicle I've seen in a long time and because of this, Business perception will change. Or we can hope.:)
You've hit the nail on the head here. The problem is, YouTube faces serious problems primarily because their technology is so easy to reproduce. Competitors, like Revver, provide a much better option for people who want to share videos because they offer a share of earnings that the video creates. If I was the Daily Show, or Fox or any major content producer, I would post short clips of shows with Revver so I could make money with my "advertisements." Also, I would be working to make it easy to buy the full content as you watch a clip (a button to add the DVD to your cart ). I suspect the bright folks at Google understand this quite clearly and plan to integrate Google checkout and their targeted advertising with YouTube's services. Furthermore, they will have to innovate some type of revenue sharing for copyright holders if they plan on capitalizing on the YouTube brand name. This will happen.
* The wireless setup is not straightforward, and if you're not used to it can be a bit confusing.
To offer a different perspective, when I first bought my Linksys WRT a few years ago i was furious to find that the cd that they included only included windows drivers. There were no instructions for OS X, so I figured I was screwed. After calming down I realized that my powerbook WAS online after all; I didn't do anything to configure it. Since then I have never had a problem accessing a wireles network with my powerbook. I'm not sure what problems the parent poster encountered but I doubt that this is the case with most Apple users. Also, most office programs available for Ubuntu (open office, abiword etc.) are available for the mac as well. This is true for thousands of software packages if you choose to use the janky X11 windowing environment (not installed with OS X by default but available on the install discs)
I don't even know if there's a hotkey for cycling through tabs in Safari -- I hope there is, but that I just haven't found it yet.
I always use Shift-Cmd-left arrow and Shift-Cmd-Right arrow. This is the most ergonomic way of navigating through tabs I have encountered since the history back and forward commands are Cmd-Left and Right respectively. I hate using Firefox's Ctrl-tab and have gone to great lengths to make it respond in the simple Safari manner. I noticed another reply mentioned Cmd-} and Cmd-{ so maybe it's just my version of Safari (away from the laptop right now. I think I'm running 2 but it could be 1.3)
For quickly getting between windows in an application when I'm not sure of the order, I just press the Expose key for all application windows (suddenly, all my TextEdit windows are on the screen, waiting for me to pick one!). I can do this for all applications and their windows with a different Expose shortcut.
Thanks for correcting Rob for his incomplete usage of the Apple windowing system! I was thinking the same thing myself. I'll add that the Shift key reverses the tabbing cycle and is therefore another useful way to navigate windows when you're unsure of the order. Also, if you find yourself in a situation where you have multiple Text Edit windows open I highly recommend downloading the excellent Text Wrangler from barebones.com. You can manage many documents using a side drawer, easily do diffs on files, edit (and easily distinguish) remote documents from local documents and many other features that make it an indispensible tool for managing projects like web code. Best of all, it's free! If I had money I would probably buy barebone's BBedit but Text Wrangler is so good at what it does I have a hard time imagining what more I would be buying. BTW, I'm not affiliated with barebones software--I simply hate seeing people do things the hard way.
Late 2011, Google purchases Adobe and makes Flash and a light version of PDF part of their web platform. Google announced mobile web platform: Google Boxmobile.
You forget that Apple, in an attempt to dominate rapidly growing education/self-publishing market, will purchase Adobe in 2009!
Here is an opinion piece I wrote in 2002 for a school paper that seems relevant to this discussion:
In 1961, John F. Kennedy posed a challenge to American scientists and engineers. The goal, he said, was to put a man on the moon by the end of the decade.
The technological hurdles to be overcome were daunting, to say the least. Many people thought it was a ludicrous proposition. But he noted, "[w]e choose to go to the moon, not because it's easy but because it's hard."
On July 20, 1969 the Eagle landed in the Sea of Tranquility. America answered the call.
As we enter a new millennium, another challenge faces our country.
The importance of this challenge supersedes the quest for lunar landing or even the pursuit of terrorists.
It is technologically feasible and incredibly beneficial. If we had a wise leader in the office of the president, he or she would proclaim to the world that within a decade, the U.S. would cease to use fossil fuels. Not because it's easy but because we have to.
It may be a shocking proposition, but it is entirely attainable.
The obstacles to eliminate widespread use of renewable energy are not primarily technological. Instead, it is our own government's policies that keep us locked into the unfortunate "necessities" of environmental degradation and military protection of oil reserves.
The Bush administration cut research funding for renewable energy by $135 million. This was a 36 percent decrease from Clinton's last budget.
Instead of increasing the amount the federal government spent on fuel cell or solar power research, Bush began a $150 million program to study how to make coal burn cleaner.
He also increased the entire fossil fuels budget two percent, or about $10 million, over Clinton's budget. For the 2002 fiscal year, research and support for fossil fuels was $449 million while renewable energy projects received $237 million. Cheney's Energy Policy Report pays lip service to alterative power while emphasizing continued reliance on fossil fuels.
What else could you expect from an administration that includes a president and vice president who have lifetimes of connections to the oil industry?
If you're thinking "not much," then you're right. Tax credits and other subsidies to oil companies wind up costing the public around $5 billion a year. That's a conservative estimate and does not account for the billions the United States spends defending oil reserves and pipelines. The future war in Iraq and the war in Afghanistan are just the most recent examples.
Fuel cells run on hydrogen, and therefore, do not require reliance on foreign oil reserves.
The emissions from fuel cells consist of water vapor. Solar cells harness the power from our sun, and thus, have a nearly limitless ability to produce energy.
Geothermal and wind energy are also great untapped reserves of power.
Together, they account for about three percent of our nation's energy supply.
One of the principal objections to implementing alternative energies is that they are too expensive. The reason they are too expensive is that there is little demand for them, economically speaking. It's a chicken-and-the-egg issue. How can fuel cells gain widespread popularity when the costs of producing them limit demand? The answer lies within our government.
In the 1960s, computers were prohibitively expensive. The U.S. government invested hundreds of millions of dollars for equipment that would allow them to test weapons and compile statistical data. Gradually, costs began to fall to a range a number of large companies could afford.
This spurred further drops in price and created a competitive environment where smaller companies could afford computers.
Eventually, individuals were able to buy "personal computers." And a revolution began.
What we need now is an energy revolution.
The government should convert its fleets of vehicles to ethanol or fuel cells. All government f
I thought I should point out Yahoo pays a lot of money to the wire services to display their stories. My father works for the Associated Press and told me Yahoo and AOL are now the AP's biggest customers. I imagine Reuters is in much the same boat. The point is, Yahoo is not simply copying this news under the guise of "aggregation" like Google does. They are paying hundreds of millions of dollars to become a full-fledged partner.
more like advanced weaponry and Federal Reserve notes;P I am continually amazed by how much people love to badmouth Jimmy Carter. Yes, yes, rampant inflation. It's a old canard. The OPEC embargo was largely out of his control and Reagan reaped much of the gain from Carter's policies (much of the improvement in the early 80s economy was a result of executive changes begun in the Carter administration; it takes time to turn an economy around) Of course, I was born in 1978 so didn't really experience the horror of his presidency first hand.
Politically, he was ahead of his time. I suppose a better policy would have been to launch a full-scale invasion of the Middle East to secure our right to cheap oil. Hmmmm, why does that sound familiar?
Carter is a true humanitarian. History will give him the respect he deserves. BTW, if you're ever in Atlanta, check out the Carter Center-one of the best kept secrets in the city.
I think it's a little more than that. I first came across XDI when I was researching open alternatives to Myspace. I signed up for friendster several years ago but never really used it much. When I finally got a myspace account, I had to fill out the same info yet again (interests, etc). On top of that, I found the myspace interface annoying. What would be great, I thought, would be a basic profile that could be shared across different sites. Kind of like a vCard on steroids. Something that would preserve your relationships with other people. XDI makes this possible.
I suppose mentioning Myspace is no way to ingratiate myself with the Slashdot mods but I think that the underlying model paves the way towards The Net in Osrson Scot Card's novel Ender's Game. For those unaware, The Net is a global forum of governance. Different "salons" debate policy issues and are voted upon. It's distributed democracy.
To just wrap up my short post (it's too early still), these issues are rather abstract, but will become more important as our world becomes increasingly interconnected. Another essay on the general subject is by Shawn Murphy, the man behind Nooron. He explains the idea behind nooron in How to Build a Global Brain I've submitted links on nooron and XDI to slashdot before, only to have them rejected in favor of the latest iPod "killer." So it's good to see something finally published . ..
I'll post more later after breakfast and coffee . . .
I'm generally opposed to biometrics (don't want a finger chopped off so someone else can get access ; ) but agree with your sentiment about a better reputation system. You may be interested in the XDI initiative. A good introduction can be found here: http://journal.planetwork.net/article.php?lab=reed 0704
A typical movie, if compressed by half, will fit on a standard 4.5 GB DVD
Using the H.264 codec, which Apple is pushing with Quicktime 7, a movie will handily compress to 700MB. I used Handbrake I compressed The Life Aquatic to less than 700MB at fullsize. The results were amazing. I am sure this is what they will use for downloaded movies. Plus, it makes it easier to squeeze 'em onto video iPods.
I was surprised that nobody else said "Go with Apple" so I guess I will. I've worked with DVD production on both macs and pcs and find the macs to do a better job. iDVD should fit the bill considering you haven't done the process before. However, DVD Studio Pro can be really easy if you use the templates and provides a great deal of extra power/detail if you need. I haven't tried most of the PC programs mentioned by other posters but I can't stress the Mac option enough if you're new to the process and have acces to a Mac.
Slashdot Mirror
I use MetroPCS, which provides exactly what you are descibing. For 55 dollars a month I get unlimited local and long distance calls,as well as unlimited text messages. I live in Atlanta and Metropcs is unable or unwilling to negotiate peering agreements with the majors to offer nationwide roaming. That's OK as I spend 99% of my time here and enjoy not having to worry about whether a certain call is going to cost me 40 cents a minute(!) when I've used up my alloted 600 minutes from t-mobile.
absolutely public data should be public, just not mine ; P Seriously, if taxpayer money is used, the public should be able to access the results of studies, etc. To a large extent, I would argue it's already like this. Many academic publications are available online at the local state university. Of course, not too many people use that resource. The real travesty is when public money is used to fund research that benefits the public, but the fruits of the research are appropriated and patented by corporate concerns like pharmaceutical companies. The USGS lockdown of some map data is another example of abuse of public knowledge. I also happen to think the national telecommuncations infrastructure should be nationalized, but that's another discussion . . . ; )
You might want to check out billmonk.com. I ran across the site a while ago and to tell the truth, haven't used it a bit. But the concept seems cool. You can use it to track loans (of CDs, books, money or clothes) among a community of friends. I haven't used it because I haven't enlisted any friends to sign up. It could be useful for your situation although I don't believe the software behind the site is extensible or that its possible to create groups or communities. (*sigh* web 3. where art thou?)
maybe they didn't have any money? :P
Your 0.3% is right on, but it's consistently been 1.6% in the years before. Now are you sure it's noise?The 0.3% figure the gp cited was for a reduction in miles driven. The 0.3 percent you mentioned was for an increase in gas demand. You seem to imply they are related. They are not. It is statistical noise.
i think your best option is to use devices that charge via usb as much as possible. my phone uses usb to charge and i thought ipods did as well (don't have one though.) I know there are cameras that use usb to replenish their batteries. incompatible chargers is an enourmously frustrating experience so i am happy to see that more devices seem to be focusing on using usb. i know that radio shack sells kits with different adapter sizes and voltage switching as i used one to charge my minidisc player a few years back. this is not as good of a solution to me as usb charging so i look for that in devices i want to purchase. i realize differnt devices have dfferent amperage requirements but why, oh why, must cell phone manufacturers make so many different interfaces and amperage settings for what is essentially the same device! can they possibly be making that much money ripping people off for chargers? anyway, demand usb charging and hopefully more manufaturers will get a clue.
i'm willing to bet blue ray is as dead as beta. hard drive prices are plummeting and network speeds are greatly increasing. who wants a scratchable disc that holds ~25gb when hard drives are so cheap. portability? flash drives will be over 10gb before you know it and they're rewritable and smaller to boot. besides, what data do you really need to be portable in the blu-ray size range? movies, especially with h.264 compression look great at fairly small file sizes. the one case i could see for a blu-ray disc is for holding series of shows (simpsons, the blue planet, etc.) but when you're able to order tv shows from the back catalog on demand, what's the point of owning discs? and once cell phone networks get upgraded to 4g, forget about it. (this is happening faster than you may think)
blu-ray is sunk
well, windows mobile 5 sucks so much, and in so many novelly irritatating ways, that a simple list of its bad points could run into pages. Seriously, someone could write a dissertation on how not to design a mobile computing interface with winmobile 5 as the central example. I shudder to think what version 3 (or heaven forbid, 1) was like.
Using emulation is definitely a great idea, but it would seem that many legacy apps run on legacy/specialized hardware as well. Emulation might not work so well in such an environment, especially if the drivers or protocols for any specialized hardware are closed. Of course, as the cost of new computers plummets and the variety of USB enabled hardware spirals upwards, it may be a decision that makes sense for many businesses in the near future. Especially if the newer machines take the place of several older machines (thin clients, etc.) I realize you must have a license to run older software in emulation environments. How does this work for corporate volume?
tagging is another important component of what i'm sure some genius will call web 3.0 in a couple of years. rss will also be integral. ultimately, as natural language processing improves, the way we will be able to search and organize data will be vastly improved. imagine being able to subscribe to feeds of searches based on criteria like reputation! it's an interesting field but it's late now . . .
The end is near!
The U.S> has the largest prison population (over 2 million) and the highest rate of prisoners per capita at 715 per 100,000. source: NationMaster
You've hit the nail on the head here. The problem is, YouTube faces serious problems primarily because their technology is so easy to reproduce. Competitors, like Revver, provide a much better option for people who want to share videos because they offer a share of earnings that the video creates. If I was the Daily Show, or Fox or any major content producer, I would post short clips of shows with Revver so I could make money with my "advertisements." Also, I would be working to make it easy to buy the full content as you watch a clip (a button to add the DVD to your cart ). I suspect the bright folks at Google understand this quite clearly and plan to integrate Google checkout and their targeted advertising with YouTube's services. Furthermore, they will have to innovate some type of revenue sharing for copyright holders if they plan on capitalizing on the YouTube brand name. This will happen.
To offer a different perspective, when I first bought my Linksys WRT a few years ago i was furious to find that the cd that they included only included windows drivers. There were no instructions for OS X, so I figured I was screwed. After calming down I realized that my powerbook WAS online after all; I didn't do anything to configure it. Since then I have never had a problem accessing a wireles network with my powerbook. I'm not sure what problems the parent poster encountered but I doubt that this is the case with most Apple users. Also, most office programs available for Ubuntu (open office, abiword etc.) are available for the mac as well. This is true for thousands of software packages if you choose to use the janky X11 windowing environment (not installed with OS X by default but available on the install discs)
I always use Shift-Cmd-left arrow and Shift-Cmd-Right arrow. This is the most ergonomic way of navigating through tabs I have encountered since the history back and forward commands are Cmd-Left and Right respectively. I hate using Firefox's Ctrl-tab and have gone to great lengths to make it respond in the simple Safari manner. I noticed another reply mentioned Cmd-} and Cmd-{ so maybe it's just my version of Safari (away from the laptop right now. I think I'm running 2 but it could be 1.3)
Thanks for correcting Rob for his incomplete usage of the Apple windowing system! I was thinking the same thing myself. I'll add that the Shift key reverses the tabbing cycle and is therefore another useful way to navigate windows when you're unsure of the order. Also, if you find yourself in a situation where you have multiple Text Edit windows open I highly recommend downloading the excellent Text Wrangler from barebones.com. You can manage many documents using a side drawer, easily do diffs on files, edit (and easily distinguish) remote documents from local documents and many other features that make it an indispensible tool for managing projects like web code. Best of all, it's free! If I had money I would probably buy barebone's BBedit but Text Wrangler is so good at what it does I have a hard time imagining what more I would be buying. BTW, I'm not affiliated with barebones software--I simply hate seeing people do things the hard way.
You forget that Apple, in an attempt to dominate rapidly growing education/self-publishing market, will purchase Adobe in 2009!
In 1961, John F. Kennedy posed a challenge to American scientists and engineers. The goal, he said, was to put a man on the moon by the end of the decade.
The technological hurdles to be overcome were daunting, to say the least. Many people thought it was a ludicrous proposition. But he noted, "[w]e choose to go to the moon, not because it's easy but because it's hard."
On July 20, 1969 the Eagle landed in the Sea of Tranquility. America answered the call.
As we enter a new millennium, another challenge faces our country.
The importance of this challenge supersedes the quest for lunar landing or even the pursuit of terrorists.
It is technologically feasible and incredibly beneficial. If we had a wise leader in the office of the president, he or she would proclaim to the world that within a decade, the U.S. would cease to use fossil fuels. Not because it's easy but because we have to.
It may be a shocking proposition, but it is entirely attainable.
The obstacles to eliminate widespread use of renewable energy are not primarily technological. Instead, it is our own government's policies that keep us locked into the unfortunate "necessities" of environmental degradation and military protection of oil reserves.
The Bush administration cut research funding for renewable energy by $135 million. This was a 36 percent decrease from Clinton's last budget.
Instead of increasing the amount the federal government spent on fuel cell or solar power research, Bush began a $150 million program to study how to make coal burn cleaner.
He also increased the entire fossil fuels budget two percent, or about $10 million, over Clinton's budget. For the 2002 fiscal year, research and support for fossil fuels was $449 million while renewable energy projects received $237 million. Cheney's Energy Policy Report pays lip service to alterative power while emphasizing continued reliance on fossil fuels.
What else could you expect from an administration that includes a president and vice president who have lifetimes of connections to the oil industry?
If you're thinking "not much," then you're right. Tax credits and other subsidies to oil companies wind up costing the public around $5 billion a year. That's a conservative estimate and does not account for the billions the United States spends defending oil reserves and pipelines. The future war in Iraq and the war in Afghanistan are just the most recent examples.
Fuel cells run on hydrogen, and therefore, do not require reliance on foreign oil reserves.
The emissions from fuel cells consist of water vapor. Solar cells harness the power from our sun, and thus, have a nearly limitless ability to produce energy.
Geothermal and wind energy are also great untapped reserves of power.
Together, they account for about three percent of our nation's energy supply.
One of the principal objections to implementing alternative energies is that they are too expensive. The reason they are too expensive is that there is little demand for them, economically speaking. It's a chicken-and-the-egg issue. How can fuel cells gain widespread popularity when the costs of producing them limit demand? The answer lies within our government.
In the 1960s, computers were prohibitively expensive. The U.S. government invested hundreds of millions of dollars for equipment that would allow them to test weapons and compile statistical data. Gradually, costs began to fall to a range a number of large companies could afford.
This spurred further drops in price and created a competitive environment where smaller companies could afford computers.
Eventually, individuals were able to buy "personal computers." And a revolution began.
What we need now is an energy revolution.
The government should convert its fleets of vehicles to ethanol or fuel cells. All government f
I thought I should point out Yahoo pays a lot of money to the wire services to display their stories. My father works for the Associated Press and told me Yahoo and AOL are now the AP's biggest customers. I imagine Reuters is in much the same boat. The point is, Yahoo is not simply copying this news under the guise of "aggregation" like Google does. They are paying hundreds of millions of dollars to become a full-fledged partner.
more like advanced weaponry and Federal Reserve notes ;P I am continually amazed by how much people love to badmouth Jimmy Carter. Yes, yes, rampant inflation. It's a old canard. The OPEC embargo was largely out of his control and Reagan reaped much of the gain from Carter's policies (much of the improvement in the early 80s economy was a result of executive changes begun in the Carter administration; it takes time to turn an economy around) Of course, I was born in 1978 so didn't really experience the horror of his presidency first hand.
Politically, he was ahead of his time. I suppose a better policy would have been to launch a full-scale invasion of the Middle East to secure our right to cheap oil. Hmmmm, why does that sound familiar?
Carter is a true humanitarian. History will give him the respect he deserves. BTW, if you're ever in Atlanta, check out the Carter Center-one of the best kept secrets in the city.
The reason is that the latest Windows Media Player on the Mac does not support Microsoft's new DRM. No DRM=no store=nozune for mac.
I found the following article on XDI a good introduction: The Social Web: Creating An Open Social Network with XDI I encourage anyone interested in trust networks and reputation systems to read it.
I suppose mentioning Myspace is no way to ingratiate myself with the Slashdot mods but I think that the underlying model paves the way towards The Net in Osrson Scot Card's novel Ender's Game. For those unaware, The Net is a global forum of governance. Different "salons" debate policy issues and are voted upon. It's distributed democracy.
To just wrap up my short post (it's too early still), these issues are rather abstract, but will become more important as our world becomes increasingly interconnected. Another essay on the general subject is by Shawn Murphy, the man behind Nooron. He explains the idea behind nooron in How to Build a Global Brain I've submitted links on nooron and XDI to slashdot before, only to have them rejected in favor of the latest iPod "killer." So it's good to see something finally published . . .
I'll post more later after breakfast and coffee . . .
I'm generally opposed to biometrics (don't want a finger chopped off so someone else can get access ; ) but agree with your sentiment about a better reputation system. You may be interested in the XDI initiative. A good introduction can be found here:d 0704
http://journal.planetwork.net/article.php?lab=ree
Using the H.264 codec, which Apple is pushing with Quicktime 7, a movie will handily compress to 700MB. I used Handbrake I compressed The Life Aquatic to less than 700MB at fullsize. The results were amazing. I am sure this is what they will use for downloaded movies. Plus, it makes it easier to squeeze 'em onto video iPods.
I was surprised that nobody else said "Go with Apple" so I guess I will. I've worked with DVD production on both macs and pcs and find the macs to do a better job. iDVD should fit the bill considering you haven't done the process before. However, DVD Studio Pro can be really easy if you use the templates and provides a great deal of extra power/detail if you need. I haven't tried most of the PC programs mentioned by other posters but I can't stress the Mac option enough if you're new to the process and have acces to a Mac.