Use the money saved to switch over to energy efficient bulbs, install hot water solar collectors on your house, blow in insulation, buy new windows, etc.
You mean the energy efficient bulbs with all the mercury in them and that require a hazmat team to dispose of? Hmmm... I dunno.
You have some good ideas, though. Here are some more: How about turn off lights you don't need, adjust your thermostat a few degrees, check your tire pressure frequently, replace your appliances with the most energy efficient models, move close to work, bike instead of drive, use mass transit, do your laundry with cold water, put your computer to sleep when not in use, unplug chargers not in use, buy local produce...
It seems like the marketing brilliance of this entire scenario is being missed by a lot of people here. How much publicity would NIN gotten without the RIAA enforcement? Would we be having this discussion, for instance? This seems like a well-orchestrated stunt, and color me impressed.
NIN scatter these songs around to their fans
Predictably, the fans post the songs
Somehow RIAA discovers this "infringement"
NIN looks like the good guy, RIAA makes the news
...Profit!
How do you suppose the RIAA discovered this infringement?
Suppose Joe is sharing a song he downloaded. It gets downloaded four times, as you suggest. One of the people who downloads it is Mary.
Joe gets sued by the RIAA and they compute damages based on their guess on how deep the tree is below Joe. Mary gets sued by the RIAA and... wait a minute... now the RIAA is double-dipping on the damages for all of the people below Mary!
Now that would be a cool design for Bluetooth headset. Now if they could just make a phone where you'd have to look down a periscope to see the display, I'd be completely sold!
My heart is moving. That's one difference, there are many other.
Autorhythmicity... sure, that's certainly one difference. The ancients called that "tong chi". You're not alive because your heart is beating, though- it's the other way around. Even in Western medicine they call a heartbeat a "sign of life."
And you would argue out of ignorance. All of those theories are based on observation and founded in mathematics. The concept of 'chi' has no such foundation, and has not stood up to observation.
Chinese Medicine is no less strigent of a science and based on thousands of years of observation, and trial and error, with a quarter of the world's population! It's creation was dependent on careful observation.
But to refute your position that it has "not stood up to observation", I'll point you to 127 scientific medical publications on the topic, most of which would seem to support these theories:
I'm amused that you think a foundation of mathematics is a magic bullet; that somehow math magically makes hypotheses true. String theory is indeed based heavily on math, but it is far from achieving a conscensus in the scientific community on its "truth". In fact, there's plenty of debate on whether or not it even qualifies as science!
No such thing as "chi", huh? Perhaps you can explain to me what the difference is between you and a fresh corpse, then?
It seems your objection is that there's nothing mystical or mysterious in the world. If you hold this view, I suggest that you simply don't know enough science. The Big Bang, quantum physics, embryology, string theory... I'd argue that they all meet the criteria for mystical phenomena. Do you blindly reject these as well?
Before diving in to what kind of design we should be using, I think some time needs to be spend deciding the design parameters. The solution should probably:
Be auditable.
Be easily testable.
Be anonymous (with respect to individual votes).
Be intuitive to use.
Be fair.
The Nevada Gaming Board has been cited as a good example of the kind of extremely paranoid testing and auditing that needs to go into a system this important. However, for a voting system we've added some new and challenging criteria- anonymity, ease of use, and fairness. None of these individually are difficult, but when combined with the testabilty and auditability become particularly challenging. How do you ensure that individual votes are getting properly registered while still maintaining the anonymity of the votes?
Personally, I don't see how all of these criteria can be met in a "remote" (e.g. web) voting system. However, I think these problems are all solvable with our current technology, if we are careful. In fact, I think that if a system were designed carefully, we could even come up with a system where we can, if necessary, confirm (validate) a region or even nation's voting results by storing individual voting results on voter-owned smart cards.
Assume we set up a system where every voter is issued a voting smart card that they retain possession over. When you go in to vote you stick your smart card in the voting machine. You then vote, and it records your choices on the card. Audits could then take place after an election by having randomly selected voters come in and stick their smart cards into a seperate vote validation system that retallies the results and allows voters to confirm their vote selection. Using statistics, you can set a threshold for when the error level is too suspiciously high, and require revotes in the regions with anomalous results. By using different vendors to provide the voting machines, smart cards, and vote auditing system, you can greatly increase your assurance that no entity has tampered with the voting results. Apart from the influences of the media... and politicians... and education system... and religions.....
While I suppose that MiniDisc is a possible alternative to an iPod, it really has completely different strengths and weaknesses. I love my MiniDisc portable, but in all honesty it's no iPod replacement.
MiniDisc is great if you like making "mixed discs". The editability of the format makes it perfect for that (rearrange the order of songs, erase one's that don't quite work out in your mix, etc.) I use my MD portable mostly for live recoding, which it also does very well. The discs are very durable (unlike CD-Rs), the decks are almost impossible to make skip (unlike CDs) and so in combination with the excellent battery life, could prove very useful to someone.
However, you can't really hold all that much music on a disc, even in the long-play formats. It's not a jukebox. This means you'll have to tote your MD collection around with you, which means bulk. The point of a portable MP3 jukebox like the iPod is the reduction of that bulk.
The fact that combination attacks like this are possible is one of the biggest reasons for "redundant" Open Source projects.
Slashdotters like to play into the "OS war" and "X program is better than Y program" silliness. In reality, it's really important for the overall health of Open Source to have heterogenous base of installed software. If everyone ran Linux and Apache, for instance, it greatly increases the incentive for crackers to target these systems.
This is why I'm always glad to see competition like Sendmail/Exim/QMail, Mono/DotGnu/.NET, Linux/BSD, etc.
Slashdot Mirror
You mean the energy efficient bulbs with all the mercury in them and that require a hazmat team to dispose of? Hmmm... I dunno.
You have some good ideas, though. Here are some more: How about turn off lights you don't need, adjust your thermostat a few degrees, check your tire pressure frequently, replace your appliances with the most energy efficient models, move close to work, bike instead of drive, use mass transit, do your laundry with cold water, put your computer to sleep when not in use, unplug chargers not in use, buy local produce...
It seems like the marketing brilliance of this entire scenario is being missed by a lot of people here. How much publicity would NIN gotten without the RIAA enforcement? Would we be having this discussion, for instance? This seems like a well-orchestrated stunt, and color me impressed.
How do you suppose the RIAA discovered this infringement?
That argument doesn't hold water for me.
Suppose Joe is sharing a song he downloaded. It gets downloaded four times, as you suggest. One of the people who downloads it is Mary.
Joe gets sued by the RIAA and they compute damages based on their guess on how deep the tree is below Joe.
Mary gets sued by the RIAA and... wait a minute... now the RIAA is double-dipping on the damages for all of the people below Mary!
Now that would be a cool design for Bluetooth headset. Now if they could just make a phone where you'd have to look down a periscope to see the display, I'd be completely sold!
No, not really.
How about UDF?
It's supported by just about every modern OS and should be patent-free.
Autorhythmicity... sure, that's certainly one difference. The ancients called that "tong chi". You're not alive because your heart is beating, though- it's the other way around. Even in Western medicine they call a heartbeat a "sign of life."
Chinese Medicine is no less strigent of a science and based on thousands of years of observation, and trial and error, with a quarter of the world's population! It's creation was dependent on careful observation.
But to refute your position that it has "not stood up to observation", I'll point you to 127 scientific medical publications on the topic, most of which would seem to support these theories:
ReferencesI'm amused that you think a foundation of mathematics is a magic bullet; that somehow math magically makes hypotheses true. String theory is indeed based heavily on math, but it is far from achieving a conscensus in the scientific community on its "truth". In fact, there's plenty of debate on whether or not it even qualifies as science!
No such thing as "chi", huh? Perhaps you can explain to me what the difference is between you and a fresh corpse, then?
It seems your objection is that there's nothing mystical or mysterious in the world. If you hold this view, I suggest that you simply don't know enough science. The Big Bang, quantum physics, embryology, string theory... I'd argue that they all meet the criteria for mystical phenomena. Do you blindly reject these as well?
Oh, but those aren't Chinese names!
Thank God someone finally came up with a half trillion dollar solution so we won't have to get rid of our SUVs!
Now if someone could just come up with a new orbital space armada that would solve the problem of having to wipe before we flush the toilet...
Man, this song is such a ripoff of my 1:02 of silence! Forget the DMCA, this is copyright infringement!
Thankfully, no one has stolen my 1:12 of 60Hz hum, or the extended 1:32 remix yet.
Before diving in to what kind of design we should be using, I think some time needs to be spend deciding the design parameters. The solution should probably:
The Nevada Gaming Board has been cited as a good example of the kind of extremely paranoid testing and auditing that needs to go into a system this important. However, for a voting system we've added some new and challenging criteria- anonymity, ease of use, and fairness. None of these individually are difficult, but when combined with the testabilty and auditability become particularly challenging. How do you ensure that individual votes are getting properly registered while still maintaining the anonymity of the votes?
Personally, I don't see how all of these criteria can be met in a "remote" (e.g. web) voting system. However, I think these problems are all solvable with our current technology, if we are careful. In fact, I think that if a system were designed carefully, we could even come up with a system where we can, if necessary, confirm (validate) a region or even nation's voting results by storing individual voting results on voter-owned smart cards.
Assume we set up a system where every voter is issued a voting smart card that they retain possession over. When you go in to vote you stick your smart card in the voting machine. You then vote, and it records your choices on the card. Audits could then take place after an election by having randomly selected voters come in and stick their smart cards into a seperate vote validation system that retallies the results and allows voters to confirm their vote selection. Using statistics, you can set a threshold for when the error level is too suspiciously high, and require revotes in the regions with anomalous results. By using different vendors to provide the voting machines, smart cards, and vote auditing system, you can greatly increase your assurance that no entity has tampered with the voting results. Apart from the influences of the media... and politicians... and education system... and religions.....
On second thought, forget the whole thing. :)
While I suppose that MiniDisc is a possible alternative to an iPod, it really has completely different strengths and weaknesses. I love my MiniDisc portable, but in all honesty it's no iPod replacement.
MiniDisc is great if you like making "mixed discs". The editability of the format makes it perfect for that (rearrange the order of songs, erase one's that don't quite work out in your mix, etc.) I use my MD portable mostly for live recoding, which it also does very well. The discs are very durable (unlike CD-Rs), the decks are almost impossible to make skip (unlike CDs) and so in combination with the excellent battery life, could prove very useful to someone.
However, you can't really hold all that much music on a disc, even in the long-play formats. It's not a jukebox. This means you'll have to tote your MD collection around with you, which means bulk. The point of a portable MP3 jukebox like the iPod is the reduction of that bulk.
The fact that combination attacks like this are possible is one of the biggest reasons for "redundant" Open Source projects.
Slashdotters like to play into the "OS war" and "X program is better than Y program" silliness. In reality, it's really important for the overall health of Open Source to have heterogenous base of installed software. If everyone ran Linux and Apache, for instance, it greatly increases the incentive for crackers to target these systems.
This is why I'm always glad to see competition like Sendmail/Exim/QMail, Mono/DotGnu/.NET, Linux/BSD, etc.