I doubt these games have much of an effect on kids, and even if they do we need to develop strategies to mitigate the effects, not the eliminate the exposure: sanitizing our culture is not a viable option.
But while I don't blame these games for the Eric Harrises and Dylan Klebolds of the world, I do have a problem with them: they're stupid. By and large they are very, VERY stupid. And they're vulgar. They're a commodification of an ugly thing: violent, directionless, immature rage. They bottle the stuff, distill it to remove any trace of thoughtfulness or ability to succeed as art, and sell it.
I don't think these games make anyone pick up a gun, but they very well make people stupider by giving a pop-culture seal of approval to some truly abhorrent ideas, and the people who consume this crap are going to be worse people for it. You know what feature I hear most often touted by fans of GTA3? How, in the game, you can rob and kill hookers. I think Rockstar should be free to have hooker killing and robbing features in their game; but if they design those games so that people come away from them excited about how much fun it was to kill and rob those hookers, well, then they're just appealing to latent misogyny and anger. I'd like to believe the huffy essays of the "games are art" people, but when I see GTA at the top of the charts I can't help but laugh at them. Do they even understand what art is? There are criteria beyond being able to look and/or listen to something, you know.
Now, you might rightly ask who I am to police art. But if you're really going to try to argue that mowing down innocent bystanders with guns and automobiles is a viable means of conveying a developed artistic idea, I'd suggest that you've got a tough rhetorical road ahead. I concede it may be possible. I maintain that few, if any, of these games do so.
Violence has a valid place in our culture, and while it shouldn't be celebrated, neither should it be censored. Shock value and crassness, on the other hand, are cynical devices used to extract money from the stupid. We can oppose censorship without venerating the content to be censored -- which is frequently pretty terrible. But that distinction isn't being made. Instead it's just worried parents who want to ban things, and enraged gamers refusing to give up their lowest-common-denominator pap. All in all, a pretty sad state of affairs.
Are you referring to XP's built-in flavor of terminal services? I'm not familiar with that, but wouldn't be surprised if such a consumer-focused piece of software limited the number of concurrent users to 1.
In Server 2000, I guarantee you can have multiple clients on the machine at once via Terminal Services. We do it all the time at work. Open up Terminal Services manager, you'll see there's a sessions tab.
There is a finite number of slots available, but that's configurable... And you can certainly have different users logged into the same machine at once.
Admittedly, I have only used the windows version of VNC, but I'm unclear as to how it could allow multiple sessions, since it seems to just mirror mouse/keyboard activity (eg, when I use VNC over my lan I can see the cursor moving on the target machine. this is not the case in terminal services -- users in the background are transparent, unless you're looking at the management tool).
Don't get me wrong, I love VNC -- windows won't let you run terminal services server on win2k pro, so I use VNC quite a bit. But it definitely feels a lot clunkier than terminal services to me.
yes, it'd be nice if it scaled a little better. however -- for a few users at a time, Terminal Services' performance is significantly better than VNC.
I realize VNC is cross-platform and hooks into the OS in fundamentally different ways, so this is not really a fair comparison. But under term. services both machines are much more responsive than under VNC. Linux needs a remote access scheme that works as well.
There are a couple of problems. Remember, you can only have a resolution equal to half a wavelength of what you're using for measuring. Human hearing craps out at 20,000 Hz (and that's being very generous -- we're much better under 8KHz).
Anyway, take speed of sound at sea level (340.29 m/s according to google), do some simple math and you get an optimum resolution of about 0.85 cm. That's not really that great, and when you use a more realistic sound range you get results closer to 2.1 cm.
Obviously this would still be a great development for blind folks, but these numbers are just theoretical. The sad truth is that we just don't have the hardware between out ears to do true echolocation. We can localize sound sources, but the parts of our brain responsible for hearing do not tie that closely into our sense of spatial awareness.
So yeah, you might be able to roughly track one or two things in space, but calling it echolocation is a big stretch.
Well, ignoring the fact that comparing humans' ability to isolate sound to bat echolocation is to vastly overstate the case, the fact that we can localize sound in space shouldn't be big news. But the technical applications are limited: the problem is that modifying a simple stereo sound source -- headphones -- to give spatial information is a pretty big PITA, and the technology must be adapted to every individual who uses it.
The basic problem is that the pinna (outer ear) is largely what's responsible for refining the spatial information that an incoming sound provides. Sure, there are some simple cues embedded in the sound -- basically a sound shadow created by the head for high frequency sound, simple intensity falloff, and the interval between sound arriving at each ear -- but these only apply to isolating sounds laterally. Vertical information is almost entirely dependent on the frequency transforms created by your pinnae. And everyone's pinnae are unique.
I remember a demonstration a professor gave on this in school: he sat a classmate down and blindfolded him, then snapped his fingers at various spaces around the subject's head, and asked him to point to where the sound came from. Predictably, he did pretty well. Then the prof took some silly putty and stretched it over the student's ears, with holes made for the entrance to the ear canal. Laterally, the student performed about as well after this handicap was introduced, but his ability to resolve targets vertically was pretty lousy.
So, if you wanted to use this technology to help pilots track planes around them -- an application the article hints at -- you would have to have a processor constantly apply a frequency transform to the sound. That's not a huge problem, but the way you get that frequency transform is: stick a tiny mix in the ear canal and shoot a variety of sounds at the subject.
Short of some significant advances in computationally modeling the freq. xforms from 3d scans of the pinna (or temporarily cutting off the subjects' ears) this is the only way to get a spatially rich signal from an artificial source (with stereo outputs -- I'm assuming this has to be doable with headphones to be considered practical). Might make sense to go to all this trouble for fighter pilots I suppose, but we will probably not see any relevant tech in consumer gear for quite a while.
Aside from the obvious improbability of this, could an open solution do this? I suppose it may depend on the exact nature of the license under which they release their project, but it seems to go against the idea of open source if folks who want to modify the code into a derivative work have to worry about third party licenses?
I suppose LAME is an example of such a project... but that's a project of limited scope -- it's difficult to imagine feature creep adding more licensing dependencies down the road. Seamless plugin launching is just one of many aspects to a browser -- opening the door to something like this on, say, mozilla, would do a lot to discourage derivative works.
the button layout is fine, but identical to the SNES. but the d-pad... ugh. that hard plastic led to some very sore thumbs during my THPS2 obsession. not a good controller. it just seems like a cheap copout, only slightly better than an oldschool NES controller.
Call me a Nintendo fanboy if you'd like, but I think it's hard to argue that anyone makes better controllers. They may look weird, but the ergonomics have been very solid from the N64 on, and the wavebird is a pretty definitive answer to the wireless controller problem -- although it might not seem so impressive had there not been so many crappy attempts before it.
Let is also be noted that the patent pertains to plug-in launching only. It does not cover HTML, XHTML, XML, CSS, JavaScript/ECMAScript, the DOM, or other web standards.
So what say we develop some new web standards? How about overhauling javascript, developing a standardized XML-based vector graphics format that's integrated with the DOM (or at least embrace one of the existing ones), and writing some decent authoring tools for people uncomfortable with hand-coding graphics? While we're at it, what say we throw in decent PNG support?
All pie-in-the-sky wishing for now, but man, wouldn't that be great? Browsers have stagnated for years -- tabbed browsing is nice, but it's not exactly making me wet myself with excitement.
This is bad, bad news for Macromedia. But it *could* be good news for DHTML authors, and it might even stem the tide of flash pop-ups. Unfortunately they'll probably just be replaced by DHTML popups that make it halfway across your screen, throw a javascript error and sit there on top of the page's main text...
however, having done so, and having looked at softswitch's website I noticed this:
In their normal state Softswitch fabrics are insulators until pressure is applied at which point the resistance decreases until the fabric achieves metal-like conductivity.
There's not a lot of other information, but it does look like their only invention is a cloth interface. I suspect the conducting technology is just plain old copper with a heavy jacket. And while the interface thing is cool and all, I don't really see that as being what's held up development of these embedded systems. I'd assume most could be acceptably controlled with small rubberized buttons or over whatever tech emerges to fulfill bluetooth's empty promises.
Power supply density and flexible, impact- and water-resistant ICs would seem to be the bigger stumbling block.
And Dr. Dianne Jones from textile company SOFTswitch, maker of the Burton Amp jacket which integrates an Apple iPod, thinks that the wearable computing industry will grow rapidly. She says that in ten years, 20% of our clothes will incorporate some kind of electronic components.
um... sewing an ipod-sized pocket into a jacket somehow makes her an expert on trends in embedded systems?
Well hell, I can fit five AA cells in my mouth -- I say in 6 months we'll all be living underwater on the moon!
Now where's my consulting fee?
this ignores fundamental neurological effects
on
Cubism For CG And Movies
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· Score: 3, Interesting
While the work is very nice, it's not groundbreaking. Cubism happened in what, the 20s? 30s? The technology is better, but the idea of disconnecting information about a thing from its spatial representation is not new. Directors have used mirrors, split screens and warped lenses to do this for quite a while.
But it all ignores a fundamental neurological truth: the part of your brain that says "that's a cool idea" (or anything else) is a nice one, but it's not the one in charge of figuring out what's going on in a scene. Anyone who has had sight from birth is pretty well hardwired to spatially understand things from a three-dimensional model consistent with our ordinary experience.
As a result, while techniques like this one can be intellectually satisfying, they really don't serve the purpose of narrative -- sure, you're presenting the information in a more efficient (and intriguing) way, but we can't process it nearly as quickly. The film becomes something that has to be mulled over, rewatched and considered to be fully appreciated -- and the gimmicky nature of the technique can only distract from any real emotional resonance that the underlying work has. Such a film is only really going to succeed on an intellectual level, and consequently it's automatically going to be shoved into the "art film" ghetto -- where these techniques have been all along.
This is cool and all, but it's really just a digital polishing of ideas that have been around a long time. I don't think this guy is going to find his voicemailbox full of frantic messages from Jerry Bruckheimer.
let's be honest here: there are shades of cracking. given how easy it is to be anonymous on the internet, attacks like this one are *almost* constructive. I agree that punishment is appropriate, but would hope it would be tempered in light of the non-destructive nature of the intrusion. Paying a large fine to cover damages, probation and doing community service seem appropriate. Jail time and being forbidden to use a computer (in this day and age) do not.
Unfortunately a measured response doesn't seem likely given the technical ignorance of most judges and legislators. Penalties for cracking are formulated with the end result of the worst attacks in mind, but those who are caught are generally not the ones behind such attacks. Yet because the type of crime is new, frightening to business, and the limits of damages are often hard to delineate, the book is thrown at these kids.
Just look at that dope who got caught for writing a Blaster variant. Just one guy -- but do you really think the judge and/or jury will be able to understand that he was not the original author, and that his work only caused a subset of total Blaster damages? My money's on No.
Others have cited P2P and I agree to some extent -- books are hard to digitize relative to music. Putting them into a digital format is not a good idea in the age of P2P. And of course until we get used to PDAs, people will prefer paper books -- ebooks haven't exactly been flying off the eshelves.
But I suspect another major reason is that publishing-on-demand may be rolled out in the next few years, and ebooks would provide a great inroad for competitors/pirates/users at schools with POD facilities to get in on Barnes and Noble's action.
Re:stop winging about clearing memory
on
MRAM in 2004?
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· Score: 1
unless I'm mistaken, the various flash-ram formats out there are considerably slower and, more importantly, have a limited number of write cycles before they kick the bucket. not a big deal for your mp3 player or pda since in that context they're just storage media and are written to relatively infrequently -- but as PC RAM, they would fail too quickly to be practical.
if I hear one more whiny person say, "no, quantum computers are coming in two years! Have patience!" I think I'll go destroy something expensive...
But they are coming... to the basement of a secret NSA facility near you!
hard drives aren't going away
on
MRAM in 2004?
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· Score: 1
for one thing, they've got a head start -- for another, the fact that you need switching circuitry incorporated into the media ensures that you'll never reach the data densities that you can with traditional platters. IANAPhysicist, but I suspect there are other issues (inductive effects?) that make a traditional platter system more efficient.
With that said, there's no consumer application at the moment other than video editing that comes close to using the bandwidth of modern IDE for sustained periods, so I imagine this tech could popularize centralized network storage for consumers. the appeal of a wireless tablet PC would be pretty strong if it didn't have to waste weight, money and batteries spinning platters...
Good thing the last two generations of game consoles have gotten us inured to load times! If there is such a moved toward consumer-space network storage, I suspect MRAM will mean faster OS (and integrated application) loading, but significantly slower load times for infrequently-used or large third-party apps.
You really pay 130% tax on phone service? That's terrible. Here (northern VA) it's well under 50%, making Vonage more expensive.
If you are a big long distance user then perhaps it makes sense -- but given the current glut of very-cheap long distance products, I would have a difficult time agreeing to sacrifice reliability and potentially emergency service for more long distance minutes. And dedicated hardware... blech.
The killer VoIP product? 802.11b-enabled cell phones, giving you cheaper and/or unmetered at-home cell use. I'm sure you've seen this suggested other places. I suspect broadband/cell providers like ATT and Verizon will roll out a product like this in not too long, and could see it hitting big.
I don't quite understand what you intend to do to force a flatter income distribution for these sorts of professions. The reason they exist is because of what consumers demand and the fundamental economics of the business. The one way to do it is to make musicians more like plumbers by disallowing royalties from cheaply-produced media and forcing them to take all their revenue from scarce resources such as live performances. But that to me requires scrapping the concept of copyright, which would undermine much of our economy (rights to books, research, etc).
Your points are well taken, and I largely agree. But I am approaching the problem from what I consider to be a pragmatic standpoint: copyright is already gone, at least as far as recorded audio performances are concerned. There is no way the industry can stem the tide of international P2P. There are only three outcomes I can envision: (1) the industry collapses into a much smaller form; (2) the internet is drastically altered to prevent P2P file sharing; (3) the industry discourages P2P use through mechanisms like lawsuits, and lives with filesharing the way it lives with FM radio.
I don't think options 2 or 3 are likely -- if filesharing could be controlled the way the record companies control radio, then perhaps option 3 would be a possibility. It's not.
The copyrights for other works you mention are indeed areas of concern. However, the economics of research theft make it somewhat resistant to copyright theft: the monetary incentive is there, and has been there, for a long time. Violations generally require enough resources that there are relatively few possible culprits. Essentially, it's possible to police corporations for violations after the fact. P2P has not and will not change how research copyrights are approached and enforced.
Books are another matter -- fortunately the industry hasn't made any moves toward ebooks. There are a few factors working in books' favor: they're a pain to digitize, people like the paper format, the segment of the population that reads is probably less likely to pursue IP theft due to having more disposable income, and publishing-on-demand will probably drastically reduce book costs in the near future. With that said, the industry will eventually have to cough up an ebook standard, and they'd better make sure it has some sort of DRM or they'll be in trouble.
The movie industry is screwed. They will have to drop prices, pursue litigation and focus on the visual quality argument.
Even if that were done, there would still be a wildly uneven income distribution, because the economic rent spills into other areas, such as selling the top pop star's name to help sell goods (I suspect Spears generates more income from the sale of her affiliation than her CD sales).
I suspect you're right, but I also imagine that big brands will increasingly be in the business of selling music. Pepsi, for instance, might push a regionally large musical act to national prominence in an attempt to cash in on a potential synergy (man I hate that word) -- buy a bottle of pepsi, get a code to download the artist's album from pepsi.com. Then you can only buy tickets for the tour with proof of purchase on a 12 pack of code red. That sort of nonsense. But the recorded audio will be a nearly-disposable commodity used for marketing the live performance or other products. In the long run the lawsuits won't work well enough, and you will only be able to sell an MP3 for the cost of the convenience of not having to find it on Kazaa -- which isn't much.
So I agree, the only way to flatten out income distribution among entertainers is to effectively nullify copyright. And I agree that would probably be an unwise legislative decision. But technology is making the decision for us. The internet is too valuable to reengineer, and short of doing that, I don't think there's anything that can stop the destruction of audio copyrights (for personal use).
So do most cell phone plans. Free long distance is a nice feature, but I don't think it can really be regarded as the core of what vonage is offering any more than calling cards are a replacement for your home phone. After all, there are other VoIP providers (dialpad, net2phone, etc) that offer very good long distance rates. Or you could use one of the dirt-cheap 10-10 providers (who presumably use VoIP themselves).
For most people the cell plan they already have is the best way to do long distance. Those without a cell can use one of the solutions listed above. Either way, I don't see how Vonage is superior.
Plus, others have noted that some unlimited long distance plans (like MCI's The Neighborhood) are priced competitively with Vonage's unlimited plan without the same reliability/911 issues.
Slashdot Mirror
But while I don't blame these games for the Eric Harrises and Dylan Klebolds of the world, I do have a problem with them: they're stupid. By and large they are very, VERY stupid. And they're vulgar. They're a commodification of an ugly thing: violent, directionless, immature rage. They bottle the stuff, distill it to remove any trace of thoughtfulness or ability to succeed as art, and sell it.
I don't think these games make anyone pick up a gun, but they very well make people stupider by giving a pop-culture seal of approval to some truly abhorrent ideas, and the people who consume this crap are going to be worse people for it. You know what feature I hear most often touted by fans of GTA3? How, in the game, you can rob and kill hookers. I think Rockstar should be free to have hooker killing and robbing features in their game; but if they design those games so that people come away from them excited about how much fun it was to kill and rob those hookers, well, then they're just appealing to latent misogyny and anger. I'd like to believe the huffy essays of the "games are art" people, but when I see GTA at the top of the charts I can't help but laugh at them. Do they even understand what art is? There are criteria beyond being able to look and/or listen to something, you know.
Now, you might rightly ask who I am to police art. But if you're really going to try to argue that mowing down innocent bystanders with guns and automobiles is a viable means of conveying a developed artistic idea, I'd suggest that you've got a tough rhetorical road ahead. I concede it may be possible. I maintain that few, if any, of these games do so.
Violence has a valid place in our culture, and while it shouldn't be celebrated, neither should it be censored. Shock value and crassness, on the other hand, are cynical devices used to extract money from the stupid. We can oppose censorship without venerating the content to be censored -- which is frequently pretty terrible. But that distinction isn't being made. Instead it's just worried parents who want to ban things, and enraged gamers refusing to give up their lowest-common-denominator pap. All in all, a pretty sad state of affairs.
not to mention the fact that if this tech leans on organic molecules more heavily than its predecessor, a 20 year lifespan may not be realistic
In Server 2000, I guarantee you can have multiple clients on the machine at once via Terminal Services. We do it all the time at work. Open up Terminal Services manager, you'll see there's a sessions tab.
There is a finite number of slots available, but that's configurable... And you can certainly have different users logged into the same machine at once.
Admittedly, I have only used the windows version of VNC, but I'm unclear as to how it could allow multiple sessions, since it seems to just mirror mouse/keyboard activity (eg, when I use VNC over my lan I can see the cursor moving on the target machine. this is not the case in terminal services -- users in the background are transparent, unless you're looking at the management tool).
Don't get me wrong, I love VNC -- windows won't let you run terminal services server on win2k pro, so I use VNC quite a bit. But it definitely feels a lot clunkier than terminal services to me.
I realize VNC is cross-platform and hooks into the OS in fundamentally different ways, so this is not really a fair comparison. But under term. services both machines are much more responsive than under VNC. Linux needs a remote access scheme that works as well.
is to switch to TiVo'd Farscape episodes whenever it detects 300+ lbs at once
thinkgeek will start carrying stickers of Calvin peeing on a Microsoft logo?
Of course, that'll just delay (slightly) the release schedule of movies on the P2P networks.
Which is good -- the RIAA clearly can't handle P2P, and the more entrenched it becomes the better its odds against the more-powerful movie industry.
Anyway, take speed of sound at sea level (340.29 m/s according to google), do some simple math and you get an optimum resolution of about 0.85 cm. That's not really that great, and when you use a more realistic sound range you get results closer to 2.1 cm.
Obviously this would still be a great development for blind folks, but these numbers are just theoretical. The sad truth is that we just don't have the hardware between out ears to do true echolocation. We can localize sound sources, but the parts of our brain responsible for hearing do not tie that closely into our sense of spatial awareness.
So yeah, you might be able to roughly track one or two things in space, but calling it echolocation is a big stretch.
The basic problem is that the pinna (outer ear) is largely what's responsible for refining the spatial information that an incoming sound provides. Sure, there are some simple cues embedded in the sound -- basically a sound shadow created by the head for high frequency sound, simple intensity falloff, and the interval between sound arriving at each ear -- but these only apply to isolating sounds laterally. Vertical information is almost entirely dependent on the frequency transforms created by your pinnae. And everyone's pinnae are unique.
I remember a demonstration a professor gave on this in school: he sat a classmate down and blindfolded him, then snapped his fingers at various spaces around the subject's head, and asked him to point to where the sound came from. Predictably, he did pretty well. Then the prof took some silly putty and stretched it over the student's ears, with holes made for the entrance to the ear canal. Laterally, the student performed about as well after this handicap was introduced, but his ability to resolve targets vertically was pretty lousy.
So, if you wanted to use this technology to help pilots track planes around them -- an application the article hints at -- you would have to have a processor constantly apply a frequency transform to the sound. That's not a huge problem, but the way you get that frequency transform is: stick a tiny mix in the ear canal and shoot a variety of sounds at the subject.
Short of some significant advances in computationally modeling the freq. xforms from 3d scans of the pinna (or temporarily cutting off the subjects' ears) this is the only way to get a spatially rich signal from an artificial source (with stereo outputs -- I'm assuming this has to be doable with headphones to be considered practical). Might make sense to go to all this trouble for fighter pilots I suppose, but we will probably not see any relevant tech in consumer gear for quite a while.
I suppose LAME is an example of such a project... but that's a project of limited scope -- it's difficult to imagine feature creep adding more licensing dependencies down the road. Seamless plugin launching is just one of many aspects to a browser -- opening the door to something like this on, say, mozilla, would do a lot to discourage derivative works.
Call me a Nintendo fanboy if you'd like, but I think it's hard to argue that anyone makes better controllers. They may look weird, but the ergonomics have been very solid from the N64 on, and the wavebird is a pretty definitive answer to the wireless controller problem -- although it might not seem so impressive had there not been so many crappy attempts before it.
So what say we develop some new web standards? How about overhauling javascript, developing a standardized XML-based vector graphics format that's integrated with the DOM (or at least embrace one of the existing ones), and writing some decent authoring tools for people uncomfortable with hand-coding graphics? While we're at it, what say we throw in decent PNG support?
All pie-in-the-sky wishing for now, but man, wouldn't that be great? Browsers have stagnated for years -- tabbed browsing is nice, but it's not exactly making me wet myself with excitement.
This is bad, bad news for Macromedia. But it *could* be good news for DHTML authors, and it might even stem the tide of flash pop-ups. Unfortunately they'll probably just be replaced by DHTML popups that make it halfway across your screen, throw a javascript error and sit there on top of the page's main text...
however, having done so, and having looked at softswitch's website I noticed this:
There's not a lot of other information, but it does look like their only invention is a cloth interface. I suspect the conducting technology is just plain old copper with a heavy jacket. And while the interface thing is cool and all, I don't really see that as being what's held up development of these embedded systems. I'd assume most could be acceptably controlled with small rubberized buttons or over whatever tech emerges to fulfill bluetooth's empty promises.
Power supply density and flexible, impact- and water-resistant ICs would seem to be the bigger stumbling block.
um... sewing an ipod-sized pocket into a jacket somehow makes her an expert on trends in embedded systems?
Well hell, I can fit five AA cells in my mouth -- I say in 6 months we'll all be living underwater on the moon!
Now where's my consulting fee?
But it all ignores a fundamental neurological truth: the part of your brain that says "that's a cool idea" (or anything else) is a nice one, but it's not the one in charge of figuring out what's going on in a scene. Anyone who has had sight from birth is pretty well hardwired to spatially understand things from a three-dimensional model consistent with our ordinary experience.
As a result, while techniques like this one can be intellectually satisfying, they really don't serve the purpose of narrative -- sure, you're presenting the information in a more efficient (and intriguing) way, but we can't process it nearly as quickly. The film becomes something that has to be mulled over, rewatched and considered to be fully appreciated -- and the gimmicky nature of the technique can only distract from any real emotional resonance that the underlying work has. Such a film is only really going to succeed on an intellectual level, and consequently it's automatically going to be shoved into the "art film" ghetto -- where these techniques have been all along.
This is cool and all, but it's really just a digital polishing of ideas that have been around a long time. I don't think this guy is going to find his voicemailbox full of frantic messages from Jerry Bruckheimer.
it seems irrelevant if the labels cull trending data from P2P use. I think you would have a very hard time using against them in any way.
Unfortunately a measured response doesn't seem likely given the technical ignorance of most judges and legislators. Penalties for cracking are formulated with the end result of the worst attacks in mind, but those who are caught are generally not the ones behind such attacks. Yet because the type of crime is new, frightening to business, and the limits of damages are often hard to delineate, the book is thrown at these kids.
Just look at that dope who got caught for writing a Blaster variant. Just one guy -- but do you really think the judge and/or jury will be able to understand that he was not the original author, and that his work only caused a subset of total Blaster damages? My money's on No.
But I suspect another major reason is that publishing-on-demand may be rolled out in the next few years, and ebooks would provide a great inroad for competitors/pirates/users at schools with POD facilities to get in on Barnes and Noble's action.
unless I'm mistaken, the various flash-ram formats out there are considerably slower and, more importantly, have a limited number of write cycles before they kick the bucket. not a big deal for your mp3 player or pda since in that context they're just storage media and are written to relatively infrequently -- but as PC RAM, they would fail too quickly to be practical.
But they are coming... to the basement of a secret NSA facility near you!
With that said, there's no consumer application at the moment other than video editing that comes close to using the bandwidth of modern IDE for sustained periods, so I imagine this tech could popularize centralized network storage for consumers. the appeal of a wireless tablet PC would be pretty strong if it didn't have to waste weight, money and batteries spinning platters...
Good thing the last two generations of game consoles have gotten us inured to load times! If there is such a moved toward consumer-space network storage, I suspect MRAM will mean faster OS (and integrated application) loading, but significantly slower load times for infrequently-used or large third-party apps.
If you are a big long distance user then perhaps it makes sense -- but given the current glut of very-cheap long distance products, I would have a difficult time agreeing to sacrifice reliability and potentially emergency service for more long distance minutes. And dedicated hardware... blech.
The killer VoIP product? 802.11b-enabled cell phones, giving you cheaper and/or unmetered at-home cell use. I'm sure you've seen this suggested other places. I suspect broadband/cell providers like ATT and Verizon will roll out a product like this in not too long, and could see it hitting big.
I don't think options 2 or 3 are likely -- if filesharing could be controlled the way the record companies control radio, then perhaps option 3 would be a possibility. It's not.
The copyrights for other works you mention are indeed areas of concern. However, the economics of research theft make it somewhat resistant to copyright theft: the monetary incentive is there, and has been there, for a long time. Violations generally require enough resources that there are relatively few possible culprits. Essentially, it's possible to police corporations for violations after the fact. P2P has not and will not change how research copyrights are approached and enforced.
Books are another matter -- fortunately the industry hasn't made any moves toward ebooks. There are a few factors working in books' favor: they're a pain to digitize, people like the paper format, the segment of the population that reads is probably less likely to pursue IP theft due to having more disposable income, and publishing-on-demand will probably drastically reduce book costs in the near future. With that said, the industry will eventually have to cough up an ebook standard, and they'd better make sure it has some sort of DRM or they'll be in trouble.
The movie industry is screwed. They will have to drop prices, pursue litigation and focus on the visual quality argument.
I suspect you're right, but I also imagine that big brands will increasingly be in the business of selling music. Pepsi, for instance, might push a regionally large musical act to national prominence in an attempt to cash in on a potential synergy (man I hate that word) -- buy a bottle of pepsi, get a code to download the artist's album from pepsi.com. Then you can only buy tickets for the tour with proof of purchase on a 12 pack of code red. That sort of nonsense. But the recorded audio will be a nearly-disposable commodity used for marketing the live performance or other products. In the long run the lawsuits won't work well enough, and you will only be able to sell an MP3 for the cost of the convenience of not having to find it on Kazaa -- which isn't much.
So I agree, the only way to flatten out income distribution among entertainers is to effectively nullify copyright. And I agree that would probably be an unwise legislative decision. But technology is making the decision for us. The internet is too valuable to reengineer, and short of doing that, I don't think there's anything that can stop the destruction of audio copyrights (for personal use).
For most people the cell plan they already have is the best way to do long distance. Those without a cell can use one of the solutions listed above. Either way, I don't see how Vonage is superior.
Plus, others have noted that some unlimited long distance plans (like MCI's The Neighborhood) are priced competitively with Vonage's unlimited plan without the same reliability/911 issues.
This is a fluff magazine piece just begging to be written.