Really? It's been driving me crazy that I can't find a mail client which makes encryption "clicky clicky" easy. All I want is a mail client/plugin which automatically searches an authenticated keyserver for public keys that match my recipients, and offers to import them. Doesn't seem to exist as far as I can see. What's your setup that allows normies to encrypt/sign 100% of their email?
There's a fantastic talk from the San Francisco Exploratorium's Mars event this summer, where an anthropologist talks about exactly this issue... "learning how to see like a rover." She talks about the decision making process behind everything the mars rovers do... and ultimately how the people on the human team on earth end up anthropomorphising the robots. The best part is, it goes both ways: they assign human characteristics to the rovers, but when talking about what they want the rovers to do, they take on robot characteristics themselves. There's even a can't-miss set of instructions of the "rover dance" that people use when they're trying to show various parts of the rover and how it works and feels.
http://www.exploratorium.edu/tv/?project=2&program=1386&type=clip
(the first minute or two intro is quite slow, but the talk itself is great)
Really fascinating. But the key takeaway is that we can strongly connect to robots that are visually non-human. After all, we all felt worried for R2-D2 when he got "eaten" in the swamps of Dagobah. The latest research in this area confirms that trying to mimic humans makes us uncomfortable. But a robot that looks like a robot is easily accepted.
Thank you.
There's too much to say, so I won't. Just: thank you. For all the years of work and dedication. For having so much fun along with all of us.
Whatever your next venture may be, know that you have your own personal army on hand.:)
How sad. Even if the research there seemed like piddling in LOE, it was one of the first massively international projects in human history. It was certainly a major step in the "internationalization" of space, and in multilateral relations. Quoth Harrison Ford, "It belongs in a museum!"
It's doubly sad as a metaphor for America's lost, multinational space age, in this time of international suspicion and violence. If anyone remembers, the significance of Star Trek was it's vision of a future where race, creed, and color were irrelevant; where black, white, yellow, and even Russian humans worked together to explore the vast unknown of space. That was the ideal of the space age, and our generation gets to watch that ideal get classified as junk, and sent to sink beneath the waves.
Apparently it's time we set our ennobling, international past behind us, to concentrate on blowing up people of other colors. We must stop creating multi-PhD astronauts, and start creating uneducated religious extremists, so we can fight other extremists. Let us beat our ploughshares into swords, our rocket ships into rockets, and get back to doing what we've all wanted to do for tens of thousands of years. Let's blow ourselves up over ownership of scraps of earth, air, and sea.
Sounds like a great idea. Tell you what: you raise as much money as the rest of the GOP combined in a low fundraising quarter, dominate 2/3rds of the straw polls (1st place in 43 of 67 straw polls conducted), and come second place in a few primaries. Then I'll have a few questions for you.
I get very frustrated with people who complain that Paul has no chance. This isn't a competition to guess the winner. This is a competition to choose the candidate who is most closely aligned with your values and opinions on how the country should be run. If you really base your vote on your perception of a candidates likelihood to be elected, then I'll have no sympathy when you elect a dictator because the TV told you so.
I'm not interested, as long as he still preaches that Jesus B.S. and refuses to accept the plain facts of His Noodly Magnificence's Saucy imprint on all of creation. I'm sure the scientists would have been much more interested in a visit from a representative of the REAL Holy Church, whose beliefs speak to a much "higher" (not to mention tastier) rationality than anything the catholics could propose. RAmen.
My wife and I have a $100 500gb USB drive at my mother-in-law's house. We don't even rsync, we just take our laptops with us and synchronize every time we're there. Presto - off-site backup, with real life "nagware" when I don't visit my mother-in-law enough.:)
Of course, if you think you hate backing up NOW, wait till you combine it with your in-laws!
There are plenty of sweet applications for this.
- electronic posters
- digital picture frames
- e-books
- e-MUSIC-books
- wall calendars
I could go on. Personally, I want a music book made out of e-paper. I cart around a 50lb backpack everywhere because of the amount of sheet music I have to carry. I want a two page binder where touching a button "turns the page", with a memory of thousands of pages.
The Internet is an empowering force for an individual. Sitting alone, I can learn about almost any subject on the planet. I am constantly asked to use my own individual judgment to filter information. Any wonder that we believe in the power of the individual to take care of himself?
This is supported by our real-world status. Internet users are overwhelmingly middle and upper class income earners. The vast majority have at least one college degree, and many have more than one. In other words, the majority of us have learned to think for ourselves about complex subjects, and have reaped economic benefits from that ability. Any wonder that we believe in the power of the individual to take care of himself?
Ironically, the Internet is also a powerful force for communal products. Because digital copying has almost no cost, the law of supply and demand is seriously altered for information. In fact, the best model for many kinds of information is a very socialist one - Open Source. But still we are not interacting as a GROUP, it is always just a collection of individuals. Some of the great benefits of the internet may be because of a group, socialist-style model... but the experience is entirely individual. OF COURSE we believe in the power of the individual.
It's interesting to hear this from the perspective of a very mainstream composer. Fascinating that he feels so disjunct from his listeners. Because for most independent and small artists, the Internet has brought them much CLOSER to their audiences. The increased communication, sense of community, and the niche culture of the Internet has been hailed as a boon by small artists. Suddenly the major label barriers to audience access have fallen down.
Perhaps what Elton is really describing is the disconnect of the artist who does not concertize. Smaller, independents described above make the majority of their income in live performances. Online communities and media all drive these artists' fans towards the concert hall. Elton is still operating in the paradigm where the album is the primary unit of communication with your audience. You do concerts and tours, but really only to promote a new album. Fans' reactions are taken on a per-album basis. There's no question that this model is getting less effective, and that can feel like a disconnect if you're stuck operating that way.
And BTW, Elton may be a real composer, but let's not compare him to Mozart. In his short life, Mozart revolutionized music. A poster here commented that he never got old enough for us to see if he was "really any good." As a classical musician, I can tell you that 600 compositions is MORE THAN ENOUGH to tell if a composer is "really any good". And Mozart was one of the greatest.
All of those GOP candidates toe the same line on net neutrality: "let the free market [heavily modified by subsidies and regulations to favor my donors] take care of it." All the candidates except Ron Paul, of course:
"I trust the Internet a lot more [than the mainstream media]. And I trust freedom of expression, and that's why we should NEVER interfere with the Internet. That's why I have never voted to regulate the Internet, even when there's the temptation to put bad things on the Internet." -Ron Paul
"I believe strongly in protecting the Internet. My colleagues aren't quite as interested in the subject. That, to me, is disappointing." -Ron Paul
Personal note - I'm registering Republican so I can vote for RP in the primaries. I know/.ers are generally big supporters of his... you all should be doing the same.
Take a prep course.
I'm a Canadian student, studying in the US for the last 4 years. My marks at Canadian institutions were only OK, so they advised me to take an SAT when I applied for American schools. My first, unprepared PSAT (Practice SAT) scored 1260. After a two month weekly prep course, I scored 1540. It was enough to make a $30,000 difference in the amount of scholarship they offered me over the course of my degree. I know those prep courses can be expensive, but THEY'RE WORTH IT!
SATs are not about what you know, they are about HOW YOU TAKE THE EXAM. Prep courses teach exactly this subject, including information based on how the test is written etc. Coming from a good school system (one that encourages critical thinking, ie not the US), you should not have to learn much at all, save a few vocab words. What you will REALLY learn is a test-taking strategy that increases your chance of a right answer when you don't know the answer (or don't have time to do the math).
Good luck!
PS - don't just buy a prep book. Though they often have most of the same information, what's the likelihood of you ACTUALLY completing the course, as opposed to when you have a set regular time with an instructor?
FP maybe?
What I don't get is WHY apple would do this. Apart from the fact that the community has already added this feature on their own, what benefit does this bring Apple?
I love the wording on the page, BTW: "Boot Camp will burn a CD of all the required drivers for Windows so you don't have to scrounge around the Internet looking for them."
"Any sound that Winston made, above the level of a very low whisper, would be picked up by [the telescreen], moreover, so long as he remained within the field of vision which the metal plaque commanded, he could be seen as well as heard. There was of course no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment. How often, or on what system, the Thought Police plugged in on any individual wire was guesswork. It was even conceivable that they watched everybody all the time. But at any rate they could plug in your wire whenever they wanted to. You had to live -- did live, from habit that became instinct -- in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and, except in darkness, every movement scrutinized. "
Anyone see a parallel here? A black box that watches everything you do, with no way to know whether what you are doing is ThoughtCrime or not. Way to safeguard my privacy and rights.
And how would free market Capitalism have fared if it wasn't under constant attack from the Soviet states? Oh wait - it was.
Face it: it was a competition between two economic models. Both of them tried to trip each other up. And Capitalism won, by a landslide. Seriously; even feudal states have lasted longer than the Communist record of 71 years (1917 - 1991).
Communism required that the state create an artificial market, it required that people give up their individuality, and it required that mediocrity be idealized. It never stood a chance against Capitalism, which allows the market to do what it wants, requires that people act as individuals, and requires that exceptional ability be idealized. Even a totally corrupt Capitalist country (as many would argue is the case in the USA) was more than a match for all of the Soviet Republics.
FOSS advancement can be explained using evolutionary theory - basically, that mutation and fragmentation between groups is a good thing. Higher mutation rates increase a group's chance of survival - or in OSS terms: the higher "branching" rates are actually good for innovation and development.
My only comment to the movie industry here is "Good luck, guys!"
Unless you give consumers what they want, they will continue to get it elsewhere - ie online. I stopped buying dvd's and going to movies because of the obscene amount of protection (installing a drm'ed player!) and advertising (up to 30 minutes!) involved, respectively. The only source that actually offers me what I the consumer, want, is bittorrent. So that is where I will go.
I don't care about free movies; $5-$10 is a price I will happily pay to save my time. All I want is content that I can access when and how I want, without advertising. God forbid the movie industry offer this to the public. The further they get from actually giving consumers what they want, the more people will, like me, turn to illegal methods to get the product they want.
It's funny... in world economics, we learned the same lesson from Soviet Russia: the more you try to break the market, the more the market breaks you.
What's wrong with 99c per song is that it has NOTHING to do with what the market wants! $1 for a soda pop would be unreasonable, too, if everyone else was giving it away for free.
This is not about supporting valid attempts to bring you music. Many systems of monetizing 'free' music have been proposed to the record industry, but the industry isn't showing any interest. Talk to the Wippet people, or Sharman, or any of the other hundred companies who have proposed models.
So tell your local record company to support valiid attempts to bring the market what it wants.
Um... "self-boiling?" Does that mean that it will boil of it's own accord? If that's the case, why aren't we using this stuff to power generators?
(boiling sludge -> water -> vapor -> drives a turbine...)
Tradewars was my FAVORITE GAME. Also the forums, aka "brick walls". I remember my external 2400 baud modem, and how fast it all seemed at the time.... and my fondest memory?
A heated argument with several other sysops about this new-fangled invention, _the mouse_. No way, we insisted, would these things EVER be used over a modem!
I was travelling from the US to Canada last year, carrying (among other things) my dead-battery iBook, and digital camera. Of course, you have to show them that your laptop works. The security agents would not let me plug the iBook in in order to show them; instead, they had the luggage people find my bags, so I could re-pack with the iBook in my checked luggage.
Then the search continued, and it was discovered that i was carrying AA batteries for my digicam! Well, that was completely out of the question. I don't understand why batteries are not allowed as carryon items ("I've got a 9v, and I can make you put your tongue on the contacts!" what a threat!), but apparently they aren't. So my luggage was opened yet again, and I ended up with an empty carryon.
right, so there are all sorts of exciting ways to make sector-for-sector copies from one drive to another. My question is, how do you prepare Windows for this procedure first? If there are significant differences in hardware between the imaged machine and the "imagee", even WinXP will crap out! So how do you set up the "base" WinXP machine so that it will detect all of the different hardware in the new machine on startup, and not get confused?
What do musicians think of this? Here's one musician's perspective.
when people started complaining about CD prices (mid-90s?), the correct response from the music industry would have been to cut music prices. Sales would boost, and musician revenues would go up with them.
when music fans were given a new way to get music much cheaper, more customizably, and more conveniently than through the already overpriced stores, the correct response for music companies again, would have been to have lowered CD prices. but they refused to act competitively. yet again, musicians' potential pay went down.
when the economic bubble burst, and america was launched into depression, the correct response should have been to lower CD prices. people have less money now, and since the value of CD's hasn't gone up, you have to lower the price to fit your customers' budgets. CD prices stayed the same though, and musicians lost more income potential income.
when DVD prices were lowered to be the same as CD prices, the correct response should have been to lower CD prices again. DVD's offer much more value for your dollar, after all. CD's have to compete! apparently not, prices stayed the same, and musicians lost out yet again.
now the record industry is suing as many music lovers as they can to prove the point that the extra value in CD's is insurance against lawsuit. they're adding value to the CDs, and trying to add cost (potential for lawsuit) to downloads. but by now, there are alternatives. we can buy from apple.com, or buymusic.com, or any of the other similar sites. again, the appropriate response according to traditional economics is to cut CD prices so that the traditional industry can compete. this would have to be a drastic cut, because they're fighting uphill against convenience and fashion. but no, still they didn't cut the prices.
bear in mind that through all of this, CD sales continued to increase. More and more people were getting access to a wider variety of CDs. More and more people were getting CD players in the first place. CD's were fashionable. So even DESPITE all this terrible management, the Recording Industry saw some great profits. Even now, with everything against them, no one is cutting a loss here. They were riding on some serious momentum.
and now, FINALLY - we're seeing some price cuts. watch for CD sales to rise... a bit musicians' incomes will appreciate the boost, this is much better than the tactics the industry has been using. at least in the short term, this is good for musicians.
but it's much too little too late. the music industry lost customers to the black market by failing to respond appropriately in at least those 5 examples above. getting those CD sales back up is impossible now that so many people have found alternatives. what the industry SHOULD be doing now is setting up as many services like buymusic.com and apple.com as they can, and pumping dollars into this new method of distribution. make this as effective a distribution tactic as possible, and THEN the industry will have a chance at recovery. THEN the musicians will start to see the benefits.
so.... what do musicians think of this? well THIS particular musician thinks that this is great in the short run, but just another dumb move in the long run.
trouble is, no matter how much cash certain rich individuals can pump into government, we aren't a very strong voting base. in order to get elected, you pander to groups that have MANY voters and groups that have LOYAL voters. groups that have both are gold mines. ie seniors are the favorite voter's group, because they rarely change their votes. we the techies have OK numbers, but not great; but we're saddled with genuine political consciousness - that means voter volatility, not reliability. why would they listen to us, when there are more valuable groups to go after?
Slashdot Mirror
Really? It's been driving me crazy that I can't find a mail client which makes encryption "clicky clicky" easy. All I want is a mail client/plugin which automatically searches an authenticated keyserver for public keys that match my recipients, and offers to import them. Doesn't seem to exist as far as I can see. What's your setup that allows normies to encrypt/sign 100% of their email?
There's a fantastic talk from the San Francisco Exploratorium's Mars event this summer, where an anthropologist talks about exactly this issue... "learning how to see like a rover." She talks about the decision making process behind everything the mars rovers do... and ultimately how the people on the human team on earth end up anthropomorphising the robots. The best part is, it goes both ways: they assign human characteristics to the rovers, but when talking about what they want the rovers to do, they take on robot characteristics themselves. There's even a can't-miss set of instructions of the "rover dance" that people use when they're trying to show various parts of the rover and how it works and feels. http://www.exploratorium.edu/tv/?project=2&program=1386&type=clip (the first minute or two intro is quite slow, but the talk itself is great) Really fascinating. But the key takeaway is that we can strongly connect to robots that are visually non-human. After all, we all felt worried for R2-D2 when he got "eaten" in the swamps of Dagobah. The latest research in this area confirms that trying to mimic humans makes us uncomfortable. But a robot that looks like a robot is easily accepted.
Thank you. There's too much to say, so I won't. Just: thank you. For all the years of work and dedication. For having so much fun along with all of us. Whatever your next venture may be, know that you have your own personal army on hand. :)
How sad. Even if the research there seemed like piddling in LOE, it was one of the first massively international projects in human history. It was certainly a major step in the "internationalization" of space, and in multilateral relations. Quoth Harrison Ford, "It belongs in a museum!"
It's doubly sad as a metaphor for America's lost, multinational space age, in this time of international suspicion and violence. If anyone remembers, the significance of Star Trek was it's vision of a future where race, creed, and color were irrelevant; where black, white, yellow, and even Russian humans worked together to explore the vast unknown of space. That was the ideal of the space age, and our generation gets to watch that ideal get classified as junk, and sent to sink beneath the waves.
Apparently it's time we set our ennobling, international past behind us, to concentrate on blowing up people of other colors. We must stop creating multi-PhD astronauts, and start creating uneducated religious extremists, so we can fight other extremists. Let us beat our ploughshares into swords, our rocket ships into rockets, and get back to doing what we've all wanted to do for tens of thousands of years. Let's blow ourselves up over ownership of scraps of earth, air, and sea.
Sounds like a great idea. Tell you what: you raise as much money as the rest of the GOP combined in a low fundraising quarter, dominate 2/3rds of the straw polls (1st place in 43 of 67 straw polls conducted), and come second place in a few primaries. Then I'll have a few questions for you. I get very frustrated with people who complain that Paul has no chance. This isn't a competition to guess the winner. This is a competition to choose the candidate who is most closely aligned with your values and opinions on how the country should be run. If you really base your vote on your perception of a candidates likelihood to be elected, then I'll have no sympathy when you elect a dictator because the TV told you so.
I'm not interested, as long as he still preaches that Jesus B.S. and refuses to accept the plain facts of His Noodly Magnificence's Saucy imprint on all of creation. I'm sure the scientists would have been much more interested in a visit from a representative of the REAL Holy Church, whose beliefs speak to a much "higher" (not to mention tastier) rationality than anything the catholics could propose. RAmen.
My wife and I have a $100 500gb USB drive at my mother-in-law's house. We don't even rsync, we just take our laptops with us and synchronize every time we're there. Presto - off-site backup, with real life "nagware" when I don't visit my mother-in-law enough. :)
Of course, if you think you hate backing up NOW, wait till you combine it with your in-laws!
There are plenty of sweet applications for this. - electronic posters - digital picture frames - e-books - e-MUSIC-books - wall calendars I could go on. Personally, I want a music book made out of e-paper. I cart around a 50lb backpack everywhere because of the amount of sheet music I have to carry. I want a two page binder where touching a button "turns the page", with a memory of thousands of pages.
The Internet is an empowering force for an individual. Sitting alone, I can learn about almost any subject on the planet. I am constantly asked to use my own individual judgment to filter information. Any wonder that we believe in the power of the individual to take care of himself? This is supported by our real-world status. Internet users are overwhelmingly middle and upper class income earners. The vast majority have at least one college degree, and many have more than one. In other words, the majority of us have learned to think for ourselves about complex subjects, and have reaped economic benefits from that ability. Any wonder that we believe in the power of the individual to take care of himself? Ironically, the Internet is also a powerful force for communal products. Because digital copying has almost no cost, the law of supply and demand is seriously altered for information. In fact, the best model for many kinds of information is a very socialist one - Open Source. But still we are not interacting as a GROUP, it is always just a collection of individuals. Some of the great benefits of the internet may be because of a group, socialist-style model... but the experience is entirely individual. OF COURSE we believe in the power of the individual.
It's interesting to hear this from the perspective of a very mainstream composer. Fascinating that he feels so disjunct from his listeners. Because for most independent and small artists, the Internet has brought them much CLOSER to their audiences. The increased communication, sense of community, and the niche culture of the Internet has been hailed as a boon by small artists. Suddenly the major label barriers to audience access have fallen down.
Perhaps what Elton is really describing is the disconnect of the artist who does not concertize. Smaller, independents described above make the majority of their income in live performances. Online communities and media all drive these artists' fans towards the concert hall. Elton is still operating in the paradigm where the album is the primary unit of communication with your audience. You do concerts and tours, but really only to promote a new album. Fans' reactions are taken on a per-album basis. There's no question that this model is getting less effective, and that can feel like a disconnect if you're stuck operating that way.
And BTW, Elton may be a real composer, but let's not compare him to Mozart. In his short life, Mozart revolutionized music. A poster here commented that he never got old enough for us to see if he was "really any good." As a classical musician, I can tell you that 600 compositions is MORE THAN ENOUGH to tell if a composer is "really any good". And Mozart was one of the greatest.
All of those GOP candidates toe the same line on net neutrality: "let the free market [heavily modified by subsidies and regulations to favor my donors] take care of it." All the candidates except Ron Paul, of course: "I trust the Internet a lot more [than the mainstream media]. And I trust freedom of expression, and that's why we should NEVER interfere with the Internet. That's why I have never voted to regulate the Internet, even when there's the temptation to put bad things on the Internet." -Ron Paul "I believe strongly in protecting the Internet. My colleagues aren't quite as interested in the subject. That, to me, is disappointing." -Ron Paul Personal note - I'm registering Republican so I can vote for RP in the primaries. I know /.ers are generally big supporters of his... you all should be doing the same.
Take a prep course. I'm a Canadian student, studying in the US for the last 4 years. My marks at Canadian institutions were only OK, so they advised me to take an SAT when I applied for American schools. My first, unprepared PSAT (Practice SAT) scored 1260. After a two month weekly prep course, I scored 1540. It was enough to make a $30,000 difference in the amount of scholarship they offered me over the course of my degree. I know those prep courses can be expensive, but THEY'RE WORTH IT! SATs are not about what you know, they are about HOW YOU TAKE THE EXAM. Prep courses teach exactly this subject, including information based on how the test is written etc. Coming from a good school system (one that encourages critical thinking, ie not the US), you should not have to learn much at all, save a few vocab words. What you will REALLY learn is a test-taking strategy that increases your chance of a right answer when you don't know the answer (or don't have time to do the math). Good luck! PS - don't just buy a prep book. Though they often have most of the same information, what's the likelihood of you ACTUALLY completing the course, as opposed to when you have a set regular time with an instructor?
FP maybe? What I don't get is WHY apple would do this. Apart from the fact that the community has already added this feature on their own, what benefit does this bring Apple? I love the wording on the page, BTW: "Boot Camp will burn a CD of all the required drivers for Windows so you don't have to scrounge around the Internet looking for them."
"Any sound that Winston made, above the level of a very low whisper, would be picked up by [the telescreen], moreover, so long as he remained within the field of vision which the metal plaque commanded, he could be seen as well as heard. There was of course no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment. How often, or on what system, the Thought Police plugged in on any individual wire was guesswork. It was even conceivable that they watched everybody all the time. But at any rate they could plug in your wire whenever they wanted to. You had to live -- did live, from habit that became instinct -- in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and, except in darkness, every movement scrutinized. "
--George Orwell, 1984
Anyone see a parallel here? A black box that watches everything you do, with no way to know whether what you are doing is ThoughtCrime or not. Way to safeguard my privacy and rights.
And how would free market Capitalism have fared if it wasn't under constant attack from the Soviet states? Oh wait - it was. Face it: it was a competition between two economic models. Both of them tried to trip each other up. And Capitalism won, by a landslide. Seriously; even feudal states have lasted longer than the Communist record of 71 years (1917 - 1991). Communism required that the state create an artificial market, it required that people give up their individuality, and it required that mediocrity be idealized. It never stood a chance against Capitalism, which allows the market to do what it wants, requires that people act as individuals, and requires that exceptional ability be idealized. Even a totally corrupt Capitalist country (as many would argue is the case in the USA) was more than a match for all of the Soviet Republics.
FOSS advancement can be explained using evolutionary theory - basically, that mutation and fragmentation between groups is a good thing. Higher mutation rates increase a group's chance of survival - or in OSS terms: the higher "branching" rates are actually good for innovation and development.
My only comment to the movie industry here is "Good luck, guys!"
Unless you give consumers what they want, they will continue to get it elsewhere - ie online. I stopped buying dvd's and going to movies because of the obscene amount of protection (installing a drm'ed player!) and advertising (up to 30 minutes!) involved, respectively. The only source that actually offers me what I the consumer, want, is bittorrent. So that is where I will go.
I don't care about free movies; $5-$10 is a price I will happily pay to save my time. All I want is content that I can access when and how I want, without advertising. God forbid the movie industry offer this to the public. The further they get from actually giving consumers what they want, the more people will, like me, turn to illegal methods to get the product they want.
It's funny... in world economics, we learned the same lesson from Soviet Russia: the more you try to break the market, the more the market breaks you.
What's wrong with 99c per song is that it has NOTHING to do with what the market wants! $1 for a soda pop would be unreasonable, too, if everyone else was giving it away for free. This is not about supporting valid attempts to bring you music. Many systems of monetizing 'free' music have been proposed to the record industry, but the industry isn't showing any interest. Talk to the Wippet people, or Sharman, or any of the other hundred companies who have proposed models. So tell your local record company to support valiid attempts to bring the market what it wants.
Um... "self-boiling?" Does that mean that it will boil of it's own accord? If that's the case, why aren't we using this stuff to power generators? (boiling sludge -> water -> vapor -> drives a turbine...)
I'd just like to say that I predicted
this ages ago. This is another TIA project, under a different name. "Terrorism database" indeed.
Tradewars was my FAVORITE GAME. Also the forums, aka "brick walls". I remember my external 2400 baud modem, and how fast it all seemed at the time.... and my fondest memory? A heated argument with several other sysops about this new-fangled invention, _the mouse_. No way, we insisted, would these things EVER be used over a modem!
I was travelling from the US to Canada last year, carrying (among other things) my dead-battery iBook, and digital camera. Of course, you have to show them that your laptop works. The security agents would not let me plug the iBook in in order to show them; instead, they had the luggage people find my bags, so I could re-pack with the iBook in my checked luggage. Then the search continued, and it was discovered that i was carrying AA batteries for my digicam! Well, that was completely out of the question. I don't understand why batteries are not allowed as carryon items ("I've got a 9v, and I can make you put your tongue on the contacts!" what a threat!), but apparently they aren't. So my luggage was opened yet again, and I ended up with an empty carryon.
right, so there are all sorts of exciting ways to make sector-for-sector copies from one drive to another. My question is, how do you prepare Windows for this procedure first? If there are significant differences in hardware between the imaged machine and the "imagee", even WinXP will crap out! So how do you set up the "base" WinXP machine so that it will detect all of the different hardware in the new machine on startup, and not get confused?
What do musicians think of this? Here's one musician's perspective.
when people started complaining about CD prices (mid-90s?), the correct response from the music industry would have been to cut music prices. Sales would boost, and musician revenues would go up with them.
when music fans were given a new way to get music much cheaper, more customizably, and more conveniently than through the already overpriced stores, the correct response for music companies again, would have been to have lowered CD prices. but they refused to act competitively. yet again, musicians' potential pay went down.
when the economic bubble burst, and america was launched into depression, the correct response should have been to lower CD prices. people have less money now, and since the value of CD's hasn't gone up, you have to lower the price to fit your customers' budgets. CD prices stayed the same though, and musicians lost more income potential income.
when DVD prices were lowered to be the same as CD prices, the correct response should have been to lower CD prices again. DVD's offer much more value for your dollar, after all. CD's have to compete! apparently not, prices stayed the same, and musicians lost out yet again.
now the record industry is suing as many music lovers as they can to prove the point that the extra value in CD's is insurance against lawsuit. they're adding value to the CDs, and trying to add cost (potential for lawsuit) to downloads. but by now, there are alternatives. we can buy from apple.com, or buymusic.com, or any of the other similar sites. again, the appropriate response according to traditional economics is to cut CD prices so that the traditional industry can compete. this would have to be a drastic cut, because they're fighting uphill against convenience and fashion. but no, still they didn't cut the prices.
bear in mind that through all of this, CD sales continued to increase. More and more people were getting access to a wider variety of CDs. More and more people were getting CD players in the first place. CD's were fashionable. So even DESPITE all this terrible management, the Recording Industry saw some great profits. Even now, with everything against them, no one is cutting a loss here. They were riding on some serious momentum.
and now, FINALLY - we're seeing some price cuts. watch for CD sales to rise... a bit musicians' incomes will appreciate the boost, this is much better than the tactics the industry has been using. at least in the short term, this is good for musicians.
but it's much too little too late. the music industry lost customers to the black market by failing to respond appropriately in at least those 5 examples above. getting those CD sales back up is impossible now that so many people have found alternatives. what the industry SHOULD be doing now is setting up as many services like buymusic.com and apple.com as they can, and pumping dollars into this new method of distribution. make this as effective a distribution tactic as possible, and THEN the industry will have a chance at recovery. THEN the musicians will start to see the benefits.
so.... what do musicians think of this? well THIS particular musician thinks that this is great in the short run, but just another dumb move in the long run.
trouble is, no matter how much cash certain rich individuals can pump into government, we aren't a very strong voting base. in order to get elected, you pander to groups that have MANY voters and groups that have LOYAL voters. groups that have both are gold mines. ie seniors are the favorite voter's group, because they rarely change their votes. we the techies have OK numbers, but not great; but we're saddled with genuine political consciousness - that means voter volatility, not reliability. why would they listen to us, when there are more valuable groups to go after?