...you could order something on the Internet and pick it up through a trapdoor in your cellar the next morning
This would be such an amazing improvement over the current state of affairs, where I can order something on the Internet and pick it up through a front door in my living room the next morning.
True books don't require batteries. OTOH, books don't have built in dictionaries, thesauruses and access to wikipedia.
You also can't adjust the font size.
You also can't instantly search for any word or phrase inside a paper book.
You also can't carry 100 paper books in the space of one paper book.
You also can't instantly buy a new paper book while riding a train or bus.
The list goes on and on...
So I agree, they ARE different things, and that's the whole point which lots of people seem to be missing!
Please note that I am not talking about the case where the user is not logged in as Admin, I am talking about the case where the user IS logged in as Admin. You are correct, applications that simply assume that a user is always Admin are poorly written and will fail even under XP for non-admin users. But many XP applications assume that IF the current user is Admin (which can easily be checked in code), then attempts to carry out privileged operations will succeed. Vista changed this so that even if the user user IS Admin, privileged operations will still fail!
If your application requires write access to Program Files, it's already broken under Windows XP
Not necessarily. It's trivial to write code that says if (adminUser) DoPrivilegedOperation() else MessageBox("Please log in as Admin before attempting this."). It's not pretty but it is often adequate, and many apps do this. All such apps are automatically broken under Vista since the above logic works fine under XP and fails under Vista.
Just as an example, many applications that support plugins store the plugins under their own directories in Program Files so that they are accessible to all users, not just the user installing the plugin. It may or may not be the 100% approved Microsoft Certified Correct Way Of Doing Things, but the fact remains that many, many Windows apps do this or other similar operations and all such apps are broken by Vista and require patches to fix.
As a home user who tries to always run Windows with non-admin permissions (as, frankly, everybody should be doing)
Why, exactly? I run as Admin all the time. It's my computer, I want to do whatever I want to it, whenever I want to, and I don't want any privilege issues getting in my way. There are definitely scenarios (e.g. corporate users, systems with multiple users, etc.) where people should not run as admins, but why shouldn't I run as admin on my own home PC if I want to?
I'm also a developer who has had to port apps from XP to Vista, and trust me, the GP is right, it's a nightmare. Most of the problems stem from the "improved" security. Vista locks down certain parts of the system pretty hard (e.g. the registry), in theory to block malware, but they wound up taking out (I'm guessing) about 75% of commercial apps along with it. Just for example, under XP, most application operations that require elevated privileges (e.g. writing to Program Files) will simply work if the application is being run by an admin. Under Vista, the OS will block the operation until the admin approves it, even though the admin is already running the app. That might be OK if it were handled transparently, but the application has to be rewritten to handle this case explicitly.
Any substantial commercial XP application that has been around for any significant amount of time will almost certainly run into problems under Vista. Perhaps in theory a 100% perfectly well behaved Windows application that doesn't do one thing even slightly wrong anywhere might have a chance of working immediately under Vista, but how many real world applications are 100% perfect?
Yeah, except even Banks had to invent kudos so that an ancient, amazingly advanced race of gas giant inhabitants still had something to exchange for products and services...they didn't have money of course, being so advanced, so they used kudos instead..which worked amazingly like...money.
I tried 2 different ways to stop the torrent of pre-approved credit card offers I was receiving in the mail:
1. Called the companies up and, after wasting endless time in the phone system, finally found someone who claimed to be able to remove me from the mailing list. This had no noticeable effect.
2. Started mailing back every single offer with "PLEASE REMOVE ME FROM YOUR LIST" scrawled across the acceptance form, in their own postage-paid reply envelopes. This was wildly successful. The mail stopped stopped almost immediately and hasn't resumed since, and that was a couple of years ago now.
Try again, it not 10 feet in diameter, its 100 feet!
I'm curious, what exactly in the photo makes you think the crater is only 10 feet in diameter? The only thing in the photo that gives any sense of scale at all are the people and car in the background, but since we don't know how far back they are from the rim, even they are of little use.
But if you assume the car is 12 feet long and fairly close to the rim, that would put the crater at 60-70 feet across at least.
Your dad's stash of Playboys didn't have people dressed up as Squirrels having sex with people dressed up as Nuns in orifices that should not be penetrated smeared with what looks like a mixture of feces and vomit.
It's a compelling story, but I just don't believe that the epic battle of Big Labels vs. independent artists adequately explains what SoundExchange is currently up to. Many of the popular web casters who would be put out of business by the new rates play mostly Big Label music (e.g. Radio Paradise, etc.) Personally, I'm absolutely convinced it is all simply about piracy. The RIAA is hopelessly obsessed with the possibility that anybody, anywhere, could possibly receive a free copy of un-DRM'd music from any source. The fact that SoundExchange offered an exemption to their new rates to those webcasters who agreed to use DRM pretty much cinched it for me.
The problem with that theory is, why go through all that trouble only to end up with songs whose start and end overlap with other songs and have gone through audio processing when you can simply get onto the usual torrent sites and other P2P networks and get CD rips?
Even with the imperfect results, it is surprisingly easy, using free MP3 editing tools available on the net, to take the output of SteamRipper and patch the files back into something very close to pristine tracks. Also, many web stations do not overlap tracks. And unlike P2P networks, it is completely safe from the RIAA snoops - your IP address is never made public as part of the process and you will never find yourself in court as a result. Think about it: in the RIAA's eyes, thanks to Web Radio and Streamripper, you can download free, un-DRM'd copyrighted music all day long and they can't find you!
Anyway, the point that there are other, possibly easier ways to pirate music is not relevant. Your arguments may make sense to us, but to the RIAA any opportunity for people to get music for free is bad and must be stopped.
I have no doubt P2P is costing them money, though not to the tune they calculate; just because someone downloads it doesn't mean they would have bought it otherwise. But online radio is not costing them money, it is free advertising. I have nothing against revenue sharing; that is how radio in Europe has worked for a long time and at the end of the day the station is making money off the music too. But the rates need to be reasonable as the stations are also advertising the music.
Agreed, no argument here. That wasn't the point of my post. I'm just trying to explain what their agenda is, not validate it.
Right now, SoundExchange is being rather unreasonable.
Again, I agree. Still, it doesn't change my point. More info here:
Once you understand that, everything SoundExchange is doing makes sense. These seemingly counter-productive actions by SoundExchange lead to a lot of head scratching by a lot of people. Why would the music industry want to kill such a seemingly obvious way to generate more music sales? Etc.
The RIAA has been trying for years, without success, to pass legislation to require all internet radio broadcasters to use DRM in their streams. In practice this means only one thing: they desperately want to make it illegal to broadcast internet radio in mp3 format.
The RIAA has got in their heads that the combination of DRM-free readio broadcasts in mp3 format with tools such as StreamRipper is leading to rampant music piracy. I have no idea how rampant the piracy actually is, but it could be bad at least in theory. The problem is that it is possible, with relatively little technical know how, to point a tool like StreamRipper at, just for example, one of the many fine music 128k music channels available at somafm.com, leave it running, and come back a day or 2 later to a directory containing gigabytes of free MP3 music.
Anyway, since they have not been able to make mp3 broadcasting illegal, SoundExchange's behavior is simply the RIAA attacking the "problem" from a new front. They want to shut web broadcasters down. They know the new rates are way too high! That's the whole point. They want to bankrupt all the broadcasters who are streaming near-CD-quality mp3s out to the world for free.
After the success of The Sims, you can be sure EA/Maxis is looking for every new game they release to be the start of another long and extremely lucrative series of expansion packs. I worked at Maxis a few years ago, and The Sims expansion packs were hands down the biggest profit generators across the entire company (and possibly across all of EA). I have no doubt at all they are planning for another endless expansion pack bonanza with Spore.
Probably 30-50% of the time I have more than one source file open at a time while I'm coding...the file I'm working on the and the file that is my reference (often the a class API.) If both files are limited to 80 columns, I can fit them both side by side comfortably on my 1600x1200 monitor and I'm very productive. If they aren't 80 columns and I can't fit them both on my screen I get cranky and usually wind up reading Slashdot instead of working.
why would i give my cc to a russian run illegal mp3 site?
Why not? Credit cards are a dime a dozen for most people these days. I have at least 2 extra that I keep "for emergencies" (in case one of my primary card #s is stolen), and which I don't normally use to buy stuff. So I just started using one of these extra cards *only* for allofmp3.com, and nothing else. If the number gets stolen, I cancel it, so what? No big deal at all. I'm not liable for the any charges on the card that I did not authorize.
Anyway allofmp3 is (or was) a business. They wouldn't have lasted as long as they did if they were stealing their own customer's credit card numbers. I used them for years, not once did any unauthorized charge ever appear on my credit card.
and I don't understand quantum entanglement very well. So I was wondering - Is it possible that something like this can enable faster-than-light communications?
"Observations on entangled states naively appear to conflict with the property of relativity that information cannot be transferred faster than the speed of light. Although two entangled systems appear to interact across large spatial separations, no useful information can be transmitted in this way, so causality cannot be violated through entanglement. "
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, it was scrapped becase the frickin goggles did nothing for the shark's remaining eye.
This would be such an amazing improvement over the current state of affairs, where I can order something on the Internet and pick it up through a front door in my living room the next morning.
Religion and football...two things that I couldn't possibly care less about. I hope they obliterate each other in a spectacular orgy of litigation.
Hey, now there's an idea! What could possibly go wrong?
You also can't instantly search for any word or phrase inside a paper book.
You also can't carry 100 paper books in the space of one paper book.
You also can't instantly buy a new paper book while riding a train or bus.
The list goes on and on...
So I agree, they ARE different things, and that's the whole point which lots of people seem to be missing!
Oh please..."religious" people are some of the biggest pr0n hounds on the planet.
Please note that I am not talking about the case where the user is not logged in as Admin, I am talking about the case where the user IS logged in as Admin. You are correct, applications that simply assume that a user is always Admin are poorly written and will fail even under XP for non-admin users. But many XP applications assume that IF the current user is Admin (which can easily be checked in code), then attempts to carry out privileged operations will succeed. Vista changed this so that even if the user user IS Admin, privileged operations will still fail!
Not necessarily. It's trivial to write code that says if (adminUser) DoPrivilegedOperation() else MessageBox("Please log in as Admin before attempting this."). It's not pretty but it is often adequate, and many apps do this. All such apps are automatically broken under Vista since the above logic works fine under XP and fails under Vista.
Just as an example, many applications that support plugins store the plugins under their own directories in Program Files so that they are accessible to all users, not just the user installing the plugin. It may or may not be the 100% approved Microsoft Certified Correct Way Of Doing Things, but the fact remains that many, many Windows apps do this or other similar operations and all such apps are broken by Vista and require patches to fix.
As a home user who tries to always run Windows with non-admin permissions (as, frankly, everybody should be doing)
Why, exactly? I run as Admin all the time. It's my computer, I want to do whatever I want to it, whenever I want to, and I don't want any privilege issues getting in my way. There are definitely scenarios (e.g. corporate users, systems with multiple users, etc.) where people should not run as admins, but why shouldn't I run as admin on my own home PC if I want to?
I'm also a developer who has had to port apps from XP to Vista, and trust me, the GP is right, it's a nightmare. Most of the problems stem from the "improved" security. Vista locks down certain parts of the system pretty hard (e.g. the registry), in theory to block malware, but they wound up taking out (I'm guessing) about 75% of commercial apps along with it. Just for example, under XP, most application operations that require elevated privileges (e.g. writing to Program Files) will simply work if the application is being run by an admin. Under Vista, the OS will block the operation until the admin approves it, even though the admin is already running the app. That might be OK if it were handled transparently, but the application has to be rewritten to handle this case explicitly.
Any substantial commercial XP application that has been around for any significant amount of time will almost certainly run into problems under Vista. Perhaps in theory a 100% perfectly well behaved Windows application that doesn't do one thing even slightly wrong anywhere might have a chance of working immediately under Vista, but how many real world applications are 100% perfect?
Yeah, except even Banks had to invent kudos so that an ancient, amazingly advanced race of gas giant inhabitants still had something to exchange for products and services...they didn't have money of course, being so advanced, so they used kudos instead..which worked amazingly like...money.
Can you elect me NOW?
1. Called the companies up and, after wasting endless time in the phone system, finally found someone who claimed to be able to remove me from the mailing list. This had no noticeable effect.
2. Started mailing back every single offer with "PLEASE REMOVE ME FROM YOUR LIST" scrawled across the acceptance form, in their own postage-paid reply envelopes. This was wildly successful. The mail stopped stopped almost immediately and hasn't resumed since, and that was a couple of years ago now.
I'm curious, what exactly in the photo makes you think the crater is only 10 feet in diameter? The only thing in the photo that gives any sense of scale at all are the people and car in the background, but since we don't know how far back they are from the rim, even they are of little use.
But if you assume the car is 12 feet long and fairly close to the rim, that would put the crater at 60-70 feet across at least.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/space/article/0,,2171920,00.html
Umm, link please.... ?
It's a compelling story, but I just don't believe that the epic battle of Big Labels vs. independent artists adequately explains what SoundExchange is currently up to. Many of the popular web casters who would be put out of business by the new rates play mostly Big Label music (e.g. Radio Paradise, etc.) Personally, I'm absolutely convinced it is all simply about piracy. The RIAA is hopelessly obsessed with the possibility that anybody, anywhere, could possibly receive a free copy of un-DRM'd music from any source. The fact that SoundExchange offered an exemption to their new rates to those webcasters who agreed to use DRM pretty much cinched it for me.
Even with the imperfect results, it is surprisingly easy, using free MP3 editing tools available on the net, to take the output of SteamRipper and patch the files back into something very close to pristine tracks. Also, many web stations do not overlap tracks. And unlike P2P networks, it is completely safe from the RIAA snoops - your IP address is never made public as part of the process and you will never find yourself in court as a result. Think about it: in the RIAA's eyes, thanks to Web Radio and Streamripper, you can download free, un-DRM'd copyrighted music all day long and they can't find you!
Anyway, the point that there are other, possibly easier ways to pirate music is not relevant. Your arguments may make sense to us, but to the RIAA any opportunity for people to get music for free is bad and must be stopped.
I have no doubt P2P is costing them money, though not to the tune they calculate; just because someone downloads it doesn't mean they would have bought it otherwise. But online radio is not costing them money, it is free advertising. I have nothing against revenue sharing; that is how radio in Europe has worked for a long time and at the end of the day the station is making money off the music too. But the rates need to be reasonable as the stations are also advertising the music.
Agreed, no argument here. That wasn't the point of my post. I'm just trying to explain what their agenda is, not validate it.
Right now, SoundExchange is being rather unreasonable.
Again, I agree. Still, it doesn't change my point. More info here:
http://machinist.salon.com/blog/2007/07/16/interne t_radio_copying/
The RIAA has been trying for years, without success, to pass legislation to require all internet radio broadcasters to use DRM in their streams. In practice this means only one thing: they desperately want to make it illegal to broadcast internet radio in mp3 format.
The RIAA has got in their heads that the combination of DRM-free readio broadcasts in mp3 format with tools such as StreamRipper is leading to rampant music piracy. I have no idea how rampant the piracy actually is, but it could be bad at least in theory. The problem is that it is possible, with relatively little technical know how, to point a tool like StreamRipper at, just for example, one of the many fine music 128k music channels available at somafm.com, leave it running, and come back a day or 2 later to a directory containing gigabytes of free MP3 music.
Anyway, since they have not been able to make mp3 broadcasting illegal, SoundExchange's behavior is simply the RIAA attacking the "problem" from a new front. They want to shut web broadcasters down. They know the new rates are way too high! That's the whole point. They want to bankrupt all the broadcasters who are streaming near-CD-quality mp3s out to the world for free.
After the success of The Sims, you can be sure EA/Maxis is looking for every new game they release to be the start of another long and extremely lucrative series of expansion packs. I worked at Maxis a few years ago, and The Sims expansion packs were hands down the biggest profit generators across the entire company (and possibly across all of EA). I have no doubt at all they are planning for another endless expansion pack bonanza with Spore.
Probably 30-50% of the time I have more than one source file open at a time while I'm coding...the file I'm working on the and the file that is my reference (often the a class API.) If both files are limited to 80 columns, I can fit them both side by side comfortably on my 1600x1200 monitor and I'm very productive. If they aren't 80 columns and I can't fit them both on my screen I get cranky and usually wind up reading Slashdot instead of working.
Why not? Credit cards are a dime a dozen for most people these days. I have at least 2 extra that I keep "for emergencies" (in case one of my primary card #s is stolen), and which I don't normally use to buy stuff. So I just started using one of these extra cards *only* for allofmp3.com, and nothing else. If the number gets stolen, I cancel it, so what? No big deal at all. I'm not liable for the any charges on the card that I did not authorize.
Anyway allofmp3 is (or was) a business. They wouldn't have lasted as long as they did if they were stealing their own customer's credit card numbers. I used them for years, not once did any unauthorized charge ever appear on my credit card.
All I know is that thing would make one hell of a bitchin paperweight. I totally want one.
IANAP either, but I am an internet user! From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spooky_action:
"Observations on entangled states naively appear to conflict with the property of relativity that information cannot be transferred faster than the speed of light. Although two entangled systems appear to interact across large spatial separations, no useful information can be transmitted in this way, so causality cannot be violated through entanglement. "
Sure they have. That's why all the Star Trek transporters employ "Heisenberg compensators". Duh.
I'm thinking probably not too long.