This is probably just the geek in me talking but right after he said "My Gods, they're in the mountain," my first thought was, what exactly would happen if this really occurred. Would it be like a matter/anti-matter annihilation? Or would some weird displacement effect occur and the matter would all just push itself around and in this case add a small bump to the mountain? They're transponder code apparently still was broadcasting, though obviously that was the only sensible way to point out they were inside the mountain. What would be the result if something suddenly popped into existence in the same spot as something else? I'm surprised the cylons haven't tried jumping a whole bunch of small masses into where the colonial ships are, hoping to put at least some of them in the same place.
The idea is to show people that they can at least have a reasonable chance of making money off of a creation. Without copyright, anyone could then undercut you and prevent you making anything off of it. If that happened you'd probably give up and switch to something with a better payout. The original law had a much shorter term (14 years I believe, don't quote me on that) which seems more than reasonable, though nowadays that should probably be lessened, I think. By expiring, it forces the creator to not rely it for a source of income and, since they can have some expectation of recieving money from creations, be encouraged to create something new. Also, the expiration helps innovation because, as many would agree, everything that is considered an improvement or progress is all based on something that already existed.
The current copyright durations are most certainly counter to the original intent and should (ideally in my opinion) be completely scrapped for something closer to the GPL, or at least, as another poster said, to 2-3 years maximum.
I was confused for a while about this myself. Apparently the click part refers to the actual button action (which is mechanical) that is integrated into the pad, and not the "clicker" sound effect. Wheel just refers to the shape and not a physical action. The click wheel term is to differentiate between the previous ones that had the pad but used different button schemes.
Dude, have you been reading my mind? I've been thinking about something like that for a good couple of months now and just recently decided to put together a quick concept. Quick images of the box are here and here and a decent description can be found at the bottom of the post linked above.
Though indeed very silly at times, the whole point of State of Fear, IMHO, was just to show that we don't know enough to understand the changes that the climate is undergoing. There is not enough data to prove conclusively whether the changes are man made or not, or what the climate will be in the near future. This is a line that's very similar through most of his books, that we don't know enough about complex systems and we shouldn't mess (ie. the whole chaos theory bit with regards to events in Jurassic Park and The Lost World, the emergent system behavior in Prey). It is his weakest book yet, and is style-wise much more like a Dan Brown novel and not much like his own, but the very fundamental messages are sound: we don't know enough to accurately decide either way, and stop pretending like we are more important than we really are.
Having said that, it would make more sense for IM programs to add this functionality.
Gaim has support for "buddy pounces" which allow you to set an action (such as a notification which can be anything from a pop-up window, IM box, and sent message to just a simple sound) for any event (an IM, change in state, even typing) a person on your buddylist triggers. They can also be set to repeat. They can even be used to piss people off by having it send a message to them whenever they start or stop typing. That can get really annoying, believe me.
Great points that I really wish would happen, but the bank withdrawal analogy doesn't quite work. Sure you can do whatever you want with the money, except make perfect copies of it easily and quickly transport it anywhere. The only reason we have DRM is because it's so easy to make and share a perfect copy of the content and people want to control who experiences the content. In fact, money has all kinds of equivalents to DRM (eg, watermarks, metal strips, color changing ink, clear plastic in Australia). I can't think of a better analogy, but using that one allows people to poke holes in the argument for no DRM, which we don't want to happen because that can possibly weaken the cause.
Personally, I would readily pay for things that were high-quality (both in fidelity and content) and had no restrictions instead of pirating them, but I don't know how many other people would too. iTunes has shown that some people certainly will flock to an easy, legal, and cheap alternative, but you have to convince the content creators and publishers that *everyone* will. Making it ridiculously easy and convenient will help a lot in this area; it's all about the convenience. Actually, first let's get rid of the notion that ideas are property, then go about getting rid of the middleman distributors and let the Internet and word-of-mouth (which can be frighteningly effective) do the work.
Saw this in my live bookmarks with the "driva" of mandriva cut off. First thought was they were taking a new (and expensive!) approach to tech support. Needless to say I was sorely disappointed.
Hmm I don't know about you but I get results for horses on ESPN and Hungarian
Re:The true future is the antimatter-fueled car!
on
The Future of the Car
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· Score: 1
Talk about complete suckage when someone wraps their car around a tree or something. Complete annihilation. I have to admit the idea is amusing, in a morbid sort of way.
Re:All the tools for accident avoidance exist...
on
The Future of the Car
·
· Score: 1
The only problem is that in today's culture (almost) everyone wants to be able to drive. We are definitely capable of having near accident free roads-the environment is a good bit harder to control and probably still would cause some accidents even with smart drivers-except for that damn thing called the driver. The US should have much stricter recurring driving exams, especially early on and later in life. But then people would complain to their representative about everything and it would be a big mess, though I'd rather have a big legal mess WITH these restrictions in place than no restrictions, no mess, but the current accident rate.
Oh yeah, preview is pretty kickasd.
Or more likely Linux (if the DARPA Grand Challenge goes anywhere-I hope it does). It looks like a lot of the bots run on Linux of some kind (at least one OS X too).
How about you have to get a license, in addition to the regular driver's license, that shows you can handle a non-enhanced (not sure what to call it) car. Or, maybe include it in the regular driver's test.
Oh, and cars don't last forever. They can last a damn long time for sure but even in Victoria they won't last indefinitely. This seems to be more of an eventual goal, that starts with making smaller steps, to be reached many years from now (article says networked cars will only start roll out in 2010). And, the network won't be a necessity, just an additional sensor that allows for an even better sense of the area around the vehicle. I do hope they can improve the quality though. Some cars do struggle seriously in this dept.
Re:"Virus kills hundreds on I-95"
on
The Future of the Car
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
I don't think virii will become a fatal problem simply because of the way the cars are likely to be controlled. I can't imagine any sane engineer linking the OS to the intercar communication system in a way that would allow direct control of the car from an outside source. The external communication/gps positioning is purely for additional road sensing and navigating-not for the actual driving and avoiding of obstacles-and will probably happen in a separate system. The core driving operation will likely be kept isolated from outside control. Also, remember that, in the early years of these systems, humans will still be driving. The extra sensing will only notify the driver of conditions and attempt to prevent (or at least alleviate somewhat) an accident should one begin to occur.
It certainly would be possible to suddenly make all cars lost but that wouldn't be so much of a safety issue. The real danger in this sense will be possible backdoors or dangerous easter eggs that could be inserted during the OS development process.
I beg to differ.
I happen to know that the Earth revolves around the Sun (I'm not THAT fat, thank you very much).
I sometimes prefer that things don't happen instantly so I have time to think about what is going on.
I generally prefer people don't talk to me (on IM anyways) unless they have something important and worthwhile to talk about (almost never, I once refused to reply to people unless they started with something other than "hey" but it didn't change much) because it interrupts my concentration-not as bad as/. though.
And, MTV sucks ass.
Also, I always wear a belt (I don't feel right without one), I have a savings account that is quite full thanks to being employed for my uncle at the moment, and I just mailed a considerable number of thank you notes-exhausted the supply of suitable cards and small envelopes-to various suppliers of birthday and graduation gifts.
Still, it is nice to be acknowledge, even if it is as a twit!
Plenty do. It's just really hard to find the results in all the crap and rehashes that pass for games nowadays. One of the reasons downloading games is so popular. I hate spending US$50 on a game that sucked ass and wasn't nearly worth it, though that doesn't happen much since I'll wait and read reviews or ask friends about them.
Slashdot Mirror
This is probably just the geek in me talking but right after he said "My Gods, they're in the mountain," my first thought was, what exactly would happen if this really occurred. Would it be like a matter/anti-matter annihilation? Or would some weird displacement effect occur and the matter would all just push itself around and in this case add a small bump to the mountain? They're transponder code apparently still was broadcasting, though obviously that was the only sensible way to point out they were inside the mountain. What would be the result if something suddenly popped into existence in the same spot as something else? I'm surprised the cylons haven't tried jumping a whole bunch of small masses into where the colonial ships are, hoping to put at least some of them in the same place.
By the looks of my spam boxes, if you split it with every person on the planet it would be the end of poverty as we know it.
The idea is to show people that they can at least have a reasonable chance of making money off of a creation. Without copyright, anyone could then undercut you and prevent you making anything off of it. If that happened you'd probably give up and switch to something with a better payout. The original law had a much shorter term (14 years I believe, don't quote me on that) which seems more than reasonable, though nowadays that should probably be lessened, I think. By expiring, it forces the creator to not rely it for a source of income and, since they can have some expectation of recieving money from creations, be encouraged to create something new. Also, the expiration helps innovation because, as many would agree, everything that is considered an improvement or progress is all based on something that already existed.
The current copyright durations are most certainly counter to the original intent and should (ideally in my opinion) be completely scrapped for something closer to the GPL, or at least, as another poster said, to 2-3 years maximum.
I was confused for a while about this myself. Apparently the click part refers to the actual button action (which is mechanical) that is integrated into the pad, and not the "clicker" sound effect. Wheel just refers to the shape and not a physical action. The click wheel term is to differentiate between the previous ones that had the pad but used different button schemes.
Dude, have you been reading my mind? I've been thinking about something like that for a good couple of months now and just recently decided to put together a quick concept. Quick images of the box are here and here and a decent description can be found at the bottom of the post linked above.
At the Apple store near me it looks like you sign on a touch sensitive screen instead of a physical reciept both in the front and at the iPod table.
Bah that should be an eg. not ie. Shame on me. Double shame for replying to my own post.
Though indeed very silly at times, the whole point of State of Fear, IMHO, was just to show that we don't know enough to understand the changes that the climate is undergoing. There is not enough data to prove conclusively whether the changes are man made or not, or what the climate will be in the near future. This is a line that's very similar through most of his books, that we don't know enough about complex systems and we shouldn't mess (ie. the whole chaos theory bit with regards to events in Jurassic Park and The Lost World, the emergent system behavior in Prey). It is his weakest book yet, and is style-wise much more like a Dan Brown novel and not much like his own, but the very fundamental messages are sound: we don't know enough to accurately decide either way, and stop pretending like we are more important than we really are.
Having said that, it would make more sense for IM programs to add this functionality.
Gaim has support for "buddy pounces" which allow you to set an action (such as a notification which can be anything from a pop-up window, IM box, and sent message to just a simple sound) for any event (an IM, change in state, even typing) a person on your buddylist triggers. They can also be set to repeat. They can even be used to piss people off by having it send a message to them whenever they start or stop typing. That can get really annoying, believe me.
Great points that I really wish would happen, but the bank withdrawal analogy doesn't quite work. Sure you can do whatever you want with the money, except make perfect copies of it easily and quickly transport it anywhere. The only reason we have DRM is because it's so easy to make and share a perfect copy of the content and people want to control who experiences the content. In fact, money has all kinds of equivalents to DRM (eg, watermarks, metal strips, color changing ink, clear plastic in Australia). I can't think of a better analogy, but using that one allows people to poke holes in the argument for no DRM, which we don't want to happen because that can possibly weaken the cause.
Personally, I would readily pay for things that were high-quality (both in fidelity and content) and had no restrictions instead of pirating them, but I don't know how many other people would too. iTunes has shown that some people certainly will flock to an easy, legal, and cheap alternative, but you have to convince the content creators and publishers that *everyone* will. Making it ridiculously easy and convenient will help a lot in this area; it's all about the convenience. Actually, first let's get rid of the notion that ideas are property, then go about getting rid of the middleman distributors and let the Internet and word-of-mouth (which can be frighteningly effective) do the work.
Here is something I've been thinking about for the past couple of months now.
d eo-bittorrent-diggcom.html
http://alecperkins.blogspot.com/2005/10/google-vi
The market just isn't there unless you can come up with a huge source of content independent of the traditional production channels.
http://video.google.com/
Not so much good stuff yet but it's getting there.
Or just do away with the whole time-slot idea. Make all of TV on-demand and eliminate the need for PVRs in that sense.
Saw this in my live bookmarks with the "driva" of mandriva cut off. First thought was they were taking a new (and expensive!) approach to tech support. Needless to say I was sorely disappointed.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/sciencenow/3204/02.ht ml
...and certain people didn't listen (or didn't care).
They didn't know exactly when, but they knew it was inevitable.
http://www.alternet.org/story/24871/
The article says the message from the system includes a diagram of the location of the swimmer, so I imagine they use a special pager system.
Hmm I don't know about you but I get results for horses on ESPN and Hungarian
Talk about complete suckage when someone wraps their car around a tree or something. Complete annihilation. I have to admit the idea is amusing, in a morbid sort of way.
The only problem is that in today's culture (almost) everyone wants to be able to drive. We are definitely capable of having near accident free roads-the environment is a good bit harder to control and probably still would cause some accidents even with smart drivers-except for that damn thing called the driver. The US should have much stricter recurring driving exams, especially early on and later in life. But then people would complain to their representative about everything and it would be a big mess, though I'd rather have a big legal mess WITH these restrictions in place than no restrictions, no mess, but the current accident rate.
Oh yeah, preview is pretty kickasd.
Or more likely Linux (if the DARPA Grand Challenge goes anywhere-I hope it does). It looks like a lot of the bots run on Linux of some kind (at least one OS X too).
How about you have to get a license, in addition to the regular driver's license, that shows you can handle a non-enhanced (not sure what to call it) car. Or, maybe include it in the regular driver's test.
Oh, and cars don't last forever. They can last a damn long time for sure but even in Victoria they won't last indefinitely. This seems to be more of an eventual goal, that starts with making smaller steps, to be reached many years from now (article says networked cars will only start roll out in 2010). And, the network won't be a necessity, just an additional sensor that allows for an even better sense of the area around the vehicle. I do hope they can improve the quality though. Some cars do struggle seriously in this dept.
I don't think virii will become a fatal problem simply because of the way the cars are likely to be controlled. I can't imagine any sane engineer linking the OS to the intercar communication system in a way that would allow direct control of the car from an outside source. The external communication/gps positioning is purely for additional road sensing and navigating-not for the actual driving and avoiding of obstacles-and will probably happen in a separate system. The core driving operation will likely be kept isolated from outside control. Also, remember that, in the early years of these systems, humans will still be driving. The extra sensing will only notify the driver of conditions and attempt to prevent (or at least alleviate somewhat) an accident should one begin to occur.
It certainly would be possible to suddenly make all cars lost but that wouldn't be so much of a safety issue. The real danger in this sense will be possible backdoors or dangerous easter eggs that could be inserted during the OS development process.
I beg to differ. I happen to know that the Earth revolves around the Sun (I'm not THAT fat, thank you very much). I sometimes prefer that things don't happen instantly so I have time to think about what is going on. I generally prefer people don't talk to me (on IM anyways) unless they have something important and worthwhile to talk about (almost never, I once refused to reply to people unless they started with something other than "hey" but it didn't change much) because it interrupts my concentration-not as bad as /. though.
And, MTV sucks ass.
Also, I always wear a belt (I don't feel right without one), I have a savings account that is quite full thanks to being employed for my uncle at the moment, and I just mailed a considerable number of thank you notes-exhausted the supply of suitable cards and small envelopes-to various suppliers of birthday and graduation gifts.
Still, it is nice to be acknowledge, even if it is as a twit!
Don't forget Beowulf clusters!
Plenty do. It's just really hard to find the results in all the crap and rehashes that pass for games nowadays. One of the reasons downloading games is so popular. I hate spending US$50 on a game that sucked ass and wasn't nearly worth it, though that doesn't happen much since I'll wait and read reviews or ask friends about them.