I don't agree that the "greats" have remained with time. I think the "greats" exemplify the point that without the threat that singles pose to them, they will put one good song on an album filled with crap. Madonna, Aerosmith, the Rolling Stones, Paul McCartney could easily be considered among the greats, yet their albums since the death of the single have become mostly filler. They just don't have an incentive to produce great albums packed with value anymore. Singles created a threat to them. If they only had one or two good songs for every 15 they recorded, then people would go buy the singles and they'd make less money. When the music industry eliminated singles in the 1990s, even the so-called "greats" became less great. Why put out 15 fantastic songs when one will do the job and you can make the same amount of money?
I have moderator points, but I just had to comment on your post. Sgt. Pepper's, Dark Side of the Moon, etc... were albums filled with value from the first track to the last. They stopped making albums like that in the 80's, when they figured out that a one-hit-wonder could sell their one hit on an album filled with crap and then charge the consumers a full-album price. I'd love for albums to still be filled with 15 awesome songs, but that's just not reality anymore. I for one am overjoyed at the prospect of an end to albums.
Google Docs??!! This is not even close to MS office. The only free online office suite worth using (if you want something that reproduces MS office) is Thinkfree http://www.thinkfree.com/. It faithfully reproduces PowerPoint, Word, and Excel with full compatibility. The ONLY thing keeping something like this from replacing office for most people is that, obviously, you've got to be online to run the office suite. Now, what happens to an "online" office suite like this when you can use it offline, as well? More precisely, what's the point of spending hundreds of dollars on MS Office anymore? For me, at least, I'd never buy MS Office again.
I used a free utility that would create a partition in RAM to be read as a drive. I wrote a little.bat file to be called from the autoexec.bat on bootup which would 1) create the ram drive, 2) copy over the larger and most frequently used executables and system files on the drive to the ram drive, then SET the location of the programs to the drive letter of the ram drive. The idea was there are a certain number of programs that are loaded everytime the computer turns on, and repeatedly while it stays on. Immediately getting these files off the drive and into memory and resetting their location for the operating system's reference to the ram drive enabled the grunt work to get done by RAM, which was fast and silent, rather than the hard-drive (which in those days was super-slow and noisy). The result was the computer booted much quicker and would operate a heck of a lot faster. What we need is the equivalent of a gigantic RAM drive which is immediately loaded with all the most frequently accessed executables each time the system turns on. This should be the first operation of bootup after the system checks are complete. After the RAM drive is pre-populated with the major OS executables and startup programs' executables, the operating system should then run itself off its executables located on the RAM drive and look to the ram drive, 1st, as the location of all startup programs' executables when attempting to load them at bootup. Is this already being done, if not, why?
1st, know your state insurance laws well. In most states, the insurance companies are required to fund the state "high risk pool". In return for their contributions to the high risk pool, many states have little, if any, regulations on the decisions of insurance companies to deny individual coverage. As opposed to company insurance plans, where there are federal and state regulations requiring insurers to provide coverage, there are no such guarantees for individual plans. There is an incentive for insurance companies to deny individual coverage for almost any reason and force people into the "high risk pool", where they will end up paying far more for insurance. Since the pool is funded by the insurers, you essentially become their client either way, but you will pay them far more if you can be sent to the high-risk pool. My own experience is a perfect example of how screwed up our system is for individual insurance. I used to own a small computer reselling/consulting business. I decided to change careers and went back to school. I applied for individual insurance coverage from the same insurer with whom I'd had coverage when I was in business and answered everything on the application truthfully. You must list every doctor you've visited for any reason and I listed a Chiropractor I'd visited a few years before for a slipped disk and a doctor I'd visited when I had a cold and was prescribed antibiotics. When I received word back from the insurance company, I was informed that due to a "pre-existing condition" (visiting the chiropractor) that I would have to sign a waiver agreeing they would NOT provide any insurance coverage for my: Back, Neck, or Spine for any reason. If I refused to sign the waiver, then I would be referred to the High-Risk pool. Despite repeated letters from my Chiropractor stating that he had not diagnosed me with any condition, that I had a temporary discomfort years ago which he was able to fix completely, the insurance company would not budge. The insurance company also looked up the list of medications I was prescribed from the other doctor I'd visited for sinusitis. In addition to antibiotics, he prescribed Allegra (which is now available over-the-counter without a prescription). Although I have no history of allergies, nor have ever been diagnosed with allergies, they required me to sign an additional waiver stating that they would not provide any coverage to me for allergies. Since I do not have allergies, I considered this waiver unimportant to my overall health, but the back/neck/spine could be a serious issue someday if I were ever in a severe accident where any part of my central nervous system was affected. I researched our state insurance laws and found that there is absolutely no expiration for the length of time an insurance company may exclude coverage and that they may call virtually anything at their discretion a "pre-existing condition". In our state the only recourse is to go to the high-risk pool or get on a company or association's insurance plan. Individually insured have no protections from the systemic and routine abuse by the insurers. My advice is to research your laws carefully and if you find that you have no legal protections on an individual insurance plan, then you need to hide everything you can from the insurer when you apply. Don't tell them if you've been to a Chiropractor, don't tell them if you've been to the doctor for a routine cold. The only things you should be honest about are genuine pre-existing conditions you have, not things that were 1-time office visits, since they'll use that to unfairly deny you coverage or force you into a high-risk pool. It's just you against them in the world of individual insurance, and you've got to protect yourself since the state's won't do it for you.
Your question got straight to the heart of the matter and its something I've noticed. In the US, our society seems to demand very little in the way of protections from Corporate snooping into our lives, but we get very angry when we learn of Government's monitoring of our lives. This contrasts with much of the rest of the world, where governments are not automatically assumed to be evil, but corporations are. Particularly in Germany, there is a sense that the Government is there to protect people from invasion of people's rights by the Corporations. They have very good laws to keep corporations out of everyone's private life. The question needs to be raised, "Which is worse, corporate or government monitoring of civiliians?" I feel the answer is that neither is worse, they are both subject to abuse. Take the US for example, where the government has simply sidestepped the provisions we have against it monitoring our lives and started using private corporations, data-miners, to gather the exact same information they could have had they been allowed to carry out the task themselves. It really doesn't matter if the government or a corporation is collecting records of every financial transaction, every home address, every phone call, or every television program one watches. The end result, in the US, is that the government gets the information anyway by contracting the services of the data-miners.
--Dave
off-topic:
Oh, I'm also not sure what you mean about the 'right to remain silent' bit. There's the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994, pre Tony, where police now say when arresting you "'You do not have to say anything, but it may harm your defence if you do not mention, when questioned, something which you later rely on in court. Anything you do say may be given in evidence.'" You can remain silent, but if you choose to give up that silence only in court, inference can be made from that. That's up to the jury. Perhaps I'm missing something about a right to silence.
If one chooses to remain silent in court then their silence can be used by the court to infer your guilt. This hardly allows one the right to remain silent if one's silence carries the penalty of guilt.
Actually, that's not quite correct. The courts (which are independent of the executive. Well, as independent as any judiciary can be) have long held that there are "ordinary statutes" and "constitutional statutes". And only a new constitutional statute can overturn an existing one. In other words, things like the Human Rights Act, the Representation fo the Peoples Act and the Bill of Rights (along with the Acts of Union, Settlement, etc, etc) must be purposefully overturned. You cannot just stick a rider onto a Fisheries Bill abolishing the right of appeal, or fling in a statutory instrument asserting the right of the executive to have detention without trial. It must be specifically brought forth and voted in by Parliament (all of Parliament, not just the House of Commons).
Herein lies one of the frailties. The courts, though they may have "long held", are not the final arbiters of Parliamentary will. A constitutional amendment is still a simple act of Parliament. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitutional_amendm ent
They may not strike down a constitutional statute that overturns a previous constitutional statute. Abolishing a constitutional statute, or right, is still done via a simple majority that can practically rest on the determined will of the ruling government in the House of Commons. You say that approval is required from the House of Lords, yet, we both know that the House of Commons has limited the authority of the Lords through legislation and may continue to do so. Again, there is nothing to stop parliament from doing so other than tradition. Without a judiciary that has veto power over parliamentary acts and without a House of Lords that is free from working within the privileges granted them by permission of the Commons, the establishment and removal of constitutional provisions is structurally the same as any piece of legislation. For all practical intents and purposes, a determined House of Commons could still take away any rights you hold dear, even if they had to begin by taking them from the Lords. It could all be done legislatively. A far cry from the protection afforded by a 2/3 majority from both Houses of congress and ratification by 3/4 of the state legislatures.
In the end, the strength of the US Constitution is only as great as those charged with its defence, and the desire of the US population to see its strictures adhered to. It didn't stop the abomination of slavery - although its power was shown when that institution was finally abolished via constitutional amendment.
Actually, British Mercantilism, as it existed during the time of the colonies, depended on cheap imports from the colonies for Britains. The "Atlantic Triangle" involved British slave-ships traveling from Britain to Africa to purchase slaves for their import to the southern colonies for the purposes of producing cheap goods deemed essential to sustaining the British economy. The British created strict rules which required the vast majority of goods produced with slave labor to be imported back to Britain so that the British government would be able to tax the goods, sell them cheaply to their citizens and below-international market rates, and hoard any important raw materials for the British military and prevent the governments of Europe from acquiring them. The goods Britain allowed for resale in Europe were then sent from Britain to the mainland and sold at extremely high rates to ensure that the rest of Europe's economies, particularly that of France, had to bear a significant financial burden to acquire these goods. Slavery was essential to Britain's mercantile system and to helping her gain a militaristic and economic advantage over other European governments. It was England who created and sustained the worldwide economy of Slavery, both in the colonies and in Africa, and institutionalized slavery in the Southern colonies. To pretend the slavery problem was somehow an American inventio
The 1689 Bill of Rights is about protecting Parliament from the Crown. It primarily limits the Crown's interference with Parliament and is the document that essentially set the stage for Parliamentary Supremecy. It is not a Bill of Rights of the people, in the US sense, that lays out the individual rights of citizens and establishes their permanent protections from all forms of government. What the British lack is a Bill of Rights that sets boundaries on the supremacy of Parliament and holds individual liberties above any future acts of parliament.
Furthermore, this was an "Act of Parliament". Under parliamentary sovereignty no previous act of parliament can trump a future act of parliament. This can be overturned by another Act of Parliament until the British establish a Bill of Rights of the people which limits Parliament's sovereignty and binds all future parliament's to its provisions. Parliamentary Sovereignty allowed one Parliament, in 1689, to declare a Bill of Rights for themselves... But even so, Parliamentary Sovereignty allows for any future parliament to abolish this Bill of Rights. If the only thing sustaining any perceived rights in Britain is tradition and each new Parliament's own sense of self-restraint, then how much confidence can a Brit have that it will continue? Afterall, the right to remain silent was sustained for 300 years based on tradition and self-restraint, yet Blair's government tossed both out the window and now that long-held right that was taken for granted is now gone.
-- Dave
The US system and UK system are entirely different. In the UK, there is parliamentary sovereignty and no written constitution. There are no courts with the power to overrule any law passed by parliament (no uk version of the supreme court). There are no REAL powers to curb the parliament's will. The House of Lords is mostly symbolic and if it ever stood in parliament's way by making a serious nuisance of itself, parliament could legally abolish it or curb its power further (as they have done throughout the twentieth century). Technically, the crown is supposed to sign off on any legislation passed by parliament (royal ascent), yet they never challenge parliament because if they did, this would probably spell the death-knell of the monarchy. Royal-Ascent is a rubber-stamp. Thus, parliament is entirely sovereign. Any law they pass automatically becomes part of their ever-evolving and expanding constitution. Think of every single law as a constitutional amendment without requiring anyone's review or permission -- except that of the current parliament. They do not require a super-majority, just a simple majority will do. There is no written Bill of Rights. Tony Blair's government recently removed the right-to-remain silent without so much as a public debate and did so in a single afternoon with the stroke of a pen. The right-to-remain silent is now not a right and parliament was entirely within their own rights to do this.
In the Lockean philosophy of the United States constitution, and Declaration of Independence, Parliamentary Sovereignty is a crime and I agree with that view. This is why we fought to free ourselves from the authority of Britain. However, it is naive for people to make such bold assertions as, "It is NOT the role of the government to grant rights", when in fact, it IS the role of government (in the UK) to grant rights and take them away. It is important to accept this reality to better understand such things as why Britain has such high voter-turnout (wouldn't we have high voter turnout if the Pres was chosen by the House, the Senate was only symbolic, There was no Supreme Court and anything a new House passed was part of the constitution?), and important for understanding why there is a movement in Britain to pass a Bill of Rights, Create a codified Constitution, and other issues that pose sticky questions: "Parliament has been ceding its authority to the EU, what happens when the EU asserts its authority over Parliament and Parliament tries to take it's authority back?" Who is sovereign in that situation?. By actually trying to understand the realities of systems of government in other countries, some people might have a better appreciation for what we have in the United States. Here, it is not the role of government to determine our rights, in Britain it is.
-- Dave
"The principle is, that the sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number, is self-protection. That is the only purpose for which power can be rightfully excersized over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient warrant. He cannot rightfully be compelled to do or forbear because it will be better for him to do so, because it will make him happier, because, in the opinions of others, to do so would be wise, or even right. These are good reasons for remonstrating with him, or reasoning with him, or persuading him, or entreating him, but not for compelling him, or visiting him with any evil, in case he do otherwise. To justify that, the conduct from which it is desired to deter him must be calculated to produce evil to some one else. The only part of the conduct of any one, for which he is amenable to society, is that which concerns others. In the part which merely concerns himself, his independence is, of right, absolute. Over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign."
There are 2 questions, really:
1) Does spying on everyone's internet use threaten everyone's Liberty to use it?
2) What happens when there are 2 people, meaning to harm others, but the only way to know how to prevent that harm is to restrict their "liberty of action" along with everyone else's?
If you're looking for a guess, I don't have it. All I know is that it bothers me when the government's fear of people they can't even identify is enough reason for them to start "monitoring" the 300 million people in our country that they can identify. I don't know how much liberty one has if they are aware that everything they type, or every call they make, is "monitored". Is that liberty? Does that make anyone feel safer?
How much "public" information should be easily accessible from any keyboard in the world? I find that it is hard to argue for privacy-laws that protect one's private information when we simultaneously demand that every piece of government data be available from any keyboard with internet access. The problem is not whether or not a "terrorist" is going to get ahold of this information, the problem is that maybe the person who's house is burning down feels like his misfortune is a personal, private, or community-affair rather than an international circus-show for the amusement of anyone who has a computer. Why is any of this "public" information on the internet to begin with is beyond me. Just because data is technically public, it does not mean the term "public" should be defined, via the internet, to extend to everyone outside the precinct, beyond the city-limits, over state lines, beyond the timezones, and to everyone in the world with a computer. In my state, I can type in a URL and within seconds pop-up the detailed divorce records, claims, counter-claims, child-custody fights, of anyone in my state. Although a couple is certainly aware that their situation is on some level "public", why does the state feel that public should involve the entire world with internet-access? What's wrong with making someone, who is really interested, walk down to the courthouse and ask for a copy of the documents? At the least, it is likely to ensure that people who are viewing the information come from the same community, at the most it prevents employers-creditors-coworkers-jealous schoolmates of their children-and anyone else in the world from leasurely sitting on their ass behind a keyboard and poking their nose around where it doesn't belong. What business is it of everyone in seattle to know who's house is burning down at any given time? If the goal is to measure the effectiveness of the fire-department, then that can be done without doing it in real-time. But, I fail to see how this information that often involves tradgedy for the people involved should be turned into google-meshup for anyone with internet access to gawk over. If someone has a legitimate or illigitmate interest in knowing who's house burned, they should at least be required to get off their ass and go ask for a copy of the report at the county-clerk's office. The same goes for those prying around in someone's divorce case, or curious to know how fast someone was going when they got their last speeding ticket. Public information doesn't mean the entire world qualifies as public, and public doesn't mean it has to be convenient.
And then there's Anecdote C&D
Anecdote C: You hear a single good song from an artist, you go to iTunes or whathaveyou and you buy THAT SINGLE SONG for a buck, rather than be forced to shell out $20 for a CD that has 1 good song and 16 pieces of crap. The music industry started getting rid of singles in the 1980's because there were too many 1-hit wonders. For a period of about 15-20 years there was very little way for one to purchase a single. In my opinion, this is what got people trading music online. They wanted 1 song, not 16 pieces of crap +1 song. Furthermore, generation X felt it was payback time for all those times they'd taken their allowance down to the music store, dropped it all on a CD, run home and discovered they had just lost a week's allowance on 1 good song. Now that the hardware companies have forced the music industry into selling singles again, OF COURSE CD SALES ARE GOING DOWN. ; )
Anecdote D: Someone downloads a few songs from a file-sharing site that they had previously thought they'd like because they already like 1 song by the same artist. They figure they'll buy the CD if there are a few good songs on it, but thanks to file-sharing, they discover those other songs are, pieces of crap, and that shelling out $20 is not worth it for 1 song. Maybe they buy the 1 song from iTunes, maybe they don't even care about owning it that much at all now. But regardless, they will now never by that CD. In the '80's, 90's, either you had a friend who already had the CD, or you took a gamble and bought it anyway. Bottom line is, as long as file-sharing is out there, the music industry will not be able to screw consumers anymore with their 1 good song + 16 pieces of crap = $20 that they got away with for 20 years... people now have a way of finding out exactly what they're buying before they spend their money and that's got to make the industry irate.
Yep, I'm nostalgic for those days. I had 110 echomail feeds coming in from Fidonet and several other mail networks. I remember being among the first SysOps to stumble into the Adam Hudson 20meg limit on a message base (which crashes the system and you lose every message). It still amazes me what we could get done with.BAT files and Frontdoor.
I remember getting a message from a user one day who kindly listed for me the entire contents on the root directory on my C: drive after gaining sysop priviledges and using my hidden menu to drop to DOS on my computer. He said, "if you create a menu option for ALT-254 on the numeric keypad, then when hackers try this they won't get sysop priviledges, they'll just be redirected to whatever that menu option takes them to." I was pretty shocked, went and tried it, and sure enough... In the early versions of Remote Access, anyone who hit alt-254 on the numeric keypad received user level 64000 and had access to any menu option. That was my first lesson in not being able to trust the author of a program. Several months later, Andrew Milner fixed the "bug", but I'd already done away with any drop-to-dos options. Good times.
Lastly, and this will be shocking since I am an academic, but this IP / privacy obsession we have in this country is getting out of hand. Many people seem to have the impression that every precious thought from their head deserves protection and eternal ownership. In fact, most of it is not that interesting and will not benefit them financially. In the long run, obsessing over IP is dangerous. If we choke our transmission of original and useful ideas with overzealous IP rights, we will cease to transmit ideas. The rest of the world will be glad to take over for us in this area and they will if we are not careful. This does not mean I support the idea that ALL information should be free. But in the context of Turnitin, is that English paper you wrote for freshman comp, or even your senior thesis that financially valuable? If you are a good student, wouldn't you like to help the catch the cheaters? After all, they get the same degree you do in the end, even if they cheat to do it.
I think it's odd that for so many in this country, an original thought is only worth protecting if it can generate money. That certainly seems to be a double-standard. Why is it acceptable for the RIAA, Microsoft, MPAA, Disney to have over 100 years of protection for their various forms of original thought, but a college student is entitled to none? Ostensibly, your argument seems to suggest that since a kid can't generate any money from their research paper, it's not worth protecting their right to ownership of it. Moreover, your argument seems to be that turnitin.com should profit from the college student's original work simply because the student isn't using it for profit. I guess what's good for the goose, is not really good for the gander in your mind (sorry, I don't have a paranthetical citation for this sentence).
Day 1: Turnitin.com opens and receives X submissions. The lucky students who were among the first to submit their papers to turnitin's database receive low "probability of plagarism" for their papers and the results are sent to their professors. The professors' students, for the most part, are all considered to be doing honest work and the professors grade the papers according to the content and quality of their ideas.
Day 1,000: Turnitin.com's database has swelled to 100 million. Any common turn-of-phrase, or figure of speech, inevitably causes at least a marginal bump in the "probability of plagarism". God help the student who comes up with a sentence (on their own, and honestly) that matches word-for-word a sentence in one of the other 100 million papers. Poof! Even though the student did not plagarize, the sentence is nearly identical to someone else's and their P.o.P. jumps up. Now... Imagine you are a professor. You receive 20 reports from turnitin.com on your students' papers. A student named Jimmy has a damn good paper, but his probability of plagarism is reported to be twice as high as that of your other students. The paper, without the probability of plagarism report, is deserving of a low 'A'. However, you can't overlook the fact that his probability of plagarism is twice that of the other students. You decide to give him a high 'B' instead -- just to be safe. Something significant has just happened: You have unwittingly made the "probability of plagarism" a key component in your grading. You have no guidelines for what magic # causes you to lower a student's grade and can't verbalize or codify this grading component for your students. Most importantly, once this becomes a component of your grading, turnitin.com's P.o.P. # on a student's paper should now become an important consideration for students. As professors try to explain the importance of a low POP to their students, the students will, in time, come to realize that it is just as important to keep this mystical # low. In the future, Jimmy will be less likely to write a paper over a topic that interests him greatly if he fears that too many other people are also interested in that topic, as well. He rationalizes that if there the more papers written on his topic, the greater chance that his POP # will go up. Although he is honest, he knows that honest people are constantly coming up with the same ideas and doesn't want to take a chance that he will write a paper that is "too similar" to another paper submitted by a kid in Rhode Island 3 years earlier. Look at the U.S. Patent system. People are always coming up with fantastic ideas, honestly, and then discover to their dismay that someone has already come up with the exact same idea. The larger the database grows, the greater the opportunity for one's POP to increase.
A hypothetical:
Freshman year, English 1001: Student writes a 7 page paper and develops a good idea that they try to remember.
Junior year, Political Science 3001: Student no longer has a copy of their Freshman year paper, but still remembers, almost word for word, a key sentence or paragraph that they wrote years ago. They include this in their Political Science paper, submit to turnitin.com and are flagged as a plagarist . Turnitin.com does not tell them what paper it is they have plagarized, who wrote the original work (even though it happened to be them), nor does turnitin.com explain to the professor that the "plagarized" paragraph was originally written by the same student. How does the student get access to the supposed "orignal"? Furthermore, is it not possible that this system is based primarily on a "whoever turns it in first, is automatically the original author" type of system? Suppose someone writes a paper for their own pleasure, or even for an entry for some type of scholarship. Someone likes his paper so much that they make a copy and hold on to the paper. That someone has a class and is asked to write a very similar paper, maybe at a different school, and decides to plagarize the original author's paper and submits it to turnitin.com. However, because the original author had never submitted his paper to turnitin, turnitin now considers the plagarizer to be the "orignal author" of the paper. Fast forward to a few years later when the orignal author is in their senior year in college and decides to submit their paper for a class that is calling for him to write something over the exact topic he wrote about years ago. When he submits it to turnitin.com, he is labelled a plagarizer, and he has absolutely no recourse nor any way to clear his name.
The problem with the "war on terror" is that no one can define Victory for us. When will we know we've won? As long as there is no way for us to know when we've won, then we are in a never-ending pursuit of something that doesn't exist and will never be found. No amount of surveillance will be enough, no amount of "alternative interrogation methods" will be enough, no amount of data-mining will be enough because there is no way to achieve victory as long as it can't be defined. There will always be people on this planet who hate America and have a plan to hurt us, and that will never change. The goal for us should be to demand a definition of victory from our government in this "war" and if they can't give us one, then we must tell them to end it.
At least record albums were a media standard for a long time, but FLASH MEMORY?
Not considering other media storage formats like Iomega ZIP, this is just a list of flash-memory media formats that 'I' am aware of to have come out in the 10 years since 1995 when Compact Flash Type 1 was introduced:
Compact Flash Type I
Compact Flash Type II
Compact Flash Type III
Smart Media
Multi Media Card
Secure Digital Card
MiniSD
Memory Stick
Memory Stick Magic Gate
Memory Stick Duo
Memory Stick PRO
Extreme Digital Card
That's an average of more than 1 new flash-memory format/year, and I'm sure there are others that I have missed.
If someone buys a Rolling Stones album on a DRM'd SD card, they're making a bet that from now on, every.mp3 player, car stereo, computer, card reader, entertainment system and cellphone they purchase will have built-in support for that particular flash-media storage format. And with an average of more than 1 new flash-media format introduced/year that's just a pipe-dream. That makes the 8-track look like it had a pretty fantastic run.
Upon challenge, they'll have to show a demonstratable threat to the "common good" (citizenry, not studios) that is caused by anonymous emails used for P2P software registration. That is a big, if inedffective, attempt to reduce the rights of people to privacy and a court will want them to show that (1) anonymous email registration causes more harm than good for citizens of California (2) legit email registration will not cause more harm than good (email harvesting spam-bots come to mind).
...Media Center Edition 2004 is a boxed package that is easy to set up and configure, it looks amazingly beautiful, has great features such as On-Demand content, and is fully supported by Microsoft.
...MythTV takes the gold for its greater support for a variety of hardware and software codecs.
Pardon my cynicism, but this isn't totally unlike saying:
...BMW 3-Series 2004 comes complete with everything you'll need, looks amazingly beautiful, has all the latest luxury features, and includes a 5-year 40,000 mile warranty.
...However, the 1996 Ford Taurus gets our recommendation because it will fit a wider variety of wheels, tires, mufflers and filters.
Over at ExtremeTech, they have a great article right now that compares OGG/WMA/MP3/AAC codecs and their conclusion is that AAC is the best overall codec in terms of quality. Codec
Shootout
So, Perhaps, AAC needs to be "broken" in order to prevent an inferior codec standard from gaining too much momentum. This already happened with MP3. Personally, I like the idea of OGG, and it received a strong 2nd place finish in the report.
I have a feeling it won't be a big success. They appear to be pitching it to people who need something cheap ($20/mo.). Most of these people who can only afford 20 bucks a month will be living in apartments, and they will be prevented from installing the necessary antennae on any "common-share" structure, ie, a roof. But is $20/mo really cheap? Considering that you only get 10 more channels than you normally do for free, $20/mo isn't cheap afterall.
There are 2 ESPN channels (why 2?)
There are 2 cartoon channels (why 2?)
There are 2 Lifetime channels (why 2?)
And 4 others including foxnews, discovery, foodnetwork, and TLC.
If you aren't a kid, 20% of your channels are meaningless to you. On top of that, if you aren't a sports nut, you've only got 6 channels left and you're paying $20/mo. plus the $100 for a digital converter box and whatever the antennae costs. I predict failure, since for only $40/mo. someone can get digital cable with a hundred channels and rent the converter box.
There is no need for patents on software, we already have copyright laws which should be used rather than the extreme overkill of "software patents". Look, there is no risk to companies who innovate in software... noone's shelling out a Billion $ to develop 1-click shopping, thus no need for them to have a monopoly on something as asinine as 1-click shopping for 20 years. In hardware, a company might spend a billion$ trying to develop a product before it can ever come to market -- that's a detrimental impact on that company's bottom line, and they should have a 20 year monopoly. If a company could not receive that monopoly, in most cases, they would not have a necessary incentive to spend a billion$ on R&D and the product would never come into existence. Contrast that with software innovation... Does anyone REALLY BELIEVE that without software/internet patents there was no hope that the world would ever be blessed with 1-click shopping? Does anyone really care about 1-click shopping? Of course this little company would still have developed 1-click shopping, because it didn't cost them anything extra to develop and it pays instant rewards in increased sales. Do you think for a second that we wouldn't have browser plug-ins without patents? Do you think for a second that we wouldn't have turbotax, halo, amazon, ebay, slashdot without patents? Of course we would! The question is what do we NOT have because of software patents. What companies are being shut-down, stifled, put out of business -- what REAL innovations are being stamped out because they might "infringe" on something as asinine as 1-click-shopping? Everyone agrees that without industrial patents, we wouldn't have 1/10th the innovation in aerospace, electronics, mining, or environmental science... but without software/internet patents we'd have more innovation that we do currently. Whose really benefitting from all these software patents? A: The Gov't and the Lawyers... that's it, it ain't us folks, so don't let anyone feed you a line about how these software patents are designed to "bring innovation to the consumer market"... that's a crock. The reality is we'd have all the same software innovations we have today (most likely more), but due to an increase in competition, the software might be a little less buggy and would probably be a lot cheaper, too.
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I don't agree that the "greats" have remained with time. I think the "greats" exemplify the point that without the threat that singles pose to them, they will put one good song on an album filled with crap. Madonna, Aerosmith, the Rolling Stones, Paul McCartney could easily be considered among the greats, yet their albums since the death of the single have become mostly filler. They just don't have an incentive to produce great albums packed with value anymore. Singles created a threat to them. If they only had one or two good songs for every 15 they recorded, then people would go buy the singles and they'd make less money. When the music industry eliminated singles in the 1990s, even the so-called "greats" became less great. Why put out 15 fantastic songs when one will do the job and you can make the same amount of money?
I have moderator points, but I just had to comment on your post. Sgt. Pepper's, Dark Side of the Moon, etc... were albums filled with value from the first track to the last. They stopped making albums like that in the 80's, when they figured out that a one-hit-wonder could sell their one hit on an album filled with crap and then charge the consumers a full-album price. I'd love for albums to still be filled with 15 awesome songs, but that's just not reality anymore. I for one am overjoyed at the prospect of an end to albums.
Google Docs??!! This is not even close to MS office. The only free online office suite worth using (if you want something that reproduces MS office) is Thinkfree http://www.thinkfree.com/. It faithfully reproduces PowerPoint, Word, and Excel with full compatibility. The ONLY thing keeping something like this from replacing office for most people is that, obviously, you've got to be online to run the office suite. Now, what happens to an "online" office suite like this when you can use it offline, as well? More precisely, what's the point of spending hundreds of dollars on MS Office anymore? For me, at least, I'd never buy MS Office again.
--Dave
I used a free utility that would create a partition in RAM to be read as a drive. I wrote a little .bat file to be called from the autoexec.bat on bootup which would 1) create the ram drive, 2) copy over the larger and most frequently used executables and system files on the drive to the ram drive, then SET the location of the programs to the drive letter of the ram drive. The idea was there are a certain number of programs that are loaded everytime the computer turns on, and repeatedly while it stays on. Immediately getting these files off the drive and into memory and resetting their location for the operating system's reference to the ram drive enabled the grunt work to get done by RAM, which was fast and silent, rather than the hard-drive (which in those days was super-slow and noisy). The result was the computer booted much quicker and would operate a heck of a lot faster. What we need is the equivalent of a gigantic RAM drive which is immediately loaded with all the most frequently accessed executables each time the system turns on. This should be the first operation of bootup after the system checks are complete. After the RAM drive is pre-populated with the major OS executables and startup programs' executables, the operating system should then run itself off its executables located on the RAM drive and look to the ram drive, 1st, as the location of all startup programs' executables when attempting to load them at bootup. Is this already being done, if not, why?
1st, know your state insurance laws well. In most states, the insurance companies are required to fund the state "high risk pool". In return for their contributions to the high risk pool, many states have little, if any, regulations on the decisions of insurance companies to deny individual coverage. As opposed to company insurance plans, where there are federal and state regulations requiring insurers to provide coverage, there are no such guarantees for individual plans. There is an incentive for insurance companies to deny individual coverage for almost any reason and force people into the "high risk pool", where they will end up paying far more for insurance. Since the pool is funded by the insurers, you essentially become their client either way, but you will pay them far more if you can be sent to the high-risk pool. My own experience is a perfect example of how screwed up our system is for individual insurance. I used to own a small computer reselling/consulting business. I decided to change careers and went back to school. I applied for individual insurance coverage from the same insurer with whom I'd had coverage when I was in business and answered everything on the application truthfully. You must list every doctor you've visited for any reason and I listed a Chiropractor I'd visited a few years before for a slipped disk and a doctor I'd visited when I had a cold and was prescribed antibiotics. When I received word back from the insurance company, I was informed that due to a "pre-existing condition" (visiting the chiropractor) that I would have to sign a waiver agreeing they would NOT provide any insurance coverage for my: Back, Neck, or Spine for any reason. If I refused to sign the waiver, then I would be referred to the High-Risk pool. Despite repeated letters from my Chiropractor stating that he had not diagnosed me with any condition, that I had a temporary discomfort years ago which he was able to fix completely, the insurance company would not budge. The insurance company also looked up the list of medications I was prescribed from the other doctor I'd visited for sinusitis. In addition to antibiotics, he prescribed Allegra (which is now available over-the-counter without a prescription). Although I have no history of allergies, nor have ever been diagnosed with allergies, they required me to sign an additional waiver stating that they would not provide any coverage to me for allergies. Since I do not have allergies, I considered this waiver unimportant to my overall health, but the back/neck/spine could be a serious issue someday if I were ever in a severe accident where any part of my central nervous system was affected. I researched our state insurance laws and found that there is absolutely no expiration for the length of time an insurance company may exclude coverage and that they may call virtually anything at their discretion a "pre-existing condition". In our state the only recourse is to go to the high-risk pool or get on a company or association's insurance plan. Individually insured have no protections from the systemic and routine abuse by the insurers. My advice is to research your laws carefully and if you find that you have no legal protections on an individual insurance plan, then you need to hide everything you can from the insurer when you apply. Don't tell them if you've been to a Chiropractor, don't tell them if you've been to the doctor for a routine cold. The only things you should be honest about are genuine pre-existing conditions you have, not things that were 1-time office visits, since they'll use that to unfairly deny you coverage or force you into a high-risk pool. It's just you against them in the world of individual insurance, and you've got to protect yourself since the state's won't do it for you.
Your question got straight to the heart of the matter and its something I've noticed. In the US, our society seems to demand very little in the way of protections from Corporate snooping into our lives, but we get very angry when we learn of Government's monitoring of our lives. This contrasts with much of the rest of the world, where governments are not automatically assumed to be evil, but corporations are. Particularly in Germany, there is a sense that the Government is there to protect people from invasion of people's rights by the Corporations. They have very good laws to keep corporations out of everyone's private life. The question needs to be raised, "Which is worse, corporate or government monitoring of civiliians?" I feel the answer is that neither is worse, they are both subject to abuse. Take the US for example, where the government has simply sidestepped the provisions we have against it monitoring our lives and started using private corporations, data-miners, to gather the exact same information they could have had they been allowed to carry out the task themselves. It really doesn't matter if the government or a corporation is collecting records of every financial transaction, every home address, every phone call, or every television program one watches. The end result, in the US, is that the government gets the information anyway by contracting the services of the data-miners. --Dave
off-topic: Oh, I'm also not sure what you mean about the 'right to remain silent' bit. There's the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994, pre Tony, where police now say when arresting you "'You do not have to say anything, but it may harm your defence if you do not mention, when questioned, something which you later rely on in court. Anything you do say may be given in evidence.'" You can remain silent, but if you choose to give up that silence only in court, inference can be made from that. That's up to the jury. Perhaps I'm missing something about a right to silence.
If one chooses to remain silent in court then their silence can be used by the court to infer your guilt. This hardly allows one the right to remain silent if one's silence carries the penalty of guilt.
Actually, that's not quite correct. The courts (which are independent of the executive. Well, as independent as any judiciary can be) have long held that there are "ordinary statutes" and "constitutional statutes". And only a new constitutional statute can overturn an existing one. In other words, things like the Human Rights Act, the Representation fo the Peoples Act and the Bill of Rights (along with the Acts of Union, Settlement, etc, etc) must be purposefully overturned. You cannot just stick a rider onto a Fisheries Bill abolishing the right of appeal, or fling in a statutory instrument asserting the right of the executive to have detention without trial. It must be specifically brought forth and voted in by Parliament (all of Parliament, not just the House of Commons).
Herein lies one of the frailties. The courts, though they may have "long held", are not the final arbiters of Parliamentary will. A constitutional amendment is still a simple act of Parliament. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitutional_amendm ent They may not strike down a constitutional statute that overturns a previous constitutional statute. Abolishing a constitutional statute, or right, is still done via a simple majority that can practically rest on the determined will of the ruling government in the House of Commons. You say that approval is required from the House of Lords, yet, we both know that the House of Commons has limited the authority of the Lords through legislation and may continue to do so. Again, there is nothing to stop parliament from doing so other than tradition. Without a judiciary that has veto power over parliamentary acts and without a House of Lords that is free from working within the privileges granted them by permission of the Commons, the establishment and removal of constitutional provisions is structurally the same as any piece of legislation. For all practical intents and purposes, a determined House of Commons could still take away any rights you hold dear, even if they had to begin by taking them from the Lords. It could all be done legislatively. A far cry from the protection afforded by a 2/3 majority from both Houses of congress and ratification by 3/4 of the state legislatures.
In the end, the strength of the US Constitution is only as great as those charged with its defence, and the desire of the US population to see its strictures adhered to. It didn't stop the abomination of slavery - although its power was shown when that institution was finally abolished via constitutional amendment.
Actually, British Mercantilism, as it existed during the time of the colonies, depended on cheap imports from the colonies for Britains. The "Atlantic Triangle" involved British slave-ships traveling from Britain to Africa to purchase slaves for their import to the southern colonies for the purposes of producing cheap goods deemed essential to sustaining the British economy. The British created strict rules which required the vast majority of goods produced with slave labor to be imported back to Britain so that the British government would be able to tax the goods, sell them cheaply to their citizens and below-international market rates, and hoard any important raw materials for the British military and prevent the governments of Europe from acquiring them. The goods Britain allowed for resale in Europe were then sent from Britain to the mainland and sold at extremely high rates to ensure that the rest of Europe's economies, particularly that of France, had to bear a significant financial burden to acquire these goods. Slavery was essential to Britain's mercantile system and to helping her gain a militaristic and economic advantage over other European governments. It was England who created and sustained the worldwide economy of Slavery, both in the colonies and in Africa, and institutionalized slavery in the Southern colonies. To pretend the slavery problem was somehow an American inventio
The 1689 Bill of Rights is about protecting Parliament from the Crown. It primarily limits the Crown's interference with Parliament and is the document that essentially set the stage for Parliamentary Supremecy. It is not a Bill of Rights of the people, in the US sense, that lays out the individual rights of citizens and establishes their permanent protections from all forms of government. What the British lack is a Bill of Rights that sets boundaries on the supremacy of Parliament and holds individual liberties above any future acts of parliament.
Furthermore, this was an "Act of Parliament". Under parliamentary sovereignty no previous act of parliament can trump a future act of parliament. This can be overturned by another Act of Parliament until the British establish a Bill of Rights of the people which limits Parliament's sovereignty and binds all future parliament's to its provisions. Parliamentary Sovereignty allowed one Parliament, in 1689, to declare a Bill of Rights for themselves... But even so, Parliamentary Sovereignty allows for any future parliament to abolish this Bill of Rights. If the only thing sustaining any perceived rights in Britain is tradition and each new Parliament's own sense of self-restraint, then how much confidence can a Brit have that it will continue? Afterall, the right to remain silent was sustained for 300 years based on tradition and self-restraint, yet Blair's government tossed both out the window and now that long-held right that was taken for granted is now gone.
-- Dave
The US system and UK system are entirely different. In the UK, there is parliamentary sovereignty and no written constitution. There are no courts with the power to overrule any law passed by parliament (no uk version of the supreme court). There are no REAL powers to curb the parliament's will. The House of Lords is mostly symbolic and if it ever stood in parliament's way by making a serious nuisance of itself, parliament could legally abolish it or curb its power further (as they have done throughout the twentieth century). Technically, the crown is supposed to sign off on any legislation passed by parliament (royal ascent), yet they never challenge parliament because if they did, this would probably spell the death-knell of the monarchy. Royal-Ascent is a rubber-stamp. Thus, parliament is entirely sovereign. Any law they pass automatically becomes part of their ever-evolving and expanding constitution. Think of every single law as a constitutional amendment without requiring anyone's review or permission -- except that of the current parliament. They do not require a super-majority, just a simple majority will do. There is no written Bill of Rights. Tony Blair's government recently removed the right-to-remain silent without so much as a public debate and did so in a single afternoon with the stroke of a pen. The right-to-remain silent is now not a right and parliament was entirely within their own rights to do this.
In the Lockean philosophy of the United States constitution, and Declaration of Independence, Parliamentary Sovereignty is a crime and I agree with that view. This is why we fought to free ourselves from the authority of Britain. However, it is naive for people to make such bold assertions as, "It is NOT the role of the government to grant rights", when in fact, it IS the role of government (in the UK) to grant rights and take them away. It is important to accept this reality to better understand such things as why Britain has such high voter-turnout (wouldn't we have high voter turnout if the Pres was chosen by the House, the Senate was only symbolic, There was no Supreme Court and anything a new House passed was part of the constitution?), and important for understanding why there is a movement in Britain to pass a Bill of Rights, Create a codified Constitution, and other issues that pose sticky questions: "Parliament has been ceding its authority to the EU, what happens when the EU asserts its authority over Parliament and Parliament tries to take it's authority back?" Who is sovereign in that situation?. By actually trying to understand the realities of systems of government in other countries, some people might have a better appreciation for what we have in the United States. Here, it is not the role of government to determine our rights, in Britain it is. -- Dave
There are 2 questions, really:
If you're looking for a guess, I don't have it. All I know is that it bothers me when the government's fear of people they can't even identify is enough reason for them to start "monitoring" the 300 million people in our country that they can identify. I don't know how much liberty one has if they are aware that everything they type, or every call they make, is "monitored". Is that liberty? Does that make anyone feel safer?
How much "public" information should be easily accessible from any keyboard in the world? I find that it is hard to argue for privacy-laws that protect one's private information when we simultaneously demand that every piece of government data be available from any keyboard with internet access. The problem is not whether or not a "terrorist" is going to get ahold of this information, the problem is that maybe the person who's house is burning down feels like his misfortune is a personal, private, or community-affair rather than an international circus-show for the amusement of anyone who has a computer. Why is any of this "public" information on the internet to begin with is beyond me. Just because data is technically public, it does not mean the term "public" should be defined, via the internet, to extend to everyone outside the precinct, beyond the city-limits, over state lines, beyond the timezones, and to everyone in the world with a computer. In my state, I can type in a URL and within seconds pop-up the detailed divorce records, claims, counter-claims, child-custody fights, of anyone in my state. Although a couple is certainly aware that their situation is on some level "public", why does the state feel that public should involve the entire world with internet-access? What's wrong with making someone, who is really interested, walk down to the courthouse and ask for a copy of the documents? At the least, it is likely to ensure that people who are viewing the information come from the same community, at the most it prevents employers-creditors-coworkers-jealous schoolmates of their children-and anyone else in the world from leasurely sitting on their ass behind a keyboard and poking their nose around where it doesn't belong. What business is it of everyone in seattle to know who's house is burning down at any given time? If the goal is to measure the effectiveness of the fire-department, then that can be done without doing it in real-time. But, I fail to see how this information that often involves tradgedy for the people involved should be turned into google-meshup for anyone with internet access to gawk over. If someone has a legitimate or illigitmate interest in knowing who's house burned, they should at least be required to get off their ass and go ask for a copy of the report at the county-clerk's office. The same goes for those prying around in someone's divorce case, or curious to know how fast someone was going when they got their last speeding ticket. Public information doesn't mean the entire world qualifies as public, and public doesn't mean it has to be convenient.
And then there's Anecdote C&D Anecdote C: You hear a single good song from an artist, you go to iTunes or whathaveyou and you buy THAT SINGLE SONG for a buck, rather than be forced to shell out $20 for a CD that has 1 good song and 16 pieces of crap. The music industry started getting rid of singles in the 1980's because there were too many 1-hit wonders. For a period of about 15-20 years there was very little way for one to purchase a single. In my opinion, this is what got people trading music online. They wanted 1 song, not 16 pieces of crap +1 song. Furthermore, generation X felt it was payback time for all those times they'd taken their allowance down to the music store, dropped it all on a CD, run home and discovered they had just lost a week's allowance on 1 good song. Now that the hardware companies have forced the music industry into selling singles again, OF COURSE CD SALES ARE GOING DOWN. ; ) Anecdote D: Someone downloads a few songs from a file-sharing site that they had previously thought they'd like because they already like 1 song by the same artist. They figure they'll buy the CD if there are a few good songs on it, but thanks to file-sharing, they discover those other songs are, pieces of crap, and that shelling out $20 is not worth it for 1 song. Maybe they buy the 1 song from iTunes, maybe they don't even care about owning it that much at all now. But regardless, they will now never by that CD. In the '80's, 90's, either you had a friend who already had the CD, or you took a gamble and bought it anyway. Bottom line is, as long as file-sharing is out there, the music industry will not be able to screw consumers anymore with their 1 good song + 16 pieces of crap = $20 that they got away with for 20 years... people now have a way of finding out exactly what they're buying before they spend their money and that's got to make the industry irate.
Yep, I'm nostalgic for those days. I had 110 echomail feeds coming in from Fidonet and several other mail networks. I remember being among the first SysOps to stumble into the Adam Hudson 20meg limit on a message base (which crashes the system and you lose every message). It still amazes me what we could get done with .BAT files and Frontdoor.
I remember getting a message from a user one day who kindly listed for me the entire contents on the root directory on my C: drive after gaining sysop priviledges and using my hidden menu to drop to DOS on my computer. He said, "if you create a menu option for ALT-254 on the numeric keypad, then when hackers try this they won't get sysop priviledges, they'll just be redirected to whatever that menu option takes them to." I was pretty shocked, went and tried it, and sure enough... In the early versions of Remote Access, anyone who hit alt-254 on the numeric keypad received user level 64000 and had access to any menu option. That was my first lesson in not being able to trust the author of a program. Several months later, Andrew Milner fixed the "bug", but I'd already done away with any drop-to-dos options. Good times.
Day 1: Turnitin.com opens and receives X submissions. The lucky students who were among the first to submit their papers to turnitin's database receive low "probability of plagarism" for their papers and the results are sent to their professors. The professors' students, for the most part, are all considered to be doing honest work and the professors grade the papers according to the content and quality of their ideas. Day 1,000: Turnitin.com's database has swelled to 100 million. Any common turn-of-phrase, or figure of speech, inevitably causes at least a marginal bump in the "probability of plagarism". God help the student who comes up with a sentence (on their own, and honestly) that matches word-for-word a sentence in one of the other 100 million papers. Poof! Even though the student did not plagarize, the sentence is nearly identical to someone else's and their P.o.P. jumps up. Now... Imagine you are a professor. You receive 20 reports from turnitin.com on your students' papers. A student named Jimmy has a damn good paper, but his probability of plagarism is reported to be twice as high as that of your other students. The paper, without the probability of plagarism report, is deserving of a low 'A'. However, you can't overlook the fact that his probability of plagarism is twice that of the other students. You decide to give him a high 'B' instead -- just to be safe. Something significant has just happened: You have unwittingly made the "probability of plagarism" a key component in your grading. You have no guidelines for what magic # causes you to lower a student's grade and can't verbalize or codify this grading component for your students. Most importantly, once this becomes a component of your grading, turnitin.com's P.o.P. # on a student's paper should now become an important consideration for students. As professors try to explain the importance of a low POP to their students, the students will, in time, come to realize that it is just as important to keep this mystical # low. In the future, Jimmy will be less likely to write a paper over a topic that interests him greatly if he fears that too many other people are also interested in that topic, as well. He rationalizes that if there the more papers written on his topic, the greater chance that his POP # will go up. Although he is honest, he knows that honest people are constantly coming up with the same ideas and doesn't want to take a chance that he will write a paper that is "too similar" to another paper submitted by a kid in Rhode Island 3 years earlier. Look at the U.S. Patent system. People are always coming up with fantastic ideas, honestly, and then discover to their dismay that someone has already come up with the exact same idea. The larger the database grows, the greater the opportunity for one's POP to increase.
A hypothetical: Freshman year, English 1001: Student writes a 7 page paper and develops a good idea that they try to remember. Junior year, Political Science 3001: Student no longer has a copy of their Freshman year paper, but still remembers, almost word for word, a key sentence or paragraph that they wrote years ago. They include this in their Political Science paper, submit to turnitin.com and are flagged as a plagarist . Turnitin.com does not tell them what paper it is they have plagarized, who wrote the original work (even though it happened to be them), nor does turnitin.com explain to the professor that the "plagarized" paragraph was originally written by the same student. How does the student get access to the supposed "orignal"? Furthermore, is it not possible that this system is based primarily on a "whoever turns it in first, is automatically the original author" type of system? Suppose someone writes a paper for their own pleasure, or even for an entry for some type of scholarship. Someone likes his paper so much that they make a copy and hold on to the paper. That someone has a class and is asked to write a very similar paper, maybe at a different school, and decides to plagarize the original author's paper and submits it to turnitin.com. However, because the original author had never submitted his paper to turnitin, turnitin now considers the plagarizer to be the "orignal author" of the paper. Fast forward to a few years later when the orignal author is in their senior year in college and decides to submit their paper for a class that is calling for him to write something over the exact topic he wrote about years ago. When he submits it to turnitin.com, he is labelled a plagarizer, and he has absolutely no recourse nor any way to clear his name.
The problem with the "war on terror" is that no one can define Victory for us. When will we know we've won? As long as there is no way for us to know when we've won, then we are in a never-ending pursuit of something that doesn't exist and will never be found. No amount of surveillance will be enough, no amount of "alternative interrogation methods" will be enough, no amount of data-mining will be enough because there is no way to achieve victory as long as it can't be defined. There will always be people on this planet who hate America and have a plan to hurt us, and that will never change. The goal for us should be to demand a definition of victory from our government in this "war" and if they can't give us one, then we must tell them to end it.
Not considering other media storage formats like Iomega ZIP, this is just a list of flash-memory media formats that 'I' am aware of to have come out in the 10 years since 1995 when Compact Flash Type 1 was introduced:
That's an average of more than 1 new flash-memory format/year, and I'm sure there are others that I have missed.
If someone buys a Rolling Stones album on a DRM'd SD card, they're making a bet that from now on, every
Upon challenge, they'll have to show a demonstratable threat to the "common good" (citizenry, not studios) that is caused by anonymous emails used for P2P software registration. That is a big, if inedffective, attempt to reduce the rights of people to privacy and a court will want them to show that (1) anonymous email registration causes more harm than good for citizens of California (2) legit email registration will not cause more harm than good (email harvesting spam-bots come to mind).
Pardon my cynicism, but this isn't totally unlike saying:
by ExtremeTech. Sorry.
Over at ExtremeTech, they have a great article right now that compares OGG/WMA/MP3/AAC codecs and their conclusion is that AAC is the best overall codec in terms of quality. Codec Shootout
So, Perhaps, AAC needs to be "broken" in order to prevent an inferior codec standard from gaining too much momentum. This already happened with MP3. Personally, I like the idea of OGG, and it received a strong 2nd place finish in the report.
I have a feeling it won't be a big success. They appear to be pitching it to people who need something cheap ($20/mo.). Most of these people who can only afford 20 bucks a month will be living in apartments, and they will be prevented from installing the necessary antennae on any "common-share" structure, ie, a roof. But is $20/mo really cheap? Considering that you only get 10 more channels than you normally do for free, $20/mo isn't cheap afterall.
There are 2 ESPN channels (why 2?)
There are 2 cartoon channels (why 2?)
There are 2 Lifetime channels (why 2?)
And 4 others including foxnews, discovery, foodnetwork, and TLC.
If you aren't a kid, 20% of your channels are meaningless to you. On top of that, if you aren't a sports nut, you've only got 6 channels left and you're paying $20/mo. plus the $100 for a digital converter box and whatever the antennae costs. I predict failure, since for only $40/mo. someone can get digital cable with a hundred channels and rent the converter box.
There is no need for patents on software, we already have copyright laws which should be used rather than the extreme overkill of "software patents". Look, there is no risk to companies who innovate in software... noone's shelling out a Billion $ to develop 1-click shopping, thus no need for them to have a monopoly on something as asinine as 1-click shopping for 20 years. In hardware, a company might spend a billion$ trying to develop a product before it can ever come to market -- that's a detrimental impact on that company's bottom line, and they should have a 20 year monopoly. If a company could not receive that monopoly, in most cases, they would not have a necessary incentive to spend a billion$ on R&D and the product would never come into existence. Contrast that with software innovation... Does anyone REALLY BELIEVE that without software/internet patents there was no hope that the world would ever be blessed with 1-click shopping? Does anyone really care about 1-click shopping? Of course this little company would still have developed 1-click shopping, because it didn't cost them anything extra to develop and it pays instant rewards in increased sales. Do you think for a second that we wouldn't have browser plug-ins without patents? Do you think for a second that we wouldn't have turbotax, halo, amazon, ebay, slashdot without patents? Of course we would! The question is what do we NOT have because of software patents. What companies are being shut-down, stifled, put out of business -- what REAL innovations are being stamped out because they might "infringe" on something as asinine as 1-click-shopping? Everyone agrees that without industrial patents, we wouldn't have 1/10th the innovation in aerospace, electronics, mining, or environmental science... but without software/internet patents we'd have more innovation that we do currently. Whose really benefitting from all these software patents? A: The Gov't and the Lawyers... that's it, it ain't us folks, so don't let anyone feed you a line about how these software patents are designed to "bring innovation to the consumer market"... that's a crock. The reality is we'd have all the same software innovations we have today (most likely more), but due to an increase in competition, the software might be a little less buggy and would probably be a lot cheaper, too.