.....but the only truly permanent way to store data......
The first thing is to think about whether there would be anyone interested in all that data 100 or 1000 years from now. Data and information and knowledge are all different. Of the three, knowlege is the main thing worth preserving for many centuries. Distill all that data down to the kind of knowledege that those living 500 or more years from today might still care about. What kind of knowlege from say the year 1000 would we REALLY like to have today?
The technology for storing knowledge has been around a long time. We can still read the dead sea scrolls and the ancient clay tablets. We have surprising insights into the earliest recorded activities of man. Store the knowledge in a human readable form on a medium at least as durable has the stuff humanity has used since antiquity. Modern science out to be able to come up with technology at least as durable as the ancient Babylonians.
.....These days, a lot of people leave their machines on 24/6......
I set my computers go to sleep shortly after I am not actively sitting in front of it and using it. Whatever such a hack might be, it would have to prevent sleep, which would certainly get noticed. Once asleep, only an external event can wake it but nothing in any program. Unlike Windows, OSX is not so easy to hack. Now that Macs run on an Intel chip, we'll see what, if anything hackers can come up with. Maybe universal viruses?
......into Dell and other big name PC laptops......
As an unofficial helpdesk for my daughter she told me of the Dells and other XP PC laptops and the hassle of getting them all to connect to the wireless of their office. She brought in her iBook and it connected immediately, without her doing anything except showing up and turning it on. She was connected to the web and their e-mail and their windows server immediately. An expensive "expert" finally got the other Windows based laptops working. In the end, the money they saved on the slightly cheaper PC stuff was more than eaten up by the cost of getting that all to work. They also had to install all sorts of anti-virus software and security software, none of which is needed for the Mac. Her Mac's virtual PC program also worked with the network without needing an expert.
Why bother with booting those other systems. Just wait for an Intel version of virtual PC or equivalent and run those other OS under the umbrella of OSX. This actually works reasonably well today with a fast powerPC based Mac with slower emulation of the x86 chips. With a real x86 chip, the system speed penalty should be small. Instead of waiting for each system to boot, you can run them all and instantly switch from one to the other.
....Or in this case, to run your business, you MUST purchase Microsoft Windows(TM).....
There is a LOT of BS here on/., but that takes the cake! I know of many business that don't use ANY MS product at all. There are even still businesses that don't use a computer. Comparing computer or any other tool use to breathing is incredibly stupid. Here in our lumber cutting area, many tree cutters use STIHL chainsaws, but then many also use HUSQVARNA and other kinds. Nobody has EVER been forced to buy any particular tool for a job. A computer is nothing more than a tool and MS just happens to make the most commonly used tools in the computing category.
Just like people in this country, the the ones in Government use many kinds of tools, including the most popular computing tool. They spend YOUR tax money on these tools, so why does that bother you in the case of the computer as a tool?
If you sell me something for a dollar and then you find out I located a buyer the next day that was willing to buy that item from for a thousand, you may be chagrined, but you have no right to accuse me of stealing. I paid you the agreed for price and so did my buyer. It was yours to keep before I came and made you the offer to which you agreed. Remember, in EVERYTHING, it is the buyer, not the seller that determines what any particular item is worth. Apparently there were/are enough buyers who think whatever MS offers is worth paying the asking price, making Mr. Gates a very rich man.
.....he stole hundreds of billions of dollars from people all over the world. He was convicted of this in a US court......
Normally, convicted thieves go to jail, but Bill and all his friends are still running around free. People that are rich, especially super rich will always have envious persons like you around. Nobody held a gun to you head and forced you to buy anything from MS or anyone else.
........the home entertainment industry will have to proclaim about 5 other formats dead befoe they finally hit........
What the fervent wishes of the entertainment moguls are and declare dead won't neccessarily match up with what the consumers will spend money on. For music, the treadmill of people buying the content in the industry vaults over and over again has already ground to a halt. The same will be true soon for video. If/when the new disk or other even better formats take hold, consumers will do with their existing DVD collections as they are now doing with their music. They will copy their purchased content onto the new formats, regardless of the DMCA, thousands of **AA lawyers, or whatever additional laws the moguls may purchase from our corrupt polititians. In ten years, there may be video iPods that will hold as many full length movies in HD quality or at least present DVD quality as is now done with audio. The fancy DRM on the new disks will be cracked, just as all other copy protections from the floppy disk onward have been. It is mathematically certain: If it can be played, it can be copied. The days of content providers selling their same old stuff over and over have already come to an end for the music business.
......HD is coming, and once your TV size goes to 42".......
Watching movies DVD from our DLP projector on a 72" screen is plenty fun for our family and friends. None of them has ever complained about the quality. The news and soaps and other TV drivel is fine on the old 20" TV.
....My iBook and Mac mini fit fine into my entertainment system....
An old TI Powerbook connected to a DLP projector makes for great "movie nights" for family and friends. The sound is transmitted wirelessly to the stereo system. The projector and 72" screen was a lot cheaper than any TV that big. When not in use, the screen just rolls up and is out of the way. A simple 25" TV is fine for news and soaps.
......When you consider the time required to copy DVDs, its probably actually cheaper to just by a legit copy...
Especially true if you can find movies you like for $5-$6 in the Walmart bargain bins. DVDs are actually quite a bargain compared to music CDs. At times you can buy the whole movie for less than the soundtrack CD thereof.
.....will all of the media purchaced turn into an expensive and ineffective paper weight in 10 years.....
Of course that is what the **AAs of this world would like. They want to sell you the same old stuff over and over an over again, forever, or at least for the next 75 years or so. That's why they are so torqued over mp3 format and the ability of consumers to transcode the contents to the new format from which they don't get any revenue.
Once the material recorded, it can be copied onto new information carriers. This happened with LPs to CDs and VCR to DVD, but until recently, it could only by done by the companies with sufficient capital for the expensive recording devices. Now everybody can copy the material they already bought.
.....it won't have the clear advantages over DVD that DVD had over VHS......
Indeed true. It is the convenience of random access that disks have over tapes that made most consumers switch to DVD and audio CDs. The lack of wear when played and the superior quality were bonuses, but not the driving points for consumers to re-buy all or at least much the old content over again. The old TV's used with VCRs worked and still do just fine with that new DVD player and the audio systems already in use were useable with the digital audio CDs.
The new formats will really only have better quality as the reason to switch to the new technology. If a customer does not also buy an expensive big screen HD TV, the new format will not do much more than the current DVDs do. Much of the material in the vaults of the movie companies would not benefit consumers in noticeable superior quality anyway.
The video equivalent of mp3, where a user an store a few thousand movies at today's DVD quality in a holographic chip the size of a compact flash card, storing about 100 terabyes or so, at about the current price of one might be a compelling reason to buy new movie storage equipment.
.....wiping out DVDs sooner than another storage media.....
What about holographic storage systems being worked on, some of which can store all the films in Hollywood's vaults in a volume about the size of a 3.5" disk drive, wherein the only thing that moves is a laser beam? That would make these new HD DVD and the download systems obsolete.
.......Morals are a result of social and biological evolution, not religion......
There is no way to prove this. It is an assertion of faith. It is also an assertion of faith that God put certain physical and moral laws into His creation, which includes mankind and animals. Man is incurably religious and evolution mechanisms, such as natural selection and survival of the fittest do not include religion. Religion in humans do not make them any more fit or less fit to survive and propagate than the absence of religion in a snail make any difference one way or the other to the snail's survival. Religion does not promote nor hinder survival of man or any other organism. Whatever the reasons for man's religious nature, survival and evolution do not enter the picture in any way.
.....One need only look at all the religious wars....
There never has been and never will be a "religious" war. Religion has been used as a means of persuading people by other people to go to war for what were always economic reasons or quests for control over others to get an advantage. Wars are caused by somone or a group who desires to take a shortcut to a need or want. A thief will steal your goods as a shortcut to getting what he wants. He could get what you have by working for it, but it is easier and above all quicker to just take it from you. If you are successful because you have worked harder, or just been lucky, there will ALWAYS be someone who will envy you and try to take what you have worked for. Only pure force, either by you or someone on your behalf will deter the thief from taking such a shortcut.
In the absence of belief in a just Creator who will judge good and bad behavior, the only thing left is what Mao said: "Power comes form the barrel of a gun." So then I just have to make sure that if I want to keep what I have, to have the biggest gun or hire someone who has such a gun. For us here that hireling is the US military, which right now happens to have the biggest gun. In our society, lawyers have become an effective subtitute for guns because ultimately they have the power of the biggest guns behind them.
.....What does equal rights have to do with whether we were created equal or not??.....
Our constitutional government was put in place by people who believed that humans "are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights". Human rights do not come from governments or one another, but ultimately from our Creator. We humans have no more control over the innateness and absoluteness over right and wrong than we have over the laws of physics. Whether we like it or not, the One who came up with the natural laws under which the whole cosmos operates and by which evolution itself works, also formulated moral absolutes of right and wrong. Unlike physical laws, which we MUST obey, the Creator has seen fit for now, to allow humans to choose, which, if any of His moral laws we will abide by. Every person has the right and the ability to choose to do what is right or wrong. Unfortunately, even if we know what is right in a certain cirumstance, we often do not go that way.
Both the natural and the moral laws have the same Source. Whether we want to attribute both to impersonal forces or to a personal God is left up to us. Both physical and moral choices have consequences and nobody is ever going to get around that fact. "Whatosever a man soewth, he shall also reap" has been and always will be true.
Right now, the good and the bad are intertwined and mixed together and nobody has been able to separate them in all of human history. Every technology or discovery man has ever made was used both for good and evil. A look at the Internet and its means for distributing knowledge and computer worms is an examle very familiar to/. readers.
My most dangerous thought is that one day soon, the Creator is going to implement His promise to return to this planet and FORCE everyone to abide by His moral code in the same manner everyone must now obey His laws of physics. If you tell a lie, the consequences thereof will be just as quick and devastating as jumping off a 20 story building or touching a 100KV power line is today.
.....Space is not matter and does not affect the speed of light.....
The properties of space --- free space that is--- very much affect electromagnetic energy propagation, including its speed. The purpose of every transmitting antenna is to launch such electromagentic waves into space. Without getting into complicated math here, one of the properties of space that determines critical parameters of antenna design is the electrical impedance of free space. An antenna is basically an impedance matching device between the the impedance of the RF generator and free space, enabling the energy of the former to be efficiently transferred to the latter. Both the impedance and the light speed are in the formulas for antenna design. You can look this stuff up in any radio engineering handbook.
Gravity DOES affect electromagnetic waves. The gravitational field of the sun bends starlight, just as a lens, such that the apparent position of a star is markedly different if the light has gone close, past the sun on its way to us. Gravity affects the properties of space and thus matter-energy moving through that space.
NO law of physics requires any of these "constants" to be invariant over time. There are "conservation" laws of mass-energy, momentum etc, that are not violated even if the speed of light and related parameters change. In order to carry the same energy, if a bullet (photon or electron) travels faster, some of its mass is converted into energy. The converse is also true. Einstein first came up with these discoveries and they have been verified experimentally too many times to count. Space-time, gravity and matter-energy are all relative to one another and there is nothing absolute to any one of them. You can think of the speed of light as one way of describing the properties of space. Matter-energy determine the strength of gravity in a region of space. It is interesting that the equations of electromagnetism and atomic behavior all have references to c or parameters related thereto and these all contain a time dimension. The equations concering gravity however do not make reference to any kind of time units.
.....The speed of light is inherent in the laws of electromagnetic interaction.....
No known laws or principles of physics mandates that the speed of light be constant. Its speed is highly dependent on the nature of the medium through which it propagates. That is what makes lenses, prisms fiber optics and other media do what they do. The nature of space is determined by its contents and as such affects the speed of light. When the Universe was small and dense, the nature of space was also very much different and thus the speed at which light propagates through the medium of space. Gravity bends the light near a star because gravity affects the properties of the space around the star. The gravity of a black hole is so great that the light is bent back to its source before it can ever get out of such a black hole. It is indeed true that some of the properties of atomic structure are affected by this. The nature of the light produced by all atoms is well characterized by current knowledge of quantum physics. Recent discoveries that the red shift of far away galaxies occurs in discrete quantum bands negates the idea that the red shift is caused by incredibly rapid movement of the these far away objects, but by the quantum leaps of the electron orbits of the light emitting atoms of these incredibly far away places.
Energy-matter, space-time and gravity are all interrelated and as space itself expanded, associated parameters adjusted themselves and are still observed to be doing so, albeit very slowly today. The pioneer spacecraft "mystery" is one of these evidences that cannot be explained easily if one is determined to dogmatically assert that these "constants" must not ever change.
There is no problem with the data whatsoever. It is the attempts to explain the data in the light of currently held assumptions that requires convoluted, non-existent constructs, such as dark matter and energy. It is in fact the data that is calling into question many long held beliefs. One of these beliefs is that all of the so called constants have never and are still unchanging parameters of the Universe. Abandoning such beliefs is difficult, but then the need for dark matter evaporates as a means to try to interpret the data.
About 400 years ago a Danish Astronomer first challenged the then widely held notion that light takes no time to travel any distance. Experiments done with lanterns and shutters from mountain tops "proved" that this was so. It took about 50 years and many repeated experiments, before the larger scientific community finally accepted the fact that the speed of light was finite. Even Einstein had a hard time coming to grips with some of the implications of quantum theory. Many widely held theories of science have fallen to new data. This is what makes science interesting but also obsoletes science text books faster than most other kinds of books.
.....The vast bulk of malware has no real need of Administrator-level privileges...
On OSX, any install of any program wanting to run for the first time asks for an admin password and gives a warning. If the user doesn't give the password and clicks "Cancel" the program cannot run or install. There is NO way to get a program running on OSX without some indication. Assuming that OSX were also vulnerable to the latest worm embedded in graphics files, when this worm tried to run, a warning would come up that code xxx was trying to run, giving the user a warning and a chance to cancel this operation. Why can't Windows be programmed to do this? It is of course not fool proof, but it may prevent many infections. Scaring the s**t out of clueless users by a dire warning in the name of security may not be such a bad thing if it benefits the over all computing community.
Finding a file and trashing it is a lot easier than calling up a special program to edit a special file. Trashing a user's ENTIRE library is still preferable to having to format the drive and re-installing everything because something like Sony's rootkit screwed up the entire computer. Trashing such a user library doesn't prevent the computer from ever working again, which is often the case if the registry file is corrupted. Is it not instructive that Sony nor any other DRM crazy music outfit has yet come out with a way to prevent Mac users from playing their damn infectious music abominations with impunity? When I deliberately put one of these rootkit disks into my Mac, iTunes comes up and the disk rips and plays just like any other music CD. If it were so easy to do the infection crap on Macs, don't you think that these greedy music companies would have figured something out by now? Apple, ("rip, mix, burn") was FORCED to put some DRM into their iTunes store to appease the music moguls, but MS pushes DRM as a selling point, calling it a feature! They are also the ones pushing "trusted" computing. If they have their way, they, not the user will be "trusted" to do whatever THEY want to do with YOUR computer.
....physics isn't about answers, it's about questions....
The problem is that some the answers are disliked because they demolish long held cherished philosophical viewpoints and widely held underlying assumptions. These assumptions are the scientists equivalent of religious faith. Dark energy, matter, the pioneer probes "mysterious" acceleration and Hubble's "law" are postulated to preserve uniformitarian beliefs. One such scientific tenet of faith is the invariability of so called constants, all related to each other. "Constants" such as Planck's constant, alpha and the speed of light and related others, are, in the minds of most current scientists, sacred cows that cannot be admitted to having changed, perhaps drastically over the ages of time. Many of these observed "anomalies" can be explained by simply admitting that these cherished constants may have been many orders of magnitude different in the long ago ages of the beginning of the Universe and may be even yet changing slowly. There is nothing constant about our observed Universe, so why should these "constants" not also change over time?
Well they ought to tell the users that to run as admin is very DANGEROUS to the health of their computer. Then tell the users they must set up a non-admin account for everyday use and put up a nasty dialog box every time a user is asked for an admin password.
"Are you sure you want to do this? If this came over the Internet without your EXPLICIT request, you may be installing dangerous programs". Then highlight a big RED NO button as default.
In school and business settings, the user should not even have the admin password at all. It seems that MS ought to have sufficient clout over their developers to FORCE them to write applications that do NOT require a user to be an admin. If MS had done this ages ago, most of the malware on the Internet would be diminished to a livable nuisance, like flies in the summer. Maybe someone can compile a list of programs of all kinds, written in the last four years, that will not run correctly for a non-admin user.
In OSX, which is infinitely more secure (zero malware in the wild) there is no registry or other central place where application and other computer settings settings are kept. Each user keeps the settings for all programs in their own user space. If there is a problem, only that user is affected. Also, each user can set any given program parameters to their own choosing. Trashing the settings file(s) for that user will make the computer to create a new default set. There is no need to figure out how to edit an arcane file, which if corrupted can prevent a computer from booting. In OSX there is also a user specific login file and unlike Windows, nobody gets root access by default. The registry is one of Microsoft's biggest abominations. Stop defending the world's richest computer company who can't, or maybe worse, won't come up with a safe computing environment for their customers.
......This exploit could have been prevented by good design, but it wasn't.....
There are still a number of code leftovers in Windows that go way back to the days before the Internet or networking as a whole common. Each computer stood alone and data was passed around on floppies. The fact that much, if not most Windows software still won't run, unless it has full access to the whole system, also goes back to the days when a computer was a single user PERSONAL computer, much like a single celled organism. Today, the Internet makes each computer one cell in an interconnected, world wide organism. The old components of the cellular structure have to be replaced, one by one and MS has been having trouble doing that fast enough. The *NIX heritage systems which do not suffer from these single user leftovers, were conceived with networking and security in mind and are therefore more resistant to the external attacks. MS should examine every byte of their code that was written for the single user paradigm.
.....I think people SHOULD be required to know basic engine mechanics to drive a car......
People learning how to drive a car USED to have to know more about the inner workings and people who use early computer USED to need to know about the arcane aspects of computers. Nowadays, both cars and computers are commodity technologies, the inner workings of which have become too complex for most users to have to or want to understand. That aside from the cost issue, this is why small airplanes are not as numerous as they could be. People will use a technology if some aspect makes it easier to do something than it was before. E-mail is simpler, faster and more convenient than post office mail. If it were not, then it would not be used. If, in order to to get on the Information Highway, an expensive course and a stiff exam were required, the disadvantages of that would keep most using the post office or phone. All/. geeks would still be paying many times the price of the mass produced hardware we enjoy today.
It seems that most reader here on/. look down their noses on the clueless, unwashed mass of computer users out there because even basic knowledge about the workings of computers is absent. The fact is that OSX is much safer, easier to network and a lot nicer to look at than malware infested Windows. Such a user could install OSX 10.4 on a two year old Mac without a hitch and be connected to the net without help from an "expert". Doing that with a Windows box does require such an expert. Finding and installing a driver for the video was a hassle also. I hope that with VISTA, MS will finally come up with an OS that is at least as good and secure as OSX is today.
.......but many many programs (especially games) require administrator privs just to run......
That in a nutshell is the biggest problem with Windows. It is still suffering from its roots as a single user computer system in the world before networking. *NIX systems, such as Linux and OSX are more secure mostly because of they do not require administrator status to run application programs. MS will have to FORCE developers to change this by making two users on every system -- one the admin and another the user, one or more ordinary users with limited privileges. Programs that ask for higher privs, would just die with a nasty message from the OS.
The other change would be to get rid of the registry which is used to ensure that malware runs when the system is booted, among other functions. If in VISTA, ordinary programs, games or anything other than system utilities and installers STILL require the user to be an admin, there certianly is no reason to upgrade in the hopes of finally getting a system at least as secure from malware as OSX. In combination with this MS should then spend some serious money to educate their customers not to EVER give their admin password unless they KNOW they are installing some new software. An internet greeting card, picture or e-mail should not EVER allow the introduction of new, executeable code onto a computer without the explicit permission of the educated user.
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.....but the only truly permanent way to store data ......
The first thing is to think about whether there would be anyone interested in all that data 100 or 1000 years from now. Data and information and knowledge are all different. Of the three, knowlege is the main thing worth preserving for many centuries. Distill all that data down to the kind of knowledege that those living 500 or more years from today might still care about. What kind of knowlege from say the year 1000 would we REALLY like to have today?
The technology for storing knowledge has been around a long time. We can still read the dead sea scrolls and the ancient clay tablets. We have surprising insights into the earliest recorded activities of man. Store the knowledge in a human readable form on a medium at least as durable has the stuff humanity has used since antiquity. Modern science out to be able to come up with technology at least as durable as the ancient Babylonians.
.....These days, a lot of people leave their machines on 24/6......
I set my computers go to sleep shortly after I am not actively sitting in front of it and using it. Whatever such a hack might be, it would have to prevent sleep, which would certainly get noticed. Once asleep, only an external event can wake it but nothing in any program. Unlike Windows, OSX is not so easy to hack. Now that Macs run on an Intel chip, we'll see what, if anything hackers can come up with. Maybe universal viruses?
......into Dell and other big name PC laptops......
As an unofficial helpdesk for my daughter she told me of the Dells and other XP PC laptops and the hassle of getting them all to connect to the wireless of their office. She brought in her iBook and it connected immediately, without her doing anything except showing up and turning it on. She was connected to the web and their e-mail and their windows server immediately. An expensive "expert" finally got the other Windows based laptops working. In the end, the money they saved on the slightly cheaper PC stuff was more than eaten up by the cost of getting that all to work. They also had to install all sorts of anti-virus software and security software, none of which is needed for the Mac. Her Mac's virtual PC program also worked with the network without needing an expert.
....Powerbook I can triple boot!....
Why bother with booting those other systems. Just wait for an Intel version of virtual PC or equivalent and run those other OS under the umbrella of OSX. This actually works reasonably well today with a fast powerPC based Mac with slower emulation of the x86 chips. With a real x86 chip, the system speed penalty should be small. Instead of waiting for each system to boot, you can run them all and instantly switch from one to the other.
....Or in this case, to run your business, you MUST purchase Microsoft Windows(TM).....
/., but that takes the cake! I know of many business that don't use ANY MS product at all. There are even still businesses that don't use a computer. Comparing computer or any other tool use to breathing is incredibly stupid. Here in our lumber cutting area, many tree cutters use STIHL chainsaws, but then many also use HUSQVARNA and other kinds. Nobody has EVER been forced to buy any particular tool for a job. A computer is nothing more than a tool and MS just happens to make the most commonly used tools in the computing category.
There is a LOT of BS here on
Just like people in this country, the the ones in Government use many kinds of tools, including the most popular computing tool. They spend YOUR tax money on these tools, so why does that bother you in the case of the computer as a tool?
If you sell me something for a dollar and then you find out I located a buyer the next day that was willing to buy that item from for a thousand, you may be chagrined, but you have no right to accuse me of stealing. I paid you the agreed for price and so did my buyer. It was yours to keep before I came and made you the offer to which you agreed. Remember, in EVERYTHING, it is the buyer, not the seller that determines what any particular item is worth. Apparently there were/are enough buyers who think whatever MS offers is worth paying the asking price, making Mr. Gates a very rich man.
.....he stole hundreds of billions of dollars from people all over the world. He was convicted of this in a US court......
Normally, convicted thieves go to jail, but Bill and all his friends are still running around free. People that are rich, especially super rich will always have envious persons like you around. Nobody held a gun to you head and forced you to buy anything from MS or anyone else.
........the home entertainment industry will have to proclaim about 5 other formats dead befoe they finally hit........
What the fervent wishes of the entertainment moguls are and declare dead won't neccessarily match up with what the consumers will spend money on. For music, the treadmill of people buying the content in the industry vaults over and over again has already ground to a halt. The same will be true soon for video. If/when the new disk or other even better formats take hold, consumers will do with their existing DVD collections as they are now doing with their music. They will copy their purchased content onto the new formats, regardless of the DMCA, thousands of **AA lawyers, or whatever additional laws the moguls may purchase from our corrupt polititians. In ten years, there may be video iPods that will hold as many full length movies in HD quality or at least present DVD quality as is now done with audio. The fancy DRM on the new disks will be cracked, just as all other copy protections from the floppy disk onward have been. It is mathematically certain: If it can be played, it can be copied. The days of content providers selling their same old stuff over and over have already come to an end for the music business.
......HD is coming, and once your TV size goes to 42".......
Watching movies DVD from our DLP projector on a 72" screen is plenty fun for our family and friends. None of them has ever complained about the quality. The news and soaps and other TV drivel is fine on the old 20" TV.
....My iBook and Mac mini fit fine into my entertainment system....
An old TI Powerbook connected to a DLP projector makes for great "movie nights" for family and friends. The sound is transmitted wirelessly to the stereo system. The projector and 72" screen was a lot cheaper than any TV that big. When not in use, the screen just rolls up and is out of the way. A simple 25" TV is fine for news and soaps.
......When you consider the time required to copy DVDs, its probably actually cheaper to just by a legit copy. ..
Especially true if you can find movies you like for $5-$6 in the Walmart bargain bins. DVDs are actually quite a bargain compared to music CDs. At times you can buy the whole movie for less than the soundtrack CD thereof.
.....will all of the media purchaced turn into an expensive and ineffective paper weight in 10 years.....
Of course that is what the **AAs of this world would like. They want to sell you the same old stuff over and over an over again, forever, or at least for the next 75 years or so. That's why they are so torqued over mp3 format and the ability of consumers to transcode the contents to the new format from which they don't get any revenue.
Once the material recorded, it can be copied onto new information carriers. This happened with LPs to CDs and VCR to DVD, but until recently, it could only by done by the companies with sufficient capital for the expensive recording devices. Now everybody can copy the material they already bought.
.....it won't have the clear advantages over DVD that DVD had over VHS......
Indeed true. It is the convenience of random access that disks have over tapes that made most consumers switch to DVD and audio CDs. The lack of wear when played and the superior quality were bonuses, but not the driving points for consumers to re-buy all or at least much the old content over again. The old TV's used with VCRs worked and still do just fine with that new DVD player and the audio systems already in use were useable with the digital audio CDs.
The new formats will really only have better quality as the reason to switch to the new technology. If a customer does not also buy an expensive big screen HD TV, the new format will not do much more than the current DVDs do. Much of the material in the vaults of the movie companies would not benefit consumers in noticeable superior quality anyway.
The video equivalent of mp3, where a user an store a few thousand movies at today's DVD quality in a holographic chip the size of a compact flash card, storing about 100 terabyes or so, at about the current price of one might be a compelling reason to buy new movie storage equipment.
.....wiping out DVDs sooner than another storage media.....
What about holographic storage systems being worked on, some of which can store all the films in Hollywood's vaults in a volume about the size of a 3.5" disk drive, wherein the only thing that moves is a laser beam? That would make these new HD DVD and the download systems obsolete.
.......Morals are a result of social and biological evolution, not religion......
There is no way to prove this. It is an assertion of faith. It is also an assertion of faith that God put certain physical and moral laws into His creation, which includes mankind and animals. Man is incurably religious and evolution mechanisms, such as natural selection and survival of the fittest do not include religion. Religion in humans do not make them any more fit or less fit to survive and propagate than the absence of religion in a snail make any difference one way or the other to the snail's survival. Religion does not promote nor hinder survival of man or any other organism. Whatever the reasons for man's religious nature, survival and evolution do not enter the picture in any way.
.....One need only look at all the religious wars....
There never has been and never will be a "religious" war. Religion has been used as a means of persuading people by other people to go to war for what were always economic reasons or quests for control over others to get an advantage. Wars are caused by somone or a group who desires to take a shortcut to a need or want. A thief will steal your goods as a shortcut to getting what he wants. He could get what you have by working for it, but it is easier and above all quicker to just take it from you. If you are successful because you have worked harder, or just been lucky, there will ALWAYS be someone who will envy you and try to take what you have worked for. Only pure force, either by you or someone on your behalf will deter the thief from taking such a shortcut.
In the absence of belief in a just Creator who will judge good and bad behavior, the only thing left is what Mao said: "Power comes form the barrel of a gun." So then I just have to make sure that if I want to keep what I have, to have the biggest gun or hire someone who has such a gun. For us here that hireling is the US military, which right now happens to have the biggest gun. In our society, lawyers have become an effective subtitute for guns because ultimately they have the power of the biggest guns behind them.
.....What does equal rights have to do with whether we were created equal or not??.....
/. readers.
Our constitutional government was put in place by people who believed that humans "are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights". Human rights do not come from governments or one another, but ultimately from our Creator. We humans have no more control over the innateness and absoluteness over right and wrong than we have over the laws of physics. Whether we like it or not, the One who came up with the natural laws under which the whole cosmos operates and by which evolution itself works, also formulated moral absolutes of right and wrong. Unlike physical laws, which we MUST obey, the Creator has seen fit for now, to allow humans to choose, which, if any of His moral laws we will abide by. Every person has the right and the ability to choose to do what is right or wrong. Unfortunately, even if we know what is right in a certain cirumstance, we often do not go that way.
Both the natural and the moral laws have the same Source. Whether we want to attribute both to impersonal forces or to a personal God is left up to us. Both physical and moral choices have consequences and nobody is ever going to get around that fact. "Whatosever a man soewth, he shall also reap" has been and always will be true.
Right now, the good and the bad are intertwined and mixed together and nobody has been able to separate them in all of human history. Every technology or discovery man has ever made was used both for good and evil. A look at the Internet and its means for distributing knowledge and computer worms is an examle very familiar to
My most dangerous thought is that one day soon, the Creator is going to implement His promise to return to this planet and FORCE everyone to abide by His moral code in the same manner everyone must now obey His laws of physics. If you tell a lie, the consequences thereof will be just as quick and devastating as jumping off a 20 story building or touching a 100KV power line is today.
.....Space is not matter and does not affect the speed of light.....
The properties of space --- free space that is--- very much affect electromagnetic energy propagation, including its speed. The purpose of every transmitting antenna is to launch such electromagentic waves into space. Without getting into complicated math here, one of the properties of space that determines critical parameters of antenna design is the electrical impedance of free space. An antenna is basically an impedance matching device between the the impedance of the RF generator and free space, enabling the energy of the former to be efficiently transferred to the latter. Both the impedance and the light speed are in the formulas for antenna design. You can look this stuff up in any radio engineering handbook.
Gravity DOES affect electromagnetic waves. The gravitational field of the sun bends starlight, just as a lens, such that the apparent position of a star is markedly different if the light has gone close, past the sun on its way to us. Gravity affects the properties of space and thus matter-energy moving through that space.
NO law of physics requires any of these "constants" to be invariant over time. There are "conservation" laws of mass-energy, momentum etc, that are not violated even if the speed of light and related parameters change. In order to carry the same energy, if a bullet (photon or electron) travels faster, some of its mass is converted into energy. The converse is also true. Einstein first came up with these discoveries and they have been verified experimentally too many times to count. Space-time, gravity and matter-energy are all relative to one another and there is nothing absolute to any one of them. You can think of the speed of light as one way of describing the properties of space. Matter-energy determine the strength of gravity in a region of space. It is interesting that the equations of electromagnetism and atomic behavior all have references to c or parameters related thereto and these all contain a time dimension. The equations concering gravity however do not make reference to any kind of time units.
.....The speed of light is inherent in the laws of electromagnetic interaction.....
No known laws or principles of physics mandates that the speed of light be constant. Its speed is highly dependent on the nature of the medium through which it propagates. That is what makes lenses, prisms fiber optics and other media do what they do. The nature of space is determined by its contents and as such affects the speed of light. When the Universe was small and dense, the nature of space was also very much different and thus the speed at which light propagates through the medium of space. Gravity bends the light near a star because gravity affects the properties of the space around the star. The gravity of a black hole is so great that the light is bent back to its source before it can ever get out of such a black hole. It is indeed true that some of the properties of atomic structure are affected by this. The nature of the light produced by all atoms is well characterized by current knowledge of quantum physics. Recent discoveries that the red shift of far away galaxies occurs in discrete quantum bands negates the idea that the red shift is caused by incredibly rapid movement of the these far away objects, but by the quantum leaps of the electron orbits of the light emitting atoms of these incredibly far away places.
Energy-matter, space-time and gravity are all interrelated and as space itself expanded, associated parameters adjusted themselves and are still observed to be doing so, albeit very slowly today. The pioneer spacecraft "mystery" is one of these evidences that cannot be explained easily if one is determined to dogmatically assert that these "constants" must not ever change.
....Show me the data...
There is no problem with the data whatsoever. It is the attempts to explain the data in the light of currently held assumptions that requires convoluted, non-existent constructs, such as dark matter and energy. It is in fact the data that is calling into question many long held beliefs. One of these beliefs is that all of the so called constants have never and are still unchanging parameters of the Universe. Abandoning such beliefs is difficult, but then the need for dark matter evaporates as a means to try to interpret the data.
About 400 years ago a Danish Astronomer first challenged the then widely held notion that light takes no time to travel any distance. Experiments done with lanterns and shutters from mountain tops "proved" that this was so. It took about 50 years and many repeated experiments, before the larger scientific community finally accepted the fact that the speed of light was finite. Even Einstein had a hard time coming to grips with some of the implications of quantum theory. Many widely held theories of science have fallen to new data. This is what makes science interesting but also obsoletes science text books faster than most other kinds of books.
.....The vast bulk of malware has no real need of Administrator-level privileges...
On OSX, any install of any program wanting to run for the first time asks for an admin password and gives a warning. If the user doesn't give the password and clicks "Cancel" the program cannot run or install. There is NO way to get a program running on OSX without some indication. Assuming that OSX were also vulnerable to the latest worm embedded in graphics files, when this worm tried to run, a warning would come up that code xxx was trying to run, giving the user a warning and a chance to cancel this operation. Why can't Windows be programmed to do this? It is of course not fool proof, but it may prevent many infections. Scaring the s**t out of clueless users by a dire warning in the name of security may not be such a bad thing if it benefits the over all computing community.
Finding a file and trashing it is a lot easier than calling up a special program to edit a special file. Trashing a user's ENTIRE library is still preferable to having to format the drive and re-installing everything because something like Sony's rootkit screwed up the entire computer. Trashing such a user library doesn't prevent the computer from ever working again, which is often the case if the registry file is corrupted. Is it not instructive that Sony nor any other DRM crazy music outfit has yet come out with a way to prevent Mac users from playing their damn infectious music abominations with impunity? When I deliberately put one of these rootkit disks into my Mac, iTunes comes up and the disk rips and plays just like any other music CD. If it were so easy to do the infection crap on Macs, don't you think that these greedy music companies would have figured something out by now? Apple, ("rip, mix, burn") was FORCED to put some DRM into their iTunes store to appease the music moguls, but MS pushes DRM as a selling point, calling it a feature! They are also the ones pushing "trusted" computing. If they have their way, they, not the user will be "trusted" to do whatever THEY want to do with YOUR computer.
....physics isn't about answers, it's about questions....
The problem is that some the answers are disliked because they demolish long held cherished philosophical viewpoints and widely held underlying assumptions. These assumptions are the scientists equivalent of religious faith. Dark energy, matter, the pioneer probes "mysterious" acceleration and Hubble's "law" are postulated to preserve uniformitarian beliefs. One such scientific tenet of faith is the invariability of so called constants, all related to each other. "Constants" such as Planck's constant, alpha and the speed of light and related others, are, in the minds of most current scientists, sacred cows that cannot be admitted to having changed, perhaps drastically over the ages of time. Many of these observed "anomalies" can be explained by simply admitting that these cherished constants may have been many orders of magnitude different in the long ago ages of the beginning of the Universe and may be even yet changing slowly. There is nothing constant about our observed Universe, so why should these "constants" not also change over time?
....._Windows_ doesn't "require" it either......
Well they ought to tell the users that to run as admin is very DANGEROUS to the health of their computer. Then tell the users they must set up a non-admin account for everyday use and put up a nasty dialog box every time a user is asked for an admin password.
"Are you sure you want to do this? If this came over the Internet without your EXPLICIT request, you may be installing dangerous programs". Then highlight a big RED NO button as default.
In school and business settings, the user should not even have the admin password at all. It seems that MS ought to have sufficient clout over their developers to FORCE them to write applications that do NOT require a user to be an admin. If MS had done this ages ago, most of the malware on the Internet would be diminished to a livable nuisance, like flies in the summer. Maybe someone can compile a list of programs of all kinds, written in the last four years, that will not run correctly for a non-admin user.
In OSX, which is infinitely more secure (zero malware in the wild) there is no registry or other central place where application and other computer settings settings are kept. Each user keeps the settings for all programs in their own user space. If there is a problem, only that user is affected. Also, each user can set any given program parameters to their own choosing. Trashing the settings file(s) for that user will make the computer to create a new default set. There is no need to figure out how to edit an arcane file, which if corrupted can prevent a computer from booting. In OSX there is also a user specific login file and unlike Windows, nobody gets root access by default. The registry is one of Microsoft's biggest abominations. Stop defending the world's richest computer company who can't, or maybe worse, won't come up with a safe computing environment for their customers.
......This exploit could have been prevented by good design, but it wasn't.....
There are still a number of code leftovers in Windows that go way back to the days before the Internet or networking as a whole common. Each computer stood alone and data was passed around on floppies. The fact that much, if not most Windows software still won't run, unless it has full access to the whole system, also goes back to the days when a computer was a single user PERSONAL computer, much like a single celled organism. Today, the Internet makes each computer one cell in an interconnected, world wide organism. The old components of the cellular structure have to be replaced, one by one and MS has been having trouble doing that fast enough. The *NIX heritage systems which do not suffer from these single user leftovers, were conceived with networking and security in mind and are therefore more resistant to the external attacks. MS should examine every byte of their code that was written for the single user paradigm.
.....I think people SHOULD be required to know basic engine mechanics to drive a car. .....
/. geeks would still be paying many times the price of the mass produced hardware we enjoy today.
/. look down their noses on the clueless, unwashed mass of computer users out there because even basic knowledge about the workings of computers is absent. The fact is that OSX is much safer, easier to network and a lot nicer to look at than malware infested Windows. Such a user could install OSX 10.4 on a two year old Mac without a hitch and be connected to the net without help from an "expert". Doing that with a Windows box does require such an expert. Finding and installing a driver for the video was a hassle also. I hope that with VISTA, MS will finally come up with an OS that is at least as good and secure as OSX is today.
People learning how to drive a car USED to have to know more about the inner workings and people who use early computer USED to need to know about the arcane aspects of computers. Nowadays, both cars and computers are commodity technologies, the inner workings of which have become too complex for most users to have to or want to understand. That aside from the cost issue, this is why small airplanes are not as numerous as they could be. People will use a technology if some aspect makes it easier to do something than it was before. E-mail is simpler, faster and more convenient than post office mail. If it were not, then it would not be used. If, in order to to get on the Information Highway, an expensive course and a stiff exam were required, the disadvantages of that would keep most using the post office or phone. All
It seems that most reader here on
.......but many many programs (especially games) require administrator privs just to run......
That in a nutshell is the biggest problem with Windows. It is still suffering from its roots as a single user computer system in the world before networking. *NIX systems, such as Linux and OSX are more secure mostly because of they do not require administrator status to run application programs. MS will have to FORCE developers to change this by making two users on every system -- one the admin and another the user, one or more ordinary users with limited privileges. Programs that ask for higher privs, would just die with a nasty message from the OS.
The other change would be to get rid of the registry which is used to ensure that malware runs when the system is booted, among other functions. If in VISTA, ordinary programs, games or anything other than system utilities and installers STILL require the user to be an admin, there certianly is no reason to upgrade in the hopes of finally getting a system at least as secure from malware as OSX. In combination with this MS should then spend some serious money to educate their customers not to EVER give their admin password unless they KNOW they are installing some new software. An internet greeting card, picture or e-mail should not EVER allow the introduction of new, executeable code onto a computer without the explicit permission of the educated user.