Will somebody please mod the parent comment down? I don't think I have to do much more than quote from one of the "Doctor's" papers:
From "AIDS: More Convincingly A Metabolic Disorder:"
Although the total attention of AIDS research is directed toward its predicted viral etiology, the intestinal stress and tissue cortisone release factor inducd physiology of the body, over a long period of time, and dependent on the mode and frequency of homosexual practice, can possibly be the precipitating cause of this condition. It is proposed that in homosexuals, AIDS is an intestinal stress induced metabolic disorder and, opiod peptides being markers of stress to the regulatory systems of the body, excessive use of opiates can possibly cause an indirect promotion of stress physiology that can bring about the associated immune system inhibition and disturbance"
Translated: Gay people get AIDS because they have too much anal sex.
This "doctor" is entirely incredible, possibly homophobic, and a quack in the most negative sense of the word. No creedence whatsoever should be given to anything that he's written.
I think that everybody's missing the point - the price of a textbook isn't driven by the printing costs; it's the content that's so pricey. Somebody still has to research and write this material, and putting it on the PDA is still going to cost a lot of money.
Real books are hard to come by...but wifi-enabeled Pocket PCs are easy? I'm all for technology applications, but a book is a fraction of the cost of a PDA (yes, even a textbook) - and more durable, too.
It's a perfectly valid comparison. According to this site, the US has over 200 million internet users, while if you add up all the european countries in that list, you get less than that figure.
There's no point in making a zombie comparison based on population - you need to look at the number of internet users. If there's zombie out there who doesn't have internet access, we have bigger problems on our hands.
Reminds me of the old Microsoft Word AutoReplace gag - set up some not-too-computer-literate friend's computer to replace, say, the word "the" with the first few lines of Moby Dick. Drives them nuts.
My college, Middlebury College in VT recently sent out an email with the same type of survey. I can't get back to it because I already filled it out, but here's what I remember as being particularly interesting:
1) The survey didn't give a price - it listed a series of prices, ranging from about $3 to $18 per month, and asked roughly how much the student would be willing to pay. It struck me more as an attempt by Napster to figure out an acceptable entry price than an attempt to cover anything up, but I have no idea what their motives could be.
2) The funding for this would be tacked onto our school's activity fee, and we were assured in the FAQ (which seemed to be compiled by Napster and the College) that the school would only be charged for students with Windows-based computers. How exactly they determine whether a student has a windows-based computer (my Dell still has Windows, but I used Mandrake 90% of the time), I have no idea. Unfortunately, although the total cost goes down, the cost is still spread across all of the users.
3) As mentioned before, the only part of the service that this fee would allow someone to access is the temporary subscription-based service. While students are home for summer, they would be allowed to listen to music downloaded at college but not download new music, IIRC. Essentially, this looks to me like a streaming service that eats up your hard drive, all kinds of DRM'd up music killing hard drive space and in need of some proprietary player to access.
I was disappointed by the way that the College and Napster sprung this on us - right at the end of school, with students so busy with finals that any kind of discussion of the issue was essentially impossible. On Napster's part, at least, that may or may not be accidental - I'm sure that many classmates who don't read/. will see "Napster" and think "Oo, free music!" without checking out the service. So next year I plan on paying an extra who-knows-how-much in order to provide music to my windows-using peers.
I really don't see the point in this arrangement, other than the obvious "we're paying Napster so that the RIAA doesn't go after us." If a student wants the service, let the student subscribe to the service, but don't partner in with a company whose business model is essentially to put proprietary software on everyone's PC and attempt to coerce them to buy crappy music. Just my $.02.
I used to be a huge fan of shuffling (this isn't a new feature - every mp3 player ever has had the ability) until I started appreciating the album as a cohesive work. I never really enjoyed the music of the Beatles, for example, until I listened to Abbey Road the whole way through and realized that the album's genius lies at least in part in the overall construction. I feel like a lot of this is lost through random play.
Yes, yes it does... As the article clearly states: "The service is provided by Musicphone in cooperation with UK-based Shazam Entertainment. Shazam claims that their pattern recognition technology can identify recorded audio even under noisy conditions. Their music information database is Europe's largest, holding over 1,600,000 music tracks."
It does look like it'd be a pretty slick Live CD distro (although I admit that I haven't tried it yet), so maybe that'll get some exposure. I know that a bunch of people here at my school have been exposed to linux via the liveCD idea (some of the helpdesk guys carry around knoppix or the like for quick diagnostics and file recovery). So maybe it'll get people to use firebird in that way - live CDs let people who don't use linux use linux. For about 2 months this year, i fooled around with knoppix and PCLinuxOS before finally installing a full HD-based distro.
I've had a Toshiba e740 for a while... what's the difference between this and hypothetically getting a bunch of wifi PDAs together and ad-hoc networking them (aside from the obvious bonus of having a huge nerdpack on your back)?
Not really - what's the difference between this and just having a teacher walk around and glance over the kids' shoulders? The fact that VNC is used instead of a pair of eyes? Computers in schools have never been a place for completely anonymous internet access.
There's a slight difference between burning certificates and destroying all the machines that make them. In any case, this kind of action is a) rash and b) unnecessary at the current time - there is already a good amount of media coverage of these electronic voting systems and their shortcomings, especially in the new interest in voting methods brought about by the 2000 election.
I don't remember "civil disobedience" as practiced by Ghandi or MLK including breaking things... it was generally a peaceful type of thing. Maybe a sit-in, demonstrating outside the machines and explaining to the people who come in to vote what's wrong with them, or disobedience like this - but not wrecking the machine. Anyway, these machines seem to do a good enough job of breaking themselves - why go to all the trouble?
I get modded down to troll for posting a link to a CNN story refuting a parent post? Seems like the liberal minds around here like to practice the censorship that they condemn. I apologize, oh great ones, for posting something that might run counter to your preconceived ideas.
I don't like the guy either, but this Florida crap has to stop. Complain about his policy in Iraq, in Afghanistan, domestically, whatever - there's plenty of good fodder for criticism - but sour grapes won't win you any minds.
Well yes, you could do this - and you could use any sound recording application, like audacity or sound forge or microsoft's sound recorder. There'll be a significant degradation of quality in most cases, however, unless you've got a really nice sound card and/or a firewire / usb external capture device. The hiss from most soundcards' line in or microphone jacks combined with the compression afterwards will give you a decent quality hit. In addition, you have the problem of essentially recording at 1x rather than ripping at multiple speeds.
Actually, it's probably faster just to circumvent the copy protection.
It seems like there's hardly a mode of copy protection that hasn't been broken - whether via sharpie or shift key, there's usually a way around these things.
Actually, I'd buy it for $45... and then resell it in bulk to all the people who pay twice that (at least) for an upgrade or, heaven forbid, the full price.
I understand your point and realize that the monopolistic policies here limit peoples' choices, but the choices do exist - and the opportunity for consumers to educate themselves does as well. I wouldn't go out and buy a car without talking to somebody who knows more about cars than I do, and I think that many consumers view computers in the same way. Granted, there's no comparable monopoly in the car industry (that I know of) Still, I'd guess that most people here, actually, have been asked for computer/tech purchasing advice on a fairly regular basis.
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Will somebody please mod the parent comment down? I don't think I have to do much more than quote from one of the "Doctor's" papers:
From "AIDS: More Convincingly A Metabolic Disorder:"
Although the total attention of AIDS research is directed toward its predicted viral etiology, the intestinal stress and tissue cortisone release factor inducd physiology of the body, over a long period of time, and dependent on the mode and frequency of homosexual practice, can possibly be the precipitating cause of this condition. It is proposed that in homosexuals, AIDS is an intestinal stress induced metabolic disorder and, opiod peptides being markers of stress to the regulatory systems of the body, excessive use of opiates can possibly cause an indirect promotion of stress physiology that can bring about the associated immune system inhibition and disturbance"
Translated: Gay people get AIDS because they have too much anal sex.
This "doctor" is entirely incredible, possibly homophobic, and a quack in the most negative sense of the word. No creedence whatsoever should be given to anything that he's written.
I think that everybody's missing the point - the price of a textbook isn't driven by the printing costs; it's the content that's so pricey. Somebody still has to research and write this material, and putting it on the PDA is still going to cost a lot of money.
Real books are hard to come by...but wifi-enabeled Pocket PCs are easy? I'm all for technology applications, but a book is a fraction of the cost of a PDA (yes, even a textbook) - and more durable, too.
It's a perfectly valid comparison. According to this site, the US has over 200 million internet users, while if you add up all the european countries in that list, you get less than that figure.
There's no point in making a zombie comparison based on population - you need to look at the number of internet users. If there's zombie out there who doesn't have internet access, we have bigger problems on our hands.
Reminds me of the old Microsoft Word AutoReplace gag - set up some not-too-computer-literate friend's computer to replace, say, the word "the" with the first few lines of Moby Dick. Drives them nuts.
I'm not sure that his IP could be any more violated
this to me is the least offensive method of combatting piracy
I believe that it's spelled "effective," not "offensive"
My college, Middlebury College in VT recently sent out an email with the same type of survey. I can't get back to it because I already filled it out, but here's what I remember as being particularly interesting:
/. will see "Napster" and think "Oo, free music!" without checking out the service. So next year I plan on paying an extra who-knows-how-much in order to provide music to my windows-using peers.
1) The survey didn't give a price - it listed a series of prices, ranging from about $3 to $18 per month, and asked roughly how much the student would be willing to pay. It struck me more as an attempt by Napster to figure out an acceptable entry price than an attempt to cover anything up, but I have no idea what their motives could be.
2) The funding for this would be tacked onto our school's activity fee, and we were assured in the FAQ (which seemed to be compiled by Napster and the College) that the school would only be charged for students with Windows-based computers. How exactly they determine whether a student has a windows-based computer (my Dell still has Windows, but I used Mandrake 90% of the time), I have no idea. Unfortunately, although the total cost goes down, the cost is still spread across all of the users.
3) As mentioned before, the only part of the service that this fee would allow someone to access is the temporary subscription-based service. While students are home for summer, they would be allowed to listen to music downloaded at college but not download new music, IIRC. Essentially, this looks to me like a streaming service that eats up your hard drive, all kinds of DRM'd up music killing hard drive space and in need of some proprietary player to access.
I was disappointed by the way that the College and Napster sprung this on us - right at the end of school, with students so busy with finals that any kind of discussion of the issue was essentially impossible. On Napster's part, at least, that may or may not be accidental - I'm sure that many classmates who don't read
I really don't see the point in this arrangement, other than the obvious "we're paying Napster so that the RIAA doesn't go after us." If a student wants the service, let the student subscribe to the service, but don't partner in with a company whose business model is essentially to put proprietary software on everyone's PC and attempt to coerce them to buy crappy music. Just my $.02.
It's not off-topic... as long as the topic is "irrational fears"
I'm not sure that this proves that a movie needs synergy... it may prove, however, that Lucas' writing is shit. See also: Ep I and II.
Why do I not find this surprising?
I used to be a huge fan of shuffling (this isn't a new feature - every mp3 player ever has had the ability) until I started appreciating the album as a cohesive work. I never really enjoyed the music of the Beatles, for example, until I listened to Abbey Road the whole way through and realized that the album's genius lies at least in part in the overall construction. I feel like a lot of this is lost through random play.
Yes, yes it does... As the article clearly states: "The service is provided by Musicphone in cooperation with UK-based Shazam Entertainment. Shazam claims that their pattern recognition technology can identify recorded audio even under noisy conditions. Their music information database is Europe's largest, holding over 1,600,000 music tracks."
... nah, too easy.
It does look like it'd be a pretty slick Live CD distro (although I admit that I haven't tried it yet), so maybe that'll get some exposure. I know that a bunch of people here at my school have been exposed to linux via the liveCD idea (some of the helpdesk guys carry around knoppix or the like for quick diagnostics and file recovery). So maybe it'll get people to use firebird in that way - live CDs let people who don't use linux use linux. For about 2 months this year, i fooled around with knoppix and PCLinuxOS before finally installing a full HD-based distro.
I've had a Toshiba e740 for a while... what's the difference between this and hypothetically getting a bunch of wifi PDAs together and ad-hoc networking them (aside from the obvious bonus of having a huge nerdpack on your back)?
Not really - what's the difference between this and just having a teacher walk around and glance over the kids' shoulders? The fact that VNC is used instead of a pair of eyes? Computers in schools have never been a place for completely anonymous internet access.
There's a slight difference between burning certificates and destroying all the machines that make them. In any case, this kind of action is a) rash and b) unnecessary at the current time - there is already a good amount of media coverage of these electronic voting systems and their shortcomings, especially in the new interest in voting methods brought about by the 2000 election.
I don't remember "civil disobedience" as practiced by Ghandi or MLK including breaking things... it was generally a peaceful type of thing. Maybe a sit-in, demonstrating outside the machines and explaining to the people who come in to vote what's wrong with them, or disobedience like this - but not wrecking the machine. Anyway, these machines seem to do a good enough job of breaking themselves - why go to all the trouble?
I get modded down to troll for posting a link to a CNN story refuting a parent post? Seems like the liberal minds around here like to practice the censorship that they condemn. I apologize, oh great ones, for posting something that might run counter to your preconceived ideas.
Hmm... maybe we should check those facts.
I don't like the guy either, but this Florida crap has to stop. Complain about his policy in Iraq, in Afghanistan, domestically, whatever - there's plenty of good fodder for criticism - but sour grapes won't win you any minds.
Well yes, you could do this - and you could use any sound recording application, like audacity or sound forge or microsoft's sound recorder. There'll be a significant degradation of quality in most cases, however, unless you've got a really nice sound card and/or a firewire / usb external capture device. The hiss from most soundcards' line in or microphone jacks combined with the compression afterwards will give you a decent quality hit. In addition, you have the problem of essentially recording at 1x rather than ripping at multiple speeds. Actually, it's probably faster just to circumvent the copy protection.
It seems like there's hardly a mode of copy protection that hasn't been broken - whether via sharpie or shift key, there's usually a way around these things.
Actually, I'd buy it for $45... and then resell it in bulk to all the people who pay twice that (at least) for an upgrade or, heaven forbid, the full price.
I understand your point and realize that the monopolistic policies here limit peoples' choices, but the choices do exist - and the opportunity for consumers to educate themselves does as well. I wouldn't go out and buy a car without talking to somebody who knows more about cars than I do, and I think that many consumers view computers in the same way. Granted, there's no comparable monopoly in the car industry (that I know of) Still, I'd guess that most people here, actually, have been asked for computer/tech purchasing advice on a fairly regular basis.