Hmmm. I'm trying to figure out whether you're being sarcastic or pedantic...
Yes, if you look at all of the employees and all of the stockholders, there are more people that "own" the media today then before. But those people don't make the day-to-day decisions on what to cover or set the overall direction for the media outlets, which was more to my point.
You're just counting television news. When there were just three television networks and a couple more radio networks, there were hundreds of independent newspapers. Now that tv, radio, newspapers and magazines can be under the same management, overall media ownership is in far fewer hands.
Yeah, vote selling, vote buying, poll taxes, outright exclusion for being an unfavorable race/ethnic group/religion and other forms of coercion, both subtile and gross, NEVER existed before electronic balloting.
Next you'll tell me that dead people who voted for Mayor Richard J. Daley in Chicago from the 50's to the 70's really were valid voters...
Don't get me wrong - people will still buy iPods. They just won't be selling DRM music anymore.
Of course Apple keep selling encoded files, because they want to keep their contracts with the major music publishers. Do you honestly think that Apple encoded music for iTunes because Apple thought it was a good idea?
Apple can afford to bide their time until they see how things turn out. By staying silent, Apple forces the competition to consider whether they really want to go up against Apple's legal department if and when Apple decides to sue. If iPod sales actually drop because of the decoding software, they'll go after the sellers of the products that are dumb enough to make this software available for their player or are stupid enough to advertise that their player will work with iTunes because of it.
You mentioned the Zune player. It's highly unlikely that Microsoft will even mention Doubletwist when talking about their player as it would be the same as saying that it's ok for people to use third-party software to break the installation key on Office. Or on WMA.
Besides, the majority of iPod users won't be interested in the software because they're perfectly happy with the way that it works now and taking the copy protection off their files doesn't really get them anything. Most iPod users upgrade rather than look at new players and the new iPods play the files just fine.
I do. But, realistically, you aren't going to have much choice as to who makes the batteries in your laptop if there is only one supplier.
Someone from Intel once told me that they knew exactly how many keyboards that there were because Intel was the only supplier. Nobody else wanted to get into the business because it was too costly to ramp up production for such a low-margin item. Even though batteries are a more expensive item than a single chip, the situation is much the same here. One could ask Dell or Apple all they want to look for another battery supplier, but unless or until there's enough money in it for someone to make them or people would be willing to pay a higher price for a short time to, in effect, subsidize a new manufacturer's development, choices will be limited.
On a related note, Sony makes a lot of items for other manufacturers. The CCD for Nikon's DSLR cameras, I understand, are made by Sony. If you look under the cover, I think you'll find that a lot of LCD screens are made by Sony. Are we to extend the boycott to them, too? Are we also to boycott Carl Zeiss because they make optics for some Sony cameras?
You'll still have Sony batteries because they're one of the few manufacturers that actually make the things in the specialized shape that Dell, Toshiba and Apple need. It's not cheap process to set up - more like extremely expensive - so there's not many manufacturers that are lined up waiting to take Sony's business. Which means that you're going to be using Sony batteries for some time to come.
If one is truly committed to never using Sony, one could, I guess carry around a car battery and an inverter...
Then we're going to deny adversaries access to space by what method?
By diplomatic means? Right. We haven't had a decent diplomatic corps since Nixon left office.
By economic means? Why not? It's worked real well with Cuba, North Korea and just about any other country that we've tried to use economic sanctions against, hasn't it?
Face it, the only means that we have available to us because of our rank stupidity in dealing with other countries (and I'm not blaming just Bush pere and fils here) are military ones.
We still haven't dealt with where we're going to put all of the spent rods/irradiated equipment/etc. Our best solution to date is to dump it in the remotest part of Nevada, something that most of the Nevadans really aren't terribly happy with. Not to mention that nobody, but nobody, really wants the trucks that will have to move it from plant to intermediate storage facility to final storage facility to come through their town. How much more accepting will people be when every house is producing radioactive waste?
It makes very little economic sense to do so. California went through this a couple of years ago. Prices went up, graft went up, producers complained that it was too difficult to build new plants and the Legislature responded by making it easier to start new plants. How many new plants went up? Almost none. A governor was removed from office, the power plants that were magically off-line (all at the same time - fancy that) got their repairs done and none of the few producers left wanted to expend the capital to build new plants. New plants were unveiled with great fanfare to the press, but very few were actually built. So, guess what, we're just about exactly in the same place that we were before the last power crisis. Which, of course, makes perfect sense. Why would a market that prices itself based on scarcity be terribly interested in doing something that would reduce that scarcity?
Do you honestly think that, if the country really needed new power plants and that the utilies were willing to produce them (meaning that there was enough money in it), that "Eco-religion" would stop it? We've seemed to be able to shed our religions convictions when it's been necessary or convenient to do so in the past...
DRM has absolutely nothing to do with the iTunes service - making sure that your files are safely backed up is your problem, not theirs.
They will find out when their PC crashes and they lose all the music on their hard drive, get a new computer, install iTunes then auto-sync their IPOD and lose all their music.
Or they could just back up their music files and restore them on their new computer. iTunes has a utility that does this. All the user has to do once they've been restored is authorize the computer the first time that they play anything from iTunes. It's very easy to do - I've done it a couple of times and had absolutely no problems. And this is only required for stuff bought from the iTunes store - anything they rip from their own music or get from other sources doesn't require authorization to play.
If they lose both their computer and their iPod, they can always restore the files, burn the iTunes one to CD/DVD and then import the music into whatever player they like. It's a bit of a pain, but not impossible.
Counless numbers of Night Elves, Tauren, Dwarves, Undead (well, not the Undead - how can you kill that which has no life?) and other races of Azeroth are being slaughtered just to satisfy the blood lust of gamers!
I've worked with these systems on three elections and I can only speak for how we did it in my county, but I can say that there that the way that the system is set up, it'd difficult to impossible to link a voter to a vote.
After you sign in and are verified as someone is registered in the precinct (in California you can still vote a Provisional ballot even if you aren't registered, but it's a paper ballot), you are given an access card that has been activated by one of the polling place workers that allows you to use the voting machine. This card activates the machine and tells it, depending on the election, which ballot to display. It can also tell the system to display large text or to read the ballot to the voter, but that's incidental. Once the vote is cast, the card is deactivated and cannot be used to activate the voting system again until it is reset by one of the clerks.
The encoder is very limited. Basically, all you can do with them is choose the ballot (if multiple ballots), choose special options for visibility and sound and then activate/deactivate the card. That's about it. Adding personal information on the voter really isn't possible.
Now, I don't have full access to the internals of the system, but the only information that I can guess that the card passes to the ballot is the precinct number so someone can't bring in an encoder and vote more than once.
So, unless you type your own name in as a write-in vote, you're safe from someone finding out how you voted.
Or maybe it just shows that Flickr users aren't representative of digital camera users as a whole. The three top selling camera producers are Canon, Sony and Kodak. Sony shows up in the list once and Kodak not at all. Sony really hasn't had anything in the high-end space, so naturally they wouldn't show up. Kodak's high-end cameras are very expensive ($10,000+) so naturally wouldn't be there either. Nikon's presence on the list is far higher than you would expect based upon their sales figures (which is fine with me, because I have a Nikon), which tends to support the list being non-representative.
As was pointed out earlier, the list tends toward higher-end cameras, so unless you are looking for a DSLR, you probably shouldn't be using it to figure out what camera that you should buy.
I agree that adding people would do much to solve that particular problem, but more people means higher cost. Remember, the people who count the votes aren't the same people who sit in the polling places all day. The folks that work for the Registrar of Voters in my county make a whole lot more per day than the $50-$100 that the poll workers get paid.
Exit polls will give a reasonable estimate on the results.
Are these the same exit polls that predicted a win for Gore, then Bush, then Gore, then Bush? No thanks, I'd prefer to wait for the official totals. Some people lie to exit pollers. I'm one of them.
Yes, it could be hours if it was a simple election, but in California, it would be upwards of a day. At least.
Between candidates for constituional offices, local offices, statewide ballot propositions, local measures and all of the other things that were given to the people to voter on, the last California ballot had between 15-25 separate items. And that was just a gubernatorial primary. Multiply that by the thousands of precincts, and you've got a long wait.
I would say that they're very much aware of who their customer is.
They know that they aren't going to interest the folks that build MythTVs, they know that they Series 2s will work just fine with people who don't have or want HDTV and they know that the people who've already spent $2000+ on a HDTV and $60+ a month for HDTV service (and $700+ more on a premium sound system) aren't going to be particularly averse to dropping another $800 for a Series 3.
Yes, because no one has been able to play a Wii and use the motion sensitive controllers. All the videos posted all over Youtube and gaming review sites of people playing the games are doctored.
I never implied that they were doctored. Saying that you can see pictures of people playing is like saying that you can see pictures of people using Vista - yes, you can, but you can't buy it yet. What I was saying was, at this point, it's just marketing hype and should be treated as such.
Now I am not saying that Sony copied Nintendo, but this is the second time they are anouncing a concept very simmilar to something Nintendo already did (the motion sensetive controllers being the first).
You say that Nintendo has actually done the motion-sensitive controllers, but I don't seem to be able to find them. Until you can buy one, the Wii is every bit as much a concept as the PS3 and its features merely vaporware.
In California you can do this too. But your ballot is Provisional and is put in an envelope that separates it from the rest of the ballots. It isn't counted until it can be confirmed that you haven't voted in another precinct or have sent in an Absentee ballot and are able to register in the county that you say that you live in.
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Yes, if you look at all of the employees and all of the stockholders, there are more people that "own" the media today then before. But those people don't make the day-to-day decisions on what to cover or set the overall direction for the media outlets, which was more to my point.
You're just counting television news. When there were just three television networks and a couple more radio networks, there were hundreds of independent newspapers. Now that tv, radio, newspapers and magazines can be under the same management, overall media ownership is in far fewer hands.
Next you'll tell me that dead people who voted for Mayor Richard J. Daley in Chicago from the 50's to the 70's really were valid voters...
Of course Apple keep selling encoded files, because they want to keep their contracts with the major music publishers. Do you honestly think that Apple encoded music for iTunes because Apple thought it was a good idea?
Apple can afford to bide their time until they see how things turn out. By staying silent, Apple forces the competition to consider whether they really want to go up against Apple's legal department if and when Apple decides to sue. If iPod sales actually drop because of the decoding software, they'll go after the sellers of the products that are dumb enough to make this software available for their player or are stupid enough to advertise that their player will work with iTunes because of it.
You mentioned the Zune player. It's highly unlikely that Microsoft will even mention Doubletwist when talking about their player as it would be the same as saying that it's ok for people to use third-party software to break the installation key on Office. Or on WMA.
Besides, the majority of iPod users won't be interested in the software because they're perfectly happy with the way that it works now and taking the copy protection off their files doesn't really get them anything. Most iPod users upgrade rather than look at new players and the new iPods play the files just fine.
Someone from Intel once told me that they knew exactly how many keyboards that there were because Intel was the only supplier. Nobody else wanted to get into the business because it was too costly to ramp up production for such a low-margin item. Even though batteries are a more expensive item than a single chip, the situation is much the same here. One could ask Dell or Apple all they want to look for another battery supplier, but unless or until there's enough money in it for someone to make them or people would be willing to pay a higher price for a short time to, in effect, subsidize a new manufacturer's development, choices will be limited.
On a related note, Sony makes a lot of items for other manufacturers. The CCD for Nikon's DSLR cameras, I understand, are made by Sony. If you look under the cover, I think you'll find that a lot of LCD screens are made by Sony. Are we to extend the boycott to them, too? Are we also to boycott Carl Zeiss because they make optics for some Sony cameras?
If one is truly committed to never using Sony, one could, I guess carry around a car battery and an inverter...
By diplomatic means? Right. We haven't had a decent diplomatic corps since Nixon left office.
By economic means? Why not? It's worked real well with Cuba, North Korea and just about any other country that we've tried to use economic sanctions against, hasn't it?
Face it, the only means that we have available to us because of our rank stupidity in dealing with other countries (and I'm not blaming just Bush pere and fils here) are military ones.
Upper management does. Unfortunately.
I get my cellulose through wood pulp and wheat chaff. Not much difference, after all...
We still haven't dealt with where we're going to put all of the spent rods/irradiated equipment/etc. Our best solution to date is to dump it in the remotest part of Nevada, something that most of the Nevadans really aren't terribly happy with. Not to mention that nobody, but nobody, really wants the trucks that will have to move it from plant to intermediate storage facility to final storage facility to come through their town. How much more accepting will people be when every house is producing radioactive waste?
It makes very little economic sense to do so. California went through this a couple of years ago. Prices went up, graft went up, producers complained that it was too difficult to build new plants and the Legislature responded by making it easier to start new plants. How many new plants went up? Almost none. A governor was removed from office, the power plants that were magically off-line (all at the same time - fancy that) got their repairs done and none of the few producers left wanted to expend the capital to build new plants. New plants were unveiled with great fanfare to the press, but very few were actually built. So, guess what, we're just about exactly in the same place that we were before the last power crisis. Which, of course, makes perfect sense. Why would a market that prices itself based on scarcity be terribly interested in doing something that would reduce that scarcity?
Do you honestly think that, if the country really needed new power plants and that the utilies were willing to produce them (meaning that there was enough money in it), that "Eco-religion" would stop it? We've seemed to be able to shed our religions convictions when it's been necessary or convenient to do so in the past...
They will find out when their PC crashes and they lose all the music on their hard drive, get a new computer, install iTunes then auto-sync their IPOD and lose all their music.
Or they could just back up their music files and restore them on their new computer. iTunes has a utility that does this. All the user has to do once they've been restored is authorize the computer the first time that they play anything from iTunes. It's very easy to do - I've done it a couple of times and had absolutely no problems. And this is only required for stuff bought from the iTunes store - anything they rip from their own music or get from other sources doesn't require authorization to play.
If they lose both their computer and their iPod, they can always restore the files, burn the iTunes one to CD/DVD and then import the music into whatever player they like. It's a bit of a pain, but not impossible.
Counless numbers of Night Elves, Tauren, Dwarves, Undead (well, not the Undead - how can you kill that which has no life?) and other races of Azeroth are being slaughtered just to satisfy the blood lust of gamers!
This must end!
Yeah, and operating system and application bloat has matched increased processing power step for step.
After you sign in and are verified as someone is registered in the precinct (in California you can still vote a Provisional ballot even if you aren't registered, but it's a paper ballot), you are given an access card that has been activated by one of the polling place workers that allows you to use the voting machine. This card activates the machine and tells it, depending on the election, which ballot to display. It can also tell the system to display large text or to read the ballot to the voter, but that's incidental. Once the vote is cast, the card is deactivated and cannot be used to activate the voting system again until it is reset by one of the clerks.
The encoder is very limited. Basically, all you can do with them is choose the ballot (if multiple ballots), choose special options for visibility and sound and then activate/deactivate the card. That's about it. Adding personal information on the voter really isn't possible.
Now, I don't have full access to the internals of the system, but the only information that I can guess that the card passes to the ballot is the precinct number so someone can't bring in an encoder and vote more than once.
So, unless you type your own name in as a write-in vote, you're safe from someone finding out how you voted.
As was pointed out earlier, the list tends toward higher-end cameras, so unless you are looking for a DSLR, you probably shouldn't be using it to figure out what camera that you should buy.
Exit polls will give a reasonable estimate on the results.
Are these the same exit polls that predicted a win for Gore, then Bush, then Gore, then Bush? No thanks, I'd prefer to wait for the official totals. Some people lie to exit pollers. I'm one of them.
Between candidates for constituional offices, local offices, statewide ballot propositions, local measures and all of the other things that were given to the people to voter on, the last California ballot had between 15-25 separate items. And that was just a gubernatorial primary. Multiply that by the thousands of precincts, and you've got a long wait.
They know that they aren't going to interest the folks that build MythTVs, they know that they Series 2s will work just fine with people who don't have or want HDTV and they know that the people who've already spent $2000+ on a HDTV and $60+ a month for HDTV service (and $700+ more on a premium sound system) aren't going to be particularly averse to dropping another $800 for a Series 3.
Maybe if they offer him enough money before the reelection? One can always hope.
So you would prefer the only filming of the Lord of the Rings to be Ralph Bakshi's masterpiece of lameness?http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0077869/
Like Jackson or not, like his version or not, you have to admire him for being able to talk a studio into putting up the money to film it.
Now I really feel old. I remember watching the "New Season" promotional spots and being freaked out by the guy with the silver eyeballs...
I never implied that they were doctored. Saying that you can see pictures of people playing is like saying that you can see pictures of people using Vista - yes, you can, but you can't buy it yet. What I was saying was, at this point, it's just marketing hype and should be treated as such.
You say that Nintendo has actually done the motion-sensitive controllers, but I don't seem to be able to find them. Until you can buy one, the Wii is every bit as much a concept as the PS3 and its features merely vaporware.
In California you can do this too. But your ballot is Provisional and is put in an envelope that separates it from the rest of the ballots. It isn't counted until it can be confirmed that you haven't voted in another precinct or have sent in an Absentee ballot and are able to register in the county that you say that you live in.
Where 'ya gonna find any honest people in the wretched hive of scum and villany that's slashdot?