I was told in the KDE channel on Freenode that Dolphin will be an alternative (and default) file browser, but that Konqueror will still retain that functionality. Nitpicking the submission, but I thought it was worth pointing out.
No, I'm not a shill (but thanks for resorting to ad homimem). I just prefer to rely on solid evidence before jumping to conclusions. Here, read this for example:
"The only appetite variable that differed between sweeteners was desire to eat, which had a higher area under the curve the day after Suc compared with HFCS. CONCLUSION: These short-term results suggest that, when fructose is consumed in the form of HFCS, the measured metabolic responses do not differ from Suc in lean women."
Studies like this one repeatedly show that the small added amount of fructose in HFCS (most of the time we're talking about 56% fructose in HFCS instead of 50% in sugar) simply don't make a difference nutritionally. Other studies have shown opposite results, and so it's something we need to continue to investigate. In the meantime I'll continue to avoid HFCS just because I don't want to support unnecessary protectionist measures for agricultural corporations that leech off us taxpayers, and also products made with HFCS tend to be very low quality anyway (shown by the manufacturer's desire to save a few pennies in any way possible, so they're probably compromising in other ways too), so if HFCS is also harmful to your health then I'll just continue to avoid it.
Also, I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but the obesity epidemic is happening in countries all around the world, not just America. If HFCS were the primary root cause of obesity it wouldn't be spreading in places like Europe that consume no HFCS.
You're right, the sugar quotas and corn subsidies raise prices (directly or indirectly) for almost all consumable items. The jury is still out on whether HFCS truly is tied to obesity (there are studies that go both ways, and TFA adds as far as I can tell nothing new to the debate), but there is absolutely no question that it kills us economically.
Just check out this research study that estimates that subtracting the benefits of the quotas/subsidies from the costs (i.e. consumer/producer benefits of lower costs minus "oh but the poor farming corporations!") leaves the American economy almost billion dollars per year better off.
They were in fact scheduled to coincide but you don't want them to actually overlap and make people have to deal with time conflicts. RSS was Wednesday through Saturday and as soon as it ended everybody who was involved in it could begin to focus on preparing for RoboCup which officially commenced yesterday (Monday).
Having submitted this story (yes that's me up there) I thought this deserved a mention since Slashdot has reported on RoboCup in the past (2001, 2002) 2004, 2006).
I'm also covering this for our campus newspaper (click my name above for the preview article in last week's issue), so if anybody has anything they wanted to know or see pictures of let me know and I can try to make it happen. As I was bogged down with classes today I haven't seen any of the robots compete yet (although last week I "met" some still-unfinished robots being built by Georgia Tech students) but I intend to spend at least a few hours there tomorrow and every day the rest of the week.
(BTW, is anybody on here a participant in the event?)
Screw them. Until E-bay institutes a much needed "overtime" change, I will never do business anymore. I'm tired of all the 1-second-till-end phantom biding programs and online services screwing me over.
Evidently the people who use these programs want the items you are bidding on more than you do, or it would not matter that they are entering last-minute bids. Enter as your maximum bid the highest possible price you would want to buy the item for, and it won't matter if somebody enters a bid at the last possible moment because you will automatically outbid them.
If you are not willing to do this, chances are the other person wants the item more than you do (i.e. is willing to pay more for it, no matter when they entered their bid) and thus you don't deserve to win it. The system is not broken.
Not under the Wikipedia guidelines which state that "Original research (OR) is a term used in Wikipedia to refer to unpublished facts, arguments, concepts, statements, or theories." I presented two different publications.
You presented zero publications which explicitly asserted that Posada was framed. Honestly, I hadn't seen the other reply to your post when I posted but he makes your misunderstanding abundantly clearer, much better than I was able to. Reread that other post, over and over if you have to, until you understand the difference between your own original research (as well-sourced as it may be) and that of a reliable authority.
Correction: me and about 26100 other people are claiming that.
Now take the next step and find, in those results, a reputable site who says that Posada was framed, and that that photograph of the AK-47 was part of it. Then you can say "But according to So and So Respected Source, the photograph clearly shows an AK-47 mismatched with the wrong sized ammunition". That sentence will fit into the "No Original Research" rule, and the attribution to the external source making the claim MAKES ALL THE DIFFERENCE!
This is, in no way at all, an "original idea", it's a carefully constructed criticism with sources fully cited. As I said in my other post, this is a crude attempt at framing, based on that evidence alone, Posada Carriles would be acquitted in any civilized court of justice.
Of course it is original. As far as your posts show, YOU, and nobody else with any authority on the subject, are claiming that Posada was framed. While the evidence you have supplied comes from an external entity and it might make your claim more convincing (note I am not commenting on the truth of the claim either way; I know little about Cuba and less about guns), it changes nothing about the fact that you added your own original research, and not that of another respected authority, into the encyclopedia article.
The most important rule that Wikipedia has (and one of the least observed) is that every statement or fact should be attributable to a source with authority. It's called "No original research and it is supposed to make Wikipedia reliable by ensuring that any old crackpot can't use Wikipedia articles as their soapbox for their theories. Again, I'm not saying your claim isn't correct or that you are a crackpot, but that rule applies to everybody, not just people who are correct (because everybody thinks they are correct).
As another poster suggested, the way to correct this injustice you perceive is to make your claim to a media outlet or a publisher, and when somebody with authority on the topic makes the claim that Posada was framed, then it will be appropriate to add that into the article.
It's not so much hyperbole as it is just being totally off the mark. IANACL (Canadian), but I am not aware of any laws being broken when a customer and theater engage in a contract whereby the customer agrees to be frisked in exchange for admittance into a movie. If the customer doesn't want to be searched he is free to leave, at which point a forceful search against his will would be the only conceivable way this policy would deny him or her any of his "Rights and Freedoms". In fact, "freedom" is allowing businesses and customers to make consentual agreements with each other depending on each one's circumstances.
According to some of you, a search policy would be a make-or-break issue for an average prospective movie seer. As somebody who flies a lot and typically has to wait 15 minutes to get through security, I'm thinking people really won't care very much.
I used to have an iCarPlay, but one of the ones where you can only pick from the preset frequencies. I normally don't have anger issues, but one day my device... broke.
I live in Atlanta, where like all big cities you will have an extremely tough time finding an unused frequency. I settled on 88.3 MHz, which is 0.2 MHz away from a 100,000 W college station and thus gets a lot of interference from that, but at least your music will mostly come in clear. The problem is, that's what everybody else uses for their iPod radio transmitters, and once in a while somebody with a better transmitter will bump your music off your radio.
This happened to me one day at a stop light. I was in an extremely bad mood, and also running late to somewhere I didn't want to be in the first place, and suddenly some SUV pulls up in the lane beside me, and my precious music (the only thing keeping me sane at the time) turns into Whitesnake. With crystal clarity, clearer than my music would ever come in. Incredulous, I turned my radio off and let my passenger window down, to make sure that SUV was the source of the music. Sure enough, I heard Whitesnake blasting out of there.
Well, to make a long story short, before the light turned green my iCarPlay was in about 15 pieces and I am now trying to shop for a replacement. =/
I'm glad to see at least one other person actually realizes what's going on. The government has nothing to do with this combination license/credit card other than the fact that they provide the piece of plastic it uses. Other than their already existing civilian surveillance methods they will have no knowledge of the purchases you make.
Sorry, while this story is upsetting, I'm not really outraged when somebody is falsely arrested, as long as they are not falsely convicted, and as long as the basis for the arrest was honest and without any malice or impropriety. I certainly would like to see the number of innocent people arrested minimized, and in that sense maybe we can learn something about how field testing methods can be less than reliable, and maybe in certain cases their findings should have to be corroborated before they can be used to arrest somebody. I was just kind of annoyed that the detail of "this person's situation has been totally resolved" was not included in the writeup.
By the way, it looks like this all fell down on him because he consented to a search of his vehicle. Take note, Slashdotters: you will never benefit by forfeiting your 4th amendment right to not be searched without a warrant, and the fact that you're not knowingly breaking any laws shouldn't make you feel like there's no way you can get arrested. Clearly, we've seen this is not the case.
Editors, I wish you'd take five seconds to review what you are putting up. TFA is from April 11 (that's eleven days ago), and since then he has been released. A discussion of the faultiness of field testing methods might be in order but you need to properly set the stage for said discussion, otherwise it gets derailed when people get alarmed about the fact that somebody is sitting in jail right now for a mistake and then somebody (in this case me) has to come and point out that the whole thing has actually been resolved.
Look at the bottom of that form. It is a felony to lie about any of the information you supply. As a result, they include questions like "Are you or were you ever found mentally ill?" so that if you are later arrested (or otherwise attract the attention of law enforcement) and they go back and figure out you lied on that form about your mental health, they can throw you in jail for it or otherwise increase your penalties. It doesn't do you much good in this situation, of course, when the connection is only figured out after the guy is dead.
And you also can't count the number of times it has given you erroneous information because you don't bother to verify what its entries say. But ignorance is bliss, right?
It seems like with the tides turning against the RIAA and its members (Sony, Universal, EMI, Warner, et al) that their next act of massive dickheadedness will be to lobby Congress, under cries of massive copyright infringement destroying their industry, that music will die as long as this loophole exists of being able to play host to illegal activity, so long as you aren't aware of it, with no penalties for not taking any preventative measures. Of course I don't think that will kill music at all but the RIAA has a little more sway than me with Congress.:)
So how long until the owner of an internet service account becomes responsible, no matter what, for what happens via their connection? When incompetence and ignorance are no longer valid excuses? It honestly looks inevitable to me, because it's not like the RIAA is just going to roll over and I hardly think free distribution (aka free advertising) will appeal to them if they haven't gotten the clue this far.
You are right about being able to use a phone on Amtrak trains (if you can get reception in wherever the train happens to be). But having travelled a total distance of about 800 miles on Amtrak trains in the past year I would say the atmosphere of a plane cabin is considerably different from that of one of their trains, and while it might be okay to use it on a train I'd really hate to have to deal with it on airplanes. You usually have much more personal space on the train with the rows further apart, so you probably won't be able to hear the conversation of anyone who is not sitting beside you because the train is so loud -- or at least, maybe the train seems louder than an plane engine because its noise isn't as uniform and easy to tune out.
Maybe you didn't read the summary or you don't fly much but from the summary:
It will also offer discounted options for customers and tie into existing service programs like T-Mobile, iPass and Boingo.
Those services listed all cost about $10 per day and at most airports they are your only wireless internet options; for instance, here in Atlanta when you connect to the wireless network you can only access the airport information site and the menu of wifi providers so you can purchase one of their internet service packages. It sucks (especially since I used to live in Pittsburgh where they offer it for free), however, it seems like the market has shown that it will support a price of $10 to connect to the internet during your air travel, so it only makes sense that when they are extending the airport wifi structure to the actual airplane they use the same distribution mechanisms and the same pricing scheme.
Ok, April fool's joke aside, what the heck is up with that patent that it is linked to?
Abstract: This directory tab would aid in organizing and tracking files in a suspended filing system. The quick reference directory saves the user time and provides a handy at-a-glance feature to a filing system. This directory tab is designed to eliminate sorting through a suspended folder; it allows the user to look at the directory and visually see what's in a folder. Its design also permits additions or deletions in a quick and efficient manner. The directory tab is designed to allow office personnel who are in need of a particular item within a suspended file folder the ability to date and initial the directory tab. In doing so, the next user that comes along needing the same information will be able to identify who has it in a quick and efficient manner.
Good grief, they'll let you patent ANYTHING won't they?
All the cool universities are switching to Sakai, an open source system. We're getting it next school year at Georgia Tech, but tons of other schools have already begun using it.
That's one idea, and a good one. However not all porn can be live, it's simply not feasible for certain types. I would say the best way to prevent piracy and ensure that SOMEBODY finances the production of the stuff would be to slap it with invisible, personally identifying watermarks. If they are spotted on pictures and images found in the wild, so to speak, your subscription is cancelled and you don't get a refund.
Although that might make people want to give them all away the day before their subscription ends, so that part I'm not sure about yet.:)
"why would you want to let other people make money off of deterring cheaters by using your work - without you seeing a penny of the profit".
Because it's not evil for a company to make money? And without the added value that your paper receives by being in an easily searchable database of millions of texts, it is essentially worthless after you have been graded on it? And because by preventing plagiarism and upholding honesty in academics they are providing a public service, even if, GASP, they are profiting off of it, the same way countless other companies in various fields do?
If the students are legally in the right, then kudos to them for their upcoming payday. But Slashdot is the last place where I would have expected to see everybody saying copyright owners inherently deserve god-like control of what anyone, anywhere does with their copyrighted works. (this isn't directed at the parent in particular, but at the discussion in general)
I didn't think anything I said was inconsistent with many if not most "niche" bands being of low quality due to lack of talent and/or production capabilities, and likewise a large number of popular bands being of high quality. I might even concede that many or most naturally gifted and technically proficient artists usually sign big record deals and receive heavy radio airplay: for instance, the band in your sig.:)
However, depending on your tastes, some or MOST of the quality (in your subjective view) will be found in the niche or independent artists. In that case you can either ignore it and just decide it's not worth the pursuit (after all you can't vacation to EVERY south Pacific island), or you can try to locate it (in my opinion, one of the things that life is really all about, finding great art that stimulates your senses and mind). If you select the latter, the hardest part of finding good quality music by little known bands really is wading through all the crap. And the fact that it IS mostly crap has been kind of an unspoken, even subconscious strike against any kind of obscure artist (guilt by association, so to speak), in the eyes of the casual music fan. But as more alternative channels of music distribution spring up, especially those that are genuinely caterred to the individual listener, that distinction really will not be applicable anymore.
Bingo. For a large portion of the population, and probably for a majority of the dollars being spent on music, a song's quality is a function of the frequency with which they're hearing it and the places they're hearing it from. Being a part of a niche market is no good because few people go out of their way to find good music, they wait for it to come to them.
On the other hand the blunt force trauma method of assaulting the listener via repetitive radio plays, television promos, etc, conveys to the listener that this is "the new song" from "the new band", and instantly adds a level of perceived quality to the music because certainly it is impossible that everybody would be going crazy about this new band unless they were pretty good...right? And if this unknown band was any good they'd be heard on a mainstream source by now...right?
No one gives a second thought that a musician might not want to alter their art to suit the "lowest common denominator" market that popular music must appeal to. Luckily we are quickly moving to a system where good music can find you on the Internet even if you're hardly trying, and the public will inadvertently relieve the RIAA of its stranglehold and abusive domination of not an industry, but a form of art and human expression.
Your comment makes no sense. Any number of other commodities would lose all their value if suddenly they had no use to people anymore, and it's not a scenario that's unique to imaginary assets. If Second Life "dies" you are left with a valueless property, the same way that an exodus of people and businesses or an environmental disaster might leave real life property worthless.
A smart investor will not put his money in something that has the risk of becoming valueless. Evidently, Linden has made many people very confident that their world will be not just up and functioning but thriving for a long time to come, and therefore its land has legitimate value in the same way that anything else might.
Slashdot Mirror
I was told in the KDE channel on Freenode that Dolphin will be an alternative (and default) file browser, but that Konqueror will still retain that functionality. Nitpicking the submission, but I thought it was worth pointing out.
No, I'm not a shill (but thanks for resorting to ad homimem). I just prefer to rely on solid evidence before jumping to conclusions. Here, read this for example:
Effects of high-fructose corn syrup and sucrose consumption on circulating glucose, insulin, leptin, and ghrelin and on appetite in normal-weight women.
"The only appetite variable that differed between sweeteners was desire to eat, which had a higher area under the curve the day after Suc compared with HFCS. CONCLUSION: These short-term results suggest that, when fructose is consumed in the form of HFCS, the measured metabolic responses do not differ from Suc in lean women."
Studies like this one repeatedly show that the small added amount of fructose in HFCS (most of the time we're talking about 56% fructose in HFCS instead of 50% in sugar) simply don't make a difference nutritionally. Other studies have shown opposite results, and so it's something we need to continue to investigate. In the meantime I'll continue to avoid HFCS just because I don't want to support unnecessary protectionist measures for agricultural corporations that leech off us taxpayers, and also products made with HFCS tend to be very low quality anyway (shown by the manufacturer's desire to save a few pennies in any way possible, so they're probably compromising in other ways too), so if HFCS is also harmful to your health then I'll just continue to avoid it.
Also, I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but the obesity epidemic is happening in countries all around the world, not just America. If HFCS were the primary root cause of obesity it wouldn't be spreading in places like Europe that consume no HFCS.
You're right, the sugar quotas and corn subsidies raise prices (directly or indirectly) for almost all consumable items. The jury is still out on whether HFCS truly is tied to obesity (there are studies that go both ways, and TFA adds as far as I can tell nothing new to the debate), but there is absolutely no question that it kills us economically.
Just check out this research study that estimates that subtracting the benefits of the quotas/subsidies from the costs (i.e. consumer/producer benefits of lower costs minus "oh but the poor farming corporations!") leaves the American economy almost billion dollars per year better off.
They were in fact scheduled to coincide but you don't want them to actually overlap and make people have to deal with time conflicts. RSS was Wednesday through Saturday and as soon as it ended everybody who was involved in it could begin to focus on preparing for RoboCup which officially commenced yesterday (Monday).
Having submitted this story (yes that's me up there) I thought this deserved a mention since Slashdot has reported on RoboCup in the past (2001, 2002) 2004, 2006).
I'm also covering this for our campus newspaper (click my name above for the preview article in last week's issue), so if anybody has anything they wanted to know or see pictures of let me know and I can try to make it happen. As I was bogged down with classes today I haven't seen any of the robots compete yet (although last week I "met" some still-unfinished robots being built by Georgia Tech students) but I intend to spend at least a few hours there tomorrow and every day the rest of the week.
(BTW, is anybody on here a participant in the event?)
Evidently the people who use these programs want the items you are bidding on more than you do, or it would not matter that they are entering last-minute bids. Enter as your maximum bid the highest possible price you would want to buy the item for, and it won't matter if somebody enters a bid at the last possible moment because you will automatically outbid them.
If you are not willing to do this, chances are the other person wants the item more than you do (i.e. is willing to pay more for it, no matter when they entered their bid) and thus you don't deserve to win it. The system is not broken.
You presented zero publications which explicitly asserted that Posada was framed. Honestly, I hadn't seen the other reply to your post when I posted but he makes your misunderstanding abundantly clearer, much better than I was able to. Reread that other post, over and over if you have to, until you understand the difference between your own original research (as well-sourced as it may be) and that of a reliable authority.
Now take the next step and find, in those results, a reputable site who says that Posada was framed, and that that photograph of the AK-47 was part of it. Then you can say "But according to So and So Respected Source, the photograph clearly shows an AK-47 mismatched with the wrong sized ammunition". That sentence will fit into the "No Original Research" rule, and the attribution to the external source making the claim MAKES ALL THE DIFFERENCE!
Of course it is original. As far as your posts show, YOU, and nobody else with any authority on the subject, are claiming that Posada was framed. While the evidence you have supplied comes from an external entity and it might make your claim more convincing (note I am not commenting on the truth of the claim either way; I know little about Cuba and less about guns), it changes nothing about the fact that you added your own original research, and not that of another respected authority, into the encyclopedia article.
The most important rule that Wikipedia has (and one of the least observed) is that every statement or fact should be attributable to a source with authority. It's called "No original research and it is supposed to make Wikipedia reliable by ensuring that any old crackpot can't use Wikipedia articles as their soapbox for their theories. Again, I'm not saying your claim isn't correct or that you are a crackpot, but that rule applies to everybody, not just people who are correct (because everybody thinks they are correct).
As another poster suggested, the way to correct this injustice you perceive is to make your claim to a media outlet or a publisher, and when somebody with authority on the topic makes the claim that Posada was framed, then it will be appropriate to add that into the article.
It's not so much hyperbole as it is just being totally off the mark. IANACL (Canadian), but I am not aware of any laws being broken when a customer and theater engage in a contract whereby the customer agrees to be frisked in exchange for admittance into a movie. If the customer doesn't want to be searched he is free to leave, at which point a forceful search against his will would be the only conceivable way this policy would deny him or her any of his "Rights and Freedoms". In fact, "freedom" is allowing businesses and customers to make consentual agreements with each other depending on each one's circumstances.
According to some of you, a search policy would be a make-or-break issue for an average prospective movie seer. As somebody who flies a lot and typically has to wait 15 minutes to get through security, I'm thinking people really won't care very much.
I used to have an iCarPlay, but one of the ones where you can only pick from the preset frequencies. I normally don't have anger issues, but one day my device ... broke.
I live in Atlanta, where like all big cities you will have an extremely tough time finding an unused frequency. I settled on 88.3 MHz, which is 0.2 MHz away from a 100,000 W college station and thus gets a lot of interference from that, but at least your music will mostly come in clear. The problem is, that's what everybody else uses for their iPod radio transmitters, and once in a while somebody with a better transmitter will bump your music off your radio.
This happened to me one day at a stop light. I was in an extremely bad mood, and also running late to somewhere I didn't want to be in the first place, and suddenly some SUV pulls up in the lane beside me, and my precious music (the only thing keeping me sane at the time) turns into Whitesnake. With crystal clarity, clearer than my music would ever come in. Incredulous, I turned my radio off and let my passenger window down, to make sure that SUV was the source of the music. Sure enough, I heard Whitesnake blasting out of there.
Well, to make a long story short, before the light turned green my iCarPlay was in about 15 pieces and I am now trying to shop for a replacement. =/
I'm glad to see at least one other person actually realizes what's going on. The government has nothing to do with this combination license/credit card other than the fact that they provide the piece of plastic it uses. Other than their already existing civilian surveillance methods they will have no knowledge of the purchases you make.
Sorry, while this story is upsetting, I'm not really outraged when somebody is falsely arrested, as long as they are not falsely convicted, and as long as the basis for the arrest was honest and without any malice or impropriety. I certainly would like to see the number of innocent people arrested minimized, and in that sense maybe we can learn something about how field testing methods can be less than reliable, and maybe in certain cases their findings should have to be corroborated before they can be used to arrest somebody. I was just kind of annoyed that the detail of "this person's situation has been totally resolved" was not included in the writeup.
By the way, it looks like this all fell down on him because he consented to a search of his vehicle. Take note, Slashdotters: you will never benefit by forfeiting your 4th amendment right to not be searched without a warrant, and the fact that you're not knowingly breaking any laws shouldn't make you feel like there's no way you can get arrested. Clearly, we've seen this is not the case.
Editors, I wish you'd take five seconds to review what you are putting up. TFA is from April 11 (that's eleven days ago), and since then he has been released. A discussion of the faultiness of field testing methods might be in order but you need to properly set the stage for said discussion, otherwise it gets derailed when people get alarmed about the fact that somebody is sitting in jail right now for a mistake and then somebody (in this case me) has to come and point out that the whole thing has actually been resolved.
Look at the bottom of that form. It is a felony to lie about any of the information you supply. As a result, they include questions like "Are you or were you ever found mentally ill?" so that if you are later arrested (or otherwise attract the attention of law enforcement) and they go back and figure out you lied on that form about your mental health, they can throw you in jail for it or otherwise increase your penalties. It doesn't do you much good in this situation, of course, when the connection is only figured out after the guy is dead.
And you also can't count the number of times it has given you erroneous information because you don't bother to verify what its entries say. But ignorance is bliss, right?
It seems like with the tides turning against the RIAA and its members (Sony, Universal, EMI, Warner, et al) that their next act of massive dickheadedness will be to lobby Congress, under cries of massive copyright infringement destroying their industry, that music will die as long as this loophole exists of being able to play host to illegal activity, so long as you aren't aware of it, with no penalties for not taking any preventative measures. Of course I don't think that will kill music at all but the RIAA has a little more sway than me with Congress. :)
So how long until the owner of an internet service account becomes responsible, no matter what, for what happens via their connection? When incompetence and ignorance are no longer valid excuses? It honestly looks inevitable to me, because it's not like the RIAA is just going to roll over and I hardly think free distribution (aka free advertising) will appeal to them if they haven't gotten the clue this far.
You are right about being able to use a phone on Amtrak trains (if you can get reception in wherever the train happens to be). But having travelled a total distance of about 800 miles on Amtrak trains in the past year I would say the atmosphere of a plane cabin is considerably different from that of one of their trains, and while it might be okay to use it on a train I'd really hate to have to deal with it on airplanes. You usually have much more personal space on the train with the rows further apart, so you probably won't be able to hear the conversation of anyone who is not sitting beside you because the train is so loud -- or at least, maybe the train seems louder than an plane engine because its noise isn't as uniform and easy to tune out.
Those services listed all cost about $10 per day and at most airports they are your only wireless internet options; for instance, here in Atlanta when you connect to the wireless network you can only access the airport information site and the menu of wifi providers so you can purchase one of their internet service packages. It sucks (especially since I used to live in Pittsburgh where they offer it for free), however, it seems like the market has shown that it will support a price of $10 to connect to the internet during your air travel, so it only makes sense that when they are extending the airport wifi structure to the actual airplane they use the same distribution mechanisms and the same pricing scheme.
Good grief, they'll let you patent ANYTHING won't they?
All the cool universities are switching to Sakai, an open source system. We're getting it next school year at Georgia Tech, but tons of other schools have already begun using it.
That's one idea, and a good one. However not all porn can be live, it's simply not feasible for certain types. I would say the best way to prevent piracy and ensure that SOMEBODY finances the production of the stuff would be to slap it with invisible, personally identifying watermarks. If they are spotted on pictures and images found in the wild, so to speak, your subscription is cancelled and you don't get a refund.
Although that might make people want to give them all away the day before their subscription ends, so that part I'm not sure about yet.
Because it's not evil for a company to make money? And without the added value that your paper receives by being in an easily searchable database of millions of texts, it is essentially worthless after you have been graded on it? And because by preventing plagiarism and upholding honesty in academics they are providing a public service, even if, GASP, they are profiting off of it, the same way countless other companies in various fields do?
If the students are legally in the right, then kudos to them for their upcoming payday. But Slashdot is the last place where I would have expected to see everybody saying copyright owners inherently deserve god-like control of what anyone, anywhere does with their copyrighted works. (this isn't directed at the parent in particular, but at the discussion in general)
I didn't think anything I said was inconsistent with many if not most "niche" bands being of low quality due to lack of talent and/or production capabilities, and likewise a large number of popular bands being of high quality. I might even concede that many or most naturally gifted and technically proficient artists usually sign big record deals and receive heavy radio airplay: for instance, the band in your sig. :)
However, depending on your tastes, some or MOST of the quality (in your subjective view) will be found in the niche or independent artists. In that case you can either ignore it and just decide it's not worth the pursuit (after all you can't vacation to EVERY south Pacific island), or you can try to locate it (in my opinion, one of the things that life is really all about, finding great art that stimulates your senses and mind). If you select the latter, the hardest part of finding good quality music by little known bands really is wading through all the crap. And the fact that it IS mostly crap has been kind of an unspoken, even subconscious strike against any kind of obscure artist (guilt by association, so to speak), in the eyes of the casual music fan. But as more alternative channels of music distribution spring up, especially those that are genuinely caterred to the individual listener, that distinction really will not be applicable anymore.
Bingo. For a large portion of the population, and probably for a majority of the dollars being spent on music, a song's quality is a function of the frequency with which they're hearing it and the places they're hearing it from. Being a part of a niche market is no good because few people go out of their way to find good music, they wait for it to come to them.
On the other hand the blunt force trauma method of assaulting the listener via repetitive radio plays, television promos, etc, conveys to the listener that this is "the new song" from "the new band", and instantly adds a level of perceived quality to the music because certainly it is impossible that everybody would be going crazy about this new band unless they were pretty good...right? And if this unknown band was any good they'd be heard on a mainstream source by now...right?
No one gives a second thought that a musician might not want to alter their art to suit the "lowest common denominator" market that popular music must appeal to. Luckily we are quickly moving to a system where good music can find you on the Internet even if you're hardly trying, and the public will inadvertently relieve the RIAA of its stranglehold and abusive domination of not an industry, but a form of art and human expression.
Your comment makes no sense. Any number of other commodities would lose all their value if suddenly they had no use to people anymore, and it's not a scenario that's unique to imaginary assets. If Second Life "dies" you are left with a valueless property, the same way that an exodus of people and businesses or an environmental disaster might leave real life property worthless.
A smart investor will not put his money in something that has the risk of becoming valueless. Evidently, Linden has made many people very confident that their world will be not just up and functioning but thriving for a long time to come, and therefore its land has legitimate value in the same way that anything else might.