While I hate thieves more than most, it is quite maddening and ironic that we put software pirates away for longer than we do child rapists.
On the one hand, you have someone who was convicted of several thousand counts of software piracy. Comparing that to what someone gets for maybe a dozen acts of rape would be useful to factor in. On the other hand, if a child rapist is going away for less than 7 years, a fix would start by putin them away for longer.
Remember to always factor in the number of counts in the conviction. I could easily come up with a way that could get me sentenced to 1000+ years in prison. Many counts of mail fraud can get anyone put away for longer than any serial killer has been sentenced to.
120 frames/s progresive, 3840x2160 @ 16x9 screen resolution. The point is to exceed the eyes visual limits. There was one demonstration given where they used a similar resolution than that and about the same fps. People got motion sickness from the demo because it was so realistic. That is the engineers goal.
Afterall, they haven't been able to supplant the music CD as the prefered hardcopy method yet.
Music CDs aren't a good comparison. First, CD quality encoding is high enough that I've only met one, maybe two people who can tell the difference between it and any higher quality of music. Both of the two I know had very good hearing above 20khz. That's why the wav format it uses hasn't been replaced yet. As to the medium of the CD itself. For music at that quality, you don't need anything more for 99.99% of the market. The standard album length is 45 minutes. A music CD will hold 70 standard. Until they start putting other stuff on the disks, the CD will remain.
The one thing I could see hapening is taking one of the newer methods, DVD,HD, Blueray, making a disk that stores about a gig (at most), but has a much smaller diameter, and turning that into the new music format. Basically, think of music CDs that are only two inches in diameter, tops.
Video is much different in that as you scale up the screen size, artifacts and distortion appears. The solution is to up the pixel count (like HD did) which ups the bitrate. The goal, as I understand it, is to eventually have a 2160 line movie at 120fps. At that point, a few TV engineers I've met believe that humans won't be able to tell the difference between TV and seeing with their own eyes.
Ah, but the commentators would have experience controlling the view from the first person perspective, and more importantly, from the perspective of one teams side. If I'm watching, I'm going to want a "Grand Strategy" (think a generals) overview instead of a single players perspective. Watching a game from over one persons shoulder is a lot different than trying to watch both teams at once. Kind of like in a football game, the difference between a helmet cam and what you see from above the field.
Actually, you could probably get the sports anouncers to give some tips on what needs to be shown and leave the announcing to the players.
Doesn't CS have a map interface where you can watch the match from a bird's eye point of view?
Never played it so I can't say. One problem with birds eye views is that if you have multiple levels and can go inside of buildings or (as in several levels in other games I know of) it all takes place inside a cave, a birds eye isn't that useful. About the only thing I can figure out that would be needed would be a 3d radar map that would tell you where everyone is and some birds eyes of where the action is. Along with, as you say, people comentating on what is going on.
Look at LAN parties, do you see people sat back watching the action in large numbers? No, instead everyone sees that Dust is on and jumps into the action. Games just arent fun to watch.
To me it just doesnt seem like entertainment, I dont want to watch other people play games I want to play it myself - thats what games are for.
I watch people play the games. Especially DDR and fighting games. I find it more interesting than sports, actually. Super Smash Bros is a fun one to watch from outside the game as you get to laugh at all the ways people die.
The main problem with this is going to be the FPS games as there is no way to see everything at once. They would have to come up with a complete interface for the audience to see the whole field at once for the genre. Otherwise, if the action is taking place in two places, you're going to miss out on something.
Now if we could adapt this law to work on the physical mailbox
Slight problem with this. By law, you do not 'own' the mailbox, even the one in front of your house. The USPS 'owns' it. At least, it is considered their property for all intensive purposes.
I've found Caller ID usefull. I've learned the numbers/areas that the telemarketers usually use and just ignore the calls at that point. It's also useful when a friend/relative calls and I can pickup say, one sec or I'll get him, and hand the phone to the person they usally call to talk to. After a year, they all knew we had caller ID and did't care.
Africa showed evidence of brain surgery as early as 3,000 B.C. in papyrus writings found in Egypt. "Brain," the actual word itself, is used here for the first time in any language. Egyptian knowledge of anatomy may have been rudimentary, but the ancient civilization did contribute important notations on the nervous system.
Whatever your answer, don't preach either way please.
I wish a lot of people felt this way. I'd rather have the raw numbers than anything else.
A question for you on the some of hte things you mentioned. Are you keeping track of how much you save/cut electricity by? I'd love to have real world numbers on some of these things. For example, how much less electricity is used on the electric/ceramic oven over a standard coil electric? What is a "white good"? Does solar water-heating have a backup for when you are without sunshine for a few days (Say, the electric grid?) or for heavy usage days?
To give an example of the real world stories, I am currently renting a room in a house. I got to talking to the landlord one day and found out he was able to cut the electricity needed for lighting the house by 60% by switching to CFL over Incandescent. As I said, I love real world numbers.
One thing I didn't see you mention, and wondered if you had switched yet, is if you are using some of the new heat pumps that have come out.
I hate to say it, but from what I've read about the PS3 and it's cost components, it seems to me that Sony should have followed Microsofts lead and released the 1st gen PS3 without Blue-Ray. As I understand it, that alone would have allowed a several hundred dollar price cut and would make it competitive with the 360. Also, given the lack of blue lasers out there, it would help with manufacturing as well. Then, in a year or two when the Blue Ray drives have come down in price, they could release the 2nd gen PS3s with Blue-Ray. One revolution per generation seems to be enough.
One thing I'm curious about. I wonder if one reason MS delayed shiping the 360 with an HD-DVD drive was to see if Blue-Ray would come out on top over HD-DVD and make sure that they didn't support the losing side prematurely. Basically, even though MS says they are commited to HD-DVD, if it flops they could just put Blue-Ray drives in the 2nd gen 360s instead.
According to your article, the process started in 1999. Bush didn't take office until 2001. It had been going on for over a year by the time the Bush administration even took office.
)Are there any machines available that are not crippled in this way?
The PRV-LX1 is a profesional level DVD recorder that should not suffer these problems you speak of. There is also the associated DVD players they offer as well.
The short of it is, the companies are doing something extra to bork over the customers with the stuff. A proper DVD recorder/player and VCR should have no problems playing back something from another machine so long as they both are following the standard.
How do you create a market for a product, and make money of a product that has a huge initial creative investment, but then no manufacturing cost, and is in infinite supply?
I'm assuming you're asking about CDs and DVDs for one thing. For those two, it's all about the extras. Little things that don't cost much but are bonuses like the prize in a ceral box. For example, including full lyrics in the CD booklet. Or a collectors card/photo with either a picture of the singer/band or something on it. Basically, you release something that isn't as easy to distribute digitally.
There's probably other things you can do as well. Those are what I've seen done before. It's a nice treat for the fans.
From Wiki: Note that coal power plants are the single largest source of mercury emissions into the environment. According to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), (when coal power is used) the mercury released from powering an incandescent bulb for five years exceeds the sum of the mercury released by powering a comparably luminous CFL for the same period and the mercury contained in the lamp.
Given that, and that the Incandescents use 4-5 times as much electricity as Flourescents, that meanst that switching to a Flourescent, even though it contains mercury, will actually reduce mercury emmisions, if you get power from coal.
So remember, if you want to reduce mercury, you should first work to eliminate coal power plants.
Not gonna happen. What Congress did do, I believe, is pass something about having standby consume less than 1 watt.
try to find ways for consumer electronics to generate DC power more efficiently
Higher power devices already do this. Start with computers with active power correction and Energy Star Compliance. Efficiency is another thing they are working on as well. I've got a 1100 watt microwave at home that consumes less power than an 800 watt bought 20 years ago. Heat pumps are more efficient now as well, including a two stage posted on slashdot a few months back are even more so. Refergerators are also improving. Efficiency is improving. It just takes time for it to develope and work it's way down. Or would you rather mandate that everyone replace their appliances every five years too?
The main problem with AC/DC Converters is that at higher power consumption, they typically become less efficient. This is partly due to the technologies involved. Switching power supplies are +90% efficient. However, they are solid state and do have a limit to how much power they can supply and still be cost effective. Higher power models require other, more traditional and less efficient converters. The converters can't get much more efficient any time soon. As the more efficient converters drop in price, you'll see them in cheaper applications. In the mean time, efficiency of the device itself is, for now, the best way to go, not in the converters.
I see nothing in the story that is not simple facts about the case and what has reportedly been found in a police investigation.
Precisely. A proper impartial jury is not supposed to know anything about a case prior to the start of the trial.
(For the defense) Depending on how UK law works, it could be used as evidence that members of the Jury have been biased towards believing that the suspects are guilty before the trial begins. In the US, sometimes measures are taken that include moving the trials several hundred miles from the area the crime was commited to find an impartial jury. If an impartial jury can not be found, I don't know if that is grounds for a misstrial or a case dismissal. In the US, if it is found afterwards that the jury was not impartial, it is grounds for an apeal.
Reading the article there is information mentioned that could bias an individual against the defendants.
I see only the facts that a great many people likely want to learn about the investigation, facts that the investigators have chosen to reveal.
Interesting to note is that some of the quotes mentioned are from people who were not supposed to talk about the investigation. The facts that people want to learn could wait until a jury has been selected. As for the publishing of information, any that the investigators have officially revealed I see no reason why that information should not be published (if the investigators have publisized it, it would be their fault and not the NY Times for doing so). It would be some of the non-officially published information that could cause problems.
If TOR ransomizes your IP, that could be a problem as well. It means that I can't try to claim to be in a specific jurisdiction if I wanted to. Say, BBC Content only available in the UK or NY Times content only available in the US.
Good journalism doesn't involve censoring oneself because someone else wants you to do so. In fact, good journalism can and often is the very act of doing the opposite. If you're going to argue that journalistic censorship is a good thing, you then open the door to arguments such as "we shouldn't be talking about Falun Gong and the people who practice it because China hates that" or "we shouldn't be publishing anything that dictator X of country Y feels doesn't advance his/her causes" (in that case, we wouldn't know about illegal warrantless wiretapping here in the US, for example, because the publishing of the story was not in line with the power grab plans of the government).
Good journalism is also about knowing when to delay publishing a story. As an example, a lot of WW2 operations were revealed ahead of time and the germans were getting inteligence from the newspapers. Had the reporters not kept quiet about D-Day, it most likely would have failed.
Well, since no one appears to have said it yet, I guess this is one reason to support your local proxy server. The people in the UK should be able to just connect through a US based proxy server and see what their law does not allow them to see.
So they get about the same return as relatively safe investments and all it takes is a whole bunch of extra work and risk.
I think the article means 4.9% to 6% per scam, meaning they make that in about two days, not over the course of one year. 4.9%, compounded once every two days for one year comes out to over 500,000%
Slashdot Mirror
Ok then, let me rephrase. Several thousand acts of software piracy. One act for each sale.
While I hate thieves more than most, it is quite maddening and ironic that we put software pirates away for longer than we do child rapists.
On the one hand, you have someone who was convicted of several thousand counts of software piracy. Comparing that to what someone gets for maybe a dozen acts of rape would be useful to factor in. On the other hand, if a child rapist is going away for less than 7 years, a fix would start by putin them away for longer.
Remember to always factor in the number of counts in the conviction. I could easily come up with a way that could get me sentenced to 1000+ years in prison. Many counts of mail fraud can get anyone put away for longer than any serial killer has been sentenced to.
120 frames/s progresive, 3840x2160 @ 16x9 screen resolution. The point is to exceed the eyes visual limits. There was one demonstration given where they used a similar resolution than that and about the same fps. People got motion sickness from the demo because it was so realistic. That is the engineers goal.
Afterall, they haven't been able to supplant the music CD as the prefered hardcopy method yet.
Music CDs aren't a good comparison. First, CD quality encoding is high enough that I've only met one, maybe two people who can tell the difference between it and any higher quality of music. Both of the two I know had very good hearing above 20khz. That's why the wav format it uses hasn't been replaced yet. As to the medium of the CD itself. For music at that quality, you don't need anything more for 99.99% of the market. The standard album length is 45 minutes. A music CD will hold 70 standard. Until they start putting other stuff on the disks, the CD will remain.
The one thing I could see hapening is taking one of the newer methods, DVD,HD, Blueray, making a disk that stores about a gig (at most), but has a much smaller diameter, and turning that into the new music format. Basically, think of music CDs that are only two inches in diameter, tops.
Video is much different in that as you scale up the screen size, artifacts and distortion appears. The solution is to up the pixel count (like HD did) which ups the bitrate. The goal, as I understand it, is to eventually have a 2160 line movie at 120fps. At that point, a few TV engineers I've met believe that humans won't be able to tell the difference between TV and seeing with their own eyes.
Ah, but the commentators would have experience controlling the view from the first person perspective, and more importantly, from the perspective of one teams side. If I'm watching, I'm going to want a "Grand Strategy" (think a generals) overview instead of a single players perspective. Watching a game from over one persons shoulder is a lot different than trying to watch both teams at once. Kind of like in a football game, the difference between a helmet cam and what you see from above the field.
Actually, you could probably get the sports anouncers to give some tips on what needs to be shown and leave the announcing to the players.
Doesn't CS have a map interface where you can watch the match from a bird's eye point of view?
Never played it so I can't say. One problem with birds eye views is that if you have multiple levels and can go inside of buildings or (as in several levels in other games I know of) it all takes place inside a cave, a birds eye isn't that useful. About the only thing I can figure out that would be needed would be a 3d radar map that would tell you where everyone is and some birds eyes of where the action is. Along with, as you say, people comentating on what is going on.
Look at LAN parties, do you see people sat back watching the action in large numbers? No, instead everyone sees that Dust is on and jumps into the action. Games just arent fun to watch.
To me it just doesnt seem like entertainment, I dont want to watch other people play games I want to play it myself - thats what games are for.
I watch people play the games. Especially DDR and fighting games. I find it more interesting than sports, actually. Super Smash Bros is a fun one to watch from outside the game as you get to laugh at all the ways people die.
The main problem with this is going to be the FPS games as there is no way to see everything at once. They would have to come up with a complete interface for the audience to see the whole field at once for the genre. Otherwise, if the action is taking place in two places, you're going to miss out on something.
Lieberman was (last I heard) running as an independant democrat. Even without the democratic nomination, he's running as a democrat part member.
Now if we could adapt this law to work on the physical mailbox
Slight problem with this. By law, you do not 'own' the mailbox, even the one in front of your house. The USPS 'owns' it. At least, it is considered their property for all intensive purposes.
I've found Caller ID usefull. I've learned the numbers/areas that the telemarketers usually use and just ignore the calls at that point. It's also useful when a friend/relative calls and I can pickup say, one sec or I'll get him, and hand the phone to the person they usally call to talk to. After a year, they all knew we had caller ID and did't care.
How's this?
Africa showed evidence of brain surgery as early as 3,000 B.C. in papyrus writings found in Egypt. "Brain," the actual word itself, is used here for the first time in any language. Egyptian knowledge of anatomy may have been rudimentary, but the ancient civilization did contribute important notations on the nervous system.
Whatever your answer, don't preach either way please.
I wish a lot of people felt this way. I'd rather have the raw numbers than anything else.
A question for you on the some of hte things you mentioned. Are you keeping track of how much you save/cut electricity by? I'd love to have real world numbers on some of these things. For example, how much less electricity is used on the electric/ceramic oven over a standard coil electric? What is a "white good"? Does solar water-heating have a backup for when you are without sunshine for a few days (Say, the electric grid?) or for heavy usage days?
To give an example of the real world stories, I am currently renting a room in a house. I got to talking to the landlord one day and found out he was able to cut the electricity needed for lighting the house by 60% by switching to CFL over Incandescent. As I said, I love real world numbers.
One thing I didn't see you mention, and wondered if you had switched yet, is if you are using some of the new heat pumps that have come out.
I hate to say it, but from what I've read about the PS3 and it's cost components, it seems to me that Sony should have followed Microsofts lead and released the 1st gen PS3 without Blue-Ray. As I understand it, that alone would have allowed a several hundred dollar price cut and would make it competitive with the 360. Also, given the lack of blue lasers out there, it would help with manufacturing as well. Then, in a year or two when the Blue Ray drives have come down in price, they could release the 2nd gen PS3s with Blue-Ray. One revolution per generation seems to be enough.
One thing I'm curious about. I wonder if one reason MS delayed shiping the 360 with an HD-DVD drive was to see if Blue-Ray would come out on top over HD-DVD and make sure that they didn't support the losing side prematurely. Basically, even though MS says they are commited to HD-DVD, if it flops they could just put Blue-Ray drives in the 2nd gen 360s instead.
According to your article, the process started in 1999. Bush didn't take office until 2001. It had been going on for over a year by the time the Bush administration even took office.
)Are there any machines available that are not crippled in this way?
The PRV-LX1 is a profesional level DVD recorder that should not suffer these problems you speak of. There is also the associated DVD players they offer as well.
The short of it is, the companies are doing something extra to bork over the customers with the stuff. A proper DVD recorder/player and VCR should have no problems playing back something from another machine so long as they both are following the standard.
How do you create a market for a product, and make money of a product that has a huge initial creative investment, but then no manufacturing cost, and is in infinite supply?
I'm assuming you're asking about CDs and DVDs for one thing. For those two, it's all about the extras. Little things that don't cost much but are bonuses like the prize in a ceral box. For example, including full lyrics in the CD booklet. Or a collectors card/photo with either a picture of the singer/band or something on it. Basically, you release something that isn't as easy to distribute digitally.
There's probably other things you can do as well. Those are what I've seen done before. It's a nice treat for the fans.
From Wiki:
Note that coal power plants are the single largest source of mercury emissions into the environment. According to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), (when coal power is used) the mercury released from powering an incandescent bulb for five years exceeds the sum of the mercury released by powering a comparably luminous CFL for the same period and the mercury contained in the lamp.
Given that, and that the Incandescents use 4-5 times as much electricity as Flourescents, that meanst that switching to a Flourescent, even though it contains mercury, will actually reduce mercury emmisions, if you get power from coal.
So remember, if you want to reduce mercury, you should first work to eliminate coal power plants.
I would also ban standby mode
Not gonna happen. What Congress did do, I believe, is pass something about having standby consume less than 1 watt.
try to find ways for consumer electronics to generate DC power more efficiently
Higher power devices already do this. Start with computers with active power correction and Energy Star Compliance. Efficiency is another thing they are working on as well. I've got a 1100 watt microwave at home that consumes less power than an 800 watt bought 20 years ago. Heat pumps are more efficient now as well, including a two stage posted on slashdot a few months back are even more so. Refergerators are also improving. Efficiency is improving. It just takes time for it to develope and work it's way down. Or would you rather mandate that everyone replace their appliances every five years too?
The main problem with AC/DC Converters is that at higher power consumption, they typically become less efficient. This is partly due to the technologies involved. Switching power supplies are +90% efficient. However, they are solid state and do have a limit to how much power they can supply and still be cost effective. Higher power models require other, more traditional and less efficient converters. The converters can't get much more efficient any time soon. As the more efficient converters drop in price, you'll see them in cheaper applications. In the mean time, efficiency of the device itself is, for now, the best way to go, not in the converters.
I see nothing in the story that is not simple facts about the case and what has reportedly been found in a police investigation.
Precisely. A proper impartial jury is not supposed to know anything about a case prior to the start of the trial.
(For the defense) Depending on how UK law works, it could be used as evidence that members of the Jury have been biased towards believing that the suspects are guilty before the trial begins. In the US, sometimes measures are taken that include moving the trials several hundred miles from the area the crime was commited to find an impartial jury. If an impartial jury can not be found, I don't know if that is grounds for a misstrial or a case dismissal. In the US, if it is found afterwards that the jury was not impartial, it is grounds for an apeal.
Reading the article there is information mentioned that could bias an individual against the defendants.
I see only the facts that a great many people likely want to learn about the investigation, facts that the investigators have chosen to reveal.
Interesting to note is that some of the quotes mentioned are from people who were not supposed to talk about the investigation. The facts that people want to learn could wait until a jury has been selected. As for the publishing of information, any that the investigators have officially revealed I see no reason why that information should not be published (if the investigators have publisized it, it would be their fault and not the NY Times for doing so). It would be some of the non-officially published information that could cause problems.
If TOR ransomizes your IP, that could be a problem as well. It means that I can't try to claim to be in a specific jurisdiction if I wanted to. Say, BBC Content only available in the UK or NY Times content only available in the US.
Good journalism doesn't involve censoring oneself because someone else wants you to do so. In fact, good journalism can and often is the very act of doing the opposite. If you're going to argue that journalistic censorship is a good thing, you then open the door to arguments such as "we shouldn't be talking about Falun Gong and the people who practice it because China hates that" or "we shouldn't be publishing anything that dictator X of country Y feels doesn't advance his/her causes" (in that case, we wouldn't know about illegal warrantless wiretapping here in the US, for example, because the publishing of the story was not in line with the power grab plans of the government).
Good journalism is also about knowing when to delay publishing a story. As an example, a lot of WW2 operations were revealed ahead of time and the germans were getting inteligence from the newspapers. Had the reporters not kept quiet about D-Day, it most likely would have failed.
Well, since no one appears to have said it yet, I guess this is one reason to support your local proxy server. The people in the UK should be able to just connect through a US based proxy server and see what their law does not allow them to see.
So they get about the same return as relatively safe investments and all it takes is a whole bunch of extra work and risk.
I think the article means 4.9% to 6% per scam, meaning they make that in about two days, not over the course of one year. 4.9%, compounded once every two days for one year comes out to over 500,000%
The US government gave big telecom $100 billion to roll out nationwide 45 megabit/sec symmetric fiber to every home and business.
Kindly site the source. Given that the ammount would have equaled 5% of the national budget, I doubt that it is true.
I've had the vinyl (yes, they use vinyl) clear plastic stick to the metal layer, and pull it right the fuck off.
Was this by any chance due to a lack of air-conditioning? I've never had this problem, but mine have all been kept below 85 degrees F.