You have a fair point, but there's the other side to things too. At least part of the reason there's been an attempt to redefine "intelligence" as something touchy-feely by some people is that there's an attempt by other people to conflate "intelligent" with "good in math and science" with "worthwhile human beings". Basically some people who happen to score high on IQ tests are trying to push the idea that we need to let people with high IQs run the world, because they're better than everyone else. (Yes, I scored pretty well on IQ tests when I've taken them, but no, I don't think they're a good measure of a person's worth)
But then on the other hand, there has been a tendency to restrict "intelligence" to the math/science arena much more than is proper, given what we really mean by "intelligence". We get wrapped up in testing how smart people are by testing their ability to take a square root in their head, or in asking questions about geometry or science. You get a model of intelligence where Rain Man is smarter than us all.
I think it's fair, though, to talk about "emotional intelligence" insofar as intelligence includes abilities that enable us to figure things out mentally. The ability to understand ones own mind, to understand social situations, and to navigate difficult interpersonal problems is within the realm of "intelligence". I would say that "street smarts" is a kind of intelligence. I've certainly known people who always aced all the tests in school, but at the same time couldn't be trusted to cross a street without getting run over because they were complete dumbasses. Because of that, I don't think it's right to say that "intelligence" is a simple 1 dimensional scale, and it's certainly not something that's measured well by IQ tests.
But anyway, I'm not sure any of this is what the author of this article has in mind (can't be sure, only RTFS). I think the idea is more like, "When thinking about intelligence abstractly, or in thinking about AI, we tend to assume that intelligence should be measured in a thing's ability to think about the things we think about the way we think about them. This might be a mistake." Imagine you had an alien intelligence that had no ears, only saw in X-rays, and had a thick hide that provided adequate shelter from the elements. Would you assume it was stupid because it didn't develop spoken language? If it hadn't made clothes for itself or built itself housing, would you assume that it was less intelligent than cave men?
There's a strong philosophical argument that intelligence requires some kind of motivation or drive. It might follow, then, that the measurement of intelligence ought to be in measuring the efficacy of satisfying that drive, rather than satisfying the drives of other beings (us).
Ah, but a chair only has a finite lifespan. So if it falls apart after 3 years of normal use I would probably not be responsible for fixing it.
I think a very important part of the issue is that a chair degrades naturally. If someone was storing media files without a backup, and the hard drive died of "natural causes", then you could argue that it's comparable to the chair failing. The store isn't necessarily responsible for replacing it.
But imagine I started selling chairs with a built in remote-controlled self-destruct mechanism, and I didn't explain that self-destruct mechanism to my customers at the point of sale. Years later, I engage that self-destruct mechanism, and everyone's perfectly good chairs fall apart.
Wouldn't it be reasonable, then, to assign me some responsibility for the customer losing his chair? Wouldn't you think it was fair for me to either (a) replace the chair with a non-self-destructing version; or (b) refund the money for the original purchase?
In essence, because a license is supposed to be a sort of contract, it's like saying they want to be able to not only dictate all the terms in said contract/license scheme (as they already do, one way or another), but they also want a couple of "open clauses" that they can fill in later on, essentially nullifying the other part's contractual rights, if, when and where they see fit.
Yes, I think the key thing here is that you're not buying the song, you're buying a license. AFAIK for most of these stores, there's some clause in the license that says something like, "We reserve the right to revoke this license for any reason."
I think be big problem here is really false advertising. You aren't buying the music in the way people think when they hear the word "buy". Online stores which use DRM should not be permitted to use the word "buy" or "purchase" unless it's clear that you're purchasing a unilaterally revokable license.
This kind of thing really scares me... If the worst has happened, CentOS will be forced to fork their project and start over.
Is that actually scary? I'm far from an expert on this, but isn't CentOS mostly just RHEL repackaged? And isn't the source for CentOS itself available? How hard would it be to fork or start over?
I ask because my first thought was to think, "This must be sarcastic," but then I realized I don't really know what I'm talking about, and there might be some kind of issue I'm not considering.
I would go further than that and say that there's something about "having a relentless ego" that tends to work against "being great". Having some kind of an ego can help. It can make you more bold and assertive and willing to pursue your own good ideas even when others are unconvinced. On the other hand, being unwilling to acknowledge your own mistakes and shortcomings leaves you prone to repeat mistakes. Also, having such a large ego that you're prevented from working well with others often ends up with sub-standard output-- because let's face it, we generally can't do it alone, whatever "it" is.
In this example, Torvalds may be brilliant, but he certainly hasn't built Linux all by himself, and it's very unlikely that he could have built it himself. In order to produce the Linux kernel, he had to work with others. And he must not always be too awful to work with, or someone would have forked the kernel a long time ago.
Let me guess, it's arrogant of me to say that there are higher standards and that anyone who wants to can work towards them, but it's not arrogant for you to deny the humanity of a stranger because you dislike his message?
It's all well and good to try to set standards for yourself and then try to live up to them. It's another thing to sit up on your high horse and talk like everyone else in the world are stupid little sheep, and to assume that you're somehow above it all, and you don't fall prey to any of their petty weaknesses.
I'm not really trying to claim that you're inhuman. I'm just mocking the degree to which you seem to have decided that you're better than everyone else. Sure, there's a degree to which everyone sees the rest of humanity as mindless sheep, and that's a natural sort of delusion that we have because we're all human. But take it too far, and you're just paranoid.
Anarchism has the same inherent problem as laissez faire capitalism-- if you leave situations unregulated, power has a tendency to pool together. People with small natural advantages are able to gather larger advantages to themselves until they become significantly more powerful than others. Over time, you end up with very powerful people who can prey on the weak.
I don't think the Philosopher King was meant to be taken all that seriously. Socrates is often sarcastic, leading the discussion in directions that he knows won't work out.
It's more like, "Imagine the quality of lawyers who would come out of law school if it were involuntary, only people who didn't want to be lawyers were chosen, it lasted 25 years, and you got treated like crap the whole time-- even after you became a lawyer."
It IS a character flaw. It comes from mindlessly carrying out a task. It's the opposite of acting in a deliberate, strategic, planned fashion based on your own independent decision-making.
Ok, well I suppose you might be some kind of freak who has no actual human qualities. Good for you. For everyone else in the world, we occasionally follow our instincts and conditioning. For mere mortals (not you, who I'm sure is a veritable god on earth) there is absolutely no way around it. All the mindfulness in the world will ultimately not allow you to cease following your instincts and conditioned responses. You may as well be trying to prevent your reflex from kicking your leg when the doctor taps your knee.
What's worse, it's stupid to be so mindful of little everyday crap all the time. There's a reason why your brain allows you to run on autopilot when doing certain things. When I'm walking down the street, should I be thinking, "Left, right, left, right, left, right. Don't walk too close to that guy, Wait, now you're too far. Make sure you're swinging your arms while you walk, or else it looks weird. Left, right, left, right." It would be stupid, and what's worse, it would prevent my mind from thinking about more important things, such as where I'm going. I mean, not you, obviously. You're a god among men, don't suffer from such frailties, and have unlimited cognitive abilities.
Now honestly, I'd agree with you if you were simply saying that people should be more mindful on the road. It's a dangerous place, and we take it too lightly. But trying to make it about people being "sheep" is just a little silly. If you were human, you'd understand that every single person who drives for any length of time will eventually space out for a little while. Every one. Every single person will occasional fall into some unconscious pattern of following someone else on the road without noticing. All people have unconscious/subconscious forces that help in driving their behavior, and by definition they aren't very aware of it.
I've always thought that the trouble with both systems is that they rely on altruistic people being in charge
You could argue that's the problem in all power structure systems people have invented. Underlying them all, somewhere you always get to "who you're putting in charge" and hoping that person (or those people) are honorable/benevolent enough to want to run the system in a just/beneficial way, and also wise/skilled enough to do it well. The inherent problem is always, "What happens when someone else, not matching that description, gets themselves into power." Even anarchism, in putting each person in charge of himself, supposes that people will individually be good enough to run their own lives without encroaching too far on everyone else's.
It would be great if *someone* were focusing on creating a ubiquitous high-speed data network that provided open access to anyone using any hardware, so long as they were willing to pay a reasonable and flat monthly fee.
The problem with the Marxist/Capitalist debate is (IMO, of course) that both are more or less correct in assessing the weakness of the other system, but each overvalues its own strengths and refuses to acknowledge their own weaknesses.
Advocates of each system essentially base their support on two assertions:
The alternative is flawed and problematic.
If you institute my favored system, everything will suddenly work perfectly and nothing will go wrong.
The problem is in the second assertion, not the first.
I really don't think they intend to do it. I think they're just such sheep that they cannot even independently choose their own speed.
You make it sound like it a character flaw particular to specific people, but I'm sure it's just an instinctual thing we all have. We're basically pack animals. It's like birds when they're flying in a flock; they instinctually form a nice little pattern. Now in a pack, someone is going to be the alpha, but that person is still participating in the pack dynamic. They aren't simply "doing their own thing". You can consciously choose not to participate to some degree, but I bet that when you aren't paying very close attention, you fall into some of these patterns yourself.
If I were to draw something out of your examples, it would be that we probably do all sorts of silly little things because we aren't paying very close attention. Some degree of road hypnosis is common. Have you ever been driving somewhere where you're familiar with the trip, thinking about something else, and suddenly you arrive without really remembering how you got there?
IMO, it's a good argument for why we shouldn't take driving so lightly, and should invest more in forms of public transportation, which are often more safe.
Especially now that they've told people about it. It's bad enough, the idea that there's a known flaw in the design of these towers that would allow some guy with an iPhone to cripple our telecommunications infrastructure. What's worse is that they're apparently relying on obscurity (i.e. no one figuring out this bug out) in order to keep the towers safe. What's even worse is that Apple just told everyone that this flaw exists, and that it can be exploited with an iPhone.
it could be because there are just so many more iPhones on AT&T they are really worried about the data load
I don't think it's just the number of iPhones, but that people with iPhones actually use their Internet access. People actually use the web browser on their phone pretty often, which I don't think was the case with previous phones because mobile browsers have generally sucked. Blackberries were often used by geeks and executives who were primarily fetching text emails. The iPhone is being picked up by the YouTube generation and they want to browse the web, upload and download photos and even videos.
AT&T wants to sell you their internet access, but they don't want you to actually use it.
This isn't too surprising. At the time the App store was announced, there were vague implications that one of the major reason Apple wanted approval over applications (beyond issues like maintaining battery life, stability, user experience) was that AT&T wanted to control what was and wasn't allowed.
It was stated outright at launch that VOIP apps that allowed use over the cell networks wouldn't be allowed at all. It was implied that tethering applications and IM clients (which compete with SMS) would probably not be allowed. (Chat clients are now allowed, though.) Apple even said something about, "Since we have been given unprecedented access to AT&T's network, we're going to have to limit what we allow in order to be very careful about security,"... whatever that's supposed to mean.
I really hope that, as the iPhone/iPod-Touch platform matures a bit, the wireless networks also become faster and, just as important, more open, and that Apple opens the whole system up. I want to be able to access the filesystem on my iPhone (and not have my MP3 collection hidden), install applications as easily as I install applications on my computer, and run whatever I want. On that day, if the wireless network is any good, I'll drop my cell phone service, buy an iPod touch, and install a VOIP application.
I would love to see some developers taking a run at the adventure genre in general. I guess there's a new Monkey Island game, but I'm a little afraid to plunk down money since I haven't read any reviews. But I was a big fan of the Sierra games when I was a kid. Quest for Glory and Space Quest were my favorite series.
Another great adventure game that's not nearly famous enough was Out of this World. It was a very simple game as far as the controls, and the graphics weren't very advanced, but they were cool. It was kind of more like a Prince of Persia platformer, but with enough story and puzzles to warrant placement in the "Adventure" category. I'd love to see someone create a Sands of Time grade remake of that game.
I think you have a decent point in that there is a pro-file-sharing contingent in Slashdot. On the other hand, there are a lot of us who just dislike the bullying tactics of the big record companies, which seem to abuse both the customers and artists that they depend on.
So yes, if piracy is down and sales are up, then it seems reasonable to assume that those two are connected. But what's the cause? Are sales up because piracy is down, and if so, then why is piracy down? Are those RIAA lawsuits with million-dollar judgements scaring people in the UK into "being good"? Or is it possible that piracy is down because sales are up? Is there some way that the record companies have done a better job at selling legitimate distribution?
The article you link to suggest that they "are now streaming music regularly from places like YouTube, MySpace, and Spotify." So that wouldn't account for increased sales unless you count "streaming" as a sale. Plus, the article says:
File sharing still happens, of course, and the number of users who have ever gone to P2P for music has increased to 31 percent, up from 28 percent in December of 2007. The report also pointed out that people were still giving music to each other the old-fashioned way.
"More fans are regularly sharing burned CDs and bluetoothing tracks to each other than file-sharing tracks," said the report.
So this news isn't uniformly about file sharing and "free" music diminishing.
Highest quality 1080p is said to consume 1GB/minute.
Is that right? I thought completely uncompressed 1080p was supposed to be something like 3Gbps. Looking at the wikipedia:
The movie industry has embraced 1080p24 as a digital mastering format in both native 24p form and in 24PsF form.... For live broadcast applications, a high-definition progressive scan format operating at 1080p at 50 or 60 frames per second is currently being evaluated... as it has doubled the data rate of current 50 or 60 fields interlaced 1920 Ã-- 1080 from 1.485 Gbit/s to nominally 3 Gbit/s.
Ok, so it looks like that's a future standard. But 1920x1080 * 3 channels * 8 bits per channel * 24 frames per second = about 1.2Gbps, right? I don't know if the cameras have good compression built in, but 1GB/minute still sounds low to me. Is my math wrong?
Anyway, point taken. There's a use for compact large-capacity hard drives.
Have you studied up on the new Intel X25-M G2 drives? Apparently they're nice and fast, and the G2 drives are much cheaper than the G1 drives. Still not cheap, but getting there.
so, wouldn't it be better to have a smaller, but more energy efficient and thougher disk better ?
But making smaller, more energy efficient disks also mean that it's easier to fit bigger, higher capacity disks into the same packaging. It's part of the same deal.
I mean, yes, I agree with what you're saying. Putting this drive in my laptop would be overkill. My laptop is currently only using 25 GB. But the nice thing about having lots of different options is everyone can get what they want. With the new flash-based notebook drives, I can get a small, fast, energy-efficient drive, and with this release the guy who actually has use for a 1TB drive in his laptop will be able to get it. We all win.
It seems to me like the real killer app for a HUD is when you can have augmented reality built into your normal glasses. It would normally require a transparent screen, though, or a virtually transparent screen (by mounting a camera on the HUD which shows you what is in the field of vision being blocked by the display.
Of course, there's some danger there, too. No doubt some dumbass would use that sort of thing while driving, only to have the "augmented reality" block his vision of real reality, thereby causing an accident.
Slashdot Mirror
You have a fair point, but there's the other side to things too. At least part of the reason there's been an attempt to redefine "intelligence" as something touchy-feely by some people is that there's an attempt by other people to conflate "intelligent" with "good in math and science" with "worthwhile human beings". Basically some people who happen to score high on IQ tests are trying to push the idea that we need to let people with high IQs run the world, because they're better than everyone else. (Yes, I scored pretty well on IQ tests when I've taken them, but no, I don't think they're a good measure of a person's worth)
But then on the other hand, there has been a tendency to restrict "intelligence" to the math/science arena much more than is proper, given what we really mean by "intelligence". We get wrapped up in testing how smart people are by testing their ability to take a square root in their head, or in asking questions about geometry or science. You get a model of intelligence where Rain Man is smarter than us all.
I think it's fair, though, to talk about "emotional intelligence" insofar as intelligence includes abilities that enable us to figure things out mentally. The ability to understand ones own mind, to understand social situations, and to navigate difficult interpersonal problems is within the realm of "intelligence". I would say that "street smarts" is a kind of intelligence. I've certainly known people who always aced all the tests in school, but at the same time couldn't be trusted to cross a street without getting run over because they were complete dumbasses. Because of that, I don't think it's right to say that "intelligence" is a simple 1 dimensional scale, and it's certainly not something that's measured well by IQ tests.
But anyway, I'm not sure any of this is what the author of this article has in mind (can't be sure, only RTFS). I think the idea is more like, "When thinking about intelligence abstractly, or in thinking about AI, we tend to assume that intelligence should be measured in a thing's ability to think about the things we think about the way we think about them. This might be a mistake." Imagine you had an alien intelligence that had no ears, only saw in X-rays, and had a thick hide that provided adequate shelter from the elements. Would you assume it was stupid because it didn't develop spoken language? If it hadn't made clothes for itself or built itself housing, would you assume that it was less intelligent than cave men?
There's a strong philosophical argument that intelligence requires some kind of motivation or drive. It might follow, then, that the measurement of intelligence ought to be in measuring the efficacy of satisfying that drive, rather than satisfying the drives of other beings (us).
Ah, but a chair only has a finite lifespan. So if it falls apart after 3 years of normal use I would probably not be responsible for fixing it.
I think a very important part of the issue is that a chair degrades naturally. If someone was storing media files without a backup, and the hard drive died of "natural causes", then you could argue that it's comparable to the chair failing. The store isn't necessarily responsible for replacing it.
But imagine I started selling chairs with a built in remote-controlled self-destruct mechanism, and I didn't explain that self-destruct mechanism to my customers at the point of sale. Years later, I engage that self-destruct mechanism, and everyone's perfectly good chairs fall apart.
Wouldn't it be reasonable, then, to assign me some responsibility for the customer losing his chair? Wouldn't you think it was fair for me to either (a) replace the chair with a non-self-destructing version; or (b) refund the money for the original purchase?
This scenario seems more comparable to DRM.
In essence, because a license is supposed to be a sort of contract, it's like saying they want to be able to not only dictate all the terms in said contract/license scheme (as they already do, one way or another), but they also want a couple of "open clauses" that they can fill in later on, essentially nullifying the other part's contractual rights, if, when and where they see fit.
Yes, I think the key thing here is that you're not buying the song, you're buying a license. AFAIK for most of these stores, there's some clause in the license that says something like, "We reserve the right to revoke this license for any reason."
I think be big problem here is really false advertising. You aren't buying the music in the way people think when they hear the word "buy". Online stores which use DRM should not be permitted to use the word "buy" or "purchase" unless it's clear that you're purchasing a unilaterally revokable license.
This kind of thing really scares me... If the worst has happened, CentOS will be forced to fork their project and start over.
Is that actually scary? I'm far from an expert on this, but isn't CentOS mostly just RHEL repackaged? And isn't the source for CentOS itself available? How hard would it be to fork or start over?
I ask because my first thought was to think, "This must be sarcastic," but then I realized I don't really know what I'm talking about, and there might be some kind of issue I'm not considering.
Are you, by any chance, this guy?
I would go further than that and say that there's something about "having a relentless ego" that tends to work against "being great". Having some kind of an ego can help. It can make you more bold and assertive and willing to pursue your own good ideas even when others are unconvinced. On the other hand, being unwilling to acknowledge your own mistakes and shortcomings leaves you prone to repeat mistakes. Also, having such a large ego that you're prevented from working well with others often ends up with sub-standard output-- because let's face it, we generally can't do it alone, whatever "it" is.
In this example, Torvalds may be brilliant, but he certainly hasn't built Linux all by himself, and it's very unlikely that he could have built it himself. In order to produce the Linux kernel, he had to work with others. And he must not always be too awful to work with, or someone would have forked the kernel a long time ago.
Let me guess, it's arrogant of me to say that there are higher standards and that anyone who wants to can work towards them, but it's not arrogant for you to deny the humanity of a stranger because you dislike his message?
It's all well and good to try to set standards for yourself and then try to live up to them. It's another thing to sit up on your high horse and talk like everyone else in the world are stupid little sheep, and to assume that you're somehow above it all, and you don't fall prey to any of their petty weaknesses.
I'm not really trying to claim that you're inhuman. I'm just mocking the degree to which you seem to have decided that you're better than everyone else. Sure, there's a degree to which everyone sees the rest of humanity as mindless sheep, and that's a natural sort of delusion that we have because we're all human. But take it too far, and you're just paranoid.
Anarchism has the same inherent problem as laissez faire capitalism-- if you leave situations unregulated, power has a tendency to pool together. People with small natural advantages are able to gather larger advantages to themselves until they become significantly more powerful than others. Over time, you end up with very powerful people who can prey on the weak.
I don't think the Philosopher King was meant to be taken all that seriously. Socrates is often sarcastic, leading the discussion in directions that he knows won't work out.
It's more like, "Imagine the quality of lawyers who would come out of law school if it were involuntary, only people who didn't want to be lawyers were chosen, it lasted 25 years, and you got treated like crap the whole time-- even after you became a lawyer."
It IS a character flaw. It comes from mindlessly carrying out a task. It's the opposite of acting in a deliberate, strategic, planned fashion based on your own independent decision-making.
Ok, well I suppose you might be some kind of freak who has no actual human qualities. Good for you. For everyone else in the world, we occasionally follow our instincts and conditioning. For mere mortals (not you, who I'm sure is a veritable god on earth) there is absolutely no way around it. All the mindfulness in the world will ultimately not allow you to cease following your instincts and conditioned responses. You may as well be trying to prevent your reflex from kicking your leg when the doctor taps your knee.
What's worse, it's stupid to be so mindful of little everyday crap all the time. There's a reason why your brain allows you to run on autopilot when doing certain things. When I'm walking down the street, should I be thinking, "Left, right, left, right, left, right. Don't walk too close to that guy, Wait, now you're too far. Make sure you're swinging your arms while you walk, or else it looks weird. Left, right, left, right." It would be stupid, and what's worse, it would prevent my mind from thinking about more important things, such as where I'm going. I mean, not you, obviously. You're a god among men, don't suffer from such frailties, and have unlimited cognitive abilities.
Now honestly, I'd agree with you if you were simply saying that people should be more mindful on the road. It's a dangerous place, and we take it too lightly. But trying to make it about people being "sheep" is just a little silly. If you were human, you'd understand that every single person who drives for any length of time will eventually space out for a little while. Every one. Every single person will occasional fall into some unconscious pattern of following someone else on the road without noticing. All people have unconscious/subconscious forces that help in driving their behavior, and by definition they aren't very aware of it.
I've always thought that the trouble with both systems is that they rely on altruistic people being in charge
You could argue that's the problem in all power structure systems people have invented. Underlying them all, somewhere you always get to "who you're putting in charge" and hoping that person (or those people) are honorable/benevolent enough to want to run the system in a just/beneficial way, and also wise/skilled enough to do it well. The inherent problem is always, "What happens when someone else, not matching that description, gets themselves into power." Even anarchism, in putting each person in charge of himself, supposes that people will individually be good enough to run their own lives without encroaching too far on everyone else's.
It would be great if *someone* were focusing on creating a ubiquitous high-speed data network that provided open access to anyone using any hardware, so long as they were willing to pay a reasonable and flat monthly fee.
Is that really such a crazy idea?
Agree. We need to add some more Gs in there, so I can download music quickly and play it in my speakers that go all the way up to 11.
The problem with the Marxist/Capitalist debate is (IMO, of course) that both are more or less correct in assessing the weakness of the other system, but each overvalues its own strengths and refuses to acknowledge their own weaknesses.
Advocates of each system essentially base their support on two assertions:
The problem is in the second assertion, not the first.
I really don't think they intend to do it. I think they're just such sheep that they cannot even independently choose their own speed.
You make it sound like it a character flaw particular to specific people, but I'm sure it's just an instinctual thing we all have. We're basically pack animals. It's like birds when they're flying in a flock; they instinctually form a nice little pattern. Now in a pack, someone is going to be the alpha, but that person is still participating in the pack dynamic. They aren't simply "doing their own thing". You can consciously choose not to participate to some degree, but I bet that when you aren't paying very close attention, you fall into some of these patterns yourself.
If I were to draw something out of your examples, it would be that we probably do all sorts of silly little things because we aren't paying very close attention. Some degree of road hypnosis is common. Have you ever been driving somewhere where you're familiar with the trip, thinking about something else, and suddenly you arrive without really remembering how you got there?
IMO, it's a good argument for why we shouldn't take driving so lightly, and should invest more in forms of public transportation, which are often more safe.
Security by obscurity does not get you very far.
Especially now that they've told people about it. It's bad enough, the idea that there's a known flaw in the design of these towers that would allow some guy with an iPhone to cripple our telecommunications infrastructure. What's worse is that they're apparently relying on obscurity (i.e. no one figuring out this bug out) in order to keep the towers safe. What's even worse is that Apple just told everyone that this flaw exists, and that it can be exploited with an iPhone.
it could be because there are just so many more iPhones on AT&T they are really worried about the data load
I don't think it's just the number of iPhones, but that people with iPhones actually use their Internet access. People actually use the web browser on their phone pretty often, which I don't think was the case with previous phones because mobile browsers have generally sucked. Blackberries were often used by geeks and executives who were primarily fetching text emails. The iPhone is being picked up by the YouTube generation and they want to browse the web, upload and download photos and even videos.
AT&T wants to sell you their internet access, but they don't want you to actually use it.
This isn't too surprising. At the time the App store was announced, there were vague implications that one of the major reason Apple wanted approval over applications (beyond issues like maintaining battery life, stability, user experience) was that AT&T wanted to control what was and wasn't allowed.
It was stated outright at launch that VOIP apps that allowed use over the cell networks wouldn't be allowed at all. It was implied that tethering applications and IM clients (which compete with SMS) would probably not be allowed. (Chat clients are now allowed, though.) Apple even said something about, "Since we have been given unprecedented access to AT&T's network, we're going to have to limit what we allow in order to be very careful about security,"... whatever that's supposed to mean.
I really hope that, as the iPhone/iPod-Touch platform matures a bit, the wireless networks also become faster and, just as important, more open, and that Apple opens the whole system up. I want to be able to access the filesystem on my iPhone (and not have my MP3 collection hidden), install applications as easily as I install applications on my computer, and run whatever I want. On that day, if the wireless network is any good, I'll drop my cell phone service, buy an iPod touch, and install a VOIP application.
I would love to see some developers taking a run at the adventure genre in general. I guess there's a new Monkey Island game, but I'm a little afraid to plunk down money since I haven't read any reviews. But I was a big fan of the Sierra games when I was a kid. Quest for Glory and Space Quest were my favorite series.
Another great adventure game that's not nearly famous enough was Out of this World. It was a very simple game as far as the controls, and the graphics weren't very advanced, but they were cool. It was kind of more like a Prince of Persia platformer, but with enough story and puzzles to warrant placement in the "Adventure" category. I'd love to see someone create a Sands of Time grade remake of that game.
I think you have a decent point in that there is a pro-file-sharing contingent in Slashdot. On the other hand, there are a lot of us who just dislike the bullying tactics of the big record companies, which seem to abuse both the customers and artists that they depend on.
So yes, if piracy is down and sales are up, then it seems reasonable to assume that those two are connected. But what's the cause? Are sales up because piracy is down, and if so, then why is piracy down? Are those RIAA lawsuits with million-dollar judgements scaring people in the UK into "being good"? Or is it possible that piracy is down because sales are up? Is there some way that the record companies have done a better job at selling legitimate distribution?
The article you link to suggest that they "are now streaming music regularly from places like YouTube, MySpace, and Spotify." So that wouldn't account for increased sales unless you count "streaming" as a sale. Plus, the article says:
File sharing still happens, of course, and the number of users who have ever gone to P2P for music has increased to 31 percent, up from 28 percent in December of 2007. The report also pointed out that people were still giving music to each other the old-fashioned way.
"More fans are regularly sharing burned CDs and bluetoothing tracks to each other than file-sharing tracks," said the report.
So this news isn't uniformly about file sharing and "free" music diminishing.
Oh, I didn't understand, when I read your original post, that you were specifically opposed to starving the "stupid people".
Highest quality 1080p is said to consume 1GB/minute.
Is that right? I thought completely uncompressed 1080p was supposed to be something like 3Gbps. Looking at the wikipedia:
The movie industry has embraced 1080p24 as a digital mastering format in both native 24p form and in 24PsF form.... For live broadcast applications, a high-definition progressive scan format operating at 1080p at 50 or 60 frames per second is currently being evaluated... as it has doubled the data rate of current 50 or 60 fields interlaced 1920 Ã-- 1080 from 1.485 Gbit/s to nominally 3 Gbit/s.
Ok, so it looks like that's a future standard. But 1920x1080 * 3 channels * 8 bits per channel * 24 frames per second = about 1.2Gbps, right? I don't know if the cameras have good compression built in, but 1GB/minute still sounds low to me. Is my math wrong?
Anyway, point taken. There's a use for compact large-capacity hard drives.
Have you studied up on the new Intel X25-M G2 drives? Apparently they're nice and fast, and the G2 drives are much cheaper than the G1 drives. Still not cheap, but getting there.
so, wouldn't it be better to have a smaller, but more energy efficient and thougher disk better ?
But making smaller, more energy efficient disks also mean that it's easier to fit bigger, higher capacity disks into the same packaging. It's part of the same deal.
I mean, yes, I agree with what you're saying. Putting this drive in my laptop would be overkill. My laptop is currently only using 25 GB. But the nice thing about having lots of different options is everyone can get what they want. With the new flash-based notebook drives, I can get a small, fast, energy-efficient drive, and with this release the guy who actually has use for a 1TB drive in his laptop will be able to get it. We all win.
It seems to me like the real killer app for a HUD is when you can have augmented reality built into your normal glasses. It would normally require a transparent screen, though, or a virtually transparent screen (by mounting a camera on the HUD which shows you what is in the field of vision being blocked by the display.
Of course, there's some danger there, too. No doubt some dumbass would use that sort of thing while driving, only to have the "augmented reality" block his vision of real reality, thereby causing an accident.