Racially speaking, I don't see how that could be possible unless they were asked to input their skin colour. Otherwise, it would, by definition, be treating races equally, wouldn't it? Genders, however... more difficult, especially when you're looking at backgrounds.
I don't claim to know more than your average geek about quantum physics, but isn't the underlying assumption here that the placement of the delayed detector (to determine if it is detected as a wave or particle) would have to affect how the non-delayed photon is detected? If so, why is it that the detection of the non-delayed photon (which obviously happens first) does not influence the way in which the second photon is detected? Why would the second photon affect the first photon when the first photon is being detected, well, first? Wouldn't the first photon simply influence how the second one was detected? What obvious thing am I missing?
I really hope it works, despite that it does not add up to me. Faster-than-light communication would really revolutionize a lot of things on this planet and, eventually, beyond.
"... the only difference being it is caused by lack of self-control rather than a virus. "
I think you just answered your own question. Also, a lack of testosterone and/or a bit of glutonny and excess are slightly different than a terminal disease.
Heh, there's nothing green about big windows where I live at least. More A/C required in the summer, more heat in the winter. I suppose if a person was to work without light except for natural lighting that might make the difference, though. Except there are only about 6 hours of daylight here in the winters. That said, in the summer, you have about that many hours of darkness so it balances I suppose.
A fundamental tenant of the natural order is self-preservation. To ignore that and say "it's part of nature for us to destroy ourselves" is like a gazelle seeing a lion and not running because it knows its place in the food chain.
Heh, good point except that of course draft-N stuff tends to work with g etc. as well. So someone can't hack in and stream your files... just not as quickly.
While I see your point and would've modded this insightful had I not wanted to post, I disagree. A track, after all, is only another name for a song, which is still what a lot of musicians write these days. The term is archaic or at least is linked to physical media, but what is meant by it is still relevant. Likewise with albums, although to be fair this depends on the artist. An album is a collection of songs that often are recorded together, represent a theme, or for some reason are included together. While the term has been around since the days of vinyl (despite its comeback of late, it's still an obsolete technology) its meaning has always reflected the concept rather than the medium.
I'm not really one for picking and choosing tracks, but that's because I like the flow and construction and usually accompanying artwork of an album. There are artists for whom it's all about the hit or whatever, and for them, yes, album is an obsolete term and probably a waste of time since various parties write the songs, they get bought and paid for and sung and generally put out on an album with a bunch of garbage that really shouldn't have been put out in the first place. But thankfully it's not all like that in the music world...
That's insightful but your conclusion is fallacious for a few reasons. First of all, the reason there is trouble modeling these items traditionally is because the cost, unlike for an album or piece of software, is primarily a fixed overhead. You pay the money in advance to either software developers or engineers or studios or bands and that is your largest cost. Pricing either software or music at the raw material price plus a small margin is at best risky and quite likely doomed. You need to recover the time and money invested into the creation process. Incidentally, this model is used but altered in many other consumer electronics, where they charge a premium to early adopters and as competition comes on stream, lower the prices. That's why the money is there for the first ones out the door.
Now, here's where they've gone wrong in _my_ opinion. The established industry is basically the early adopters. They were around on vinyl and cassette and CD long before it was easy for you or I, thanks to the internet and computer recording/editing software, to produce and distribute our own music. In essence, to compete with the early adopters. And so, the value of music, particularly soulless music generated by an industry that had expended its energies in the last decade on promoting image over substance and generating a formula for determining the likelihood of a song being a 'hit', declines. Because others are able to produce in many cases a far superior product (i.e. one that is authentic and has soul) for a lower cost. Because they are not paying for the overhead that the established industry has mired itself in and the artists are not after millions of dollars anyway.
Think of it this way. Company X releases product Y. Let's say it's Sony and Blu-ray. There's no competition or equivalent out, so they can charge $5000 for a player (which probably doesn't even play at this point) and do so happily, recovering some of their DRM R&D. Then HD-DVD comes along. Microsoft et al decide to price it quite a bit lower than $5000. Now, in the normal scenario, Sony would respond by matching or beating their price, driving the cost-to-consumer down as has happened with vanilla DVD drives, CD drives, and countless other tech in the past. Imagine instead that Sony continues to keep their price at $5000. Furthermore, they introduce tough measures so that HD-DVD players can not read BluRay and sue the pants off anyone who tries to circumvent that. Meanwhile, HD-DVD offers better features, more rights, lower price, and none of that bullshit. They allow their discs to play on BluRay players, knowing that this is a competitive advantage. Sony sticks to the $5000 and insists that people hacking BluRay is their problem.
It seems not only pretty obvious what will happen to Sony but that this would be unthinkable strategy in any other situation. It also seems obvious what Sony could've done to maintain their early lead and, if nothing else, maintain some relevance. That the record industry is choosing to go this route is no surprise to me, but still one would hope a little clear-headed shrewdness would see that the model has changed and they're no longer the only kids on the block. What DOES surprise me is how cohesively the industry is bound together to resist change. I would think the successful radio stations would be those who embrace the new competitors as well as the old farts, but I see none of those popping up. I would think that more brick and mortar music stores would establish a concrete and creative presence online, but iTunes clearly dominates. I would think more artists would want less DRM so ANYbody can buy/listen to their music, not just people with MP3 player X. And I would think that by now music sites would offer full listens/previews of albums, perhaps just at reduced quality, which would, at least for me, mitigate the need to hunt for things on filesharing networks anyway. Or even find a way to make the sharing networks work for them.
This is a long and drawn out analysis, especially for someone whose only real business experience comes from running a restaurant and a little thing I optimistically call common sense./rant
Of course that's logical and probably correct... in which case you have to ask yourself what the real point is to these threat levels. If you can't post them before the threat is removed for fear of tipping your hand, then how do they possibly assist the public? Yesterday would've been a time when the public deserved to be on "critical threat" notification since there was a very high risk of something happening (assuming that this isn't trumped up for some reason).
What if the attacks had gone a day early? What use would the 'terror' scale be? It is clearly completely useless and serves only to panic the public. That it was put up after the threat was addressed raises two possibilities. 1) That they're worried about those that have inevitably slipped through the nets. 2) That there is some political capital to be gained from citizens who feel threatened, perhaps from impending and inherently unpopular policy change.
Time will tell or at least offer some clues. For now I don't believe that you can rule anything out, so maybe you ought to consider your posts more carefully.
Seems a little short-sighted to me. Yes, it's possible, and I agree probable, that people will check in their car. But what if I'm out and want to check conditions before I come home? Should I be denied this feature because some idiot might check it while driving? Should all society be locked into a bubbled room because one person might find a way to hurt themselves and others?
Now, I still agree with you, but I imagine the intent here is a stepping stone to real-time in-car routing that factors traffic into the equation. Getting from a-z often involves stopping at several letters on the way.
Since RFID tags use the transmitting signal to send a reply, the strength and therefore distance that it will transmit or echo is dependant largely on the signal of the detector. Obviously the tags themselves can't rebroadcast an infinitely large signal, but the fact that you needed to get close to the doors at your school is a design feature of the doors and not a limitation of the technology. After all, they don't want doors unlocking just because someone is walking by...
As a non-smoker living in a province (in Canada) where the non-smoking laws are extreme, I can tell you I enjoy going out and not getting smokey and smelling like ash. I wish nobody smoked anywhere. BUT, it should also be the right of proprietors to choose if they allow this in their establishment, and thinking this does not make you a "f'n moron". If you don't like it, don't patronize the location. Period. I had stopped going to places that weren't adequately ventilated and got really smokey long before the ban came in. If you are unwilling to avoid places that don't give you the service you want, or that is ostensibly killing you, then perhaps such colourful language is only self-loathing.
I'm sorry that this is offtopic, but I find blanket dismissal of opposing viewpoints to be a growing problem and a frustrating one.
I'm offended! What size of city qualifies it as major, or is it relative to other cities in the region? OK, so I'm not offended, but the implication that Vancouver is the first to have this is incorrect at best. Saskatoon, another Canadian city, has been using the system for almost a year already. See here:
"Qtrax will offer two tiers of service: the first is a free, advertising-supported tier designed to work with and filter copyrighted content from existing peer-to-peer networks.
My guess is that they are building their 'p2p filter' right into the stack so that they can limit what you access not only with QTrax, but with other apps as well.
I think the core idea is solid and the way that music will inevitably move: a limited free preview before purchasing, but this will only work in the following conditions:
1. The purchased final copy does not restrict the user's rights.
2. The software (whether p2p or web based) doesn't hijack the user's computer or lock them into a big brother scenario. Respect is required.
3. The cost for a download is competitive with a CD, meaning that since there is no physical medium involved and distribution costs much lower, the cost of downloading an album should be cheaper than buying it.
That's it. Those three rules and a "try-before-you-buy" philosophy are all that is needed to curb the vast majority of people downloading music. As it is, I (like many others) use P2P to try new stuff out currently. There will never be a solution for stopping everyone from 'piracy', but I think the goal should be to get honest consumers a means to be honest consumers on the internet.
Incidentally, Napster offers free previews in the US, and while I'm Canadian and unable to try it, I think the principle is solid if only (and I could be wrong) they offered un-DRM'ed purchases.
Sleep mode, like it or not, is still throwing energy out the window. I can understand during the day when you may be away from the computer for half an hour or something, but people leaving their systems on overnight for the sake of 20 seconds in the morning are wasting energy and money. In fact, I seem to recall a study criticizing Sleep mode because users tend to leave monitors and computers on all the time and let them sleep which resulted in actually wasting more energy than people who might have left their computer run inactive for an hour here and there but shut it down overnight.
Anyway, I'm sure you know all this, but not everyone seems to appreciate this fact.
I'm sorry, but if you're using the word 'artist' to refer to some dummy put in place to sing someone else's work whilst looking hot, our definition varies. Singer, fine (though even that is something I largely dispute as their voice is processed extensively before ever being heard and believe it or not, most of your so-called 'artists' don't even sing live). Ever tried to sing when you're out of breath? Probably not. Go on, do a bunch of stage dancing and try to sing. I'll wait here.
Anyway, I agree with you that money should go to the artists, but someone arguing that music is about a bunch of people churning out drivel and then putting a pretty showpiece in front of the audience has lost the meaning of more than just the word 'artist'.
Finally, I'd sooner give money to someone who is actually creating art (see many other posts on indie music here) than to someone scoring a 'slam dunk' or 'home run'.
Parent may be flamebair but I think more importantly it's insightful. It could be interpreted as the hand of God guiding development, especially since it appears that the evolutionary parts don't spawn themselves, but rather, are selected by the God/player.
And of course, there are plenty of games that allow players to be God in various ways that haven't raised an uproar. Hopefully the fact that it's a game, it's non-violent, and it seems to require some intervention (I might say divine were that not self-aggrandizing) to work.
Slightly more on topic, I think a move to innovative games by EA is just what the doctor ordered, good on them for not moving the same direction as Hollywood and the music industry, trying to increase profits by flooding the market with garbage. Quality, my friends, quality. People like Will Wright, Sid Meier, Peter Molyneux, and hell, Tim Schafer are just the ones to look to.
Amen. Improving Chinese search seems to me consistent with their whole reason for being, firstly, and secondly, restricted results that SAY AS MUCH rather than simply not showing any indication of censorship is a big step in the right direction. And finally, you're operating in a country with different laws than here in glory-to-us North America, so you either play the game their way (doing, as you say, what you can) or take your bat and go home.
Of course it's not the ideal situation, but, to quote Bill Murray, baby steps.
Anyway, refreshing to read a logical reply amid this hoopla. Thanks.
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Racially speaking, I don't see how that could be possible unless they were asked to input their skin colour. Otherwise, it would, by definition, be treating races equally, wouldn't it? Genders, however... more difficult, especially when you're looking at backgrounds.
PS: As a typical /. guy I love all the technology but if it's used to enslave mankind to the machine no amount of blue LEDs is gonna make up for it.
May I just say that I snorted water through my nose and you may have a law..err.. wet suit on your hands.
The 'club-goer' is clearly bending his advanced intellect into confounding media through the subtlety of a double-negative!
I really hope it works, despite that it does not add up to me. Faster-than-light communication would really revolutionize a lot of things on this planet and, eventually, beyond.
I just got one and it's actually not hot to the touch nor uncomfortable for the lap. It does get warm of course, but not excessively so.
"... the only difference being it is caused by lack of self-control rather than a virus. "
I think you just answered your own question. Also, a lack of testosterone and/or a bit of glutonny and excess are slightly different than a terminal disease.
Heh, there's nothing green about big windows where I live at least. More A/C required in the summer, more heat in the winter. I suppose if a person was to work without light except for natural lighting that might make the difference, though. Except there are only about 6 hours of daylight here in the winters. That said, in the summer, you have about that many hours of darkness so it balances I suppose.
A fundamental tenant of the natural order is self-preservation. To ignore that and say "it's part of nature for us to destroy ourselves" is like a gazelle seeing a lion and not running because it knows its place in the food chain.
Heh, good point except that of course draft-N stuff tends to work with g etc. as well. So someone can't hack in and stream your files... just not as quickly.
'Dutch'?!?! Don't the Dutch speak Hollondaise?
I'm not really one for picking and choosing tracks, but that's because I like the flow and construction and usually accompanying artwork of an album. There are artists for whom it's all about the hit or whatever, and for them, yes, album is an obsolete term and probably a waste of time since various parties write the songs, they get bought and paid for and sung and generally put out on an album with a bunch of garbage that really shouldn't have been put out in the first place. But thankfully it's not all like that in the music world...
Now, here's where they've gone wrong in _my_ opinion. The established industry is basically the early adopters. They were around on vinyl and cassette and CD long before it was easy for you or I, thanks to the internet and computer recording/editing software, to produce and distribute our own music. In essence, to compete with the early adopters. And so, the value of music, particularly soulless music generated by an industry that had expended its energies in the last decade on promoting image over substance and generating a formula for determining the likelihood of a song being a 'hit', declines. Because others are able to produce in many cases a far superior product (i.e. one that is authentic and has soul) for a lower cost. Because they are not paying for the overhead that the established industry has mired itself in and the artists are not after millions of dollars anyway.
Think of it this way. Company X releases product Y. Let's say it's Sony and Blu-ray. There's no competition or equivalent out, so they can charge $5000 for a player (which probably doesn't even play at this point) and do so happily, recovering some of their DRM R&D. Then HD-DVD comes along. Microsoft et al decide to price it quite a bit lower than $5000. Now, in the normal scenario, Sony would respond by matching or beating their price, driving the cost-to-consumer down as has happened with vanilla DVD drives, CD drives, and countless other tech in the past. Imagine instead that Sony continues to keep their price at $5000. Furthermore, they introduce tough measures so that HD-DVD players can not read BluRay and sue the pants off anyone who tries to circumvent that. Meanwhile, HD-DVD offers better features, more rights, lower price, and none of that bullshit. They allow their discs to play on BluRay players, knowing that this is a competitive advantage. Sony sticks to the $5000 and insists that people hacking BluRay is their problem.
It seems not only pretty obvious what will happen to Sony but that this would be unthinkable strategy in any other situation. It also seems obvious what Sony could've done to maintain their early lead and, if nothing else, maintain some relevance. That the record industry is choosing to go this route is no surprise to me, but still one would hope a little clear-headed shrewdness would see that the model has changed and they're no longer the only kids on the block. What DOES surprise me is how cohesively the industry is bound together to resist change. I would think the successful radio stations would be those who embrace the new competitors as well as the old farts, but I see none of those popping up. I would think that more brick and mortar music stores would establish a concrete and creative presence online, but iTunes clearly dominates. I would think more artists would want less DRM so ANYbody can buy/listen to their music, not just people with MP3 player X. And I would think that by now music sites would offer full listens/previews of albums, perhaps just at reduced quality, which would, at least for me, mitigate the need to hunt for things on filesharing networks anyway. Or even find a way to make the sharing networks work for them.
This is a long and drawn out analysis, especially for someone whose only real business experience comes from running a restaurant and a little thing I optimistically call common sense.
What if the attacks had gone a day early? What use would the 'terror' scale be? It is clearly completely useless and serves only to panic the public. That it was put up after the threat was addressed raises two possibilities. 1) That they're worried about those that have inevitably slipped through the nets. 2) That there is some political capital to be gained from citizens who feel threatened, perhaps from impending and inherently unpopular policy change.
Time will tell or at least offer some clues. For now I don't believe that you can rule anything out, so maybe you ought to consider your posts more carefully.
Now, I still agree with you, but I imagine the intent here is a stepping stone to real-time in-car routing that factors traffic into the equation. Getting from a-z often involves stopping at several letters on the way.
Since RFID tags use the transmitting signal to send a reply, the strength and therefore distance that it will transmit or echo is dependant largely on the signal of the detector. Obviously the tags themselves can't rebroadcast an infinitely large signal, but the fact that you needed to get close to the doors at your school is a design feature of the doors and not a limitation of the technology. After all, they don't want doors unlocking just because someone is walking by...
I'm sorry that this is offtopic, but I find blanket dismissal of opposing viewpoints to be a growing problem and a frustrating one.
http://www.city.saskatoon.sk.ca/org/municipal_engi neering/parking_services/index.asp
Wouldn't you be pulling data from the hills and not the valley? Unless you're suggesting a cleavage antenna...
"Qtrax will offer two tiers of service: the first is a free, advertising-supported tier designed to work with and filter copyrighted content from existing peer-to-peer networks.
My guess is that they are building their 'p2p filter' right into the stack so that they can limit what you access not only with QTrax, but with other apps as well.
I think the core idea is solid and the way that music will inevitably move: a limited free preview before purchasing, but this will only work in the following conditions:
1. The purchased final copy does not restrict the user's rights.
2. The software (whether p2p or web based) doesn't hijack the user's computer or lock them into a big brother scenario. Respect is required.
3. The cost for a download is competitive with a CD, meaning that since there is no physical medium involved and distribution costs much lower, the cost of downloading an album should be cheaper than buying it.
That's it. Those three rules and a "try-before-you-buy" philosophy are all that is needed to curb the vast majority of people downloading music. As it is, I (like many others) use P2P to try new stuff out currently. There will never be a solution for stopping everyone from 'piracy', but I think the goal should be to get honest consumers a means to be honest consumers on the internet.
Incidentally, Napster offers free previews in the US, and while I'm Canadian and unable to try it, I think the principle is solid if only (and I could be wrong) they offered un-DRM'ed purchases.
Anyway, I'm sure you know all this, but not everyone seems to appreciate this fact.
Anyway, I agree with you that money should go to the artists, but someone arguing that music is about a bunch of people churning out drivel and then putting a pretty showpiece in front of the audience has lost the meaning of more than just the word 'artist'.
Finally, I'd sooner give money to someone who is actually creating art (see many other posts on indie music here) than to someone scoring a 'slam dunk' or 'home run'.
Wow, apparently my concept of imperial measure is not as good as I thought. I mean, sure, 15000 ft is long, but 4.5 km of runway?! Wow.
And of course, there are plenty of games that allow players to be God in various ways that haven't raised an uproar. Hopefully the fact that it's a game, it's non-violent, and it seems to require some intervention (I might say divine were that not self-aggrandizing) to work.
Slightly more on topic, I think a move to innovative games by EA is just what the doctor ordered, good on them for not moving the same direction as Hollywood and the music industry, trying to increase profits by flooding the market with garbage. Quality, my friends, quality. People like Will Wright, Sid Meier, Peter Molyneux, and hell, Tim Schafer are just the ones to look to.
Of course it's not the ideal situation, but, to quote Bill Murray, baby steps.
Anyway, refreshing to read a logical reply amid this hoopla. Thanks.