In my experience, when you've got a "look" that's not consistent with what people expect (based on your function or the company you're representing for example) Then you've got a slight barrier to cross initially before they take you serious. But if appearance is the only thing that sets you apart from your professional group (i.e. you're at least as good or better at your work than them) then once they've had the time to talk to you they'll come to respect your knowledge and forget about your appearance. I usually dye my hair in funny colours (purple, blue, red, orange, green,..) and wear brightly coloured clothes, all of which are not normal in my line of work. But I never get negative feedback about my work from customers, and my appearance is usually talked about as something "refreshing" or "unexpected", never "terrible" or "unprofessional". Of course if I've got a very bad day my weird appearance only works against me. The trick is to never have a bad day when it's a first day at a new customer.
I don't think something like a fixed amount/time period or something would work, people have different productivity levels. It's hard enough to determine for an employer wether an employee delivers his moneys worth, and they (supposedly) see each other quite often. I think there are two types of reward policies that will work for this type of problem: 1. A user of the program oor someone interested in what it could become puts a "reward" on the implementation of a certain feature or squashing of some bug. 2. Someone values the work someone else has done for a certain project and sends them money for their time. Both these systems ensure the person paying gets a good bang for his/her buck. Type 1 will also attract developers and once word gets around that a certain project catches a lot of type 2 rewards it might help attract developers also. So if you're interested in attracting developers you could define a few subtasks and put a reward on them? ($10 for each cool textured 3d model of a human character I like etc...)
This article confirms what a few of my friends and I have been saying for a while. We all are very active computer users (>10h/day usually, using computers for at least 15 years), and we all only suffer from pain in the wrist when we allow our stress levels to rise to intolerable heights or when we're doing something we really dislike. From what I've seen in other people everybody who had severe wrist/arm/shoulder complaints that they were relating to their computer work was either: - Working under a lot of stress and/or time pressure for prolonged periods. or: - Not happy with their work or their work situation. I think that computer use puts you in a certain heightened risk group for RSI/carpal tunnel but in my opinion you only "get" RSI or carpal tunnel when you are under a lot of stress or generally not in a very relaxed/happy mental state.
I find that when I voice this opinion in the real world, people tend to be very offended by it... so just for the record, this is not a troll.
I do most certainly like that added value thank you. I kind of like the idea that the weaker members of my society are provided for so paying taxes is no problem for me. Right now customs has to stop my parcel here (the Netherlands) and I get to pick up my parcel and a bill for an unexpected amount of money in some customs office. This costs me a lot of time and the individual taxation in small amounts is really inefficient. By making all US-based businesses that sell to private persons in the EU collect and pay that tax efficiency rises and, as an added bonus, I get my parcel faster and I will know the full amount I have to pay up front instead of on delivery. That this will cost American companies some money and some business is just to bad(tm). (and fair towards europe based businesses).
In a similar vein, maybe I should put something like this in my browser identification string: Important, read carefully before serving me any web pages! Definitions: Browser: The program used by me to visit your site. Server: the person responsible for the web page my browser is requesting at this time. Browser type: The type (brand/version)of this browser. By serving me web pages you agree to the following: 1. You will only serve me pages that are fully compatible with Browser type I use. If you are unable to do so you will notify me of that fact before serving me the page anyway. 1a. If there is a contract of any form between us concerning my viewing of a part of the page I'm requesting you will serve me that the page in a form fully compatible with my browser type. Failure to comply results in breach of said contract by server. And results in liability for damages for server. 2. No splash or intro screen. If the page you are about to serve me is a splash screen, you will not serve that page, but instead you will serve the page that would be reached after that. This contract is applicable to that page. 3. No flash unless you're a true artist. If you're not sure wether you're a true artist, no flash! 4. No popups. 5. Ads only in the form of distinctly separate static pictures that never cover any part of the content of the page. 6. No icon changers. 7. I don't want to addd your site to my favorites. 8. If the page my browser is requesting requires me to register, I herby register as noone the nobody, I live in albania, was born jan 1st 1901, my e-mail adress = yourceo'sname@yourdomain.yourextension and I wish to receive anything you could possibly ever send me on that adress. 9. failure to comply with items 2 to 8 results in damages payable by server to me in the amount of $100,- per offence.
I recently thought about drawing up some sort of document like that EVLA (bit stricter though). And then mailing it to the CEO of every large company I buy stuff from with a letter attached to it saying that the terms I lay out in that document are applicable to every piece of business I do with them over a certain period in the future (say a year or so) and that they are free to refuse my business but if they (or any person acting on their behalf i.e. employees) accept my business they implicitly accept the terms of my EVLA. So that CEO would have to warn every salesperson in his organisation not to sell me stuff if he doesn't like my document. Now if 5 billion people in the world draw up their own EVLA and mail it to every organisation they do business with....
I for one don't think inappropriate e-mail will hurt kids one bit as long as there's a parent around to explain stuff. I for one cycled through a part of the red light district of the city I lived in to get to school from the age of 12 and as far as I can determine I'm as sane as the next guy.
But if there are influential people who see the fact that inappropriate spam reaches children as a reason to seriously start fighting spam I'm all for it.
And to further stretch the analogy (thought experiment time)
Suppose the car was probably bought under certain terms, maybe a free service checkup every 3 months. Would the customer still have the right to the full terms of the contract he signed with the garage? I'm inclined to think so... But if that is the case than people that downloaded waste from the original Nullsoft website still have the right to the contract they "signed" (i.e. they read and undertood the accompanying licence). So those people have certain rights with respect to the waste source code they downloaded. More specifically, they downloaded it under the GPL. So those people still have both the rights and duties that come with the GPL with respect to waste.
No one knew or had any reason to suspect that the person distributing waste was not authorized to do so. So everybody that downloaded waste from the nullsoft website has legally obtained Waste under the GPL. And may legally redistribute the waste program or any derived works as long as they include the source code in their distribution.
This is just a thought experiment though, I have no idea how this works in real life. I know I just thought that giving us Waste was a cool action by Nullsoft and I never suspected otherwise. (this was released the same day RTCW Enemy Territory was given away for free so perhaps I wasjust getting used to companies giving cool stuff away for free)
Please, open your source and throw your patents in the public domain. As soon as you do that I'll be more than happy to evaluate your system. Right now, my only incline is to look for prior art. (which I'm pretty sure exists).
Entering a computer generated world to play a character whose goal is leaving a computer generated world. And they expect people to pay money for that?
My bedroom has a bed. (and some closets for clothes) Apart from that I make sure all buzzing, flashing beeping and vibrating work related gizmo's come equiped with a special feature I call a "power switch" I typically use this feature when I go home from work. Alternatively, if your boss is a penny saving monster and refuses to pay for this feature you could just forget to take all gizmo's home. Of course you should always make it clear to your boss that all gizmo's you paid for yourself are off limits for him.
Most people I know (the Netherlands) have a contract that says their employer can require overtime if it is needed and advance warning is given (one week to one month depending on the contract). But, every hour of time worked after the contract time is reached (typically 32, 36 of 40 hours) must be compensated either financially or in the form of extra free time. I'd never go for a contract that states that if my boss so desires I can be forced to work 24/7 without extra compensation.
Truly a classic. The woman had the law on her side in this case, absurd as it may sound. Hot drinks (coffee for example) must be 60 degrees celsius (or something close to that) or colder when they are handed to a customer (this to prevent extreme burns in the case of spilling or hasty consumption), the woman got coffee of more than 75 degrees celsius. The coffee machine at mcdonalds was faulty and should have been replaced or at least serviced a few months earlier. Typical negligent behavior by mcdonalds I'd say. The woman probably knew coffee would be hot, she just didn't know it would be that hot.
The heisenberg uncertainty principle states that it is impossible to know both the speed and location of a particle with infinite accuracy at the same time, rather, it says that the product of the error in the measurement of speed and the error in the measurement of location should always be larger than hbar/2. If you don't care about the speed of a hydrogen atom you could know it's location with infinite accuracy (zero error). Same goes for energy and time (you can't know the energy of a particle and the time at which it had that energy at the same time with perfect accuracy). Distance across a hydrogen atom is something else though, I doubt wether anyone would be able to measure it at all with any accuracy... something like the average distance between the nucleus and the orbiting electron when in ground state at a random kelvin temperature > 0 (because the distance is zero at zero kelvin) would be needed.. seems very arbitrary though.... My preference for a distance unit is something related to the distance light travels in vacuum over a given timespan.
If someone from that area where to find and post his adress I'd sure take some time to fill in a few "free catalog" requests. Several tons of snail mail spam every day might just annoy him as much as his spam annoys me.
seems quite difficult to give the actual feedback without the sound. moreover, wouldn't the sound be an important factor in the feedback you speak about?
I totally agree. Buy a basic amp and some basic home stereo speakers. They take up a bit more (desk) space but you'll get way more sound quality for your dollar. I use a thirty year old amplifier and the speakers that came with it as the sound output for my pc. It cost me just 20,- in a secondhand electronics store and it outperforms most if not all computer speakers that cost three times as much.
Oracle has just released some firewire drivers/patches that they claim can be used to create firewire clusters. We use it at my work for networking on w2k machines using this and it's really fast with lower latency than 100Mbit network.
What do you think the legal (or appropriate) uses of MP3 technology should be?
MP3 technology is technology to compress digital sound files to a size more easily manageable by current hardware (especially portable music players and) and current bandwith capacities (internet but also the USB bus often used for portable music players). As far as I know any use of MP3 technology is legal and appropriate. What can possibly be wrong with compressing a sound file? As far as I'm concerned MP3 technology (or any other technology solely used for audio or video compression has nothing to do with the other parts of the debate named (DMCA,CBDTPA,DeCSS,etc).
We all know the RIAA complains about the illegitimate uses of P2P technology. Since its most prevalent usage is (by the RIAA's definition) illegal use, what are some applications of the technology that the P2P crowd can use to swing the tide in its favor?
Well, I'm on slippery legal ground here, but one of the legal uses of the audio I buy (here in the Netherlands at least) is giving that audio (the original) to a friend either for a while (so he can listen to it for a few days) or forever (as a gift). In my Opinion it would (or maybe should) be perfectly legal to make MP3 versions of my audio, and share(through P2P) this mp3 version to the world. As long as I made sure only one person in the entire world was listening to that piece of music at any one time, including the original I bought then this would be a legal use. After all, having an MP3 file on your disc of material you don't own isn't illegal as long as you don't listen to it (again, under dutch law), so the P2P system would just be used to allow others to download music they might want to listen to in the future to their disc for storage (for example to make more efficient use of available bandwidth) until they have the opportunity to listen to that music (that is, it is their "turn" to listen to the song). Apart from that I think freenet and locstworld are good examples of legal use of P2P technology and these guys are searching for more. Basically P2P is a way to make a network less dependent on specific nodes so there are tons of legal uses (darpa net is a good one too)
The DMCA...
I'm not familiar enough with the exact contents of this law to react to this question.
An argument frequently levied at the RIAA and MPAA is that they are more than content to label the large majority of consumers as thieves and pirates. What can the RIAA and MPAA do to change this? How can these organizations polish this image up?
The main interest of these bodies at this time seems to be to limit the value of their products to close to nothing. DVD's I cannot watch on my linux box (without "illegal" DeCSS) CD's that will not play on my PC (my only CD player currently) etc. The image of these bodies is directly related to the precieved value of the products they sell. So currently it appears customers (or at least this customer) and RIAA/MPAA see each other as thieves and pirates and both act as thieves and pirates would act towards thieves and pirates (a lack of mutual trust comes to mind....)
With laws such as the DMCA and possible future legislation such as the CBDTPA, many consumers feel that their freedoms to enjoy the entertainment they purchase are being slowly eroded away by content companies. What rights (other than the right to listen or view) do you feel that consumers should have with media they purchase?
Right to change the format of said media to suit the users needs. (portable MP3 players, (future) portable video players, even place the media on a (non public) internet server to be able to enjoy the media all over the world without having to lug several suitcases of media carriers and equipment around.) Right to enjoy the media in the company of family, friends, etc. Right to sell the media to whoever you please once you don't need or want it anymore.
Your data set is screwed, all physics PhD's you meet have gotten out of the field already and therefore where not motivated enough or able enough to find a job in the physics field (or they felt the lure of IT money). If this guy is in love with the field he should go for it, physics needs motivated people, most physics students I know (myself included) get out of the field because they are unable to continually perform at the high intellectual level physics requires of them. To actually make a meaningfull contribution to physics these days you need to be one intelligent single minded dedicated person, It's just too damn hard for the rest of us. I would advice the original poster to honestly test his knowledge of physics and mathematics when compared to that of the physics bachelors/masters he knows. If he can convince his friends (who should be very sceptical if they take their own hard work serious) that he is at least at bachelor level in physics he should be able to convince a university.
Slashdot Mirror
In my experience, when you've got a "look" that's not consistent with what people expect (based on your function or the company you're representing for example) Then you've got a slight barrier to cross initially before they take you serious. But if appearance is the only thing that sets you apart from your professional group (i.e. you're at least as good or better at your work than them) then once they've had the time to talk to you they'll come to respect your knowledge and forget about your appearance. I usually dye my hair in funny colours (purple, blue, red, orange, green,..) and wear brightly coloured clothes, all of which are not normal in my line of work. But I never get negative feedback about my work from customers, and my appearance is usually talked about as something "refreshing" or "unexpected", never "terrible" or "unprofessional".
Of course if I've got a very bad day my weird appearance only works against me. The trick is to never have a bad day when it's a first day at a new customer.
I don't think something like a fixed amount/time period or something would work, people have different productivity levels. It's hard enough to determine for an employer wether an employee delivers his moneys worth, and they (supposedly) see each other quite often.
I think there are two types of reward policies that will work for this type of problem:
1. A user of the program oor someone interested in what it could become puts a "reward" on the implementation of a certain feature or squashing of some bug.
2. Someone values the work someone else has done for a certain project and sends them money for their time.
Both these systems ensure the person paying gets a good bang for his/her buck. Type 1 will also attract developers and once word gets around that a certain project catches a lot of type 2 rewards it might help attract developers also.
So if you're interested in attracting developers you could define a few subtasks and put a reward on them? ($10 for each cool textured 3d model of a human character I like etc...)
This article confirms what a few of my friends and I have been saying for a while. We all are very active computer users (>10h/day usually, using computers for at least 15 years), and we all only suffer from pain in the wrist when we allow our stress levels to rise to intolerable heights or when we're doing something we really dislike.
From what I've seen in other people everybody who had severe wrist/arm/shoulder complaints that they were relating to their computer work was either:
- Working under a lot of stress and/or time pressure for prolonged periods.
or:
- Not happy with their work or their work situation.
I think that computer use puts you in a certain heightened risk group for RSI/carpal tunnel but in my opinion you only "get" RSI or carpal tunnel when you are under a lot of stress or generally not in a very relaxed/happy mental state.
I find that when I voice this opinion in the real world, people tend to be very offended by it... so just for the record, this is not a troll.
I do most certainly like that added value thank you. I kind of like the idea that the weaker members of my society are provided for so paying taxes is no problem for me. Right now customs has to stop my parcel here (the Netherlands) and I get to pick up my parcel and a bill for an unexpected amount of money in some customs office. This costs me a lot of time and the individual taxation in small amounts is really inefficient.
By making all US-based businesses that sell to private persons in the EU collect and pay that tax efficiency rises and, as an added bonus, I get my parcel faster and I will know the full amount I have to pay up front instead of on delivery. That this will cost American companies some money and some business is just to bad(tm). (and fair towards europe based businesses).
In a similar vein, maybe I should put something like this in my browser identification string:
Important, read carefully before serving me any web pages!
Definitions:
Browser: The program used by me to visit your site.
Server: the person responsible for the web page my browser is requesting at this time.
Browser type: The type (brand/version)of this browser.
By serving me web pages you agree to the following:
1. You will only serve me pages that are fully compatible with Browser type I use. If you are unable to do so you will notify me of that fact before serving me the page anyway.
1a. If there is a contract of any form between us concerning my viewing of a part of the page I'm requesting you will serve me that the page in a form fully compatible with my browser type. Failure to comply results in breach of said contract by server. And results in liability for damages for server.
2. No splash or intro screen. If the page you are about to serve me is a splash screen, you will not serve that page, but instead you will serve the page that would be reached after that. This contract is applicable to that page.
3. No flash unless you're a true artist. If you're not sure wether you're a true artist, no flash!
4. No popups.
5. Ads only in the form of distinctly separate static pictures that never cover any part of the content of the page.
6. No icon changers.
7. I don't want to addd your site to my favorites.
8. If the page my browser is requesting requires me to register, I herby register as noone the nobody, I live in albania, was born jan 1st 1901, my e-mail adress = yourceo'sname@yourdomain.yourextension and I wish to receive anything you could possibly ever send me on that adress.
9. failure to comply with items 2 to 8 results in damages payable by server to me in the amount of $100,- per offence.
I recently thought about drawing up some sort of document like that EVLA (bit stricter though). And then mailing it to the CEO of every large company I buy stuff from with a letter attached to it saying that the terms I lay out in that document are applicable to every piece of business I do with them over a certain period in the future (say a year or so) and that they are free to refuse my business but if they (or any person acting on their behalf i.e. employees) accept my business they implicitly accept the terms of my EVLA. So that CEO would have to warn every salesperson in his organisation not to sell me stuff if he doesn't like my document. Now if 5 billion people in the world draw up their own EVLA and mail it to every organisation they do business with....
I for one don't think inappropriate e-mail will hurt kids one bit as long as there's a parent around to explain stuff. I for one cycled through a part of the red light district of the city I lived in to get to school from the age of 12 and as far as I can determine I'm as sane as the next guy.
But if there are influential people who see the fact that inappropriate spam reaches children as a reason to seriously start fighting spam I'm all for it.
anyone set up a .torrent yet?
I would, if I had any of the files...
We at IBM always laughed about the sillyness of SCO code and comments your honour, honestly, it wasn't theft, it was parody!
Slot machines don't cheat people, people cheat people.
A message from the National Gambling Association
So that's why my monitor keeps disappearing if I look at it for more than a few mi... oh...
And to further stretch the analogy (thought experiment time)
Suppose the car was probably bought under certain terms, maybe a free service checkup every 3 months. Would the customer still have the right to the full terms of the contract he signed with the garage? I'm inclined to think so...
But if that is the case than people that downloaded waste from the original Nullsoft website still have the right to the contract they "signed" (i.e. they read and undertood the accompanying licence). So those people have certain rights with respect to the waste source code they downloaded. More specifically, they downloaded it under the GPL. So those people still have both the rights and duties that come with the GPL with respect to waste.
No one knew or had any reason to suspect that the person distributing waste was not authorized to do so. So everybody that downloaded waste from the nullsoft website has legally obtained Waste under the GPL. And may legally redistribute the waste program or any derived works as long as they include the source code in their distribution.
This is just a thought experiment though, I have no idea how this works in real life. I know I just thought that giving us Waste was a cool action by Nullsoft and I never suspected otherwise. (this was released the same day RTCW Enemy Territory was given away for free so perhaps I wasjust getting used to companies giving cool stuff away for free)
Please, open your source and throw your patents in the public domain. As soon as you do that I'll be more than happy to evaluate your system. Right now, my only incline is to look for prior art. (which I'm pretty sure exists).
Entering a computer generated world to play a character whose goal is leaving a computer generated world.
And they expect people to pay money for that?
Gardens actually have usefull bugs, know them and let them be.
My bedroom has a bed. (and some closets for clothes)
Apart from that I make sure all buzzing, flashing beeping and vibrating work related gizmo's come equiped with a special feature I call a "power switch"
I typically use this feature when I go home from work.
Alternatively, if your boss is a penny saving monster and refuses to pay for this feature you could just forget to take all gizmo's home.
Of course you should always make it clear to your boss that all gizmo's you paid for yourself are off limits for him.
Most people I know (the Netherlands) have a contract that says their employer can require overtime if it is needed and advance warning is given (one week to one month depending on the contract). But, every hour of time worked after the contract time is reached (typically 32, 36 of 40 hours) must be compensated either financially or in the form of extra free time.
I'd never go for a contract that states that if my boss so desires I can be forced to work 24/7 without extra compensation.
Truly a classic.
The woman had the law on her side in this case, absurd as it may sound. Hot drinks (coffee for example) must be 60 degrees celsius (or something close to that) or colder when they are handed to a customer (this to prevent extreme burns in the case of spilling or hasty consumption), the woman got coffee of more than 75 degrees celsius. The coffee machine at mcdonalds was faulty and should have been replaced or at least serviced a few months earlier. Typical negligent behavior by mcdonalds I'd say. The woman probably knew coffee would be hot, she just didn't know it would be that hot.
The heisenberg uncertainty principle states that it is impossible to know both the speed and location of a particle with infinite accuracy at the same time, rather, it says that the product of the error in the measurement of speed and the error in the measurement of location should always be larger than hbar/2. If you don't care about the speed of a hydrogen atom you could know it's location with infinite accuracy (zero error). Same goes for energy and time (you can't know the energy of a particle and the time at which it had that energy at the same time with perfect accuracy). Distance across a hydrogen atom is something else though, I doubt wether anyone would be able to measure it at all with any accuracy... something like the average distance between the nucleus and the orbiting electron when in ground state at a random kelvin temperature > 0 (because the distance is zero at zero kelvin) would be needed.. seems very arbitrary though....
My preference for a distance unit is something related to the distance light travels in vacuum over a given timespan.
If someone from that area where to find and post his adress I'd sure take some time to fill in a few "free catalog" requests. Several tons of snail mail spam every day might just annoy him as much as his spam annoys me.
True Click without the *Clack*
seems quite difficult to give the actual feedback without the sound. moreover, wouldn't the sound be an important factor in the feedback you speak about?
I totally agree.
Buy a basic amp and some basic home stereo speakers. They take up a bit more (desk) space but you'll get way more sound quality for your dollar. I use a thirty year old amplifier and the speakers that came with it as the sound output for my pc. It cost me just 20,- in a secondhand electronics store and it outperforms most if not all computer speakers that cost three times as much.
Oracle has just released some firewire drivers/patches that they claim can be used to create firewire clusters. We use it at my work for networking on w2k machines using this and it's really fast with lower latency than 100Mbit network.
What do you think the legal (or appropriate) uses of MP3 technology should be?
MP3 technology is technology to compress digital sound files to a size more easily manageable by current hardware (especially portable music players and) and current bandwith capacities (internet but also the USB bus often used for portable music players). As far as I know any use of MP3 technology is legal and appropriate. What can possibly be wrong with compressing a sound file? As far as I'm concerned MP3 technology (or any other technology solely used for audio or video compression has nothing to do with the other parts of the debate named (DMCA,CBDTPA,DeCSS,etc).
We all know the RIAA complains about the illegitimate uses of P2P technology. Since its most prevalent usage is (by the RIAA's definition) illegal use, what are some applications of the technology that the P2P crowd can use to swing the tide in its favor?
Well, I'm on slippery legal ground here, but one of the legal uses of the audio I buy (here in the Netherlands at least) is giving that audio (the original) to a friend either for a while (so he can listen to it for a few days) or forever (as a gift). In my Opinion it would (or maybe should) be perfectly legal to make MP3 versions of my audio, and share(through P2P) this mp3 version to the world. As long as I made sure only one person in the entire world was listening to that piece of music at any one time, including the original I bought then this would be a legal use. After all, having an MP3 file on your disc of material you don't own isn't illegal as long as you don't listen to it (again, under dutch law), so the P2P system would just be used to allow others to download music they might want to listen to in the future to their disc for storage (for example to make more efficient use of available bandwidth) until they have the opportunity to listen to that music (that is, it is their "turn" to listen to the song). Apart from that I think freenet and locstworld are good examples of legal use of P2P technology and these guys are searching for more. Basically P2P is a way to make a network less dependent on specific nodes so there are tons of legal uses (darpa net is a good one too)
The DMCA ...
I'm not familiar enough with the exact contents of this law to react to this question.
An argument frequently levied at the RIAA and MPAA is that they are more than content to label the large majority of consumers as thieves and pirates. What can the RIAA and MPAA do to change this? How can these organizations polish this image up?
The main interest of these bodies at this time seems to be to limit the value of their products to close to nothing. DVD's I cannot watch on my linux box (without "illegal" DeCSS) CD's that will not play on my PC (my only CD player currently) etc. The image of these bodies is directly related to the precieved value of the products they sell. So currently it appears customers (or at least this customer) and RIAA/MPAA see each other as thieves and pirates and both act as thieves and pirates would act towards thieves and pirates (a lack of mutual trust comes to mind....)
With laws such as the DMCA and possible future legislation such as the CBDTPA, many consumers feel that their freedoms to enjoy the entertainment they purchase are being slowly eroded away by content companies. What rights (other than the right to listen or view) do you feel that consumers should have with media they purchase?
Right to change the format of said media to suit the users needs. (portable MP3 players, (future) portable video players, even place the media on a (non public) internet server to be able to enjoy the media all over the world without having to lug several suitcases of media carriers and equipment around.)
Right to enjoy the media in the company of family, friends, etc.
Right to sell the media to whoever you please once you don't need or want it anymore.
Your data set is screwed, all physics PhD's you meet have gotten out of the field already and therefore where not motivated enough or able enough to find a job in the physics field (or they felt the lure of IT money).
If this guy is in love with the field he should go for it, physics needs motivated people, most physics students I know (myself included) get out of the field because they are unable to continually perform at the high intellectual level physics requires of them. To actually make a meaningfull contribution to physics these days you need to be one intelligent single minded dedicated person, It's just too damn hard for the rest of us.
I would advice the original poster to honestly test his knowledge of physics and mathematics when compared to that of the physics bachelors/masters he knows. If he can convince his friends (who should be very sceptical if they take their own hard work serious) that he is at least at bachelor level in physics he should be able to convince a university.