I bought "Red Velvet Car" with some bonus video content from the iTunes store, maybe it's not DRM, I thought it wasn't when I clicked "Buy Now", maybe there's some way to download it to my PC, I sure as hell don't have the time to figure out how - I did take about 1/2 an hour looking through the menus, encountering statements like "authorized on up to 5 devices" and similar, nothing clearly labeling a way to just get a bloody.mp3 or whatever file out to another device. I searched through Google, in blogs, and, after what I considered an appropriate amount of my time had been wasted learning about what is clearly a "different" system of content distribution, concluded that I'll stick with buying.mp3s from Amazon and other vendors, a format that I can readily understand and copy to any of the dozens of devices that I occasionally listen to music on, and backup with all my other music files.
Publishing a copy of a book (without permission) was a crime in 1799, and it should still be a crime today. The author, and original publisher, are both damaged by lost revenue from their more difficult endeavor of creating the original content. Just because every person who has $500 to buy a PC can now copy huge digital works for fractions of a penny, does not erase the essence of intellectual property and its benefits.
The stupid extension of copyright duration and ridiculous relaxation of patent examination standards in recent years are also crimes that should be rectified, even if we will never be able to properly punish the perpetrators.
If "DRM free" really is a better way, let it prove itself in parallel with a respected DRM world. Ripping off DRM'ed works does nothing to prove the benefits of a completely DRM free world.
Back in the 1700s and before, "civilized men" recognized the value of intellectual property to society as a whole and provided foundations for it in most governmental systems. These IP protecting systems, like so much else, have been morphed and twisted by entities with power and influence to benefit themselves as much as possible, and in my opinion they have gone almost far enough that abolishment of IP protection might be just as good as the IP protection systems we have today if it weren't for the social upheaval that abolishment would cause.
However, the fundamental idea of protection of intellectual property is a good one. "Information wants to be free" is not fundamentally right in the way that "Thou shall not kill" is fundamentally right.
Perhaps the path to a better world starts with 100,000 lawyers at the bottom of the ocean?
Zero respect for IP is not ideal, and neither is absolute authority to enforce IP rights in all media and devices.
That's just an opinion, but I do agree with it.
But between the two, I'd much rather have the former.
What I'd like to see is an open marketplace with clear labeling: DRM vs non DRM. Both producers and consumers should be free to choose, with non-trivial options on both sides. It seems to me that non DRM audio entertainment and video games are starting to make some significant headway, while the motion picture industry is still playing ostrich and saying all DRM, everywhere, all the time is the only thing conceivable.
I bought one DRM'ed album on iTunes for my iPad, it was such an unholy disappointing pain in the ass that I will never do that again - in contrast, I spent thousands of dollars on essentially non DRM'ed vinyl back in the day, and hundreds of dollars on high quality tape and tape recorders to protect and extend my fair use ownership rights of the music on the LPs.
The piracy riddle is not impossible, but the two sides of the argument have taken irreconcilable positions. Zero respect for IP is not ideal, and neither is absolute authority to enforce IP rights in all media and devices.
All optical switching could improve...EM noise considerably.
This ^^^ more than anything is very interesting to me. Will all optical switching and logic be inherently radiation hardened? Able to operate above the Van-Allen belts during a solar storm? I suspect the answer will be yes, until it is reduced in size to be competitive with silicon ICs, at which point it will also become vulnerable - kind of like why vacuum tubes still work with massive EMP, the tube itself is so damn big that the noise averages out.
Still, I'd bet that comparable silicon / optical systems will have different vulnerabilities and will be able to serve as complementary redundant systems.
Anytime drones come up, I usually see a "so I just whip out my Glock19 and have some target practice" response from the peanut gallery. I just found this, suggesting that you'd better have more than one clip, and a clear field behind the target, if you really want to take a small drone down from any distance.
Missile defense has been debated since before there were practical missiles. It was a particularly hot topic in the late '60s, with the conclusion at the time very similar to the result demonstrated in the video - hitting moving targets is hard.
Patriot missile batteries and similar have given a credible demonstration of missile defense, but the defensive missile is usually far more expensive to develop, build and deploy than the offensive missile it can effectively defend against.
The article seems focused on using drones as a high endurance mobile defensive missile deployment platform, which they doubtlessly can be... what I'm far more worried about is North Korea developing and deploying a cargo ship launchable drone large enough to carry a nuclear weapon, I'm not sure the US Navy has enough coverage to scan every incoming commercial vessel for nukes before they get within striking range of the coast. And, with all the Air Force base closures, air to air response time to take out a drone that you may not detect until minutes before landfall is.... less than comforting.
Since SCOTUS has agreed to hear the case, I doubt it is clear-cut open and shut.
If the contents of the book are substantially the same as the parallel US versions, just printed more cheaply for the foreign market, I'd be happy to use one of those textbooks - I had more than one "made for the US market" $100+ textbook self-destruct before the semester was over due to apparently intentionally shoddy bindings. One was written by the course professor, who cackled with glee about the lack of a used market in his textbooks.
To be fair, I haven't had a "risking my life and everyone else's" ticket in decades, and just two B.S. revenue collection speed fines in the last 15 years... no collisions for longer, no collisions with injury ever. Actually, most of those "risking my life" roadside lectures from way back didn't involve a ticket or a fine, I guess the paperwork is hell.
The concern for Google dragging their feet is not about FCC being bored while waiting for the requested data, the concern is whether or not they are trying to fabricate something during the delay, effectively lying about what they've done to millions upon millions of Americans.
Not exactly the same life and death arena we all commute to work in, but, in my opinion, worthy of a fine that costs more than the P.R. spin control meeting.
I don't get why people think capacitive touch is better. Here are the ways in which it is different from resistive:
Pros: - Allows multi-touch gestures
Cons: - Less accurate - Requires a human finger or object of similar resistance, rather than just any object
Now does that seem better overall? Even the phone I have now has resistive touch, that's one of the reasons I bought it.
You left out: Pro: Sexy, smooth, feels like a sapphire window on your device, instead of a soft plastic screen that's easily scratched.
Maybe that's not true of all capacitive vs resistive screens, but in practice, most resistive screens are soft and easily scratched, and most capacitive screens are delivered with Gorilla Glass on them.
Three phase (6 terminals), 100s of amps, remote control actuation of solenoids, low volume production - the things were chunks, about half the size of a lunchbox.
Commercial aircraft used lots of similar single-phase RCCBs, they were about $200 each.
I made circuit breakers for B1s - over $1000 a pop, compared to about $600 for similar units for other planes, price difference mostly due to low volume.
My grandfather crashed a B-17 in free-at-that-time France
How can that be? France was invaded in 1940, before the US and its B-17s were in the war, and was liberated in 1945 with the rest of Europe. Are you saying he crashed in peace time? Sounds a bit careless.
Lots of crashes during training, if there weren't, we wouldn't need to train so much, would we?
Seriously, though, a whole lot of time spent in the air during peace time can be just as hazardous as a single mission during wartime.
Jeez, when I want to get to work a little faster, I'm risking a fine that's equivalent to several hours of pay, and I only get paid 2000 hours a year... Google gives federal investigators a hard time and they only propose to fine them about 3 seconds of gross profit?
If a vendor's IP6 solution is that much slower than IP4, they're doing it wrong. There's not so much overhead in the protocol that any decent cell-phone processor chip can't rip through it in a small fraction of a nanosecond per packet.
I do believe that they can do IP4 better, with 20 years of practice I would hope they can, but it's not intrinsically IP6's fault that the vendors' implementations are slower, especially on Gigabit bandwidth local links.
Fortunately, I'm American, I pay for health insurance, and I appreciate that the insurance industry doesn't just lay out $30K for everyone who "wants to try something." Actually, I think they do far too much reimbursement for expensive, unnecessary tests and procedures already.
I'm all for full coverage of appropriate treatments, but in the realm of depression treatment (and many others) there are a lot of very expensive treatments that should be saved until less invasive, less expensive things have been tried. See also: VNS.
Depression is relatively easy to cure short-term, drugs, electrodes, vacation, sky-diving, whatever. The trick is staying non-depressed when you feel trapped and unable to fix your perceived problems.
There's an old joke about why ECT wears off after 6 months... it takes that long for the patient to remember just how bad their life sucks.
I own some mountain property. Beetles, fire danger, blah, blah, blah. I play lumberjack a couple of weeks a year, and it is hell what it does to your body!
Chainsaws are fun, as long as you can walk away when you've had enough.
U.S. "intelligence gathering" organizations are incredibly efficient in their laziness. Most of what they collect, they simply ask people to send them.
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I bought "Red Velvet Car" with some bonus video content from the iTunes store, maybe it's not DRM, I thought it wasn't when I clicked "Buy Now", maybe there's some way to download it to my PC, I sure as hell don't have the time to figure out how - I did take about 1/2 an hour looking through the menus, encountering statements like "authorized on up to 5 devices" and similar, nothing clearly labeling a way to just get a bloody .mp3 or whatever file out to another device. I searched through Google, in blogs, and, after what I considered an appropriate amount of my time had been wasted learning about what is clearly a "different" system of content distribution, concluded that I'll stick with buying .mp3s from Amazon and other vendors, a format that I can readily understand and copy to any of the dozens of devices that I occasionally listen to music on, and backup with all my other music files.
Publishing a copy of a book (without permission) was a crime in 1799, and it should still be a crime today. The author, and original publisher, are both damaged by lost revenue from their more difficult endeavor of creating the original content. Just because every person who has $500 to buy a PC can now copy huge digital works for fractions of a penny, does not erase the essence of intellectual property and its benefits.
The stupid extension of copyright duration and ridiculous relaxation of patent examination standards in recent years are also crimes that should be rectified, even if we will never be able to properly punish the perpetrators.
If "DRM free" really is a better way, let it prove itself in parallel with a respected DRM world. Ripping off DRM'ed works does nothing to prove the benefits of a completely DRM free world.
Back in the 1700s and before, "civilized men" recognized the value of intellectual property to society as a whole and provided foundations for it in most governmental systems. These IP protecting systems, like so much else, have been morphed and twisted by entities with power and influence to benefit themselves as much as possible, and in my opinion they have gone almost far enough that abolishment of IP protection might be just as good as the IP protection systems we have today if it weren't for the social upheaval that abolishment would cause.
However, the fundamental idea of protection of intellectual property is a good one. "Information wants to be free" is not fundamentally right in the way that "Thou shall not kill" is fundamentally right.
Perhaps the path to a better world starts with 100,000 lawyers at the bottom of the ocean?
The thing is... I don't think a free and open internet is possible together with strong, enforcable and actively enforced copyright laws.
You could say the same thing about kiddie porn...
Zero respect for IP is not ideal, and neither is absolute authority to enforce IP rights in all media and devices.
That's just an opinion, but I do agree with it.
But between the two, I'd much rather have the former.
What I'd like to see is an open marketplace with clear labeling: DRM vs non DRM. Both producers and consumers should be free to choose, with non-trivial options on both sides. It seems to me that non DRM audio entertainment and video games are starting to make some significant headway, while the motion picture industry is still playing ostrich and saying all DRM, everywhere, all the time is the only thing conceivable.
I bought one DRM'ed album on iTunes for my iPad, it was such an unholy disappointing pain in the ass that I will never do that again - in contrast, I spent thousands of dollars on essentially non DRM'ed vinyl back in the day, and hundreds of dollars on high quality tape and tape recorders to protect and extend my fair use ownership rights of the music on the LPs.
The piracy riddle is not impossible, but the two sides of the argument have taken irreconcilable positions. Zero respect for IP is not ideal, and neither is absolute authority to enforce IP rights in all media and devices.
Why can't we all just get along?
All optical switching could improve...EM noise considerably.
This ^^^ more than anything is very interesting to me. Will all optical switching and logic be inherently radiation hardened? Able to operate above the Van-Allen belts during a solar storm? I suspect the answer will be yes, until it is reduced in size to be competitive with silicon ICs, at which point it will also become vulnerable - kind of like why vacuum tubes still work with massive EMP, the tube itself is so damn big that the noise averages out.
Still, I'd bet that comparable silicon / optical systems will have different vulnerabilities and will be able to serve as complementary redundant systems.
Is it time for the "Mineshaft Gap" speech yet?
Look at the fuel consumption figures of just about any jet powered aircraft....
Anytime drones come up, I usually see a "so I just whip out my Glock19 and have some target practice" response from the peanut gallery. I just found this, suggesting that you'd better have more than one clip, and a clear field behind the target, if you really want to take a small drone down from any distance.
Missile defense has been debated since before there were practical missiles. It was a particularly hot topic in the late '60s, with the conclusion at the time very similar to the result demonstrated in the video - hitting moving targets is hard.
Patriot missile batteries and similar have given a credible demonstration of missile defense, but the defensive missile is usually far more expensive to develop, build and deploy than the offensive missile it can effectively defend against.
The article seems focused on using drones as a high endurance mobile defensive missile deployment platform, which they doubtlessly can be... what I'm far more worried about is North Korea developing and deploying a cargo ship launchable drone large enough to carry a nuclear weapon, I'm not sure the US Navy has enough coverage to scan every incoming commercial vessel for nukes before they get within striking range of the coast. And, with all the Air Force base closures, air to air response time to take out a drone that you may not detect until minutes before landfall is.... less than comforting.
Since SCOTUS has agreed to hear the case, I doubt it is clear-cut open and shut.
If the contents of the book are substantially the same as the parallel US versions, just printed more cheaply for the foreign market, I'd be happy to use one of those textbooks - I had more than one "made for the US market" $100+ textbook self-destruct before the semester was over due to apparently intentionally shoddy bindings. One was written by the course professor, who cackled with glee about the lack of a used market in his textbooks.
To be fair, I haven't had a "risking my life and everyone else's" ticket in decades, and just two B.S. revenue collection speed fines in the last 15 years... no collisions for longer, no collisions with injury ever. Actually, most of those "risking my life" roadside lectures from way back didn't involve a ticket or a fine, I guess the paperwork is hell.
The concern for Google dragging their feet is not about FCC being bored while waiting for the requested data, the concern is whether or not they are trying to fabricate something during the delay, effectively lying about what they've done to millions upon millions of Americans.
Not exactly the same life and death arena we all commute to work in, but, in my opinion, worthy of a fine that costs more than the P.R. spin control meeting.
I don't get why people think capacitive touch is better. Here are the ways in which it is different from resistive:
Pros:
- Allows multi-touch gestures
Cons:
- Less accurate
- Requires a human finger or object of similar resistance, rather than just any object
Now does that seem better overall? Even the phone I have now has resistive touch, that's one of the reasons I bought it.
You left out: Pro: Sexy, smooth, feels like a sapphire window on your device, instead of a soft plastic screen that's easily scratched.
Maybe that's not true of all capacitive vs resistive screens, but in practice, most resistive screens are soft and easily scratched, and most capacitive screens are delivered with Gorilla Glass on them.
Three phase (6 terminals), 100s of amps, remote control actuation of solenoids, low volume production - the things were chunks, about half the size of a lunchbox.
Commercial aircraft used lots of similar single-phase RCCBs, they were about $200 each.
I made circuit breakers for B1s - over $1000 a pop, compared to about $600 for similar units for other planes, price difference mostly due to low volume.
My grandfather crashed a B-17 in free-at-that-time France
How can that be? France was invaded in 1940, before the US and its B-17s were in the war, and was liberated in 1945 with the rest of Europe. Are you saying he crashed in peace time? Sounds a bit careless.
Lots of crashes during training, if there weren't, we wouldn't need to train so much, would we?
Seriously, though, a whole lot of time spent in the air during peace time can be just as hazardous as a single mission during wartime.
Jeez, when I want to get to work a little faster, I'm risking a fine that's equivalent to several hours of pay, and I only get paid 2000 hours a year... Google gives federal investigators a hard time and they only propose to fine them about 3 seconds of gross profit?
Actually yes it is a big deal. After heat, internet is #1 need in the modern age.
So, make sure to recycle those old P4 desktops into needy homes, heat and internet access in one package.
If a vendor's IP6 solution is that much slower than IP4, they're doing it wrong. There's not so much overhead in the protocol that any decent cell-phone processor chip can't rip through it in a small fraction of a nanosecond per packet.
I do believe that they can do IP4 better, with 20 years of practice I would hope they can, but it's not intrinsically IP6's fault that the vendors' implementations are slower, especially on Gigabit bandwidth local links.
is all the world will need for the next 20 years, right?
Fortunately, I'm American, I pay for health insurance, and I appreciate that the insurance industry doesn't just lay out $30K for everyone who "wants to try something." Actually, I think they do far too much reimbursement for expensive, unnecessary tests and procedures already.
I'm all for full coverage of appropriate treatments, but in the realm of depression treatment (and many others) there are a lot of very expensive treatments that should be saved until less invasive, less expensive things have been tried. See also: VNS.
Depression is relatively easy to cure short-term, drugs, electrodes, vacation, sky-diving, whatever. The trick is staying non-depressed when you feel trapped and unable to fix your perceived problems.
There's an old joke about why ECT wears off after 6 months... it takes that long for the patient to remember just how bad their life sucks.
and mid-1990s Microsoft Pen computing tablets. Capacitive touch screens made all the difference.
The worst job was lumberjack...
I own some mountain property. Beetles, fire danger, blah, blah, blah. I play lumberjack a couple of weeks a year, and it is hell what it does to your body!
Chainsaws are fun, as long as you can walk away when you've had enough.
U.S. "intelligence gathering" organizations are incredibly efficient in their laziness. Most of what they collect, they simply ask people to send them.