So you're saying that all those physicists helped build a bomb which they thought could kill the entire human race upon detonation?
My understanding is that it was a late concern, after they had come up with the bomb concepts and started to figure out how much energy would be released and what the affect would be. Many of the scientists opposed, or had serious reservations about actually using the bomb, and thought it could be used as a "doomsday" type deterrent. The entire project was so full of strange bureaucracy and weird circumstance that it is a fascinating one for study. Some of by favorite tidbits include the scientist whose thesis work was instrumental to the project, but lacked a security clearance and thus was banned from reading his own research to write his thesis. Another favorite was the refinement process. They needed several tons of wire for the plutonium refining process, but during the war copper was rationed, and requisitioning that much might tip off the other side. The answer, call Fort Knox and requisition a few tons of gold and silver. You just can't make stuff like this up. Anyway, back to your original question. I don't have any idea which physicists were voicing the concerns, but it is mentioned in the biographies of several of the prominent physicists on the project some of whom voice concerns that they thought the decision to test the bombs was too rushed to be safe.
the theoretical process works by imbuing heavy metals - such as lead - with the essence of the sun's emanatory spirit, resulting in the lead taking on a yellowish hue.
I remember reading once about how every now and again someone finds a pile of platinum hidden somewhere. It was believed by some gold prospectors that platinum was gold that had not yet turned yellow, thus they hid it so they could come back later and see if it had become valuable gold yet. That has nothing to do with anything, but I find it amusing.
hould we really be trusting a story from RedHerring.com?
If I recall correctly, Red Herring is a fairly popular venture capitalist rag. So, the answer is a definite maybe, but don't invest in whomever has made this without doing some independent research.
People are smart in various ways. The gentleman I was early referring to, for example, had memorized all the trig tables and could instantly tell you any of them, but often had trouble remembering where his car was parked. I've heard even better stories from people who knew Einstein. People make mistakes, and when you're talking about something with that many variables, energy output, gravity's affect on the atmosphere, inertia, etc., etc. I can see how people would disagree. I know I've been involved in projects where we performed an experiment simply because it was faster than checking and trying to resolve the differences between four different people's calculations, and that was just undergraduate stuff.
Forgive my ignorance, but what key combination do you hit to automatically translate stuff in OSX?
The ones I assigned to it in the "Keyboard and Mouse" system preference pane, after installing language translation services from a third party. Some services are available from here. That one is $10 shareware. I actually evaluated about three different sets of these a few years ago, so there are more available. I think one was free even. If you don't assign keys to them, these functions can be found by going to the application name menu then the services menu. For example, In Safari I might select "Safari: Services: Translate: German to English." That, however, was a bit onerous, so I assigned the two I use to keys. Enjoy.
This is mostly a myth. Virtually every physicist associated with the Manhattan Project came independently to the conclusion that a nuclear bomb would not ignite the atmosphere, based on what was known about the nuclear cross-sections of atmospheric atoms (which was a lot).
Having had one of said people as mathematics instructor; he said it was about 1/3 of the team members who thought it would probably kill us all via igniting the atmosphere, or jettisoning a significant amount of it into space.
Damned if they send out patches as they're made (too many, too confusing) and damned if they wait 'til Patch Tuesday (negligent, inconsiderate).
Yup, but not damned if they fix the obvious design blunders that lead to many of these exploits, do security audits before releasing new technologies, and build an architecture that is not so brittle so that users don't have to worry that a patch to the web browser will break both core OS functions and third party applications.
Maybe Microsoft will consider adding this functionality to Windows if it's ever actually capable of translating into any languages apart from gobbledygook and double-dutch. As it is now, it's just a gimmick. Thanks, but I'd prefer the developers of my operating system to be concentrating on useful features, not gimmicks.
Personally I find computer translation useful, even with its limitations. More important than the translation services in specific, however, is the framework that allows programs to share services like translation, spell checking, encryption, and many more. If you go to all the trouble to write a spell checker for your word processor, why shouldn't it be available to your web browser (for Slashdot posts), your e-mail client, your text editor, your chat client, your IRC server, and any other program that can use it? Apple spent no time implementing the translation services, I downloaded them from a third party developer. They just provided an OS that lets me use them wherever I want. Running an OS where every application has to implement everything all over again is what is primitive and backwards.
Well, that is cool, but I haven't had a problem translating all my chat discussions. I just use some of the translation services available for all text on OS X. It would be nice if my chat client would support automatic translation to and from a given language, for specific person though. I do have to select the text and hit a key-combo. I really hope Linux and Windows catch up and move things like translation and spell/grammar checking to system wide services, rather than re-implementing them in each individual application. When using text or images on Windows, it always feels like I've stepped back to an earlier, more primitive, era of computing.
And FOX axed Dark Angel to make room for that bastard firefly show. I suspect you can tell which I liked better.
Everyone has personal likes and dislikes. Canceling Dark Angel may have annoyed you, and may have even been a bad idea, but Dark Angel is out on DVD, and is in no way a top seller. It doesn't even outsell the 4th season of the Golden Girls. Firefly, on the other hand, is the number one selling TV series on DVD, outselling prime time blockbusters like Lost. Even the most clueless of TV executives has to wonder how they can justify axing a show with that kind of demand, before even playing all the episodes they paid to make.
Ariel Sharon is dying and you lot are here talking about Futurama?!
Please, Futurama is way funnier than Sharon. I mean, what good jokes has he ever told? I have no interest in watching video of him, and if Fox puts him on for half an hour, I won't be watching. You reality TV fans must have brain damage.
Gee, really? I guess that explains why none of them are doing very well then and why analyst after analyst has found that people want to own, not rent music.
I've found it is definitely worth the $60/year. Right now I've got 744 songs in my collection, which if purchased at iTunes would cost more than 12 years of subscription fees (assuming the price doesn't go up).
So how many songs do you think you will download, versus how long do you think you will live? I spend under $60 on used CDs and music downloads a year. Plus, I don't ever have to worry about whether or not I will get enough any given year. It stays forever. Finally, there is no danger that someone will go out of business and my CDs or downloads (which I burn to CD) will go out of business. You're betting that in 30 years Yahoo music service will still be around and carrying music you like, otherwise your investment is wasted. That's a lot of commitment to one service. I have some friends who are looking for a good man, would you like me to forward some marriage proposals to them for you?
Seriously though, I hope it works out for you, and nothing is wrong with choice, it just isn't a choice many consumers seem to want, according to most market evaluations.
OK, I read the article. I still don't know what the software being released does. Is it a Web application or a traditional one? What OS's are supported? Does this include a Media player, like iTunes, or is it just the retail store portion? Is this being illegally bundled with Windows or offered separately? They go on to talk about support for TV, without mentioning if that functionality is supported by this new service, and if so what programs will be available. Of course I'll never install this crap anyway, being as it is tied to WMP and I can't think of anything worse for the media industry than to be locked into an MS controlled, proprietary format. Still, I want to know what crap I'll have to deal with when working on PCs. Where's the beef?
ver a full third of taxpayers in this country pay no taxes at all. The top 1% of taxpayers - and these aren't all or even mostly people who are fabulously wealthy; these include people who make just over $250,000/year in household income - as of 2004, pay over 40% of the tax. The top 5% now pay over 60% of the tax. The entire bottom 50% now pay less than 3% of the tax burden, and most of them are at the upper part of the 50%. The bottom 35% pay nothing.
Looking at the numbers you are listing, you are only talking about income to evaluate taxes, not total wealth. If I recall correctly the last census indicated that when you add up the lowest 48% of all households income and savings and debt you reached a net total of zero, with the debt just balancing the savings and income. That debt is owed to someone, and they're not in the bottom 48%. Nearly half the wealth in this country is controlled by less than 5% of the population. That 5% should pay more proportionally, since they are not the ones suffering from poverty. Your claims of the rich being overtaxed are belied by the shrinking middle class and growing lower class. More and more people have less and less each day, while the very small top 10-15% controls disproportionately more and more wealth. Also, the inheritance tax, the single most progressive tax, is being dismantled as we speak. Stop watching right-wing propaganda and just read the actual census and analyze the numbers yourself.
Since, as you say, the more fortunate have more than enough money, perhaps we could take some of theirs, and simply give it to the poor?
You do know what happens when the majority become very poor and a small wealthy class is established. Eventually, the poor chop off the heads of the rich and start a new government. I'm not too confident that this new system will be as well constructed as what we came up with 200 years ago. In any case the rich pay more taxes, so they don't get killed for exploiting the poor (at least if they are smart they do).
From the "technology isn't bad, it's just technology" crowd, and indictment of a communication technology.
Agreed. They should have complained about the programming on TV, not the technology.
Otherwise, we should trash newspapers and "Shakespear" (sic - hmm, maybe you're right about the dumbing down...), too.
Before you make an idiot of yourself, please at least investigate your opinions. Shakespeare spelled his own name in different ways at different times. Spelling was much more nebulous in the Elizabethan era, and using a less common spelling is in no way incorrect.
The lack of personal responsibility, however, is. Of course, your message doesn't seem to hold personal responsibility in very high regard, so your assessment isn't surprising.
I'm all for personal responsibility. If the poor are not given equal opportunities and a chance to advance, then those in power can hold themselves personally responsible for their own messy deaths when the poor revolt. The American dream is a farce. Of the wealthiest 5% of people in the US during the last census, only a handful did not have a parent in the wealthiest 5%. I, for one, don't believe that is because of superior genetics. It is because it takes money to make money and connections are more important that intelligence or skill. The deck is well stacked. As more and more of our population live their lives in debt, or with very little, and as ever fewer find the means to own land or a home they become ever more restless. The least wealthy 5% is already imprisoned and denied the ability to vote. That ship has sailed. You can only push people down so far, before they push back.
What about that "right-click" key that pretty much all recent PC keyboards have?
I'm not sure I understand your comment. People using alternative interfaces usually don't have the option of using the keyboard in conjunction with another device and often no keyboard at all. Think of someone paralyzed who uses their mouth to control the computer.
Those were (are) artificially contrained by DTV to remove features such as video export, dvd burning, playing home movies & slide shows etc...
So you're saying with an out of the box Tivo, I can grab a movie or show with my powerbook and watch it there in MPEG format? And I can burn a DVD of it from there when I'm done? And I can easily plug in an external hard drive full of movies, music, and images and the Tivo will allow me to select and play them? I'd love to know how, since no one I asked who has one was able to do any of these things, nor was I able to find any documentation claiming they could when last I evaluated DVR systems.
me of the items up there are jsut wrong - no skip back? What do you think the Instant Replay button is for?
When last I evaluated DVRs (about a year ago, maybe a year and a half ago) I found the easiest way to skip commercials was using a skip ahead, occasionally using a skip back for programs with weird commercial break lengths. On many systems this was easy. You click the forward button to skip ahead and the back to skip back. On the system I ended up with, these times are actually customizable to any length, which is an added bonus. When testing the Tivo it did not have any skip ahead (which I later learned can be enabled with an easter egg, something most people will never learn) and if there was a skip back I did not find it. If you say it is there, I'll take your word for it, but it sure did not seem easy or intuitive to find to me.
Specifically which of these features do you claim Tivos now are capable of?
Not to nitpick or start a flame war, but isn't that like how microsoft word doesn't require a keyboard( office ships with voice recognition)? Mac OS is by far the best desktop OS out there and it does support two buttoned mice completely. I just wish they weren't so stubborn about some things.
Have you ever tried using an alternate input device, like a stylus, voice interface, control stick, braille board, or touch screen with the average Windows and Mac applications? On Windows you constantly run into functionality that is only available via mouse, right-click. Often there is no easy way to get to this functionality with another type of interface. On the mac I know of only one program (a high end ray tracing suite) that provides functionality only in the right click menu. Having a default of one button forces developers to code to that standard and leaves that button available for other functions. Thus all programs offer all features to people with disabilities, or who just need a special interface for some situation. More importantly for me, it also means that rather than relying upon the developer to choose what options are in the right-click menu, I can build a custom menu with actually useful features. Right-clicking in notepad is useless. Right-clicking in textedit gives me a shortcut to the text manipulation scripts I occasionally use.
I dont understand this. Tivo right now, works perfect.
For the average person, who does not implement hacks or easter egg features that is not even close to correct.
No 30 second skip ahead or 10 second skip back.
No easy export to other devices like laptops.
No easy DVD/VCD burning without paying big bucks.
No editor to remove commercials.
No choice of scheduling services (why can't they use the free TitanTV service)?
Why can't it import my iTunes songs, store, and play them?
Why can't it use an external drive or network drive to store data?
No easy way to add/store/play home movies and slideshows of photos.
No easy way to buy shows that are not on any channel right now, like classic TV shows.
DRM allows broadcasters to restrict what I export and how long I can store a given show.
Tivo does a lot of things right, but it also does not offer a lot of useful features. It also is very restrictive for the average user. Tivo seems to have sold out to the cable and satellite companies and I just don't trust them. They certainly haven't provided what I wanted so I went with someone who would. A lot of people would like the option to do the same.
Wouldn't the user at least notice the app that is launched to handle the wmf being opened?
I don't think it gets that far. It auto-launches the file, which is handed to the graphics framework which sees it is a wmf and should then launch the player, but since the exploit basically allows the user to run a random script at this point, I don't think the player is ever actually opened. I don't really have a good VM to test this right now, I'm afraid, so I'm going by what I have read on the security forums so don't take this as gospel.
Not that this really relates to your comment, but OpenOffice.org doesn't have a grammar checker... I think the lack has a serious effect on OO's functionality and as a consequence, its usefulness.
I agree with you, partly, but I do have a number of reservations. First, I think Word (and most other) grammar checkers are much less useful than many people think. They are incorrect as often as they are correct. Second, I don't think a word processor is the proper place for a spell checker or a grammar checker. These are services that most people would like to apply to all text they manipulate and should be OS plug-ins that are available to all applications. Right now on OS X, this is the way they are implemented (as services). This means I can not only spell and grammar check my word processor files, but also my Slashdot comments, my e-mails, my command line, and pretty much everything else. I can also perform other operations, like translation to other languages, encryption, dictionary and thesaurus lookups, common text transformations (strip line endings and the like), or speaking text aloud. This means I can also train my spelling and grammar checkers once, rather than once per application. It also means I can use the best spellchecker and grammar checker in each application, rather than the one included with that application.
I might mention, this functionality works in about 95% of all applications, excluding some java and other runtime engine applications and a few applications that have implemented their own text handling from scratch ignoring all the built in functionality and developer guidelines. About the only major application I know of that falls into this last category is Word. What I'd really like to see is not a grammar checker for OpenOffice, but a OS plug-in framework for Linux and Windows that OpenOffice can take advantage of.
those things separated by semicolons are not cumulative, but alternatives.
Yes, I'm aware of that in the first case, although I disagree in the second case. The final sentence fragment is condition/example for the first two. You'll note it starts with "as."
so to take something and carry it away feloniously is stealing...
Yes, but "feloniously" (while ripe with many meanings) usually means "while committing a felony." Copyright infringement is not a felony. It is not even a criminal offense; just a civil one. I suppose you could interpret it in the very old usage as "maliciously" but at that point only some copyright infringement could be called "stealing" and it is a pretty weak and strained interpretation.
Of course your point is neither here nor there and it all depends upon your interpretation of "felonious" and whether or not deprecating the value of your car is felonious in and given jurisdiction.
i find your instructions to "buy a dictionary already" amusing given that you seem to be unable to properly read the one you've got. the fact that you concluded that auto theft for joyriding wasn't stealing should've been a pretty clear indicator that you had something out of whack.
I find your entire post amusing. Is your 'shift' key broken? Why are you lacking all capitalization? I've interpreted the dictionary properly. You might want to find one for your computer as well that you can use for spellchecking. You might also want to invest in a book about law. Joy-riding is not stealing, as any lawyer will tell you. It will, however, probably get you arrested and convicted of stealing anyway. Of course wearing a t-shirt that says "protect our civil liberties" to a Bush rally will get you arrested for trespassing. It still does not make it so.
hmm maybe. but if i'm a virus writer and i know that one way will get me all of the ie users infected without them being aware that anything even happened
There still seems to be a misunderstanding. With an "auto-launch" IE does not ask anything and runs the wmf, resulting in the same behavior as if it was embedded in an img tag (with IE's default settings). The only practical difference between the two methods is that auto-launching has the potential to infect Firefox and possibly other browsers.
It's not insightful. It's playing word games in order to make the act appear to be less offensive than it really is.
Bullshit. Stealing is taking something away from someone. Copying is making a copy of something. Copying a work the government has forbidden you to make a copy of without permission is still copying. Equating the two (stealing and copying) is what is playing word games. If I go into your house and take your TV, I have stolen from you. If I copy a book written in 1971, whose copyright owner is unknown and unfindable I have infringed a copyright. Both are illegal; one a criminal offense and the other a civil offense. One causes damage to someone and loss of property, the other does not. You are confusing the violation of a persons natural rights with the violation of a supposedly limited government granted right.
And FYI, I am professional author and make my money creating copyrighted works. That does not mean copyright law, as it now exists, is just or beneficial. As for whether or not copyright violation is justified, in many cases I find it laudable. I certainly have violated copyrights in order to make an archival copy of a work before it it lost, or in order to make available to some person a literary or musical work that is otherwise unavailable and cannot be purchased anywhere. I don't have any problem with anyone copying works for non-commercial uses, or works that have been copyrighted for more than a few years. I don't have any problem with people violating any copyrights held by large organizations who have contributed to the problem by buying laws that extend their copyrights unreasonably. Just because some company has bribed politician into passing unjust laws does not make it unethical to disobey those laws.
Artists (myself included) don't deserve compensation for work, but I think that if the government is willing to grant a short monopoly on reproduction in exchange for archival copies and to promote the creation and dissemination of works, that is reasonable. If, however, the government wants to use copyright law to make works unavailable to the public at any cost, erasing from the public consciousness important works, all for the sake of higher profits... well they can shove the laws where the sun doesn't shine. I'll certainly not obey them.
Yeah, tell that to the cops when they pull you over driving around a car that has been reported missing.
It is true that you will most likely be found guilty of theft if you are caught "borrowing" a car, but the law has ruled in a number of cases that when it is clear a person did, or intended to return an item that it is not theft, per se. Not that borrowing items without permission is not illegal, but it is not stealing. In the car example, someone who borrowed and returned it and was then caught would be charged with deprecating the value of the vehicle (whatever that offense is called in a particular jurisdiction).
Arguing semantics does not change the fact many people view copyright violation as wrong, along the same lines as stealing.
...but most of those people do not understand the stated purpose or history of copyright. Personally, I'd like to have a good a working copyright system, but the system as it exists now is worse than nothing. Musicians are paying a cartel to take their "intellectual property." To prevent competition, to protect tiny amounts of profit, and simply because they have no reason no to, copyright holders are denying the vast majority of literature, cinema, music, and other art forms to the people and bankrupting our artistic heritage. Works vanish every day. Confusing "intellectual property" rights with natural rights like normal property rights is a big part of the problem. Naturally we all have the right to possess that which we are given or trade for. Naturally we all have the right to say, write, or express whatever we want. Copyright is an artificial limitation on free speech, enacted temporarily to benefit the people in certain ways. If it is not benefitting the people optimally, it should be changed to do so. The only reason it exists is to benefit the people. Right now, it is doing more damage than good, in my opinion.
Slashdot Mirror
So you're saying that all those physicists helped build a bomb which they thought could kill the entire human race upon detonation?
My understanding is that it was a late concern, after they had come up with the bomb concepts and started to figure out how much energy would be released and what the affect would be. Many of the scientists opposed, or had serious reservations about actually using the bomb, and thought it could be used as a "doomsday" type deterrent. The entire project was so full of strange bureaucracy and weird circumstance that it is a fascinating one for study. Some of by favorite tidbits include the scientist whose thesis work was instrumental to the project, but lacked a security clearance and thus was banned from reading his own research to write his thesis. Another favorite was the refinement process. They needed several tons of wire for the plutonium refining process, but during the war copper was rationed, and requisitioning that much might tip off the other side. The answer, call Fort Knox and requisition a few tons of gold and silver. You just can't make stuff like this up. Anyway, back to your original question. I don't have any idea which physicists were voicing the concerns, but it is mentioned in the biographies of several of the prominent physicists on the project some of whom voice concerns that they thought the decision to test the bombs was too rushed to be safe.
the theoretical process works by imbuing heavy metals - such as lead - with the essence of the sun's emanatory spirit, resulting in the lead taking on a yellowish hue.
I remember reading once about how every now and again someone finds a pile of platinum hidden somewhere. It was believed by some gold prospectors that platinum was gold that had not yet turned yellow, thus they hid it so they could come back later and see if it had become valuable gold yet. That has nothing to do with anything, but I find it amusing.
hould we really be trusting a story from RedHerring.com?
If I recall correctly, Red Herring is a fairly popular venture capitalist rag. So, the answer is a definite maybe, but don't invest in whomever has made this without doing some independent research.
People are smart in various ways. The gentleman I was early referring to, for example, had memorized all the trig tables and could instantly tell you any of them, but often had trouble remembering where his car was parked. I've heard even better stories from people who knew Einstein. People make mistakes, and when you're talking about something with that many variables, energy output, gravity's affect on the atmosphere, inertia, etc., etc. I can see how people would disagree. I know I've been involved in projects where we performed an experiment simply because it was faster than checking and trying to resolve the differences between four different people's calculations, and that was just undergraduate stuff.
Forgive my ignorance, but what key combination do you hit to automatically translate stuff in OSX?
The ones I assigned to it in the "Keyboard and Mouse" system preference pane, after installing language translation services from a third party. Some services are available from here. That one is $10 shareware. I actually evaluated about three different sets of these a few years ago, so there are more available. I think one was free even. If you don't assign keys to them, these functions can be found by going to the application name menu then the services menu. For example, In Safari I might select "Safari: Services: Translate: German to English." That, however, was a bit onerous, so I assigned the two I use to keys. Enjoy.
This is mostly a myth. Virtually every physicist associated with the Manhattan Project came independently to the conclusion that a nuclear bomb would not ignite the atmosphere, based on what was known about the nuclear cross-sections of atmospheric atoms (which was a lot).
Having had one of said people as mathematics instructor; he said it was about 1/3 of the team members who thought it would probably kill us all via igniting the atmosphere, or jettisoning a significant amount of it into space.
Damned if they send out patches as they're made (too many, too confusing) and damned if they wait 'til Patch Tuesday (negligent, inconsiderate).
Yup, but not damned if they fix the obvious design blunders that lead to many of these exploits, do security audits before releasing new technologies, and build an architecture that is not so brittle so that users don't have to worry that a patch to the web browser will break both core OS functions and third party applications.
Maybe Microsoft will consider adding this functionality to Windows if it's ever actually capable of translating into any languages apart from gobbledygook and double-dutch. As it is now, it's just a gimmick. Thanks, but I'd prefer the developers of my operating system to be concentrating on useful features, not gimmicks.
Personally I find computer translation useful, even with its limitations. More important than the translation services in specific, however, is the framework that allows programs to share services like translation, spell checking, encryption, and many more. If you go to all the trouble to write a spell checker for your word processor, why shouldn't it be available to your web browser (for Slashdot posts), your e-mail client, your text editor, your chat client, your IRC server, and any other program that can use it? Apple spent no time implementing the translation services, I downloaded them from a third party developer. They just provided an OS that lets me use them wherever I want. Running an OS where every application has to implement everything all over again is what is primitive and backwards.
Well, that is cool, but I haven't had a problem translating all my chat discussions. I just use some of the translation services available for all text on OS X. It would be nice if my chat client would support automatic translation to and from a given language, for specific person though. I do have to select the text and hit a key-combo. I really hope Linux and Windows catch up and move things like translation and spell/grammar checking to system wide services, rather than re-implementing them in each individual application. When using text or images on Windows, it always feels like I've stepped back to an earlier, more primitive, era of computing.
And FOX axed Dark Angel to make room for that bastard firefly show. I suspect you can tell which I liked better.
Everyone has personal likes and dislikes. Canceling Dark Angel may have annoyed you, and may have even been a bad idea, but Dark Angel is out on DVD, and is in no way a top seller. It doesn't even outsell the 4th season of the Golden Girls. Firefly, on the other hand, is the number one selling TV series on DVD, outselling prime time blockbusters like Lost. Even the most clueless of TV executives has to wonder how they can justify axing a show with that kind of demand, before even playing all the episodes they paid to make.
Ariel Sharon is dying and you lot are here talking about Futurama?!
Please, Futurama is way funnier than Sharon. I mean, what good jokes has he ever told? I have no interest in watching video of him, and if Fox puts him on for half an hour, I won't be watching. You reality TV fans must have brain damage.
Subscription-based music is the way to go.
Gee, really? I guess that explains why none of them are doing very well then and why analyst after analyst has found that people want to own, not rent music.
I've found it is definitely worth the $60/year. Right now I've got 744 songs in my collection, which if purchased at iTunes would cost more than 12 years of subscription fees (assuming the price doesn't go up).
So how many songs do you think you will download, versus how long do you think you will live? I spend under $60 on used CDs and music downloads a year. Plus, I don't ever have to worry about whether or not I will get enough any given year. It stays forever. Finally, there is no danger that someone will go out of business and my CDs or downloads (which I burn to CD) will go out of business. You're betting that in 30 years Yahoo music service will still be around and carrying music you like, otherwise your investment is wasted. That's a lot of commitment to one service. I have some friends who are looking for a good man, would you like me to forward some marriage proposals to them for you?
Seriously though, I hope it works out for you, and nothing is wrong with choice, it just isn't a choice many consumers seem to want, according to most market evaluations.
OK, I read the article. I still don't know what the software being released does. Is it a Web application or a traditional one? What OS's are supported? Does this include a Media player, like iTunes, or is it just the retail store portion? Is this being illegally bundled with Windows or offered separately? They go on to talk about support for TV, without mentioning if that functionality is supported by this new service, and if so what programs will be available. Of course I'll never install this crap anyway, being as it is tied to WMP and I can't think of anything worse for the media industry than to be locked into an MS controlled, proprietary format. Still, I want to know what crap I'll have to deal with when working on PCs. Where's the beef?
ver a full third of taxpayers in this country pay no taxes at all. The top 1% of taxpayers - and these aren't all or even mostly people who are fabulously wealthy; these include people who make just over $250,000/year in household income - as of 2004, pay over 40% of the tax. The top 5% now pay over 60% of the tax. The entire bottom 50% now pay less than 3% of the tax burden, and most of them are at the upper part of the 50%. The bottom 35% pay nothing.
Looking at the numbers you are listing, you are only talking about income to evaluate taxes, not total wealth. If I recall correctly the last census indicated that when you add up the lowest 48% of all households income and savings and debt you reached a net total of zero, with the debt just balancing the savings and income. That debt is owed to someone, and they're not in the bottom 48%. Nearly half the wealth in this country is controlled by less than 5% of the population. That 5% should pay more proportionally, since they are not the ones suffering from poverty. Your claims of the rich being overtaxed are belied by the shrinking middle class and growing lower class. More and more people have less and less each day, while the very small top 10-15% controls disproportionately more and more wealth. Also, the inheritance tax, the single most progressive tax, is being dismantled as we speak. Stop watching right-wing propaganda and just read the actual census and analyze the numbers yourself.
Since, as you say, the more fortunate have more than enough money, perhaps we could take some of theirs, and simply give it to the poor?
You do know what happens when the majority become very poor and a small wealthy class is established. Eventually, the poor chop off the heads of the rich and start a new government. I'm not too confident that this new system will be as well constructed as what we came up with 200 years ago. In any case the rich pay more taxes, so they don't get killed for exploiting the poor (at least if they are smart they do).
From the "technology isn't bad, it's just technology" crowd, and indictment of a communication technology.
Agreed. They should have complained about the programming on TV, not the technology.
Otherwise, we should trash newspapers and "Shakespear" (sic - hmm, maybe you're right about the dumbing down...), too.
Before you make an idiot of yourself, please at least investigate your opinions. Shakespeare spelled his own name in different ways at different times. Spelling was much more nebulous in the Elizabethan era, and using a less common spelling is in no way incorrect.
The lack of personal responsibility, however, is. Of course, your message doesn't seem to hold personal responsibility in very high regard, so your assessment isn't surprising.
I'm all for personal responsibility. If the poor are not given equal opportunities and a chance to advance, then those in power can hold themselves personally responsible for their own messy deaths when the poor revolt. The American dream is a farce. Of the wealthiest 5% of people in the US during the last census, only a handful did not have a parent in the wealthiest 5%. I, for one, don't believe that is because of superior genetics. It is because it takes money to make money and connections are more important that intelligence or skill. The deck is well stacked. As more and more of our population live their lives in debt, or with very little, and as ever fewer find the means to own land or a home they become ever more restless. The least wealthy 5% is already imprisoned and denied the ability to vote. That ship has sailed. You can only push people down so far, before they push back.
What about that "right-click" key that pretty much all recent PC keyboards have?
I'm not sure I understand your comment. People using alternative interfaces usually don't have the option of using the keyboard in conjunction with another device and often no keyboard at all. Think of someone paralyzed who uses their mouth to control the computer.
Those were (are) artificially contrained by DTV to remove features such as video export, dvd burning, playing home movies & slide shows etc...
So you're saying with an out of the box Tivo, I can grab a movie or show with my powerbook and watch it there in MPEG format? And I can burn a DVD of it from there when I'm done? And I can easily plug in an external hard drive full of movies, music, and images and the Tivo will allow me to select and play them? I'd love to know how, since no one I asked who has one was able to do any of these things, nor was I able to find any documentation claiming they could when last I evaluated DVR systems.
me of the items up there are jsut wrong - no skip back? What do you think the Instant Replay button is for?
When last I evaluated DVRs (about a year ago, maybe a year and a half ago) I found the easiest way to skip commercials was using a skip ahead, occasionally using a skip back for programs with weird commercial break lengths. On many systems this was easy. You click the forward button to skip ahead and the back to skip back. On the system I ended up with, these times are actually customizable to any length, which is an added bonus. When testing the Tivo it did not have any skip ahead (which I later learned can be enabled with an easter egg, something most people will never learn) and if there was a skip back I did not find it. If you say it is there, I'll take your word for it, but it sure did not seem easy or intuitive to find to me.
Specifically which of these features do you claim Tivos now are capable of?
Not to nitpick or start a flame war, but isn't that like how microsoft word doesn't require a keyboard( office ships with voice recognition)? Mac OS is by far the best desktop OS out there and it does support two buttoned mice completely. I just wish they weren't so stubborn about some things.
Have you ever tried using an alternate input device, like a stylus, voice interface, control stick, braille board, or touch screen with the average Windows and Mac applications? On Windows you constantly run into functionality that is only available via mouse, right-click. Often there is no easy way to get to this functionality with another type of interface. On the mac I know of only one program (a high end ray tracing suite) that provides functionality only in the right click menu. Having a default of one button forces developers to code to that standard and leaves that button available for other functions. Thus all programs offer all features to people with disabilities, or who just need a special interface for some situation. More importantly for me, it also means that rather than relying upon the developer to choose what options are in the right-click menu, I can build a custom menu with actually useful features. Right-clicking in notepad is useless. Right-clicking in textedit gives me a shortcut to the text manipulation scripts I occasionally use.
I dont understand this. Tivo right now, works perfect.
For the average person, who does not implement hacks or easter egg features that is not even close to correct.
Tivo does a lot of things right, but it also does not offer a lot of useful features. It also is very restrictive for the average user. Tivo seems to have sold out to the cable and satellite companies and I just don't trust them. They certainly haven't provided what I wanted so I went with someone who would. A lot of people would like the option to do the same.
Wouldn't the user at least notice the app that is launched to handle the wmf being opened?
I don't think it gets that far. It auto-launches the file, which is handed to the graphics framework which sees it is a wmf and should then launch the player, but since the exploit basically allows the user to run a random script at this point, I don't think the player is ever actually opened. I don't really have a good VM to test this right now, I'm afraid, so I'm going by what I have read on the security forums so don't take this as gospel.
Not that this really relates to your comment, but OpenOffice.org doesn't have a grammar checker... I think the lack has a serious effect on OO's functionality and as a consequence, its usefulness.
I agree with you, partly, but I do have a number of reservations. First, I think Word (and most other) grammar checkers are much less useful than many people think. They are incorrect as often as they are correct. Second, I don't think a word processor is the proper place for a spell checker or a grammar checker. These are services that most people would like to apply to all text they manipulate and should be OS plug-ins that are available to all applications. Right now on OS X, this is the way they are implemented (as services). This means I can not only spell and grammar check my word processor files, but also my Slashdot comments, my e-mails, my command line, and pretty much everything else. I can also perform other operations, like translation to other languages, encryption, dictionary and thesaurus lookups, common text transformations (strip line endings and the like), or speaking text aloud. This means I can also train my spelling and grammar checkers once, rather than once per application. It also means I can use the best spellchecker and grammar checker in each application, rather than the one included with that application.
I might mention, this functionality works in about 95% of all applications, excluding some java and other runtime engine applications and a few applications that have implemented their own text handling from scratch ignoring all the built in functionality and developer guidelines. About the only major application I know of that falls into this last category is Word. What I'd really like to see is not a grammar checker for OpenOffice, but a OS plug-in framework for Linux and Windows that OpenOffice can take advantage of.
you misunderstand definitions.
Actually, I don't think so.
those things separated by semicolons are not cumulative, but alternatives.
Yes, I'm aware of that in the first case, although I disagree in the second case. The final sentence fragment is condition/example for the first two. You'll note it starts with "as."
so to take something and carry it away feloniously is stealing...
Yes, but "feloniously" (while ripe with many meanings) usually means "while committing a felony." Copyright infringement is not a felony. It is not even a criminal offense; just a civil one. I suppose you could interpret it in the very old usage as "maliciously" but at that point only some copyright infringement could be called "stealing" and it is a pretty weak and strained interpretation.
Of course your point is neither here nor there and it all depends upon your interpretation of "felonious" and whether or not deprecating the value of your car is felonious in and given jurisdiction.
i find your instructions to "buy a dictionary already" amusing given that you seem to be unable to properly read the one you've got. the fact that you concluded that auto theft for joyriding wasn't stealing should've been a pretty clear indicator that you had something out of whack.
I find your entire post amusing. Is your 'shift' key broken? Why are you lacking all capitalization? I've interpreted the dictionary properly. You might want to find one for your computer as well that you can use for spellchecking. You might also want to invest in a book about law. Joy-riding is not stealing, as any lawyer will tell you. It will, however, probably get you arrested and convicted of stealing anyway. Of course wearing a t-shirt that says "protect our civil liberties" to a Bush rally will get you arrested for trespassing. It still does not make it so.
hmm maybe. but if i'm a virus writer and i know that one way will get me all of the ie users infected without them being aware that anything even happened
There still seems to be a misunderstanding. With an "auto-launch" IE does not ask anything and runs the wmf, resulting in the same behavior as if it was embedded in an img tag (with IE's default settings). The only practical difference between the two methods is that auto-launching has the potential to infect Firefox and possibly other browsers.
It's not insightful. It's playing word games in order to make the act appear to be less offensive than it really is.
Bullshit. Stealing is taking something away from someone. Copying is making a copy of something. Copying a work the government has forbidden you to make a copy of without permission is still copying. Equating the two (stealing and copying) is what is playing word games. If I go into your house and take your TV, I have stolen from you. If I copy a book written in 1971, whose copyright owner is unknown and unfindable I have infringed a copyright. Both are illegal; one a criminal offense and the other a civil offense. One causes damage to someone and loss of property, the other does not. You are confusing the violation of a persons natural rights with the violation of a supposedly limited government granted right.
And FYI, I am professional author and make my money creating copyrighted works. That does not mean copyright law, as it now exists, is just or beneficial. As for whether or not copyright violation is justified, in many cases I find it laudable. I certainly have violated copyrights in order to make an archival copy of a work before it it lost, or in order to make available to some person a literary or musical work that is otherwise unavailable and cannot be purchased anywhere. I don't have any problem with anyone copying works for non-commercial uses, or works that have been copyrighted for more than a few years. I don't have any problem with people violating any copyrights held by large organizations who have contributed to the problem by buying laws that extend their copyrights unreasonably. Just because some company has bribed politician into passing unjust laws does not make it unethical to disobey those laws.
Artists (myself included) don't deserve compensation for work, but I think that if the government is willing to grant a short monopoly on reproduction in exchange for archival copies and to promote the creation and dissemination of works, that is reasonable. If, however, the government wants to use copyright law to make works unavailable to the public at any cost, erasing from the public consciousness important works, all for the sake of higher profits... well they can shove the laws where the sun doesn't shine. I'll certainly not obey them.
Yeah, tell that to the cops when they pull you over driving around a car that has been reported missing.
It is true that you will most likely be found guilty of theft if you are caught "borrowing" a car, but the law has ruled in a number of cases that when it is clear a person did, or intended to return an item that it is not theft, per se. Not that borrowing items without permission is not illegal, but it is not stealing. In the car example, someone who borrowed and returned it and was then caught would be charged with deprecating the value of the vehicle (whatever that offense is called in a particular jurisdiction).
Arguing semantics does not change the fact many people view copyright violation as wrong, along the same lines as stealing.
...but most of those people do not understand the stated purpose or history of copyright. Personally, I'd like to have a good a working copyright system, but the system as it exists now is worse than nothing. Musicians are paying a cartel to take their "intellectual property." To prevent competition, to protect tiny amounts of profit, and simply because they have no reason no to, copyright holders are denying the vast majority of literature, cinema, music, and other art forms to the people and bankrupting our artistic heritage. Works vanish every day. Confusing "intellectual property" rights with natural rights like normal property rights is a big part of the problem. Naturally we all have the right to possess that which we are given or trade for. Naturally we all have the right to say, write, or express whatever we want. Copyright is an artificial limitation on free speech, enacted temporarily to benefit the people in certain ways. If it is not benefitting the people optimally, it should be changed to do so. The only reason it exists is to benefit the people. Right now, it is doing more damage than good, in my opinion.