Changing mediums doesn't change the energy source.
How we describe energy depends upon it's current form. Light may have been electricity yesterday, or a million years ago. The energy in the earth was probably light, or x-rays, or nuclear bonds at some point. That is irrelevant. If it is now stored in the earth as heat, it is geothermal. If light hit the earth ten thousand years ago and heated it up, is the heat in the earth suddenly called solar energy? No, the time frame is not the issue.
Geothermal energy never "got into" Earth. It's always been there and formed along with Earth.
Oh I see, God put it there when he created the earth 6000 years ago. How silly of me.
The slate (Earth, basically) stores the heat from the sun and releases it gradually into the room.
If you argue that the slate is just a piece of earth you have rearranged, then it is solar energy that becomes geothermal, then radiant heat. If you argue that it is a low-tech solar cell, then it is solar energy, then stored heat, then radiant heat. It is just a matter of perspective.
The key word, there, being " stored." The storage medium is irrelevant to the source of the energy.
Don't be a twit. All energy we deal with has probably changed in medium at some point. Solar energy is just energy that was stored in atoms, and is released. That it is stored in the sun is irrelevant. It's not solar, it's really just nuclear power. See the parallel here?
You can argue the semantics of this all you like, but ground pumps use geothermal energy. How the energy got into the earth is not important. It is heat energy from the earth. It is geothermal. get over yourself.
Although the heat comes from the ground, it's source is mostly from solar warming of the ground
Yes, I know what a heat pump is. No, I don't agree with you definition of geothermal. Around here, in the northern U.S., heat pumps are placed below the level of the ground that has anything to do with direct solar energy. About 5 meters below the surface, the amount of solar energy to hit the surface at that location, has little to no effect on the temperature of the ground (2 degrees Fahrenheit variation over a year). While the source of the heat is ultimately solar, so is the the source for fossil fuels. This is heat stored in the earth itself, and you can't get much more geothermal than that (geo=earth, thermal=heat). Pumping air up that is 70 degrees warmer than the air outside is a pretty significant source of heat, IMHO.
What you're talking about sounds like a ground-sourced heat pump (or ground water-sourced in your case.) It runs on electricity.
I have a natural gas burner with forced air. Since the air is circulated by an electric fan, I suppose you classify that as electric heat too? The heat/cooling source in the above post is geothermal. The transfer mechanism is electric. I've heard that a stirling engine running on the heat differential could provide the pumping action for a ground pump, but I wonder if it would work in practice.
One type of energy which you rarely hear about, but seems very enviromentally friendly is geo thermal.
Several people have already mentioned heat pumps, which are a good investment in the north, if you have the capital when building (which no one does). From a larger perspective, however, I've always found it amusing that we live on the cooled crust of a giant ball of molten rock, and yet get our heat by burning parts of said crust. The earth is a huge energy resource that technology has not been able to exploit on a large scale. There are also plenty of possible drawbacks like carbon dioxide emission, destabilization of the ground, and eruptions of lava. It will probably happen about the same time as flying cars.
why do 'greens' throw so much effort into things like wind, solar, and hydro, when the only real solution to replacing fossil fuels is nuclear power?
Because the government won't let me run my own nuclear plant for my house. Every time I ask I just get followed around by guys with buzz cuts and those awful purplish-blue jackets. I can, on the other hand, stick some solar panels on the roof (Although they don't provide much electricity up here in the north). Wind and hydro power are real options to, depending upon location and local laws. Single home capacity fuel cells are coming along as well and provide waste heat to my forced air system.
Distributed power production provides a number of benefits that have nothing to do with cost. Also, having experience in power distribution systems, I can tell you it is not too hard for some shmuck to create a cascading failure that knocks out the grid in an area. I'd rather trust myself to keep things running, than a local monopoly more interested in cutting costs than keeping my systems up.
Here is the breakdown of the top 4, according to a recent article:
59% - AIM
18% - MSN
7% - ICQ
5% - Yahoo Messenger
MSN has a great deal of market share worldwide, but AOL is winning by far in the U.S. Jabber is doing well in corporate America, providing secure IM, under the control of local sys admins. I personally use Jabber, AIM, and ICQ in that order. Hopefully, when MS starts to dominate AIM, they will get smart and use jabber and open source to level the playing field, otherwise this will be another MS coup, due to their monopoly.
Luckily I type fast and get annoyed when people stand over me while I type a password:-) ).
Typing really fast, but poorly, with five or six backspaces per password, while working in a dimly lit room, on a terminal with 9 pt font in green on a black background...is all the security most of us need.
That is really not too bad of an idea. Someone can still get into your account by asking for a new password as you and snooping your mail server, but they can do that no matter what your password is. I think the main drawback is the inconvenience. Not too many people are willing to wait for a new password via an automated mailing. Most of us just want to buy something and be done with it. I guess it depends on the response time of their automated password mailer.
..except once they have two of your passwords, they've figured out your pattern.
Depending upon your scheme that is entirely possible. Using an ASCII value would not be a bad way to go, if you know them offhand. And there are plenty of other ways this sort of security can be boosted. I just provided a very simple and easy example that is the "low hanging fruit." Using the scheme I originally mentioned if you go to two sites that both start with the same letter, they would both have the same password. If someone at allofmp3.com tried your password to buy things on amazon.com, the system has failed. The point I was trying to demonstrate was that 90% of the time, just adding that letter will prevent someone from one site that is compromised from guessing another site. Most internet fraud perps don't have to work very hard, and they are not going to bother trying to cross check names and passwords across sites to try to figure out your pattern. They will just skip to the next name on the list.
For low security operations, like your online accounts, using a standard password is not too unreasonable. With just a hair more effort, however, you can use a standard password scheme. For example, instead of using "8dogs8food" as your password for all of the random online accounts you have, prepend or append the first letter of the web site you are accessing. For Amazon.com you can have "a8dogs8food" and for slashdot you can have "s8dogs8food." This gives you a better idea if your password is leaked, and keeps insiders from using your userid/passwd on other consumer sites. I think that a password scheme like this strikes a good balance of security and ease of use.
I disagree, the system does not actually function the way you describe.
Currently the systems is something like this, The U.S. government taxes all of us, then gives money to universities and research centers. Universities and research centers perform studies to try and help people, or just learn things. Private companies give money to the universities, then take the work already done (funded by us), and try to come up with something that will make money. They try to make the pill or substance that will make them the most money, with no responsibility to help humanity. Then they patent it and everything they can think of like it. Further, if they come up with an improvement to one of these patented substances, they don't sell that to us. They wait until the patent on what they are selling expires, then patent the new substance and start selling it. This slows down the progress of science by 7 years every time it happens. Since these drug companies are now rolling in cash, they spend it the American way. They buy laws that will protect their money making scheme, divert more government spending to help them, and allow them to basically lie about what their drugs do, remove responsibility for drugs that cause medical problems, bribe doctors to prescribe their drugs, and fix prices on drugs whose patents have already expired.
Pharmacutical companies are responsible for stifling several promising lines of research already, because they may result in cures for diseases. Curing a disease is not as profitable as treating it.
Arguing that patents are helping in this situation demonstrates your complete ignorance about the state of pharmaceutical research in the U.S. The research will be funded by either tax dollars, private funds (a lot is donated by people who have lost a loved on to some ailment), or from drug companies who are willing to take a risk to get their drug to market.
Now I'm not saying that all patents are bad, but patents on drugs are not working right now. The system is badly broken. Right now drug companies pay only a fraction of the cost of producing a drug and get all of the profit. This is not fair for patients, or for tax payers. If the U.S. government paid just 10% more all drugs could be sold for less than half their current cost, with a huge net benefit to the population. I don't trust the government, nor do I think it will always act in our best interests, but we know what the pharmaceutical companies want. They want money. And the government at least has to act like it has our health as its primary concern or we vote them out (sometimes).
though it was funny watching what programs it would have to run through when I started cursing in frustration
Years ago Apple implemented voice recognition built into OS9. The peak for me was when I managed to get it to connect the internet, download my e-mail, and read the messages to me, without having to get out of bed. Unfortunately, the system suffered from just the problem you are mentioning. If it did not understand what you said it would assume you meant "open netscape." Do you know how long it took to open netscape on a 66 Mhz box with 4 meg of RAM? It took way too long.
someone is breaking european law by placing restrictions on the trade and movement of goods in europe.
As far as I know, intellectual property has never before been included in the "goods and services" that the EU is regulating. I think the close parallel between this intellectual property, and the already published CD which is normally sold, is the reason for people to want it treated in the same manner.
The info on their Web site seems to imply that they make an exact copy of the DVD, probably as a disk image. This seems to me that they are missing out on one of the most important benefits associated with ripping a DVD. Can this system skip, the un-skippable commercials that are starting to be added to DVDs? Can it bypass the menus and be configured to just play the movie when you select it, without having to guess what button will play the bloody thing? Has anyone used one of these?
Someone in UK is allowed to buy from France without there being allowed to be any restrictions or problems that does not exist also from someone in France.
Try thinking of it in terms of something else that is regulated by law individually in each country. For example, Suppose a company was selling hovercraft operating correspondence classes, including a hovercraft operators permit. In each country the end result for the user is the same, they know how to operate a hovercraft and have permission to do so (within their country). Now suppose the UK and France both charge different amounts for said permit. If the company that offers the class charges students in the UK, and students in France a different amount, is that a violation? That is basically analogous, except that the respective countries have delegated the authority to license music within their country to private companies. If Apple sells music downloads in France for the price the BPI has set in the UK, and then hands over most of the money to the BPI, they will be sued for copyright infringement by the music licensing body in France. Since Apple has no right to license people to sell music in France, save under the terms they have worked out with the music licensing body in France. It is the same as trying to sell British hovercraft permits to the French.
We've all sung along to lyrics like "We don't need no Education!" and "School's out for ever!" We've all rooted for Ferris Beuler, the Breakfast Club, and the kids from Saved by the Bell to outwit their bumbling teachers and principals and cut class in the most extreme ways possible. But it's songs and movies like this that has turned education into Enemy #1 for our youth.
I'm not sure that you are correct to blame the poor perception of the American school system on the media. Pretty much everyone in the U.S. has been through that system, and I think some of the popularity of media's disrespect for it, is because there is a great deal about it that is ridiculous and moronic.
I went to a public school, in a medium sized town that was neither affluent nor poor. The experience was not what I expected going in. There were several very good teachers who cared and taught useful information. There were many teachers that did not care, and just wanted to get paid. There were a few teachers who would show up drunk and occasionally try to physically harm their students.
Most of the subject matter was useless and poorly presented. I would have learned ten times as much just reading fiction as I did in most of my classes. I cut classes all the time. Why wouldn't I? Who wants to spend an hour listening to the same history that has been taught to you every year for the last 8 years? Nothing pisses off a public school teacher more than sitting in class and telling them all the mistakes they have been reading out of a horribly out of date world history book.
On the other hand, school taught me social skills, lots of information about petty crime, drugs, and sex (moderately accurate). It taught me how to handle myself in a fight, write BS answers that sound intelligent, that it is good to have people to watch your back, and why I should never believe what anyone tells me, without checking it out myself.
I moved on to college and found that it was in some ways more of the same. One of the major differences was that all the students wanted to be there. I learned as much from fellow students as I did from professors. It just seems that our educational system is just a big bureaucracy, that is stumbling and lurching along. It is not doing a good job of educating most people, and provides only minor help for people trying to educate themselves.
I guess the point I am trying to make is, the educational system is not just failing because of people's perception of it, it is partially seen as useless, because of the way it functions.
If people want to talk about how the Rich Minority are taking over the country, just look at the uneducated majority and understand why. Sometimes it's not a conspiracy -- sometimes, it's just logic.
I'm not sure that I agree with you here either. Rich people often do not get any better education, it's just that they get that education while surrounded by other rich people. They are given a good financial starting point, and it takes money to make money. How many wealthy people have been handed jobs running a company, and bankrupted it, and are then given another company to run? Think George Bush. The thing is, they have the contacts and the money, which translate into the ability to make more money. They are becoming richer, while everyone else becomes poorer, because the game has been slowly being fixed. It's not like this is a secret or anything. Look at all the laws, passed by wealthy people and corporations, to protect their wealth, and make them more money. Poorer people aren't getting dumber and lazier, it's just that the playing field is tilting further and further. Take a look at the capitalist model sometime. You'll note that without regulation by the majority (not the wealthy minority) all wealth eventually accumulates in one place. Then you have what is known as a dictatorship. We have a long way to go before then. We're a de-facto oligarchy right now. There is this thing that happens in dictatorships though, viva le revolution!
it is possible to buy CDs from any other EU country, so it should be possible with online music downloads.
When you buy a CD, you buy a CD. When you buy an mp3, or AAC file, you are buying a license to make a copy (Actually several copies) for your own use, in your country. One is a purchase of a physical object, one is a license to intellectual property. Just because intellectual property laws are stupid, don't blame Apple. They are just stuck between two conflicting laws.
I can go and order a book from a French bookshop over the net, I then pay what someone in France would
It's true, you can. But you can't order an e-book from a store in France. The reason is that a book is physical purchase that happens to have intellectual property already published on it. The other is a license to a copy of intellectual property which someone in France does not have the rights to sell you, since the right to publish it in your country is owned by a different party. Get it?
I don't think it's fair for someone to be able to petition the government for, let's say, same-sex marriage and then not allow others to petition for the disallowance of such.
The difference in this case is that they are petitioning to remove a restriction, while you are petitioning to keep or add one. Why is it that every law passed takes more rights out of the hands of the people and makes decisions for them? When was the last law that gave more rights to the people? If you don't think gay marriage is morally right, don't marry someone of the same sex. But who are you to say it is immoral? Why should you get to decide for them? If you don't like butt-sex, fine, don't have it. It's not like anyone is saying just because something is legal, it is something you have to do. Do you think it is morally right to say that Jesus raped donkeys? Do you think a law should be passed to prevent people from saying that? Stop trying to legislate religion. Make it legal for people to do anything that does not directly hurt others, even if it is not moral or allowed by your religion. If you don't like it, you don't have to do it. Just keep your religious ideals out of the legal system or you are no better than the societies that don't let women out in public without veils. You just have different unfair and demeaning taboos.
In my high school writing class we were instructed to count the number of words in a sample of our own writing. According to the instructor, 20 words made for a good average. To most people, this meant writing longer sentences. My average was 55. She thought that this was great, but after thinking about it, I realized that shorter sentences probably made for easier reading.
Unlike many people here, I do not have a problem with the grammar, punctuation, or spelling of e-mail messages. The content of some messages is lacking, but even those coworkers who speak English as a second language are easily understandable. To my shame, some of the management here, write e-mail with far more attention to grammar and style than I do, even though I am a professional writer as part of my work. I suppose I should consider myself blessed by such competence.
Who are apple to come along and say whats what in the EU?
Umm, Apple is just caught between conflicting laws. It's the EU and the UK who is saying what is what. Apple negotiated a price with the BPI, added their expenses, then picked a round number close to it. If the EU can't license music for the same price across all it's member countries, why should Apple be tasked with sorting it out? If you have to sell for the same price, fine charge Apple the same price, if not, fine don't complain when Apple sells different things for different prices. Guess what, the BPI won't sell music across it's borders at all, that is because it is illegal. Apple is just running a whole series of stores selling different products (different due to the fact that the laws on pricing and sales are differnt) in different countries. Consumers may see a song as being the same, but until the law reflects that fact, Apple can't be expected to pass laws and change it.
that means that we in the UK may be able to get cheaper songs from the EU store
Except that doing so is not legal, according to UK law since only the UK recording industry has rights to sell songs in the UK. Actually the issue is the same price, since the EU law states that you have to offer the same price to all EU members. They need to fix their intellectual property laws.
This has nothing to do with intelectual property. It's like if they had a shop in france and charged english people who came into it 20% more due to their accent.
Yup, just like that. Well, except if they had different shops for each country and were selling music online, and charged prices based upon your credit card's billing address.
Do you really think this is a discrimination issue? Against the British?!? They are selling at different prices because they are selling different products. It costs a different price to license music from the RIAA equivalent in Britain than in France. If they charged the same, I bet Apple would too. If you don't like it, why don't you pass laws forcing music industry conglomerates to license at the same price, like the EU already instructed them to.
It costs a different price in the U.S. too, and even less in Canada. Get over it.
Slashdot Mirror
Changing mediums doesn't change the energy source.
How we describe energy depends upon it's current form. Light may have been electricity yesterday, or a million years ago. The energy in the earth was probably light, or x-rays, or nuclear bonds at some point. That is irrelevant. If it is now stored in the earth as heat, it is geothermal. If light hit the earth ten thousand years ago and heated it up, is the heat in the earth suddenly called solar energy? No, the time frame is not the issue.
Geothermal energy never "got into" Earth. It's always been there and formed along with Earth.
Oh I see, God put it there when he created the earth 6000 years ago. How silly of me.
The slate (Earth, basically) stores the heat from the sun and releases it gradually into the room.
If you argue that the slate is just a piece of earth you have rearranged, then it is solar energy that becomes geothermal, then radiant heat. If you argue that it is a low-tech solar cell, then it is solar energy, then stored heat, then radiant heat. It is just a matter of perspective.
Now who's really being a twit, here?
You don't really want me to answer that.
P.S. you're still wrong.
The key word, there, being " stored ." The storage medium is irrelevant to the source of the energy.
Don't be a twit. All energy we deal with has probably changed in medium at some point. Solar energy is just energy that was stored in atoms, and is released. That it is stored in the sun is irrelevant. It's not solar, it's really just nuclear power. See the parallel here?
You can argue the semantics of this all you like, but ground pumps use geothermal energy. How the energy got into the earth is not important. It is heat energy from the earth. It is geothermal. get over yourself.
Although the heat comes from the ground, it's source is mostly from solar warming of the ground
Yes, I know what a heat pump is. No, I don't agree with you definition of geothermal. Around here, in the northern U.S., heat pumps are placed below the level of the ground that has anything to do with direct solar energy. About 5 meters below the surface, the amount of solar energy to hit the surface at that location, has little to no effect on the temperature of the ground (2 degrees Fahrenheit variation over a year). While the source of the heat is ultimately solar, so is the the source for fossil fuels. This is heat stored in the earth itself, and you can't get much more geothermal than that (geo=earth, thermal=heat). Pumping air up that is 70 degrees warmer than the air outside is a pretty significant source of heat, IMHO.
What you're talking about sounds like a ground-sourced heat pump (or ground water-sourced in your case.) It runs on electricity.
I have a natural gas burner with forced air. Since the air is circulated by an electric fan, I suppose you classify that as electric heat too? The heat/cooling source in the above post is geothermal. The transfer mechanism is electric. I've heard that a stirling engine running on the heat differential could provide the pumping action for a ground pump, but I wonder if it would work in practice.
One type of energy which you rarely hear about, but seems very enviromentally friendly is geo thermal.
Several people have already mentioned heat pumps, which are a good investment in the north, if you have the capital when building (which no one does). From a larger perspective, however, I've always found it amusing that we live on the cooled crust of a giant ball of molten rock, and yet get our heat by burning parts of said crust. The earth is a huge energy resource that technology has not been able to exploit on a large scale. There are also plenty of possible drawbacks like carbon dioxide emission, destabilization of the ground, and eruptions of lava. It will probably happen about the same time as flying cars.
why do 'greens' throw so much effort into things like wind, solar, and hydro, when the only real solution to replacing fossil fuels is nuclear power?
Because the government won't let me run my own nuclear plant for my house. Every time I ask I just get followed around by guys with buzz cuts and those awful purplish-blue jackets. I can, on the other hand, stick some solar panels on the roof (Although they don't provide much electricity up here in the north). Wind and hydro power are real options to, depending upon location and local laws. Single home capacity fuel cells are coming along as well and provide waste heat to my forced air system.
Distributed power production provides a number of benefits that have nothing to do with cost. Also, having experience in power distribution systems, I can tell you it is not too hard for some shmuck to create a cascading failure that knocks out the grid in an area. I'd rather trust myself to keep things running, than a local monopoly more interested in cutting costs than keeping my systems up.
Here is the breakdown of the top 4, according to a recent article:
59% - AIM
18% - MSN
7% - ICQ
5% - Yahoo Messenger
MSN has a great deal of market share worldwide, but AOL is winning by far in the U.S. Jabber is doing well in corporate America, providing secure IM, under the control of local sys admins. I personally use Jabber, AIM, and ICQ in that order. Hopefully, when MS starts to dominate AIM, they will get smart and use jabber and open source to level the playing field, otherwise this will be another MS coup, due to their monopoly.
Luckily I type fast and get annoyed when people stand over me while I type a password :-) ).
Typing really fast, but poorly, with five or six backspaces per password, while working in a dimly lit room, on a terminal with 9 pt font in green on a black background ...is all the security most of us need.
That is really not too bad of an idea. Someone can still get into your account by asking for a new password as you and snooping your mail server, but they can do that no matter what your password is. I think the main drawback is the inconvenience. Not too many people are willing to wait for a new password via an automated mailing. Most of us just want to buy something and be done with it. I guess it depends on the response time of their automated password mailer.
Depending upon your scheme that is entirely possible. Using an ASCII value would not be a bad way to go, if you know them offhand. And there are plenty of other ways this sort of security can be boosted. I just provided a very simple and easy example that is the "low hanging fruit." Using the scheme I originally mentioned if you go to two sites that both start with the same letter, they would both have the same password. If someone at allofmp3.com tried your password to buy things on amazon.com, the system has failed. The point I was trying to demonstrate was that 90% of the time, just adding that letter will prevent someone from one site that is compromised from guessing another site. Most internet fraud perps don't have to work very hard, and they are not going to bother trying to cross check names and passwords across sites to try to figure out your pattern. They will just skip to the next name on the list.
anyone else have a few standard passwords?
For low security operations, like your online accounts, using a standard password is not too unreasonable. With just a hair more effort, however, you can use a standard password scheme. For example, instead of using "8dogs8food" as your password for all of the random online accounts you have, prepend or append the first letter of the web site you are accessing. For Amazon.com you can have "a8dogs8food" and for slashdot you can have "s8dogs8food." This gives you a better idea if your password is leaked, and keeps insiders from using your userid/passwd on other consumer sites. I think that a password scheme like this strikes a good balance of security and ease of use.
I disagree, the system does not actually function the way you describe.
Currently the systems is something like this, The U.S. government taxes all of us, then gives money to universities and research centers. Universities and research centers perform studies to try and help people, or just learn things. Private companies give money to the universities, then take the work already done (funded by us), and try to come up with something that will make money. They try to make the pill or substance that will make them the most money, with no responsibility to help humanity. Then they patent it and everything they can think of like it. Further, if they come up with an improvement to one of these patented substances, they don't sell that to us. They wait until the patent on what they are selling expires, then patent the new substance and start selling it. This slows down the progress of science by 7 years every time it happens. Since these drug companies are now rolling in cash, they spend it the American way. They buy laws that will protect their money making scheme, divert more government spending to help them, and allow them to basically lie about what their drugs do, remove responsibility for drugs that cause medical problems, bribe doctors to prescribe their drugs, and fix prices on drugs whose patents have already expired.
Pharmacutical companies are responsible for stifling several promising lines of research already, because they may result in cures for diseases. Curing a disease is not as profitable as treating it.
Arguing that patents are helping in this situation demonstrates your complete ignorance about the state of pharmaceutical research in the U.S. The research will be funded by either tax dollars, private funds (a lot is donated by people who have lost a loved on to some ailment), or from drug companies who are willing to take a risk to get their drug to market.
Now I'm not saying that all patents are bad, but patents on drugs are not working right now. The system is badly broken. Right now drug companies pay only a fraction of the cost of producing a drug and get all of the profit. This is not fair for patients, or for tax payers. If the U.S. government paid just 10% more all drugs could be sold for less than half their current cost, with a huge net benefit to the population. I don't trust the government, nor do I think it will always act in our best interests, but we know what the pharmaceutical companies want. They want money. And the government at least has to act like it has our health as its primary concern or we vote them out (sometimes).
Oops, I meant MacOS 7, not 9.
though it was funny watching what programs it would have to run through when I started cursing in frustration
Years ago Apple implemented voice recognition built into OS9. The peak for me was when I managed to get it to connect the internet, download my e-mail, and read the messages to me, without having to get out of bed. Unfortunately, the system suffered from just the problem you are mentioning. If it did not understand what you said it would assume you meant "open netscape." Do you know how long it took to open netscape on a 66 Mhz box with 4 meg of RAM? It took way too long.
someone is breaking european law by placing restrictions on the trade and movement of goods in europe.
As far as I know, intellectual property has never before been included in the "goods and services" that the EU is regulating. I think the close parallel between this intellectual property, and the already published CD which is normally sold, is the reason for people to want it treated in the same manner.
The info on their Web site seems to imply that they make an exact copy of the DVD, probably as a disk image. This seems to me that they are missing out on one of the most important benefits associated with ripping a DVD. Can this system skip, the un-skippable commercials that are starting to be added to DVDs? Can it bypass the menus and be configured to just play the movie when you select it, without having to guess what button will play the bloody thing? Has anyone used one of these?
Someone in UK is allowed to buy from France without there being allowed to be any restrictions or problems that does not exist also from someone in France.
Try thinking of it in terms of something else that is regulated by law individually in each country. For example, Suppose a company was selling hovercraft operating correspondence classes, including a hovercraft operators permit. In each country the end result for the user is the same, they know how to operate a hovercraft and have permission to do so (within their country). Now suppose the UK and France both charge different amounts for said permit. If the company that offers the class charges students in the UK, and students in France a different amount, is that a violation? That is basically analogous, except that the respective countries have delegated the authority to license music within their country to private companies. If Apple sells music downloads in France for the price the BPI has set in the UK, and then hands over most of the money to the BPI, they will be sued for copyright infringement by the music licensing body in France. Since Apple has no right to license people to sell music in France, save under the terms they have worked out with the music licensing body in France. It is the same as trying to sell British hovercraft permits to the French.
We've all sung along to lyrics like "We don't need no Education!" and "School's out for ever!" We've all rooted for Ferris Beuler, the Breakfast Club, and the kids from Saved by the Bell to outwit their bumbling teachers and principals and cut class in the most extreme ways possible. But it's songs and movies like this that has turned education into Enemy #1 for our youth.
I'm not sure that you are correct to blame the poor perception of the American school system on the media. Pretty much everyone in the U.S. has been through that system, and I think some of the popularity of media's disrespect for it, is because there is a great deal about it that is ridiculous and moronic.
I went to a public school, in a medium sized town that was neither affluent nor poor. The experience was not what I expected going in. There were several very good teachers who cared and taught useful information. There were many teachers that did not care, and just wanted to get paid. There were a few teachers who would show up drunk and occasionally try to physically harm their students.
Most of the subject matter was useless and poorly presented. I would have learned ten times as much just reading fiction as I did in most of my classes. I cut classes all the time. Why wouldn't I? Who wants to spend an hour listening to the same history that has been taught to you every year for the last 8 years? Nothing pisses off a public school teacher more than sitting in class and telling them all the mistakes they have been reading out of a horribly out of date world history book.
On the other hand, school taught me social skills, lots of information about petty crime, drugs, and sex (moderately accurate). It taught me how to handle myself in a fight, write BS answers that sound intelligent, that it is good to have people to watch your back, and why I should never believe what anyone tells me, without checking it out myself.
I moved on to college and found that it was in some ways more of the same. One of the major differences was that all the students wanted to be there. I learned as much from fellow students as I did from professors. It just seems that our educational system is just a big bureaucracy, that is stumbling and lurching along. It is not doing a good job of educating most people, and provides only minor help for people trying to educate themselves.
I guess the point I am trying to make is, the educational system is not just failing because of people's perception of it, it is partially seen as useless, because of the way it functions.
If people want to talk about how the Rich Minority are taking over the country, just look at the uneducated majority and understand why. Sometimes it's not a conspiracy -- sometimes, it's just logic.
I'm not sure that I agree with you here either. Rich people often do not get any better education, it's just that they get that education while surrounded by other rich people. They are given a good financial starting point, and it takes money to make money. How many wealthy people have been handed jobs running a company, and bankrupted it, and are then given another company to run? Think George Bush. The thing is, they have the contacts and the money, which translate into the ability to make more money. They are becoming richer, while everyone else becomes poorer, because the game has been slowly being fixed. It's not like this is a secret or anything. Look at all the laws, passed by wealthy people and corporations, to protect their wealth, and make them more money. Poorer people aren't getting dumber and lazier, it's just that the playing field is tilting further and further. Take a look at the capitalist model sometime. You'll note that without regulation by the majority (not the wealthy minority) all wealth eventually accumulates in one place. Then you have what is known as a dictatorship. We have a long way to go before then. We're a de-facto oligarchy right now. There is this thing that happens in dictatorships though, viva le revolution!
it is possible to buy CDs from any other EU country, so it should be possible with online music downloads.
When you buy a CD, you buy a CD. When you buy an mp3, or AAC file, you are buying a license to make a copy (Actually several copies) for your own use, in your country. One is a purchase of a physical object, one is a license to intellectual property. Just because intellectual property laws are stupid, don't blame Apple. They are just stuck between two conflicting laws.
I can go and order a book from a French bookshop over the net, I then pay what someone in France would
It's true, you can. But you can't order an e-book from a store in France. The reason is that a book is physical purchase that happens to have intellectual property already published on it. The other is a license to a copy of intellectual property which someone in France does not have the rights to sell you, since the right to publish it in your country is owned by a different party. Get it?
I don't think it's fair for someone to be able to petition the government for, let's say, same-sex marriage and then not allow others to petition for the disallowance of such.
The difference in this case is that they are petitioning to remove a restriction, while you are petitioning to keep or add one. Why is it that every law passed takes more rights out of the hands of the people and makes decisions for them? When was the last law that gave more rights to the people? If you don't think gay marriage is morally right, don't marry someone of the same sex. But who are you to say it is immoral? Why should you get to decide for them? If you don't like butt-sex, fine, don't have it. It's not like anyone is saying just because something is legal, it is something you have to do. Do you think it is morally right to say that Jesus raped donkeys? Do you think a law should be passed to prevent people from saying that? Stop trying to legislate religion. Make it legal for people to do anything that does not directly hurt others, even if it is not moral or allowed by your religion. If you don't like it, you don't have to do it. Just keep your religious ideals out of the legal system or you are no better than the societies that don't let women out in public without veils. You just have different unfair and demeaning taboos.
In my high school writing class we were instructed to count the number of words in a sample of our own writing. According to the instructor, 20 words made for a good average. To most people, this meant writing longer sentences. My average was 55. She thought that this was great, but after thinking about it, I realized that shorter sentences probably made for easier reading.
Unlike many people here, I do not have a problem with the grammar, punctuation, or spelling of e-mail messages. The content of some messages is lacking, but even those coworkers who speak English as a second language are easily understandable. To my shame, some of the management here, write e-mail with far more attention to grammar and style than I do, even though I am a professional writer as part of my work. I suppose I should consider myself blessed by such competence.
Who are apple to come along and say whats what in the EU?
Umm, Apple is just caught between conflicting laws. It's the EU and the UK who is saying what is what. Apple negotiated a price with the BPI, added their expenses, then picked a round number close to it. If the EU can't license music for the same price across all it's member countries, why should Apple be tasked with sorting it out? If you have to sell for the same price, fine charge Apple the same price, if not, fine don't complain when Apple sells different things for different prices. Guess what, the BPI won't sell music across it's borders at all, that is because it is illegal. Apple is just running a whole series of stores selling different products (different due to the fact that the laws on pricing and sales are differnt) in different countries. Consumers may see a song as being the same, but until the law reflects that fact, Apple can't be expected to pass laws and change it.
that means that we in the UK may be able to get cheaper songs from the EU store
Except that doing so is not legal, according to UK law since only the UK recording industry has rights to sell songs in the UK. Actually the issue is the same price, since the EU law states that you have to offer the same price to all EU members. They need to fix their intellectual property laws.
This has nothing to do with intelectual property. It's like if they had a shop in france and charged english people who came into it 20% more due to their accent.
Yup, just like that. Well, except if they had different shops for each country and were selling music online, and charged prices based upon your credit card's billing address.
Do you really think this is a discrimination issue? Against the British?!? They are selling at different prices because they are selling different products. It costs a different price to license music from the RIAA equivalent in Britain than in France. If they charged the same, I bet Apple would too. If you don't like it, why don't you pass laws forcing music industry conglomerates to license at the same price, like the EU already instructed them to.
It costs a different price in the U.S. too, and even less in Canada. Get over it.