I think the usefulness of DRM-on-a-chip is basically a conundrum. I can see ultra-secret or ultra-important data that is digitally marked in some way to prove how/when/where/who modified, created, or opened a given bit of data. This would be a good thing for trade secrets or government secrets.
I don't see the applications of this at home, save for managing what software manufacturers want to track or tie down. I realize that business seems to drive how personal computing is moving forward, but I don't think system manufacturers really have a grip on what makes a computer satisfying for a government agency and for Joe/Jane consumer.
Perhaps there should be a choice - a choice concerning the installation of hardware DRM in home or small business computers. Perhaps consumers can purchase hardware that "opts out" of these types of schemes.
Personally, I don't have an issue with hardware DRM for organizations or individuals who want this type of technology in their machines. I believe it crosses the line when the consumer or business who does not want this type of technology is/are forced to accept it. Software piracy measures are becoming more and more draconian, it seems - and what scares me the most is that the people who develop the DRM technologies are just as likely to write/introduce errors and bugs as any other developer. To me, this means that a DRM technology might make my data unusable or inaccessible in some way.
Experience indicates that often the flair of a presentation is more prize-fetching than its substance. Often, the bar is set to standards like "well, they're not professionals so we should cut them some slack."
WRT my kids, their presentations have been along the lines of stuff that is environmentally interesting or is "future science." I'm very proud of the efforts they've made, but honestly, they didn't have a chance against the glitz-covered crowd.
So, really, what becomes important (not winning) is what the student learned about the scientific process. That's the part on which we've focused.
I understand copyrights and piracy and all the issues around all that. That isn't my focus for this article...
If it is indeed the RIAA's choice to try to prohibit putting one's music on one's portable, this latest thing is lunacy. It IS fair use to listen to one's music on alternate devices that one owns!!! Every artist I know (including myself) WANTS people to listen to their music!!! How is this latest thing going to PROMOTE music? How is it going to create or keep FANS interested?
I don't normally get hot under the collar about this stuff, but this isn't very smart on their part. When you've bought a CD or bought tunes from some service, the listener has every right to want to listen to it! Putting a copy on a portable (or putting it on a backup CD) doesn't amount to piracy - it is normal use.
Many of us give away music in an effort to try to get people to discover our sounds. MOST of us WANT people to jam/groove/listen to our music while doing things that are important to fans (music is a part of daily life for most folks, and me, personally, I'd like to be a part of that - my musical friends feel the same way) and portables are a ubiquitous means of "being there."
You CAN'T forget about fans, RIAA! Period!
[/rant]
Sorry for the rant post, Slashdot. I feel better now.
From TFA:Asked about the potential impact on Bermuda's unique reefs, she said the efficient generator would have a "very low" environmental impact and said the noise produced by the generator would be "very, very quiet" and would not impact sea creatures.
She said the unit would be sunk past the first layer of marine life, and fish below that level would be able to safely swim through it. An electric cable would link the substation to the generator under the sand.
I guess this means that the generator blades spin slowly enough that the fish just swim around the blades? My first thoughts before RTFA were concerns for the reef's health. I would hope that they would design it such that it would not cause a sort of in-the-ocean-current observer effect.
I'd like to see the opining of those with some physics or ocean dynamics experience.
It sounds like a great idea... I wish we had lots more three finkers out there trying to make power in new ways.
I sincerely appreciate the comments of those who know (much more than me) about web UI, techniques, technologies, and patterns. As a server-side engineer and developer, I don't spend a lot of time on the front end. It's nice to see how/.ers digest this type of information and re-present it from lots of angles.
With that said, I'd also like to say that the pages are pretty well done. It is obvious that a great deal of time and effort was spent conceiving, writing, and, producing these beginnings of libraries and instructions. I found the effort to be commendable and interesting.
For someone like me, these types of efforts actually help me understand quicker and keep me interested.
The demonstration of the technology is without a doubt the nicest technology demo I've seen in a decade (on top of the fact that the technology is great).
I don't like to predict, but feel like I must: My children's children will see this type of thing on a daily basis.
I've always wanted to be able to brainstorm in a free-form and extremely editable way, with both hands and all fingers - this technology would be intuitive to my design process. This beats even a touch-tablet by a mile.
My very first computer was a single-floppy Macintosh 512K (wish I still had it)... It got me started with lots of things, not the least of which was the joy of figuring out how computers work. MacPaint, MacWrite, and Mac OS 1.x on a single 400K floppy, baby!
My dad then gave me his rockin' 8086 AT&T boat anchor^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H computer with a 10-meg-HDD and a 5 1/4 floppy. Gem desktop rocks, baby! Also included was the very first release of what became Microsoft Office... The pinball game was the best, though...
You mean now I need tin foil for the inside of my head?
But seriously folks (I'm here all week) the human body is a work of art and a true miracle. Our bodies constantly fight off lots of things that are potentially bad voodoo. We have so many parasitic and bacterial symbionic organisms, it's a wonder that we do so well. It's not surprising that we have organisms that live only in our eyebrows and those that live only in our intestines.
I'm not surprised to find that we have such an organism.
You've asked a bunch of questions here... good ones...
Alternative means of hiring: Monster still has some effectiveness, although it is no longer an alternative means. You get lots of bulk that way, but there are many gems in that particular stream. Perhaps you could team with folks like Monster to come up with some neat ideas.
A good alternative would be to hold a contest of some sort. Let potential job applicants put together solutions, write software to solve a simple, fixed problem. Give the most successful applicants some incentives (other than just a job): perhaps some small cash prizes; something interesting like a nice gadget; perhaps some interesting prestige like a listing in some neat place on a web page or a brochure.
How might you leave rejected candidates leave with a positive impression: First and foremost, make decisions in a fairly quick period of time. Don't leave folks hanging out there for long periods. Also, tell the rejected applicants what it was that was good about the applicant. Perhaps let the person know on what they could work to make themselves more attractive to the type of position for which they applied (in other words, help them in their future employment quests).
Hiring communicative technical people is a special challenge: It is generally better to hire someone who has experience, and a great attitude and excellent human communications - even if they don't have all the super-duper "on-paper" skills for which you might be looking.
Exciting ways to be interviewed and recruited: Throw a celebration focused on your company, bring your most fun and interesting people to the party, then invite lots of possible applicants. Mix it up with the folks, have some free poker games (not money gambling, just plain chips with door prizes, etc.), no booze, just great snacks, good music, and lots of chairs and tables where people can sit down and pitch the company or pitch themselves as applicants. Make it fun, advertise it in key places in the country. Don't be afraid to fly extremely interesting candidates out to your party...
Every nickel you spend on getting face-time with applicants is well spent... make lots of fun and interesting ways to attract applicants to your meetings...
I do see some (narrow) circumstances where non-physical-media business software and server software is viable and maybe even a good thing. It has long been the dream of major software providers to vend their wares via a mechanism that is ultra-controlled, and can be sold as a service or subscription.
That said, I have yet to see consumers (business or home users) who have said, "Gee, I wish I didn't have to worry about my software being up-to-the-second!" In the server business world, I do see folks that want easy means of updates... in the home software and entertainment world, I don't see folks that are clamoring not to have disks for their software/games. As has already been said in many comments, the control of use suddenly goes from the consumer to the producer/provider (in a disk-less system.)
However, people like music a lot, and it is important to most people in some way or another. (By the way, have you ever seen a movie you really liked that didn't have music in it?) Look at a bunch of folks (folks that were hidden in a jungle for centuries without outside contact) and you'll find that they make music in some way or another. Music seems to actually be something that is important - whether or not it is mainstream, popular or "pretty bad."
I REALLY like B.B. King. My kids couldn't be bothered with him - they think he's good at what he does, but they'd rather listen to Ozzie or Green Day. They take their clues from many sources, mostly their peers. On a different tack, my 67-year-old mother likes Queen, Alan Parsons, and ABBA. Why? None of her peers are the same way, none of the radio stations to which she listens play that kind of mix. She listens to them because they bring back memories of her kids and her husband (in that order, believe me). She's not generally subject to mob rules.
My point is, no surprise here, that some folks follow the crowd, while others could care less about the crowd's opinion. I like to listen to music from folks I've never heard - and I generally get my best (recent) music from the oddest places on the Internet. I don't, however, tend to listen to pop radio because it seems less genuine and from-the-heart to me.
Now if we could just get the super-producers and studios to spend their time and money on music, and not album sales.
I believe that the Wikipedia is many things (most of them wonderful) - but is not a tome of absolute fact.
Wikipedia is a fabulous experiment in humanity and social interaction. It is without a doubt one of the most interesting things I've come across since I began using the Internet. I like looking things up in Wikipedia for two distinct reasons: 1) There is a huge body of knowledge out there in the minds of the world; 2) I enjoy reading the history of the given bits of information I read. It is particularly telling when one reads topics that are controversial or contemporarily historic. Many people, many opinions, many slants/spins on what is real and what is not.
Throw into the mix a sprinkling of morons, vandals, gleeful miscreants, politicians, PR people, and the ignorant, and you get a fabulous view of the brilliantly bizarre view of the public itself.
Don't take Wikipedia (and its contents) as fact. Take it as a social experiment. The views on the Bush administration in the public forums is extremely similar to the view of the Bush administration in Wikipedia.
I'd like to see a clear definition of private copying.
At what point does retrieving a file from someone else's computer stop being private? I completely understand someone making copies of all kinds of things within their home. When someone I don't know is making copies of my files - this is when it seems to be anything but private. I'm not advocating a particular POV about copyrighted materials here... I'm thinking in terms of the moment that a file ceases to be "my" file and becomes "someone else's file."
Well, I do know what AIFFs are. That's because I make them. I listen to the raw format on my iPod to listen to the eq and mix of my music. It's too time-consuming to constantly convert them to other formats because I'm constantly changing them. Once they're mastered out to CD when I finish an album, I convert the set in my iTunes to something compressed - that way they fit on the kids' and my wife's iPods easier.
I completely understand this... I am the happy owner of a 4GB nano (wouldn't trade it for the world, an anniversary present). Since most of the music on my iPod is uncompressed AIFF files, it only holds so much music. I could fill up a 1GB Nano in a heart-beat.
That said, my kids don't mind MP3s at all. When they make playlists, they get quite a bit of their favorite tunes on their 1GB shuffles...
I like the GPL as well. In addition, I rather like most of the Creative Commons licenses. The CC licenses grant different levels of licensure that makes (in my opinion) more creative works available to a broader section of the world (business, personal, for-profit, etc.).
One example that comes to mind is the license that allows free use, but not re-sale. Yet another offers unfettered use, but attribution is required. The list goes on. This type of flexibility is much more conducive to the sharing of things like media.
I don't think that dismissal of all CC licenses (when one disagrees with only a portion of them) is appropriate.
I think that the issues that are endemic to the patent system in the U.S. are really a function of the combination of business (how can we protect our hard work), law (the rule of law is sometimes very academic - how can you protect one without protecting another - what is the definition of useful), and government (constituents and lobbyists want "protection" to foster innovation - government reacts by fiddling with the law).
Throw into this mix patent squatters (think of it this way: some folks buy internet domain names (that are company/product/identifiable names) not for themselves or for their own uses, but to hope that someday, some company will pay large sums for the privilege of having the given domain name - now apply that idea to patents). In addition to patent squatters, there are true trolls - the folks that patent ideas that they can't even hope to produce or innovate.
What's the solution? I don't know that there is a simple solution at all. Market forces, billions (trillions?) in investments and in speculation are at stake, as well as jobs, ideas, and growth of economies. The one thing I do know for sure is that reform often hurts, but is usually worth it. Perhaps concentrated analysis from all interested parties and establishment of simplified patent rules? I wish I had the answer.
1) Follow your dream if you can. If you're capable of doing something that you love, and life lets you do it, then ROCK ON.
2) Thanks for defending our country, eagl.
3) It is not egotistical to super-enjoy your work, provided that you're the best person you can be.
4) One's quality of self-satisfaction and life far outweighs stuff, not matter how much one loves one's stuff.
5) At the end of the day, one's work tends to consume a third or more of one's life. Make the most of it, if possible.
If indeed the administration and the political glitterati wish to filter what (non-quack) scientists have to tell us, then I believe we are being done a disservice.
I (very strongly) feel that science should not be seen through the rose-colored glasses of contemporary ideological/religious beliefs. It wasn't too many years ago that excellent medical scientists were treated as village idiots because the scientists' beliefs were not in-line with ideology. Before that, if a scientist had suggested giving processed mold to people with infections, the scientist would have been burned at the stake in some rural village square.
It is incumbent on the individual to discern whether or not the results of clean, unbiased science has implications on beliefs and value systems. It is not the job of ideologues to decide on our behalf.
It would be nice to have our cake and eat it too. If I was driving in bad weather and had an accident (such that I could not call for help), I'd love for my loved ones and emergency personnel to be able to find me. Similarly, If a business lives or dies by ultra-efficiency, it is always good to be able to re-route on-the-ground employees to handle business issues as quickly as possible - while not wasting the employee's time by having them call in/be called constantly to know where they are.
However, I strongly dislike the idea that one can be tracked without one's permission. It isn't a government's job to know where I am at all times. I also don't believe that governments need to track non-criminal activities just in case a person does something wrong.
Law enforcement has always walked a fine line between police state activities and protecting the greater good. What I don't know is how our politicians and law enforcement can necessarily handle telling the difference between the two...
Apple did some really great things with the Newton. They were a little too early, though. Competitors like Palm and Casio did them one better in marketing and ubiquity (probably price, too, if I remember). The Newton and eMate are great, but didn't make it.
Apple waited a bit before coming out with a portable music player (didn't make a CD player, and watched the first few MP3-Type players hit market). In this case, they did a great job of design and marketing. It's been a hit ever since.
Now, Apple has made patent application to do some touch-screen stuff. Knowing Apple, they could just be "thinking about something with touch screens", and might just be pro-active in patents. If they do a tablet, iTouchyPod (iPad?, iPodTouch?, iTouch?, touchIPod?), they're likely to learn lots of lessons from the tablet-pc and touch-screen world and do something neat.
Slashdot Mirror
I think the usefulness of DRM-on-a-chip is basically a conundrum. I can see ultra-secret or ultra-important data that is digitally marked in some way to prove how/when/where/who modified, created, or opened a given bit of data. This would be a good thing for trade secrets or government secrets.
I don't see the applications of this at home, save for managing what software manufacturers want to track or tie down. I realize that business seems to drive how personal computing is moving forward, but I don't think system manufacturers really have a grip on what makes a computer satisfying for a government agency and for Joe/Jane consumer.
Perhaps there should be a choice - a choice concerning the installation of hardware DRM in home or small business computers. Perhaps consumers can purchase hardware that "opts out" of these types of schemes.
Personally, I don't have an issue with hardware DRM for organizations or individuals who want this type of technology in their machines. I believe it crosses the line when the consumer or business who does not want this type of technology is/are forced to accept it. Software piracy measures are becoming more and more draconian, it seems - and what scares me the most is that the people who develop the DRM technologies are just as likely to write/introduce errors and bugs as any other developer. To me, this means that a DRM technology might make my data unusable or inaccessible in some way.
Experience indicates that often the flair of a presentation is more prize-fetching than its substance. Often, the bar is set to standards like "well, they're not professionals so we should cut them some slack."
WRT my kids, their presentations have been along the lines of stuff that is environmentally interesting or is "future science." I'm very proud of the efforts they've made, but honestly, they didn't have a chance against the glitz-covered crowd.
So, really, what becomes important (not winning) is what the student learned about the scientific process. That's the part on which we've focused.
[rant]
I understand copyrights and piracy and all the issues around all that. That isn't my focus for this article...
If it is indeed the RIAA's choice to try to prohibit putting one's music on one's portable, this latest thing is lunacy. It IS fair use to listen to one's music on alternate devices that one owns!!! Every artist I know (including myself) WANTS people to listen to their music!!! How is this latest thing going to PROMOTE music? How is it going to create or keep FANS interested?
I don't normally get hot under the collar about this stuff, but this isn't very smart on their part. When you've bought a CD or bought tunes from some service, the listener has every right to want to listen to it! Putting a copy on a portable (or putting it on a backup CD) doesn't amount to piracy - it is normal use.
Many of us give away music in an effort to try to get people to discover our sounds. MOST of us WANT people to jam/groove/listen to our music while doing things that are important to fans (music is a part of daily life for most folks, and me, personally, I'd like to be a part of that - my musical friends feel the same way) and portables are a ubiquitous means of "being there."
You CAN'T forget about fans, RIAA! Period!
[/rant]
Sorry for the rant post, Slashdot. I feel better now.
From TFA:Asked about the potential impact on Bermuda's unique reefs, she said the efficient generator would have a "very low" environmental impact and said the noise produced by the generator would be "very, very quiet" and would not impact sea creatures. She said the unit would be sunk past the first layer of marine life, and fish below that level would be able to safely swim through it. An electric cable would link the substation to the generator under the sand.
I guess this means that the generator blades spin slowly enough that the fish just swim around the blades? My first thoughts before RTFA were concerns for the reef's health. I would hope that they would design it such that it would not cause a sort of in-the-ocean-current observer effect.
I'd like to see the opining of those with some physics or ocean dynamics experience.
It sounds like a great idea... I wish we had lots more three finkers out there trying to make power in new ways.
I sincerely appreciate the comments of those who know (much more than me) about web UI, techniques, technologies, and patterns. As a server-side engineer and developer, I don't spend a lot of time on the front end. It's nice to see how /.ers digest this type of information and re-present it from lots of angles.
With that said, I'd also like to say that the pages are pretty well done. It is obvious that a great deal of time and effort was spent conceiving, writing, and, producing these beginnings of libraries and instructions. I found the effort to be commendable and interesting.
For someone like me, these types of efforts actually help me understand quicker and keep me interested.
The demonstration of the technology is without a doubt the nicest technology demo I've seen in a decade (on top of the fact that the technology is great).
I don't like to predict, but feel like I must: My children's children will see this type of thing on a daily basis.
I've always wanted to be able to brainstorm in a free-form and extremely editable way, with both hands and all fingers - this technology would be intuitive to my design process. This beats even a touch-tablet by a mile.
My very first computer was a single-floppy Macintosh 512K (wish I still had it)... It got me started with lots of things, not the least of which was the joy of figuring out how computers work. MacPaint, MacWrite, and Mac OS 1.x on a single 400K floppy, baby!
My dad then gave me his rockin' 8086 AT&T boat anchor^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H computer with a 10-meg-HDD and a 5 1/4 floppy. Gem desktop rocks, baby! Also included was the very first release of what became Microsoft Office... The pinball game was the best, though...
You mean now I need tin foil for the inside of my head?
But seriously folks (I'm here all week) the human body is a work of art and a true miracle. Our bodies constantly fight off lots of things that are potentially bad voodoo. We have so many parasitic and bacterial symbionic organisms, it's a wonder that we do so well. It's not surprising that we have organisms that live only in our eyebrows and those that live only in our intestines.
I'm not surprised to find that we have such an organism.
You've asked a bunch of questions here... good ones... Alternative means of hiring: Monster still has some effectiveness, although it is no longer an alternative means. You get lots of bulk that way, but there are many gems in that particular stream. Perhaps you could team with folks like Monster to come up with some neat ideas.
A good alternative would be to hold a contest of some sort. Let potential job applicants put together solutions, write software to solve a simple, fixed problem. Give the most successful applicants some incentives (other than just a job): perhaps some small cash prizes; something interesting like a nice gadget; perhaps some interesting prestige like a listing in some neat place on a web page or a brochure.
How might you leave rejected candidates leave with a positive impression: First and foremost, make decisions in a fairly quick period of time. Don't leave folks hanging out there for long periods. Also, tell the rejected applicants what it was that was good about the applicant. Perhaps let the person know on what they could work to make themselves more attractive to the type of position for which they applied (in other words, help them in their future employment quests).
Hiring communicative technical people is a special challenge: It is generally better to hire someone who has experience, and a great attitude and excellent human communications - even if they don't have all the super-duper "on-paper" skills for which you might be looking. Exciting ways to be interviewed and recruited: Throw a celebration focused on your company, bring your most fun and interesting people to the party, then invite lots of possible applicants. Mix it up with the folks, have some free poker games (not money gambling, just plain chips with door prizes, etc.), no booze, just great snacks, good music, and lots of chairs and tables where people can sit down and pitch the company or pitch themselves as applicants. Make it fun, advertise it in key places in the country. Don't be afraid to fly extremely interesting candidates out to your party...
Every nickel you spend on getting face-time with applicants is well spent... make lots of fun and interesting ways to attract applicants to your meetings...
I do see some (narrow) circumstances where non-physical-media business software and server software is viable and maybe even a good thing. It has long been the dream of major software providers to vend their wares via a mechanism that is ultra-controlled, and can be sold as a service or subscription.
That said, I have yet to see consumers (business or home users) who have said, "Gee, I wish I didn't have to worry about my software being up-to-the-second!" In the server business world, I do see folks that want easy means of updates... in the home software and entertainment world, I don't see folks that are clamoring not to have disks for their software/games. As has already been said in many comments, the control of use suddenly goes from the consumer to the producer/provider (in a disk-less system.)
Seriously... the mob rules.
However, people like music a lot, and it is important to most people in some way or another. (By the way, have you ever seen a movie you really liked that didn't have music in it?) Look at a bunch of folks (folks that were hidden in a jungle for centuries without outside contact) and you'll find that they make music in some way or another. Music seems to actually be something that is important - whether or not it is mainstream, popular or "pretty bad."
I REALLY like B.B. King. My kids couldn't be bothered with him - they think he's good at what he does, but they'd rather listen to Ozzie or Green Day. They take their clues from many sources, mostly their peers. On a different tack, my 67-year-old mother likes Queen, Alan Parsons, and ABBA. Why? None of her peers are the same way, none of the radio stations to which she listens play that kind of mix. She listens to them because they bring back memories of her kids and her husband (in that order, believe me). She's not generally subject to mob rules.
My point is, no surprise here, that some folks follow the crowd, while others could care less about the crowd's opinion. I like to listen to music from folks I've never heard - and I generally get my best (recent) music from the oddest places on the Internet. I don't, however, tend to listen to pop radio because it seems less genuine and from-the-heart to me.
Now if we could just get the super-producers and studios to spend their time and money on music, and not album sales.
I believe that the Wikipedia is many things (most of them wonderful) - but is not a tome of absolute fact.
Wikipedia is a fabulous experiment in humanity and social interaction. It is without a doubt one of the most interesting things I've come across since I began using the Internet. I like looking things up in Wikipedia for two distinct reasons: 1) There is a huge body of knowledge out there in the minds of the world; 2) I enjoy reading the history of the given bits of information I read. It is particularly telling when one reads topics that are controversial or contemporarily historic. Many people, many opinions, many slants/spins on what is real and what is not.
Throw into the mix a sprinkling of morons, vandals, gleeful miscreants, politicians, PR people, and the ignorant, and you get a fabulous view of the brilliantly bizarre view of the public itself.
Don't take Wikipedia (and its contents) as fact. Take it as a social experiment. The views on the Bush administration in the public forums is extremely similar to the view of the Bush administration in Wikipedia.
I'd like to see a clear definition of private copying.
At what point does retrieving a file from someone else's computer stop being private? I completely understand someone making copies of all kinds of things within their home. When someone I don't know is making copies of my files - this is when it seems to be anything but private. I'm not advocating a particular POV about copyrighted materials here... I'm thinking in terms of the moment that a file ceases to be "my" file and becomes "someone else's file."
Wow! Thank you for all the great responses!
Well, I do know what AIFFs are. That's because I make them. I listen to the raw format on my iPod to listen to the eq and mix of my music. It's too time-consuming to constantly convert them to other formats because I'm constantly changing them. Once they're mastered out to CD when I finish an album, I convert the set in my iTunes to something compressed - that way they fit on the kids' and my wife's iPods easier.
01010111 01101000 01100101 01110111 00101110 00100000 01000111 01101100 01100001 01100100 00100000 01001001 00100111 01101101 00100000 01101001 01101110 00100000 01110100 01101000 01100101 00100000 00110001 00110000 00100000 01110000 01100101 01110010 01100011 01100101 01101110 01110100 00101110 00100000 01001101 01111001 00100000 01100011 01101000 01101001 01101100 01100100 01110010 01100101 01101110 00100000 01110111 01101111 01110101 01101100 01100100 00100000 01100010 01100101 00100000 01110010 01100101 01100001 01101100 01101100 01111001 00100000 01110000 01101001 01110011 01110011 01100101 01100100 00100001
I completely understand this... I am the happy owner of a 4GB nano (wouldn't trade it for the world, an anniversary present). Since most of the music on my iPod is uncompressed AIFF files, it only holds so much music. I could fill up a 1GB Nano in a heart-beat.
That said, my kids don't mind MP3s at all. When they make playlists, they get quite a bit of their favorite tunes on their 1GB shuffles...
This is a good thing. It will make the iPod more accessible...
Apple will definitely do well with these, given the current reputation of iPods.
Now, if I had just waited until now to buy the kids their 1GB iPods...
I like the GPL as well. In addition, I rather like most of the Creative Commons licenses. The CC licenses grant different levels of licensure that makes (in my opinion) more creative works available to a broader section of the world (business, personal, for-profit, etc.).
One example that comes to mind is the license that allows free use, but not re-sale. Yet another offers unfettered use, but attribution is required. The list goes on. This type of flexibility is much more conducive to the sharing of things like media.
I don't think that dismissal of all CC licenses (when one disagrees with only a portion of them) is appropriate.
Creative Commons Info
I think that the issues that are endemic to the patent system in the U.S. are really a function of the combination of business (how can we protect our hard work), law (the rule of law is sometimes very academic - how can you protect one without protecting another - what is the definition of useful), and government (constituents and lobbyists want "protection" to foster innovation - government reacts by fiddling with the law).
Throw into this mix patent squatters (think of it this way: some folks buy internet domain names (that are company/product/identifiable names) not for themselves or for their own uses, but to hope that someday, some company will pay large sums for the privilege of having the given domain name - now apply that idea to patents). In addition to patent squatters, there are true trolls - the folks that patent ideas that they can't even hope to produce or innovate.
What's the solution? I don't know that there is a simple solution at all. Market forces, billions (trillions?) in investments and in speculation are at stake, as well as jobs, ideas, and growth of economies. The one thing I do know for sure is that reform often hurts, but is usually worth it. Perhaps concentrated analysis from all interested parties and establishment of simplified patent rules? I wish I had the answer.
1) Follow your dream if you can. If you're capable of doing something that you love, and life lets you do it, then ROCK ON.
2) Thanks for defending our country, eagl.
3) It is not egotistical to super-enjoy your work, provided that you're the best person you can be.
4) One's quality of self-satisfaction and life far outweighs stuff, not matter how much one loves one's stuff.
5) At the end of the day, one's work tends to consume a third or more of one's life. Make the most of it, if possible.
If indeed the administration and the political glitterati wish to filter what (non-quack) scientists have to tell us, then I believe we are being done a disservice.
I (very strongly) feel that science should not be seen through the rose-colored glasses of contemporary ideological/religious beliefs. It wasn't too many years ago that excellent medical scientists were treated as village idiots because the scientists' beliefs were not in-line with ideology. Before that, if a scientist had suggested giving processed mold to people with infections, the scientist would have been burned at the stake in some rural village square.
It is incumbent on the individual to discern whether or not the results of clean, unbiased science has implications on beliefs and value systems. It is not the job of ideologues to decide on our behalf.
It would be nice to have our cake and eat it too. If I was driving in bad weather and had an accident (such that I could not call for help), I'd love for my loved ones and emergency personnel to be able to find me. Similarly, If a business lives or dies by ultra-efficiency, it is always good to be able to re-route on-the-ground employees to handle business issues as quickly as possible - while not wasting the employee's time by having them call in/be called constantly to know where they are.
However, I strongly dislike the idea that one can be tracked without one's permission. It isn't a government's job to know where I am at all times. I also don't believe that governments need to track non-criminal activities just in case a person does something wrong.
Law enforcement has always walked a fine line between police state activities and protecting the greater good. What I don't know is how our politicians and law enforcement can necessarily handle telling the difference between the two...
Wow, that's a blast from the past! I'd forgotten all about that... thanks for the link...
Apple did some really great things with the Newton. They were a little too early, though. Competitors like Palm and Casio did them one better in marketing and ubiquity (probably price, too, if I remember). The Newton and eMate are great, but didn't make it.
Apple waited a bit before coming out with a portable music player (didn't make a CD player, and watched the first few MP3-Type players hit market). In this case, they did a great job of design and marketing. It's been a hit ever since.
Now, Apple has made patent application to do some touch-screen stuff. Knowing Apple, they could just be "thinking about something with touch screens", and might just be pro-active in patents. If they do a tablet, iTouchyPod (iPad?, iPodTouch?, iTouch?, touchIPod?), they're likely to learn lots of lessons from the tablet-pc and touch-screen world and do something neat.
To paraphrase Benjamin Franklin (whom history has consistently under-rated),
"Expect the worst. If all goes well, you'll be pleasantly surprised."
I prefer to think of myself as a pessimistic optimist.