Except that the government has kind of ignored the last part of Amendment 10..
I would argue it's pretty much ignored it in it's entirety. Then again, the Government (and the courts) seems to be good at ignoring the rest of the document as well.
The Bill of Rights is actually fairly clear that the only legal powers of the Federal Government are those explicitly granted (I.e. Enumerated Powers) to it by the Constitution, and that anything not otherwise prohibited is reserved for individual States to excercise.
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."
Most satellites are in geostationary orbit much, much higher than the station, which orbits the earth about fifteen times a day.
Actually, most are in LEO (Low Earth Orbit), the easiest orbit to reach. Also, both GSO (geostationary) and GEO (geosynchronous) orbits have an orbital period of 24 hours (geostationary is a geosynchronous orbit with an inclination of 0deg.), completing a single orbit per day. The end result is that GSO, with an orbital period of 24 hours appears to hover a figure eight pattern (size is dependent on the inclination) over the surface of the Earth while GEO, with an inclination of 0deg, appears to hover over a single fixed point over the equator. Geosync is a lot more common than geostationary since geostationary is much more difficult to maintain and there are only a small handful of geostationary "slots".
up to geostationary orbit or else ever so slightly higher, and using it to refuel until it itself runs out of fuel, then deorbiting it to burn up and launching another.
Except satellites in geosynchronous orbits are too high up to de-orbit back down into the Earth, instead the remaining fuel is used to boost the satellites even higher and out of the way into what's known as a graveyard orbit.
What's even better is when I pop in a BluRay and they spend the next five minutes extolling the virtues of "HD" trying to convince me to adopt BluRay... WTF, I'm watching your bleeping BluRay, you don't have to try to sell me on a technology I've obviously alredy adopted...
Seriously. I could see some sort of promo on a DVD trying to convince people to try out BluRay, but if someone is watching a BluRay you don't have to tell them about the benefits, real or perceived to convince them to try BluRay... They're obviously already using BluRay. You don't see ads on television telling you how great television is and why you should upgrade from radio... Ok, you see cable and satellite companies advertising on cable TV, but in large part they're trying to tell you that they're less evil than the OTHER cable company and are trying to get you to switch, or keep you from switching providers rather than trying to convince you to stop watching over the air broadcasts and discover subscription television.
Better then making the trailers skippable (which is a bare minimum) better yet, take me straight to the root menu and stick them in a "trailers for other movies you might like" extra section... I know my parents after watching a DVD/BluRay will usually explore the extras, trailers, etc.
Before the collective wrath of Slashdot falls upon an innocent* cyber squatter, bear in mind that the URL listed in the text of the email wasn't actually the URL that the href linked to (text claimed to point to one spot, actual href tag pointed some place completely different). It didn't link to a PDF either but an executable with the.scr (Windows Screensaver) extension.
*Presumed innocent in the context of this malware, not in the grander scheme of effing up the domain registry system for the rest of us...
1) You usually listen in your car, and road-noise alone will destroy your ability to discern slight volume changes and perception of frequencies anywhere near 12khz and above
Actually, I usually have talk radio on in the car...
2) If you don't listen in a car, you often use your cheap speakers on your laptop
Can't say I do that either. Sure, sometimes I'll use the lower fidelity of headphones/earbuds hooked up to my iPhone, but that's not where most of my listening takes place...
3) Most headphones people use are either cheap (under $50), or they are biased on the lower-end, and most are not equalized correctly, or not equalized to your ear physiology (different sizes ear canals can cause resonance/standing waves that cause a different perception in frequency for different people -- each set must be tuned individually if you are a true audiophile).
Well, the headphone/earbuds I usually use fall in the ~$70-100 range, even though I'm not an "audiophile" since I refuse to pay $400 for magic ethernet cables...
4) If you're older than 21, you probably can't hear above 16Khz at all
Well, my ears aren't as good as they were ten years ago, but I've tried to avoid the normal things that cause hearing loss and damage (such as, I dunno, obscenely loud music?)
5) Your ears are not perfect (many people's frequency response is different from one ear to the other)
of course.
6) Your player is not perfect
of course...
7) Your speakers are not perfect, and you most likely haven't calibrated them with an RTA for the room they sit in or for where people are actually positioned.
of course......
8) The humidity, temperature, air pressure, and even the air pressure on the other side of your ear-drum changes frequently causing a difference in frequency response.
well, yes...
And if I'm completely wrong on points 1-8, then you are now in the.01% of all listeners, and you are not the target audience for mass-produced and distributed MP3s anyway.
Though I never said I was the target audience for "mass produced mp3's", your post really comes across as a snotty "audiophile"... I've pretty much stopped listening to the Mp3 format. The music on my iPhone is mostly 256kbit AAC with a sprinkling of Apple Lossless. One of the reasons I often buy CD's over downloaded is because I know I have them in the most lossless and unencrypted format available to me. There are a few high-end sites (such as Linn Records UK) that sell lossless FLAC format music not only in standard CD 16bit/44.1khz but also in higher resolution "Studio" quality formats 24bit/88.2/96khz, some tracks are even available in 192khz. The "modern" pop/rock/etc. stuff isn't as much of a big deal but when dealing with stuff that is a lot more about the acoustics then you better believe the audio fidelity makes a difference.
Of course music that is produced with the intent of distribution at the higher resolutions often has higher production values anyway since they are targeting a different audience that cares about such things as the dynamic range and who are more likely to pick up on subtle issues whereas many "joe listeners" prefer the sound of the lossy compressions since that's what they have been raised listening to... sad really.
Sure, I don't have $10k speakers or a $20k receiver, but I can hear subtle differences, even if some of it may be attributable to placebo effect. I do have equipment that can handle some of the higher resolutions both on my primary stereo system as well as my primary desktop system. It find is much easier to down-sample a 24-bit/88.2khz track for whatever my listening environment may be then to do the inverse for when I wish to really "enjoy" and "experience" the music.
Republicans on the other hand, want the government completely out of their lives
"You keep using that word, I do not think it means what you think it means..."
You seem to have "Republicans" confused with "Conservatives" and "Libertarians". Nowadays, the difference between "Republicans" and "Democrats" (at least among those actually in power) mostly tends to be in WHICH ways to expand Government.
Well, the last time I checked, salt is a vital element to our survival (It regulates water content, not enough and we'd all die of dehydration regardless of how much water we drank). So by removing it from public sources, are they thereby impacting at least some people's ability to get salt (IE those that do not eat much at home) and hence endangering them? Sure, excessive salt can be dangerous, but not nearly as dangerous as not enough... This sounds to me like a "That sounds bad, we should do something about it!" snap decision... Sigh...
The follow-up bill will ban that terrible menace, dihydrogen monoxide! New York cares enough to ensure that the public is kept safe from such dangerous chemical compounds!
Exactly. NTFS-3G has been solid for quite a while now. I've been using it for years on both my Macs and Linux boxes without issue. All of my large capacity external drives are formatted NTFS nowadays and they easily talk to all of the systems I care about.
I stopped getting compressed classical (and some jazz) tracks
Depends on the compression. I agree with you about classical music that uses lossy compression, however there are plenty of places where you can get it in a lossless format such as FLAC. Most of them often offer not only CD quality (16-bit, 44/48khz, but also high definition 24-bit 88/96khz for many tracks) FLAC. And Linn records has recently started selling 24-bit 192khz tracks (at not much more then the 88/96khz tracks).
I always grab the highest definition (24-bit 88, 96, or 192khz) offered and resample when I transcode it to other formats (such as mp3 or AAC for portable players which don't benefit from the higher fidelity).
I have been trying to get one of my IPs unblocked by Slashdot for several months now and have seem to have hit a black hole, emails go in never to be seen again...
The Kindle DX will natively display PDF's. I have one and LOVE it. it has ~3.5G of storage space, but sadly no expansion capability. Amazon's eBooks are in the MobiPocket format with a derivative of it's DRM. There are tools that will strip the DRM from Mobipocket files, both Amazon and non-Amazon, and software that will convert between formats including PDF, eBook, MobiPocket, etc. such as Calibre.
Which is something that I try to point out when various Vehicular GPS' refuse to accept input while the vehicle is moving. My Dad has to go through a convoluted routine to put the integrated GPS into a service mode every time he starts his car so that it is willing to accept input while in motion, such as from the passenger...
I see it as another example of "Nanny State" thinking where they feel necessary (or in some cases may be mandated by law) to protect us from the very possibility of our own stupidity.
I used to be a longtime Palm user, only stopped carrying my Tungsten T3 a year or so ago after getting my iPhone. Palm has been an a downhill plummet for the past several years anyway. I used to love their devices in spite of their limitations as they were the best and most stable mobile platform, and the OS really seemed designed for the form factor instead of "squeezed" into it, like Windows CE always seemed to be.
Then, they starting changing the device hardware interfaces every few revisions and breaking old accessories. They purchased BeOS and subsequently sped up it's death. They never did properly support OSX with their Palm Desktop. They spun off and started an on-again/off-again relationship with their OS, pretty much abandoning PalmOS and halting development of things such as true/improved multitasking and start pushing Windows Mobile. They then come out with WebOS which is in many ways is just another entry in the iPhone/Android/etc. new generation mobile OS trend.
The childish tantrums they are having over WebOS and iTunes really shows in my opinion how they have edge as the leader in handhelds to just another follower.As has been pointed out time and again, there are legitimate ways that the iTunes library can be accessed and synced but instead Palm is LYING and trying to piggy back on Apple's work, and when things fail it's Apple that gets the support calls/blame not Palm. They should instead update their PalmDesktop to support the Pre and use the hooks that are available to add iTunes library syncing, but instead they are violating the USB specifications and abandoning their responsibilities and agreements as a USB-IF member and I truly hope they get slapped hard.
I have lost a lot of respect for Palm, especially over the course of the Pre debacle, and am not sure they would be able to win me back as a customer now. A lot of the people that made up the old great Palm are no longer with the company. Thankfully, in many ways Apple has picked up the ball that Palm dropped several years ago when they introduced the iPhone SDK/App Store.
I find it interesting the EU States can ban images within a videogame, and the publisher MUST comply with that restriction. I wonder if the same could happen with a US State? Could California declare "no more swastikas" and force Activision to edit California editions of Wolfenstein, or would the U.S. overrule that decision? If yes, could the EU eventually overrule Germany's law?
Except the EU does not have this pesky little "First Amendment" that the US does which, among other things, guarantees one's right to "freedom of speech" no matter how deplorable that speech might be. If any government in the US (be it the state of California, or our favorite disbarred activist/lawyer Jack Thompson) tried to get something like that banned, they would quickly get their head handed back to them by the Federal Court system. That would not prevent, say, WalMart from banning it within their stores as they are not a government entity. WalMart is known to often ban particularly vulgar or otherwise similarly NSFW music CD's in order to at least appear to be more "family friendly", as a result labels will often be "forced" to publish a sanitized for WalMart in order to be stocked (WalMart is the largest brick and mortar music retailer).
As far as the EU goes, I'm not terribly familiar with their government structure in terms of at what levels the EU governance overrides local governance, but while the member nations are in large part handing much of their sovereignty over to the EU parliament, they still maintain some level of independence (something we lost in the United States after the Civil War when the transition from what was a loose confederacy of states to an even more powerful centralized federal governing system was really solidified. I see Europe headed in a similar direction).
Sadly, the government of Germany, and apparently the people of Germany as a whole seem to still be sensitive about their involvement in the World Wars and in the Nazi regime to the point that such censorship is widely supported. There is plenty of Nazi/Racist sentiment within Germany in large part because of cultural aspects and "generational racism" where feelings and attitudes are passed down from parent, and grandparent, to child, but like we see in other forms of prohibition, such as alcohol in the 20's and drugs today, the fact that it is forbidden can make it more attractive, exciting, and "adventurous" to some.
I'm sure most here on Slashdot will agree that while such Neo-Nazi and racist sentiment such as the movements in Germany are "A bad thing (TM)", the proper action isn't to ignore the past and censor/ban any sort of expression that even appears to possible in some remote way relate to it, but rather to encourage an open discussion and exchange of ideas like the First Amendment in the United States was written to ensure.
I find it ironic that a region (Europe) that tries to be so "progressive" in many areas, become real stick-in-the-mud's in other areas such as German censorship laws, French cryptography laws, British firearm laws, etc.
More to the point, they don't (and can't) claim copyright to the text of "Tom Sawyer", but they can and are claiming copyright to that particular print version (ie. the aspects of the presentation (bound/electronic volume) beyond the words of the title book itself. So while the words are not under copyright, the rest of the total of the "presentation" is, and include the entirety of the other aspects such as fonts used, pagination, cover art/design, page/chapter art/design, prefacing commentary, etc. effective from the first publication of that edition.
So, I can take and a hundred copies of Tom Sawyer and hand them out to anyone I wanted, I can't print out/sell/give copies of a specific copyrighted edition. Even though 98% of the book, that core text is identical, that other 2% which extends beyond the words on the page that IS covered under copyright.
A similar example is in music. Mozart's Requiem is long public domain. However an orchestral performance of Requiem has a separate copyright. So while recording A may have entered into the public domain, recording B is still under copyright protection even though both recordings are of the same piece of music, and may sound nearly indistinguishable from each other to someone who may not know/listen for the nuances of particular performances/orchestras/etc.
You can certainly take and publish/perform your own versions of Tom Sawyer/Mozart's Requiem, but you can't take and reproduce/redistribute a duplicate of the edition/performance by Bantam Books/Scottish Chamber Orchestra.
Here in Baltimore we've had WiMax for well over a year. I've been running WiMax via XOHM both on my laptops as well as a secondary/redundant connection at home using XOHM's Pick Two plan. I get consistently respectable speeds (3-5M Down, ~1M up). The biggest hurdle right now is that coverage quickly goes from dense in the city itself, to moderate in the more populated suburbs such as in Columbia, to non-existent the further you get from the city.
When it works, it works wonderfully and I'm glad I have it, especially when I was having trouble with Comcast, I was able to stay online through XOHM until the issue was resolved. It may not have been as fast or as low latency, but it's still pretty darn fast. Fast enough for large downloads, video streaming, etc. (even HD Netflix streams to my Roku!)
From what I've seen, WiMax is being considered by many as more of a incremental stepping stone to LTE deployment further into the future.
A word of advice however. Go with XOHM or Clearwire (which now owns XOHM) and not the Sprint 3G/4G service. Sprint imposes a total bandwidth cap (I believe it's around 5GB) which covers both 3G and 4G usage whereas with XOHM, which is only WiMax (4G) only, there is no usage cap I am aware of (and they also claim it is "unlimited" with no cap, especially since they do pitch and offer service designed to be a primary connection, potentially replacing traditional wired DSL/Cable connections). When it was my primary connection while arguing with Comcast, I used MANY (tens, if not hundreds) GB's of data over the XOHM connection (HD Video streams, multi GB software downloads, online gaming, etc.) and never got any sort of complaints about "excessive usage", or "overage fees".
The closest thing to a Consumer Desktop Remote Management card I've found is a "PC Weasel" which I saw back in 2000... http://www.realweasel.com/intro.html
That said, the website hasn't been updated since ~2000, it's expensive, but is the closest thing to what you're asking for, "Headless BIOS access" without going with real server hardware. Personally, I'd just keep a video card in the thing and hook it to a KVM switch... It's not going to pull that much extra power.
A local talk show host (Rom Smith, WBAL Radio) succinctly summed it up fairly accurately (I am paraphrasing here as I don't remember his EXACT words, though he has references this point repeatedly).
"The only actual job of a politician is to win elections"
Slashdot Mirror
Except that the government has kind of ignored the last part of Amendment 10..
I would argue it's pretty much ignored it in it's entirety. Then again, the Government (and the courts) seems to be good at ignoring the rest of the document as well.
The Bill of Rights is actually fairly clear that the only legal powers of the Federal Government are those explicitly granted (I.e. Enumerated Powers) to it by the Constitution, and that anything not otherwise prohibited is reserved for individual States to excercise.
http://www.archives.gov/exhibi...
"Amendment X
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."
That Hubble also went WAY over budget, not to mention the incurred cost of sending a shuttle up not once but twice to fix and upgrade it.
Five times actually...
SM-1 in December 1993
SM-2 in February 1997
SM-3A in December 1999
SM-3B in March 2002
and the most recent and final mission,
SM-4 in May 2009
http://hubblesite.org/the_telescope/team_hubble/servicing_missions.php
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hubble_Space_Telescope#Servicing_missions_and_new_instruments
Most satellites are in geostationary orbit much, much higher than the station, which orbits the earth about fifteen times a day.
Actually, most are in LEO (Low Earth Orbit), the easiest orbit to reach. Also, both GSO (geostationary) and GEO (geosynchronous) orbits have an orbital period of 24 hours (geostationary is a geosynchronous orbit with an inclination of 0deg.), completing a single orbit per day. The end result is that GSO, with an orbital period of 24 hours appears to hover a figure eight pattern (size is dependent on the inclination) over the surface of the Earth while GEO, with an inclination of 0deg, appears to hover over a single fixed point over the equator. Geosync is a lot more common than geostationary since geostationary is much more difficult to maintain and there are only a small handful of geostationary "slots".
up to geostationary orbit or else ever so slightly higher, and using it to refuel until it itself runs out of fuel, then deorbiting it to burn up and launching another.
Except satellites in geosynchronous orbits are too high up to de-orbit back down into the Earth, instead the remaining fuel is used to boost the satellites even higher and out of the way into what's known as a graveyard orbit.
What's even better is when I pop in a BluRay and they spend the next five minutes extolling the virtues of "HD" trying to convince me to adopt BluRay... WTF, I'm watching your bleeping BluRay, you don't have to try to sell me on a technology I've obviously alredy adopted...
Seriously. I could see some sort of promo on a DVD trying to convince people to try out BluRay, but if someone is watching a BluRay you don't have to tell them about the benefits, real or perceived to convince them to try BluRay... They're obviously already using BluRay. You don't see ads on television telling you how great television is and why you should upgrade from radio... Ok, you see cable and satellite companies advertising on cable TV, but in large part they're trying to tell you that they're less evil than the OTHER cable company and are trying to get you to switch, or keep you from switching providers rather than trying to convince you to stop watching over the air broadcasts and discover subscription television.
Better then making the trailers skippable (which is a bare minimum) better yet, take me straight to the root menu and stick them in a "trailers for other movies you might like" extra section... I know my parents after watching a DVD/BluRay will usually explore the extras, trailers, etc.
Congressmen/women have to go thru the scan. Everyone has to go thru the scan.
Not all of them do. Those high enough up the ranks can bypass security when flying commercial.
http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/11/19/no-security-pat-downs-for-boehner/
Before the collective wrath of Slashdot falls upon an innocent* cyber squatter, bear in mind that the URL listed in the text of the email wasn't actually the URL that the href linked to (text claimed to point to one spot, actual href tag pointed some place completely different). It didn't link to a PDF either but an executable with the .scr (Windows Screensaver) extension.
*Presumed innocent in the context of this malware, not in the grander scheme of effing up the domain registry system for the rest of us...
1) You usually listen in your car, and road-noise alone will destroy your ability to discern slight volume changes and perception of frequencies anywhere near 12khz and above
Actually, I usually have talk radio on in the car...
2) If you don't listen in a car, you often use your cheap speakers on your laptop
Can't say I do that either. Sure, sometimes I'll use the lower fidelity of headphones/earbuds hooked up to my iPhone, but that's not where most of my listening takes place...
3) Most headphones people use are either cheap (under $50), or they are biased on the lower-end, and most are not equalized correctly, or not equalized to your ear physiology (different sizes ear canals can cause resonance/standing waves that cause a different perception in frequency for different people -- each set must be tuned individually if you are a true audiophile).
Well, the headphone/earbuds I usually use fall in the ~$70-100 range, even though I'm not an "audiophile" since I refuse to pay $400 for magic ethernet cables...
4) If you're older than 21, you probably can't hear above 16Khz at all
Well, my ears aren't as good as they were ten years ago, but I've tried to avoid the normal things that cause hearing loss and damage (such as, I dunno, obscenely loud music?)
5) Your ears are not perfect (many people's frequency response is different from one ear to the other)
of course.
6) Your player is not perfect
of course...
7) Your speakers are not perfect, and you most likely haven't calibrated them with an RTA for the room they sit in or for where people are actually positioned.
of course......
8) The humidity, temperature, air pressure, and even the air pressure on the other side of your ear-drum changes frequently causing a difference in frequency response.
well, yes...
And if I'm completely wrong on points 1-8, then you are now in the .01% of all listeners, and you are not the target audience for mass-produced and distributed MP3s anyway.
Though I never said I was the target audience for "mass produced mp3's", your post really comes across as a snotty "audiophile"... I've pretty much stopped listening to the Mp3 format. The music on my iPhone is mostly 256kbit AAC with a sprinkling of Apple Lossless. One of the reasons I often buy CD's over downloaded is because I know I have them in the most lossless and unencrypted format available to me. There are a few high-end sites (such as Linn Records UK) that sell lossless FLAC format music not only in standard CD 16bit/44.1khz but also in higher resolution "Studio" quality formats 24bit/88.2/96khz, some tracks are even available in 192khz. The "modern" pop/rock/etc. stuff isn't as much of a big deal but when dealing with stuff that is a lot more about the acoustics then you better believe the audio fidelity makes a difference.
Of course music that is produced with the intent of distribution at the higher resolutions often has higher production values anyway since they are targeting a different audience that cares about such things as the dynamic range and who are more likely to pick up on subtle issues whereas many "joe listeners" prefer the sound of the lossy compressions since that's what they have been raised listening to... sad really.
Sure, I don't have $10k speakers or a $20k receiver, but I can hear subtle differences, even if some of it may be attributable to placebo effect. I do have equipment that can handle some of the higher resolutions both on my primary stereo system as well as my primary desktop system. It find is much easier to down-sample a 24-bit/88.2khz track for whatever my listening environment may be then to do the inverse for when I wish to really "enjoy" and "experience" the music.
you can also get kidnapped by one of those pirates gangs and spend months while someone put (a lot of) money on the table to take you back.
See, that's exactly why Sony includes DRM on the movies, to prevent exactly this sort of piracy.....
Republicans on the other hand, want the government completely out of their lives
"You keep using that word, I do not think it means what you think it means..."
You seem to have "Republicans" confused with "Conservatives" and "Libertarians". Nowadays, the difference between "Republicans" and "Democrats" (at least among those actually in power) mostly tends to be in WHICH ways to expand Government.
http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=3184
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2008/oct/19/big-government-gets-bigger/
Well, the last time I checked, salt is a vital element to our survival (It regulates water content, not enough and we'd all die of dehydration regardless of how much water we drank). So by removing it from public sources, are they thereby impacting at least some people's ability to get salt (IE those that do not eat much at home) and hence endangering them? Sure, excessive salt can be dangerous, but not nearly as dangerous as not enough... This sounds to me like a "That sounds bad, we should do something about it!" snap decision... Sigh...
The follow-up bill will ban that terrible menace, dihydrogen monoxide! New York cares enough to ensure that the public is kept safe from such dangerous chemical compounds!
Looks like ipv6.comcast.net has both A (IPv4) and AAAA (IPv6) records.
$ host ipv6.comcast.net
ipv6.comcast.net has address 69.252.76.96
ipv6.comcast.net has address 68.87.64.59
ipv6.comcast.net has IPv6 address 2001:558:1002:5:68:87:64:59
ipv6.comcast.net has IPv6 address 2001:558:1004:9:69:252:76:96
Exactly. NTFS-3G has been solid for quite a while now. I've been using it for years on both my Macs and Linux boxes without issue. All of my large capacity external drives are formatted NTFS nowadays and they easily talk to all of the systems I care about.
I stopped getting compressed classical (and some jazz) tracks
Depends on the compression. I agree with you about classical music that uses lossy compression, however there are plenty of places where you can get it in a lossless format such as FLAC. Most of them often offer not only CD quality (16-bit, 44/48khz, but also high definition 24-bit 88/96khz for many tracks) FLAC. And Linn records has recently started selling 24-bit 192khz tracks (at not much more then the 88/96khz tracks).
http://www.linnrecords.com/index.aspx
https://www.hdtracks.com/index.php
I always grab the highest definition (24-bit 88, 96, or 192khz) offered and resample when I transcode it to other formats (such as mp3 or AAC for portable players which don't benefit from the higher fidelity).
I have been trying to get one of my IPs unblocked by Slashdot for several months now and have seem to have hit a black hole, emails go in never to be seen again...
The Kindle DX will natively display PDF's. I have one and LOVE it. it has ~3.5G of storage space, but sadly no expansion capability. Amazon's eBooks are in the MobiPocket format with a derivative of it's DRM. There are tools that will strip the DRM from Mobipocket files, both Amazon and non-Amazon, and software that will convert between formats including PDF, eBook, MobiPocket, etc. such as Calibre.
Which is something that I try to point out when various Vehicular GPS' refuse to accept input while the vehicle is moving. My Dad has to go through a convoluted routine to put the integrated GPS into a service mode every time he starts his car so that it is willing to accept input while in motion, such as from the passenger...
I see it as another example of "Nanny State" thinking where they feel necessary (or in some cases may be mandated by law) to protect us from the very possibility of our own stupidity.
I used to be a longtime Palm user, only stopped carrying my Tungsten T3 a year or so ago after getting my iPhone. Palm has been an a downhill plummet for the past several years anyway. I used to love their devices in spite of their limitations as they were the best and most stable mobile platform, and the OS really seemed designed for the form factor instead of "squeezed" into it, like Windows CE always seemed to be.
Then, they starting changing the device hardware interfaces every few revisions and breaking old accessories. They purchased BeOS and subsequently sped up it's death. They never did properly support OSX with their Palm Desktop. They spun off and started an on-again/off-again relationship with their OS, pretty much abandoning PalmOS and halting development of things such as true/improved multitasking and start pushing Windows Mobile. They then come out with WebOS which is in many ways is just another entry in the iPhone/Android/etc. new generation mobile OS trend.
The childish tantrums they are having over WebOS and iTunes really shows in my opinion how they have edge as the leader in handhelds to just another follower.As has been pointed out time and again, there are legitimate ways that the iTunes library can be accessed and synced but instead Palm is LYING and trying to piggy back on Apple's work, and when things fail it's Apple that gets the support calls/blame not Palm. They should instead update their PalmDesktop to support the Pre and use the hooks that are available to add iTunes library syncing, but instead they are violating the USB specifications and abandoning their responsibilities and agreements as a USB-IF member and I truly hope they get slapped hard.
I have lost a lot of respect for Palm, especially over the course of the Pre debacle, and am not sure they would be able to win me back as a customer now. A lot of the people that made up the old great Palm are no longer with the company. Thankfully, in many ways Apple has picked up the ball that Palm dropped several years ago when they introduced the iPhone SDK/App Store.
I find it interesting the EU States can ban images within a videogame, and the publisher MUST comply with that restriction. I wonder if the same could happen with a US State? Could California declare "no more swastikas" and force Activision to edit California editions of Wolfenstein, or would the U.S. overrule that decision? If yes, could the EU eventually overrule Germany's law?
Except the EU does not have this pesky little "First Amendment" that the US does which, among other things, guarantees one's right to "freedom of speech" no matter how deplorable that speech might be. If any government in the US (be it the state of California, or our favorite disbarred activist/lawyer Jack Thompson) tried to get something like that banned, they would quickly get their head handed back to them by the Federal Court system. That would not prevent, say, WalMart from banning it within their stores as they are not a government entity. WalMart is known to often ban particularly vulgar or otherwise similarly NSFW music CD's in order to at least appear to be more "family friendly", as a result labels will often be "forced" to publish a sanitized for WalMart in order to be stocked (WalMart is the largest brick and mortar music retailer).
As far as the EU goes, I'm not terribly familiar with their government structure in terms of at what levels the EU governance overrides local governance, but while the member nations are in large part handing much of their sovereignty over to the EU parliament, they still maintain some level of independence (something we lost in the United States after the Civil War when the transition from what was a loose confederacy of states to an even more powerful centralized federal governing system was really solidified. I see Europe headed in a similar direction).
Sadly, the government of Germany, and apparently the people of Germany as a whole seem to still be sensitive about their involvement in the World Wars and in the Nazi regime to the point that such censorship is widely supported. There is plenty of Nazi/Racist sentiment within Germany in large part because of cultural aspects and "generational racism" where feelings and attitudes are passed down from parent, and grandparent, to child, but like we see in other forms of prohibition, such as alcohol in the 20's and drugs today, the fact that it is forbidden can make it more attractive, exciting, and "adventurous" to some.
I'm sure most here on Slashdot will agree that while such Neo-Nazi and racist sentiment such as the movements in Germany are "A bad thing (TM)", the proper action isn't to ignore the past and censor/ban any sort of expression that even appears to possible in some remote way relate to it, but rather to encourage an open discussion and exchange of ideas like the First Amendment in the United States was written to ensure.
I find it ironic that a region (Europe) that tries to be so "progressive" in many areas, become real stick-in-the-mud's in other areas such as German censorship laws, French cryptography laws, British firearm laws, etc.
More to the point, they don't (and can't) claim copyright to the text of "Tom Sawyer", but they can and are claiming copyright to that particular print version (ie. the aspects of the presentation (bound/electronic volume) beyond the words of the title book itself. So while the words are not under copyright, the rest of the total of the "presentation" is, and include the entirety of the other aspects such as fonts used, pagination, cover art/design, page/chapter art/design, prefacing commentary, etc. effective from the first publication of that edition.
So, I can take and a hundred copies of Tom Sawyer and hand them out to anyone I wanted, I can't print out/sell/give copies of a specific copyrighted edition. Even though 98% of the book, that core text is identical, that other 2% which extends beyond the words on the page that IS covered under copyright.
A similar example is in music. Mozart's Requiem is long public domain. However an orchestral performance of Requiem has a separate copyright. So while recording A may have entered into the public domain, recording B is still under copyright protection even though both recordings are of the same piece of music, and may sound nearly indistinguishable from each other to someone who may not know/listen for the nuances of particular performances/orchestras/etc.
You can certainly take and publish/perform your own versions of Tom Sawyer/Mozart's Requiem, but you can't take and reproduce/redistribute a duplicate of the edition/performance by Bantam Books/Scottish Chamber Orchestra.
Here in Baltimore we've had WiMax for well over a year. I've been running WiMax via XOHM both on my laptops as well as a secondary/redundant connection at home using XOHM's Pick Two plan. I get consistently respectable speeds (3-5M Down, ~1M up). The biggest hurdle right now is that coverage quickly goes from dense in the city itself, to moderate in the more populated suburbs such as in Columbia, to non-existent the further you get from the city.
When it works, it works wonderfully and I'm glad I have it, especially when I was having trouble with Comcast, I was able to stay online through XOHM until the issue was resolved. It may not have been as fast or as low latency, but it's still pretty darn fast. Fast enough for large downloads, video streaming, etc. (even HD Netflix streams to my Roku!)
From what I've seen, WiMax is being considered by many as more of a incremental stepping stone to LTE deployment further into the future.
A word of advice however. Go with XOHM or Clearwire (which now owns XOHM) and not the Sprint 3G/4G service. Sprint imposes a total bandwidth cap (I believe it's around 5GB) which covers both 3G and 4G usage whereas with XOHM, which is only WiMax (4G) only, there is no usage cap I am aware of (and they also claim it is "unlimited" with no cap, especially since they do pitch and offer service designed to be a primary connection, potentially replacing traditional wired DSL/Cable connections). When it was my primary connection while arguing with Comcast, I used MANY (tens, if not hundreds) GB's of data over the XOHM connection (HD Video streams, multi GB software downloads, online gaming, etc.) and never got any sort of complaints about "excessive usage", or "overage fees".
The closest thing to a Consumer Desktop Remote Management card I've found is a "PC Weasel" which I saw back in 2000... http://www.realweasel.com/intro.html
That said, the website hasn't been updated since ~2000, it's expensive, but is the closest thing to what you're asking for, "Headless BIOS access" without going with real server hardware. Personally, I'd just keep a video card in the thing and hook it to a KVM switch... It's not going to pull that much extra power.
Ugh, notice my typo AFTER hitting Submit... BAD SLASHDOTTER...
It's "Ron Smith".
http://www.wbal.com/shows/smith/
A local talk show host (Rom Smith, WBAL Radio) succinctly summed it up fairly accurately (I am paraphrasing here as I don't remember his EXACT words, though he has references this point repeatedly).
"The only actual job of a politician is to win elections"
I have no idea what you just said, but somehow I feel strangely insulted...