well, most Everest deaths do occur in the "death zone" (above 8,000 meters), so even though it happens on the descent, the pathology that would ultimately kill them (cerebral edema) could have began during their ascent to the summit, and there could simply be a delay between the onset of the disease and the actual time of death.
but the article doesn't really say what induces the leakage of blood vessels which causes cerebral edema. so it could be the altitude, or it could be the extreme cold, or it could be a combination of the two.
what moron modded this comment a troll? is "-1 Troll" the default mod for "waaahhhh! reality doesn't agree with me!"?
if you disagree with the views expressed in a comment, the appropriate thing to do is to respond to it (and preferably refute it in mature/rational manner). modding someone down just for disagreeing with you is a sign of intellectual cowardice.
really? so the ATM machine remembers the serial number on each bill it dispenses? they must use massive databases just to keep track of the millions of ATM withdrawals that are made each day, not to mention all the bills already in circulation (16,650,000 $1 bills are printed each day). seems like that would be a heck of a lot harder than tracking electronic ballots cast only once every 4 years.
votes don't need to be "traced" on two ends. you only need to authenticate (verify the identity of) each voter when they case their vote, and then securely transmit that vote to a central database of electronic ballots. a one SSN, one vote system would work if you just have each person select a password when they register to vote, so the job of identifying the voter is done long before the actual election day. then on the day of the election, everyone logs onto the official voting site (whether from home or using public internet access at a school or library) and inputs their social security number, d-o-b, and password for authentication. then they simply cast their vote and write down a confirmation number (or print out a receipt).
with the ballots being entirely electronic, they are immediately processed and added to a secure central database, at which point a second public ballot-tracking database will also be updated with the vote. so before the voter even leaves the voting booth (computer), they can confirm (using the confirmation number above) that their vote has been processed and properly recorded. if you are extremely paranoid, you can check your vote again from a different computer--heck, you can call up your friend in a different state and ask them to check from their computer.
basically, this gives each voter the prerogative to verify that their vote was recorded properly (and to catch any election fraud). the system can also double-check that the official ballot database perfectly matches the ballot-tracking database. if they don't match, then you know that there has been vote tampering, and you know exactly which ballots were tampered with.
you can't translate the meaning of a sentence by blindly replacing words with the dictionary definition. if you do that with any sentence you'll end up with an incoherent awkward-sounding mess.
for instance, "we've taken on heavy casualties" is a perfectly appropriate use of the word "casualties." but according to your interpretation, it would mean "we've taken on heavy [(dead or wounded) person]."
"casualty" simply refers to the general concept of human injury (which can include death). a "minor" indicates a moderate degree of something. so "minor casualty" simply means moderate injuries--that makes complete sense and is a perfectly acceptable use of the word.
which is why it's somewhat disturbing when you consider that Starship Troopers is considered recommended reading within the U.S. Army, Marine Corps, and Navy, and it's also the only sci-fi novel on the reading lists of four of the five U.S. military academies.
i think that would still be better handled through hospitals/police stations rather than with field personnel trying to communicate with each other across the country. if you communicate information about the emergency to a hospital/police station, their dispatchers can then relay that info to all the appropriate field personnel. it just doesn't make sense to have a paramedic or police officer sitting in their ambulance/patrol vehicle trying to coordinate a nation-wide relief effort.
the only kind of wireless communication those professions require is with their dispatch office and other personnel in their area. beyond that, it would be more beneficial/useful to have a public wireless network that is accessible to everyone. frankly, a civilian would have more use for a nation-wide wireless network than an on-duty police officer or paramedic. even if you want to pose an incredibly unlikely Hollywood-action-movie-type scenario where, say an on-duty paramedic is the only person at the scene of a bioweapon outbreak, and he/she need to receive instructions on how to counter this threat from a CDC specialist on this bioweapon who's in Washington D.C., it would still make more sense for the 9-11 emergency dispatcher to patch the CDC specialist through to that on-scene paramedic.
i mean, what are you going to do, create a national database with the number/extension for every single paramedic & police officer so that they can be contacted, or contact each other, directly? that's just not an efficient way of coordinating large-scale law enforcement or medical operations.
yes, and hopefully that will lead to a record deal. but otherwise you're still not going to make it big just by putting up YouTube videos and uploading your tracks to Last.fm.
the indie label i work for is actually exploring these promotion vehicles right now (we've been on last.fm for a couple of years, but we still don't have a YouTube channel yet) and while the stats for last.fm are nice--we can see which bands/albums/tracks are the most popular--and it's certainly a means of gaining exposure, it's still not a silver bullet for all of the problems an indie musician faces, not the least of which being the problem of promoting yourself in an oversaturated market and trying to gain decent distribution in an industry that is exclusively controlled by the Big Four.
i mean, say you manage to build up a respectable fanbase on your own; perhaps you play a lot of local shows, you put up your music on BitTorrent, and you've got a really good local promoter; but then what? how do you get to the next level (beyond just being a local act playing at the same handful of local venues every month)?
assuming that you know a good audio engineer and have access to decent recording equipment (these days you can record pretty high quality stuff using just Pro Tools and some consumer-grade recording equipment in someone's garage), and you manage to get a professional quality album recorded. let's say you even know an excellent graphic designer/artist and get him to design the album artwork for you. now what? is the bank going to loan you the money to get your CDs pressed, printed, assembled and packaged? and even if you managed to do all that, what are you going to do with those hundreds or thousands of CDs? you have no distribution, and you can't just call up Best Buy or Virgin Megastore and ask them to sell your CDs. without the backing of a label and their distribution, you'll be lucky if you can find a single local record shop willing to pick up your album on consignment.
the reality is, without the financial and professional backing of a decent record label, it's nigh impossible for an unknown artist to make it big. your growth potential will be severely limited by your lack of promotion & distribution resources. i mean, even if you forgo physical album sales and just concentrate on digital music sales, as an unsigned indie artist you won't even be able to get your music on iTunes, eMusic, or any other major digital music retailers. even indie labels have a hard time getting into these retail outlets without help from a large (RIAA/Big Four) distributor. and you can forget about ever seeing your CDs in a brick-and-mortar store, as they only purchase their music from one-stops, who only work with majors or their branch distributors collectively representing a large number of indie labels.
though there is still the other possibility that an indie artist can build their own website and sell all of their music & merch themselves. it's not particularly efficient or practical, but it can be done. however, that still requires that the artist is tech-savvy enough to figure this out and also has, or knows someone who has, the technical expertise to build a functional e-commerce site for the band. for obvious reasons, this doesn't happen a lot, since rarely is someone both a great musician and a competent web developer.
good point. and to be honest, most people don't need FireWire 800/1600 just to transfer a few documents or spreadsheets--or even photos & mp3s--to their computer. the few seconds saved doesn't justify the added cost of FireWire over USB. nor do they need to use a high-speed data bus for their mouse, keyboard, webcam, printer, scanner, or what have you. so it makes sense that USB is more prevalent than FireWire.
however, FireWire is still extremely useful (and crucial) to certain professionals who regularly work with large files or have to move around large amounts of data, like hi-res/raw images, lossless audio, hi-def video, etc. that's why FireWire is still pretty standard in high-end music & video production equipment. so the idea that FireWire is dead (or can simply be replaced with USB 2.0/3.0) is just poorly informed.
1394b is playing a pivotal role in the F-35 Lightning II program, providing guaranteed quality of service with predictable latencies in real-time control applications. More than 70 1394 devices are delivering information about mission details, communication systems, weapon systems, engine controls, and flight controls.
it's interesting that you brought that up. from my personal experience, most brand name NTSC players sold in the U.S. don't support PAL, but most PAL players sold in, say Taiwan, do support NTSC.
also, cheapo $20 DVD players are more likely to support both NTSC and PAL, as well as DivX/MPEG-4 video, etc. than the expensive $100~200 players. they're usually off-brand players, but you can also find these cheap players by major companies like Panasonic or Sony, though you'll have to enter a code to unlock the player.
While USB 2.0's theoretical 480Mbp/s (60MBp/s) throughput should be sufficient for UDMA 4 CompactFlash, realthroughput is significantly less. Top hard drive manufacturers typically cite USB 2.0's best speed at 33MB/s, or abouthalf the speed of UDMA 4 CompactFlash, or 25% of UDMA 6 CompactFlash. There are myriad reasons for USB 2.0's'real world' speeds including: CPU overhead from its master/slave arrangement, NRZI encoding, and inexpensivechipset implementations. The USB 2.0 UDMA reader used in the benchmarks above uses one of the latest USBchipsets from Genesys Logic. While a new generation of that chipset should soon be available, we don't foresee itproviding throughput close to half of that of FireWire.
heck, those benchmarks show that even using FireWire 400 to read a PIO CompactFlash card still beats USB 2.0 UDMA reading a UDMA-enabled CompactFlash card.
it is indeed possible these days to be successful while remaining relatively independent, but prior to online music downloads being embraced by mainstream society, musicians pretty much had no choice but to sign with a record label.
say you want to remain independent, how would you promote your music? how would you distribute your music? how would you get tour support? unless you have a rich uncle willing to loan you tens/hundreds of thousands of dollars upfront, you'll never get your music career off the ground. record labels basically act as that rich uncle. they front you the money to record your albums, to go on tour to promote those albums, and they pay the radio stations to play your songs. they even front your merchandise to sell and land shows/tours for you. those aren't things that a budding musician (and i use that term lightly--you can be in a band for over 10-12 years and still be "budding" in terms of industry experience.) can do all on their own.
once a band has made a name for themselves, then it might be possible for them to basically act as their own label (though up until recently they'd still just be running a vanity label and getting their distribution through one of the majors). but indie artists just starting their music careers can't do that. moreover, they don't have a lot of leverage to negotiate their record contracts. they can shop around, but you're pretty much going to get screwed on the terms no matter where you go.
and even now it's still pretty difficult to make it in the music industry as an indie artist. it's possible, but you'd have to be pretty business/marketing savvy as well as computer/internet savvy in addition to being a great musician. not all great musicians know how to promote themselves using the internet (or even know that they can promote themselves using the internet).
One thing that always bothered me about Steamboat Willie was the fact that Mickey, Minnie, and Pete appeared to be sentient(well, as much as niggers are, anyway) but all of the other animals were just dumb farm-beasts.
so the problem isn't that they're being paid too little. if anything, they're being paid too much for too little work (and too little quality). if NASA contracts are handed out the same way that military contracts get handed out, then it is probably done through a corruption-filled old boy network negotiated by kickbacks and bribery. that kind of cronyism breeds incompetence as it destroys any hint of meritocracy or accountability.
i don't believe the Justice Department/Treasury Department/Homeland Security operate any ambulances or police vehicles.
police officers/vehicles are usually hooked up to their station. and each station can then be hooked up (via a wired connection) to other police departments. ambulances are connected to dispatchers as well. why would they need a nation-wide wireless network?
i don't own a PS3 so i don't know if that's the direction the PS3 is headed in, but i agree that i would be really stupid, especially since the XMB is such an easy to use and well-designed interface (i believe it's won an award for its design).
what would be nice (and make more sense) would be if Sony had instead spent their resources on expanding/extending the XMB by adding useful features. for instance, add some kind of media manager like the iPod or iTunes that lets you organize your music and browse by album/genre/artist/etc. and for the PSP's XMB it would be nice to also have an e-book browser/reader/download service.
like Microsoft's idea of a virtual mall posted on/. earlier, this is just another useless VR application that people will quickly lose interest in once the novelty of a VR environment wears off.
that's why i wrote WiFi/WiMax. you lay down fibre to connect the backhauls or for FttH and FttN connections. residential areas would have the option of using mobile WiMax or WiFi (there would be plenty of spectra blocks to share if current cellular/radio/tv frequency ranges are given to wireless broadband deployment), which would be faster. and, no, using VoIP on a WiFi network when you're at home isn't not ridiculous. unless you have a really crappy router/access point, there should be no problem making a VoIP call with a 300 Mbps connection. if you're sitting at home rather than driving around, then it would make more sense to hop on the WiFi network rather than the mobile WiMax.
i was thinking in the same direction too. but when i read this part of the summary:
but when they popped the video into the player, nothing came up -- the disc was blank.
my immediate question was, "did they try a PAL player?"
what's interesting to me is that two "data recovery firms" told them that the data was unrecoverable, but Seagate Recovery Service was able to recover the data without a problem. that makes me wonder if the earlier data recovery firms even tried to diagnose the problem or if they even knew anything about digital media & data storage. perhaps they thought that just by buying some digital forensics or data recovery software that automatically qualifies them to run a data recovery service. though i'm guessing that's what most police departments do as well.
i guess that's the problem with buying off the shelf software to do your job rather than learning how things work for yourself.
why the hell do they even need their own wireless network? if Homeland security wants anywhere wireless access, then they'll need to get in line like everyone else. either set up a public wireless broadband network that we can all use or stop whining. if they're worried about security they can use encryption.
i mean, $195 million and 6 years of work and they still don't have a network up? that's pathetic. that money would have been better spent given to local governments to set up their own municipal wireless networks, which if a Homeland security agent happens to be in range of, they're free to use like everyone else.
wireless broadband access is already slowly becoming a basic component of public infrastructure. it's something that benefits everyone, and increasingly vital to the technological progress of a society. the task of building such vital communications infrastructure should have been given to a science/technology-oriented government agency--something like Japan's Ministry of Economy, Trade & Industry (which would be more useful than the Homeland Security Department).
um, i never said it wasn't viable. the telecoms can do whatever they want because they have a natural monopoly (oligopoly in some places, but in practice there's not much difference) and telecommunications is a service with inelastic demand. these days a cellphone is almost a basic necessity if you live in most places. but their making buttloads of cash doesn't change the fact that:
SMS messages cost 10~15 cents each (in the U.S.) while it's just a stripped down proprietary version of e-mails or IMs. no one in their right mind would charge/pay to send and to receive text messages over the internet.
cellphone carriers are still charging mid-90's prices for mobile internet access, and even charging per MB for data transfer still.
roaming & long-distance charges make no sense whatsoever in the age of modern digital communications.
we have the technology and resources to deploy a nationwide public wireless broadband network. and with ubiquitous wireless coverage, VoIP would eliminate the need for cellphone carriers and their ridiculous rates & terms. paying up the ass to use cellular networks and their 3 Mbps asymmetric EV-DO connections is just stupid when there are alternatives that can provide almost 22x the speed with symmetric upstream/downstream speeds.
but maybe you're right. maybe we should just wait for 3G to reach the masses so that everyone can enjoy the decade-old technology (yes, EVDO was developed in 1999). and if you think bringing up how much worse things were in the past changes the fact that telecoms are still impeding technological progress, then let me just say that i think Alabama is a shining beacon of progress because black people are no longer being lynched there.
i'm sure they exist, they just aren't sought after by schools because everyone uses Windows. if you're only ever putting out ads looking for teachers proficient in Windows, then that's all you'll ever come across. that does not mean that Linux or even Unix-savvy teachers don't exist. and even if there aren't enough at the moment, by actually creating a demand for such teachers you'll start attracting Linux users to the teacher profession, not to mention it'll pressure current teachers to pick up Linux.
i mean, do you think that there was already an existing computer-savvy workforce when PCs were first introduced? no, but people quickly adapted and a workforce was created to fill the immense demand for computer skills. there's no reason to think that it would be any different with Linux instructors.
well, 500 AUD = 329.85 USD. which is also the list price for the Asus Eee PC in Australia (for the Linux version, i'm assuming).
shipping/customs shouldn't be a issue since it's being ordered by the Australian government, and in such bulk that the per unit shipping cost would be negligible.
well, since they're netbooks, not desktops, you'd need ubiquitous wireless access in order to match the functionality that would be provided with Ubuntu + OpenOffice. and considering that Australia's one of the few developed countries behind the U.S. in internet infrastructure, that seems very unlikely.
to get the full benefits of the hardware, you pretty much have to go with FOSS or spend a heck of a lot more money.
media convergence is the way of the future. the internet is a general-purpose communications network that's capable of transmitting any kind of digital data, whether it be text, video, audio/voice, or any other data. it doesn't make sense to have cable or terrestrial broadcast television when high-speed broadband allows streaming video content to be delivered over the internet. and by merging things like radio, TV, and cellphone networks with the internet, the radio spectra currently used by those proprietary networks (and controlled by a handful of corporations) can then be consolidated towards the deployment of public wireless broadband.
it's just more efficient to have a single general-purpose open communications network than a bunch of disjointed and redundant closed/proprietary ones. and when you're getting your TV transmissions over the internet, there won't be much sense in making a distinction between a "TV" and a "monitor." there will just be high-end monitors (greater resolution, better contrast ratios, wider viewing angles, more faithful color reproductions) and low-end monitors--basically what TVs are today.
heck, most large LCDs and plasma screen monitors already have built-in tuner cards so as to double as a "TV set."
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well, most Everest deaths do occur in the "death zone" (above 8,000 meters), so even though it happens on the descent, the pathology that would ultimately kill them (cerebral edema) could have began during their ascent to the summit, and there could simply be a delay between the onset of the disease and the actual time of death.
but the article doesn't really say what induces the leakage of blood vessels which causes cerebral edema. so it could be the altitude, or it could be the extreme cold, or it could be a combination of the two.
um, that's the whole point of the confirmation number...
only the voter knows which ballot was his/hers.
what moron modded this comment a troll? is "-1 Troll" the default mod for "waaahhhh! reality doesn't agree with me!"?
if you disagree with the views expressed in a comment, the appropriate thing to do is to respond to it (and preferably refute it in mature/rational manner). modding someone down just for disagreeing with you is a sign of intellectual cowardice.
really? so the ATM machine remembers the serial number on each bill it dispenses? they must use massive databases just to keep track of the millions of ATM withdrawals that are made each day, not to mention all the bills already in circulation (16,650,000 $1 bills are printed each day). seems like that would be a heck of a lot harder than tracking electronic ballots cast only once every 4 years.
votes don't need to be "traced" on two ends. you only need to authenticate (verify the identity of) each voter when they case their vote, and then securely transmit that vote to a central database of electronic ballots. a one SSN, one vote system would work if you just have each person select a password when they register to vote, so the job of identifying the voter is done long before the actual election day. then on the day of the election, everyone logs onto the official voting site (whether from home or using public internet access at a school or library) and inputs their social security number, d-o-b, and password for authentication. then they simply cast their vote and write down a confirmation number (or print out a receipt).
with the ballots being entirely electronic, they are immediately processed and added to a secure central database, at which point a second public ballot-tracking database will also be updated with the vote. so before the voter even leaves the voting booth (computer), they can confirm (using the confirmation number above) that their vote has been processed and properly recorded. if you are extremely paranoid, you can check your vote again from a different computer--heck, you can call up your friend in a different state and ask them to check from their computer.
basically, this gives each voter the prerogative to verify that their vote was recorded properly (and to catch any election fraud). the system can also double-check that the official ballot database perfectly matches the ballot-tracking database. if they don't match, then you know that there has been vote tampering, and you know exactly which ballots were tampered with.
you can't translate the meaning of a sentence by blindly replacing words with the dictionary definition. if you do that with any sentence you'll end up with an incoherent awkward-sounding mess.
for instance, "we've taken on heavy casualties" is a perfectly appropriate use of the word "casualties." but according to your interpretation, it would mean "we've taken on heavy [(dead or wounded) person]."
"casualty" simply refers to the general concept of human injury (which can include death). a "minor" indicates a moderate degree of something. so "minor casualty" simply means moderate injuries--that makes complete sense and is a perfectly acceptable use of the word.
which is why it's somewhat disturbing when you consider that Starship Troopers is considered recommended reading within the U.S. Army, Marine Corps, and Navy, and it's also the only sci-fi novel on the reading lists of four of the five U.S. military academies.
i think that would still be better handled through hospitals/police stations rather than with field personnel trying to communicate with each other across the country. if you communicate information about the emergency to a hospital/police station, their dispatchers can then relay that info to all the appropriate field personnel. it just doesn't make sense to have a paramedic or police officer sitting in their ambulance/patrol vehicle trying to coordinate a nation-wide relief effort.
the only kind of wireless communication those professions require is with their dispatch office and other personnel in their area. beyond that, it would be more beneficial/useful to have a public wireless network that is accessible to everyone. frankly, a civilian would have more use for a nation-wide wireless network than an on-duty police officer or paramedic. even if you want to pose an incredibly unlikely Hollywood-action-movie-type scenario where, say an on-duty paramedic is the only person at the scene of a bioweapon outbreak, and he/she need to receive instructions on how to counter this threat from a CDC specialist on this bioweapon who's in Washington D.C., it would still make more sense for the 9-11 emergency dispatcher to patch the CDC specialist through to that on-scene paramedic.
i mean, what are you going to do, create a national database with the number/extension for every single paramedic & police officer so that they can be contacted, or contact each other, directly? that's just not an efficient way of coordinating large-scale law enforcement or medical operations.
yes, and hopefully that will lead to a record deal. but otherwise you're still not going to make it big just by putting up YouTube videos and uploading your tracks to Last.fm.
the indie label i work for is actually exploring these promotion vehicles right now (we've been on last.fm for a couple of years, but we still don't have a YouTube channel yet) and while the stats for last.fm are nice--we can see which bands/albums/tracks are the most popular--and it's certainly a means of gaining exposure, it's still not a silver bullet for all of the problems an indie musician faces, not the least of which being the problem of promoting yourself in an oversaturated market and trying to gain decent distribution in an industry that is exclusively controlled by the Big Four.
i mean, say you manage to build up a respectable fanbase on your own; perhaps you play a lot of local shows, you put up your music on BitTorrent, and you've got a really good local promoter; but then what? how do you get to the next level (beyond just being a local act playing at the same handful of local venues every month)?
assuming that you know a good audio engineer and have access to decent recording equipment (these days you can record pretty high quality stuff using just Pro Tools and some consumer-grade recording equipment in someone's garage), and you manage to get a professional quality album recorded. let's say you even know an excellent graphic designer/artist and get him to design the album artwork for you. now what? is the bank going to loan you the money to get your CDs pressed, printed, assembled and packaged? and even if you managed to do all that, what are you going to do with those hundreds or thousands of CDs? you have no distribution, and you can't just call up Best Buy or Virgin Megastore and ask them to sell your CDs. without the backing of a label and their distribution, you'll be lucky if you can find a single local record shop willing to pick up your album on consignment.
the reality is, without the financial and professional backing of a decent record label, it's nigh impossible for an unknown artist to make it big. your growth potential will be severely limited by your lack of promotion & distribution resources. i mean, even if you forgo physical album sales and just concentrate on digital music sales, as an unsigned indie artist you won't even be able to get your music on iTunes, eMusic, or any other major digital music retailers. even indie labels have a hard time getting into these retail outlets without help from a large (RIAA/Big Four) distributor. and you can forget about ever seeing your CDs in a brick-and-mortar store, as they only purchase their music from one-stops, who only work with majors or their branch distributors collectively representing a large number of indie labels.
though there is still the other possibility that an indie artist can build their own website and sell all of their music & merch themselves. it's not particularly efficient or practical, but it can be done. however, that still requires that the artist is tech-savvy enough to figure this out and also has, or knows someone who has, the technical expertise to build a functional e-commerce site for the band. for obvious reasons, this doesn't happen a lot, since rarely is someone both a great musician and a competent web developer.
good point. and to be honest, most people don't need FireWire 800/1600 just to transfer a few documents or spreadsheets--or even photos & mp3s--to their computer. the few seconds saved doesn't justify the added cost of FireWire over USB. nor do they need to use a high-speed data bus for their mouse, keyboard, webcam, printer, scanner, or what have you. so it makes sense that USB is more prevalent than FireWire.
however, FireWire is still extremely useful (and crucial) to certain professionals who regularly work with large files or have to move around large amounts of data, like hi-res/raw images, lossless audio, hi-def video, etc. that's why FireWire is still pretty standard in high-end music & video production equipment. so the idea that FireWire is dead (or can simply be replaced with USB 2.0/3.0) is just poorly informed.
even the military still uses FireWire for things like the the F-35's vehicle systems network:
the IEEE-1394B data bus is similarly employed in the F-22 Raptor for which it was developed. and NASA also uses it to monitor debris during launches amongst other mission-critical applications.
it's interesting that you brought that up. from my personal experience, most brand name NTSC players sold in the U.S. don't support PAL, but most PAL players sold in, say Taiwan, do support NTSC.
also, cheapo $20 DVD players are more likely to support both NTSC and PAL, as well as DivX/MPEG-4 video, etc. than the expensive $100~200 players. they're usually off-brand players, but you can also find these cheap players by major companies like Panasonic or Sony, though you'll have to enter a code to unlock the player.
so why do FireWire 400 readers still consistently beat out USB 2:
heck, those benchmarks show that even using FireWire 400 to read a PIO CompactFlash card still beats USB 2.0 UDMA reading a UDMA-enabled CompactFlash card.
it is indeed possible these days to be successful while remaining relatively independent, but prior to online music downloads being embraced by mainstream society, musicians pretty much had no choice but to sign with a record label.
say you want to remain independent, how would you promote your music? how would you distribute your music? how would you get tour support? unless you have a rich uncle willing to loan you tens/hundreds of thousands of dollars upfront, you'll never get your music career off the ground. record labels basically act as that rich uncle. they front you the money to record your albums, to go on tour to promote those albums, and they pay the radio stations to play your songs. they even front your merchandise to sell and land shows/tours for you. those aren't things that a budding musician (and i use that term lightly--you can be in a band for over 10-12 years and still be "budding" in terms of industry experience.) can do all on their own.
once a band has made a name for themselves, then it might be possible for them to basically act as their own label (though up until recently they'd still just be running a vanity label and getting their distribution through one of the majors). but indie artists just starting their music careers can't do that. moreover, they don't have a lot of leverage to negotiate their record contracts. they can shop around, but you're pretty much going to get screwed on the terms no matter where you go.
and even now it's still pretty difficult to make it in the music industry as an indie artist. it's possible, but you'd have to be pretty business/marketing savvy as well as computer/internet savvy in addition to being a great musician. not all great musicians know how to promote themselves using the internet (or even know that they can promote themselves using the internet).
you keep using that word. i do not think it means what you think it means.
i'm pretty sure all NASA and DoD contractors are paid via cost-plus-award-fee contracts.
so the problem isn't that they're being paid too little. if anything, they're being paid too much for too little work (and too little quality). if NASA contracts are handed out the same way that military contracts get handed out, then it is probably done through a corruption-filled old boy network negotiated by kickbacks and bribery. that kind of cronyism breeds incompetence as it destroys any hint of meritocracy or accountability.
i don't believe the Justice Department/Treasury Department/Homeland Security operate any ambulances or police vehicles.
police officers/vehicles are usually hooked up to their station. and each station can then be hooked up (via a wired connection) to other police departments. ambulances are connected to dispatchers as well. why would they need a nation-wide wireless network?
i know. i read the article.
the PAL remark was a joke.
i don't own a PS3 so i don't know if that's the direction the PS3 is headed in, but i agree that i would be really stupid, especially since the XMB is such an easy to use and well-designed interface (i believe it's won an award for its design).
what would be nice (and make more sense) would be if Sony had instead spent their resources on expanding/extending the XMB by adding useful features. for instance, add some kind of media manager like the iPod or iTunes that lets you organize your music and browse by album/genre/artist/etc. and for the PSP's XMB it would be nice to also have an e-book browser/reader/download service.
like Microsoft's idea of a virtual mall posted on /. earlier, this is just another useless VR application that people will quickly lose interest in once the novelty of a VR environment wears off.
that's why i wrote WiFi/WiMax. you lay down fibre to connect the backhauls or for FttH and FttN connections. residential areas would have the option of using mobile WiMax or WiFi (there would be plenty of spectra blocks to share if current cellular/radio/tv frequency ranges are given to wireless broadband deployment), which would be faster. and, no, using VoIP on a WiFi network when you're at home isn't not ridiculous. unless you have a really crappy router/access point, there should be no problem making a VoIP call with a 300 Mbps connection. if you're sitting at home rather than driving around, then it would make more sense to hop on the WiFi network rather than the mobile WiMax.
i was thinking in the same direction too. but when i read this part of the summary:
my immediate question was, "did they try a PAL player?"
what's interesting to me is that two "data recovery firms" told them that the data was unrecoverable, but Seagate Recovery Service was able to recover the data without a problem. that makes me wonder if the earlier data recovery firms even tried to diagnose the problem or if they even knew anything about digital media & data storage. perhaps they thought that just by buying some digital forensics or data recovery software that automatically qualifies them to run a data recovery service. though i'm guessing that's what most police departments do as well.
i guess that's the problem with buying off the shelf software to do your job rather than learning how things work for yourself.
why the hell do they even need their own wireless network? if Homeland security wants anywhere wireless access, then they'll need to get in line like everyone else. either set up a public wireless broadband network that we can all use or stop whining. if they're worried about security they can use encryption.
i mean, $195 million and 6 years of work and they still don't have a network up? that's pathetic. that money would have been better spent given to local governments to set up their own municipal wireless networks, which if a Homeland security agent happens to be in range of, they're free to use like everyone else.
wireless broadband access is already slowly becoming a basic component of public infrastructure. it's something that benefits everyone, and increasingly vital to the technological progress of a society. the task of building such vital communications infrastructure should have been given to a science/technology-oriented government agency--something like Japan's Ministry of Economy, Trade & Industry (which would be more useful than the Homeland Security Department).
um, i never said it wasn't viable. the telecoms can do whatever they want because they have a natural monopoly (oligopoly in some places, but in practice there's not much difference) and telecommunications is a service with inelastic demand. these days a cellphone is almost a basic necessity if you live in most places. but their making buttloads of cash doesn't change the fact that:
we have the technology and resources to deploy a nationwide public wireless broadband network. and with ubiquitous wireless coverage, VoIP would eliminate the need for cellphone carriers and their ridiculous rates & terms. paying up the ass to use cellular networks and their 3 Mbps asymmetric EV-DO connections is just stupid when there are alternatives that can provide almost 22x the speed with symmetric upstream/downstream speeds.
but maybe you're right. maybe we should just wait for 3G to reach the masses so that everyone can enjoy the decade-old technology (yes, EVDO was developed in 1999). and if you think bringing up how much worse things were in the past changes the fact that telecoms are still impeding technological progress, then let me just say that i think Alabama is a shining beacon of progress because black people are no longer being lynched there.
i'm sure they exist, they just aren't sought after by schools because everyone uses Windows. if you're only ever putting out ads looking for teachers proficient in Windows, then that's all you'll ever come across. that does not mean that Linux or even Unix-savvy teachers don't exist. and even if there aren't enough at the moment, by actually creating a demand for such teachers you'll start attracting Linux users to the teacher profession, not to mention it'll pressure current teachers to pick up Linux.
i mean, do you think that there was already an existing computer-savvy workforce when PCs were first introduced? no, but people quickly adapted and a workforce was created to fill the immense demand for computer skills. there's no reason to think that it would be any different with Linux instructors.
well, 500 AUD = 329.85 USD. which is also the list price for the Asus Eee PC in Australia (for the Linux version, i'm assuming).
shipping/customs shouldn't be a issue since it's being ordered by the Australian government, and in such bulk that the per unit shipping cost would be negligible.
well, since they're netbooks, not desktops, you'd need ubiquitous wireless access in order to match the functionality that would be provided with Ubuntu + OpenOffice. and considering that Australia's one of the few developed countries behind the U.S. in internet infrastructure, that seems very unlikely.
to get the full benefits of the hardware, you pretty much have to go with FOSS or spend a heck of a lot more money.
media convergence is the way of the future. the internet is a general-purpose communications network that's capable of transmitting any kind of digital data, whether it be text, video, audio/voice, or any other data. it doesn't make sense to have cable or terrestrial broadcast television when high-speed broadband allows streaming video content to be delivered over the internet. and by merging things like radio, TV, and cellphone networks with the internet, the radio spectra currently used by those proprietary networks (and controlled by a handful of corporations) can then be consolidated towards the deployment of public wireless broadband.
it's just more efficient to have a single general-purpose open communications network than a bunch of disjointed and redundant closed/proprietary ones. and when you're getting your TV transmissions over the internet, there won't be much sense in making a distinction between a "TV" and a "monitor." there will just be high-end monitors (greater resolution, better contrast ratios, wider viewing angles, more faithful color reproductions) and low-end monitors--basically what TVs are today.
heck, most large LCDs and plasma screen monitors already have built-in tuner cards so as to double as a "TV set."