eh, Apple hasn't gotten rid of FireWire. they're just not including FireWire with their low-end products because Macs are now being used by more and more casual computer users. the MacBook Pro has FireWire 800, as does the Mac Mini, iMac, and Mac Pro.
FireWire certainly isn't something that is needed by the average computer user (though more and more people have large 1 TB+ external HDDs these days, and they would certainly benefit from FireWire) so to save cost, it makes sense to simply install USB 2.0 ports for peripheral devices.
saying FireWire is dead is like saying DSLRs or high-end video cards are dead. sure, the average person doesn't need that level of performance, but it's rather arrogant (and ignorant) to think that just because you don't have a use for something that it must have no future. i mean, i may not have a use for pro audio equipment, and neither do most people, but i'm not going to claim that pro audio equipment is dead.
FireWire still pretty much comes standard on most mid-range consumer desktops and laptops. HDMI and DVI interfaces are much more rare than FireWire, but neither of those interfaces are even closed to being dead. all this melodrama about Apple "abandoning" FireWire or FireWire "being dead" typically comes from poorly informed casual computer users. because the idea that everyone is suddenly going to abandon FireWire for USB 2.0/3.0 is laughable.
dude, transsexualism has nothing to do with being gay. most homosexuals aren't transsexuals. they're just males/females who are attracted to their own sex.
USB 3 will do at least 200mb/s sustained. And home users will love it when external harddrives gets faster. Professionals may need firewire for other stuff but the measly 100mb/s will not be an argument for firewire.
when USB 3.0 can do 200MB/s (not sustained), FireWire S3200 will have sustained speeds of 400MB/s. and it's not faster external hard drives that will push consumers to upgrade from USB 2.0 to 3.0--current UDMA133 hard drives are already far outstripping the 33MB/s transfer speed USB 2.0 is capable of providing. it's the ever increasing disk sizes, especially in portable media players, along with the proliferation of HD video, hi-res cameras, lossless audio, and other applications exposing consumers to ever-larger file transfers, that will increase demand for faster bus interfaces.
And every computer at NASA uses USB for the mouse, it doesn't mean shit. 1394b is an interconnect system. It can't track launch debris.
i know you're just trolling, but if every computer at NASA uses USB--whether it's for mouse/keyboard/printer/scanner/whatever--then that clearly means USB isn't going anywhere. i mean, FireWire is a high speed serial bus. of course it's being used as an interconnect--in this case to connect debris-monitoring equipment. what did you expect them to use it as? a CPU? NASA and the military use IEEE 1394b for high-speed interconnects because it's the best solution. IEEE 1394b has been standardized by SAE AS5643 as a data bus network for use in future military & aerospace projects (such as the Orion crew exploration vehicle) that require a high throughput data bus. USB doesn't even come close to the same performance.
Face it, firewire is dead. It's only been used for DV by consumers. Now DV is gone and firewire will soon follow as far as consumers are concerned.
yea, you can repeat that as many times as you want, but that won't make it true. FireWire's current applications extend far beyond the DV format. as long as most consumer laptops and computers still support FireWire, it's not considered dead, especially as there are no viable alternatives to FireWire for sustained high speed data transfers.
clueless armchair analysts have been predicting the death of FireWire since USB 2.0 came out. but anyone who's actually worked with both interfaces or is media production (or understands the difference between PIO and DMA) knows that USB's real-world performance doesn't even compare to that of FireWire.
if you're transferring that much data with a card reader, it might be worthwhile to get one that supports FireWire. even a FireWire 400 CompactFlash card reader in PIO mode beats out a USB 2.0 card reader in UDMA mode. but a FireWire 800 CF card reader in UDMA mode absolutely smokes USB 2.0 in UDMA mode.
While USB 2.0's theoretical 480Mbp/s (60MBp/s) throughput should be sufficient for UDMA 4 CompactFlash, real throughput is significantly less. Top hard drive manufacturers typically cite USB 2.0's best speed at 33MB/s, or about half 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 inexpensive chipset implementations. The USB 2.0 UDMA reader used in the benchmarks above uses one of the latest USB chipsets from Genesys Logic. While a new generation of that chipset should soon be available, we don't foresee it providing throughput close to half of that of FireWire.
The above tests demonstrate both FireWire 800 and 400 readers are significantly faster for reading CompactFlash cards by orders of magnitude. When card to computer speed in crucial, always choose a FireWire based CompactFlash reader or a reader with a comparable bandwidth.
so if you don't want the bus interface to be a bottleneck preventing your CompactFlash cards from realizing their full performance, then it might be worthwhile to invest in a slightly more expensive FireWire 800 card reader.
of course, if you have a laptop with an ExpressCard 34/54 slot, then you could go with a CFExpressPro+ PCIe ExpressCard to CompactFlash Memory Card Adapter. though CF rev. 4 itself only supports transfer speeds of up to 133MB (UDMA 6), so any bus speed beyond 1 Gbps would be overkill.
that's like asking why cars keep getting faster when not everyone needs a Ferrari.
faster transfer speeds are always better, and as technology moves forward faster and faster speeds will be available for lower and lower costs. but there will always be a disparity between each generation of FireWire and USB because USB is in a lower cost bracket.
so far all USB versions have continued to rely on the host processor to manage most low-level USB operations. the emphasis continues to be on lowering costs. that's why Intel's UHCI controller interface is primarily software-driven to lower costs.
FireWire OTOH uses more expensive interface hardware to offload tasks from the CPU. this comes at a higher cost, but it will always provide more throughput and use less CPU resources than than the USB approach. so it doesn't matter how faster USB gets in future generations, this difference in design will continue to create a disparity in the real-world performance of the two bus families.
USB is cheaper, and not everyone needs FireWire's level of performance, so USB is more prevalent and dominates the casual computing market; that's only natural. but most motherboards sold these days still come with at least 1 FireWire port.
and while FireWire can technically replace USB, USB will never be able to replace FireWire. even though the average user doesn't need sustained 100MB/sec transfer speeds to transfer their MP3s onto their iPod or text documents onto their thumbdrive, there are a lot of professions where USB just won't cut it. if you're in multimedia production or otherwise need to transfer large amounts of data regularly, then the extra cost of FireWire is more than worth it.
high-end external hard drives, cameras, professional audio equipment, etc. will all continue to use FireWire for this reason. heck, IEEE 1394b is even used by NASA for monitoring launch debris and by the U.S. military in jets like the F-22 and the F-35. so FireWire is far from dead. it's just found its niche. at the very worse, users will have to buy expansion cards to add FireWire S1600/S3200 controllers to their computers. but FireWire will continue to be available for a long, long time.
Apple's decision to remove FireWire from their low-end systems is just a sign that they're no longer catering exclusively to the prosumer/media-production crowd. they're still selling systems with FireWire, but they're also recognize that the Mac-using demographic has changed over the years, and there are a lot of Mac users that will never need FireWire.
it's true that Google has suffered a significant amount of undeserved public backlash from reactionary elements disconcerted by their unmitigated success and rapid growth as a company. but i don't think the GP is a Google-basher.
as times change and new technologies that threaten personal privacy come into popular use, the laws need to be updated to protect personal privacy. and everyone being given equal ability to violate each others' privacy is not a solution. just because someone else's privacy is violated does not mean it's ok for them to violate my privacy. someone charged with voyeurism can't just claim that others are allowed to spy on him as well and get off scot-free.
Google has proven themselves to be a morally responsible company who, for the most part, looks out for consumers and public interest. and, outside of China, their policies have always been favorable to their users, and adequately protect their privacy. but their research has shown that data-mining can be a serious threat to personal privacy, which is why it's a good thing that Google has made efforts to identify potential privacy issues that their (necessary) data harvesting programs might cause.
at the moment i trust Google to regulate themselves, but that does not mean that the public shouldn't remain vigilant--even towards Google. and there are a ton of other companies out there who collect and process similarly sensitive private information that can be mined by opportunistic marketers. and most of those businesses aren't as trustworthy and virtuous as Google. and others may simply expose their users to such threats to privacy unknowingly or on accident.
at the very least safeguards should be in place to protect certain kinds of especially sensitive private information, such as medical records/info. it's not too much to ask that companies like Google or Microsoft don't publish photos of people walking out of specialist medical clinics. and given the known privacy implications, i think certain data-mining regulations need to be established. for instance, Google's recommendation against mining different social networks for the purpose of merging different user profiles and social graphs should be forbidden.
data-mining in itself is detrimental to personal privacy. the average American has more information stored on them unbeknownst to them than contained in the dossiers kept by the Stasi on the citizens of East Germany. if we're going to allow commercial corporations to keep such large databases of sensitive private info on every individual, then there should be some kind of regulation in place to protect the public.
it's true that most internet ads are hyperlinks to sites where you can directly purchase a product or service. but advertising has been in use long before the advent of the web. the primary purpose of an ad is to promote a product through increased exposure/visibility. a billboard doesn't sell you a product or service directly; you can't click on magazine or newspaper ads; nor do TV commercials take you to a retailer where you can purchase the advertised product. but companies still spend billions of dollars every year on marketing and advertising to passively promote their products. a superbowl ad that won't result in any click-through sales is still worth far more money than a linked banner ad that actually takes people to a retail site. that's because advertising/marketing is all about mind share & branding. it's about influencing consumers subconsciously.
advertising is a form of passive persuasion. we're bombarded with ads everyday, and most people claim that this has absolutely no effect on them. but the numbers tell a completely different story. that's what makes advertising so insidious. it has practically become a science that can influence consumers in consistently predictable ways by exploiting known psychological quirks and human behavioral patterns. yet this unconscious influence makes us think that we're the ones who are choosing to buy this product or use that service. free will is just an illusion. oftentimes we make subconscious decisions due to external influences and then rationalize the decision only after the choice has been made, giving us the impression that it was a spontaneous choice made autonomously. this is demonstrated most clearly in a study conducted on the effect that music has on wine shoppers.
basically, some researchers played different types of music at a supermarket on different days and found that this had a noticeable influence on the purchase decisions of the wine shoppers--French music sold French wine and German music sold German wine. despite the indisputable statistical correlation, only 1 in 44 surveyed customers acknowledged the store's ambient music as having an influence on their wine choice. this shows that people often fail to realize why they make their purchases, and will even make up reasons for "choosing" a particular product when in reality it was chosen for them by external influences.
so it's not just clickthroughs that advertisers are after. even if nobody clicks on the ads on a webpage, they are still fulfilling their purpose and influencing future purchase decisions. no one is immune to advertising, and especially not if you don't even recognize the power they have over you. time and time again studies have shown that consumers make purchase decisions based on irrational impulses instilled through advertising--like equating large vehicles to safety, or purchasing familiar brands that are a poorer value.
Re:Drupal and the CMS.
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Using Drupal
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· Score: 2, Interesting
i just started learning CakePHP and jQuery to build a new informational & e-commerce site for our company (a record label). this is actually the first time i've worked with any web development frameworks, so it's all very new to me. originally i was thinking about going with an open source CMS--preferably an e-Commerce-oriented CMS like osCommerce--but i wasn't sure how extensible it would be.
is Drupal suitable for mid-sized e-commerce sites that might require a lot of custom features (shopping cart, mp3 store, artist listing, music catalog, etc.)? part of the reason i decided to go with the CakePHP framework is that it's highly extensible while producing a very maintainable site using the MVC design pattern. part of the problem i ran into using pre-written CMS packages before was that they were just too rigid to base a custom enterprise website off of.
i mean, there are a ton of business sites out there using a personal blog CMS with a patchwork of poorly integrated modules. and you take one look at the site and you can immediately tell that it was made using PHP-Nuke or WordPress or whatever. it's not very professional and just isn't appropriate for enterprise applications. the only thing worse are sites that try to use phpBB or some other forum software as a CMS, regardless of what their site is for.
i've never used Drupal before, but i keep hearing good things about it. and even if it's not suitable for an enterprise-level e-Commerce site, it seems like it might be appropriate for individual band homepages. i was originally planning on developing my own custom CMS that i can deploy on all of our band sites using different templates. but artist homepages are generally fairly basic, so i'm thinking that a custom CMS might be a waste of time.
Re:What we REALLY need
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Using Drupal
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· Score: 1
well, according to this page (contains a video of an interview with Linus) there are multiple pronounciations for 'Linux' and 'Linus', so there isn't really a definitive answer to what's the correct pronounciation.
Linus seems to pronounce his name differently depending on what language he's using and/or where he's living. but in the video he does say that 'Linux' is always linn-uks.
Re:Translation: This is what he is trying to say.
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Roland Piquepaille Dies
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· Score: 5, Insightful
Roland might have been short on netiquette when he first started submitting stories to/., but once the community started to speak out against his copy-and-paste blog entries and use of other people's content to earn ad revenue, he stopped doing all that. all of his submissions of late have linked directly to the source article.
if anything, Roland has contributed greatly to the/. community by submitting a ton of excellent stories--even after he stopped earning ad revenue from submissions--and starting many interesting discussions. so he clearly cared more about/. as a thriving community with a rich online culture than just another business to be monetized. and if you're more worried about Slashdot's value as a business than its usefulness to its users (which is primarily from the discussions that follow each submission), then you clearly don't understand/. as well as Roland did.
your blatant hyperboles and baseless accusations are more dishonest than Roland has ever been. and i doubt you will ever make as great of a contribution to the/. community as he has.
well, that's what most of the Britney Spears/Linkin Park/50 Cent/Toby Kieth/Justin Timberlake crowd seems to think, at least.
but you're right. all the top selling pop "musicians" are all signed to majors, who select bands using their wallets rather than their ears. i mean, who needs indies when you have music connoisseurs like Simon Cowell picking the latest musical fads for you to listen to.
pretty much every famous band or musician signed to the majors (except for formulaic teenage pop groups put together by the majors themselves, like the Spice Girls) started off has unsigned indie musicians, then moved on to an indie label, then were poached by the majors. even some bands put together by the majors are often signed to indie labels for development until they sell a certain number of records. so if there's no good music in the indie scene, then there's no good music anywhere.
only high schoolers with poor musical tastes would think that the Big Four have a monopoly on good music, or that the best music is whatever happens to be playing on the radio that week. if you need the radio to tell you what to listen to, then it's likely that you have no clue what good music is--it's not just what the major labels are paying your favorite Top-40 station to play.
except that the G1 is already made in Taiwan, as are the majority of "non-Asian" phones sold by T-Mobile, Verizon, Sprint/Nextel, AT&T/Cingular, Sony-Ericsson, Siemens, Vodaphone, O2, Orange, etc. that are just rebranded handsets made by Asian ODMs.
and considering that Asia has far more advanced cellphone networks than the U.S. and generally receives new cellphone features & wireless technologies before us, we're likely the ones knocking-off their phones, not the other way around. heck, Asian manufacturers were selling touch phones long before the iPhone was released.
besides, the cellphone carriers are ultimately the ones who decide what phones people use here in the U.S.--there have been Chinese iPhone knockoffs for quite a while now. but those knock-offs aren't sold outside of their home markets and would never receive the approval of U.S. cellphone carriers.
just because it's "off-topic" doesn't mean it can't be insightful. the GP's post was simply following the course of the conversation. he didn't hijack the thread or post about something completely random that has nothing to do with the thread.
i mean, when you have a conversation with someone off-line do you bitch about people being "off-topic" whenever the conversation naturally progresses to or touches on a new topic? this is a casual discussion, not a goddamn book report.
there's a difference between being timeless and being popular. art that is timeless simply means that its artistic merits transcend temporal boundaries and the whims of fashion, and thus won't ever be outlived. the music of the Beatles certainly qualify as timeless as it's just as enjoyable now as it was back then. most pop songs OTOH have a very short shelf-life and quickly become dated, as they can only be appreciated by those who lived during a certain era. such music is often shallow, kitsch, and derivative. and the only reason they are popular at first is because they faddishly chase the latest aesthetics and cultural trends.
and just because people don't know who "Marlene Dietrich" is doesn't mean that there's no such thing as timeless art. that has absolutely no bearing on the music of the Beatles. you could just as easily say:
heck, Rowan Atkinson was "timeless," and now no one even knows his name, therefore Mozart/Bach/Beethoven sucks.
likewise, just because you don't like the Beatles doesn't make their music any less timeless. there are Beatles fans of almost every generation currently alive. you can remain in denial all you want, but if you grab any random person off the street, they're more likely to be able to name a Beatles song/album/tune than they are a piece by Mozart/Bach/Beethoven.
i think i'm missing something here about the DLP screens.
with the normal LCD monitor the screen is constantly switching between the left & right views, which makes perfect sense with the shutter glasses.
however, according to the article, the DLP screen blends the left & right views by displaying them on alternating pixels. so how exactly do the shutters filter out the different views to different eyes?
that's not true. the web is an incredibly diverse communication medium. blogs are just one format that digital media exists in. there are plenty of in-depth articles/interviews/exposés on the web--probably more than print media these days. even if you want to argue that mainstream news sources are superior to independent journalism, print publications like the NYTimes, Harper's, The New Yorker, Scientific American, etc. are all now on the web.
the quality or level of detail of a piece of reportage has nothing to do with whether it's digital or printed. there's absolutely no reason to think that quality investigative journalism can't be distributed digitally. the web has only made it easier for journalists to strike out on their own and bypass the largely consolidated mainstream media establishment and their editorial control. likewise, it's also made it easier for the public to access a wide variety of diverse news sources and verify reported information for themselves.
good writers and true journalists don't care whether they are published on print media or digital media so long as they reach the largest audience they can. these days, the internet provides the best way to reach a large global audience. so it's irrational to think that quality reporting only exists on print media.
are you talking about R or S? searching for "R" on google returns pretty good results--the first 6 links are all related to R. and 4 of the results on the next page are also related to R. searching for "S" on the other hand doesn't immediately come up with any relevant results.
i'd say it's fairly easy to find info on R using google considering its limited popularity relative to other languages. obviously you're not going to find a ton of information on it since it's a somewhat obscure niche language. but if you can find the r-project/CRAN website or other R resources on google, then you can probably find documentation for whatever info you need.
besides, you can always use multiple keywords and boolean search operators to narrow down your search results, like searching for "R" AND "statistics." or once you've found online documentation for "R" you can use the "site:" modifier to search that site only.
i mean, this is all pretty basic stuff. there are much harder things to search for information on--like pharmaceutical drugs. this just requires basic knowledge of search engines and a little commonsense.
yea, i still remember the first time i went stargazing somewhere with practically no light pollution. i was staying at a rural Buddhist temple/monastery in Taiwan for a Buddhist summer camp. Taiwan has a somewhat tropical climate, and i remember it being a warm summer night with a very soothing breeze. the group of us just laid on the roof of the monastery for hours staring up at the star-filled sky. it was absolutely breathtaking.
being able to see the night sky like that really is one of those simple pleasures that i wish more people could experience. i mean, it doesn't cost any money really. all you have to do is get away from the light pollution found in most major cities. but i guess that's becoming harder and harder to do these days.
i remember when i was growing up and my parents and i were still living with my grandma in Taiwan, my dad had a skylight installed in our room directly above the bed so that we could look at the stars at night. back then our home town was still transitioning from a farming community to a medium-sized urban population center. so there was some light pollution, but you could still see the stars at night. and whenever my cousins spent the weekend with us, we'd run down to the local 7-11 and pick up a ton of snacks (Taiwan has a great selection of junk food =P) and just hang out under the "moonroof"--it was funner than watching TV (well, in Taiwan everything on cable after 10 PM is basically porn) or playing video games.
sadly, the last time i went back to Taiwan (~4 years ago) the town had become completely (over)industrialized. i mean, there were already a few factories going up in the area when we were still living there in the early 90's, but by the time i went back the whole place had become a full-blown industrial/commercial district. the air was smoggy; the roads were dirty & littered; the creeks & irrigation channels that once ran by the fields were all either dried up or disgustingly polluted; and you could no longer see the stars at night.
well, i know that my boss does have a lawyer on retainer (these days it's nigh impossible for a record label to operate without some sort of legal consul), though not a copyright lawyer. so he did consult a lawyer about the situation when the Geisel estate first sent the cease & desist letter. but ultimately, it was just cheaper to give them what they wanted rather than to fight it. had the decision been up to me, i probably would have done just as you said and gone to court if necessary. but we aren't printing any more runs of the WtKSP album, and, being a businessman, my boss didn't feel it was worth the hassle just to make a moral stand.
it's interesting that you mention Jacob's Dream and not being able to find their CDs. Metal Blade is actually our biggest competitor. it was only 2-3 years ago that they poached Goatwhore from us. and while Metal Blade is one of the larger indie labels out there (like Relapse or Fat Wreck), they actually have relatively shitty distribution compared to us. for the amount of touring Goatwhore had to do in promotion of their last album, their soundscan numbers weren't that impressive.
the reason for that is mainly that they handle all of their distribution in-house, which is no doubt cheaper, but it's not going to be as extensive as having a distribution agreement with one of the majors, which is what Rotten Records has (we're distributed by Sony/RED through Megaforce). but then again, Metal Blade releases like 5-10 albums each month, whereas we average about 1 a month.
if you can't find the album(s) you're looking for in record shops, then i'd try their online store--or even iTunes; digital sales comprise about 25% of our total revenue these days. or you could probably write down the addresses of the record shops not carrying their CDs and e-mail Metal Blade with the info. i'm sure they'd appreciate that.
telecommuting might be preferable for a lot of jobs, but not all. and i'm not just talking about manufacturing, which i think will eventually be replaced by automation.
these days everyone from school teachers to librarians to police officers use computers at work. and all of these jobs also involve non-computer-related tasks that require an on site presence. so there will always be a need for non-verbal input methods in shared work environments.
besides, it would be a pretty bleak future if everyone just worked from home, completely isolated from one another and cut off from regular social interaction. sometimes it's nice to work in an office with other people, especially if there is a friendly office atmosphere.
say you're trying to launch a startup company, and you've recruited a respectable pool of talent. it's probably better to actually set up a shared headquarters where everyone can get to know one another and work alongside each other than to have everyone working from home. telecommuting just doesn't foster the same kind of creative work atmosphere or organizational cohesion as a shared office environment.
if the wormhole aliens are really supernatural deities then DS9 becomes sci-fi-fantasy. but just because you believe something/someone to be a god/prophet does not actually make them a supernatural deity. the Aztecs initially thought the conquistadors were gods, but that does not make Cortés a divine/supernatural being. likewise, other societies have worshiped natural phenomena like fire and lightning as gods, attributing the unexplained to the supernatural, but that does not make those natural phenomena magical or supernatural.
the point is, if you attribute everything you don't understand to the supernatural, then you won't ever learn and grow intellectually. if Newton or Einstein simply attributed the way things are to the supernatural, then they would never have discovered the laws of physics that underly the natural universe. so it's very unlikely that a civilization based on a theocracy would ever develop any kind of advanced technology, unless it was simply handed to them by their "prophets." i mean, imagine if all schools/universities were to teach creationism rather than biology, or we still believed in a geocentric universe--do you think such an environment would be conducive of scientific/technological progress?
DS9 has some great episodes like In the Pale Moonlight and some of the Ferengi-centered ones provided great comedy relief dispersed throughout the more serious story arc. however, there was also a ton of completely unwatchable crap IMO--particularly the episodes about Sisko's gradual conversion to Bajoran religion and were basically preaching religious faith.
i mean, Gene Roddenberry was a staunch atheist, and he makes this pretty clear throughout TNG. so even though there were TNG episodes that touched on the issue of religion, it was understood that religiosity is not a trait of an enlightened society, nor would it be conducive of the scientific advances necessary for interstellar travel. yet Rick Berman bases the entire DS9 series around the Bajoran race, a backward theocracy steeped in superstition and religious cliches, that somehow managed to develop FTL propulsion technology in a time when their society still obeyed a caste system.
this no doubt gave DS9 a broader appeal to the general population, but it really goes against the original spirit of Star Trek. for me part of the appeal of Star Trek was Roddenberry's use of science fiction to explore alternative lifestyles, social dynamics, and political systems. he used Star Trek to ponder what life would be like without familiar social institutions like religion, nation-states, or capitalism. being set in the future, Roddenberry tried to extrapolate and project the social/cultural/political progress humanity might make over several centuries time.
in contrast, Bajoran society is just an idealized version of past & existing theocracies. there's a state religion, but somehow religious conflict & intolerance aren't an issue, because everyone follows the same religion. and instead of solving problems on one's own using rational thought and human(oid) ingenuity, the series often advocates prayer and having faith in the supernatural to solve your problems for you. i think one season finale even ends with a deus ex machina through intervention by the wormhole aliens (the prophets). not to mention, TOS and TNG were both primarily about discovery/exploration and interaction with alien species, whereas much of DS9 is centered around gun fights and space battles.
even if we were somehow able to convince the Seuss/Geisel-estate to grant us a license to use their character, it's unlikely that the album would have remained profitable--all for a single song title. frankly, the lyrics have very little to nothing to do with Dr. Seuss. so in retrospect, from the perspective of the label, the smart thing to do would have been just to change the track title and remove the 4 occurrences of "Dr. Seuss" from the lyrics. but we're not in the habit of censoring our bands, and i don't think they'd really appreciate being forced to run all of their new material by a copyright lawyer before being allowed to perform a song or record an album. i don't know, that just doesn't seem conducive of a healthy creative environment IMHO.
lastly, the only merchandise we sold containing an actual depiction of the Dr. Seuss character did have major alterations--it was an original design commissioned by the label & the band depicting Dr. Seuss looking strung-the-fuck-out, smoking a joint, and with a needle in his arm. but as i said, there's no fixed metric for determining what is considered fair use and what is not. it's always judged on a case by case basis. and frankly, we don't have the money to engage in a court battle with a multi-million/billion-dollar corporation. if ABC backed down from a copyright dispute against the Geisel estate, then that tells me that we don't really stand much of a chance.
i mean, in an ideal world, the law would always be interpreted in accordance to its intent. mentioning "Dr. Seuss" in the song title or lyrics of a metal album is not likely to devalue the Geisel estate's IP or otherwise damage them financially. so we should have had nothing to worry about. and in an ideal world, money would also mean nothing in a court of law, and any average joe could take on a major corporation like Disney or Sony BMG in court and win. but that's not the way the world works, and people who are in the right are unfortunately often forced to settle out of court.
as to your last question, i've never been in a band or worked with Acid Bath, though i did meet Sammy Duet at a Goatwhore (the band he formed with Ben Falgoust of Soilent Green/Paralysis fame after Acid Bath broke up) show when they were signed to Rotten Records, which is where i work. unfortunately, Acid Bath broke up a couple of years before i started working at the label around my senior year in high school. but i can tell you this much, Dax Riggs, who wrote most of the songs, is not the type of person to associate with lawyers. heck, he's refused to work with even record labels since Agents of Oblivion split up--and not for a lack of offers. in fact, Dax's antiestablishmentarian views is the primary reason why Acid Bath (minus Audie Pitre, obviously) has never reunited.
oh, and one last thing. i think it's worth noting that FOX owns the copyrights to both, The Simpsons and Family Guy, so that's probably not a good example to use. South Park's parody of Family Guy and The Simpsons are probably more appropriate to this discussion, but Comedy Central has a lot more money to spend on lawyers than we do.
we're not talking about the Amtrack police serving a previously issued arrest warrant that the photographer had out for him. we're talking about the police arresting an innocent individual for doing doing something he was given permission to do by Amtrack (the property owner).
if the police had an arrest warrant out for one of my guests, then yes they can arrest him. but they sure as hell can't arrest him for trespassing on my property when i've deliberately invited him into my home.
ultimately, it's up to the property owner, not the police, to decide who is allowed to take photos on their property. so the notion that Amtrak was somehow wrong for allowing people to take photos of their trains is simply ass-backwards wrong.
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eh, Apple hasn't gotten rid of FireWire. they're just not including FireWire with their low-end products because Macs are now being used by more and more casual computer users. the MacBook Pro has FireWire 800, as does the Mac Mini, iMac, and Mac Pro.
FireWire certainly isn't something that is needed by the average computer user (though more and more people have large 1 TB+ external HDDs these days, and they would certainly benefit from FireWire) so to save cost, it makes sense to simply install USB 2.0 ports for peripheral devices.
saying FireWire is dead is like saying DSLRs or high-end video cards are dead. sure, the average person doesn't need that level of performance, but it's rather arrogant (and ignorant) to think that just because you don't have a use for something that it must have no future. i mean, i may not have a use for pro audio equipment, and neither do most people, but i'm not going to claim that pro audio equipment is dead.
FireWire still pretty much comes standard on most mid-range consumer desktops and laptops. HDMI and DVI interfaces are much more rare than FireWire, but neither of those interfaces are even closed to being dead. all this melodrama about Apple "abandoning" FireWire or FireWire "being dead" typically comes from poorly informed casual computer users. because the idea that everyone is suddenly going to abandon FireWire for USB 2.0/3.0 is laughable.
dude, transsexualism has nothing to do with being gay. most homosexuals aren't transsexuals. they're just males/females who are attracted to their own sex.
the city you are looking for is Trinidad, Colorado, which has been dubbed the Sex Change Capital of the U.S.
when USB 3.0 can do 200MB/s (not sustained), FireWire S3200 will have sustained speeds of 400MB/s. and it's not faster external hard drives that will push consumers to upgrade from USB 2.0 to 3.0--current UDMA133 hard drives are already far outstripping the 33MB/s transfer speed USB 2.0 is capable of providing. it's the ever increasing disk sizes, especially in portable media players, along with the proliferation of HD video, hi-res cameras, lossless audio, and other applications exposing consumers to ever-larger file transfers, that will increase demand for faster bus interfaces.
i know you're just trolling, but if every computer at NASA uses USB--whether it's for mouse/keyboard/printer/scanner/whatever--then that clearly means USB isn't going anywhere. i mean, FireWire is a high speed serial bus. of course it's being used as an interconnect--in this case to connect debris-monitoring equipment. what did you expect them to use it as? a CPU? NASA and the military use IEEE 1394b for high-speed interconnects because it's the best solution. IEEE 1394b has been standardized by SAE AS5643 as a data bus network for use in future military & aerospace projects (such as the Orion crew exploration vehicle) that require a high throughput data bus. USB doesn't even come close to the same performance.
yea, you can repeat that as many times as you want, but that won't make it true. FireWire's current applications extend far beyond the DV format. as long as most consumer laptops and computers still support FireWire, it's not considered dead, especially as there are no viable alternatives to FireWire for sustained high speed data transfers.
clueless armchair analysts have been predicting the death of FireWire since USB 2.0 came out. but anyone who's actually worked with both interfaces or is media production (or understands the difference between PIO and DMA) knows that USB's real-world performance doesn't even compare to that of FireWire.
if you're transferring that much data with a card reader, it might be worthwhile to get one that supports FireWire. even a FireWire 400 CompactFlash card reader in PIO mode beats out a USB 2.0 card reader in UDMA mode. but a FireWire 800 CF card reader in UDMA mode absolutely smokes USB 2.0 in UDMA mode.
Synchrotech has performed some FireWire vs. USB 2.0 UDMA CompactFlash benchmarks. this is their conclusion:
so if you don't want the bus interface to be a bottleneck preventing your CompactFlash cards from realizing their full performance, then it might be worthwhile to invest in a slightly more expensive FireWire 800 card reader.
of course, if you have a laptop with an ExpressCard 34/54 slot, then you could go with a CFExpressPro+ PCIe ExpressCard to CompactFlash Memory Card Adapter. though CF rev. 4 itself only supports transfer speeds of up to 133MB (UDMA 6), so any bus speed beyond 1 Gbps would be overkill.
that's like asking why cars keep getting faster when not everyone needs a Ferrari.
faster transfer speeds are always better, and as technology moves forward faster and faster speeds will be available for lower and lower costs. but there will always be a disparity between each generation of FireWire and USB because USB is in a lower cost bracket.
so far all USB versions have continued to rely on the host processor to manage most low-level USB operations. the emphasis continues to be on lowering costs. that's why Intel's UHCI controller interface is primarily software-driven to lower costs.
FireWire OTOH uses more expensive interface hardware to offload tasks from the CPU. this comes at a higher cost, but it will always provide more throughput and use less CPU resources than than the USB approach. so it doesn't matter how faster USB gets in future generations, this difference in design will continue to create a disparity in the real-world performance of the two bus families.
USB is cheaper, and not everyone needs FireWire's level of performance, so USB is more prevalent and dominates the casual computing market; that's only natural. but most motherboards sold these days still come with at least 1 FireWire port.
and while FireWire can technically replace USB, USB will never be able to replace FireWire. even though the average user doesn't need sustained 100MB/sec transfer speeds to transfer their MP3s onto their iPod or text documents onto their thumbdrive, there are a lot of professions where USB just won't cut it. if you're in multimedia production or otherwise need to transfer large amounts of data regularly, then the extra cost of FireWire is more than worth it.
high-end external hard drives, cameras, professional audio equipment, etc. will all continue to use FireWire for this reason. heck, IEEE 1394b is even used by NASA for monitoring launch debris and by the U.S. military in jets like the F-22 and the F-35. so FireWire is far from dead. it's just found its niche. at the very worse, users will have to buy expansion cards to add FireWire S1600/S3200 controllers to their computers. but FireWire will continue to be available for a long, long time.
Apple's decision to remove FireWire from their low-end systems is just a sign that they're no longer catering exclusively to the prosumer/media-production crowd. they're still selling systems with FireWire, but they're also recognize that the Mac-using demographic has changed over the years, and there are a lot of Mac users that will never need FireWire.
it's true that Google has suffered a significant amount of undeserved public backlash from reactionary elements disconcerted by their unmitigated success and rapid growth as a company. but i don't think the GP is a Google-basher.
as times change and new technologies that threaten personal privacy come into popular use, the laws need to be updated to protect personal privacy. and everyone being given equal ability to violate each others' privacy is not a solution. just because someone else's privacy is violated does not mean it's ok for them to violate my privacy. someone charged with voyeurism can't just claim that others are allowed to spy on him as well and get off scot-free.
Google has proven themselves to be a morally responsible company who, for the most part, looks out for consumers and public interest. and, outside of China, their policies have always been favorable to their users, and adequately protect their privacy. but their research has shown that data-mining can be a serious threat to personal privacy, which is why it's a good thing that Google has made efforts to identify potential privacy issues that their (necessary) data harvesting programs might cause.
at the moment i trust Google to regulate themselves, but that does not mean that the public shouldn't remain vigilant--even towards Google. and there are a ton of other companies out there who collect and process similarly sensitive private information that can be mined by opportunistic marketers. and most of those businesses aren't as trustworthy and virtuous as Google. and others may simply expose their users to such threats to privacy unknowingly or on accident.
at the very least safeguards should be in place to protect certain kinds of especially sensitive private information, such as medical records/info. it's not too much to ask that companies like Google or Microsoft don't publish photos of people walking out of specialist medical clinics. and given the known privacy implications, i think certain data-mining regulations need to be established. for instance, Google's recommendation against mining different social networks for the purpose of merging different user profiles and social graphs should be forbidden.
data-mining in itself is detrimental to personal privacy. the average American has more information stored on them unbeknownst to them than contained in the dossiers kept by the Stasi on the citizens of East Germany. if we're going to allow commercial corporations to keep such large databases of sensitive private info on every individual, then there should be some kind of regulation in place to protect the public.
that's an overly simplistic view of advertising.
it's true that most internet ads are hyperlinks to sites where you can directly purchase a product or service. but advertising has been in use long before the advent of the web. the primary purpose of an ad is to promote a product through increased exposure/visibility. a billboard doesn't sell you a product or service directly; you can't click on magazine or newspaper ads; nor do TV commercials take you to a retailer where you can purchase the advertised product. but companies still spend billions of dollars every year on marketing and advertising to passively promote their products. a superbowl ad that won't result in any click-through sales is still worth far more money than a linked banner ad that actually takes people to a retail site. that's because advertising/marketing is all about mind share & branding. it's about influencing consumers subconsciously.
advertising is a form of passive persuasion. we're bombarded with ads everyday, and most people claim that this has absolutely no effect on them. but the numbers tell a completely different story. that's what makes advertising so insidious. it has practically become a science that can influence consumers in consistently predictable ways by exploiting known psychological quirks and human behavioral patterns. yet this unconscious influence makes us think that we're the ones who are choosing to buy this product or use that service. free will is just an illusion. oftentimes we make subconscious decisions due to external influences and then rationalize the decision only after the choice has been made, giving us the impression that it was a spontaneous choice made autonomously. this is demonstrated most clearly in a study conducted on the effect that music has on wine shoppers.
basically, some researchers played different types of music at a supermarket on different days and found that this had a noticeable influence on the purchase decisions of the wine shoppers--French music sold French wine and German music sold German wine. despite the indisputable statistical correlation, only 1 in 44 surveyed customers acknowledged the store's ambient music as having an influence on their wine choice. this shows that people often fail to realize why they make their purchases, and will even make up reasons for "choosing" a particular product when in reality it was chosen for them by external influences.
so it's not just clickthroughs that advertisers are after. even if nobody clicks on the ads on a webpage, they are still fulfilling their purpose and influencing future purchase decisions. no one is immune to advertising, and especially not if you don't even recognize the power they have over you. time and time again studies have shown that consumers make purchase decisions based on irrational impulses instilled through advertising--like equating large vehicles to safety, or purchasing familiar brands that are a poorer value.
i just started learning CakePHP and jQuery to build a new informational & e-commerce site for our company (a record label). this is actually the first time i've worked with any web development frameworks, so it's all very new to me. originally i was thinking about going with an open source CMS--preferably an e-Commerce-oriented CMS like osCommerce--but i wasn't sure how extensible it would be.
is Drupal suitable for mid-sized e-commerce sites that might require a lot of custom features (shopping cart, mp3 store, artist listing, music catalog, etc.)? part of the reason i decided to go with the CakePHP framework is that it's highly extensible while producing a very maintainable site using the MVC design pattern. part of the problem i ran into using pre-written CMS packages before was that they were just too rigid to base a custom enterprise website off of.
i mean, there are a ton of business sites out there using a personal blog CMS with a patchwork of poorly integrated modules. and you take one look at the site and you can immediately tell that it was made using PHP-Nuke or WordPress or whatever. it's not very professional and just isn't appropriate for enterprise applications. the only thing worse are sites that try to use phpBB or some other forum software as a CMS, regardless of what their site is for.
i've never used Drupal before, but i keep hearing good things about it. and even if it's not suitable for an enterprise-level e-Commerce site, it seems like it might be appropriate for individual band homepages. i was originally planning on developing my own custom CMS that i can deploy on all of our band sites using different templates. but artist homepages are generally fairly basic, so i'm thinking that a custom CMS might be a waste of time.
well, according to this page (contains a video of an interview with Linus) there are multiple pronounciations for 'Linux' and 'Linus', so there isn't really a definitive answer to what's the correct pronounciation.
Linus seems to pronounce his name differently depending on what language he's using and/or where he's living. but in the video he does say that 'Linux' is always linn-uks.
Roland might have been short on netiquette when he first started submitting stories to /., but once the community started to speak out against his copy-and-paste blog entries and use of other people's content to earn ad revenue, he stopped doing all that. all of his submissions of late have linked directly to the source article.
if anything, Roland has contributed greatly to the /. community by submitting a ton of excellent stories--even after he stopped earning ad revenue from submissions--and starting many interesting discussions. so he clearly cared more about /. as a thriving community with a rich online culture than just another business to be monetized. and if you're more worried about Slashdot's value as a business than its usefulness to its users (which is primarily from the discussions that follow each submission), then you clearly don't understand /. as well as Roland did.
your blatant hyperboles and baseless accusations are more dishonest than Roland has ever been. and i doubt you will ever make as great of a contribution to the /. community as he has.
well, that's what most of the Britney Spears/Linkin Park/50 Cent/Toby Kieth/Justin Timberlake crowd seems to think, at least.
but you're right. all the top selling pop "musicians" are all signed to majors, who select bands using their wallets rather than their ears. i mean, who needs indies when you have music connoisseurs like Simon Cowell picking the latest musical fads for you to listen to.
pretty much every famous band or musician signed to the majors (except for formulaic teenage pop groups put together by the majors themselves, like the Spice Girls) started off has unsigned indie musicians, then moved on to an indie label, then were poached by the majors. even some bands put together by the majors are often signed to indie labels for development until they sell a certain number of records. so if there's no good music in the indie scene, then there's no good music anywhere.
only high schoolers with poor musical tastes would think that the Big Four have a monopoly on good music, or that the best music is whatever happens to be playing on the radio that week. if you need the radio to tell you what to listen to, then it's likely that you have no clue what good music is--it's not just what the major labels are paying your favorite Top-40 station to play.
except that the G1 is already made in Taiwan, as are the majority of "non-Asian" phones sold by T-Mobile, Verizon, Sprint/Nextel, AT&T/Cingular, Sony-Ericsson, Siemens, Vodaphone, O2, Orange, etc. that are just rebranded handsets made by Asian ODMs.
and considering that Asia has far more advanced cellphone networks than the U.S. and generally receives new cellphone features & wireless technologies before us, we're likely the ones knocking-off their phones, not the other way around. heck, Asian manufacturers were selling touch phones long before the iPhone was released.
besides, the cellphone carriers are ultimately the ones who decide what phones people use here in the U.S.--there have been Chinese iPhone knockoffs for quite a while now. but those knock-offs aren't sold outside of their home markets and would never receive the approval of U.S. cellphone carriers.
just because it's "off-topic" doesn't mean it can't be insightful. the GP's post was simply following the course of the conversation. he didn't hijack the thread or post about something completely random that has nothing to do with the thread.
i mean, when you have a conversation with someone off-line do you bitch about people being "off-topic" whenever the conversation naturally progresses to or touches on a new topic? this is a casual discussion, not a goddamn book report.
there's a difference between being timeless and being popular. art that is timeless simply means that its artistic merits transcend temporal boundaries and the whims of fashion, and thus won't ever be outlived. the music of the Beatles certainly qualify as timeless as it's just as enjoyable now as it was back then. most pop songs OTOH have a very short shelf-life and quickly become dated, as they can only be appreciated by those who lived during a certain era. such music is often shallow, kitsch, and derivative. and the only reason they are popular at first is because they faddishly chase the latest aesthetics and cultural trends.
and just because people don't know who "Marlene Dietrich" is doesn't mean that there's no such thing as timeless art. that has absolutely no bearing on the music of the Beatles. you could just as easily say:
heck, Rowan Atkinson was "timeless," and now no one even knows his name, therefore Mozart/Bach/Beethoven sucks.
likewise, just because you don't like the Beatles doesn't make their music any less timeless. there are Beatles fans of almost every generation currently alive. you can remain in denial all you want, but if you grab any random person off the street, they're more likely to be able to name a Beatles song/album/tune than they are a piece by Mozart/Bach/Beethoven.
i think i'm missing something here about the DLP screens.
with the normal LCD monitor the screen is constantly switching between the left & right views, which makes perfect sense with the shutter glasses.
however, according to the article, the DLP screen blends the left & right views by displaying them on alternating pixels. so how exactly do the shutters filter out the different views to different eyes?
that's not true. the web is an incredibly diverse communication medium. blogs are just one format that digital media exists in. there are plenty of in-depth articles/interviews/exposés on the web--probably more than print media these days. even if you want to argue that mainstream news sources are superior to independent journalism, print publications like the NYTimes, Harper's, The New Yorker, Scientific American, etc. are all now on the web.
the quality or level of detail of a piece of reportage has nothing to do with whether it's digital or printed. there's absolutely no reason to think that quality investigative journalism can't be distributed digitally. the web has only made it easier for journalists to strike out on their own and bypass the largely consolidated mainstream media establishment and their editorial control. likewise, it's also made it easier for the public to access a wide variety of diverse news sources and verify reported information for themselves.
good writers and true journalists don't care whether they are published on print media or digital media so long as they reach the largest audience they can. these days, the internet provides the best way to reach a large global audience. so it's irrational to think that quality reporting only exists on print media.
are you talking about R or S? searching for "R" on google returns pretty good results--the first 6 links are all related to R. and 4 of the results on the next page are also related to R. searching for "S" on the other hand doesn't immediately come up with any relevant results.
i'd say it's fairly easy to find info on R using google considering its limited popularity relative to other languages. obviously you're not going to find a ton of information on it since it's a somewhat obscure niche language. but if you can find the r-project/CRAN website or other R resources on google, then you can probably find documentation for whatever info you need.
besides, you can always use multiple keywords and boolean search operators to narrow down your search results, like searching for "R" AND "statistics." or once you've found online documentation for "R" you can use the "site:" modifier to search that site only.
i mean, this is all pretty basic stuff. there are much harder things to search for information on--like pharmaceutical drugs. this just requires basic knowledge of search engines and a little commonsense.
yea, i still remember the first time i went stargazing somewhere with practically no light pollution. i was staying at a rural Buddhist temple/monastery in Taiwan for a Buddhist summer camp. Taiwan has a somewhat tropical climate, and i remember it being a warm summer night with a very soothing breeze. the group of us just laid on the roof of the monastery for hours staring up at the star-filled sky. it was absolutely breathtaking.
being able to see the night sky like that really is one of those simple pleasures that i wish more people could experience. i mean, it doesn't cost any money really. all you have to do is get away from the light pollution found in most major cities. but i guess that's becoming harder and harder to do these days.
i remember when i was growing up and my parents and i were still living with my grandma in Taiwan, my dad had a skylight installed in our room directly above the bed so that we could look at the stars at night. back then our home town was still transitioning from a farming community to a medium-sized urban population center. so there was some light pollution, but you could still see the stars at night. and whenever my cousins spent the weekend with us, we'd run down to the local 7-11 and pick up a ton of snacks (Taiwan has a great selection of junk food =P) and just hang out under the "moonroof"--it was funner than watching TV (well, in Taiwan everything on cable after 10 PM is basically porn) or playing video games.
sadly, the last time i went back to Taiwan (~4 years ago) the town had become completely (over)industrialized. i mean, there were already a few factories going up in the area when we were still living there in the early 90's, but by the time i went back the whole place had become a full-blown industrial/commercial district. the air was smoggy; the roads were dirty & littered; the creeks & irrigation channels that once ran by the fields were all either dried up or disgustingly polluted; and you could no longer see the stars at night.
but i guess that's the cost of economic growth...
well, i know that my boss does have a lawyer on retainer (these days it's nigh impossible for a record label to operate without some sort of legal consul), though not a copyright lawyer. so he did consult a lawyer about the situation when the Geisel estate first sent the cease & desist letter. but ultimately, it was just cheaper to give them what they wanted rather than to fight it. had the decision been up to me, i probably would have done just as you said and gone to court if necessary. but we aren't printing any more runs of the WtKSP album, and, being a businessman, my boss didn't feel it was worth the hassle just to make a moral stand.
it's interesting that you mention Jacob's Dream and not being able to find their CDs. Metal Blade is actually our biggest competitor. it was only 2-3 years ago that they poached Goatwhore from us. and while Metal Blade is one of the larger indie labels out there (like Relapse or Fat Wreck), they actually have relatively shitty distribution compared to us. for the amount of touring Goatwhore had to do in promotion of their last album, their soundscan numbers weren't that impressive.
the reason for that is mainly that they handle all of their distribution in-house, which is no doubt cheaper, but it's not going to be as extensive as having a distribution agreement with one of the majors, which is what Rotten Records has (we're distributed by Sony/RED through Megaforce). but then again, Metal Blade releases like 5-10 albums each month, whereas we average about 1 a month.
if you can't find the album(s) you're looking for in record shops, then i'd try their online store--or even iTunes; digital sales comprise about 25% of our total revenue these days. or you could probably write down the addresses of the record shops not carrying their CDs and e-mail Metal Blade with the info. i'm sure they'd appreciate that.
telecommuting might be preferable for a lot of jobs, but not all. and i'm not just talking about manufacturing, which i think will eventually be replaced by automation.
these days everyone from school teachers to librarians to police officers use computers at work. and all of these jobs also involve non-computer-related tasks that require an on site presence. so there will always be a need for non-verbal input methods in shared work environments.
besides, it would be a pretty bleak future if everyone just worked from home, completely isolated from one another and cut off from regular social interaction. sometimes it's nice to work in an office with other people, especially if there is a friendly office atmosphere.
say you're trying to launch a startup company, and you've recruited a respectable pool of talent. it's probably better to actually set up a shared headquarters where everyone can get to know one another and work alongside each other than to have everyone working from home. telecommuting just doesn't foster the same kind of creative work atmosphere or organizational cohesion as a shared office environment.
if the wormhole aliens are really supernatural deities then DS9 becomes sci-fi-fantasy. but just because you believe something/someone to be a god/prophet does not actually make them a supernatural deity. the Aztecs initially thought the conquistadors were gods, but that does not make Cortés a divine/supernatural being. likewise, other societies have worshiped natural phenomena like fire and lightning as gods, attributing the unexplained to the supernatural, but that does not make those natural phenomena magical or supernatural.
the point is, if you attribute everything you don't understand to the supernatural, then you won't ever learn and grow intellectually. if Newton or Einstein simply attributed the way things are to the supernatural, then they would never have discovered the laws of physics that underly the natural universe. so it's very unlikely that a civilization based on a theocracy would ever develop any kind of advanced technology, unless it was simply handed to them by their "prophets." i mean, imagine if all schools/universities were to teach creationism rather than biology, or we still believed in a geocentric universe--do you think such an environment would be conducive of scientific/technological progress?
DS9 has some great episodes like In the Pale Moonlight and some of the Ferengi-centered ones provided great comedy relief dispersed throughout the more serious story arc. however, there was also a ton of completely unwatchable crap IMO--particularly the episodes about Sisko's gradual conversion to Bajoran religion and were basically preaching religious faith.
i mean, Gene Roddenberry was a staunch atheist, and he makes this pretty clear throughout TNG. so even though there were TNG episodes that touched on the issue of religion, it was understood that religiosity is not a trait of an enlightened society, nor would it be conducive of the scientific advances necessary for interstellar travel. yet Rick Berman bases the entire DS9 series around the Bajoran race, a backward theocracy steeped in superstition and religious cliches, that somehow managed to develop FTL propulsion technology in a time when their society still obeyed a caste system.
this no doubt gave DS9 a broader appeal to the general population, but it really goes against the original spirit of Star Trek. for me part of the appeal of Star Trek was Roddenberry's use of science fiction to explore alternative lifestyles, social dynamics, and political systems. he used Star Trek to ponder what life would be like without familiar social institutions like religion, nation-states, or capitalism. being set in the future, Roddenberry tried to extrapolate and project the social/cultural/political progress humanity might make over several centuries time.
in contrast, Bajoran society is just an idealized version of past & existing theocracies. there's a state religion, but somehow religious conflict & intolerance aren't an issue, because everyone follows the same religion. and instead of solving problems on one's own using rational thought and human(oid) ingenuity, the series often advocates prayer and having faith in the supernatural to solve your problems for you. i think one season finale even ends with a deus ex machina through intervention by the wormhole aliens (the prophets). not to mention, TOS and TNG were both primarily about discovery/exploration and interaction with alien species, whereas much of DS9 is centered around gun fights and space battles.
i used to think similarly, but you're ignoring certain realities of business and the legal system.
first of all, licensing copyrighted works is not always a viable option. if you're familiar with Acid Bath, then you know what kind of subject matters they sing about and the type of lyrics they use. i don't think the Seuss estate is likely to grant a license to use their character's name in a song about IV drug use & rotting corpses, and that uses the f-word 18 times, in an album that is illustrated by a convicted serial-killer/cannibal/pedophile/necrophile.
even if we were somehow able to convince the Seuss/Geisel-estate to grant us a license to use their character, it's unlikely that the album would have remained profitable--all for a single song title. frankly, the lyrics have very little to nothing to do with Dr. Seuss. so in retrospect, from the perspective of the label, the smart thing to do would have been just to change the track title and remove the 4 occurrences of "Dr. Seuss" from the lyrics. but we're not in the habit of censoring our bands, and i don't think they'd really appreciate being forced to run all of their new material by a copyright lawyer before being allowed to perform a song or record an album. i don't know, that just doesn't seem conducive of a healthy creative environment IMHO.
lastly, the only merchandise we sold containing an actual depiction of the Dr. Seuss character did have major alterations--it was an original design commissioned by the label & the band depicting Dr. Seuss looking strung-the-fuck-out, smoking a joint, and with a needle in his arm. but as i said, there's no fixed metric for determining what is considered fair use and what is not. it's always judged on a case by case basis. and frankly, we don't have the money to engage in a court battle with a multi-million/billion-dollar corporation. if ABC backed down from a copyright dispute against the Geisel estate, then that tells me that we don't really stand much of a chance.
i mean, in an ideal world, the law would always be interpreted in accordance to its intent. mentioning "Dr. Seuss" in the song title or lyrics of a metal album is not likely to devalue the Geisel estate's IP or otherwise damage them financially. so we should have had nothing to worry about. and in an ideal world, money would also mean nothing in a court of law, and any average joe could take on a major corporation like Disney or Sony BMG in court and win. but that's not the way the world works, and people who are in the right are unfortunately often forced to settle out of court.
as to your last question, i've never been in a band or worked with Acid Bath, though i did meet Sammy Duet at a Goatwhore (the band he formed with Ben Falgoust of Soilent Green/Paralysis fame after Acid Bath broke up) show when they were signed to Rotten Records, which is where i work. unfortunately, Acid Bath broke up a couple of years before i started working at the label around my senior year in high school. but i can tell you this much, Dax Riggs, who wrote most of the songs, is not the type of person to associate with lawyers. heck, he's refused to work with even record labels since Agents of Oblivion split up--and not for a lack of offers. in fact, Dax's antiestablishmentarian views is the primary reason why Acid Bath (minus Audie Pitre, obviously) has never reunited.
oh, and one last thing. i think it's worth noting that FOX owns the copyrights to both, The Simpsons and Family Guy, so that's probably not a good example to use. South Park's parody of Family Guy and The Simpsons are probably more appropriate to this discussion, but Comedy Central has a lot more money to spend on lawyers than we do.
we're not talking about the Amtrack police serving a previously issued arrest warrant that the photographer had out for him. we're talking about the police arresting an innocent individual for doing doing something he was given permission to do by Amtrack (the property owner).
if the police had an arrest warrant out for one of my guests, then yes they can arrest him. but they sure as hell can't arrest him for trespassing on my property when i've deliberately invited him into my home.
ultimately, it's up to the property owner, not the police, to decide who is allowed to take photos on their property. so the notion that Amtrak was somehow wrong for allowing people to take photos of their trains is simply ass-backwards wrong.