This, I think, is the trouble they keep running into. Personally, I want to buy DVDs and rip them. The only drawback is that I'd end up with a bunch of physical media I don't really care about. As a result, I should be thrilled to see digital distribution starting to take off, right? I don't have to go through the time-consuming process of ripping and re-encoding, and I don't have physical copies to keep track of.
Except things aren't so good. If I rip a DVD, I can watch the resulting file on any computer in the house, running any software I feel like. I also have the opportunity to remove all the ads, previews, and warnings. On top of that, if I'm feeling flush on hard drive space, I can keep the full DVD (or even BluRay) size and quality. On the small number of downloadable movies today, I don't have these benefits - there may not always be previews, but the quality is typically well below that of a DVD and I'm limited to using the software linked to the download service. That's not convenience, and it's not better than ripping a DVD. It's worse, in nearly every way - and on top of that, I'd still pay the same for the movie, even though distribution costs are lower.
If some studio would allow me to download a movie for less than the cost of a physical disk, without all the previews and ads, in a high-quality format playable on any platform I like, the number of movies I buy would go through the roof. I'd even pay more for a high-definition copy - I'm still on DVDs because I don't want to shell out for a BluRay drive or player, not because I'm unwilling to pay a bit more for quality in the movies themselves.
You seem to be still confused. The DRM is already present on the media - the content producers have seen to that. The media is encrypted, and cannot be played without the DRM support in Windows.
It would be entirely possible to have software which can play the media and neither actively cooperate with nor actively ignore the DRMers' attempts to restrict it; indeed, that would have been the path of least resistance, the easiest way to go.
What exactly do you think the DRM in Windows is? It's primarily decryption, not restriction. The restrictions are already present in the media. You very proudly don't run Windows. Does this mean you can play all the BluRay discs you want, at full quality, with absolutely no restrictions? No, it means you can't play them at all.
Yes, it's hypothetically possible that Microsoft could write up an OS which allows the media to be decrypted and then used with no restrictions whatsoever. They'd immediately be sued by the content producers under the DMCA for bypassing copyright protection, of course, and would end up in the same situation as Linux and its kin are - no DRM restrictions whatsoever, because it would also have no DRM decryption capabilities whatsoever, and would be utterly incapable of playing anything.
I'm not sure the content producers would even notice. If they did, I'm guessing their reaction would be a huge sigh of relief. Don't get me wrong, I hate DRM as much as anybody. Make sure you're directing your anger in the right place, though - in this case, Microsoft isn't working against you. They're profit-motivated, sure, but they're including DRM to provide more abilities to consumers, not to restrict them at the behest of the producers.
Whenever the subject of DRM in Windows comes up in a discussion, we get to see just how confused some people are - it's nice to see a few people get it right, for a change.
Microsoft includes DRM software in their operating systems to allow consumers to view certain media on their computers. Microsoft didn't put the DRM on the media, the DRM doesn't affect your personal files, and Windows sure as hell isn't enabling anything, unless you're talking about "enabling" a consumer to view something they have legally purchased. The industries creating the content have other outlets - they'd be quite happy to only allow playback on locked consumer electronics like DVD/BluRay and CD players.
Linux and other open-source software aren't an improvement in this regard, they're a dramatic regression. Want to play a BluRay disc on your Win7 computer? Not a problem, thanks to that horrible DRM software. Want to play it on Vista or XP? If you've got the right playback program, go right ahead. Want to play it on Linux? Sorry, you don't have any horrible, crippling, useless, freedom-stealing DRM software. So your computer is less capable.
If you think "High Quality" and "Most Expensive in World" are synonymous, then perhaps it is you who are mistaken.
In all reality, extremely high-quality headphones can be had for a few hundred US dollars. Beyerdynamic DT 880s are very well-regarded, and cost only $275. Perhaps you can construct a better-sounding stereo system for a hundred times as much, and hopefully your $5,000 headphones sound slightly better. However, listening to something on $500 headphones is closer to a perfect listening experience than most people will get in their entire lives.
Double-blind testing is a magnificent thing. A shame so many audio nuts don't quite understand the practice.
Yep, the Pentium M has nothing at all to do with a Pentium 4. Actually, it's based on a Pentium III and most closely related to the Core architecture (Pentium M was the predecessor to Core Solo, and I think the only difference is that Core is 64-bit). For the most part, a 2GHz Pentium M can run with a 3GHz Pentium 4.
To the other person who replied to this, you're thinking of the Mobile Pentium 4.
Just as you guess, making the parts smaller drops their heat output and power consumption considerably for a given speed. It's also necessary to advance the technology further, because it allows them to create new, faster parts without raising the power consumption.
I did read a story where they theorized what would happen if privacy vanished altogether... IMO it was a bit utopian but the general principle (that pretty much what we use it for is to hide stuff we shouldn't be doing) was about right.
Would that have been "The light of Other Days" by Arthur C. Clarke and Stephen Baxter? If not, and if you enjoyed the one you read, I'd suggest you take a look. It manages to take a believable look at a situation most of us have never even imagined.
This thread may be about video cards, but somehow it reminds me of all the audiophiles I've ever known...
Perhaps the two obsessions are superficially similar, but I suspect if you were to stop and think for a moment, you would find some significant differences. Primarily in that the video card obsession has extremely quantifiable, testable, measurable, and repeatable qualities. Audiophile psychosis, on the other hand, is basically spending huge sums of money for differences that can only be heard by the person who spent the money and which disappear as soon as someone brings up the idea of a scientifically valid test.
The problem with the circumvention clause, at least to me, is that it disallows an activity which seems to me as though it should be perfectly legitimate.
I want to buy a DVD, take it home, and rip it to my hard drive, then store the DVD itself in my closet. Then I want to stream it to the media center connected to my TV. That is to say, I want to give them money and then use the video in my own home. I don't want to share it with friends, I don't want to sell it, and I don't want to waste my bandwidth sharing it with the world. I just want to watch it without having to deal with the physical disk.
Alternately, I could buy a movie download. But then I would still want to use my own media player, not whatever software they thought I should use, so I would still have to circumvent.
However, thanks to the anti-circumvention clause, I might as well skip the money-to-them part and just pirate my movies. I'm breaking the law either way.
People who honestly don't feel pain are very likely to die young, because they tend to become seriously injured without realizing it. They will then die of their injuries without ever realizing they've sustained any.
On the other hand, someone who has a very high tolerance for pain will know when they've been injured and will seek appropriate care. They will simply not be hindered by the pain in the process.
I can't speak for his company, but at mine there's a great deal more to the network than internet access. All of our files are stored on network servers. Since we are all connected via gigabit ethernet, these shares are as responsive as local hard drives. Our work would continue undeterred if we were limited to browsing the internet on 768 kb/s DSL, but if we started connecting to our server with the DSL I think productivity might drop. In fact, you're right, I might even break down in tears.
For reference, gigabit ethernet offers theoretical 128 MB/s transfers, while local hard drives offer between 60 and 90 MB/s. Obviously the latency will be a bit higher on the networked drives, but you'll see no drop in sustained transfer rates. Compare that to a theoretical maximum of 37.5 MB/s for wireless N or 6.75 MB/s for wireless G, and bear in mind that those speeds will be shared with all clients rather than dedicated as with the ethernet connection.
I've always been a big fan of these tiny, power-efficient computers for no reason I can fully explain. However, that doesn't excuse the tremendous errors in your reasoning.
Your first flaw is in the cost of power. It's a bit lower than that - about a fifth your estimate, in most places.
Yeah, a low-end computer these days will pretty likely have a 300-watt power supply. However, most consumer-level computers don't draw anything like that much power. Then, even if you did have a computer setup that drew 300 watts, it'd spend 90% of its time drawing around 30, with brief spikes up to its maximum for certain activities. I run a mid-range computer 24/7 on a 320-watt power supply and it costs me less than $100 per year.
If you've managed to get a computer running at full power all the time, maybe you should stop running Folding@Home, Distributed.net, SETI, or whatever it is that's using all that power. I don't have a problem with people running those programs, but you can't do that and complain about power at the same time - it's your own fault.
Ahh, gotta love the fine reporting from Computer World. For example, I'd really like to know why the read speed is higher at the inside of the platter, since the linear velocity of the outside of the platter is much higher and as a result the manufacturer would actually have to go to a certain amount of intentional effort to make the drive read slower there.
And, as other posters have noted, it's almost always better to buy a drive and an enclosure from a place like Newegg and combine them yourself. I understand that this isn't a great option for most people, but it's well within the abilities of everyone on Slashdot and of almost everyone likely to read that article.
Why do I use linux on my top of the line machines? To get around all that DRM shit and to get the most out of my pc.
That's a poor excuse. I've heard a lot of this thrown around lately and you should know that you're quite wrong. The DRM in Vista doesn't actually cripple your computer in any way. Rather, it allows additional functionality that won't be available on Linux or older versions of Windows. If you consider watching HD movies to be an integral part of getting the most out of your computer, I think you'll find it's Windows, not Linux, which enables the full capabilities of your computer.
I'm not a huge fan of Vista, either. But my reasons are at least based in truth. Yeah, DRM is bad. However, the presence of DRM in Vista doesn't make it a crippled operating system, it actually makes everything else a crippled operating system. By all means enjoy your rabid zealotry, but please understand that you are actually not 'getting around' anything. DRM still exists in the content and without the horrible, awful, crippling, terrifying, evil DRM in Vista, you can't watch that content.
I care. I care a lot. I mean, don't get me wrong, I don't care if the airlocks are any good or whether the passengers are allowed to bring food on the flight. I also don't care about the insurance regulations, fire extinguishers, acceptance of liability, or anything else like that. If I'm ever a passenger, I might care about those things, but right now I'm not a passenger, so those things are completely irrelevant.
What I DO care about are the things I didn't see in that article. Like what people can leave up there, and where they can go. The most significant part of getting something into space is accelerating it to 17,000 miles per hour. The rest, all the computers and airtight boxes full of people and fire extinguishers to stop the people catching fire, is just garnish.
Now, aside from tourists and science experiments that are probably important but don't really affect me, the space around earth is cluttered with two things - communications satellites and debris. The communications satellites are absolutely essential for modern technology to work. I imagine you'll be using at least one as you read this sentence. The other one, the debris, is a big issue. It's small rocks, and bits and pieces of old rockets, and satellites that ran out of fuel and were moved out of their orbit to a less important one to clear the way for a new satellite. These rocks and bits of metal are all still moving at 17,000 miles per hour - the have to be, in order to stay in their orbits.
When the debris hits anything important, the important thing stops being important and becomes more debris. Fortunately, that doesn't happen very often. NASA keeps track of all the biggest chunks, and keeps satellites and space stations out of the way. They just accept the risks posed by the stuff too small to track, since space is quite large and the chances of one hitting something important are acceptably small. However, if private companies start throwing things into space and don't bring it all down, the debris is going to become overwhelming, and space will become absolutely useless for communications, navigation, science, AND tourists. We'd also be trapped on Earth and unable to explore other planets until we can come up with a way to clear the debris, or just wait a few million years for it to clear up naturally.
Personally, I like the internet, cell phones, GPS, and pictures of Mars. I'd like to keep space as free of debris as possible, and I'd really like to see regulations governing what can be left in orbit and where.
I've never seen the point in the recent uptake in wireless technology. I have a wireless network, but it's just so I don't have to run network cords around my apartment. I hate my wireless network - it's unreliable and slow, despite being all alone on its channel and usually running at 54 Mbps. However, despite my own issues with it, I understand the point of wireless networking. It's great for public access or situations like my apartment where running cables cleanly is difficult. I can also see the point of a bluetooth mouse for a laptop, or a bluetooth keyboard for your PDA. It makes things faster and more portable, and gives you more freedom.
However, I draw the limit there. My keyboard, mouse, monitor, printer, external storage, and occasional other things are all wired. I don't have to keep track of batteries, and I don't get poor performance near the end of my battery life. It's all sitting on my desk not moving anyway, and there are only a few cords present on my desk - the rest are hidden behind the desk. I also like the tactile effort cords provide. When I plug my graphing calculator into my computer, when I stick a USB thumb drive in, when I connect my camera, when I plug in my headphones, or when I hook up a USB card reader, there's tactile feedback. I know I have just achieved something. I also don't find it terribly inconvenient to stick my flash drive into a front USB port.
There's more than just reliability and feedback, though. When I unplug my flash drive or external hard drive, I know that the devices are powered down and safe from snooping eyes, and not experiencing wear and tear. I also know that when I sit down at the computer lab with my flash drive in my pocket, the guy next to me isn't stealing my files. I understand that the connection between the computer and device will probably be encrypted automatically, so that's fine. But what about the connection process? If I have to go through a lengthly process to associate the device before I can use it (bluetooth), then I'm not really any better off than I was with wired USB. If I don't have to go through that process, what's stopping the guy next to me from doing it? And in the same computer lab, with USB my mouse isn't going to suddenly decide to associate itself with the computer across the way. Now, we could password protect the flash drive. However, and perhaps I'm alone on this, I'd rather not have a password on my mouse. And what if I replace 'mouse' with 'keyboard?' You can't password protect a keyboard.
I'm a college student, and I imagine this 'feature' going over very poorly in lecture halls. Students often start their computers shortly after the lecture has started, or sometimes start or reboot in the middle of class. Usually it's no big deal, but on occasion the sound is turned on and the volume is cranked way up. It's extremely disruptive. I used to take my computer to class to take notes, and for a while I had a stereo headphone plug (just the plug, no headphones or speakers connected) in my computer bag so if I'd forgotten to mute my sound before I shut down, I could stick that in the headphone port and mute the sound long enough to get into Windows where I could adjust the volume. I have since disabled that and a few other sounds on my system, and I'm quite happy this way.
Another problem situation would be at home, when other family members are sleeping or otherwise would rather not be disturbed, having the sound play at each startup can be a bit irritating.
If I were Microsoft, I'd go ahead and put the forced sounds in the first boot/registration section, and from there on out make it switchable. I can understand their desire to keep it uniform, to an extent - so no control panel for sounds which gives users the option to use their own sound for boot - but there should at least be an on/off radio button somewhere.
Actually, he didn't say that dual cores don't affect speed. He very clearly said that people don't care how many cores there are, and that people only want speed. It's entirely possible that a dual-core processor would be faster than a single, but most people don't actually care how the thing works, and they will go for what feels fastest regardless to the number of cores.
I never said that.DOC was a standard, I said it was pretty much standard. As in, the most widely used, even if it's proprietary. To you, 'easily editable' means that it's well-documented and can be opened by many programs equally well. To most people, 'easily editable' means that if they double-click on the file, they will then be able to edit it. (let me give you a hint - by this method, PDF is not easily editable, while.DOC is)
I'm neither a programmer nor a 'Microsoft Junkie.' I'm an engineering student. I use OpenOffice, and save all my work in.ODT. However, I understand that very few of the people I send files to will be able to open that. So if it's something I know the recipient will need to edit, it's getting sent as.DOC, because guess what almost every USER (not programmer) has the highest compatibility with? If the recipient has no need to edit the file, then it'll get sent as a PDF because I know they will see it just as I have.
The problem is that neither format is right for what people want out of a document format: editability and universal layout. HTML is easy to edit, but looks different depending on what you use to view it. PDF, on the other hand, looks the same but isn't easy to edit.
PDF isn't supposed to be easily editable, and that's the point. If you're going to easy editability, a Microsoft Office format is pretty much the standard. If you're saving something in a PDF, it's to make sure the person you are sending it to sees precisely what you saw. It can't be changed easily, and it won't be rendered differently if it's opened in a different program.
Yeah, a do-all format should be easily edited and universally standard. But sometimes the do-all product isn't the best. If I send a file in PDF, it's in PDF for a reason. If I just wanted to make sure it was readable, I'd send it as.DOC.
No, I was actually serious. I think there's a government regulation that states that a speed limit should be 85% of the unregulated flow of traffic. I'm looking around now and can't find anything to support myself, so if someone has a source to prove I'm not crazy, I'd appreciate it.
Second semester, freshman year. I was taking a social sciences class, something on ancient Athens. We didn't have a final for the class, but we did have a small test at the end. It was during dead week, so it wasn't allowed to be worth more than 10% of the final grade. I knew I needed to get exactly 100% to get a B in the class.
I went in, sat down, finished in ten minutes, and got a 110%.
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This, I think, is the trouble they keep running into. Personally, I want to buy DVDs and rip them. The only drawback is that I'd end up with a bunch of physical media I don't really care about. As a result, I should be thrilled to see digital distribution starting to take off, right? I don't have to go through the time-consuming process of ripping and re-encoding, and I don't have physical copies to keep track of.
Except things aren't so good. If I rip a DVD, I can watch the resulting file on any computer in the house, running any software I feel like. I also have the opportunity to remove all the ads, previews, and warnings. On top of that, if I'm feeling flush on hard drive space, I can keep the full DVD (or even BluRay) size and quality. On the small number of downloadable movies today, I don't have these benefits - there may not always be previews, but the quality is typically well below that of a DVD and I'm limited to using the software linked to the download service. That's not convenience, and it's not better than ripping a DVD. It's worse, in nearly every way - and on top of that, I'd still pay the same for the movie, even though distribution costs are lower.
If some studio would allow me to download a movie for less than the cost of a physical disk, without all the previews and ads, in a high-quality format playable on any platform I like, the number of movies I buy would go through the roof. I'd even pay more for a high-definition copy - I'm still on DVDs because I don't want to shell out for a BluRay drive or player, not because I'm unwilling to pay a bit more for quality in the movies themselves.
The data is taken from http://speedtest.net/global.php, as indicated in C64's original post.
It would be entirely possible to have software which can play the media and neither actively cooperate with nor actively ignore the DRMers' attempts to restrict it; indeed, that would have been the path of least resistance, the easiest way to go.
What exactly do you think the DRM in Windows is? It's primarily decryption, not restriction. The restrictions are already present in the media. You very proudly don't run Windows. Does this mean you can play all the BluRay discs you want, at full quality, with absolutely no restrictions? No, it means you can't play them at all.
Yes, it's hypothetically possible that Microsoft could write up an OS which allows the media to be decrypted and then used with no restrictions whatsoever. They'd immediately be sued by the content producers under the DMCA for bypassing copyright protection, of course, and would end up in the same situation as Linux and its kin are - no DRM restrictions whatsoever, because it would also have no DRM decryption capabilities whatsoever, and would be utterly incapable of playing anything.
I'm not sure the content producers would even notice. If they did, I'm guessing their reaction would be a huge sigh of relief. Don't get me wrong, I hate DRM as much as anybody. Make sure you're directing your anger in the right place, though - in this case, Microsoft isn't working against you. They're profit-motivated, sure, but they're including DRM to provide more abilities to consumers, not to restrict them at the behest of the producers.
Whenever the subject of DRM in Windows comes up in a discussion, we get to see just how confused some people are - it's nice to see a few people get it right, for a change.
Microsoft includes DRM software in their operating systems to allow consumers to view certain media on their computers. Microsoft didn't put the DRM on the media, the DRM doesn't affect your personal files, and Windows sure as hell isn't enabling anything, unless you're talking about "enabling" a consumer to view something they have legally purchased. The industries creating the content have other outlets - they'd be quite happy to only allow playback on locked consumer electronics like DVD/BluRay and CD players.
Linux and other open-source software aren't an improvement in this regard, they're a dramatic regression. Want to play a BluRay disc on your Win7 computer? Not a problem, thanks to that horrible DRM software. Want to play it on Vista or XP? If you've got the right playback program, go right ahead. Want to play it on Linux? Sorry, you don't have any horrible, crippling, useless, freedom-stealing DRM software. So your computer is less capable.
If you think "High Quality" and "Most Expensive in World" are synonymous, then perhaps it is you who are mistaken.
In all reality, extremely high-quality headphones can be had for a few hundred US dollars. Beyerdynamic DT 880s are very well-regarded, and cost only $275. Perhaps you can construct a better-sounding stereo system for a hundred times as much, and hopefully your $5,000 headphones sound slightly better. However, listening to something on $500 headphones is closer to a perfect listening experience than most people will get in their entire lives.
Double-blind testing is a magnificent thing. A shame so many audio nuts don't quite understand the practice.
Yep, the Pentium M has nothing at all to do with a Pentium 4. Actually, it's based on a Pentium III and most closely related to the Core architecture (Pentium M was the predecessor to Core Solo, and I think the only difference is that Core is 64-bit). For the most part, a 2GHz Pentium M can run with a 3GHz Pentium 4.
To the other person who replied to this, you're thinking of the Mobile Pentium 4.
Just as you guess, making the parts smaller drops their heat output and power consumption considerably for a given speed. It's also necessary to advance the technology further, because it allows them to create new, faster parts without raising the power consumption.
Would that have been "The light of Other Days" by Arthur C. Clarke and Stephen Baxter? If not, and if you enjoyed the one you read, I'd suggest you take a look. It manages to take a believable look at a situation most of us have never even imagined.
The problem with the circumvention clause, at least to me, is that it disallows an activity which seems to me as though it should be perfectly legitimate.
I want to buy a DVD, take it home, and rip it to my hard drive, then store the DVD itself in my closet. Then I want to stream it to the media center connected to my TV. That is to say, I want to give them money and then use the video in my own home. I don't want to share it with friends, I don't want to sell it, and I don't want to waste my bandwidth sharing it with the world. I just want to watch it without having to deal with the physical disk.
Alternately, I could buy a movie download. But then I would still want to use my own media player, not whatever software they thought I should use, so I would still have to circumvent.
However, thanks to the anti-circumvention clause, I might as well skip the money-to-them part and just pirate my movies. I'm breaking the law either way.
People who honestly don't feel pain are very likely to die young, because they tend to become seriously injured without realizing it. They will then die of their injuries without ever realizing they've sustained any.
On the other hand, someone who has a very high tolerance for pain will know when they've been injured and will seek appropriate care. They will simply not be hindered by the pain in the process.
I can't speak for his company, but at mine there's a great deal more to the network than internet access. All of our files are stored on network servers. Since we are all connected via gigabit ethernet, these shares are as responsive as local hard drives. Our work would continue undeterred if we were limited to browsing the internet on 768 kb/s DSL, but if we started connecting to our server with the DSL I think productivity might drop. In fact, you're right, I might even break down in tears.
For reference, gigabit ethernet offers theoretical 128 MB/s transfers, while local hard drives offer between 60 and 90 MB/s. Obviously the latency will be a bit higher on the networked drives, but you'll see no drop in sustained transfer rates. Compare that to a theoretical maximum of 37.5 MB/s for wireless N or 6.75 MB/s for wireless G, and bear in mind that those speeds will be shared with all clients rather than dedicated as with the ethernet connection.
I've always been a big fan of these tiny, power-efficient computers for no reason I can fully explain. However, that doesn't excuse the tremendous errors in your reasoning.
Your first flaw is in the cost of power. It's a bit lower than that - about a fifth your estimate, in most places.
Yeah, a low-end computer these days will pretty likely have a 300-watt power supply. However, most consumer-level computers don't draw anything like that much power. Then, even if you did have a computer setup that drew 300 watts, it'd spend 90% of its time drawing around 30, with brief spikes up to its maximum for certain activities. I run a mid-range computer 24/7 on a 320-watt power supply and it costs me less than $100 per year.
If you've managed to get a computer running at full power all the time, maybe you should stop running Folding@Home, Distributed.net, SETI, or whatever it is that's using all that power. I don't have a problem with people running those programs, but you can't do that and complain about power at the same time - it's your own fault.
Ahh, gotta love the fine reporting from Computer World. For example, I'd really like to know why the read speed is higher at the inside of the platter, since the linear velocity of the outside of the platter is much higher and as a result the manufacturer would actually have to go to a certain amount of intentional effort to make the drive read slower there.
And, as other posters have noted, it's almost always better to buy a drive and an enclosure from a place like Newegg and combine them yourself. I understand that this isn't a great option for most people, but it's well within the abilities of everyone on Slashdot and of almost everyone likely to read that article.
Why do I use linux on my top of the line machines? To get around all that DRM shit and to get the most out of my pc.
That's a poor excuse. I've heard a lot of this thrown around lately and you should know that you're quite wrong. The DRM in Vista doesn't actually cripple your computer in any way. Rather, it allows additional functionality that won't be available on Linux or older versions of Windows. If you consider watching HD movies to be an integral part of getting the most out of your computer, I think you'll find it's Windows, not Linux, which enables the full capabilities of your computer.
I'm not a huge fan of Vista, either. But my reasons are at least based in truth. Yeah, DRM is bad. However, the presence of DRM in Vista doesn't make it a crippled operating system, it actually makes everything else a crippled operating system. By all means enjoy your rabid zealotry, but please understand that you are actually not 'getting around' anything. DRM still exists in the content and without the horrible, awful, crippling, terrifying, evil DRM in Vista, you can't watch that content.
I care. I care a lot. I mean, don't get me wrong, I don't care if the airlocks are any good or whether the passengers are allowed to bring food on the flight. I also don't care about the insurance regulations, fire extinguishers, acceptance of liability, or anything else like that. If I'm ever a passenger, I might care about those things, but right now I'm not a passenger, so those things are completely irrelevant.
What I DO care about are the things I didn't see in that article. Like what people can leave up there, and where they can go. The most significant part of getting something into space is accelerating it to 17,000 miles per hour. The rest, all the computers and airtight boxes full of people and fire extinguishers to stop the people catching fire, is just garnish.
Now, aside from tourists and science experiments that are probably important but don't really affect me, the space around earth is cluttered with two things - communications satellites and debris. The communications satellites are absolutely essential for modern technology to work. I imagine you'll be using at least one as you read this sentence. The other one, the debris, is a big issue. It's small rocks, and bits and pieces of old rockets, and satellites that ran out of fuel and were moved out of their orbit to a less important one to clear the way for a new satellite. These rocks and bits of metal are all still moving at 17,000 miles per hour - the have to be, in order to stay in their orbits.
When the debris hits anything important, the important thing stops being important and becomes more debris. Fortunately, that doesn't happen very often. NASA keeps track of all the biggest chunks, and keeps satellites and space stations out of the way. They just accept the risks posed by the stuff too small to track, since space is quite large and the chances of one hitting something important are acceptably small. However, if private companies start throwing things into space and don't bring it all down, the debris is going to become overwhelming, and space will become absolutely useless for communications, navigation, science, AND tourists. We'd also be trapped on Earth and unable to explore other planets until we can come up with a way to clear the debris, or just wait a few million years for it to clear up naturally.
Personally, I like the internet, cell phones, GPS, and pictures of Mars. I'd like to keep space as free of debris as possible, and I'd really like to see regulations governing what can be left in orbit and where.
I've never seen the point in the recent uptake in wireless technology. I have a wireless network, but it's just so I don't have to run network cords around my apartment. I hate my wireless network - it's unreliable and slow, despite being all alone on its channel and usually running at 54 Mbps. However, despite my own issues with it, I understand the point of wireless networking. It's great for public access or situations like my apartment where running cables cleanly is difficult. I can also see the point of a bluetooth mouse for a laptop, or a bluetooth keyboard for your PDA. It makes things faster and more portable, and gives you more freedom.
However, I draw the limit there. My keyboard, mouse, monitor, printer, external storage, and occasional other things are all wired. I don't have to keep track of batteries, and I don't get poor performance near the end of my battery life. It's all sitting on my desk not moving anyway, and there are only a few cords present on my desk - the rest are hidden behind the desk. I also like the tactile effort cords provide. When I plug my graphing calculator into my computer, when I stick a USB thumb drive in, when I connect my camera, when I plug in my headphones, or when I hook up a USB card reader, there's tactile feedback. I know I have just achieved something. I also don't find it terribly inconvenient to stick my flash drive into a front USB port.
There's more than just reliability and feedback, though. When I unplug my flash drive or external hard drive, I know that the devices are powered down and safe from snooping eyes, and not experiencing wear and tear. I also know that when I sit down at the computer lab with my flash drive in my pocket, the guy next to me isn't stealing my files. I understand that the connection between the computer and device will probably be encrypted automatically, so that's fine. But what about the connection process? If I have to go through a lengthly process to associate the device before I can use it (bluetooth), then I'm not really any better off than I was with wired USB. If I don't have to go through that process, what's stopping the guy next to me from doing it? And in the same computer lab, with USB my mouse isn't going to suddenly decide to associate itself with the computer across the way. Now, we could password protect the flash drive. However, and perhaps I'm alone on this, I'd rather not have a password on my mouse. And what if I replace 'mouse' with 'keyboard?' You can't password protect a keyboard.
I'm a college student, and I imagine this 'feature' going over very poorly in lecture halls. Students often start their computers shortly after the lecture has started, or sometimes start or reboot in the middle of class. Usually it's no big deal, but on occasion the sound is turned on and the volume is cranked way up. It's extremely disruptive. I used to take my computer to class to take notes, and for a while I had a stereo headphone plug (just the plug, no headphones or speakers connected) in my computer bag so if I'd forgotten to mute my sound before I shut down, I could stick that in the headphone port and mute the sound long enough to get into Windows where I could adjust the volume. I have since disabled that and a few other sounds on my system, and I'm quite happy this way.
Another problem situation would be at home, when other family members are sleeping or otherwise would rather not be disturbed, having the sound play at each startup can be a bit irritating.
If I were Microsoft, I'd go ahead and put the forced sounds in the first boot/registration section, and from there on out make it switchable. I can understand their desire to keep it uniform, to an extent - so no control panel for sounds which gives users the option to use their own sound for boot - but there should at least be an on/off radio button somewhere.
Actually, he didn't say that dual cores don't affect speed. He very clearly said that people don't care how many cores there are, and that people only want speed. It's entirely possible that a dual-core processor would be faster than a single, but most people don't actually care how the thing works, and they will go for what feels fastest regardless to the number of cores.
I never said that .DOC was a standard, I said it was pretty much standard. As in, the most widely used, even if it's proprietary. To you, 'easily editable' means that it's well-documented and can be opened by many programs equally well. To most people, 'easily editable' means that if they double-click on the file, they will then be able to edit it. (let me give you a hint - by this method, PDF is not easily editable, while .DOC is)
.ODT. However, I understand that very few of the people I send files to will be able to open that. So if it's something I know the recipient will need to edit, it's getting sent as .DOC, because guess what almost every USER (not programmer) has the highest compatibility with? If the recipient has no need to edit the file, then it'll get sent as a PDF because I know they will see it just as I have.
I'm neither a programmer nor a 'Microsoft Junkie.' I'm an engineering student. I use OpenOffice, and save all my work in
The problem is that neither format is right for what people want out of a document format: editability and universal layout. HTML is easy to edit, but looks different depending on what you use to view it. PDF, on the other hand, looks the same but isn't easy to edit.
.DOC.
PDF isn't supposed to be easily editable, and that's the point. If you're going to easy editability, a Microsoft Office format is pretty much the standard. If you're saving something in a PDF, it's to make sure the person you are sending it to sees precisely what you saw. It can't be changed easily, and it won't be rendered differently if it's opened in a different program.
Yeah, a do-all format should be easily edited and universally standard. But sometimes the do-all product isn't the best. If I send a file in PDF, it's in PDF for a reason. If I just wanted to make sure it was readable, I'd send it as
No, I was actually serious. I think there's a government regulation that states that a speed limit should be 85% of the unregulated flow of traffic. I'm looking around now and can't find anything to support myself, so if someone has a source to prove I'm not crazy, I'd appreciate it.
Actually, as I understand it the formula for determining the speed limit is as follows:
1) Determine average speed on road if it were unrestricted
2) Multiply average by 0.85
3) Make signs
Second semester, freshman year. I was taking a social sciences class, something on ancient Athens. We didn't have a final for the class, but we did have a small test at the end. It was during dead week, so it wasn't allowed to be worth more than 10% of the final grade. I knew I needed to get exactly 100% to get a B in the class.
I went in, sat down, finished in ten minutes, and got a 110%.
Then let me introduce myself to you. I have only used BT, and never used Napster, Limewire or any of the P2P clients.
Seconded.