"...it's more important than ever that citzens defend the right that are given to them."
I can't speak for other countries, but here in the U.S. (and the parent's post is U.S.-centric), our civil rights are not "given" to us. The wording of the Consitution clearly indicates that they are innate, and only enumerated by the Bill of Rights. In case anyone is wondering what the difference is, a "granted" right is nothing more than a priveledge, and can be taken away as easily. An innate right can never be legally or moraly taken away. Those "Founding Fathers" had their moments.
Actually, in some areas, they've succeeded passing laws that make it a separate, additional crime if you use a police scanner while committing another crime. Same thing with bullet-proof vests, in some areas. For example, if you rob a liquor store, you're committing something like grand larceny (any criminologists out there, feel free to chime in with accurate definitions). If you use a gun, you're upping the ante -- grand larceny, assault with a deadly weapon, AND commission of a crime while using a gun. Do it while wearing a bullet-proof vest and using a police scanner, that's at least five crimes.
Another way of looking at it... it's perfectly legal in my area to carry a gun, listen to the police radio, and wear a bullet-proof vest in the comfort of my own home. But god forbid I smoke some pot while I'm doing the rest of it... Then the rest suddenly becomes illegal.
My apologies if I'm wrong, but I believe when "huge colin (528073)" said 'child posts' he meant subsequent posts, not immature posts. You know, as opposed to "parent".
When was the last time you heard of a group of radical atheists throwing a hand grenade into a tour bus?
If a totalitarian theocracy took over the United States, you would. I personally don't think religion is the cause of any of the terrible acts committed by religious extremists, but rather that religion is a convenient excuse. I think an extremist faction is probably attractive to an angry, disaffected person in much the same way that street gangs are here in the US. Does it really matter who they kill for?
That having been said, the brits have my deepest condolences and sympathies, both for the lives lost and troubles faced, as well as those yet to come in the aftermath.
To take this just a little further off-topic, it would make more sense to figure out what it is that's reacting with O2 (probably already out there in the public knowledge base -- I'm sick of chemistry, so I'm not going to get into it) and neutralize it. If O2 can get in, so can other chemicals. Something can render it non-reactive, and I'm sure something can do it without impacting playability. Only question is how feasible and economical the process would be.
I've noticed a BIG trend in the post-boom IT industry where those free service providers who rose to the top of their field think that if they start charging, they'll STAY as good as they were. They don't seem to realize that in every single case, they reason they were so popular is that they were free. Take Yahoo! Personals for example. I'll admit it... I had a lot of fun there a few years ago. I met a lot of extremely strange and interesting people through their free service. I've had a very serious girlfriend for the past 3 years now, but I recently poked my head back in there for kicks, to maybe expand my social circle again, and meet some people my g/f and I could hang out with. I posted an ad, and was perplexed at the fact that I got no responses. In the "good old days," I'd get at least 1 a day. Granted, I was single then, and I imagine most people went to Yahoo! Personals to get laid, but still! Then I got hit by a survey (they wanted to know how people liked the new structure) and I discovered that you have to PAY to respond to the ads. Consequence? What used to be a fantastic place to meet psychos and weirdos (and I happen to like weirdos) became a no-man's-land of horny AOL-wannabes where no one connects (and Yahoo! can't be making much money off of it!).
So how does this apply to slashdot? Well, it's great now, because of the, what, 250,000 readers, I'd say a least 1% are contributors, either in stories or in comments. Of those perhaps 25,000, a goodly portion are intelligent, or at least fun to argue with. Also, those perhaps 25,000 community members come up with some very interesting stories to submit, giving us good topics to flame each other about. If Slashdot makes it inconvenient and/or expensive to participate, well, guess what -- participation goes down. Sure, they think slashdot provides such a great service and such great information and they think they can turn a profit off of that, but the proverbial "they" may forget how much of that "provided" value is actually provided by the community which uses slashdot. If the community shrank by 90% (which it probably would if, for example, they REQUIRED subscription), I seriously doubt that slashdot would still hold my interest. Yes, I realize that's not what they're suggesting, but if participation drops by say 33% because they spew ads at non-subscribers, it will have the same effect, to a somewhat lesser degree.
You remember the Simpsons cartoon with a 3-eyed fish near the nuclear power plant? Well that's no joke. That's what radiation does.
Let me get this straight: You're using a fictional (and extremely cute) cartoon fish character to support your anti-irradiating argument?
We just can't afford to screw our environment this way. Once we destabalise it, there may never be a vaild path back to stability which doesn't involve the eradication of the main problem: US.
Ah, the profound guilt and self-loathing of the "ecological activist" rears its ugly head again. Either you're a pitiable victim of propoganda, or you're grossly underestimating both the astounding power and majesty of Mother Nature and the remarkable resilliency of her creations, specifically us. As you may have noticed, a significant vocal population has always spouted forth the "precarious balance on a fragile pinnacle of equillibrium over the roaring seas of doom and destruction" world-view. I personally think that's a symptom of The Human Condition, perhaps a vestigal natural instinct of tension to keep us on our toes, alert for other predators and/or prey. Of course, it also gives those who believe it a purpose, a reason to live (something for which just about everyone looks, although they may find it in different places). At any rate, while in past centuries (as well as this one, to a lesser extent), Western culture's condition of "doom and destruction" has been in the religious and moral arena, with the consequences being hellfire and damnation (as an American, I'm not in any position to speculate on the expression of the "doom and destruction" prophecies of Eastern culture). Since we've more or less given that up in the wake of our "scientific enlightenment," it's only natural that the need for a dire position would manifest in the scientific genre.
Humanity is but a speck in the natural order here on earth. She has proven herself the opposite of your precarious balance image time and again over the millennia -- instead of a delicate equillibrium balanced on a needle of chance, where the tiniest nudge will send us tumbling into an abyss of chaos and damnation, a more appropriate image would be that of a large rock at the base of a lush valley. Sure, with a strong enough nudge, that rock can be swung away from center and rolled up the hill, but it will roll back to the center again.
Egomaniacal self-loathing... what an unfortunate and pitiable combination of mental disorders to suffer, and so astoundingly common among the so-called nature-lovers. Interesting, that they profess such respect for Mother Nature, yet have so little respoct for her power that they consider themselves her keeper rather than the other way around!
L.A. to Sydney (Qantas): 14 hours. New York to Hong Kong (Continental): 16 hours. Chicago to Hong Kong (United): 15 hours. Singapore to London (Singapore Airlines): 13 hours
Sheeeeeit... when I take a ~7 hour flight from DC to London or Paris, I sleep for at least 2-3 hours of it! Take a nap! Quake will still be there when you wake up!
Are they saying we can only use the broadband to look at web pages? wtf??
Errr... I think they've been more or less saying that for a while. That's certainly the impression you get if you ask them if you can do anything else.
Ask Comcast if you can set up your own nice little low-bandwidth mail server to take advantage of that static IP and domain name you got.
If they provide radio stations with content the people want to hear (like non-mainstream music in all
genres) then you might have a winner.
Hate to be the one to tell you this, but by definition, "mainstream" music IS what people want to hear. You're suffering from the all-too-common human curse of thinking everyone in the world is like you and your own local peer group.
You want to know what the benefit is? Let me give you an example:
Do you get cable/satellite TV? Have you ever gone for any length of time without it? I didn't get cable until I was about 10 years old. I was perfectly content before that, watching local saturday morning cartoons, watching local network sitcoms like Who's the Boss, etc. Then around 10 or 11, I got cable, and discovered the joys of USA's Cartoon Express (and now, we have a whole Cartoon Network!), and found a whole world of other programming on those 40 or so channels (at the time). Not to mention all those wonderful movies on the premium channels we got for free as a sign-up bonus (back when I was 11 or so, I was more easily amused. Or maybe Showtime sucks now. At least Skinemax is still living up to its name...). I got to watch TV shows that actually stimulate, rather than sedate, the mind! Then, after a couple years, my family decided that they didn't really watch all those channels, and we could save a little chunk of change by ditching cable, so we did. We went back to watching drivel like Who's the Boss, and OMFG it sucked! It lasted about 6 months before my parents broke and got cable again.
What's the moral to this story, you may ask? Local programming, like broadcast TV and radio, is necessarily limited. Niche markets, on a local scale, are not generally worth catering to. Sure, local programming is interesting for curiosity's sake when it's not your own local area, or for keeping grounded in your local world, which is all fine and good, but it certainly does NOT bring you the best the media has to offer. Generally, they cater to the lowest common denominator, and odds are, in your area, that's pretty damn low (at least compared to the average Slashdot-Intellectual).
Is cable perfect? Of course not. It's necessarily limited in bandwidth, and therefore you DO get some of that lowest-common-denominator effect (HOW many f***ing times a day is that Emeril loser on Food TV? ok, bad example, since he owns a bunch of it, but still. And how many Turner networks do I really need? Especially since Discovery took all their good shows on put them on specialty networks, like Discovery Wings, Discovery Science, and Discovery Health, leaving bassically NOTHING good on Plain Ol' Discovery Channel, the only one I get). Sorry for the rant. At any rate, sure, cable's not perfect (leaving the door open for DBS and digital cable), but ye gods! have you seen broadcast TV lately? One or two good shows a week, and everything else melts your brain!
Now imagine how that could apply to radio. I live in the DC metro area. We have a lot of radio. I think we have something like 20 FM stations. I don't like a single damn one of them. I think the two modern rock stations sync their (bad) playlists just to piss me off. The 3 "Mix" stations play an interesting "mix" of decent music and crap... heavy on the crap. Country stations are right out, as are the hip-hop/R&B/whatever you want to call 'em stations. Occasionally I get a jonesin' for some classical, some nice Beethoven or Wagner, but our classical stations just play lilting little fairy-dust stuff whenever I turn them on. Jazz is totally hit-or-miss when I hit the public/college stations (maybe one good song a month, due mostly to the fact that they only play jazz maybe 2 hrs a day, and only when I'm not listening to the radio). One thing I can count on is the morning shows. WHFS's morning show will, at least once every single weekday morning, talk about Fred Durst. And that's only in the 45 minutes or so I listen, out of, what, 4 hours they're on? The Mix stations have ok morning shows, and that's really the only thing I listen to the radio for anymore. Much like broadcast TV... local news is really all it seems to be good for anymore. All the good shows on local broadcast channels are made by the NETWORKS which probably only broadcast ANYTHING because not everyone has cable/DBS yet.
Why listen to someone else's playlists at all? Well, I have about 45 hours' worth of MP3s here at work, and maybe another 100 hours on CD at home that I haven't ripped yet, and I get SICK of my music. I'll go a month or so just loving the crap out of my mixes (MD player for the morning commute) and then go a month without listening to a single thing I already own. That month is painful, because I'm reduced to listening to that locally broadcast shite.
I welcome satellite radio (and I get especially creamy at the thought of what will replace it!).
If you want to kill the Xbox instead of buying one and never getting one game... take your $300 and pick up a GameCube with Super Smash Brothers and Pikmin.
But then you don't have a relatively sweet piece of portable PC hardware, just BEGGING to become a truly cool car-mounted DVD/CD/MP3 player, GPS navigator, and all-around digital assistant. For $300. I think that's about the coolest use for an Xbox there is -- screw that Tribes-wannabe "Halo" game... think mobile computing!
Of course, I suppose you could hack a GameCube into a similar state, but you'd need a lot more custom hardware and software, methinks (since it's not already PC-based). Plus, you'd be screwing Nintendo out of software royalties. Nintendo was, after all, a surrogate mother for many of us. You don't want to screw our mother like that -- it's bad karma. Microsoft, on the other hand, is our surrogate obnoxious rich uncle who thinks he owns the world and that your nose should be up his @$$ 24x7. Screwing him is GOOD karma. All in all, buying an Xbox to hack, and never buying any Xbox games is definitely good for the soul.
Often on/. we forget that the average Joe doesn't have an inkling of the technical knowledge we have and take for granted. The record companies
know that most people don't have the right patch cable and usually don't knpw what the other ports on their sound card are for.
Ah, but Average Joe DOES know how to search for mp3s on the web. For widespread music piracy to exist, only a very small percentace of the participants need to have the technical knowledge. Most of the "piracy problem" is merely a matter of distribution. How many game crackers are out there vs. people in posession of warez? And how many of your warezed games did you get directly from the cracker? Most people with illegal copies know a guy who knows a guy who knows how to get that kinda stuff.
One of he disadvantages of having a single "mega-device" is that you pretty much have to be wearing the headset all the time if
you want make/take calls and also use the everything-but-the-kitchen-sink-in-my-hand device to also retrieve information or
make notes.
Err... I think you're mistaken. Why on earth would I have to have the headset on to write notes? Even if for some strange reason the device required a headset be connected when NOT on a call, how would it know if the headset wasn't actually on my ear? I can't imagine audio output or voice input would be necessary to operate the notes/organization functions of a PDA. It might be nice (clicky noises when you select something on screen -- wait, that's not nice, it's annoying), but hardly vital to the operation of the unit.
what if you're in a business meeting
or slaving over a hot keyboard at work where headset-wearing is not allowed.[snip]in that
situation, you have to rely on the original killer app (pencil & paper) to make notes and then transfer into your device at the
end of the call, which kinda makes it all pointless!
Err.. who the h3ll isn't allowed to wear a headset at work? I'd never get anything done if I couldn't talk on the cell phone hands-free. If you're in a business meeting or some other situation where you really shouldn't be taking calls, then why would you be on a call while trying to take notes? The only problem I can see is that if you're in a call and trying to write something down (such as directions the person on the phone is giving you), it might be tricky to take notes on the same device, but I'm assuming the developers have worked around that problem and made it simple to use the PDA and phone functions simultaneously.
Then again, the "397 Tools In One" Fix-O-Matic (TM) seems to always sell well with the consumer types who are more
interested in feeling productive than in being productive.
I guess we know which type you are.
Why don't you ask Norm Abrams to carry his workshop around a city all day? I bet you he'd cut down a bit on the number of specialized tools, and replace 'em with some damned-fine mutli-purpose items.
Can you afford 5 different drills to work those 5 different bits? Is the ~$400 worth saving that hour of work? I don't have room to place a table saw, let alone a planer and a jointer, so I get by with a circular saw and a hand-planer when its woodworking time. I carry a Leatherman around because I can't realistically carry a big pair of pliers, a can opener, bottle opener, 4 different screwdrivers, a utility knife, and scissors around the various buildings I support. There's no question that I'd rather use real tools, but as the gun guys say, "When you need a gun, a.22 in your pocket is better than the.44 you left in the safe at home."
Then again, ragging on people for thinking differently seems very popular with those who are more interested in looking intelligent than being intelligent.
I guess we know which type you are.
By the same token, ragging on people for ragging on other people is always popular with those more interested in looking superior than being superior, so I guess we know which type I am.
once the plant is decomissioned, as I recall it gets buried in concrete and/or glass for some long time>
Yeah, Destroying the ecology in a small area around a power plant is way worse than spewing fossil fuel exhaust directly into the air, huh?
the East
Coast's continental shelf could support a gigantic wind farm with minimal environmental impact.
I bet that's what they used to think about burning coal and oil.
From what I've read, some
wind farms are already price-competitive with coal, etc.
All sarcasm aside, where did you hear this? Is that taking into account the government subsidies and tax breaks? I would be absolutely shocked (and excited) if the cost of equipment, maintenance, and implementation of wind (or solar) power generation could equal fossil-fuel power generation over time.
The way I see it, the simple fact is that you can not extract energy from a system without altering the system. If you're (not directed to anyone in particular) not willing to destroy anything, well... I would say you'd better just kill yourself now, but then you'd be destroying the habitat of countless microbes currently residing in your body. However, you certainly can't go on living, because your home is taking up space where millions of other beings could be living. Your immune system is killing off hordes of innocent virii, bacteria, and fungi every day, just trying to eke out a living in your body. If you don't care about the plants even the most die-hard vegan kills directly, what about their effects higher up the foodchain? How many widdle bunnies starve to death when they could've been fed on the aforementioned vegans' breakfast of lettuce?
You simply can not live (or die) without altering your environment. This applies to all aspects of life, including energy conversaion/usage. The best we can hope for is to improve our efficiency and reduce our impact on the systems we know about. After all, if we start pulling all our energy from the wind, what will that do to weather patterns? How many plants would die off if we started sucking up all the sunlight? I imagine Greenpeace and the ELF will be happy to tell you about the impacts of hydroelectric plants. Okay, so maybe we shouldn't try to pull enery out of the earth's systems. Maybe we should go extraterrestrial, and build a Dyson Sphere or something. Great, until we discover what the rest of the universe was doing with that energy we just nabbed. The alernative? I don't see one. Simply do the best we can.
Well, besides burning the crap out of your finger, you'd likely stall the generator. I wouldn't call that a design hurdle, I'd call it a usage hurdle. I mean, when was the last time anyone said, "Hmm... if you plug the tailpipe on a car, it'll stall... we've got to do something about that!" Here's what you do: you quit plugging the exhaust!
=>So if you sample at 44100Hz, you can't reproduce waves above 22050Hz
not to mention audio reproduction. Who knows what the experimentor had, but I doubt the average set of multimedia speakers can go much above 20kHz (if they can een do that). I know my homebuilt stereo speakers are only rated to ~23kHz (According to the tweeter specs... who knows what putting them into their boxes has done to their frequency response).
Re:one more step towards total integration
on
New Nokia Phone
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Just 7 years ago very few people had a moblie phone, they were huge bricks with a battery life of 20 minutes.
Err.. I think you mean 17 years ago. I actually still have my Dad's first cell-phone. A car-mounted behemoth about the size of a metal Aladdin lunchbox (the kind with the thermos inside). You could open up the trunk and disconnect it from the car and haul it around with you if you wanted, but the built-in antenna wasn't so good. Back when Cellular One was the only carrier around, and there was no such thing as "free minutes".
Now we all have our digicam-watches, TiVos, DVD/TV/sound system players/recorders, Internet fridges (order food online as you use it), and miblie
[sic] phones that can do pretty much
enything you want except act as a sextoy [watch this space!].Err... I don't know anyone with a TiVo, DVD/TV/sound system player/recorder, or internet fridge. Where do you live, Dot-Com-Boom-Fantasyland?
As this trend increases, the total personal device (phone/pc/watch/camera/whatever) will evolve. It will do everything, go everywhere with you. It will interact with all the other devices
in your life, making things easier and more personal. The electronic walls will change shade as you go into a public buliding, billboards will only advertise things you want. It'll be a
better world
So, to you, a world where your every taste, preference, and spending habit, not to mention exact location, is recorded, tracked, and sold to every street-corner spammer is a "better world"? Okay, we'll give you the benefit of the doubt, and assume you're not a wanted felon, you're not into any "subversive" pastimes, and you'll never do anything the PTB will consider dangerous to the public morality. You're a good little subject, but such invasion of privacy can still be extremely inconvenient or dangerous. Imagine walking to a lunch interview with your prospective new employer when the side of the restaurant lights up with an ad for your favorite head shop. Imagine what your mom would think when you're [insert non-offensive holiday here] shopping with her and an ad pops up with your name on it, touting your favorite foot-fetish porn rag. You're out with your buds getting sauced, and your secret Pokemon or Britney Spears addiction is blasted across the billboards. You're angling for a raise, but your boss reconsiders when he sees not a budget motel ad on your office wall, but directed advertising telling you that Pergo now makes laminate flooring for your 100m yacht (hers is only 75m). Do you think the advertisers would let you "turn off" such a service?
No, I'd rather not live in such a world, thank you.
We have seen purly computer generated/AI "art" before, imagine having to listen to it at 300Db
If it were at 300dB, you wouldn't be *listening* to it for very long.
I mean isn't most music about creating something meaningful to you in the hopes
that it connects with someone else?
When I play drums, it's about getting into a groove (and the therapeutic benefits thereof), working up a sweat (and the therapeutic benefits thereof), and putting a big ol' smile on my face (and the therapeutic benefits thereof). If someone else likes it, that's their business, not mine. Same with my forays into painting, drawing, and photography. Most artists I know do it for themselves.
Now what *I'd* like to see is
something like this that makes it's OWN music based on what feedback it gets. Faster heart rates means faster drum beats, crazier bass, or what have you. Now that would be fun..
first off, we need to move beyond this heartrate measurement. I mean, come on... when someone cranks up 'N-Sync, my heartrate goes up, not because I like it, but because I'm in aural pain and the fight-or-flight mode kicks in. Lets hook up EEGs to everyone and measure their brain activity, and THEN we'll be able to really involve the audience. Now THAT would be fun.
You aren't 'trading' anything if you still retain the original to be 'traded' again.
Ahh, back to the old "intellectual property" conundrum, eh?
at the end of the day you are stealing.
What follows is an argument I've proposed hundreds of times in the past.
Steal. verb. To take (the property of another) without right or permission. (American Heritage Dictionary, 4th ed). It is reasonable to assume that for one's act to be theft, one must deprive the property owner of value to which they have all rights, correct? If you rob a bank, mug someone, steal a car, etc., you're very clearly taking value from the proper owner. What if you sell bootleg CDs at a flea market? Slightly less clear cut, since those CDs were created by you, instead of a record company, but I think we can all agree that the money for those bootlegs ought to be going to those who own the music on them, and that it more or less constitutes theft.
HOWEVER:
Does "trading" bootlegged music constitute theft? From a legal standpoint, yes, it apparently does. How many of us really care about the law? Well, we really only care it we get caught. Don't believe me? Think you're more righteous than that? How long has it been since you turned onto or off of a public road without using your turn signal? Ever come to a rolling stop at a stop sign? I bet just about everyone here has, at one point or another, taken a prescription medication and put it in something other than its original, labelled container, or given such medication to someone else (letting your kids use that left-over prescription cortizone cream when they get poison ivy, for example). Therefore, what are we REALLY worried about here? The MORALITY of theft. Is it really theft if you haven't hurt (in this case, deprived the rightful owner of value or property) anyone (whether they know it or not)? Morally, I say no.
But you're listening to music/playing games/writing papers/blah blah blah without paying the author his/her rightful ammount!
The flaw in this argument is the assumption that the copyright owner has some right to the money in my pocket, even his his or her product is offal. Let's take a hypothetical person (we'll call him Hyp) with a hypothetical computer and a hypothetical T3. Hyp has $1,000 in his bank account. Hyp, one night, discovers the joy of Napster. Hyp thinks of all sorts of music he used to listen to a few years back on the radio, which they don't play anymore (since radio stations are slaves to the music industry and won't play anything the RIAA doesn't have a hard-on to sell). Hyp doesn't want to actually BUY that music. Hyp thinks that Offspring's "Come out and Play" was kinda fun to listen to, but the rest of the CD was trash, and would sooner rape his own dog than lay out $18 for it. However, he DOES have it stuck in his head, and WOULD like to hear it again.
Pop quiz: Does the owner of OFfspring's Come Out and Play have absolutely ANY pre-existing right to the money in Hyp's bank account? Correct answer: No. Does said owner have any MORAL right to said money? Correct answer: No. Said owner would only have a MORAL right to that money if Hyp thought the product was worth the set price. Hyp does not. Hyp kinda wants to hear the song, but wouldn't piss on the CD if it was on fire. Therefore, morally, the owner of the copyright has no right to, and will not get, Hyp's money. It's a solid fact. Hyp's not gonna pay it, no way, no how. That having been said, why the hell shouldn't Hyp be able to hear it anyway? Will it cost Copyright Owner anything if he does? Only if he physically steals a CD, or downloads it off of Copyright Owner's servers, or otherwise consumes some of Copyright Owner's resources. If Hyp goes out on the net and downloads a copy of Come Out and Play, he has hurt absolutely no one, and is therefore morally innocent.
Situation number two. Hyp, much like myself, went through a period where he loved music to hell and back, and would buy a CD for one great song. He sometimes found that the rest of the CD was also great, and his $18 was well-spent. Far more often, however, he found that the rest of the CD was trash. HE wasn't able to discover this before he purchased it, because the RIAA doesn't WANT you to hear all those other songs before you buy it. The RIAA would much rather you toss your dollars their way and discover on your own whether or not the rest of the album sucks. Furthermore, all of the record stores which used to allow customers to come in and listen to any CD all the way through before buying it have all gone out of business in his area. Hyp has no option to listen to a CD before he buys it unless he borrows the CD from a friend, or bootlegs it. Hyp believes the RIAA is scamming his ass with this tactic, and morally, Hyp is correct, although it is actually common practice in the business world. Thus the phrase, "Buyer beware." Hyp discovers one day that out of his 600 CD collection, he really only listens to about 20 on a regular basis. Those 20 were definitely worth the $18 he spent on them. Another 75 or so hold two or three songs Hyp likes to throw on mixes and listen to at least once or twice a year. Those are borderline cases, but generally he does not regret having bought them. Hyp then looks at the roughly 500 remaining CDs and realizes he doesn't like them anymore. He bought them when he was caught up in whatever hook the artist had thrown into the song, and when he eventually developed a tolerance to its siren-like effect, he realised it was really over-hyped trash. $9,000 (500x$18. I don't know how much you pay for CDs, but when I walk into Tower, and walk out with 1 CD, I generally walk out with $18 less in my wallet, after taxes) worth of over-hyped trash. Hyp looks at his ratty car, and realized he was more or less scammed out of most of a NEW car. Hyp takes those 500 cds to the used record store. The used record store only wants about 250 of 'em, and will only pay about $200. Hyp has lost roughly $8800 and gained a few months of listening pleasure. Hyp vows never to buy another CD until he's sure it has "Staying power" and is worth the $15-20 he'll spend on it. Hyp chooses Napster for his previewing needs. Hyp discovers new bands, like "Jump Little Children" and "Conehead Buddha", that he never would have heard on the radio. A month later, still loving their quality music, Hyp buys their indy CDs online for about $10 a piece. Did Hyp commit an act of theft? LEgally, yes. Morally, hell no. He brought more money almost directly to the artists than they would have gotten had Hyp NOT bootlegged music (because, if he hadn't, he never would've heard them or known he liked them). Hyp downloads the new Eminem CD. Hyp thinks, alright, but lets see how it sticks. A week later, Hyp deletes it, 'cause he's realized it's trash. Has Hyp committed another act of theft? LEgally, yes. He illegally copied copyrighted music for his own gain. Morally? No. He discovered that said CD was trash, and refused to pay for trash. The recording infrastructure has NO RIGHT to Hyp's money unless he chooses to buy their products. Hyp chooses not to buy trash, and luckily, through the use of bootlegging, has found a reliable mechanism for pre-purchase trash detection.
Morally, at the end of the day, Hyp is not stealing. Morally, Hyp has refused to allow the RIAA and associated industry to rape him in the ass.
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Minor correction:
"...it's more important than ever that citzens defend the right that are given to them."
I can't speak for other countries, but here in the U.S. (and the parent's post is U.S.-centric), our civil rights are not "given" to us. The wording of the Consitution clearly indicates that they are innate, and only enumerated by the Bill of Rights. In case anyone is wondering what the difference is, a "granted" right is nothing more than a priveledge, and can be taken away as easily. An innate right can never be legally or moraly taken away. Those "Founding Fathers" had their moments.
Actually, in some areas, they've succeeded passing laws that make it a separate, additional crime if you use a police scanner while committing another crime. Same thing with bullet-proof vests, in some areas. For example, if you rob a liquor store, you're committing something like grand larceny (any criminologists out there, feel free to chime in with accurate definitions). If you use a gun, you're upping the ante -- grand larceny, assault with a deadly weapon, AND commission of a crime while using a gun. Do it while wearing a bullet-proof vest and using a police scanner, that's at least five crimes.
Another way of looking at it... it's perfectly legal in my area to carry a gun, listen to the police radio, and wear a bullet-proof vest in the comfort of my own home. But god forbid I smoke some pot while I'm doing the rest of it... Then the rest suddenly becomes illegal.
Of course they realize it. The contest is sponsered by DARPA, not Milton Bradley!
My apologies if I'm wrong, but I believe when "huge colin (528073)" said 'child posts' he meant subsequent posts, not immature posts. You know, as opposed to "parent".
When was the last time you heard of a group of radical atheists throwing a hand grenade into a tour bus?
If a totalitarian theocracy took over the United States, you would. I personally don't think religion is the cause of any of the terrible acts committed by religious extremists, but rather that religion is a convenient excuse. I think an extremist faction is probably attractive to an angry, disaffected person in much the same way that street gangs are here in the US. Does it really matter who they kill for?
That having been said, the brits have my deepest condolences and sympathies, both for the lives lost and troubles faced, as well as those yet to come in the aftermath.
To take this just a little further off-topic, it would make more sense to figure out what it is that's reacting with O2 (probably already out there in the public knowledge base -- I'm sick of chemistry, so I'm not going to get into it) and neutralize it. If O2 can get in, so can other chemicals. Something can render it non-reactive, and I'm sure something can do it without impacting playability. Only question is how feasible and economical the process would be.
-Jus'n
I've noticed a BIG trend in the post-boom IT industry where those free service providers who rose to the top of their field think that if they start charging, they'll STAY as good as they were. They don't seem to realize that in every single case, they reason they were so popular is that they were free. Take Yahoo! Personals for example. I'll admit it... I had a lot of fun there a few years ago. I met a lot of extremely strange and interesting people through their free service. I've had a very serious girlfriend for the past 3 years now, but I recently poked my head back in there for kicks, to maybe expand my social circle again, and meet some people my g/f and I could hang out with. I posted an ad, and was perplexed at the fact that I got no responses. In the "good old days," I'd get at least 1 a day. Granted, I was single then, and I imagine most people went to Yahoo! Personals to get laid, but still! Then I got hit by a survey (they wanted to know how people liked the new structure) and I discovered that you have to PAY to respond to the ads. Consequence? What used to be a fantastic place to meet psychos and weirdos (and I happen to like weirdos) became a no-man's-land of horny AOL-wannabes where no one connects (and Yahoo! can't be making much money off of it!).
So how does this apply to slashdot? Well, it's great now, because of the, what, 250,000 readers, I'd say a least 1% are contributors, either in stories or in comments. Of those perhaps 25,000, a goodly portion are intelligent, or at least fun to argue with. Also, those perhaps 25,000 community members come up with some very interesting stories to submit, giving us good topics to flame each other about. If Slashdot makes it inconvenient and/or expensive to participate, well, guess what -- participation goes down. Sure, they think slashdot provides such a great service and such great information and they think they can turn a profit off of that, but the proverbial "they" may forget how much of that "provided" value is actually provided by the community which uses slashdot. If the community shrank by 90% (which it probably would if, for example, they REQUIRED subscription), I seriously doubt that slashdot would still hold my interest. Yes, I realize that's not what they're suggesting, but if participation drops by say 33% because they spew ads at non-subscribers, it will have the same effect, to a somewhat lesser degree.
Ah, the profound guilt and self-loathing of the "ecological activist" rears its ugly head again. Either you're a pitiable victim of propoganda, or you're grossly underestimating both the astounding power and majesty of Mother Nature and the remarkable resilliency of her creations, specifically us. As you may have noticed, a significant vocal population has always spouted forth the "precarious balance on a fragile pinnacle of equillibrium over the roaring seas of doom and destruction" world-view. I personally think that's a symptom of The Human Condition, perhaps a vestigal natural instinct of tension to keep us on our toes, alert for other predators and/or prey. Of course, it also gives those who believe it a purpose, a reason to live (something for which just about everyone looks, although they may find it in different places). At any rate, while in past centuries (as well as this one, to a lesser extent), Western culture's condition of "doom and destruction" has been in the religious and moral arena, with the consequences being hellfire and damnation (as an American, I'm not in any position to speculate on the expression of the "doom and destruction" prophecies of Eastern culture). Since we've more or less given that up in the wake of our "scientific enlightenment," it's only natural that the need for a dire position would manifest in the scientific genre.
Humanity is but a speck in the natural order here on earth. She has proven herself the opposite of your precarious balance image time and again over the millennia -- instead of a delicate equillibrium balanced on a needle of chance, where the tiniest nudge will send us tumbling into an abyss of chaos and damnation, a more appropriate image would be that of a large rock at the base of a lush valley. Sure, with a strong enough nudge, that rock can be swung away from center and rolled up the hill, but it will roll back to the center again.
Egomaniacal self-loathing... what an unfortunate and pitiable combination of mental disorders to suffer, and so astoundingly common among the so-called nature-lovers. Interesting, that they profess such respect for Mother Nature, yet have so little respoct for her power that they consider themselves her keeper rather than the other way around!
L.A. to Sydney (Qantas): 14 hours.
New York to Hong Kong (Continental): 16 hours.
Chicago to Hong Kong (United): 15 hours.
Singapore to London (Singapore Airlines): 13 hours
Sheeeeeit... when I take a ~7 hour flight from DC to London or Paris, I sleep for at least 2-3 hours of it! Take a nap! Quake will still be there when you wake up!
Are they saying we can only use the broadband to look at web pages? wtf??
Errr... I think they've been more or less saying that for a while. That's certainly the impression you get if you ask them if you can do anything else.
Ask Comcast if you can set up your own nice little low-bandwidth mail server to take advantage of that static IP and domain name you got.
You want to know what the benefit is? Let me give you an example:
Do you get cable/satellite TV? Have you ever gone for any length of time without it? I didn't get cable until I was about 10 years old. I was perfectly content before that, watching local saturday morning cartoons, watching local network sitcoms like Who's the Boss, etc. Then around 10 or 11, I got cable, and discovered the joys of USA's Cartoon Express (and now, we have a whole Cartoon Network!), and found a whole world of other programming on those 40 or so channels (at the time). Not to mention all those wonderful movies on the premium channels we got for free as a sign-up bonus (back when I was 11 or so, I was more easily amused. Or maybe Showtime sucks now. At least Skinemax is still living up to its name...). I got to watch TV shows that actually stimulate, rather than sedate, the mind! Then, after a couple years, my family decided that they didn't really watch all those channels, and we could save a little chunk of change by ditching cable, so we did. We went back to watching drivel like Who's the Boss, and OMFG it sucked! It lasted about 6 months before my parents broke and got cable again. What's the moral to this story, you may ask? Local programming, like broadcast TV and radio, is necessarily limited. Niche markets, on a local scale, are not generally worth catering to. Sure, local programming is interesting for curiosity's sake when it's not your own local area, or for keeping grounded in your local world, which is all fine and good, but it certainly does NOT bring you the best the media has to offer. Generally, they cater to the lowest common denominator, and odds are, in your area, that's pretty damn low (at least compared to the average Slashdot-Intellectual).
Is cable perfect? Of course not. It's necessarily limited in bandwidth, and therefore you DO get some of that lowest-common-denominator effect (HOW many f***ing times a day is that Emeril loser on Food TV? ok, bad example, since he owns a bunch of it, but still. And how many Turner networks do I really need? Especially since Discovery took all their good shows on put them on specialty networks, like Discovery Wings, Discovery Science, and Discovery Health, leaving bassically NOTHING good on Plain Ol' Discovery Channel, the only one I get). Sorry for the rant. At any rate, sure, cable's not perfect (leaving the door open for DBS and digital cable), but ye gods! have you seen broadcast TV lately? One or two good shows a week, and everything else melts your brain!
Now imagine how that could apply to radio. I live in the DC metro area. We have a lot of radio. I think we have something like 20 FM stations. I don't like a single damn one of them. I think the two modern rock stations sync their (bad) playlists just to piss me off. The 3 "Mix" stations play an interesting "mix" of decent music and crap... heavy on the crap. Country stations are right out, as are the hip-hop/R&B/whatever you want to call 'em stations. Occasionally I get a jonesin' for some classical, some nice Beethoven or Wagner, but our classical stations just play lilting little fairy-dust stuff whenever I turn them on. Jazz is totally hit-or-miss when I hit the public/college stations (maybe one good song a month, due mostly to the fact that they only play jazz maybe 2 hrs a day, and only when I'm not listening to the radio). One thing I can count on is the morning shows. WHFS's morning show will, at least once every single weekday morning, talk about Fred Durst. And that's only in the 45 minutes or so I listen, out of, what, 4 hours they're on? The Mix stations have ok morning shows, and that's really the only thing I listen to the radio for anymore. Much like broadcast TV... local news is really all it seems to be good for anymore. All the good shows on local broadcast channels are made by the NETWORKS which probably only broadcast ANYTHING because not everyone has cable/DBS yet.
Why listen to someone else's playlists at all? Well, I have about 45 hours' worth of MP3s here at work, and maybe another 100 hours on CD at home that I haven't ripped yet, and I get SICK of my music. I'll go a month or so just loving the crap out of my mixes (MD player for the morning commute) and then go a month without listening to a single thing I already own. That month is painful, because I'm reduced to listening to that locally broadcast shite.
I welcome satellite radio (and I get especially creamy at the thought of what will replace it!).
-j
If you want to kill the Xbox instead of buying one and never getting one game... take your $300 and pick up a GameCube with Super Smash Brothers and Pikmin.
But then you don't have a relatively sweet piece of portable PC hardware, just BEGGING to become a truly cool car-mounted DVD/CD/MP3 player, GPS navigator, and all-around digital assistant. For $300. I think that's about the coolest use for an Xbox there is -- screw that Tribes-wannabe "Halo" game... think mobile computing! Of course, I suppose you could hack a GameCube into a similar state, but you'd need a lot more custom hardware and software, methinks (since it's not already PC-based). Plus, you'd be screwing Nintendo out of software royalties. Nintendo was, after all, a surrogate mother for many of us. You don't want to screw our mother like that -- it's bad karma. Microsoft, on the other hand, is our surrogate obnoxious rich uncle who thinks he owns the world and that your nose should be up his @$$ 24x7. Screwing him is GOOD karma. All in all, buying an Xbox to hack, and never buying any Xbox games is definitely good for the soul.
Err.. who the h3ll isn't allowed to wear a headset at work? I'd never get anything done if I couldn't talk on the cell phone hands-free. If you're in a business meeting or some other situation where you really shouldn't be taking calls, then why would you be on a call while trying to take notes? The only problem I can see is that if you're in a call and trying to write something down (such as directions the person on the phone is giving you), it might be tricky to take notes on the same device, but I'm assuming the developers have worked around that problem and made it simple to use the PDA and phone functions simultaneously.
Can you afford 5 different drills to work those 5 different bits? Is the ~$400 worth saving that hour of work? I don't have room to place a table saw, let alone a planer and a jointer, so I get by with a circular saw and a hand-planer when its woodworking time. I carry a Leatherman around because I can't realistically carry a big pair of pliers, a can opener, bottle opener, 4 different screwdrivers, a utility knife, and scissors around the various buildings I support. There's no question that I'd rather use real tools, but as the gun guys say, "When you need a gun, a
Then again, ragging on people for thinking differently seems very popular with those who are more interested in looking intelligent than being intelligent.
I guess we know which type you are.
By the same token, ragging on people for ragging on other people is always popular with those more interested in looking superior than being superior, so I guess we know which type I am.
I bet that's what they used to think about burning coal and oil.
All sarcasm aside, where did you hear this? Is that taking into account the government subsidies and tax breaks? I would be absolutely shocked (and excited) if the cost of equipment, maintenance, and implementation of wind (or solar) power generation could equal fossil-fuel power generation over time.
The way I see it, the simple fact is that you can not extract energy from a system without altering the system. If you're (not directed to anyone in particular) not willing to destroy anything, well... I would say you'd better just kill yourself now, but then you'd be destroying the habitat of countless microbes currently residing in your body. However, you certainly can't go on living, because your home is taking up space where millions of other beings could be living. Your immune system is killing off hordes of innocent virii, bacteria, and fungi every day, just trying to eke out a living in your body. If you don't care about the plants even the most die-hard vegan kills directly, what about their effects higher up the foodchain? How many widdle bunnies starve to death when they could've been fed on the aforementioned vegans' breakfast of lettuce?
You simply can not live (or die) without altering your environment. This applies to all aspects of life, including energy conversaion/usage. The best we can hope for is to improve our efficiency and reduce our impact on the systems we know about. After all, if we start pulling all our energy from the wind, what will that do to weather patterns? How many plants would die off if we started sucking up all the sunlight? I imagine Greenpeace and the ELF will be happy to tell you about the impacts of hydroelectric plants. Okay, so maybe we shouldn't try to pull enery out of the earth's systems. Maybe we should go extraterrestrial, and build a Dyson Sphere or something. Great, until we discover what the rest of the universe was doing with that energy we just nabbed. The alernative? I don't see one. Simply do the best we can.
No, I'd rather not live in such a world, thank you.
We have seen purly computer generated/AI "art" before, imagine having to listen to it at 300Db
If it were at 300dB, you wouldn't be *listening* to it for very long.
Steal. verb. To take (the property of another) without right or permission. (American Heritage Dictionary, 4th ed).
It is reasonable to assume that for one's act to be theft, one must deprive the property owner of value to which they have all rights, correct? If you rob a bank, mug someone, steal a car, etc., you're very clearly taking value from the proper owner. What if you sell bootleg CDs at a flea market? Slightly less clear cut, since those CDs were created by you, instead of a record company, but I think we can all agree that the money for those bootlegs ought to be going to those who own the music on them, and that it more or less constitutes theft.
HOWEVER:
Does "trading" bootlegged music constitute theft? From a legal standpoint, yes, it apparently does. How many of us really care about the law? Well, we really only care it we get caught. Don't believe me? Think you're more righteous than that? How long has it been since you turned onto or off of a public road without using your turn signal? Ever come to a rolling stop at a stop sign? I bet just about everyone here has, at one point or another, taken a prescription medication and put it in something other than its original, labelled container, or given such medication to someone else (letting your kids use that left-over prescription cortizone cream when they get poison ivy, for example). Therefore, what are we REALLY worried about here? The MORALITY of theft. Is it really theft if you haven't hurt (in this case, deprived the rightful owner of value or property) anyone (whether they know it or not)? Morally, I say no.
But you're listening to music/playing games/writing papers/blah blah blah without paying the author his/her rightful ammount!
The flaw in this argument is the assumption that the copyright owner has some right to the money in my pocket, even his his or her product is offal. Let's take a hypothetical person (we'll call him Hyp) with a hypothetical computer and a hypothetical T3. Hyp has $1,000 in his bank account. Hyp, one night, discovers the joy of Napster. Hyp thinks of all sorts of music he used to listen to a few years back on the radio, which they don't play anymore (since radio stations are slaves to the music industry and won't play anything the RIAA doesn't have a hard-on to sell). Hyp doesn't want to actually BUY that music. Hyp thinks that Offspring's "Come out and Play" was kinda fun to listen to, but the rest of the CD was trash, and would sooner rape his own dog than lay out $18 for it. However, he DOES have it stuck in his head, and WOULD like to hear it again.
Pop quiz: Does the owner of OFfspring's Come Out and Play have absolutely ANY pre-existing right to the money in Hyp's bank account? Correct answer: No. Does said owner have any MORAL right to said money? Correct answer: No. Said owner would only have a MORAL right to that money if Hyp thought the product was worth the set price. Hyp does not. Hyp kinda wants to hear the song, but wouldn't piss on the CD if it was on fire. Therefore, morally, the owner of the copyright has no right to, and will not get, Hyp's money. It's a solid fact. Hyp's not gonna pay it, no way, no how. That having been said, why the hell shouldn't Hyp be able to hear it anyway? Will it cost Copyright Owner anything if he does? Only if he physically steals a CD, or downloads it off of Copyright Owner's servers, or otherwise consumes some of Copyright Owner's resources. If Hyp goes out on the net and downloads a copy of Come Out and Play, he has hurt absolutely no one, and is therefore morally innocent.
Situation number two. Hyp, much like myself, went through a period where he loved music to hell and back, and would buy a CD for one great song. He sometimes found that the rest of the CD was also great, and his $18 was well-spent. Far more often, however, he found that the rest of the CD was trash. HE wasn't able to discover this before he purchased it, because the RIAA doesn't WANT you to hear all those other songs before you buy it. The RIAA would much rather you toss your dollars their way and discover on your own whether or not the rest of the album sucks. Furthermore, all of the record stores which used to allow customers to come in and listen to any CD all the way through before buying it have all gone out of business in his area. Hyp has no option to listen to a CD before he buys it unless he borrows the CD from a friend, or bootlegs it. Hyp believes the RIAA is scamming his ass with this tactic, and morally, Hyp is correct, although it is actually common practice in the business world. Thus the phrase, "Buyer beware." Hyp discovers one day that out of his 600 CD collection, he really only listens to about 20 on a regular basis. Those 20 were definitely worth the $18 he spent on them. Another 75 or so hold two or three songs Hyp likes to throw on mixes and listen to at least once or twice a year. Those are borderline cases, but generally he does not regret having bought them. Hyp then looks at the roughly 500 remaining CDs and realizes he doesn't like them anymore. He bought them when he was caught up in whatever hook the artist had thrown into the song, and when he eventually developed a tolerance to its siren-like effect, he realised it was really over-hyped trash. $9,000 (500x$18. I don't know how much you pay for CDs, but when I walk into Tower, and walk out with 1 CD, I generally walk out with $18 less in my wallet, after taxes) worth of over-hyped trash. Hyp looks at his ratty car, and realized he was more or less scammed out of most of a NEW car. Hyp takes those 500 cds to the used record store. The used record store only wants about 250 of 'em, and will only pay about $200. Hyp has lost roughly $8800 and gained a few months of listening pleasure. Hyp vows never to buy another CD until he's sure it has "Staying power" and is worth the $15-20 he'll spend on it. Hyp chooses Napster for his previewing needs. Hyp discovers new bands, like "Jump Little Children" and "Conehead Buddha", that he never would have heard on the radio. A month later, still loving their quality music, Hyp buys their indy CDs online for about $10 a piece. Did Hyp commit an act of theft? LEgally, yes. Morally, hell no. He brought more money almost directly to the artists than they would have gotten had Hyp NOT bootlegged music (because, if he hadn't, he never would've heard them or known he liked them). Hyp downloads the new Eminem CD. Hyp thinks, alright, but lets see how it sticks. A week later, Hyp deletes it, 'cause he's realized it's trash. Has Hyp committed another act of theft? LEgally, yes. He illegally copied copyrighted music for his own gain. Morally? No. He discovered that said CD was trash, and refused to pay for trash. The recording infrastructure has NO RIGHT to Hyp's money unless he chooses to buy their products. Hyp chooses not to buy trash, and luckily, through the use of bootlegging, has found a reliable mechanism for pre-purchase trash detection.
Morally, at the end of the day, Hyp is not stealing. Morally, Hyp has refused to allow the RIAA and associated industry to rape him in the ass.