Have a listen to this lame old mp3 of Leadbelly...it was about the message
Thanks for that I enjoyed it, but it is not an example of what I was talking about. There is very little high frequency content in this simple recording. He wasn't concerned about how it was recorded, because he was a musician. Musicians don't care about the technology, they care about the sound. Ask a musician how their music sounds as mp3's, because if it's about the message and not the actual _listening_to_the_music_, why don't we just compress everything down to the lyrics and put it through a rss reader and save even more bytes.
I actually have some old zephyr microphones (I think 1950's vintage) and they produce that characteristic midrange sound because that was the limit of the technology then. The limit of the technology in the 30's is probably well within mp3 capabilities to reproduce without screwing it up too badly.
I have little doubt that when I put this piece on my spectrum analyser it will reveal very little high frequency energy, but with the expertise I've gained, I can tell from listening that I can't hear a drum kit. My OP,
low and midrange sounds ok, but the high end sounds so annoying and obvious that listening for problems in the low and mid-range is irrelavent.
Music is only marginally about the medium.
That is subjective, I say the same things to the old audiophile's who think that valve amplifiers on their stereo system is a good idea, cause it sounds more "warm". But what they are doing is introducing third harmonic distortions into the end product, not what the musician or producer intended for you to hear. Fine if you know thats what you want but as my OP said,
that's the choice the listener has to make
psycho-acoustic makes the choice for you.
Itchy ears indeed! Perhaps MrKaos should stop sitting on them.
How clever, but unneccessary! Even by sitting on my itchy ears I would expect an attenuation of 10-20db of high frequency energy, and this recording would still sound close. If you try taking off your asshat, you might regain the ability to hear the high frequency ranges I'm talking about, can you hear the absence of a drumkit or other high frequency sources in the recording?
"he other thing is the capacity of flash devices keeps increasing and the fact that most car stereos have usb port I wonder if mp3 is useful any more,"
Think about that a little more.
Did you actually read my post of just pick out the bit you could mindlessly criticise? I said,
I find the convenience of mp3's has been useful for work-out's and in the car where there is enough background noise to absorb the destruction of some audio artifacts.
Did you actually think before you pressed the submit button or were you just looking for a way to be objectionable?
FM quality is worse then mp3. except for the lowest mp3s.
yeah yeah, I know. You have magic ears.
Actually, from your highly subjective statement it's plain to see you don't know jack, jack. 22.5khz is half the sampling rate of a cd, which is approximately (did you read that in my OP) the bandwidth of FM radio. When I say FM radio, I don't mean your poorly tuned in radio on your crappy hardly grounded car stereo with the antenna falling off, I mean benchmark FM radio reception. The type where I can tell that they are playing a mp3 as the source material as opposed to a CD. Not because my ears are magic, but because I've spent the time comparing source material vs cd quality material vs mp3 material, and to me, it's obvious. It may not be obvious to you because you're an amateur listener of music.
"I'm an amateur producer of music" You said it, bub... Amateur
Well perhaps you are trying to be objectionable. You know maybe there is another principle at work here. Where if you give any qualifying information about yourself in an attempt to share a point of view, the chances of encountering a troll becomes more likely the more information you give away.
Did I mention that I'm a Professional Troll flusher?
I'm an amateur producer of music and I find the comparison of mp3's to wav's or cd's similar to comparing low resolution screens to high resolution screens. I find the convenience of mp3's has been useful for work-out's and in the car where there is enough background noise to absorb the destruction of some audio artifacts.
To me there seems to be some problems with the psycho-acoustic models that are being used for mp3, because those artifacts make my ears feel itchy. To me it sounds low resolution, especially cybals and other high frequency audio. It sounds pixelated and annoying, low and midrange sounds ok, but the high end sounds so annoying and obvious that listening for problems in the low and mid-range is irrelavent.
The other thing is the capacity of flash devices keeps increasing and the fact that most car stereos have usb port I wonder if mp3 is useful any more, is there a point to having a massive music capacity, when you can have slightly less quantity and much better quality especially when the capability of technology increases. A 4Gb flash is enough for roughly 6 cd's at full resolution, or 12 at half resolution (approx fm radio) without lossy compression such as mp3.
Another thing is the psycho-acoustic model, why is the ambient components of music not important, who decided that? Those seemingly redundant components of music are very interesting components of the piece, the echo, reverberation and some harmonic components are the character of the music. With all due repect to engineers, they are not musicians or producers. Writing and producing music is not a science, it's an art. Engineers involved in the production of equipment to produce music are constantly striving to create equipment that is capable of accuratley recording the musicians and producers intentions. Sampling rates on the recording side are increasing, 96khz sampling rates at 24bit are common place for recording and many other technological advancements, but the use of the technology, placement of microphones, type of microphones is similar to the way a painter uses paintbrushes.
I would never listen to mp3's on my home hi-fi. High-fidelity music is a joy to listen to, and high resolution hi-fi sound is astounding. To draw the oposite analagy, at what point does lowering the resolution of a picture make it unviewable? It's the same with sound and that's the choice the listener has to make.
While I think this is really cool and I want to build one, recently the news reported people outside airports shining lasers into pilots eye's whilst landing a 767 with almost 200 passengers on board. This is probably not a good thing to do to a pilot landing an aircraft and would encourge the more technically adept on/. not to provide these to dolts.
1999 AN10 is also purported to be in the earth's general vicinity around this time (2027) http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news017.html, looks like it will be a busy time for space agencies everywhere.
Even if the asteriod misses it's supposed to back in our general vicinity around 2038, so it would probably be prudent to keep an eye on it.
The electronic's industry offsets the "cost" of their externalities onto the community, the government is effectivley subsidising the cost of handling waste products by sanctioning release (by burning) of toxic chemicals. We either pay for the externality via toxic pollution or increased price of products to cater for the waste re-processing. For example if industry had to pay for the damage caused by releasing these chemicals then perhaps recovering resources like Coltan http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coltan from that waste would become viable. Instead the risk of litigation is considered.
Surely it would make sense to recover resources from the waste products when they are gathered in one place, especially if you have sufficient volume of e-waste.
I agree with you in principle eldavojohn but we don't have to look much further that kerberos and smb to see how M$ has "leveraged" open standards and then Pwned them for their own gain, i.e. Embrace and Extend.
I've been in the position you are in where I gave M$ a go, only to find that they again acted in a way that justified being cynical and suspicious of their motives, I see the same thing now. If Microsoft were sincere why don't they just open source the code base of Windows 95 or Windows 2000, which in reality that is the kind of thing they would need to do to end criticism, and if Sun can do it with Solaris...
No, M$ is well past the point of trust, even if their employee's motives are pure there is little doubt the coporate machine will find a way to corrupt the original intentions, bend it to M$'s advantage to the detriment of all other parties.
M$'s practice of bullying their employees shows in they way they bully the entire IT market and treat everyone else with contempt. It's a pityfull state of affairs for a so-called "market leader", still, you reap what you sow.
and not indicative of a big trend in the general population.
Probably, but I suspect everyone, everywhere else in the world loves windows. I've given enough QA for M$ today, without revealing methods, suffice to say my next step is to increase volume and then perfect my method before I share it. Nothing wrong with me making the other side of that bell curve steeper, eh.
That announcement isn't made until after the king is dead.
And when their Ubuntu breaks, will the three R's be any different?
yes, it's spelt ssh.
I was talking to a non-techie, and he was complaining about the non-native speakers that he could barely understand when he called support. He asked me what I do when my machine breaks. I told him I fix it myself.
I support the boxes I install so there is no language problems. I've still found it really hard to get decent windows support when I have (rarely) needed it.
I agree with your sentiment - but new linux user's expectations are lower because of their experiences with windows. I don't mean this to be as provocative as it sounds, but as an example, I have a busy 67 yo who has been using Fedora core 2, which I recently upgraded to FC5. It does everything he needs it to and the upgrade was the only support he needed. They don't know that they have to delete and compress the old files on their XP box, or defragment the hard drive every so often, they just sit there wondering why their web pages take so long to load even thought they have a super dooper broadband connection.
Some of them are just utterly stoked that they don't have to re-enter the activation key every couple of months because 'something' broke (invoking the third R) but most of all, when they realise they don't have to worry about virus software so much any more - they are completely blown away and are wondering why they've had to put up with virus scans slowing down their computer once a week, paying for and downloading new virus signatures, it's just not an issue for them anymore.
I agree that Vista is not a compelling upgrade, but people will get it when they buy a new machine. And new devices will be sure to support it. And so it will be the path of least resistance.
My most recent Linux installs are on new machines, with the users ASKING for linux to be installed (I've been building a install server and kickstart profiles to deal with the unexpected volume). At the other end the users don't want to throw away a perfectly good 5 year old vaio when they don't have the budget for a new machine to do web browsing, email and word processing. I agree that new devices support vista, but I don't think that the M$ driver certification makes it a sure thing any more, even less so that a device will continue to work if certification is withdrawn because there is some sort of security problem with the device. You just don't have that assurance in windows anymore, especially if it becomes a hassle for a device vendor that wants to focus on their new products.
A friend of mine, I'd call her a "average computer user", was asking me (she knew I worked in IT) why power users (her mum in this case) even bothered upgrading windows? I was thinking of my answer (cpu capacity, memory capacity - access to better resources, upgraded software etc), when she said...
"My mum upgraded and it's exactly the same, except now it's got 'rounded corners', big deal it's the same thing except the 'corners are round'!!!"
I was quietly suprised, but she went on..
"My mum has gone throught the same hassle everytime she decides to upgrade her computer, she spends a whole lot of money, a whole lot of time and in the end the result is the same thing, except 'the corners are rounder'".
That is the perspective of a average computer user with no technical interest, I simply agreed with her and said I had noticed pretty much the same thing.
For as long as I can remember M$ have underdelivered. I don't even support windows users anymore, it's simply not worth the effort, if I fix it, it will break again subject to the three R's of windows;
Reboot the machine.
Reload the application.
Reinstall the Operating System.
I can charge them for it, but I usually just make suggestions on how to fix it so they have to go through the hassle themselves, after all it was their choice.
Nowadays, I just give people a Ubuntu live install to try, I tell them it will probably be a bit slow running of the CD or DVD and to focus on the way it works rather than the speed. I think that, despite the fragmentation in the Linux distribution's, I continue to notice a trend of installing more Linux, either Fedora or Ubuntu. This year I've actually had people asking me for linux installs, I haven't had any of these lay-users wanting to go back to windows even though I give them the option to. In reality, I think it comes down to this,
You can fool some of the people all of the time, or all of the people some of the time, but you can't fool all of the people all of the time.
I don't think this simple peice of wisdom factors into M$'s business plan.
80%, thats fantastic, maybe thats why Sweden is not involved in a war that most of their citizens don't want to be involved in. I wonder if my country would be if 80% of the population cared who was in government.
I don't know what it is like there, maybe one day we will have participation rates that high, you are very lucky not to either have to deal with apathy towards voting, or manipulation of the electorate that makes it difficult for people to participate or actually makes people think they can make a difference if they do vote.
jeeeez, ok I guess I didn't make myself clear, my bad. I know it's not the same thing but I think it would be a good thing
and over the internet voting would be a great step forward
future tense.
If they did use the Internet they'd probably be like "zOMG hackers!!!" and actually implement some encryption algo's that could potentially make voting more secure then ever before.
yeah, I know, it's probably a pipe dream, a demiarch built on pgp and pda's.
How does having a touch screen instead of a punch card make a difference?
By allowing more volume, reducing lines, decreasing the amount of people involved in the voting process thus allowing better use of resources to increase the amount of polling stations making it easier for people to participate. So not just the voter component, thats the end result. btw I'm not in america so no punch cards for me.
(no, "electronic voting" is not "internet voting"... the problems there are a whole different kettle of wardheelers)
I didn't say it was, I said "over the internet voting would be a great step forward".
Having seen how paper ballots are conducted it's harder to imagine how that system is manipulated, however the drawback is that fewer people can participate. AFAIR the voting rates in western countires are lower than 20%, which is not a good thing. It's not good because the fewer people who participate in an election, the easier it is to affect te outcome by the influence of "swinging" voters.
The good thing about electronic voting is it allows more voters, and over the internet voting would be a great step forward however, as electronic voting is in it's infancy, it is still easy to manipulate the outcome of an election (as we have seen recently). It's essential that electronic voting systems are hardened.
More citizens involved in the running of 1st world countries is essential, because it's not left vs right anymore, it's the masses vs the power elite (or plutocracy or ogliarch what ever you want to call it), vested interests and other smiley gladhands.
Maybe the vote held was manipulated, but with a higher rate of participation it may not have mattered. What it clearly illustrates is the higher the level of apathy towards a vote the easier it is for a determined set of individuals to affect the outcome. The bottom line is a country is only as free as the amount of 'citizens' participating in it's democracy.
Apple is just betting on where the mass of the market is at the moment. Most people will have 32bit XP for a while so why waste energy on "64bit windows" apps until demand materialises, and Apple will probably reason "since so many other things don't work under 64 MS product why should you be suprised that this dosen't, you should have bought a Mac anyway".
As irritating as this must be to all the MS fanbouys out there, it's intensley amusing that Apple has "organised" thier priorities the same way MS do, they know they have a product there is demand for, so will use their market power the same way the MS does.
I'll just be happy to wait and watch this unfold over what really is an accessory, few people here will be able to take advantage of 64bit or ever use all the feature of the phone. Personally I think this one is a winner http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/smartphones/fics-linuxb ased-smartphone-213016.php but thats just me, and since it's open source based, it will probably even work with vista;-)
You have some very good points. Gates is commercially adept and I think he sees what the Micro$oft board sees as they slip down the end of the marketing bell curve into revenue oblivion. It will be interesting (ok, nail biting) to see if GPL3 can adequatley counter the M$ standard policy of embrace and extend.
The bottom line is if it's hard for business to run on M$'s "64bit" platform, what's the point of persisting, it's already difficult to support. Business dosen't want to spend so much money on keeping something as simple as spreadsheets wordprocessors and email clients going, and it's M$'s own doing through the BSA. Had software asset management not become such a big deal through the threat of litigation, contract compliance and snap infrastructure audits, the underbelly of M$'s infrastructure cost model would not have come under scrutiny by the management of so many businesses.
Questions like why so much money is spent on virus software and the economic's of how PC's are retired long before analogous computing infrastructure has reached the end of it's useful life would not be scutinised by company accountants.
The carrot will be interoperability with Microsoft's stacks, the stick will be that wallet of "infringements".
Micro$oft improved WINE, without the hassles that windows presents when deployed in enterprise environments, I can see the ad's now "Microsoft extends business application lifespan, and brings value to your business's Linux investment - ask us how". I'm sure there will be a whole lot of small IT shops that have captured some vertical market leaned on by microsoft to play thier way as they migrate windows based application to linux. M$ won't guarantee all those 16bit legacy applications will work anymore under vista, suddenly Linux looks viable to those markets.
Above all, Microsoft wants to make life hard for IBM: its fear and loathing of IBM underpins its strategy in the Linux space.
Because M$ knows that IBM knows that the M$ infrastructure model costs too much. IBM can't stand M$ because they HAVE to purchase so many Windows licences, anti virus licences, office licences for their own operations and the clients they service. IBM know they can't derive the revenue streams with PC's that they can with other computing infrastructure and that profitability end's up as another companies revenue, mainly M$. Meanwhile IBM quietly develop's their own Linux desktop.
One, it has moved too soon and too aggressively, probably scared by the GPLv3, and has created serious anger with those large firms it's supposed to be gaining as "Linux customers".
Second, it is playing games with an industry - the patent industry - that is more evil even than Microsoft. By feeding the trolls, it's sowing the seeds of its own departure from the software business.
And good riddance, they're like Novell before TCP/IP, but so much more belligerant with their client base. They have been squeezing business for soooo long, and for what, a platform that play's video games, I mean, we have been talking about a Personal Computer all this time.
Three, it is forcing IBM to move to action against Microsoft
They have been shadow boxing for years, but IBM won't engage them no matter how many bloody noses they get from M$ unless M$ becomes openly confrontational. IBM has alot of business strategists that want to shake that M$ revenue tree, they know deploying linux into business will be a MASSIVE source of growth, linux is a perfect fit for the IBM service model. While Micro$oft fight IBM, IBM fight's it's own bureaucracy.
Red Hat will, IMO, eventually make a deal with Microsoft, as will Canonical.
Not willingly, kicking and screaming maybe. I think they both recognise the potential for service revenue is far greater without M$ involvement than with it and next to impossible without IBM lending them validity in the marketplace. If the push comes from anywhere it will be from Red Hat's investors.
Cheers, I'll be reading over your article after I get some sleep, ttfn.
There could be good reasons for having these things on him, other than flight risk. If he was expecting arrest, having the $9k in cash on him would keep that money locked away as "personal effects" until his release. That would be a place, I suspect, legally protected in some ways that a bank might not protect him -- such as protection from creditors. (and he did have major financial issues, so that would be a very likely reason) Of course, there is now the potential for thievery by prison employees.
This is a very sane peice of analysis. It totally makes sense and for some reason rings true to reiser behaviour so far. Since everything here is speculation, I'll speculate.
A close friend of mine's had his girlfriend usurped from him in the same way. A "friend" fed her drugs, got her addicted and then moved in on her. It was bad, and there were no kids or money involved. When is that ever appropriate? "Stergeon" has admitted to killing before, S&M, carving things into his arm, HELLO *Freak-alert*, once that line has been crossed once and he has gotten away with it what's to stop him doing it again. Do you think a guy like this would give a fuck about code, how many of you coders out there have dived so deeply into a project that it absorbs all attention. This is what's happened to reiser, he couldn't see what was going on around him, his focus was elsewhere, he was a target.
No this reeks of set-up, I don't know why, but my guts are saying that reiser didn't do it.
If any of you encountered people addicted to MMDH? they don't process emotions very well, they forget who/what is important in thier lives - they can be manipulated, especially if Stergeon was in a position of trust. What sort of drugs was he into? Born again, my ass. I've met people like this - they will do or say anything.
I know some bikers and they say, fuck with thier head, then fuck with thier finances, then fuck with thier life.
What if that last conversation reiser had with nina was "I don't give a flying fuck what you do anymore, just stay away from me and my kids and get out of my life.
No, I think reiser realised to late he was being set-up,betrayed/used/manipulated and went into damage control mode, maybe he didn't want to beleive his friend was that much of a freak and when the police followed him it fed his paranoia/confusion even more, he visits russia for god sake, maybe he borrowed money from the russian mafia, it's common knowledge they have access to former KGB infrastrusture/contacts.
What if Stergeon set Reiser up for nina's murder and reiser realised to late what was going on, but not late enough for to get rid of the suspicion, but just enough to mess up thier plans. What if reisers kids were being threatened - and reiser knows?
And when asked about the car seat reiser talked about the FS source code, what sort of frame of mode was this guy when he wrote these comments... I mean some of them seem superflous..
Why don't we get the coal industry to fund it. It's probably not a good idea to burn carbon dioxide in our atmosphere, so if the coal industry pitched in to help with the development of carbon nanotubes, which I think need to be made at temperature anyway, we could have a viable way to continue, and perhaps even grow, an industry that has served us since the industrial revolution began. Through it's evolution, the coal industry could make a positive contribution to human society into the future and remain commercially viable (disclaimer: I am not affiliated with the coal industry in any way). Maybe it sounds radical, but bare with me...
My plan to terraform Mars...
1. Development of carbon sequestration methods through use of carbon nanaotube based building materials (new types of buildings, bridges etc)
2. Development and Deployment of a Space Elevator, deployment of more space elevators
3. Mining of brown and black coal, transported and hoisted into space.
4. Coal "nuggets" several thousand metric tons thrown at Mars by our space elevators and guided towards mars so it can burn up in the atmosphere.
5. Nugget size/construction adjusted as Mars atmosphere thickens and heats up.
6. Mars atmosphere heats and thickens the water/ice melts which also should release more oxygen.
7.Profit!!! (well if I don't add it someone will)
The biggest benefit I can see over the Niven plan is it would not subject Mars to gravitational stresses that crashing Europa (or other celestial bodies) into it would. In addition, since we have known data regarding our own activities wrt burning carbon for fuel, we can make estimations to the volumes of this and other gasses we could use to warm and heat Mars.
Mining is used to making long term investments in infrastructure anyway that take a long time to generate returns, and whilst I don't know if manufacturing carbon nanotubes from the exhaust if coal power plants is even viable it could provide enough incentive for them to get involved. Well thats my idea I thought I'd put out there for the slashdot audience to kick around.
Slashdot Mirror
I actually have some old zephyr microphones (I think 1950's vintage) and they produce that characteristic midrange sound because that was the limit of the technology then. The limit of the technology in the 30's is probably well within mp3 capabilities to reproduce without screwing it up too badly.
I have little doubt that when I put this piece on my spectrum analyser it will reveal very little high frequency energy, but with the expertise I've gained, I can tell from listening that I can't hear a drum kit. My OP,
low and midrange sounds ok, but the high end sounds so annoying and obvious that listening for problems in the low and mid-range is irrelavent.
That is subjective, I say the same things to the old audiophile's who think that valve amplifiers on their stereo system is a good idea, cause it sounds more "warm". But what they are doing is introducing third harmonic distortions into the end product, not what the musician or producer intended for you to hear. Fine if you know thats what you want but as my OP said,
that's the choice the listener has to make
psycho-acoustic makes the choice for you.
How clever, but unneccessary! Even by sitting on my itchy ears I would expect an attenuation of 10-20db of high frequency energy, and this recording would still sound close. If you try taking off your asshat, you might regain the ability to hear the high frequency ranges I'm talking about, can you hear the absence of a drumkit or other high frequency sources in the recording?Did you actually read my post of just pick out the bit you could mindlessly criticise? I said,
I find the convenience of mp3's has been useful for work-out's and in the car where there is enough background noise to absorb the destruction of some audio artifacts.
Did you actually think before you pressed the submit button or were you just looking for a way to be objectionable?
Actually, from your highly subjective statement it's plain to see you don't know jack, jack. 22.5khz is half the sampling rate of a cd, which is approximately (did you read that in my OP) the bandwidth of FM radio. When I say FM radio, I don't mean your poorly tuned in radio on your crappy hardly grounded car stereo with the antenna falling off, I mean benchmark FM radio reception. The type where I can tell that they are playing a mp3 as the source material as opposed to a CD. Not because my ears are magic, but because I've spent the time comparing source material vs cd quality material vs mp3 material, and to me, it's obvious. It may not be obvious to you because you're an amateur listener of music. Well perhaps you are trying to be objectionable. You know maybe there is another principle at work here. Where if you give any qualifying information about yourself in an attempt to share a point of view, the chances of encountering a troll becomes more likely the more information you give away.Did I mention that I'm a Professional Troll flusher?
Have a nice day.
To me there seems to be some problems with the psycho-acoustic models that are being used for mp3, because those artifacts make my ears feel itchy. To me it sounds low resolution, especially cybals and other high frequency audio. It sounds pixelated and annoying, low and midrange sounds ok, but the high end sounds so annoying and obvious that listening for problems in the low and mid-range is irrelavent.
The other thing is the capacity of flash devices keeps increasing and the fact that most car stereos have usb port I wonder if mp3 is useful any more, is there a point to having a massive music capacity, when you can have slightly less quantity and much better quality especially when the capability of technology increases. A 4Gb flash is enough for roughly 6 cd's at full resolution, or 12 at half resolution (approx fm radio) without lossy compression such as mp3.
Another thing is the psycho-acoustic model, why is the ambient components of music not important, who decided that? Those seemingly redundant components of music are very interesting components of the piece, the echo, reverberation and some harmonic components are the character of the music. With all due repect to engineers, they are not musicians or producers. Writing and producing music is not a science, it's an art. Engineers involved in the production of equipment to produce music are constantly striving to create equipment that is capable of accuratley recording the musicians and producers intentions. Sampling rates on the recording side are increasing, 96khz sampling rates at 24bit are common place for recording and many other technological advancements, but the use of the technology, placement of microphones, type of microphones is similar to the way a painter uses paintbrushes.
I would never listen to mp3's on my home hi-fi. High-fidelity music is a joy to listen to, and high resolution hi-fi sound is astounding. To draw the oposite analagy, at what point does lowering the resolution of a picture make it unviewable? It's the same with sound and that's the choice the listener has to make.
http://www.news.com.au/adelaidenow/story/0,22606,2 2215301-5005962,00.html
Definately double plus ungood!!!
But then a fighter jet aiming a laser at a car is not good either!!!
Even if the asteriod misses it's supposed to back in our general vicinity around 2038, so it would probably be prudent to keep an eye on it.
The electronic's industry offsets the "cost" of their externalities onto the community, the government is effectivley subsidising the cost of handling waste products by sanctioning release (by burning) of toxic chemicals. We either pay for the externality via toxic pollution or increased price of products to cater for the waste re-processing. For example if industry had to pay for the damage caused by releasing these chemicals then perhaps recovering resources like Coltan http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coltan from that waste would become viable. Instead the risk of litigation is considered.
Surely it would make sense to recover resources from the waste products when they are gathered in one place, especially if you have sufficient volume of e-waste.
I've been in the position you are in where I gave M$ a go, only to find that they again acted in a way that justified being cynical and suspicious of their motives, I see the same thing now. If Microsoft were sincere why don't they just open source the code base of Windows 95 or Windows 2000, which in reality that is the kind of thing they would need to do to end criticism, and if Sun can do it with Solaris...
No, M$ is well past the point of trust, even if their employee's motives are pure there is little doubt the coporate machine will find a way to corrupt the original intentions, bend it to M$'s advantage to the detriment of all other parties.
M$'s practice of bullying their employees shows in they way they bully the entire IT market and treat everyone else with contempt. It's a pityfull state of affairs for a so-called "market leader", still, you reap what you sow.
http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2007/07/14/11838 33843064.html?from=top5
and a video
http://video.aol.com/video-detail/id/1439921521
OR it was because his mobile phone bills were too high, and I know I can relate to that.
Teach em well n let em leed th wa
Show em ll th booty tha possess insyd
Giv em a senz of pryd 2 mak it easyr
Let th chilen's laffter remind uz how we uzd 2 b
Chorus:
Bcuz th graytst luv of ll
Is happz 2 me.....
I'm a little illiterate with my phonetic markdowns, feel free to correct me.
I agree with your sentiment - but new linux user's expectations are lower because of their experiences with windows. I don't mean this to be as provocative as it sounds, but as an example, I have a busy 67 yo who has been using Fedora core 2, which I recently upgraded to FC5. It does everything he needs it to and the upgrade was the only support he needed. They don't know that they have to delete and compress the old files on their XP box, or defragment the hard drive every so often, they just sit there wondering why their web pages take so long to load even thought they have a super dooper broadband connection.
Some of them are just utterly stoked that they don't have to re-enter the activation key every couple of months because 'something' broke (invoking the third R) but most of all, when they realise they don't have to worry about virus software so much any more - they are completely blown away and are wondering why they've had to put up with virus scans slowing down their computer once a week, paying for and downloading new virus signatures, it's just not an issue for them anymore.
My most recent Linux installs are on new machines, with the users ASKING for linux to be installed (I've been building a install server and kickstart profiles to deal with the unexpected volume). At the other end the users don't want to throw away a perfectly good 5 year old vaio when they don't have the budget for a new machine to do web browsing, email and word processing. I agree that new devices support vista, but I don't think that the M$ driver certification makes it a sure thing any more, even less so that a device will continue to work if certification is withdrawn because there is some sort of security problem with the device. You just don't have that assurance in windows anymore, especially if it becomes a hassle for a device vendor that wants to focus on their new products. The king is dead. Long live the King.Thanks, I'll check it out.
"My mum upgraded and it's exactly the same, except now it's got 'rounded corners', big deal it's the same thing except the 'corners are round'!!!"
I was quietly suprised, but she went on..
"My mum has gone throught the same hassle everytime she decides to upgrade her computer, she spends a whole lot of money, a whole lot of time and in the end the result is the same thing, except 'the corners are rounder'".
That is the perspective of a average computer user with no technical interest, I simply agreed with her and said I had noticed pretty much the same thing.
For as long as I can remember M$ have underdelivered. I don't even support windows users anymore, it's simply not worth the effort, if I fix it, it will break again subject to the three R's of windows;
Reboot the machine.
Reload the application.
Reinstall the Operating System.
I can charge them for it, but I usually just make suggestions on how to fix it so they have to go through the hassle themselves, after all it was their choice.
Nowadays, I just give people a Ubuntu live install to try, I tell them it will probably be a bit slow running of the CD or DVD and to focus on the way it works rather than the speed. I think that, despite the fragmentation in the Linux distribution's, I continue to notice a trend of installing more Linux, either Fedora or Ubuntu. This year I've actually had people asking me for linux installs, I haven't had any of these lay-users wanting to go back to windows even though I give them the option to. In reality, I think it comes down to this,
You can fool some of the people all of the time, or all of the people some of the time, but you can't fool all of the people all of the time.
I don't think this simple peice of wisdom factors into M$'s business plan.
I don't know what it is like there, maybe one day we will have participation rates that high, you are very lucky not to either have to deal with apathy towards voting, or manipulation of the electorate that makes it difficult for people to participate or actually makes people think they can make a difference if they do vote.
You are more free than me.
The good thing about electronic voting is it allows more voters, and over the internet voting would be a great step forward however, as electronic voting is in it's infancy, it is still easy to manipulate the outcome of an election (as we have seen recently). It's essential that electronic voting systems are hardened.
More citizens involved in the running of 1st world countries is essential, because it's not left vs right anymore, it's the masses vs the power elite (or plutocracy or ogliarch what ever you want to call it), vested interests and other smiley gladhands.
Maybe the vote held was manipulated, but with a higher rate of participation it may not have mattered. What it clearly illustrates is the higher the level of apathy towards a vote the easier it is for a determined set of individuals to affect the outcome. The bottom line is a country is only as free as the amount of 'citizens' participating in it's democracy.
What if they had a patent/monopoly on a secure operating system?
microsoft tax
My Bad, late night posting.
As irritating as this must be to all the MS fanbouys out there, it's intensley amusing that Apple has "organised" thier priorities the same way MS do, they know they have a product there is demand for, so will use their market power the same way the MS does.
I'll just be happy to wait and watch this unfold over what really is an accessory, few people here will be able to take advantage of 64bit or ever use all the feature of the phone. Personally I think this one is a winner http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/smartphones/fics-linuxb ased-smartphone-213016.php but thats just me, and since it's open source based, it will probably even work with vista ;-)
The bottom line is if it's hard for business to run on M$'s "64bit" platform, what's the point of persisting, it's already difficult to support. Business dosen't want to spend so much money on keeping something as simple as spreadsheets wordprocessors and email clients going, and it's M$'s own doing through the BSA. Had software asset management not become such a big deal through the threat of litigation, contract compliance and snap infrastructure audits, the underbelly of M$'s infrastructure cost model would not have come under scrutiny by the management of so many businesses.
Questions like why so much money is spent on virus software and the economic's of how PC's are retired long before analogous computing infrastructure has reached the end of it's useful life would not be scutinised by company accountants.
Micro$oft improved WINE, without the hassles that windows presents when deployed in enterprise environments, I can see the ad's now "Microsoft extends business application lifespan, and brings value to your business's Linux investment - ask us how". I'm sure there will be a whole lot of small IT shops that have captured some vertical market leaned on by microsoft to play thier way as they migrate windows based application to linux. M$ won't guarantee all those 16bit legacy applications will work anymore under vista, suddenly Linux looks viable to those markets. Because M$ knows that IBM knows that the M$ infrastructure model costs too much. IBM can't stand M$ because they HAVE to purchase so many Windows licences, anti virus licences, office licences for their own operations and the clients they service. IBM know they can't derive the revenue streams with PC's that they can with other computing infrastructure and that profitability end's up as another companies revenue, mainly M$. Meanwhile IBM quietly develop's their own Linux desktop. And good riddance, they're like Novell before TCP/IP, but so much more belligerant with their client base. They have been squeezing business for soooo long, and for what, a platform that play's video games, I mean, we have been talking about a Personal Computer all this time. They have been shadow boxing for years, but IBM won't engage them no matter how many bloody noses they get from M$ unless M$ becomes openly confrontational. IBM has alot of business strategists that want to shake that M$ revenue tree, they know deploying linux into business will be a MASSIVE source of growth, linux is a perfect fit for the IBM service model. While Micro$oft fight IBM, IBM fight's it's own bureaucracy. Not willingly, kicking and screaming maybe. I think they both recognise the potential for service revenue is far greater without M$ involvement than with it and next to impossible without IBM lending them validity in the marketplace. If the push comes from anywhere it will be from Red Hat's investors.Cheers, I'll be reading over your article after I get some sleep, ttfn.
A close friend of mine's had his girlfriend usurped from him in the same way. A "friend" fed her drugs, got her addicted and then moved in on her. It was bad, and there were no kids or money involved. When is that ever appropriate? "Stergeon" has admitted to killing before, S&M, carving things into his arm, HELLO *Freak-alert*, once that line has been crossed once and he has gotten away with it what's to stop him doing it again. Do you think a guy like this would give a fuck about code, how many of you coders out there have dived so deeply into a project that it absorbs all attention. This is what's happened to reiser, he couldn't see what was going on around him, his focus was elsewhere, he was a target.
No this reeks of set-up, I don't know why, but my guts are saying that reiser didn't do it.
If any of you encountered people addicted to MMDH? they don't process emotions very well, they forget who/what is important in thier lives - they can be manipulated, especially if Stergeon was in a position of trust. What sort of drugs was he into? Born again, my ass. I've met people like this - they will do or say anything.
I know some bikers and they say, fuck with thier head, then fuck with thier finances, then fuck with thier life.
What if that last conversation reiser had with nina was "I don't give a flying fuck what you do anymore, just stay away from me and my kids and get out of my life.
No, I think reiser realised to late he was being set-up,betrayed/used/manipulated and went into damage control mode, maybe he didn't want to beleive his friend was that much of a freak and when the police followed him it fed his paranoia/confusion even more, he visits russia for god sake, maybe he borrowed money from the russian mafia, it's common knowledge they have access to former KGB infrastrusture/contacts.
What if Stergeon set Reiser up for nina's murder and reiser realised to late what was going on, but not late enough for to get rid of the suspicion, but just enough to mess up thier plans. What if reisers kids were being threatened - and reiser knows?
And when asked about the car seat reiser talked about the FS source code, what sort of frame of mode was this guy when he wrote these comments... I mean some of them seem superflous..
my 2 cents.
Australia has some e-voting software that is open sourced, http://www.elections.act.gov.au/Elecvote.html also has a link to the source code.
My plan to terraform Mars...
1. Development of carbon sequestration methods through use of carbon nanaotube based building materials (new types of buildings, bridges etc)
2. Development and Deployment of a Space Elevator, deployment of more space elevators
3. Mining of brown and black coal, transported and hoisted into space.
4. Coal "nuggets" several thousand metric tons thrown at Mars by our space elevators and guided towards mars so it can burn up in the atmosphere.
5. Nugget size/construction adjusted as Mars atmosphere thickens and heats up.
6. Mars atmosphere heats and thickens the water/ice melts which also should release more oxygen.
7.Profit!!! (well if I don't add it someone will)
The biggest benefit I can see over the Niven plan is it would not subject Mars to gravitational stresses that crashing Europa (or other celestial bodies) into it would. In addition, since we have known data regarding our own activities wrt burning carbon for fuel, we can make estimations to the volumes of this and other gasses we could use to warm and heat Mars.
Mining is used to making long term investments in infrastructure anyway that take a long time to generate returns, and whilst I don't know if manufacturing carbon nanotubes from the exhaust if coal power plants is even viable it could provide enough incentive for them to get involved. Well thats my idea I thought I'd put out there for the slashdot audience to kick around.
Hey, it might even work!!!!