Would you rather see these penis-compensating morons giving their money to computer-parts makers (which benefits you and I in the form of R&D money) or spending it on something equally as retarded like, oh, 400W halogen headlights, neon running lights, and a muffler that makes their piece of shit Civic sound like a sports car?
They're going to spend their money on stupid shit that makes them feel important anyway, might as well give it to the companies that make things that we'd use as well.
And with laws made for people like him, why do the rest of us Americans vote?
If that kind of shit aggravates you, maybe you should be voting Green Party in any elections you participate in. Consumer rights are a top priority of theirs. They took a significant chunk of the last presidential election, more than a 3rd party has done in quite a while. They are starting to win local elections across the country. If more people stop thinking of them as a wasted vote, you'll see some changes coming round these parts real quick.
I'm thinking this is a move to improve customer relations. They KNOW they have a bad reputation and have alienated many customers. This kind of decision seems uncharacteristic of them, given prior behavior, so it's logical to conclude that they're trying to get business back from their competitors who are more willing to sell you out to the RIAA.
Maybe a permutation on an old geek addage is in order:
Pick Two: -quality of service -low price -privacy
I say this because it seems some of the better reputed ISPs for price and quality have been selling out their customers at the drop of a hat.
Yeah, for the casual user, a $9 a month dialup line on their main phoneline is fine. But many many people are in one of two situations:
1) They only have a cell phone 2) They have a second line for their internet service so they arent tying up the main line.
Considering that a phone line costs about $20 a month MINIMUM, it's the same total price to get cheap 256k DSL as it is to get a phone line and dialup. For some people it's cheaper....MSN and AOL, the two biggest dialup providers, charge something like $20-$25 a month for service. That plus the $20-$25 for the extra phone line equals the cost of a nice fat cable modem. (Or save $10 getting the slower DSL setup) In fact, most broadband providers are advertising their service this way. If you aren't doing it this way as well, maybe you should pitch it to your marketing folks and get a nice raise.
I'm more inclined to think that most of the folks that aren't switching are doing it because:
- As you said, they are lazy. - Because they don't understand the technology and why it is an improvement over dialup - They just don't need the extra speed and so are ambivalent about switching.
I don't think union influences would do much to stem the tide of offshoring programmers.
What is the big weapon of the union? Striking. Getting every worker in the union to walk out at once. If a company is planning on moving their programming jobs to another country, I think you'd just be giving them bigger incentive. Production has now stopped, what better reason to get the new foreign scabs up and running?
Also, software development is a slow process, it will not hurt them to take a week or two off of development whereas coal miners (for example) ceasing production can cost a company millions per day and have repercussions on the energy industry. the pressure of a strike just isn't there in the software industry. Admins and network engineers may be another story...if the network goes down and the people who normally fix it are not there, you have problems. But how can you time that to a strike without sabtoging the data center and looking like extortionists?
Your heart's in the right place, but I don't think a union is the right solution here.
By contrast, the last Tool CD was almost 70 minutes. This leaves very little room for extras. Not everyone puts out 30 minute CDs. Also, some of the extras mentioned were videos and such. (Wouldn't that be great? Get the videos along with the music) Those take up a good deal more room than even uncompressed audio.
Microwave and radio frequency radiation are not going to give you cancer. They are not of sufficient energy to be considered ionizing radiation. To actually break a chemical bond in a cell(a necessary step for formation of cancer at the cellular level) requires energy greater than what is contained in microwave or radio wavelengths. Ultraviolet radiation is where sufficient energy begins, with it being a minor threat. The worst is of course gamma radiation which carries the most energy of the spectrum.
At a cellular level, cancerous cells are developed when an electron-deficient material bonds with free electrons on nitrogen atoms in DNA. Then when the DNA replicates on cell division, a mutation is formed. If the immune system cannot detect and destroy the rogue cell, it may be able to replicate on its own, depending on how badly the DNA is damaged. This replication is what we call cancer.
Ionizing radiation creates positive ions and free radicals in the cells that can react as mentioned above. High energy radiation like x-rays and gamma rays can also penetrate past the skin and react with organs further in the body. (UV cannot, this is why skin cancer is about the only kind you can get from solar radiation) Organ cells reproduce quite more frequently as well, which makes them more susceptible to mutation. Radiation such as microwaves, radio waves, visible light, and the like will not break chemical bonds and hence cannot cause cellular mutations.
Microwaves DO have the ability to vibrate the bonds of polar molecules (such as water) causing them to heat up. This is how your microwave oven works...water in your food is heated which inductively heats your food. Excessive heat can cause proteins to denature (i.e. cook) but will not break them into ions or free radicals.
There's your lesson in cellular biology, chemistry, and eletromagnetic physics. Now quit worrying about your cell phone or microwave giving you cancer.
I think this is where the recording industry is slowly heading. There are already standards for DVD-audio. I'm sure once portable DVD player tech becomes a lot less expensive and is integrated into Walkman-like devices, you'll start seeing albums get released with a ton of extras. As it stands now, there isn't a whole lot of room for extra material on a compact disc.
A lot of people already do not want to be part of the rat race anymore. Unfortunately, they are branded at best different or Unamerican and at worst, terrorists. Everyone is so gun shy at the word terrorist that they don't stop to think about what it really means. It's McCarthyism all over again. There are really people out there that think all drugs are bad for you. There are really people that think Iraq had something to do with 9/11 and that the war WASN'T about oil and old grudges. There are really people that think the government has our best interests in mind when it starts passing laws like the PATRIOT act.
Get a good education so you can be a good corporate wage slave and buy everything that makes you happy. That drives the economy, dontcha know.
I agree with you...this system will not last another 20 years. Better learn to live outside the system so that you won't be stranded when it's gone.
The screensavers and bookmarks are trivial to change or delete, I promise. You really need to read the article to understand how absolutely uninvasive these ads will be before you whine wbout them.
I used to run a Radeon 7200 in linux. I since switch to nVidia not by deliberate choice but because a friend was kind enough to give me a GF4 Ti4600. But anyway, the Radeon ran just fine in Linux. I didn't try any games because honestly I prefer Windows for my gaming, but X ran like a champ on that Radeon.
As far as the drivers sucking goes, I assume you mean the Windows drivers. THey had some driver problems in the early release of the Radeon boards, but that's all taken care of now...their drivers are quite fast and stable.
If I weren't a poor college student, I'd buy a Radeon 9800 in a heartbeat, even as satisfied as I am with this nVidia card I'm using currently.
That is precisely what makes her parents liable for her actions. Any monetary damages (the ethics of claiming damage on song downloading is another argument entirely) caused by a child are be reclaimed from the parents. If the kid breaks a window, her parents have to pay for it. Here, the kid gets busted being a major file swapper, so her partents have to pay the settlement. It would have been the parents that were served with a summons, as well.
To address your other points, I'm quite sure that the parents were the ones that entered into the contract for internet service. I'm also pretty sure that said ISP's terms of use includes a statement along the lines of "You are responsible for the actions of anyone who uses your internet service."
You may, however, have a good point with your first statement. If she is indeed 12 years old, a private organization may not collect personal information about her. I'm not sure if this applied towards a legal evidence discovery, but it's damn debatable. Someone call her lawyer.
Maybe he didn't have a passport? That pretty much makes it impossible to go anywhere off the continent. Living on the lamb in Mexico as a skinny white American boy would just be moronic. Canada? Well, Canada might not be a bad place to hide out, but he'd need to establish some sort of identity which is not that easy to do in a civilized technological country other than the one of your birth, so he'd be washing dishes for $5 an hour under the table in some seedy restaurant.
Living on the run isn't fun unless you're filthy stinking rich and can live somewhere that you can buy your way out of trouble.
Actually, the type of molecule passing through the field will affect the emmission spectrum based upon its molecular / atomic structure. This is the how spectophotometry works. It will take them time to classify each type of compound and its resultant emissions, but it'll work.
I would venture to guess that some 3rd world African and Asian countries don't have any sort of laws against sex with children....by virtue of them having not advanced to the point of civil rights yet or having higher priorities.
Even in places where it is technically illegal, so much goes on behind the scenes and generates hoards of income from degenerate fucking tourists (*cough* Thailand *cough*) that the police are told to look the other way. Coincedentally, these are the same places that also allow their children to be employed in factories for big foreign countries for 12 hours a day at pennies per hour.
These are also the same places that illegalize on pain of death most controlled substances. God forbid you indulge in something mind-expanding and come to the realization that the government is letting dirty foreigners fuck your kids. (physically AND financially)
Yeah, because we all know the EVERY song gets an equal chance at airtime on the radio.
What I'd like to see is the ability to transfer songs within the iTunes system. Not only for someone to sell a song they don't want anymore, but also for the ability to buy them as gifts for someone. "Hey Bob, I bought a few tracks off the new Beck CD and transferred them to you. Go check it out. Happy Birthday."
Well, here's one example...in the article they mentioned that they can do something like detect one molecule of a substance. The implications this has on analytical chemistry are staggering.
For instance, when your body has certain ailments, it will generate chemicals that are not normally present in the metabolism. These chemicals are often released in VERY small amounts when you exhale. There are prototypes of tests now that can detect the presence of these chemicals at a certain level, but really it is only useful when the ailment is near the chest cavity. (lung / breast cancer) Something that can detect molecules on a "parts per trillion" or even lower range could easily find even smaller trace amounts from illnesses in other parts of the body.
How does this help you? Imagine knowing that you were ABOUT to get cancer rather than finding out 6 months after it had spread to every major organ in your body. Much easier to treat it that way, and your chances of survival are increased a hundred-fold because of a quick, easy, cheap breath test your doctor could administer.
Environmental laboratories could detect pollutants on a smaller level, and measure small changes in concentrations, thereby preventing a problem before it occurs. Mercury, for instance, can't be detected by analytical equipment until it reaches concentrations in the "parts per billion" or 1 mercury atom per billion water atoms. (about the size of a mist particle or dew drop) Imagine being able to detect a single drop of mercury in the equivalent of a swimming pool. Doesn't sound like much, but now think of being able to tell that the concentration doubled each month for the last 12 months. It's still way below current detection standards, but you've found now found a trend and have some time to locate the source of contamination.
Perhaps you have a point, but I would argue that what used to be a public interest in science has merely shifted gears.
40-50 years ago, most of the major advances were in rocketry, aerospace, chemistry and chemical engineering, space exploration, and the like. Those things were all in the public interest and it was easy to extrapolate some fantastic Sci-fi from it.
Now, public interest has shifted away from "hard" science and towards things like forensics and computers / electronics. Still interesting enough, but definately not the stuff that hardcore sci-fi is made of...there's only so much a computer can do (barring fantastic advances in material science and physics anyway) and forensics is pretty much as good as it's going to get for a while.
Many of the people that would have gone into pure science many years ago are now choosing career paths in IT, computer science, or EE. We don't have as many physicists and chemists as we used to in our population. Less people interested in those things means less people to drop out of graduate school and write novels instead of doing research.
Computers are a very contstraining medium to work with. Creativity will only get you so far in the realm of IT or development. Not to say there isn't a need for creativity there, but a very inventive person is going to accomplish less exploring their PC than they will exploring the universe. Software in and of itself it basically useless, it's all in how you apply it. I see computing technology becoming less of a career in the future and more of a tool for people to use in other careers....hopefully we'll make a push back towards real science. (Or not...honestly I can do without the job competition)
You raise a valid point in the discussion of replacement CDs. Many software companies will replace scratched or damaged CDROMs if you mail them the broken one plus like $5 for packing and shipping. WOuldn't it be great if music retailers would get their heads out of their asses and do the same? I can't tell you how many times I've re-bought some of my CDs due to damage.
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Would you rather see these penis-compensating morons giving their money to computer-parts makers (which benefits you and I in the form of R&D money) or spending it on something equally as retarded like, oh, 400W halogen headlights, neon running lights, and a muffler that makes their piece of shit Civic sound like a sports car?
They're going to spend their money on stupid shit that makes them feel important anyway, might as well give it to the companies that make things that we'd use as well.
And with laws made for people like him, why do the rest of us Americans vote?
If that kind of shit aggravates you, maybe you should be voting Green Party in any elections you participate in. Consumer rights are a top priority of theirs. They took a significant chunk of the last presidential election, more than a 3rd party has done in quite a while. They are starting to win local elections across the country. If more people stop thinking of them as a wasted vote, you'll see some changes coming round these parts real quick.
Bipartisanism sucks.
I'm thinking this is a move to improve customer relations. They KNOW they have a bad reputation and have alienated many customers. This kind of decision seems uncharacteristic of them, given prior behavior, so it's logical to conclude that they're trying to get business back from their competitors who are more willing to sell you out to the RIAA.
Maybe a permutation on an old geek addage is in order:
Pick Two:
-quality of service
-low price
-privacy
I say this because it seems some of the better reputed ISPs for price and quality have been selling out their customers at the drop of a hat.
Yeah, for the casual user, a $9 a month dialup line on their main phoneline is fine. But many many people are in one of two situations:
1) They only have a cell phone
2) They have a second line for their internet service so they arent tying up the main line.
Considering that a phone line costs about $20 a month MINIMUM, it's the same total price to get cheap 256k DSL as it is to get a phone line and dialup. For some people it's cheaper....MSN and AOL, the two biggest dialup providers, charge something like $20-$25 a month for service. That plus the $20-$25 for the extra phone line equals the cost of a nice fat cable modem. (Or save $10 getting the slower DSL setup) In fact, most broadband providers are advertising their service this way. If you aren't doing it this way as well, maybe you should pitch it to your marketing folks and get a nice raise.
I'm more inclined to think that most of the folks that aren't switching are doing it because:
- As you said, they are lazy.
- Because they don't understand the technology and why it is an improvement over dialup
- They just don't need the extra speed and so are ambivalent about switching.
He does nuclear research for the navy. This link has his story..."The Radioactive Boyscout" he was monickered.
t ml
http://www.dangerouslaboratories.org/radscout.h
I don't think union influences would do much to stem the tide of offshoring programmers.
What is the big weapon of the union? Striking. Getting every worker in the union to walk out at once. If a company is planning on moving their programming jobs to another country, I think you'd just be giving them bigger incentive. Production has now stopped, what better reason to get the new foreign scabs up and running?
Also, software development is a slow process, it will not hurt them to take a week or two off of development whereas coal miners (for example) ceasing production can cost a company millions per day and have repercussions on the energy industry. the pressure of a strike just isn't there in the software industry. Admins and network engineers may be another story...if the network goes down and the people who normally fix it are not there, you have problems. But how can you time that to a strike without sabtoging the data center and looking like extortionists?
Your heart's in the right place, but I don't think a union is the right solution here.
Maybe. Rotate me 90 degrees and ask me again.
By contrast, the last Tool CD was almost 70 minutes. This leaves very little room for extras. Not everyone puts out 30 minute CDs. Also, some of the extras mentioned were videos and such. (Wouldn't that be great? Get the videos along with the music) Those take up a good deal more room than even uncompressed audio.
Microwave and radio frequency radiation are not going to give you cancer. They are not of sufficient energy to be considered ionizing radiation. To actually break a chemical bond in a cell(a necessary step for formation of cancer at the cellular level) requires energy greater than what is contained in microwave or radio wavelengths. Ultraviolet radiation is where sufficient energy begins, with it being a minor threat. The worst is of course gamma radiation which carries the most energy of the spectrum.
At a cellular level, cancerous cells are developed when an electron-deficient material bonds with free electrons on nitrogen atoms in DNA. Then when the DNA replicates on cell division, a mutation is formed. If the immune system cannot detect and destroy the rogue cell, it may be able to replicate on its own, depending on how badly the DNA is damaged. This replication is what we call cancer.
Ionizing radiation creates positive ions and free radicals in the cells that can react as mentioned above. High energy radiation like x-rays and gamma rays can also penetrate past the skin and react with organs further in the body. (UV cannot, this is why skin cancer is about the only kind you can get from solar radiation) Organ cells reproduce quite more frequently as well, which makes them more susceptible to mutation. Radiation such as microwaves, radio waves, visible light, and the like will not break chemical bonds and hence cannot cause cellular mutations.
Microwaves DO have the ability to vibrate the bonds of polar molecules (such as water) causing them to heat up. This is how your microwave oven works...water in your food is heated which inductively heats your food. Excessive heat can cause proteins to denature (i.e. cook) but will not break them into ions or free radicals.
There's your lesson in cellular biology, chemistry, and eletromagnetic physics. Now quit worrying about your cell phone or microwave giving you cancer.
I think this is where the recording industry is slowly heading. There are already standards for DVD-audio. I'm sure once portable DVD player tech becomes a lot less expensive and is integrated into Walkman-like devices, you'll start seeing albums get released with a ton of extras. As it stands now, there isn't a whole lot of room for extra material on a compact disc.
A lot of people already do not want to be part of the rat race anymore. Unfortunately, they are branded at best different or Unamerican and at worst, terrorists. Everyone is so gun shy at the word terrorist that they don't stop to think about what it really means. It's McCarthyism all over again. There are really people out there that think all drugs are bad for you. There are really people that think Iraq had something to do with 9/11 and that the war WASN'T about oil and old grudges. There are really people that think the government has our best interests in mind when it starts passing laws like the PATRIOT act.
Get a good education so you can be a good corporate wage slave and buy everything that makes you happy. That drives the economy, dontcha know.
I agree with you...this system will not last another 20 years. Better learn to live outside the system so that you won't be stranded when it's gone.
Not that I've ever seen...I've owned 2 Dell laptops in my lifetime, both of which ran Linux just fine.
The screensavers and bookmarks are trivial to change or delete, I promise. You really need to read the article to understand how absolutely uninvasive these ads will be before you whine wbout them.
Well, considering he's probably going to prison, I hope he wasn't too attached to that vow of any vows of chastity he may have had.
I'm pretty sure they DID sue the parents, not the kid. Am I mistaken?
Or better yet, if they attack an IP that's a virtual host for 50+ web sites, do all 50 count as being hacked or just the server itself?
I used to run a Radeon 7200 in linux. I since switch to nVidia not by deliberate choice but because a friend was kind enough to give me a GF4 Ti4600. But anyway, the Radeon ran just fine in Linux. I didn't try any games because honestly I prefer Windows for my gaming, but X ran like a champ on that Radeon.
As far as the drivers sucking goes, I assume you mean the Windows drivers. THey had some driver problems in the early release of the Radeon boards, but that's all taken care of now...their drivers are quite fast and stable.
If I weren't a poor college student, I'd buy a Radeon 9800 in a heartbeat, even as satisfied as I am with this nVidia card I'm using currently.
That is precisely what makes her parents liable for her actions. Any monetary damages (the ethics of claiming damage on song downloading is another argument entirely) caused by a child are be reclaimed from the parents. If the kid breaks a window, her parents have to pay for it. Here, the kid gets busted being a major file swapper, so her partents have to pay the settlement. It would have been the parents that were served with a summons, as well.
To address your other points, I'm quite sure that the parents were the ones that entered into the contract for internet service. I'm also pretty sure that said ISP's terms of use includes a statement along the lines of "You are responsible for the actions of anyone who uses your internet service."
You may, however, have a good point with your first statement. If she is indeed 12 years old, a private organization may not collect personal information about her. I'm not sure if this applied towards a legal evidence discovery, but it's damn debatable. Someone call her lawyer.
Maybe he didn't have a passport? That pretty much makes it impossible to go anywhere off the continent. Living on the lamb in Mexico as a skinny white American boy would just be moronic. Canada? Well, Canada might not be a bad place to hide out, but he'd need to establish some sort of identity which is not that easy to do in a civilized technological country other than the one of your birth, so he'd be washing dishes for $5 an hour under the table in some seedy restaurant.
Living on the run isn't fun unless you're filthy stinking rich and can live somewhere that you can buy your way out of trouble.
Actually, the type of molecule passing through the field will affect the emmission spectrum based upon its molecular / atomic structure. This is the how spectophotometry works. It will take them time to classify each type of compound and its resultant emissions, but it'll work.
I would venture to guess that some 3rd world African and Asian countries don't have any sort of laws against sex with children....by virtue of them having not advanced to the point of civil rights yet or having higher priorities.
Even in places where it is technically illegal, so much goes on behind the scenes and generates hoards of income from degenerate fucking tourists (*cough* Thailand *cough*) that the police are told to look the other way. Coincedentally, these are the same places that also allow their children to be employed in factories for big foreign countries for 12 hours a day at pennies per hour.
These are also the same places that illegalize on pain of death most controlled substances. God forbid you indulge in something mind-expanding and come to the realization that the government is letting dirty foreigners fuck your kids. (physically AND financially)
Yeah, because we all know the EVERY song gets an equal chance at airtime on the radio.
What I'd like to see is the ability to transfer songs within the iTunes system. Not only for someone to sell a song they don't want anymore, but also for the ability to buy them as gifts for someone. "Hey Bob, I bought a few tracks off the new Beck CD and transferred them to you. Go check it out. Happy Birthday."
Well, here's one example...in the article they mentioned that they can do something like detect one molecule of a substance. The implications this has on analytical chemistry are staggering.
For instance, when your body has certain ailments, it will generate chemicals that are not normally present in the metabolism. These chemicals are often released in VERY small amounts when you exhale. There are prototypes of tests now that can detect the presence of these chemicals at a certain level, but really it is only useful when the ailment is near the chest cavity. (lung / breast cancer) Something that can detect molecules on a "parts per trillion" or even lower range could easily find even smaller trace amounts from illnesses in other parts of the body.
How does this help you? Imagine knowing that you were ABOUT to get cancer rather than finding out 6 months after it had spread to every major organ in your body. Much easier to treat it that way, and your chances of survival are increased a hundred-fold because of a quick, easy, cheap breath test your doctor could administer.
Environmental laboratories could detect pollutants on a smaller level, and measure small changes in concentrations, thereby preventing a problem before it occurs. Mercury, for instance, can't be detected by analytical equipment until it reaches concentrations in the "parts per billion" or 1 mercury atom per billion water atoms. (about the size of a mist particle or dew drop) Imagine being able to detect a single drop of mercury in the equivalent of a swimming pool. Doesn't sound like much, but now think of being able to tell that the concentration doubled each month for the last 12 months. It's still way below current detection standards, but you've found now found a trend and have some time to locate the source of contamination.
Is that a good enough start for ya?
Perhaps you have a point, but I would argue that what used to be a public interest in science has merely shifted gears.
40-50 years ago, most of the major advances were in rocketry, aerospace, chemistry and chemical engineering, space exploration, and the like. Those things were all in the public interest and it was easy to extrapolate some fantastic Sci-fi from it.
Now, public interest has shifted away from "hard" science and towards things like forensics and computers / electronics. Still interesting enough, but definately not the stuff that hardcore sci-fi is made of...there's only so much a computer can do (barring fantastic advances in material science and physics anyway) and forensics is pretty much as good as it's going to get for a while.
Many of the people that would have gone into pure science many years ago are now choosing career paths in IT, computer science, or EE. We don't have as many physicists and chemists as we used to in our population. Less people interested in those things means less people to drop out of graduate school and write novels instead of doing research.
Computers are a very contstraining medium to work with. Creativity will only get you so far in the realm of IT or development. Not to say there isn't a need for creativity there, but a very inventive person is going to accomplish less exploring their PC than they will exploring the universe. Software in and of itself it basically useless, it's all in how you apply it. I see computing technology becoming less of a career in the future and more of a tool for people to use in other careers....hopefully we'll make a push back towards real science. (Or not...honestly I can do without the job competition)
You raise a valid point in the discussion of replacement CDs. Many software companies will replace scratched or damaged CDROMs if you mail them the broken one plus like $5 for packing and shipping. WOuldn't it be great if music retailers would get their heads out of their asses and do the same? I can't tell you how many times I've re-bought some of my CDs due to damage.