True. But the beauty of this is that by using sensors not to detect motion but to detect heat, you don't have to jump up and wave your arms around when the lights go off. I would imagine all you have to do is maintain a body temperature somewhere around 98.6 degrees fahrenheit--not a difficult thing for most of us.
And you still have some degree of privacy in that it's not detecting that you are in the building, but that something warm is in the building which might like to have lights.
As I understand how it works at Napster/Real, etc., it's essentially a form of Micropayment.
The portable music player keeps track of what songs you listen to. It reports this back to the Store. Once every month, the Store counts up all the songs listened to and how much the song was and sends off checks to the appropriate rights holders.
So if I listen to a Song/BMG song 100 times and listening to it costs 0.1 cents, I owe Sony/BMG 10 cents for that month.
Of course, that's tough to sell. So instead, the guys who run the Store came up with a flat fee of $14.95 per month. They pay the labels for your usage and keep the rest. If you listen to music 24/7, they don't make much off of you.
Gmail is free. So is Hotmail and Yahoo. So here's a fun analogy, to the tune of various slashdot memes:
Modern Radio Stations suck. They're all owned by the same company, they all play the same crap music forced down their throats by the RIAA. But, hey, what do you want? You're getting free music and you're still bitching?
Broadcast TV sucks. It's all watered down crap designed to appeal to the lowest-common-denominator. But, hey, what do you want? You're getting free entertainment and you're still bitching?
TV News sucks. It's all sensationalist propaganda and pandering, delivered by blow-dryed actors who haven't got an ounce of brains. But, hey, what do you want? You're getting free news and you're still bitching?
In other words, whether something is free or not is besides the point. Google is trying to sell me on this whole idea of hosted services. Will something go wrong from time to time? I'm sure it will. But is it now Google's choice as to what is important enough to back up and what isn't? Will I suddenly discover my word processing documents are all gone because Google decided they weren't important enough to back up?
So, I write this important document using Google's applications. I should back it up myself, I guess, and not trust Google to do it? Okay, fair enough. But then, what advantage is Google's hosted apps giving me (for free or otherwise) that I don't get from, say, installing a word processor on my own machine and managing my own back ups which--according to you--I should be doing anyway. Cost? Well, if I want to go the cheap route, I can install OpenOffice for free. Reliability? Doesn't sound like it to me. Availability? Maybe--I can work on that document anywhere I can find an Internet connection--assuming Google hasn't lost the file.
It was my understanding that the advantage of a hosted solution over doing it myself is that all the hassles are gone. But when something goes wrong, I'm told that I should have undergone all the same hassles as if I was running the thing myself? Then why the hell should I pay you money for your hosted solution if I'm going to have to do all the work?!
Suppose you have a couch on your lawn. You figure you'll hire somebody to come move it to the dump, but your neighbor says, "Heck, I got a couple of strong boys. I'll move it for free tonight." Next morning, the couch is still there. A few days later, you mention it to the neighbor. "Sure, I'll get the boys to do it tonight. No problem!" Next day, it's still there. It rained that night and the couch is now soaked through. You can't mow the lawn because there's this couch in the way. The in-laws are coming over tomorrow and you'd rather not have this big ol' couch sitting right smack dab in the middle of the lawn. But the neighbor says, "Hey, don't worry. My boys'll be over to take it away."
Sure, it's not costing you anything. But how annoying is it? And considering this problem, would you really trust your neighbor to, say, feed your dog while you were away on vacation?
So some of this is perception. Google says, "trust us with your data." And when something goes wrong, they'll try to get it back? They have to show me that they can get it back before I'll trust them with my important data.
Firefox informs me that wierd is not the correct spelling of "weird". I before e, except after c, except in weigh? "I before E, except after C, or when sounded as 'A,' as in neighbor or weigh." But I always learned it as "I before E, except after C, unless it's weird." That pretty much encompasses all the exceptions.
Actually, here's an entertaining application for your car.
Suppose you could transmit an FM signal strong enough to override the "normal" traffic update signal for, say, a half-mile radius inconspicuously. I don't know if that's possible, but bear with me. So you drive down the road while broadcasting that there has been a horrendous accident, bomb scare, or just plain "Closed Road" about five miles ahead of you.
All those people with their GPSes will immediately get the warning and they'll tell their GPS to start plotting an alternate route--after all, that's the whole point of having a GPS, right? But, most importantly, they will get out of your way as they seek to get off the freeway and onto their nice safe alternate route. After a minute or two, once you are out of range, the alert will go away and their GPS will put them back on the road behind you.
Parents buy their kids $500/$600 iPods right? (hint... they do) First, I'd point out that Apple doesn't make a $500-$600 iPod. The most expensive iPod they make is $349 (80GB). But I think they had a $449 or $499 one once (maybe the first 60GB).
Second, I know of very few people with the 80GB iPod. Of the kids I know with iPods--not a giant sampling, I'll grant you--two have shuffles, one has a nano, and one has a 20GB iPod. Of the kids who want an iPod, they're mostly interested in the nano. In fact, the one with the 20GB iPod wishes she had a nano instead.
So, no, I'm not convinced that Mom & Dad are going out and buying expensive iPods for their kids and I doubt you'll see lots of them rushing out to buy $500 phones for their kid, either. Some will--sure. There are people for whom $500 is not a major purchase.
"Why don't we pay them welfare folks to fill in the Bering Strait and charge the Indians a buck a head to go home. It's a good sound business solution."
I'm a firefighter and dispatch gets it wrong ALL THE TIME. Then it's time to complain about the dispatcher getting it wrong rather than say, "Well, they might have gotten it wrong, so I'll endanger others just in case they did."
By the way, your example works to the opposite. Yes, if a roof had collapsed, you should get there posthaste which is what the dispatcher told you. So I assume you did. Good for you. On the other hand, would it have been acceptable for you to say, "Oh, that dispatcher is always full of shit. We'll drive slowly and carefully," and arrive at the site and discover that the dispatcher had been correct all along?
To me, the dispatcher is the person who knows the most about what is going on and is able to judge how much of an "emergency" exists. If they err, they should err on the side of caution and that's fine. I have no problem with an officer who is responding to what he or she has been told is an emergency rushing to the scene. If that includes making illegal U-turns or running a red light, that's fine. If, after doing these things, they arrive and discover that no emergency exists, they certainly shouldn't be culpable for their illegal activities.
But if there's no emergency, there is no reason for police or firefighters to be deciding otherwise and break the law.
Well, we have absolute no way of knowing what was going on. Perhaps they were hunting for a very large deer. To me, whether to use lights and sirens in an emergency is based on the situation and I'm willing to give leeway here.
However, if there is no emergency, there should be no need to endanger the public at large. I can't see any reason for a cop to run a red light in order to give a parking ticket to that guy who parks in front of my driveway. I don't care if it's 2:55AM and the roads are empty and the cop gets off at 3:00AM--if I can't do it, they can't do it.
From TFA:
"I think what they're worrying about is what if it's 2 o'clock in the morning, you're headed to a call but it's not an emergency call," Cpl. Bristo said. "If I roll right through that light, I might save myself a minute or two. With some calls, that minute or two can make a lot of difference."
Well, anything can happen on "some calls." However, a dispatcher has spoken with the person who made the call and, I assume, made a determination whether something was an emergency or not. It is not the police officer's job to second-guess the dispatcher and decide whether or not a call should be an emergency.
I remember reading about the Apollo era arguments over what was the best way to go to the Moon. van Braun was of the opinion that doing lots of launches to Earth orbit, assembling ships there and then heading off to the Moon was the only sensible option. Other engineers were of the opinion that going direct from the Earth to the Moon was the safest approach and therefore the best option. And yes, dare I say it, they were both right.
I have a fun book from 1959 talking about the "future of spaceflight." It started off talking about a reusable space plane that would launch on the top of a rocket and glide back down to earth. After that would be a large space station in earth orbit (a la 2001). From there, ships would be assembled for a trip to the moon. We'd end up with a bunch of ships and a bunch of people staying on the moon for a month or two. This would occur, according to the book, sometime in 1980s.
Of course, then Kennedy came along and said we had to put somebody on the moon by the end of 1960 so we could show them commies who was boss. So, needless say, the mission parameters changed from studying and colonizing the moon to get some guy to stick a flag on the surface and get him back ASAP. So while the idea of assembling a ship in orbit to go to the moon was a good idea for the long term, it was a technically complicated idea and there was no really good way to draw up a timetable for getting all the pieces done. The system NASA came up with was easier to develop and test and would fulfill the mission requirements.
I've never heard of any incident where navigation equipment was actually affected by a cell phone in the real world. Wouldn't you think if it were even possible, it would have happened at least once? Okay, here's about 87 of them (I haven't read them all and some are just complaints about passengers not doing what they're told).
Do a search on "Passenger Electronic Devices."
You'll see a bunch of cases where where problems occurred while a passenger was using a electronic device and cleared up when the passenger was asked to stop using it. Does this prove anything? No, it doesn't. But, if you're erring on the side of caution, you ban the devices.
By the way, check out "Passenger Misconduct" if you want a good laugh...
You're paying to listen to HUGE, GIGANTIC libraries of ANY SONG YOU WANT, whenever you want, wherever you want. Agreed. And one of the biggest mistakes is that it hasn't been marketed that way.
Subscription services are trying to compete with stores. Stores basically say, "Come here and buy your favorite music." That's great. I want to buy my favorite music. But how do I know if I like a song?
So how do you sell a subscription service? To me, the answer is the second part of the name: Service
Suppose I pay $15 per month to have access to any songs I want. But what songs do I want? I'm not going to go through a catalog of 2 or 3 million songs and figure out what's good and what sucks! I have better things to do with my day! And I already own my favorite songs on CD, so I'm certainly not going to rent them again. So what do I get from the subscription model? Absolutely nothing. I still have to do all the work.
So make it a real service. Do some research. Use other people's research. Come up with genre playlists and let people subscribe to them. Find worthwhile podcasts and hire/pay people to make them daily/weekly and let people subscribe to them. Promote hot DJs at hot clubs by letting them come up with weekly playlists and let people subscribe to them. Build playlists from Billboard, Radio & Records, etc. and let people subscribe to them. And, of course, let "regular people" build lists of music and let people subscribe to them. Heck, build playlists based upon my ripped CDs and let me subscribe to them.
Then let me build my own playlists of music and playlists. I might want to build a playlist of Billboard's Top 40 along with this song from your collection, this song from my CD, and Club DJ Wugmeister's mix. I might build another playlist of Radio & Record's Adult Contemporary listings, along with my Barry Manilow collection (from CD), the latest ABC News podcast, and WJAZ's Smooth Jazz playlist.
The "Here's our whole catalog--you figure it out" model isn't bringing them in droves because it's too much work. I'm not going to pay $15 per month for access to a mind-numbingly large collection of music. But I might pay that much if the subscription service actually provides a service where I automatically get new music that I might actually want to listen to!
I'll admit, it's anecdotal. But how do you respond to a case where there's so much "noise" on the communication system that the pilots can't hear the tower. They tell passengers to turn off all electronic equipment and the noise goes away? The fuel gauges are reading fluky, so they tell the guy with the laptop to turn off his WiFi and the fuel gauges start working? (Two examples from the database that I linked)
It could be a confluence of items--mountains, transmitters on the ground, transmitters in the airplane, sunspots, and the guy in seat 11A with his Gameboy. Turn off any one of these things and everything works. But the only one the FAA can have influence over is the guy in seat 11A.
So why the ban? Erring on the side of caution? Gimme a break. There's gotta be another reason that nobody's talking about. I don't have a problem believing that the FAA is erring on the side of caution. There is plenty of anecdotal evidence relating to it. And, since the FAA is responsible for passenger safety, I'm sure they prefer to err on the side of caution.
I've been able to ride home from work with the top down in my convertable the last few weeks. Why weren't you riding home from work with the top down in your convertible before daylight savings? Was it raining?
Let me get this straight: you bought a vehicle with a top that could be removed--paid extra money for that feature no less--so that you could put the top up because it was dark?!
"Darn, I can't drive with the top down because it's dark. I mean, I can't very well let all that darkness into my car. It'll ruin the upholstery."
I'm sorry. Please turn in your convertible at the door on the way out.
It's over in one day... Actually, it's two days--one in the spring and one in the fall.
The biggest problem I've had with daylight savings was train scheduling. I used to take the LIRR home when I worked in Manhattan and lived on Long Island. There was a 1:20AM train, a 2:20AM, a 3:50AM, and a 5:20AM train. Daylight savings would always confuse their schedules.
In the spring time, you set your clock ahead. So 1AM jumps to 2AM. So what happens to the 1:20AM train? Now what would make sense, of course, is to just bag the 1:20AM train and run the 2:20AM, 3:50AM, and 5:20AM trains at their normal times. But one year I remember they ran a 2:20AM, 2:50AM, and then the 5:20AM train.
In the fall, you set your clock back. So 2AM jumps back to 1AM. And the whole thing gets very confusing. They won't run two 1:20AM trains. So they run one 1:20AM train but don't run another 1:20AM train. Of course, you never know whether they'll run the 1:20AM EST or the 1:20AM EDT train so there's going to be a two hour delay no matter what.
Usually the LIRR employees didn't know what was going to happen because when I came in, it was a different shift and they weren't going to be affected. Every year they seemed to try one thing or another. So even if, for example, they ran the train at 1:20AM EST last year, you couldn't count it being the same rule the next year. So twice a year, getting home was a real adventure.
Of course, now I'm out in sunny Southern California and I drive everywhere.
Another example is where I live, by the beach. The state beach has ample parking for RVs and every weekend in the summer there seems to be a trek of RVs coming from inland. They find a parking spot and pay for the weekend. They setup the RV and have an oceanfront cabin. Not a horrible thing, I would think--if I lived inland, I'd consider buying something like that. All the comforts of home in front of the beach--now including your satellite TV!
Also, with any luck, it'll keep the rugrats inside watching TV and not playing hopscotch on the bike path...:^)
But assuming they're close together, would you really be able to see two distinct sunsets ( la Tatooine) or would it be one oddly shaped blob? I would think they'd need to be far enough apart to see the difference.
Okay, I'm a tad lost on your definition of "emulated."
If they built a library that translates DirectX to OpenGL and compiled the original source code with their library, you consider that to be "emulation"? If that's the case, yup--you're right. Lots of games in the Mac are "emulated."
I'm not a hardcore gamer and I have no problems finding games to play on my Mac. That said, I usually have to wait to play the hottest game du jour. My roomate's nephew was playing Call of Duty about 6 months before I had the opportunity and about 9 months before I actually installed the game on my Mac. I'm currently making my way through Quake 4 (which was out last summer for Mac) so I'm about a year behind.
So if having the hottest game while it's hot is important to you, don't get a Mac. If having a wide selection of games is important to you, don't get a Mac.
This is a stupid statement that has little basis in reality, and is not much more than a narcissistic ego stroke with flimsy justification.
I'm curious as to what has changed in the world to bring about "more creative" people? I agree with you about the parent poster. That said, while I'm not convinced there are "more" creative people, the price of tools has come down to the point where it is economically feasible for more people to explore that side of their brain.
Back when I was in highschool, we had a few nice SLR cameras and a darkroom for a photography class. Nowadays, the school has gone all digital and included classes in video and editing. They've been able to do this because the prices on decent equipment and software to support it have dropped dramatically.
So I'd argue that while there might be the same number of "creative people" as before, more of them are getting an opportunity to be creative.
Actually, I'll come up with another reason: Consistency.
In theory, one of the great things about iTunes Store is that it is consistent. If I buy a song from iTunes Store, I know what I can do with it. Most other stores have a dizzying array of what can and can't be done with a song purchase--you can/can't burn it to CD, transfer to music player, rent it, squirt it, etc.
Adding in the "Digital Rights Managed" field would be a step against this. Suddenly, when you download a song, you don't know what you can do with it. Or so the theory goes.
Personally, I think that's the reason Apple is holding out for the "all or nothing" approach. I also think Apple shouldn't wait for the major labels to come around and should, instead, try to get the ball rolling by letting those who don't want DRM on their music sell their music through iTunes without DRM.
Slashdot Mirror
True. But the beauty of this is that by using sensors not to detect motion but to detect heat, you don't have to jump up and wave your arms around when the lights go off. I would imagine all you have to do is maintain a body temperature somewhere around 98.6 degrees fahrenheit--not a difficult thing for most of us.
And you still have some degree of privacy in that it's not detecting that you are in the building, but that something warm is in the building which might like to have lights.
The portable music player keeps track of what songs you listen to. It reports this back to the Store. Once every month, the Store counts up all the songs listened to and how much the song was and sends off checks to the appropriate rights holders.
So if I listen to a Song/BMG song 100 times and listening to it costs 0.1 cents, I owe Sony/BMG 10 cents for that month.
Of course, that's tough to sell. So instead, the guys who run the Store came up with a flat fee of $14.95 per month. They pay the labels for your usage and keep the rest. If you listen to music 24/7, they don't make much off of you.
Modern Radio Stations suck. They're all owned by the same company, they all play the same crap music forced down their throats by the RIAA. But, hey, what do you want? You're getting free music and you're still bitching?
Broadcast TV sucks. It's all watered down crap designed to appeal to the lowest-common-denominator. But, hey, what do you want? You're getting free entertainment and you're still bitching?
TV News sucks. It's all sensationalist propaganda and pandering, delivered by blow-dryed actors who haven't got an ounce of brains. But, hey, what do you want? You're getting free news and you're still bitching?
In other words, whether something is free or not is besides the point. Google is trying to sell me on this whole idea of hosted services. Will something go wrong from time to time? I'm sure it will. But is it now Google's choice as to what is important enough to back up and what isn't? Will I suddenly discover my word processing documents are all gone because Google decided they weren't important enough to back up?
So, I write this important document using Google's applications. I should back it up myself, I guess, and not trust Google to do it? Okay, fair enough. But then, what advantage is Google's hosted apps giving me (for free or otherwise) that I don't get from, say, installing a word processor on my own machine and managing my own back ups which--according to you--I should be doing anyway. Cost? Well, if I want to go the cheap route, I can install OpenOffice for free. Reliability? Doesn't sound like it to me. Availability? Maybe--I can work on that document anywhere I can find an Internet connection--assuming Google hasn't lost the file.
It was my understanding that the advantage of a hosted solution over doing it myself is that all the hassles are gone. But when something goes wrong, I'm told that I should have undergone all the same hassles as if I was running the thing myself? Then why the hell should I pay you money for your hosted solution if I'm going to have to do all the work?!
I gotta admit, this is a tricky call.
Suppose you have a couch on your lawn. You figure you'll hire somebody to come move it to the dump, but your neighbor says, "Heck, I got a couple of strong boys. I'll move it for free tonight." Next morning, the couch is still there. A few days later, you mention it to the neighbor. "Sure, I'll get the boys to do it tonight. No problem!" Next day, it's still there. It rained that night and the couch is now soaked through. You can't mow the lawn because there's this couch in the way. The in-laws are coming over tomorrow and you'd rather not have this big ol' couch sitting right smack dab in the middle of the lawn. But the neighbor says, "Hey, don't worry. My boys'll be over to take it away."
Sure, it's not costing you anything. But how annoying is it? And considering this problem, would you really trust your neighbor to, say, feed your dog while you were away on vacation?
So some of this is perception. Google says, "trust us with your data." And when something goes wrong, they'll try to get it back? They have to show me that they can get it back before I'll trust them with my important data.
Actually, here's an entertaining application for your car.
Suppose you could transmit an FM signal strong enough to override the "normal" traffic update signal for, say, a half-mile radius inconspicuously. I don't know if that's possible, but bear with me. So you drive down the road while broadcasting that there has been a horrendous accident, bomb scare, or just plain "Closed Road" about five miles ahead of you.
All those people with their GPSes will immediately get the warning and they'll tell their GPS to start plotting an alternate route--after all, that's the whole point of having a GPS, right? But, most importantly, they will get out of your way as they seek to get off the freeway and onto their nice safe alternate route. After a minute or two, once you are out of range, the alert will go away and their GPS will put them back on the road behind you.
Great way to clear the freeway in front of you.
Second, I know of very few people with the 80GB iPod. Of the kids I know with iPods--not a giant sampling, I'll grant you--two have shuffles, one has a nano, and one has a 20GB iPod. Of the kids who want an iPod, they're mostly interested in the nano. In fact, the one with the 20GB iPod wishes she had a nano instead.
So, no, I'm not convinced that Mom & Dad are going out and buying expensive iPods for their kids and I doubt you'll see lots of them rushing out to buy $500 phones for their kid, either. Some will--sure. There are people for whom $500 is not a major purchase.
Create? No-one. View? Quit a few.
...you insensitive clod! We have a hard enough time seeing Venus!
To quote George Carlin...
"Why don't we pay them welfare folks to fill in the Bering Strait and charge the Indians a buck a head to go home. It's a good sound business solution."
Just read the link.
...Cool.
So, let me get this straight. If I'm in Texas and someone is using my Wifi network after dark, they are trespassing and I can shoot them?
By the way, your example works to the opposite. Yes, if a roof had collapsed, you should get there posthaste which is what the dispatcher told you. So I assume you did. Good for you. On the other hand, would it have been acceptable for you to say, "Oh, that dispatcher is always full of shit. We'll drive slowly and carefully," and arrive at the site and discover that the dispatcher had been correct all along?
To me, the dispatcher is the person who knows the most about what is going on and is able to judge how much of an "emergency" exists. If they err, they should err on the side of caution and that's fine. I have no problem with an officer who is responding to what he or she has been told is an emergency rushing to the scene. If that includes making illegal U-turns or running a red light, that's fine. If, after doing these things, they arrive and discover that no emergency exists, they certainly shouldn't be culpable for their illegal activities.
But if there's no emergency, there is no reason for police or firefighters to be deciding otherwise and break the law.
However, if there is no emergency, there should be no need to endanger the public at large. I can't see any reason for a cop to run a red light in order to give a parking ticket to that guy who parks in front of my driveway. I don't care if it's 2:55AM and the roads are empty and the cop gets off at 3:00AM--if I can't do it, they can't do it.
From TFA:Well, anything can happen on "some calls." However, a dispatcher has spoken with the person who made the call and, I assume, made a determination whether something was an emergency or not. It is not the police officer's job to second-guess the dispatcher and decide whether or not a call should be an emergency.
I have a fun book from 1959 talking about the "future of spaceflight." It started off talking about a reusable space plane that would launch on the top of a rocket and glide back down to earth. After that would be a large space station in earth orbit (a la 2001). From there, ships would be assembled for a trip to the moon. We'd end up with a bunch of ships and a bunch of people staying on the moon for a month or two. This would occur, according to the book, sometime in 1980s.
Of course, then Kennedy came along and said we had to put somebody on the moon by the end of 1960 so we could show them commies who was boss. So, needless say, the mission parameters changed from studying and colonizing the moon to get some guy to stick a flag on the surface and get him back ASAP. So while the idea of assembling a ship in orbit to go to the moon was a good idea for the long term, it was a technically complicated idea and there was no really good way to draw up a timetable for getting all the pieces done. The system NASA came up with was easier to develop and test and would fulfill the mission requirements.
Do a search on "Passenger Electronic Devices."
You'll see a bunch of cases where where problems occurred while a passenger was using a electronic device and cleared up when the passenger was asked to stop using it. Does this prove anything? No, it doesn't. But, if you're erring on the side of caution, you ban the devices.
By the way, check out "Passenger Misconduct" if you want a good laugh...
Subscription services are trying to compete with stores. Stores basically say, "Come here and buy your favorite music." That's great. I want to buy my favorite music. But how do I know if I like a song?
So how do you sell a subscription service? To me, the answer is the second part of the name: Service
Suppose I pay $15 per month to have access to any songs I want. But what songs do I want? I'm not going to go through a catalog of 2 or 3 million songs and figure out what's good and what sucks! I have better things to do with my day! And I already own my favorite songs on CD, so I'm certainly not going to rent them again. So what do I get from the subscription model? Absolutely nothing. I still have to do all the work.
So make it a real service. Do some research. Use other people's research. Come up with genre playlists and let people subscribe to them. Find worthwhile podcasts and hire/pay people to make them daily/weekly and let people subscribe to them. Promote hot DJs at hot clubs by letting them come up with weekly playlists and let people subscribe to them. Build playlists from Billboard, Radio & Records, etc. and let people subscribe to them. And, of course, let "regular people" build lists of music and let people subscribe to them. Heck, build playlists based upon my ripped CDs and let me subscribe to them.
Then let me build my own playlists of music and playlists. I might want to build a playlist of Billboard's Top 40 along with this song from your collection, this song from my CD, and Club DJ Wugmeister's mix. I might build another playlist of Radio & Record's Adult Contemporary listings, along with my Barry Manilow collection (from CD), the latest ABC News podcast, and WJAZ's Smooth Jazz playlist.
The "Here's our whole catalog--you figure it out" model isn't bringing them in droves because it's too much work. I'm not going to pay $15 per month for access to a mind-numbingly large collection of music. But I might pay that much if the subscription service actually provides a service where I automatically get new music that I might actually want to listen to!
I'll admit, it's anecdotal. But how do you respond to a case where there's so much "noise" on the communication system that the pilots can't hear the tower. They tell passengers to turn off all electronic equipment and the noise goes away? The fuel gauges are reading fluky, so they tell the guy with the laptop to turn off his WiFi and the fuel gauges start working? (Two examples from the database that I linked)
It could be a confluence of items--mountains, transmitters on the ground, transmitters in the airplane, sunspots, and the guy in seat 11A with his Gameboy. Turn off any one of these things and everything works. But the only one the FAA can have influence over is the guy in seat 11A.
Let me get this straight: you bought a vehicle with a top that could be removed--paid extra money for that feature no less--so that you could put the top up because it was dark?!
"Darn, I can't drive with the top down because it's dark. I mean, I can't very well let all that darkness into my car. It'll ruin the upholstery."
I'm sorry. Please turn in your convertible at the door on the way out.
The biggest problem I've had with daylight savings was train scheduling. I used to take the LIRR home when I worked in Manhattan and lived on Long Island. There was a 1:20AM train, a 2:20AM, a 3:50AM, and a 5:20AM train. Daylight savings would always confuse their schedules.
In the spring time, you set your clock ahead. So 1AM jumps to 2AM. So what happens to the 1:20AM train? Now what would make sense, of course, is to just bag the 1:20AM train and run the 2:20AM, 3:50AM, and 5:20AM trains at their normal times. But one year I remember they ran a 2:20AM, 2:50AM, and then the 5:20AM train.
In the fall, you set your clock back. So 2AM jumps back to 1AM. And the whole thing gets very confusing. They won't run two 1:20AM trains. So they run one 1:20AM train but don't run another 1:20AM train. Of course, you never know whether they'll run the 1:20AM EST or the 1:20AM EDT train so there's going to be a two hour delay no matter what.
Usually the LIRR employees didn't know what was going to happen because when I came in, it was a different shift and they weren't going to be affected. Every year they seemed to try one thing or another. So even if, for example, they ran the train at 1:20AM EST last year, you couldn't count it being the same rule the next year. So twice a year, getting home was a real adventure.
Of course, now I'm out in sunny Southern California and I drive everywhere.
Agreed.
:^)
Another example is where I live, by the beach. The state beach has ample parking for RVs and every weekend in the summer there seems to be a trek of RVs coming from inland. They find a parking spot and pay for the weekend. They setup the RV and have an oceanfront cabin. Not a horrible thing, I would think--if I lived inland, I'd consider buying something like that. All the comforts of home in front of the beach--now including your satellite TV!
Also, with any luck, it'll keep the rugrats inside watching TV and not playing hopscotch on the bike path...
But assuming they're close together, would you really be able to see two distinct sunsets ( la Tatooine) or would it be one oddly shaped blob? I would think they'd need to be far enough apart to see the difference.
Okay, I'm a tad lost on your definition of "emulated."
If they built a library that translates DirectX to OpenGL and compiled the original source code with their library, you consider that to be "emulation"? If that's the case, yup--you're right. Lots of games in the Mac are "emulated."
I'm not a hardcore gamer and I have no problems finding games to play on my Mac. That said, I usually have to wait to play the hottest game du jour. My roomate's nephew was playing Call of Duty about 6 months before I had the opportunity and about 9 months before I actually installed the game on my Mac. I'm currently making my way through Quake 4 (which was out last summer for Mac) so I'm about a year behind.
So if having the hottest game while it's hot is important to you, don't get a Mac. If having a wide selection of games is important to you, don't get a Mac.
I'm curious as to what has changed in the world to bring about "more creative" people? I agree with you about the parent poster. That said, while I'm not convinced there are "more" creative people, the price of tools has come down to the point where it is economically feasible for more people to explore that side of their brain.
Back when I was in highschool, we had a few nice SLR cameras and a darkroom for a photography class. Nowadays, the school has gone all digital and included classes in video and editing. They've been able to do this because the prices on decent equipment and software to support it have dropped dramatically.
So I'd argue that while there might be the same number of "creative people" as before, more of them are getting an opportunity to be creative.
Actually, I'll come up with another reason: Consistency.
In theory, one of the great things about iTunes Store is that it is consistent. If I buy a song from iTunes Store, I know what I can do with it. Most other stores have a dizzying array of what can and can't be done with a song purchase--you can/can't burn it to CD, transfer to music player, rent it, squirt it, etc.
Adding in the "Digital Rights Managed" field would be a step against this. Suddenly, when you download a song, you don't know what you can do with it. Or so the theory goes.
Personally, I think that's the reason Apple is holding out for the "all or nothing" approach. I also think Apple shouldn't wait for the major labels to come around and should, instead, try to get the ball rolling by letting those who don't want DRM on their music sell their music through iTunes without DRM.