Ethanol comes from Corn. Ethanol works asa fuel because it is rich in nitrogen. Corn does not produce it's own nitrogen. Corn for Ethanol requires nitrogen rich fertalizer.
Deisle can be made from Soy. Soy produces it's own nitrogen. Soy grows damn near anywheres. Brazil can grown enough Soy in one year to feed the world for 6 years. Soy is your savior. Turbo Deisle is the way to go. Either that or a hydrogen combustion generator for an electric car;)
This is a common practice. I did some consulting work for a co-owner for one of the early email harvesting/organizing/sales/distrobution companies. (Not on his evil project though) He went through 6 IPs that year. Basicly, DDOSers would attack the entire node he was on, not just him, they would threaten the ISP. The ISP looks at the profit potential of one company, versus the cost of losing all of their customers and would boot him off their grid.
All in all a pita for him. But the thing that will shut down a spammer... Charge Backs. Anyone who deals with online sales and credit cards knows that the quickest way to lose your online sales abaility is to have a few people return their goods and demand their money back. CC companies hate this, and if you get more then a few over a year, you can bet your account is going to get revoked. And getting an ISP is a hell of a lot easier than getting a CC carrier.
Look past making copies. With the speed of the internet, the growing penetration of broad band, and the advances in networking, distrubution is going to become a mute point. Why pay for a single COPY that you can copy once for back up, when you can pay for the CONTENT and access it from anywhere?
The point of DRM is to be in the way when you try to distribute something.
I think DRMs should be capable of running on anything that is associated as mine, or in my possession. IE: My car sterio, my home entertainment system, my computer, my MP3 Player, my friends PSP that he loaned me, etc. So long as I can (EASILY!) prove to the DRM that I own the content, I should be able to view/play/use whatever the content.
Infact, I think that in the advent that my content is stolen or damaged, I should be able to goto a distribution point (like the record label's web site) and download another copy of the content completely free, because I have already paid for it.
That is what DRM's should do in my opinion. They don't yet, but hopefully they will.
"Our research shows clearly that DRM is only an issue to consumers when it's technology they keep bumping into."
That remains true. His problem now w/ the MS DRM is that he's bumping into it. If the DRM was improved so that it would get out of his way, he would still have no issue with it.
Cars are physical objects that can't be easily or inexpensively copied, so the analogy doesn't work very well.
True, it was ment as a hyperbole, an anecdot that over ephasises a point. The point was to show not the ease of copying, but the effect on the production market. The issue to worry about is not the cost to copy, but the cost to create. If it costs $500 to make something, not much is lost if it is given away for free. If something costs $300,000+ (3 software developers working full time for a year, salary, benifits and taxes included) and is given away, that's significantly more of an issue. If something that costs $900 million (development of a new prescription medication), giving the forumla away would be an immense issue! At a measly $150,000, the cost of producing an albumn isn't too outstanding, but it is outstanding enough when multiplied by the number of albumns generated for there to be some concern about where the money comes from.
I hate to rain on your parade, but the torus is a geometric shape that was more discovered than invented.
Please excuse my incorrect phonetical spelling. Taurus is what I ment to say.
Also, the discussion was about monitor and video card output, not music recordings. I don't know about you, but I'm not about to let M$ or anyone else decide that my output devices are too sharp for their comfort.
I agree, but I am willing to purchase content legally. So long as the DRM that is in place is transparent and gives me the control and rights I want, I don't mind. People should stop fighting against DRMs and start fighting to SHAPE DRMs. DRMs are the future, like it or not, and working arround them will continue to become more and more of a pain. Why not save that suffering and shape DRMs into an acceptable solution?
If someone is determined, the will get in. Take a line out of the Isreali play book. Drive a tank through the wall. Your locks and sensors won't stop EVERYONE, they will just deter the MAJORITY of criminals.
And that's where YOUR analogy breaks down. You assume that someone must be around to pay or no more music/software/movies will ever be made again.
I didn't mean to sound so absolute. What I ment was that FORD will stop producing cars. Other people may still produce cars, until they stop making a profit. At which point, only people who have indipendant resourses, or are funded will develop new cars.
The music industry is a bit different. Most musicians make there money performing ($20/hour strumming and singing on the side walk is not a problem). Allowing for completely free distrobution of music will not effect the performers, but it will drop the market out of production and distrobution. Musicians would have to suck up the costs to keep the Production world in place, atleast the recording and processing studios, but other then that it would just be a bunch of rich people losing their incomes and a bunch of poor people losing their jobs.
Software on the other hand, is not like that. Software is more like the Ford situation. Luckily, there are companies like IBM and Sun that can see where the Open Source/Free as in Beer revolution is leading.
If I write a program (Which I do) and release it for money, I can use that money to pay my bills and continue living. If I release that code open source and free, I get no money and can not pay my bills. This is where people chime in "Charge for support!" which is a great idea! Except that if you are a developer, support is not your core compotency, developing is. So most likely, some other company will become a great supporter of your application (IE: redhat vs linux, redhat supports and makes money, linux is developed and makes no money). With no money, no one would develop linux. Linux is special in it's own way however, primarily due to group dynamics and an unnatural loathing of microsoft.
So anyways, free software development will be viable in the future so long as companies like Sun and IBM dump funding into open source projects.
But there's a downside to that. Having been through unemployeement, and having a family, I'm a stickler for job security. While getting funding for an open source project is great, it is only garunteed for a short period of time. And while $10k may sound like a lot of money, that would barily cover the mortgage on my house for a year(read: tiny beatup 100 year old house in bum-bleeps-ville), not to mention food, power, gas, student loans, repairs for my late 80's automobile, etc.
Ah well, enough of that bantor. There is 1 key issue that you have to remeber, the economy, not just the US or EU's, but the entire world's economy depends on 1 thing. Not how much money is available, but how much money is moving. When money stops moving, the world economy crashes. By not paying for music/movies/software, you are reducing the performance of the economy, and the $.99 you save by downloading that new song on emule as opposed to iTunes (which I hate) could add up with the others and come arround in the form of inflation.
What's a good number of copies for DRM-ed media? Obviously DRM will have to support at least 1 for backup purposes, but I'd much rather have about 10. I backup my most important data three times and also play my DVDs from copies so I don't have to pay for them again when they inevitably scratch. Who decides that "2 backups should be enough for anyone"? I'd rather that be ME.
Back on topic! I don't think there should be any limit. I think I should be able to identify any unit as my own or in my posession, and I should be able to play any of my drm'd content on it. I also think my drm'd content should be available anywheres. I want to be able to buy a drm'd album at the local best buy, and if that CD gets scratched, I'll just goto columbia house.com and download another copy, since I own the content. Infact, I want to be able to walk arround with my PDA/CellPhone/Wireless/MP3 player and contact columbia house and download any song I already own on the spot.
This whole "backup" copy arguement is mute. I want access to my content at any time from anywheres on any device so long as I can EASILY prove that I am the DRM holder.
The point is to keep the market going. Think about it, if Ford motor company makes a new car, person A buys the new car. Person B then has a choice between making an exact copy of person A's car for free or buying their own car. If enough people just make free copies instead of buying the car, Ford will no longer make money selling a car. At which point Ford will go out of business, and nobody will get a new car.
Other possible outcomes is that Ford continues to design cars, but charges the entire R&D + development + manufacturing + assembly + deliver for each one. Then one person can but a 500 million dollar torus, and everyone else can copy it. You just need to find someone willing to blow half a mill on a torus.
Another posibility is a federal tax. The government applies a $2000/year tax on anyone who has a car. That way, your car is free, and there is still money going into the development of new cars. This is similar to the EU's "Blank Media Tax".
Another posibility is that an entirely new market system magically creates itself. While this would be wonderful, there is no sign of it occuring. The market is adapting, by providing online sales and downloadable music, and by providing DRM's, the market garuntees that the majority of people are still funding the system.
Personally, I'd rather have a transparent DRM that prevents me from burning 10,000 copies, distributing via the web, or P2Ping a song then pay a tax on my MP3 player.
Problem is that they likely have very poor if any frame rate. To change the image I'm going to guess they first clear the image, and then create an electronic charge in cells containing electro-reactive ink. Once the ink has the static charge, it stays in it's state until it is either grounded, or receives another electric charge. But applying a 2nd charge would have serious limitations, it'd be easier just to ground the cell and apply the correct charge for the next image.
The goal of DRMs is not to prevent the home own from getting his own electricity, it is to prevent unskilled persons (as you called them) from tapping more lines into the power box.
It's not like having a DRM (when they opperate transparently and correctly) prevents you from listening to the content, it just prevents you from reproducing it.
So, for DRM to be effective, it must be able to keep out the determined criminals. And so far, at least, it has failed to do that.
I disagree. In order for DRM to be successful it must do a few things:
1) Be transparent to the end user. Jim Bob has to be able to download a song, play it on his PC, an mp3 player, his home entertainment system, and burn it to a disk and play it on a CD player.
2) Be industry standard. When all branches of content distribution can have a set standard, it'll be much easier to get DRMs to be transparent on ALL systems
3) Show that the small cost of using the legal system is advantagous over using a free illegal system. IE: Big lawsuits, FUD, and hassling of people who distribute copyrighted material illegally.
Once they can pull that off, DRMs will become a standard issue. Sure people will opperate outside the legal bounds, technology can not prevent that. But social issues (lawsuits and FUD) can.
Keeping an honest person honest is like keeping a tall person tall. The DRM may as well not be on there in the first place. The "honest" folk will do with their content what they would anyway, just as the DRM would allow them to (i.e. not distribute it on a large scale) , and the determined users will crack the DRM and do whatever they want with the content.
Your point of view assumes that people are honest, but studies have shown that when it comes to behavior on the internet, most people have more relaxed morals. Think about it, right now you can get a $5/month subscription to yahoo music, download songs for less than $1 on iTunes, or use any one of tons of other music provider services for a very low cost (less then a CD in a stored). If most average people are honest, and these options are available, why are illegal music content transfers still so popular?
It's kinda like locking the doors on your car. It'll keep the kids from grabbing your smokes off the dash board, but it won't keep a theif from steeling your car. This is the same case, the "innocents" as you put it, arn't actually innocent, they just aren't car theives (or mass-reprodruction rings producing large quantities of copyright infringing materials).
The thing to watch out for is how "secure" is defined and how easy it is to become/remain secure.
I think DRMs are a great idea, as long as they work with the system I have, and I can still do everything I want with my purchased material. If I can download a song, burn it to a CD, copy it to my MP3 Player, and pipe it to my home entertainment system, I'm happy. If the DRM does not allow me to do that, then I am not happy and will not buy the content.
That's a pretty big if. How would you react if your son in grade 12 was issued a Win 95 machine?
Well, if >I
I think that, unless this is an incredibly affluent neighbourhood, they are going to get killed on costs.
The hardware cost would be neglitable. 350 students, figure a low end solution from a dealer who gets advertising rights for $200. Toss in a grant for some college to do research on use/performance and you're looking at something most likely inline with a large book purchase. It's the e-book licensing that would be the clincher. Heck, you may even get the e-book licensing company to buy you the hardware for free, for the price of a continued license agreement with them.
The problems are obsolesence and breakage: how do they plan to handle situations where a single laptop might get broken 10 or more times in a year (and I mean broken as in "in half")?
That's why I would guess that most of these cutting edge school are getting heavily subsidized by e-book publishers and or college researchers and grants. At this time there just isn't enough real world experience to know.
It'd be interesting to see the cost of a laptop put up against a book. If the school could get a sponsor to supply a tablet pc, even a med/low end one (not like it need's to be able to play games) you could get a them for a relatively low price. If you can get say 8 years out of them (2 complete US highschool cycles) you're looking at a relatively low hardware cost over time. Then it's a matter of e-book licensing. I'm not sure on HS book prices, but even some of my crappy papper back books from college were well over $100 each.
Some classes this would be worth it, like advanced science, tech related classes, current soc/hist classes. When the subject matter changes so much that a textbook needs to be replaced in less the 4 years, it get's very costly.
Some not so much, literary classics don't change, and that run the school bought 20 years ago (albeit beat to hell) is probrably still in an acceptable condition.
Woowho! Statistics out of context! Isn't it beautiful! Let me show ya something, it's called "Spin Removal". You see, all broadcast groups (BBC, Fox, CNN, etc) spin news to make it interesting, or to push a political agenda. This is no exception.
You would think by those huge number (35% raise!!) that the English are buying illegal guns in droves and shooting the crap out of eachother.
When in fact, there were 10,000 related gun crimes in 2k1-2k2. Now, of those 10k gun crimes, only 2500 actually had shots fired. Infact, a large portion of them were actually people with REPLICAS that threadened someone.
So, take a country with a population of about 60 million, factor 10k gun crimes, and that's 1 crime per 6000 people, factor that only 2500 actual dealt with shots fired (not necesarily with victims) and you are looking at 1 crime per 24000 citizens.
Now, put that up against the good 'ol gun toting US of A! 300 million members strong, and we had what, about 1/2 a million violent gun crime victims last year. That works out to be 1 Violent crime with a victim per 600 people.
This is called critical thinking and research. You can claim the Brits are ass backwords, but they have a significantly better gun crime rate per capita the us US boys. And befor someone calls me a pansy ass grass eating hippy child, I put in my 4 years in the Marine Corps. I qualed high expert with the M-16 and I will put a hole dead center in a man sized target at 500 meters with out breaking a sweat. Doesn't mean I want my wack job, inbread coked up, crack pot of a neighboor to be armed to the teeth.
No easily owned guns, so of course there's an epidemic of stabbings, instead.
Check the fatality rates of gun shot victims against the fatality rate of stabbing victims.
And, of course, people who don't care about the law anyway are going to ignore those laws, too, leaving only the criminals with guns, knives, and eventually anything heavy, pointy, or flammable.
So by that same logic we should just forget about nuclear weapon bans because hey, if some terrorist cell wants it bad enough, they'll get it??
-Rick
Slashdot Mirror
Ethanol comes from Corn. Ethanol works asa fuel because it is rich in nitrogen. Corn does not produce it's own nitrogen. Corn for Ethanol requires nitrogen rich fertalizer.
;)
Deisle can be made from Soy. Soy produces it's own nitrogen. Soy grows damn near anywheres. Brazil can grown enough Soy in one year to feed the world for 6 years. Soy is your savior. Turbo Deisle is the way to go. Either that or a hydrogen combustion generator for an electric car
-Rick
This is a common practice. I did some consulting work for a co-owner for one of the early email harvesting/organizing/sales/distrobution companies. (Not on his evil project though) He went through 6 IPs that year. Basicly, DDOSers would attack the entire node he was on, not just him, they would threaten the ISP. The ISP looks at the profit potential of one company, versus the cost of losing all of their customers and would boot him off their grid.
All in all a pita for him. But the thing that will shut down a spammer... Charge Backs. Anyone who deals with online sales and credit cards knows that the quickest way to lose your online sales abaility is to have a few people return their goods and demand their money back. CC companies hate this, and if you get more then a few over a year, you can bet your account is going to get revoked. And getting an ISP is a hell of a lot easier than getting a CC carrier.
-Rick
I still can't get my ATI x700 to come up on Gnome/Xorg in Ubuntu. But Mandiva and XFree86 comes up no problem. bleh. -Rick
Look past making copies. With the speed of the internet, the growing penetration of broad band, and the advances in networking, distrubution is going to become a mute point. Why pay for a single COPY that you can copy once for back up, when you can pay for the CONTENT and access it from anywhere?
-Rick
The point of DRM is to be in the way when you try to distribute something.
I think DRMs should be capable of running on anything that is associated as mine, or in my possession. IE: My car sterio, my home entertainment system, my computer, my MP3 Player, my friends PSP that he loaned me, etc. So long as I can (EASILY!) prove to the DRM that I own the content, I should be able to view/play/use whatever the content.
Infact, I think that in the advent that my content is stolen or damaged, I should be able to goto a distribution point (like the record label's web site) and download another copy of the content completely free, because I have already paid for it.
That is what DRM's should do in my opinion. They don't yet, but hopefully they will.
-Rick
To quote Mike from his original blog last year:
"Our research shows clearly that DRM is only an issue to consumers when it's technology they keep bumping into."
That remains true. His problem now w/ the MS DRM is that he's bumping into it. If the DRM was improved so that it would get out of his way, he would still have no issue with it.
-Rick
Cars are physical objects that can't be easily or inexpensively copied, so the analogy doesn't work very well. True, it was ment as a hyperbole, an anecdot that over ephasises a point. The point was to show not the ease of copying, but the effect on the production market. The issue to worry about is not the cost to copy, but the cost to create. If it costs $500 to make something, not much is lost if it is given away for free. If something costs $300,000+ (3 software developers working full time for a year, salary, benifits and taxes included) and is given away, that's significantly more of an issue. If something that costs $900 million (development of a new prescription medication), giving the forumla away would be an immense issue! At a measly $150,000, the cost of producing an albumn isn't too outstanding, but it is outstanding enough when multiplied by the number of albumns generated for there to be some concern about where the money comes from.
I hate to rain on your parade, but the torus is a geometric shape that was more discovered than invented.
Please excuse my incorrect phonetical spelling. Taurus is what I ment to say.
Also, the discussion was about monitor and video card output, not music recordings. I don't know about you, but I'm not about to let M$ or anyone else decide that my output devices are too sharp for their comfort. I agree, but I am willing to purchase content legally. So long as the DRM that is in place is transparent and gives me the control and rights I want, I don't mind. People should stop fighting against DRMs and start fighting to SHAPE DRMs. DRMs are the future, like it or not, and working arround them will continue to become more and more of a pain. Why not save that suffering and shape DRMs into an acceptable solution?
-Rick
Actually my first thought was of a delutionist slash dotter who did it with the intetion of blaiming it on MS.
So where were you on the night of July 10th, 2005?
-Rick
If someone is determined, the will get in. Take a line out of the Isreali play book. Drive a tank through the wall. Your locks and sensors won't stop EVERYONE, they will just deter the MAJORITY of criminals.
-Rick
And that's where YOUR analogy breaks down. You assume that someone must be around to pay or no more music/software/movies will ever be made again.
.com and download another copy, since I own the content. Infact, I want to be able to walk arround with my PDA/CellPhone/Wireless/MP3 player and contact columbia house and download any song I already own on the spot.
I didn't mean to sound so absolute. What I ment was that FORD will stop producing cars. Other people may still produce cars, until they stop making a profit. At which point, only people who have indipendant resourses, or are funded will develop new cars.
The music industry is a bit different. Most musicians make there money performing ($20/hour strumming and singing on the side walk is not a problem). Allowing for completely free distrobution of music will not effect the performers, but it will drop the market out of production and distrobution. Musicians would have to suck up the costs to keep the Production world in place, atleast the recording and processing studios, but other then that it would just be a bunch of rich people losing their incomes and a bunch of poor people losing their jobs.
Software on the other hand, is not like that. Software is more like the Ford situation. Luckily, there are companies like IBM and Sun that can see where the Open Source/Free as in Beer revolution is leading.
If I write a program (Which I do) and release it for money, I can use that money to pay my bills and continue living. If I release that code open source and free, I get no money and can not pay my bills. This is where people chime in "Charge for support!" which is a great idea! Except that if you are a developer, support is not your core compotency, developing is. So most likely, some other company will become a great supporter of your application (IE: redhat vs linux, redhat supports and makes money, linux is developed and makes no money). With no money, no one would develop linux. Linux is special in it's own way however, primarily due to group dynamics and an unnatural loathing of microsoft.
So anyways, free software development will be viable in the future so long as companies like Sun and IBM dump funding into open source projects.
But there's a downside to that. Having been through unemployeement, and having a family, I'm a stickler for job security. While getting funding for an open source project is great, it is only garunteed for a short period of time. And while $10k may sound like a lot of money, that would barily cover the mortgage on my house for a year(read: tiny beatup 100 year old house in bum-bleeps-ville), not to mention food, power, gas, student loans, repairs for my late 80's automobile, etc.
Ah well, enough of that bantor. There is 1 key issue that you have to remeber, the economy, not just the US or EU's, but the entire world's economy depends on 1 thing. Not how much money is available, but how much money is moving. When money stops moving, the world economy crashes. By not paying for music/movies/software, you are reducing the performance of the economy, and the $.99 you save by downloading that new song on emule as opposed to iTunes (which I hate) could add up with the others and come arround in the form of inflation.
What's a good number of copies for DRM-ed media? Obviously DRM will have to support at least 1 for backup purposes, but I'd much rather have about 10. I backup my most important data three times and also play my DVDs from copies so I don't have to pay for them again when they inevitably scratch. Who decides that "2 backups should be enough for anyone"? I'd rather that be ME.
Back on topic! I don't think there should be any limit. I think I should be able to identify any unit as my own or in my posession, and I should be able to play any of my drm'd content on it. I also think my drm'd content should be available anywheres. I want to be able to buy a drm'd album at the local best buy, and if that CD gets scratched, I'll just goto columbia house
This whole "backup" copy arguement is mute. I want access to my content at any time from anywheres on any device so long as I can EASILY prove that I am the DRM holder.
-Rick
Dealing with spy ware, flaky p2p clients, or getting Grandma on a bit torrent is convienient? When compared to Start -> Programs -> iTunes?
-Rick
The point is to keep the market going. Think about it, if Ford motor company makes a new car, person A buys the new car. Person B then has a choice between making an exact copy of person A's car for free or buying their own car. If enough people just make free copies instead of buying the car, Ford will no longer make money selling a car. At which point Ford will go out of business, and nobody will get a new car.
Other possible outcomes is that Ford continues to design cars, but charges the entire R&D + development + manufacturing + assembly + deliver for each one. Then one person can but a 500 million dollar torus, and everyone else can copy it. You just need to find someone willing to blow half a mill on a torus.
Another posibility is a federal tax. The government applies a $2000/year tax on anyone who has a car. That way, your car is free, and there is still money going into the development of new cars. This is similar to the EU's "Blank Media Tax".
Another posibility is that an entirely new market system magically creates itself. While this would be wonderful, there is no sign of it occuring. The market is adapting, by providing online sales and downloadable music, and by providing DRM's, the market garuntees that the majority of people are still funding the system.
Personally, I'd rather have a transparent DRM that prevents me from burning 10,000 copies, distributing via the web, or P2Ping a song then pay a tax on my MP3 player.
-Rick
Problem is that they likely have very poor if any frame rate. To change the image I'm going to guess they first clear the image, and then create an electronic charge in cells containing electro-reactive ink. Once the ink has the static charge, it stays in it's state until it is either grounded, or receives another electric charge. But applying a 2nd charge would have serious limitations, it'd be easier just to ground the cell and apply the correct charge for the next image.
-Rick
So, you would also walk into a best buy and give yourself a 5-finger discount for a CD so that you could play it in your car?
-Rick
The goal of DRMs is not to prevent the home own from getting his own electricity, it is to prevent unskilled persons (as you called them) from tapping more lines into the power box.
It's not like having a DRM (when they opperate transparently and correctly) prevents you from listening to the content, it just prevents you from reproducing it.
-Rick
So, for DRM to be effective, it must be able to keep out the determined criminals. And so far, at least, it has failed to do that. I disagree. In order for DRM to be successful it must do a few things:
1) Be transparent to the end user. Jim Bob has to be able to download a song, play it on his PC, an mp3 player, his home entertainment system, and burn it to a disk and play it on a CD player.
2) Be industry standard. When all branches of content distribution can have a set standard, it'll be much easier to get DRMs to be transparent on ALL systems
3) Show that the small cost of using the legal system is advantagous over using a free illegal system. IE: Big lawsuits, FUD, and hassling of people who distribute copyrighted material illegally.
Once they can pull that off, DRMs will become a standard issue. Sure people will opperate outside the legal bounds, technology can not prevent that. But social issues (lawsuits and FUD) can.
-Rick
Keeping an honest person honest is like keeping a tall person tall. The DRM may as well not be on there in the first place. The "honest" folk will do with their content what they would anyway, just as the DRM would allow them to (i.e. not distribute it on a large scale) , and the determined users will crack the DRM and do whatever they want with the content.
Your point of view assumes that people are honest, but studies have shown that when it comes to behavior on the internet, most people have more relaxed morals. Think about it, right now you can get a $5/month subscription to yahoo music, download songs for less than $1 on iTunes, or use any one of tons of other music provider services for a very low cost (less then a CD in a stored). If most average people are honest, and these options are available, why are illegal music content transfers still so popular?
-Rick
It's kinda like locking the doors on your car. It'll keep the kids from grabbing your smokes off the dash board, but it won't keep a theif from steeling your car. This is the same case, the "innocents" as you put it, arn't actually innocent, they just aren't car theives (or mass-reprodruction rings producing large quantities of copyright infringing materials).
The thing to watch out for is how "secure" is defined and how easy it is to become/remain secure.
I think DRMs are a great idea, as long as they work with the system I have, and I can still do everything I want with my purchased material. If I can download a song, burn it to a CD, copy it to my MP3 Player, and pipe it to my home entertainment system, I'm happy. If the DRM does not allow me to do that, then I am not happy and will not buy the content.
-Rick
Makes the OLED Keyboard(http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?s id=05/07/14/1335215&tid=126&tid=159&tid=227) seem much more viable though!
-Rick
That's a pretty big if. How would you react if your son in grade 12 was issued a Win 95 machine?
Well, if >I
I think that, unless this is an incredibly affluent neighbourhood, they are going to get killed on costs.
The hardware cost would be neglitable. 350 students, figure a low end solution from a dealer who gets advertising rights for $200. Toss in a grant for some college to do research on use/performance and you're looking at something most likely inline with a large book purchase. It's the e-book licensing that would be the clincher. Heck, you may even get the e-book licensing company to buy you the hardware for free, for the price of a continued license agreement with them.
The problems are obsolesence and breakage: how do they plan to handle situations where a single laptop might get broken 10 or more times in a year (and I mean broken as in "in half")?
That's why I would guess that most of these cutting edge school are getting heavily subsidized by e-book publishers and or college researchers and grants. At this time there just isn't enough real world experience to know.
-Rick
It'd be interesting to see the cost of a laptop put up against a book. If the school could get a sponsor to supply a tablet pc, even a med/low end one (not like it need's to be able to play games) you could get a them for a relatively low price. If you can get say 8 years out of them (2 complete US highschool cycles) you're looking at a relatively low hardware cost over time. Then it's a matter of e-book licensing. I'm not sure on HS book prices, but even some of my crappy papper back books from college were well over $100 each.
Some classes this would be worth it, like advanced science, tech related classes, current soc/hist classes. When the subject matter changes so much that a textbook needs to be replaced in less the 4 years, it get's very costly.
Some not so much, literary classics don't change, and that run the school bought 20 years ago (albeit beat to hell) is probrably still in an acceptable condition.
-Rick
Woowho! Statistics out of context! Isn't it beautiful! Let me show ya something, it's called "Spin Removal". You see, all broadcast groups (BBC, Fox, CNN, etc) spin news to make it interesting, or to push a political agenda. This is no exception.
You would think by those huge number (35% raise!!) that the English are buying illegal guns in droves and shooting the crap out of eachother.
When in fact, there were 10,000 related gun crimes in 2k1-2k2. Now, of those 10k gun crimes, only 2500 actually had shots fired. Infact, a large portion of them were actually people with REPLICAS that threadened someone.
So, take a country with a population of about 60 million, factor 10k gun crimes, and that's 1 crime per 6000 people, factor that only 2500 actual dealt with shots fired (not necesarily with victims) and you are looking at 1 crime per 24000 citizens.
Now, put that up against the good 'ol gun toting US of A! 300 million members strong, and we had what, about 1/2 a million violent gun crime victims last year. That works out to be 1 Violent crime with a victim per 600 people.
This is called critical thinking and research. You can claim the Brits are ass backwords, but they have a significantly better gun crime rate per capita the us US boys. And befor someone calls me a pansy ass grass eating hippy child, I put in my 4 years in the Marine Corps. I qualed high expert with the M-16 and I will put a hole dead center in a man sized target at 500 meters with out breaking a sweat. Doesn't mean I want my wack job, inbread coked up, crack pot of a neighboor to be armed to the teeth.
-Rick
Never said it did. Less guns = Less crime related deaths.
-Rick
No easily owned guns, so of course there's an epidemic of stabbings, instead.
Check the fatality rates of gun shot victims against the fatality rate of stabbing victims. And, of course, people who don't care about the law anyway are going to ignore those laws, too, leaving only the criminals with guns, knives, and eventually anything heavy, pointy, or flammable. So by that same logic we should just forget about nuclear weapon bans because hey, if some terrorist cell wants it bad enough, they'll get it?? -Rick
If you are one of those who think gun control stops gun crime
Yeah, cause look at all the hand gun crimes in England...
Moran.
-Rick