I don't like this idea at all. I commend them for tackling such a large endeavor but I wish their efforts were concentrated on something more helpful to society.
When I experience something, it's a multitude of things. It's not just my five senses which can be recreated to within some threshold... it's also the state of my mind at the time. That cannot be recreated. You can't show me a video of my first kiss and expect me to feel the same thing I felt back then. I dare say that my senses and state of mind are near infinite.
I would view it and try to remember what I was like back then but I'd still be me now. I've still kissed ten or twenty other girls in passion. You could never put me back there and it's laughable to aim for that goal.
I also believe that humans are dynamic beings and that we are more than "the sum total of our memories..." These may affect behavior but they do not necessarily define us.
More importantly, I'm more intelligent now. Show me the video clip of me pulling a garden hose off a shelf in kindergarten and I'll wince as the sledge on top of it plummets off of the shelf and destroys my big toe. I'll watch it over and over and over again and dwell on how stupid I was. Or, I'll move on with my life.
People who want to do this are possibly suffering from a legacy complex where they are worried about what mark they leave on the world. Maybe this will satisfy you and maybe you'll make your kids experience these but it's not going to change the facts--there's a low probability anyone but your offspring will remember you. Hell, I don't even know any generation prior to my grandparents and neither does history.
Things happen to us--for better or for worse they happen. Let's experience them and move on. I don't dwell on pictures, I don't dwell on home videos, if you want memories of joyous occasions then record them but nobody wants to watch me go to work day after day.
I've read a lot of cases about the RIAA in court and I have to say there's some common tactics that this article doesn't mention:
Prior to the trial, make sure that the judge realizes that your wife, daughter and grandmother are available for him depending on his age preference.
Have the only licensed copy of Photoshop in the world installed on your laptop and present at the trial. Ask the defendent for his IP address during questioning and then add it to a BMP screen shot of some file sharing application with "KAZAA" shakily written at the top of the screen. Make sure that you wipe the drool from the judges mouth when you explain to him that this list is dynamic but you're sure the defendent is guilty. Also, throw his IP address on the Berlin Wall, the cover of Chairman Mao's Red Book & Hitler's armband in his 1936 speech just so the judge realizes the pure evil he's dealing with .
Remind the judge how much you and your industry mean to the American economy. Also remind him who's in charge right now and how important it is that the economy stays in full swing. Carefully explain to him that a successful lawsuit will not help the American economy.
Bring in Senator Ted Stevens as an expert witness on computers and tubes so the judge can understand how both computers and the internet works.
Act like the artists (or in Microsoft's case, developers) are the ones being screwed here. They are the ones that this hacker is stealing from and then show pictures of their families living in the cold run down mansions in Redwood. Also show a picture of Lars Ulrich with a measily pile of only 5 million dollars instead of 6.
Rinse, wash, repeat above card.
Use legions of lawyers to inundate the individual with accusations about his past and his profession.
Bottom line: stear clear of the fact that people pay you money for instances of something that's easily instantiated. Try to blur the concept of physical property versus intellectual property and use bad analogies such as grand theft auto or gas station holdups to the case at hand.
Oh, and stop at nothing to make sure the person is ruined for the rest of their life. Leans on paychecks are a sweel idea as well as restitution through house, car, possessions, etc.
So, as you can see, Microsoft has a ways to go before meeting the RIAA's stringent legal tactics. Don't worry though, I have faith in Microsoft.
I agree with you, but I see this as more intensifying their gamble.
Sony has parlayed two bets that the PS3 will do well and so will Blu-Ray. They feel the two technologies helped each other out. Blu-Ray gives the PS3 more proliferation via a selling point while the PS3 proliferates the standard of Blu-Ray throughout the community prematurely.
However, if one of these technologies fails, I believe the other will also. Sony has tied their fates and if consumers balk on either, Sony goes under. A burden? No. A huge gamble that may or may not pay off. Sony has rolled out five times the number of displays for the PS3 as there were for the PS2. I think they realize the amount they're risking on the table.
The word 'breakthrough' is definitely used too much.
I'm always skeptical when it's used in a present tense. For example, "The Segway is a breakthrough in transportation technology."
When the Segway first premiered, I heard this. Yet, it has been anything but a 'breakthrough' nor has it changed my life in anyway (with the exception of some humor at the Segway's expense).
My point is that you can only really use the term in the past tense when something really did signal a breakthrough. Like the invention of solid state transistors. At the time, did they really realize how big it was? Maybe, but that's not always the case.
Breakthroughs are also sometimes relative, for instance Srgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band might have been a musical breakthrough for rock but mean little to computer scientists. Likewise, proving Fermat's last theorem might have been a breakthrough for mathematics but meant little or nothing to a musician.
So, in the end, I think 'breakthrough' is used prematurely but it also is used relative to fields a lot. I don't think the author bothered to look at the thousands of uses of the word to see if it was followed by "for physicists" or "for medicine" in which case they might have been genuine breakthroughs in that sense. The difficult breakthroughs are the ones that do affect everyone (like the transistor or radio) but they are becoming harder to pinpoint as many inventions these days aren't actual inventions but instead integration of already existing inventions to form a new utility for those devices.
Among the small wonders produced by nanotechnology are carbon nanotubes, an advanced material as strong as diamond. These amazing carbon cylinders possess 100 times the tensile strength of steel and are 10,000 times finer than human hair. They are believed to conduct heat better than any other material, and they can also conduct electricity or function as semiconductors.
"Nanotubes are astonishingly promising, and I'm a realist, not an optimist," says Rod Ruoff, a mechanical engineering professor at Northwestern University. "It's a question of making the technology cheap enough." In 2001, only 3 kilograms of the highest quality carbon nanotubes--the single-walled variety--were produced worldwide, each gram worth $300, or 30 times as expensive as gold.
Now, full-scale production of carbon nanotubes is underway at the world's first ever large-scale nanotube factory, built outside Tokyo by the Carbon Nanotech Research Institute, a subsidiary of Japan's Mitsui & Co. The new facility is expected to churn out 10 tons of carbon nanotubes--albeit the lesser quality multi-walled type--a month, and CNRI anticipates the price will be a much more reasonable $80 a kilogram.
These multi-walled carbon nanotubes may not possess all the impressive properties of their single-walled brethren, but mixed with plastics, they make ultrastrong composites or microscale precision parts. Such carbon nanotube-filled plastics are already being used by automakers in fuel lines because they are conductive and can thus be grounded to release static electricity, which can ignite flammable gasoline.
One issue brought up is the possibility of discharging the ionosphere. Our calculations based on the size and conductivity of the ribbon and the electrical properties exhibited in our upper atmosphere illustrate that a small area (square meters) around the ribbon could become discharged in the worst conditions. The magnitude of this discharging makes us believe with high confidence that no adverse local or global phenomenon will occur. It also shows that it is unlikely, without considerable effort, that any kind of usable power may be generated by this same method.
I think your concern is valid though for conduction through the ionoshpere or even on the surface of the nano tube/wire -- what would this huge antenna/conducter do to our atmosphere (if anything)?
Now, 1 meter resolution might be twice as good as 2 meter resolution but my dumbass isn't going to know the difference. My point is that those are two very high resolutions so I think the Mars Express gets the credit of being the first to get super close-up pictures. Don't worry, American's will not be out done by Europeans -- there will not be a super resolution images of mars gap! Every American will now be proud to say that their screensaver takes up roughly twice the amount of room as their European counterpart.:-)
In all seriousness though, these images would be very useful for selecting landing sites for more missions and possibly manned missions in the very far future. The MRO and Mars Express seem to have very similar objectives -- studying the composition of Mars, it's weather, atmosphere & geology -- I wonder if they couldn't have been a combined effort for an even greater return. Then again, I'm just glad both of them are fulfilling their goals instead of both burning up on entry due to a conversion of units error.
Although these were a very solid twenty mishaps that almost lead to nuclear war, why are they all tied to the U.S. & Russia?
I'm sure there are other countries with nuclear weapons. The current count on nuclear weapons from Wikipedia comes to:
The former chair of the United Nations disarmament committee states there are more than 16,000 strategic and tactical nuclear weapons ready for deployment and another 14,000 in storage. The U.S. has nearly 7,000 ready for action and 3,000 in storage and Russia has about 8,500 on hand and 11,000 in storage, he said. China has 400 nuclear weapons, France 350, Britain 200, Israel 200, India 95 and Pakistan 50. NATO has stationed 480 U.S. nuclear weapons in Belgium, the Netherlands, Italy, Germany and Turkey, with several other countries in pursuit of an arsenal of their own (1).
Frankly, the India/Pakistan development of a nuclear arsenol worries me more than what happened historically between the U.S. & Russia. And don't even get me started on chemical and biological weapons.
A coworker of mine tried to astonish me with the same fact. He said, "We have over 90% of the same genes as mice!"
It's not too astonishing to me. Considering from the point of DNA, you are no where close to the end product. I'm not a biologist but to my knowledge, DNA can be one of four acids. Those, in turn are read in varying lengths to make one of twenty different amino acids. Those amino acids can be read in varying lengths to be one of hundreds (if not thousands) different proteins which are the building blocks of life.
So if you want to shock me and tell me that between a mouse and I, nine in every ten genes is the same, I'm not going to be too shocked. If one in every ten is different, I could see the above transformation resulting in something no where near the same thing.
But the basic idea is very very well founded, any gene to protein research is good research. Since we know very little about that process and find it quite difficult to predict. The answer to Alzheimer's is believed to be rooted in this process and, by working backwards, we may be able to isolate the genes that cause it. That is, of course, assuming it's due to a twisted protein which may or may not be caused by a common virus or just age.
What I am very curious to know is what the verdict is on the 99% of Junk DNA that mice have. Humans have a similar scenario but what "junk" means is that this DNA does not code into proteins or seem to have a function. I recall reading an article where lab scientists had successfully removed a large chunk of what was believed to be junk DNA.
Every mouse born missing that trait suffered a severe spine defect which looked like multiple sclerosis beyond belief. It was then believed that this deformity occurred in every mouse born but when inserted into junk DNA, it would be rendered harmless. Without the junk DNA to absorb the common deformity, the protein sequence for spinal cells was effectively altered nearly all the time.
Hopefully with this mapping, we'll be able to better understand mice (and, in turn humans and optimistically eukaryotes in general). And perhaps we'll be able to settle the dispute as to whether or not junk DNA has functions beyond our insight.
Unfortunately, I think one of the even more important tools for figuring out how Alzheimer's Desease occurs is understanding how proteins fold. Hopefully this will aid researchers looking to do this as a valuable tool.
Aside from this being just a generally difficult type of study to execute, but what is their confidence level that a 13% drop is related to file-sharing?
Though the methodology is complex, the results are straightforward: some US music consumers "could have decreased their CD purchases (prior to 2004) by about 13 percent due to Internet file sharing."
Oh, there it is, the word 'could.' So on a level from one to a hundred, where does 'could' lie? I mean, if this was a rigorous statistical procedure -- no matter how complex, they should be able to give a percent confidence. You can measure deviation from your model and give it to me that way but I'm concerned that there might have been uncontrolled variables affecting the sale of CDs.
And I believe that iTunes Music Service has been out since 2001, is that accounted for? It doesn't seem to be if you search the below linked document. I mean, I assume this study is targeting illegal downloads. iTunes is legal to my knowledge yet it would still decrease CD purchases.
If you'd like to read the paper, it can be found here (PDF alert).
While this study does take into acocunt some variables, I'm just afraid there are too many for it to be conclusive. I would recommend that the article ignore Family Size and find out how many of their users used a legal music download service.
Also, is 2,000 samples per year enough to be accurate? Possibly, but then again, they are talking about an economy of 250 million consumers.
The cost of the engine itself depends on how much energy it can store; an EEStor-powered engine with a range roughly equivalent to that of a gasoline-powered car would cost about $5,200. That's a slight premium over the cost of the gas engine and the other parts the device would replace -- the gas tank, exhaust system, and drivetrain. But getting rid of the need to buy gas should more than make up for the extra cost of an EEStor-powered car.
Yeah, but how do I know that capacitors that perform at the $9 per 500 miles aren't exponentially more expensive?
How well do these capacitors retain their charge? How many charges are they good for? The biggest concern I've heard of against fuel cell cars is that their cells are worthless after five years or so.
Also, I doubt they're hooking it to a regular outlet if they're getting $9 of electricity out of it in five minutes. Granted, you could make charge stations that are similar to gas stations (or add them to gas stations) but you really should list all the materials we would need when considering the cost of this alternative.
I'm not trying to rain on your parade, just pointing out that it's not going to be adopted by everyone in the United States unless it's obviously cheaper than the current method. On the surface, it appears to be... but there are a lot of details missing.
The analysts are counting on Sony making up the sales of machines with the sales of video games.
If you don't make a profit on the console, then you probably hate me. Usually the only reason I buy a console is because of a game or two that are specific only to that console. My game libraries are quite small and if I ever buy more than two or three games, they are used and cheap.
My last console of purchase was a Gamecube. The number of retail games I purchased for it totals two: Super Smash Brothers and Windwaker. I hope Nintendo made money on that console because I doubt they made much on the games I purchased for it -- though I could be wrong.
So how many games would I have to buy to make a PS3 profitable? Well if they lose $300 per console and let's be generous and assume they make $50 profit on each game, then I'd have to buy six games -- which there is no way in hell I'm going to do because each game is going to be $60. If I'm to drop $500-$600 on the console (which I'm probably not going to), I'm not dropping another $300+ on games.
Now, if Sony makes big royalties on their Blu-Ray DVDs and the sales of the PS3 increase sales of that, they may be OK. It's hard to say but I think that the adoption of their Blu-Ray standard is crucial to their survival -- the PS3 being expensive because of it is just making the stakes all that much higher. And they've put themselves in that position so they have no one to blame but themselves. Quite the gamble. 'Will it pay off?' relies on too many factors for me to even ponder... or care to ponder for that matter.
There's something the technicians need to learn from the artists. If it isn't aesthetically pleasing, it's probably wrong.
How hilariously coincidental. And although it may be the quote of the moment, I must counter with something I've said to many people: Stephen Hawking isn't very aesthetically pleasing but he's rarely wrong.
Or, conventionally cited as "you can't judge a book by its cover."
What it means is that I've seen some very ugly things create or provide very beautiful things. Elliott Smith was ugly but his music was beautiful. Although the library I went to as a kid was ugly and looked like an old bomb shelter, it provided something very important to me. Although snakes and earth worms and spiders look ugly as hell, I still love what they do. And, as a kid, it made sense to me to kill rabbits and pocket gophers on a farm while making sure not to harm a garden snake as I mowed the lawn.
Like I'll still maintain, whether something is beautiful or ugly tells me nothing.
I hadn't heard of several of the top sites they rate. But why is it that so many torrent sites are so ugly?
Excellent question! But a difficult one to answer because, if cheesy TV has taught me anything, isn't beauty in the eye of the beholder?
I've never taken a UI design course. And I'm probably the last person on earth to be able to make one. I'm an engineer developer and my web services often have no front end. If they do, it is one of ice cold ability to do what you want -- the perfect marriage of function and function.
So what about these sites displeases you? I just flipped through four of them and none of them made my eyes puke like an angry fruit salad (although BushTorrent did cause me to cringe at the site of my 'fearless leader')... so what in particular is the problem?
Hell, I even visited Torrentz and, although the 90s called and asked for their 'z' back, the design was still pleasing to me. I went to isoHunt that was minimalist but still did the job. I went to MegaNova and even though it was busy as hell, it had the top torrents laid out by category. So what's the problem? There are a few flaws here and there but these sites serve the function they are there to perform. The only really ugly things on these sites are the ads. So far I've seen one flashing ad and one shaking ad. Those are offensive to my eye but I'm so use to ignoring them! I mean, the people who run these indexing sites probably don't get revenue from anything but ads so to make their pages load faster, they inundate us with banners and Ads By Google. So what? So does Slashdot and I'm here quite often. It's the 00s, most sites would put ads by Google on their own grandmother if she was digital.
I don't see any problems with these UIs. They're not award winning, but then again, should they be? I mean, the few times I've used bittorrent is because a site wants to host a large file illegally (like a WoW patch or whatever) and they instead offer a torrent file. I'm really interested in what everyone else is interested in and, if you are, then just go to these sites and peruse them. Don't make them your homepage.
If you really think they're that horrible, wander back to Geocities user pages and enjoy dancing Jesus and Flying Toasters with the blink marquee tag abused to high hell. Then you'd be overjoyed to see some of the gradient blends used on these pages.
I agree. The person who submitted this story is clearly trying to fix something that's probably not borken.
How to Encourage Use of OSS?
If you really want to champion this movement, you have to recognize the problem before you can start to offer people solutions. You mention installing OSS apps that you seem to enjoy on everyone's machine.
While you may feel that this is doing them a world of good, what problem did you solve? Did they complain to you that they were sick of DRM? Did they complaining that they wish they hadn't bought MS Office and long for a free suite of editing and publishing tools? Was IE failing to fill its role in their lives?... probably not.
For the average person, there are few problems with their computer experiences. If they have issues with security online or troubles coming up with the cash for MS Office, then you have definite problems that need solutions. And OSS is there for them, that's when it's your duty to step in and offer your services and free 15-30 minutes of time to explain how this new software works. Nobody wants to climb extra learning curves and, let's face it, commercial software products are usually years ahead of their OSS competitors.
A lot of open source applications are developed to satisfy a very specific problem. That is, they don't have a breadth of system requirements, just very very specific ones. They may come out fulfilling these few requirements far and above their competitors but they often lack the bells and whistles. For instance, I love CDex because it's simple and slimmed down with no DRM. Does this mean that my sister should also want to use it? No. She doesn't care or know what DRM is and my explanations bore her. Instead, she wants quick instant American gratification at the click of a button. iTunes gives this to her, CDex is ugly and foreign with no online tutorials or music store built into it.
So before you ask me how to encourage the use of OSS, you first need to tell me the problem that OSS needs to solve. I'm guessing for a lot of these people, there isn't one. Unfortunately, OSS is simply not for everyone.
If someone comes to you in distress with a problem, simply say, "you know, I use this app that..." or if someone comes to you with obvious little money say, "you know, there are all these free tools out there..." That's when you'll really do people some good -- not when you force it down their throats and tell them that their trusty expensive apps are the devil.
And if they're for OSS, should they try to put some pressure on their users/clients?
You may feel like you're fighting the good fight and putting up a valiant effort but the last thing I want is people who have bad Linux/OSS experiences out there telling everyone about them. I mean, I can think of several people that would actually be detrimental to your cause if you pressured them into using OSS.
The beautiful thing about OSS is that it's free. And you're not forced to use it (like Dell forces people to use Windows). Let's keep it that way.
Please only install this software on their machines if they give you permission. If their computer stops working soon after or they experience problems that they don't understand (file associations), they may just quietly blame it on those applications and tell that to all their friends and relatives.
Microsoft Corp. said on Thursday it may offer a free, advertising-supported version of its basic word processing and spreadsheet software, in an apparent bid to fend off a nascent challenge from Google Inc. in the business software market.
Microsoft is not "planning" this. The title of TFA is "Microsoft mulls free Web-based business software." The definition of 'mull' is "to consider at length." Nowhere does it say this is for sure or that they are planning it. They are considering it. There is a difference. They are trying to figure out if it would be feasible to port MS Works to be accessible over the web generating revenue through in product advertising.
Maybe they'll decide to work on this. Maybe they'll decide the market is too crowded already. Right now, it's all up in the air -- I have found no sources claiming they are already planning it.
The idea that we can end terrorism by treating everyone with "respect" is naïve.
No more naïve than thinking that increased nuclear warheads, military spending and seek & destory missions in other countries will end terrorism.
Did I suggest we surrender or run away? No, I suggest an alternative more condusive to listening and thinking than burning and shooting.
Also you misunderstood me, I didn't say "everyone" as in individuals, I said "other countries" specifically the ones we have exerted influence over in order to benefit our own country or economy. I'm not concerned about respecting Osama Bin Laden. Hollowing out countries where he has been in the past in an effort to find him does concern me, however. I feel it leaves long lasting detrimental effects on the populace living there and only creates more anti-American sentiment. We should be fighting a war of words and asking for help from other countries, not blowing up what we want and demanding things. We make our allies look like puppets to the rest of the world and say things like, "If you're not with us, you're against us." Stupid.
Republicans praised the bill, saying it will help the U.S. government fight terrorism.
Maybe it will. Maybe it will ensure that I never have to worry about a terrorist inside my country ever again. Maybe. Then again, maybe it won't. Maybe they'll just become better at using encryption. Who knows? I don't think you can really prove that it will help you at all. There is no "silver bullet" to stop terrorism. Stop claiming there is. Our best bet to end terrorism is making it a world wide effort and treating other countries with respect -- the same way our country would like to be treated.
One thing I do know is that this will allow my government to build a case against me with no warrant, probable cause or charges filed and documented against me. There could be a dossier (digital or hard copy) somewhere in the government's system with my name on it even though I haven't done anything wrong. Worse, the same could be said about every single American.
You can call me a crazed conspiracy theorist and you can call me a tin foil hat-ist but you can't deny it will be it will be a possibility for even you if you live in the United States.
Under the guise of "modernization," this bill will only add to the decline of my country. We sure aren't as "modernized" as Orwell's 1984 so I guess we're 22 years behind and we better get on it -- and who better than the Republicans to lead us there?
For the love of your country, write your representative in the house about how you feel on this issue. Please. Do it by hand with your signature and address on the letter. Physically mail it to them. Take the time to do this. Make sure you are heard about the things that matter to you. Make your concern known to those who represent you. If you spend a lot of time writing it, send it to your local newspaper also as a possible editorial. I doubt I'm alone on my concerns.
Really, enjoy it while you can, because the record companies will sue YouTube into the ground. Soon.
That's not entirely true.
Or, to put it another way, I think there are better alternatives to suing and the record companies have figured this out. When they sued Napster, Kazaa & eDonkey and then started suing users, I don't think their profits went up. I mean, they might have gotten a few million from the companies and a few thousand from the users that year. But they destroyed something that they could have taken advantage of. Most industries would kill for an infrastructure of people acting as their own marketing tools spreading their product around. Now, it was illegal because the product was being copied illegally. But if the record companies could have taken a look at the business model and adapted it to suit their needs and sued for the ability to call the shots instead of just pure cash, I think they would have come out further ahead in the long run.
You see, if the record companies looked at YouTube and tried to drive them in the ground, they'd only be trying to suppress something that has come about naturally. Why don't they just claim what is theirs and demand all the copyrighted material ad revenue goes straight to them? Why don't they try to work something out with YouTube in an attempt to generate a recurring income? I mean, surely YouTube can keep the quality down on the work or restrict it to certain songs so that people will feel compelled to purchase CDs/DVDs, can't they?
I think YouTube is like a wild stallion and the record industry is afraid of it. They can either shoot it dead (but that will just spawn more) or tame it and generate a steady income from it.
When you've gotten so big that people are afraid you're controlling free speech and the press, then I don't think $1.5 billion is too much to ask.
Remember, the CEO of News Corp is Rupert Murdoch. Everything you see with the Fox logo is his. Its yearly revenue is around $24 billion. "News Corp" is a nice generic name that no one remembers while it's holdings grow out of control. Whenever you see Fox or Myspace or anything listed in the link above, you should be thinking one thing: "It's all News Corp under the direction of one man."
Taking these pictures of the face was the primary goal of this mission. ESA was sick of listening to its citizens bitch about there being a 30 year "pictures of the face on Mars" gap (that's a rough translation from European).
image the entire surface at high resolution (10 metres/pixel) and selected areas at super resolution (2 metres/pixel);
produce a map of the mineral composition of the surface at 100 metre resolution;
map the composition of the atmosphere and determine its global circulation;
determine the structure of the sub-surface to a depth of a few kilometres;
determine the effect of the atmosphere on the surface;
determine the interaction of the atmosphere with the solar wind.
The Beagle 2 lander was planned to:
determine the geology and the mineral and chemical composition of the landing site;
search for life signatures (exobiology);
study the weather and climate.
I guess I would rather see something more than just regular images come from a mission. Right now, I can see all these things on the ESA's site that help the user see all these pictures of Mars but I don't see any maps of mineral composition, atmospheric movement, etc. I've seen pictures, these are some great high quality images with 3D detail that are great screensaver material. But, for the love of science, when do we get the rest of the data from the mission -- you know, the stuff that is, like, going to alter the way we view Mars? Is the public never going to see these results?
What makes this particularly interesting is that Erlich is a Republican -- the party often maligned for exploiting flaws in electronic systems -- and his attempts to clean up Maryland's voting problems are being opposed by Democrats, the party that is usually complaining about electronic voting!
You act surprised. You shouldn't be, sometimes the priority of one party is just to be against whatever the otherside wants. Regardless of whether or not they have a common goal. It's called "partisan politics" and it's been ruining the country for over 200 years. Both parties want this country to remain polarized for the next election because they feel they both have votes to gain from it. Therefore, they'll try to block anything the otherside tries to do in a knee-jerk reaction.
And for those of you voting for your "team" regardless of the actual issues and goals are doing the country just as large a disservice.
So this summary and article talk of an anti-theft (yes, they use that word) pickpocket notification system.
Is this supposed to work in real time? I mean, setup the scenario in which this thing will prevent theft. Ok, a thief steals a BlackBerry and the victim receives a wireless message on their... well, not BlackBerry because that's in pickpocket's hands right now. They probably aren't carrying anything else if the BlackBerry is supposed to encompass all. So maybe this just isn't going to realistically work in alerting you and thwarting a pickpocket on the street.
What it does do is "render your data unusable" if you don't enter your code fast enough. Now, unless it also disables the device, I don't see that deterring pickpockets much at all. Since their primary take is probably the device itself for resale on the streets of your nearest metropolis. The data onboard is just a bonus if you were stupid enough to store financial information on a mobile device.
But let's assume this "wireless alert message" would be in the form of sound waves (hey, sound waves are wireless) and were just a bunch of sirens and a guy shouting "I'm being stolen!" Well, I could imagine this to be either A) more trouble than it's worth, B) ineffective because a minute after it's removed from the holster it's probably already half way across town or C) a reason for a smack addict to shoot you when he holds you at gun point and demands everything in your pockets.
"It's the kind of feature you didn't know you need until you see other people have it -- and then you want it," said James Faucette, an analyst with Pacific Crest Securities in Oregon.
Faucette said government workers or those who have sensitive data on their BlackBerrys would be likely customers for the new feature, although he said that niche group of buyers probably wouldn't account for more than a hundred thousand customers in North America. "And even if it were 500,000, we're still only talking about 10 per cent of the BlackBerrys they're going to ship this year."
I don't know about Faucette but where I work, BlackBerrys aren't allowed -- and your an idiot if you put any important data on a mobile device!
So really, the only news here is that you can now be notified via e-mail or text message that your BlackBerry has officially been found to be not in its holster. I guess the people who get on the bus with their BlackBerry in their bag and then get off the bus without the BlackBerry in their bag will no longer have to put two and two together to discover that they've been robbed. They will be notified by e-mail which they can read at their leisure -- with things as stream lined as that, it must be THE FUTURE!
That certainly explains why your posts (and the political views you've posted about) seem to have an air of intolerance and inexperience--you haven't particularly seen or experienced a whole lot of the world.
Well, that's a very large assumption and a slap in the face.
I try to be as open minded as possible (see sig). I grew up on a farm in the middle of nowhere Minnesota and have severely lacked the funds to ever travel anywhere -- though I like to think that the books I've read from libraries have made up for this as much as possible. I used to listen to MPR all the time and now that's one of the biggest things I miss but I can stream it at home. We had six in Minnesota with tons of local shows. There is one out here.
I moved to Virginia for work -- there was none for developers in Minnesota at the time. One of the reasons I have had a pretty hard time meeting new people is because it seems a lot of people out here are intollerant of new ideas. There's been more than a few people here that have found out I'm from Minnesota and said, "Oh, so you're from a blue state..." Not everyone is like that out here but the wind sure blows a different way.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't like this idea at all. I commend them for tackling such a large endeavor but I wish their efforts were concentrated on something more helpful to society.
... it's also the state of my mind at the time. That cannot be recreated. You can't show me a video of my first kiss and expect me to feel the same thing I felt back then. I dare say that my senses and state of mind are near infinite.
When I experience something, it's a multitude of things. It's not just my five senses which can be recreated to within some threshold
I would view it and try to remember what I was like back then but I'd still be me now. I've still kissed ten or twenty other girls in passion. You could never put me back there and it's laughable to aim for that goal.
I also believe that humans are dynamic beings and that we are more than "the sum total of our memories..." These may affect behavior but they do not necessarily define us.
More importantly, I'm more intelligent now. Show me the video clip of me pulling a garden hose off a shelf in kindergarten and I'll wince as the sledge on top of it plummets off of the shelf and destroys my big toe. I'll watch it over and over and over again and dwell on how stupid I was. Or, I'll move on with my life.
People who want to do this are possibly suffering from a legacy complex where they are worried about what mark they leave on the world. Maybe this will satisfy you and maybe you'll make your kids experience these but it's not going to change the facts--there's a low probability anyone but your offspring will remember you. Hell, I don't even know any generation prior to my grandparents and neither does history.
Things happen to us--for better or for worse they happen. Let's experience them and move on. I don't dwell on pictures, I don't dwell on home videos, if you want memories of joyous occasions then record them but nobody wants to watch me go to work day after day.
- Prior to the trial, make sure that the judge realizes that your wife, daughter and grandmother are available for him depending on his age preference.
- Have the only licensed copy of Photoshop in the world installed on your laptop and present at the trial. Ask the defendent for his IP address during questioning and then add it to a BMP screen shot of some file sharing application with "KAZAA" shakily written at the top of the screen. Make sure that you wipe the drool from the judges mouth when you explain to him that this list is dynamic but you're sure the defendent is guilty. Also, throw his IP address on the Berlin Wall, the cover of Chairman Mao's Red Book & Hitler's armband in his 1936 speech just so the judge realizes the pure evil he's dealing with .
- Remind the judge how much you and your industry mean to the American economy. Also remind him who's in charge right now and how important it is that the economy stays in full swing. Carefully explain to him that a successful lawsuit will not help the American economy.
- Bring in Senator Ted Stevens as an expert witness on computers and tubes so the judge can understand how both computers and the internet works.
- Act like the artists (or in Microsoft's case, developers) are the ones being screwed here. They are the ones that this hacker is stealing from and then show pictures of their families living in the cold run down mansions in Redwood. Also show a picture of Lars Ulrich with a measily pile of only 5 million dollars instead of 6.
- Rinse, wash, repeat above card.
- Use legions of lawyers to inundate the individual with accusations about his past and his profession.
- Bottom line: stear clear of the fact that people pay you money for instances of something that's easily instantiated. Try to blur the concept of physical property versus intellectual property and use bad analogies such as grand theft auto or gas station holdups to the case at hand.
- Oh, and stop at nothing to make sure the person is ruined for the rest of their life. Leans on paychecks are a sweel idea as well as restitution through house, car, possessions, etc.
So, as you can see, Microsoft has a ways to go before meeting the RIAA's stringent legal tactics. Don't worry though, I have faith in Microsoft.I agree with you, but I see this as more intensifying their gamble.
Sony has parlayed two bets that the PS3 will do well and so will Blu-Ray. They feel the two technologies helped each other out. Blu-Ray gives the PS3 more proliferation via a selling point while the PS3 proliferates the standard of Blu-Ray throughout the community prematurely.
However, if one of these technologies fails, I believe the other will also. Sony has tied their fates and if consumers balk on either, Sony goes under. A burden? No. A huge gamble that may or may not pay off. Sony has rolled out five times the number of displays for the PS3 as there were for the PS2. I think they realize the amount they're risking on the table.
The word 'breakthrough' is definitely used too much.
I'm always skeptical when it's used in a present tense. For example, "The Segway is a breakthrough in transportation technology."
When the Segway first premiered, I heard this. Yet, it has been anything but a 'breakthrough' nor has it changed my life in anyway (with the exception of some humor at the Segway's expense).
My point is that you can only really use the term in the past tense when something really did signal a breakthrough. Like the invention of solid state transistors. At the time, did they really realize how big it was? Maybe, but that's not always the case.
Breakthroughs are also sometimes relative, for instance Srgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band might have been a musical breakthrough for rock but mean little to computer scientists. Likewise, proving Fermat's last theorem might have been a breakthrough for mathematics but meant little or nothing to a musician.
So, in the end, I think 'breakthrough' is used prematurely but it also is used relative to fields a lot. I don't think the author bothered to look at the thousands of uses of the word to see if it was followed by "for physicists" or "for medicine" in which case they might have been genuine breakthroughs in that sense. The difficult breakthroughs are the ones that do affect everyone (like the transistor or radio) but they are becoming harder to pinpoint as many inventions these days aren't actual inventions but instead integration of already existing inventions to form a new utility for those devices.
Now, 1 meter resolution might be twice as good as 2 meter resolution but my dumbass isn't going to know the difference. My point is that those are two very high resolutions so I think the Mars Express gets the credit of being the first to get super close-up pictures. Don't worry, American's will not be out done by Europeans -- there will not be a super resolution images of mars gap! Every American will now be proud to say that their screensaver takes up roughly twice the amount of room as their European counterpart.
In all seriousness though, these images would be very useful for selecting landing sites for more missions and possibly manned missions in the very far future. The MRO and Mars Express seem to have very similar objectives -- studying the composition of Mars, it's weather, atmosphere & geology -- I wonder if they couldn't have been a combined effort for an even greater return. Then again, I'm just glad both of them are fulfilling their goals instead of both burning up on entry due to a conversion of units error.
I'm sure there are other countries with nuclear weapons. The current count on nuclear weapons from Wikipedia comes to: Frankly, the India/Pakistan development of a nuclear arsenol worries me more than what happened historically between the U.S. & Russia. And don't even get me started on chemical and biological weapons.
A coworker of mine tried to astonish me with the same fact. He said, "We have over 90% of the same genes as mice!"
It's not too astonishing to me. Considering from the point of DNA, you are no where close to the end product. I'm not a biologist but to my knowledge, DNA can be one of four acids. Those, in turn are read in varying lengths to make one of twenty different amino acids. Those amino acids can be read in varying lengths to be one of hundreds (if not thousands) different proteins which are the building blocks of life.
So if you want to shock me and tell me that between a mouse and I, nine in every ten genes is the same, I'm not going to be too shocked. If one in every ten is different, I could see the above transformation resulting in something no where near the same thing.
But the basic idea is very very well founded, any gene to protein research is good research. Since we know very little about that process and find it quite difficult to predict. The answer to Alzheimer's is believed to be rooted in this process and, by working backwards, we may be able to isolate the genes that cause it. That is, of course, assuming it's due to a twisted protein which may or may not be caused by a common virus or just age.
What I am very curious to know is what the verdict is on the 99% of Junk DNA that mice have. Humans have a similar scenario but what "junk" means is that this DNA does not code into proteins or seem to have a function. I recall reading an article where lab scientists had successfully removed a large chunk of what was believed to be junk DNA.
Every mouse born missing that trait suffered a severe spine defect which looked like multiple sclerosis beyond belief. It was then believed that this deformity occurred in every mouse born but when inserted into junk DNA, it would be rendered harmless. Without the junk DNA to absorb the common deformity, the protein sequence for spinal cells was effectively altered nearly all the time.
Hopefully with this mapping, we'll be able to better understand mice (and, in turn humans and optimistically eukaryotes in general). And perhaps we'll be able to settle the dispute as to whether or not junk DNA has functions beyond our insight.
Unfortunately, I think one of the even more important tools for figuring out how Alzheimer's Desease occurs is understanding how proteins fold. Hopefully this will aid researchers looking to do this as a valuable tool.
Oh, there it is, the word 'could.' So on a level from one to a hundred, where does 'could' lie? I mean, if this was a rigorous statistical procedure -- no matter how complex, they should be able to give a percent confidence. You can measure deviation from your model and give it to me that way but I'm concerned that there might have been uncontrolled variables affecting the sale of CDs.
And I believe that iTunes Music Service has been out since 2001, is that accounted for? It doesn't seem to be if you search the below linked document. I mean, I assume this study is targeting illegal downloads. iTunes is legal to my knowledge yet it would still decrease CD purchases.
If you'd like to read the paper, it can be found here (PDF alert).
While this study does take into acocunt some variables, I'm just afraid there are too many for it to be conclusive. I would recommend that the article ignore Family Size and find out how many of their users used a legal music download service.
Also, is 2,000 samples per year enough to be accurate? Possibly, but then again, they are talking about an economy of 250 million consumers.
How well do these capacitors retain their charge? How many charges are they good for? The biggest concern I've heard of against fuel cell cars is that their cells are worthless after five years or so.
Also, I doubt they're hooking it to a regular outlet if they're getting $9 of electricity out of it in five minutes. Granted, you could make charge stations that are similar to gas stations (or add them to gas stations) but you really should list all the materials we would need when considering the cost of this alternative.
I'm not trying to rain on your parade, just pointing out that it's not going to be adopted by everyone in the United States unless it's obviously cheaper than the current method. On the surface, it appears to be
My last console of purchase was a Gamecube. The number of retail games I purchased for it totals two: Super Smash Brothers and Windwaker. I hope Nintendo made money on that console because I doubt they made much on the games I purchased for it -- though I could be wrong.
So how many games would I have to buy to make a PS3 profitable? Well if they lose $300 per console and let's be generous and assume they make $50 profit on each game, then I'd have to buy six games -- which there is no way in hell I'm going to do because each game is going to be $60. If I'm to drop $500-$600 on the console (which I'm probably not going to), I'm not dropping another $300+ on games.
Now, if Sony makes big royalties on their Blu-Ray DVDs and the sales of the PS3 increase sales of that, they may be OK. It's hard to say but I think that the adoption of their Blu-Ray standard is crucial to their survival -- the PS3 being expensive because of it is just making the stakes all that much higher. And they've put themselves in that position so they have no one to blame but themselves. Quite the gamble. 'Will it pay off?' relies on too many factors for me to even ponder
Or, conventionally cited as "you can't judge a book by its cover."
What it means is that I've seen some very ugly things create or provide very beautiful things. Elliott Smith was ugly but his music was beautiful. Although the library I went to as a kid was ugly and looked like an old bomb shelter, it provided something very important to me. Although snakes and earth worms and spiders look ugly as hell, I still love what they do. And, as a kid, it made sense to me to kill rabbits and pocket gophers on a farm while making sure not to harm a garden snake as I mowed the lawn.
Like I'll still maintain, whether something is beautiful or ugly tells me nothing.
I've never taken a UI design course. And I'm probably the last person on earth to be able to make one. I'm an engineer developer and my web services often have no front end. If they do, it is one of ice cold ability to do what you want -- the perfect marriage of function and function.
So what about these sites displeases you? I just flipped through four of them and none of them made my eyes puke like an angry fruit salad (although BushTorrent did cause me to cringe at the site of my 'fearless leader')
Hell, I even visited Torrentz and, although the 90s called and asked for their 'z' back, the design was still pleasing to me. I went to isoHunt that was minimalist but still did the job. I went to MegaNova and even though it was busy as hell, it had the top torrents laid out by category. So what's the problem? There are a few flaws here and there but these sites serve the function they are there to perform. The only really ugly things on these sites are the ads. So far I've seen one flashing ad and one shaking ad. Those are offensive to my eye but I'm so use to ignoring them! I mean, the people who run these indexing sites probably don't get revenue from anything but ads so to make their pages load faster, they inundate us with banners and Ads By Google. So what? So does Slashdot and I'm here quite often. It's the 00s, most sites would put ads by Google on their own grandmother if she was digital.
I don't see any problems with these UIs. They're not award winning, but then again, should they be? I mean, the few times I've used bittorrent is because a site wants to host a large file illegally (like a WoW patch or whatever) and they instead offer a torrent file. I'm really interested in what everyone else is interested in and, if you are, then just go to these sites and peruse them. Don't make them your homepage.
If you really think they're that horrible, wander back to Geocities user pages and enjoy dancing Jesus and Flying Toasters with the blink marquee tag abused to high hell. Then you'd be overjoyed to see some of the gradient blends used on these pages.
If you really want to champion this movement, you have to recognize the problem before you can start to offer people solutions. You mention installing OSS apps that you seem to enjoy on everyone's machine.
While you may feel that this is doing them a world of good, what problem did you solve? Did they complain to you that they were sick of DRM? Did they complaining that they wish they hadn't bought MS Office and long for a free suite of editing and publishing tools? Was IE failing to fill its role in their lives?
For the average person, there are few problems with their computer experiences. If they have issues with security online or troubles coming up with the cash for MS Office, then you have definite problems that need solutions. And OSS is there for them, that's when it's your duty to step in and offer your services and free 15-30 minutes of time to explain how this new software works. Nobody wants to climb extra learning curves and, let's face it, commercial software products are usually years ahead of their OSS competitors.
A lot of open source applications are developed to satisfy a very specific problem. That is, they don't have a breadth of system requirements, just very very specific ones. They may come out fulfilling these few requirements far and above their competitors but they often lack the bells and whistles. For instance, I love CDex because it's simple and slimmed down with no DRM. Does this mean that my sister should also want to use it? No. She doesn't care or know what DRM is and my explanations bore her. Instead, she wants quick instant American gratification at the click of a button. iTunes gives this to her, CDex is ugly and foreign with no online tutorials or music store built into it.
So before you ask me how to encourage the use of OSS, you first need to tell me the problem that OSS needs to solve. I'm guessing for a lot of these people, there isn't one. Unfortunately, OSS is simply not for everyone.
If someone comes to you in distress with a problem, simply say, "you know, I use this app that
The beautiful thing about OSS is that it's free. And you're not forced to use it (like Dell forces people to use Windows). Let's keep it that way.
Please only install this software on their machines if they give you permission. If their computer stops working soon after or they experience problems that they don't understand (file associations), they may just quietly blame it on those applications and tell that to all their friends and relatives.
Maybe they'll decide to work on this. Maybe they'll decide the market is too crowded already. Right now, it's all up in the air -- I have found no sources claiming they are already planning it.
Did I suggest we surrender or run away? No, I suggest an alternative more condusive to listening and thinking than burning and shooting.
Also you misunderstood me, I didn't say "everyone" as in individuals, I said "other countries" specifically the ones we have exerted influence over in order to benefit our own country or economy. I'm not concerned about respecting Osama Bin Laden. Hollowing out countries where he has been in the past in an effort to find him does concern me, however. I feel it leaves long lasting detrimental effects on the populace living there and only creates more anti-American sentiment. We should be fighting a war of words and asking for help from other countries, not blowing up what we want and demanding things. We make our allies look like puppets to the rest of the world and say things like, "If you're not with us, you're against us." Stupid.
One thing I do know is that this will allow my government to build a case against me with no warrant, probable cause or charges filed and documented against me. There could be a dossier (digital or hard copy) somewhere in the government's system with my name on it even though I haven't done anything wrong. Worse, the same could be said about every single American.
You can call me a crazed conspiracy theorist and you can call me a tin foil hat-ist but you can't deny it will be it will be a possibility for even you if you live in the United States.
Under the guise of "modernization," this bill will only add to the decline of my country. We sure aren't as "modernized" as Orwell's 1984 so I guess we're 22 years behind and we better get on it -- and who better than the Republicans to lead us there?
For the love of your country, write your representative in the house about how you feel on this issue. Please. Do it by hand with your signature and address on the letter. Physically mail it to them. Take the time to do this. Make sure you are heard about the things that matter to you. Make your concern known to those who represent you. If you spend a lot of time writing it, send it to your local newspaper also as a possible editorial. I doubt I'm alone on my concerns.
Or, to put it another way, I think there are better alternatives to suing and the record companies have figured this out. When they sued Napster, Kazaa & eDonkey and then started suing users, I don't think their profits went up. I mean, they might have gotten a few million from the companies and a few thousand from the users that year. But they destroyed something that they could have taken advantage of. Most industries would kill for an infrastructure of people acting as their own marketing tools spreading their product around. Now, it was illegal because the product was being copied illegally. But if the record companies could have taken a look at the business model and adapted it to suit their needs and sued for the ability to call the shots instead of just pure cash, I think they would have come out further ahead in the long run.
You see, if the record companies looked at YouTube and tried to drive them in the ground, they'd only be trying to suppress something that has come about naturally. Why don't they just claim what is theirs and demand all the copyrighted material ad revenue goes straight to them? Why don't they try to work something out with YouTube in an attempt to generate a recurring income? I mean, surely YouTube can keep the quality down on the work or restrict it to certain songs so that people will feel compelled to purchase CDs/DVDs, can't they?
I think YouTube is like a wild stallion and the record industry is afraid of it. They can either shoot it dead (but that will just spawn more) or tame it and generate a steady income from it.
When you've gotten so big that people are afraid you're controlling free speech and the press, then I don't think $1.5 billion is too much to ask.
Remember, the CEO of News Corp is Rupert Murdoch. Everything you see with the Fox logo is his. Its yearly revenue is around $24 billion. "News Corp" is a nice generic name that no one remembers while it's holdings grow out of control. Whenever you see Fox or Myspace or anything listed in the link above, you should be thinking one thing: "It's all News Corp under the direction of one man."
Pretty scary when you think about it.
But seriously, it is the first goal of the Mars Orbiter: I guess I would rather see something more than just regular images come from a mission. Right now, I can see all these things on the ESA's site that help the user see all these pictures of Mars but I don't see any maps of mineral composition, atmospheric movement, etc. I've seen pictures, these are some great high quality images with 3D detail that are great screensaver material. But, for the love of science, when do we get the rest of the data from the mission -- you know, the stuff that is, like, going to alter the way we view Mars? Is the public never going to see these results?
And for those of you voting for your "team" regardless of the actual issues and goals are doing the country just as large a disservice.
Is this supposed to work in real time? I mean, setup the scenario in which this thing will prevent theft. Ok, a thief steals a BlackBerry and the victim receives a wireless message on their
What it does do is "render your data unusable" if you don't enter your code fast enough. Now, unless it also disables the device, I don't see that deterring pickpockets much at all. Since their primary take is probably the device itself for resale on the streets of your nearest metropolis. The data onboard is just a bonus if you were stupid enough to store financial information on a mobile device.
But let's assume this "wireless alert message" would be in the form of sound waves (hey, sound waves are wireless) and were just a bunch of sirens and a guy shouting "I'm being stolen!" Well, I could imagine this to be either A) more trouble than it's worth, B) ineffective because a minute after it's removed from the holster it's probably already half way across town or C) a reason for a smack addict to shoot you when he holds you at gun point and demands everything in your pockets.
I don't know about Faucette but where I work, BlackBerrys aren't allowed -- and your an idiot if you put any important data on a mobile device!
So really, the only news here is that you can now be notified via e-mail or text message that your BlackBerry has officially been found to be not in its holster. I guess the people who get on the bus with their BlackBerry in their bag and then get off the bus without the BlackBerry in their bag will no longer have to put two and two together to discover that they've been robbed. They will be notified by e-mail which they can read at their leisure -- with things as stream lined as that, it must be THE FUTURE!
I try to be as open minded as possible (see sig). I grew up on a farm in the middle of nowhere Minnesota and have severely lacked the funds to ever travel anywhere -- though I like to think that the books I've read from libraries have made up for this as much as possible. I used to listen to MPR all the time and now that's one of the biggest things I miss but I can stream it at home. We had six in Minnesota with tons of local shows. There is one out here.
I moved to Virginia for work -- there was none for developers in Minnesota at the time. One of the reasons I have had a pretty hard time meeting new people is because it seems a lot of people out here are intollerant of new ideas. There's been more than a few people here that have found out I'm from Minnesota and said, "Oh, so you're from a blue state..." Not everyone is like that out here but the wind sure blows a different way.