This would be a major, major, major pain in the ass to reproduce.
Doing this kind of work takes a lot of time and skill and equipment. It's not particularly hard to get the stuff, but you do need stuff, and the knowledge to go about doing it, and you're not just going to get that knowledge from nowhere.
This team worked for 2 years on this, and they are dedicated scientists with plenty of experience in this sort of work. How long would it take one person working in a home lab to start from scratch? Well over two years. If they don't know anything about Molecular Biology besides what they got out of high school (like your LSD-making example) probably at least triple that.
Everyone is very paranoid about the synthetic virus thing. This is hard work. No, what's more scary is the technology that's been around for three decades or so now, which is the ability to modify existing viruses. Why would someone really go to the trouble to make a new superbug from scratch when they can just use what nature's already done?
Or do you think that you can do a much better job than evolution has over millions of years?
Not that there aren't problems with creating superbugs (even Ebola and HIV have major weaknesses) and it wouldn't be easy, but it'd be far easier to modify something that already exists than it would to build something from scratch.
This is a possiblity, but pretty much anyone who's serious about this (ie, actually doing work in the field) is using a virus that can't replicate on its own. It just doesn't have the machinery to do so, because we've taken it out all together. Believe it or not, the space in a viral genome is very valuable, and you want to make as much use of it as you can, so you take out everything that's not necessary to your work.
So if the virus mutates (which isn't likely, given that most mutations happen during genomic replication) it would just sit there, doing nothing. I suppose that potentially another, wild-type virus could coinfect the cell with the mutant (also relatively unlikely) and supplement the necessary machinery, but this is no more likely than if the wild type virus itself had mutated, in which case you have a new strain on your hands (although with the originally synthetic mutant, it would still need to be supplemented by the wild type each time it infected a cell in order to replicate).
While you do raise a good point about mutation, it's not any different than what happens in nature. In fact, it's probably far more controllable.
What if, say, a virus could be designed to destroy cancer cells?
Heh. This is exactly what my lab is doing, as are many others. We're using a modified adenovirus to deliver a suicide gene to cancer cells, thereby killing them. Not a new idea anymore at all (people have been working on gene therapy for over a decade) but it's one that takes a lot of time to put in motion. Just do a search on "gene therapy" and "viral vector" at PubMed and you'll get more info than you ever wanted to know about what's going on.
Either way, as near as I can tell, you guys jumpstarted the project, and it was a badly needed thing. I feel bad that I can't follow the mailing list any more (you guys just generate way too much traffic for me:-) but I'm glad you're all doing the work that needs to be done. It's really the next major step for KDE, and I'm really happy that you guys are working on it. Linux will make it on to more desktops, and it will be because of projects like this one.
Now if all developers really start to pay attention beforehand, things will really start to improve:-)
I'm pretty sure that it originally stood for Kool Desktop Environment. I think now the official position is that the K doesn't stand for anything, but I think that they're just covering up the dumb idea to deliberately misspell cool:-)
I've also read that they chose K because it was the first letter after L, for Linux. I believe the former more than the latter though.
Aaron J Siego also started up the KDE Usability Project, in order to spearhead work on improving the KDE UI. I was following the list for quite a few weeks, until the traffic grew too substantial to keep up with. But according to the 3.1 alpha release notes, some of their intial work, including work on Kicker, is going to be included in the new release.
This is a wonderful thing. From reading the list, I know that they've painstakingly thought through the work they've done, modeled and remodeled, discussed and argued all the little details to get things as good as they could. Progress has been slow for that reason, but it is substantial, and over time I think it'll bring KDE's usability to something we can all really be proud of.
Features are nice, but I think improving the usability of KDE will help everyone in the long run.
You raise a really good question. My guess is that this game will never get the blame though.
Ever since 9/11, every news outlet has bent over backwards to avoid casting the military in a bad light. There was the small furor over "could this have been prevented?", but hardly a peep of criticism over what's going on has leaked out of the major news outlets. Nope, we can plan to invade Iraq and whatnot without any questions.
Everyone knows this game is a blatant piece of propaganda. Not that this makes it a bad thing (I liken it to "Black Hawk Down" in a way), but the fact that it comes straight out of the military means that it'll be dodged in favor of Doom 3 or GTA 3 or the like (most likely the latter, I'd guess).
The news media is so consolidated and conservative, there's no way they'd risk offending viewers or advertisers (the Army spends a lot on ads every year) when there are plenty of other easy targets should another school shooting spree occur. What, with the Internet and pornography and movies and music and other video games and drugs and parents and peer preassure aren't there enough things to blame for some kid's behavior?
You're implying that Microsoft's massive attempt to secure a chunk of all web services and transactions over the entire internet by enlisting the help of some of the biggest companies in the world, and in doing so place the financial records of millions of people at no small risk given a repeatedly poor security and privacy track record is comparable at all to a slashcode bug that only existed in CVS?
Sure, the Mac will be one way out, but most people won't be willing to switch. Linux may be really ready for everyone by that point (I think it's ready for most people, but not everyone yet). But for those who want to run windows and are scared to learn something new, they won't have any options. Remember, the decoding hardware will be on the CPU itself, not some add-on IC or something in the motherboard. You're not going to be able to avoid the hardware in a clone PC, and the only way to get around it potentially is to run software that ignores it. Windows will not ignore it.
Linux had better be fully ready for the desktop by that point.
This article didn't really say a whole lot about where things are headed. Lots of speculation, but I'm sure the X-Box team doesn't know a whole lot themselves yet. I'm still not convinced that the hard drive is really worthwhile for the price range. I can see some benefits for online gaming, but with sufficient RAM it shouldn't be a necessity.
I think the idea of replacing the TV with the X-Box is a really good one for a lot of obvious reasons, but unless they provide a CD or DVD burner, there's no way I'd toss my VCR. You simply want to archive stuff (favorite episodes and such), and if you've got an X-Box hard drive full of MP3's or whatever, you're not going to want to go around deleting things prematurely. If they make it in to a full TiVO-like service and provide a really huge hard drive (and a burner too!) they would have a potentially killer product on their hands.
I think what'll be really interesting is to see whose online gaming model will play out better. Sony's model is more anarchic, while Microsoft's is better planned and more centralized. Kind of like the difference between Id and Blizzard. In my experience, the random Quake server is a hell of a lot better than a Battle.net game of Starcraft, but we'll see if this will extend to console-based online gaming.
I'm betting that the online gaming thing won't become critical at least until the PS3 hits. It's pretty much a fringe thing right now, but I have no doubt that it'll become much more important once the console makers really get their acts together. Still, I always think of console gaming as being a lot more social than computer gaming, with a bunch of people clustered around the TV playing Smash Bros or Goldeneye to be more likely than a bunch of people clustered around a hub playing Quake on their own monitors. Because of this, I'm betting less people will feel the need to hit the network to play games when they can just call a few friends to come over and play.
Munching tacos and swilling soda while beating your friends to pulp is a lot more fun when they're right there next to you doing it too.
Here it is, I was waiting for the obligatory "Why aren't games these days more original?" post.
As another poster mentioned, Looking Glass Studios made some incredibly original games (he forgot my personal favorite that even beats out Thief, System Shock 2) and they went out of business.
Then how about Ion Storm? Daikatana was meant to be original, and it bombed, which just shows how hard it really is to be original and still make a good game. On the other hand, Deus Ex (the same team that's now in charge of the Looking Glass Thief franchise) was very original and clever and did extremely well.
Neverwinter Nights is redefining what an RPG on the computer can be.
And then there's Black and White.
And the Sims.
And Grand Theft Auto 3.
And probably a whole host of others that I've forgotten. Your choice of Doom 3 is a poor one, because that game is more of a proof of concept for the engine, which will then be used to make the real games by others. This was done with the Q3 engine and the UT engine and will be done once again.
There is plenty of innovation happening in the gaming industry. You are just choosing to ignore it.
Yes, I understand that record shop employees need to eat, but that doesn't mean that this should be happening. If the record only costs a couple thousand to make, then it can be sold overall at a lower price in order to recoup the expenses. You can still tack on the same cost for shipping and retail profit, and still have a lower cost because the entire manufacturing process is cheaper.
This is how other products work. Lower manufacturing costs lead to lower retail cost. In both examples, there is some kind of price fixing going on.
I never explicitly said that it was the record companies colluding, but it appears that it's the whole chain. Remember, the middleman is who gets hurt the most by people downloading music, and the middleman in this case is the record store. The fact is that both these examples demonstrate that something is going wrong and that collusion and price fixing is taking place.
Somehow I doubt that when Massive Attack's new album comes out, if they try to do the same thing, that the SRP will be any lower than the other CD's on the shelf, and as a result, neither will the actual price. So, once again, the consumers and the artists get the shaft.
I have an argument against price fixing. How about CD's that cost less to make?
Wilco's new "Yankee Hotel Foxtrot" album was recorded for some incredibly cheap sum, like a few thousand dollars. Yet it's sitting there with the same price tag at Best Buy as the huge manufactured pop albums. Add this to the fact that Wilco released the entire album on the internet themselves before the CD was released, and they've still already turned a profit on the thing.
Another example is the new Massive Attack DVD compilation of music videos. If you've seen this thing in stores, it's basically a clear plastic case with a boring looking DVD inside. That's it. No artwork or inserts. Nothing. The reason for this is that Massive wanted to keep the costs for the buyer as low as possible (they're giving profits to charity). You can go their website and download the artwork for yourself (you even have three choices of which artwork you want). But what happened when they talked to retailers? The retailers said that the DVD would be marked up to the same price as all the others on the shelves, even though it cost them a hell of a lot less to buy. The details are all on Massive Attack's site (I think in a newspost from 3d, although it might be in the forums).
Either way, there's a lot of price fixing and gouging going on, and no matter what steps are taken by the artists themselves, short of delivering the CD's directly to fans, they can't get the retail price down.
Personally, I try and compromise by only buying used CD's. This way, I can still support the little record store on the corner, and get the full and always complete CD that I want. I sometimes have to wait. Wait a very very long time (I recently bought an album I had been waiting to find used for two years) and in the meantime I listen to the downloaded version. I'm also willing to buy new CD's from labels that aren't the RIAA, but I haven't really gone looking for small, unheard of bands yet (there's still so much that I do know about already).
I have a bit of difficulty not going for the new bargain CD's that they sell at Tower or something. While these things don't really have the price gouging argument against them directly (hell, $7.99 is a great price for a CD even by used standards) the money will go towards gouging consumers in other ways. On the other hand, if they see that people will buy more at lower prices (an obvious fact that they have failed to grasp) then maybe they will lower other CD's to these prices, not just those in catalog that have already paid forthemselves and more.
You make some good points, but in reality these lights will never prevent you from telecommuting. A DSL or Cable line will allow you to do the same thing, although it will cost a bit. There's nothing really new in wireless, just mobility, and if you're telecommuting, there's no reason for you to have to be able to take your work with you to the park or something.
And for those people who might need that kind of instant access (reporters are one example I can think of) cellular modems would allow quick submission of data.
As for wiring whole buildings, you're right about that, although many people only have one computer (if that) so they don't need to wire their entire place, they can simply get their connection via their pre-existing phone or cable jack. If they need a LAN, wireless is great, but most people don't need that in the slightest.
I agree though, that these lights shouldn't trash the spectrum. Someone mentioned engineering them using shielding the same way LCD's are shielded, so hopefully something to that effect would be in place. My original post was more hypothetical than anything, a sort of "what do you value more?" thing. I'd easily sacrifice wireless to save on my energy bill, and I'd imagine a lot of other people would do the same. Hopefully we'll never actually have to make that sort of choice, if they can figure out how to properly shield these bulbs.
That's it, pure and simple. Freedom to do what you want with your machine. Freedom from proprietary formats and the hassle of interchanging data with others. Freedom to alter the code in any way you want, or to learn from it. Freedom to participate in more substantial ways than buying and installing some product from off the shelf. Freedom to use your computer as it best suits you, not as it best suits Bill Gates or Steve Jobs.
This might sound like fluff, but this is the reason why I gave up on Apple years ago, and it's why I've stayed with Linux ever since then. Apple has done some great things in the past few years, and I applaud them for it, but they are still not Free as in Freedom. Yes, I know about Darwin, but what about Aqua? Yes, I know about QTS Server, but what about iMovie? I'm not saying Apple should open these products or that they shouldn't make money, but simply that they're not going to make any more money from me because I will never feel safe with them after they discontinued a raft of great technology. This will not happen with Linux. Ever.
That's the killer app for me, and I know it's the killer app for others. Microsoft and Apple will never fully offer that freedom, and as a result I can never trust them fully. They might have more innovative products, but it doesn't matter. Quickdraw GX was innovative. So was Opendoc. And the original Cocoa project (kid's programming environment that I dearly miss). Where are these projects now? Innovation doesn't matter. Just that you're there, and free stuff will always be there, whether it's GPL or BSD or whatever, so long as it's Free as in Freedom. That's a far more powerful killer app than any I've ever heard of.
How much oil and gas do people consume getting to and from work?
Wireless networks will further allow people to telecommute, reducing dependancy on oil.
Would you like to tell me how I'm going to sell clothing at my retail job from home? Or perhaps how I'm going to centrifuge my DNA for my research at home?
Telecommuting is great for some people, but most people actually need to physically be somewhere to get work done, and that includes me.
And incidentally, I take the bus to work. Yes, it burns oil and gas, but public transportation goes a long way towards helping the problem. Here in Los Angeles, there is very little public transportation for various reasons (one is that we have a subway system that is completely filled with concrete, thank you corporate America!) and this is another problem.
While you might be enjoying wireless in your home for various reasons, I can guarantee you that less than 1% of the people in my neighborhood would even consider such a thing if they knew it existed, given their meager budgets. Most people aren't going to use wireless, but efficient lightbulbs will help these people. The fluorescent lights don't have the natural light feel of incandescents, and if these new bulbs provide that then I'd be surprised if they weren't used.
Oh, and Cringley covers the part about FCC regulations in his article.
I agree that the X bug is very serious (and I'm particularly worried about it because Debian doesn't even have the newest XFree86 revision in it, so where am I going to get the patch for this) but there is a difference in terms of the problem.
This is a lot easier to exploit for the malicious hacker than the IIS bug. You just set up a page with huge fonts and that it, you've crashed X. But the payoff for that is a laugh at the (relatively) rare X user who visits your site.
As for the IIS bug, I'll just quote the Wired article...
Microsoft acknowledged a serious flaw Wednesday in its Internet server software that could allow sophisticated hackers to seize control of websites, steal information and use vulnerable computers to attack others online.
This, in my opinion, is a lot worse than simply crashing X. Hell, my Windows 98 crashes almost daily but that doesn't stop me from using it. Crashing isn't so bad. Black Hats stealing information and gaining control of my computer, that's bad.
I'd heard briefly about the Mozilla bug, and I understand why it's X's fault, but I'm curious... how is it that X is able to crash the system this hard? Because it's got direct access to hardware? Because it runs with root privledges? Also, is this just XFree86, or are all variations of X affected?
For someone who was brave enough to try the crashing link supplied by the Register, does this kill the whole machine, or just X? And can you salvage things without rebooting by using either a virtual term or logging in via ssh?
I personally think Mozilla should implement some short-term patch to prevent exploitation of this bug until it's patched in XFree, but as the register article says, the fault doesn't lie with them.
Perhaps it's because I've never used a wireless network in my life for computing, but I'd much rather have low cost lightbulbs myself.
Low cost lighting benefits everyone, rather than the relative few who can and will access wireless networks. I can see the power in wireless, but since most people will never take advantage of this, and you can be environment-friendly in the process, I say go for efficient lighting. As Cringley briefly mentions and then forgets for the rest of the article, it will decrease energy usage and reliance on oil, which will really benefit everyone.
This whole "war on terror" would not likely be happening without our (the US's) incredible appetite for oil. Anything we can do to curb this will be beneficial, and that to me is far more important than being able to get sports scores and news headlines on my Visor.
That's the part we're on, figuring out punishment. You see, first you find out whether or not they are going to be punished at all (they are) and then you figure out just how to do it. It might be slow, but things are happening and they will be punished.
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This would be a major, major, major pain in the ass to reproduce.
Doing this kind of work takes a lot of time and skill and equipment. It's not particularly hard to get the stuff, but you do need stuff, and the knowledge to go about doing it, and you're not just going to get that knowledge from nowhere.
This team worked for 2 years on this, and they are dedicated scientists with plenty of experience in this sort of work. How long would it take one person working in a home lab to start from scratch? Well over two years. If they don't know anything about Molecular Biology besides what they got out of high school (like your LSD-making example) probably at least triple that.
Everyone is very paranoid about the synthetic virus thing. This is hard work. No, what's more scary is the technology that's been around for three decades or so now, which is the ability to modify existing viruses. Why would someone really go to the trouble to make a new superbug from scratch when they can just use what nature's already done?
Or do you think that you can do a much better job than evolution has over millions of years?
Not that there aren't problems with creating superbugs (even Ebola and HIV have major weaknesses) and it wouldn't be easy, but it'd be far easier to modify something that already exists than it would to build something from scratch.
This is a possiblity, but pretty much anyone who's serious about this (ie, actually doing work in the field) is using a virus that can't replicate on its own. It just doesn't have the machinery to do so, because we've taken it out all together. Believe it or not, the space in a viral genome is very valuable, and you want to make as much use of it as you can, so you take out everything that's not necessary to your work.
So if the virus mutates (which isn't likely, given that most mutations happen during genomic replication) it would just sit there, doing nothing. I suppose that potentially another, wild-type virus could coinfect the cell with the mutant (also relatively unlikely) and supplement the necessary machinery, but this is no more likely than if the wild type virus itself had mutated, in which case you have a new strain on your hands (although with the originally synthetic mutant, it would still need to be supplemented by the wild type each time it infected a cell in order to replicate).
While you do raise a good point about mutation, it's not any different than what happens in nature. In fact, it's probably far more controllable.
Either way, as near as I can tell, you guys jumpstarted the project, and it was a badly needed thing. I feel bad that I can't follow the mailing list any more (you guys just generate way too much traffic for me :-) but I'm glad you're all doing the work that needs to be done. It's really the next major step for KDE, and I'm really happy that you guys are working on it. Linux will make it on to more desktops, and it will be because of projects like this one.
:-)
Now if all developers really start to pay attention beforehand, things will really start to improve
You're right. My mistake, but the idea is still there, whether or not you believe it.
I'm pretty sure that it originally stood for Kool Desktop Environment. I think now the official position is that the K doesn't stand for anything, but I think that they're just covering up the dumb idea to deliberately misspell cool :-)
I've also read that they chose K because it was the first letter after L, for Linux. I believe the former more than the latter though.
Aaron J Siego also started up the KDE Usability Project, in order to spearhead work on improving the KDE UI. I was following the list for quite a few weeks, until the traffic grew too substantial to keep up with. But according to the 3.1 alpha release notes, some of their intial work, including work on Kicker, is going to be included in the new release.
This is a wonderful thing. From reading the list, I know that they've painstakingly thought through the work they've done, modeled and remodeled, discussed and argued all the little details to get things as good as they could. Progress has been slow for that reason, but it is substantial, and over time I think it'll bring KDE's usability to something we can all really be proud of.
Features are nice, but I think improving the usability of KDE will help everyone in the long run.
You raise a really good question. My guess is that this game will never get the blame though.
Ever since 9/11, every news outlet has bent over backwards to avoid casting the military in a bad light. There was the small furor over "could this have been prevented?", but hardly a peep of criticism over what's going on has leaked out of the major news outlets. Nope, we can plan to invade Iraq and whatnot without any questions.
Everyone knows this game is a blatant piece of propaganda. Not that this makes it a bad thing (I liken it to "Black Hawk Down" in a way), but the fact that it comes straight out of the military means that it'll be dodged in favor of Doom 3 or GTA 3 or the like (most likely the latter, I'd guess).
The news media is so consolidated and conservative, there's no way they'd risk offending viewers or advertisers (the Army spends a lot on ads every year) when there are plenty of other easy targets should another school shooting spree occur. What, with the Internet and pornography and movies and music and other video games and drugs and parents and peer preassure aren't there enough things to blame for some kid's behavior?
Let me get this straight...
You're implying that Microsoft's massive attempt to secure a chunk of all web services and transactions over the entire internet by enlisting the help of some of the biggest companies in the world, and in doing so place the financial records of millions of people at no small risk given a repeatedly poor security and privacy track record is comparable at all to a slashcode bug that only existed in CVS?
You're right. You do need to get out more.
Sure, the Mac will be one way out, but most people won't be willing to switch. Linux may be really ready for everyone by that point (I think it's ready for most people, but not everyone yet). But for those who want to run windows and are scared to learn something new, they won't have any options. Remember, the decoding hardware will be on the CPU itself, not some add-on IC or something in the motherboard. You're not going to be able to avoid the hardware in a clone PC, and the only way to get around it potentially is to run software that ignores it. Windows will not ignore it.
Linux had better be fully ready for the desktop by that point.
Are you kidding? Have you seen an X-Box? If put one in your living room, the room will be dominated by the unholy size of the thing.
Then you can use it as a combination coffee table and space heater. Now that's utility!
This article didn't really say a whole lot about where things are headed. Lots of speculation, but I'm sure the X-Box team doesn't know a whole lot themselves yet. I'm still not convinced that the hard drive is really worthwhile for the price range. I can see some benefits for online gaming, but with sufficient RAM it shouldn't be a necessity.
I think the idea of replacing the TV with the X-Box is a really good one for a lot of obvious reasons, but unless they provide a CD or DVD burner, there's no way I'd toss my VCR. You simply want to archive stuff (favorite episodes and such), and if you've got an X-Box hard drive full of MP3's or whatever, you're not going to want to go around deleting things prematurely. If they make it in to a full TiVO-like service and provide a really huge hard drive (and a burner too!) they would have a potentially killer product on their hands.
I think what'll be really interesting is to see whose online gaming model will play out better. Sony's model is more anarchic, while Microsoft's is better planned and more centralized. Kind of like the difference between Id and Blizzard. In my experience, the random Quake server is a hell of a lot better than a Battle.net game of Starcraft, but we'll see if this will extend to console-based online gaming.
I'm betting that the online gaming thing won't become critical at least until the PS3 hits. It's pretty much a fringe thing right now, but I have no doubt that it'll become much more important once the console makers really get their acts together. Still, I always think of console gaming as being a lot more social than computer gaming, with a bunch of people clustered around the TV playing Smash Bros or Goldeneye to be more likely than a bunch of people clustered around a hub playing Quake on their own monitors. Because of this, I'm betting less people will feel the need to hit the network to play games when they can just call a few friends to come over and play.
Munching tacos and swilling soda while beating your friends to pulp is a lot more fun when they're right there next to you doing it too.
Here it is, I was waiting for the obligatory "Why aren't games these days more original?" post.
As another poster mentioned, Looking Glass Studios made some incredibly original games (he forgot my personal favorite that even beats out Thief, System Shock 2) and they went out of business.
Then how about Ion Storm? Daikatana was meant to be original, and it bombed, which just shows how hard it really is to be original and still make a good game. On the other hand, Deus Ex (the same team that's now in charge of the Looking Glass Thief franchise) was very original and clever and did extremely well.
Neverwinter Nights is redefining what an RPG on the computer can be.
And then there's Black and White.
And the Sims.
And Grand Theft Auto 3.
And probably a whole host of others that I've forgotten. Your choice of Doom 3 is a poor one, because that game is more of a proof of concept for the engine, which will then be used to make the real games by others. This was done with the Q3 engine and the UT engine and will be done once again.
There is plenty of innovation happening in the gaming industry. You are just choosing to ignore it.
Yes, I understand that record shop employees need to eat, but that doesn't mean that this should be happening. If the record only costs a couple thousand to make, then it can be sold overall at a lower price in order to recoup the expenses. You can still tack on the same cost for shipping and retail profit, and still have a lower cost because the entire manufacturing process is cheaper.
This is how other products work. Lower manufacturing costs lead to lower retail cost. In both examples, there is some kind of price fixing going on.
I never explicitly said that it was the record companies colluding, but it appears that it's the whole chain. Remember, the middleman is who gets hurt the most by people downloading music, and the middleman in this case is the record store. The fact is that both these examples demonstrate that something is going wrong and that collusion and price fixing is taking place.
Somehow I doubt that when Massive Attack's new album comes out, if they try to do the same thing, that the SRP will be any lower than the other CD's on the shelf, and as a result, neither will the actual price. So, once again, the consumers and the artists get the shaft.
I have an argument against price fixing. How about CD's that cost less to make?
Wilco's new "Yankee Hotel Foxtrot" album was recorded for some incredibly cheap sum, like a few thousand dollars. Yet it's sitting there with the same price tag at Best Buy as the huge manufactured pop albums. Add this to the fact that Wilco released the entire album on the internet themselves before the CD was released, and they've still already turned a profit on the thing.
Another example is the new Massive Attack DVD compilation of music videos. If you've seen this thing in stores, it's basically a clear plastic case with a boring looking DVD inside. That's it. No artwork or inserts. Nothing. The reason for this is that Massive wanted to keep the costs for the buyer as low as possible (they're giving profits to charity). You can go their website and download the artwork for yourself (you even have three choices of which artwork you want). But what happened when they talked to retailers? The retailers said that the DVD would be marked up to the same price as all the others on the shelves, even though it cost them a hell of a lot less to buy. The details are all on Massive Attack's site (I think in a newspost from 3d, although it might be in the forums).
Either way, there's a lot of price fixing and gouging going on, and no matter what steps are taken by the artists themselves, short of delivering the CD's directly to fans, they can't get the retail price down.
Personally, I try and compromise by only buying used CD's. This way, I can still support the little record store on the corner, and get the full and always complete CD that I want. I sometimes have to wait. Wait a very very long time (I recently bought an album I had been waiting to find used for two years) and in the meantime I listen to the downloaded version. I'm also willing to buy new CD's from labels that aren't the RIAA, but I haven't really gone looking for small, unheard of bands yet (there's still so much that I do know about already).
I have a bit of difficulty not going for the new bargain CD's that they sell at Tower or something. While these things don't really have the price gouging argument against them directly (hell, $7.99 is a great price for a CD even by used standards) the money will go towards gouging consumers in other ways. On the other hand, if they see that people will buy more at lower prices (an obvious fact that they have failed to grasp) then maybe they will lower other CD's to these prices, not just those in catalog that have already paid forthemselves and more.
You make some good points, but in reality these lights will never prevent you from telecommuting. A DSL or Cable line will allow you to do the same thing, although it will cost a bit. There's nothing really new in wireless, just mobility, and if you're telecommuting, there's no reason for you to have to be able to take your work with you to the park or something.
And for those people who might need that kind of instant access (reporters are one example I can think of) cellular modems would allow quick submission of data.
As for wiring whole buildings, you're right about that, although many people only have one computer (if that) so they don't need to wire their entire place, they can simply get their connection via their pre-existing phone or cable jack. If they need a LAN, wireless is great, but most people don't need that in the slightest.
I agree though, that these lights shouldn't trash the spectrum. Someone mentioned engineering them using shielding the same way LCD's are shielded, so hopefully something to that effect would be in place. My original post was more hypothetical than anything, a sort of "what do you value more?" thing. I'd easily sacrifice wireless to save on my energy bill, and I'd imagine a lot of other people would do the same. Hopefully we'll never actually have to make that sort of choice, if they can figure out how to properly shield these bulbs.
Good point, I'd forgotten about backporting. I suppose they'll have to do that anyway, since 4.1 is what's in Woody. Well that's comforting, thanks.
That's it, pure and simple. Freedom to do what you want with your machine. Freedom from proprietary formats and the hassle of interchanging data with others. Freedom to alter the code in any way you want, or to learn from it. Freedom to participate in more substantial ways than buying and installing some product from off the shelf. Freedom to use your computer as it best suits you, not as it best suits Bill Gates or Steve Jobs.
This might sound like fluff, but this is the reason why I gave up on Apple years ago, and it's why I've stayed with Linux ever since then. Apple has done some great things in the past few years, and I applaud them for it, but they are still not Free as in Freedom. Yes, I know about Darwin, but what about Aqua? Yes, I know about QTS Server, but what about iMovie? I'm not saying Apple should open these products or that they shouldn't make money, but simply that they're not going to make any more money from me because I will never feel safe with them after they discontinued a raft of great technology. This will not happen with Linux. Ever.
That's the killer app for me, and I know it's the killer app for others. Microsoft and Apple will never fully offer that freedom, and as a result I can never trust them fully. They might have more innovative products, but it doesn't matter. Quickdraw GX was innovative. So was Opendoc. And the original Cocoa project (kid's programming environment that I dearly miss). Where are these projects now? Innovation doesn't matter. Just that you're there, and free stuff will always be there, whether it's GPL or BSD or whatever, so long as it's Free as in Freedom. That's a far more powerful killer app than any I've ever heard of.
Telecommuting is great for some people, but most people actually need to physically be somewhere to get work done, and that includes me.
And incidentally, I take the bus to work. Yes, it burns oil and gas, but public transportation goes a long way towards helping the problem. Here in Los Angeles, there is very little public transportation for various reasons (one is that we have a subway system that is completely filled with concrete, thank you corporate America!) and this is another problem.
While you might be enjoying wireless in your home for various reasons, I can guarantee you that less than 1% of the people in my neighborhood would even consider such a thing if they knew it existed, given their meager budgets. Most people aren't going to use wireless, but efficient lightbulbs will help these people. The fluorescent lights don't have the natural light feel of incandescents, and if these new bulbs provide that then I'd be surprised if they weren't used.
Oh, and Cringley covers the part about FCC regulations in his article.
This is a lot easier to exploit for the malicious hacker than the IIS bug. You just set up a page with huge fonts and that it, you've crashed X. But the payoff for that is a laugh at the (relatively) rare X user who visits your site.
As for the IIS bug, I'll just quote the Wired article... This, in my opinion, is a lot worse than simply crashing X. Hell, my Windows 98 crashes almost daily but that doesn't stop me from using it. Crashing isn't so bad. Black Hats stealing information and gaining control of my computer, that's bad.
I'd heard briefly about the Mozilla bug, and I understand why it's X's fault, but I'm curious... how is it that X is able to crash the system this hard? Because it's got direct access to hardware? Because it runs with root privledges? Also, is this just XFree86, or are all variations of X affected?
For someone who was brave enough to try the crashing link supplied by the Register, does this kill the whole machine, or just X? And can you salvage things without rebooting by using either a virtual term or logging in via ssh?
I personally think Mozilla should implement some short-term patch to prevent exploitation of this bug until it's patched in XFree, but as the register article says, the fault doesn't lie with them.
Perhaps it's because I've never used a wireless network in my life for computing, but I'd much rather have low cost lightbulbs myself.
Low cost lighting benefits everyone, rather than the relative few who can and will access wireless networks. I can see the power in wireless, but since most people will never take advantage of this, and you can be environment-friendly in the process, I say go for efficient lighting. As Cringley briefly mentions and then forgets for the rest of the article, it will decrease energy usage and reliance on oil, which will really benefit everyone.
This whole "war on terror" would not likely be happening without our (the US's) incredible appetite for oil. Anything we can do to curb this will be beneficial, and that to me is far more important than being able to get sports scores and news headlines on my Visor.
That's the part we're on, figuring out punishment. You see, first you find out whether or not they are going to be punished at all (they are) and then you figure out just how to do it. It might be slow, but things are happening and they will be punished.