That would be nice... One that doesn't require manual defragmenting the hard drive (everybody else can do it...) But they've been working on a new file system for a few years now and keep pushing it back, so it's kind of going the way of Duke Nukem' Forever...
The new interface/interaction paradigm might be cool, but that should come out of Microsoft Research so they can do proper user experience testing (and not just test like 13 MS employees like they did with the ribbon (this was mentioned on the Office development blog)... The ribbon looks cool, but I find myself digging around for items that I used to just have a small toolbox pop up for or were just on the main toolbar--plus there doesn't appear to be a way to reorganize the ribbon...) The regular MS people just don't have the training/expertise to do much user experience work--I've talked to employees about it at career fairs and such (I'm an HCI major) and most of them don't even know what user experience/usability work really is... And for a company that large and ubiquitous, that's just sad...
Re:My favorite new toy is the $40 helicopter
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The Return of Toys
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· Score: 1
I think spinmaster is the official distributor of Silverlit's picooz and I think the name of it was changes to the Havoc Heli here after the picco Z came out as a cheap knock off (silverlit is suing them, but they figured changing the name would be the fastest way to prevent confusion--since they were getting complaints about the other, cheap knockoff, not working well...)
I just had a conversation about this today. There are essentially three solutions to this problem:
Withdraw from Iraq and let it go to hell in a hand basket. People have an issue with this because they think of it as "defeat", I see it as cutting losses... Also, some people see it as bad on our part for causing a mess and then abandoning it... but really, it was sort of already a mess...
Cut off all communication between Iraq and the outside world and fight the war like wars used to be fought (kill whoever you need to kill to stop an insurgency). This of course would be frowned upon by the UN and likely to create martyrs/create more problems/force us to spread this tactic throughout the Middle East... Probably not the best solution... but if you're going to fight a war, you should fight a war...
Divide the country up into smaller portions where each of the major factions controls part of it (see: Yugoslavia). Again, the UN is likely to frown upon this. There's also the issue that Syria and Iran are likely to antagonize these smaller nations and that could lead to issues. Plus these smaller nations may very well fight amongst themselves any way. And to make matters even worse one of the new countries would likely be Kurdish and Turkey and many other Middle Eastern countries have stated that they will not allow a new Kurdish state to be formed...
In short, we should cut our losses and bill it as a "strategic retreat" rather than a "defeat" for those who actually care... Otherwise, we're looking at being there for decades with, likely, very little progress...
This may get me buried as off topic, but I have karma to burn... For those interested in the iPhone (it is a cell phone, so it's somewhat related to the topic at hand...) DealsPl.us is giving one away. All you have to do is join and then get another member to join (free registration and I have yet to get any spam) and you'll be entered to win. You do not have to, but it would be appreciated if you sign up for the site through this link http://dealspl.us/i/mikeisme77 so I can have an entry to win it. Plus this way if you end up winning, I win it as well (since they give the person who invited the person who won the prize the same prize). I just thought slashdotters would be interested in this give away and figured I would spread the word about it. Feel free to sign up through the normal site if you don't want to give me an entry--I'm mostly just spreading the word about the contest (although I would LOVE the additional entries... I understand if you don't want me to have them).
That is the current thinking in the English Literature Academia world, yes. Science Fiction/Sci Fi (Sci Fi is a sub-genre of science fiction--where science ficition contains real science and sci fi is for cheap thrills), fantasy, and horror (technically the proper labeling of horror is dark fantasy) all fall under the umbrella term "Speculative Fiction". This is due to the fact that they often have overlapping elements. For example, Star Wars has both science fiction (spaceships) and fantasy (the Force/magic) elements in it; Frankenstein has horror (scary monster) and science fiction (reanimating a corpse through electricity) elements to it, and so on and so forth.
So while it would be ok to label Harry Potter speculative fiction, it would not be okay to label him with the sub-genre label of sci fi (since there is neither fake nor real science in it)--Harry Potter is clearly made up of almost entirely fantasy elements (although at a stretch one might be able to say there are some dark fantasy/horror elements). One of my professors as an undergrad was the co-editor of Science Fiction magazine and I took his class on science fiction. I'm also friends with an English literature professor and have taken my fair share of literature classes (as required to graduate with a degree in creative writing).
ACM Digital Library is a great source for computer science related papers. Psychology and many other fields also have excellent online repositories of papers. Sure some of these papers might also be available in print version, but they are difficult to track down. There are also several emerging fields (such as video games) where finding good academic papers (in a non-digital format) may be very difficult.
I think it's okay to use wikipedia/encyclopedias when citing something that's common knowledge, but may not be common knowledge for all generations. For example, if writing a paper on video games, then citing the wikipedia articles on Super Mario Bros. and Platform Games would be acceptable when describing what elements make up a platform game. However, using wikipedia as a source for information about causes of the Cold War probably would not be the best source.
Sounds to me like this could be used for a "Metal Gear"... As long as the electrical charge can't be tracked like the heat from missiles, you can have an untraceable weapon capable of firing projectiles into the upper reaches of the atmosphere to come back down on unsuspecting enemies...
I don't think this could be used to launch orbiting vehicles though because then the power needed to launch it into space would be even larger (larger mass->more power required), but as you stated it might be possible to shoot orbiting objects down with this...
While the music industry is the largest culprit, Apple should be given some blame as well. If they were to license FairPlay to other vendors (as France tried passing laws to force) then consumers would not be locked to buying iPods/iPhones/i-whatevers to play all of the music they've purchased from iTunes. Yes, you could just buy CDs and rip those, but then you're paying a lot more when you just want one or two songs off of a CD. You could also use other sites to download the music, but if you currently have an iPod the alternatives out there that work with iPods (e.g. sell MP3s legally) tend to have limited selected (see: eMusic). Furthermore, while most Slashdot users have CD burners so can burn the music to CD and then rip it back to MP3, some consumers do not (although that's increasingly the minority)--but even then you lose some quality when you do that (although I wonder how much the average consumer will notice/care). Still, the point is that Apple COULD reduce the iPod lock-in if they so chose to do so (and still make a lot of money from licensing and such--you don't have to lock them into the hardware itself)--except part of the grand scheme of things is to turn consumers on to other Apple products (such as their computer line and now their cell phone). So while it's understandable WHY they would want to lock consumers in, that doesn't mean they shouldn't get some bad press about it...
This, as well as many other posts here, ignore the fact that when you lose copyright to a work you lose copyright to the characters... So, with a series like Harry Potter or Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy these authors would only have exclusive rights to their characters for the duration of the copyright. After which any movie studio, publisher, etc. is free not only to exploit these characters but make derivative works that could destroy these franchises. In some cases (such as the Peanuts) the characters are worth more than the original works themselves. The original creator/copyright holder continue to use these characters for many years, but if these were released to public domain and everybody could use them then there would be a flood of (more than likely crappy) derivative works that could confuse consumers and jeopardize the franchise. Alternatively, some movie studio that sees a series (like Harry Potter) is popular could simply have somebody create a film using the characters/story without the author ever seeing any benefit from it since movie derivative of books normally come out 5-10 (or even longer) from the publication of the book. Why shouldn't creators of work that's this memorable and can span multiple mediums be allowed to cash in on these things? As you said the original work tends not to create that much cash, and even with a successful novel you won't make 1/10th as much as a successful novel that becomes a successful motion picture and spawns all sorts of merchandise deals and such.
While I agree 100% that copyright is too long as it currently stands, a 5-10 year copyright is far too short. 15 years I can see as being acceptable, but I still think a 30 year copyright is the ideal solution--long enough that nobody can sit on a work or profit too much from any work created off of the initial steam from the work, and preserves the characters created for a decent amount of time. However, I think that's still short enough that it can happen in a person's lifetime so that they can use it if they really want to.
5-10 years is far too short. For things like books, movie scripts, almost any type of writing and probably some visual art and music too... Otherwise publishers, studios, etc. you submit your work to (which you might not do until a 2+ years after the original copyright--have to find an agent, do some revisions, etc.) would just sit on it until the copyright runs out and then make money from it... I think a 15 year minimum on copyrights would be ok, but 30+ years (but no longer than the life of the creator--as long as the creator lives at least 15 years after the work is created) would probably be the best way to go...
Data fragmentation isn't an issue with flash memory--they don't need to spin up to the point where the data is located, they can simply access it right away. However, the limited number of erase cycles can be a problem. It all depends on how the file system/you are going to use the drive. If you're going to be moving data, replacing data, etc. often and don't need the benefits of speed and durability then this isn't for you yet. However, if you're primary concerns are durability (as mentioned in the posts about why this would be important to defense contractors) then this would be extremely useful. Likewise, if you don't have a file system that is constantly moving files around on the hard drive (to prevent fragmentation) and you don't really delete your files/programs all that often then the speed and durability might be what you're looking for (although the $600 price point is rather hefty... so you better REALLY need the speed...) At the moment, I would assume that durability is the greatest pro that might be the clincher for those who need hard drives that can sustain a considerable amount of abuse (e.g. remote air crafts and such).
Birth of an Island, Rise of a Nation...
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Birth of an Island
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· Score: 4, Funny
Now if I saw an island being formed, I would anchor my yacht offshore, wait for the land to cool, then plant a flag claiming it in the name of my new sovereign nation... Even if it's just a small island, it would still be cool to be the ruler of an island nation... A man can dream...
For those who didn't RTFA, one of the ways of catching this disease is by accidentally digesting cat feces (if the cat is effected with the bacteria). Smokey is a fairly common name for a grey cat here in the States.
That's one point, and the other point is that if the students are coerced (e.g. due to fear of failing the class) then their participation is not truly voluntary and it violates the IRB (and very few journals will accept anything for publication that has not been approved by the IRB).
While there's no denying that the value of US currency is on the decline, you must also factor in the fluctuation in value of the metals (copper in 1998 is not the same price as copper in 2006). I don't have the figure (and am too lazy to look it up), but likely the value of copper has gone up significantly since 1998 to help contribute to this rather large shift in value.
On another note, kudos for linking to the Straight Dope (great site).
I've always contended that the purpose of the 2nd amendment wasn't so that every idiot can own a gun, but that it was designed so that people could overthrow the government by force if the government wasn't properly representing them. Think of it as the last resort escape clause. The government isn't doing it's job properly, but democracy isn't working properly either... By using our 2nd amendment rights, we can arm ourselves and overthrow the government. Unfortunately, we can't realistically do this any more because the weapons we would need to do so are all illegal (but perhaps that's unconstitutional... of course... I wouldn't want every crazy organized militia to have ICBMs and all of that... but I suppose I'll choose freedom and liberty over safety and security).
300,000 x 10 = $3,000,000 (before expenses). 30,000,000 * 10 = $300,000,000 (before expenses). Which is better again? Especially since your 30,000,000 is likely to include people who might become die hard fans. Plus, having just casual fans means they'll hit your server less often which will lower operating costs for you. Even if they all leave after a year, you'd still be far better off than have the 300,000 die hard fans for 10 years. With the money you make off the 30,000,000 casual fans you can invest in the next 1 year fad to continue the huge profits-and because nobody plays your old game any more you can reuse the equipment from the previous game.
Linspire/Freespire is the only Linux distro that I am currently willing to recommend to people who aren't tech savvy (at least when I don't want to, or am unable to, set it up myself). It works and it's similar enough to how Windows works that people who haven't used anything else ever are comfortable enough to use it. And now they no longer charge for access to their CNR basic repository (which has software that they never should have charged people to have access to). The distro sucks for geeks, but for the non-tech savvy it still can't be beat. Ubuntu is sort of close... but by refusing to have anything proprietary it will never "just work" because graphics drivers and such aren't free as in beer yet.
Wired recently wrote a story related to this and I posted my reaction (as to why I believe the entire world cannot become atheist at this point in human history). The Wired article can be found here. Also, if anybody is interested, I have an semi-atheist stage play online (currently under copyright, although I may put it under Creative Commons later) here. And my reaction is reposted here (originally posted on MikeOren.com):
The other day, I read an interesting piece in Wired about New Atheism. Like many scientifically minded individuals, I realize how various religious beliefs can get in the way of scientific study, objectivity, and in general hold back the advance of civilization. I have also had my periods of doubt as to whether or not there is a God (after all, there is no way of proving that God exists, and by scientific reasoning you normally don't trust something exists simply because you can't disprove it--the fact that it can't be disproven simply means that there is a possibility). Still, I have not fallen in with atheism in general and still hold my belief in God and that Jesus is the savior. This article about the New Atheists though claims that such a belief is detrimental and even seems to be inclined to declare that the very notion of belief in God(s) is a great evil. It declares that we must throw away our beliefs in anything that is rooted in superstition and ancient beliefs in favor of reason. The logic behind this argument is, of course, very reasonable. Important points that are brought up are things like the Pope speaking for millions/billions of Catholics and that having weight, even though millions/billions of Catholics don't necessarily agree with the statement--so he is being given more influence/power by those on the outskirts who aren't fundamentalist Catholics. The negative effects of this are, of course, dire. Especially in the spread of AIDS/HIV throughout Africa because the Pope says that using contraception is a sin (something millions of Catholics don't agree with), but the majority of the Catholic population of Africa (and most of Africa is Catholic) take that as the word of God and refrain from the use of condoms--leading to the spread of AIDS.
Then of course we have the United States, where fundamentalist Christians have continually tried to put an end to stem cell research, which is incidentally making our nation fall behind in medical and biological science research. It should be noted that proposals to only use stem cells from fertility clinics (that are just going to be destroyed any way) have also been rejected (although the last attempt to pass it was vetoed by President Bush, since enough Congressional members had a change in thought from the original passage of the stem cell research laws). Furthermore, homosexual individuals have had their rights taken away from them due to religious beliefs. While I do not agree with that lifestyle, I do think that every person should have the right to live their life the way they choose to do so and as such I feel our nation has broken from our charter of separating church and State (although if you look at the history of the United States, we have always been a Christian nation and have always failed miserably at separating church and state--but that doesn't mean it's right to do that). Then, of course, you have the Muslims in the middle east who die in a holy war for the promised after life with virgins and all of that. Religion is clearly a problem for the advance of society. A problem for peace.
BUT religion IS necessary. The New Atheists, the majority of which are in the top 5% of the population (whether that be by social, economic, or education status--or a little bit from all three) seem to forget some basic tenants of humanity, as often happens when you're at the top and loo
Malware != regulare software. It doesn't have an uninstaller and due to security problems with IE and Windows installs itself--so it's not really a choice of the user (other than not using IE and Windows of course--hence why I haven't had to deal with this for over 2 years). Now stop trolling.
Add/Remove programs doesn't work on the 180Solutions software. It'd be nice if it did, but in some cases it pretends to do something (while in reality doing nothing), in other cases it tells you to go to a web site to get the removal software (which you either never get or doesn't work), or it just tells you that this software cannot be removed.It's been awhile since I've had to deal with this crap (I've been fortunate in that I haven't seen it on any computers I've had to fix in over 2 years--actually, I haven't had to deal with any malware in over 2 years since I mostly serviced the computers of friends and family and I've moved them all over to Firefox and other alternative browsers and have gotten them to use free anti-virus and anti-spyware programs), but the grandparent is correct in stating that it is next to impossible to uninstall.Maybe the newer stuff can be removed easily like that, but at least their older stuff suffered from this problem. As did that 20/20 search bar or whatever the heck it was.
Maybe, due to the compression problems of the Blu-Ray disc (or PS3, I forget which and too early in the morning for me to look it up) the discs are being filled because they simply aren't compressing the data as much as something that they would put on a DVD. Alternatively, maybe they are filling the discs by not compressing them simply for propaganda such as this... I don't doubt that Blu-Ray/HD-DVD discs will, indeed, eventually be necessary and very beneficial to games (short of everything being downloaded to the HDD)--especially for full 1080P. I just doubt that any game currently being made REALLY fills the entire thing using the same level of compression as a DVD (especially since I was under the [mis]understanding) that few, if any, of the launch titles would actually be full 1080p.
I thought Janus was the Windows Media DRM for subscription services? I may be confused on that point though... The wikipedia entry on it is fairly short and could use some more details.
Re:Doublespeak he can't avoid...
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Jobs Unfazed by Zune
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· Score: 2, Insightful
I also support iTunes. I think 99 cents is a fair price to pay for a song (although I do wish more of the money went to artists as opposed to the studios, but that's a whole seperate issue--and something pirating only makes worse). I do have an issue with the DRM being unable to play on my Samsung MP3 player, but there are many, many ways around that (burning to CD and ripping to MP3; using QTFairUse6--technically illegal, but not tracable like downloading from p2p is; or recording the output from a song being played and saving it as an MP3--sloppy and technically illegal, but works "well enough"). Sure the sound quality will suffer a little bit, but its not noticable enough--especially since I mostly just listen to my MP3 player while either working or driving (so the sound is more background music and thus I'm not paying attention to every nuance of it). I've tried other services, but most of them lack the library of iTunes and others just aren't as streamlined (plus, I think iTunes FairPlay DRM is friendlier then Microsoft's PlayForSure).
Slashdot Mirror
That would be nice... One that doesn't require manual defragmenting the hard drive (everybody else can do it...) But they've been working on a new file system for a few years now and keep pushing it back, so it's kind of going the way of Duke Nukem' Forever...
The new interface/interaction paradigm might be cool, but that should come out of Microsoft Research so they can do proper user experience testing (and not just test like 13 MS employees like they did with the ribbon (this was mentioned on the Office development blog)... The ribbon looks cool, but I find myself digging around for items that I used to just have a small toolbox pop up for or were just on the main toolbar--plus there doesn't appear to be a way to reorganize the ribbon...) The regular MS people just don't have the training/expertise to do much user experience work--I've talked to employees about it at career fairs and such (I'm an HCI major) and most of them don't even know what user experience/usability work really is... And for a company that large and ubiquitous, that's just sad...
I think spinmaster is the official distributor of Silverlit's picooz and I think the name of it was changes to the Havoc Heli here after the picco Z came out as a cheap knock off (silverlit is suing them, but they figured changing the name would be the fastest way to prevent confusion--since they were getting complaints about the other, cheap knockoff, not working well...)
- Withdraw from Iraq and let it go to hell in a hand basket. People have an issue with this because they think of it as "defeat", I see it as cutting losses... Also, some people see it as bad on our part for causing a mess and then abandoning it... but really, it was sort of already a mess...
- Cut off all communication between Iraq and the outside world and fight the war like wars used to be fought (kill whoever you need to kill to stop an insurgency). This of course would be frowned upon by the UN and likely to create martyrs/create more problems/force us to spread this tactic throughout the Middle East... Probably not the best solution... but if you're going to fight a war, you should fight a war...
- Divide the country up into smaller portions where each of the major factions controls part of it (see: Yugoslavia). Again, the UN is likely to frown upon this. There's also the issue that Syria and Iran are likely to antagonize these smaller nations and that could lead to issues. Plus these smaller nations may very well fight amongst themselves any way. And to make matters even worse one of the new countries would likely be Kurdish and Turkey and many other Middle Eastern countries have stated that they will not allow a new Kurdish state to be formed...
In short, we should cut our losses and bill it as a "strategic retreat" rather than a "defeat" for those who actually care... Otherwise, we're looking at being there for decades with, likely, very little progress...This may get me buried as off topic, but I have karma to burn... For those interested in the iPhone (it is a cell phone, so it's somewhat related to the topic at hand...) DealsPl.us is giving one away. All you have to do is join and then get another member to join (free registration and I have yet to get any spam) and you'll be entered to win. You do not have to, but it would be appreciated if you sign up for the site through this link http://dealspl.us/i/mikeisme77 so I can have an entry to win it. Plus this way if you end up winning, I win it as well (since they give the person who invited the person who won the prize the same prize). I just thought slashdotters would be interested in this give away and figured I would spread the word about it. Feel free to sign up through the normal site if you don't want to give me an entry--I'm mostly just spreading the word about the contest (although I would LOVE the additional entries... I understand if you don't want me to have them).
That is the current thinking in the English Literature Academia world, yes. Science Fiction/Sci Fi (Sci Fi is a sub-genre of science fiction--where science ficition contains real science and sci fi is for cheap thrills), fantasy, and horror (technically the proper labeling of horror is dark fantasy) all fall under the umbrella term "Speculative Fiction". This is due to the fact that they often have overlapping elements. For example, Star Wars has both science fiction (spaceships) and fantasy (the Force/magic) elements in it; Frankenstein has horror (scary monster) and science fiction (reanimating a corpse through electricity) elements to it, and so on and so forth.
So while it would be ok to label Harry Potter speculative fiction, it would not be okay to label him with the sub-genre label of sci fi (since there is neither fake nor real science in it)--Harry Potter is clearly made up of almost entirely fantasy elements (although at a stretch one might be able to say there are some dark fantasy/horror elements). One of my professors as an undergrad was the co-editor of Science Fiction magazine and I took his class on science fiction. I'm also friends with an English literature professor and have taken my fair share of literature classes (as required to graduate with a degree in creative writing).
ACM Digital Library is a great source for computer science related papers. Psychology and many other fields also have excellent online repositories of papers. Sure some of these papers might also be available in print version, but they are difficult to track down. There are also several emerging fields (such as video games) where finding good academic papers (in a non-digital format) may be very difficult.
I think it's okay to use wikipedia/encyclopedias when citing something that's common knowledge, but may not be common knowledge for all generations. For example, if writing a paper on video games, then citing the wikipedia articles on Super Mario Bros. and Platform Games would be acceptable when describing what elements make up a platform game. However, using wikipedia as a source for information about causes of the Cold War probably would not be the best source.
I don't think this could be used to launch orbiting vehicles though because then the power needed to launch it into space would be even larger (larger mass->more power required), but as you stated it might be possible to shoot orbiting objects down with this...
While the music industry is the largest culprit, Apple should be given some blame as well. If they were to license FairPlay to other vendors (as France tried passing laws to force) then consumers would not be locked to buying iPods/iPhones/i-whatevers to play all of the music they've purchased from iTunes. Yes, you could just buy CDs and rip those, but then you're paying a lot more when you just want one or two songs off of a CD. You could also use other sites to download the music, but if you currently have an iPod the alternatives out there that work with iPods (e.g. sell MP3s legally) tend to have limited selected (see: eMusic). Furthermore, while most Slashdot users have CD burners so can burn the music to CD and then rip it back to MP3, some consumers do not (although that's increasingly the minority)--but even then you lose some quality when you do that (although I wonder how much the average consumer will notice/care). Still, the point is that Apple COULD reduce the iPod lock-in if they so chose to do so (and still make a lot of money from licensing and such--you don't have to lock them into the hardware itself)--except part of the grand scheme of things is to turn consumers on to other Apple products (such as their computer line and now their cell phone). So while it's understandable WHY they would want to lock consumers in, that doesn't mean they shouldn't get some bad press about it...
While I agree 100% that copyright is too long as it currently stands, a 5-10 year copyright is far too short. 15 years I can see as being acceptable, but I still think a 30 year copyright is the ideal solution--long enough that nobody can sit on a work or profit too much from any work created off of the initial steam from the work, and preserves the characters created for a decent amount of time. However, I think that's still short enough that it can happen in a person's lifetime so that they can use it if they really want to.
5-10 years is far too short. For things like books, movie scripts, almost any type of writing and probably some visual art and music too... Otherwise publishers, studios, etc. you submit your work to (which you might not do until a 2+ years after the original copyright--have to find an agent, do some revisions, etc.) would just sit on it until the copyright runs out and then make money from it... I think a 15 year minimum on copyrights would be ok, but 30+ years (but no longer than the life of the creator--as long as the creator lives at least 15 years after the work is created) would probably be the best way to go...
Data fragmentation isn't an issue with flash memory--they don't need to spin up to the point where the data is located, they can simply access it right away. However, the limited number of erase cycles can be a problem. It all depends on how the file system/you are going to use the drive. If you're going to be moving data, replacing data, etc. often and don't need the benefits of speed and durability then this isn't for you yet. However, if you're primary concerns are durability (as mentioned in the posts about why this would be important to defense contractors) then this would be extremely useful. Likewise, if you don't have a file system that is constantly moving files around on the hard drive (to prevent fragmentation) and you don't really delete your files/programs all that often then the speed and durability might be what you're looking for (although the $600 price point is rather hefty... so you better REALLY need the speed...) At the moment, I would assume that durability is the greatest pro that might be the clincher for those who need hard drives that can sustain a considerable amount of abuse (e.g. remote air crafts and such).
Now if I saw an island being formed, I would anchor my yacht offshore, wait for the land to cool, then plant a flag claiming it in the name of my new sovereign nation... Even if it's just a small island, it would still be cool to be the ruler of an island nation...
A man can dream...
For those who didn't RTFA, one of the ways of catching this disease is by accidentally digesting cat feces (if the cat is effected with the bacteria). Smokey is a fairly common name for a grey cat here in the States.
That's one point, and the other point is that if the students are coerced (e.g. due to fear of failing the class) then their participation is not truly voluntary and it violates the IRB (and very few journals will accept anything for publication that has not been approved by the IRB).
On another note, kudos for linking to the Straight Dope (great site).
I've always contended that the purpose of the 2nd amendment wasn't so that every idiot can own a gun, but that it was designed so that people could overthrow the government by force if the government wasn't properly representing them. Think of it as the last resort escape clause. The government isn't doing it's job properly, but democracy isn't working properly either... By using our 2nd amendment rights, we can arm ourselves and overthrow the government. Unfortunately, we can't realistically do this any more because the weapons we would need to do so are all illegal (but perhaps that's unconstitutional... of course... I wouldn't want every crazy organized militia to have ICBMs and all of that... but I suppose I'll choose freedom and liberty over safety and security).
300,000 x 10 = $3,000,000 (before expenses). 30,000,000 * 10 = $300,000,000 (before expenses). Which is better again? Especially since your 30,000,000 is likely to include people who might become die hard fans. Plus, having just casual fans means they'll hit your server less often which will lower operating costs for you. Even if they all leave after a year, you'd still be far better off than have the 300,000 die hard fans for 10 years. With the money you make off the 30,000,000 casual fans you can invest in the next 1 year fad to continue the huge profits-and because nobody plays your old game any more you can reuse the equipment from the previous game.
Linspire/Freespire is the only Linux distro that I am currently willing to recommend to people who aren't tech savvy (at least when I don't want to, or am unable to, set it up myself). It works and it's similar enough to how Windows works that people who haven't used anything else ever are comfortable enough to use it. And now they no longer charge for access to their CNR basic repository (which has software that they never should have charged people to have access to). The distro sucks for geeks, but for the non-tech savvy it still can't be beat. Ubuntu is sort of close... but by refusing to have anything proprietary it will never "just work" because graphics drivers and such aren't free as in beer yet.
Wired recently wrote a story related to this and I posted my reaction (as to why I believe the entire world cannot become atheist at this point in human history). The Wired article can be found here. Also, if anybody is interested, I have an semi-atheist stage play online (currently under copyright, although I may put it under Creative Commons later) here. And my reaction is reposted here (originally posted on MikeOren.com):
The other day, I read an interesting piece in Wired about New Atheism. Like many scientifically minded individuals, I realize how various religious beliefs can get in the way of scientific study, objectivity, and in general hold back the advance of civilization. I have also had my periods of doubt as to whether or not there is a God (after all, there is no way of proving that God exists, and by scientific reasoning you normally don't trust something exists simply because you can't disprove it--the fact that it can't be disproven simply means that there is a possibility). Still, I have not fallen in with atheism in general and still hold my belief in God and that Jesus is the savior. This article about the New Atheists though claims that such a belief is detrimental and even seems to be inclined to declare that the very notion of belief in God(s) is a great evil. It declares that we must throw away our beliefs in anything that is rooted in superstition and ancient beliefs in favor of reason. The logic behind this argument is, of course, very reasonable. Important points that are brought up are things like the Pope speaking for millions/billions of Catholics and that having weight, even though millions/billions of Catholics don't necessarily agree with the statement--so he is being given more influence/power by those on the outskirts who aren't fundamentalist Catholics. The negative effects of this are, of course, dire. Especially in the spread of AIDS/HIV throughout Africa because the Pope says that using contraception is a sin (something millions of Catholics don't agree with), but the majority of the Catholic population of Africa (and most of Africa is Catholic) take that as the word of God and refrain from the use of condoms--leading to the spread of AIDS.
Then of course we have the United States, where fundamentalist Christians have continually tried to put an end to stem cell research, which is incidentally making our nation fall behind in medical and biological science research. It should be noted that proposals to only use stem cells from fertility clinics (that are just going to be destroyed any way) have also been rejected (although the last attempt to pass it was vetoed by President Bush, since enough Congressional members had a change in thought from the original passage of the stem cell research laws). Furthermore, homosexual individuals have had their rights taken away from them due to religious beliefs. While I do not agree with that lifestyle, I do think that every person should have the right to live their life the way they choose to do so and as such I feel our nation has broken from our charter of separating church and State (although if you look at the history of the United States, we have always been a Christian nation and have always failed miserably at separating church and state--but that doesn't mean it's right to do that). Then, of course, you have the Muslims in the middle east who die in a holy war for the promised after life with virgins and all of that. Religion is clearly a problem for the advance of society. A problem for peace.
BUT religion IS necessary. The New Atheists, the majority of which are in the top 5% of the population (whether that be by social, economic, or education status--or a little bit from all three) seem to forget some basic tenants of humanity, as often happens when you're at the top and loo
Malware != regulare software. It doesn't have an uninstaller and due to security problems with IE and Windows installs itself--so it's not really a choice of the user (other than not using IE and Windows of course--hence why I haven't had to deal with this for over 2 years). Now stop trolling.
Add/Remove programs doesn't work on the 180Solutions software. It'd be nice if it did, but in some cases it pretends to do something (while in reality doing nothing), in other cases it tells you to go to a web site to get the removal software (which you either never get or doesn't work), or it just tells you that this software cannot be removed.It's been awhile since I've had to deal with this crap (I've been fortunate in that I haven't seen it on any computers I've had to fix in over 2 years--actually, I haven't had to deal with any malware in over 2 years since I mostly serviced the computers of friends and family and I've moved them all over to Firefox and other alternative browsers and have gotten them to use free anti-virus and anti-spyware programs), but the grandparent is correct in stating that it is next to impossible to uninstall.Maybe the newer stuff can be removed easily like that, but at least their older stuff suffered from this problem. As did that 20/20 search bar or whatever the heck it was.
Maybe, due to the compression problems of the Blu-Ray disc (or PS3, I forget which and too early in the morning for me to look it up) the discs are being filled because they simply aren't compressing the data as much as something that they would put on a DVD. Alternatively, maybe they are filling the discs by not compressing them simply for propaganda such as this... I don't doubt that Blu-Ray/HD-DVD discs will, indeed, eventually be necessary and very beneficial to games (short of everything being downloaded to the HDD)--especially for full 1080P. I just doubt that any game currently being made REALLY fills the entire thing using the same level of compression as a DVD (especially since I was under the [mis]understanding) that few, if any, of the launch titles would actually be full 1080p.
I thought Janus was the Windows Media DRM for subscription services? I may be confused on that point though... The wikipedia entry on it is fairly short and could use some more details.
I also support iTunes. I think 99 cents is a fair price to pay for a song (although I do wish more of the money went to artists as opposed to the studios, but that's a whole seperate issue--and something pirating only makes worse). I do have an issue with the DRM being unable to play on my Samsung MP3 player, but there are many, many ways around that (burning to CD and ripping to MP3; using QTFairUse6--technically illegal, but not tracable like downloading from p2p is; or recording the output from a song being played and saving it as an MP3--sloppy and technically illegal, but works "well enough"). Sure the sound quality will suffer a little bit, but its not noticable enough--especially since I mostly just listen to my MP3 player while either working or driving (so the sound is more background music and thus I'm not paying attention to every nuance of it). I've tried other services, but most of them lack the library of iTunes and others just aren't as streamlined (plus, I think iTunes FairPlay DRM is friendlier then Microsoft's PlayForSure).