If you happen to have 50,000 songs on your computer and are 18 and deliver pizzas for a living I don't think innocent until proven guilty applies. If the fox has a mouthful of chicken feathers then it's reasonable assume enough guilt to charge him with the offense. I doubt they are basing it on bittorent installation or the number would be higher. I briefly installed it because a software vendor I use, Luxology, they make a high end modeler, was pushing people to use it to save bandwidth and bottlenecking. I found it a pain and I deleted it and I never once used it to download a song, legal or otherwise. The estimates are meant to reflect copyrighted material. In truth I think the numbers are really low. A lot of businesses are getting busted for unlicensed software even. I'd guess the numbers a lot closer to 85% to 90% and some countries it's probably closer to a 100%, in south east asia most software and movies are pirated let alone music. The Constitution is to protect your rights not shield you from the law. If you have a garage full of brand new stereos in boxes and you aren't running a business yes it is suspicous and if a cop sees them he has the right to inquire if they are legally obtained. He can't search your garage without a warrant but if you leave the door open so they are visible he has the right to ask or to take photos and use them to obtain a search warrant. With computers it's tougher. If you're burning through a couple of hundred gig of bandwidth every month you're either a Youtube fanatic or you probably have some feathers in your mouth. Yes you can be running a business or have servers, I'm in that situation, but it's enough bandwidth to get some one's attention and if you are a heavy torrent user then they may feel they struck paydirt. Because of how torrents function you obviously aren't downloading a couple of hundred gig of content yourself but you would have to be downloading a lot yourself to run those kind of numbers.
First off snagging a cup of coffee because it's sitting on a counter is thieft. There may be a debate about IP and downloading but I don't think there's a debate about taking physical items. Just because Brittany does it, steals a lighter in front of the paparazzi, doesn't make it alright.
I'm curious about the patent. I'm assuming it relates specifically proprietary software and hardware that they developed as in a long range goal with the iPhones. They seem to want to expand it over time into a personal assisstent rather than just a PDA with a phone. It's not the patent so much as the deals that they are making may be questionable. The deals may leave competition out in the cold. The problem we are facing may be are the old views on monopolies may no longer be sustainable. Competition was always a good thing when the playing field was level and the laws governing monopolies were to keep that playing field level. That model has been shattered by free trade. People in the US can't live as cheaply as people in other countries so there is simply no way for them to compete. A level playing field means everyone has to live in a third world economy because there are limited resources. Remember we've been exceeding available resources since the early 80s. How this applies to this issue is what's the true market and can it sustain more than one competitor or do they simply get into a throat cutting contest? Look at satelite radio. There's only two companies competing yet neither can turn a profit. Their only hope of survival is probably a merger but the law doesn't allow for it. The service itself may have to go away because of existing laws. On the other hand I find things like media mergers a very scary thing and we may be seeing the death of the press as we've known it. Already we have blond bimbos and male models reading the news on most stations where as back in the day they were actual reporters. Yeah they didn't look so good and they often drank too much but they knew their subject and did most of their own reporting. Watching the White House Press Secretary stare blankly when she was asked about the Cuban Missile Crisis drove that home. Being a perky blond doesn't mean you're qualified to work in news other than running for coffee. I'd rather have an over weight chain smoker that did serious reporting.
With this type of sales system it may cause chaos having multiple companies competing for the market. Imagine with the Blu-Ray HD battle only with a hundred standards fighting to survive? There may need to be a single standard but there's no organization in place to create the standard. Even if there was history tells us it would take years and potentially decades to establish one. If one company is going to put the time and money into establishing the system then their stockholders are going to expect to benefit from that investment. So long as it doesn't end up costing more for the customer, due to a lack of competition then I don't really see the harm. The real purpose behind anti monopoly laws was to keep one company from dictating what you'd pay for goods or services. Ultimately the government may have to accept some monopolies and provide oversight inorder to keep progress moving forward. The obvious argument is we can't trust government or they aren't competent. Well guess what, next time you vote for these idiots look in a mirror. I get tired of the argument that the government is too incompetent to be trusted to run anything bigger than a lemonaide stand. We should have the best minds running the government, we pay them enough. We can't trust or depend on government so long as people keep electing Cletus the Slack Jawed Yokel to run the country. Just because they slap a suit on them and stand them up there doesn't mean you have to vote for them. The old saying "you can't give a monkey a gun and blame him when he shoots some one" applies here. You want people to pass meaningful patent reform then elect them. You can't elect some one that can't spell the word and expect change.
I've seen a lot of people over the years on Slashdot complain about the size of iPods not being big enough or boasting of filling them. How many people do you know that spend several grand a year on music? How many have amassed a 10,000+ song collection before 21, I've seen people boast of 40,000 or more song collections? I've known a few fanatics that did that or more even back in the 70s but they were rare and now they seem to be commonplace at the same time sales are consistently dropping. I really doubt they are ripping them off LPs and used CDs. Show of hands, how many on Slashdot have a working record player? Now how many have them hooked up to rip music and how many are in the attic gathering dust? I wish everyone would just can all the rationalizing and excuses and just say they don't want to pay for music or movies anymore. I think that's a whole lot closer to the truth than most iPod users have closets full of old LPs. Other than for DJs use just how many LPs of Brittany Spears music were released? I'm not accusing any Slashdot users of listening to her music but I'm making the point that most people under 40 are listening to music produced in the last ten years so it's doubtful they are ripping from LPs. Yes I'm sure there's plenty of Beattles and Rolling Stones in some of their collections but Beattles LPs are actually worth some money and other than digging through their parents closet for a scratched up LP I seriously doubt most these days have access to them. I'd love to see a moritorium on arguments like "sticking it to the man" and "gee I was just borrowing it from a friend next door to see if I wanted to buy it". Most people with 5,000 to 10,000+ songs on their iPods are bulk downloading from torrents. The really ironic thing is most won't even bother to listen to the music they are just downloading it because they can or for bragging rights, I have noticed a few boasting 50,000 to even 200,000 song collections. The real joke is if they have that much music stored they have to have things downloaded they wouldn't be caught dead listening to. I guess an inventive tactic by the recording industry would be to keep track of who downloads what and publish a list of people that have things like Boy George and John Denver. Would some geek be boasting so much about 50,000 song collections if people knew they included the collected works of Tiny Tim?
With a maxium speed of 60 and a range of 68 miles at 25 mph what's the point? Either they are for chasing pedestrians or motorcycle escorts. The speed is only adequate for city streets for short trips. I'm assuming they are intended for traffic and parking tickets and are more a replacement for for the old Cushman type vehicles. They are hardly a replacement for motorcycles. They could servie some of the purposes that mounted officers did but they lack the high visibility that was a benificial feature of being on horseback. I really wish the article had gone into the intended use because it is a puzzle.
If I take notice of an ad it's because it's obnoxious and I want to avoid the product they are advertising. A perfect example is Head On. I'd let my head explode before I used any of their products. If you've missed these little gems flip on CNN they run every few minutes and some times several times in a row. I generally hit the mute button during commercials. Flashing and animated web ads are the worst for me. One of my favorite sites years ago got so obsessed with flashing ads I couldn't read the stories I was logging on for. I started sticking post-its around the side of the pages until I realized this was nuts and deleted the bookmark. I seriously question the effectiveness of obnoxious adverising since I know personally I avoid companies that use it. It may be a numbers game where they come out a few points ahead but I've stopped using products and services that I had used for years because of the over the top ads. They may see a benfit but there has to be a better way than driving away some customers.
We were building a rig for a show and there were a lot of surplus aitcraft parts around. I found a large bracket that was perfect but it needed an extra hole drilled in it. The piece was light enough I assumed it was aluminum. I was using a hardened drill bit that should have cut through stainless. After five minutes I checked it and I barely scratched the surface. Aircraft Aluminum can be fairly hard but it seemed rediculous so I tried again but still nothing. I flipped over the part and there stamped/cast on the otherside was Titanium. Needless to say I gave up. All I managed to do was kill a good drill bit. If it seems really light for it's size and can't easily be scratched there's a good chance it's Titanium.
I'm confused by this one. What other use is there for music and movies other than personal? Just curious since the obvious intent was to produce them for personal use but based on selling them not giving the content away.
People have decided if they can get it for free they shouldn't have to pay for it. The rationalizing agruments are either that they cost too much or some people make 20 mill a film. Very few people make 20 mill a film and percentile wise very few actors make 1 mill a picture. For everyone making north of 10 mill a film there's a 1,000 people making one side or the other of a grand a week and they at times only work three to six months out of the year. The people at the top are the last to take pay cuts not the first so it's the people at the bottom that suffer most. Already most production has moved out of country. Notice all the new Canadian stars? It's not because there are more Canadian actors all the production is done there and either they hire locals to save a buck or they are generally required to mostly hire locals. Entertainment can't survive the market shift since the new model seems to be make available free. People don't want more commercials but that would be one of the few revenues streams they'd be left. Expect radically more draconian security measures and more lawsuits in the near term because they will go down fighting but in the end everyone will loose because all that will survive are garage bands and Youtube fodder. Yes there will be some films made and some artists touring but expect ticket prices to expode. Video gaming is threatened as well so expect changes there. Network television as we've known it is half dead already and I doubt they'll be producing much original content past the next ten years. The movie industry may hang on for another 20 years in some form but expect average budgets to drop to 3 mill and they'll be a lot more like current TV than the big budget features people like to watch. I've heard models proposed like "well I'll pay a buck a piece for movies". Based on what I've seen even given that option most won't pay for it and given the budget of some blockbuster films every person in the country would have to buy a copy to break even. The math never works. The simple fact is people are unwilling to pay if they have options so the film industry and much of the music industry won't survive. You can't exactly do live performances on movies and theater attendance has been dropping off steadily. It's hit the break point where if they charge more people won't go. The problem is most films just count on breaking even in the theater then they make their profits off DVD sales. Take that away and they loose money. They can drop the budgets but do you want to pay $10 to get in and $5 for popcorn to watch a 3 mill movie? Most won't. I realize it's a troll argument and the good music and movie fairy is going to save us all but entertainment is driven by dollars. Take away the profit and the studios will be torn down for condos and the backers will get into the stock market and real estate. Can't happen? Anyone ever been to Century City? It was 20th Century Fox's backlot back in the day. I say by 2030 most of the studios will be bulldozed for condos and what little production that's happening will all be in India and China. Broadcast TV will be reruns with some cheapie reality shows but mostly infomercials. Worst case senario is it goes all infomercials, it's halfway there now.
Did he make it conditional up front to return the defective drive? If he didn't it was probably thrown on a pile with other drives making it impossible to return. The other point is I've dealt with surplus and most companies don't recycle intact drives the first thing they do is drill or punch a hole through the drive making them impossible to recover data from. I'm guessing that's Apple's policy like most major companies. There's an outside chance of people in the repair department pocketing the defective drive for recovery but that's a risk anywhere and has nothing to do with Apple.
There are viewable films that are over a hundred years old. Nitrate stock was less stable than current safety film but there are still plenty of surviving films. The stock may degrade but there's stil a viewable image 50 to a 100 years later. Photos have even last longer with the oldest being nearly 200 years old. We're having trouble accessing data that's a few decades old. Storage is one problem given the rapidly changing formats but the single biggest problem is an utter lack of standards. If you want to watcha beta tape you need to hit Ebay for an aging player made in the 80s. The truly ironic thing is the earliest electronic broadcasts were all saved on film not in an electronic film. Film has been the best way to archive to date. The reason is all you have to do is pass a light through it to get an image. Analogue forms of storage are more straightforward. When record needles died people have been known to use a nail instead. It would destroy the medium on the first playing but you got out sound. Try that with a CD. It's why the Voyager recordings were made on a golden record disk. If an alien set us one we could figure out who to play it and on a galactic scale we aren't very bright. There are long term means so storing digital information but the real problem will always come back to standards. Until we commit to a single standard long term storage is hopeless. Just imagine film. Say everyone used different sizes much like they used to, 8mm, Super 8, 16mm, 35mm, 70mm. The problem gets more complicated when you add in all the different ratios for wide screen, there are far more standards there than you think. Imagine having to build a projector just to play an old movie? Already there are hundreds of different formats and compression senarios. I think we are at least a decade away from locking down any form of standard format. Economics are the primary thing holding that back. It's like the old days when NTSC was adopted, everyone has there own system they are pushing. We need a lossless achiving format that everyone can agree on. It's going to take the industry coming together and agreeing on a single organization to oversee it all to avoid one group hyjacking the process and trying to use it to their own advantage.
is he has become a joke but unlike most of the Hollywood hero types he is the real deal. He's won more Karate championships than anyone and is a legitimate star athlete in the sport. His films were rarely all that serious other than maybe the one with Bruce Lee. He had fun making some silly movies and an even sillier TV series but it's sad it's damaged his name. He's not an actor and has terrible tastes in what projects he's taken on. He's made a lot of money at it and not really harmed anyone along the way, with his films and TV series anyway, so I say more power to him. He worked hard for his name for better or worse so he has the right to protect it. It's just too bad he'll be remembered as a third rate action hero instead of the world class athlete he is.
You can make whatever law you want but they are useless unless you enforce them and creating draconian laws that are selectively enforced will make a mess of the courts. It's like immigration laws. Everyone largely ignored them so illegal immigration became a serious problem. We were told for years enforcement wouldn't work and wasn't either possible or humane. Now that a few states like Arizona are enforcing the laws the situation is slowly correcting itself in those states. People are leaving because it's difficult for them to stay. Make it difficult on the store owners if they sell to minors but the far bigger issue is parents buying the games for the kids. The government can't regulate morality as much as it'd like to. If they try to protect people from themselves then we get back to the good ole days of Hayes where the raciest thing you could make were Disney cartoons. Yes people were protected from nudity, violence and bad language but eventually filmmakers kept pushing the limits until Hayes went away. There are plenty of people that feel we need a return of that kind of puritanical code for video games but it's going to be a tough sell and the only way they can do it is the way they do everything else, chip away at it until they get their way. Even back in the 70s they had rules limiting one act of violence per half hour on TV. It's why the old Barreta show went off the air when it was on top. Robert Blake, love or hate the guy, refused to abide by the rule and shut the show down rather than make the scripts conform to the TV standard. Parents don't want to say no to their kids so I think it's only a matter of time before they'll embrace rules limiting the types of violence in games since in their minds games are by definition intended for kids. The fact the vast majority of mature games are played by adults won't be considered the good of the children will be placed above individual rights. It sounds good on paper but it all comes down to people not wanting to be responsible for themselves. I can't say no to my kid so take away the temptation. The best thing the industry can do to defend themselves is to come up with as many non violent options as possible but the next magical trick is to get people to buy them. Some sell well now but the point is the sin factor. Kids want the games in part because they aren't supposed to have them. One approach might be to make the separation even more radical. Parents accept violence in the US far quicker than sex. Add extreme sexual content to the violent games instead of taking it away. Not only is it violent but it's pornographic. Most parents may buy their kid a violent video game but how many would buy them a porno tape? It's silly but if parents won't police themselves then it's a heavy handed way to force their hands. Add nudity to the covers so the store owners can't even display them and they have to be sold from behind the counter. Like I say silly but they wouldn't have any excuses then. "Gee I didn't realize the game was adult when I sold it to the kid". That argument becomes moot when the cover is two naked chicks with machine guns and has a title "Lesbian Drug Dealing Hitmen of Crack Avenue."
I haven't checked lately but I believe they are still selling analog TVs at a lot of places. I know I saw some over the summer. I'm sure the salesmen aren't exactly pointing out the fact the TV will go dark unless you get an expensive converter box in 18 months. They should have been phased out less than 24 months before the switch over and 36 months would have been better. I can see a sudden influx of TVs into the local landfill with a disturbing number fairly new. It may have been well intended but it's hardly eco friendly making a large number of electronics into very large paperweights overnight.
They probably did it's just their smiley face has five eyes and no mouth. The stars spelling out "We Are Here" are tough to read given the language differences and they use a pentagon to point instead of an arrow given they never developed archery. Celapods have trouble with bows. There is hope of translating the "Free Beer" part of the sign if we can only figure out the translation for beer. We do know there's an exclamation mark like symbol at the end of what's thought to be the word Beer. We know it as Orion's Belt.
There are multiple reasons for a three wheeled design. Only three tires, most electrics use four electric motors whereas this one uses one. You loose about a 1/3 of the frame and body saving money there as well and weight improving efficency. The big trade off is stability since you have only one tire for traction and no wheel base in the back. Air bags are an overstated feature. I was a big supporter in the 70s but in truth they are mainly for people that don't wear seatbelts. A proper shoulder restraint is about as safe and causes far fewer injuries than airbags. Crumple zones aren't an issue, if you watch the video he describes a system similar to what the old Citroens used where the passenger compartment rides up over the engine. It's actually far safer than traditional desings even with crumple zones. It's a well thought out vehicle. Is it for everyone? No. Neither are SUVs although it's hard to believe that some times given the number on the road. It's not a motorcycle in anyway it's a hybrid between a car and a motorcycle. The 300 MPG was for the hybrid version that comes out the following year. The all electric is 120 mile range. It's still better than twice what the original EV1 got and people loved those. Under 30K puts it into the afordable category. Yes no one will be happy until they are selling for 10K to 15K but go to your local car lot for an eye opener. 30K is bordering on average for a cars. Factor in energy savings and they are very afordable. You'll run a year on what the eletricity costs compared to a tank or two of gasoline for your neighbor. Given the sources of electricity it's not likely to go up as fast as gasoline. You can always cover your roof with solar cells. Too expensive? Wait a year or two for the printed cells to hit the consumer markets. They started shipping this last week to industrial customers. If the projected retail price is correct then they'll be the cheapest source of power going costing at least half what coal does. Everyone is waiting for solutions, they are starting to ship over the coarse of the next two years. The future has arrived.
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If you happen to have 50,000 songs on your computer and are 18 and deliver pizzas for a living I don't think innocent until proven guilty applies. If the fox has a mouthful of chicken feathers then it's reasonable assume enough guilt to charge him with the offense. I doubt they are basing it on bittorent installation or the number would be higher. I briefly installed it because a software vendor I use, Luxology, they make a high end modeler, was pushing people to use it to save bandwidth and bottlenecking. I found it a pain and I deleted it and I never once used it to download a song, legal or otherwise. The estimates are meant to reflect copyrighted material. In truth I think the numbers are really low. A lot of businesses are getting busted for unlicensed software even. I'd guess the numbers a lot closer to 85% to 90% and some countries it's probably closer to a 100%, in south east asia most software and movies are pirated let alone music. The Constitution is to protect your rights not shield you from the law. If you have a garage full of brand new stereos in boxes and you aren't running a business yes it is suspicous and if a cop sees them he has the right to inquire if they are legally obtained. He can't search your garage without a warrant but if you leave the door open so they are visible he has the right to ask or to take photos and use them to obtain a search warrant. With computers it's tougher. If you're burning through a couple of hundred gig of bandwidth every month you're either a Youtube fanatic or you probably have some feathers in your mouth. Yes you can be running a business or have servers, I'm in that situation, but it's enough bandwidth to get some one's attention and if you are a heavy torrent user then they may feel they struck paydirt. Because of how torrents function you obviously aren't downloading a couple of hundred gig of content yourself but you would have to be downloading a lot yourself to run those kind of numbers.
I'm curious about the patent. I'm assuming it relates specifically proprietary software and hardware that they developed as in a long range goal with the iPhones. They seem to want to expand it over time into a personal assisstent rather than just a PDA with a phone. It's not the patent so much as the deals that they are making may be questionable. The deals may leave competition out in the cold. The problem we are facing may be are the old views on monopolies may no longer be sustainable. Competition was always a good thing when the playing field was level and the laws governing monopolies were to keep that playing field level. That model has been shattered by free trade. People in the US can't live as cheaply as people in other countries so there is simply no way for them to compete. A level playing field means everyone has to live in a third world economy because there are limited resources. Remember we've been exceeding available resources since the early 80s. How this applies to this issue is what's the true market and can it sustain more than one competitor or do they simply get into a throat cutting contest? Look at satelite radio. There's only two companies competing yet neither can turn a profit. Their only hope of survival is probably a merger but the law doesn't allow for it. The service itself may have to go away because of existing laws. On the other hand I find things like media mergers a very scary thing and we may be seeing the death of the press as we've known it. Already we have blond bimbos and male models reading the news on most stations where as back in the day they were actual reporters. Yeah they didn't look so good and they often drank too much but they knew their subject and did most of their own reporting. Watching the White House Press Secretary stare blankly when she was asked about the Cuban Missile Crisis drove that home. Being a perky blond doesn't mean you're qualified to work in news other than running for coffee. I'd rather have an over weight chain smoker that did serious reporting.
With this type of sales system it may cause chaos having multiple companies competing for the market. Imagine with the Blu-Ray HD battle only with a hundred standards fighting to survive? There may need to be a single standard but there's no organization in place to create the standard. Even if there was history tells us it would take years and potentially decades to establish one. If one company is going to put the time and money into establishing the system then their stockholders are going to expect to benefit from that investment. So long as it doesn't end up costing more for the customer, due to a lack of competition then I don't really see the harm. The real purpose behind anti monopoly laws was to keep one company from dictating what you'd pay for goods or services. Ultimately the government may have to accept some monopolies and provide oversight inorder to keep progress moving forward. The obvious argument is we can't trust government or they aren't competent. Well guess what, next time you vote for these idiots look in a mirror. I get tired of the argument that the government is too incompetent to be trusted to run anything bigger than a lemonaide stand. We should have the best minds running the government, we pay them enough. We can't trust or depend on government so long as people keep electing Cletus the Slack Jawed Yokel to run the country. Just because they slap a suit on them and stand them up there doesn't mean you have to vote for them. The old saying "you can't give a monkey a gun and blame him when he shoots some one" applies here. You want people to pass meaningful patent reform then elect them. You can't elect some one that can't spell the word and expect change.
I've seen a lot of people over the years on Slashdot complain about the size of iPods not being big enough or boasting of filling them. How many people do you know that spend several grand a year on music? How many have amassed a 10,000+ song collection before 21, I've seen people boast of 40,000 or more song collections? I've known a few fanatics that did that or more even back in the 70s but they were rare and now they seem to be commonplace at the same time sales are consistently dropping. I really doubt they are ripping them off LPs and used CDs. Show of hands, how many on Slashdot have a working record player? Now how many have them hooked up to rip music and how many are in the attic gathering dust? I wish everyone would just can all the rationalizing and excuses and just say they don't want to pay for music or movies anymore. I think that's a whole lot closer to the truth than most iPod users have closets full of old LPs. Other than for DJs use just how many LPs of Brittany Spears music were released? I'm not accusing any Slashdot users of listening to her music but I'm making the point that most people under 40 are listening to music produced in the last ten years so it's doubtful they are ripping from LPs. Yes I'm sure there's plenty of Beattles and Rolling Stones in some of their collections but Beattles LPs are actually worth some money and other than digging through their parents closet for a scratched up LP I seriously doubt most these days have access to them. I'd love to see a moritorium on arguments like "sticking it to the man" and "gee I was just borrowing it from a friend next door to see if I wanted to buy it". Most people with 5,000 to 10,000+ songs on their iPods are bulk downloading from torrents. The really ironic thing is most won't even bother to listen to the music they are just downloading it because they can or for bragging rights, I have noticed a few boasting 50,000 to even 200,000 song collections. The real joke is if they have that much music stored they have to have things downloaded they wouldn't be caught dead listening to. I guess an inventive tactic by the recording industry would be to keep track of who downloads what and publish a list of people that have things like Boy George and John Denver. Would some geek be boasting so much about 50,000 song collections if people knew they included the collected works of Tiny Tim?
Aren't there more than a 150 members of Congress? Or are they just sticking with Senators?
With a maxium speed of 60 and a range of 68 miles at 25 mph what's the point? Either they are for chasing pedestrians or motorcycle escorts. The speed is only adequate for city streets for short trips. I'm assuming they are intended for traffic and parking tickets and are more a replacement for for the old Cushman type vehicles. They are hardly a replacement for motorcycles. They could servie some of the purposes that mounted officers did but they lack the high visibility that was a benificial feature of being on horseback. I really wish the article had gone into the intended use because it is a puzzle.
If I take notice of an ad it's because it's obnoxious and I want to avoid the product they are advertising. A perfect example is Head On. I'd let my head explode before I used any of their products. If you've missed these little gems flip on CNN they run every few minutes and some times several times in a row. I generally hit the mute button during commercials. Flashing and animated web ads are the worst for me. One of my favorite sites years ago got so obsessed with flashing ads I couldn't read the stories I was logging on for. I started sticking post-its around the side of the pages until I realized this was nuts and deleted the bookmark. I seriously question the effectiveness of obnoxious adverising since I know personally I avoid companies that use it. It may be a numbers game where they come out a few points ahead but I've stopped using products and services that I had used for years because of the over the top ads. They may see a benfit but there has to be a better way than driving away some customers.
That's a relief it's a dupe. For a second there I thought I'd zoned out and it was still two days until Christmas.
We were building a rig for a show and there were a lot of surplus aitcraft parts around. I found a large bracket that was perfect but it needed an extra hole drilled in it. The piece was light enough I assumed it was aluminum. I was using a hardened drill bit that should have cut through stainless. After five minutes I checked it and I barely scratched the surface. Aircraft Aluminum can be fairly hard but it seemed rediculous so I tried again but still nothing. I flipped over the part and there stamped/cast on the otherside was Titanium. Needless to say I gave up. All I managed to do was kill a good drill bit. If it seems really light for it's size and can't easily be scratched there's a good chance it's Titanium.
There was a great disturbance in the geek community.
I'm confused by this one. What other use is there for music and movies other than personal? Just curious since the obvious intent was to produce them for personal use but based on selling them not giving the content away.
People have decided if they can get it for free they shouldn't have to pay for it. The rationalizing agruments are either that they cost too much or some people make 20 mill a film. Very few people make 20 mill a film and percentile wise very few actors make 1 mill a picture. For everyone making north of 10 mill a film there's a 1,000 people making one side or the other of a grand a week and they at times only work three to six months out of the year. The people at the top are the last to take pay cuts not the first so it's the people at the bottom that suffer most. Already most production has moved out of country. Notice all the new Canadian stars? It's not because there are more Canadian actors all the production is done there and either they hire locals to save a buck or they are generally required to mostly hire locals. Entertainment can't survive the market shift since the new model seems to be make available free. People don't want more commercials but that would be one of the few revenues streams they'd be left. Expect radically more draconian security measures and more lawsuits in the near term because they will go down fighting but in the end everyone will loose because all that will survive are garage bands and Youtube fodder. Yes there will be some films made and some artists touring but expect ticket prices to expode. Video gaming is threatened as well so expect changes there. Network television as we've known it is half dead already and I doubt they'll be producing much original content past the next ten years. The movie industry may hang on for another 20 years in some form but expect average budgets to drop to 3 mill and they'll be a lot more like current TV than the big budget features people like to watch. I've heard models proposed like "well I'll pay a buck a piece for movies". Based on what I've seen even given that option most won't pay for it and given the budget of some blockbuster films every person in the country would have to buy a copy to break even. The math never works. The simple fact is people are unwilling to pay if they have options so the film industry and much of the music industry won't survive. You can't exactly do live performances on movies and theater attendance has been dropping off steadily. It's hit the break point where if they charge more people won't go. The problem is most films just count on breaking even in the theater then they make their profits off DVD sales. Take that away and they loose money. They can drop the budgets but do you want to pay $10 to get in and $5 for popcorn to watch a 3 mill movie? Most won't. I realize it's a troll argument and the good music and movie fairy is going to save us all but entertainment is driven by dollars. Take away the profit and the studios will be torn down for condos and the backers will get into the stock market and real estate. Can't happen? Anyone ever been to Century City? It was 20th Century Fox's backlot back in the day. I say by 2030 most of the studios will be bulldozed for condos and what little production that's happening will all be in India and China. Broadcast TV will be reruns with some cheapie reality shows but mostly infomercials. Worst case senario is it goes all infomercials, it's halfway there now.
All the cooked birds you can eat.
Did he make it conditional up front to return the defective drive? If he didn't it was probably thrown on a pile with other drives making it impossible to return. The other point is I've dealt with surplus and most companies don't recycle intact drives the first thing they do is drill or punch a hole through the drive making them impossible to recover data from. I'm guessing that's Apple's policy like most major companies. There's an outside chance of people in the repair department pocketing the defective drive for recovery but that's a risk anywhere and has nothing to do with Apple.
it's lawyers, rats,politicians, cats, then monkeys and finally, a human brain
There are viewable films that are over a hundred years old. Nitrate stock was less stable than current safety film but there are still plenty of surviving films. The stock may degrade but there's stil a viewable image 50 to a 100 years later. Photos have even last longer with the oldest being nearly 200 years old. We're having trouble accessing data that's a few decades old. Storage is one problem given the rapidly changing formats but the single biggest problem is an utter lack of standards. If you want to watcha beta tape you need to hit Ebay for an aging player made in the 80s. The truly ironic thing is the earliest electronic broadcasts were all saved on film not in an electronic film. Film has been the best way to archive to date. The reason is all you have to do is pass a light through it to get an image. Analogue forms of storage are more straightforward. When record needles died people have been known to use a nail instead. It would destroy the medium on the first playing but you got out sound. Try that with a CD. It's why the Voyager recordings were made on a golden record disk. If an alien set us one we could figure out who to play it and on a galactic scale we aren't very bright. There are long term means so storing digital information but the real problem will always come back to standards. Until we commit to a single standard long term storage is hopeless. Just imagine film. Say everyone used different sizes much like they used to, 8mm, Super 8, 16mm, 35mm, 70mm. The problem gets more complicated when you add in all the different ratios for wide screen, there are far more standards there than you think. Imagine having to build a projector just to play an old movie? Already there are hundreds of different formats and compression senarios. I think we are at least a decade away from locking down any form of standard format. Economics are the primary thing holding that back. It's like the old days when NTSC was adopted, everyone has there own system they are pushing. We need a lossless achiving format that everyone can agree on. It's going to take the industry coming together and agreeing on a single organization to oversee it all to avoid one group hyjacking the process and trying to use it to their own advantage.
is he has become a joke but unlike most of the Hollywood hero types he is the real deal. He's won more Karate championships than anyone and is a legitimate star athlete in the sport. His films were rarely all that serious other than maybe the one with Bruce Lee. He had fun making some silly movies and an even sillier TV series but it's sad it's damaged his name. He's not an actor and has terrible tastes in what projects he's taken on. He's made a lot of money at it and not really harmed anyone along the way, with his films and TV series anyway, so I say more power to him. He worked hard for his name for better or worse so he has the right to protect it. It's just too bad he'll be remembered as a third rate action hero instead of the world class athlete he is.
You can make whatever law you want but they are useless unless you enforce them and creating draconian laws that are selectively enforced will make a mess of the courts. It's like immigration laws. Everyone largely ignored them so illegal immigration became a serious problem. We were told for years enforcement wouldn't work and wasn't either possible or humane. Now that a few states like Arizona are enforcing the laws the situation is slowly correcting itself in those states. People are leaving because it's difficult for them to stay. Make it difficult on the store owners if they sell to minors but the far bigger issue is parents buying the games for the kids. The government can't regulate morality as much as it'd like to. If they try to protect people from themselves then we get back to the good ole days of Hayes where the raciest thing you could make were Disney cartoons. Yes people were protected from nudity, violence and bad language but eventually filmmakers kept pushing the limits until Hayes went away. There are plenty of people that feel we need a return of that kind of puritanical code for video games but it's going to be a tough sell and the only way they can do it is the way they do everything else, chip away at it until they get their way. Even back in the 70s they had rules limiting one act of violence per half hour on TV. It's why the old Barreta show went off the air when it was on top. Robert Blake, love or hate the guy, refused to abide by the rule and shut the show down rather than make the scripts conform to the TV standard. Parents don't want to say no to their kids so I think it's only a matter of time before they'll embrace rules limiting the types of violence in games since in their minds games are by definition intended for kids. The fact the vast majority of mature games are played by adults won't be considered the good of the children will be placed above individual rights. It sounds good on paper but it all comes down to people not wanting to be responsible for themselves. I can't say no to my kid so take away the temptation. The best thing the industry can do to defend themselves is to come up with as many non violent options as possible but the next magical trick is to get people to buy them. Some sell well now but the point is the sin factor. Kids want the games in part because they aren't supposed to have them. One approach might be to make the separation even more radical. Parents accept violence in the US far quicker than sex. Add extreme sexual content to the violent games instead of taking it away. Not only is it violent but it's pornographic. Most parents may buy their kid a violent video game but how many would buy them a porno tape? It's silly but if parents won't police themselves then it's a heavy handed way to force their hands. Add nudity to the covers so the store owners can't even display them and they have to be sold from behind the counter. Like I say silly but they wouldn't have any excuses then. "Gee I didn't realize the game was adult when I sold it to the kid". That argument becomes moot when the cover is two naked chicks with machine guns and has a title "Lesbian Drug Dealing Hitmen of Crack Avenue."
I haven't checked lately but I believe they are still selling analog TVs at a lot of places. I know I saw some over the summer. I'm sure the salesmen aren't exactly pointing out the fact the TV will go dark unless you get an expensive converter box in 18 months. They should have been phased out less than 24 months before the switch over and 36 months would have been better. I can see a sudden influx of TVs into the local landfill with a disturbing number fairly new. It may have been well intended but it's hardly eco friendly making a large number of electronics into very large paperweights overnight.
What's hokey about a male model and a talking car that fight crime?
They probably did it's just their smiley face has five eyes and no mouth. The stars spelling out "We Are Here" are tough to read given the language differences and they use a pentagon to point instead of an arrow given they never developed archery. Celapods have trouble with bows. There is hope of translating the "Free Beer" part of the sign if we can only figure out the translation for beer. We do know there's an exclamation mark like symbol at the end of what's thought to be the word Beer. We know it as Orion's Belt.
There are multiple reasons for a three wheeled design. Only three tires, most electrics use four electric motors whereas this one uses one. You loose about a 1/3 of the frame and body saving money there as well and weight improving efficency. The big trade off is stability since you have only one tire for traction and no wheel base in the back. Air bags are an overstated feature. I was a big supporter in the 70s but in truth they are mainly for people that don't wear seatbelts. A proper shoulder restraint is about as safe and causes far fewer injuries than airbags. Crumple zones aren't an issue, if you watch the video he describes a system similar to what the old Citroens used where the passenger compartment rides up over the engine. It's actually far safer than traditional desings even with crumple zones. It's a well thought out vehicle. Is it for everyone? No. Neither are SUVs although it's hard to believe that some times given the number on the road. It's not a motorcycle in anyway it's a hybrid between a car and a motorcycle. The 300 MPG was for the hybrid version that comes out the following year. The all electric is 120 mile range. It's still better than twice what the original EV1 got and people loved those. Under 30K puts it into the afordable category. Yes no one will be happy until they are selling for 10K to 15K but go to your local car lot for an eye opener. 30K is bordering on average for a cars. Factor in energy savings and they are very afordable. You'll run a year on what the eletricity costs compared to a tank or two of gasoline for your neighbor. Given the sources of electricity it's not likely to go up as fast as gasoline. You can always cover your roof with solar cells. Too expensive? Wait a year or two for the printed cells to hit the consumer markets. They started shipping this last week to industrial customers. If the projected retail price is correct then they'll be the cheapest source of power going costing at least half what coal does. Everyone is waiting for solutions, they are starting to ship over the coarse of the next two years. The future has arrived.
You forgot one thing, did you mean 2008 or 2108? When discussing Duke Nuke em Forever one must be specific.
And they thought finals time was exhausting before.
Was the handcrank extra or did they come standard?
"The Misunderstood True Hero Of LOTRs Sauron", sponsored by the Bush administration.