There are costs incurred by allowing music to be copied freely, and costs incurred by restricting it. By allowing it to be free, it is harder for bands to make money, and this will lead to less music being made. But when we enforce copyright, it severely limits the ability of people to discover and enjoy all the music which already exists.
This debate should come down to asking which is the greater cost to society as a whole. I say that the second cost is far greater. Personally, I would have missed out on so much music if I had to pay money for it before I even knew if I'd like it. I think the world is a better place if everyone has the option to explore their musical tastes freely.
It's not as if we are going to have a shortage of bands just because they can't sell CDs. They will have to find other ways to make money, or just make music for music's sake. The best way for a band to make money is by putting on shows. I love to support bands by going to see them when they come to my area. They can also make money through merchandise, collectible recordings, sponsorships, etc.
This makes me wonder if SATA 6G is a smart idea. It doesn't provide any significant benefit to magnetic drives, and upon release it will already be a bottleneck for SSDs. They needed to jump right to 12G, even if that meant extra delays and higher initial costs.
Sony VAIO is the slowest laptop? Not exactly a shocking result to anyone who has used one of their bloatware infested machines. The only test a VAIO laptop scores fastest on is the wind tunnel.
What about getting a small, good quality webcam, preferably with a zoom feature? When your professor writes out an equation, point the camera at it, take a quick screen capture, and paste it into your notes.
The calculator in Windows works just like a small handheld calculator, and so it won't allow you to enter the second decimal point. However, it is also limited in the same ways as a small handheld calculator.
The Ubuntu calculator allows for expressions, not just numbers. You can enter something like this:
(47/6 - 13.222) * 8.3
And it will give you the answer. This is much better than what the Windows calculator provides. As for 2.2.2, why would anyone enter that? Isn't it better to give the user feedback about this typo? Someone who enters 2.2.2 probably intended to enter 2+2.2 or something along those lines. In the Ubuntu calculator, they would realize their mistake. In the Windows calculator, they would have the wrong answer and not know it.
To me, this is a perfect example of rejecting Linux just because it is different, even when the difference is an improvement.
I don't understand why the Ubuntu team has never simplified the setup process for Samba. It is simple enough to share a folder with unlimited access, but as soon as you want to create users and passwords, it becomes rather complex. I've had to set it up a couple of times, and I never seem to get it to work quite right.
Many Ubuntu users are also going to be running a Windows machine on their local network. If the goal is to give them a positive experience with Linux, then setting up the connections on the local network should be brain-dead easy. Imagine sending a novice user to this page! They would soon be throwing away their Ubuntu disk and installing Windows.
Making an easy GUI for this configuration process shouldn't be that difficult. I hope that it will be addressed sometime soon.
I forgot to add one point. The original Space Race was the US doing all the right things for all the wrong reasons. It isn't necessarily a bad way to get things done!
This could be a good source of motivation. Exploring the use of nuclear power for space exploration makes a ton of sense. Currently, when anyone brings it up, people express fears that it is too dangerous and expensive, and so let's just play it safe. Perhaps instead they can fear that other countries will develop it first and leave us behind.
Frankly I'm tired of re-buying the same basic handheld over and over again (and yet terrified that if I don't buy each new iteration I may miss out on some great new nuance of the system).
But he's terrified about missing out on nuanced features. Terrified! I hope he never finds himself in precarious, life-threatening situation -- he will have no words left to describe his condition.
That is a nice theory, but the Cubs already have the third highest team salary in baseball. They won their division in 2007 and 2008, and in 2008 they were expected to go far in the playoffs. Somehow, they managed to fall apart and lose in three games. I don't think it is caused by the fans or the curse so much as it is bad luck.
"Google Envisions 10 Million Servers" => Well, I just imagined a beowulf cluster of those server farms. Your move, Google! And none of that infinity plus one stuff.
Thanks, but I was just trying for a dumb pun. (The poster meant "piloting" as in "running a pilot program" - but I was taking it to mean "steering a vehicle.")
Thank you! I will put it at the top of my to-read list. I've been thinking about this idea of asteroid-as-ejection-mass for quite some time, and it will be fun to read a novel on the subject.
That's nice that "A US company and its Chinese partner" are piloting the bus, but I think it would be much more interesting to know who designed and built it.
In addition, if you want to play online games, it is $50/year for the Xbox, and free for the PS3. And yet, the PS3 will still be labeled as overpriced.
Microsoft outfoxed Sony with how they packaged their system. Sony offers better value, but Microsoft offers lower cost of entry. They're taking a play from the cell phone companies. ("Have a $400 phone for free! Pay no attention to the overpriced data plan!") Sadly, this is quite effective as a marketing ploy.
Sitting back and waiting does not lead to much technological advancement. Taking on an ambitious project tends to inspire many advances.
The idea is not to catch asteroids along the way. Rather, the craft would catch one large asteroid of sufficient mass to provide all the raw material needed for the journey. Using an asteroid saves the huge cost of lifting this massive raw material into space.
Not really a problem. For one thing, space is really big, and the particles will disperse. Secondly, adding a slight curve to the flight path will result in the jet of particles missing our solar system .
We could slow it down as needed by decelerating, just as the Mars mission would do. That does probably mean the mission would take 3-4 times as long, but it should still be feasible.
Alpha Centauri is 4.24 light years away. If the ship could reach 0.5c at the half way point, it should average 0.25c (very approximately) for the trip. This puts the trip at 17 years, plus another 4 years to receive the transmission.
Unfortunately, I doubt that 0.5c is feasible. Perhaps 0.1c is more attainable. This means it would take 89 years to get a signal back, which is outside my lifetime but still very respectable.
Even if it would take 1000 years, I think we should go for it if it can be done.
The VASIMR engine couples well with an idea I've been pondering. Imagine building a ship designed to latch onto a largish asteroid, and then use the asteroid's mass as the ejected reaction mass for acceleration.
The ship would need a powerful nuclear reactor, and robotics capable of slowly grinding the asteroid's mass to a fine powder. The engine would need to be able to accelerate this powder to an enormous speed, regardless of what the powder was made of.
Such a ship would be able to accelerate to amazing speeds, and could be a perfect deep space explorer. Imagine if we could do a close flyby on another solar system! The powerful nuclear reactor could be used to power advanced scientific instruments, and to beam a very strong signal back to earth.
I wonder how feasible this would be. I'd love to see an unmanned craft reach another solar system in my lifetime. To me, that would be more exciting than putting a man on Mars.
This may be a big use for Google Gears. Perhaps Gears was created to support Google's book sales and online apps, and then Chrome was created to push other browsers towards Gears compatibility. You can't accuse Google of thinking small.
If the books are really just displayed in the browser as text, there will probably be tools developed by hackers to extract the contents to a text file. I wonder if Google will fight this or just let it happen?
I could care less what the price of a game is on the other side of the world. Why would I even take the time to compare? If the price in my country is fair to me, I will buy it.
The biggest problem is that the games cannot be resold, and yet they are priced as if they could be resold. A $10-15 downloadable game is usually a cute diversion, lacking in substance and soon forgotten. And yet, that same $10-15 could be the net cost of buying a full retail game, playing it, and then selling it.
Some of the downloadable games are nothing more than glorified versions of the Flash games I can play online for free. How about a price of $2 - $5?
Slashdot Mirror
There are costs incurred by allowing music to be copied freely, and costs incurred by restricting it. By allowing it to be free, it is harder for bands to make money, and this will lead to less music being made. But when we enforce copyright, it severely limits the ability of people to discover and enjoy all the music which already exists.
This debate should come down to asking which is the greater cost to society as a whole. I say that the second cost is far greater. Personally, I would have missed out on so much music if I had to pay money for it before I even knew if I'd like it. I think the world is a better place if everyone has the option to explore their musical tastes freely.
It's not as if we are going to have a shortage of bands just because they can't sell CDs. They will have to find other ways to make money, or just make music for music's sake. The best way for a band to make money is by putting on shows. I love to support bands by going to see them when they come to my area. They can also make money through merchandise, collectible recordings, sponsorships, etc.
This makes me wonder if SATA 6G is a smart idea. It doesn't provide any significant benefit to magnetic drives, and upon release it will already be a bottleneck for SSDs. They needed to jump right to 12G, even if that meant extra delays and higher initial costs.
Sony VAIO is the slowest laptop? Not exactly a shocking result to anyone who has used one of their bloatware infested machines. The only test a VAIO laptop scores fastest on is the wind tunnel.
What about getting a small, good quality webcam, preferably with a zoom feature? When your professor writes out an equation, point the camera at it, take a quick screen capture, and paste it into your notes.
The calculator in Windows works just like a small handheld calculator, and so it won't allow you to enter the second decimal point. However, it is also limited in the same ways as a small handheld calculator.
The Ubuntu calculator allows for expressions, not just numbers. You can enter something like this:
(47/6 - 13.222) * 8.3
And it will give you the answer. This is much better than what the Windows calculator provides. As for 2.2.2, why would anyone enter that? Isn't it better to give the user feedback about this typo? Someone who enters 2.2.2 probably intended to enter 2+2.2 or something along those lines. In the Ubuntu calculator, they would realize their mistake. In the Windows calculator, they would have the wrong answer and not know it.
To me, this is a perfect example of rejecting Linux just because it is different, even when the difference is an improvement.
I don't understand why the Ubuntu team has never simplified the setup process for Samba. It is simple enough to share a folder with unlimited access, but as soon as you want to create users and passwords, it becomes rather complex. I've had to set it up a couple of times, and I never seem to get it to work quite right.
Many Ubuntu users are also going to be running a Windows machine on their local network. If the goal is to give them a positive experience with Linux, then setting up the connections on the local network should be brain-dead easy. Imagine sending a novice user to this page! They would soon be throwing away their Ubuntu disk and installing Windows.
Making an easy GUI for this configuration process shouldn't be that difficult. I hope that it will be addressed sometime soon.
I forgot to add one point. The original Space Race was the US doing all the right things for all the wrong reasons. It isn't necessarily a bad way to get things done!
This could be a good source of motivation. Exploring the use of nuclear power for space exploration makes a ton of sense. Currently, when anyone brings it up, people express fears that it is too dangerous and expensive, and so let's just play it safe. Perhaps instead they can fear that other countries will develop it first and leave us behind.
But he's terrified about missing out on nuanced features. Terrified! I hope he never finds himself in precarious, life-threatening situation -- he will have no words left to describe his condition.
True, an OS that takes many attempts and several years to get it right will never make it in the marketplace.
That is a nice theory, but the Cubs already have the third highest team salary in baseball. They won their division in 2007 and 2008, and in 2008 they were expected to go far in the playoffs. Somehow, they managed to fall apart and lose in three games. I don't think it is caused by the fans or the curse so much as it is bad luck.
"Google Envisions 10 Million Servers" => Well, I just imagined a beowulf cluster of those server farms. Your move, Google! And none of that infinity plus one stuff.
Thanks, but I was just trying for a dumb pun. (The poster meant "piloting" as in "running a pilot program" - but I was taking it to mean "steering a vehicle.")
Thank you! I will put it at the top of my to-read list. I've been thinking about this idea of asteroid-as-ejection-mass for quite some time, and it will be fun to read a novel on the subject.
That's nice that "A US company and its Chinese partner" are piloting the bus, but I think it would be much more interesting to know who designed and built it.
In addition, if you want to play online games, it is $50/year for the Xbox, and free for the PS3. And yet, the PS3 will still be labeled as overpriced.
Microsoft outfoxed Sony with how they packaged their system. Sony offers better value, but Microsoft offers lower cost of entry. They're taking a play from the cell phone companies. ("Have a $400 phone for free! Pay no attention to the overpriced data plan!") Sadly, this is quite effective as a marketing ploy.
Sitting back and waiting does not lead to much technological advancement. Taking on an ambitious project tends to inspire many advances.
The idea is not to catch asteroids along the way. Rather, the craft would catch one large asteroid of sufficient mass to provide all the raw material needed for the journey. Using an asteroid saves the huge cost of lifting this massive raw material into space.
Not really a problem. For one thing, space is really big, and the particles will disperse. Secondly, adding a slight curve to the flight path will result in the jet of particles missing our solar system .
We could slow it down as needed by decelerating, just as the Mars mission would do. That does probably mean the mission would take 3-4 times as long, but it should still be feasible.
Alpha Centauri is 4.24 light years away. If the ship could reach 0.5c at the half way point, it should average 0.25c (very approximately) for the trip. This puts the trip at 17 years, plus another 4 years to receive the transmission.
Unfortunately, I doubt that 0.5c is feasible. Perhaps 0.1c is more attainable. This means it would take 89 years to get a signal back, which is outside my lifetime but still very respectable.
Even if it would take 1000 years, I think we should go for it if it can be done.
The VASIMR engine couples well with an idea I've been pondering. Imagine building a ship designed to latch onto a largish asteroid, and then use the asteroid's mass as the ejected reaction mass for acceleration.
The ship would need a powerful nuclear reactor, and robotics capable of slowly grinding the asteroid's mass to a fine powder. The engine would need to be able to accelerate this powder to an enormous speed, regardless of what the powder was made of.
Such a ship would be able to accelerate to amazing speeds, and could be a perfect deep space explorer. Imagine if we could do a close flyby on another solar system! The powerful nuclear reactor could be used to power advanced scientific instruments, and to beam a very strong signal back to earth.
I wonder how feasible this would be. I'd love to see an unmanned craft reach another solar system in my lifetime. To me, that would be more exciting than putting a man on Mars.
This may be a big use for Google Gears. Perhaps Gears was created to support Google's book sales and online apps, and then Chrome was created to push other browsers towards Gears compatibility. You can't accuse Google of thinking small.
If the books are really just displayed in the browser as text, there will probably be tools developed by hackers to extract the contents to a text file. I wonder if Google will fight this or just let it happen?
I could care less what the price of a game is on the other side of the world. Why would I even take the time to compare? If the price in my country is fair to me, I will buy it.
The biggest problem is that the games cannot be resold, and yet they are priced as if they could be resold. A $10-15 downloadable game is usually a cute diversion, lacking in substance and soon forgotten. And yet, that same $10-15 could be the net cost of buying a full retail game, playing it, and then selling it.
Some of the downloadable games are nothing more than glorified versions of the Flash games I can play online for free. How about a price of $2 - $5?
Sure, that's one theory.
The article fails to mention if the 30-second boot is for Windows or for Android. 30 seconds isn't especially fast.
You asked for it.