Again, you fail to comprehend the nature of what I wrote. The Linux command prompt can be very intimidating to the non-initiated, and as I said, the vast majority of people do not want to be bothered by it, they simply want their computer to work, period.
The question of being thin or thick skinned is irrelevant. Using pejorative language to describe anyone who appears to, or may in point of fact have less skill then a person like me, who has been doing this stuff for 25 years, does not build a desire to use a system, in which you are going to have to ask for help with, eventually, when you think that the very person you will have to seek help from will deride you for not knowing the in and outs of grep, pipes, re-direction, tail, shell scripting etc..
When Joe or Jane average user, whether Joe is a carpenter or Jane is a doctor use a tool such as a computer, which uses very complex processes to produce a given result, generally don't have the time or inclination to even use or learn about Linux at the CUI interface level, much less be afraid of it.
If you had bothered to actually read what I said in the context of his remarks, it would have been perfectly obvious to you that I was referencing his use of the pejorative, "simpletons". Each person has their own particular skill set. Now just because that persons skill set is not that of a programmer, system administrator or even a particularly competent person to say, adjust the X-Windows setting, does not mean their skill set is of any less value. A Carpenters skill set is that of building things from wood, but they would more then likely be desirous of using estimating software, but not tweaking a Linux system.
Sorry to point this out so rudely but people like YOU are just one of the many reasons that Linux doesn't get traction faster.
You mean when can _Windows_ expect a unified program installation method. Linux has had package managers for decades, even GUI ones for simpletons.
You want Linux to get used more, then stop insulting people who's ONLY use for a computer is to do work that they need to do, such as writing letters, working on spreadsheets, creating presentations etc. etc.
They NEVER want to see the command prompt. They want to turn it on and just have it work.
By deriding people who don't care about the gory technical details, you alienate them and DO HARM to the wider acceptance of Linux.
The unanimous Declaration of the 50 united States of America
When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. -- That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, -- That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. -- Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present President of the United States is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.
He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.
He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.
He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their Public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.
He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.
He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected, whereby the Legislative Powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.
He has endeavored to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.
He has obstructed the Administration of Justice by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary Powers.
He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.
He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.
With the "common Carrier" status, ISP's pipe suppliers and what not can claim they "just carry traffic" they don't know or care about the content.
Now it seems by actually Identifying Torrent traffic, and throttling, regulating, metering or in any way attempting to regulate it, they could quite possibly setting them selves up as an RIAA target.
It would seem to me, and perhaps a lawyer or two, that by doing so, they are "knowingly, transmitting, Allowing to be transmitted or perhaps even facilitating the transmission of prohibited ie: Copyrighted Material".
Just one of those things that makes you go hmmmm.
Also it seems to me, that a minor software update to the bit torrent software could circumvent the whole process. Simply add code that will allow the software to start randomizing ports during the transfer. It would be simple enough for the packet exchange to carry a "Next Packet on port n" and completely avoid the entire throttling mechanism.
Just another one of those things that makes you go hmmmm.
Start getting everyone you know to start leaning on the folks at CodeWorks to get Delphi & C++ Builder ported over to Linux. Say what you will about Borland, but imagine those 3 tools being completely X-Platform between Win32, Linux ( Gnome & KDE ) and OS-X. That alone would put a very LARGE dent in Visual Studio.
Not to mention Osmotic Pressure. If you drown in Fresh Water your lungs will actually absorb water into your blood stream and you will become water-logged. If you drown in Salt Water, brackish or water that has MORE salt content then your blood stream, you lungs will actually leach water from your blood and pickle you.
Well other then Losing Ballmer they need to do a few things and your right one is to just throw the shit away and start fresh.
But the problem is far beyond backward compatibility.
First of all they have to pick a model on which to base this From Scratch new operating system. Now when it comes to this it is not as wide open as one would think. First of all they have to have a hardware platform on which to build. The current hardware world is basically divided between Intel Processors & Chipsets and IBM processors and chipsets. AMD's are clones of Intel processors with some interesting modes. So where to you choose to host this thing? If you go with Intel do you collaborate with them on an entirely new instruction set and design? Do you go with IMB and the PowerPC line and it's successors such as Cell Technology? If you are going to push out something totally new then these are questions you have to ask. Even Microsoft with all their money and clout has to have a partnership with the hardware producers.
In this theoretical new hardware environment what do we do? Do we come up with an entirely new bus? I mean please, anything to replace the PCI bus. And what about external communication? Do we still keep forging along with USB? Embrace FireWire? Do we go back to having dedicated interfaces for things like Keyboards and Mice?
Personally I think something like a fiber-optic switch being the heart of a "computer" and things like Processors, Ram, Storage Devices, et all each having a fiber connection. If you need more of anything you just plug it into a port of the fiber switch and off you go.
The problem with that brilliant idea is that you only switch so fast from fiber to electrical signals and back so fast. Thats one of the problems with digital is the switching and the converting, which is one of the reasons IMO why we are still stuck with things like PCI, it may suck, but it has 32 or more discrete pathways that carry all the various signals, in parallel to the various main components.
Parallelism was what made SCSI so superior to IDE or MFM along with the fact that it has its one on-board processing and command set. However along with all that came the problems of clocking and this that and the other. SAS will push the speed up, put at some point there is a limit as to how fast you can signal before it just becomes a radio transmitter and the physical layer will become to cumbersome with all the shielding and the power consumption since the faster you signal the more it just like DC to the copper.
Processor speed is starting to approach the end of its limit and its time to start looking for better ways to line instructions up across a broad front and process them at once and resolve the dependencies accordingly which brings us right back to software.
Can software, an OS, solve some of these problems? yes but not alone. To re-invent an entirely new OS will take years unless you want it to be a re-hash of the Unix model which is what, like it or not, everything out there is based upon. It will take bold new thinking in both the hardware and software fields to bring us the truly next generation of computers. Some of the people at Microsoft, IBM, Novell, The Linux community are capable of some bold steps but the the companies themselves as entities are not IMO capable. In the hay day of advancement we had places like PARC, AT&T Labs, MIT, UC Berkeley, The Government ( indirectly through grants ), and a few others doing PURE research and that was where all the great advances really came from. If we are to do so again, those places must be renewed, funded and staffed with people with imagination and the drive to take any direction that shows promise and do the basic research.
The last thing that has to happen to get all these great labs back in top shape is patent reform. These days research is often scuttled because some MBA or Lawyer cannot see the road to lock this in so lots of money can be made.
When i was taking C courses at UC Berkeley the professor made a few rules:
1. You will have more comments then code.
2. If a function takes more then a page to write, split into two functions.
As much as I thought this guy was a total asshole, he wrote damn good code.
I am personally just sick to death of this notion that you should just get it. Well commented code means you have a comment for everything even things you think are obvious. If you write code that is of any consequence there will be someone coming along after you that has to either maintain it, modify it or re-write some portion of it. Additionally at some point if you are a good programmer you will have to come after someone else and maintain, modify or rewrite their code.
Code style is another thing all together. Style Nazis have their place, an no its not sitting on the freeway tied up waiting for a semi to run them down. They exist to make sure code is clear and readable. I once worked on a project and there was a definite style Nazi working there. Her ONLY job was to enforce the style rules. She would check everything you wrote and would give you notes and your code would not be submitted for the nights build if you turned it in last minute or if your code didn't meet the style rules. Now this got me into the shit with my manager at least once, but I am a better programmer for it.
Every #include, #define, everything had to have a comment stating WHY it was included and a general note as to what it was supporting. They even had boiler plate for stdio! I know that seems WAY over the top, but there was not a module of code that I couldn't understand the basics of what it was doing in about 5 minutes just by reading the comments.
A lot of the code I see in CVS's and things like that is just pure garbage.
Don't EVEN get me started on what some of these Java monkeys do. Oy!
As to #2 - Look no farther then Novell's NSS or even their old TFat. Run Salvage and you can get back every version of a delete ( or overwritten ) file that you have ever made. I agree its not as cool as your example, but its there, Always has been, always will be.
They have even ported NSS over to linux and let me tell ya, its still a bit rough around the edges, but DAYUM its fasssssssst.
For your perusal...
Novell Storage Services (NSS)
Disaster recovery capabilities are enhanced under NetWare 6.5 through the use of Novell Storage Services, a 64-bit storage system. NSS augments an existing storage system by providing the ability to recognize and store massive files (up to 8 terabytes) and large numbers of them (up to 8 trillion). Up to one million files can be open simultaneously (server RAM permitting), up to 253 NSS volumes can be mounted on a given server and volumes can be mounted with a minimum amount of RAM.
The primary business continuity benefit NSS delivers is that large amounts of storage can be aggregated and managed without any degradation in performance--rapid access to data is possible regardless of file, directory or volume size. Organizations can pool vast collections of files (small and large) for secure control and management as well as redundancy and backup. NSS technology has been available for several years and has proven very stable and dependable for organizations with massive file storage and manipulation requirements. Enhanced volume management in NSS makes it easier for administrators to grow pools and volumes "on the fly". Re-allocation of volume quotas within an NSS pool can also be done while online.
Other file management features that provide added flexibility when expanding or modifying storage capability include Distributed File Service (DFS). DFS provides the ability to section or split a volume and then move it to another server while maintaining access rights and mappings. DFS junctions make the "split off" volume appear to users as the previous single volume. This allows administrators the ability to partition storage in manageable chunks while maintaining a consistent view to users. Existing client and workstation drive mappings and application settings are preserved. Administrators can load balance servers and manage data set backup sizes without affecting users.
I can understand the notion of needing a place to start from, but do we really know that there was nothing before the big bang, bounce, whateva ya wanna call it?
For all we know, that cosmic background could be the remnants of a Black Whole implosion that crunched everything within a given radius down to a singularity, and then puked it all back up, and the background noise we detect is the backside of the propagating wave front of that event.
If one examines things that go BOOM, one notes that if not constrained by something very solid, that the effects are felt in every direction as the blast wavefront propagates in all directions. If the observer of the remnant energy, was not, in point of fact, at the very center of the event, then they would not see an even background hum in all directions. If the observer were say, halfway across the universe then the observer would expect to see different energy levels ( if measurable ) depending on the direction of examination.
Now lets say for sake of argument that our belief that the known Universe did in fact result from a singularity that occurred someplace in the fabric of OMEGA ( can't think of a better word to use at the moment to describe what we postulate that might have existed before the "big bang" ) and the resulting reaction caused matter to be distributed in a somewhat spherical manner. Let say we are someplace towards the edge of the known universe. Would we not see a marked difference in the energy levels that we describe as the remnant of the Big Bang, depending on where we looked? So for example, when we look toward the center, or at least what we describe as the center, of the Universe would it not be detected at a different energy level then say, if we looked towards the outer edge of the "expanding universe"
It would seem to me that the inverse square rule would apply to this as much as anything else we understand. If that is the case, then we should see a marked difference in energy levels if the big band theory is correct, as we look for this background.
Back when I started out in this biz, the 5.25" full height 10Meg hard drive was all there was, and it was good, and I forget how many platters that damn thing contained.
Then came half height 5.25" drives ( the Seagate 20meg comes to mind ) and now we have launched into terabyte territory on 3.5" single platter drives
When the multi-platter drives got bigger and bigger they started writing disk drivers with "elevator" algorithms so that data was written to all the platters simultaneously and therefor you could read with ALL the heads at once and get a very large chunk of data at once.
So for small devices like MP3 players, laptops and the like we need ever smaller drives with ever higher capacity, but for servers and large storage devices why not go back to larger form factors. You could loosen up the track density a little and make them more forgiving, yet increase the capacity by say 20x. 5 double sided, 5.25 inch platters all spinning on the same spindle. I don't think the motors would have to be that much more powerful since in a storage farm you don't really care if it takes 5 or 25 seconds for the drive to get up to speed, what you care about is storage capacity and longevity.
One of the things I don't know and would love to have an answer to is how many times around does a head have to see the same bits to decode them correctly.
If you let your records and equipment get dirty yes. Thats why you find true audiophiles a bit nutty when it comes to their collections and equipment.
At the peak of the art there were records that used much more expensive vinyl formulations then were pressed for mass consumption. Also there were some very exotic needles for turn tables that would set you back $500.00 bucks. Then there were turntables that ran into the thousands of dollars. The whole point of all of this was to get the most accurate sound reproduction possible. I once new a guy who basically turned a large room in his house into a clean room. His collection was massive, well over 5000 LP's and his equipment was the best that could be obtained at the time.
Lots of people don't remember or never even know about companies like Klipsch or McIntosh manufacturers of some of the very best in audio reproduction equipment. Even fewer ever laid eyes on say a set of Panasonic MonoBlocks. Those were two complete and separate ( shared a common yet isolated power supply ) 50 watt Class A audio amplifiers. The power supply was capable of putting out 400 watts of power, but the amp was rated at only 50 watts per block 20hz to 20khz, all the extra power supply provided the dynamic overhead for things like the 1812 overture w/cannon yielded the purest sound possible with a perfectly flat frequency response curve and NO clipping!. For those readers that do not understand the term clipping it is when an amplifier tries to reproduce an input signal that overruns its power supply, thus yielding a sine wave with a flat top. This is technically straight line DC and that will fry even the most expensive speakers. A true audiophile system could set you back upwards of $10,000.00 mid 70's dollars
Unfortunately, these days most amplifiers have components that are stressed to their electronic limits in the name of cost and size. Sadly this is what happens when you have MBA's running companies instead of the engineers that dreamed all this stuff up.
I was not ignoring the theorem. Quite to the contrary, I alluded to it and other methods for compensation in my last paragraph, which is not to say both the theorem and reconstruction filtering are not adequate, rather, they are not perfect and for most people adequate is, well, adequate. For those with a more discerning ear, it is not adequate, and MP3 is certainly objectionable. My wife is deaf in one ear ( childhood infection ) and she just loves her iPod.
No matter how you slide and dice a curve, you will always have steps, this is the nature of digital and you cannot cheat C, no matter how hard you try. An OpAmp or VCO or whatever circuit that is designed to reconstruct the analog signal, will always be taking a step voltage as an input to attempt to reproduce an analog signal that is an infinite curve of infinite potential.
Even in Nyquist-Shannon proof sets, the interpolation explicitly states that it cannot take into account infinite samples at infinite intervals, hence the basis for the argument. This is why digital recordings are bandwidth filtered, because to go outside that band limit, produces both aliasing and Fourier failure.
Nyquist is a mathematical theory that if applied in a vacuum is in point of fact, perfect, but in practice it falls short of the ideal.
The forgoing is the reason that a properly mastered vinyl record, mastered with analog equipment, will always be a superior reproduction. The grooves in the platter are the sine waves themselves and with proper equalization curves applied they are a thing of beauty.
Pure and simple, you don't know your subject matter.
You really need to do the math, to understand why CD based music does not accurately represent what was played in the studio, or captured at a concert.
In the standard reproduction formats, the frequency bandwidth is 20hz to 20khz.
To reproduce that sine wave after it has been digitized is a herculean task. Consider a tone that rings at 10khz, it has a periodicity.1 millisecond. To accurately digitize and then reproduce that sine wave perfectly, in 1/10th of a millisecond it needs to be sampled several thousand times. Remember, digital is either on or off, but a sine wave is an analog curve and to properly record that curve digitally it takes a huge number of data points. Consider the fact that 20hz has a periodicity of 50ms and 20khz has a periodicity of.05 milliseconds. Now as we know everything is a trade off right? To sample the low end of the spectrum at a rate fast enough to accurately sample the high end of the spectrum would grossly over sample and this is why digital bass reproduction tends to be muddy.
All sorts of algorithms have been created to compensate and interpolate the loss at the high end of the spectrum in the trade off sample rate, but interpolation will never be as accurate as the real thing in analog.
Ok well... I just had to RTFA, and funny thing is that it no place in the article did he mention a bill number or a sponsor. Additionally there is generally nothing to back his assetion up with the exception of the PDF he points us all to. Now I am not saying its a hoax, but he gave us precious little information to go on.
Soooo I clicked on over to the New York State Assembly and had a look around. I keyword searched for "voting or software" and got one hit. Below is the text of the bill:
SUMMARY:
A6383 Benjamin
BENJAMIN
Amd S7-202, El L
Requires security and personnel safeguards in the use of electronic voting systems and
software. BILL TEXT:
STATE OF NEW YORK
_____
6383
2007-2008 Regular Sessions
IN ASSEMBLY
March 7, 2007
___________
Introduced by M. of A. BENJAMIN -- read once and referred to the Commit-
tee on Election Law
AN ACT to amend the election law, in relation to secure electronic
voting machines and software.
The People of the State of New York, represented in Senate and Assembly,
do enact as follows:
1 Section 1. Legislative declaration. The legislature hereby declares
2 that no electronic voting system shall at any time contain or use any
3 undisclosed software. Any voting system containing or using software
4 shall disclose the source code, object code, and executable represen-
5 tation of that software to the state board of elections, and such board
6 shall make that source code, object code, and executable representation
7 available for inspection upon request to any local election board.
8 2. Section 7-202 of the election law is amended by adding a new
9 subdivision 5 to read as follows:
10 5. No electronic voting system shall be used in an election for state
11 office unless the manufacturer of such system meets the following
12 requirements:
13 a. The manufacturer shall conduct background checks on individuals who
14 are programmers and developers before such individuals work on any soft-
15 ware used in connection with the electronic voting system.
16 b. The manufacturer shall document the chain of custody for the handl-
17 ing of software used in connection with the electronic voting system.
18 c. The manufacturer shall ensure that any software used in connection
19 with the electronic voting system is not transferred over the internet.
20 d. The manufacturer shall provide the codes used in any software used
21 in connection with the electronic voting system to the state board of
22 elections and may not alter such codes once certification has occurred
23 unless such system is recertified.
24 e. The manufacturer shall implement procedures to ensure internal
25 security, as required by the state board of elections.
26 f. The manufacturer shall meet such other requirements as may be
27 established by the state board of elections.
28 3. This act shall take effect immediately.
EXPLANATION--Matter in italics (underscored) is new; matter in brackets
[ ] is old law to be omitted.
LBD07122-01-7
SPONSORS MEMO:
NEW YORK STATE ASSEMBLY
MEMORANDUM IN SUPPORT OF LEGISLATION
submitted in accordance with Assembly Rule III, Sec 1(e)
BILL NUMBER: A6383
SPONSOR: Benjamin
TITLE OF BILL: An act to amend the election law, in relation to
secure electronic voting machines and software
PURPOSE OR GENERAL IDEA OF BILL: Requires security and personnel safe-
guards in the use of electronic voting systems and software.
SUMMARY OF SPECIFIC PROVISIONS: To amend the election law, in relation
to secure electronic voting machines and software.
JUSTIFICATION: This bill would ensure voting rights by preventing
tampering to voting machines and their software through added security
features.
PRIOR LEGISLATIVE HISTORY
I have my 12 function key Model M and my original IBM-PC ( 10 function keys up the side in two rows ) and they are both still the in great shape. The model M has had just about everything spilled in it, from Coke, Coffee, Beer, Jack Daniels, hell I even spunked all over the damn thing once ( pre-internet ) with an actual female participant! Its been through the dishwasher ( NO dishwasher detergent as its far too corrosive ) with a few drops of liquid dish washing soap several times, as has the original PC keyboard.
With things like pagers and cell phones it you drop it in toilet or into the sink or whatever, REMOVE THE BATTERY as fast as you can! If it was in a hostile environment such as a toilet full of piss, rinse if well under cold clear running water.
Once you are satisfied the contamination is removed, put it in a clean dish cloth, slingshot style, and twirl it at as high a rate of speed as you can produce using centrifugal force to get as much water out as you possibly can.
Turn the over to its lowest setting and let it pre-heat. When it has pre-heated, turn the oven OFF and place the electronic gizmo in the oven, top rack, once the temp has settled below about 70C, close the door and leave it in there until the oven is cold.
Put a new battery in the device, since most batteries have vents these days and there is around a 99% probability that the device will come right back to life.
This is simply a fabulous idea... Uhmmm right up to the point were you deliver the last mile, or have to peer with someone else to get anywhere. Here are the problems:
AT&T owns the copper ( the last mile ) to just about every residence is the US these days.
Unless you can raise BILLIONS of dollars in capitol, you are not going to replace the last mile.
The big fiber backbones that stretch across the country are owned by AT&T, Verizon, GOOGLE and just a couple of other lesser deities, and if you want to peer with them, you are going to have to play their game Unless you can raise BILLIONS of dollars in capitol and build your own backbone(s) to escape their game, which is not going to happen because they have pretty much all the right-of-ways and have the congressmen and senators in their pockets to prevent you from getting them even if you DID have the money, which you don't.
But you are certainly welcome to try. Then you can deal with the torrent's, the P2P's the News Groups with HUGE amounts of porn in them, not to mention the SPAM that currently clog the living shit out of the existing infrastructure. Guess what you haven't even gone to Europe or ASIA yet on the trans-Atlantic or trans-Pacific cables that, you guessed it, are owned by AT&T & Verizon.
Well that may be true; however, who gets to control how much free content is allowed?
Answer the question please, since your so confident in this study.
Should it be:
A. The content owner?
B. The artist?
C. The operator of say, PirateBay?
D. You?
Please choose, and then tell me who will compensate the person that is in business to produce content, that is not getting a CD, iTunes, etc. etc. for every person who simply takes the content from an unauthorized distribution source for FREE.
And you like so many or your ilk, don't know a damn thing about the publishing business!
Ever wonder what happens to books that just don't sell? The retail outlet returns them to the distributor, for a FULL REFUND. The distributor returns them to the publisher for (you guessed it!), a FULL REFUND!
And ya know what? It works almost exactly the same for the music business.
Guess what else? If half of those 5000 CD's get returned, the publisher ie: Record Company, eats the loss. Why in the hell do you think record company contracts are so fucked up, mostly because publishing in general is fucked up. Name ANY other business where the retail seller can simply say, "Well it didn't sell, so here are all the copies, give me my money back.
Your argument that P2P, Torrent, etc. is advertising just doesn't wash, because it is human nature that if someone can get the latest CD from U2, without fear of prosecution, then they simply are not going to go out and pay for it. They are going to download it, or give their "friend" a.25 cent blank CD and ask them to burn it for them, it's that simple.
You people simply astound me with your rather convoluted rationalizations. If you walk up to me and my wife while we are say standing in line to get into a concert venue, and you say, "Wow dude, your old lady has a spectacular ass, and then turn to her and say, "Damn I would like to buttfuck you", it is very illegal for me to just haul off and beat your head to a bloody red pulp, but let me tell you something, just because its illegal, doesn't make it wrong.
Here I am with mod points, but I see the rest of the people with mod points have decided that you are "insightful" because you have decided that breaking the law and being a thief is "OK" as long as its from those "nasty old record companies".
Your a jerk. How much money do you have? Hmmm want to go into the music business? Lets see....
Find a talent that you think is going to do well.
Now write a contract, with terms that you can swallow and so can they.
YOU pay for the studio time for this talent to record their music at about $200.00 an hour ( including the recording engineer ) for the entire time it takes this talent to get everything recorded. Mind you this can take weeks or even months to accomplish, and the costs can quickly run into 6 digits!
YOU pay to have the CD master made.
YOU pay to have the CD art work done, not to mention liner art, photographs, what have you. This can easily run between 1 to 10 thousand dollars if its well done. Remember, cover art can often make the difference in the record store as to your talent's CD getting picked up and looked at, or even listened to at a listening station.
YOU pay to have the CD's stamped with nice artwork. Lets say your initial run is 5000 copies. The cheapest I have seen for could quality stamping w/4 color art, in those quantities is around, 75 cents each AND you have to pay for the container they are in, not to mention the damn shrink wrap and the anti-theft chicklets, so this is gonna cost around $5000.00 all in all.
YOU pay all the promotion costs. This includes Web, Radio, iTunes, etc. etc. etc. and this too can run into 5 figures, but lets just say 10 thousand for sake of argument.
YOU pay to get them on tour. This includes transportation, bookings, venues, lodging, meals, booze, bimbos, bribes to venue owners, instrument repair or re-purchase to even get them on the stage.
NONE of the above takes into account sick, cranky, blocked, drugged out, temper tantrum throwing, hotel room trashing, getting arrested on tour, show time missing "talent", which will cost you even MORE money.
So lets just say all of the above has cost you on the order of say $100,000.00 dollars. Now its time to sell some CD's at $15 a pop. Hmmm your initial stamping was 5000 so if they ALL sell ( a rare thing for new talent, but if they are popular, it's not out of the question, but that does not include promotional copies to critics, radio stations, friends, grand mothers, whatever ), thats $75,000.00. This leaves you $25,000.00 in the hole, and by the way if you are a nice guy, you pay the band, say around $2.00 per copy AND you pay them on a per CD sold basis!. Ohhh wait, that $15 a pop was RETAIL! Oh silly me, lets see you sell them to a distributor for around 50% or retail, so you are only making $7.50 per CD! So I am wrong, thats not $75,000.00 its $37,5000. Now you pay the band their $2.00 per CD and now YOU have $27,500.00
Then before you know it, some jerk like you has put it up on a torrent, or is P2P sharing it after you ripped it to MP3. Now if you could make the argument, that for every copy "shared" by nice folks would generate 1 or more purchases that would be great, but you cant.
SO here you are $72,500.00 in the hole, and the music you PAID to get made is now being given away to anyone with an internet connection that wants to torrent it or download it and basically there is not a lot you can do about it except go after them in court, which costs LOTS money. In the mean time your trying to get another batch stamped and costing you marginally less then the $5000.00 YOU paid for the first stamping since you already have the setup.
Now tell me with a straight face, that you are not gonna be pissed off and wanting these people stopped!
Slashdot Mirror
Again, you fail to comprehend the nature of what I wrote. The Linux command prompt can be very intimidating to the non-initiated, and as I said, the vast majority of people do not want to be bothered by it, they simply want their computer to work, period.
The question of being thin or thick skinned is irrelevant. Using pejorative language to describe anyone who appears to, or may in point of fact have less skill then a person like me, who has been doing this stuff for 25 years, does not build a desire to use a system, in which you are going to have to ask for help with, eventually, when you think that the very person you will have to seek help from will deride you for not knowing the in and outs of grep, pipes, re-direction, tail, shell scripting etc..
When Joe or Jane average user, whether Joe is a carpenter or Jane is a doctor use a tool such as a computer, which uses very complex processes to produce a given result, generally don't have the time or inclination to even use or learn about Linux at the CUI interface level, much less be afraid of it.
If you had bothered to actually read what I said in the context of his remarks, it would have been perfectly obvious to you that I was referencing his use of the pejorative, "simpletons". Each person has their own particular skill set. Now just because that persons skill set is not that of a programmer, system administrator or even a particularly competent person to say, adjust the X-Windows setting, does not mean their skill set is of any less value. A Carpenters skill set is that of building things from wood, but they would more then likely be desirous of using estimating software, but not tweaking a Linux system.
Sorry to point this out so rudely but people like YOU are just one of the many reasons that Linux doesn't get traction faster.
You mean when can _Windows_ expect a unified program installation method. Linux has had package managers for decades, even GUI ones for simpletons.You want Linux to get used more, then stop insulting people who's ONLY use for a computer is to do work that they need to do, such as writing letters, working on spreadsheets, creating presentations etc. etc.
They NEVER want to see the command prompt. They want to turn it on and just have it work.
By deriding people who don't care about the gory technical details, you alienate them and DO HARM to the wider acceptance of Linux.
IN CONGRESS, August 18th, 2007
The unanimous Declaration of the 50 united States of America
When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. -- That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, -- That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. -- Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present President of the United States is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.
He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.
He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.
He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their Public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.
He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.
He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected, whereby the Legislative Powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.
He has endeavored to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.
He has obstructed the Administration of Justice by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary Powers.
He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.
He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.
He has kept among us, in time
With the "common Carrier" status, ISP's pipe suppliers and what not can claim they "just carry traffic" they don't know or care about the content.
Now it seems by actually Identifying Torrent traffic, and throttling, regulating, metering or in any way attempting to regulate it, they could quite possibly setting them selves up as an RIAA target.
It would seem to me, and perhaps a lawyer or two, that by doing so, they are "knowingly, transmitting, Allowing to be transmitted or perhaps even facilitating the transmission of prohibited ie: Copyrighted Material".
Just one of those things that makes you go hmmmm.
Also it seems to me, that a minor software update to the bit torrent software could circumvent the whole process. Simply add code that will allow the software to start randomizing ports during the transfer. It would be simple enough for the packet exchange to carry a "Next Packet on port n" and completely avoid the entire throttling mechanism.
Just another one of those things that makes you go hmmmm.
Correction to my last.. CodeGEAR.com I think I am getting old.
Start getting everyone you know to start leaning on the folks at CodeWorks to get Delphi & C++ Builder ported over to Linux. Say what you will about Borland, but imagine those 3 tools being completely X-Platform between Win32, Linux ( Gnome & KDE ) and OS-X. That alone would put a very LARGE dent in Visual Studio.
Not to mention Osmotic Pressure. If you drown in Fresh Water your lungs will actually absorb water into your blood stream and you will become water-logged. If you drown in Salt Water, brackish or water that has MORE salt content then your blood stream, you lungs will actually leach water from your blood and pickle you.
Well other then Losing Ballmer they need to do a few things and your right one is to just throw the shit away and start fresh.
But the problem is far beyond backward compatibility.
First of all they have to pick a model on which to base this From Scratch new operating system. Now when it comes to this it is not as wide open as one would think. First of all they have to have a hardware platform on which to build. The current hardware world is basically divided between Intel Processors & Chipsets and IBM processors and chipsets. AMD's are clones of Intel processors with some interesting modes. So where to you choose to host this thing? If you go with Intel do you collaborate with them on an entirely new instruction set and design? Do you go with IMB and the PowerPC line and it's successors such as Cell Technology? If you are going to push out something totally new then these are questions you have to ask. Even Microsoft with all their money and clout has to have a partnership with the hardware producers.
In this theoretical new hardware environment what do we do? Do we come up with an entirely new bus? I mean please, anything to replace the PCI bus. And what about external communication? Do we still keep forging along with USB? Embrace FireWire? Do we go back to having dedicated interfaces for things like Keyboards and Mice?
Personally I think something like a fiber-optic switch being the heart of a "computer" and things like Processors, Ram, Storage Devices, et all each having a fiber connection. If you need more of anything you just plug it into a port of the fiber switch and off you go.
The problem with that brilliant idea is that you only switch so fast from fiber to electrical signals and back so fast. Thats one of the problems with digital is the switching and the converting, which is one of the reasons IMO why we are still stuck with things like PCI, it may suck, but it has 32 or more discrete pathways that carry all the various signals, in parallel to the various main components.
Parallelism was what made SCSI so superior to IDE or MFM along with the fact that it has its one on-board processing and command set. However along with all that came the problems of clocking and this that and the other. SAS will push the speed up, put at some point there is a limit as to how fast you can signal before it just becomes a radio transmitter and the physical layer will become to cumbersome with all the shielding and the power consumption since the faster you signal the more it just like DC to the copper.
Processor speed is starting to approach the end of its limit and its time to start looking for better ways to line instructions up across a broad front and process them at once and resolve the dependencies accordingly which brings us right back to software.
Can software, an OS, solve some of these problems? yes but not alone. To re-invent an entirely new OS will take years unless you want it to be a re-hash of the Unix model which is what, like it or not, everything out there is based upon. It will take bold new thinking in both the hardware and software fields to bring us the truly next generation of computers. Some of the people at Microsoft, IBM, Novell, The Linux community are capable of some bold steps but the the companies themselves as entities are not IMO capable. In the hay day of advancement we had places like PARC, AT&T Labs, MIT, UC Berkeley, The Government ( indirectly through grants ), and a few others doing PURE research and that was where all the great advances really came from. If we are to do so again, those places must be renewed, funded and staffed with people with imagination and the drive to take any direction that shows promise and do the basic research.
The last thing that has to happen to get all these great labs back in top shape is patent reform. These days research is often scuttled because some MBA or Lawyer cannot see the road to lock this in so lots of money can be made.
When i was taking C courses at UC Berkeley the professor made a few rules:
As much as I thought this guy was a total asshole, he wrote damn good code.
I am personally just sick to death of this notion that you should just get it. Well commented code means you have a comment for everything even things you think are obvious. If you write code that is of any consequence there will be someone coming along after you that has to either maintain it, modify it or re-write some portion of it. Additionally at some point if you are a good programmer you will have to come after someone else and maintain, modify or rewrite their code.
Code style is another thing all together. Style Nazis have their place, an no its not sitting on the freeway tied up waiting for a semi to run them down. They exist to make sure code is clear and readable. I once worked on a project and there was a definite style Nazi working there. Her ONLY job was to enforce the style rules. She would check everything you wrote and would give you notes and your code would not be submitted for the nights build if you turned it in last minute or if your code didn't meet the style rules. Now this got me into the shit with my manager at least once, but I am a better programmer for it.
Every #include, #define, everything had to have a comment stating WHY it was included and a general note as to what it was supporting. They even had boiler plate for stdio! I know that seems WAY over the top, but there was not a module of code that I couldn't understand the basics of what it was doing in about 5 minutes just by reading the comments.
A lot of the code I see in CVS's and things like that is just pure garbage.
Don't EVEN get me started on what some of these Java monkeys do. Oy!
As to #2 - Look no farther then Novell's NSS or even their old TFat. Run Salvage and you can get back every version of a delete ( or overwritten ) file that you have ever made. I agree its not as cool as your example, but its there, Always has been, always will be.
They have even ported NSS over to linux and let me tell ya, its still a bit rough around the edges, but DAYUM its fasssssssst.
For your perusal...
Novell Storage Services (NSS)
Disaster recovery capabilities are enhanced under NetWare 6.5 through the use of Novell Storage Services, a 64-bit storage system. NSS augments an existing storage system by providing the ability to recognize and store massive files (up to 8 terabytes) and large numbers of them (up to 8 trillion). Up to one million files can be open simultaneously (server RAM permitting), up to 253 NSS volumes can be mounted on a given server and volumes can be mounted with a minimum amount of RAM.
The primary business continuity benefit NSS delivers is that large amounts of storage can be aggregated and managed without any degradation in performance--rapid access to data is possible regardless of file, directory or volume size. Organizations can pool vast collections of files (small and large) for secure control and management as well as redundancy and backup. NSS technology has been available for several years and has proven very stable and dependable for organizations with massive file storage and manipulation requirements. Enhanced volume management in NSS makes it easier for administrators to grow pools and volumes "on the fly". Re-allocation of volume quotas within an NSS pool can also be done while online.
Other file management features that provide added flexibility when expanding or modifying storage capability include Distributed File Service (DFS). DFS provides the ability to section or split a volume and then move it to another server while maintaining access rights and mappings. DFS junctions make the "split off" volume appear to users as the previous single volume. This allows administrators the ability to partition storage in manageable chunks while maintaining a consistent view to users. Existing client and workstation drive mappings and application settings are preserved. Administrators can load balance servers and manage data set backup sizes without affecting users.
I can understand the notion of needing a place to start from, but do we really know that there was nothing before the big bang, bounce, whateva ya wanna call it?
For all we know, that cosmic background could be the remnants of a Black Whole implosion that crunched everything within a given radius down to a singularity, and then puked it all back up, and the background noise we detect is the backside of the propagating wave front of that event.
If one examines things that go BOOM, one notes that if not constrained by something very solid, that the effects are felt in every direction as the blast wavefront propagates in all directions. If the observer of the remnant energy, was not, in point of fact, at the very center of the event, then they would not see an even background hum in all directions. If the observer were say, halfway across the universe then the observer would expect to see different energy levels ( if measurable ) depending on the direction of examination.
Now lets say for sake of argument that our belief that the known Universe did in fact result from a singularity that occurred someplace in the fabric of OMEGA ( can't think of a better word to use at the moment to describe what we postulate that might have existed before the "big bang" ) and the resulting reaction caused matter to be distributed in a somewhat spherical manner. Let say we are someplace towards the edge of the known universe. Would we not see a marked difference in the energy levels that we describe as the remnant of the Big Bang, depending on where we looked? So for example, when we look toward the center, or at least what we describe as the center, of the Universe would it not be detected at a different energy level then say, if we looked towards the outer edge of the "expanding universe"
It would seem to me that the inverse square rule would apply to this as much as anything else we understand. If that is the case, then we should see a marked difference in energy levels if the big band theory is correct, as we look for this background.
Back when I started out in this biz, the 5.25" full height 10Meg hard drive was all there was, and it was good, and I forget how many platters that damn thing contained.
Then came half height 5.25" drives ( the Seagate 20meg comes to mind ) and now we have launched into terabyte territory on 3.5" single platter drives
When the multi-platter drives got bigger and bigger they started writing disk drivers with "elevator" algorithms so that data was written to all the platters simultaneously and therefor you could read with ALL the heads at once and get a very large chunk of data at once.
So for small devices like MP3 players, laptops and the like we need ever smaller drives with ever higher capacity, but for servers and large storage devices why not go back to larger form factors. You could loosen up the track density a little and make them more forgiving, yet increase the capacity by say 20x. 5 double sided, 5.25 inch platters all spinning on the same spindle. I don't think the motors would have to be that much more powerful since in a storage farm you don't really care if it takes 5 or 25 seconds for the drive to get up to speed, what you care about is storage capacity and longevity.
One of the things I don't know and would love to have an answer to is how many times around does a head have to see the same bits to decode them correctly.
HEY! Watch your mouth, Turbo Debugger is a great program!>/p>
If you let your records and equipment get dirty yes. Thats why you find true audiophiles a bit nutty when it comes to their collections and equipment.
At the peak of the art there were records that used much more expensive vinyl formulations then were pressed for mass consumption. Also there were some very exotic needles for turn tables that would set you back $500.00 bucks. Then there were turntables that ran into the thousands of dollars. The whole point of all of this was to get the most accurate sound reproduction possible. I once new a guy who basically turned a large room in his house into a clean room. His collection was massive, well over 5000 LP's and his equipment was the best that could be obtained at the time.
Lots of people don't remember or never even know about companies like Klipsch or McIntosh manufacturers of some of the very best in audio reproduction equipment. Even fewer ever laid eyes on say a set of Panasonic MonoBlocks. Those were two complete and separate ( shared a common yet isolated power supply ) 50 watt Class A audio amplifiers. The power supply was capable of putting out 400 watts of power, but the amp was rated at only 50 watts per block 20hz to 20khz, all the extra power supply provided the dynamic overhead for things like the 1812 overture w/cannon yielded the purest sound possible with a perfectly flat frequency response curve and NO clipping!. For those readers that do not understand the term clipping it is when an amplifier tries to reproduce an input signal that overruns its power supply, thus yielding a sine wave with a flat top. This is technically straight line DC and that will fry even the most expensive speakers. A true audiophile system could set you back upwards of $10,000.00 mid 70's dollars
Unfortunately, these days most amplifiers have components that are stressed to their electronic limits in the name of cost and size. Sadly this is what happens when you have MBA's running companies instead of the engineers that dreamed all this stuff up.
I was not ignoring the theorem. Quite to the contrary, I alluded to it and other methods for compensation in my last paragraph, which is not to say both the theorem and reconstruction filtering are not adequate, rather, they are not perfect and for most people adequate is, well, adequate. For those with a more discerning ear, it is not adequate, and MP3 is certainly objectionable. My wife is deaf in one ear ( childhood infection ) and she just loves her iPod.
No matter how you slide and dice a curve, you will always have steps, this is the nature of digital and you cannot cheat C, no matter how hard you try. An OpAmp or VCO or whatever circuit that is designed to reconstruct the analog signal, will always be taking a step voltage as an input to attempt to reproduce an analog signal that is an infinite curve of infinite potential.
Even in Nyquist-Shannon proof sets, the interpolation explicitly states that it cannot take into account infinite samples at infinite intervals, hence the basis for the argument. This is why digital recordings are bandwidth filtered, because to go outside that band limit, produces both aliasing and Fourier failure.
Nyquist is a mathematical theory that if applied in a vacuum is in point of fact, perfect, but in practice it falls short of the ideal.
The forgoing is the reason that a properly mastered vinyl record, mastered with analog equipment, will always be a superior reproduction. The grooves in the platter are the sine waves themselves and with proper equalization curves applied they are a thing of beauty.
Pure and simple, you don't know your subject matter.
You really need to do the math, to understand why CD based music does not accurately represent what was played in the studio, or captured at a concert.
In the standard reproduction formats, the frequency bandwidth is 20hz to 20khz.
To reproduce that sine wave after it has been digitized is a herculean task. Consider a tone that rings at 10khz, it has a periodicity .1 millisecond. To accurately digitize and then reproduce that sine wave perfectly, in 1/10th of a millisecond it needs to be sampled several thousand times. Remember, digital is either on or off, but a sine wave is an analog curve and to properly record that curve digitally it takes a huge number of data points. Consider the fact that 20hz has a periodicity of 50ms and 20khz has a periodicity of .05 milliseconds. Now as we know everything is a trade off right? To sample the low end of the spectrum at a rate fast enough to accurately sample the high end of the spectrum would grossly over sample and this is why digital bass reproduction tends to be muddy.
All sorts of algorithms have been created to compensate and interpolate the loss at the high end of the spectrum in the trade off sample rate, but interpolation will never be as accurate as the real thing in analog.
Think before you speak.
Ok well... I just had to RTFA, and funny thing is that it no place in the article did he mention a bill number or a sponsor. Additionally there is generally nothing to back his assetion up with the exception of the PDF he points us all to. Now I am not saying its a hoax, but he gave us precious little information to go on.
Soooo I clicked on over to the New York State Assembly and had a look around. I keyword searched for "voting or software" and got one hit. Below is the text of the bill:
SUMMARY:
A6383 Benjamin
BENJAMIN
Amd S7-202, El L
Requires security and personnel safeguards in the use of electronic voting systems and
software. BILL TEXT:
STATE OF NEW YORK
_____
6383
2007-2008 Regular Sessions
IN ASSEMBLY
March 7, 2007
___________
Introduced by M. of A. BENJAMIN -- read once and referred to the Commit-
tee on Election Law
AN ACT to amend the election law, in relation to secure electronic voting machines and software.
The People of the State of New York, represented in Senate and Assembly,
do enact as follows:
1 Section 1. Legislative declaration. The legislature hereby declares
2 that no electronic voting system shall at any time contain or use any
3 undisclosed software. Any voting system containing or using software
4 shall disclose the source code, object code, and executable represen-
5 tation of that software to the state board of elections, and such board
6 shall make that source code, object code, and executable representation
7 available for inspection upon request to any local election board.
8 2. Section 7-202 of the election law is amended by adding a new
9 subdivision 5 to read as follows:
10 5. No electronic voting system shall be used in an election for state
11 office unless the manufacturer of such system meets the following
12 requirements:
13 a. The manufacturer shall conduct background checks on individuals who
14 are programmers and developers before such individuals work on any soft-
15 ware used in connection with the electronic voting system.
16 b. The manufacturer shall document the chain of custody for the handl-
17 ing of software used in connection with the electronic voting system.
18 c. The manufacturer shall ensure that any software used in connection
19 with the electronic voting system is not transferred over the internet.
20 d. The manufacturer shall provide the codes used in any software used
21 in connection with the electronic voting system to the state board of
22 elections and may not alter such codes once certification has occurred
23 unless such system is recertified.
24 e. The manufacturer shall implement procedures to ensure internal
25 security, as required by the state board of elections.
26 f. The manufacturer shall meet such other requirements as may be
27 established by the state board of elections.
28 3. This act shall take effect immediately.
EXPLANATION--Matter in italics (underscored) is new; matter in brackets [ ] is old law to be omitted.
LBD07122-01-7
SPONSORS MEMO:
NEW YORK STATE ASSEMBLY
MEMORANDUM IN SUPPORT OF LEGISLATION
submitted in accordance with Assembly Rule III, Sec 1(e)
BILL NUMBER: A6383
SPONSOR: Benjamin
TITLE OF BILL: An act to amend the election law, in relation to secure electronic voting machines and software
PURPOSE OR GENERAL IDEA OF BILL: Requires security and personnel safe- guards in the use of electronic voting systems and software.
SUMMARY OF SPECIFIC PROVISIONS: To amend the election law, in relation to secure electronic voting machines and software.
JUSTIFICATION: This bill would ensure voting rights by preventing tampering to voting machines and their software through added security features.
PRIOR LEGISLATIVE HISTORY
Well at least they used to be...
I have my 12 function key Model M and my original IBM-PC ( 10 function keys up the side in two rows ) and they are both still the in great shape. The model M has had just about everything spilled in it, from Coke, Coffee, Beer, Jack Daniels, hell I even spunked all over the damn thing once ( pre-internet ) with an actual female participant! Its been through the dishwasher ( NO dishwasher detergent as its far too corrosive ) with a few drops of liquid dish washing soap several times, as has the original PC keyboard.
With things like pagers and cell phones it you drop it in toilet or into the sink or whatever, REMOVE THE BATTERY as fast as you can! If it was in a hostile environment such as a toilet full of piss, rinse if well under cold clear running water.
Once you are satisfied the contamination is removed, put it in a clean dish cloth, slingshot style, and twirl it at as high a rate of speed as you can produce using centrifugal force to get as much water out as you possibly can.
Turn the over to its lowest setting and let it pre-heat. When it has pre-heated, turn the oven OFF and place the electronic gizmo in the oven, top rack, once the temp has settled below about 70C, close the door and leave it in there until the oven is cold.
Put a new battery in the device, since most batteries have vents these days and there is around a 99% probability that the device will come right back to life.
This is simply a fabulous idea... Uhmmm right up to the point were you deliver the last mile, or have to peer with someone else to get anywhere. Here are the problems:
But you are certainly welcome to try. Then you can deal with the torrent's, the P2P's the News Groups with HUGE amounts of porn in them, not to mention the SPAM that currently clog the living shit out of the existing infrastructure. Guess what you haven't even gone to Europe or ASIA yet on the trans-Atlantic or trans-Pacific cables that, you guessed it, are owned by AT&T & Verizon.
Well that may be true; however, who gets to control how much free content is allowed?
Answer the question please, since your so confident in this study.
Should it be:
Please choose, and then tell me who will compensate the person that is in business to produce content, that is not getting a CD, iTunes, etc. etc. for every person who simply takes the content from an unauthorized distribution source for FREE.
Ohhhhh freeking get a clue! Better yet, give your paypal account number so I can give you a quarter so you can call someone with a clue!
Dell has been a Microsoft Reseller Partner since its inception! Its has been trying to do the Linux thing for about a month. Fer crying out loud!
And you like so many or your ilk, don't know a damn thing about the publishing business!
Ever wonder what happens to books that just don't sell? The retail outlet returns them to the distributor, for a FULL REFUND. The distributor returns them to the publisher for (you guessed it!), a FULL REFUND!
And ya know what? It works almost exactly the same for the music business.
Guess what else? If half of those 5000 CD's get returned, the publisher ie: Record Company, eats the loss. Why in the hell do you think record company contracts are so fucked up, mostly because publishing in general is fucked up. Name ANY other business where the retail seller can simply say, "Well it didn't sell, so here are all the copies, give me my money back.
Your argument that P2P, Torrent, etc. is advertising just doesn't wash, because it is human nature that if someone can get the latest CD from U2, without fear of prosecution, then they simply are not going to go out and pay for it. They are going to download it, or give their "friend" a .25 cent blank CD and ask them to burn it for them, it's that simple.
You people simply astound me with your rather convoluted rationalizations. If you walk up to me and my wife while we are say standing in line to get into a concert venue, and you say, "Wow dude, your old lady has a spectacular ass, and then turn to her and say, "Damn I would like to buttfuck you", it is very illegal for me to just haul off and beat your head to a bloody red pulp, but let me tell you something, just because its illegal, doesn't make it wrong.
Here I am with mod points, but I see the rest of the people with mod points have decided that you are "insightful" because you have decided that breaking the law and being a thief is "OK" as long as its from those "nasty old record companies".
Your a jerk. How much money do you have? Hmmm want to go into the music business? Lets see....
So lets just say all of the above has cost you on the order of say $100,000.00 dollars. Now its time to sell some CD's at $15 a pop. Hmmm your initial stamping was 5000 so if they ALL sell ( a rare thing for new talent, but if they are popular, it's not out of the question, but that does not include promotional copies to critics, radio stations, friends, grand mothers, whatever ), thats $75,000.00. This leaves you $25,000.00 in the hole, and by the way if you are a nice guy, you pay the band, say around $2.00 per copy AND you pay them on a per CD sold basis!. Ohhh wait, that $15 a pop was RETAIL! Oh silly me, lets see you sell them to a distributor for around 50% or retail, so you are only making $7.50 per CD! So I am wrong, thats not $75,000.00 its $37,5000. Now you pay the band their $2.00 per CD and now YOU have $27,500.00
Then before you know it, some jerk like you has put it up on a torrent, or is P2P sharing it after you ripped it to MP3. Now if you could make the argument, that for every copy "shared" by nice folks would generate 1 or more purchases that would be great, but you cant.
SO here you are $72,500.00 in the hole, and the music you PAID to get made is now being given away to anyone with an internet connection that wants to torrent it or download it and basically there is not a lot you can do about it except go after them in court, which costs LOTS money. In the mean time your trying to get another batch stamped and costing you marginally less then the $5000.00 YOU paid for the first stamping since you already have the setup.
Now tell me with a straight face, that you are not gonna be pissed off and wanting these people stopped!
The phrase your looking for is...
Speed - Qaulity - Price
Pick any TWO