Your links are unfortunately misleading. Your US numbers are from 2011, while the Australian numbers are from 2007-2008. Additionally, the Australian numbers are PPP or "Purchasing Power Parity". PPP allows comparing of currencies insofar as what can be bought, rather than the pure exchange rate. While PPP may be a useful way to compare different countries, it is inappropriate in this discussion, as the point being made is that Australians pay more than they should for products. I don't have recent numbers for Australian median incomes, but Wikipedia's page on GDP per capita: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nominal)_per_capita Places Australia at a GDP per capita at between $67-70,000 while the US is at $47-$50,000 per capita. Not the double in income that the original poster said, but still about $20,000 ahead.
I think you need to get a bit of fresh air. New Zealand consistently ranks at or near the top of the least corrupt countries in the world. http://cpi.transparency.org/cpi2011/results/ While countries like the US and Iran may have court systems that regularly make decisions for political reasons, that is not the case in most of the developed world. Just because you don't like the decision, doesn't mean it is corruption.
I think you are misreading history. However, even if you are right, it doesn't mean that Gates' efforts to rebrand himself won't work. Alfred Nobel developed dynamite, and made his millions selling explosives. He decided to change his image after he saw a mistakenly printed obituary calling him a merchant of death. He spent his money creating the Nobel prizes. Today the overwhelming majority of people associate the name Nobel with the prizes he created, and in particular the peace prize.
In other words, even if Gates is the demon you seem to think he is, it doesn't mean that a bit of well placed money won't whitewash his image.
What typically happens is once the plankton dies, it sinks to the bottom of the sea. If it lands in an anaerobic area (a region of low oxygen, which is not uncommon on the sea floor) then it will not rot. Over time, it could be covered with sediments and blocked off from the rest of the sea. Over the course of millions of years, the dead plankton may be cooked at 70-80 degrees and transform into oil and gas. Once in this liquid or gas form, it can move from this source material. If it is caught in a trap, then it could become an economic oil or gas deposit several dozen million years in the future.
In contrast, most trees fall and rot on the ground. The amazon rainforest is a big area with lots of trees and plants, but there is also lots of organisms actively decomposing the dead material. Some carbon can get stuck in the ground, but it tends to be much less than the sea.
The environmental argument for ebooks is based on the fact that reading additional books causes virtually no additional environmental damage as the device already exists. If you read enough books, then an iPad, or Kindle or whatever becomes more environmentally friendly. Of course, that assumes you read enough books on it. If you buy a kindle for someone, and they read three books on it, and throw it away, then it is less environmentally friendly. If they read 10,000 books on it, then it is far more environmentally friendly. As for the break even point, I understand the number is in the order of about 200 books. The other side is that an iPad is used for many things besides reading books. If you are already buying an iPad for web browsing, or movie watching or whatever, then any ebook you read on it causes next to no additional environmental damage.
As far as durability of ebooks, I have tried to not abuse my text books, but I have rarely had a text book survive a semester without serious damage to it. On the other hand I have taken my iPad to class every day for a semester, and besides a couple of scratches, it looks and functions as well as when I bought it.
This is the difference between Key frames (or intra frames) and predicted frames (or inter frames). Different codecs put different emphasis on the different frame types. Ideally key frames will have the same quality as the other frames, but different codecs can put different emphasis on quality for the different frame types. I haven't looked at Theora since it was known as VP3, but if I remember correctly, while most codecs' predicted frames can only draw from the immediately previous key or predicted frame, frames in VP3 can always draw from the previous key frame. This means that key frames are more significant to VP3 than MPEG-4, and might explain why they spend more bits encoding their key frames.
From the article: "When you install Firefox 3, which is as simple as downloading and extracting the tarball someplace like/opt and running the./firefox script"
This is slightly off topic, and maybe I've been using a mac too long, but this sounds anything but an easy install. Surely installing something as basic as a web browser has been simplified by now.
It has been many years since I studied torts, but the basic objective of common law torts is to put the injured party in the position they would have been if the injury hadn't occurred... eg someone destroys your car, you are compensated for the value of the car. In rare circumstances, when the defendant has repeatedly commits the same action despite punishment, they are saddled with an extra punitive damages (Perhaps the best example being the McDonalds coffee case). I haven't read the case, but I believe in this example the large payment was permitted because of legislation, and not because of a general principle of likelihood of getting caught. As these levels of damages are enabled through legislation it seems that this appeal is destined to fail. I assume the people who advocate for awarded damages to be equivalent to the plaintiffs injury, are the same people who argue that GPL infringements should all be dismissed as no monetary loss has been suffered by the "injured" party. Which is clearly ridiculous
It is interesting to note that while the GDP per capita of Cuba is estimated at less than $4000, and the USA is well over 10 times that (at $44000) the life expectancy in Cuba is only one year less than the US (at 77 compared to 78)
However, it does not allow for commercial exploitation of his work so we enter a grey-area. Is the use of his work to prosecute a lawsuit for monetary damages a commercial exploitation of his work?
Of course they can use it in court. Short of one of the various privileges (none of which would apply here) there is no way to keep this kind of evidence out of court... and it shouldn't be kept out of court. Courts demand access to all relevant unprivileged evidence to help achieve the most accurate decision.
Plagiarism is not illegal. If a university student copies an essay and hands it in under her name, she has broken no laws. She cannot be arrested, fined or gaoled. She can (and should) be kicked out of university as well as lose any kind of academic credibility.
I don't want to speak for the original poster, but he probably also wants to be compensated for his work. If I were a professional photographer, and a newspaper ran my photo on the front page, I would probably want to be paid for it.
At the moment there is nothing inherently illegal about putting up a photo without attribution or with a misattribution... so long as you have the rights. If you have the rights to a photo, you can say it was taken by whomever you want.
"Backed up"? Give me a break! How many people do you know who "back up" their CDs? How many people "back up" their books? Invariably, when someone says they want to "back up" their DVDs they mean "copy", and they don't mean for their personal use. "Fair Use" does not mean "give a copy to a friend"
Ummm. You don't have to buy any drugs that are produced. Would you rather get alzheimer's and be told there is no cure, or told there is a cure, and it will cost $10,000? In any case, patents only last for 20 years, and after that, the drugs should become relatively cheap. Additionally, this folding at home work is just the start of the process. It is one thing to know how a particular folded protein might cause a disease, and creating a drug to fix it.
From the article it appears they used the default settings that came with the machine. They later allowed people to send them URLs that they would load into Safari. It sounds like the reason they did not release the settings used was to keep this exploit contained, and that they will provide the settings to Apple. I have been a dedicated mac user for more than 10 years, but I find it ludicrous that people believe that macos is invulnerable or any discovered exploits must be fake.
I think it is more a sign of the maturity of the game industry. There were a relatively low number of genre of games, and there were only a few "blockbuster" games of each genre. Today there are dozens of game genres and each one has a number of leading games. It is impossible to have a game that appeals to FPS gamers, RTS gamers, RPG gamers etc.
An comparison can be drawn to the early rock era. There are no bands from the last 20 years that have come close to the popularity of the Beatles in their day (with the possible exception of Michael Jackson). The Beatles were good, but today, with hundreds of genres and subgenres of "rock" music, it would be virtually impossible for a band to have the cross-the-population popularity that the Beatles enjoyed.
I don't want to defend the Finder in 10.4, but the Finder included in 10.0 sucked so much harder than the current version. On a G4, when resizing a "column-view" window, it would only refresh every couple of seconds or so. IIRC, this wasn't fixed until 10.2. There are still large complaints with the Finder (especially the networking one you mentioned) but it is unfair to say there haven't been improvements.
Starcraft didn't revolutionize the genre, it perfected it. It didn't add that much additional stuff over WC2, but what it added, and how it was designed makes it a very popular and engaging game almost 9 years after its release.
OK. That makes a lot of sense. It has been a couple of years since I have read the GPL. That would mean that only the copyright holder would have the right to sue for infringement. Or to put it another way: in the event that the copyright holder is unknown, or unavailable no action could be taken against a person who infringes the GPL. I know a number of Free software advocates who believe that as a consumer, they can force the release of closed source software that uses GPL code.
as long as you've purchased your copy of OS X, you should be able to do what you like with it Regardless of how much you have spent on it, you are still subject to the terms of a license agreement. If I purchase a copy of Redhat Linux, I don't have the right to change the source, and re-sell it without the source-code.
Well, copyrights do expire. Most places in the world adhere to the life + 70 years. Personally, I think 70 years is excessive, with life + 30, or life + 50 years being more reasonable.
What makes you think that the aircraft manufacturers would not have paid to register copyrights over their works when they produced them?
Requiring people to pay for copyright would not affect large companies like those in the music, movie, publishing or the aviation industry. It would affect individuals, and small groups from being able to protect their rights. For example, while newspapers, and other news organisations would register their copyrights, bloggers are less likely to do so... which means the New York Times would be able to publish a blog without permission or attribution. If a small band put an MP3 of a song of theirs on a CD, there would be nothing stopping a large music distributer from putting it on a CD, again without attribution or permission. Additionally, Free and open source software licenses function through the copyright system. If copyrights had to be registered, individuals who write an application or a library, and want to release it under the GPL would have to pay to register it (otherwise it would be released as public domain.)
Slashdot Mirror
Your links are unfortunately misleading. Your US numbers are from 2011, while the Australian numbers are from 2007-2008. Additionally, the Australian numbers are PPP or "Purchasing Power Parity". PPP allows comparing of currencies insofar as what can be bought, rather than the pure exchange rate. While PPP may be a useful way to compare different countries, it is inappropriate in this discussion, as the point being made is that Australians pay more than they should for products. I don't have recent numbers for Australian median incomes, but Wikipedia's page on GDP per capita:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nominal)_per_capita
Places Australia at a GDP per capita at between $67-70,000 while the US is at $47-$50,000 per capita. Not the double in income that the original poster said, but still about $20,000 ahead.
I think you need to get a bit of fresh air. New Zealand consistently ranks at or near the top of the least corrupt countries in the world. http://cpi.transparency.org/cpi2011/results/ While countries like the US and Iran may have court systems that regularly make decisions for political reasons, that is not the case in most of the developed world. Just because you don't like the decision, doesn't mean it is corruption.
I think you are misreading history. However, even if you are right, it doesn't mean that Gates' efforts to rebrand himself won't work. Alfred Nobel developed dynamite, and made his millions selling explosives. He decided to change his image after he saw a mistakenly printed obituary calling him a merchant of death. He spent his money creating the Nobel prizes. Today the overwhelming majority of people associate the name Nobel with the prizes he created, and in particular the peace prize.
In other words, even if Gates is the demon you seem to think he is, it doesn't mean that a bit of well placed money won't whitewash his image.
What typically happens is once the plankton dies, it sinks to the bottom of the sea. If it lands in an anaerobic area (a region of low oxygen, which is not uncommon on the sea floor) then it will not rot. Over time, it could be covered with sediments and blocked off from the rest of the sea. Over the course of millions of years, the dead plankton may be cooked at 70-80 degrees and transform into oil and gas. Once in this liquid or gas form, it can move from this source material. If it is caught in a trap, then it could become an economic oil or gas deposit several dozen million years in the future.
In contrast, most trees fall and rot on the ground. The amazon rainforest is a big area with lots of trees and plants, but there is also lots of organisms actively decomposing the dead material. Some carbon can get stuck in the ground, but it tends to be much less than the sea.
The environmental argument for ebooks is based on the fact that reading additional books causes virtually no additional environmental damage as the device already exists. If you read enough books, then an iPad, or Kindle or whatever becomes more environmentally friendly. Of course, that assumes you read enough books on it. If you buy a kindle for someone, and they read three books on it, and throw it away, then it is less environmentally friendly. If they read 10,000 books on it, then it is far more environmentally friendly. As for the break even point, I understand the number is in the order of about 200 books. The other side is that an iPad is used for many things besides reading books. If you are already buying an iPad for web browsing, or movie watching or whatever, then any ebook you read on it causes next to no additional environmental damage.
As far as durability of ebooks, I have tried to not abuse my text books, but I have rarely had a text book survive a semester without serious damage to it. On the other hand I have taken my iPad to class every day for a semester, and besides a couple of scratches, it looks and functions as well as when I bought it.
Are you kidding? Some are predicting the Kindle fire to sell 3.9 million this quarter http://recombu.com/news/amazons-kindle-fire-sales-second-place-to-ipad-set-to-vaporise-other-android-tab-sales_M15995.html, and others are predicting Apple to sell in the order of 13 million iPads http://articles.businessinsider.com/2011-11-28/tech/30449262_1_ipads-piper-jaffray-apple-stores .100,000 Xooms is less than a rounding error. To put it in perspective, Windows mobile 7 has more of the phone market than any of the non-kindle android tablets have of the tablet market.
This is the difference between Key frames (or intra frames) and predicted frames (or inter frames). Different codecs put different emphasis on the different frame types. Ideally key frames will have the same quality as the other frames, but different codecs can put different emphasis on quality for the different frame types.
I haven't looked at Theora since it was known as VP3, but if I remember correctly, while most codecs' predicted frames can only draw from the immediately previous key or predicted frame, frames in VP3 can always draw from the previous key frame. This means that key frames are more significant to VP3 than MPEG-4, and might explain why they spend more bits encoding their key frames.
someone really should moderate down all of these achievement whores... like me...
From the article: /opt and running the ./firefox script"
"When you install Firefox 3, which is as simple as downloading and extracting the tarball someplace like
This is slightly off topic, and maybe I've been using a mac too long, but this sounds anything but an easy install. Surely installing something as basic as a web browser has been simplified by now.
It has been many years since I studied torts, but the basic objective of common law torts is to put the injured party in the position they would have been if the injury hadn't occurred... eg someone destroys your car, you are compensated for the value of the car. In rare circumstances, when the defendant has repeatedly commits the same action despite punishment, they are saddled with an extra punitive damages (Perhaps the best example being the McDonalds coffee case).
I haven't read the case, but I believe in this example the large payment was permitted because of legislation, and not because of a general principle of likelihood of getting caught. As these levels of damages are enabled through legislation it seems that this appeal is destined to fail.
I assume the people who advocate for awarded damages to be equivalent to the plaintiffs injury, are the same people who argue that GPL infringements should all be dismissed as no monetary loss has been suffered by the "injured" party. Which is clearly ridiculous
It is interesting to note that while the GDP per capita of Cuba is estimated at less than $4000, and the USA is well over 10 times that (at $44000) the life expectancy in Cuba is only one year less than the US (at 77 compared to 78)
However, it does not allow for commercial exploitation of his work so we enter a grey-area. Is the use of his work to prosecute a lawsuit for monetary damages a commercial exploitation of his work?
Of course they can use it in court. Short of one of the various privileges (none of which would apply here) there is no way to keep this kind of evidence out of court... and it shouldn't be kept out of court. Courts demand access to all relevant unprivileged evidence to help achieve the most accurate decision.
Plagiarism is not illegal. If a university student copies an essay and hands it in under her name, she has broken no laws. She cannot be arrested, fined or gaoled. She can (and should) be kicked out of university as well as lose any kind of academic credibility.
I don't want to speak for the original poster, but he probably also wants to be compensated for his work. If I were a professional photographer, and a newspaper ran my photo on the front page, I would probably want to be paid for it.
At the moment there is nothing inherently illegal about putting up a photo without attribution or with a misattribution... so long as you have the rights. If you have the rights to a photo, you can say it was taken by whomever you want.
"Backed up"? Give me a break! How many people do you know who "back up" their CDs? How many people "back up" their books? Invariably, when someone says they want to "back up" their DVDs they mean "copy", and they don't mean for their personal use. "Fair Use" does not mean "give a copy to a friend"
Ummm. You don't have to buy any drugs that are produced. Would you rather get alzheimer's and be told there is no cure, or told there is a cure, and it will cost $10,000? In any case, patents only last for 20 years, and after that, the drugs should become relatively cheap. Additionally, this folding at home work is just the start of the process. It is one thing to know how a particular folded protein might cause a disease, and creating a drug to fix it.
From the article it appears they used the default settings that came with the machine. They later allowed people to send them URLs that they would load into Safari. It sounds like the reason they did not release the settings used was to keep this exploit contained, and that they will provide the settings to Apple.
I have been a dedicated mac user for more than 10 years, but I find it ludicrous that people believe that macos is invulnerable or any discovered exploits must be fake.
I think it is more a sign of the maturity of the game industry. There were a relatively low number of genre of games, and there were only a few "blockbuster" games of each genre. Today there are dozens of game genres and each one has a number of leading games. It is impossible to have a game that appeals to FPS gamers, RTS gamers, RPG gamers etc.
An comparison can be drawn to the early rock era. There are no bands from the last 20 years that have come close to the popularity of the Beatles in their day (with the possible exception of Michael Jackson). The Beatles were good, but today, with hundreds of genres and subgenres of "rock" music, it would be virtually impossible for a band to have the cross-the-population popularity that the Beatles enjoyed.
I don't want to defend the Finder in 10.4, but the Finder included in 10.0 sucked so much harder than the current version. On a G4, when resizing a "column-view" window, it would only refresh every couple of seconds or so. IIRC, this wasn't fixed until 10.2. There are still large complaints with the Finder (especially the networking one you mentioned) but it is unfair to say there haven't been improvements.
Starcraft didn't revolutionize the genre, it perfected it. It didn't add that much additional stuff over WC2, but what it added, and how it was designed makes it a very popular and engaging game almost 9 years after its release.
OK. That makes a lot of sense. It has been a couple of years since I have read the GPL.
That would mean that only the copyright holder would have the right to sue for infringement. Or to put it another way: in the event that the copyright holder is unknown, or unavailable no action could be taken against a person who infringes the GPL. I know a number of Free software advocates who believe that as a consumer, they can force the release of closed source software that uses GPL code.
Did you read my post?
as long as you've purchased your copy of OS X, you should be able to do what you like with it
Regardless of how much you have spent on it, you are still subject to the terms of a license agreement. If I purchase a copy of Redhat Linux, I don't have the right to change the source, and re-sell it without the source-code.
Well, copyrights do expire. Most places in the world adhere to the life + 70 years. Personally, I think 70 years is excessive, with life + 30, or life + 50 years being more reasonable.
What makes you think that the aircraft manufacturers would not have paid to register copyrights over their works when they produced them?
Requiring people to pay for copyright would not affect large companies like those in the music, movie, publishing or the aviation industry. It would affect individuals, and small groups from being able to protect their rights. For example, while newspapers, and other news organisations would register their copyrights, bloggers are less likely to do so... which means the New York Times would be able to publish a blog without permission or attribution. If a small band put an MP3 of a song of theirs on a CD, there would be nothing stopping a large music distributer from putting it on a CD, again without attribution or permission.
Additionally, Free and open source software licenses function through the copyright system. If copyrights had to be registered, individuals who write an application or a library, and want to release it under the GPL would have to pay to register it (otherwise it would be released as public domain.)