Really no excuses
Apple now offers 2 million more DRM-free songs at iTunes Music Store, and guess what, they now offer it in 265 Kbps, for $0.99 per song. Thank you, Amazon. See why this matters.
2084
You know, robots will never take over the human kind. Never ever, because they can’t be intelligent enough to have a clear purpose of existence. We [humans], however, may well live just for the sake of life. That’s possibly our greatest competitive advantage, apart from the ability to modify the environment.
No excuses
It’s half a year already that Apple started selling DRM-free music at its iTunes music store. Soon it will start selling music with higher bitrate — 256 Kbps probably (my prediction). The reason for this is dead simple — eliminate all excuses for downloading music illegally »»»
Russian learning curve
Right to the point: it’s flat.
About 20 years ago the price of oil sharply dropped from $70+ to just above $20, depriving the USSR of $20 billion in annual revenue (somewhat a lot), and effectively ruining the country into a dozen independent states, with Russia being the legal successor of USSR. Today, in 2007, we have oil prices again at that high level, and we (Russians) do nothing to develop any other sources of revenue »»»
Strange ways of fighting terrorism
If you were to hijack an aircraft, would you rather prefer to have nail scissors and some (whatever) liquid with you, or would you prefer that a couple hundred passengers could call [panicking] their home or 911 or Fox News or whomever and tell the whole story of the hijacking live and with all the ugly details you would gently provide them with? Terrorism is not about killing people, it is about putting the world in hysterics for whatever reason — stock trading, influencing government policy or election results, etc. Enabling the use of cell phones in civil aircraft is going to make the next great hijack the most famous, scary and long-remembered one, because it will be covered live on all TV and radio channels — at least in the sound. And the recordings of desperate calls from the hijacked aircraft will live forever.
Limits of intuition
One of them is the exponent. That is, the function of time (for example) that doubles every hour/day/week/year or any other fixed period of time.
Imagine you have two sources of income: a job that initially pays $50,000 a year and a strange bond that initially pays you $1 a year. Let’s say that your salary goes up by 3% a year but the amount the bond pays you each year doubles.
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VoIP: Voting over Internet Protocol
Even in Russia some politicians argue for implementing voting via internet on presidential and parliamentary elections. For a moment let’s ignore all the transparency/security issues and focus on the possible change in electoral behavior »»»
