I mean what do you think our government is, a government?

And yes I do realize that's too much to ask from Slashdot readership.

My guess is that Thompson wants their format to be able to sold for lossless downloads, as the formats move that way.

This would be a way for, say, Amazon, to sell lossless downloads and maintain 100% compatibility. Those who care could buy them and then transcode to whatever superior lossless format they wanted to.

Why should a citizen of Alabama's vote count more than a citizen in New York city?

That just seems fundamentally undemocratic.

The Iowa votes still counted towards the popular vote.

The entire thing renders the electoral vote into a formality - it really doesn't matter where the 270 electoral votes come from. Only the popular vote now, matters, and a vote from Iowa still counts towards that popular vote.

People in the majority would benefit from this.

People whose votes have been overvalued in the past due to a bad system will not.

Effectively weighting a rural vote higher than an urban vote strikes me as inherently undemocratic.

no one seems to mind that the Senate is composed of 100 senators, evenly distributed among states as diverse in size and population as California and Rhode Island.

That's because the system is balanced out by the House. There's nothing balancing this out - a less popular president can win because rural voters are being counted more than urban voters.

The Iowa votes still count because they count towards the popular vote, which in turn determines the distribution of a majority of the electoral votes.

How is this hard to understand???? It's getting rid of the electoral college by tying it to the popular vote; the popular candidate wins, no shenanigans. The law only goes into effect if enough states pass the same law, thus insuring that a majority of electoral votes go to the winner of the popular vote.

Everyone wins in this circumstance. No reasonable human being could possibly object to it, unless you share our forefathers' opinions that the country needs to be protected from the voters.

Iowa isn't going to award all 7 of its votes to the winner of the election in Iowa. That would be "winner take all" as you're complaining.

Instead Iowa will give its 7 electoral votes to the candidate with the most votes *nationwide*. But ONLY if enough states adopt the measure.

That would mean that the candidate with the most votes nationally would always win the electoral vote.

So it's "winner takes all" in the sense that the winner wins, instead of sometimes losing like in recent history.

The vast majority of the music on the Zune store is 320kbps MP3's. I believe 80% was the last number I saw.

What on earth would make you expect Aronofsky to do a good job on a film like this?

Oversubscription is good for power users!

1. It allows ISPs to take bandwidth at a $40/Mbps bulk/wholesale rate and parcel it to consumers for $40/6 Mbps (roughly $7/Mbps). If broadband consumers wanted to buy committed bandwidth in the 5-10 Mbps range, they could expect to pay in the range of $70/Mbps (not much bulk). Looks like a 10:1 oversubscription ratio is very fair in comparison to any traditional business model of a supplier buying bulk and marking up.

2. Oversubscription allows Joe Average User to help finance Joe Power User's connection (a fact that /.ers shouldn't be griping about!) You advocates of pay-per-packet would soon find that your BitTorrent usage would drive your monthly bill to double what it used to be, while granny up the street gets a cost break.

3. No data to back this, but consumers seem to prefer unlimited over metered services. Consider the increasing popularity of "unlimited long distance" plans, mega-rollover minutes (wireless marketing spin for flat-rate). Consider the failure of metered consumer services like ISDN! Sheesh, I wish I could get my energy and water bills flat-rated! My guess is that consumers like the freedom of using a communication service as much as they want, and the predictability of knowing what the bill will be each month.

(Despite what the parent says about paying fixed rates, all tier 1 ISPs offer burst-billed services as well, but ISPs tend to like the same thing as their consumers: predictability of cost...makes the budget easier to figure.)

4. The original justification for packet-switched networks vs. circuit-switched networks was to reduce costs and allow scalability. In short, to more efficiently use available network resources. A dedicated conduit to each subscriber is simply inefficient when you want to scale. This same principle is what makes the economics of VoIP disruptive in comparison to traditional telecom.

5. I hope anyone pushing for a committed bandwidth consumer broadband products isn't simultaneously throwing their weight behind Net Neutrality, because it would essentially make it illegal for telcos and cablecos to provide such a service.

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Re: honesty in marketing, consumer broadband should be marketed as "up to" a given speed. And that's the way the fine print likely reads. But is this any worse than equipment manufacturers that sold you a 56k modems that will never reach 56k? HDD manufacturers that sold you a 1 GB HDD that was 1000 MB instead of 1024? How about the "up to 20 hour battery life" Sony promised you? Those products will NEVER reach their advertised capacities, and at least your broadband may burst to it's maximum on occasion.

And finally, if anyone thinks the economics of running an ISP are so great and broadband providers are all making off like bandits, think again. It's a business of tight margins and heavy price pressure (enough to sink 100s if not 1000s of small ISPs).
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A red title bar signifies a "subscriber-only" story. Notice that the timestamp is for 8:15am -- a time in the future. That is when the story will (or should) debut for non-subscribing Slashdot members.

There seems to be a glitch in the Mat^H^H^HSlashdot system, or perhaps they are attempting to lure more subscribers by showing off the features of the system.

Most universitys are being put under threat by microsoft and apple to enforce piracy issues by forcing the universities to pay micosoft and apple so much money per term per student out of their computing fees instead of facing potentially (and i suspect some what unmerited and unproveable)million dollar lawsuits!!

At my university we pay $60 a semester for computing fees - now- no thanks to Gun Toting Microshaft and Apple - $12 every semester is going to Microshaft and Apple - that's $12 that previously went to our departments to provide students with advanced computing tools (for film students final cut pro - newer machines - for engineering students more clusters - for cs students more clusters etc!). So if you are here for 4 years (or 5 as most) and $12 a semester gone - that's $96 - now you think awesome - for $96 I get free and reduced cost copies of office, xp, mac office, etc - but in the end microsoft is making a lot of money it doesn't deserve for all those other students who don't have the need for a computer(it's cheaper to use campus resources) or those suites - or for those of us who use linux and will never buy office products.

I'd rather my department get the money in the face of huge budget cuts and fewer classes and resources for students. for our university alone there's 25,000 students - in one semester microsoft is scamming out $300,000 - $600,000 for the year. now every state school controlled by our regents is part of this deal - so the other big university has 25,000 students approx too - so let's see - 1.2 million just from two university a year in the middle of the midwest. great scam.

Microsoft and Apple are using scare tactics and threats of expensive legal action to bully universities across the country out of a lot of money to partake in giving the edu's cheaper software - but is it really?