Slashdot Mirror

It's a fair question. In this link 1997 music sales in the US were around 750 million units, in 1996 that was around 780 million and in 1998 it was around 850 million which averages out at less than 3 albums per person. According to this the peak was 953 million units per year. The estimated total sales figures from the first link give approximately $13 per CD, which matches my recollections of those long ago days :)
Those figures are for the US, Europe and rest of world was lower (I am not in the US so my recollection will be different).

I don't have data on average CD's-purchased-per-person as that does not seem to be available (it's all units sold and revenue) but if we do a rough exercise and say that the population of the US was 282.2 million in 2000 and that half the population weren't buying music at all, that leaves us with an average of 6 albums per person for around 80 dollars per year, or 6 dollars per month.
You were clearly a music aficionado if you were spending way more than 120 per year on CDs!

My point really is that they can either go for quantity or quality. At $5 or $6 a month they will get more people than at $10 or $14. Only they can say if the numbers will add up.

You're assuming the aliens are rational and think the way we do. The Masters are completely alien and their real motives are ambiguous, the Martians in Mars Attacks are just dicks. And the Visitors are space Nazis who like the eat intelligent life they've subjugated.

And, like I say, there are plenty of examples of human civilisations going on a conquering spree of their less advanced neighbours for reasons that weren't really rational from the perspective of the whole civilisation.

E.g. the British Empire was a net drain on national resources. On the other hand the people who ended up doing the conquering made a fortune out of it, and the invented a justification of national glory and bringing civilisation to the barbarians to keep the people back home supportive.

Same with the Spanish and Portuguese conquest of South America. The people doing it were doing it to get rich. And they invented a spurious justification of bringing the world of God to the natives to keep the state subsidies flowing.

Looked at at the national level it didn't make any sense. And in fact Adam Smith argued the UK should give up Empire because it was a net drain on UK resources.

http://www.let.rug.nl/usa/docu...

The rulers of Great Britain have, for more than a century past, amused the people with the imagination that they possessed a great empire on the west side of the Atlantic. This empire, however, has hitherto existed in imagination only. It has hitherto been, not an empire, but the project of an empire; not a gold mine, but the project of a gold mine; a project which has cost, which continues to cost, and which, if pursued in the same way as it has been hitherto, is likely to cost, immense expense, without being likely to bring any profit; for the effects of the monopoly of the colony trade, it has been shown, are, to the great body of the people, mere loss instead of profit. It is surely now time that our rulers should either realise this golden dream, in which they have been indulging themselves, perhaps, as well as the people; or, that they should awake from it themselves, and endeavour to awaken the people. If the project cannot be completed, it ought to be given up. If any of thee provinces of the British empire cannot be made to contribute towards the support of the whole empire, it is surely time that Great Britain should free herself from the expense of defending those provinces in time of war, and of supporting any part of their civil or military establishments in time of peace, and endeavour to accommodate her future views and designs to the real mediocrity of her circumstances.

No one listened and it all carried on for a century or more before collapsing because the UK couldn't afford it. I.e. he was right.

Or look at (presumably) your country, the US. Invading Iraq and then was wholly irrational in retrospect. It cost a fortune and didn't produce the stable democracy promised or even any good loot. In fact it destabilised the whole region and enabled Islamist forces like ISIS to take over. It also cost a lot of money.

If human foreign policy is largely irrational and has been for most of recorded history, why should alien foreign policy be any different?

e.g. The Federalist Papers? - http://www.let.rug.nl/usa/docu...

I don't know what's the goal of the course, but there already exists a free online book that surveys C++, including the latest revisions. It's called C++ annotations:

http://www.icce.rug.nl/documents/cplusplus/

When you already have a high quality one!

Distance doesn't always follow visibility. There are things that are far away but are much brighter than some of the nearby stuff, so are easier to notice. For the example of our Solar neighborhood, by number and by mass most of the stars are faint (magnitude > 14), and "all" of the light comes from the most luminous ones (from here). What you see at 14 billion l.y. away is entire galaxies, not individual stars.

tl;dr: RTFA, not just the pictures.

Full version:

Unfortunately, you misread the site. The site doesn't report the popularity of chords by name at all. If you'd read the lead-in to the chord chart, you'd see the explanation. Or if you'd thought about the most popular chords being "G F C Am Dm Em", the main traids in the key of C, you might be suspicious. Or if you had read the following analysis on the site which explains his theories for their popularity, you'd have seen your misinterpretation.

The site reports the popularity of key signatures by name.

It reports the popularity of chords by pseudo-name: relative to the key signature by transposing all the songs into the key of C. Yes, that's a dumb thing for him to do, but that's what he did, and it's identical to what you propose he should do. (The per-song analyses do actually use roman-numeral notation.)

Your explanation is therefore bogus; the A chord is not necessarily particularly rare as far as we can tell. Maybe it is, maybe it isn't. Probably it is, actually, which leads me to my second argument: your reason for why it's rare is wrong.

It is absolutely true that the popularity of many chords in guitar music is due to what's convenient on the guitar. But I'm doubtful that A chords are very rare in guitar music. More likely, the pop music analyzed here is not very guitar-centric.

Let's look at an actual guitar band. The easiest to use is the Beatles, since they're well studied. They got less guitar-y in their later albums, though. Here's a source.. Note that relative minors have already been adapted in the same way.

Top six keys in order on the site in the slashdot article:
C G Eb F D A

All beatles: G A E D C ...
First two albums: E D A G ...
Next three albums: A G D E ...
Abbey Road: A C E D F

So, in this actual guitar band, before they started writing on piano, retuning songs by changing the tape speed, etc., the keys of E, D, and A were incredibly popular, so I bet the A chord was probably popular as well. (but I have no stats).

And since guitarists don't actually avoid these keys, unsurprisingly, your explanation for why guitarists would avoid these keys are wrong. (1) The B chord is uncomfortable for a beginning guitarist, but the B7 chord is easily learned, so B doesn't present a problem for the key of E. (And the reality is that the difficulty of the chord isn't a big deal for serious musicians. They favor open chords not because they're easy, but because they sound better.) (2) The key of D doesn't present much problem, as not having the chord root not at the top just means you play inversions a lot, or use sparser chords. The fact it's not low is irrelevant when you have a bassist; and look at something like Nashville tuning. Indeed, the convenience of a flexible A7 for use as V, and the ease of Dsus2 and Dsus4, makes D a quite popular key signature on the guitar. (3) I don't know why your A theory is wrong, but since your E and D theories were wrong, and since the Beatles (with three different male singers) loved the key of A, I can't imagine it's correct.

So, the actual explanation for why A is at 2% is that it's the "relative A" chord that is the major VI chord, or i.e. the V-of-ii chord. That makes it popular enough to be at 2% -- V-of-ii isn't unheard of, but not a particularly common chord in the key of C, the way the non-diminished triads from the key signature are.

The original story is at http://www.rug.nl/cit/hpcv/nieuws/touchscreen1 and there are plenty of details in the text belonging to the youtube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AlWFtF06RFo&hd=1.
In the original story there is no claim for the world largest, but perhaps it is the worlds largest curved screen. How knows.
It is not used for teaching math, but if a professor comes along to give it a try he/she is welcome to do so. It is used by students studying interaction methods as the best method for interaction will change with a big screen. It is also used for teaching students about Geographic Information Systems. For that application the resolution kind of matters.
Note that we only added touch detection to an existing 3D screen and we did so for very little money ( $2500).

If you go to the source at http://www.rug.nl/cit/hpcv/nieuws/touchscreen1 you will see that it wasn't created for teaching math at all (the blogspam linked from the story seems to have made that up). According to RUG: "the initial goal was to facilitate the scientists studying Geographic Information Systems and a research group that studies interaction methods for touch screens" GIS is a perfect application for this technology.

If you go to the source at http://www.rug.nl/cit/hpcv/nieuws/touchscreen1 you will see that it wasn't created for teaching math at all (the blogspam linked from the story seems to have made that up). According to RUG: "the initial goal was to facilitate the scientists studying Geographic Information Systems and a research group that studies interaction methods for touch screens"

How about linking directly to the source, instead of to this blogspam: http://www.rug.nl/cit/hpcv/nieuws/touchscreen1

The internet isn't really a place to gain an informed opinion over things.

Yes, you are correct. Opinions should all be tossed out. Pure info is what the Internet is all about. Pick a language and a FOSS project, develop away, it's a great learning process that I've found much more "educational" than formal education.

Teach yourself C++: C++ Annotations, C++ Language Tutorial... ... or Perl: Perl programming documentation, or JavaScript,
or Java.

Just search the web, you'll find everything that any professor will ever be able to teach you online. Need guidance, clarification, or to ask a question? There are free online forums for that too... Yes, the Internet on average, much like the FM band, has more signal than noise, but similarly you can easily tune your into the signal you need.

Consider this: My Java "professor" gave an assignment where we read in rows of data from standard input, and output the table sorted by a certain column's value. He offered extra credit for proper alignment and justification of the table's cells... "WTF? Really?", I thought.

I used the Collections framework along with Swing to provide a GUI w/ sortable & justified JTable columns instead of doing character counting and sending extra spaces with the text to the standard output. He gave me a C. Another student used the Formatter to provide printf style formatting... also got a C, WTF! Go beyond the prof's teachings & expectations to meet a requirement, get a poor grade... That's dumb and counter productive.

In the real world, you try not to re-invent the wheel, this college course was not teaching practical programming; It was so far beneath what I learned already online, on Java's own website, I dropped the course (waste of time). Sure I can write a merge sort, or programatically align console text output, but that was not what the assignment said: "Provide a tabular output sorted by the 'Name' column." We learned merge sort 2 weeks prior, but the "professor" would not move on.

Not having a "degree" myself, I frequently answer questions that "Degree" holding graduates ask in online forums... Why? Because they didn't learn what they needed to know in their courses.

You would be hard pressed to find a programmer that doesn't have some form of documentation open in another window, screen, or context menu while coding. IMO, besides learning about algorithms and complexity, the language specs & online tutorials are all you really need. I find paper books pale in comparison to down-loadable, copy&paste-able free, online resources. Also note: As a programmer you will be expected to keep up to date with the ever changing languages you learn. All of these changes are easily accessible online too.

There's a lot of noise and very little quality signal to use and without having a degree to start with it's pretty much futile in terms of knowing what is and is not reliable information.

I call bullshit. See esp. the Java link above, your arguments are ill-informed, and reek of FUD. Search google for "java tutorial", or "$any_lang tutorial" and you get some pretty damn reliable, pure "signal" information about what you searched for.

Are you really arguing that Language specs & Tutorials from IBM, Microsoft, etc, and docs from a language's main website (such as http://perldoc.perl.org/

I can understand that copy editing is a lot of work, and GOOD copy editing is somewhat expensive. But "preparation costs?" Complete horseshit. Typesetting is essentially free unless you need to make physical copies, and it's a job that should be done by the copy editor, not a separate engraver. This isn't the 20th century anymore.

(Of course that particular free typesetter only creates a PDF or Postscript file. I'm sure the excessive DRM schemes and platform-specific obfuscation cost several million dollars to create and apply.)

Promotion is a burden that's essentially already borne by Amazon et al. I can't remember the last time I saw an ad for a book anywhere. Where the hell does that advertising budget go? My guess is the publishers are mainly competing with each other for "prime estate" on the front page, but many people-- specifically college students-- are more interested in finding a specific book than whatever is being promoted most heavily. Even private purchasers are loath to pay $5 for a book they may not enjoy at all; most purchases are via word of mouth or because the reader enjoyed reading previous works by that author. The search infrastructure allowing specific purchases is already there, if immature. A Pandora-style associative advertising system probably isn't far off. I don't see where the publishers fit into either of these cases.

So remind me again where the money is going, aside from lobbying against copyright reform?

My implication was that The Beatles aren't on Spotify or iTunes and so they are suffering from lower exposure to the people who are getting their music from these sources. I can only think that whoever holds the rights these days still looks down on digital distribution for some reason. Idiots.

Did you see the reply from the troll saying 100% of The Beatles was 'ephemeral'? I bet he's not listened to 100% of The Beatles, probably just the odd track on Classic 60's radio shows. It wasn't until I had access to pretty much every Beatles album and listened to them in sequence, made some kind of sense of them, and then studied them thanks to Alan W Pollack's thorough treatments:

http://www.icce.rug.nl/~soundscapes/DATABASES/AWP/awp-alphabet.shtml

  that I realised what absolute musical geniuses they were. Even Ringo. Maybe! Before then I thought they were a bunch of early vocal harmony love songs that made 60's teens wet themselves and another bunch of later songs written by drugged-up hippies with more Rolls-Royces than sense (Revolution #9). That was my dismissal of The Beatles until I had a chance to go through all their albums for nothing (hooray for friends' CD collections).

  I'll see your 1920s big band jazz and raise you some JS Bach :)

To quote Thomas Jefferson:

You make it seem like Thomas Jefferson was against patents here. That's pretty interesting, especially since he was the US's first patent examiner, and wrote 35 USC 101 which is the basis for all patent law.

I was always under the impression that patents were to protect novel ideas that were unlikely to be obvious to anyone that was working in the field. This I find acceptable usage of patents!

You have always been mistaken. The purpose of the patent system is to encourage investment into research and development, and thus encourage and promote human progress and invention. Allowing ideas to be patented slows innovation, while allowing the patent of an invention which has required much time, effort, and or money to develop, provides a financial incentive for for R&D, and thus encourages innovation.

Thus patents should protect inventions which require a significant amount of research and development, not ideas. To quote Thomas Jefferson:

It would be curious then, if an idea, the fugitive fermentation of an individual brain, could, of natural right, be claimed in exclusive and stable property. If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of every one, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it. Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density in any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation.

If you wish to correct your ignorance, I can suggest the book "Math you can't use" as an excellent text on the subject.

Jefferson's ideas of "organized rebellion" WERE incorporated into the constitution, in the form of the balance of powers

You're seriously going to nitpick out the fact that I didn't explicitly say "organized AND ARMED rebellion", and then try to play it off like JEFFERSON didn't explicitly say so? Please. Jefferson, while whole-heartedly embracing the principles of Democratic government, was very cynical about it actually continuing to represent the people and not reverting to de-facto tyranny. He most definitely maintained that fear of armed revolt was a valid way to keep governments in line -- all governments, including the one he created. He most definitely maintained that people should be allowed to keep arms expressly for that purpose. You can't have read his writings and say otherwise, so try the WP page at least.

All the most famous quotes you've heard from Jefferson regarding revolution, "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots & tyrants" for example, and "what country can preserve it's liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms." come from a letter that was regarding a revolt against the government of the state of Massachusetts, as in part of the United States! No talk of hunting or protecting your property from injuns, no, instead he says of the rebellion: "God forbid we should ever be 20 years without such a rebellion."

So, yeah, sorry, but your thesis that Jefferson thought guns as tools of rebellion were unnecessary in a land of free speech is, shall we say, grossly at odds with reality.

"The Republic is really the form of National Government that has stood the test of time, of which the United States is NOT."

So, again, can you provide real examples or is it just wishful thinking?

"Of course, the EU and US are as different as any country is from another."
Much more than that. USA is a country; EU is not.

What makes something a country? What I said was that the United States is not a National Government, it is a Federal Government. If you think that is just a matter of semantics, then that is your opinion, and that gives a pretty clear vision of either your ideology or your education, but please recognize that your idea of a state as a mere formality of national affairs is fundamentally different from that of the Founders intentions as well as the law as it is still written today. And not to praise them as some kind of perfect all knowing beings, but you might be keen on familiarizing yourself with some of the things that they SAID and that they DISCUSSED about each issue and item addressed in the constitution. There are records of discussions and letters that outline what, at least, at the time that they wrote it. No, the constitution is vague in some places, but you can get transcripts from the discussion arguing over how and why it should be phrased in a certain way to give the best possible clarity. They may not have all agreed on exactly what it did mean, but it is easy to see what they all agreed it was NOT. I would highly recommend reading The Jefferson Letters, The Federalist Papers, and John Taylor's New Views of the Constitution. To put it simply, One of the powers of the federal government expressly granted by the states in the constitution is to make treaties and declare treaties. This can all be done without having to get the permission of the state first. On the otherhand, in the EU, the EU has common defense, but does not have the power to declare war or make treaties. The Federal Government can can make loans against the United States in the form of Treasury Notes, and could print money if it so desired (which it does not. The last United States Notes were taken out of circulation in 1971). The European Union was founded in 1993, where as the Federal Government we "have today" was founded in 1788. Give the EU 200 years, and I am sure that will get wildly out of control and you will hear France threatening to succeed from the Union like Texas is today. The American Civil War didn't begin until 1861 where for the first time it was challenged whether or not a state had the right to succeed.So what? That is just totally settled? Come on, at very least you need to acknowledge the existential argument there.

As for the Enlightenment Age, I am talking about the Enlightenment itself, not saying it was the greatest time in all history, just that we need to remember what it was and why it worked. Of course I am happy as anyone that we eradicated small pox, but I would argue that were it not for enlightenment thinking, something like a small pox vaccination certainly wasn't going to be devised in the dark ages. You really going to say that the poor lower class were better off in the dark ages? Maybe if you were a puritan, but those kids just gtfo anyhow. (Yes, I realize they came to what is now the United States and had a big influence on law, but I'd really prefer to forget that. I KNOW!)

Sues Sweden? And what if they don't obey?

An interesting question, about which the lawyer F. de Vries, former University lecturer in Constitutional Law at the University of Groningen, gave an interesting speech back in 2004, which you can find in Dutch at: http://www.rug.nl/Rechten/faculteit/overFaculteit/lezingVries

He basically says that there is no reason Sweden should obey, since Europe actually has no authority over Swedish National affairs. It just appers th EU has "authority", but it created that on itself. And since no-one defines its own powers, how is it that Sweden is supposed to obey the European Court of Justice?

YET, I must add, since the Lisbon treaty will change all this. However, this is a translation of a part of what this expert had to say:

"All this gives to think. Obviously we have to do with a very particular moment. That becomes clear also from what I just before mentioned as the `approval' of the [European] Constitution by the European Parliament. It was celebrated there as an important step in the direction of a new Europe. But, I ask myself, why did the European Parliament acutally approve that constitution? What actually remains for the citizens of the Member States if their representation in Europe has already agreed with the design? Rather little, one would think at first sight.

Here too legal reality is another. It should be clear that the European Parliament in this process has in fact no role to play. It has no principal authority. Still, I understand the parliament, however. It acts, as it happens, on the basis of the present treaties as a representative of all European citizens. And you have to do something.

I believe that here we run up against a returning problem with the unification of Europe. In all enthousiasm with which we try to shape the European construction work, we incite numerous constitutional problems. We call a new treaty out of ease "a Consitution" and proceed to the order of the day. But there are more examples. The treaty of Maastricht created the `European citizen'. Nationals of the Member States are citizens at two levels: in their own country and in Europe. This `double citizenship' one of course also finds back in the designs of the constitution. But is this double citizenship so logical? Where does your representative as European a citizen actually reside? In The Hague or in Brussels? I will return to the consequences of, what I would want to call, this `representation surplus' soon after.

It strikes me, generally spoken, that Europe generally is pretty good at calling this type of problems, but is silent concerning the solutions there of. This problem is moreover more seriously and especially also older as you probably think. It has really started in 1964, when the European Court of Justice ruled in the case Costa/Enel. In a attempt to [sidestep] the possible detrimental consequences of the way in which the Italian legal system regulated the relation between the national and international law, the Court of Justice reached a remarkable legal conception. The court created, on its own authorisation, a legal order which, to say it in modern terms, would above all acknowledge its own dynamics. On the basis of which Member States would no longer be free to withdraw themselves from that legal order.

This incorrect and in my eyes above all unauthorized judgement, subsequently went to live a life entirely on its own. It has led to, especially in the Netherlands, to the misconception that the European law from itself has primacy above the national Dutch law, also outside of the regulations in articles 93 and 94 of the [Dutch] constitution. Even the Supreme Court seems to put herself at this point of view in her recent pronouncement of last November 2nd (judgement obligatory resting times). This conception seems however completely incorrect to me. What we might further think of Europe, our t

The Beatles wrote straight-up, standard pop music. There is nothing particularly noteworthy about them, ... [ snip ] ..., but they aren't really any more skilled or special than, say, Smashing Pumpkins.

I'm being constructive here ... take the time, read one of Alan Pollack's Notes On ... Series, say 'Strawberry Fields Forever' at http://www.icce.rug.nl/~soundscapes/DATABASES/AWP/sff.shtml, listen to the song, and then point me at one of Billy's songs that is 'particularly noteworty' in comparison.

Or maybe you just dig S.P.'s more that the Beatles ... if so, that's fine. Then let's talk about it in that context.

But there is nothing 'straight-up' or 'standard' about SFF. It's a fucking cool song and it is innovative, sophisticated and was ground-breaking in many different ways.

More likely, "MacHeads is another cheap 'find a subculture and mock it' film that will pander to Apple haters, and bore or irritate Apple fans. It will broaden the minds of neither, and pass unnoticed by everyone else."

Yeah. What I find are more anti-whatevers, than pro-whatevers. People obsessing over what other people use. Some of the causes might be legitimate (marketshare concerns or they end up doing tech support for friends/relatives) and some are petty (obsessing how other people spend their money).

For the classic in OS satire, there is "The Unix Hater's Handbook":
http://www.icce.rug.nl/edu/ugh.pdf

It was pretty much the poke in the eye to unix users but the anti-foreword was written by Dennis Ritchie - but was just as scathing right back:) (This was when some users came from other systems, like Lisp Machines.) It's probably still relevant today, seeing as how OS with unix foundations are the only OS with marketshare outside Windows these days.

I haven't heard of anyone who reverse engineered the toolchain but there's an awesome tool that helps you reverse engineer your own binaries: http://www.cs.rug.nl/~wladimir/decuda/ This is relevant because the compiler creates device specific binaries that you can't get the assembler code for. So if you want to know exactly what your kernel is doing disassemble it with decuda. Unfortunately the tool is a bit outdated but it still might be useful to some.

Beatles fans might find Alan Pollack's notes on every Beatles song ever very interesting. Try his comments on Hard Days Night

The differences between Cell and GPU aren't as clear cut and simple as you make them out to be. Both derive their power from having lots of parallel processing units and memory architecture that helps you keep those elements busy (which is the real trick in parallel computing). Both are a bit tricky to program. Cell has mechanisms for chaining data flow from one SPE to another (which is good for decoding applications), but I don't see a fundamental limitation of using CUDA/GPUs for decoding. An existence proof of this can be found at this site. It's not H.264, but it shows that HD decoding can be made to fit into a GPU.

The C++ annotations is more a tutorial than a reference but I find it very useful. http://www.icce.rug.nl/documents/cplusplus/ And unlike more other documents of that kind, this one is regularly updated by its author (since 1994).

Anybody interested in visualizing hyperspace should learn about Alicia Boole Stott and her amazing story. She was the daughter of George Boole (of boolean algebra fame) who developed a mind-boggling series of paper cutout models of four dimensional objects that won her an honorary math doctorate in 1914. Check out these extensive photos of her work.

Anybody interested in visualizing hyperspace should learn about Alicia Boole Stott and her amazing story. She was the daughter of George Boole (of boolean algebra fame) who developed a mind-boggling series of paper cutout models of four dimensional objects that won her an honorary math doctorate in 1914. Check out these extensive photos of her work.

I know lots of people have gotten the short attention span sickness, which most Americans have. Still i am dissapointed, even on slashdot.
But this stuff is not new.

Just some links about this technology, from 2006:
http://blog.wired.com/music/2006/11/acoustic_recogn.html
http://technology.newscientist.com/channel/tech/mg19225780.159-big-brother-is-listening-to-you.html

One of the companies responsible for this was founded in 2000:
http://www.soundintel.com/

more links wanted? go to http://www.rug.nl/scholieren/adamsAppel/archief2007/afl11 [dutch]

**** Knowing is less important then Remembering. ****

I don't know why these sorts of arguments keep coming up.

When the constitution was written, radio didn't exist. Neither did lots of other things that the courts have decided that the federal government has the constitutional authority to regulate. Simply put, if the courts decide a law [like the one establishing the FCC] is constitutional, then it is [Marburg v Madison]. No matter what you think. I posted this elsewhere in the thread:

The FCC notes that the Supreme Court in 1969 upheld the government's authority to limit broadcast licenses. In Red Lion Broadcasting Co. vs. the United States, the high court held, "Congress unquestionably has the power to grant and deny licenses and to eliminate existing stations. No one has a First Amendment right to a license or to monopolize a radio frequency."

Source http://www.icce.rug.nl/~soundscapes/VOLUME01/Tree_Radio_Berkeley_Appendix.shtml

Although I'll say that if [I'd estimate] 4/9 of the Supreme Court had their way, then all of these regulatory powers that aren't explicitly stated in the constitution would go away. This is why the next election is so critical. So go out and vote!

Can I also add to my other post that the Supreme Court has already ruled on this?

In Red Lion Broadcasting Co. vs. the United States, the high court held, "Congress unquestionably has the power to grant and deny licenses and to eliminate existing stations. No one has a First Amendment right to a license or to monopolize a radio frequency.

Here's the full text http://www.icce.rug.nl/~soundscapes/VOLUME01/Tree_Radio_Berkeley_Appendix.shtml

"Look, I understand your point, but you should reevaluate the copying = stealing line."

I don't think so - not because you didn't raise a point - you raised a couple of good ones. The problem is that there are people who would use that as a justification for feeling entitled to rip off whatever they want, regardless of if they are putting somebody into bankruptcy in the process, and the counterpoint needs to be made.

Stipe's not a bad lyricist, even if he sings like a Budweiser toad. I rate about one out of every ten songs he's released -- again, not bad. He writes a nice kind of oblique look at alienated modern life ("Daysleeper"), a good patch on southern gothic ("Swan Swan H"), silly likable McCartneyesque ditties ("Shiny Happy People") and even Burroughs-like cut ups ("It's The End of The World As We Know It"). Then again he's overly earnest, saccharine, melodramatic and painfully PC. A little of his weepy-eyed frog-voiced honking goes a long way; happily the music is often better than his contribution.

The Beatles have their faults (the early stuff is overly cute, some of the music hall clowning is tiresome) but on the whole their music does what muzak never has been able to do: catalyze imaginations, epitomize and shape their time, seed a movement, score an ethos. You don't have to like their stuff, but you have to be somewhat cleverer than to fall for a minor pop artist's jealous dig.

Anyone wanting to understand the Beatles could do much worse than look at musicologist Allan Pollack's intelligent notes:

http://www.icce.rug.nl/~soundscapes/DATABASES/AWP/awp-notes_on.shtml

Jefferson's political ideal was an agrarian republic of "small" independent farmers. The world of the slave-holding elite

While Thomas Jefferson wanted an agrarian society he was against slavery. Sure, he owned some slaves however all of them he inherited from either his father or his father-in-law, but he himself was antislavery. Some of the slaves he freed. Also in his original drafts of the "Declaration of Independence" he wrote that all people, including negros and women, had the same natural rights he wrote of. That's not exactly the elitist you make him out to be.

[...]but Dr. Baird (whom you and I saw many years after at his native place, St. Andrew's in Scotland) gave a contrary opinion: "For the industry of that Franklin," says he, "is superior to any thing I ever saw of the kind; I see him still at work when I go home from club, and he is at work again before his neighbors are out of bed."

Actually endurance seems to improve up to age 30 or so, and really only starts declining, in regular athletes, until after age 45. This paper seems to indicate that as they get older, athletes tend to switch from shorter, more intensive races to longer, endurance-limited ones. Triathon experts write one should not attemps ironman too young, but work up to it.

Male runners seem to be able to keep running for very long distances until after 70. There is the famous case of John A. Kelly who ran the Boston marathon until he was 84. He had won this race at age 35 and 37.

Actually, it's a shitty analogy, but it does get your attention for long enough to look at the real argument:

Those that understand that there is a threat to personal freedom by the simple building of enormous cross-referenced databases already know about echelon. The TFH crowd warned us about the "no such agency" and later about "echelon", both of which were later confirmed, and whose existence has now passed into the realm of common knowledge.

So the response of those people who understand the threat is to say to the rest of the good subjects of King George "See, I told ya so."

And the rest of the good subjects response is consistently "You're a nutball. If this has been going on for years and I didn't notice, why should I care now?"

The period of this political cycle (liberty-repression-liberty...) in this country seems to be about 50-75 years. We're just starting into the hardcore authoritarian portion of the cycle. Next comes overt McCarthyism. Take the "flag burning amendment" as a marker for our official entry into that one.

Enjoy the ride, folks, and, remember--it's going to get a lot worse before it gets better. The good news is that this is nothing new, and this, too shall pass.

What country before ever existed a century & half without a rebellion? & what country can preserve its liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon & pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots & tyrants. It is its natural manure.


According to Jefferson, we're about 30 years overdue. I say we're not quite ready yet, but I think I'll see it in my lifetime.

What country before ever existed a century & half without a rebellion? & what country can preserve its liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon & pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots & tyrants.

- Thomas Jefferson, letter to William Stephens Smith (November 13, 1787)
http://odur.let.rug.nl/~usa/P/tj3/writings/brf/jef l64.htm

Java remains an excellent choice for serious web apps which you're going to want to maintain later.

Java remains an overly verbose and inflexible language that requires intensive and detailed study of the gargantuan API before ANY development work can even begin. I have never understodd the allure of Java, and I probably never will.

After reading the article, I've decided to at last take a glimpse at Ruby. First google result was this, an interactive web tutorial. I'm tinkering away like a kid in a sandbox. It's kind of fun.

Compare to Java. Here's the spec. You WILL need to read substantial portions of this before you even begin to program anything of substance. Learning Java, along with all its quicks, restrictions, paradigms and frameworks, reminds me of going to church and hearing all that nonsensical dogma. I never liked church. Ruby just reminds me of perl.

For me, a language has to be somehow fun to program in for it to be useful. You may find that ridiculous, but if I'm not enjoying what I'm doing, my work will be substandard. Java was never fun. I don't think java is even fun for Java zealots. Java has always felt like a chore.

I'm on lesson four in the Ruby tutorial. It feels like it could be fun. I'll let you extrapolate the future.

USA never actually having had the idea of changing they government type or ways of working never needed to trash their constitution and get a new one.

Actually some revolutionaries, Founding Fathers, believed a new constitution should be written every so often. Thomas Jefferson once said "God forbid we should ever be 20 years without such a rebellion."

The Zuiderzee works are only a small part of the 'wall' around the Netherlands. It was created to make that wall a good bit shorter, like the Delta Works.

Given that the oldest wall-shaped water defenses date from around 200BC, and that the making of new dry land in the form of polders involved massive private ventures in the 17th and 18th centuries and were undertaken as big New Deal-like projects in the early 20th century, the real figure may still be pretty big.

It seems that even the University in Groningen claims that Stella is the fastest in Europe, which is not the case if you see top500.org (the link in the post above).

It is exactly that type of thinking that was the argument against the Bill of Rights - that enumerating them would cause people to think that the amendments granted the rights as opposed to simply recognized them.

It has been objected also against a bill of rights, that, by enumerating particular exceptions to the grant of power, it would disparage those rights which were not placed in that enumeration, and it might follow by implication, that those rights which were not singled out, were intended to be assigned into the hands of the general government, and were consequently insecure. This is one of the most plausible arguments I have ever heard urged against the admission of a bill of rights into this system; but, I conceive, that may be guarded against. I have attempted it, as gentlemen may see by turning to the last clause of the 4th resolution.

from http://odur.let.rug.nl/~usa/P/jm4/speeches/amend.h tm

At least you knew that Clinton wouldn't get away with too much in the way of hurting our civil liberties, because the Republicans controlled Congress for most of his Presidency.

The Republicans gained control of congress because of Clinton's attack on 2nd amendment rights. Bill himself admitted this in his 1995 state of the union address.

And despite Clinton's fiscal conservatism, he was a liberal at heart, so he wasn't interested so much in curtailing civil liberties as he was in growing social welfare programs, i.e., growing the "feel good" side of government, often at the expense of defense programs.

Bill Clinton was certainly interested in curtailing civil liberties. He sought to give the president the unilateral power to label ANY group he saw fit as a terrorist group and outlaw membership in that group. He had people arrested for protesting him.

Bush, on the other hand, might talk a good game of conservatism, but his actions speak differently. And so it is with his and congress's actions to "protect our liberty.

Bush is doing what we elected him to do. Protect our second amendment rights and not spend our money on abortions. I realize that these may not be popular ideals in a place like Slashdot, but the fact is that we don't care who doesn't like what we believe. We'll go right on believing it and winning elections.

Bush pays lip service to conservative ideals, but at heart he is a criminal who will do anything to gain more power for himself or his friends.

There is only one president who has committed a felony during my lifetime, and it wasn't Bush.

LK

America's Puritan heritage.

It implements the refinement of a 10 year old technology invented in Belgium.

IBM has discovered how to detect and change the spin of a single electron.

Measuring the spin of electrons bound to atoms was first achieved in the famous 1922 Stern-Gerlach experiment, a key stage in the discovery and understanding of quantum spin.

However, to quote from this discussion of the experiment, the Stern-Gerlach technique cannot be used to measure free electron spin because 'The spreading of the electron wave packet washes out the separation effect due to the electron spin'. Therefore, it appears that IBM's discovery is significant.

I just searched around on google and these documents come up
Word Order in German
Kathol's analysis of German Word Order

It never states that only those *in* the militia should have the right to bear arms. It just says that the reason for the right is to prepare people to be in a militia (army) if necessary. This was before the time of standing armies; they needed people who were familiar with weapons in case of war.

"The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed; a well armed and well regulated
militia being the best security of a free country."

The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

It matters not in the slightest whether an algorithm is obvious or not, it is a piece of mathematics and belongs to us all. If you find a new algorithm that is particularly efficient for some purpose then you are perfectly entitled to keep the matter secret. What you are not entitled to do (ethically speaking) is lay claim to ownership of that mathematical idea and prevent others from using it. Some time ago I read a comment in which it was claimed that the (unpatented) Viterbi algorithm was a pure invention, of use only in the field of digital communications and that consequently it would have been perfectly reasonable to patent it. This was obviously utter nonsense and it took me all of 30 seconds to discover that the Viterbi algorithm had already been adopted as an invaluable tool in several other fields. Sadly this is the kind of plausible fallacy often employed by pro-software patent activists and it can be very effective in convincing the innumerate and the scientifically illiterate.

Returning to the RSA algorithm - it can be understood by children, is about as sophisticated as Pythagoras's theorem and it was in fact patented by it's discoverers - or at least the first people known to have published it. That doesn't make it ethically justifiable though and it is certainly possible to patent algorithmic expressions of mathematics that is already well known, as for example Stanford University/Bracewell did with the DHT algorithm in 1987. I don't know offhand of any other uses for the RSA algorithm but if I had found one I would until recently have been legally prevented from using it. The mere possibility of that happening is enough to make software patents on algorithms absolutely unacceptable. A lot of maths research is done using computers these days and some fields probably wouldn't even exist without them (Fractal geometry - Mandelbrot and Julia sets etc. are the obvious and graphic example).

Economic arguments over the merits or otherwise of software patents are an irrelevance. I have purchased several general purpose electronic computers over the years and have used them for all sorts of things including writing programmes to implement bits of maths and communicating those ideas to others - sometimes in the form of explicit algorithms which for all I know may well have contained patented material. It is unconscionable to me that these largely non-economic activities be threatened by the existence of patents that benefit none but a handful of very large corporations and the parasitic community of patent lawyers. It is my computer and I will use it as I see fit and I will ignore the law if the law is enough of an ass to legalize exclusive ownership by others of the uses to which I might put my electronic machinery. I don't write fully fledged, saleable applications, I do not compete in the professional software market and if I did I would be well served by present day copyright law anyway. And when it comes to free software developer communities who could be said to compete in these markets, then if a company of full time professionals cannot carve out a profitable niche for themselves or keep up with

Slashdot is wonderfully American-centric. Imagine if this discussion was happening on say a Chinese tech site. "There's 1.3 billion of us, and only 290 million of them. The Internet should be all in English." :)

The Internet comes from an English background. Therefore, a lot of software comes with English comments and docs only. Most tech people have an understanding of it because of that, not because they like the language so much.

Any sort of admin will have to read certain mailing lists etc. They are in English only.

Let me repeat that I'm not a native speaker when it comes to English. I speak three languages. I can differentiate German from Dutch from Finnish. But it doesn't matter. Nobody can deal with all those languages in popular use unless he's some sort of miracle philologist.

The hosting provider I worked at years ago got *LOTS* of support emails in various languages. I'm really good at recognizing languages by various clues, which was very helpful to feed it to online translation services, but not everyone is good at that.

Did you have foreign customers, or why did people send in support requests in other languages? There should be some sort of form / contact page which states what languages are being understood.

If you do want to put in the effort of trying to identify languages, try TextCat and its fellow language id programs.