You know... it does. All this money wasted on audio, haven't they figured out that audio is transmitted through... air?
Seriously, what kind of crappy capitalism are we going for people? We need to be sold buckets (yes, buckets!) of air to fill our home theaters with so that we get perfect sound quality. After all, the sound can only be as good as the air it is moving through.
I can see it now, rich guys wearing gas masks, nay, full hazmat gear, sitting in plush recliners because sound travels that much better in an atmosphere of 5% Tellurium Hexafluoride.
(God I hope this doesn't actually happen, but I'm deathly afraid that it will.)
Look at it this way: you got a gallon of milk sitting in your fridge. You decide you want some cereal, so you pour the cereal, then you open and pour the milk. In chunks.
Then you throw out the milk and the tainted cereal and get mad because you wanted cereal.
Some genius comes along and says "hey when milk is soured it has more of chemical x, and I can make a milk indicator that lets you know when your milk is sour." Sells it to the milk bottlers and makes a fortune.
Now when you go to have cereal and you see the big red X on the side of the carton, you don't even have to smell it (unless you like the smell of sour milk) and just decide to have eggs (which you run into the same problem until someone invents a similar solution).
Point is, in a free market, in government, in your refrigerator, transparency works. More perfect information leads to more informed decisions.
This idea is only good if they make it an oven mitt shaped indentation. Otherwise you'll be seeing suits for burnt hands.
One step to better mobile computing that doesn't involve hand prints:
Divorce the components.
Text input device Pointing device Screen/display Storage Computer
Basically this means if I'm sitting in a train seat and I want to use the built in screen in the back of my neighbor's seat, I just synchronize to use it and keep my own screen packed away.
It means only one of the people in a party needs to bring their optical drive because the rest can just load-to-ram or rip the data to their HD in the computer component.
It means I'm not buying a laptop. I'm buying separate components that I can evaluate separately for their perks and faults.
There are downsides. Multiple batteries, for example.
But as far as I can tell, this is the way forward. You can even keep your laptop: someone can make a "shell" that you can fit your display, text input, storage, computer, and pointing device into a single package.
There's so many add-ons/extensions these days, you really expect them all to keep up?
I'm sure many of them that had previously updated for the 3.0 betas just have to bump their version from 3.0pre to 3.0; others may still be working on updating to 3.0 for the first time.
Depending on what parts of Firefox they extend that may be more challenging/time consuming.
Expect quite a few to be updated as soon as it dawns on the authors that 3.0 RC1 is out. If they don't know it's out, they won't know to update it yet. If you believe that's the case you could help them out by throwing them a message "RC1 is out, if possible bump your version and go through your tests to make sure nothing broke," assuming they've updated to 3.0 betas previously.
And for those of you forever holding Microsoft guilty for monopoly, do you watch MLB baseball games? The NFL? Do you avoid any products made with metals from US Steel? Do you demand that your local farmer not use seeds from Monsanto? Just how far does your moral outrage go?
I don't watch MLB, NFL. I (probably) buy some products that contain US Steel. I (probably) buy/consume some foods that contains Frankenfood.
Hardly the point. The point is that capitalism functions best under certain conditions. When a company actively works to undermine those conditions it creates an imbalance in the market which is bad for us all.
Whether Microsoft plays "fair" is basically a matter of opinion outside of the court system.
This is equivalent to saying that it is ethical to commit murder, in cold blood, over skittles, if you do not get caught. It doesn't work that way, son. The court does not have a monopoly on facts. A thing can be factual without a court even existing. That includes fairness.
Held it back how?
That's one of the problems with monopolists in creative fields. For example if only one plant could produce the color red and all paint had to be made from that plant and it was all produced by some company. That company might effectively try to control what got painted with red paint. Thus, the painting industry would be held back by the business concerns.
In the case of Microsoft they have a lot of leverage over the hardware manufacturers, OEMs, other software firms, and the like. They use that leverage to, for example, ensure that OOXML passes ISO.
Look at Auschwitz, Rwanda, Pol Pot's killing fields, Mao and Stalin's famines and purges. Look at Kristalnacht, Oklahoma City, and the Twin Towers.
I've got news for you, son. Dictators are businessmen. They just tend to use torture, death, starvation, and other similarly cruel methods instead of mere purse strings.
As to whether Gates is evil, that's a separate matter. It's one that the post you're replying to did not claim.
If you'll notice that poster put "evil" in "quotation marks" meaning 'this word has been used but I'm choosing not to take ownership of that.' Instead he/she simply supplied the typical arguments that are used and called Gates an ass.
But, since you brought it up, just because I walked up to a toddler and stole his candy instead of throttling him doesn't mean I'm not evil. That is, more extreme instances of evil do not make lesser forms cease to be evil.
I don't see Gates or Microsoft as evil, either. I see the company as one that had and has a great deal of potential to make peoples' lives better and yet does not deliver to the level I'd like to see. I see Gates in much the same way. That's not evil, that's just inadequate.
Depends how you use it. If you 'follow' people who twitter their garbage collection you'll see that. You could use it for something else entirely.
For example, you could use it to allow you to remote control your computer from your cellphone, if you were so inclined (I'd imagine having unlimited text message plan would help).
All the Comcasts of the world really need to do here is to reorganize their offerings so they make sense.
If I'm paying for x mbps up and y mbps down a month then that seems to imply a given volume up and down. They've been shown to surreptitiously cap people that actually use that implied volume. So they should be truthful about $billed_amount = $upspeed_rate * $upvolume_rate + $downspeed_rate * $downvolume_rate
They'll either try to enforce a higher price than they should because a lot of their customers are currently overcharged (ie, don't use near the implied volume) or they'll lose money.
In the first case, customers will look and say, "I'm not paying the same amount as before for the same speed but much lower volume." Comcast will be forced to be reasonable in their pricing.
So then they will be in the business of promoting more use than now, to keep their revenue growing. They'll have a great incentive to increase their network capacity.
If it comes to court, they won't use the information directly. It's a well-documented tactic to extract legal information by using illegal information and then creating a false foundation to justify the legal information. (Put legal/illegal in quotes in the previous sentence if it makes you feel better)
This is much the same with the suits regarding illegal wiretaps. If you can't show you've been illegally wiretapped, you can't sue for being illegally wiretapped. The term for this sort of situation is "Catch-22."
"What right did they have?" "Catch-22." "What?" Yossarian froze in his tracks with fear and alarm and felt his whole body begin to tingle. "What did you say?" "Catch-22," the old woman repeated, rocking her head up and down. "Catch-22. Catch-22 says they have a right to do anything we can't stop them from doing."
From Joseph Heller's Catch-22
The solution is transparency. Require disclosure of information. It's quite funny to note that this is also the most essential ingredient to a self-regulating, free market. If transparency had been in place there would be no sub-prime mortgage crisis. If transparency had been enforced, the current FAA scandal would not exist. If we valued it as a past-time there would never have been a Vietnam war much less an Iraq war.
Hell, if transparency were our policy then September Eleventh probably would have been thwarted. And so on.
So long as corporations (any institution) can systematically:
disrupt
misdirect
discredit
or otherwise neutralize the truth, hopes of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness will be:
cleansed
folded
manipulated
into dreams of:
xenophobic segregation
greed
brutality
the wholesale bleeding of:
women
children
to feed the maw of the powers that be.
Transparency solves our problems. Take Ignaz Semmelweis and Hand-washing. When it was known that a specific behavior had a specific result, more of the desirable behavior occurred and less of the undesirable behavior.
Any content that you wish to keep people from downloading while on the plane, they can easily have stored on these devices called hard drives, DVDs, etc.
Do they plan to screen your storage devices and media prior to boarding? No. They plan to censor what content you're accessing, ahem, over the network.
It's just not clear what they hope to accomplish. I'm all ears, what access do they want to filter that you couldn't already have downloaded and stored on your laptop?
You own your life. That is, the actions you take have repercussions, which you have to deal with.
And that extends to the online world, too. My website, I know what I put on there could (theoretically:o) be read by someone and cause a reaction in my life. I choose to put a widget on it that any item I share in Google Reader is (up to the limit on the widget) displayed on my site. I take these things into account when I choose to put something on that site, when I choose to share an item in Google Reader. I choose to make my shared items public (mostly Slashdot stories anyway).
But I do the same thing when I'm talking on the phone with someone, or interacting with them in person. I try to consider what I'm saying and how I'm saying it so that understanding is clear, so that information is easily acquired and assimilated.
And guess what, I'm doing that right now too, here on Slashdot responding to the article.
What is the big deal? There are some details I feel should be private and some of those details are protected by contract or law. The rest of them are at least plausibly available.
You don't know my blood pressure, you don't know my weight (err, I don't even know my blood pressure and weight), but looking through someone's Slashdot comments you can probably learn some details about their life. Same with their website, etc.
Ultimately it's what you're comfortable with. If you want to separate groups of friends or friends & family make another gmail account.
But above all remember this: if you believe your behavior is reasonable, own it. Whatever the reaction of others, good or bad, it's your life. If your wife or husband, son or daughter, mother or father, boss or coworker, friend or enemy has an opinion they'll express it. It may be kind or harsh. At the end of the day you may suffer for being who you are, but that is always better than suffering for being who you aren't.
And you shouldn't feel bad because others don't approve of you, like I said, as long as your behavior is reasonable.
I'm okay with it if they want to ditch built-in hardware in the booths, but bring back phone booths. In the airport, in the theater lobby, in the waiting rooms, the hotel lobby, and so on.
Just little single-person boxes where people having a cell-phone conversation can go to have privacy and to avoid annoying those in their environment.
Seriously, just because you can talk anywhere doesn't mean we can't have special designated spaces just like we used to when phones had fixed locations.
Sure, some would still ignore them, or they'd be full... but it's a step in the right direction.
AND, it sets an important precedent for the future when we all have mobile toilets. No more need for public restrooms, but I don't want people pissing and shitting in public.
Mere phones (especially the conspicuous consumption dreck they're hocking these days) are past their usefulness.
A Google tricorder, now that's something I'd like to see. Scan e-mail for spam, scan the milk in the fridge to make sure it's not past expiration, an end to the puzzles of moderating on slashdot as the little gizmo beeps and says "-1, Borg".
Come on Google, another cellphone? Too many people expect their phones to be a damn orgasm. I don't want that. Give me a tricorder.
We're running out of excuses in the USA for not having ubiquitous public transportation in and between any moderately sized city.
The internet lets us move data at tremendous speed. To move physical things faster we need consolidated systems too.
Yet for some reason our rulers...err leaders don't seem to be campaigning on building a public transport infrastructure to compete with those found in Japan and Europe. They just promise to turn corn into fuel for cars. Damn them.
In an ideal world would Tux go chimney-to-chimney world round in a single clockcycle and force all linux users to update tzdata at gunpoint?
Sure. This is not an ideal world.
In this non-ideal world the updated version of tzdata was added to etch-volatile at the end of July. That's a full two months anyone who needed it could've done extensive research about how to get it. http://packages.qa.debian.org/t/tzdata/news/20070731T155541Z.html
If you're a single debian etch user in NZ then simply install the update manually. Takes what, half a minute at best?
The GPLv3 doesn't prevent you from forming a contract that says "you'll pay for X months of our service if you buy this hardware."
All it says is, "If you're putting GPLv3 software on that hardware, then you have to give the source and they have to be able to meaningfully use that source on the hardware." In other words, "you can take their X months of rent for the hardware, but you can't take their freedom to not use your service with the hardware."
And I don't see what's wrong with that. The fact is I can't think of a single scenario where faulty open source software should not be replaced, yet I can think of a large number of scenarios where they could be using locked hardware to prevent the changes from propagating that are horrible.
Don't bother with a parallel organization. The better route might be to act as a watchdog/advocate outside the ISO. Active comments on ISO issues and standards, plus 'OpenISO Certification' for standards conforming to OpenISO principles.
If the ISO approved OOXML would you use it? I wouldn't.
ISO does not imply useful. OpenISO could be like the slashdot tagging system on articles.
Gonna keep this one short since it's been several days and I didn't keep up with this thread.
These claims I've heard repeatedly from various unnamed news sources and government officials that "they're only after the bad guys" -- no one backs that up. It's like if I say "yeah, here's an invisible check for $1,000,000,000,000,0.....00,000,000,000.00," good luck getting it cashed.
That's it. That's my whole argument. My argument is that we need oversight.
I can accept 9/11 if there had been oversight to make sure the jobs were done.
I can accept Katrina if there had been oversight to make sure the defenses were in place to our best ability.
True story: my first ever savings account I opened when I got my first regular-paying job when I was 15. I deposited maybe $300. Went back a few days later and checked my balance and it read $0.00. You have to watch out, mistakes get made.
Enough eyes all bugs are shallow. Enough oversight of what the hell we're doing on this planet and the problems start to get easier and they start to dissipate.
So fine, they're only tapping terrorists, or terrorists and terrorist suspects or maybe an American only if they're talking to a terrorist. Someone has to verify that and they can't be in the Administration.
They have to. Separation of duties. Prevent corruption, prevent mistakes. Oversight.
If you think I'm repeating someone or ignorant, fine. But everything you're saying sounds a lot like, "we'll gladly open your savings account." Well, guess what, I'm gonna check to see if my money's really there and that's my right and that's just sane reality. If you can't deal with it, I'm sorry.
One of the weirder things about their site is they constantly spotlight websites that allegedly (haven't looked into it) tell predators how to stalk children but then their own site is full of the same information. While they place it there in an attempt to warn parents, "these are things that predators might try," that's still information that predators themselves could use as far as I can tell.
Anyway, my general take on this sort of social problem is that being outraged isn't going to solve the problem. Locking them all up or killing them won't either. It's only when we can understand what goes wrong with their brains and either find a treatment or a way to identify them so that we can quarantine them from society (obviously still giving them as good a life as they can have) that children will be safe.
The fact that these sorts of people are so passionate about "we gotta mangle these bastards" without actually thinking about "hey, we're not going to stop kids from being abused, we're just contributing to the overall quantity of human misery" is probably a mental disorder in and of itself.
I'd like to ask you to preview your posts. It was a chore to separate what you were quoting from your responses. Also, if you choose to respond to this please try to be a little more civil. I understand you disagree with me, and maybe you really believe I'm of an inferior intellect, but it is entirely counterproductive to berate me for my beliefs. If you really, truly believe I'm anything like what you seem to paint me as then I'm not worth your time.
You think I'm wrong? Well when has a cop needed a warrant to search a car? When has a cop needed a warrant to search a suspect before handcuffing them and booking them? It all falls onto reasonable. And reasonable can be defined by law.
They can attempt to define reasonable by law, but if they say "reasonable is anything we seize we can sell on eBay for profit" won't fly. The instances where police are enabled to act without a warrant are exceptions and require the same sorts of circumstances and evidence that a warrant would require. In other words, the only way to legally search and seize WITHOUT a warrant is under conditions where if the authorities had the luxury of time to get a warrant it would be granted. Otherwise any seizure or search conducted will not be admissible as evidence ("The fruit of the poisoned tree")
Do you really think the government should be worried about a return when instituting a program?
Yes. I don't expect a direct monetary return on investment, but I do think we should see results of our programs. We spend billions on roads, then we get the economic benefits that result from having the ability to move products. That's ROI. How good it is varies from project to project, but any project that we spend billions on and it fails in its most vital capacities does need some serious overhaul or decommissioning (not expansion).
So tell me what ample warning did we have.
For one, we had a prior attack on the same target (WTC) eight years earlier. And at the very least immediately after the first tower was hit the second one became preventable. That's two in my book. They probably count as hindsight, but I tend to reject the argument that what's apparent in hindsight was inaccessible in foresight. At the very least we can, moving forward, built systems that are more resilient against the unknown plots.
What is it that you know that hundreds of people trained in the area of security don't know and never realized before you said it?
I know, for example, that if the WTC had been built as a pyramid it would not have collapsed as a result of those planes hitting it.
That's right, I'm saying that your scenario of 'as many chances as we can to stop terrorism' is not incompatible with oversight.
And how is that? How are we supposed to have security in your little world that is safer then what we have when we have a chance?
We're supposed to play smarter, not harder. That means not only trying to address the security issue, but spending time on the motivations behind terrorism as well. In other words, instead of focusing solely on putting out fires, it's a good idea to study why people are storing gasoline in their coffee makers. I've seen no indication we're really interested in addressing why Al Qaeda exists in the first place.
What could he have done that would have been any different?
The first thing he could have done is taken a little less vacation and done what he claimed in his campaigns, to put partisanship away and worked on positive reforms (specifically in intelligence and defense) before Sept. 11. But as for ON Sept. 11 they should have scrambled jets to escort planes as soon as the first one hit. Even better they could have known before it hit that it was errant and had jets scrambled then.
Nothing violates it? How about 'the right to be secure against unreasonable search and seizure' which includes 'warrants issued' (a function of the judicial branch) only with 'probable cause supported by oath or affirmation particularly describing' what is being searched, seized, etc.
And yes, go ahead and look up 'warrant' in a law dictionary (NOT on last.fm) and you'll see that it's most specifically a writ by a judge. The new law says Albert gets to send a sealed memorandum to the Chief Justice and be done with it. Only if the gathered evidence is actually needed in a court of law will it be tested for legitimacy.
The notion, 'don't need oversight' is entirely misguided. Oversight is a founding principle of the United States. And in the case of search and seizure (which includes wiretapping) it is in fact required by the Constitution. It requires warrants.
Sufficient is a relative term.
Believe that if you wish. I choose to believe that we as a people give (according to 2005 figures) about 1/4 of our GDP to our government. We were already (pre-Bush) spending a very large amount of money on defense and intelligence. Obviously on 2001/09/11 we found out our ROI is complete shit. That we are not getting what we pay for.
We had ample warning. We had it in time. They did not act appropriately. That is a failure of government. The same case as Hurricane Katrina. I don't see Congress passing a law to illegally spy on the atmosphere, however.
Your rhetoric about 'lives are at stake' is nice. It completely misses the point. My point was that we can have sane intelligence gathering that gives us every opportunity to thwart terrorist attacks and still have court oversight as is Constitutionally required. That's right, I'm saying that your scenario of 'as many chances as we can to stop terrorism' is not incompatible with oversight. Regardless of who is in power, what they claim their values are.
I am not prepared to forgive the Bush Administration for their failures on September 11th. They haven't apologized for their failures. They haven't shown any indication they would do better under a similar attack. It is the duty of the President as Commander and Chief is to protect this country. He didn't do that. If he were a private contractor he would be held liable in court for breach of contract.
You know, I'm really glad we have these government agencies so eager to set up this net and catch information exclusively about terrorist activities overseas that threaten our interests. The problem is they do not seem to understand (or want to) the implications of their actions.
Setting up a tap into the wires that carry ANY American's communication without some sort of check on their power to thwart abuse is unacceptable. As in, 'in direct violation of the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America.' They have to put some kind of oversight in place and it can't be Albert Gonzales. It has to be judicial branch.
They could have amended the FISA law to remain legal (ie, concordant with the Constitution), but instead they passed a law that does indeed violate the Constitution. And that's pretty scary, that these agencies and our President and our Congress are not sensitive to protecting the law.
There's some strong arguments against the whole program. Slashdot covered the issue of 'well what if someone hacks the tap?' and that's a big problem. There's huge potential for abuse of power, as well. And there's always the prospect of the erosion of trust within a society which leads to totalitarian-style culture. There's enough doubt about the value of this thing that it should be forced through the courts.
There's still no evidence having the exact specifications of a pending attack on the USA would enable our government to do anything to prevent it. On September 11, 2001 attacks happened despite sufficient warning. They lacked the will to properly defend the country then. Now is no different.
I think the purpose of the theoretical example of negative shaping to achieve neutrality is predicated on the idea that network partiality only makes sense because you're giving advantage to someone. That advantage is leverage as a means to revenue.
ISP Q turns all connections to 10% strength and then puts their tip jar out. Whoever throws money in gets the 10% widened and has a merit-agnostic advantage to attract customers. But if ISP R leases bandwith from Q, even with Q's 10% rule, they can ensure only the 10% on all connections. That removes the advantage. This is especially effective because Q has a contractual agreement to provide better connectivity to the tippers and they're also bound to lease their lines to other companies. Since R thwarts partiality the tippers won't keep paying Q and while Q can keep all lines at 10% their revenue won't go up. Sooner or later a Q-type company will open to say 15% to try to bring in more customers since their partiality scheme failed. Other Q-type will follow and the consumer will benefit.
In theory, anyway. In practice, if the government regulators and the ISPs want to be anti-competitive bastards about things then they'll end up costing their country a lot of money. This already seems to be happening in the USA with our dismal consumer broadband offerings and similar technological deficiencies.
Slashdot's new AJAX-based comment system is definitely an improvement, for example.
Tell that to the moderators. Until the new comment system I never made a moderation error. With the new system as soon as I select a moderation for a comment it gets applied. Recently I was moderating and I accidentally moved my mouse over the wrong rating (I meant insightful, but accidentally hit redundant); there was no way (as far as I could tell) to undo this mistake.
With the old system you selected mods for all comments in a discussion you wanted to moderate, then clicked "moderate." That way if you selected the wrong moderation it wasn't instant. Maybe I should turn off the new comment system when I'm moderating, but the simpler solution would be to give me an option (is there one?) to turn off 'instant moderation.'
Please reply if there's a way to make sure I don't do that again, as it bums me out when someone is unjustly moderated simply due to a combination of bad design and human error.
Slashdot Mirror
You know... it does. All this money wasted on audio, haven't they figured out that audio is transmitted through... air?
Seriously, what kind of crappy capitalism are we going for people? We need to be sold buckets (yes, buckets!) of air to fill our home theaters with so that we get perfect sound quality. After all, the sound can only be as good as the air it is moving through.
I can see it now, rich guys wearing gas masks, nay, full hazmat gear, sitting in plush recliners because sound travels that much better in an atmosphere of 5% Tellurium Hexafluoride.
(God I hope this doesn't actually happen, but I'm deathly afraid that it will.)
The solution is transparency.
Look at it this way: you got a gallon of milk sitting in your fridge. You decide you want some cereal, so you pour the cereal, then you open and pour the milk. In chunks.
Then you throw out the milk and the tainted cereal and get mad because you wanted cereal.
Some genius comes along and says "hey when milk is soured it has more of chemical x, and I can make a milk indicator that lets you know when your milk is sour." Sells it to the milk bottlers and makes a fortune.
Now when you go to have cereal and you see the big red X on the side of the carton, you don't even have to smell it (unless you like the smell of sour milk) and just decide to have eggs (which you run into the same problem until someone invents a similar solution).
Point is, in a free market, in government, in your refrigerator, transparency works. More perfect information leads to more informed decisions.
This idea is only good if they make it an oven mitt shaped indentation. Otherwise you'll be seeing suits for burnt hands.
One step to better mobile computing that doesn't involve hand prints:
Divorce the components.
Text input device
Pointing device
Screen/display
Storage
Computer
Basically this means if I'm sitting in a train seat and I want to use the built in screen in the back of my neighbor's seat, I just synchronize to use it and keep my own screen packed away.
It means only one of the people in a party needs to bring their optical drive because the rest can just load-to-ram or rip the data to their HD in the computer component.
It means I'm not buying a laptop. I'm buying separate components that I can evaluate separately for their perks and faults.
There are downsides. Multiple batteries, for example.
But as far as I can tell, this is the way forward. You can even keep your laptop: someone can make a "shell" that you can fit your display, text input, storage, computer, and pointing device into a single package.
Huzzah.
There's so many add-ons/extensions these days, you really expect them all to keep up?
I'm sure many of them that had previously updated for the 3.0 betas just have to bump their version from 3.0pre to 3.0; others may still be working on updating to 3.0 for the first time.
Depending on what parts of Firefox they extend that may be more challenging/time consuming.
Expect quite a few to be updated as soon as it dawns on the authors that 3.0 RC1 is out. If they don't know it's out, they won't know to update it yet. If you believe that's the case you could help them out by throwing them a message "RC1 is out, if possible bump your version and go through your tests to make sure nothing broke," assuming they've updated to 3.0 betas previously.
I don't watch MLB, NFL. I (probably) buy some products that contain US Steel. I (probably) buy/consume some foods that contains Frankenfood.
Hardly the point. The point is that capitalism functions best under certain conditions. When a company actively works to undermine those conditions it creates an imbalance in the market which is bad for us all.
This is equivalent to saying that it is ethical to commit murder, in cold blood, over skittles, if you do not get caught. It doesn't work that way, son. The court does not have a monopoly on facts. A thing can be factual without a court even existing. That includes fairness.
That's one of the problems with monopolists in creative fields. For example if only one plant could produce the color red and all paint had to be made from that plant and it was all produced by some company. That company might effectively try to control what got painted with red paint. Thus, the painting industry would be held back by the business concerns.
In the case of Microsoft they have a lot of leverage over the hardware manufacturers, OEMs, other software firms, and the like. They use that leverage to, for example, ensure that OOXML passes ISO.
I've got news for you, son. Dictators are businessmen. They just tend to use torture, death, starvation, and other similarly cruel methods instead of mere purse strings.
As to whether Gates is evil, that's a separate matter. It's one that the post you're replying to did not claim.
If you'll notice that poster put "evil" in "quotation marks" meaning 'this word has been used but I'm choosing not to take ownership of that.' Instead he/she simply supplied the typical arguments that are used and called Gates an ass.
But, since you brought it up, just because I walked up to a toddler and stole his candy instead of throttling him doesn't mean I'm not evil. That is, more extreme instances of evil do not make lesser forms cease to be evil.
I don't see Gates or Microsoft as evil, either. I see the company as one that had and has a great deal of potential to make peoples' lives better and yet does not deliver to the level I'd like to see. I see Gates in much the same way. That's not evil, that's just inadequate.
Any statistician should be able to tell you that the odds are in favor of the existence of a god.
Really? You made the claim, I'd like to see the actual figures and their basis.
[...] walking along a beach and happen upon a beautiful Swiss watch lying in the sand near the surf.
Begs the question: who made the creator?
Unless you've got an answer other than "always existed" then you just have a more elaborate version of saying the watch came out of nothing.
Depends how you use it. If you 'follow' people who twitter their garbage collection you'll see that. You could use it for something else entirely.
For example, you could use it to allow you to remote control your computer from your cellphone, if you were so inclined (I'd imagine having unlimited text message plan would help).
All the Comcasts of the world really need to do here is to reorganize their offerings so they make sense.
If I'm paying for x mbps up and y mbps down a month then that seems to imply a given volume up and down. They've been shown to surreptitiously cap people that actually use that implied volume. So they should be truthful about $billed_amount = $upspeed_rate * $upvolume_rate + $downspeed_rate * $downvolume_rate
They'll either try to enforce a higher price than they should because a lot of their customers are currently overcharged (ie, don't use near the implied volume) or they'll lose money.
In the first case, customers will look and say, "I'm not paying the same amount as before for the same speed but much lower volume." Comcast will be forced to be reasonable in their pricing.
So then they will be in the business of promoting more use than now, to keep their revenue growing. They'll have a great incentive to increase their network capacity.
This is much the same with the suits regarding illegal wiretaps. If you can't show you've been illegally wiretapped, you can't sue for being illegally wiretapped. The term for this sort of situation is "Catch-22."
From Joseph Heller's Catch-22
The solution is transparency. Require disclosure of information. It's quite funny to note that this is also the most essential ingredient to a self-regulating, free market. If transparency had been in place there would be no sub-prime mortgage crisis. If transparency had been enforced, the current FAA scandal would not exist. If we valued it as a past-time there would never have been a Vietnam war much less an Iraq war.
Hell, if transparency were our policy then September Eleventh probably would have been thwarted. And so on.
So long as corporations (any institution) can systematically:
or otherwise neutralize the truth, hopes of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness will be:
into dreams of:
to feed the maw of the powers that be.
Transparency solves our problems. Take Ignaz Semmelweis and Hand-washing. When it was known that a specific behavior had a specific result, more of the desirable behavior occurred and less of the undesirable behavior.
Perfume - Polyrhythm (Japanese music video): http://youtube.com/watch?v=qjL_FM23FzU&fmt=6
Touhou 8 - Final Boss (Japanese video game): http://youtube.com/watch?v=UOWR1_uMdW8&fmt=6
CNN/Univision Debate: http://youtube.com/watch?v=_BGyWYtee18&fmt=6
These are the only ones I found (the skate dog shows up too) in a google search for site:youtube.com "fmt=6"
http://www.google.com/search?q=+site:youtube.com+%22fmt%3D6%22&num=100&hl=en&safe=off&filter=0
My guess at this point is they are reencoding the original uploads iff they are higher bitrate than the old codec youtube was using.
Any content that you wish to keep people from downloading while on the plane, they can easily have stored on these devices called hard drives, DVDs, etc.
Do they plan to screen your storage devices and media prior to boarding? No. They plan to censor what content you're accessing, ahem, over the network.
It's just not clear what they hope to accomplish. I'm all ears, what access do they want to filter that you couldn't already have downloaded and stored on your laptop?
You own your life. That is, the actions you take have repercussions, which you have to deal with.
:o) be read by someone and cause a reaction in my life. I choose to put a widget on it that any item I share in Google Reader is (up to the limit on the widget) displayed on my site. I take these things into account when I choose to put something on that site, when I choose to share an item in Google Reader. I choose to make my shared items public (mostly Slashdot stories anyway).
And that extends to the online world, too. My website, I know what I put on there could (theoretically
But I do the same thing when I'm talking on the phone with someone, or interacting with them in person. I try to consider what I'm saying and how I'm saying it so that understanding is clear, so that information is easily acquired and assimilated.
And guess what, I'm doing that right now too, here on Slashdot responding to the article.
What is the big deal? There are some details I feel should be private and some of those details are protected by contract or law. The rest of them are at least plausibly available.
You don't know my blood pressure, you don't know my weight (err, I don't even know my blood pressure and weight), but looking through someone's Slashdot comments you can probably learn some details about their life. Same with their website, etc.
Ultimately it's what you're comfortable with. If you want to separate groups of friends or friends & family make another gmail account.
But above all remember this: if you believe your behavior is reasonable, own it. Whatever the reaction of others, good or bad, it's your life. If your wife or husband, son or daughter, mother or father, boss or coworker, friend or enemy has an opinion they'll express it. It may be kind or harsh. At the end of the day you may suffer for being who you are, but that is always better than suffering for being who you aren't.
And you shouldn't feel bad because others don't approve of you, like I said, as long as your behavior is reasonable.
I'm okay with it if they want to ditch built-in hardware in the booths, but bring back phone booths.
In the airport, in the theater lobby, in the waiting rooms, the hotel lobby, and so on.
Just little single-person boxes where people having a cell-phone conversation can go to have privacy and to avoid annoying those in their environment.
Seriously, just because you can talk anywhere doesn't mean we can't have special designated spaces just like we used to when phones had fixed locations.
Sure, some would still ignore them, or they'd be full... but it's a step in the right direction.
AND, it sets an important precedent for the future when we all have mobile toilets. No more need for public restrooms, but I don't want people pissing and shitting in public.
Thanks.
Mere phones (especially the conspicuous consumption dreck they're hocking these days) are past their usefulness.
A Google tricorder, now that's something I'd like to see. Scan e-mail for spam, scan the milk in the fridge to make sure it's not past expiration, an end to the puzzles of moderating on slashdot as the little gizmo beeps and says "-1, Borg".
Come on Google, another cellphone? Too many people expect their phones to be a damn orgasm. I don't want that. Give me a tricorder.
We're running out of excuses in the USA for not having ubiquitous public transportation in and between any moderately sized city.
The internet lets us move data at tremendous speed. To move physical things faster we need consolidated systems too.
Yet for some reason our rulers...err leaders don't seem to be campaigning on building a public transport infrastructure to compete with those found in Japan and Europe. They just promise to turn corn into fuel for cars. Damn them.
In an ideal world would Tux go chimney-to-chimney world round in a single clockcycle and force all linux users to update tzdata at gunpoint?
Sure. This is not an ideal world.
In this non-ideal world the updated version of tzdata was added to etch-volatile at the end of July. That's a full two months anyone who needed it could've done extensive research about how to get it. http://packages.qa.debian.org/t/tzdata/news/20070731T155541Z.html
If you're a single debian etch user in NZ then simply install the update manually. Takes what, half a minute at best?
If you're admin of a lot of etch systems you should either put volatile in your repository list or (I like this better) set up a local repository on your own network so that you can roll out exactly the packages and versions you want.
And for the sake of anyone who does need this package and is patiently waiting. Stop waiting.
http://packages.debian.org/etch-volatile/tzdata/all/download
It's right there.
The GPLv3 doesn't prevent you from forming a contract that says "you'll pay for X months of our service if you buy this hardware."
All it says is, "If you're putting GPLv3 software on that hardware, then you have to give the source and they have to be able to meaningfully use that source on the hardware." In other words, "you can take their X months of rent for the hardware, but you can't take their freedom to not use your service with the hardware."
And I don't see what's wrong with that. The fact is I can't think of a single scenario where faulty open source software should not be replaced, yet I can think of a large number of scenarios where they could be using locked hardware to prevent the changes from propagating that are horrible.
Don't bother with a parallel organization. The better route might be to act as a watchdog/advocate outside the ISO. Active comments on ISO issues and standards, plus 'OpenISO Certification' for standards conforming to OpenISO principles.
If the ISO approved OOXML would you use it? I wouldn't.
ISO does not imply useful. OpenISO could be like the slashdot tagging system on articles.
Gonna keep this one short since it's been several days and I didn't keep up with this thread.
These claims I've heard repeatedly from various unnamed news sources and government officials that "they're only after the bad guys" -- no one backs that up. It's like if I say "yeah, here's an invisible check for $1,000,000,000,000,0.....00,000,000,000.00," good luck getting it cashed.
That's it. That's my whole argument. My argument is that we need oversight.
I can accept 9/11 if there had been oversight to make sure the jobs were done.
I can accept Katrina if there had been oversight to make sure the defenses were in place to our best ability.
True story: my first ever savings account I opened when I got my first regular-paying job when I was 15. I deposited maybe $300. Went back a few days later and checked my balance and it read $0.00. You have to watch out, mistakes get made.
Enough eyes all bugs are shallow. Enough oversight of what the hell we're doing on this planet and the problems start to get easier and they start to dissipate.
So fine, they're only tapping terrorists, or terrorists and terrorist suspects or maybe an American only if they're talking to a terrorist. Someone has to verify that and they can't be in the Administration.
They have to. Separation of duties. Prevent corruption, prevent mistakes. Oversight.
If you think I'm repeating someone or ignorant, fine. But everything you're saying sounds a lot like, "we'll gladly open your savings account." Well, guess what, I'm gonna check to see if my money's really there and that's my right and that's just sane reality. If you can't deal with it, I'm sorry.
One of the weirder things about their site is they constantly spotlight websites that allegedly (haven't looked into it) tell predators how to stalk children but then their own site is full of the same information. While they place it there in an attempt to warn parents, "these are things that predators might try," that's still information that predators themselves could use as far as I can tell.
Anyway, my general take on this sort of social problem is that being outraged isn't going to solve the problem. Locking them all up or killing them won't either. It's only when we can understand what goes wrong with their brains and either find a treatment or a way to identify them so that we can quarantine them from society (obviously still giving them as good a life as they can have) that children will be safe.
The fact that these sorts of people are so passionate about "we gotta mangle these bastards" without actually thinking about "hey, we're not going to stop kids from being abused, we're just contributing to the overall quantity of human misery" is probably a mental disorder in and of itself.
They can attempt to define reasonable by law, but if they say "reasonable is anything we seize we can sell on eBay for profit" won't fly. The instances where police are enabled to act without a warrant are exceptions and require the same sorts of circumstances and evidence that a warrant would require. In other words, the only way to legally search and seize WITHOUT a warrant is under conditions where if the authorities had the luxury of time to get a warrant it would be granted. Otherwise any seizure or search conducted will not be admissible as evidence ("The fruit of the poisoned tree")
Yes. I don't expect a direct monetary return on investment, but I do think we should see results of our programs. We spend billions on roads, then we get the economic benefits that result from having the ability to move products. That's ROI. How good it is varies from project to project, but any project that we spend billions on and it fails in its most vital capacities does need some serious overhaul or decommissioning (not expansion).
For one, we had a prior attack on the same target (WTC) eight years earlier. And at the very least immediately after the first tower was hit the second one became preventable. That's two in my book. They probably count as hindsight, but I tend to reject the argument that what's apparent in hindsight was inaccessible in foresight. At the very least we can, moving forward, built systems that are more resilient against the unknown plots.
I know, for example, that if the WTC had been built as a pyramid it would not have collapsed as a result of those planes hitting it.
We're supposed to play smarter, not harder. That means not only trying to address the security issue, but spending time on the motivations behind terrorism as well. In other words, instead of focusing solely on putting out fires, it's a good idea to study why people are storing gasoline in their coffee makers. I've seen no indication we're really interested in addressing why Al Qaeda exists in the first place.
The first thing he could have done is taken a little less vacation and done what he claimed in his campaigns, to put partisanship away and worked on positive reforms (specifically in intelligence and defense) before Sept. 11. But as for ON Sept. 11 they should have scrambled jets to escort planes as soon as the first one hit. Even better they could have known before it hit that it was errant and had jets scrambled then.
But to reiterate my bottom line on this issue:
We do need intel
Nothing violates it? How about 'the right to be secure against unreasonable search and seizure' which includes 'warrants issued' (a function of the judicial branch) only with 'probable cause supported by oath or affirmation particularly describing' what is being searched, seized, etc.
And yes, go ahead and look up 'warrant' in a law dictionary (NOT on last.fm) and you'll see that it's most specifically a writ by a judge. The new law says Albert gets to send a sealed memorandum to the Chief Justice and be done with it. Only if the gathered evidence is actually needed in a court of law will it be tested for legitimacy.
The notion, 'don't need oversight' is entirely misguided. Oversight is a founding principle of the United States. And in the case of search and seizure (which includes wiretapping) it is in fact required by the Constitution. It requires warrants.
Sufficient is a relative term.
Believe that if you wish. I choose to believe that we as a people give (according to 2005 figures) about 1/4 of our GDP to our government. We were already (pre-Bush) spending a very large amount of money on defense and intelligence. Obviously on 2001/09/11 we found out our ROI is complete shit. That we are not getting what we pay for.
We had ample warning. We had it in time. They did not act appropriately. That is a failure of government. The same case as Hurricane Katrina. I don't see Congress passing a law to illegally spy on the atmosphere, however.
Your rhetoric about 'lives are at stake' is nice. It completely misses the point. My point was that we can have sane intelligence gathering that gives us every opportunity to thwart terrorist attacks and still have court oversight as is Constitutionally required. That's right, I'm saying that your scenario of 'as many chances as we can to stop terrorism' is not incompatible with oversight. Regardless of who is in power, what they claim their values are.
I am not prepared to forgive the Bush Administration for their failures on September 11th. They haven't apologized for their failures. They haven't shown any indication they would do better under a similar attack. It is the duty of the President as Commander and Chief is to protect this country. He didn't do that. If he were a private contractor he would be held liable in court for breach of contract.
You know, I'm really glad we have these government agencies so eager to set up this net and catch information exclusively about terrorist activities overseas that threaten our interests. The problem is they do not seem to understand (or want to) the implications of their actions.
Setting up a tap into the wires that carry ANY American's communication without some sort of check on their power to thwart abuse is unacceptable. As in, 'in direct violation of the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America.' They have to put some kind of oversight in place and it can't be Albert Gonzales. It has to be judicial branch.
They could have amended the FISA law to remain legal (ie, concordant with the Constitution), but instead they passed a law that does indeed violate the Constitution. And that's pretty scary, that these agencies and our President and our Congress are not sensitive to protecting the law.
There's some strong arguments against the whole program. Slashdot covered the issue of 'well what if someone hacks the tap?' and that's a big problem. There's huge potential for abuse of power, as well. And there's always the prospect of the erosion of trust within a society which leads to totalitarian-style culture. There's enough doubt about the value of this thing that it should be forced through the courts.
There's still no evidence having the exact specifications of a pending attack on the USA would enable our government to do anything to prevent it. On September 11, 2001 attacks happened despite sufficient warning. They lacked the will to properly defend the country then. Now is no different.
I think the purpose of the theoretical example of negative shaping to achieve neutrality is predicated on the idea that network partiality only makes sense because you're giving advantage to someone. That advantage is leverage as a means to revenue.
ISP Q turns all connections to 10% strength and then puts their tip jar out. Whoever throws money in gets the 10% widened and has a merit-agnostic advantage to attract customers. But if ISP R leases bandwith from Q, even with Q's 10% rule, they can ensure only the 10% on all connections. That removes the advantage. This is especially effective because Q has a contractual agreement to provide better connectivity to the tippers and they're also bound to lease their lines to other companies. Since R thwarts partiality the tippers won't keep paying Q and while Q can keep all lines at 10% their revenue won't go up. Sooner or later a Q-type company will open to say 15% to try to bring in more customers since their partiality scheme failed. Other Q-type will follow and the consumer will benefit.
In theory, anyway. In practice, if the government regulators and the ISPs want to be anti-competitive bastards about things then they'll end up costing their country a lot of money. This already seems to be happening in the USA with our dismal consumer broadband offerings and similar technological deficiencies.
Tell that to the moderators. Until the new comment system I never made a moderation error. With the new system as soon as I select a moderation for a comment it gets applied. Recently I was moderating and I accidentally moved my mouse over the wrong rating (I meant insightful, but accidentally hit redundant); there was no way (as far as I could tell) to undo this mistake.
With the old system you selected mods for all comments in a discussion you wanted to moderate, then clicked "moderate." That way if you selected the wrong moderation it wasn't instant. Maybe I should turn off the new comment system when I'm moderating, but the simpler solution would be to give me an option (is there one?) to turn off 'instant moderation.'
Please reply if there's a way to make sure I don't do that again, as it bums me out when someone is unjustly moderated simply due to a combination of bad design and human error.