My only experience with linux on the ppc was.. linuxppc, a few years ago. That distro, howeever, is very much a redhat for ppc rather than a distro unto itself. Has anyone out there in slashdot land installed and used debain-ppc? How does it compare to ydl and linuxppc?
Pretty much everything you've said relates to the flaws in the US lawmaking process, not WIPO. That's 1/177 down. The parent's post is still accurate: WIPO resolutions, like those of all other international bodies, require ratification by member-states before they have force of law. Think of WIPO et al like you would the W3C and its ilk: their only purpose is to write the standard; it's up to individual companies to impliment it as they like to. And in writing a resolution in WIPO, the influence of private interests is limited to their influence on member-states.
The situation with international organzations as they stand right now is somewhat comprable to the situation in the former european colonies; locals had no official say in the running of their state. Until the second world war, the political focus of activists was mainly integration within the colonial government (i.e. more civil service positions, limited influence in the lawmaking process). After ww2, that focus shifted to control of the government (i.e. elections & self-government); it was the second focus which brought about real emancipation of the colonized. There is a parallel to this in WIPO: as it stands, people want more access and influence in the decision-making process. That's all well and good, but a much better goal (in my mind) would be to have direct representation in the bodies: voting for your UN rep, etc. While this won't solve all problems, it would be a much more elegant system than the current undemocratic resolution-writing/democratic ratification that currently exists.
Just to be clear, what do you mean by 'moral relitivism'? Beyond that, a couple points: You can't infer someone is 'intellectually weak' simply because they hold a position other than that of 'philosophers and academics'. The ivory tower gets shaken up every hundred years or so, and former outcasts get let it. No consensus is permenant. Second, you _really_ can't say that a point of view has been rejected by 'anybody who accepts reason and logic'. That's a tautology, and is as useful as saying 'I'm right because I say I'm right'. Lastly, when reading the philosophers, make sure not to confuse _morality_ and _practicality_. One might say that it is right for a society to have a law against theft for more than one reason: some say that just because they want to keep their stuff safe.
The display would be another matter, but for direction control using a gyroscope would seem to make sense.. you'd move the PocketPC/whatever itself to move up&down, left&right.
Given that Intel wants this to be availible at a consumer level in the near future, why couldn't people create robots with the ability to map terrain in front of them.. hmm...
I remember the BBC story from last night mentioning a delay of 1 day, but my cache of the page is gone now and the current article dosen't mention that, so I have to assume that I misread the original article. Sorry about that.. it was a late night..
Hmm.. It's odd, I never made reference to CNN nor did I make a qualitiative statement about the BBC - and as point of fact, I have as much respect for CNN's world coverage as I do for the BBC, at least as ti is presented in places other than the States. Anyway, since you didn't address any of the substantive points I raised in my post, here are some other points of view which may be more to your liking:
http://www.graphic.com.gh/dgraphic/news/news.htm l
http://www.mg.co.za/mg/
http://www.dispatch.co.za/
http://www.inc.co.za/online/star/
http://www.zamnet.zm/zamnet/post/post.html
http://www.nationaudio.com/News/EastAfrican/curr en t/index.htm
http://www.nationaudio.com/News/DailyNation/Toda y/ index.html
http://www.namibian.com.na/
A few points. Rwanda and Yugoslavia occured when Boutros Boutros-Ghali was the sec-gen of the UN. In these cases, and to a lesser degree that of Somalia, much of the blame should be placed on the tendeancy of member-states, especially the US, to ask great things of the UN while not offering the required personnelÂ& equipment to get the job done, while at times - most nauseously in the case of Rwanda - actively blocking any efforts to restore peace. During the same period, the UN succesfully oversaw the restoration of democracy in Cambodia, the return of order & democracy to Haiti, and the maintenance of peace where there were peacekeepers, as well as several other operations I have forgotten. Under Anan, East Timor was governed by the UN until self-government could be established (which it now has been), Kosovo was and is under a similar arrangement, and peace negotiations were overseen & peacekeepers installed between Ethiopia & Eritrea, as well as many other things I'm forgetting. I'll leave the mideast to someone more brave than I, but your last paragraph.. I most seriously suggest that you educate yourself on the current state of affairs accross Africa. First off, Anan - like many others - is doing much to improve the state of affairs in Africa, just as he is also doing much to improve the state of affairs on every other continent on earth. To insinuate he has no place on the world state because he is African, or because he spearheads initiatives like UNAIDS (which is a global program in any case) is ignorant, myopic, racist and contemptable. Few would seriously claim that 'white man' is the cause of all problems in Africa; likewise, few would claim that 'white man' is blameless for the same. The very idea of 'white man' s a reducto ad absurdum whose only valiidity arises from mindsets like yours in history.
On the UN, you're forgetting a few things.. first, the US is a founding member of the organization, and certainly had much sway in the decisions regarding the dues calculations. The US is supposed to pay 1/4 of the UN's budget because it's economic output is approximatly 1/4 of the world's economic output, and the UN is a worldwide organization. You mentioned that the EU together forms the largest economy in the world. Have you looked at the total UN dues of EU members?
Second, until very recently the US wasn't simply not paying what it was supposed to, it wasn't paying at all. After years of nonpayment, it agreed to pay only part of its back-payments in return for a downward change in its dues calculations.
Third, the US has, throughout the life of the UN made extensive use of the UN when it was most expedient, and continues to exert great influence in UN decisions - witness the ousting of Boutros Boutros-Ghali by US veto or the active hinderence of intervention in Rwanda.
Re:In case you don't read them normally,
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DMCA 2, Freedom 0
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Nevermind.. I just have a link to decss. I've been perusing slashdot too much lately..
In case you don't read them normally,
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I seem to recall this sort of system being considered for use with the Avro Arrow - at least during the CBC 'Arrow' docu-movie, mention was made of it. At 70,000 feet, though!
I remember watching a show about a search for a US navy ship that had been sunk in the days before the end of the 2nd world war (the 'Pennsylvania', I think.. it was the ship that'd brought the a-bomb to Hawa'ii) on the discovery channel. Anyway, the pointed out during the show that the 'fire-control' systems were on the bridge of the ship.
"We have to get away from the ethos that knowledge is good, knowledge should be publicly available, that information will liberate us," said University of Pennsylvania bioethicist Arthur Caplan. "Information will kill us in the techno-terrorist age, and I think it's nuts to put that stuff on Web sites."
The debate here is between the idea there is and that there is not a net benefit in having an open society, where individuals by virtue of citizenship have access to whatever information they want so long as it doesn't post an immediate and vital security threat. Once you start censoring papers and publications because they can fathomably be used to hurt the government, you limit the public's ability of oversight in public health, security, and spending. No longer can public-interest groups review and recommend changes to public works and such. You also reduce accountability of the government to the people and the press: if the plans on public works are state secrets, graft and corruption become much easier and less dangerous. Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, because this style of censorship does not have a clear standard of justification - a 'clear & present danger', say - the issue of a slippery slope comes into play. There is, I suppose, one fundamental questions to be asked: first, is the realistic danger of the censorship greater than the realistic danger of the information being censored?
I was up at 4:30 (AST); nothing much happened. At 5:00, the show started; between 5 and 5:15, the sky was nearly cloudless and the display was quite impressive - a meteor every five seconds or so, with multiple meteors several times (once, a short & quick one shot out below the radient; as it did so, a similar one shot out above the radient. Very keen.). Quite a few fireballs, as well (at least three observed). Clouds began obstructing the view at around 5:15, and by 5:30, only patches of the sky were visible, though every once in a while you could see a meteor from behind the cloud cover, which in some ways was more interesting than the meteors themselves. All in all, a great show: some of the fireballs were amazing, and the consistency after 5am was great.
Since, every time this is mentioned, independent thinkers here a slashdot crow about how foolish the concept of global warming is, here are some posts of mine from kuro5hin awhile ago on the same topic, with several pertient links to actual, real, evidence for the matter at hand. Enjoy, sand-heads:
--
Stating that long-term climate change can't be known from short-term calculations is dosen't prove or disprove anything. If you are going to try and disprove climate change, look at all the evidence that's been collected first, and look at the theoretical side of the argument. I'll give a short summery of what I know of each now; I'll try and get some links to back myself up by tonight and post them as a reply to this.
Areas of Evidence for climate change:
The general areas of evidence for climate change, as I know them, are
Ground-based temperature measurment
Balloon-based temperature measurment
Sattelite-based temperature measurment
Permaice-based atmospheric chemical content measurment
It's the last one, measurment of atmosphereic chemical content through drill-cores of permanent ice (in areas having very long term ice formations - Greenland, the Antarctic region, and so forth) which you have failed to mention, and which give some of the most compelling evidence yet - due to the informaiton's long-term charecteristics - of global climate change. What is derived from such measurments (as I said, I'll post some links tonight) is that the CO2 content in the atmosphere is now - i.e. in the last 100 or so years - increasing at a rate not seen since the last major global temperature change. What gives this evidence it's added weight is both the fact that it isn't limited to the last 100, 50, or 20 years; rather, the body of informaiton extends over thousands, tens of thousand, or more years. The other methods of measurment, too, give some proof of short-term temerpature change; further, their body of evidence, though short-term, does demonstrate three things which are not of negligable importance. First, that the temperatures measured are fluctuating, though in which direction I (under the assumption that what you have written is mostly truthful) cannot say. Second, that there that these fluctuations are occuring on a global scale. Their global scale, and their simple fluctuation - with the best sensors we have - demonstrate that there is someting happening, though exactly what cannot be known from that. Thirdly, the changes occuring are demonstrating a pattern to their change, and have been for as long as measurments have been taken. These last ten years, keep in mind, have been the warmest past ten years on record (or so I've been told more than once, though I will - as I said - get some links to back this up); further, each of these past ten years has been warmer than the previous year.
The theory of global warming
Despite the number and the justification of the questions concerning the current consensus on global warming, these arguments given have rested on questioning the evidence of the warming. What hasn't yet been addressed is the theory behind global warming. Just as CFCs were considered to be dangerous because of a theory which saw them as such, there is a method to the (to some, apparent) madness of the people who see warming as a threat. That is that C02 is a greehouse gas - i.e. the level of greenhouse gas in the atmosphere is corelated to the amount of solar radiation kept within the atmosphere of a given planet. Given this, and given that there is ample evidence that humans have been releasing - through the conversion of petrochemicals into mechanical energy - the dormant CO2 from the earth's crust into the earth's atmosphere - leads to the contention that humans are having some effect on the environment through the activites of our civilization. The only thing left to question, so long as the theory of CO2 being a greehouse gas and the contention that humans have been releasing it into the earth's atmosphere are not disproven by some unaccounted for or unmeasured piece of evidence, is the scale of the change. Given what I stated above (i.e. that the level of CO2 in the atmosphere has been seen to be increasing at it's greatest level, year over year, in an extremely long time, leads one to conclude that there is a significant possibility that humans have, or will have, some direct influence on the average temperature of the earth's atmosphere and surface. Given that a large proportion of the accessable petrochemicals have already been used, and thus that a significant proprtion of the dormant CO2 in the earth has been released into the atmosphere, I would then put forth that there is at least some cause for concern around this issue. Given, further, that there are methods by which we can now reduce, if we so desired as a population, our CO2 output, I see no compelling reason why we should not do that.
His works are brilliant.. what's more, the Culture series is both very mature in its development and very diverse in its execution. That, and they're ripping good yarns. The only drawback is the sometimes overdone gore.
I drasticly misread your post. I was talking about words in conversation, not app names. But the lawyer thing.. I may completely miss the intent of a short post, but even _I_ wouldn't take unsolicited legal advice from a (mostly) anonymous public forum..
Re:Emacs 21 is really a step ahead.
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Trademarks don't give you a right to ban words from conversation.. they don't give a right to the owning corporation to have a word redefined at will. As long as a certain meaning is understood to refer to a specific thing, then no qualification is needed. If there is no such consensus, then definition is appropriate.
Re:Oh yea! Especailly the new Harry Potter set!
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I haven't acutally _seen_ any of these newfangled sets, but hey.. fuck it. Kids are kids, and they'll find ways to use the new oddly-shaped pieces for random creations of their imaginations. As long as you have a good store of plain vanillas, you're ok.
Slashdot Mirror
My only experience with linux on the ppc was.. linuxppc, a few years ago. That distro, howeever, is very much a redhat for ppc rather than a distro unto itself. Has anyone out there in slashdot land installed and used debain-ppc? How does it compare to ydl and linuxppc?
The situation with international organzations as they stand right now is somewhat comprable to the situation in the former european colonies; locals had no official say in the running of their state. Until the second world war, the political focus of activists was mainly integration within the colonial government (i.e. more civil service positions, limited influence in the lawmaking process). After ww2, that focus shifted to control of the government (i.e. elections & self-government); it was the second focus which brought about real emancipation of the colonized. There is a parallel to this in WIPO: as it stands, people want more access and influence in the decision-making process. That's all well and good, but a much better goal (in my mind) would be to have direct representation in the bodies: voting for your UN rep, etc. While this won't solve all problems, it would be a much more elegant system than the current undemocratic resolution-writing/democratic ratification that currently exists.
Just to be clear, what do you mean by 'moral relitivism'? Beyond that, a couple points: You can't infer someone is 'intellectually weak' simply because they hold a position other than that of 'philosophers and academics'. The ivory tower gets shaken up every hundred years or so, and former outcasts get let it. No consensus is permenant. Second, you _really_ can't say that a point of view has been rejected by 'anybody who accepts reason and logic'. That's a tautology, and is as useful as saying 'I'm right because I say I'm right'. Lastly, when reading the philosophers, make sure not to confuse _morality_ and _practicality_. One might say that it is right for a society to have a law against theft for more than one reason: some say that just because they want to keep their stuff safe.
The display would be another matter, but for direction control using a gyroscope would seem to make sense.. you'd move the PocketPC/whatever itself to move up&down, left&right.
Given that Intel wants this to be availible at a consumer level in the near future, why couldn't people create robots with the ability to map terrain in front of them.. hmm...
I remember the BBC story from last night mentioning a delay of 1 day, but my cache of the page is gone now and the current article dosen't mention that, so I have to assume that I misread the original article. Sorry about that.. it was a late night..
http://www.graphic.com.gh/dgraphic/news/news.ht
http://www.mg.co.za/mg/
http://www.dispatch.co.za/
http://www.inc.co.za/online/star/
http://www.zamnet.zm/zamnet/post/post.html
http://www.nationaudio.com/News/EastAfrican/cur
http://www.nationaudio.com/News/DailyNation/Tod
http://www.namibian.com.na/
A few points. Rwanda and Yugoslavia occured when Boutros Boutros-Ghali was the sec-gen of the UN. In these cases, and to a lesser degree that of Somalia, much of the blame should be placed on the tendeancy of member-states, especially the US, to ask great things of the UN while not offering the required personnelÂ& equipment to get the job done, while at times - most nauseously in the case of Rwanda - actively blocking any efforts to restore peace. During the same period, the UN succesfully oversaw the restoration of democracy in Cambodia, the return of order & democracy to Haiti, and the maintenance of peace where there were peacekeepers, as well as several other operations I have forgotten. Under Anan, East Timor was governed by the UN until self-government could be established (which it now has been), Kosovo was and is under a similar arrangement, and peace negotiations were overseen & peacekeepers installed between Ethiopia & Eritrea, as well as many other things I'm forgetting.
I'll leave the mideast to someone more brave than I, but your last paragraph.. I most seriously suggest that you educate yourself on the current state of affairs accross Africa. First off, Anan - like many others - is doing much to improve the state of affairs in Africa, just as he is also doing much to improve the state of affairs on every other continent on earth. To insinuate he has no place on the world state because he is African, or because he spearheads initiatives like UNAIDS (which is a global program in any case) is ignorant, myopic, racist and contemptable. Few would seriously claim that 'white man' is the cause of all problems in Africa; likewise, few would claim that 'white man' is blameless for the same. The very idea of 'white man' s a reducto ad absurdum whose only valiidity arises from mindsets like yours in history.
This is OT, but I'll rant nonetheless
On the UN, you're forgetting a few things.. first, the US is a founding member of the organization, and certainly had much sway in the decisions regarding the dues calculations. The US is supposed to pay 1/4 of the UN's budget because it's economic output is approximatly 1/4 of the world's economic output, and the UN is a worldwide organization. You mentioned that the EU together forms the largest economy in the world. Have you looked at the total UN dues of EU members?
Second, until very recently the US wasn't simply not paying what it was supposed to, it wasn't paying at all. After years of nonpayment, it agreed to pay only part of its back-payments in return for a downward change in its dues calculations.
Third, the US has, throughout the life of the UN made extensive use of the UN when it was most expedient, and continues to exert great influence in UN decisions - witness the ousting of Boutros Boutros-Ghali by US veto or the active hinderence of intervention in Rwanda.
Nevermind.. I just have a link to decss. I've been perusing slashdot too much lately..
now might be a good time to look at my .sig..
I seem to recall this sort of system being considered for use with the Avro Arrow - at least during the CBC 'Arrow' docu-movie, mention was made of it. At 70,000 feet, though!
I remember watching a show about a search for a US navy ship that had been sunk in the days before the end of the 2nd world war (the 'Pennsylvania', I think.. it was the ship that'd brought the a-bomb to Hawa'ii) on the discovery channel. Anyway, the pointed out during the show that the 'fire-control' systems were on the bridge of the ship.
Forget the old slashdot, this is the new, fast-paced, slashdotzoom!
The Register some critical coverage of the same matter. Seems this may be just a PR ploy
The debate here is between the idea there is and that there is not a net benefit in having an open society, where individuals by virtue of citizenship have access to whatever information they want so long as it doesn't post an immediate and vital security threat. Once you start censoring papers and publications because they can fathomably be used to hurt the government, you limit the public's ability of oversight in public health, security, and spending. No longer can public-interest groups review and recommend changes to public works and such. You also reduce accountability of the government to the people and the press: if the plans on public works are state secrets, graft and corruption become much easier and less dangerous. Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, because this style of censorship does not have a clear standard of justification - a 'clear & present danger', say - the issue of a slippery slope comes into play. There is, I suppose, one fundamental questions to be asked: first, is the realistic danger of the censorship greater than the realistic danger of the information being censored?
I was up at 4:30 (AST); nothing much happened. At 5:00, the show started; between 5 and 5:15, the sky was nearly cloudless and the display was quite impressive - a meteor every five seconds or so, with multiple meteors several times (once, a short & quick one shot out below the radient; as it did so, a similar one shot out above the radient. Very keen.). Quite a few fireballs, as well (at least three observed). Clouds began obstructing the view at around 5:15, and by 5:30, only patches of the sky were visible, though every once in a while you could see a meteor from behind the cloud cover, which in some ways was more interesting than the meteors themselves. All in all, a great show: some of the fireballs were amazing, and the consistency after 5am was great.
Since, every time this is mentioned, independent thinkers here a slashdot crow about how foolish the concept of global warming is, here are some posts of mine from kuro5hin awhile ago on the same topic, with several pertient links to actual, real, evidence for the matter at hand. Enjoy, sand-heads:
--Stating that long-term climate change can't be known from short-term calculations is dosen't prove or disprove anything. If you are going to try and disprove climate change, look at all the evidence that's been collected first, and look at the theoretical side of the argument. I'll give a short summery of what I know of each now; I'll try and get some links to back myself up by tonight and post them as a reply to this.
Areas of Evidence for climate change:The general areas of evidence for climate change, as I know them, are
It's the last one, measurment of atmosphereic chemical content through drill-cores of permanent ice (in areas having very long term ice formations - Greenland, the Antarctic region, and so forth) which you have failed to mention, and which give some of the most compelling evidence yet - due to the informaiton's long-term charecteristics - of global climate change. What is derived from such measurments (as I said, I'll post some links tonight) is that the CO2 content in the atmosphere is now - i.e. in the last 100 or so years - increasing at a rate not seen since the last major global temperature change. What gives this evidence it's added weight is both the fact that it isn't limited to the last 100, 50, or 20 years; rather, the body of informaiton extends over thousands, tens of thousand, or more years. The other methods of measurment, too, give some proof of short-term temerpature change; further, their body of evidence, though short-term, does demonstrate three things which are not of negligable importance. First, that the temperatures measured are fluctuating, though in which direction I (under the assumption that what you have written is mostly truthful) cannot say. Second, that there that these fluctuations are occuring on a global scale. Their global scale, and their simple fluctuation - with the best sensors we have - demonstrate that there is someting happening, though exactly what cannot be known from that. Thirdly, the changes occuring are demonstrating a pattern to their change, and have been for as long as measurments have been taken. These last ten years, keep in mind, have been the warmest past ten years on record (or so I've been told more than once, though I will - as I said - get some links to back this up); further, each of these past ten years has been warmer than the previous year.
The theory of global warmingDespite the number and the justification of the questions concerning the current consensus on global warming, these arguments given have rested on questioning the evidence of the warming. What hasn't yet been addressed is the theory behind global warming. Just as CFCs were considered to be dangerous because of a theory which saw them as such, there is a method to the (to some, apparent) madness of the people who see warming as a threat. That is that C02 is a greehouse gas - i.e. the level of greenhouse gas in the atmosphere is corelated to the amount of solar radiation kept within the atmosphere of a given planet. Given this, and given that there is ample evidence that humans have been releasing - through the conversion of petrochemicals into mechanical energy - the dormant CO2 from the earth's crust into the earth's atmosphere - leads to the contention that humans are having some effect on the environment through the activites of our civilization. The only thing left to question, so long as the theory of CO2 being a greehouse gas and the contention that humans have been releasing it into the earth's atmosphere are not disproven by some unaccounted for or unmeasured piece of evidence, is the scale of the change. Given what I stated above (i.e. that the level of CO2 in the atmosphere has been seen to be increasing at it's greatest level, year over year, in an extremely long time, leads one to conclude that there is a significant possibility that humans have, or will have, some direct influence on the average temperature of the earth's atmosphere and surface. Given that a large proportion of the accessable petrochemicals have already been used, and thus that a significant proprtion of the dormant CO2 in the earth has been released into the atmosphere, I would then put forth that there is at least some cause for concern around this issue. Given, further, that there are methods by which we can now reduce, if we so desired as a population, our CO2 output, I see no compelling reason why we should not do that.
----Links to sources w/ comment: http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2001/3/2/03449/2
Did you even try and click on the savannah link in the previous post? The FSF is already providing the hosting, bandwidth, _and_ etc. You won't get your foot in your mouth if you don't run so fast, man.
His works are brilliant.. what's more, the Culture series is both very mature in its development and very diverse in its execution. That, and they're ripping good yarns. The only drawback is the sometimes overdone gore.
I drasticly misread your post. I was talking about words in conversation, not app names. But the lawyer thing.. I may completely miss the intent of a short post, but even _I_ wouldn't take unsolicited legal advice from a (mostly) anonymous public forum..
Trademarks don't give you a right to ban words from conversation.. they don't give a right to the owning corporation to have a word redefined at will. As long as a certain meaning is understood to refer to a specific thing, then no qualification is needed. If there is no such consensus, then definition is appropriate.
I haven't acutally _seen_ any of these newfangled sets, but hey.. fuck it. Kids are kids, and they'll find ways to use the new oddly-shaped pieces for random creations of their imaginations. As long as you have a good store of plain vanillas, you're ok.
What would be the consequences of, with regard to the seperation of church and state, of this if you wrote in 'politics' as your religion?
SCMP is free, like the NYT. Those were just news articles, though I think they were original.. for opinion, check out the editorial pages.