Some were solo. Some were part of a group. Some were coordinated by the EFF, and if that's not a "large group" on our side, then what is?
So far, every such effort I've been involved with came to naught.
How much effort must one waste at a futile thing, before one is allowed to give up and try a different approach that might work? The answer is far less than "infinite", yet I doubt I could prove to your satisfaction that my efforts were in vain with anything less than total devotion of my every waking moment to this particular cause. Again, I can only speak for myself - perhaps others may find ways that they can suceed at such efforts - but I do decide my own actions.
I can only speak for myself, but...it's not apathy for me. I vote. I occasionally write to my Representative and Senator. I've filed comments in a few of the "request for public comment" bits mentioned above.
And, every single time, I've seen every point I tried to make utterly ignored, in favor of enough money from the entertainment barons to buy enough votes (through ads, pork projects, films and TV shows to drive points home) to make more people vote for the incumbent anyway.
When every single attempt at activism results in such poor results, I must conclude, as I suspect many others have on even less evidence, that my time is wasted in such endeavors. I therefore instead spend my time in other pursuits, in the hopes of creating a better place and moving there before The Powers That Be get around to destroying my life for daring not to be another mindless consumer, as they seem so intent on doing to so many people. It will take many years, perhaps a few decades, to set up said better place, but things aren't that bad yet...
I hear you. I can honestly say that I am for freedom of speech, even for my worst enemies - let the world hear their lies, so long as I or others can in turn expose said lies for what they are - but my own is an increasingly solo voice...
Ok, wild notion here, but...are you saying we should just get rid of copyright altogether? (Or, at least, severely reduce it - say, back to the 28 or so years maximum it was back around the USA's founding?)
We can wish. Sadly, with the current Congress, it's more likely we'd sooner see an amendment passed to revoke the First Amendment. Not necessarily ratified by the states, mind, but it would have an easy ride getting most of the Congressional votes it'd need to be sent to the states for ratification.
But who says anyone will use the corporate names? As it is now, sports media go out of their way to avoid using corporate names for stadiums. ("The ballpark formerly known as Candlestick Park", for example, instead of "3Com Park".)
Besides, I'd rather see the corporations up there than see no one up there. And as it is now, practically no one's up there (literally no one, if you go above LEO and exclude robots).
Hmm. Gee. Wide, open frontiers. New civilizations, some empires but usually primitive compared to the explorers. Frontier living means you're often your own law.
"If A then B" logically implies "If not-B then not-A".
I'm sorry, but you are factually incorrect. Please refer to almost any textbook on Boolean logic, or a medium-to-advanced Web text on same (i.e., not simplified for search engines only). "If A then B" means only that "A and not(B)" is not true; "A and B", "not(A) and B", and "not(A) and not(B)" can all be true if "if A then B" is true.
The term you are probably thinking of is "if and only if", commonly abbreviated to "iff". "If and only if A then B" means that either "A and B" or "not(A) and not(B)" must be true. This is the common English meaning of "if", however it is not the logical/academic usage which computers, and programmers (most of the time), use - thus, it is not the common usage within Slashdot's audience.
Which does not, of course, change the fact that you are right about being able to find water without life. However, water is a good indicator for life: there is a much higher probability of finding (Earth-like) life where there is water than where there is none. It is not proof, of course - what might constitute "proof" is in question, though I suspect it might suffice to launch a probe with a microscope to the location in question and observe some single celled organisms moving around.
Reopening of the remedy portion? Umm, there was a reason this wasn't done when the previous Final Judgement was found to be not working, no? And it lead us right back here...
I just wonder how far they'll push you before you say "Ok, we're making the *complete* source code to Windows and Office public domain now!" And what the odds are that they see you would do it, and back down before then.
Then why hasn't congress passed any worthwhile laws recently?
Who defines "worthwhile"? Some of them think the PATRIOT Act was worthwhile, though a number of us would disagree. Frankly, I'm just glad they haven't passed even more "worthwhile" laws like that recently - and doubly so that passing laws in situations like this is (supposed to be) hard. As for why they think those laws are worth passing, well, that's a political discussion that would take its own Katz article; suffice it to say for me, I voted against the current administration.
I mean, why do we still have SPAM,
There are laws against junk faxes, for much the same reason as the grievances against junk email. The laws are almost never enforced. Merely passing laws will not help.
and those ads that spawn other ads when you close them,
I surf the 'Net with Javascript turned off, only turning it on when I run across a site that requires it - and turning it back off when I'm done. Or, if I need Javascript on for an extended period of time, I turn it off immediately if I run into whack-a-mole popups, just long enough to close said popups, then turn it back on and resume life. I don't have any problem with popup ads.
and why do I have to goddamn pass idiots in the right lane because they drive 54 in the left lane and won't pull over?
Because no cop has come and pulled them over. If you have the local police department's number (not 911: this isn't an emergency), get on the offender's tail (but don't tailgate) long enough to read the license plate, then put in a call to the cops filing a complaint. They will probably at least investigate, and maybe even dispatch a car immediately (if you tell them where you are), since 54 in the left lane is a safety hazard (assuming there is space in the other lanes to pull into, and it's not 54 vs. 34 in all other lanes).
It is almost never the case that a big agency or institution has only one, current, urgent project that supercedes everything else. FBI fighting terrorism, NASA with the ISS, EFF fighting the MPAA/RIAA...sure, they're important, but they're never "drop everything else and deal only with this". Besides, the effectiveness that could be gained by dropping all the other projects and working only on the one is minimal, in some cases actually negative.
Don't confuse the needs of an animator with those of final production rendering.
Hear, hear. For final production rendering, there's services like NetRendered that can take care of it for you. You don't want to run that on your own desktop, unless you don't want to use your desktop for anything else for a few days (depending on the length and quality of the animation).
Re:What is important in technology?
on
This is IT?
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· Score: 2
Ok, so mecha won't be worth deploying until they're cheap enough. That's a legitimate concern, but not an insurmountable one. If I can make a suit of powered armor for less than the $200k cost of a missile, plus make its controls so intuitive (basically, reacting to the body's movement) that practically zero training is required, then your argument against military apps goes away. Alternately, if I can make a mech suit for about the cost of a forklift, and make it so that the user has a better (closer) view of what's being lifted so as to be more precise than would be possible with a forklift - or so that it can lift irregular cargo (like, say, debris from the WTC) that would simply roll off or slide through a similary priced forklift's lifters - then that argument goes away.
Granted, it would be difficult to do the above. Few things worth doing are easy. But it's far from impossible, even when one considers recovering development costs.
I know, this is so late that it probably won't ever be seen, but what the hey?
Of course, there is the nontrivial barrier of inventing an artificial form of cellular respiration (or other means of extracting energy from glucose) that will fit in whatever physical constraints this device needs to have.
It's been a few years since I took biology, but isn't there a step of respiration that involves electron transfer? Intercept that electron, and you've got power.
Of course, the biggest problem would be relying on this, at least at first, as a source of major power. It wouldn't be, at first. But, merely using it as automatic, minimal-will-needed weight control would allow even crude versions to find a successful market...thus providing funds to refine it enough that one could get useable amounts of electric power out.
Revolutionary new developments in lasers whose frequency is not absorbed by typical munition casings. (Consider: microwaves can heat water inside a ceramic container without directly heating the container itself. True, they do react with metal, but at least some of the energy would penetrate.)
Re:are artillery shells that delicate?
on
Battlefield Lasers
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· Score: 1
Consider: the explosion inside has to get out of the shell upon detonation. Sure, you could armor the shell more, but that would use some of the blast energy just tearing the shells apart...or turn the shell into effectively a shaped charge, blowing out only the laser-weakened side.
Well...that's one of the neat things about exploring: you don't care who owns it, so long as the owner can't kick you out. And, right now, there are no guns on Mars to force explorers away.
Mars, and other celestial properties, will belong to those who actually land there and develop them. Arguing about it before actually using it just delays the time when people will actually start using it.
He's talking of something that would be reporting to a government archive. Assumedly the only time something in this archive could be used against you would be in a court of law.
You don't even need to cite the long history of government abuses of power for this one (though that would help). Open information, sunshine laws, freedom of information: usually a good thing; in this case, they allow just anyone to view the data. Which in itself is not so bad, but then people can say "there is data in the archives", and use that claim - without letting others verify it, just banking on public desire for scandal to let the public assume it's actually there - to accuse others of anything. Yes, it falls far short of our (and most legal) standards of proof, but I'm talking about the court of public opinion.
Sure, it wouldn't prevent someone dressing up like you and doing whatever, but geez, that possibility is out there right now with camcorders... He's just talking about making it widespread.
Aye, and there's another rub. If video evidence is even more heavily believed and easier to obtain, then the cost/benefit to faking a personal act and filming it shifts in the faker's favor.
Slashdot Mirror
Since many folks here are talking about what they got for Christmas ... I'll do something different and say what I gave.
;)
Wish I had mod points, to give you +1 Insightful.
Some were solo. Some were part of a group. Some were coordinated by the EFF, and if that's not a "large group" on our side, then what is?
So far, every such effort I've been involved with came to naught.
How much effort must one waste at a futile thing, before one is allowed to give up and try a different approach that might work? The answer is far less than "infinite", yet I doubt I could prove to your satisfaction that my efforts were in vain with anything less than total devotion of my every waking moment to this particular cause. Again, I can only speak for myself - perhaps others may find ways that they can suceed at such efforts - but I do decide my own actions.
I can only speak for myself, but...it's not apathy for me. I vote. I occasionally write to my Representative and Senator. I've filed comments in a few of the "request for public comment" bits mentioned above.
And, every single time, I've seen every point I tried to make utterly ignored, in favor of enough money from the entertainment barons to buy enough votes (through ads, pork projects, films and TV shows to drive points home) to make more people vote for the incumbent anyway.
When every single attempt at activism results in such poor results, I must conclude, as I suspect many others have on even less evidence, that my time is wasted in such endeavors. I therefore instead spend my time in other pursuits, in the hopes of creating a better place and moving there before The Powers That Be get around to destroying my life for daring not to be another mindless consumer, as they seem so intent on doing to so many people. It will take many years, perhaps a few decades, to set up said better place, but things aren't that bad yet...
I hear you. I can honestly say that I am for freedom of speech, even for my worst enemies - let the world hear their lies, so long as I or others can in turn expose said lies for what they are - but my own is an increasingly solo voice...
Ok, wild notion here, but...are you saying we should just get rid of copyright altogether? (Or, at least, severely reduce it - say, back to the 28 or so years maximum it was back around the USA's founding?)
We can wish. Sadly, with the current Congress, it's more likely we'd sooner see an amendment passed to revoke the First Amendment. Not necessarily ratified by the states, mind, but it would have an easy ride getting most of the Congressional votes it'd need to be sent to the states for ratification.
But who says anyone will use the corporate names? As it is now, sports media go out of their way to avoid using corporate names for stadiums. ("The ballpark formerly known as Candlestick Park", for example, instead of "3Com Park".)
Besides, I'd rather see the corporations up there than see no one up there. And as it is now, practically no one's up there (literally no one, if you go above LEO and exclude robots).
Oh, right, sorry. Misread your statement as "A->B == !A->!B". I didn't see the A/B getting reversed.
Nevermind. ^_^;;;
"He who breaks a thing to find out what it is, has left the path of wisdom." - Gandalf
Wise snippets he may have had, but I've always thought that even - especially - the orcs knew better than that one.
Hmm. Gee. Wide, open frontiers. New civilizations, some empires but usually primitive compared to the explorers. Frontier living means you're often your own law.
Nope, no similarities whatsoever.
Those who observe it would be no more. Everyone else would celebrate...until the world starts rotting for a lack of dreams.
;)
Or: so that's how we could power a warp drive!
If we're talking anime anyway, Trigun might also fit what the poster was asking about.
"If A then B" logically implies "If not-B then not-A".
I'm sorry, but you are factually incorrect. Please refer to almost any textbook on Boolean logic, or a medium-to-advanced Web text on same (i.e., not simplified for search engines only). "If A then B" means only that "A and not(B)" is not true; "A and B", "not(A) and B", and "not(A) and not(B)" can all be true if "if A then B" is true.
The term you are probably thinking of is "if and only if", commonly abbreviated to "iff". "If and only if A then B" means that either "A and B" or "not(A) and not(B)" must be true. This is the common English meaning of "if", however it is not the logical/academic usage which computers, and programmers (most of the time), use - thus, it is not the common usage within Slashdot's audience.
Which does not, of course, change the fact that you are right about being able to find water without life. However, water is a good indicator for life: there is a much higher probability of finding (Earth-like) life where there is water than where there is none. It is not proof, of course - what might constitute "proof" is in question, though I suspect it might suffice to launch a probe with a microscope to the location in question and observe some single celled organisms moving around.
Reopening of the remedy portion? Umm, there was a reason this wasn't done when the previous Final Judgement was found to be not working, no? And it lead us right back here...
I just wonder how far they'll push you before you say "Ok, we're making the *complete* source code to Windows and Office public domain now!" And what the odds are that they see you would do it, and back down before then.
Then why hasn't congress passed any worthwhile laws recently?
Who defines "worthwhile"? Some of them think the PATRIOT Act was worthwhile, though a number of us would disagree. Frankly, I'm just glad they haven't passed even more "worthwhile" laws like that recently - and doubly so that passing laws in situations like this is (supposed to be) hard. As for why they think those laws are worth passing, well, that's a political discussion that would take its own Katz article; suffice it to say for me, I voted against the current administration.
I mean, why do we still have SPAM,
There are laws against junk faxes, for much the same reason as the grievances against junk email. The laws are almost never enforced. Merely passing laws will not help.
and those ads that spawn other ads when you close them,
I surf the 'Net with Javascript turned off, only turning it on when I run across a site that requires it - and turning it back off when I'm done. Or, if I need Javascript on for an extended period of time, I turn it off immediately if I run into whack-a-mole popups, just long enough to close said popups, then turn it back on and resume life. I don't have any problem with popup ads.
and why do I have to goddamn pass idiots in the right lane because they drive 54 in the left lane and won't pull over?
Because no cop has come and pulled them over. If you have the local police department's number (not 911: this isn't an emergency), get on the offender's tail (but don't tailgate) long enough to read the license plate, then put in a call to the cops filing a complaint. They will probably at least investigate, and maybe even dispatch a car immediately (if you tell them where you are), since 54 in the left lane is a safety hazard (assuming there is space in the other lanes to pull into, and it's not 54 vs. 34 in all other lanes).
It is almost never the case that a big agency or institution has only one, current, urgent project that supercedes everything else. FBI fighting terrorism, NASA with the ISS, EFF fighting the MPAA/RIAA...sure, they're important, but they're never "drop everything else and deal only with this". Besides, the effectiveness that could be gained by dropping all the other projects and working only on the one is minimal, in some cases actually negative.
Don't confuse the needs of an animator with those of final production rendering.
Hear, hear. For final production rendering, there's services like NetRendered that can take care of it for you. You don't want to run that on your own desktop, unless you don't want to use your desktop for anything else for a few days (depending on the length and quality of the animation).
Ok, so mecha won't be worth deploying until they're cheap enough. That's a legitimate concern, but not an insurmountable one. If I can make a suit of powered armor for less than the $200k cost of a missile, plus make its controls so intuitive (basically, reacting to the body's movement) that practically zero training is required, then your argument against military apps goes away. Alternately, if I can make a mech suit for about the cost of a forklift, and make it so that the user has a better (closer) view of what's being lifted so as to be more precise than would be possible with a forklift - or so that it can lift irregular cargo (like, say, debris from the WTC) that would simply roll off or slide through a similary priced forklift's lifters - then that argument goes away.
Granted, it would be difficult to do the above. Few things worth doing are easy. But it's far from impossible, even when one considers recovering development costs.
I know, this is so late that it probably won't ever be seen, but what the hey?
Of course, there is the nontrivial barrier of inventing an artificial form of cellular respiration (or other means of extracting energy from glucose) that will fit in whatever physical constraints this device needs to have.
It's been a few years since I took biology, but isn't there a step of respiration that involves electron transfer? Intercept that electron, and you've got power.
Of course, the biggest problem would be relying on this, at least at first, as a source of major power. It wouldn't be, at first. But, merely using it as automatic, minimal-will-needed weight control would allow even crude versions to find a successful market...thus providing funds to refine it enough that one could get useable amounts of electric power out.
Revolutionary new developments in lasers whose frequency is not absorbed by typical munition casings. (Consider: microwaves can heat water inside a ceramic container without directly heating the container itself. True, they do react with metal, but at least some of the energy would penetrate.)
Consider: the explosion inside has to get out of the shell upon detonation. Sure, you could armor the shell more, but that would use some of the blast energy just tearing the shells apart...or turn the shell into effectively a shaped charge, blowing out only the laser-weakened side.
Shoot down friendly munitions erroneously aimed at you, only to be shot at for protecting the enemy? Not a good set of options there.
Well...that's one of the neat things about exploring: you don't care who owns it, so long as the owner can't kick you out. And, right now, there are no guns on Mars to force explorers away.
Mars, and other celestial properties, will belong to those who actually land there and develop them. Arguing about it before actually using it just delays the time when people will actually start using it.
Ok. You're lazy. ^_^
He's talking of something that would be reporting to a government archive. Assumedly the only time something in this archive could be used against you would be in a court of law.
You don't even need to cite the long history of government abuses of power for this one (though that would help). Open information, sunshine laws, freedom of information: usually a good thing; in this case, they allow just anyone to view the data. Which in itself is not so bad, but then people can say "there is data in the archives", and use that claim - without letting others verify it, just banking on public desire for scandal to let the public assume it's actually there - to accuse others of anything. Yes, it falls far short of our (and most legal) standards of proof, but I'm talking about the court of public opinion.
Sure, it wouldn't prevent someone dressing up like you and doing whatever, but geez, that possibility is out there right now with camcorders... He's just talking about making it widespread.
Aye, and there's another rub. If video evidence is even more heavily believed and easier to obtain, then the cost/benefit to faking a personal act and filming it shifts in the faker's favor.