Bollier leaves himself wide open to this sort of wimsical attack. Bollier is not in any way proposing communism or anything 'left wing'. He's talking about bringing things back into ballence.
Capitalism and Democracy are a symbiotic pair. You cannot have one without the other. Too much Capitalism (where money controls everything) and you loose your democracy, it becomes totalitarian. Too much Democracy and you loose innovation, and things become an Animal Farm.
Currently we are flirting with totalitarianism, under the disguise of capitalism.
This amendment needs a compromise; the watermark should only be enforcable if it is created in a non-biased manner by a non-profit organization with a board of directors from the general public, free of charge for those distributing their content without charge. Thus, any garage band should be able to get a watermark as easily as the RIAA for their stuff, regardless of financial ability. What we *dont't* want is SONY or the RIAA itself minting these watermarks. We need a non-biased "authority" otherwise this will just further entrench media monopolies at the expense of small businesses (such as a local band).
publishing the full Blender sources, including old and new development, under the GNU GPL license ... the Foundation has to pay in advance a one time fee of 100k euro for this (100k USD).
Ok. Who is the foundation, where are it's organizing papers? Who is on its board, etc.
the Foundation can offer an additional commercial non-copylefted (BSD style) license for companies to integrate with non-GPL projects.
Ohhh. This comes out of nowhere. Where is the proposed agreement with NaN? Does NaN get a cut of this money? Who sets the prices for this non-GPL licensing? Where does the money go? Who funds the access to non-GPL, is this part of the 100K?
I don't know about you; but I'm skeptical. This is alot of money, and it's a bit short on details.
Perhaps. I'm talking about the rolling-back of Polluter Pays a few years back (under Clinton actually and then with continued support of Bush). http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A1 08 78-2002Jul1.html
No. Most of the very very rich are due to laws which favor them (the incumbants) over newcomers.
It works like this. We have a two part system, democracy and capitalism. Democracy is our social system it defines the rules for the economic system (capitalism). The basic tenant of Democracy is one person one vote. Why? So that the economic system is a level playing field. Thus, this requires equality in the social system, but not necessarly in the economic system.
Now here is the problem. Those with lots of money in the economic system get more "political speech" than those who are doing poorly in the economic system. Thus, even though there is one person one vote; you only get to vote for whom has the money to advertise and put themselves on the ballot. Thus, the people being elected are skewed towards those who have money (half of representatives are worth over 10 million). And these people, in tern, have a vested interest in keeping their money (and the money of the people who put them there). Thus, they write laws that help those with money and hurt those without money? Doubt me? Check your history books.
So, there are two possible outcomes. First, the people in the middle wake up and make the democracy more of a level playing field (which it should be). OR... the wealth keep getting wealtheier. In the latter case, eventually we will end up in an Economic Dictatorship which will transfer over to our social system.
So, for all of those people who are defending the very rich beacuse they think the rich work harder and are smarter than average (perhaps due to their own arrogance that they think they can join the very very small circle) are in for a rude awakening as they get older and understand that the rules are stacked against them.
So what are you going to do? Let the surge in wealth continue? Note: I'm not talking about people with a few million dollars. I know lots of hard working capitalists who bust their asses and deserve this. I'm talking about billionares here... ones that have one million times more net worth than average. A few thousand I can deal with... but a difference of a million means one thing to me -- a broken system.
It has nothing to do with "hard work", it has everything to do with "might makes right" and courruption.
You haven't done a good job of countering his argument, and you have failed to persuade me that he is wrong.
The difference lies in what you want to consider the status quo; with the basic assumption that you don't want to fiddle with dials unless you know what you are doing (cuz it could hurt alot of people). There are two perspectives. The first perspective is that the status quo is defined by our current industrialized society and its action. The other status quo is that of the earth over centuries.
The question is if we should spend a big investment in technologies now to prevent pollution now (and clean up the messes we've made). From the "economic" perspective, the answer is NO. You don't divert any large amount of economic resources to making cleaner and more renewable technologies since it's not clear that the current population would be better off. From the "earth" perspecitve, the answer is clearly YES. We (the current population) are guests here and should pick up our own toys so that future generations can enjoy the planet as we have had a right to do.
The first perspective is "might makes right" or "all animal population approaches the carrying capacity, humans are animals too". It says that we don't need to clean up or invest in newer technologies untill the older ones are clearly going to be more expensive and we are suffering pain from pollution, etc. This perspective is spend now, pay later; the psyche of a child.
The second perspective is one of moderation, understanding that we humans have a brain and are capable of long-term sacrifice, something which animals do not. As such we humans don't necessarly have to hit this carrying capacity and experience horrific suffering if we do a bit of planning now for the possible course our future may bring. This one is invest now, reap the interest later; the psyche of a man.
Quite clearly the first choice is the easiest. And with recent *huge* cuts in SuperFund and continued focus on fossil fuels we, the United States, have clearly chosen the former. IMHO, we've done so blindly and are being the child.
SuperFund is a good thing. I grew up a few miles from a toxic waste dump. People get this strange attitute that they "own" land thus they can do with it anything they wish... including dump wastes on the land and pollute it for generations to come. The reality is that they are merely borrowing the land for a few decades before passing it on to another owner. Which one is more realistic? Lots of companies and individuals have used the "it's my property, I'll do with it as I wish" logic and have then gone bankrupt; in the mean time the pollution they left has seeped into the water table, poisoned rivers, etc.
So. This debate is not about facts, statictis, or anything like that. And to ask for numbers to back assertions isn't the point. The point is the phlisophy in which we choose to run our life, our country, and our world. Philosophy matters. And IMHO, our current phliosophy sucks. It is short-sighted and selfish.
Disrupting the economy because himans MIGHT be affecting the natural cycle.
When I was young, my grandfather told me to always return something that I borrow in better condition than I found it. During each human's life time we borrow the land and our environment for a short period of time. If we are going to modify the envionment (in many many ways) we should always be asking if our changes are reversable and at what cost so that when that human's life is over, the resources he/she borrowed can be returned so that another human can use them.
We know that polluting the land (while ecnomically advantageous) runs counter to this general idea. Putting alot of carbon dioxide in the air may very well also be problematic. In short, if we are changing the environment we need to look carefully at what we do.
Claiming that I have to prove that your changes are going to cause harm is just bunk. You should have to prove to the community that your change is harmless. You have it exactly backwards. You are putting a short-term economy ahead of long-term environment that our children, grand children, great-great-great grand children will have to deal with.
If we continue to act irresponsibility then the burden will fall on our children... oh well, at least we won't be around to suffer. Or will we?
Yep. You hit it right on the head, you summed up our culture perfectly. Makes me sick to my stomach. This is the exact opposite type of behavior that a super power should have.
Everwhere in this discussion I see this sort of attitude: (a) I've got the money and therefore I am right. If I wern't right, I wouldn't have the money, now would I? (b) Everyone is cooked, if I'm not I'll get screwed; ooh, look at that poor idiot with ethics (c) I can do what ever I want with the world beacuse its mine, if you think that I'm hurting it, prove it; it's not my responsibility to prove that I'm not going bad (d) I got all of the statistics and research to back what I say, never mind that the scientists making the reports were paid very well for their opinion (e) everything is opinion, there isn't a right or wrong, everything is relative (f) well, we are animals afterall... what do you expect?
This is the classic Liberal's delimma. The liberal screams and shouts that something is very wrong -- people open there eyes a bit and things get quite a bit better. Then the conservatives come along later and say: "Gee, the liberal was wrong, see we're ok now."
About 15 years ago I remember the "Skeptical Environmentalists" saying that the temperature of the earth won't even go up one degree by 2050. Well. It appears as if they are wrong. In some parts (the artic regions) we are anywhere from 4 to 7 degrees warmer. As I remember, it may have even been Julian who made these predictions (or who re-quoted them).
It's clear that we are seeing an acceleration in global warmth which is going to dramatically change our climate (and is doing so as we speak). What are you going to do about it? Close your eyes and say that we humans will adapt? Do you have that much faith in technology... I don't. How can you be sure it doesn't warm even faster?
I don't know about you, but I'd rather err on the "conservative" side of things and take action now rather than wait till it becomes a crisis. No?
The Earth will not expire in 2050. Simple economics will keep it from doing so
You can't use economic arguments. Why? Beacuse our current economics don't take into account the cost of pollution (externalities) -- what makes you think that things will change in 50 years? Has current pollution made us change? Please.
What we need is reasoned leadership, not to keep running towards what everyone knows is a cliff. By the time we get there we may not be able to stop... how can we bring extinct species back? how can we stop global warming... Assume for a moment that global warming is like any force, just beacuse the change is still relatively small doesn't mean that the accelleration isn't huge. Once you want to "change" it's like stopping a car... it will take a while. A long while. If it took us 200 years to start serious warming, it may very well take us 300 years to do the cooling. And by then it may be just too late.
There are four types of people: those who are ignorant and know it; those who are knowlegable and don't; those that are knowlegable and know it; and those who are ignorant but think that they are knowlegable. You my fellow biped are in the latter category; and what a dangerous person you are beacuse of this. Why a moderator would mark you as insightful is beyond me. Spreading ignorance under the guise of wisdom is the worst of all sins.
I can't think of any reason to steal it and distribute it without attribution (not that someone else couldn't) so I'm not real worried at this point. (emphasis mine)
And how could I possibly steal something that is in the public domain? Just beacuse they wrote it they own it? The framers of the consitution rejected natural-rights thought with regard to intellectual property. Who owns it anyway? The public of the U.S. paid for it, so don't we own it? If I copy it and use it for my own purposes why would this make me a thief?
I think you have fallen into the group-think that the RIAA wants everyone to succumb to.
In this case RELAX is far superior, it has both an XML and a non-XML represenatation and is build on top of a clean model by some brilliant fellas.
XML Schema, OTOH, is just a bloated mess.
DTD's are antiquated
Perhaps, but they are readable. XML Schema is anything but readable.
and I can't even transform against them for meta-meta-data tasks
Oh, now that's something you do every day. Using XML syntax for everything is just plain stupid. IF you have to do transforms, use RELAX, it has a cleaner model anyway... doing transforms on XML Schema is like pulling teeth.
Have you ever tried to use XML Schema? It's a bloated peice of ****. Relax is tons better. And for the government's purposes, DTDs work much better and are an ISO standard.
Dig the notice at xml.house.gov -- The document type definitions (DTDs) presented on this site were developed at the U.S. House of Representatives by employees of the Federal Government in the course of their official duties. Pursuant to Title 17 Section 105 of the United States Code, these DTDs are not subject to copyright protection and are in the public domain. These DTDs are in draft form. The U.S. House of Representatives assumes no responsibility whatsoever for their use by other parties, and makes no guarantees, expressed or implied, about their quality, reliability, or any other characteristic. These DTDs can be redistributed and/or modified freely provided that any derivative works bear some notice that they are derived from it, and any modified versions bear some notice that they have been modified. (emphasis mine)
Either these DTDs are copyrighted and they can place restrictions upon distribution or they arn't. This need people have to control everything is just driving me crazy. The whole reason for Title 17 Section 105 is so that the Government can't put restrictions on this kind of stuff (bills, laws, etc.)...
Well, Taco you can start making slashdot look less childish by using a decent Microsoft icon, instead of the Bill Gates borg.
Hunh? No. It's perfect. This is exactly what Microsoft is. They've taken advantage of a very imballenced copyright law to dominate thousands of smaller (and even larger) businesses. The fact that Billy's net worth is greater than 40-45% of the U.S. Population combined is just stunning, no other word for it -- something is horribly, horribly wrong here. Calling a spade a spade is exactly what is needed. Microsoft *is* the Borg if anything could be the borg.
However maybe the execs in the movie business are a little saner! I mean in the music industry they probably count someone thinking about buying an album and then not as a sale lost to "PIRACY
You clearly haven't been following Fritz Holling's senate hearings have you? The movie industry is arguing that the only thing keeping their profits up is that movies are very big. They state that the biggest reason for broadband is movies, and that they won't push for broadband (and in fact actively seek to keep broadband minimal) until the problem of rampid piracy of intellectual content is solved. Luckly, Microsoft is being a good player here and is going to help out the movie industry (and thus look good to government, so perhaps they will be more lienent on the pending court case). Amazing how one issue gets intertwined in another isn't it? As for movie exects being more realistic? Please.
Hardly a blip on the radar screen... now, if it were in the billions we could finally have a mathematician in the Forbes 400... that would be signficiant. A million dollars is puny; hardly worth the time. Hell, even Lotto winners get more money. Picking random numbers in a lotter must be more important.
One thing to note is that PostgreSQL is free for proprietary applications; while MySQL must be licensed since it is GPLed. Besides, you can now write your triggers in perl or python with PostgreSQL; which IMHO, is damn cool. Besides being very stable, good performace, etc.
Who has a company which can charge these people? Preferrably one with credit card processing facilities to make it painless as possible for them. Once the charge goes through; you could then take most of the money and dole it out to some of the big OpenSSH contributors...
and have no representation in congress; no senator and no voting representative. It's not like we don't pay federal taxes or anything like that. Worse yet, D.C. residents pay District taxes and guess who decides how the money is spent? The U.S. Congress. Do I have a say? No. Am I a U.S. Citizen? Yes, born and raised. Taxation without representation... what's new?
I can't believe the communist crap I am reading on this board.
What makes America great is that we arn't a pure capitalistic society... if we were, we would quicly slide into a dictatorship as companies gobble up smaller companies in order to form monopolies, etc. Further, we are not a pure socialistic society, private ownership is essential. What we are is a pretty-good ballence between the two extremes. Unfortunately, for the last 10-20 years the power has been getting out of ballence, with capitalistic forces now having more control then the democratic forces. This is clearly seen by the acquisations of congress people doign the bidding of companies instead of people.
Have you read Adam Smith's title called The Wealth of Nations? It rests on a principle of a competitive or free market economy; a competitive market being defined by many economists as one where no single supplier holds more than 20% of the marketspace, having 7 or more distinct direct competitors. Only under these circumstances will capitalistic markets bring the highest value to society. In marginalized situations, where a single company holds a large share of the marketplace there isn't a choice, it is called monopolistic.
Monopolies in general arn't bad, but a special class of monpoplies which provide for essential services are problematic. Telephone is essential in our day and age (ever try to get a job without a telephone number?) and the baby bells have a huge part of the marketshare for telephone and related land-line services.
So. What do we do with essential monopolies? There are two extremes forms of control; Democratic (one customer one vote) or Dictatorship. The latter choice is usually bad since, if left to its own devices, it will maximize profits by overcharing the customer, causing huge distortions in the economic system and undermining other markets and thus our free market economy. The former choice is not great, but variations of it are important to consider.
One form is to have government operate the smallest, most essential service of the business which cause it to be a monopoly. Our roads are good examples. The government owns them, but services to maintain the road (which can be competitive) are all farmed out to various companies who can bid. The government need not create the road signs, for example. The other form is to let a private dictatorship run it, but regulate the dictatorship. Unfortunately... there just arn't any other options!
As for the phone systems themselves, a bulk of the funding for these systems were initally provided by the government (the people) since setting up a phone infrastructure is a huge operation... thus to say that private enterprise has done this is just not true. Private funding for stuff is usually not long-term. More often than not, public funding for bring projects is the only way to get them done.
Your black and white charactization is just dead wrong. It isn't iorn grip of Washington that is the issue. Washington is just the government controlled by either Democratic or Capitalistic forces. In this case, we have yet another victory for the capitalistic force; which already has the bulk of the power. The more we allow this to happen the closer we come to having a pure dictatorship. By the way, if we were shifting to be totally socialist (everything decided by the people with equal weight), then I'd be arguing on the other side of the fence. This is a delicate ballence, not a black vs white issue. Becarefull for what you wish... you may just get it.
As you know, it takes a great deal of money to track down terrorists. To help save money in this effort, John Ashcroft has created a special form where you can help provide the information about yourself so that our govenment can better use its resources on the real terrorists. Please fill out the form now, help us fight and win this war against terror! Also please find articles on the Homeland Security page to help you identify potential terrorists and report them.
Here's my suggestion: Have the FBI, or even some more reputable organization, run a full-bore background check on them, followed by total surveillance for some period of time from 30 days to life, depending on the seriousness of the violation.
Your suggestion just moves the problem; who watches the watchers? This reminds me of many "fault tolerant" comptuers, in reality they just move the critical failure point to another location; it still leaves the device with a failure point. Read the other insightful posts on this list. Why did they have the information in the first place?
Re:Charge for it in geometrically increasing sums
on
Fair IP Laws?
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· Score: 3, Funny
This is a fantastic idea. I'm in D.C., I'll try to shop it around. Legislators have never met a tax bill they didn't like.
Slashdot Mirror
Bollier leaves himself wide open to this sort of wimsical attack. Bollier is not in any way proposing communism or anything 'left wing'. He's talking about bringing things back into ballence.
Capitalism and Democracy are a symbiotic pair. You cannot have one without the other. Too much Capitalism (where money controls everything) and you loose your democracy, it becomes totalitarian. Too much Democracy and you loose innovation, and things become an Animal Farm.
Currently we are flirting with totalitarianism, under the disguise of capitalism.
This amendment needs a compromise; the watermark should only be enforcable if it is created in a non-biased manner by a non-profit organization with a board of directors from the general public, free of charge for those distributing their content without charge. Thus, any garage band should be able to get a watermark as easily as the RIAA for their stuff, regardless of financial ability. What we *dont't* want is SONY or the RIAA itself minting these watermarks. We need a non-biased "authority" otherwise this will just further entrench media monopolies at the expense of small businesses (such as a local band).
publishing the full Blender sources, including old and new development, under the GNU GPL license ... the Foundation has to pay in advance a one time fee of 100k euro for this (100k USD).
Ok. Who is the foundation, where are it's organizing papers? Who is on its board, etc.
the Foundation can offer an additional commercial non-copylefted (BSD style) license for companies to integrate with non-GPL projects.
Ohhh. This comes out of nowhere. Where is the proposed agreement with NaN? Does NaN get a cut of this money? Who sets the prices for this non-GPL licensing? Where does the money go? Who funds the access to non-GPL, is this part of the 100K?
I don't know about you; but I'm skeptical. This is alot of money, and it's a bit short on details.
Bush has proposed no cuts in Superfund
1 08 78-2002Jul1.html
Perhaps. I'm talking about the rolling-back of Polluter Pays a few years back (under Clinton actually and then with continued support of Bush).
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A
Most of the rich are rich due to their own work
No. Most of the very very rich are due to laws which favor them (the incumbants) over newcomers.
It works like this. We have a two part system, democracy and capitalism. Democracy is our social system it defines the rules for the economic system (capitalism). The basic tenant of Democracy is one person one vote. Why? So that the economic system is a level playing field. Thus, this requires equality in the social system, but not necessarly in the economic system.
Now here is the problem. Those with lots of money in the economic system get more "political speech" than those who are doing poorly in the economic system. Thus, even though there is one person one vote; you only get to vote for whom has the money to advertise and put themselves on the ballot. Thus, the people being elected are skewed towards those who have money (half of representatives are worth over 10 million). And these people, in tern, have a vested interest in keeping their money (and the money of the people who put them there). Thus, they write laws that help those with money and hurt those without money? Doubt me? Check your history books.
So, there are two possible outcomes. First, the people in the middle wake up and make the democracy more of a level playing field (which it should be). OR... the wealth keep getting wealtheier. In the latter case, eventually we will end up in an Economic Dictatorship which will transfer over to our social system.
So, for all of those people who are defending the very rich beacuse they think the rich work harder and are smarter than average (perhaps due to their own arrogance that they think they can join the very very small circle) are in for a rude awakening as they get older and understand that the rules are stacked against them.
So what are you going to do? Let the surge in wealth continue? Note: I'm not talking about people with a few million dollars. I know lots of hard working capitalists who bust their asses and deserve this. I'm talking about billionares here... ones that have one million times more net worth than average. A few thousand I can deal with... but a difference of a million means one thing to me -- a broken system.
It has nothing to do with "hard work", it has everything to do with "might makes right" and courruption.
You haven't done a good job of countering his argument, and you have failed to persuade me that he is wrong.
The difference lies in what you want to consider the status quo; with the basic assumption that you don't want to fiddle with dials unless you know what you are doing (cuz it could hurt alot of people). There are two perspectives. The first perspective is that the status quo is defined by our current industrialized society and its action. The other status quo is that of the earth over centuries.
The question is if we should spend a big investment in technologies now to prevent pollution now (and clean up the messes we've made). From the "economic" perspective, the answer is NO. You don't divert any large amount of economic resources to making cleaner and more renewable technologies since it's not clear that the current population would be better off. From the "earth" perspecitve, the answer is clearly YES. We (the current population) are guests here and should pick up our own toys so that future generations can enjoy the planet as we have had a right to do.
The first perspective is "might makes right" or "all animal population approaches the carrying capacity, humans are animals too". It says that we don't need to clean up or invest in newer technologies untill the older ones are clearly going to be more expensive and we are suffering pain from pollution, etc. This perspective is spend now, pay later; the psyche of a child.
The second perspective is one of moderation, understanding that we humans have a brain and are capable of long-term sacrifice, something which animals do not. As such we humans don't necessarly have to hit this carrying capacity and experience horrific suffering if we do a bit of planning now for the possible course our future may bring. This one is invest now, reap the interest later; the psyche of a man.
Quite clearly the first choice is the easiest. And with recent *huge* cuts in SuperFund and continued focus on fossil fuels we, the United States, have clearly chosen the former. IMHO, we've done so blindly and are being the child.
SuperFund is a good thing. I grew up a few miles from a toxic waste dump. People get this strange attitute that they "own" land thus they can do with it anything they wish... including dump wastes on the land and pollute it for generations to come. The reality is that they are merely borrowing the land for a few decades before passing it on to another owner. Which one is more realistic? Lots of companies and individuals have used the "it's my property, I'll do with it as I wish" logic and have then gone bankrupt; in the mean time the pollution they left has seeped into the water table, poisoned rivers, etc.
So. This debate is not about facts, statictis, or anything like that. And to ask for numbers to back assertions isn't the point. The point is the phlisophy in which we choose to run our life, our country, and our world. Philosophy matters. And IMHO, our current phliosophy sucks. It is short-sighted and selfish.
Disrupting the economy because himans MIGHT be affecting the natural cycle.
When I was young, my grandfather told me to always return something that I borrow in better condition than I found it. During each human's life time we borrow the land and our environment for a short period of time. If we are going to modify the envionment (in many many ways) we should always be asking if our changes are reversable and at what cost so that when that human's life is over, the resources he/she borrowed can be returned so that another human can use them.
We know that polluting the land (while ecnomically advantageous) runs counter to this general idea. Putting alot of carbon dioxide in the air may very well also be problematic. In short, if we are changing the environment we need to look carefully at what we do.
Claiming that I have to prove that your changes are going to cause harm is just bunk. You should have to prove to the community that your change is harmless. You have it exactly backwards. You are putting a short-term economy ahead of long-term environment that our children, grand children, great-great-great grand children will have to deal with.
If we continue to act irresponsibility then the burden will fall on our children... oh well, at least we won't be around to suffer. Or will we?
Yep. You hit it right on the head, you summed up our culture perfectly. Makes me sick to my stomach. This is the exact opposite type of behavior that a super power should have.
Everwhere in this discussion I see this sort of attitude: (a) I've got the money and therefore I am right. If I wern't right, I wouldn't have the money, now would I? (b) Everyone is cooked, if I'm not I'll get screwed; ooh, look at that poor idiot with ethics (c) I can do what ever I want with the world beacuse its mine, if you think that I'm hurting it, prove it; it's not my responsibility to prove that I'm not going bad (d) I got all of the statistics and research to back what I say, never mind that the scientists making the reports were paid very well for their opinion (e) everything is opinion, there isn't a right or wrong, everything is relative (f) well, we are animals afterall... what do you expect?
Good lord.
This is the classic Liberal's delimma. The liberal screams and shouts that something is very wrong -- people open there eyes a bit and things get quite a bit better. Then the conservatives come along later and say: "Gee, the liberal was wrong, see we're ok now."
About 15 years ago I remember the "Skeptical Environmentalists" saying that the temperature of the earth won't even go up one degree by 2050. Well. It appears as if they are wrong. In some parts (the artic regions) we are anywhere from 4 to 7 degrees warmer. As I remember, it may have even been Julian who made these predictions (or who re-quoted them).
It's clear that we are seeing an acceleration in global warmth which is going to dramatically change our climate (and is doing so as we speak). What are you going to do about it? Close your eyes and say that we humans will adapt? Do you have that much faith in technology... I don't. How can you be sure it doesn't warm even faster?
I don't know about you, but I'd rather err on the "conservative" side of things and take action now rather than wait till it becomes a crisis. No?
The Earth will not expire in 2050. Simple economics will keep it from doing so
You can't use economic arguments. Why? Beacuse our current economics don't take into account the cost of pollution (externalities) -- what makes you think that things will change in 50 years? Has current pollution made us change? Please.
What we need is reasoned leadership, not to keep running towards what everyone knows is a cliff. By the time we get there we may not be able to stop... how can we bring extinct species back? how can we stop global warming... Assume for a moment that global warming is like any force, just beacuse the change is still relatively small doesn't mean that the accelleration isn't huge. Once you want to "change" it's like stopping a car... it will take a while. A long while. If it took us 200 years to start serious warming, it may very well take us 300 years to do the cooling. And by then it may be just too late.
There are four types of people: those who are ignorant and know it; those who are knowlegable and don't; those that are knowlegable and know it; and those who are ignorant but think that they are knowlegable. You my fellow biped are in the latter category; and what a dangerous person you are beacuse of this. Why a moderator would mark you as insightful is beyond me. Spreading ignorance under the guise of wisdom is the worst of all sins.
I can't think of any reason to steal it and distribute it without attribution (not that someone else couldn't) so I'm not real worried at this point. (emphasis mine)
And how could I possibly steal something that is in the public domain? Just beacuse they wrote it they own it? The framers of the consitution rejected natural-rights thought with regard to intellectual property. Who owns it anyway? The public of the U.S. paid for it, so don't we own it? If I copy it and use it for my own purposes why would this make me a thief?
I think you have fallen into the group-think that the RIAA wants everyone to succumb to.
Using XML to describe XML simply makes sense.
In this case RELAX is far superior, it has both an XML and a non-XML represenatation and is build on top of a clean model by some brilliant fellas.
XML Schema, OTOH, is just a bloated mess.
DTD's are antiquated
Perhaps, but they are readable. XML Schema is anything but readable.
and I can't even transform against them for meta-meta-data tasks
Oh, now that's something you do every day. Using XML syntax for everything is just plain stupid. IF you have to do transforms, use RELAX, it has a cleaner model anyway... doing transforms on XML Schema is like pulling teeth.
Why use DTDs?
Have you ever tried to use XML Schema? It's a bloated peice of ****. Relax is tons better. And for the government's purposes, DTDs work much better and are an ISO standard.
Dig the notice at xml.house.gov -- The document type definitions (DTDs) presented on this site were developed at the U.S. House of Representatives by employees of the Federal Government in the course of their official duties. Pursuant to Title 17 Section 105 of the United States Code, these DTDs are not subject to copyright protection and are in the public domain. These DTDs are in draft form. The U.S. House of Representatives assumes no responsibility whatsoever for their use by other parties, and makes no guarantees, expressed or implied, about their quality, reliability, or any other characteristic. These DTDs can be redistributed and/or modified freely provided that any derivative works bear some notice that they are derived from it, and any modified versions bear some notice that they have been modified. (emphasis mine)
...
Either these DTDs are copyrighted and they can place restrictions upon distribution or they arn't. This need people have to control everything is just driving me crazy. The whole reason for Title 17 Section 105 is so that the Government can't put restrictions on this kind of stuff (bills, laws, etc.)
Well, Taco you can start making slashdot look less childish by using a decent Microsoft icon, instead of the Bill Gates borg.
Hunh? No. It's perfect. This is exactly what Microsoft is. They've taken advantage of a very imballenced copyright law to dominate thousands of smaller (and even larger) businesses. The fact that Billy's net worth is greater than 40-45% of the U.S. Population combined is just stunning, no other word for it -- something is horribly, horribly wrong here. Calling a spade a spade is exactly what is needed. Microsoft *is* the Borg if anything could be the borg.
However maybe the execs in the movie business are a little saner! I mean in the music industry they probably count someone thinking about buying an album and then not as a sale lost to "PIRACY
You clearly haven't been following Fritz Holling's senate hearings have you? The movie industry is arguing that the only thing keeping their profits up is that movies are very big. They state that the biggest reason for broadband is movies, and that they won't push for broadband (and in fact actively seek to keep broadband minimal) until the problem of rampid piracy of intellectual content is solved. Luckly, Microsoft is being a good player here and is going to help out the movie industry (and thus look good to government, so perhaps they will be more lienent on the pending court case). Amazing how one issue gets intertwined in another isn't it? As for movie exects being more realistic? Please.
Hardly a blip on the radar screen... now, if it were in the billions we could finally have a mathematician in the Forbes 400 ... that would be signficiant. A million dollars is puny; hardly worth the time. Hell, even Lotto winners get more money. Picking random numbers in a lotter must be more important.
One thing to note is that PostgreSQL is free for proprietary applications; while MySQL must be licensed since it is GPLed. Besides, you can
now write your triggers in perl or python with
PostgreSQL; which IMHO, is damn cool. Besides
being very stable, good performace, etc.
Who has a company which can charge these people?
Preferrably one with credit card processing facilities to make it painless as possible for them. Once the charge goes through; you could then take most of the money and dole it out to some of the big OpenSSH contributors...
and have no representation in congress; no senator and no voting representative. It's not like we don't pay federal taxes or anything like that. Worse yet, D.C. residents pay District taxes and guess who decides how the money is spent? The U.S. Congress. Do I have a say? No.
Am I a U.S. Citizen? Yes, born and raised. Taxation without representation... what's new?
I can't believe the communist crap I am reading on this board.
What makes America great is that we arn't a pure capitalistic society... if we were, we would quicly slide into a dictatorship as companies gobble up smaller companies in order to form monopolies, etc. Further, we are not a pure socialistic society, private ownership is essential. What we are is a pretty-good ballence between the two extremes. Unfortunately, for the last 10-20 years the power has been getting out of ballence, with capitalistic forces now having more control then the democratic forces. This is clearly seen by the acquisations of congress people doign the bidding of companies instead of people.
Have you read Adam Smith's title called The Wealth of Nations? It rests on a principle of a competitive or free market economy; a competitive market being defined by many economists as one where no single supplier holds more than 20% of the marketspace, having 7 or more distinct direct competitors. Only under these circumstances will capitalistic markets bring the highest value to society. In marginalized situations, where a single company holds a large share of the marketplace there isn't a choice, it is called monopolistic.
Monopolies in general arn't bad, but a special class of monpoplies which provide for essential services are problematic. Telephone is essential in our day and age (ever try to get a job without a telephone number?) and the baby bells have a huge part of the marketshare for telephone and related land-line services.
So. What do we do with essential monopolies? There are two extremes forms of control; Democratic (one customer one vote) or Dictatorship. The latter choice is usually bad since, if left to its own devices, it will maximize profits by overcharing the customer, causing huge distortions in the economic system and undermining other markets and thus our free market economy. The former choice is not great, but variations of it are important to consider.
One form is to have government operate the smallest, most essential service of the business which cause it to be a monopoly. Our roads are good examples. The government owns them, but services to maintain the road (which can be competitive) are all farmed out to various companies who can bid. The government need not create the road signs, for example. The other form is to let a private dictatorship run it, but regulate the dictatorship. Unfortunately... there just arn't any other options!
As for the phone systems themselves, a bulk of the funding for these systems were initally provided by the government (the people) since setting up a phone infrastructure is a huge operation... thus to say that private enterprise has done this is just not true. Private funding for stuff is usually not long-term. More often than not, public funding for bring projects is the only way to get them done.
Your black and white charactization is just dead wrong. It isn't iorn grip of Washington that is the issue. Washington is just the government controlled by either Democratic or Capitalistic forces. In this case, we have yet another victory for the capitalistic force; which already has the bulk of the power. The more we allow this to happen the closer we come to having a pure dictatorship. By the way, if we were shifting to be totally socialist (everything decided by the people with equal weight), then I'd be arguing on the other side of the fence. This is a delicate ballence, not a black vs white issue. Becarefull for what you wish... you may just get it.
My directtvdsl is $49 a month with a static IP.
I _had_ cais.net for $72 per month... now the same level of service with the regional bell costs me $178 per month... for less bandwith.
As you know, it takes a great deal of money to track down terrorists. To help save money in this effort, John Ashcroft has created a special form where you can help provide the information about yourself so that our govenment can better use its resources on the real terrorists. Please fill out the form now, help us fight and win this war against terror! Also please find articles on the Homeland Security page to help you identify potential terrorists and report them.
Here's my suggestion: Have the FBI, or even some more reputable organization, run a full-bore background check on them, followed by total surveillance for some period of time from 30 days to life, depending on the seriousness of the violation.
Your suggestion just moves the problem; who watches the watchers? This reminds me of many "fault tolerant" comptuers, in reality they just move the critical failure point to another location; it still leaves the device with a failure point. Read the other insightful posts on this list. Why did they have the information in the first place?
This is a fantastic idea. I'm in D.C., I'll try to shop it around. Legislators have never met a tax bill they didn't like.