The people who promote these schemes in the name of science should not be allowed to claim (as they usually do) that opposition is due to ignorance and superstition.
Should not be allowed to? Don't you think it is remotely possible that opposition to a given technology may be based on ignorance and superstition? A great example of this might be your mentioning Three Mile Island. You may not be aware of this, but Three Mile Island was not a disaster. The safety systems worked as designed, and very little radiation was leaked. The Chernobyl accident has been shown to have been caused by incompetency on the parts of the plant operators. This is far from any "intrinsic" danger in nuclear power. In fact, nuclear power is economical. It is also the most environmentally clean power source in places where space limitations prevent things like hydroelectric and wind power. Further, the irrational fear of nuclear-anything means that most Americans miss out on some important technologies: for example, all of the E coli outbreaks of the last decade could have been prevented through irradiation. Restaurants could serve medium rare burgers again.
It is one thing for a university to claim ownership of work produced by their employees; it is quite another for a university to claim ownership of work produced by people who are paying to be there.
Not really...you just "pay to be there" in ways beyond your tuition.
I don't think either of the situations described in the article make sense: either a researcher is forced by her university to keep the source private, or she's forced (through the proposed laws agains "billing the public twice") to open it. I don't think either one needs to be the case, and I think what we have now is actually pretty sensible.
And what is the situation now? Basically, researchers are employed by the university. You can ask your employer (as you could working anywhere) to open a project's source, but in the end it's a management decision. I mean, there are probably some guys at Microsoft who'd like to open the IIS source to get rid of some bugs, but it just doesn't make sense given the business model in use. Researchers are always free to look for employment elsewhere, just like everyone else.
Agreed. Bereaucracy doesn't make software engineering any more "real." I don't need a license, I don't want regulation. I will do whatever I'm hired to do, hire whomever can do the job, and in general figure things out on my own, without the "help" of the government or any other regulating body.
I remember it used to be popular in some circles to make copies of Return of the Jedi with no Ewok scenes.
I would like to see this technology implemented for other media as well. Instead of burning the school library's copy of Catcher in the Rye, parents could buy a set of transparent overlays with blackout regions to be placed on each page while reading.
That's a well-known fact of UI design, that users will make wrong statements about speed, rate of errors, and so forth, when using an interface they actually enjoy. This is why anecdotal "evidence" is next to useless in this case.
Think post office. Only people who use it pay for it.
But it costs the same amount for me to send a letter from the post office to a P.O. Box somewhere as it does for me to send it from a really remote village to some other remote village. Even though it is more expensive to deliver the second letter, the consumer's price is the same. Subsidy!
Truth in advertising kind of loses its importance when there is no competition. I'm sure they're setting up infrastructure as quickly as they can afford, and you'll get your broadband eventually. In the meantime, you don't lose more than a few minutes on the phone checking if it's ready yet. You're not getting screwed or anything.
Compiling on every system strikes me as such a waste of cycles...but nothing ever works right unless you do it. Makes me miss the Mac, where every program comes in a.sit archive with one application and a README that you can put anywhere. Sure, the files are bigger, but "package management" doesn't exist.
Word. I tried XFce because of memory constraints, but the latest version isn't very light. WindowMaker does everything XFce does, and takes up less memory.
Re:Gotta love governments who don't understand tec
on
Send out the Clones?
·
· Score: 4
I hear you. The biggest problem I see is that already there is an "import ban" on clones. Shouldn't that be an "immigration ban," or are we deciding before cloning has even succeeded that clones will be nothing more than property? Didn't these guys see Blade Runner?
One thing we might want to do now is consider our stance on anti-spam law. If we make effective anti-spam legislation, what else is going to be restricted?
Good association! I made a very similar comment on the recent article on anti-spam legislation, but I didn't make the connection. You're right, it all leads to the same thing, juding whether someone's intensions are "valid" or not. Not a good place to be legislating...
Although this was necessary to stop the domain squatters out to make a quick buck
That's the problem right there. When you start being concerned that people are making money too easily, or unfairly (though it's hard to find a victim in cybersquatting "crimes", IMO), anything you do in the way of prevention is going to have the effect of limiting freedom, which will have an adverse affect on everyone given enough time.
TPO (and Jeopardy, and probably everything else on the Sony Station) has had this forever. With TPO, though, you have the option of seeing the commercial, and viewing it gives you a magic transporter token. Fortunately, you can see which of your opponents have sold their soul and berate them for selling out.
That's not really true. It's not impossible to complete large downloads over slow connections. It's just tedious and dumb, which is why people with slower connections are more likely to buy a CD. But really, bandwidth is bandwidth after all: no one's going to stop some dude from downloading all 6 RedHat CDs or whatever, even if it takes him 4 weeks, 1K at a time. The distro companies are going to have fast connections, server space, etc. They want people to have their software. But for people who want it on CD, it's certainly okay to charge them for the effort of burning the image, postage, etc. What this really comes down to is, why is Libranet doing everything in its power to keep its product out of its customers' hands? We may never know.
I like the thing about how asking you if you want to put all your desktop items in a folder is "a great way to conserve system resources." Let's see, system resources: cycles, memory, drive space, and, oh yes, desktop space, precious desktop space! My box is pretty slow, maybe I need to add 4 inches on to the right of my desktop... then knock out this wall and add a guest bathroom. I hear the next version of Windows will conserve resources by featuring, in addition to the Desktop, the Floor, Behind the Couch, and the Junk Drawer. Innovation!
The majority of people don't commit murder. Therfore, there is no need for police.
Right on. I'm sick of all these politicians promising to "put more cops on the streets." This is the last thing we need. The only thing cops do is shoot innocent black people and bother skateboarders in the mall. They have more rights than normal citizens, and can (at least in New York) do pretty much as they please. And there are so fucking many of them.
I think that pretty much anything regarding dvorak is mythical. I used to use qwerty, and now use only dvorak, and the only thing i can say is that dvorak just feels better. It does. And it only takes a few weeks to learn.
I'm in the process of converting my own 150+ cd library to 192kbps MP3, so I can push the "shuffle" button in Winamp and get a random song from my FULL library.
Why? Wouldn't that be like converting all of your DVDs to digital files on your computer, so that you could hit "shuffle" and get a random movie scene from your FULL library? That would be crazy. Or getting all of your books in some e-book format and hitting "shuffle" to get a random 20-page excerpt?
This should not be (4: Funny). It violates the standard form of the "Can you imagine..." post, giving away the punchline in the subject line. Please moderate it down.
Slashdot Mirror
Should not be allowed to? Don't you think it is remotely possible that opposition to a given technology may be based on ignorance and superstition? A great example of this might be your mentioning Three Mile Island. You may not be aware of this, but Three Mile Island was not a disaster. The safety systems worked as designed, and very little radiation was leaked. The Chernobyl accident has been shown to have been caused by incompetency on the parts of the plant operators. This is far from any "intrinsic" danger in nuclear power. In fact, nuclear power is economical. It is also the most environmentally clean power source in places where space limitations prevent things like hydroelectric and wind power. Further, the irrational fear of nuclear-anything means that most Americans miss out on some important technologies: for example, all of the E coli outbreaks of the last decade could have been prevented through irradiation. Restaurants could serve medium rare burgers again.
Not really...you just "pay to be there" in ways beyond your tuition.
I don't think either of the situations described in the article make sense: either a researcher is forced by her university to keep the source private, or she's forced (through the proposed laws agains "billing the public twice") to open it. I don't think either one needs to be the case, and I think what we have now is actually pretty sensible.
And what is the situation now? Basically, researchers are employed by the university. You can ask your employer (as you could working anywhere) to open a project's source, but in the end it's a management decision. I mean, there are probably some guys at Microsoft who'd like to open the IIS source to get rid of some bugs, but it just doesn't make sense given the business model in use. Researchers are always free to look for employment elsewhere, just like everyone else.
Agreed. Bereaucracy doesn't make software engineering any more "real." I don't need a license, I don't want regulation. I will do whatever I'm hired to do, hire whomever can do the job, and in general figure things out on my own, without the "help" of the government or any other regulating body.
I remember it used to be popular in some circles to make copies of Return of the Jedi with no Ewok scenes.
I would like to see this technology implemented for other media as well. Instead of burning the school library's copy of Catcher in the Rye, parents could buy a set of transparent overlays with blackout regions to be placed on each page while reading.
That's a well-known fact of UI design, that users will make wrong statements about speed, rate of errors, and so forth, when using an interface they actually enjoy. This is why anecdotal "evidence" is next to useless in this case.
But it costs the same amount for me to send a letter from the post office to a P.O. Box somewhere as it does for me to send it from a really remote village to some other remote village. Even though it is more expensive to deliver the second letter, the consumer's price is the same. Subsidy!
Truth in advertising kind of loses its importance when there is no competition. I'm sure they're setting up infrastructure as quickly as they can afford, and you'll get your broadband eventually. In the meantime, you don't lose more than a few minutes on the phone checking if it's ready yet. You're not getting screwed or anything.
Compiling on every system strikes me as such a waste of cycles...but nothing ever works right unless you do it. Makes me miss the Mac, where every program comes in a .sit archive with one application and a README that you can put anywhere. Sure, the files are bigger, but "package management" doesn't exist.
Word. I tried XFce because of memory constraints, but the latest version isn't very light. WindowMaker does everything XFce does, and takes up less memory.
I hear you. The biggest problem I see is that already there is an "import ban" on clones. Shouldn't that be an "immigration ban," or are we deciding before cloning has even succeeded that clones will be nothing more than property? Didn't these guys see Blade Runner?
Nice sig.
Good association! I made a very similar comment on the recent article on anti-spam legislation, but I didn't make the connection. You're right, it all leads to the same thing, juding whether someone's intensions are "valid" or not. Not a good place to be legislating...
That's the problem right there. When you start being concerned that people are making money too easily, or unfairly (though it's hard to find a victim in cybersquatting "crimes", IMO), anything you do in the way of prevention is going to have the effect of limiting freedom, which will have an adverse affect on everyone given enough time.
Jesus Christ...why don't you move?
TPO (and Jeopardy, and probably everything else on the Sony Station) has had this forever. With TPO, though, you have the option of seeing the commercial, and viewing it gives you a magic transporter token. Fortunately, you can see which of your opponents have sold their soul and berate them for selling out.
That's not really true. It's not impossible to complete large downloads over slow connections. It's just tedious and dumb, which is why people with slower connections are more likely to buy a CD. But really, bandwidth is bandwidth after all: no one's going to stop some dude from downloading all 6 RedHat CDs or whatever, even if it takes him 4 weeks, 1K at a time. The distro companies are going to have fast connections, server space, etc. They want people to have their software. But for people who want it on CD, it's certainly okay to charge them for the effort of burning the image, postage, etc. What this really comes down to is, why is Libranet doing everything in its power to keep its product out of its customers' hands? We may never know.
I like the thing about how asking you if you want to put all your desktop items in a folder is "a great way to conserve system resources." Let's see, system resources: cycles, memory, drive space, and, oh yes, desktop space, precious desktop space! My box is pretty slow, maybe I need to add 4 inches on to the right of my desktop... then knock out this wall and add a guest bathroom. I hear the next version of Windows will conserve resources by featuring, in addition to the Desktop, the Floor, Behind the Couch, and the Junk Drawer. Innovation!
I just finished the last assignment for OS I at Columbia. We used Red Hat running on vmware running on Red Hat.
The majority of people don't commit murder. Therfore, there is no need for police.
Right on. I'm sick of all these politicians promising to "put more cops on the streets." This is the last thing we need. The only thing cops do is shoot innocent black people and bother skateboarders in the mall. They have more rights than normal citizens, and can (at least in New York) do pretty much as they please. And there are so fucking many of them.
I think that pretty much anything regarding dvorak is mythical. I used to use qwerty, and now use only dvorak, and the only thing i can say is that dvorak just feels better. It does. And it only takes a few weeks to learn.
Thank you, everyone, for your support. The Album is an artform that will never die.
Overall, Scot is a cool guy.
Nice.
Why? Wouldn't that be like converting all of your DVDs to digital files on your computer, so that you could hit "shuffle" and get a random movie scene from your FULL library? That would be crazy. Or getting all of your books in some e-book format and hitting "shuffle" to get a random 20-page excerpt?
This should not be (4: Funny). It violates the standard form of the "Can you imagine..." post, giving away the punchline in the subject line. Please moderate it down.