In order for the software to work, you have to have a pristine cuecat. If you've hacked your cuecat to get around the encryption, so that it works as a generic barcode scanner, CueHack won't work.
The canadians count ALL their ballots BY HAND within about 4 hours of the polls closing (if memory servers it was 13+ million votes cast).
The Canadians aren't counting chad. They're counting ballots designed to be counted by hand.
If something is contested, what do you do? You can't do anything but have a total revote. If you have all those pieces of paper in a box u just count them again.
Not if you use a scanner. To my mind, the best system would be one in which you mark your choices, feed it in and the system displays on screen "You voted for Roblimo for president, Hemos for Senator and YES on Proposition 51, the Slashdot Initiative. Is this correct?" Push the YES button and your vote is recorded and your ballot stored in a lock-box. Push NO and your ballot is spit back out to you for you to change.
Well said. I also don't think moderation is a problem in and of itself. I'd suggest a couple of modifications to the current system, though. First, remove the ability to post as an AC. Anyone can read. You want to post, log in. Second, either remove or at the very least hide karma. Remove the incentive to karma whore.
According to the actual decision, Governor
George W. Bush... filed a petition for certiorari to review the Florida Supreme
Court decision. (The above link to the decision on MSNBC spaz's out due to junkbuster.) A petition for certiorari is a request for the Supreme Court to review the decision. The decision by the SC was that the Florida court wasn't clear in their decision and needed to revisit it. The Florida court can essentially write a new decision, ruling the same way but answering the SC's specific questions as to the grounds of their decision. If they do so, the SC may either accept or reject the decision.
In the Eighties, only a few people had computers. They were expensive, difficult to use, etc. If you owned a computer, you were by definition hard-core. Today, everyone owns a computer.
I don't know where you live but there are still face-to-face meetins of geeks going on most US urban areas, at least. Try looking for a Linux/Unix Users group.
So what are you saying..that the law trumps any moral code? This means that there can not BE an immoral law. China's iron grip on the media? Hey, that's cool - it's the law. South Africa's apartheid? Of course there's nothing wrong with it. It's the LAW, for Christ's sakes. Surely you don't think some moral principle trumps the law do you?
Actually, some libraries used to carry Playboy and Penthouse. They were behind the counter and you had to be an adult and request them. This may still be true in some places for all I know.
Not carrying something is one thing, however. If your library doesn't carry Playboy, fine. If, however, they do carry Playboy but go through with a pair of scisors and cut out all the pictures, I for one would be highly upset. Additionally, filtering isn't perfect. Far, far from it. Not only do they block inappropriate sites but a lot of legitimate sites as well. It's not problematic if I block my child from accessing a site on breast cancer. It's seriously problematic if the government blocks me from accessing that same site.
Well said, though of course it'll never get moderated up on/. There's nothing wrong with filtering software per se. It's just a program. The problem is when an adult is forced to use a filtered public connection - i.e., a terminal at the local public library.
We insist that programmers should not be blamed for the use to which their software is put. Napster is not responsible for the pirating of music over their service - they merely provide a conduit. What goes through that conduit is the responsibility of the user. Yet if I write a program to filter what sites my child can access from my home computer and a local government official wants to install it on the local library system, I and my program suddenly become evil. Anyone else smell a bit of hypocrasy here?
A "fact" is often wrong. 1+1=2 is a "fact". So is 1+1=10. The latter is true if you're utilizing the binary number system. The former is true in any larger number system. What we consider facts are often based upon a number of assumptions, some obvious and some subtle. A^2 + B^2 = C^2, where A and B are the sides and C the hypotenuse of a right triangle. This is a fact taught in grade school. One problem - it's wrong. Sort of. The assumption is that space is Euclidian. Physics has shown that, in the real world, space isn't. The margin of error at our macroscopic level is minute. The law is close enough for almost any use in the real world. But it isn't a "fact."
About the only place you have real "facts" is within mathematics, and there you have a carefully specified list of premises. The Pythagorean theorem is true within, and only within, the carefully defined world of Euclidian geometry.
When it comes to medicine, things are much trickier. It's virtually impossible to say that medicine X curse ailment Z. The most that can usually be said is that medicine X appears to help ailment Z in Y% of cases. Does aspirin cure a headache? No. Does it provide relief for the pain of a headache? For a large percentage of people, it provides some relief. Does penicillin kill bacteria? We used to think so. But what about the new resistant strains that are showing up?
It's easy to prove a fact wrong. You only have to find one case. To prove it true, you have to show that it's true in ALL cases. This is a much more difficult task.
All of that being said, I have no real problem with the proposal so long as there is no attempt to force ALL medical web sites to use the.health TLD.
There's another thing which makes us very different from all our predecessors: They apparently never travelled over water unless they could see land.
While this is generally true, there is ample evidence that it was at least occasionally untrue. The Viking's settlement on North America is just one example.
Why is this practical? Because DVD is useful for more than just pirating commercial movies. Because DVD-RWs will likely get much cheaper in the future. It wasn't that long ago that CD-Rs were about $10 apiece.
A mother raising children is not considered "a worker." She is treated as if she has no input or productivity to contribute to the "real economy".
A mother raising children is not a "worker" as pertains to the economy. She impacts the economy in a variety of ways, and may be quite important to society as a whole and/or to the quality of the children she raises. But she does not produce goods and, in terms of the economy, is therefore not "productive."
If we assume that the advertising isn't wasted on someone living in the actual town (a questionable assumption but necessary for this discussion), then I don't see where it would be ENTIRELY wasted on you. Certainly, if there's an ad for Mom's Diner on the corner of 1st and Main in that town, it's wasted on you. But if there's an ad for parkas on sale at Wal-Mart while the weather channel is reporting a huge blizzard headed your way, the advertising is just as effective for you as it is for someone in that particular town. IOW, most "targeted" advertising isn't aimed that precisely. If they know what region of the country you're in, you're probably within their target area.
How did he "thumb" the evidence? What was it that he did that could have obscured evidence pointing to the real crackers?
Was he foolish to go poke around? Probably so. Lesson learned, the hard way. But he went there well AFTER the fact. He committed no crime and there was nothing indicating that he was involved in the original crack. So what reason was there to confiscate his equipment? I could see somebody coming by and asking him some questions, perhaps.
The other question I have is, why was the FBI involved in the first place? This was an act of vandalism. No real damage done. No list of credit card numbers comprimised. No trade secrets or source code endangered. Just a sports web page defaced. Fire the system administrator if it was a known security hole or sloppy set up, and tighten up your site security. Aren't there enough real crimes out there to keep the FBI busy?
People do ned to upgrade and people still need new computers.
Do they? Obviously, at some point, you'll need to replace your current system. But the need to upgrade is nowhere near as pressing as in the past. The difference in discernable performance (as opposed to benchmarks) between steps is much less than it used to be. Just how much power do you need to run a word processor or email? I'm running Windows 2000 on a Celeron 400. This is far, far from a state of the art machine but I don't feel a great need to upgrade. Performance for most of the stuff I'm doing is more than acceptable. The system doesn't feel sluggish at all. (I'm running 256 meg of RAM, of course.)
Would I like to have a 1GHz+ machine? Certainly. But I've used a 1GHz machine and it simply doesn't feel that much faster than my system at home. When I was running a 486DX4120 and they brought in Pentium systems at work, I was quick to upgrade. My system at home felt like a snail. Same with the PII vs the Pentium and even, to a lesser extent, the PII400 vs my old PII 233.
If you're a graphic artist, a developer doing extensive compiles of large projects, etc. you'll benifit from the latest, most powerful machines. But that's only a fraction of the PC market.
Eventually, I'll replace/upgrade this system. But my upgrade cycles used to be measured in months. Now, its in years. And I suspect I'm not atypical in that regard.
People seem to think that evolution is an intelligent process - that things are evolving towards some abstract ideal rather than adapting to a particular environment. But I'm as clueless as you as to why this should be the case. People seem to follow a sort of reverse Occam's Razor - if something appears to operate in a directed fashion, then it's the product of some sort of intelligent agent. The idea that random effects constrained by a few simple principles can result in highly directed behavior seems incomprehensible to many.
It's a little silly for us to talk about how people should be allowed to reverse engineer things and then get upset when they do it to something we don't want them to....
There's a difference in saying someone shouldn't hack/reverse engineer something and saying that they can't, particularly when that can't is backed by the threat of state violence.
Apparently, the embryo was chosen as having the best chance, not no chance of developing the disease.
Where do you get that? The article says When the embryos reach the eight-cell stage, one cell is removed and tested genetically, a procedure called preimplantation genetic diagnosis. The testing is used to select embryos that do not have the same genetic disease as the sibling, but do have tissue compatible for transplant. This certainly seems to imply that the embryo does NOT have this particular genetic problem. Certainly, we aren't yet at the stage where we can identify ALL genetic problems, but we can identify and screen out a number of known ones.
Anyway, there were 14 other embryos passed over, so ethically, they would always be available in the future.
Surely they would not have been simply discarded in a civilized society.
I'm not sure if you're being serious or droll, but I'll take the chance that I'm being trolled. Why shouldn't they be discarded? They're just human tissue, little different than a severed finger or an apendix that has been removed.
Uh, that's one of the reasons for doing genetic testing. Also quoting from the article: When the embryos reach the eight-cell stage, one cell is removed and tested genetically, a procedure called preimplantation genetic diagnosis. The testing is used to select embryos that do not have the same genetic disease as the sibling, but do have tissue compatible for transplant.
Walker added: "The burden of proof is not for the people who defend property rights, but those who want to take them away."
How's that again? You're the one using force to prevent me from using a perfectly obvious idea in my business, yet I'm the one who's required to prove that you shouldn't be allowed to do that? To my way of thinking, the burden of proof is always on the shoulders of the one using force to impose their idea's/beliefs on others.
Well, obviously the books haven't changed. (Other than a bit of minor editing, perhaps.) Is it that you've grown wiser and you see deeper into the author's intentions or that you've become a bit jaded yourself and your own cynicism colors your perceptions? (Obviously a rhetorical question, or one that only you can answer for yourself.)
Slashdot Mirror
...that the rights to any sex you have while employed there automatically belong to them?
In order for the software to work, you have to have a pristine cuecat. If you've hacked your cuecat to get around the encryption, so that it works as a generic barcode scanner, CueHack won't work.
In conformity with a fixed procedure, principle, or discipline.
Regular expressions provide an regular or ordered way to specify patterns.
The Canadians aren't counting chad. They're counting ballots designed to be counted by hand.
If something is contested, what do you do? You can't do anything but have a total revote. If you have all those pieces of paper in a box u just count them again.
Not if you use a scanner. To my mind, the best system would be one in which you mark your choices, feed it in and the system displays on screen "You voted for Roblimo for president, Hemos for Senator and YES on Proposition 51, the Slashdot Initiative. Is this correct?" Push the YES button and your vote is recorded and your ballot stored in a lock-box. Push NO and your ballot is spit back out to you for you to change.
Well said. I also don't think moderation is a problem in and of itself. I'd suggest a couple of modifications to the current system, though. First, remove the ability to post as an AC. Anyone can read. You want to post, log in. Second, either remove or at the very least hide karma. Remove the incentive to karma whore.
According to the actual decision, Governor George W. Bush ... filed a petition for certiorari to review the Florida Supreme
Court decision. (The above link to the decision on MSNBC spaz's out due to junkbuster.) A petition for certiorari is a request for the Supreme Court to review the decision. The decision by the SC was that the Florida court wasn't clear in their decision and needed to revisit it. The Florida court can essentially write a new decision, ruling the same way but answering the SC's specific questions as to the grounds of their decision. If they do so, the SC may either accept or reject the decision.
I don't know where you live but there are still face-to-face meetins of geeks going on most US urban areas, at least. Try looking for a Linux/Unix Users group.
So what are you saying..that the law trumps any moral code? This means that there can not BE an immoral law. China's iron grip on the media? Hey, that's cool - it's the law. South Africa's apartheid? Of course there's nothing wrong with it. It's the LAW, for Christ's sakes. Surely you don't think some moral principle trumps the law do you?
If customers do not renew or install an upgrade product, they can still open, view and print their existing documents.
Open, view and print. Nothing said about editing.
Not carrying something is one thing, however. If your library doesn't carry Playboy, fine. If, however, they do carry Playboy but go through with a pair of scisors and cut out all the pictures, I for one would be highly upset. Additionally, filtering isn't perfect. Far, far from it. Not only do they block inappropriate sites but a lot of legitimate sites as well. It's not problematic if I block my child from accessing a site on breast cancer. It's seriously problematic if the government blocks me from accessing that same site.
We insist that programmers should not be blamed for the use to which their software is put. Napster is not responsible for the pirating of music over their service - they merely provide a conduit. What goes through that conduit is the responsibility of the user. Yet if I write a program to filter what sites my child can access from my home computer and a local government official wants to install it on the local library system, I and my program suddenly become evil. Anyone else smell a bit of hypocrasy here?
About the only place you have real "facts" is within mathematics, and there you have a carefully specified list of premises. The Pythagorean theorem is true within, and only within, the carefully defined world of Euclidian geometry.
When it comes to medicine, things are much trickier. It's virtually impossible to say that medicine X curse ailment Z. The most that can usually be said is that medicine X appears to help ailment Z in Y% of cases. Does aspirin cure a headache? No. Does it provide relief for the pain of a headache? For a large percentage of people, it provides some relief. Does penicillin kill bacteria? We used to think so. But what about the new resistant strains that are showing up?
It's easy to prove a fact wrong. You only have to find one case. To prove it true, you have to show that it's true in ALL cases. This is a much more difficult task.
All of that being said, I have no real problem with the proposal so long as there is no attempt to force ALL medical web sites to use the .health TLD.
While this is generally true, there is ample evidence that it was at least occasionally untrue. The Viking's settlement on North America is just one example.
Why is this practical? Because DVD is useful for more than just pirating commercial movies. Because DVD-RWs will likely get much cheaper in the future. It wasn't that long ago that CD-Rs were about $10 apiece.
A mother raising children is not a "worker" as pertains to the economy. She impacts the economy in a variety of ways, and may be quite important to society as a whole and/or to the quality of the children she raises. But she does not produce goods and, in terms of the economy, is therefore not "productive."
If we assume that the advertising isn't wasted on someone living in the actual town (a questionable assumption but necessary for this discussion), then I don't see where it would be ENTIRELY wasted on you. Certainly, if there's an ad for Mom's Diner on the corner of 1st and Main in that town, it's wasted on you. But if there's an ad for parkas on sale at Wal-Mart while the weather channel is reporting a huge blizzard headed your way, the advertising is just as effective for you as it is for someone in that particular town. IOW, most "targeted" advertising isn't aimed that precisely. If they know what region of the country you're in, you're probably within their target area.
Was he foolish to go poke around? Probably so. Lesson learned, the hard way. But he went there well AFTER the fact. He committed no crime and there was nothing indicating that he was involved in the original crack. So what reason was there to confiscate his equipment? I could see somebody coming by and asking him some questions, perhaps.
The other question I have is, why was the FBI involved in the first place? This was an act of vandalism. No real damage done. No list of credit card numbers comprimised. No trade secrets or source code endangered. Just a sports web page defaced. Fire the system administrator if it was a known security hole or sloppy set up, and tighten up your site security. Aren't there enough real crimes out there to keep the FBI busy?
Do they? Obviously, at some point, you'll need to replace your current system. But the need to upgrade is nowhere near as pressing as in the past. The difference in discernable performance (as opposed to benchmarks) between steps is much less than it used to be. Just how much power do you need to run a word processor or email? I'm running Windows 2000 on a Celeron 400. This is far, far from a state of the art machine but I don't feel a great need to upgrade. Performance for most of the stuff I'm doing is more than acceptable. The system doesn't feel sluggish at all. (I'm running 256 meg of RAM, of course.)
Would I like to have a 1GHz+ machine? Certainly. But I've used a 1GHz machine and it simply doesn't feel that much faster than my system at home. When I was running a 486DX4120 and they brought in Pentium systems at work, I was quick to upgrade. My system at home felt like a snail. Same with the PII vs the Pentium and even, to a lesser extent, the PII400 vs my old PII 233.
If you're a graphic artist, a developer doing extensive compiles of large projects, etc. you'll benifit from the latest, most powerful machines. But that's only a fraction of the PC market.
Eventually, I'll replace/upgrade this system. But my upgrade cycles used to be measured in months. Now, its in years. And I suspect I'm not atypical in that regard.
People seem to think that evolution is an intelligent process - that things are evolving towards some abstract ideal rather than adapting to a particular environment. But I'm as clueless as you as to why this should be the case. People seem to follow a sort of reverse Occam's Razor - if something appears to operate in a directed fashion, then it's the product of some sort of intelligent agent. The idea that random effects constrained by a few simple principles can result in highly directed behavior seems incomprehensible to many.
There's a difference in saying someone shouldn't hack/reverse engineer something and saying that they can't, particularly when that can't is backed by the threat of state violence.
Paperwork gets done because of middlemanagement. Real work gets done in spite of it.
Where do you get that? The article says When the embryos reach the eight-cell stage, one cell is removed and tested genetically, a procedure called preimplantation genetic diagnosis. The testing is used to select embryos that do not have the same genetic disease as the sibling, but do have tissue compatible for transplant. This certainly seems to imply that the embryo does NOT have this particular genetic problem. Certainly, we aren't yet at the stage where we can identify ALL genetic problems, but we can identify and screen out a number of known ones.
Anyway, there were 14 other embryos passed over, so ethically, they would always be available in the future.
Surely they would not have been simply discarded in a civilized society.
I'm not sure if you're being serious or droll, but I'll take the chance that I'm being trolled. Why shouldn't they be discarded? They're just human tissue, little different than a severed finger or an apendix that has been removed.
Uh, that's one of the reasons for doing genetic testing. Also quoting from the article: When the embryos reach the eight-cell stage, one cell is removed and tested genetically, a procedure called preimplantation genetic diagnosis. The testing is used to select embryos that do not have the same genetic disease as the sibling, but do have tissue compatible for transplant.
How's that again? You're the one using force to prevent me from using a perfectly obvious idea in my business, yet I'm the one who's required to prove that you shouldn't be allowed to do that? To my way of thinking, the burden of proof is always on the shoulders of the one using force to impose their idea's/beliefs on others.
Well, obviously the books haven't changed. (Other than a bit of minor editing, perhaps.) Is it that you've grown wiser and you see deeper into the author's intentions or that you've become a bit jaded yourself and your own cynicism colors your perceptions? (Obviously a rhetorical question, or one that only you can answer for yourself.)