Google didn't seem to have much support for freedom of speech when they assisted the government of India in locating a man who posted a profane picture of the Hindu saint Shivaji, as reported yesterday on Slashdot. Strong supporters of freedom of speech indeed - right up until the protection of a user's right to freedom of speech threatens to strain Google's political relationships with distant countries where labor and data center construction are cheap. India isn't a "distant" country to Google. They operate in India. And they choose to obey Indian law in India.
A company has only three choices when dealing with presence in a foreign country: obey the country's law, break the country's law, or not have a presence. Breaking the country's law is clearly not a good option; it simply results in jail time or removal from the country. Should Google not do business in India?
Almost every single country in the world has more restrictive freedom of speech than the US. Either we (as a country) can interact with the rest of the world and try to change it, or become isolationist and try to change it. As a country with open trade, we have political, economical, and military influence to cause change. As an isolationist country, we only have military influence. Which do you think is more effective?
Where do you see anything about attacking her family, or "doing evil" to her? Not to mention "mob justice". The GP simply said the woman deserves what she gets, whether that is losing her business (I read it as losing from financial burden of a criminal/civil defense lawyer) or whatever.
You read an awful lot into what the GP said.
I agree with your general sentiment, I just think your comment was triggered from the wrong post. I wasn't specifically talking about the views of the GP, but her entire family have received death threats, rocks through windows, etc. I was just saying that that sort of thing is not ok.
The woman deserves what is coming, and I will laugh happily every time I hear her family has suffered misfortune - losing their business, pulling their daughter from school and hopefully soon being forced from the community. She acted without remorse and deserves to suffer consequences. I'm not a big fan of mob justice. Not patronizing a business because you disagree with the owner is fine. Death threats, assault, and other violent and criminal activities have no place here. Causing more unhappiness certainly doesn't improve their community.
Why not put all that hate-filled energy into positive steps, like helping out a suicide hotline or pushing for legislation they feel would prevent this in the future?
The people who attack her family are doing evil, plain and simple. I hope they get sent to jail for it.
Besides, whats the fear? Its not like this planet cannot support double that if not more.
Some estimates say that will happen. Then what? What if everyone in the world manages to raise their standard of living to US levels? Then you'd need to find resources at 5X or more the rate we're currently using. Have you checked commodity prices lately?
That's what I'm afraid of. There simply isn't enough resources for everyone in the world to live like a middle class family in the US, and production isn't increasing as fast as population growth or standard of living.
Something has to give, and it's going to be within 25 years. The standard of living is going to start coming down in the US and other highly developed countries, due to demand for resources worldwide.
Sort of some miraculous deus ex machina technology is needed ASAP. Or we'll end up in a world war over resources.
HOW exactly was THIS modded UP?! I mean WHAT?! Even as AC, I am shocked. It's modded "Interesting". Meaning some people may not agree with the poster, but the poster made an attempt to come up with an argument that isn't overhashed around here.
It's an interesting opinion and an interesting point of view. There's no reason to squelch an opinion here just because you don't agree.
Fedora 9 comes out in two weeks, but we are comparing the nw born Ubuntu to 6 month old distros. Ugh. Let's compare apples to apples people! Why should one distro be handicapped because the others are not as up to date? If I chose a desktop distro today, I would want to know what the best one available today is. Not what the best one was six months ago.
Tell me then... what exactly did his parents sacrifice for? Is his child expected to also sacrifice his happiness, so that his grandchildren can be happy? What of them?
I LOLed at that, because it's true.
Kids are happy if they're entertained, educated, and fed. Sacrificing your happiness for more money beyond that isn't going to make a child happier. A content father and mother will, though.
Good idea. I like to paint. I say I start charging people every time they look at my paintings. It's funny you should mention this, since that's one of the ways art galleries make their money. Artists can continue to make money long after they complete their works, assuming they are quality enough and smart enough to loan their works or open their own gallery.
Musicians aren't the only ones who make money long after the work is completed. Shrinkwrap software sells after it's completed, as do pretty much every penny of IP licensing fees.
Your comment illustrates exactly what is wrong with the medical insurance system we have today: the idea that the purpose of insurance is to save everyone money.
With a properly functioning insurance system, you would expect to probably pay a bit more for your premiums than you would for the medical care that you actually receive. In return, you would be protected from having to foot the bill for an unlikely catastrophe.
Instead, modern medical insurance has degenerated into a sort of payment plan for routine medical expenses.
I disagree with the term "degenerated." The reason routine medical services, such as health exams and dental cleanings, are covered by insurance is to encourage the patient to get these checkups, reducing the chance of serious harm due to lack of prevention.
Insurance would not be much cheaper, if at all, if routine medical services were not covered. Catastrophic events would occur much more frequently due to lack of preventative care. A person who has to pay $100 out of pocket for a test or checkup may not get one. Whether it's because they think they can beat the system or because they feel they can't afford it, insurance companies would have to pay for the expensive cleanup afterwards.
This is a complete and utter nightmare, for so many reasons. You start to mistrust the routers in your network, then you should also distrust most of the tools in your arsenal. Can you trust that laptop? What about the chipset in that laptop? Can you trust the copy of GCC you have?
This is going to keep a lot of people awake at night. Indeed. Even if you tried to flash the firmware on your routers to clean them, who is to say the "bad" firmware isn't designed to look like it was flashed, but really do nothing to get rid of any backdoors?
If you can't trust the hardware, you can't trust anything. Scary stuff.
So, voting for Ron Paul is not throwing away your vote, even though he can't win, and therefore, you still didn't vote for the winner of the election, and possibly helped one of the others get elected instead? I feel it necessary to vote for the lesser of 3 evils, at least so things can be BETTER than they are now.
It'd be great if I could have my ideal, but practicality limits reality. Kinda true, kinda not. While I'm not a Ron Paul supporter, the idea works for any 3rd party candidate. The more support a third party candidate gets in the general election, the easier it is for the third party to compete in subsequent elections. The party gets federal matching funds for federal elections, an easier way to get on the ballot, and state benefits vary from state to state. So yes, voting for Ron Paul does make it more likely a third party will be able to rise out of obscurity, just not instantly.
It is POSSIBLE to bring up a third party, if not to compete with the Reps and Dems, then to replace one of them. We aren't still voting for Whigs, after all.
I personally think it would be easier to start a third party at the bottom, in local and regional elections, than to make a bid for the presidency. But you need to attempt both to get the word out.
Quite a few geeks seem to have Aspergers and other issues which make them socially inept. Lately, I've heard that thrown around more and more as fact. Are there any studies indicating that?
If there is no suspected public danger and no reported crime, why would there be a need to purposefully look in my car, purposefully look in my house, or use a thermal imaging system? If no one's reported a problem with that particular parking spot, why bother checking for handicapped plates/stickers at all?
Police don't just need to justify the how, but the why, too. The whole point of a police force isn't to arrest and fine, but to keep people safe.
I'm afraid of the police. Many other Americans are, too. We're all guilty of some crime or another, generally very mild, but what would happen if the police looked in every window and could force every answer to every question?
When the police complain that citizens aren't cooperative, I laugh. If I cooperate and slip up, they might find out I committed a crime. Why would I cooperate with someone who's looking for a way to either arrest me or give me a fine? Stop busting people for pot, and I'll start helping you look for the real bad guys.
And? If we truly want to live in a society of racial equality, we need to stop calling attention to stuff like this. Ignoring possible inequality does not lead to equality. Pointing out places where racism may be occurring allows us to look and see if that's the case, or if there is another underlying reason for the result. From there, we, as a society, can decide what to do, if anything, about it.
I've been trying without success to claim deductions for blackjack and hookers for years, Well here's good news for you, you CAN deduct gambling losses. But only if you're claiming gambling income as well. And you can only deduct up to the amount that you have won. Or something, I'm neither a gambler nor a tax advisor. Quick story. Before Internet gambling was devastated by the current rules against banks supporting gambling transfers, life was really good. About half of the reputable gambling sites on the Internet offered to match your initial deposits with free cash. The offers were so good, if you played correctly, you could get back on average an extra few hundred dollars just for playing blackjack with little to no risk. Over a period of a year, I know... ahem... a friend of mine that made over $7000 doing it over a period of 6 months.
Anyways, I guess that's kind of an aside. You can deduct gambling losses only if it's a job. You have to keep really good records of all of your deposits, earnings, and losses, and if you end up down for the year, you can deduct it against reported winnings in other years.
But having a direct neural interface, that can mimic all five senses at once, is another thing altogether. Outside of a direct neural interface:
Sound: Well, sound is already "good enough." A good pair of headphones with positional audio can pretty much be dead on, and sound can definitely be rendered in real time.
Sight: A stereoscopic headset has too low refresh, generally, but that will come pretty quickly. We already have good enough rendering to look almost photo realistic in real time.
Taste: We can already stimulate/simulate salty, sweet, savory, etc with electrical impulses to the tongue. Not exactly pleasant to wear an interface like that. I'm not too concerned with taste, though.
Smell: Not yet, but it looks possible. I don't really care about this one coming before Touch.
Touch: This is the big one. There are so many different feelings. Hot, cold, wet, pain, pressure, and wind all feel different. I can't see how we can get fine grained touch without stimulation of the nervous system. It's sad there's not more research advanced in this area, because this is the one everyone wants.
Why do you equate "less sophisticated" with any sort of depracation? It is a reflection of a state of knowledge, sophisticated - (of a person, ideas, tastes, manners, etc.) altered by education, experience, etc., so as to be worldly-wise; not naive
That's exactly his point. Calling someone "less sophisticated" is calling them ignorant. How do you, or anyone else, know his requirements? How do you know his level of knowledge? Calling someone "less sophisticated" based on the choice of an operating system is ridiculous. It's just an OS. Get over it! It's name calling, plain and simple.
not any reflection of intelligence nor the propriety of that state of knowledge nor any moral failing. In general, less sophisticated is better because whatever task can be accomplished with less mental effort. MS-Windows certainly is appropriate for users with very simple requirements. That's because Windows, especially XP, works very, very well as an workstation OS. Windows is certainly appropriate for those with non-simple requirements, as well. Linux and it's most popular windows managers still have plenty of quirks, flaky drivers, and software incompatibilities that makes it much more difficult to use as a workstation.
BTW, a "Fsck you" on any subject is functionally identical to a concession that you possess no further logical argument, and likely indicates you lack the grace or strength to stand by a personal perference and must instead verbally attack. In this case, it means calling someone less sophisticated based on his OS choice is already a playground argument, so there's not much point in going on.
Too bad the quality of the products will still be unfinished eternally beta like pretty much all FOSS. It beats paying for closed source beta-but-claiming-its-not software.
...refers to electron mobility, a concept I hadn't previously encountered. But it's easy enough to understand: if I apply a unit electric field to a material, how fast does it make the electrons drift? This is the mobility.
Apparently graphene (also new to me... a single-atom layer of carbon) is exciting because it has much higher electron mobility than silicon. Which leads to faster switching times, although they don't explain that part.
All this seems to be theoretical at the moment, due to insufficiently pure graphene. Still, 100th the switching delay is not a bad target to be aiming at... 100Ghz processing!
Thanks, now I don't have to RTFA. I was wondering why pure conductivity improvements are good for gates. Semiconductors are used for a reason.:-)
A radioactive cat that just underwent cancer treatment? A cat is not a radiological bomb. Obviously, their detectors are way too sensitive.
SNIP
If someone really does have a radiological weapon, all he has to do now is shield it in layers of lead to escape detection -- or have a radiological cat as a decoy.
Not quite. An unshielded slightly radioactive cat could quite possibly produce similar radiation to a shielded highly radioactive weapon. I don't see the device as being too sensitive. It picked up an unusual source of radiation, which is it's purpose.
As far as shielding with lead, if something is radioactive, handling it can leave traces of radiation or material. Even with shielding, it can be difficult to completely eliminate all of the radioactive signature in a car.
Same thing with drugs. Sometimes the sniffing dog hits on the door handle, when the big payoff is shielded in the gas tank.
Why are consoles the only thing that count? I don't even have a console, but I dropped $40 for CNC3. Red Alert 3 is supposed to be coming out this year, and it looks awesome. Won't that generate a lot of sales? Are PC games really such a minority? I'm also primarily a PC gamer. The problem is there are no good metrics for measuring PC game downloads or subscriptions yet. So it looks like there is a large slump in PC games sales, when in fact they're doing pretty well with things like Steam, WoW, and GameTap in the figures.
No worries, though. They've been predicting the death of PC gaming for years, and it's still quite strong. MS consolidating the look of on-the-shelf PC Games under the "Games For Windows" standardization will help with sales, too, even if it's a poor long term solution.
I'm hoping within the next couple of console generations there will be a conversion to a PC style gaming model with standardized hardware. Meaning mouse and keyboard support included for all/most games, game modding capable and encouraged, and with the ability to download and pay for (or get free) games independent of the hardware developer's network.
You have 6.5 gig of space on redundant remote servers. What are you backing up? Perhaps I do not understand what this application does and who needs it... Gmail has been known to shut down down accounts without notice or any chance of reversal. It's prudent to have a copy of your own data at all times, no matter how secure you think someone else is storing it.
Perhaps the reason some businesses "don't want the headache" is do to the attitude of
some IT departments. In my dealings, some of them (READ SOME) have the attitude that
they are doing you a favor, just talking to you. I think that's a big part of it. Attitude is important. It's tough to balance your attitude to make everyone happy, though.
You can't be over-eager to fix someone's computer, or they'll come to you every time they want to change their desktop background.
You can't make the work seem over-easy, or management might think it can be done by less people or someone less qualified.
In addition, you have to educate the people willing to learn about what you're doing. That includes management and individual employees. Many people still see IT as a black magic of sorts, and think it's scary and dangerous information. To a business, it's just a set of tools to improve profitability.
The way I usually put it, at least to my company, is that a good IT department can MAKE the company money, rather than cost it money. A good IT department can increase productivity of said company's employees, provide support services to customers (through the web), provide exposure to potential customers (again through the web), and fix the boss's home computer when his daughter breaks it. (Har-Har)
Slashdot Mirror
A company has only three choices when dealing with presence in a foreign country: obey the country's law, break the country's law, or not have a presence. Breaking the country's law is clearly not a good option; it simply results in jail time or removal from the country. Should Google not do business in India?
Almost every single country in the world has more restrictive freedom of speech than the US. Either we (as a country) can interact with the rest of the world and try to change it, or become isolationist and try to change it. As a country with open trade, we have political, economical, and military influence to cause change. As an isolationist country, we only have military influence. Which do you think is more effective?
Why not put all that hate-filled energy into positive steps, like helping out a suicide hotline or pushing for legislation they feel would prevent this in the future?
The people who attack her family are doing evil, plain and simple. I hope they get sent to jail for it.
Some estimates say that will happen. Then what? What if everyone in the world manages to raise their standard of living to US levels? Then you'd need to find resources at 5X or more the rate we're currently using. Have you checked commodity prices lately?
That's what I'm afraid of. There simply isn't enough resources for everyone in the world to live like a middle class family in the US, and production isn't increasing as fast as population growth or standard of living.Something has to give, and it's going to be within 25 years. The standard of living is going to start coming down in the US and other highly developed countries, due to demand for resources worldwide.
Sort of some miraculous deus ex machina technology is needed ASAP. Or we'll end up in a world war over resources.
It's an interesting opinion and an interesting point of view. There's no reason to squelch an opinion here just because you don't agree.
Tell me then... what exactly did his parents sacrifice for? Is his child expected to also sacrifice his happiness, so that his grandchildren can be happy? What of them?
I LOLed at that, because it's true.Kids are happy if they're entertained, educated, and fed. Sacrificing your happiness for more money beyond that isn't going to make a child happier. A content father and mother will, though.
Musicians aren't the only ones who make money long after the work is completed. Shrinkwrap software sells after it's completed, as do pretty much every penny of IP licensing fees.
Your comment illustrates exactly what is wrong with the medical insurance system we have today: the idea that the purpose of insurance is to save everyone money.
With a properly functioning insurance system, you would expect to probably pay a bit more for your premiums than you would for the medical care that you actually receive. In return, you would be protected from having to foot the bill for an unlikely catastrophe.
Instead, modern medical insurance has degenerated into a sort of payment plan for routine medical expenses.
I disagree with the term "degenerated." The reason routine medical services, such as health exams and dental cleanings, are covered by insurance is to encourage the patient to get these checkups, reducing the chance of serious harm due to lack of prevention.Insurance would not be much cheaper, if at all, if routine medical services were not covered. Catastrophic events would occur much more frequently due to lack of preventative care. A person who has to pay $100 out of pocket for a test or checkup may not get one. Whether it's because they think they can beat the system or because they feel they can't afford it, insurance companies would have to pay for the expensive cleanup afterwards.
If you can't trust the hardware, you can't trust anything. Scary stuff.
It is POSSIBLE to bring up a third party, if not to compete with the Reps and Dems, then to replace one of them. We aren't still voting for Whigs, after all.
I personally think it would be easier to start a third party at the bottom, in local and regional elections, than to make a bid for the presidency. But you need to attempt both to get the word out.
If there is no suspected public danger and no reported crime, why would there be a need to purposefully look in my car, purposefully look in my house, or use a thermal imaging system? If no one's reported a problem with that particular parking spot, why bother checking for handicapped plates/stickers at all?
Police don't just need to justify the how, but the why, too. The whole point of a police force isn't to arrest and fine, but to keep people safe.
I'm afraid of the police. Many other Americans are, too. We're all guilty of some crime or another, generally very mild, but what would happen if the police looked in every window and could force every answer to every question?
When the police complain that citizens aren't cooperative, I laugh. If I cooperate and slip up, they might find out I committed a crime. Why would I cooperate with someone who's looking for a way to either arrest me or give me a fine? Stop busting people for pot, and I'll start helping you look for the real bad guys.
Anyways, I guess that's kind of an aside. You can deduct gambling losses only if it's a job. You have to keep really good records of all of your deposits, earnings, and losses, and if you end up down for the year, you can deduct it against reported winnings in other years.
Sound: Well, sound is already "good enough." A good pair of headphones with positional audio can pretty much be dead on, and sound can definitely be rendered in real time.
Sight: A stereoscopic headset has too low refresh, generally, but that will come pretty quickly. We already have good enough rendering to look almost photo realistic in real time.
Taste: We can already stimulate/simulate salty, sweet, savory, etc with electrical impulses to the tongue. Not exactly pleasant to wear an interface like that. I'm not too concerned with taste, though.
Smell: Not yet, but it looks possible. I don't really care about this one coming before Touch.
Touch: This is the big one. There are so many different feelings. Hot, cold, wet, pain, pressure, and wind all feel different. I can't see how we can get fine grained touch without stimulation of the nervous system. It's sad there's not more research advanced in this area, because this is the one everyone wants.
That's exactly his point. Calling someone "less sophisticated" is calling them ignorant. How do you, or anyone else, know his requirements? How do you know his level of knowledge? Calling someone "less sophisticated" based on the choice of an operating system is ridiculous. It's just an OS. Get over it! It's name calling, plain and simple. not any reflection of intelligence nor the propriety of that state of knowledge nor any moral failing. In general, less sophisticated is better because whatever task can be accomplished with less mental effort. MS-Windows certainly is appropriate for users with very simple requirements. That's because Windows, especially XP, works very, very well as an workstation OS. Windows is certainly appropriate for those with non-simple requirements, as well. Linux and it's most popular windows managers still have plenty of quirks, flaky drivers, and software incompatibilities that makes it much more difficult to use as a workstation. BTW, a "Fsck you" on any subject is functionally identical to a concession that you possess no further logical argument, and likely indicates you lack the grace or strength to stand by a personal perference and must instead verbally attack. In this case, it means calling someone less sophisticated based on his OS choice is already a playground argument, so there's not much point in going on.
...refers to electron mobility, a concept I hadn't previously encountered. But it's easy enough to understand: if I apply a unit electric field to a material, how fast does it make the electrons drift? This is the mobility.
Apparently graphene (also new to me ... a single-atom layer of carbon) is exciting because it has much higher electron mobility than silicon. Which leads to faster switching times, although they don't explain that part.
All this seems to be theoretical at the moment, due to insufficiently pure graphene. Still, 100th the switching delay is not a bad target to be aiming at... 100Ghz processing!
Thanks, now I don't have to RTFA. I was wondering why pure conductivity improvements are good for gates. Semiconductors are used for a reason.SNIP
If someone really does have a radiological weapon, all he has to do now is shield it in layers of lead to escape detection -- or have a radiological cat as a decoy.
Not quite. An unshielded slightly radioactive cat could quite possibly produce similar radiation to a shielded highly radioactive weapon. I don't see the device as being too sensitive. It picked up an unusual source of radiation, which is it's purpose.As far as shielding with lead, if something is radioactive, handling it can leave traces of radiation or material. Even with shielding, it can be difficult to completely eliminate all of the radioactive signature in a car.
Same thing with drugs. Sometimes the sniffing dog hits on the door handle, when the big payoff is shielded in the gas tank.
No worries, though. They've been predicting the death of PC gaming for years, and it's still quite strong. MS consolidating the look of on-the-shelf PC Games under the "Games For Windows" standardization will help with sales, too, even if it's a poor long term solution.
I'm hoping within the next couple of console generations there will be a conversion to a PC style gaming model with standardized hardware. Meaning mouse and keyboard support included for all/most games, game modding capable and encouraged, and with the ability to download and pay for (or get free) games independent of the hardware developer's network.
You can't be over-eager to fix someone's computer, or they'll come to you every time they want to change their desktop background.
You can't make the work seem over-easy, or management might think it can be done by less people or someone less qualified.
In addition, you have to educate the people willing to learn about what you're doing. That includes management and individual employees. Many people still see IT as a black magic of sorts, and think it's scary and dangerous information. To a business, it's just a set of tools to improve profitability.
The way I usually put it, at least to my company, is that a good IT department can MAKE the company money, rather than cost it money. A good IT department can increase productivity of said company's employees, provide support services to customers (through the web), provide exposure to potential customers (again through the web), and fix the boss's home computer when his daughter breaks it. (Har-Har)