A program that is free as in beer means that it can be had for no cost, but it does not necessarily mean you have any other freedoms. If a program is free as in speech, then you do have those other freedoms. One of those freedoms is the ability to take the source code for that program and then create your own version, that is, a fork.
So, in short, a program that is free as in speech can be forked, but one that is only free as in beer can not. The GP and his parent used this in the context of a free lawyer.
I just tried it with something I was trying to get out of Google: an
ordered list of large California banks.
I started with "largest banks in california", and was told
"Wolfram|Alpha isn't sure what to do with your input." It also gave
me some "Related inputs to try" which included "banks in california",
so I tried that.
Of course, I was told "Wolfram|Alpha isn't sure what to do with your
input." So, I tried "list of the largest banks in california", which
gave nothing, followed by "list california banks", which offered a
possibility of "california banks", among others.
Trying that got me something! First it told me "Input interpretation:
pacific regional banks" and gave me an alphabetical list, which was
not terribly useful for my purposes. I then tried "large california
banks", and was told "Input interpretation: largest pacific regional
banks" and given actual ordered lists of banks, each list comprising a
different method of ranking, each entry paired with the ranked value.
Very nice.
Only when I got this far did I notice that they were not all
California banks. Quite a number of them were not even US banks.
That is when I realized "pacific regional" really meant any bank in
the pacific region. And further inspection revealed that while
Westamerica bank was listed (number 7 in California, according to
their site), Wells Fargo (a much larger bank also in California) was
not. So even if WA understands your query, and even if it looks for
what you asked it to, it isn't accurate.
First, station wagons can be made and still conform to standards. It's just that SUVs are cheaper to make and have more power while conforming to standards, and consumers generally do not care enough to buy the couple station wagons that are still produced, all of which drives production down.
Second, in California, at least, it is only illegal to put children/carseats in the front seat if the back seat is not filled with children/carseats. Also, you can get the passenger airbag disabled if you can show that you do this regularly.
We have this now, except for those who are wards (i.e. children or prisoners), or those who can't as a result of a court proceeding.
2. Right to control what software is on your computer
This is vague. In one sense, everyone has this -- install Linux or whatever. Or are you want the ability to replace each and every dll on your Windows machine individually? And to get around this, manufacturers can lease you a computer for 99 years for a one-time up-front fee.
3. Right to copy anything you own for your own personal use
Worthy ideal. Goes against some laws such as it being illegal to duplicate keys that have "do not duplicate" stamped on them.
4. Right to use software that does not interfere with anyone else's right
Define "right". The right of the producer to control who can have what is produced? The right to observe behavior to catch terrorists? The right to prevent illegal behavior?
5. The Right to publish any information that is true without fear of takedown notices
Define "true". Can I duplicate the entire Encyclopedia Britannica on my website?
6. The Right to possess any information
Like top secret materials? Like child porn? Trade secrets? Information that you have a contractual obligation to destroy (see NDAs, CC security codes, etc.)?
7. The Right to control your own hardware
Define "control". You want only fully open source hardware? Or simply no proprietary interfaces? No "trusted computing" chip?
8. The Right to use any device for any purpose that does not interfere with rights of others
Again, define "right".
9. The Right to remain anonymous
Anonymous how? Do you with to make it impossible for someone breaking into the Pentagon's computer systems to be found? No traceroute, no DCHP logs, no way to tell who was where? Or that anyone can use any computer/website/ftp site/service without a login?
10.The Right to have free, uncensored speech on your own servers
This could potentially come in conflict with the anonymous right above. Also, this is the first amendment of the US constitution. Or are you suggesting the first amendment is not far reaching enough? Though it occurs to me that you may not be from the US.
Have all these and we would have a good start.
I actually think that you have a number of good ideas here, but not all are practical, and the rest really would need fleshing out.
I am willing to bet that they do that with cheap books (ones they buy), but not with expensive ones (ones they borrow). One certainly can't remove the spines of books in libraries or other collections.
This is not about the imager per se. It is about the way to take images and post process them afterwords. Basically, they take three pictures, one in visible light and two in infrared, and then use the two in infrared to create a stereoscopic image and correct the image in visible light so it is not warped. From the patent, it does look like the imager is a camera, and not a scanner, since the description talks about a book resting on a platform with cameras above it. I do notice the patent makes no mention as to how the pages are turned. As noted above, as least some books' pages are turned by hand.
For good or for ill, the Internet has become rather important for the functioning of society, and it is only getting more so as time goes by. Compare it to any other piece of infrastructure.
Recently here in the bay area, we lost part of the MacArther Maze (the interchange of 580, 880, and 80 on the Oakland side of the Bay Bridge). You can trivialize by saying that the tool plaza may have lost revenue, the bus line may sweat from loss of fares, some adult may not get that date tonight to the SF restaurant, you may miss that one baseball game, some K-12 kid may not be able to get to the zoo, etc., or you can recognize that the bay bridge is one DAMN IMPORTANT piece of infrastructure that makes waves if it is down.
There is a lot that relies on cloud services, many more than you may realize. That is why there are binding QoS contracts. When something goes down, it costs money and time. While you can route around the damage, or maybe take a vacation for the day, that does not mean that failures are unimportant. When you say, "If a life is not lost, there are no worries with cloud computing", you trivialize any loss other than life. The recent housing downturn didn't cost lives, but it did cost jobs, homes, and retirement incomes, to name a few. Sorry, when a major Internet service goes down, someone had better "the F* care".
I am surprised I read this far and no one has mentioned that this proposal is in committee and not likely to leave. This is his fourth attempt.
The proposal is currently before the Assembly's Ways and Means Committee, where it seems likely to remain. This is Ortiz's fourth attempt at similiar[sic] legislation since 2003; none have made it out of committee.
So, the Founding Fathers of the USA obviously had some insight or something that the leaders of the French Revolution didn't.
They had an existing working local government that never was destroyed. The American revolution got rid of the authority of a non-local governmental entity, but by and large left the day-to-day governance intact. The French revolution did not. There, the whole of the government was destroyed, leaving a power vacuum that was not truly filled until Napoleon managed to get a firm enough grip to keep the country together.
The system is based on the subset of the Nash Equilibrium http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nash_equilibrium in which the players cooperate to maximize overall success. It was characterized in the 'nobody go for the blond' scene in "A Beautiful Mind".
The movie was wrong. That is not a Nash Equilibrium. A Nash Equilibrium is where everyone knows everyone else's choices, and no one participant can improve his own result by changing his choice while the other participants do not change theirs. A strong equilibrium (versus a weak equilibrium) is where every participant will actually worsen his result if that participant changes his choice.
The movie was wrong because after everyone in the group has decided to go after a brunette, then any single participant can improve his result by switching his choice from picking up a brunette to picking up the blonde.
Hubble does things that ground-based telescopes can not. Wikipedia states it well:
Although the HST has clearly had a significant impact on astronomical research, the financial cost of this impact has been large. A study on the relative impacts on astronomy of different sizes of telescopes found that while papers based on HST data generate 15 times as many citations as a 4 m ground-based telescope such as the William Herschel Telescope, the HST costs about 100 times as much to build and maintain.[83]
Making the decision between investing in ground-based versus space-based telescopes in the future is complex. Even before Hubble was launched, specialized ground-based techniques such as aperture masking interferometry had obtained higher-resolution optical and infrared images than Hubble would achieve, though restricted to targets about 108 times brighter than the faintest targets observed by Hubble.[84][85] Since then, advances in adaptive optics have extended the high-resolution imaging capabilities of ground-based telescopes to the infrared imaging of faint objects. The usefulness of adaptive optics versus HST observations depends strongly on the particular details of the research questions being asked. In the visible bands, adaptive optics can only correct a relatively small field of view, whereas HST can conduct high-resolution optical imaging over a wide field. Only a small fraction of astronomical objects are accessible to high-resolution ground-based imaging; in contrast Hubble can perform high-resolution observations of any part of the night sky, and on objects that are extremely faint.
In short, Hubble does high-resolution photos and photos of faint objects well because it does not have to deal with the atmosphere.
breaking and entering
n. 1) the criminal act of entering a residence or other enclosed property through the slightest amount of force (even pushing open a door), without authorization. If there is intent to commit a crime, this is burglary. If there is no such intent, the breaking and entering alone is probably at least illegal trespass, which is a misdemeanor crime. 2) the criminal charge for the above.
Breaking and entering is the crime of entering a residence or other enclosed property without authorization and some element of force. If there is intent to commit a crime, this is burglary. Without an intent to commit a crime, breaking and entering by itself usually carries a charge of the crime of trespass.
First, to note that locked versus unlocked doesn't make a difference. That is why people can not argue about whether something is a "lock" or not when defending against B&E.
Second, it appears that B&E is not per se a crime, as you say, because B&E is a wider net than the specific crime which is illegal. E.g. if there is a theft, then it is burglary, and if the person was authorized to enter, then there was no B&E.
Third, a closed door on a private residence is generally considered an implicit "uninvite" unless some other invitation has been given, implicit or otherwise.
Fourth, the better example would be to have talked about going to someone's home where there was an invitation, because then you can talk about public versus private alone. In this situation, the person is legally allowed to be in both places, but one is public and the other private, rather than in your situation, where the waters are muddied with possible trespassing. The original post discussed "expectation of privacy" and "in public", neither of which require the potential trespassing that you brought into the equation.
Last, thank you for bring to my attention that B&E is not technically a crime.
Slashdot Mirror
http://blog.craigslist.org/2009/05/cl-sues-sc-ag-for-declaratory-relief/
A program that is free as in beer means that it can be had for no cost, but it does not necessarily mean you have any other freedoms. If a program is free as in speech, then you do have those other freedoms. One of those freedoms is the ability to take the source code for that program and then create your own version, that is, a fork.
So, in short, a program that is free as in speech can be forked, but one that is only free as in beer can not. The GP and his parent used this in the context of a free lawyer.
Screw any internet provider that wants to give more weight to some traffic over others.
Net neutrality is:
Screw any internet provider that wants to give more weight to some company's traffic over other company's.
It is not:
Screw any internet provider that wants to give more weight to some types of traffic over other types.
I just tried it with something I was trying to get out of Google: an ordered list of large California banks.
I started with "largest banks in california", and was told "Wolfram|Alpha isn't sure what to do with your input." It also gave me some "Related inputs to try" which included "banks in california", so I tried that.
Of course, I was told "Wolfram|Alpha isn't sure what to do with your input." So, I tried "list of the largest banks in california", which gave nothing, followed by "list california banks", which offered a possibility of "california banks", among others.
Trying that got me something! First it told me "Input interpretation: pacific regional banks" and gave me an alphabetical list, which was not terribly useful for my purposes. I then tried "large california banks", and was told "Input interpretation: largest pacific regional banks" and given actual ordered lists of banks, each list comprising a different method of ranking, each entry paired with the ranked value. Very nice.
Only when I got this far did I notice that they were not all California banks. Quite a number of them were not even US banks. That is when I realized "pacific regional" really meant any bank in the pacific region. And further inspection revealed that while Westamerica bank was listed (number 7 in California, according to their site), Wells Fargo (a much larger bank also in California) was not. So even if WA understands your query, and even if it looks for what you asked it to, it isn't accurate.
42 mpg sounds rather high - but only because we haven't even TRIED.
And it is actually only 39, not 42. The 42 would have been the CA law, which is not in effect.
It's 35.5 overall, not 35, and it is 39 for cars, not 42.
Two responses.
First, station wagons can be made and still conform to standards. It's just that SUVs are cheaper to make and have more power while conforming to standards, and consumers generally do not care enough to buy the couple station wagons that are still produced, all of which drives production down.
Second, in California, at least, it is only illegal to put children/carseats in the front seat if the back seat is not filled with children/carseats. Also, you can get the passenger airbag disabled if you can show that you do this regularly.
1. Right to access the internet if you pay for it
We have this now, except for those who are wards (i.e. children or prisoners), or those who can't as a result of a court proceeding.
2. Right to control what software is on your computer
This is vague. In one sense, everyone has this -- install Linux or whatever. Or are you want the ability to replace each and every dll on your Windows machine individually? And to get around this, manufacturers can lease you a computer for 99 years for a one-time up-front fee.
3. Right to copy anything you own for your own personal use
Worthy ideal. Goes against some laws such as it being illegal to duplicate keys that have "do not duplicate" stamped on them.
4. Right to use software that does not interfere with anyone else's right
Define "right". The right of the producer to control who can have what is produced? The right to observe behavior to catch terrorists? The right to prevent illegal behavior?
5. The Right to publish any information that is true without fear of takedown notices
Define "true". Can I duplicate the entire Encyclopedia Britannica on my website?
6. The Right to possess any information
Like top secret materials? Like child porn? Trade secrets? Information that you have a contractual obligation to destroy (see NDAs, CC security codes, etc.)?
7. The Right to control your own hardware
Define "control". You want only fully open source hardware? Or simply no proprietary interfaces? No "trusted computing" chip?
8. The Right to use any device for any purpose that does not interfere with rights of others
Again, define "right".
9. The Right to remain anonymous
Anonymous how? Do you with to make it impossible for someone breaking into the Pentagon's computer systems to be found? No traceroute, no DCHP logs, no way to tell who was where? Or that anyone can use any computer/website/ftp site/service without a login?
10.The Right to have free, uncensored speech on your own servers
This could potentially come in conflict with the anonymous right above. Also, this is the first amendment of the US constitution. Or are you suggesting the first amendment is not far reaching enough? Though it occurs to me that you may not be from the US.
Have all these and we would have a good start.
I actually think that you have a number of good ideas here, but not all are practical, and the rest really would need fleshing out.
Or: http://www.theimproper.com/Images/Art/angelina%20jolie%20voigt.jpg
Can't say that this has changed my opinions any -- it still looks like she has been stung on the mouth by a bee.
That's a stellar picture!
Blood that is left to pool in the legs for too long can eventually lead to dangerous blood clots.
This is solved with frequent movement. Walking up the stairs of your basement every 20 minutes is sufficient. No sleep needed.
http://digg.com/general_sciences/Man_in_Vietnam_hasn%E2%80%99t_slept_in_33_years._2
All Google hits either refer to http://www.thanhniennews.com/features/?catid=10&newsid=12673 or they have no reference at all. So, it is a matter of whether you trust that site.
It also looks like he has a Wikipedia page, but not a Snopes page.
I am willing to bet that they do that with cheap books (ones they buy), but not with expensive ones (ones they borrow). One certainly can't remove the spines of books in libraries or other collections.
Another poster shows that at least one book has had pages turned by hand. Two pages of fingers.
This is not about the imager per se. It is about the way to take images and post process them afterwords. Basically, they take three pictures, one in visible light and two in infrared, and then use the two in infrared to create a stereoscopic image and correct the image in visible light so it is not warped. From the patent, it does look like the imager is a camera, and not a scanner, since the description talks about a book resting on a platform with cameras above it. I do notice the patent makes no mention as to how the pages are turned. As noted above, as least some books' pages are turned by hand.
Another poster shows that at least one book has been imaged with hand page turning. Two pages of fingers.
For good or for ill, the Internet has become rather important for the functioning of society, and it is only getting more so as time goes by. Compare it to any other piece of infrastructure.
Recently here in the bay area, we lost part of the MacArther Maze (the interchange of 580, 880, and 80 on the Oakland side of the Bay Bridge). You can trivialize by saying that the tool plaza may have lost revenue, the bus line may sweat from loss of fares, some adult may not get that date tonight to the SF restaurant, you may miss that one baseball game, some K-12 kid may not be able to get to the zoo, etc., or you can recognize that the bay bridge is one DAMN IMPORTANT piece of infrastructure that makes waves if it is down.
There is a lot that relies on cloud services, many more than you may realize. That is why there are binding QoS contracts. When something goes down, it costs money and time. While you can route around the damage, or maybe take a vacation for the day, that does not mean that failures are unimportant. When you say, "If a life is not lost, there are no worries with cloud computing", you trivialize any loss other than life. The recent housing downturn didn't cost lives, but it did cost jobs, homes, and retirement incomes, to name a few. Sorry, when a major Internet service goes down, someone had better "the F* care".
The proposal is currently before the Assembly's Ways and Means Committee, where it seems likely to remain. This is Ortiz's fourth attempt at similiar[sic] legislation since 2003; none have made it out of committee.
So, the Founding Fathers of the USA obviously had some insight or something that the leaders of the French Revolution didn't.
They had an existing working local government that never was destroyed. The American revolution got rid of the authority of a non-local governmental entity, but by and large left the day-to-day governance intact. The French revolution did not. There, the whole of the government was destroyed, leaving a power vacuum that was not truly filled until Napoleon managed to get a firm enough grip to keep the country together.
The system is based on the subset of the Nash Equilibrium http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nash_equilibrium in which the players cooperate to maximize overall success. It was characterized in the 'nobody go for the blond' scene in "A Beautiful Mind".
The movie was wrong. That is not a Nash Equilibrium. A Nash Equilibrium is where everyone knows everyone else's choices, and no one participant can improve his own result by changing his choice while the other participants do not change theirs. A strong equilibrium (versus a weak equilibrium) is where every participant will actually worsen his result if that participant changes his choice.
The movie was wrong because after everyone in the group has decided to go after a brunette, then any single participant can improve his result by switching his choice from picking up a brunette to picking up the blonde.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
We're about as close to achieving a usable cloak of illusion as we are to achieving world piece...
Well, I just achieved a piece of the world last week, but it cost over half a mil to do it. And the mortgage will go 30 years....
Although the HST has clearly had a significant impact on astronomical research, the financial cost of this impact has been large. A study on the relative impacts on astronomy of different sizes of telescopes found that while papers based on HST data generate 15 times as many citations as a 4 m ground-based telescope such as the William Herschel Telescope, the HST costs about 100 times as much to build and maintain.[83]
Making the decision between investing in ground-based versus space-based telescopes in the future is complex. Even before Hubble was launched, specialized ground-based techniques such as aperture masking interferometry had obtained higher-resolution optical and infrared images than Hubble would achieve, though restricted to targets about 108 times brighter than the faintest targets observed by Hubble.[84][85] Since then, advances in adaptive optics have extended the high-resolution imaging capabilities of ground-based telescopes to the infrared imaging of faint objects. The usefulness of adaptive optics versus HST observations depends strongly on the particular details of the research questions being asked. In the visible bands, adaptive optics can only correct a relatively small field of view, whereas HST can conduct high-resolution optical imaging over a wide field. Only a small fraction of astronomical objects are accessible to high-resolution ground-based imaging; in contrast Hubble can perform high-resolution observations of any part of the night sky, and on objects that are extremely faint.
In short, Hubble does high-resolution photos and photos of faint objects well because it does not have to deal with the atmosphere.
He posted DeCSS in response to the statement "Just like Slashdot wouldn't be liable if I post DeCSS or something along those lines."
Let's start with a couple of sources.
http://dictionary.law.com/default2.Asp?selected=98
breaking and entering
n. 1) the criminal act of entering a residence or other enclosed property through the slightest amount of force (even pushing open a door), without authorization. If there is intent to commit a crime, this is burglary. If there is no such intent, the breaking and entering alone is probably at least illegal trespass, which is a misdemeanor crime. 2) the criminal charge for the above.
http://definitions.uslegal.com/b/breaking-and-entering/
Breaking and entering is the crime of entering a residence or other enclosed property without authorization and some element of force. If there is intent to commit a crime, this is burglary. Without an intent to commit a crime, breaking and entering by itself usually carries a charge of the crime of trespass.
First, to note that locked versus unlocked doesn't make a difference. That is why people can not argue about whether something is a "lock" or not when defending against B&E.
Second, it appears that B&E is not per se a crime, as you say, because B&E is a wider net than the specific crime which is illegal. E.g. if there is a theft, then it is burglary, and if the person was authorized to enter, then there was no B&E.
Third, a closed door on a private residence is generally considered an implicit "uninvite" unless some other invitation has been given, implicit or otherwise.
Fourth, the better example would be to have talked about going to someone's home where there was an invitation, because then you can talk about public versus private alone. In this situation, the person is legally allowed to be in both places, but one is public and the other private, rather than in your situation, where the waters are muddied with possible trespassing. The original post discussed "expectation of privacy" and "in public", neither of which require the potential trespassing that you brought into the equation.
Last, thank you for bring to my attention that B&E is not technically a crime.