Thus, while technically true that DeCSS does not prevent making usable copies (witness solution (a)), it is not feasible except with very expensive equipment. Solutions (b) and (c) are very cheap-- and require DeCSS-- and so it is, I believe, fair to say that DeCSS is what enables illegal copying to occur.
I have to dispute this for reasons of pragmatism. The MPAA know that domestic piracy will happen on a small scale. But they've lived with this kind of piracy on VHS for so many years and they know it's not a significant threat. The only real piracy threat is from large-scale commercial piracy which they cannot defeat (yet) by technology alone.
While it may be possible that DeCSS makes copying a little easier it doesn't make it easy enough to form a significant threat to the MPAA.
DVD copying on domestic players (or PC-DVD drives) is too slow and expensive for you to make and distribute hundreds of copies. And there is no way that they've gone to all this trouble just to stop you from making a single copy of one DVD for your friend down the road.
There is no doubt in my mind that the reason they are panicking is because they intended to control the player market and regional distribution of titles. The argument about domestic piracy simply doesn't stack up.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is Thought exists only as an abstraction
Get away. They're in it together. In fact it's probably the same guy arguing with himself, I've seen it before on Slashdot only recently. In fact, it's probably YOU!
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is Thought exists only as an abstraction
I just mailed openlaw pointing at this thread and asking them to contact the EFF. For what it's worth. A few more mails to both parties might be in order if anybody else is serious about seeing this happen.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is Thought exists only as an abstraction
<blockquote>A friend of mine who works for the Federal Court system tells me that Judge Kaplan is one of the technically savvy judges in the district. Furthermore, he also tends toward the little guy. </blockquote>
I know it's very difficult to hold your fire under such extreme provocation as this. But maybe, just maybe, Judge Kaplan (being technically savvy) has a hidden agenda of his own (tending towards the little guy).
He knows that the current law regarding fair use is self-contradictory. He knows that all the existing legislation relating to the charges are vague and interpretation rests upon case law.
He knows that the defendants have only limited resources and that, all due respect to the EFF, their lawyers probably aren't exactly world class.
He also knows that the MPAA will throw millions of dollars at lawyers to twist the truth and <i>force</i> a decision favourable to them. This has been done before. Remember OJ Simpson's trial? There can't be a person on the whole planet who thinks he's innocent, yet he got away with it because he bought talented lawyers. The same thing could easily happen here.
You know, this kind of thing must tick Judges off a lot. As a Judge, how would *you* feel if you had to watch some smartass lawyer running rings round the opposition knowing that the law was being bent to serve a purpose against justice, and against the public interest?
But maybe, just maybe, Judge Kaplan can see a way around all this. Maybe by manipulating the situation he can help the EFF get a clear shot at winning the case.
He can give the EFF a clear warning shot across the bows, to let them know the score, so they don't waste time pursuing arguments that won't fly.
He can even trick the MPAA into wasting *their* time pursuing arguments that won't fly. Or at the very least, arguments that will narrowly win the case but stand a very good chance of being shot down by the Federal or Supreme Court (who seem to be much more concerned with protecting the constitution).
I know how you feel, I'm anguished about it too. I'm doubly upset because I don't live in the US (at the moment) so I don't even have anyone to complain to. But maybe we should avoid flaming the Judge until this is over. It's just conceivable that he's the only real friend we have. If he's not, I doubt that personal attacks will endear him to our side in the slightest.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is Thought exists only as an abstraction
That's true, but you're tilting at windmills. The original point made was not that the Shuttle and Soyuz are the same, but that they are representative of similar 1970's technologies. In his own words:
<blockquote>...the two craft were developed using similar technology. mid-70s technology. This technological level lets you do one of two things: build an advanced expendable spacecraft or build a crappy "reusable" one. </blockquote>
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is Thought exists only as an abstraction
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is Thought exists only as an abstraction
Re:On to Spanish Harlem!
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I do admit you have a point. I found normalised figures for Gross Domestic Product (PPP-GDP) but it was really incomes I was after and I could only find these expressed in absolute dollar values.
I only introduced it in order to refute someone else's implication that the poorest have incomes of about US$3000 in absolute US dollar value terms. So the figures from that study I summarized did at least serve their purpose.
Even so, it's not too much of a stretch to realize that the sort of money we're talking about is only going to cover expenses for very basic food clothing and shelter, for people on those average incomes or above. The poorest of the poor in those countries (and almost everybody in the countries at the bottom of the table) will lead truly wretched lives, and millions of them each year suffer a horrible death of starvation and disease. I can live with the knowledge that this is happening, God forgive me. But even I won't stand by while someone is spreading the obvious falsehoods that it just isn't happening at all, or that these people somehow deserve this awful fate.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is Thought exists only as an abstraction
Re:On to Spanish Harlem!
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And yet Japan not only industrialized and modernized in a few decades, they fought a very competitive war with the world's greatest powers. So 40 or 50 years (say, since the end of colonialism in the 50s and 60s) is a long time for a people like the Japanese who have some commitment and motivation, but forever for those without.
I'll grant you that the Japanese have a very dynamic society, but the picture you paint of their rise to fortune is not entirely accurate. Japan was always well prepared for war; they had a long history of it and had built up and honed their war machine for a long time. Their militarism meant that despite lacking their own raw materials this was never really a problem. They just took what they wanted from their neighbours, eg, the Chinese (who are still wary of them). In World War II they took advantage of Germany's strength to leverage their own relatively small contribution. And after WWII, Japan's rise to economic superpower status would never have happened had they not received an enormous influx of cash from the West. So it's not really a good example of a poor country making their own way. They weren't poor to start with and they didn't make their own way, they had substantial help from outside.
Oh, so let's make this about racism now
I can't help the facts. White Europeans dominated and exploited non-white Africans and Asians for centuries. They are still doing it even though it's no longer necessary for whites to settle in those countries now that we have international banking and sufficient local influence to be able to fight wars and start revolutions by proxy, and topple governments by remote control.
I suspect maybe your mother never told you that Life Is Not Fair and that if you get screwed, screw back, try again, and don't bitch.
Actually my mother never told me that but I did learn it for myself. It seems more than likely that this is the fundamental difference between us. You were raised to accept the world as a bad place, while I wasn't. As far as I'm concerned it shouldn't be and it doesn't have to be. It's only people like you that keep it that way. The point of civilization is precisely to make things fair, not to make it easier to shit on people just to satisfy your own greed.
Europeans were Imperialist bastards. The world's a tough place, moreso for some than others. Deal with it.
The knowledge that our ancestors wronged the less fortunate is not a moral justification for continuing the tradition!
You deliberately ignored the facts about poverty and the historical reasons for it because they don't justify or support your attitude. But when cornered about it you abandon your refutation of the facts and resort to maliciously snarling: "The world's evil! Deal with it!"
Aha - Got you!
Perhaps I was too hasty when I called you uneducated; it's not necessary to explain your attitude so as long as your motives are rotten enough. Now *I* don't believe in Satan, but your attitude is so convincingly extreme in its inhumanity that I can't help picturing you with horns, a pointed tail and glowing red eyes. If Hammer still made horror films you'd have a fine movie career ahead of you. Get thee behind me.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is Thought exists only as an abstraction
Re:Gas Core Nuclear Rocket
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A. Did you notice the Van allen belt comment above? Try to get to mars cheaply with gravity assist while not recieving huge doses of radiation from the belts.
The Van Allen belts aren't even the problem. The spacefarers will receive much more during the journey during and after the trans-orbit injection and during an extended stay on Mars, since the planet has no appreciable magnetic field to protect them. The greatest risk of all comes from solar flares. Any female voyagers will need to have their ovaries removed and frozen before leaving if they expect to bear children afterwards.
B. Why do you think a nuclear powered craft would be any less tested then a chemical one? Noone said anything about expecting people to fly on unproved technology.
C. Do you know that nuclear rocket engines have already been tested? In the mid 60s several nuclear thermal rocket engines were tested in Nevada. One of them had a thrust of around 250,000 lbs, even.
I presumed we were discussing an accelerated program. In that context the introduction of a new design of man-rated nuclear gas plasma rocket is lunacy.
You should know that my worry isn't about being near something nuclear. They'll most likely need to have some fission generators with them anyway, to provide electrical power to the craft's systems and during their stay on the Martian surface. My fears are to do with the vulnerability of the radiation shielding around the engines, and the risk of an explosion. Spacecraft engines are high energy devices. Even a small explosion could damage the shielding enough to fry the crew. With chemical engines, a small explosion that didn't destroy the craft outright needn't be fatal (the Apollo 13 crew survived). Retrieving the crew from a disabled craft is an entirely separate problem.
Now, assuming we're all talking about nuclear fission:
I think one of the most helpful things we could all do for mankind is to start on an extensive nuclear technology public education project. We need to teach people that nuclear energy is really the key to our future.
We'd only need to teach that to people if it were true. Which it isn't.
It can be done safely, and is already far cleaner than any other alternatives.
The evidence says otherwise, regardless of all the grandstanding by the nuclear companies. It's only clean if you can make the waste vanish. Sticking it in underground containers isn't good enough, some of our underground waste dumps are breaking up already. And what about decommissioning? How many nuclear reactors out of all those built in the last half century do you know that have been safely decommissioned without serious environmental impact?
Some of these waste products remain highly dangerous for hundreds of thousands of years. There is no place to deposit them on Earth that is known to be a safe and stable environment for that length of time. And you can't rely upon continual maintenance of waste dump facilitites because during a quarter of a million years there will very likely be periods when we dont have the money - or even the technology - to do that work.
Our future is nuclear, and it's about time we started pounding it into the public's collective mind.
Says you. I and millions of others happen to disagree. Not in my back yard, mate - and I won't allow you to pawn my children's future. The ideas you are espousing are dangerous idiocy IMHO.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is Thought exists only as an abstraction
Re:On to Spanish Harlem!
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Yes, but these are not the people who concern themselves with decisions regarding space exploration, are they? You also need to be careful how you define poverty - as one might expect, the definition varies from place to place. US$3000 might not sound like much, but for someone in a middle-income nation with such an income, it is plenty for survival and possibly a good deal more. Yes, most people in the world are far too poor to live in New York City or London. But then, most Europeans and Americans would fall into that category as well. Your view demonstrates exactly the narrowness you accuse me of.
You are trying to shift the argument towards the better off. Considering the subject matter and the plight of the victims this is nothing less than a crime against humanity.
When I said poverty I was talking about real poverty. Not about relative poverty, and not about relative purchasing power. I was most certainly not talking about "most Europeans and Americans". I was not talking about people with US$3000. Most people in the developing countries don't have anywhere near that amount of money.
For example, according to 1995 statistics (the most recent I have to hand)...65% - near as dammit two-thirds - of the worlds population lives in countries where the average annual income is less than US$1000. Lets focus this a little more sharply, shall we? 54% of the world's population - more than half - live in countries where the average annual income is less than US$500. This comprises 36 countries with a combined population of almost 3 billion souls. And the average annual income of this three billion is just US$380. That's just over a dollar a day.
You are clearly talking out of your ass. You can't manage more than a hand-to-mouth existence on that sum, in any country. And remember that the poorest of these are considerably worse off even than that.
They are welcome to industrialize. Of course, industrialization works best under a stable government, something most of the world has never seen fit to provide for itself.
This puts me in mind of Marie Antionette's famous social remedy: "Let them eat cake". "Let them industrialize" you say. With what? It takes money to fund the building of factories, an adequate transportation and communications infrastructure etc. Those that were able to industrialize with the available outside help have already done so. (The others can't attract sufficient aid because they don't have anything the West wants that the West isn't already taking).
But for those who have industrialized, guess where the bulk of the profits goes? Let me give you a clue. It doesn't go to the country hosting the industry.
And before you try to argue that this is impossible, think back 200-250 years to industrialization in Europe. Where did the foreign aid come from?
It's obvious that you don't know the answer to this question or you wouldn't have mentioned it. European industrialization was funded by the surplus already present in the booming European economies. Now where did that surplus come from? It came from overseas "trade" which was in fact almost universally, the centuries-long robbing of raw materials from less developed countries in Africa, India, the Far East, and latterly the Americas and Australasia. Not to mention kidnapped slave labour from the West coast of Africa. The biggest employer in Great Britain for two hundred years was the East India Company, whose sole purpose was the transfer of wealth from the Asian subcontinent to England.
This has been basic high-school geography in most civilised countries for decades now. Did you even go to school?
What industrial nation's universities trained the Europeans? Hmmm...nobody!!! They did it on their own. Not because they are better human beings but because they decided to stop the bullshit and do something useful.
You talk as if the Europeans were doing the rest of the world a favour by robbing them, enslaving them etc. The remark about universities is a red herring. At the time of the agrarian and industrial revolutions, there were no practical subjects being taught in universities. In fact there was very little formal science involved in the development of the key technologies. It was trial-and-error engineering performed by enthusiasts, funded by rich aristocratic sponsors.
I'd also remind you that the industrial revolution could only take place in countries which already had adequate transportation infrastructure (roads, an overseas shipping network), abundant cheap access to a wide range of raw materials and established overseas markets. But most of these things came from the exploitation of less developed countries.
Without funding there can be no progress. How can you develop an industry if you have no access to transportation, lack most of the raw materials, the world's markets are protected by colonial powers with large armies and navies to enforce their dominance, and you are too busy anyway trying to scrape a living off the land you tenant, while you are forced to pay 75% of what you can make to your white landlord?
What did we do after we'd secured our head start, then? Did we share? Did we hand back what we'd taken? Did we hell. We colonized those countries and governed them ourselves. Any blame for their lack of progress up to the middle of the 20th century therefore lies squarely with the colonial powers. The countries of the third world were denied even the opportunity to take control of their own destiny until they began demanding their freedom after the second world war.
Yes, the foundations came from the Greeks, Arabs, and Chinese (among others). But everyone started on equal footing - after all, somewhere, sometime there had to be a first set of humans, all others descended from them. So anyone anywhere can make the same decision.
Maybe we did all start on an equal footing but that soon changed when Europeans decided to take what they wanted from other less greedy countries by force.
But they'd rather fight each other over a few square kilometers of worthless desert somewhere (no specific reference intended).
When resources are limited, societies fight amongst themselves for dominion over what little there is. This is not a feature of skin colour or climate. It is a feature of being poor.
You completely astound me. Not only with the profundity of your ignorance, but with the amazing stupidity it must take to make such sweeping and critical statements without any knowledge of the subject whatever. I only hope this exchange will serve as a lesson to those of similar education who have so far prudently remained silent.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is Thought exists only as an abstraction
Re:The reason is poverty!
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That's what I was trying so hard not mention for fear of giving offense to any ladies present.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is Thought exists only as an abstraction
Re:Gas Core Nuclear Rocket
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Pshaw. I'd happily get on a rocket to Mars expecting a round trip of three years, even with only a 50% estimated probability of making it up. But NOT if it looked like I'd fry before I even got there. You're expecting people to fly a technology that not only doesn't even have a working model, it hasn't even been tested in a computer simulation yet. I'd want to see more than a couple of test flights before I'd even think about it. Give me good old fashioned chemical propulsion and gravity-assist any day.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is Thought exists only as an abstraction
Re:On to Spanish Harlem!
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This is pissing me off real bad because I'm full-on pro-government-funded-space exploration - but it seems like half of the people here demanding funds for space are total wankers and I want nothing to do with them.
You, for example, proudly display a total ignorance of the world beyond your own back yard:
I can't help it that some people aren't able/willing to survive in today's world. That's not my fault. I can manage to feed, clothe, and house myself; why can't they?
Actually it is precisely your fault because the high-consumption lifestyle you boast that you enjoy would be impossible were it not for the fact that Europe and America have been screwing the developing countries for centuries, specifically by artificially depressing the price of third world exports (mainly raw materials). Because of this selfish exploitation, the third world countries have been continually denied the right to participate in the benefits of a booming world economy. Their populations starve because we have seen to it that they do so. They are poor so that we can have enough stuff to throw half of it away.
And for the rest of the 90+% of us who aren't complete losers,
Actually the vast majority of the world's population lives in conditions of extreme poverty. You talk like as if it's a tiny minority. Do you ever bother to think before you speak?
Even other animals only work to ensure their own/their children's survival. Altruism is unheard-of, and for good reason
Absolute bullshit. This isn't biology, it's ideology. It's National Socialism in fact. Where do you get off spouting crap like that? Examples of seemingly altruistic behaviour in the animal kingdom are commonplace, where the beneficiaries are not direct descendants of the individual making the sacrifice. These are well-documented, go and read Richard Dawkins. If you can't read books, here's a very simple and common example: in many species (including chimps), members will give off a loud warning cry (called an alarm call) if a potential threat or predator comes into the territory - thereby putting themselves at increased risk of detection by the predator.
altruistic species are "selected against" as the euphemism goes.
You made this up. The statement doesn't even make sense. What altruistic species? What is an altruistic species anyway? How could a whole species be altruistic? At the water hole: "After you" "No, after you" "No, I insist".
Give me a break. Examples of altruistic behaviour are present in many species. But no species is exclusively altrustic. Duh!
unlike lesser animals, I as a human can concern myself with issues other than food and other survival issues. This is a luxury humans have that other species do not.
It's a luxury that you have because of an accident of birth. Lucky you, born in one of the richest nations in the world. You can concern yourself with issues other than bare survival because you never had to struggle for your own survival. But most of the world's 5 billion humans do face that struggle every day.
It's what intelligence is all about.
There are other traits that mark us as human. Traits like compassion, generosity etc. Well, some of us anyway. You obviously don't qualify.
Onward and upward, folks, and all are welcome to come along; but I will not carry others.
Fine. Then don't expect us to carry you when it becomes your turn to suffer. Oh, how I long for that day.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is Thought exists only as an abstraction
"Tripple"? Do you mean "triple"? Or maybe it's a Freudian slip and you are thinking of Jean Tripplehorn, who took all her clothes off in the movie you referred to? (dribble, drool)
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is Thought exists only as an abstraction
Re:What it is good for?
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We already see the end of the oil reserves on earth - but there is by far not enough research in alternatives (we will definitively not found anything like oil on mars or the moon)
But there are fantastic quantities of raw hydrocarbons on Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. Also, nearer to home, quite a lot in the asteroid belt. But these should be used for plastics and for food. I think we've burnt quite enough crap in the Earth's atmosphere already.
You didn't really make it clear what you think is the prerequisite before we should exploit the resources of the solar system. Maybe you think we should just use up what we have here first - so that by the time we look up from what we are doing, we no longer even have the resources to get into space any more. Geez. Why not just bury your head in the sand. If we listened to people like you we'd still be stuck with stone knives and bearskins (figure that reference out if you're old enough;o)
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is Thought exists only as an abstraction
Re:I can't believe this
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You clearly know NOTHING about ANYTHING.
I'm all for space exploration, and I don't advocate spending all our surplus on food shipments. But you've no reason to criticize them for having children. Poor people need to ensure they will have surviving children to take care of them when they are old. It's a basic matter of survival, they have no other option.
And it's not their fault they're poor. They've been shafted up the ass for centuries by selfish ignorant assfuckers like YOU.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is Thought exists only as an abstraction
Re:So what's the problem?
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This is looking increasingly likely IMHO. But they'll certainly establish a presence on the moon first. The only question is, will we get to hear about it before they've succeeded? They're not the most open of cultures.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is Thought exists only as an abstraction
Re:Moon landing was a fluke due to cold war
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Somebody moderate this up. More people need to see it I reckon.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is Thought exists only as an abstraction
Re:Out of the Real World
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What's the point of not starving to death if it means eating bean curry in a 6'x 3'x 3' 'cube'?
And what precisely do you suppose you'll be doing on Mars then? I rather suspect you'll be eating something rather worse than bean curry (recycled turds) in a 6' x 3' x 3' cubicle inside a habitat dome.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is Thought exists only as an abstraction
Re:The reason is poverty!
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I have never in my life heard such pitiful ignorance combined with such overweening arrogance. You clearly understand nothing about poverty so I'd advise that until this changes you either show a little tolerance and humility or else keep your mouth shut.
People for whom bare survival is a continual struggle cannot afford the luxury of treating children as little princes and princesses. In those communities, children are a precious resource. They are more hands to work on the rich man's land, or to go begging on the streets of the city. Sons will grow up to provide for the family when you are too sick or too old to go on. Daughters will grow up to be a source of dowry payments. I don't want to say how else they might be used to contribute. But that is how it is when you have no money, no food, no hope and no future.
Because children are so vital to this way of living it is mandatory to produce enough babies so that some will survive to adulthood. When the risk of infant mortality is so high this necessitates a high birth rate.
As the original poster had it, so it is. If one wants to end overpopulation one must end poverty.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is Thought exists only as an abstraction
the main reason to use Samba rather than an alternative NFS or Coda is because files are typically served to Windows clients, which automatically support SMB.
I know of installations where SMB is exclusively used to share directories between Linux boxes. Mainly because that protocol seems to be the most reliable one available.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is Thought exists only as an abstraction
On the hardware side - have you been watching the source checkins/checkouts for hardware drivers? Then you'll notice they follow a peculiar pattern - Initial Release (aka, it works, but it's slow). Revision 2 (it's buggy, but faster), and finally Revision 3 (finally get it right). The reason is that most people in the OSS community a) don't have access to debuggers to catch this stuff earlier and b) Often don't wait and properly engineer their drivers prior to implimentation. That is to say they're impatient. The result is hundreds of releases of software each day. Some people think this is because we "release early, release often" - I think it's because the programmers didn't know or didn't care enough to make it work correctly the first time and then need to go back and rewrite the code again. Now, if you listen quietly for a moment you can hear people already hammering at their keyboards crying foul.
That's kind of missing the point entirely. What you describe isn't even a side effect, it's the whole point. What makes open source "open"? You release the code, and you conduct development out in the open where everybody has the opportunity to participate. You release sub-1.0 versions and later unstable versions in the hope that others will try it out, make useful suggestions about adding features, and help you to fix the bugs.
In the majority of cases the developers will clearly mark which versions are stable and which versions have more features but are still buggy. Obtaining free software is a case of caveat emptor just as it is with any other kind of software.
But the *difference* with open source (as opposed to closed source) is that (i) the developers won't try to pretend that bugs don't exist; (ii) being subject to greater scrutiny, they'll put more effort into fixing them; and (iii) if you can't wait, you have the option of trying to fix it yourself, or paying someone else to do it.
I know that access to the source won't be much use to those without the resources to make use of it. But, if stability is your sine qua non, then obviously, get the stable version and leave development versions alone. And with closed source you don't even have the option.
May I further point out that my experience is that closed source companies often opt not to fix some bugs at all. In those cases it'll *never* get fixed. Which kind of leaves you in the lurch, doesn't it?
I'm surprise that you of all people would say something like this. I think you must have left your brain on your pillow this morning! Do I hear the sound of Signal 11 smacking his forehead in chagrin?
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is Thought exists only as an abstraction
Slashdot Mirror
Thus, while technically true that DeCSS does not prevent making usable copies (witness solution (a)), it is not feasible except with very expensive equipment. Solutions (b) and (c) are very cheap-- and require DeCSS-- and so it is, I believe, fair to say that DeCSS is what enables illegal copying to occur.
I have to dispute this for reasons of pragmatism. The MPAA know that domestic piracy will happen on a small scale. But they've lived with this kind of piracy on VHS for so many years and they know it's not a significant threat. The only real piracy threat is from large-scale commercial piracy which they cannot defeat (yet) by technology alone.
While it may be possible that DeCSS makes copying a little easier it doesn't make it easy enough to form a significant threat to the MPAA.
DVD copying on domestic players (or PC-DVD drives) is too slow and expensive for you to make and distribute hundreds of copies. And there is no way that they've gone to all this trouble just to stop you from making a single copy of one DVD for your friend down the road.
There is no doubt in my mind that the reason they are panicking is because they intended to control the player market and regional distribution of titles. The argument about domestic piracy simply doesn't stack up.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
Get away. They're in it together. In fact it's probably the same guy arguing with himself, I've seen it before on Slashdot only recently. In fact, it's probably YOU!
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
I just mailed openlaw pointing at this thread and asking them to contact the EFF. For what it's worth. A few more mails to both parties might be in order if anybody else is serious about seeing this happen.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
Trolls, Anonymous Cowards...and their wives.
And large quantities of fish, if you believe that daft film.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
An earlier poster said:
<blockquote>A friend of mine who works for the Federal Court system tells me that Judge Kaplan is one of the technically savvy judges in the district. Furthermore, he also tends toward the little guy.
</blockquote>
I know it's very difficult to hold your fire under such extreme provocation as this. But maybe, just maybe, Judge Kaplan (being technically savvy) has a hidden agenda of his own (tending towards the little guy).
He knows that the current law regarding fair use is self-contradictory. He knows that all the existing legislation relating to the charges are vague and interpretation rests upon case law.
He knows that the defendants have only limited resources and that, all due respect to the EFF, their lawyers probably aren't exactly world class.
He also knows that the MPAA will throw millions of dollars at lawyers to twist the truth and <i>force</i> a decision favourable to them. This has been done before. Remember OJ Simpson's trial? There can't be a person on the whole planet who thinks he's innocent, yet he got away with it because he bought talented lawyers. The same thing could easily happen here.
You know, this kind of thing must tick Judges off a lot. As a Judge, how would *you* feel if you had to watch some smartass lawyer running rings round the opposition knowing that the law was being bent to serve a purpose against justice, and against the public interest?
But maybe, just maybe, Judge Kaplan can see a way around all this. Maybe by manipulating the situation he can help the EFF get a clear shot at winning the case.
He can give the EFF a clear warning shot across the bows, to let them know the score, so they don't waste time pursuing arguments that won't fly.
He can even trick the MPAA into wasting *their* time pursuing arguments that won't fly. Or at the very least, arguments that will narrowly win the case but stand a very good chance of being shot down by the Federal or Supreme Court (who seem to be much more concerned with protecting the constitution).
I know how you feel, I'm anguished about it too. I'm doubly upset because I don't live in the US (at the moment) so I don't even have anyone to complain to. But maybe we should avoid flaming the Judge until this is over. It's just conceivable that he's the only real friend we have. If he's not, I doubt that personal attacks will endear him to our side in the slightest.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
That's true, but you're tilting at windmills. The original point made was not that the Shuttle and Soyuz are the same, but that they are representative of similar 1970's technologies. In his own words:
<blockquote>...the two craft were developed using similar technology. mid-70s technology. This technological level lets you do one of two things: build an advanced expendable spacecraft or build a crappy "reusable" one. </blockquote>
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
And "Voyage" (also by Stephen Baxter) while you're at it.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
For a while, anyway. And unless it was in direct sunlight of course.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
I definitely want to see this. If it's true.
Are you going to open source it?
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
I do admit you have a point. I found normalised figures for Gross Domestic Product (PPP-GDP) but it was really incomes I was after and I could only find these expressed in absolute dollar values.
I only introduced it in order to refute someone else's implication that the poorest have incomes of about US$3000 in absolute US dollar value terms. So the figures from that study I summarized did at least serve their purpose.
Even so, it's not too much of a stretch to realize that the sort of money we're talking about is only going to cover expenses for very basic food clothing and shelter, for people on those average incomes or above. The poorest of the poor in those countries (and almost everybody in the countries at the bottom of the table) will lead truly wretched lives, and millions of them each year suffer a horrible death of starvation and disease. I can live with the knowledge that this is happening, God forgive me. But even I won't stand by while someone is spreading the obvious falsehoods that it just isn't happening at all, or that these people somehow deserve this awful fate.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
And yet Japan not only industrialized and modernized in a few decades, they fought a very competitive war with the world's greatest powers. So 40 or 50 years (say, since the end of colonialism in the 50s and 60s) is a long time for a people like the Japanese who have some commitment and motivation, but forever for those without.
I'll grant you that the Japanese have a very dynamic society, but the picture you paint of their rise to fortune is not entirely accurate.
Japan was always well prepared for war; they had a long history of it and had built up and honed their war machine for a long time. Their militarism meant that despite lacking their own raw materials this was never really a problem. They just took what they wanted from their neighbours, eg, the Chinese (who are still wary of them). In World War II they took advantage of Germany's strength to leverage their own relatively small contribution. And after WWII, Japan's rise to economic superpower status would never have happened had they not received an enormous influx of cash from the West. So it's not really a good example of a poor country making their own way. They weren't poor to start with and they didn't make their own way, they had substantial help from outside.
Oh, so let's make this about racism now
I can't help the facts. White Europeans dominated and exploited non-white Africans and Asians for centuries. They are still doing it even though it's no longer necessary for whites to settle in those countries now that we have international banking and sufficient local influence to be able to fight wars and start revolutions by proxy, and topple governments by remote control.
I suspect maybe your mother never told you that Life Is Not Fair and that if you get screwed, screw back, try again, and don't bitch.
Actually my mother never told me that but I did learn it for myself. It seems more than likely that this is the fundamental difference between us. You were raised to accept the world as a bad place, while I wasn't. As far as I'm concerned it shouldn't be and it doesn't have to be. It's only people like you that keep it that way. The point of civilization is precisely to make things fair, not to make it easier to shit on people just to satisfy your own greed.
Europeans were Imperialist bastards. The world's a tough place, moreso for some than others. Deal with it.
The knowledge that our ancestors wronged the less fortunate is not a moral justification for continuing the tradition!
You deliberately ignored the facts about poverty and the historical reasons for it because they don't justify or support your attitude. But when cornered about it you abandon your refutation of the facts and resort to maliciously snarling: "The world's evil! Deal with it!"
Aha - Got you!
Perhaps I was too hasty when I called you uneducated; it's not necessary to explain your attitude so as long as your motives are rotten enough. Now *I* don't believe in Satan, but your attitude is so convincingly extreme in its inhumanity that I can't help picturing you with horns, a pointed tail and glowing red eyes. If Hammer still made horror films you'd have a fine movie career ahead of you. Get thee behind me.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
A. Did you notice the Van allen belt comment above? Try to get to mars cheaply with gravity assist while not recieving huge doses of radiation from the belts.
The Van Allen belts aren't even the problem. The spacefarers will receive much more during the journey during and after the trans-orbit injection and during an extended stay on Mars, since the planet has no appreciable magnetic field to protect them. The greatest risk of all comes from solar flares. Any female voyagers will need to have their ovaries removed and frozen before leaving if they expect to bear children afterwards.
B. Why do you think a nuclear powered craft would be any less tested then a chemical one? Noone said anything about expecting people to fly on unproved technology.
C. Do you know that nuclear rocket engines have already been tested? In the mid 60s several nuclear thermal rocket engines were tested in Nevada. One of them had a thrust of around 250,000 lbs, even.
I presumed we were discussing an accelerated program. In that context the introduction of a new design of man-rated nuclear gas plasma rocket is lunacy.
You should know that my worry isn't about being near something nuclear. They'll most likely need to have some fission generators with them anyway, to provide electrical power to the craft's systems and during their stay on the Martian surface. My fears are to do with the vulnerability of the radiation shielding around the engines, and the risk of an explosion. Spacecraft engines are high energy devices. Even a small explosion could damage the shielding enough to fry the crew. With chemical engines, a small explosion that didn't destroy the craft outright needn't be fatal (the Apollo 13 crew survived). Retrieving the crew from a disabled craft is an entirely separate problem.
Now, assuming we're all talking about nuclear fission:
I think one of the most helpful things we could all do for mankind is to start on an extensive nuclear technology public education project. We need to teach people that nuclear energy is really the key to our future.
We'd only need to teach that to people if it were true. Which it isn't.
It can be done safely, and is already far cleaner than any other alternatives.
The evidence says otherwise, regardless of all the grandstanding by the nuclear companies. It's only clean if you can make the waste vanish. Sticking it in underground containers isn't good enough, some of our underground waste dumps are breaking up already. And what about decommissioning? How many nuclear reactors out of all those built in the last half century do you know that have been safely decommissioned without serious environmental impact?
Some of these waste products remain highly dangerous for hundreds of thousands of years. There is no place to deposit them on Earth that is known to be a safe and stable environment for that length of time. And you can't rely upon continual maintenance of waste dump facilitites because during a quarter of a million years there will very likely be periods when we dont have the money - or even the technology - to do that work.
Our future is nuclear, and it's about time we started pounding it into the public's collective mind.
Says you. I and millions of others happen to disagree. Not in my back yard, mate - and I won't allow you to pawn my children's future. The ideas you are espousing are dangerous idiocy IMHO.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
Yes, but these are not the people who concern themselves with decisions regarding space exploration, are they? You also need to be careful how you define poverty - as one might expect, the definition varies from place to place. US$3000 might not sound like much, but for someone in a middle-income nation with such an income, it is plenty for survival and possibly a good deal more. Yes, most people in the world are far too poor to live in New York City or London. But then, most Europeans and Americans would fall into that category as well. Your view demonstrates exactly the narrowness you accuse me of.
You are trying to shift the argument towards the better off. Considering the subject matter and the plight of the victims this is nothing less than a crime against humanity.
When I said poverty I was talking about real poverty. Not about relative poverty, and not about relative purchasing power. I was most certainly not talking about "most Europeans and Americans". I was not talking about people with US$3000. Most people in the developing countries don't have anywhere near that amount of money.
For example, according to 1995 statistics (the most recent I have to hand)...65% - near as dammit two-thirds - of the worlds population lives in countries where the average annual income is less than US$1000. Lets focus this a little more sharply, shall we? 54% of the world's population - more than half - live in countries where the average annual income is less than US$500. This comprises 36 countries with a combined population of almost 3 billion souls. And the average annual income of this three billion is just US$380. That's just over a dollar a day.
You are clearly talking out of your ass. You can't manage more than a hand-to-mouth existence on that sum, in any country. And remember that the poorest of these are considerably worse off even than that.
They are welcome to industrialize. Of course, industrialization works best under a stable government, something most of the world has never seen fit to provide for itself.
This puts me in mind of Marie Antionette's famous social remedy: "Let them eat cake". "Let them industrialize" you say. With what? It takes money to fund the building of factories, an adequate transportation and communications infrastructure etc. Those that were able to industrialize with the available outside help have already done so. (The others can't attract sufficient aid because they don't have anything the West wants that the West isn't already taking).
But for those who have industrialized, guess where the bulk of the profits goes? Let me give you a clue. It doesn't go to the country hosting the industry.
And before you try to argue that this is impossible, think back 200-250 years to industrialization in Europe. Where did the foreign aid come from?
It's obvious that you don't know the answer to this question or you wouldn't have mentioned it. European industrialization was funded by the surplus already present in the booming European economies. Now where did that surplus come from? It came from overseas "trade" which was in fact almost universally, the centuries-long robbing of raw materials from less developed countries in Africa, India, the Far East, and latterly the Americas and Australasia. Not to mention kidnapped slave labour from the West coast of Africa. The biggest employer in Great Britain for two hundred years was the East India Company, whose sole purpose was the transfer of wealth from the Asian subcontinent to England.
This has been basic high-school geography in most civilised countries for decades now. Did you even go to school?
What industrial nation's universities trained the Europeans? Hmmm...nobody!!! They did it on their own. Not because they are better human beings but because they decided to stop the bullshit and do something useful.
You talk as if the Europeans were doing the rest of the world a favour by robbing them, enslaving them etc. The remark about universities is a red herring. At the time of the agrarian and industrial revolutions, there were no practical subjects being taught in universities. In fact there was very little formal science involved in the development of the key technologies. It was trial-and-error engineering performed by enthusiasts, funded by rich aristocratic sponsors.
I'd also remind you that the industrial revolution could only take place in countries which already had adequate transportation infrastructure (roads, an overseas shipping network), abundant cheap access to a wide range of raw materials and established overseas markets. But most of these things came from the exploitation of less developed countries.
Without funding there can be no progress. How can you develop an industry if you have no access to transportation, lack most of the raw materials, the world's markets are protected by colonial powers with large armies and navies to enforce their dominance, and you are too busy anyway trying to scrape a living off the land you tenant, while you are forced to pay 75% of what you can make to your white landlord?
What did we do after we'd secured our head start, then? Did we share? Did we hand back what we'd taken? Did we hell. We colonized those countries and governed them ourselves. Any blame for their lack of progress up to the middle of the 20th century therefore lies squarely with the colonial powers. The countries of the third world were denied even the opportunity to take control of their own destiny until they began demanding their freedom after the second world war.
Yes, the foundations came from the Greeks, Arabs, and Chinese (among others). But everyone started on equal footing - after all, somewhere, sometime there had to be a first set of humans, all others descended from them. So anyone anywhere can make the same decision.
Maybe we did all start on an equal footing but that soon changed when Europeans decided to take what they wanted from other less greedy countries by force.
But they'd rather fight each other over a few square kilometers of worthless desert somewhere (no specific reference intended).
When resources are limited, societies fight amongst themselves for dominion over what little there is. This is not a feature of skin colour or climate. It is a feature of being poor.
You completely astound me. Not only with the profundity of your ignorance, but with the amazing stupidity it must take to make such sweeping and critical statements without any knowledge of the subject whatever. I only hope this exchange will serve as a lesson to those of similar education who have so far prudently remained silent.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
That's what I was trying so hard not mention for fear of giving offense to any ladies present.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
Pshaw. I'd happily get on a rocket to Mars expecting a round trip of three years, even with only a 50% estimated probability of making it up. But NOT if it looked like I'd fry before I even got there. You're expecting people to fly a technology that not only doesn't even have a working model, it hasn't even been tested in a computer simulation yet. I'd want to see more than a couple of test flights before I'd even think about it. Give me good old fashioned chemical propulsion and gravity-assist any day.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
This is pissing me off real bad because I'm full-on pro-government-funded-space exploration - but it seems like half of the people here demanding funds for space are total wankers and I want nothing to do with them.
You, for example, proudly display a total ignorance of the world beyond your own back yard:
I can't help it that some people aren't able/willing to survive in today's world. That's not my fault. I can manage to feed, clothe, and house myself; why can't they?
Actually it is precisely your fault because the high-consumption lifestyle you boast that you enjoy would be impossible were it not for the fact that Europe and America have been screwing the developing countries for centuries, specifically by artificially depressing the price of third world exports (mainly raw materials). Because of this selfish exploitation, the third world countries have been continually denied the right to participate in the benefits of a booming world economy. Their populations starve because we have seen to it that they do so. They are poor so that we can have enough stuff to throw half of it away.
And for the rest of the 90+% of us who aren't complete losers,
Actually the vast majority of the world's population lives in conditions of extreme poverty. You talk like as if it's a tiny minority. Do you ever bother to think before you speak?
Even other animals only work to ensure their own/their children's survival. Altruism is unheard-of, and for good reason
Absolute bullshit. This isn't biology, it's ideology. It's National Socialism in fact. Where do you get off spouting crap like that? Examples of seemingly altruistic behaviour in the animal kingdom are commonplace, where the beneficiaries are not direct descendants of the individual making the sacrifice. These are well-documented, go and read Richard Dawkins. If you can't read books, here's a very simple and common example: in many species (including chimps), members will give off a loud warning cry (called an alarm call) if a potential threat or predator comes into the territory - thereby putting themselves at increased risk of detection by the predator.
altruistic species are "selected against" as the euphemism goes.
You made this up. The statement doesn't even make sense. What altruistic species? What is an altruistic species anyway? How could a whole species be altruistic? At the water hole: "After you" "No, after you" "No, I insist".
Give me a break. Examples of altruistic behaviour are present in many species. But no species is exclusively altrustic. Duh!
unlike lesser animals, I as a human can concern myself with issues other than food and other survival issues. This is a luxury humans have that other species do not.
It's a luxury that you have because of an accident of birth. Lucky you, born in one of the richest nations in the world. You can concern yourself with issues other than bare survival because you never had to struggle for your own survival. But most of the world's 5 billion humans do face that struggle every day.
It's what intelligence is all about.
There are other traits that mark us as human. Traits like compassion, generosity etc. Well, some of us anyway. You obviously don't qualify.
Onward and upward, folks, and all are welcome to come along; but I will not carry others.
Fine. Then don't expect us to carry you when it becomes your turn to suffer. Oh, how I long for that day.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
"Tripple"? Do you mean "triple"? Or maybe it's a Freudian slip and you are thinking of Jean Tripplehorn, who took all her clothes off in the movie you referred to? (dribble, drool)
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
We already see the end of the oil reserves on earth - but there is by far not enough research in alternatives (we will definitively not found anything like oil on mars or the moon)
;o)
But there are fantastic quantities of raw hydrocarbons on Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. Also, nearer to home, quite a lot in the asteroid belt. But these should be used for plastics and for food. I think we've burnt quite enough crap in the Earth's atmosphere already.
You didn't really make it clear what you think is the prerequisite before we should exploit the resources of the solar system. Maybe you think we should just use up what we have here first - so that by the time we look up from what we are doing, we no longer even have the resources to get into space any more. Geez. Why not just bury your head in the sand. If we listened to people like you we'd still be stuck with stone knives and bearskins (figure that reference out if you're old enough
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
You clearly know NOTHING about ANYTHING.
I'm all for space exploration, and I don't advocate spending all our surplus on food shipments. But you've no reason to criticize them for having children. Poor people need to ensure they will have surviving children to take care of them when they are old. It's a basic matter of survival, they have no other option.
And it's not their fault they're poor. They've been shafted up the ass for centuries by selfish ignorant assfuckers like YOU.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
This is looking increasingly likely IMHO. But they'll certainly establish a presence on the moon first. The only question is, will we get to hear about it before they've succeeded? They're not the most open of cultures.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
Somebody moderate this up. More people need to see it I reckon.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
What's the point of not starving to death if it means eating bean curry in a 6'x 3'x 3' 'cube'?
And what precisely do you suppose you'll be doing on Mars then? I rather suspect you'll be eating something rather worse than bean curry (recycled turds) in a 6' x 3' x 3' cubicle inside a habitat dome.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
I have never in my life heard such pitiful ignorance combined with such overweening arrogance. You clearly understand nothing about poverty so I'd advise that until this changes you either show a little tolerance and humility or else keep your mouth shut.
People for whom bare survival is a continual struggle cannot afford the luxury of treating children as little princes and princesses. In those communities, children are a precious resource. They are more hands to work on the rich man's land, or to go begging on the streets of the city. Sons will grow up to provide for the family when you are too sick or too old to go on. Daughters will grow up to be a source of dowry payments. I don't want to say how else they might be used to contribute. But that is how it is when you have no money, no food, no hope and no future.
Because children are so vital to this way of living it is mandatory to produce enough babies so that some will survive to adulthood. When the risk of infant mortality is so high this necessitates a high birth rate.
As the original poster had it, so it is. If one wants to end overpopulation one must end poverty.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
the main reason to use Samba rather than an alternative NFS or Coda is because files are typically served to Windows clients, which automatically support SMB.
I know of installations where SMB is exclusively used to share directories between Linux boxes. Mainly because that protocol seems to be the most reliable one available.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
On the hardware side - have you been watching the source checkins/checkouts for hardware drivers? Then you'll notice they follow a peculiar pattern - Initial Release (aka, it works, but it's slow). Revision 2 (it's buggy, but faster), and finally Revision 3 (finally get it right). The reason is that most people in the OSS community a) don't have access to debuggers to catch this stuff earlier and b) Often don't wait and properly engineer their drivers prior to implimentation. That is to say they're impatient. The result is hundreds of releases of software each day. Some people think this is because we "release early, release often" - I think it's because the programmers didn't know or didn't care enough to make it work correctly the first time and then need to go back and rewrite the code again. Now, if you listen quietly for a moment you can hear people already hammering at their keyboards crying foul.
That's kind of missing the point entirely. What you describe isn't even a side effect, it's the whole point. What makes open source "open"? You release the code, and you conduct development out in the open where everybody has the opportunity to participate. You release sub-1.0 versions and later unstable versions in the hope that others will try it out, make useful suggestions about adding features, and help you to fix the bugs.
In the majority of cases the developers will clearly mark which versions are stable and which versions have more features but are still buggy. Obtaining free software is a case of caveat emptor just as it is with any other kind of software.
But the *difference* with open source (as opposed to closed source) is that (i) the developers won't try to pretend that bugs don't exist; (ii) being subject to greater scrutiny, they'll put more effort into fixing them; and (iii) if you can't wait, you have the option of trying to fix it yourself, or paying someone else to do it.
I know that access to the source won't be much use to those without the resources to make use of it. But, if stability is your sine qua non, then obviously, get the stable version and leave development versions alone. And with closed source you don't even have the option.
May I further point out that my experience is that closed source companies often opt not to fix some bugs at all. In those cases it'll *never* get fixed. Which kind of leaves you in the lurch, doesn't it?
I'm surprise that you of all people would say something like this. I think you must have left your brain on your pillow this morning! Do I hear the sound of Signal 11 smacking his forehead in chagrin?
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction