Unfortunately, when applied to humans, the cure produces side effects like scurrying around the kitchen floor, a craving for cheese, and producing squeaks instead of intelligible speech.
The code is under a dual license and permits the person distributing the code to choose BSD or GPLv2. Well, the person chose GPLv2. That seems legitimate to me: the license does not require the code to continue to be distributed under both license. In fact, this may be unavoidable in many cases: if the code is modified in a way that would cause it to fall under the GPLv2, it simply cannot be redistributed anymore under a BSD license.
Would supplying genocide chemicals be too far even if it is not in violation of a nation's laws (obviously)?
There is no such thing as "genocide chemicals"; chemicals that have been used for genocide have many legitimate uses. So, the real question you have to ask is: can you hold a company responsible for doing business with a regime engages in genocide. And I think that has a clear answer: you can if, and only if, the government where the company is operating has restricted business with that regime.
Do international agreements mean nothing?
They mean something. What exactly they mean in the US is to be determined by this court.
However, generally, I think it would be good for Yahoo! not to be found guilty. If the US government believes that China violates human rights, it should take a firm stance and set clear rules for companies like Yahoo! Right now, politicians want to have their cake and eat it too, by condemning China to score political points and then still doing business with it.
Unfortunately, this sort of thing highlights a general problem with quality control and standards: quality control usually happens by selecting people with too much time or companies with too much money, or people or companies who hope to benefit from participating in the standards process.
For example, companies like to add complicated features their products already have to standards to make it harder for others to implement.
Individuals like to make a name for themselves by drafting big and complicated sounding prose.
Note that in addition to ISO, ANSI, and ECMA, the JCP also has a bad case of this.
The comments on the blog suggest that the guy was actually using file sharing software; that is explicitly prohibited by Comcast's AUP, so I think they are within their rights to discontinue his service immediately. Also, volume limits are an economic necessity.
Still, I think Comcast would do themselves a favor if they revised their policy:
(1) state an explicit per-month volume limit for each of their plans
(2) charge excess volume, with different rates for peak/off-peak (or make off-peak free)
(3) drop restrictions on service type
In fact, I'd be in favor of legislation basically requiring ISPs to charge in this way.
Then put the blame where it belongs -- with the South African government,
The government probably has its share of blame, but so does the company: monopolistic business practices are illegal. Furthermore, there is probably some degree of corruption involved when a company is permitted to operate like this.
Companies need to shoulder the responsibility for their actions. In this case, that might mean stiff penalties or even breakup.
Incidentally, any true monopoly must be government granted. Without the government's force to keep competition away, it's merely a really effective competitor in an open market, like Wal-Mart.
Monopolies can easily stay in power and keep competition away without government aid. All they need to do is to make the cost of entry high enough and keep prices low enough so that it's not worthwhile for competitors to enter, and to buy up any competitor that tries to enter. When they do that, they still can charge way above for their goods and services than what they could in an efficient market.
You might call a company that manipulates the market such as to raise the cost of entry into the market very high a "really effective competitor", but they are certainly not operating in a way in which a company should operate in a free market.
Hard to say. Skype is software that needs to run and do audio I/O on a wide variety of configuration and hardware, and without being able to rely much on system libraries. Reading/proc/interrupts is pretty reasonable for that.
They may also be collecting this data in order to send it to Skype to help them figure out what kinds of configurations people are using, or what kinds of configurations are crashing; I believe they give you a choice about whether to report system information.
Trying to pretend religion is the cause of humankind's problems and that people would all get along merrily if it were not for religion is just as absurd
Religion is not the sole cause of humankind's problems, but it is clearly one of a small number of primary causes of cruelty and conflict in the world.
It's as absurd as those who decry the "intolerance" of the religious while themselves being intolerant of the religious.
As far as I can tell, religion is completely tolerated in Western democracies, and people like me will defend your right to worship whatever idols, deities, or spirits you like; at the same time, I'll call you immoral for your choice and criticize you for it. Tolerance isn't the same as freedom from criticism.
Trying to pretend religion is the cause of humankind's problems and that people would all get along merrily if it were not for religion is just as absurd.
Religion is clearly not the sole cause of humankind's problems, but it clearly is one of several significant causes, while at the same time having no demonstrable benefit to society.
It's as absurd as those who decry the "intolerance" of the religious while themselves being intolerant of the religious.
I tolerate religion to the point that I will defend your right to worship, in the same way that I will defend the right of people to kill themselves with drugs and alcohol, to cheat on their wives, or to commit suicide. It is not the purpose of government to keep people from believing in, or doing, stupid things; giving government or companies the right to discriminate based on religion is simply bad public policy.
But that's all that religious tolerance means: to tolerate religion and not interfere with its exercise. It does not mean that I have to accept, or stop criticizing, religion or religious behavior. I consider many religions immoral, some of them downright evil, and, of course, I need to speak out against that, just like followers of those religions speak out against what they consider immoral behavior in others.
I hope we can reduce the practice of religion, just like we can reduce alcohol, drug addiction, HIV, spousal abuse, and illegitimacy, and I hope that, at the same time, we can remain tolerant of the people suffering from those afflictions.
In addition to Microsoft's variations, there are the dozens of wildly different and incompatible varieties of Windows that the PC vendors create: different themes, different desktops, different applications, different administrative tools, different startup sequences, different drivers, etc.
GPS is one-way from satellite to receiver, so there are no privacy concerns. There may be privacy concerns over some kind of tracking transmitter that happens to be using GPS as well, but don't blame GPS for that.
I don't understand how "looking at porn is bad" is going to keep kids from having a painful experience. Looking at porn is not painful, so mostly what you're achieving by telling kids that "looking at porn is bad" is that you're not telling them the truth.
With a system like that, you'd need to have virtually most of the cell in vacuoles so you then run into the problem of freezing again.
Most of the mass of the cell would be compartments containing hydrogen peroxide solution. The purpose of those compartments might be energy generation, energy storage, vesicle transport, water storage, and structural. There would only be very limited biochemistry happening in those compartments.
Most of the biochemical machinery (DNA, RNA, proteins) would be contained in small spaces and containing only a small amount of water, which is pretty easy to keep "liquid".
However that doesn't mean that an entirely different biochemistry isn't possible, just that it couldn't be anything like the aqueous chemistry that is ubiquitously found in life on earth.
I don't think one needs an "entirely different biochemistry" at all, just an adjustment of the relative size and distribution of various cell compartments.
It involves teaching your kids correct principles when they are young
Any attempt at parenting that involves "teaching principles" to young kids is doomed to failure.
Ironically, it's kids raised by people like you who are probably the biggest customer base for the porn and sex industry, since those kids never learned what they needed to in order to keep out of trouble.
Up until the revolution in 1979, Iran was a friend
Between 1953 and 1979, Iran was a nation that run by a US-backed regime that remained in power through repression and torture; that is not "friendship".
The mess Iran has become today is principally due to bad decisions by Eisenhower and Carter, motivated by short-sighted economic and strategic interests, instead of supporting democracy and economic development.
The simple fact is that if you are not actively working against your goverment, you are supporting them. This goes for any country.
I think this holds true mainly for democracies, like the US and Europe. The responsibility of people living in non-democratic regimes, on the other hand, depends on a lot of factors, like how repressive the regime is, how significant the abuses by the regime are, how difficult it is to leave the country, how willing other nations are to accept refugees, etc.
(However, in the US, support for Bush is, in the end, overwhelming: with about half the people not voting, and about half of the rest voting for Bush in his re-election, we can say that 3/4 of the US population accept his policies.)
The problem with that statement is that the rulers of [country X]:
1) Have said that they want nuclear weapons, and are actively pursuing nuclear technology 2) Have said that they want to wipe [the government of country Y] from [history] 3) Seem to be spreading fear through their military and covert actions
And how is this different from US actions and the statements of US politicians?
(Point (3) is particularly ironic since it is US covert actions that toppled the democratically elected government of Iran in the first place.)
The company has a demo and a web site, and I don't see anything novel about what they describe.
However, several decades of real-world experience and prior art also have shown that this kind of technology isn't very useful, except perhaps for the disabled, and they already have input devices supporting it.
While I'm hesitant to rule something like this out of hand, if they are suggesting that these organisms have high hydrogen peroxide concentrations, then that would require a completely different biochemistry unlike anything we currently know of.
On earth, you have small hydrogen peroxide containing vacuoles inside a large wet cytoplasm. That could simply be reversed on Mars, with the hydrogen peroxide solution serving the transport, structural, and reservoir functions, and more or less normal biochemical reactions taking place in small spaces with tiny amounts of regular cytoplasm, protected by proteins and salt against freezing.
Slashdot Mirror
Unfortunately, when applied to humans, the cure produces side effects like scurrying around the kitchen floor, a craving for cheese, and producing squeaks instead of intelligible speech.
The code is under a dual license and permits the person distributing the code to choose BSD or GPLv2. Well, the person chose GPLv2. That seems legitimate to me: the license does not require the code to continue to be distributed under both license. In fact, this may be unavoidable in many cases: if the code is modified in a way that would cause it to fall under the GPLv2, it simply cannot be redistributed anymore under a BSD license.
Automated e-mail responses are really old stuff; this patent is about 20 years late.
Would supplying genocide chemicals be too far even if it is not in violation of a nation's laws (obviously)?
There is no such thing as "genocide chemicals"; chemicals that have been used for genocide have many legitimate uses. So, the real question you have to ask is: can you hold a company responsible for doing business with a regime engages in genocide. And I think that has a clear answer: you can if, and only if, the government where the company is operating has restricted business with that regime.
Do international agreements mean nothing?
They mean something. What exactly they mean in the US is to be determined by this court.
However, generally, I think it would be good for Yahoo! not to be found guilty. If the US government believes that China violates human rights, it should take a firm stance and set clear rules for companies like Yahoo! Right now, politicians want to have their cake and eat it too, by condemning China to score political points and then still doing business with it.
Unfortunately, this sort of thing highlights a general problem with quality control and standards: quality control usually happens by selecting people with too much time or companies with too much money, or people or companies who hope to benefit from participating in the standards process.
For example, companies like to add complicated features their products already have to standards to make it harder for others to implement.
Individuals like to make a name for themselves by drafting big and complicated sounding prose.
Note that in addition to ISO, ANSI, and ECMA, the JCP also has a bad case of this.
The comments on the blog suggest that the guy was actually using file sharing software; that is explicitly prohibited by Comcast's AUP, so I think they are within their rights to discontinue his service immediately. Also, volume limits are an economic necessity.
Still, I think Comcast would do themselves a favor if they revised their policy:
(1) state an explicit per-month volume limit for each of their plans
(2) charge excess volume, with different rates for peak/off-peak (or make off-peak free)
(3) drop restrictions on service type
In fact, I'd be in favor of legislation basically requiring ISPs to charge in this way.
Then put the blame where it belongs -- with the South African government,
The government probably has its share of blame, but so does the company: monopolistic business practices are illegal. Furthermore, there is probably some degree of corruption involved when a company is permitted to operate like this.
Companies need to shoulder the responsibility for their actions. In this case, that might mean stiff penalties or even breakup.
Incidentally, any true monopoly must be government granted. Without the government's force to keep competition away, it's merely a really effective competitor in an open market, like Wal-Mart.
Monopolies can easily stay in power and keep competition away without government aid. All they need to do is to make the cost of entry high enough and keep prices low enough so that it's not worthwhile for competitors to enter, and to buy up any competitor that tries to enter. When they do that, they still can charge way above for their goods and services than what they could in an efficient market.
You might call a company that manipulates the market such as to raise the cost of entry into the market very high a "really effective competitor", but they are certainly not operating in a way in which a company should operate in a free market.
Hard to say. Skype is software that needs to run and do audio I/O on a wide variety of configuration and hardware, and without being able to rely much on system libraries. Reading /proc/interrupts is pretty reasonable for that.
They may also be collecting this data in order to send it to Skype to help them figure out what kinds of configurations people are using, or what kinds of configurations are crashing; I believe they give you a choice about whether to report system information.
Trying to pretend religion is the cause of humankind's problems and that people would all get along merrily if it were not for religion is just as absurd
Religion is not the sole cause of humankind's problems, but it is clearly one of a small number of primary causes of cruelty and conflict in the world.
It's as absurd as those who decry the "intolerance" of the religious while themselves being intolerant of the religious.
As far as I can tell, religion is completely tolerated in Western democracies, and people like me will defend your right to worship whatever idols, deities, or spirits you like; at the same time, I'll call you immoral for your choice and criticize you for it. Tolerance isn't the same as freedom from criticism.
Many of those files are perfectly legitimate for any application to read.
In any case, you don't need AppArmor to find what files something opens, just use strace.
Trying to pretend religion is the cause of humankind's problems and that people would all get along merrily if it were not for religion is just as absurd.
Religion is clearly not the sole cause of humankind's problems, but it clearly is one of several significant causes, while at the same time having no demonstrable benefit to society.
It's as absurd as those who decry the "intolerance" of the religious while themselves being intolerant of the religious.
I tolerate religion to the point that I will defend your right to worship, in the same way that I will defend the right of people to kill themselves with drugs and alcohol, to cheat on their wives, or to commit suicide. It is not the purpose of government to keep people from believing in, or doing, stupid things; giving government or companies the right to discriminate based on religion is simply bad public policy.
But that's all that religious tolerance means: to tolerate religion and not interfere with its exercise. It does not mean that I have to accept, or stop criticizing, religion or religious behavior. I consider many religions immoral, some of them downright evil, and, of course, I need to speak out against that, just like followers of those religions speak out against what they consider immoral behavior in others.
I hope we can reduce the practice of religion, just like we can reduce alcohol, drug addiction, HIV, spousal abuse, and illegitimacy, and I hope that, at the same time, we can remain tolerant of the people suffering from those afflictions.
In addition to Microsoft's variations, there are the dozens of wildly different and incompatible varieties of Windows that the PC vendors create: different themes, different desktops, different applications, different administrative tools, different startup sequences, different drivers, etc.
GPS is one-way from satellite to receiver, so there are no privacy concerns. There may be privacy concerns over some kind of tracking transmitter that happens to be using GPS as well, but don't blame GPS for that.
I don't understand how "looking at porn is bad" is going to keep kids from having a painful experience. Looking at porn is not painful, so mostly what you're achieving by telling kids that "looking at porn is bad" is that you're not telling them the truth.
The technique is quite old and usually used for detecting malware. Their particular implementation is also pretty primitive.
With a system like that, you'd need to have virtually most of the cell in vacuoles so you then run into the problem of freezing again.
Most of the mass of the cell would be compartments containing hydrogen peroxide solution. The purpose of those compartments might be energy generation, energy storage, vesicle transport, water storage, and structural. There would only be very limited biochemistry happening in those compartments.
Most of the biochemical machinery (DNA, RNA, proteins) would be contained in small spaces and containing only a small amount of water, which is pretty easy to keep "liquid".
However that doesn't mean that an entirely different biochemistry isn't possible, just that it couldn't be anything like the aqueous chemistry that is ubiquitously found in life on earth.
I don't think one needs an "entirely different biochemistry" at all, just an adjustment of the relative size and distribution of various cell compartments.
It involves teaching your kids correct principles when they are young
Any attempt at parenting that involves "teaching principles" to young kids is doomed to failure.
Ironically, it's kids raised by people like you who are probably the biggest customer base for the porn and sex industry, since those kids never learned what they needed to in order to keep out of trouble.
Up until the revolution in 1979, Iran was a friend
Between 1953 and 1979, Iran was a nation that run by a US-backed regime that remained in power through repression and torture; that is not "friendship".
The mess Iran has become today is principally due to bad decisions by Eisenhower and Carter, motivated by short-sighted economic and strategic interests, instead of supporting democracy and economic development.
The simple fact is that if you are not actively working against your goverment, you are supporting them. This goes for any country.
I think this holds true mainly for democracies, like the US and Europe. The responsibility of people living in non-democratic regimes, on the other hand, depends on a lot of factors, like how repressive the regime is, how significant the abuses by the regime are, how difficult it is to leave the country, how willing other nations are to accept refugees, etc.
(However, in the US, support for Bush is, in the end, overwhelming: with about half the people not voting, and about half of the rest voting for Bush in his re-election, we can say that 3/4 of the US population accept his policies.)
The problem with that statement is that the rulers of [country X]:
1) Have said that they want nuclear weapons, and are actively pursuing nuclear technology
2) Have said that they want to wipe [the government of country Y] from [history]
3) Seem to be spreading fear through their military and covert actions
And how is this different from US actions and the statements of US politicians?
(Point (3) is particularly ironic since it is US covert actions that toppled the democratically elected government of Iran in the first place.)
The company has a demo and a web site, and I don't see anything novel about what they describe.
However, several decades of real-world experience and prior art also have shown that this kind of technology isn't very useful, except perhaps for the disabled, and they already have input devices supporting it.
GNU Emacs had all sorts of autocompletion built in a decade earlier, and there are other examples even before that.
This isn't really a "hole", it's more of a void.
Nevertheless, mathematically, it is possible to have holes in a body without anything being "outside" the body.
While I'm hesitant to rule something like this out of hand, if they are suggesting that these organisms have high hydrogen peroxide concentrations, then that would require a completely different biochemistry unlike anything we currently know of.
On earth, you have small hydrogen peroxide containing vacuoles inside a large wet cytoplasm. That could simply be reversed on Mars, with the hydrogen peroxide solution serving the transport, structural, and reservoir functions, and more or less normal biochemical reactions taking place in small spaces with tiny amounts of regular cytoplasm, protected by proteins and salt against freezing.