Problem is this could be a slippery slope. So let it slide. If I don't want Russia, China, Korea, etc. to have a route to me, why should they have one? IMO, Estonian banks, businesses, etc. should simply "fork" the Internet so that only trustworthy Estonian ISPs have a route to them. Sure, it costs them something in not being able to do business internationally, but it would guarantee service for their local customers.
Beyond that, there are a few qusetions. 1) Who's going to be motivated to write the "Idiot's guide to " [insert obscure graduate-level topic here]? 2) Is it the lack of layman-available material that's the problem, or the presence of imposing "expert" material? I'm not sure I agree with the premise of these questions. An "idiot's guide to X" is an article like any other, so the attention it gets is proportional to the interest in the subject. Wikipedia has some areas that are covered in incredible depth, like evolution, so the "idiot's guide to Evolution" is a part of that depth. You're not going to get an "idiot's guide to Cyclic Redundancy Checks" because there's not that much interest in CRC overall. This leads into your second question, where you have omitted the more likely scenario that there simply isn't sufficient interest in the subject for it to be covered in such depth.
The more interest in general in a topic, the more attention it gets on Wikipedia, and hopefully, the better the set of articles related to that topic becomes. More eyes means more expertise in the topic itself as well as in writing and editing. Topics without that attention inevitably suffer in all sorts of ways.
Depends on the topic. At some point, for a given entry one needs to make an editorial decision, whether to make the content high level or low level. For instance, some mathematical topics simply require calculus to fully understand. Do you dumb down the article to conceptual level so that a relative layperson might understand it or not? This is the false dichotomy. You do not need to make that choice on a wiki. You can have different articles on the same subject or different sections in the same article for different audiences. Witness Evolution and Introduction to evolution.
(Not sure if I blame them, if there were a lot of people like me among their customers they'd probably have to start metering us and charging a few yen per GB of upload over some limit each month.) I wish my ISP would do that. It would put an end to all the crap they go through to make sure you can't really use your bandwidth. No more artificial limits on connection speed. No more traffic shaping. No more server blocking. I'll pay for the bandwidth I need and they'll bend over backwards to give it to me.
People would also get much more conscious of how they use their bandwidth if leaving BitTorrent running 24/7 or letting your computer be infected by a botnet virus cost real money.
The point is that NAT has obviated the need for everyone to have a publicly-addressable IP address. Remember when Qatar got blocked from Wikipedia? An entire country sits behind a single IP address. There are roughly 800,000 people in Qatar. At that rate, we only need about 7500 IP addresses for the entire planet.
As silly as that sounds, it might not be too far off from what ends up happening. If you want your own IP address, be prepared to pay a premium.
I'm not sure about Guidant, but I used to work for one of their competitors and the hardware support has been there for a while. Of course, there were all sorts of concerns about interference and even security as you mentioned, so it was never enabled in production units. It's still used extensively in house because it's much faster than traditional programming.
The real concern is why pacemakers are made so they are susceptible to such interference. The heart's electrical signals are very weak, so the pacemaker's sensing leads have to be incredibly sensitive in order to pick them up. Unfortunately, any ungrounded wire is an antenna, so that hyper sensitivity means that they pick up noise, even from sources that meet FCC regulations. Since the exposed lead has to be in physical contact with the heart at some point, there's no 100% effective way to eliminate the noise. It's a known problem with the very concept of a pacemaker.
First off, the various standards only set a maximum limit for interference. It is practically impossible to eliminate it entire and the iPod certainly emits its fair share. Secondly, since the heart's electrical signals do not generate very much current, the pacemaker's sensing leads are necessarily very sensitive. They are so sensitive that they will pick up interference from nearby EMI sources. It's a known problem with the fundamental concept of a pacemaker. The manufacturers do their best to protect against it, but mostly the only thing you can do is maintain physical distance.
I never bothered to try to buy alcohol before I turned 21, since I figured I would almost certainly get caught. Upon turning 21 and being able to legally purchase it, I noticed that I would only get carded maybe 1 in 3 times, despite being just over. Even at that, it's pretty easy to tell the places and people who will card from those that won't. I think I probably could have purchased a lot of alcohol by just going up and asking for it. It seems pretty silly that these kids go to such effort and spend so much money to buy a fake ID.
That being said, a friend of mine had an ingenious idea to get a "real" fake ID by stealing the identity of a baby who died 21 years ago. Skipping several steps for obvious reasons, he got to the point where he took the test, had his picture taken, and was told to wait for the ID in the mail. Unfortunately, the cops showed up instead.
Considering this got more press than most Superbowl advertisements it seems like the return on investment was pretty solid. You would think that, but practically no one went to see it. It was in 877 theaters for two weeks, half that the third week and it's all but gone from theaters now. But thanks to the movie's low production cost ($750k), the movie still managed to make a profit, bringing in about $5 million to date. The $2 million settlement therefore cut their profit margin in half, so I doubt anyone thinks it was "worth it". The story may yet change, as I'm sure the real target for the movie all along was in DVD sales.
The DMCA prohibits distributing "any technology, product, service, device, component, or part thereof... primarily designed or produced for the purpose of circumventing a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work." The key is presumably a component or a part of a device to circumvent AACS encryption.
Uuuunfortunately for everyone touting that they now have their own, DMCA-protected numbers, those randomly generated keys could not honestly be said to "effectively control access" to anything when the plain text of the encrypted haiku is available to anyone and everyone.
The linked article seems to me to be trying to defend theft of the hard work of others, and that's not cool. The article I read had nothing to do with copyright infringement. It was simple pointing out that the GPL (or something like it) could exist in a legal framework outside of copyright. I don't recall any portion of it that advocated violating legally valid terms of use.
If you don't like the rules you can work to change them or find somewhere else to live. No one doubts that copyright is currently the law of the land. In the meantime, this is what working to change the rules looks like.
Strangely, Paris Hilton isn't the ruler of anything and she's pretty much universally despised. What does not being the ruler have to do with it?
In any event, from his Wikipedia article it's clear that he's had more influence on Thai politics than say, Queen Elizabeth has had on British politics. AFAIK, Elizabeth never actively or tacitly supported the overthrow of the government. I would think that would make Adulyadej a rather controversial figure, or at least more controversial than Elizabeth.
Not that I know anything at all about the king or the political situation in Thailand, but maybe more people would oppose him if it wasn't illegal to tell them why they should.
They received a legally-unenforceable cease and desist letter, but never a DCMA takedown notice. This is key: they were under no legal obligation to do anything at any time. They received a threatening letter and over-reacted. They pulled any stories remotely related to the AACS key, including several that did not mention the number, but only commented on Digg's censorship of it. They also banned the people who submitted those stories -- something that has never been a requirement of the DCMA.
That's what I was protesting. I never expected Digg to do anything illegal or take the issue to court.
And equally, you could reverse engineer their modified product and implement the changes in the original version. Effectively, if you steal something from the public domain, the public domain has the right to steal it back.
I think the Stallman ideal is a society where everyone voluntarily follows the tenets of the GPL without being forced to. Without copyright and with the unrestrained ability to reverse engineer released products, the effect is mostly the same.
In the same vein, we spent 2 years of solid classes based around cisco with 6+ hours of lab per week. That will stick a lot longer than the 2 hours of lab in Linux that occurred for about a months time. Ha, I wouldn't count on it. The Cisco certified courses change radically over time because Cisco as a company needs to radically change its products over time in order to sell new ones. UNIX fundamentals, on the other hand, have stayed relevant for about 30 years.
We don't purchase a car for each student just because we know that they're probably going to need to know how to drive, do we? Instead, we have a "driver's education" class where they get to practice with a few school owned and maintained vehicles. Not that I'm supporting it, but the argument here would be that your basic skill set determines your class in life and the types of jobs you can hold. If "office worker" isn't in that skill set, there's a whole job sector cut off from you. Also, if we're to believe the hype behind modernization and globalization, we're losing blue-collar jobs to other countries, but gaining white-collar jobs in exchange, so the students need to be trained or risk not have a place in the workforce.
Knowing how to drive on the other hand doesn't nearly determine your position in society the way your career does. Not having a car is an inconvenience you can manage. Not having a career has a much broader effect on your life and society as a whole.
Yes, how obvious! If they didn't have those filters, the schools would never have those problems with pornography, cheating, and cracking. Clearly, the filters made the them do it.
Balmer: It's a $500 subsidized item. AKAImBatman: Its high cost proves that is not subsidized. kjart: It requires a contract, therefore it is subsidized. (My, kjart's and Balmer's definition of a subsidized phone.) Mattintosh: The contract is due to Cingular's profit motive, ergo, the phone is not subsidized. kjart: Service providers always have a profit motive. The contract decreases the end cost of the phone to you, which is a subsidy. You: Cingular's monopoly means they can stick you with the contract without decreasing the cost of the phone. You conflate the idea of a loss-leader with a subsidy. (Your definition of a subsidy.) Me: An item need not be a loss-leader to be subsidized. Repeat definition. You: You ask for proof that the cost to you is higher without the contract. Me: The contract itself represents an inherent additional cost for the phone. There is no need to concoct a hypothetical phone-only price, since the cost of the phone+contract is equivalent to a phone-only price. Even if the exact dollar figure is not available, that price is known to be higher than the listed price. Therefore, the phone is subsidized. You: If the phone were subsidized, the service would cost more than other phones. Me: Applying the same logic to other phones known to be subsidized would have you conclude, incorrectly, they are not subsidized. Explained further the inherent costs of a contract. Though not required, a specific dollar figure for the phone only can be calculated using the Early Termination Fee, proof that the iPhone does cost more without a contract. You: I (Fred) am not talking about subsidies. Me: I am indeed not talking about your definition of a subsidy. Whether or not you agree with my (and Balmer's) choice of words, it does not affect the truth value of the statement as it was meant.
Finally, by "arguing semantics" I meant that you attempted to change the truth value of a statement by changing the definitions of its terms. To clarify:
(1) The iPhone is subsidized, in that it comes with a contract, is undeniably true. (2) The iPhone is subsidized, in that it is sold for less than cost, may or may not be true, but that is completely irrelevant to me.
If you want to control access you have to whitelist, and the reason people don't do that is because they want to pretend like they're not censoring your information. Fucking brilliant point. I want this quote on a bumper sticker.
Is the contract higher for the RAZR than for the same service on other phones? No, but the RAZR and every other phone service providers sell with a contract is subsidized. The contract is the subsidy. The iPhone is no different.
You can buy the iPhone without a contract. It's called the Early Termination Fee and it's usually about $200, which covers what the service provider loses when you break the contract. When you agree to a contract you are giving the service provider something real and valuable that they don't otherwise get even if you aren't paying any more for the service. If you plan on staying with the same provider anyway, you're still giving them something: you're foregoing the opportunity to get another phone, since the cost of a new phone every two years is already factored into your service price.
Slashdot Mirror
The more interest in general in a topic, the more attention it gets on Wikipedia, and hopefully, the better the set of articles related to that topic becomes. More eyes means more expertise in the topic itself as well as in writing and editing. Topics without that attention inevitably suffer in all sorts of ways.
People would also get much more conscious of how they use their bandwidth if leaving BitTorrent running 24/7 or letting your computer be infected by a botnet virus cost real money.
The point is that NAT has obviated the need for everyone to have a publicly-addressable IP address. Remember when Qatar got blocked from Wikipedia? An entire country sits behind a single IP address. There are roughly 800,000 people in Qatar. At that rate, we only need about 7500 IP addresses for the entire planet.
As silly as that sounds, it might not be too far off from what ends up happening. If you want your own IP address, be prepared to pay a premium.
I'm not sure about Guidant, but I used to work for one of their competitors and the hardware support has been there for a while. Of course, there were all sorts of concerns about interference and even security as you mentioned, so it was never enabled in production units. It's still used extensively in house because it's much faster than traditional programming.
First off, the various standards only set a maximum limit for interference. It is practically impossible to eliminate it entire and the iPod certainly emits its fair share. Secondly, since the heart's electrical signals do not generate very much current, the pacemaker's sensing leads are necessarily very sensitive. They are so sensitive that they will pick up interference from nearby EMI sources. It's a known problem with the fundamental concept of a pacemaker. The manufacturers do their best to protect against it, but mostly the only thing you can do is maintain physical distance.
I never bothered to try to buy alcohol before I turned 21, since I figured I would almost certainly get caught. Upon turning 21 and being able to legally purchase it, I noticed that I would only get carded maybe 1 in 3 times, despite being just over. Even at that, it's pretty easy to tell the places and people who will card from those that won't. I think I probably could have purchased a lot of alcohol by just going up and asking for it. It seems pretty silly that these kids go to such effort and spend so much money to buy a fake ID.
That being said, a friend of mine had an ingenious idea to get a "real" fake ID by stealing the identity of a baby who died 21 years ago. Skipping several steps for obvious reasons, he got to the point where he took the test, had his picture taken, and was told to wait for the ID in the mail. Unfortunately, the cops showed up instead.
Box office details.
The DMCA prohibits distributing "any technology, product, service, device, component, or part thereof ... primarily designed or produced for the purpose of circumventing a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work." The key is presumably a component or a part of a device to circumvent AACS encryption.
Uuuunfortunately for everyone touting that they now have their own, DMCA-protected numbers, those randomly generated keys could not honestly be said to "effectively control access" to anything when the plain text of the encrypted haiku is available to anyone and everyone.
Strangely, Paris Hilton isn't the ruler of anything and she's pretty much universally despised. What does not being the ruler have to do with it?
In any event, from his Wikipedia article it's clear that he's had more influence on Thai politics than say, Queen Elizabeth has had on British politics. AFAIK, Elizabeth never actively or tacitly supported the overthrow of the government. I would think that would make Adulyadej a rather controversial figure, or at least more controversial than Elizabeth.
Not that I know anything at all about the king or the political situation in Thailand, but maybe more people would oppose him if it wasn't illegal to tell them why they should.
They received a legally-unenforceable cease and desist letter, but never a DCMA takedown notice. This is key: they were under no legal obligation to do anything at any time. They received a threatening letter and over-reacted. They pulled any stories remotely related to the AACS key, including several that did not mention the number, but only commented on Digg's censorship of it. They also banned the people who submitted those stories -- something that has never been a requirement of the DCMA.
That's what I was protesting. I never expected Digg to do anything illegal or take the issue to court.
And equally, you could reverse engineer their modified product and implement the changes in the original version. Effectively, if you steal something from the public domain, the public domain has the right to steal it back.
I think the Stallman ideal is a society where everyone voluntarily follows the tenets of the GPL without being forced to. Without copyright and with the unrestrained ability to reverse engineer released products, the effect is mostly the same.
Knowing how to drive on the other hand doesn't nearly determine your position in society the way your career does. Not having a car is an inconvenience you can manage. Not having a career has a much broader effect on your life and society as a whole.
Also, my public high school did have driver's ed.
Yes, how obvious! If they didn't have those filters, the schools would never have those problems with pornography, cheating, and cracking. Clearly, the filters made the them do it.
Issat so. Always sounded like Far-Fig-Newton to me. Like a cookie -- err, excuse me, fruit and cake -- that's just barely out of reach.
Actually, it was:
Balmer: It's a $500 subsidized item.
AKAImBatman: Its high cost proves that is not subsidized.
kjart: It requires a contract, therefore it is subsidized. (My, kjart's and Balmer's definition of a subsidized phone.)
Mattintosh: The contract is due to Cingular's profit motive, ergo, the phone is not subsidized.
kjart: Service providers always have a profit motive. The contract decreases the end cost of the phone to you, which is a subsidy.
You: Cingular's monopoly means they can stick you with the contract without decreasing the cost of the phone. You conflate the idea of a loss-leader with a subsidy. (Your definition of a subsidy.)
Me: An item need not be a loss-leader to be subsidized. Repeat definition.
You: You ask for proof that the cost to you is higher without the contract.
Me: The contract itself represents an inherent additional cost for the phone. There is no need to concoct a hypothetical phone-only price, since the cost of the phone+contract is equivalent to a phone-only price. Even if the exact dollar figure is not available, that price is known to be higher than the listed price. Therefore, the phone is subsidized.
You: If the phone were subsidized, the service would cost more than other phones.
Me: Applying the same logic to other phones known to be subsidized would have you conclude, incorrectly, they are not subsidized. Explained further the inherent costs of a contract. Though not required, a specific dollar figure for the phone only can be calculated using the Early Termination Fee, proof that the iPhone does cost more without a contract.
You: I (Fred) am not talking about subsidies.
Me: I am indeed not talking about your definition of a subsidy. Whether or not you agree with my (and Balmer's) choice of words, it does not affect the truth value of the statement as it was meant.
Finally, by "arguing semantics" I meant that you attempted to change the truth value of a statement by changing the definitions of its terms. To clarify:
(1) The iPhone is subsidized, in that it comes with a contract, is undeniably true.
(2) The iPhone is subsidized, in that it is sold for less than cost, may or may not be true, but that is completely irrelevant to me.
That is only because you choose to argue semantics. The facts do not change whether you call it a subsidy or not.
Is the contract higher for the RAZR than for the same service on other phones? No, but the RAZR and every other phone service providers sell with a contract is subsidized. The contract is the subsidy. The iPhone is no different.
You can buy the iPhone without a contract. It's called the Early Termination Fee and it's usually about $200, which covers what the service provider loses when you break the contract. When you agree to a contract you are giving the service provider something real and valuable that they don't otherwise get even if you aren't paying any more for the service. If you plan on staying with the same provider anyway, you're still giving them something: you're foregoing the opportunity to get another phone, since the cost of a new phone every two years is already factored into your service price.