It's not optional, but the heavy-handed EVIL law asks them to do what? To put a meta-tag into their pages with a rating. That's it. It doesn't make it illegal to host that content; it doesn't make it illegal to serve that content. What disadvantages does this system imply for the pr0n companies? They need to write a two-line Perl script that puts the proper tag into their HTML, and they're done. (Memo to self: 1. Write said two-line Perl script. 2. Sell to pr0n masters in Utah. 3. ??? 4. Profit!) However, this means that parents are able to block those sites more easily with the client-side technology that everyone is pushing here.
I suppose you could argue that the third-degree felony is too much for failing to run their Perl script. I suppose that the content providers are going to lose some income from ad impressions from the five and six-year-old kids (or older kids with less-permissive parents, or adults who are using the corporate Internet connection to surf pr0n) who can no longer hit their pages because there is an effective means of blocking. (Naturally, the fact that only Utah-based porn has to be rated cuts down the effectiveness of the measure...)
The pr0n industry has essentially refused to do voluntary rating of pages, thus producing the perceived need for the legislation. I can't feel too sorry for them...
The thing with having the search engines have to rate the content of links seems to be unacceptable and likely unenforceable.
Germany traditionally allowed two sales a year -- a winter clearance and a summer clearance. It was illegal to discount at other times. The retailer C&A attempted an "always 10% off" policy a while back, and they were stopped. Price dumping is explicitly illegal, which has hindered Wal-Mart's uptake in Germany. It's not the specific case mentioned, but this link shows the general mentality of the time -- one store sued another because it was offering a 10% Easter rebate by reducing the price at the cash register rather than putting up new price signs in the store. In this case, the plaintiff lost, however.
However, the "sale policy" changed this year. Stores may now have sales when they want to, though price-dumping remains illegal. (On the news, many Germans were convinced that this was the beginning of the end, that there would never be a summer clearance sale again...)
In most of the Bundesländer, after fourth or fifth grade you are divided into three possibilites: the "Hauptschule" (which stresses survival skills and preparing you for blue-collar labor), the "Realschule" (which has a certain level of academic standing -- it could get you into a technical institute or such), and the "Gymnasium" (which is university-bound, assuming you pass the exit exams). You will occasionally have a bright kid who was lazy in the first couple years of elementary school and then is all but doomed to a life of uneducated labor. (It is possible to take several years of labor experience and get into a night-"Realschule", and so forth.) In most areas, you must attend school until age 16 in one of the three types.
However, Germany just did rather poorly in international exams of mathematical and other abilities, in large part because the "Hauptschule" people don't learn much of anything besides car repair, cheese-making, construction work, or the like. There are now some discussions about waiting with the division until later. Others defend the current system...
Unless, of course, your company security expert is worried that M$ Exchange web access could be a security hole, so won't activate it, leaving you with Crossover Office and Lookout or nothing...
Don't you understand marketing? How else are they going to get people to pay for prison food? This is just an extremely well-marketed product that people buy without even thinking about it.
That's probably why he cleverly only did this for one day, when only 1200 of his campaign loyalists would actually see the page and vote before the "polls closed". As of Friday, his old campaign manager is back on the job. Thus he got widespread free publicity with very little risk.
So he won't have a Slashdotted Sunday, after all, or even a Diebolded Sunday as the parent suggests.
His point is that the statements in bold: "More choice is always better", "Open Source software is always better than closed source software", etc., are indeed representative of the FOSS movement, but that these statements are not true, and are therefore "myths" that the FOSS movement has lulled itself into actually believing.
Essentially, the author is a developer who fears that his livelihood will be completely lost to free software enthusiasts, as he will not be able to sell his software (though this isn't strictly true) and would be bored just selling support.
I would say that he is not categorically against Open Source, but tends toward a negative assessment. He claims that the article is intended to start discussion, so here we are, discussing.
The "express lanes" in the grocery stores have killed that grammatical rule. At least the last time I checked, the only grocery store with "12 items or fewer" was Fiesta Mart in Austin.
Those "utterly mainstream Intel motherboards" tend to have low quality sound chips that weren't very well detected and supported until pretty recently. I couldn't get mine to word with RedHat 9, though it now works fine with Fedora 1. (Mine uses the i810_sound driver...)
Interesting that Mr. Langa specifically didn't try any RedHat distributions, especially considering that for many people on the street, RedHat == Linux. (Or maybe he did, and his soundcard worked, which would have spoiled his article...)
A computer game can never account for a truly open game play of a human.
Agreed, although Nethack makes a valiant attempt at it. The various interactions between the "rubber chickens" and reading scrolls in various states, and, and, and... make you often cry out, "The DevTeam thought of everything!" Of course, Nethack has thrown in everything, including the kitchen sink, so it's not for everyone, but for many, it is THE computer role-playing game.
Open source RealPlayer (more or less)
on
Real Problems
·
· Score: 2, Informative
The Helix player (which is somehow subsidiary to Real) handles RealPlayer 10 files and is open source. Here is a link to their web page.
Re:Is the wording legal?
on
Real Problems
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
I'm sure "Best video and audio quality ever" means "Best video and audio quality ever in a RealPlayer product". That is, they're comparing Real Player 10 to Real Player 9 and earlier, not to WMA, OGG or any other competitor.
My sister also works in a Children's hospital and hits "creative" names fairly often. Like the twins who were named Orangejello (pronounced kind of Frenchish, with four syllables, accent on the antepenult: Or'anjelo) and Lemonjello (pronounced Laym'onjelo)... The best (?) though was the one who apparently had been browsing informative brochures in her gynacologist's office, and came up with the lovely name (no joke):
Syphillis (accent on the second syllable, of course)
Here in Germany, we have recently been having to pay VAT on every package coming from the U.S. or Mexico. Maybe our address (a school) has received an above average number of gifts from outside the EU... In any case, we are telling parents to send money instead of gifts, because the tax is quite high.
Thankfully, CrossOver Office declared the value of their CD at $0, so I didn't get stuck on that one...
Actually, you'll have a lot more luck speaking Italian around the Vatican today. Official documents are still printed in an official Latin translation, and there is a priest responsable for the making of new words and such, but very few actively speak it.
A few years ago, a Lithuanian(?) bishop gave his speech to a Synod in Latin, and the Pope remarked afterwards, (approx.) "The poor Latin language, she has no refuge left but Lithuania..."
The language is, of course, still used for worship, both within and outside of the Catholic Church. (Though not exclusively by any means.)
Unfortunately, the Constitution left this point quite vague. It does say a "limited" time, but doesn't indicate anything about how long that might be. Since every extension is going to set a (theoretical) expiration date, the multimedia conglomerates can always argue that the law is constitutional.
This is awful for fair use, obviously. We've got to somehow get Congressmen elected who can see the folly of the current path, and who are immune to the ideal-destroying effects of large campaign donations. Doesn't look like we'll be reading Faulkner on line anytime soon...
I've been hearing about this sort of result for some time in prolife circles, but it seems to be silenced by the mainstream media. I still don't know how much ideology is involved, though.
Essentially, the embryonic stem cells have failed to produce very promising results because of rejection or tumor formation (in many cases). Adult stem cells, which are pluripotential (not totipotential), have no rejection problems because they are autologously donated. Searching Google on "bone marrow stem cells" produces a variety of results, like this plea for funding from a Russian biologist: Why cloning? or this from Science Daily or Bone Marrow Stem Cells can become almost anything.
Re:So what happens when we find life?
on
Life on Pluto?
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
The Vatican actually defines being "human" as having intelligence and free will (by current evidence, Neanderthals make it, chimpanzees do not). That is, intelligent life on another planet would simply be another "human" race, complete with souls and being saved by Christ's death and resurrection.
Whether life on another planet is considered probable is another question.
This is, of course tangential to the discussion at hand, and I'll probably get modded down for challenging the Enlightenment-era theory of the case, but the statement that Galileo was "silenced by the simpleminded religous [sic] zealots" distorts the truth too much to be accepted.
The Church supported all of Galileo's early work, and it was the actions of jealous SCIENTISTS that brought about his condemnation.
In an early (1597) letter to Johannes Kepler, Galileo wrote that he thought that Copernicus' theory was correct, but that it would be better not to publish because the establishment would not accept it.
Twelve years later, Galileo made his famous observations with the telescope and published "The Starry Messenger", which he submitted to the Vatican and for which he received approval and support.
Then the scientific establishment started complaining, claiming that breaking with Aristotle was a heresy. They enlisted the aid of the Dominicans to denounce Galileo, but he continued to publish with the express permission of the Church. For instance, "The Assayer", is explicitly dedicated to the Pope.
Galileo's fall came at the hands of the scientist Schreiner, who managed to force a trial under the Inquisition. The head of the Inquisition supported him, and simply gave a reprimand, telling him to keep to objective facts. The scientific establishment was not satisfied and managed to get another trial, which is quite complicated in its course... The end result was a sentence of house arrest in a lavish home, exactly where Galileo preferred to do his work.
In fact, it was from house arrest that he published his "Dialogue Concerning Two New Sciences". The Church has since apologized for even this mishandling of the case.
In conclusion, it was not simpleminded religious zealots that persecuted Galileo, but rather simpleminded establishment scientists who had everything to lose in a scientific revolution.
They tell me the Vatican city still actually uses its pneumatic pipe system -- since it still works and they often have to pass original documents (something that's just not possible via FAX and email). Here the "outdated" technology can actually be superior to the modern "technology" of hiring couriers!
But if Mozilla is to be accepted, it's got to be able to access this site in particular and all sites in general...
The ideal solution would be to convince Citibank to change their scripts. An alternate "solution" would be to somehow put an idiot-proof spoofing function into the program. (Special_128_bit_mode, which changes the user agent string to something that's not 100% dishonest, but munged enough to get by most browser detection scripts... The user only activates this "mode" in case of problems with secure sites.)
I got one from a Spanish hotmail-type operation. When I wrote to the owner of the domain (abuse and postmaster bounced, so I had to go to whois), I got a response on the line of "We can't do anything about this. After all, even if we banned the spammer, he'd just get another free account from us. I'd recommend getting a spam filter for your computer."
So, in the end, I just added another rule to my spam filters...
For me, the English-only release was the least responsible thing M$ could have done... I mean, really, they thank the person who brought this to their attention so that they could get the patch out before any bad people could exploit the bug. Then they say, "Hey everybody! There's a massive bug in our browser, and everyone who has been naive enough to install a non-English version of our product is completely vulnerable. Start your attacks now!"
Of course, M$ has always been a bit poor about support for foreign (non-English) languages... Word 97 could translate a Word 6 document only if that document was written in English... Outlook in a non-English language can't communicate properly with Exchange Server in English... And at least under Windows95, DLL-Hell was a few degrees hotter if you used products in different languages. (The DLL that is currently installed is in a different language than the program you are installing. Do you want to change it?) -- for I while, I had a system with Windows in German, Word in Spanish, WordPerfect in English...
Slashdot Mirror
It's not optional, but the heavy-handed EVIL law asks them to do what? To put a meta-tag into their pages with a rating. That's it. It doesn't make it illegal to host that content; it doesn't make it illegal to serve that content. What disadvantages does this system imply for the pr0n companies? They need to write a two-line Perl script that puts the proper tag into their HTML, and they're done. (Memo to self: 1. Write said two-line Perl script. 2. Sell to pr0n masters in Utah. 3. ??? 4. Profit!) However, this means that parents are able to block those sites more easily with the client-side technology that everyone is pushing here.
I suppose you could argue that the third-degree felony is too much for failing to run their Perl script. I suppose that the content providers are going to lose some income from ad impressions from the five and six-year-old kids (or older kids with less-permissive parents, or adults who are using the corporate Internet connection to surf pr0n) who can no longer hit their pages because there is an effective means of blocking. (Naturally, the fact that only Utah-based porn has to be rated cuts down the effectiveness of the measure...)
The pr0n industry has essentially refused to do voluntary rating of pages, thus producing the perceived need for the legislation. I can't feel too sorry for them...
The thing with having the search engines have to rate the content of links seems to be unacceptable and likely unenforceable.
Germany traditionally allowed two sales a year -- a winter clearance and a summer clearance. It was illegal to discount at other times. The retailer C&A attempted an "always 10% off" policy a while back, and they were stopped. Price dumping is explicitly illegal, which has hindered Wal-Mart's uptake in Germany. It's not the specific case mentioned, but this link shows the general mentality of the time -- one store sued another because it was offering a 10% Easter rebate by reducing the price at the cash register rather than putting up new price signs in the store. In this case, the plaintiff lost, however.
However, the "sale policy" changed this year. Stores may now have sales when they want to, though price-dumping remains illegal. (On the news, many Germans were convinced that this was the beginning of the end, that there would never be a summer clearance sale again...)
In most of the Bundesländer, after fourth or fifth grade you are divided into three possibilites: the "Hauptschule" (which stresses survival skills and preparing you for blue-collar labor), the "Realschule" (which has a certain level of academic standing -- it could get you into a technical institute or such), and the "Gymnasium" (which is university-bound, assuming you pass the exit exams). You will occasionally have a bright kid who was lazy in the first couple years of elementary school and then is all but doomed to a life of uneducated labor. (It is possible to take several years of labor experience and get into a night-"Realschule", and so forth.) In most areas, you must attend school until age 16 in one of the three types. However, Germany just did rather poorly in international exams of mathematical and other abilities, in large part because the "Hauptschule" people don't learn much of anything besides car repair, cheese-making, construction work, or the like. There are now some discussions about waiting with the division until later. Others defend the current system...
Unless, of course, your company security expert is worried that M$ Exchange web access could be a security hole, so won't activate it, leaving you with Crossover Office and Lookout or nothing...
Don't you understand marketing? How else are they going to get people to pay for prison food? This is just an extremely well-marketed product that people buy without even thinking about it.
So he won't have a Slashdotted Sunday, after all, or even a Diebolded Sunday as the parent suggests.
His point is that the statements in bold: "More choice is always better", "Open Source software is always better than closed source software", etc., are indeed representative of the FOSS movement, but that these statements are not true, and are therefore "myths" that the FOSS movement has lulled itself into actually believing.
Essentially, the author is a developer who fears that his livelihood will be completely lost to free software enthusiasts, as he will not be able to sell his software (though this isn't strictly true) and would be bored just selling support.
I would say that he is not categorically against Open Source, but tends toward a negative assessment. He claims that the article is intended to start discussion, so here we are, discussing.
The "express lanes" in the grocery stores have killed that grammatical rule. At least the last time I checked, the only grocery store with "12 items or fewer" was Fiesta Mart in Austin.
Those "utterly mainstream Intel motherboards" tend to have low quality sound chips that weren't very well detected and supported until pretty recently. I couldn't get mine to word with RedHat 9, though it now works fine with Fedora 1. (Mine uses the i810_sound driver...)
Interesting that Mr. Langa specifically didn't try any RedHat distributions, especially considering that for many people on the street, RedHat == Linux. (Or maybe he did, and his soundcard worked, which would have spoiled his article...)
A computer game can never account for a truly open game play of a human.
Agreed, although Nethack makes a valiant attempt at it. The various interactions between the "rubber chickens" and reading scrolls in various states, and, and, and... make you often cry out, "The DevTeam thought of everything!" Of course, Nethack has thrown in everything, including the kitchen sink, so it's not for everyone, but for many, it is THE computer role-playing game.
The Helix player (which is somehow subsidiary to Real) handles RealPlayer 10 files and is open source. Here is a link to their web page.
I'm sure "Best video and audio quality ever" means "Best video and audio quality ever in a RealPlayer product". That is, they're comparing Real Player 10 to Real Player 9 and earlier, not to WMA, OGG or any other competitor.
Syphillis (accent on the second syllable, of course)
Please note that parent is a troll. The PDF contains goatse material. (Although the GIF is genuine.)
Here in Germany, we have recently been having to pay VAT on every package coming from the U.S. or Mexico. Maybe our address (a school) has received an above average number of gifts from outside the EU... In any case, we are telling parents to send money instead of gifts, because the tax is quite high. Thankfully, CrossOver Office declared the value of their CD at $0, so I didn't get stuck on that one...
Actually, you'll have a lot more luck speaking Italian around the Vatican today. Official documents are still printed in an official Latin translation, and there is a priest responsable for the making of new words and such, but very few actively speak it.
A few years ago, a Lithuanian(?) bishop gave his speech to a Synod in Latin, and the Pope remarked afterwards, (approx.) "The poor Latin language, she has no refuge left but Lithuania..."
The language is, of course, still used for worship, both within and outside of the Catholic Church. (Though not exclusively by any means.)
This is awful for fair use, obviously. We've got to somehow get Congressmen elected who can see the folly of the current path, and who are immune to the ideal-destroying effects of large campaign donations. Doesn't look like we'll be reading Faulkner on line anytime soon...
Essentially, the embryonic stem cells have failed to produce very promising results because of rejection or tumor formation (in many cases). Adult stem cells, which are pluripotential (not totipotential), have no rejection problems because they are autologously donated. Searching Google on "bone marrow stem cells" produces a variety of results, like this plea for funding from a Russian biologist: Why cloning? or this from Science Daily or Bone Marrow Stem Cells can become almost anything.
The Vatican actually defines being "human" as having intelligence and free will (by current evidence, Neanderthals make it, chimpanzees do not). That is, intelligent life on another planet would simply be another "human" race, complete with souls and being saved by Christ's death and resurrection.
Whether life on another planet is considered probable is another question.
Fine, then go to this page to get the complete Doomsday algorithm, including corrections for the Julian calendar.
The Church supported all of Galileo's early work, and it was the actions of jealous SCIENTISTS that brought about his condemnation.
In an early (1597) letter to Johannes Kepler, Galileo wrote that he thought that Copernicus' theory was correct, but that it would be better not to publish because the establishment would not accept it.
Twelve years later, Galileo made his famous observations with the telescope and published "The Starry Messenger", which he submitted to the Vatican and for which he received approval and support.
Then the scientific establishment started complaining, claiming that breaking with Aristotle was a heresy. They enlisted the aid of the Dominicans to denounce Galileo, but he continued to publish with the express permission of the Church. For instance, "The Assayer", is explicitly dedicated to the Pope.
Galileo's fall came at the hands of the scientist Schreiner, who managed to force a trial under the Inquisition. The head of the Inquisition supported him, and simply gave a reprimand, telling him to keep to objective facts. The scientific establishment was not satisfied and managed to get another trial, which is quite complicated in its course... The end result was a sentence of house arrest in a lavish home, exactly where Galileo preferred to do his work.
In fact, it was from house arrest that he published his "Dialogue Concerning Two New Sciences". The Church has since apologized for even this mishandling of the case.
In conclusion, it was not simpleminded religious zealots that persecuted Galileo, but rather simpleminded establishment scientists who had everything to lose in a scientific revolution.
They tell me the Vatican city still actually uses its pneumatic pipe system -- since it still works and they often have to pass original documents (something that's just not possible via FAX and email). Here the "outdated" technology can actually be superior to the modern "technology" of hiring couriers!
The ideal solution would be to convince Citibank to change their scripts. An alternate "solution" would be to somehow put an idiot-proof spoofing function into the program. (Special_128_bit_mode, which changes the user agent string to something that's not 100% dishonest, but munged enough to get by most browser detection scripts... The user only activates this "mode" in case of problems with secure sites.)
So, in the end, I just added another rule to my spam filters...
Of course, M$ has always been a bit poor about support for foreign (non-English) languages... Word 97 could translate a Word 6 document only if that document was written in English... Outlook in a non-English language can't communicate properly with Exchange Server in English... And at least under Windows95, DLL-Hell was a few degrees hotter if you used products in different languages. (The DLL that is currently installed is in a different language than the program you are installing. Do you want to change it?) -- for I while, I had a system with Windows in German, Word in Spanish, WordPerfect in English...