Yes, of course you can write in whomever you want to on the ballot. However, are you going to spend the millions to billions of dollars it takes to market your write-in candidate so that others will know to write him/her in too? What happens if they even misspell the name while writing it in? What if they can't write?
Or, as another option, are you going to go to your state legislature and register your own candidate so that his/her name gets printed on the ballot? Look at what happened to Colbert when he tried to run in South Carolina. He was shot down because "he could never win," which was more or less the truth, but it prevented him from running in the first place.
Elections are all about marketing yourself to the general public, regardless of how stupid or idiotic the public is. I'll use the 1896 presidential election as an example. William Jennings Bryan, part of the populist party, tried to market himself without spending too much money (he didn't have that much to spend) by going around the country giving stump speeches and parading through towns. McKinley, his opponent, who had much more money than Bryan did, spent that money on newspaper advertisements and also paid people to spread the word about voting for McKinley. Guess who won?
All I'm really saying is that you're being overly idealistic, and you're only likely to keep punching your fist into a brick wall with that attitude in regard to politics.
First, there's no way that you can take illegally obtained "evidence" and punish the student for it. It goes against the 4th amendment, and is unethical on so many levels. I strongly doubt that this case will go too far in court.
Second, why the hell do they need to spy on students anyway? It's good that they're giving the students laptops, but what they do at home (regardless of all the stupid shit they do) is none of the school's business, nor is it in their jurisdiction. I could make a rant about how parents need to step it up and take better care of their kids, but I'll just sum it up: schools should stay out of parental territories. It's bad for the student, and it's bad for the school.
Whoever was running this, either the school IT admins or even the higher school administration should be at least suspended pending further review.
Dude... If you really want to, sell the thing for something like $150 and put that money toward getting an actual media center PC if you really want it that much.
A modded Xbox is no good to anyone but yourself, and even so, you'll spend hours tinkering with it before it even remotely does what you want it to do. Also, if it does RROD, your out of luck getting it replaced if you mod it in any way.
That's largely because the high price of console games help subsidize the discounted cost of the console itself (with the exception of the Wii, which makes a profit with each console sold). Both Sony and Microsoft accept a slight loss with every console they sell, largely because they know they'll earn it back and then some with the boosted game sales. It's the cell phone conundrum. (Also the printer ink conundrum.)
With PC games, no subsidizing is necessary, as you already paid full price for the computer. At that point you're just paying for the content.
The contest has been going on for several years straight, and/. has had several stories about it. The article takes knowledge of the contest as a given.
Therefore we aren't sharing files. We are sharing temporal garbage as far as either of us knows. If you want to make sharing garbage packets illegal, I think you'd find a lot of people wanting to tell you to mind your own business.
So, if I somehow sent you the source code to Windows, you would just say that it was only a stream of "garbage packets"? I'm sorry, but data can be extremely valuable, whether it's in the form of code, movies, or music. Packets by themselves are only packets, but it's what they carry that counts.
I used to edit Wikipedia a lot, and during that time, I saw a lot of these debates. This is nothing new, just a heated debate over whether to include an image (in this case the Rorschach test images) based upon ethics and Wikipedia policy (which there is actually very little).
Essentially what will happen (or has already happened, I didn't read the whole debate), is that the definition of "consensus" will be called into question, as that's what runs Wikipedia, and is what decides these debates. However, the Wikipedia policy of consensus is so vague and non-standardized that many debates like this end without consensus, and can even escalate into an edit war, followed by admins having to step in. (which is one of the reasons why I no longer edit it)
I really don't see why this specific debate made it on the/. index, there have been many other and similar debates like it, many having much larger implications concerning censorship on Wikipedia by recommendation of a 3rd party organization.
Guys... It's not that hard to get a small business loan of $25,000, if you present to the bank that you have the know-how (and a business degree would help). Plus from the TFA of a related story...
All webcasters would pay a minimum fee of $25,000 for legal access to the music they stream, but that money could be applied to what they owe in royalties, making it more of a down payment.
In other words, this is $25,000 that they would be normally paying anyway.
This is why clustering is ABSOLUTELY necessary for as large a company as Authorize.net. As parent said, putting all your eggs in one basket is a stupid idea...
I wonder how many companies will switch to PayPal after this...
I honestly would like to see a good, bi-partisan healthcare plan come to the table.
However, if you actually think that the socialized healthcare systems in "every other developed country" work fine, then you should try going to France, where most have to be placed on year-long waitlists for a simple surgery.
Also, if you think that Medicaid provides remotely good healthcare, then you obviously have not talked to any doctors about it; Medicaid forces doctors to only accept 22% of a charged payment, and to write off the rest. So, if an orthopedic performed an $1,100 knee replacement, he'd only receive about $250, and wouldn't get anymore. And if that orthopedic happened to be a specialist in knee replacements, then the patient would also have to see a general orthopedic to get a referral, costing the patient unnecessary time. Many doctors have actually stopped accepting Medicare/Medicaid patients.
I think that I would honestly like to see changes made in the copyright law dealing with prescription drugs... When drug companies patent a drug (which usually happens as research just begins), they have 18 years to finish researching/developing the drug (usually takes 10-11 years), get it approved by the FDA (1-2 years, depending on what the drug cures), mass produce it, market it, and try to make a profit on it in the remaining time that they have. After the 18 years is up, the generic pharmaceuticals step in and make cheaper versions of the drug, virtually eliminating all hope for more profit on it.
Extending the copyrights for these would allow the companies to market the drugs longer and charge a lesser price on them, giving them a bigger chance at making a profit on the drug.
Overall, just remember that healthcare is a business and an industry, and costs a lot of money to run and operate. If the government wants to see an even bigger expansion on their current biggest expense (Medicare), they need to have the financial backing for it. Frankly, with the economy tanking, massively increasing our debt will not help matters almost any.
Although its not the government that directly controls the TLD, they still operate under regulations and orders provided to them by the IEDR. They could refute the orders, but they'd risk losing their mandate/contract.
I noticed on some of the comments on the site that there was a vast difference of opinion between the actual songwriters and, for example, the chief exec of Making Music...
Um.... servers are so damned complicated because they are entirely customizable (kinda like Linux, but running Windows). Servers and server software have never been marketed to the general public, only to IT nerds who actually know how to customize it to what they need it to do. Thus, servers aren't made to be easy, nor can they be easy.
especially if you make the somewhat disturbing choice to run it under Windows
Many webmasters out there use ASP and ASP.NET for their websites. It is a workable platform that many major websites use as an alternative to PHP. However, you cannot run this on a Linux server, as ASP and the.NET framework were both made by Microsoft.
The other product that you can't run on a Linux server is ColdFusion. Although this has a much smaller client list, this will not run on Linux.
Some people even choose to use Windows servers just so they can resell the bandwidth at a much higher rate; most charge $10/month higher on Windows than on Linux, saying that the higher cost is a result of the Windows licensing fees. Over time, that can lead to a much higher profit margin with Windows than with Linux.
Thus, it is not altogether disturbing to use Windows for your web server. It really just depends on what you do with it.
Windows server is only $800 for a 5-client license... and $960 for a 10-client license. This is expensive by most OS standards (even OSX Server is only $500 for a 10-client license), but its still only a small fraction of the total cost of the computer, $16K.
Nice anti-MS joke, but technically, it's off the mark.
Microsoft is just grabbing the opportunity to train more devs and IT in advanced Microsoft products. After all, this is what ensures that companies use these products; that way, the companies don't have to pay for training.
They also use this tactic with student/academia discounts, also.... (MSDNAA, anyone?)
Other proprietary alternatives to Adobe's PDF reader also exist, but like it, their internal working is a a trade secret and these programs do not respect your right to control your own privacy and data.
Personally, I've never had a problem with Adobe Reader on any platform, and this site seems to be blatantly against it.
I just don't see the need to have a directory of PDF readers. It's easy enough to Google "open source PDF readers." There just aren't enough of them to justify a directory.
As far as I can tell, this only increases their liability. Services providers have typically received immunity from the actions of their users, so long as there is a clear line between the service provider and the actions of their users.
What you are referring to is "Common Carrier" status. It prevents companies like UPS from being criminally liable for shipping cocaine, for example, overseas. It also prevents Telcoms from being liable for carrying information used to conduct criminal activities. If they actually get involved, though, they lose common carrier, and thus can become sued (or charged) for anything that occurs over their network.
No good ideas come to mind....
on
Daemon
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Have you not seen the crap that was The Net? This movie is about a computer hacker/code tester whose life gets hijacked by other hackers. It was dumb and probably one of the worst thrillers I've ever seen.
The closest movie that was interesting while at the same time technological-ish would have to be Primer. Check this out if you want more details. It's not exactly as much technological as it is paradoxical, but it seems to get at the techno-thriller genre (somewhat).
I strongly doubt that if you have a.com domain that the UK has the authority to yank it without a court order. I'm not so sure about.uk domains, though...
Most porn sites nowadays have intro pages that ask the user to confirm if he/she is over 18. Would eliminating this law mean that those sites are no longer required to have these intro pages?
(Also, do not confuse this law with COPPA, which is the Child Online Privacy Protection Act, which is enforced [and is constitutional] to prevent children under 13 from posting their personal information online.)
If the phone infrastructure is down, then texting is actually less reliable. I think Slashdot posted an earlier story about how texts actually piggyback onto the spare bandwidth of the network's phone infrastructure; the texts do not travel on a separate network. This goes to explain why your text wasn't received until almost an hour later...
Slashdot Mirror
Giving up mod abilities to respond to this...
Yes, of course you can write in whomever you want to on the ballot. However, are you going to spend the millions to billions of dollars it takes to market your write-in candidate so that others will know to write him/her in too? What happens if they even misspell the name while writing it in? What if they can't write?
Or, as another option, are you going to go to your state legislature and register your own candidate so that his/her name gets printed on the ballot? Look at what happened to Colbert when he tried to run in South Carolina. He was shot down because "he could never win," which was more or less the truth, but it prevented him from running in the first place.
Elections are all about marketing yourself to the general public, regardless of how stupid or idiotic the public is. I'll use the 1896 presidential election as an example. William Jennings Bryan, part of the populist party, tried to market himself without spending too much money (he didn't have that much to spend) by going around the country giving stump speeches and parading through towns. McKinley, his opponent, who had much more money than Bryan did, spent that money on newspaper advertisements and also paid people to spread the word about voting for McKinley. Guess who won?
All I'm really saying is that you're being overly idealistic, and you're only likely to keep punching your fist into a brick wall with that attitude in regard to politics.
First, there's no way that you can take illegally obtained "evidence" and punish the student for it. It goes against the 4th amendment, and is unethical on so many levels. I strongly doubt that this case will go too far in court.
Second, why the hell do they need to spy on students anyway? It's good that they're giving the students laptops, but what they do at home (regardless of all the stupid shit they do) is none of the school's business, nor is it in their jurisdiction. I could make a rant about how parents need to step it up and take better care of their kids, but I'll just sum it up: schools should stay out of parental territories. It's bad for the student, and it's bad for the school.
Whoever was running this, either the school IT admins or even the higher school administration should be at least suspended pending further review.
Dude... If you really want to, sell the thing for something like $150 and put that money toward getting an actual media center PC if you really want it that much.
A modded Xbox is no good to anyone but yourself, and even so, you'll spend hours tinkering with it before it even remotely does what you want it to do. Also, if it does RROD, your out of luck getting it replaced if you mod it in any way.
That's largely because the high price of console games help subsidize the discounted cost of the console itself (with the exception of the Wii, which makes a profit with each console sold). Both Sony and Microsoft accept a slight loss with every console they sell, largely because they know they'll earn it back and then some with the boosted game sales. It's the cell phone conundrum. (Also the printer ink conundrum.)
With PC games, no subsidizing is necessary, as you already paid full price for the computer. At that point you're just paying for the content.
The contest has been going on for several years straight, and /. has had several stories about it. The article takes knowledge of the contest as a given.
See Wikipedia and Netflix's own site for details.
I think he was agreeing that the police should raid the pot-growing apartments, but that they should not raid his, without a warrant.
Not when I can sell it to the idiots of the world for $200 a pop...
Therefore we aren't sharing files. We are sharing temporal garbage as far as either of us knows. If you want to make sharing garbage packets illegal, I think you'd find a lot of people wanting to tell you to mind your own business.
So, if I somehow sent you the source code to Windows, you would just say that it was only a stream of "garbage packets"? I'm sorry, but data can be extremely valuable, whether it's in the form of code, movies, or music. Packets by themselves are only packets, but it's what they carry that counts.
I used to edit Wikipedia a lot, and during that time, I saw a lot of these debates. This is nothing new, just a heated debate over whether to include an image (in this case the Rorschach test images) based upon ethics and Wikipedia policy (which there is actually very little).
/. index, there have been many other and similar debates like it, many having much larger implications concerning censorship on Wikipedia by recommendation of a 3rd party organization.
Essentially what will happen (or has already happened, I didn't read the whole debate), is that the definition of "consensus" will be called into question, as that's what runs Wikipedia, and is what decides these debates. However, the Wikipedia policy of consensus is so vague and non-standardized that many debates like this end without consensus, and can even escalate into an edit war, followed by admins having to step in. (which is one of the reasons why I no longer edit it)
I really don't see why this specific debate made it on the
NASA needs DJs to raise $400 for a littering fine applied 30 years ago.
All webcasters would pay a minimum fee of $25,000 for legal access to the music they stream, but that money could be applied to what they owe in royalties, making it more of a down payment.
In other words, this is $25,000 that they would be normally paying anyway.
This is why clustering is ABSOLUTELY necessary for as large a company as Authorize.net. As parent said, putting all your eggs in one basket is a stupid idea...
I wonder how many companies will switch to PayPal after this...
I honestly would like to see a good, bi-partisan healthcare plan come to the table.
However, if you actually think that the socialized healthcare systems in "every other developed country" work fine, then you should try going to France, where most have to be placed on year-long waitlists for a simple surgery.
Also, if you think that Medicaid provides remotely good healthcare, then you obviously have not talked to any doctors about it; Medicaid forces doctors to only accept 22% of a charged payment, and to write off the rest. So, if an orthopedic performed an $1,100 knee replacement, he'd only receive about $250, and wouldn't get anymore. And if that orthopedic happened to be a specialist in knee replacements, then the patient would also have to see a general orthopedic to get a referral, costing the patient unnecessary time. Many doctors have actually stopped accepting Medicare/Medicaid patients.
I think that I would honestly like to see changes made in the copyright law dealing with prescription drugs... When drug companies patent a drug (which usually happens as research just begins), they have 18 years to finish researching/developing the drug (usually takes 10-11 years), get it approved by the FDA (1-2 years, depending on what the drug cures), mass produce it, market it, and try to make a profit on it in the remaining time that they have. After the 18 years is up, the generic pharmaceuticals step in and make cheaper versions of the drug, virtually eliminating all hope for more profit on it.
Extending the copyrights for these would allow the companies to market the drugs longer and charge a lesser price on them, giving them a bigger chance at making a profit on the drug.
Overall, just remember that healthcare is a business and an industry, and costs a lot of money to run and operate. If the government wants to see an even bigger expansion on their current biggest expense (Medicare), they need to have the financial backing for it. Frankly, with the economy tanking, massively increasing our debt will not help matters almost any.
Although its not the government that directly controls the TLD, they still operate under regulations and orders provided to them by the IEDR. They could refute the orders, but they'd risk losing their mandate/contract.
I noticed on some of the comments on the site that there was a vast difference of opinion between the actual songwriters and, for example, the chief exec of Making Music...
Um.... servers are so damned complicated because they are entirely customizable (kinda like Linux, but running Windows). Servers and server software have never been marketed to the general public, only to IT nerds who actually know how to customize it to what they need it to do. Thus, servers aren't made to be easy, nor can they be easy.
especially if you make the somewhat disturbing choice to run it under Windows
Many webmasters out there use ASP and ASP.NET for their websites. It is a workable platform that many major websites use as an alternative to PHP. However, you cannot run this on a Linux server, as ASP and the .NET framework were both made by Microsoft.
The other product that you can't run on a Linux server is ColdFusion. Although this has a much smaller client list, this will not run on Linux.
Some people even choose to use Windows servers just so they can resell the bandwidth at a much higher rate; most charge $10/month higher on Windows than on Linux, saying that the higher cost is a result of the Windows licensing fees. Over time, that can lead to a much higher profit margin with Windows than with Linux.
Thus, it is not altogether disturbing to use Windows for your web server. It really just depends on what you do with it.
Windows server is only $800 for a 5-client license... and $960 for a 10-client license. This is expensive by most OS standards (even OSX Server is only $500 for a 10-client license), but its still only a small fraction of the total cost of the computer, $16K.
Nice anti-MS joke, but technically, it's off the mark.
Microsoft is just grabbing the opportunity to train more devs and IT in advanced Microsoft products. After all, this is what ensures that companies use these products; that way, the companies don't have to pay for training.
They also use this tactic with student/academia discounts, also.... (MSDNAA, anyone?)
Other proprietary alternatives to Adobe's PDF reader also exist, but like it, their internal working is a a trade secret and these programs do not respect your right to control your own privacy and data.
Personally, I've never had a problem with Adobe Reader on any platform, and this site seems to be blatantly against it.
I just don't see the need to have a directory of PDF readers. It's easy enough to Google "open source PDF readers." There just aren't enough of them to justify a directory.
As far as I can tell, this only increases their liability. Services providers have typically received immunity from the actions of their users, so long as there is a clear line between the service provider and the actions of their users.
What you are referring to is "Common Carrier" status. It prevents companies like UPS from being criminally liable for shipping cocaine, for example, overseas. It also prevents Telcoms from being liable for carrying information used to conduct criminal activities. If they actually get involved, though, they lose common carrier, and thus can become sued (or charged) for anything that occurs over their network.
Have you not seen the crap that was The Net? This movie is about a computer hacker/code tester whose life gets hijacked by other hackers. It was dumb and probably one of the worst thrillers I've ever seen. The closest movie that was interesting while at the same time technological-ish would have to be Primer. Check this out if you want more details. It's not exactly as much technological as it is paradoxical, but it seems to get at the techno-thriller genre (somewhat).
I strongly doubt that if you have a .com domain that the UK has the authority to yank it without a court order. I'm not so sure about .uk domains, though...
Most porn sites nowadays have intro pages that ask the user to confirm if he/she is over 18. Would eliminating this law mean that those sites are no longer required to have these intro pages?
(Also, do not confuse this law with COPPA, which is the Child Online Privacy Protection Act, which is enforced [and is constitutional] to prevent children under 13 from posting their personal information online.)
If the phone infrastructure is down, then texting is actually less reliable. I think Slashdot posted an earlier story about how texts actually piggyback onto the spare bandwidth of the network's phone infrastructure; the texts do not travel on a separate network. This goes to explain why your text wasn't received until almost an hour later...