What about an open standard for implementing this kind of technology? Say an XML file containing relevant video file names for the different paragraphs. If someone can get an open source tool together once a standard has been created, it really could be some killer tech.
An example use case in the music academic world may be something where a click on a measure of sheet music in the viewer would link to a recording of the piece, cued up to that point. Kind of like scene selection on DVDs. Or perhaps a click on a paragraph in an e-book would cue up an audiobook recording.
One problem I foresee is that it kind of seems like a modification of hyperlinking. Isn't this what hyperlinking was supposed to bring us?
True, true; as the parent post to my reply decided that it must be Lincoln's fault, I merely was correcting the President he should blame, if he wished to blame one.
While an income tax was created during the Civil War, and various income taxes were created after the Civil War, this stopped after 1895, when income taxes were essentially ruled unconstitutional.
The constitutional amendment allowing income taxes was the 16th amendment, ratified in 1913. So, it's technically Taft's fault.
Note: Basically all information in this post comes from Wikipedia.
Who has the burden of proof to prove that patents were infringed? Shouldn't Sisvel have to provide evidence that these 69 companies are infringing on patents? Do German custom agents have to secure warrants to seize property? While not the U.S., I cannot believe that Germans would willingly stand for the police taking whatever property they believe could be stolen or based off another's design.
Also, would 69 different companies all choose Sisvel's products to infringe? I've never even heard of Sisvel!
For example, some nerds would insist on calling it the GNU/Nerd Party, whereas others would just call it the Nerd Party, and we wouldn't even get to the issues. The convention would be streamed online only for Linux, and would consist mostly of technical demos of Compiz.
And, the candidates would be nominated by how well they can code.
Actually, in high school we read Animal Farm and 1984, and my middle school's library got kids to read Fahrenheit 451.
Maybe not the norm, but nice anyway. I sped-read through Brave New World. Didn't like it as much.
In one of my high school English classes, we actually discussed how one goes about creating a closed society. Relating it to the reading that we were doing (either 1984 or Animal Farm) gave a whole new dimension to the novel.
I liked the short-story The Pedestrian. From what I hear, it was the basis for Fahrenheit 451, however, I think that one can get some different meanings out of each.
What's interesting about Fahrenheit 451 are some of the parallels that could be drawn to today's society. Guy Montag's wife has a seashell like device that she puts in her ears so she can listen to the radio, much like today we have iPods, where people can seem to be in their own little worlds.
The fascination she has too with the telescreens, and wanting to be involved in one of the, for lack of a better word, "soaps," could tell of our society's own inordinate fascination with the personal lives of the "rich and famous."
Finally, that overwhelming desire for more, another telescreen, even though the last one was put in within a year prior, could speak to our society's want for material goods.
Whether or not Mr. Bradbury believes our society could degenerate to a point where we burn books, I would argue that our society already contains elements of his fictional society.
The Pedestrian is similar in that the everyday man is fascinated with what takes place on his television screen, and cannot be bothered to calmly walk down the street and think.
One connection I believe can be found between the short story and the novel is that in The Pedestrian, the main character is arrested for walking down the street (as nobody does that anymore, he must be suspicious), and in Fahrenheit 451 the girl who talks to Guy Montag mentions that her uncle got arrested once for walking down the street.
That's not so much an issue of a strong government, but rather, a strong judiciary. That is fraught with problems as well.
Here's a quote from a college government textbook, Government by the People:
It has profoundly altered the relationship between the national government and the states. It has made the federal courts, under the guidance of the Supreme Court of the United States, the most important protectors of our liberties.
Now, is that what our Founding Fathers wanted? Federalist Papers, No. 49 written by either Alexander Hamilton, or James Madison (Note that whoever wrote it, both Hamilton and Madison are qualified members of the Revolution, as they had participated in meetings that produced documents such as the Declaration of Independence and later the Constitution. They were thus trusted by their peers, and would ultimately know what they are talking about):
The members of the legislative department,..., are numberous [sic]. They are... dwell among the people at large. Their connections of blood, of friendship, and of acquaintance embrace a great proportion of the most influential part of the society. The nature of their public trust implies a personal influence among the people, and that they are more immediately the confidential guardians of the rights and liberties of the people.
Emphasis mine.
The textbook, Government by the People continues with what I consider even more heinous:
Note that the Bill of Rights literally applies only to the national government, not state governments. Why not the states? The framers were confident that states could control their own state officials; also, most state constitutions already had bill of rights. But... the new and distant central government they feared. As it turned out, those fears were largely misdirected. The national government, responsive to tens of millions of voters from a variety of races, creeds, religions,... , has shown less tendency to curtail civil liberties than have state and local governments.
What is this textbook implying? "You know those Founding Fathers, they were well-intentioned guys and all, but they were wrong. It wasn't the federal government they had to be afraid of, it was the states."
Here are the problems, State government, being closer to the Citizens, was in theory supposed to be able to be influenced by the Citizens, and thus held accountable to the Citizens. The federal government, being less under direct control by the Citizens, and hence less oversight, would be easier for a few to gain control. I believe this textbook is stating what some are trying to promote in today's society, being that the national government is better than the State government.
Why do lawyers study case law, to see how the Supreme Court has ruled on constitutional issues, rather than reading the Constitution? The Constitution being the Supreme Law of the land should be the document that any lawyer (and justice, for that matter) should read daily, to know what it says, and to see what history shines on the intentions of those who wrote it. In a way, it's like dealing with contract law.:-)
I would argue that the viewpoint presented on the middle school's web page may be somewhat simplified.
Alexander Hamilton, one of the authors of the Federalist Papers, wrote that a Bill of Rights was unnecessary because:
Here, in strictness, the people surrender nothing, and as they retain every thing, they have no need of particular reservations.
From the Wikipedia article (Federalists Papers, No. 84).
Also, a pamphlet I have of the U.S. Constitution printed by the U.S. Government Printing Office notes that 11 of the 13 states ratified the Bill of Rights. It would imply that even if two of the thirteen states were anti-Bill of Rights strongholds, the majority of the states, including Virginia, Pennsylvania, New York, and Massachusetts, were for the Bill of Rights.
I think a butchered quote from Orwell's 1984 says it best:
Whoever controls the present, controls the past. Whoever controls the past, controls the future.
The schoolchildren are the next generation. Whatever the students in school are being taught, that is what will be the policy of our government this next generation. What will our students learn if the past is corrupted?
...can anyone name a single instance where the people actually have a direct say in what happens?
Citizens are supposed to vote. Voting is our "loudspeaker" to the government.
And who do Citizens vote for? Fellow Citizens. Thus, running for public office is one of our civic duties. Our government, being a republic should follow an orderly progression, where Citizens run for public office, elected by fellow Citizens.
No, it isn't as raucous as say, mob rule, but it works.:-) Imagine if 300 million people all tried to talk at once. Elected representatives simplify matters considerably.
Those who wanted a strong central government wouldn't approve of the rights later passed as the Bill of Rights.
I would disagree. There is a Wikipedia article on the U.S. Bill of Rights that discusses arguments against the Bill of Rights; opposition to the Bill of Rights was not to instead institute a large central government, but rather, fear that a Bill of Rights would limit the rights given to the citizen.
Of course, there could have been citizens here and there who wanted a large central government. However, remember the years leading up to the Revolutionary War. Benjamin Franklin had brought up the idea of a colonial confederation as early as 1754 to assist in the French and Indian War (Albany Plan of Union), yet the colonies didn't bite. The problem was, they didn't feel like Americans. They felt like New Yorkers, and Virginians, etc. From what I understand, the early years of the Revolutionary War were similar. It appears that a widespread sentiment to create a large central government was not evident at the time of the Revolution.
I would like to think that the issue at the heart of the Civil War was really states' rights, and not slavery. Whether I can prove it is another story.
It's hard to tell from the C.S.A.'s constitution whether they fought for states rights; some areas, the Confederate States had more rights than the C.S.A. federal government, whereas in others, the C.S.A. federal government gained more rights than the Confederate States. (Or so says Wikipedia.)
However, some believe that one reason the Confederates lost was because Pres. Jefferson Davis was unwilling to violate the Confederate Constitution, while Pres. Lincoln said it would be folly to obey every minuscule point, and end up losing the whole. This would imply that maybe Davis was concerned with constitutionality, and thus, states rights, or he was a closet lawyer.:-)
Of course, this could be just like any other conflict, where even on one side, there are different intentions. While some citizens of State A may have fought to keep slavery around, others of State B may have seen it as the North unfairly taking away rights. Still others (like Robert E. Lee) may have fought simply because which way their State turned.
Oooh, do we get to have a discussion about the formation of the Constitution and how this totally violates the Bill of Rights and how scared the citizens were of a big national government and that's why we first had the Articles of Confederation which were weak like a bad cup of coffee and now we have the Constitution which is sooooooooo being violated?!
Phew. That many 'ands' in a sentence is annoying.
IMHO (which, by the way, is never humble:-) ), our government was not intended to be a large overreaching government. Control was supposed to be retained by the people. Under the original Articles of Confederation, the U.S. government was more like an informal gathering, a club, per se. This didn't work out totally, as it was seen that a few uprisings, such as the Shays' Rebellion, could destroy the confederation.
The States sent delegates to fix the Articles, which the delegates ended up scrapping and instead creating the Constitution. However, I believe that some of this animosity towards large behemoths carried over. Look at the Bill of Rights, which were added after the Constitution was ratified. They in many instances reserve power to the people, and to the States. The federal government is thus limited in what it can do.
Even though the Bill of Rights was ratified after the Constitution was ratified, from what I understand, some States made the implied passage of the Bill of Rights a condition to their ratification of the Constitution.
If true, would data read times be affected at all? I mean, if the operating system is simultaneously accessing a file, and using something in memory, would there be a performance hit?
How much does Microsoft get from support? From what I've read, phone support for Windows XP Professional is $59 per call, after the first two free. (Technically, Windows Vista SP1 support is free until March 2009.)
In theory, couldn't Microsoft follow a Red Hat or Canonical approach? Buy official support from Microsoft...become a certified Microsoft Windows super-geek...etc.
While there may be some finance issues, Microsoft probably could handle it. And, if it sold it to the stockholders as a necessary change to reorganize the company to compete in a new market, the company could probably weather the change.
I believe that probably some of the Linux geeks out there would be willing to work with the Windows code, if given a chance. I can imagine that Windows and Linux would probably exchange code ideas, resulting in what would look more and more like a combined organism, retaining some elements of Windows, and some elements of Linux.
I like the name "Skylights" for an OS, but maybe just the singular "Skylight?" That's what the ReactOS project should have called themselves!
Slashdot Mirror
What about an open standard for implementing this kind of technology? Say an XML file containing relevant video file names for the different paragraphs. If someone can get an open source tool together once a standard has been created, it really could be some killer tech.
An example use case in the music academic world may be something where a click on a measure of sheet music in the viewer would link to a recording of the piece, cued up to that point. Kind of like scene selection on DVDs. Or perhaps a click on a paragraph in an e-book would cue up an audiobook recording.
One problem I foresee is that it kind of seems like a modification of hyperlinking. Isn't this what hyperlinking was supposed to bring us?
But can you make a Beowulf cluster?
True, true; as the parent post to my reply decided that it must be Lincoln's fault, I merely was correcting the President he should blame, if he wished to blame one.
While an income tax was created during the Civil War, and various income taxes were created after the Civil War, this stopped after 1895, when income taxes were essentially ruled unconstitutional.
The constitutional amendment allowing income taxes was the 16th amendment, ratified in 1913. So, it's technically Taft's fault.
Note: Basically all information in this post comes from Wikipedia.
Who has the burden of proof to prove that patents were infringed? Shouldn't Sisvel have to provide evidence that these 69 companies are infringing on patents? Do German custom agents have to secure warrants to seize property? While not the U.S., I cannot believe that Germans would willingly stand for the police taking whatever property they believe could be stolen or based off another's design.
Also, would 69 different companies all choose Sisvel's products to infringe? I've never even heard of Sisvel!
USDA, certified Grade AA Living Constitution by the FDA.
(All advertising regulated by the FTC.)
For example, some nerds would insist on calling it the GNU/Nerd Party, whereas others would just call it the Nerd Party, and we wouldn't even get to the issues. The convention would be streamed online only for Linux, and would consist mostly of technical demos of Compiz.
And, the candidates would be nominated by how well they can code.
Actually, in high school we read Animal Farm and 1984, and my middle school's library got kids to read Fahrenheit 451.
Maybe not the norm, but nice anyway. I sped-read through Brave New World. Didn't like it as much.
In one of my high school English classes, we actually discussed how one goes about creating a closed society. Relating it to the reading that we were doing (either 1984 or Animal Farm) gave a whole new dimension to the novel.
I liked the short-story The Pedestrian. From what I hear, it was the basis for Fahrenheit 451, however, I think that one can get some different meanings out of each.
What's interesting about Fahrenheit 451 are some of the parallels that could be drawn to today's society. Guy Montag's wife has a seashell like device that she puts in her ears so she can listen to the radio, much like today we have iPods, where people can seem to be in their own little worlds.
The fascination she has too with the telescreens, and wanting to be involved in one of the, for lack of a better word, "soaps," could tell of our society's own inordinate fascination with the personal lives of the "rich and famous."
Finally, that overwhelming desire for more, another telescreen, even though the last one was put in within a year prior, could speak to our society's want for material goods.
Whether or not Mr. Bradbury believes our society could degenerate to a point where we burn books, I would argue that our society already contains elements of his fictional society.
The Pedestrian is similar in that the everyday man is fascinated with what takes place on his television screen, and cannot be bothered to calmly walk down the street and think.
One connection I believe can be found between the short story and the novel is that in The Pedestrian, the main character is arrested for walking down the street (as nobody does that anymore, he must be suspicious), and in Fahrenheit 451 the girl who talks to Guy Montag mentions that her uncle got arrested once for walking down the street.
I will have to ask you to turn in your Nerd credentials.
That's not so much an issue of a strong government, but rather, a strong judiciary. That is fraught with problems as well.
Here's a quote from a college government textbook, Government by the People:
It has profoundly altered the relationship between the national government and the states. It has made the federal courts, under the guidance of the Supreme Court of the United States, the most important protectors of our liberties.
Now, is that what our Founding Fathers wanted? Federalist Papers, No. 49 written by either Alexander Hamilton, or James Madison (Note that whoever wrote it, both Hamilton and Madison are qualified members of the Revolution, as they had participated in meetings that produced documents such as the Declaration of Independence and later the Constitution. They were thus trusted by their peers, and would ultimately know what they are talking about):
The members of the legislative department, ..., are numberous [sic]. They are ... dwell among the people at large. Their connections of blood, of friendship, and of acquaintance embrace a great proportion of the most influential part of the society. The nature of their public trust implies a personal influence among the people, and that they are more immediately the confidential guardians of the rights and liberties of the people.
Emphasis mine.
The textbook, Government by the People continues with what I consider even more heinous:
Note that the Bill of Rights literally applies only to the national government, not state governments. Why not the states? The framers were confident that states could control their own state officials; also, most state constitutions already had bill of rights. But ... the new and distant central government they feared. As it turned out, those fears were largely misdirected. The national government, responsive to tens of millions of voters from a variety of races, creeds, religions, ... , has shown less tendency to curtail civil liberties than have state and local governments.
What is this textbook implying? "You know those Founding Fathers, they were well-intentioned guys and all, but they were wrong. It wasn't the federal government they had to be afraid of, it was the states."
Here are the problems, State government, being closer to the Citizens, was in theory supposed to be able to be influenced by the Citizens, and thus held accountable to the Citizens. The federal government, being less under direct control by the Citizens, and hence less oversight, would be easier for a few to gain control. I believe this textbook is stating what some are trying to promote in today's society, being that the national government is better than the State government.
Why do lawyers study case law, to see how the Supreme Court has ruled on constitutional issues, rather than reading the Constitution? The Constitution being the Supreme Law of the land should be the document that any lawyer (and justice, for that matter) should read daily, to know what it says, and to see what history shines on the intentions of those who wrote it. In a way, it's like dealing with contract law. :-)
I would argue that the viewpoint presented on the middle school's web page may be somewhat simplified.
Alexander Hamilton, one of the authors of the Federalist Papers, wrote that a Bill of Rights was unnecessary because:
Here, in strictness, the people surrender nothing, and as they retain every thing, they have no need of particular reservations.
From the Wikipedia article (Federalists Papers, No. 84).
Also, a pamphlet I have of the U.S. Constitution printed by the U.S. Government Printing Office notes that 11 of the 13 states ratified the Bill of Rights. It would imply that even if two of the thirteen states were anti-Bill of Rights strongholds, the majority of the states, including Virginia, Pennsylvania, New York, and Massachusetts, were for the Bill of Rights.
I think a butchered quote from Orwell's 1984 says it best:
Whoever controls the present, controls the past. Whoever controls the past, controls the future.
The schoolchildren are the next generation. Whatever the students in school are being taught, that is what will be the policy of our government this next generation. What will our students learn if the past is corrupted?
Ok, let's try registering.
The screen says, "Tap 'X' to Register to vote"...whoops: "Windows has encountered a fatal error and will be shut down." :-)
...can anyone name a single instance where the people actually have a direct say in what happens?
Citizens are supposed to vote. Voting is our "loudspeaker" to the government.
And who do Citizens vote for? Fellow Citizens. Thus, running for public office is one of our civic duties. Our government, being a republic should follow an orderly progression, where Citizens run for public office, elected by fellow Citizens.
No, it isn't as raucous as say, mob rule, but it works. :-) Imagine if 300 million people all tried to talk at once. Elected representatives simplify matters considerably.
Those who wanted a strong central government wouldn't approve of the rights later passed as the Bill of Rights.
I would disagree. There is a Wikipedia article on the U.S. Bill of Rights that discusses arguments against the Bill of Rights; opposition to the Bill of Rights was not to instead institute a large central government, but rather, fear that a Bill of Rights would limit the rights given to the citizen.
Of course, there could have been citizens here and there who wanted a large central government. However, remember the years leading up to the Revolutionary War. Benjamin Franklin had brought up the idea of a colonial confederation as early as 1754 to assist in the French and Indian War (Albany Plan of Union), yet the colonies didn't bite. The problem was, they didn't feel like Americans. They felt like New Yorkers, and Virginians, etc. From what I understand, the early years of the Revolutionary War were similar. It appears that a widespread sentiment to create a large central government was not evident at the time of the Revolution.
I would like to think that the issue at the heart of the Civil War was really states' rights, and not slavery. Whether I can prove it is another story.
It's hard to tell from the C.S.A.'s constitution whether they fought for states rights; some areas, the Confederate States had more rights than the C.S.A. federal government, whereas in others, the C.S.A. federal government gained more rights than the Confederate States. (Or so says Wikipedia.)
However, some believe that one reason the Confederates lost was because Pres. Jefferson Davis was unwilling to violate the Confederate Constitution, while Pres. Lincoln said it would be folly to obey every minuscule point, and end up losing the whole. This would imply that maybe Davis was concerned with constitutionality, and thus, states rights, or he was a closet lawyer. :-)
Of course, this could be just like any other conflict, where even on one side, there are different intentions. While some citizens of State A may have fought to keep slavery around, others of State B may have seen it as the North unfairly taking away rights. Still others (like Robert E. Lee) may have fought simply because which way their State turned.
A secession would be fun.
I've always wanted to star in a spy movie. :-)
So, if you're walking down the block, and happen to see a big black van, go ask the driver if /.ers can see the equipment in the back. :-)
Oooh, do we get to have a discussion about the formation of the Constitution and how this totally violates the Bill of Rights and how scared the citizens were of a big national government and that's why we first had the Articles of Confederation which were weak like a bad cup of coffee and now we have the Constitution which is sooooooooo being violated?!
Phew. That many 'ands' in a sentence is annoying.
IMHO (which, by the way, is never humble :-) ), our government was not intended to be a large overreaching government. Control was supposed to be retained by the people. Under the original Articles of Confederation, the U.S. government was more like an informal gathering, a club, per se. This didn't work out totally, as it was seen that a few uprisings, such as the Shays' Rebellion, could destroy the confederation.
The States sent delegates to fix the Articles, which the delegates ended up scrapping and instead creating the Constitution. However, I believe that some of this animosity towards large behemoths carried over. Look at the Bill of Rights, which were added after the Constitution was ratified. They in many instances reserve power to the people, and to the States. The federal government is thus limited in what it can do.
Even though the Bill of Rights was ratified after the Constitution was ratified, from what I understand, some States made the implied passage of the Bill of Rights a condition to their ratification of the Constitution.
Didn't read the article...
So this acts as both memory and "hard drive?"
If true, would data read times be affected at all? I mean, if the operating system is simultaneously accessing a file, and using something in memory, would there be a performance hit?
How much does Microsoft get from support? From what I've read, phone support for Windows XP Professional is $59 per call, after the first two free. (Technically, Windows Vista SP1 support is free until March 2009.)
In theory, couldn't Microsoft follow a Red Hat or Canonical approach? Buy official support from Microsoft...become a certified Microsoft Windows super-geek...etc.
While there may be some finance issues, Microsoft probably could handle it. And, if it sold it to the stockholders as a necessary change to reorganize the company to compete in a new market, the company could probably weather the change.
I believe that probably some of the Linux geeks out there would be willing to work with the Windows code, if given a chance. I can imagine that Windows and Linux would probably exchange code ideas, resulting in what would look more and more like a combined organism, retaining some elements of Windows, and some elements of Linux.
I like the name "Skylights" for an OS, but maybe just the singular "Skylight?" That's what the ReactOS project should have called themselves!
I think you forgot ABDCT, MISNG, and WHRAMI. :-)
I hope it's not anyone I know.
Reminds me of the Pearls Before Swine comic strip where Pig says that "BLTs taste so ... good."
Thanks for clarifying. I didn't read the article either.