"I disagree with the notion that Open Source is a fad."
Open source is some senses _may_ prove to be a fad if enough star programmers need to join microsoft to feed themselves.
In the sense of innovation, it may be a fad. In the sense of a hobbist OS it is not.
Either way, GPL/Linux open source is still relatively young and only time will tell if it is a fad or not.
Additionally, much programming work done in the world isn't done on software meant to be sold, but for companies' internal systems. Like, accounting software for a retail chain.
And most of this software, if released at all, is released for sale as a commercial package. Lest that free software help out a retail firm's competitors. Your point is moot.
What some open source zealots, and the vast majority of open source "consumers" don't recognize is that programmers need to eat to. Until these "consumers" stop taking advantage of open source, and start paying... Open source will stay in Microsoft's (and other big corporations) shadow, and very likely even shrink.
Nessus is not the first, and not the last. Even Hans Reiser has this problem: See here... Hans Reiser: Doing GPL work is doing charity work [...] That should be and could be changed, but for now it is so. I have done my share of charity, and I would not have a problem doing proprietary work. I think people should keep their lives in balance, and that includes balancing charity work and better paid work.... It is not an easy life, I am $200k or more in debt and drive a 1989 CRX Si.
Here is another: Mute file sharing. Not sure how long this experiment will last.
And one more: Daniel Robbins founded Gentoo linux, went bankrupt, got job at Microsoft
Either help these programmers feed themselves and their families, or expect other big and large profile projects to disappear and become pay-for-play.
I love open source, and contribute money to many projects -- but open source will just prove to be a fad that will start to wear thin on programmers as they get into debt and can't feed their families. The business case for open source software longterm survival is weak, unforunately.
And I quote from Wikipedia: "DIVX (Digital Video Express) was an attempt by Circuit City [et al] to create an alternative to video rental in the United States...
DIVX was a rental format variation on the DVD player in which a customer would buy a DIVX disc (similar to a DVD) at a low cost, which would be able to be freely viewed up to 48 hours from its initial viewing. After this period, the disc could be viewed by paying a continuation fee [...] resold, given away, or discarded."
Actually, taxes aren't all that bad in Canada. Having bought about 40 items in the last 2 years from the US (ebay and such), I only get taxed 7% (GST) at the border.
The rest of the fees depend on the courier/shipping company.
USPS/Canada Post only charge a $10 brokerage fee to assess taxes/duty at the border (ontop of GST).
The problem is ground shipping with major courier companies. I will explain why below, and further below discuss better options.
UPS, DHL, Fedex and those fellows charge $40 and up to "assess" taxes. But only on ground shipments! The charge is typically a percentage of the overall item value. But it is really high at the low end (so $40 for $100 and less in value, but a $2000 item is like $300+ in fees).
I ordered some HP printer rollers and parts, total $45US shipped UPS ground to Canada. I had to pay an additional $42 CAN once it got here. $3.50 of that was tax, the rest was customs brokerage fees.
UPS, Fedex and DHL use private brokerage companies to handle taxes and clearance at the border, but since the brokerage firms don't know who you are (and chances are you don't have an account with them) you get charged a higher (and unfair) rate. UPS or Fedex splits this windfall with the brokerage agent and everybody wins except me, who gets the bill for the party.
Use USPS if you can. If you can't, using UPS, Fedex or DHL air is a better bet. With Fedex International Economy (air), it costs more to ship the item, but they only charge a $7 brokerage fee, plus GST. Doesn't matter the value of the item. So, for a $200 item shipped air will cost me $14 GST ($200 @ 7%) + $7 = $21. Almost pays for the extra cost of shipping air vs. ground (ground would cost like $60-75 in brokerage fees on a $200 item).
"... We are going to achieve our goals by breaking down the existing silo walls and eliminating the highly decentralized structure we've maintained in the past," said Stringer, a former journalist..."
So, no. Electronics will not have greater control over their products. Think "greater control" and "division" as in "Stalin" and "Communism".
Yeah, I remember when I stopped buying Sony products. Probably about 6 years ago today. My guess is that is probably when their troubles started.
Sony has this nack for being extremely hard-headed. They stuck to their Beta machines, and missed the entire VCR explosion; they stuck to minidisc and DPMS (copy prevention tech) and refused to even license the technology for the longest time. Copying from minidisc has always been severely hobbled.
Sony Trinitron was the $hit for many years. Except when they got ridicously over priced.
Then Sony missed the whole MP3 bandwagon, instead pushing their ATRAC DPMS enabled system -- which nobody wanted (sounds like Beta all over again).
Memory Stick -- another locked down format from Sony.
Turns out Copy protection schemes just don't sell very well (exception: IPod.. not the rule).
"Windows;Linux;Mac...Whatever, we're all equally edible"
It depends ultimately on what you are looking for. I'm not a big "ease of use" user because I've found that Microsoft has introduced "training wheels" along with "ease of use". It has gotten harder and harder to remove the former. But then again, I am a hardcore computer geek.
I look for: (1) Free as in freedom (2) Hackable (as in code is available -- Legally) (3) Controllable. That means simple. Can't beat.conf files for simple. Sure beats some strange "intuitive" gui with bugs in the UI that stores your settings somewhere like "the hive", which isn't all that editable should it get corrupted. (4) A system that doesn't treat me like I'm a stupid user (see Clippy). (5) I resent not having a choice. Nothing like getting a version of windows with a new computer when I don't want it and I can't get my money back for it. (6) I don't like giving money to a convicted monopolist -- regardless of how well connected (or slippery) he may be. In fact, a slippery convicted monopolist WON'T get any more of my money until he starts behaving. It's called voting with my wallet.
From the article: 'The RIAA's chief executive, Mitch Bainwol, last week said music fans acquire almost twice as many songs from illegally duplicated CDs...
Umm, yeah, Mitch... 1999 called: they want their bull$hit back.
Dumping all this RIAA and MPAA crap into a "stupid, old jokes" category would would save me reading TFA, reading the comments and then deciding that "oh yeah, the RIAA is complaining in some new way fictitious way about profits being too low... Again".
Or I could just ignore these stories [ed: No, this is slashdot].
They are okay... I think it is a nice little PDA, and pretty cheap right now. Also big user group behind it who is pretty hardcore into linux.
Pros: - CF and SD card simultaneously - Nice screen - Nice keyboard hiding feature - Even if the display crashes, you can still SSH into it! And then just restart the display driver - The linux behind the framebuffer is rock solid (uptimes of > 2 months). - Very hackable
Cons: - Only some CF cards work, and only SD memory cards work (not wifi SD for example). Limited support for CF chipsets (depends on manufacturer). - Battery life tends to be a little on the low side - Wifi card really sucks the battery dry - Thumb keyboard is really slow for doing CLI (and painful after a few lines). - Heavy changes in software base (like structure) right now, so the developers are breaking things almost as fast as old problems are fixed. *should* stabilize soon. - IR PDA keyboards (like targus) kindof suck on it, I bought one but find it frustrating to type on... Press two keys are the same time and only one shows up on the zaurus, but always a surprise which one!
Wishlist: - Longer battery - Built in bluetooth (for external keyboard)
this : James Randi Education Fundation (JREF I think it is called)
Unfortunately, James Randi himself is a little bit over the edge.
He does good by calling out true con-artists, but he does a great disservice by also attacking things that haven't really been scientifically tested, and proven ONE WAY OR THE OTHER. Despite that this is his primary thesis. My thesis is that James Randi, under the banner of science, does some pretty unscienctific and close minded bashing of things he doesn't understand.
I wonder whether his is just astroturfing for some well-funded pro-establishment "think tanks" like some of these quackery-finders. I think the quacker finders should stick to their craft and leave things they don't understand alone.
Carl Sagan, one of my favorite scientists and writers repeatedly writes about open-mindedness as a important to the scientific process. You have to be open to alternate conclusions, not just the one you want to see (wasn't there a Slashdot article recently about some third of studies are incorrect?).
Just because there haven't been adequate studies done doesn't mean it is false science or con. Unfortunately, a great many things in alternative medicine fall into this category.
A large portion of medical research and funding goes into "next big thing" kindof drugs and cures. I can prove this, at the recent G8 summit (gleneagles) they talked about _like it was something new_ pouring money into research for third-world diseases (like Leichimenisis (sp) and Malaria) that no western drug firms were really all that interested in. Are all the people with Malaria just hypochondriacs? Is there no disease to treat just because there aren't any drugs? Wouldn't we already have drugs for these diseases if they were real? This is circuluar thinking.
Now, I'm suspicious that James Randi would attack anything that hasn't been "scientifically research" even though many alternative medicines and therapies will not benefit the medical establishment, may have little value to big pharma, and hence may not receive any funding for proper study. Does this call for his form of ridicule? I think that is over-stepping his authority and reach.
Open mindedness is critical in science and unfortunately that is something James Randi lacks, and therefore I look at him and his organization with suspicion.
1984 was Orwell's take on what Stalinism would look like in, well, the west.
Last I checked, China is run by a Communist party (who has outlawed any opposition parties) and behaves much like (not exactly like) ex-Soviet communist states: secret police, limiting movement of citizens, tight control of media, deliberate misinformation to control citizens, imprisonment of large numbers of political prisoners, carefully limiting foreign visitors and tracking their movements in the country.
Freedom is somewhat opposed to the aforementioned list. See any of those things going on in the US? Not sure what freedom is?
If you need proof of tight control of media, look at your own quote.
I just finished setting up Shorewall on my home server box and I have to say it was pretty painless. Lots of information and documentation, great website, and great software.
I have to chime in on this. I've been using it for probably about a year now. It works great.
About 2 years ago, I decided I had too much paper, and that I couldn't find any important papers amoung the bunch. Being a packrat, I decided scanning was the way to go.
I bought a used Fujitsu M3097g+ off ebay for about $100 with document feeder and got started.
I can generate.tiff pictures (about 1.3M per letter size) which is too big. Using tiff2pdf and other tools I can get that down to about 50-120K per letter size page (using g4 compression).
Using djview I can get it down to around 13-25K. Thats right, like 25-40% the size of a similar PDF (or less). Plus djvu has technology to cleanup fly-specs and noise on pictures to improve compression.
djvu does color, or black and white and conversion is pretty fast. Plus, djvu documents are just a concatenation of complete single files: you can open up, unpack and add, remove or rearrange all the pages in the file. So, I can continuously append pages a larger djvu file over months as I scan them. That is difficult to do with PDF.
And its open source. The free tools will remain free, and there are enough tools available for reading, creating and manipulating files.
Were I a consumer electronics manufacturer, I'd be lining up behind strong IP as far as I could - it would be all pro and no con, as far as I could see.
I think in the long run, anyone who wants liberal or "fair" IP laws is pretty much going to be disappointed, as for voters its a non-issue and that leaves no opposing or balancing force against the efforts of lobbyists from the [RIMP]{2}AA, the big record labels, and studios.
The other side of the equation is made up of EFF, ACLU, libraries, and a smattering of individuals. Hardly a fair balance.
Government is about finding a balance between competing interests, between voters, lobbyists and all parties. Usually the party that cares or has greater interest will prevail overwhelmingly. In the case of IP, the industry seems to care MUCH more than the few pro-consumer groups. Strangely the majority of consumers don't seem to care.
Publication (print), video, and audio (music, recordings) comprise the majority of communications in public. Even though they are the medium, and critical to the message (and who controls the message: Marshall McLuhan), critical to freedom... The average person doesn't really care about restrictions, limitations or freedom.
How could something so critical be so ignored by the the masses?
The City of Dayton, Ohio announced a plan to make all of downtown a WiFi hotspot - and as of last week, the network is live. This makes Dayton the first Ohio city to offer free WiFi access. Approximately one square mile of downtown is now live, including Fifth Third Field, the Oregon District, Webster Station and RiverScape. The WiFi project is a public/private partnership not funded by taxpayers, and comes at no charge to the end user." (According to the linked story at WHIO-TV, the city is actually paying about $5,000 per year, with advertisers picking up the rest of the tab.) UPDATE: 04/04 17:26 GMT by T: Nope, its already been crushed by the overweight telephone companies lobbying hard to protect their turf, and the RIAA claiming that it could possibly be used for piracy of music from various over-hyped "superstars"
Welcome to the USAA, land of the lawyer and lobbist. Freedom comes somewhere later on, maybe.
Can record companies (Canadian equiv. of [MPRI]{2}AA) sue p2p users sharing music and movies?
Currently no. Once this act is passed, yes they can. The ISP is obligated to maintain sufficent records to identify the subscriber for a period of time.
Relevent documentation from Proposed changes: Upon receipt of a notice, ISPs would also be required to keep a record of relevant information for a specified time. Rights holders would have the legal means to compel ISPs to comply with the regime.
AND (FAQ) This will clarify that the unauthorized posting or the peer-to-peer file-sharing of material on the Internet will constitute an infringement of copyright.
Can users copy records/movies for private use?
Currently yes. After this act is passed, yes BUT users are not allowed to legally bypass any restrictions (DRM) in order to do so. That becomes illegal.
Relevent documentation from Proposed changes: The Act's private copying regime provides for an exception to copyright that permits the making of a copy of a sound recording for private use
BUT... not everything is good: (from FAQ) The bill will also contain legal protections for technological protection measures (encryptions, password requirements) and rights management systems containing information for the purpose of tracking uses of works. The removal of or tampering with such measures for the purpose of infringing copyright will itself constitute an infringement of copyright.
What this looks like is basically opening the door to lawsuits for record companies, making file sharing illegal and closing the door on consumers being able to turn off DRM to make a copy of a CD or movie for themselves.
They're fun to look at and play with for a few days, and you try to convince yourself this time you'll actually use it.
Maybe you just never found your killer app. I did.
The PDA for me has worked the best as a raw text entry device. I used it in any university and extension courses where there is a huge amount of text or material that doesn't involve a lot of math or derivations or drawing (like History, Economics, Marketing. I even used it in my Intro to Databases course). Occasional diagrams can be put on a paper notepad, but try doing text search through 100 pages of notes. Or cleaning up and reorganizing notes -- talk about time consuming and clunky.
Plain text editing without all the formating crap is where its at on PDAs. Unfortunately, this required an external keyboard, something others didn't dish out for. Data entry techniques on the PDAs without a keyboard are almost impossible, and built in keyboards like the zaurus are almost useless.
Contrast this with taking a notebook computer to class. In university, my experience has been that usually the people using them are just fiddling with fonts, or colors or text layout... Anything but actually taking notes. It seems to be more a toy than an actual tool -- something to show off. But with my pda, I had no fonts or text layout to play around with: I could just take notes. And its tiny compared to a notebook computer, 10% of the cost and liability, the battery lasts weeks (besides being easy to replace at 2 AAA batteries) and it is light and small.
Is this because they applied the fix discussed in the "persistent troubleshooter" link to only one of the two channels? Leaving the other channel as it was originally (that is, broken?)
The report, set to be released on Tuesday, states that the 2.6 Linux production kernel, shipped with software from Red Hat, Novell and other major Linux software vendors, contains 985 bugs in 5.7 million lines of code, well below the industry average for commercial enterprise software.
Commercial software (at this point in time) has its priority on releasing new versions often. Because each release is a salable item. Linux on the other hand gets forked or changes version whenever "Linus feels its ready". BIG DIFFERENCE. Here's why.
Commercial software decide how much value is on each bug, if the bugs are cheap (not show stoppers), but minor things they can't forsee as causing them to lose money... They will ship it. Acceptable known bugs. Project management decision.
Open source has time on their hands. They can look over the code carefully, waste time on bugs that commercial outfits wouldn't even bother... But the problem (like with software project management) is that you can't tell which bugs will be the nasties when you choose to ignore them. Less bugs == more secure software, less nasties.
If commerical software decided to play the careful release, minimize bug game... They would make less money initially, but in the end it would work out. Microsoft and ilk can certainly compete with linux, but they made a choice long ago not to. They made a choice to RELEASE FAST and MAKE MONEY FAST! (hey, that sounds like spam).
Sigh, Sigh, sigh... "Any idiot can face a crisis - it's the day-to-day living that wears you out." - Checkov.
In case you didn't notice, most "modern" democracies are just feudalism in disguise. Does the fact that politicians wear... Business Suites maybe clue you in? Or how about that in the US all leaders are the ridiculously rich? Or that money == power in these countries? The new feudalism is business owners == the land owing aristocrats, peasants == employees!! Ever noticed you can't get rich being an employee? Unless you run a big ass company, or wait... Own a business.
And government is just there to cater to business, not the "people". Once in 4 years the peasants have a chance to elect someone from a tiny little rich group. We have no recourse if we elect a lier or looser. The government is open every day for lobbyists and the rich and powerful, but only once every four years for everyone else.
This is modern democracy for you, this is what the US wants everywhere in the world, including the EU. Because they are the richest, they will rule it. Via the wealthy, via the big corporations.
I don't think anyone with a brain whichever side of the argument they fall on could see this article being anything other than bollocks.
Agreed. But... The concern is that this is being discussed by a senite subcommitte, not by some parents in some school somewhere. A subcommittee that is powerful enough to create laws (see our buddy Sen. Hatch) and present them for vote.
Another syndrome of the United Christian States of America? Is this another offshot of the holy war already declared on the middle east or am I missing something?
Elect a president with a religious agenda and expect to have rights squashed in the name of religious ideologies. So much for the secular.
Slashdot Mirror
"I disagree with the notion that Open Source is a fad."
Open source is some senses _may_ prove to be a fad if enough star programmers need to join microsoft to feed themselves.
In the sense of innovation, it may be a fad. In the sense of a hobbist OS it is not.
Either way, GPL/Linux open source is still relatively young and only time will tell if it is a fad or not.
Additionally, much programming work done in the world isn't done on software meant to be sold, but for companies' internal systems. Like, accounting software for a retail chain.
And most of this software, if released at all, is released for sale as a commercial package. Lest that free software help out a retail firm's competitors. Your point is moot.
What some open source zealots, and the vast majority of open source "consumers" don't recognize is that programmers need to eat to. Until these "consumers" stop taking advantage of open source, and start paying... Open source will stay in Microsoft's (and other big corporations) shadow, and very likely even shrink.
... It is not an easy life, I am $200k or more in debt and drive a 1989 CRX Si.
Nessus is not the first, and not the last. Even Hans Reiser has this problem:
See here... Hans Reiser: Doing GPL work is doing charity work [...] That should be and could be changed, but for now it is so. I have done my share of charity, and I would not have a problem doing proprietary work. I think people should keep their lives in balance, and that includes balancing charity work and better paid work.
Here is another: Mute file sharing. Not sure how long this experiment will last.
And one more: Daniel Robbins founded Gentoo linux, went bankrupt, got job at Microsoft
Either help these programmers feed themselves and their families, or expect other big and large profile projects to disappear and become pay-for-play.
I love open source, and contribute money to many projects -- but open source will just prove to be a fad that will start to wear thin on programmers as they get into debt and can't feed their families. The business case for open source software longterm survival is weak, unforunately.
m
DIVX
And I quote from Wikipedia:
"DIVX (Digital Video Express) was an attempt by Circuit City [et al] to create an alternative to video rental in the United States...
DIVX was a rental format variation on the DVD player in which a customer would buy a DIVX disc (similar to a DVD) at a low cost, which would be able to be freely viewed up to 48 hours from its initial viewing. After this period, the disc could be viewed by paying a continuation fee [...] resold, given away, or discarded."
Actually, taxes aren't all that bad in Canada. Having bought about 40 items in the last 2 years from the US (ebay and such), I only get taxed 7% (GST) at the border.
The rest of the fees depend on the courier/shipping company.
USPS/Canada Post only charge a $10 brokerage fee to assess taxes/duty at the border (ontop of GST).
The problem is ground shipping with major courier companies. I will explain why below, and further below discuss better options.
UPS, DHL, Fedex and those fellows charge $40 and up to "assess" taxes. But only on ground shipments! The charge is typically a percentage of the overall item value. But it is really high at the low end (so $40 for $100 and less in value, but a $2000 item is like $300+ in fees).
I ordered some HP printer rollers and parts, total $45US shipped UPS ground to Canada. I had to pay an additional $42 CAN once it got here. $3.50 of that was tax, the rest was customs brokerage fees.
UPS, Fedex and DHL use private brokerage companies to handle taxes and clearance at the border, but since the brokerage firms don't know who you are (and chances are you don't have an account with them) you get charged a higher (and unfair) rate. UPS or Fedex splits this windfall with the brokerage agent and everybody wins except me, who gets the bill for the party.
Use USPS if you can. If you can't, using UPS, Fedex or DHL air is a better bet. With Fedex International Economy (air), it costs more to ship the item, but they only charge a $7 brokerage fee, plus GST. Doesn't matter the value of the item. So, for a $200 item shipped air will cost me $14 GST ($200 @ 7%) + $7 = $21. Almost pays for the extra cost of shipping air vs. ground (ground would cost like $60-75 in brokerage fees on a $200 item).
m
According to the FA:
"... We are going to achieve our goals by breaking down the existing silo walls and eliminating the highly decentralized structure we've maintained in the past," said Stringer, a former journalist..."
So, no. Electronics will not have greater control over their products. Think "greater control" and "division" as in "Stalin" and "Communism".
Yeah, I remember when I stopped buying Sony products. Probably about 6 years ago today. My guess is that is probably when their troubles started.
.. not the rule).
Sony has this nack for being extremely hard-headed. They stuck to their Beta machines, and missed the entire VCR explosion; they stuck to minidisc and DPMS (copy prevention tech) and refused to even license the technology for the longest time. Copying from minidisc has always been severely hobbled.
Sony Trinitron was the $hit for many years. Except when they got ridicously over priced.
Then Sony missed the whole MP3 bandwagon, instead pushing their ATRAC DPMS enabled system -- which nobody wanted (sounds like Beta all over again).
Memory Stick -- another locked down format from Sony.
Turns out Copy protection schemes just don't sell very well (exception: IPod
m
"Windows;Linux;Mac...Whatever, we're all equally edible"
.conf files for simple. Sure beats some strange "intuitive" gui with bugs in the UI that stores your settings somewhere like "the hive", which isn't all that editable should it get corrupted.
It depends ultimately on what you are looking for. I'm not a big "ease of use" user because I've found that Microsoft has introduced "training wheels" along with "ease of use". It has gotten harder and harder to remove the former. But then again, I am a hardcore computer geek.
I look for:
(1) Free as in freedom
(2) Hackable (as in code is available -- Legally)
(3) Controllable. That means simple. Can't beat
(4) A system that doesn't treat me like I'm a stupid user (see Clippy).
(5) I resent not having a choice. Nothing like getting a version of windows with a new computer when I don't want it and I can't get my money back for it.
(6) I don't like giving money to a convicted monopolist -- regardless of how well connected (or slippery) he may be. In fact, a slippery convicted monopolist WON'T get any more of my money until he starts behaving. It's called voting with my wallet.
From the article: 'The RIAA's chief executive, Mitch Bainwol, last week said music fans acquire almost twice as many songs from illegally duplicated CDs...
Umm, yeah, Mitch... 1999 called: they want their bull$hit back.
Dumping all this RIAA and MPAA crap into a "stupid, old jokes" category would would save me reading TFA, reading the comments and then deciding that "oh yeah, the RIAA is complaining in some new way fictitious way about profits being too low... Again".
Or I could just ignore these stories [ed: No, this is slashdot].
They are okay... I think it is a nice little PDA, and pretty cheap right now. Also big user group behind it who is pretty hardcore into linux.
Pros:
- CF and SD card simultaneously
- Nice screen
- Nice keyboard hiding feature
- Even if the display crashes, you can still SSH into it! And then just restart the display driver
- The linux behind the framebuffer is rock solid (uptimes of > 2 months).
- Very hackable
Cons:
- Only some CF cards work, and only SD memory cards work (not wifi SD for example). Limited support for CF chipsets (depends on manufacturer).
- Battery life tends to be a little on the low side
- Wifi card really sucks the battery dry
- Thumb keyboard is really slow for doing CLI (and painful after a few lines).
- Heavy changes in software base (like structure) right now, so the developers are breaking things almost as fast as old problems are fixed. *should* stabilize soon.
- IR PDA keyboards (like targus) kindof suck on it, I bought one but find it frustrating to type on... Press two keys are the same time and only one shows up on the zaurus, but always a surprise which one!
Wishlist:
- Longer battery
- Built in bluetooth (for external keyboard)
this : James Randi Education Fundation (JREF I think it is called)
Unfortunately, James Randi himself is a little bit over the edge.
He does good by calling out true con-artists, but he does a great disservice by also attacking things that haven't really been scientifically tested, and proven ONE WAY OR THE OTHER. Despite that this is his primary thesis. My thesis is that James Randi, under the banner of science, does some pretty unscienctific and close minded bashing of things he doesn't understand.
I wonder whether his is just astroturfing for some well-funded pro-establishment "think tanks" like some of these quackery-finders. I think the quacker finders should stick to their craft and leave things they don't understand alone.
Carl Sagan, one of my favorite scientists and writers repeatedly writes about open-mindedness as a important to the scientific process. You have to be open to alternate conclusions, not just the one you want to see (wasn't there a Slashdot article recently about some third of studies are incorrect?).
Just because there haven't been adequate studies done doesn't mean it is false science or con. Unfortunately, a great many things in alternative medicine fall into this category.
A large portion of medical research and funding goes into "next big thing" kindof drugs and cures. I can prove this, at the recent G8 summit (gleneagles) they talked about _like it was something new_ pouring money into research for third-world diseases (like Leichimenisis (sp) and Malaria) that no western drug firms were really all that interested in. Are all the people with Malaria just hypochondriacs? Is there no disease to treat just because there aren't any drugs? Wouldn't we already have drugs for these diseases if they were real? This is circuluar thinking.
Now, I'm suspicious that James Randi would attack anything that hasn't been "scientifically research" even though many alternative medicines and therapies will not benefit the medical establishment, may have little value to big pharma, and hence may not receive any funding for proper study. Does this call for his form of ridicule? I think that is over-stepping his authority and reach.
Open mindedness is critical in science and unfortunately that is something James Randi lacks, and therefore I look at him and his organization with suspicion.
China _is_ 1984.
1984 was Orwell's take on what Stalinism would look like in, well, the west.
Last I checked, China is run by a Communist party (who has outlawed any opposition parties) and behaves much like (not exactly like) ex-Soviet communist states: secret police, limiting movement of citizens, tight control of media, deliberate misinformation to control citizens, imprisonment of large numbers of political prisoners, carefully limiting foreign visitors and tracking their movements in the country.
Freedom is somewhat opposed to the aforementioned list. See any of those things going on in the US? Not sure what freedom is?
If you need proof of tight control of media, look at your own quote.
I'm gonna help things out here a little... (stick in the proverbial hornet nest)
what they describe there is a massive cultural failure
Indeed.
A massive cultural failure is just double-speak for a terrorist attack on a yogurt factory.
[me too]
I just finished setting up Shorewall on my home server box and I have to say it was pretty painless. Lots of information and documentation, great website, and great software.
Thanks Tom.
I have to chime in on this. I've been using it for probably about a year now. It works great.
.tiff pictures (about 1.3M per letter size) which is too big. Using tiff2pdf and other tools I can get that down to about 50-120K per letter size page (using g4 compression).
About 2 years ago, I decided I had too much paper, and that I couldn't find any important papers amoung the bunch. Being a packrat, I decided scanning was the way to go.
I bought a used Fujitsu M3097g+ off ebay for about $100 with document feeder and got started.
I can generate
Using djview I can get it down to around 13-25K. Thats right, like 25-40% the size of a similar PDF (or less). Plus djvu has technology to cleanup fly-specs and noise on pictures to improve compression.
djvu does color, or black and white and conversion is pretty fast. Plus, djvu documents are just a concatenation of complete single files: you can open up, unpack and add, remove or rearrange all the pages in the file. So, I can continuously append pages a larger djvu file over months as I scan them. That is difficult to do with PDF.
And its open source. The free tools will remain free, and there are enough tools available for reading, creating and manipulating files.
Were I a consumer electronics manufacturer, I'd be lining up behind strong IP as far as I could - it would be all pro and no con, as far as I could see.
I think in the long run, anyone who wants liberal or "fair" IP laws is pretty much going to be disappointed, as for voters its a non-issue and that leaves no opposing or balancing force against the efforts of lobbyists from the [RIMP]{2}AA, the big record labels, and studios.
The other side of the equation is made up of EFF, ACLU, libraries, and a smattering of individuals. Hardly a fair balance.
Government is about finding a balance between competing interests, between voters, lobbyists and all parties. Usually the party that cares or has greater interest will prevail overwhelmingly. In the case of IP, the industry seems to care MUCH more than the few pro-consumer groups. Strangely the majority of consumers don't seem to care.
Publication (print), video, and audio (music, recordings) comprise the majority of communications in public. Even though they are the medium, and critical to the message (and who controls the message: Marshall McLuhan), critical to freedom... The average person doesn't really care about restrictions, limitations or freedom.
How could something so critical be so ignored by the the masses?
The City of Dayton, Ohio announced a plan to make all of downtown a WiFi hotspot - and as of last week, the network is live. This makes Dayton the first Ohio city to offer free WiFi access. Approximately one square mile of downtown is now live, including Fifth Third Field, the Oregon District, Webster Station and RiverScape. The WiFi project is a public/private partnership not funded by taxpayers, and comes at no charge to the end user." (According to the linked story at WHIO-TV, the city is actually paying about $5,000 per year, with advertisers picking up the rest of the tab.) UPDATE: 04/04 17:26 GMT by T: Nope, its already been crushed by the overweight telephone companies lobbying hard to protect their turf, and the RIAA claiming that it could possibly be used for piracy of music from various over-hyped "superstars"
Welcome to the USAA, land of the lawyer and lobbist. Freedom comes somewhere later on, maybe.
Don't fear the "scare-quotes".
I'm gonna comment on my own article.
According to the slashdot article post:
It even avoided the U.S. "notice and takedown system" that has caused a big headache for U.S. ISPs.
Correction:
The only thing it NARROWLY avoided was the U.S. "notice and takedown system" that has caused a big headache for U.S. ISPs.
This law sucks. Time to contact your MP and complain.
Fair use. Fair use. Fair use.
Mine's Anne McLellan, know who yours is?
Can record companies (Canadian equiv. of [MPRI]{2}AA) sue p2p users sharing music and movies?
Currently no. Once this act is passed, yes they can. The ISP is obligated to maintain sufficent records to identify the subscriber for a period of time.
Relevent documentation from Proposed changes:
Upon receipt of a notice, ISPs would also be required to keep a record of relevant information for a specified time. Rights holders would have the legal means to compel ISPs to comply with the regime.
AND
(FAQ)
This will clarify that the unauthorized posting or the peer-to-peer file-sharing of material on the Internet will constitute an infringement of copyright.
Can users copy records/movies for private use?
Currently yes. After this act is passed, yes BUT users are not allowed to legally bypass any restrictions (DRM) in order to do so. That becomes illegal.
Relevent documentation from Proposed changes:
The Act's private copying regime provides for an exception to copyright that permits the making of a copy of a sound recording for private use
BUT... not everything is good: (from FAQ)
The bill will also contain legal protections for technological protection measures (encryptions, password requirements) and rights management systems containing information for the purpose of tracking uses of works. The removal of or tampering with such measures for the purpose of infringing copyright will itself constitute an infringement of copyright.
What this looks like is basically opening the door to lawsuits for record companies, making file sharing illegal and closing the door on consumers being able to turn off DRM to make a copy of a CD or movie for themselves.
How is this not DMCA?
Je n'ai comprend pas.
They're fun to look at and play with for a few days, and you try to convince yourself this time you'll actually use it.
Maybe you just never found your killer app. I did.
The PDA for me has worked the best as a raw text entry device. I used it in any university and extension courses where there is a huge amount of text or material that doesn't involve a lot of math or derivations or drawing (like History, Economics, Marketing. I even used it in my Intro to Databases course). Occasional diagrams can be put on a paper notepad, but try doing text search through 100 pages of notes. Or cleaning up and reorganizing notes -- talk about time consuming and clunky.
Plain text editing without all the formating crap is where its at on PDAs. Unfortunately, this required an external keyboard, something others didn't dish out for. Data entry techniques on the PDAs without a keyboard are almost impossible, and built in keyboards like the zaurus are almost useless.
Contrast this with taking a notebook computer to class. In university, my experience has been that usually the people using them are just fiddling with fonts, or colors or text layout... Anything but actually taking notes. It seems to be more a toy than an actual tool -- something to show off. But with my pda, I had no fonts or text layout to play around with: I could just take notes. And its tiny compared to a notebook computer, 10% of the cost and liability, the battery lasts weeks (besides being easy to replace at 2 AAA batteries) and it is light and small.
While reading various coverage of the Huygens descent to Titan, they were talking about one of the two channels not working correctly (Jan 14, 08:57PST).
Is this because they applied the fix discussed in the "persistent troubleshooter" link to only one of the two channels? Leaving the other channel as it was originally (that is, broken?)
Can't help but wonder.
I've already got a Zaurus.
And you can replace it with an iPAQ when you pry it from my cold dead hands.
Karma to burn, karma to burn...
The report, set to be released on Tuesday, states that the 2.6 Linux production kernel, shipped with software from Red Hat, Novell and other major Linux software vendors, contains 985 bugs in 5.7 million lines of code, well below the industry average for commercial enterprise software.
Commercial software (at this point in time) has its priority on releasing new versions often. Because each release is a salable item. Linux on the other hand gets forked or changes version whenever "Linus feels its ready". BIG DIFFERENCE. Here's why.
Commercial software decide how much value is on each bug, if the bugs are cheap (not show stoppers), but minor things they can't forsee as causing them to lose money... They will ship it. Acceptable known bugs. Project management decision.
Open source has time on their hands. They can look over the code carefully, waste time on bugs that commercial outfits wouldn't even bother... But the problem (like with software project management) is that you can't tell which bugs will be the nasties when you choose to ignore them. Less bugs == more secure software, less nasties.
If commerical software decided to play the careful release, minimize bug game... They would make less money initially, but in the end it would work out. Microsoft and ilk can certainly compete with linux, but they made a choice long ago not to. They made a choice to RELEASE FAST and MAKE MONEY FAST! (hey, that sounds like spam).
m
Sigh, Sigh, sigh... "Any idiot can face a crisis - it's the day-to-day living that wears you out." - Checkov.
In case you didn't notice, most "modern" democracies are just feudalism in disguise. Does the fact that politicians wear... Business Suites maybe clue you in? Or how about that in the US all leaders are the ridiculously rich? Or that money == power in these countries? The new feudalism is business owners == the land owing aristocrats, peasants == employees!! Ever noticed you can't get rich being an employee? Unless you run a big ass company, or wait... Own a business.
And government is just there to cater to business, not the "people". Once in 4 years the peasants have a chance to elect someone from a tiny little rich group. We have no recourse if we elect a lier or looser. The government is open every day for lobbyists and the rich and powerful, but only once every four years for everyone else.
This is modern democracy for you, this is what the US wants everywhere in the world, including the EU. Because they are the richest, they will rule it. Via the wealthy, via the big corporations.
See Noam Chomsky for some more enlightenment.
Yes. I have.
I don't think anyone with a brain whichever side of the argument they fall on could see this article being anything other than bollocks.
Agreed. But... The concern is that this is being discussed by a senite subcommitte, not by some parents in some school somewhere. A subcommittee that is powerful enough to create laws (see our buddy Sen. Hatch) and present them for vote.
Another syndrome of the United Christian States of America? Is this another offshot of the holy war already declared on the middle east or am I missing something?
Elect a president with a religious agenda and expect to have rights squashed in the name of religious ideologies. So much for the secular.
m