Do viruses live? Do prions "live"? They do not, but bacteria certainly do.
There is an ongoing debate about viruses, about whether they are alive or not. Scientists do not yet agree. To simply state 'yes' or 'no' is misleading. Scientists typically answer several questions to determine whether something is alive, among them:
(1) is cellularly or molecularly organized
(2) does it respire (use energy and produce waste)
(3) does it grow
(4) does it adapt
(5) does it reproduce
The best we can say at this point is that viruses have some properties of life, and some lifeless properties. But life is not an either/or proposition, it exists on a contiuum. At what point is a heart-attack victim alive or dead? Is he alive until he loses consciousness? Until the heart stops? Until the brain dies? Until the body can no longer be revived? Is it even possible to pinpoint the moment where at one nanosecond he's alive (100%) and the next nanosecond he's dead (100%)?
Is a multicellular organism alive the when an egg cell has been fertilized? When only one sperm has made it to the egg, and is halfway through the egg cell wall? 90% through? 99.9% through? Before or after the genetic material has been integrated? Before or after it undergoes mitosis?
If people don't want to pay, they won't. If enough people want a different distribution means, it will appear. If people don't want to compensate artists, artists will stop making their product available for consumer consumption.
You had it until the last statement. It should really go: If consumers don't want to compensate artists, artists will find a different way of being compensated. Not everyone in the music/entertainment industry is driven by the almighty dollar/euro/yuan/peso/yen. There are artists who do it because they love it, and would do so even without compensation. They will still make money from concerts, and they will take second jobs to support their passion/hobby/lifestyle.
If you have an idea that you want to own, don't tell ANYONE. Then, you and you alone own it. In other words, shut the f*ck up.
Because when you open that festering gob of yours to broadcast your idea to the world, the idea no longer belongs to you. Any law attempting to skirt this fact will be as long-term effective as a law that says pi is equal to 3 1/7. It just does not, nor will it ever, fit reality.
As I understand it, the idea behind intellectual property laws is that a person should enjoy the "fruits" of their intellectual labor. If that's so, under this way of thinking, then shouldn't a person ALSO be responsible for their "intellectual liabilities"? If a person can make money for their good ideas, then they should also have to pay, in real dollars, for their bad ones.
The world got along fine for thousands and thousands of years without IP laws. I saw one argument stating that IP laws were necessary because they assist the economy. Here's another equally stupid and equally arbitrary law that could be used to assist the economy: you must spend at least 98.5% of your post-tax dollars on goods and services; saving more than 1.5% of your income will land you in jail.
Eliminating dividend taxes would certainly help Bill Gates and Warren Buffet, but it would help *me* a great deal more, by lowering the barriers to property income.
Try looking into mutual funds that specialize in or concentrate on REITs, or Real Estate Investment Trusts. Different REIT mutual funds have different investment objectives (growth, income), and some specialize in different types of real estate (commercial, industrial, rental, etc.).Minimum initial investments will range from $50 into the thousands, but certainly much less than the capital required for buying actual real estate.
Some REITs can be invested in directly, like a stock, without investing in a mutual fund. You'll have to research this for more information.
Is that really your opinion, that most people are criminals?
And your suggestion would be that instead of changing the law to meet reality (that people are criminals downloading what-have-you), we should attempt to change reality to meet the law?
Not precisely, right back at you. It sounds like your argument of diminished economic value (ignoring the legality) is like this: 1. a copy was made 2. this increased supply 3. demand remained constant 4. thus, overall value decreases
Point 1, no contention. Point 2, no contention, BUT there are additional factors to consider here. Economic supply and demand curves meet when the supplier's cost matches up with a price a consumer is willing to pay. At a given level of production, there is an associated unit cost. At that cost, there is a given demand and a given supply. With a price of $17 per CD, there is a certain supply and demand. Lower the price, and the producer is not willing to make as much, but demand rises. Raise the price and the producer makes more, but customers buy less.
None of this is new news. It's the basic economics of scarcity and it makes sense when you deal with physical items (apples, wood, steel, beer, Bosco, hookers) that are limited in resource. What happens, though, when a resource is not scarce? When the cost of producing it is next to nothing? It's interesting that you note that the product doesn't grow on trees. Nope, it's much less costly and more freely available that what grows on trees.
I estimate the cost of ripping a CD to be a penny and a half. $0.015. ($1500 300W system with a 3 year life span, $0.085/KWh, 720 seconds of system wear and electricity to rip and encode.) Adding to the market supply by uploading a copy to another user over DSL costs less than 4 cents per CD/10 songs. (15 minutes of system wear and electricity, DSL 1.5/384, $50/month, 45 minute CD @128k ~ 41 MB).
The music industry produces a certain amount of content for sale on CD. Let's say this is about 500 million CDs. Let's further pretend that we are in the same market. I will take the role of the only competing producer/supplier. The market value or cost (with built-in rape-me-in-the-ass profit) is $17/CD. The market value of their content is $8.5 billion. My fixed cost of production for ripping my CD is $0.015. (I'm not including inventory cost, because I don't know how to compute the cost of displacing porn on my hard drive to make room for an MP3.)
My cost of actually getting one copy of the CD to one user is $0.038. (I don't include the cost of purchasing the CD, I would have done that anyway, and there is no cost if I rip someone else's CD. Since I would have purchased a system anyway, its ammortized cost is reflected only in its usage for ripping and Internet data transfer.) When I add one CD to the market, the total market value stays the same, so the market value per CD changes from $17 to $16.99999997. It cost me $0.054, I made nothing, and the value lost per CD is $0.00000003. If I provided 50 uploads (copies) each of 50 CDs to the market, it would take about 26 days, cost $95.84, and the decrease in value per CD would be (8.5b/500,002,500 = $16.999915) $0.000085. This is the effect that only my actions would have on supply and on the value of supply. So, yes, it's true, my actions did decrease the market's unit value, even though the market's unit value changes more than that when Hilary Rosen has her period.
Point 3, demand would not have remained constant. My product competes with theirs in that I provide a similar-but-not-the-same product at a drastically reduced cost to the customer. Remember, it is *not* the same product. I am not giving away copies of CDs with liner notes in fancy packaging with a security sticker. All I provide is the content, and not even the same as what is on a CD. (If it were the same product, if it were a commodity with $17 vs. $0.038, all the major labels who did not fully embrace the Internet would already be dead.)
Because of that, all the people who "bought" my product wouldn't necessarily have bought the industry's product in my absence. It IS a valid point because it ISN'T the same product. If we were talking about illegally copied CDs with liner notes for sale in
We all will get the government we deserve. If we don't like the trends we are seeing in the US government, we must/do/ something about it. Posting on Slashdot is low on the List of Effective Measures for Change.
I'm not surprised about Drake now being a "model" for the RIAA. But back in the 1980s, Drake would have been anything but a model. Software copying (notice I didn't use the p-word, as there are no oceans anywhere near Drake) was rampant, and the Journalism school and the Times Delphic were generally the source of all the software. But that was 15 years ago, and Drake must have cleaned up its act since then.
Still too bad, though. I don't agree with these measures, and Drake won't be getting any donations from this alum.
This is of course not my quote, but I think it is valid nonetheless:
"A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects." (Robert Heinlein)
Well, ok, NO, just because it's an addiction, it doesn't mean it's unhealthy.
There are two definitions of addiction, the first being a more medical definition, the second being more mainstream. The definition of addiction says nothing about being healthy or unhealthy. We choose to attach the connotation of an addiction being unhealthy. Strictly speaking, from the mainstream definition:
the condition of being habitually or compulsively occupied with or involved in something
"Never" is probably not right, despite your being told this by a "big wheel". "Not in the next five years" is more accurate.
(A) Big wheels at CLECs or even ILECs don't necessarily understand the technology. Having worked at a few CLECs, I can say there is much truth in the addage, "There are two types: those who understand what they do not manage, and those who manage what they do not understand." The BW probably didn't want to piss you off any further and decided to tell you that it couldn't ever be done, rather than keep stringing you along.
(B) What is currently being deployed in the field is not much more advanced than what was designed in the lab 12 years ago. In the lab today, there are many advancements being made to combat crosstalk, gauge changes, and distance limitations. For instance, it is currently possible in the lab to deliver 2Mbps SDSL at distances of nearly 20 kft.
Cameras don't prevent crime. The only thing that we can say here is that there is a correlation between the rise in the number of cameras and (MAYBE, these postings suggest that this is a point of contention) the decrease in the crime rate. We can't say that one causes the other, only that there is a relationship.
Another good, albeit socially insensitive, correlation is the link between ice cream sales and incidents of reported sexual assuaults. As ice cream sales rise, so do the incidents of sexual assault. Year after year after year this is the case. Obviously, something in the ice cream is turning people into monsters. We MUST start shutting down all the ice cream stores IMMEDIATELY.
(Money, fame, and prizes for the person who knows what the REAL link is between sexual assaults and ice cream sales.)
I work for another DSL provider (like Covad, but I won't say which) and here are my two cents:
Know what you want. Are you connecting a network or just one system? (Some providers will actually charge you based on how many systems will use the line.) Are you hosting servers? (Some providers have restrictions on what you can host, and for this you'll want SDSL, and a static IP connection.)
Do your research on available providers.DSLReports is an invaluable resource for getting information on your area, and The List isn't bad, either. You'll also want to check out whatis.com's page on DSL . Find out what is their bandwidth oversubscription ratio. (ISPs make money by selling more bandwidth beneath them than they have coming in above them; otherwise the DS3 that feeds a network, $6k-$9k, would cost at least $133 per megabit before anything else was paid for. Typically the ratio is between 7.5:1 and 20:1.) If you're going to be spending big bucks for the connection, get references from the prospective companies.
Realize that a necessary part of the equation is the ILEC.(?) When nearly everyone gets DSL, a new copper local loop(?) must be installed, and that means the phone company in all their ignorance, circular logic, and incompetence must be involved. Realize up front that the loop installation will probably not go smoothly, and you'll save yourself some aggravation later on. Most people would agree that getting DSL installed ranges from a little annoying to a major nightmare, but that once it's installed, they're happy as clams; most of the installation problems are because of the ILEC.
When things don't work, kick ass and take names. When you talk to someone in the NOC or in customer service, don't accept half-assed or blow-off explanations. Make an issue when something you're told doesn't make sense. Make sure that they know you're taking notes and that you've written down their name. Don't take any crap. (One of our customers was recently told that their circuit was down because of bad weather in her area. "But there's a clear blue sky outside." No, the tech assured her, there was bad weather in her area and her line would be back up soon after the storm passed.)
Obviously, the company I work for doesn't have its act together and hasn't for many months, and many of its customers are getting the shaft as a result. Customer service has gotten so bad that the purely technical staff (moi) have had to step in to address problems. (I've been hanging on for the near-free wicked fast Internet connection offered to employees and for the stock options, otherwise I would have left by now.)
Since my CO isn't up and running with my company, and is months behind schedule, I got hooked up with SpeakEasy (Covad). Slick organization, everyone I've talked has known their stuff and been very polite and professional. Too bad I don't live in the Seattle area, or I'd apply for a job there. Their online order status is really slick, too.
Does IKEA get to sue to me for using a bedside table as something else?
IANAL, but as I recall from my business law class regarding liability, a company that produces a product may be held liable for a product's unintended but foreseeable use that causes harm or damage to the user of his/her property. An example would be using a chair to stand on to reach the light bulb on the ceiling. The chair is not intended to be stood on, but it is reasonable to expect that most people may use it in that fashion occasionally.
(humor)
As Digital:Burp should have considered the foreseeable uses of its product, it is reasonable for them to expect that people would attempt to "play" with the scanner. Now that Digital:Burp might intend litigation against Michael Rothwell, Michael should be able to turn around and sue Digital:Burp for damages resulting from the foreseeable use of the product.
(end humor)
Re:Easy solution - ban DNA cross referencing
on
Walk-By DNA Testing
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· Score: 1
simply BAN the cross referencing of a DNA database with public info...
This is a good idea theoretically, but difficult to implement. If a DNA scanner were available to the general populace (i.e. for sale to anyone who could afford it), how can you ensure that once Fred or XYZCo starts collecting DNA data that they aren't cross-referenced with existing data? Have Fred or XYZCo sign a letter promising they won't? (Companies and people lie all the time, and do things they shouldn't.)
Have the DNA scanner only available to users registered with the Federal government and have its use monitored? (What government agency would be able to handle the monitoring of a database and its usage which contains as many as 3+ billion fields? How do you monitor everyone's programming process?)
What happens when someone in Izrebekhistan buys or develops a DNA scanner? (How would US laws apply to its use in that country? What could we do about it?)
My fear is that be it on the open market, grey market, or black market, once these data start being collected, they will find their way to those individuals, organizations, or governments that want them.
Yet another example of science and industry doing something that can be done without asking whether it should be done.
Also some cool facts: The issue of the number of addresses availible for IPv6 works out to be around: 340,282,366,920,938,463,463,374,607,431,768,211,45 6 addresses. And this breaks down to about 1,500 IP addresses for each square meter on the surface of Earth...
Not quite. The radius of the Earth in meters is roughly 6,376,000, so the surface area is roughly 510,865,389,540,894 square meters. If the number of total IPv6 addresses stated above is correct, then there would be roughly 6.66e23 available IPv6 addresses for every square meter of surface area.
Put another way, there are roughly 313,404,992 IPv6 addresses for every cubic centimeter of the Earth's volume.
Not sure why the previous post was moderated up as "funny" as deefer does have a good point. Data are typically raw facts:
* at 8am today it was mostly cloudy in Brussels * at 8am yesterday it was mostly cloudy in Brussels * at 8am Monday it was partly cloudy in Brussels
A collection of data becomes information, a generalization from specific observances: mornings tend to be cloudy in Brussels.
Most of the Web is based in data; people report this, list that, and enumerate the other. Information is what the traditional media have provided (though, at times, severely biased); collation of data, data in context, summation of data.
I understand the principle of wanting formal specifications and then testing against those specifications. Where do formal specifications come from? Those with expertise and/or control debate and decide that (x1) needs to be laid out in this way, (x2) should withstand this, (x3) should be designed keeping this in mind,... (xn) needs to incorporate this, where (x1)... (xn) define the specification, call it (X). Those in control then say that (X) is "secure" given certain assumptions.
Someone then designs a system to (X), and then we can test the system to see if it meets (X), which is easy because (x1)... (xn) are all laid out for us.
The problem arises when comparing (X) to, say, Linux because of a number of reasons, including: (1) Linux was debated over and designed by a different set of experts than those that wrote (X) (2) Linux was designed using (y1)... (yn) as its security specifications, which may or may not intersect with (x1)... (xn) (3) Some of (y1)... (yn) are not stated explicitly, and/or a complete list of (y1)... (yn) may not exist
Thus the security of (Y) can't be "properly" verified. This means that (Y) may require more "faith" in trusting it than the faith required for (X), but it doesn't necessarily mean that (X) is more or less secure than (Y). That (X) is explicit and (Y) is implicit doesn't mean that (X) is more secure than (Y).
One could easily come up with a set of specifications (Q), (R), and (S) against which (X) and (Y) be tested and verified. If (X) is secure with repect to (Q) and (S) and (Y) is secure with respect to (R) and (S), then why is (X) trusted and (Y) not trusted?
If they're still sitting on $57 million, they probably could have afforded to keep every employee they let go. If 200 people were let go, at an average salary of $40K per year, plus $10K per year in benefits per employee, that would have cost $10,000,000 to keep them all on, and still have nearly $50M left over at the end of the year for everything else.
If I were an employee that was just let go, I would feel insulted at hearing that they are still "sitting on" $57M.
In my cursory review of the replies, I haven't seen anyone mention the competition issue.
While Bidder's Edge may not be playing fair when it ignores eBay's robots.txt, BE does clearly promote competition by providing comparisson between products from competing auctioners.
Doesn't the injunction against BE constitute some sort of anti-trust, because it seeks to rule against something that promotes competition?
As the article says, "The alert sounds include all of the classic alerts and a few new ones (Frog, Funk, and Tink)." Not true, they are not new. They were part of the NeXT OS on the original NeXT cube box way back in 1990.
I have not ready any of Penrose's material, so what I'm about to suggest may be totally off-base or perhaps redundant.
Complexity Theory suggests that any large complex system has emergent properties that are very unlikely to be inferred from the behavior of the individual elements. What if the human conscious mind is no more than a massively massively massively parallel computer and that consciousness is simply the emergent property of a complex system? And that any large system where several billion nodes simultaneously pass information to other nodes embodies a consciousness of some sort?
Top Five Unforeseen Developments resulting from Nanotech Drives:
5. Problems related to Heisenberg U.P. allow you to know the drive is installed correctly, or know that the drive is turned on, but not both 4. Public schools ban nanotech drives because teachers can't see them and students use them for cheating 3. Cracker Jack includes a drive not just in every box but in every kernel of popcorn, puts Seagate and Western Digital out of business 2. Scanning electron microscope rental business booms because customers can't see if cables are inserted properly 1. In 2037, Trans-Nanotech Inc. (NYSE:2TNY) announces product to solve the problem of losing all those tiny drives: the floppy disk
Slashdot Mirror
I raise my alkalinity by drinking sterno. I'm an old man from Piedmont, New Mexico. Damn alien germs!
(1) is cellularly or molecularly organized
(2) does it respire (use energy and produce waste)
(3) does it grow
(4) does it adapt
(5) does it reproduce
The best we can say at this point is that viruses have some properties of life, and some lifeless properties. But life is not an either/or proposition, it exists on a contiuum. At what point is a heart-attack victim alive or dead? Is he alive until he loses consciousness? Until the heart stops? Until the brain dies? Until the body can no longer be revived? Is it even possible to pinpoint the moment where at one nanosecond he's alive (100%) and the next nanosecond he's dead (100%)?
Is a multicellular organism alive the when an egg cell has been fertilized? When only one sperm has made it to the egg, and is halfway through the egg cell wall? 90% through? 99.9% through? Before or after the genetic material has been integrated? Before or after it undergoes mitosis?
If you have an idea that you want to own, don't tell ANYONE. Then, you and you alone own it. In other words, shut the f*ck up.
Because when you open that festering gob of yours to broadcast your idea to the world, the idea no longer belongs to you. Any law attempting to skirt this fact will be as long-term effective as a law that says pi is equal to 3 1/7. It just does not, nor will it ever, fit reality.
As I understand it, the idea behind intellectual property laws is that a person should enjoy the "fruits" of their intellectual labor. If that's so, under this way of thinking, then shouldn't a person ALSO be responsible for their "intellectual liabilities"? If a person can make money for their good ideas, then they should also have to pay, in real dollars, for their bad ones.
The world got along fine for thousands and thousands of years without IP laws. I saw one argument stating that IP laws were necessary because they assist the economy. Here's another equally stupid and equally arbitrary law that could be used to assist the economy: you must spend at least 98.5% of your post-tax dollars on goods and services; saving more than 1.5% of your income will land you in jail.
Maybe we need to rethink the idea of IP.
A PR rep NEVER has a right to get angry, especially when they are REPRESENTING the company to the PUBLIC.
Eliminating dividend taxes would certainly help Bill Gates and Warren Buffet, but it would help *me* a great deal more, by lowering the barriers to property income.
Try looking into mutual funds that specialize in or concentrate on REITs, or Real Estate Investment Trusts. Different REIT mutual funds have different investment objectives (growth, income), and some specialize in different types of real estate (commercial, industrial, rental, etc.).Minimum initial investments will range from $50 into the thousands, but certainly much less than the capital required for buying actual real estate.
Some REITs can be invested in directly, like a stock, without investing in a mutual fund. You'll have to research this for more information.
Is that really your opinion, that most people are criminals?
And your suggestion would be that instead of changing the law to meet reality (that people are criminals downloading what-have-you), we should attempt to change reality to meet the law?
Not precisely, right back at you. It sounds like your argument of diminished economic value (ignoring the legality) is like this:
1. a copy was made
2. this increased supply
3. demand remained constant
4. thus, overall value decreases
Point 1, no contention. Point 2, no contention, BUT there are additional factors to consider here. Economic supply and demand curves meet when the supplier's cost matches up with a price a consumer is willing to pay. At a given level of production, there is an associated unit cost. At that cost, there is a given demand and a given supply. With a price of $17 per CD, there is a certain supply and demand. Lower the price, and the producer is not willing to make as much, but demand rises. Raise the price and the producer makes more, but customers buy less.
None of this is new news. It's the basic economics of scarcity and it makes sense when you deal with physical items (apples, wood, steel, beer, Bosco, hookers) that are limited in resource. What happens, though, when a resource is not scarce? When the cost of producing it is next to nothing? It's interesting that you note that the product doesn't grow on trees. Nope, it's much less costly and more freely available that what grows on trees.
I estimate the cost of ripping a CD to be a penny and a half. $0.015. ($1500 300W system with a 3 year life span, $0.085/KWh, 720 seconds of system wear and electricity to rip and encode.) Adding to the market supply by uploading a copy to another user over DSL costs less than 4 cents per CD/10 songs. (15 minutes of system wear and electricity, DSL 1.5/384, $50/month, 45 minute CD @128k ~ 41 MB).
The music industry produces a certain amount of content for sale on CD. Let's say this is about 500 million CDs. Let's further pretend that we are in the same market. I will take the role of the only competing producer/supplier. The market value or cost (with built-in rape-me-in-the-ass profit) is $17/CD. The market value of their content is $8.5 billion. My fixed cost of production for ripping my CD is $0.015. (I'm not including inventory cost, because I don't know how to compute the cost of displacing porn on my hard drive to make room for an MP3.)
My cost of actually getting one copy of the CD to one user is $0.038. (I don't include the cost of purchasing the CD, I would have done that anyway, and there is no cost if I rip someone else's CD. Since I would have purchased a system anyway, its ammortized cost is reflected only in its usage for ripping and Internet data transfer.) When I add one CD to the market, the total market value stays the same, so the market value per CD changes from $17 to $16.99999997. It cost me $0.054, I made nothing, and the value lost per CD is $0.00000003. If I provided 50 uploads (copies) each of 50 CDs to the market, it would take about 26 days, cost $95.84, and the decrease in value per CD would be (8.5b/500,002,500 = $16.999915) $0.000085. This is the effect that only my actions would have on supply and on the value of supply. So, yes, it's true, my actions did decrease the market's unit value, even though the market's unit value changes more than that when Hilary Rosen has her period.
Point 3, demand would not have remained constant. My product competes with theirs in that I provide a similar-but-not-the-same product at a drastically reduced cost to the customer. Remember, it is *not* the same product. I am not giving away copies of CDs with liner notes in fancy packaging with a security sticker. All I provide is the content, and not even the same as what is on a CD. (If it were the same product, if it were a commodity with $17 vs. $0.038, all the major labels who did not fully embrace the Internet would already be dead.)
Because of that, all the people who "bought" my product wouldn't necessarily have bought the industry's product in my absence. It IS a valid point because it ISN'T the same product. If we were talking about illegally copied CDs with liner notes for sale in
We all will get the government we deserve. If we don't like the trends we are seeing in the US government, we must /do/ something about it. Posting on Slashdot is low on the List of Effective Measures for Change.
I'm not surprised about Drake now being a "model" for the RIAA. But back in the 1980s, Drake would have been anything but a model. Software copying (notice I didn't use the p-word, as there are no oceans anywhere near Drake) was rampant, and the Journalism school and the Times Delphic were generally the source of all the software. But that was 15 years ago, and Drake must have cleaned up its act since then.
Still too bad, though. I don't agree with these measures, and Drake won't be getting any donations from this alum.
This is of course not my quote, but I think it is valid nonetheless:
"A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects." (Robert Heinlein)
Well, ok, NO, just because it's an addiction, it doesn't mean it's unhealthy.
There are two definitions of addiction, the first being a more medical definition, the second being more mainstream. The definition of addiction says nothing about being healthy or unhealthy. We choose to attach the connotation of an addiction being unhealthy. Strictly speaking, from the mainstream definition:
the condition of being habitually or compulsively occupied with or involved in something
breathing is an addiction, n'est ce pas?
"Never" is probably not right, despite your being told this by a "big wheel". "Not in the next five years" is more accurate.
(A) Big wheels at CLECs or even ILECs don't necessarily understand the technology. Having worked at a few CLECs, I can say there is much truth in the addage, "There are two types: those who understand what they do not manage, and those who manage what they do not understand." The BW probably didn't want to piss you off any further and decided to tell you that it couldn't ever be done, rather than keep stringing you along.
(B) What is currently being deployed in the field is not much more advanced than what was designed in the lab 12 years ago. In the lab today, there are many advancements being made to combat crosstalk, gauge changes, and distance limitations. For instance, it is currently possible in the lab to deliver 2Mbps SDSL at distances of nearly 20 kft.
Cameras don't prevent crime. The only thing that we can say here is that there is a correlation between the rise in the number of cameras and (MAYBE, these postings suggest that this is a point of contention) the decrease in the crime rate. We can't say that one causes the other, only that there is a relationship.
Another good, albeit socially insensitive, correlation is the link between ice cream sales and incidents of reported sexual assuaults. As ice cream sales rise, so do the incidents of sexual assault. Year after year after year this is the case. Obviously, something in the ice cream is turning people into monsters. We MUST start shutting down all the ice cream stores IMMEDIATELY.
(Money, fame, and prizes for the person who knows what the REAL link is between sexual assaults and ice cream sales.)
Obviously, the company I work for doesn't have its act together and hasn't for many months, and many of its customers are getting the shaft as a result. Customer service has gotten so bad that the purely technical staff (moi) have had to step in to address problems. (I've been hanging on for the near-free wicked fast Internet connection offered to employees and for the stock options, otherwise I would have left by now.)
Since my CO isn't up and running with my company, and is months behind schedule, I got hooked up with SpeakEasy (Covad). Slick organization, everyone I've talked has known their stuff and been very polite and professional. Too bad I don't live in the Seattle area, or I'd apply for a job there. Their online order status is really slick, too.
Does IKEA get to sue to me for using a bedside table as something else?
IANAL, but as I recall from my business law class regarding liability, a company that produces a product may be held liable for a product's unintended but foreseeable use that causes harm or damage to the user of his/her property. An example would be using a chair to stand on to reach the light bulb on the ceiling. The chair is not intended to be stood on, but it is reasonable to expect that most people may use it in that fashion occasionally.
(humor)
As Digital:Burp should have considered the foreseeable uses of its product, it is reasonable for them to expect that people would attempt to "play" with the scanner. Now that Digital:Burp might intend litigation against Michael Rothwell, Michael should be able to turn around and sue Digital:Burp for damages resulting from the foreseeable use of the product.
(end humor)
simply BAN the cross referencing of a DNA database with public info ...
This is a good idea theoretically, but difficult to implement. If a DNA scanner were available to the general populace (i.e. for sale to anyone who could afford it), how can you ensure that once Fred or XYZCo starts collecting DNA data that they aren't cross-referenced with existing data? Have Fred or XYZCo sign a letter promising they won't? (Companies and people lie all the time, and do things they shouldn't.)
Have the DNA scanner only available to users registered with the Federal government and have its use monitored? (What government agency would be able to handle the monitoring of a database and its usage which contains as many as 3+ billion fields? How do you monitor everyone's programming process?)
What happens when someone in Izrebekhistan buys or develops a DNA scanner? (How would US laws apply to its use in that country? What could we do about it?)
My fear is that be it on the open market, grey market, or black market, once these data start being collected, they will find their way to those individuals, organizations, or governments that want them.
Yet another example of science and industry doing something that can be done without asking whether it should be done.
Also some cool facts: The issue of the number of addresses availible for IPv6 works out to be around: 340,282,366,920,938,463,463,374,607,431,768,211,45 6 addresses. And this breaks down to about 1,500 IP addresses for each square meter on the surface of Earth ...
Not quite. The radius of the Earth in meters is roughly 6,376,000, so the surface area is roughly 510,865,389,540,894 square meters. If the number of total IPv6 addresses stated above is correct, then there would be roughly 6.66e23 available IPv6 addresses for every square meter of surface area.
Put another way, there are roughly 313,404,992 IPv6 addresses for every cubic centimeter of the Earth's volume.
Not sure why the previous post was moderated up as "funny" as deefer does have a good point. Data are typically raw facts:
* at 8am today it was mostly cloudy in Brussels
* at 8am yesterday it was mostly cloudy in Brussels
* at 8am Monday it was partly cloudy in Brussels
A collection of data becomes information, a generalization from specific observances: mornings tend to be cloudy in Brussels.
Most of the Web is based in data; people report this, list that, and enumerate the other. Information is what the traditional media have provided (though, at times, severely biased); collation of data, data in context, summation of data.
I understand the principle of wanting formal specifications and then testing against those specifications. Where do formal specifications come from? Those with expertise and/or control debate and decide that (x1) needs to be laid out in this way, (x2) should withstand this, (x3) should be designed keeping this in mind, ... (xn) needs to incorporate this, where (x1) ... (xn) define the specification, call it (X). Those in control then say that (X) is "secure" given certain assumptions.
... (xn) are all laid out for us.
... (yn) as its security specifications, which may or may not intersect with (x1) ... (xn) ... (yn) are not stated explicitly, and/or a complete list of (y1) ... (yn) may not exist
Someone then designs a system to (X), and then we can test the system to see if it meets (X), which is easy because (x1)
The problem arises when comparing (X) to, say, Linux because of a number of reasons, including:
(1) Linux was debated over and designed by a different set of experts than those that wrote (X)
(2) Linux was designed using (y1)
(3) Some of (y1)
Thus the security of (Y) can't be "properly" verified. This means that (Y) may require more "faith" in trusting it than the faith required for (X), but it doesn't necessarily mean that (X) is more or less secure than (Y). That (X) is explicit and (Y) is implicit doesn't mean that (X) is more secure than (Y).
One could easily come up with a set of specifications (Q), (R), and (S) against which (X) and (Y) be tested and verified. If (X) is secure with repect to (Q) and (S) and (Y) is secure with respect to (R) and (S), then why is (X) trusted and (Y) not trusted?
If they're still sitting on $57 million, they probably could have afforded to keep every employee they let go. If 200 people were let go, at an average salary of $40K per year, plus $10K per year in benefits per employee, that would have cost $10,000,000 to keep them all on, and still have nearly $50M left over at the end of the year for everything else.
If I were an employee that was just let go, I would feel insulted at hearing that they are still "sitting on" $57M.
In my cursory review of the replies, I haven't seen anyone mention the competition issue.
While Bidder's Edge may not be playing fair when it ignores eBay's robots.txt, BE does clearly promote competition by providing comparisson between products from competing auctioners.
Doesn't the injunction against BE constitute some sort of anti-trust, because it seeks to rule against something that promotes competition?
As the article says, "The alert sounds include all of the classic alerts and a few new ones (Frog, Funk, and Tink)." Not true, they are not new. They were part of the NeXT OS on the original NeXT cube box way back in 1990.
I have not ready any of Penrose's material, so what I'm about to suggest may be totally off-base or perhaps redundant.
Complexity Theory suggests that any large complex system has emergent properties that are very unlikely to be inferred from the behavior of the individual elements. What if the human conscious mind is no more than a massively massively massively parallel computer and that consciousness is simply the emergent property of a complex system? And that any large system where several billion nodes simultaneously pass information to other nodes embodies a consciousness of some sort?
Top Five Unforeseen Developments resulting from Nanotech Drives:
5. Problems related to Heisenberg U.P. allow you to know the drive is installed correctly, or know that the drive is turned on, but not both
4. Public schools ban nanotech drives because teachers can't see them and students use them for cheating
3. Cracker Jack includes a drive not just in every box but in every kernel of popcorn, puts Seagate and Western Digital out of business
2. Scanning electron microscope rental business booms because customers can't see if cables are inserted properly
1. In 2037, Trans-Nanotech Inc. (NYSE:2TNY) announces product to solve the problem of losing all those tiny drives: the floppy disk