Your argument would be much sounder if the filters the government wants to mandate only restricted porn -- but they don't. They also restrict lots of non-pornographic content. Moreover, the things they restrict aren't determined by the librarians, or even by the government, but by the web filter companies -- and these companies won't even tell anyone which sites they are filtering. So the question really is, is it really a good idea to have the govern mandate that these companies (who aren't politically agnostic, not by a long shot) be given a "stealth veto" over what may or may not be viewed by the public in public libraries?
Just out of curiosity, what evidence do we have that Iraq is trying to invade anyone? I know about Kuwait in the early 90's, but what since?
As for the US not expanding its borders... true, but then it doesn't need to. It can get the same benefits without the drawbacks by installing puppet governments in other states. That way the USA gets its way in those states, but doesn't become responsible for the puppet states' well-being.
Besides a brutal fact always is that single thread process can be made faster than _ANY_ multithreaded approach, although it's often quite difficult. Moreover, threading is never chosen as an approach due to performance, but rather because it simplifies the structure in some cases.
Apparently you never use multi-CPU computers?
In any case, for some tasks, raw speed isn't as important as low latency. By using multiple threads with a good scheduler and a well-thought-out priority system, you can end up with a very responsive program, something which would be much harder to do with a single thread. See BeOS's GUI for a good example.
Re:Gnutella2 - The real story!
on
Gnutella2?
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· Score: 2
A crappy business model does not make stealing OK.
That's a little rich, coming from a p2p file sharing advocate....;^)
No more than you on the right liked it in 1992. Thanks for pointing out that election reform is a non-partisan issue -- people of all political stripes stand to gain from fairer, more accurate election techniques.
Voting merely gives the people the ability to collectively reject a poor candidate. Plurality voting (along with many other reasonable systems) accomplishes this task.
Please describe how plurality voting accomplished this in the 2000 USA presidential election. Claiming that any candidate who lost was a "poor candidate" by definition, simply because he lost, is not allowed.;^)
In short, if the other party could field three candidates on the ballot, and people can vote for as many as they want, you'd be stupid to limit yourself to one candidate. Hence the parties would abolish primaries.
Wouldn't this encourage parties to run as many candidates as possible, on the theory that the more candidates you have on the ballot, the more chances there are that one of them would be elected?
I can already imagine ballots with 400 Republican candidates and 500 Democrats, all vying for one single office...:^)
It probably wouldn't even be too hard to adjust the workings of a car so that you can actually fuel it with water.
Erm, no. Water is not a fuel, and never will be, because it contains no energy to extract. The energy in hydrogen and oxygen atoms is released when they combine into water, and in order to separate them again, you need to put an equivalent amount of energy back in.
We most likely will extract hydrogen from water, but we'll always need an external power source to do so.
Which car will Americans choose? Well, I guess it actually all depends on who's marketing their car more agressively.:(
I think they will choose a car that is actually available for purchase. GM's AUTOnomy concept sounds great, but it's just that -- a concept. Even in the best scenario, we won't see it on the market until 2009, and based on GM's track record, I'm not holding my breath for then either. As much as I'd like to believe otherwise, my suspicion is that AUTOnomy is a mainly a sop designed to stave off mileage regulations for a few more years.
We could also be burning hybrid fuels instead like alcohol from corn. This would put farmers to work and help the environment.
It might put farmers to work, but it hardly helps the environment. It takes large amounts of petroleum products and pesticides to produce corn (not to mention large amounts of farmland, which replaces wildlife-supporting land)
Actually, economies of scale can accomplish the above. And if the benefits provided by hybrid systems translate into more sales, then it's hardly "economic suicide" no matter what the final prices end up being (assuming they keep their cost-to-sale-price ratio the same).
No it doesn't, except for with certain specific types of encrypted file.
Of course, but Microsoft's current proposal is only the first step down a slippery slope. If people prove to accept restrictions "only on specific types of file", they will likely proceed to the next step. By the time people have realized how much control they've given up, it will be too late. This isn't just paranoia, either -- there are already plans for products that initially allow you to do what you want (so that you'll buy them), but as soon as the products have become indispensable, they can be remotely disabled so as only to play "approved" content. And the whole point of DRM is to make sure that you, the owner of this hardware, have little knowledge and no control over what the hardware does.
Get your hearing seen to. I say "No problem. As long as there is choice". At the moment there is.
At the moment, there is choice. Fast forward a few years, when DRM is standard on all new PCs. Nobody has complained too loudly (because, as you say, they have a choice), and so the RIAA pushes through a bill making DRM mandatory. Suddenly you are unable to buy a new machine that the RIAA can't control.
Firstly, I'll install Linux. Or rather uninstall Windows. I already have another two operating sytems on my machine.
Linux won't do you much good if it isn't able to read any of your files. It will do even less good if the BIOS prevents it from running because it's "unauthorized software". True, that frog isn't boiled yet, but the water is getting warmer...
DRM may partially solve the pirating problem (until it is cracked, anyway), but only by creating a far worse problem: DRM gives someone else the final say over what your computer allows you to do. "No problem", I hear you say, "I trust Microsoft not to abuse that power". Okay, let's assume for the sake of argument that Microsoft does have your best interests at heart, and wouldn't knowingly abuse your rights. What happens when Microsoft's key generator get hacked, and all of sudden their "security through signed certificates" house of cards falls apart, as every virus and trojan suddenly becomes a "trusted app", allowed full privileges to your machine? What happens when your government decides that DRM is a convenient mechanism for suppressing dissent, and pressures Microsoft to remotely disable any program that isn't government approved?
Yes, Microsoft and other DRM advocates will assure you that they have thought of these things, and they have taken steps to insure they won't happen. But to paraphrase Murphy's Law, if anything can be abused, it will be. In the end it comes down to this: how much is control over your own computer worth to you? Would you give it up just for the chance to pay to watch some movies on line?
You consider it normal that poorly written programs are able to force a reboot of the OS? Maybe that's so in Windows, but in most modern OS's you can just kill the offending program, and the rest of the OS continues unaffected.
One role of an OS is to contain the damage when a buggy program screws up. If the user has to worry about which programs might take down the OS, that's a sign that the OS isn't robust enough.
This treaty requires that signatories create criminal offences for possession of viruses or other "devices" designed to damage data/networks
Interesting. Are the people whose machines are infected considered "in possession" of the virus, since it now resides on their hard drive?
Of course, I'm still waiting for the virus that infects your machine, then quietly downloads one kiddy-porn.jpg into your C:\Windows directory every day for a month. At the end of the month, it sends an anonymous email to the authorities with your email address and IP address. By the end of the year, the entire computer-using US population will be in jail...
Since we've had such success solving poverty in our own country, it should be a snap for us to get rid of it in every other country.
Perhaps we would have more success eliminating our own poverty problems if we spent more time and effort doing so, and less time and effort devising newer and more effective ways of killing people.
In any case, it wouldn't take the total (or even major) elimination of poverty to stem terrorism, but merely the knowledge that the West actually cared about the impoverished people of the world and was taking concrete measures to help them. It isn't poverty alone that breeds resentment, but poverty combined with the perception that the west is aware of this poverty, has the means to combat it, but couldn't care less.
The RIAA's draconian tactics play same role of pesticides or antibiotics in the Internet "ecosystem". Their laws and lawyers are able to destroy 99% of the "pests", but the remaining 1% which are resistant to their attacks then have a clear playing field to play in.
The death of Napster-style centralized p2p lead to the dominance of Kazaa-style distributed p2p, and the death of traditional streaming will lead to the dominance of distributed p2p streaming.
Please take some time to write the RIAA and thank them for their support in advancing the state of the art in free content distribution.:^)
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Your argument would be much sounder if the filters the government wants to mandate only restricted porn -- but they don't. They also restrict lots of non-pornographic content. Moreover, the things they restrict aren't determined by the librarians, or even by the government, but by the web filter companies -- and these companies won't even tell anyone which sites they are filtering. So the question really is, is it really a good idea to have the govern mandate that these companies (who aren't politically agnostic, not by a long shot) be given a "stealth veto" over what may or may not be viewed by the public in public libraries?
Which country is it again, that keeps threatening to invade if its demands aren't met? Who is a threat to world peace?
As for the US not expanding its borders... true, but then it doesn't need to. It can get the same benefits without the drawbacks by installing puppet governments in other states. That way the USA gets its way in those states, but doesn't become responsible for the puppet states' well-being.
approach, although it's often quite difficult. Moreover, threading is never chosen as an approach due to
performance, but rather because it simplifies the structure in some cases.
Apparently you never use multi-CPU computers?
In any case, for some tasks, raw speed isn't as important as low latency. By using multiple threads with a good scheduler and a well-thought-out priority system, you can end up with a very responsive program, something which would be much harder to do with a single thread. See BeOS's GUI for a good example.
That's a little rich, coming from a p2p file sharing advocate....
No more than you on the right liked it in 1992. Thanks for pointing out that election reform is a non-partisan issue -- people of all political stripes stand to gain from fairer, more accurate election techniques.
(along with many other reasonable systems) accomplishes this task.
Please describe how plurality voting accomplished this in the 2000 USA presidential election. Claiming that any candidate who lost was a "poor candidate" by definition, simply because he lost, is not allowed.
And in any case, having only two viewpoints is often not enough. What if you don't like either of them?
Wouldn't this encourage parties to run as many candidates as possible, on the theory that the more candidates you have on the ballot, the more chances there are that one of them would be elected?
I can already imagine ballots with 400 Republican candidates and 500 Democrats, all vying for one single office...
FWIW, I knew a guy who attempted to write a bot that would play NetHack for him. Not an easy task, though -- I don't know how far he got.
workings of a car so that you can actually fuel it with water.
Erm, no. Water is not a fuel, and never will be, because it contains no energy to extract. The energy in hydrogen and oxygen atoms is released when they combine into water, and in order to separate them again, you need to put an equivalent amount of energy back in.
We most likely will extract hydrogen from water, but we'll always need an external power source to do so.
agressively.
I think they will choose a car that is actually available for purchase. GM's AUTOnomy concept sounds great, but it's just that -- a concept. Even in the best scenario, we won't see it on the market until 2009, and based on GM's track record, I'm not holding my breath for then either. As much as I'd like to believe otherwise, my suspicion is that AUTOnomy is a mainly a sop designed to stave off mileage regulations for a few more years.
It might put farmers to work, but it hardly helps the environment. It takes large amounts of petroleum products and pesticides to produce corn (not to mention large amounts of farmland, which replaces wildlife-supporting land)
Actually, economies of scale can accomplish the above. And if the benefits provided by hybrid systems translate into more sales, then it's hardly "economic suicide" no matter what the final prices end up being (assuming they keep their cost-to-sale-price ratio the same).
Are you sure? This hybrid looks pretty fun....
<pedantic>The original poster never referred to which country... perhaps he meant not letting Stephen Hawking leave England.</pedantic>
Of course, but Microsoft's current proposal is only the first step down a slippery slope. If people prove to accept restrictions "only on specific types of file", they will likely proceed to the next step. By the time people have realized how much control they've given up, it will be too late. This isn't just paranoia, either -- there are already plans for products that initially allow you to do what you want (so that you'll buy them), but as soon as the products have become indispensable, they can be remotely disabled so as only to play "approved" content. And the whole point of DRM is to make sure that you, the owner of this hardware, have little knowledge and no control over what the hardware does.
Get your hearing seen to. I say "No problem. As long as there is choice". At the moment there is.
At the moment, there is choice. Fast forward a few years, when DRM is standard on all new PCs. Nobody has complained too loudly (because, as you say, they have a choice), and so the RIAA pushes through a bill making DRM mandatory. Suddenly you are unable to buy a new machine that the RIAA can't control.
Firstly, I'll install Linux. Or rather uninstall Windows. I already have another two operating sytems on
my machine.
Linux won't do you much good if it isn't able to read any of your files. It will do even less good if the BIOS prevents it from running because it's "unauthorized software". True, that frog isn't boiled yet, but the water is getting warmer...
Yes, Microsoft and other DRM advocates will assure you that they have thought of these things, and they have taken steps to insure they won't happen. But to paraphrase Murphy's Law, if anything can be abused, it will be. In the end it comes down to this: how much is control over your own computer worth to you? Would you give it up just for the chance to pay to watch some movies on line?
You consider it normal that poorly written programs are able to force a reboot of the OS? Maybe that's so in Windows, but in most modern OS's you can just kill the offending program, and the rest of the OS continues unaffected.
One role of an OS is to contain the damage when a buggy program screws up. If the user has to worry about which programs might take down the OS, that's a sign that the OS isn't robust enough.
Interesting. Are the people whose machines are infected considered "in possession" of the virus, since it now resides on their hard drive?
Of course, I'm still waiting for the virus that infects your machine, then quietly downloads one kiddy-porn
I'll go you one further... don't use any email client that has the capability of running scripts or executables received in email.
Perhaps we would have more success eliminating our own poverty problems if we spent more time and effort doing so, and less time and effort devising newer and more effective ways of killing people.
In any case, it wouldn't take the total (or even major) elimination of poverty to stem terrorism, but merely the knowledge that the West actually cared about the impoverished people of the world and was taking concrete measures to help them. It isn't poverty alone that breeds resentment, but poverty combined with the perception that the west is aware of this poverty, has the means to combat it, but couldn't care less.
The death of Napster-style centralized p2p lead to the dominance of Kazaa-style distributed p2p, and the death of traditional streaming will lead to the dominance of distributed p2p streaming.
Please take some time to write the RIAA and thank them for their support in advancing the state of the art in free content distribution.
bool is_computer_on() - Returns true if the computer is turned on; if the computer is off, the result is undefined.
Not to be outdone, another Be engineer added bool is_computer_on_fire()
Good point. Things like this seem to show that copyrights should be granted for a fixed period of years, and not depend on that author's lifespan.