middleman (mdl-mn) n. 2. An intermediary; a go-between.
A monetary exchange is not essential.
Thanks for your response.  Unfortunately it's not at all relevant.  The post that I was replying to was basically stating that nobody had a problem paying ebay to be the middle-man.  Read the parent of my prior response.
eBay charges for the same sort of thing; why should it seem so strange now?
Because when somebody sells something on ebay, they are getting paid by the purchaser.  That is not the case with Napster where the user providing the content recieves zero compensation for doing so.
Re:The problems are...
on
eLection '04
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· Score: 1
They provide the necessary ID
Whenever states and counties have tried to make it required for citizens to confirm that they are who they claim to be, the ACLU jumps in and says that it's harassment and a violation of our voting rights.
A sales tax does not tax everyone equally, and is contrary do the concept of equal opportunity, let alone the concept of a flat tax.
Where did the discussion of a flat tax come in?:-)
And I believe, a sales tax does tax everybody equally.  As I stated in my previous message, all income is eventually consumed.  That means rich and poor will eventually be taxed alike.  Will poor people pay more on taxes for necessities.  You bet.  What of it?  Poor people now spend most of their money on necessities.  Don't tax food then I guess.
(Especially since you'd have to drastically raise sales taxes to make up even a small percentage of the revenue lost by eliminating the income tax. I'm all for smaller government, but you still need some money, or are you for eliminating public works altogether?)
What do you consider drastic?  According to the Cato Institute, it'd initially be a 15 percent sales tax that would decline over time.  See the info here.  As for eliminating all public works, no, I don't agree with that notion but I am for eliminating some of them.
Are you kidding? They buy less stuff on a dollar basis, but they spend much more as a percentage of income.
Your statement is not quite correct.  They (the poor) spend much more -- on basic necessities -- as a percentage of income.
So what?  Do you think that a graduated income tax will *ever* make things fair?  It will never happen.  Just look at the people at the very bottom of a tax bracket compared to those at the top of the tax bracket below them.  The people in the upper bracket will have less net income.  Yeah, that's fair.
Having the government use the tax code to "redistribute" wealth is a dismal failure and it continues to be in the name of punishing the rich to help the poor.  I'm middle class and I'm certainly not bitter about the rich getting a tax cut.  Hell, I'd like to be rich one day too and thank goodness I have the same opportunity as anybody else in this country (be them rich, poor, black, white or orange) to get there. 
We're not all equal.  But we all should have equal opportunity.  Likewise, we should all be taxed equally.  The progressive income tax does not do this.  A *simple* sales tax does.
The problem is that sales taxes are actually regressive, meaning that poor people end up paying a higher percentage of their income than rich people. That's certainly not fair, is it?
I disagree.  Why?  All income is eventually spent.  What you are disagreeing with is that "poor" people pay their taxes on items for living and "rich" people will pay their taxes from items for living and yachts.  A sales tax that doesn't care about your "income" is the only "fair" tax there can be.  Nobody is exempt and nobody gets a special exception.
but I do think that progressive taxation makes sense for a wide variety of reasons.
I'm of the opinion that progressive taxes are not at all fair.  In fact, I'm against income taxes in general and specifically progressive taxation for the following reasons:
Your money is taken from you slowly before you ever see it.  And if you choose to keep it all until April 15th and pay then, you are smacked with a "witholding penalty".  Excuse me?
It's a violation of my privacy for the government to know where my money comes from.
Progressive taxes allow the government to divide and conquer by pitting one group of taxpayers against another.
I live in California where the cost of living is high. So my income that is considered "upper class" to much of the country is considered "middle class" out here.  It's always a revalation every April that I'm upper class.
The IRS is a hideous organization with too much power.  You are guilty until you prove yourself innocent.
The current tax code is too difficult for anybody to understand.
I'm a firm believer in a sales tax?  Why?
ALL income is eventually consumed.  You can't get any more fair than that.
I have more control over how much I pay in taxes and when I pay them.
Much more privacy.  The government does not know how much I am paying or where my income is coming from.
It's much more difficult to evade paying taxes.
No more IRS. 
Of course if a national sales tax is ever implemented, it will be done in a fucked up way.  But I'd take that over our current income tax system ANY day.
Does AFS provide the capability to encrypt all data traffic with SSL?
Nope.  This was a feature of DFS.  The authentication however is quite secure since it uses a modified Kerberos IV protocol. 
Hopefully one of the new changes the community makes will be updating AFS to work within an existing Kerberos V environment without a krb4->krb5 daemon.
Re:Did you watch the Mac Expo Europe?
on
X On OSX Now Free
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· Score: 1
500mhz G4 did it in 108 seconds. If it's twice as fast per clock cycle, it should have done it in 62 seconds, which is half the time the P3 took.
You're not reading carefully...  It's a 500Mhz G4 vs. 1Ghz P3.  The G4 did it in less time with half the clock speed.  End of story.
As for the worth of the benchmark, it's *quite* relevant if you use Photoshop extensively.
Thank capitalism for making your house cost far in excess of its actual value!
Bzzzzt.  That is the value of the house at this point in time.  It may be more than you are willing to pay, but it is what the market is currently bearing.
Just remember, what comes up must also come down.  Sadly, you can expect a lot of bankruptcies when all of the venture capital in the Silicon Valley dries up.
Boy I wish people would read the article before posting...
I did read the article.  I think that spokesperson is wrong.  Heaven forbid that a sales-driod not know what they're talking about.  So do you have SBC DSL and can show in their terms and condition that you are guaranteed at least 384Kbps to your email?  I don't buy that they guarantee it...
Too bad Galeon requires me to install all of GNOME as well.
Not to nitpick too much, but the Galeon homepage states in the first sentence: "Galeon is a GNOME Web browser based on gecko (the mozilla rendering engine)."
So yeah, it's going to assume that you have GNOME installed.
It's not the purchase of the copyrighted material that I happen to object to.  If you were able to look at my CD/Video/DVD/software collection you would know this.
What *I* personally object to is only being able to play authorized media on authorized players.  Then the record/movie/software companies will control what I watch and how I watch it.
If a company offers you a service and they say they are going to GUARANTEE 384kbit/s to email, they kindof have to abide by that, it's simple contract law. If at any time that speed goes under 384kbit/s, regardless of cause (act of god notwithstanding), they can be held liable.
Now, I don't have PacBell DSL, so I'm not certain of their terms and conditions, but I can pretty much guarantee that the CIR (committed information rate) of 384kbps is to the DSLAM.  At least that's how it is with my DSL provider.  On top of it, I don't really feel too sorry for these people as my DSL does not allow any bursting and I currently have no other broadband choices to my home...
Me paying them to listen to their music? Are they kidding? Why should I listen to some new piece of crap, when I can hear it on the radio for free?
Don't be naive.  You don't listen to it on the radio for free.  You pay for that music every time you buy a product from somebody that advertises.  As the saying goes, there really isn't any such thing as a free lunch.
Somehow, someway, I need to verify that it's really their key, and if I couldn't find their key before, I could get it then.
Right, and this process does not scale.
x.509 certs place the burden of proof on the organization signing the key.  So, you then need to trust the signer, but typically their terms and conditions will be available for you to take a look at to see if you find their verification process valid.
I bought the first installment this morning, and it's 20 pages long (including the title page.)  If I were buying a full-length Stephen King book (estimate it to be 400 pages) this would mean that I would be paying $20 which is a bit high to me.
Perhaps Mr. King needs to make his micropayments a little more "micro" so that customers are being offered a better value.
This brings up a question.  How much of the cost of a new book is material and distribution and how much goes to the author?  In this scheme, he has to pay for bandwidth, a web presence and credit card processing fees which are fairly low (I'd estimate to be less than 20% of the $1 cost of the book.)  That means by my calculations that 80% of the dollar goes to Mr. King which is likely a much sweeter deal for him than any of his deals with a publisher.  Does anybody have real numbers instead of these that I just pulled out of the air?
They've posted a picture of people selling pirated videotapes a block from the courthouse, to prove their point. I think that this photo proves an entirely different point.
No, I think this proves the point perfectly.  According to the MPAA, copying a copyrighted work (even a poor copy) is theft of intellectual property and should be punished.  The fact that these idiots are selling the copied material is a larger infraction IMNSHO than if I shared a copy with a friend for free even though the opportunity cost to the MPAA is the same. 
If the MPAA is going to go after DeCSS, then they need to go after the dork on the street selling first run movies with the same tenacity.
The legislative and executive branches of the federal government.  Since they are the branches of the government that enacts legislation.
who enforces and judges compliance with the 14 year monopoly? who creates the monopoly in the first place?
The judicial system would be the enforcers of copyright law as they are now.  And like now, they will act after a copyright holder files a complaint.  This makes copyright a much more reasonable law for citizens to comply with and more importantly gets works into the public domain in a reasonable timeframe.
The solution for this problem is quite simple (two steps):
1) Repeal the DMCA. 2) Reduce the length of a copyright back to 14 years (plus a 14 year extension if the artist is still alive.)
If the record industry dies as a result of this, bummer.  But at least it will be because consumers killed it by not purchasing products (or record companies did not offer compelling enough content for consumers to buy at a reasonable price.)
More government is not the answer no matter what the question is...
Yeah, but the problem is the fact that the PGP key management does not scale well.  Sure, it's easy to have the keys of a few of your buddies, but how easy is it to get the keys from joe-blow off the net?  The user did not register their public key?  Which registry did the user put their key on?  PGP v2.x? PGP v5.x? Clueless user does not understand how to send their public key? Makes it a bit of a pain in the ass.
X.509 certs might be a better way to go since it has the URL of the LDAP server from whence you can get the individual's public key.
The person to whom's post this child posted a solution to allow you to OCR from gimp, which would then allow you to post script, and then quite easily create a pdf. This is a far cry from offtopic, but someone felt the need to mark it offtopic.
At least check the link before you flame others about marking something as offtopic (*HINT* it points to http://www.microsoft.com and NO SUCH HOWTO exists.)  Duh.:-)
Slashdot Mirror
A monetary exchange is not essential.
Thanks for your response.  Unfortunately it's not at all relevant.  The post that I was replying to was basically stating that nobody had a problem paying ebay to be the middle-man.  Read the parent of my prior response.
Because when somebody sells something on ebay, they are getting paid by the purchaser.  That is not the case with Napster where the user providing the content recieves zero compensation for doing so.
Whenever states and counties have tried to make it required for citizens to confirm that they are who they claim to be, the ACLU jumps in and says that it's harassment and a violation of our voting rights.
Huh?
Where did the discussion of a flat tax come in? :-)
And I believe, a sales tax does tax everybody equally.  As I stated in my previous message, all income is eventually consumed.  That means rich and poor will eventually be taxed alike.  Will poor people pay more on taxes for necessities.  You bet.  What of it?  Poor people now spend most of their money on necessities.  Don't tax food then I guess.
(Especially since you'd have to drastically raise sales taxes to make up even a small percentage of the revenue lost by eliminating the income tax. I'm all for smaller government, but you still need some money, or are you for eliminating public works altogether?)
What do you consider drastic?  According to the Cato Institute, it'd initially be a 15 percent sales tax that would decline over time.  See the info here.  As for eliminating all public works, no, I don't agree with that notion but I am for eliminating some of them.
Your statement is not quite correct.  They (the poor) spend much more -- on basic necessities -- as a percentage of income.
So what?  Do you think that a graduated income tax will *ever* make things fair?  It will never happen.  Just look at the people at the very bottom of a tax bracket compared to those at the top of the tax bracket below them.  The people in the upper bracket will have less net income.  Yeah, that's fair.
Having the government use the tax code to "redistribute" wealth is a dismal failure and it continues to be in the name of punishing the rich to help the poor.  I'm middle class and I'm certainly not bitter about the rich getting a tax cut.  Hell, I'd like to be rich one day too and thank goodness I have the same opportunity as anybody else in this country (be them rich, poor, black, white or orange) to get there. 
We're not all equal.  But we all should have equal opportunity.  Likewise, we should all be taxed equally.  The progressive income tax does not do this.  A *simple* sales tax does.
I disagree.  Why?  All income is eventually spent.  What you are disagreeing with is that "poor" people pay their taxes on items for living and "rich" people will pay their taxes from items for living and yachts.  A sales tax that doesn't care about your "income" is the only "fair" tax there can be.  Nobody is exempt and nobody gets a special exception.
I'm of the opinion that progressive taxes are not at all fair.  In fact, I'm against income taxes in general and specifically progressive taxation for the following reasons:
Your money is taken from you slowly before you ever see it.  And if you choose to keep it all until April 15th and pay then, you are smacked with a "witholding penalty".  Excuse me?
It's a violation of my privacy for the government to know where my money comes from.
Progressive taxes allow the government to divide and conquer by pitting one group of taxpayers against another.
I live in California where the cost of living is high. So my income that is considered "upper class" to much of the country is considered "middle class" out here.  It's always a revalation every April that I'm upper class.
The IRS is a hideous organization with too much power.  You are guilty until you prove yourself innocent.
The current tax code is too difficult for anybody to understand.
I'm a firm believer in a sales tax?  Why?
ALL income is eventually consumed.  You can't get any more fair than that.
I have more control over how much I pay in taxes and when I pay them.
Much more privacy.  The government does not know how much I am paying or where my income is coming from.
It's much more difficult to evade paying taxes.
No more IRS. 
Of course if a national sales tax is ever implemented, it will be done in a fucked up way.  But I'd take that over our current income tax system ANY day.
Nope.  This was a feature of DFS.  The authentication however is quite secure since it uses a modified Kerberos IV protocol. 
Hopefully one of the new changes the community makes will be updating AFS to work within an existing Kerberos V environment without a krb4->krb5 daemon.
You're not reading carefully...  It's a 500Mhz G4 vs. 1Ghz P3.  The G4 did it in less time with half the clock speed.  End of story.
As for the worth of the benchmark, it's *quite* relevant if you use Photoshop extensively.
Bzzzzt.  That is the value of the house at this point in time.  It may be more than you are willing to pay, but it is what the market is currently bearing.
Just remember, what comes up must also come down.  Sadly, you can expect a lot of bankruptcies when all of the venture capital in the Silicon Valley dries up.
I did read the article.  I think that spokesperson is wrong.  Heaven forbid that a sales-driod not know what they're talking about.  So do you have SBC DSL and can show in their terms and condition that you are guaranteed at least 384Kbps to your email?  I don't buy that they guarantee it...
Not to nitpick too much, but the Galeon homepage states in the first sentence: "Galeon is a GNOME Web browser based on gecko (the mozilla rendering engine)."
So yeah, it's going to assume that you have GNOME installed.
It's not the purchase of the copyrighted material that I happen to object to.  If you were able to look at my CD/Video/DVD/software collection you would know this.
What *I* personally object to is only being able to play authorized media on authorized players.  Then the record/movie/software companies will control what I watch and how I watch it.
No thanks.
Now, I don't have PacBell DSL, so I'm not certain of their terms and conditions, but I can pretty much guarantee that the CIR (committed information rate) of 384kbps is to the DSLAM.  At least that's how it is with my DSL provider.  On top of it, I don't really feel too sorry for these people as my DSL does not allow any bursting and I currently have no other broadband choices to my home...
Anyhow, check out their web site.
Don't be naive.  You don't listen to it on the radio for free.  You pay for that music every time you buy a product from somebody that advertises.  As the saying goes, there really isn't any such thing as a free lunch.
I disagree.  You really can't tell much of a story in 20 pages (at least Stephen King can't. :-) 
Also, writers are typically paid for the number of words that they write, so I don't see how you can consider it "silly and arbitrary".
Right, and this process does not scale.
x.509 certs place the burden of proof on the organization signing the key.  So, you then need to trust the signer, but typically their terms and conditions will be available for you to take a look at to see if you find their verification process valid.
Perhaps Mr. King needs to make his micropayments a little more "micro" so that customers are being offered a better value.
This brings up a question.  How much of the cost of a new book is material and distribution and how much goes to the author?  In this scheme, he has to pay for bandwidth, a web presence and credit card processing fees which are fairly low (I'd estimate to be less than 20% of the $1 cost of the book.)  That means by my calculations that 80% of the dollar goes to Mr. King which is likely a much sweeter deal for him than any of his deals with a publisher.  Does anybody have real numbers instead of these that I just pulled out of the air?
No, I think this proves the point perfectly.  According to the MPAA, copying a copyrighted work (even a poor copy) is theft of intellectual property and should be punished.  The fact that these idiots are selling the copied material is a larger infraction IMNSHO than if I shared a copy with a friend for free even though the opportunity cost to the MPAA is the same. 
If the MPAA is going to go after DeCSS, then they need to go after the dork on the street selling first run movies with the same tenacity.
The legislative and executive branches of the federal government.  Since they are the branches of the government that enacts legislation.
who enforces and judges compliance with the 14 year monopoly? who creates the monopoly in the first place?
The judicial system would be the enforcers of copyright law as they are now.  And like now, they will act after a copyright holder files a complaint.  This makes copyright a much more reasonable law for citizens to comply with and more importantly gets works into the public domain in a reasonable timeframe.
1) Repeal the DMCA.
2) Reduce the length of a copyright back to 14 years (plus a 14 year extension if the artist is still alive.)
If the record industry dies as a result of this, bummer.  But at least it will be because consumers killed it by not purchasing products (or record companies did not offer compelling enough content for consumers to buy at a reasonable price.)
More government is not the answer no matter what the question is...
X.509 certs might be a better way to go since it has the URL of the LDAP server from whence you can get the individual's public key.
At least check the link before you flame others about marking something as offtopic (*HINT* it points to http://www.microsoft.com and NO SUCH HOWTO exists.)  Duh. :-)
Excuse me for not getting the least bit excited about this.