To avoid corporate control by voting with your $$ and your mouse clicks. By turning control over to the government though, we lose that ability - the government does not allow you to pick which laws and regulations you follow.
[shameless./ karma whoring mode on] As much as I hate to sound obvious, the Open Source movement is a perfect example of this. We can (and many of us have) choose to not do business with Microsoft, Sun, Oracle, Novell, etc. by developing and/or using open solutions. The 'Government' doesn't fall under the same category, we can't go write our own laws if we don't like the ones we end up with...
Government regulation should always be a last resort, as we lose personal freedom with every law they enact. Others have already quoted Franklin here, but it's worth repeating:
"Those who would sacrifice an essential liberty for temporary security deserve neither liberty nor security."
While setting a bit may not require any energy expenditure, reading it will, thus any computation based on a previously set bit will consume energy. Now, if you can prove the ability to set, read, and clear a bit with no energy being expended, you're either the harbinger of a new age of computing and life as we know it, or just insane;-)
There was a great article in the latest Forbes about Yahoo!'s seemingly incomprehensible ability to turn a profit based solely on web advertising. What it boild down to is that Yahoo! can charge 10x - 20x what other portals can charge, because they can target their ads with great precision. Most of this ability comes from the 75 million users of Yahoo!'s various services that have volunteered information such as age, location, and interests. This will simply allow Yahoo to target those who haven't volunteered info, or bock cookies etc.
The article is well worth a read anyway, they talk about such interesting concepts as predicting trends such as movie success (based on who's searching for info about it, the actors, etc.) apparently they've been quite accurate so far...
Actually, there are currently 14 AOL mega-proxies that serve all AOL content. It would probably be trivial for AOL to set up geographically distinct proxies, but I don't see it happening. It is to AOL's advantage that they be the only people who know where their surfers are, why would they give that info out for free?
The concept that I should be charged a fee because I have the _ability_ to access copyrighted materials is asinine. Very much on par with Canada's practice of charging a tax on all blank digital media to pay artists who might be getting ripped off. Both of these ideas are so absoultely stupid, that it defies explanation...
(1) Faltering company. This exception, to be narrowly construed, covers situations where a company has sought new capital or business in order to stay open and where giving notice would ruin the opportunity to get the new capital or business, and applies only to plant closings;
(2) unforeseeable business circumstances. This exception applies to closings and layoffs that are caused by business circumstances that were not reasonably foreseeable at the time notice would otherwise have been required; and
(3) Natural disaster. This applies where a closing or layoff is the direct result of a natural disaster, such as a flood, earthquake, drought or storm.
I would assume that (3) is out, but (1), (2) or both were probably invoked in this case...
that her manager simply wanted to tell her in person rather than over the phone while she was away on business, and the machinery got ahead of her. How many of you have seen the wheels of HR grind interminably, in spite of the best interests of the company or the individuals?
I still think this sucks, but I've heard and seen much worse than what appears to be an unfortunate mis-fire (no pun intended)...
Using a proprietary (closed source) vulnerability scanner is sort of equivalent to asking a person off the street to give your home a security check. Do you know what internal code audits are done on the software? What sort of 'reporting' it may do during 'updates'? I don't mean to sound too paranoid, but all it takes is one programmer...
Another, more down to earth point is the ability to write your own checks for the scanner - are you stuck with paying maintenance fees to a company for updates of dubios quality, or can you go out and write them yourself?
But from those screenshots, it's a little tough to tell if it's gnome or kde2. There are few distinguishing features in those blurry shots, and it looks similar enough to how I have my kde2 desktop set up that I could easily make that argument...
I really don't see the fun/challenge in this. Now if you were to navigate to these using a topo, compass, and landmarks (or better yet, a sextant) - that would be a challenge. You could then have a neutral third party check your accuracy with a GPS, as long as they offered NO help at all. Guess it'd be like orienteering, with DGs as your objectives, and no markers.
Under the new rules, consumers will not be able to make a copy of a movie or show on the den TV and then play it in the bedroom or take the tape over to a friend's house.
Maybe I'm missing something here, but *MY* television is a *display*, and does not have anything to do with what my TiVO/VCR/PC record, as they are hooked in-line *before* the freaking thing. How exactly is this going to work? Will I have to pair a specific TV with a specific recording device?
also:
If you want to send a signal to a device with a CD burner in it, it won't go.
So I have to remove my CD-R/DVD-RW drive in order to get my WinTV-Digital to work? Outrageous.
I sincerely hope this won't fly - anyone have any ideas as to how we can make our vioces heard on this? Who do we write, call, e-mail, bribe, cajole?
FIGHT!
I don't mean take arms, that time has not yet come (history teaches us it must, but it looks to be a looong way off). Fight with your pen, your wallet, and your voice. Tell your representatives how you feel, and let others know so that they can stand with you. Ours is a highly representative government, and your congressman needs you to re-elect him every two years to keep his job.
You may find a place that seem smore attractive on the surface, but what happens in 5 years when things change? What about in 10 years, when you realize that you don't have a bill of rights, or a strong Constitution (say what you will, but 225 years is a damn long time for a document to stand) to protect you. You'll be in the same boat you're in now, but maybe you won't be able to run away then.
Look, not everything is getting worse. As an example, there's a new federal law that protect people from having their computers seized without being charged, and makes it easier to get seized property back - did you read about that on/.? Nope, but a bunch of people got a good man to write the bill and a bunch more got their representatives to make it a law. That's the way it works.
The thing about freedom is that it's hard work maintaining it. You can't just wave a magic wand and say 'poof - be free', you have to wave the damned wand every single day, every hour, and with every breath. Our rights may be inaliable, but they don't come without cost. We haven't had to shed blood to defend them in our generation, and for that we're fortunate, but it's led many of us to forget just how valuable these freedoms are.
You've recognized something as being broken - well I say pick up your damned toolbox and get your ass in gear, we've got some fixing to do!
We need everyone to lobby congress and the senate for a constitutional ammendment requiring bill titles to accurately describe all of their contents. The use of a 'Medal of Valor' bill to snuff out more personal freedoms is the most ludicrous thing I have seen come out of DC in quite a while. While we're at it, we should require certain types of laws, ie ones that stomp on our constitution, to garner a 2/3 vote in both the house and senate instead of just a majority.
Spam, on the other hand, wastes nothing other than a miniscule amount of bandwidth
Did you even read the article? This more than proves what we've been saying all along - SPAM uses huge amounts of bandwidth. How can you even think that it only wastes a 'miniscule amount of bandwidth'?
Maybe the amount of SPAM you recieve is 'minuscule', but multiply that by the 200 million or so e-mail addresses (there are many more E-mail addresses than ISP customers) and you have a serious hog. Throw in the millions of failed SPAMs (many spammers use automatically generated 'guesses' at e-mail addresses, with a huge failure rate) that the servers still have to handle, and maybe you'll see the light...
Just because the spammer in the article was the 'little guy', they made him out to be some sort of victim. According to the article, he fires off 17 e-mails per second! That's almost 1.5M per day, obviously these people didn't opt-in. No, he bought, traded, stole, or guessed their addresses in a cheap attempt at promoting his company with our money.
No, I have no sympathy for him whatsoever...
You have two choices, you can blame the vendor and not get anywhere, or you can fix the problems yourself, and take resposibility for the problems. A lot of companies can't handle #2, so they take the 'easy' (for their careers) route of blaming vendors for all of their problems...
You seem to have a basic misunderstanding of how the power system works here. That's ok, I just got a crash-education myself.
First of all, this is not 'the government' doing this, it is the power companies.
Second, due to massive de-regulation (see the irony?) a few years ago, the responsibility for forecasting power consumption was de-centralized, and took on a slightly more 'customer-oriented' approach. For example, instead of Big Monopoly Power Co deciding how much power the state needed, BMPC ow only decides how much it's customers need, as do all the other LPCs (little power companies). During this re-adjustment, there was a lull in new power plant starts - perfectly understandable, as BMPC had no idea how LPC would affect it's customer base. Taken by itself, this lull wouldn't have caused our current (no pun intended) problem. (see #4)
Third, plants take about 2-3 years from start to finish, and believe me, they are working on them!
Fourth, due to the good economy, people are using more electricity - plain and simple. California has traditionally bought about 20% of it's power from Washington and Oregon, who have recently stopped selling us the power due to their own needs.
And finally, we are only being asked not to run our Christmas lights between 5pm and 7pm, which is peak useage time. Due to the physics of A/C power delivery, all we have to do is cut down on the power we use during peak times, and we'll be fine. Since the elctricity is generated as it's used, that's the only time we're in real danger...
You know, it's amazing how quick people can be to criticize California, must be a jealousy thing;-)
Slashdot Mirror
[shameless
Government regulation should always be a last resort, as we lose personal freedom with every law they enact. Others have already quoted Franklin here, but it's worth repeating:
While setting a bit may not require any energy expenditure, reading it will, thus any computation based on a previously set bit will consume energy. Now, if you can prove the ability to set, read, and clear a bit with no energy being expended, you're either the harbinger of a new age of computing and life as we know it, or just insane ;-)
There was a great article in the latest Forbes about Yahoo!'s seemingly incomprehensible ability to turn a profit based solely on web advertising. What it boild down to is that Yahoo! can charge 10x - 20x what other portals can charge, because they can target their ads with great precision. Most of this ability comes from the 75 million users of Yahoo!'s various services that have volunteered information such as age, location, and interests. This will simply allow Yahoo to target those who haven't volunteered info, or bock cookies etc.
The article is well worth a read anyway, they talk about such interesting concepts as predicting trends such as movie success (based on who's searching for info about it, the actors, etc.) apparently they've been quite accurate so far...
Actually, there are currently 14 AOL mega-proxies that serve all AOL content. It would probably be trivial for AOL to set up geographically distinct proxies, but I don't see it happening. It is to AOL's advantage that they be the only people who know where their surfers are, why would they give that info out for free?
The concept that I should be charged a fee because I have the _ability_ to access copyrighted materials is asinine. Very much on par with Canada's practice of charging a tax on all blank digital media to pay artists who might be getting ripped off. Both of these ideas are so absoultely stupid, that it defies explanation...
I would assume that (3) is out, but (1), (2) or both were probably invoked in this case...
that her manager simply wanted to tell her in person rather than over the phone while she was away on business, and the machinery got ahead of her. How many of you have seen the wheels of HR grind interminably, in spite of the best interests of the company or the individuals?
I still think this sucks, but I've heard and seen much worse than what appears to be an unfortunate mis-fire (no pun intended)...
Using a proprietary (closed source) vulnerability scanner is sort of equivalent to asking a person off the street to give your home a security check. Do you know what internal code audits are done on the software? What sort of 'reporting' it may do during 'updates'? I don't mean to sound too paranoid, but all it takes is one programmer...
Another, more down to earth point is the ability to write your own checks for the scanner - are you stuck with paying maintenance fees to a company for updates of dubios quality, or can you go out and write them yourself?
Whoops, looks like they 'fixed' the 'partners' link. Worked when I checked it...
But from those screenshots, it's a little tough to tell if it's gnome or kde2. There are few distinguishing features in those blurry shots, and it looks similar enough to how I have my kde2 desktop set up that I could easily make that argument...
I really don't see the fun/challenge in this. Now if you were to navigate to these using a topo, compass, and landmarks (or better yet, a sextant) - that would be a challenge. You could then have a neutral third party check your accuracy with a GPS, as long as they offered NO help at all. Guess it'd be like orienteering, with DGs as your objectives, and no markers.
Maybe I'm missing something here, but *MY* television is a *display*, and does not have anything to do with what my TiVO/VCR/PC record, as they are hooked in-line *before* the freaking thing. How exactly is this going to work? Will I have to pair a specific TV with a specific recording device?
also:
So I have to remove my CD-R/DVD-RW drive in order to get my WinTV-Digital to work? Outrageous.
I sincerely hope this won't fly - anyone have any ideas as to how we can make our vioces heard on this? Who do we write, call, e-mail, bribe, cajole?
Without the pesky registration can be found here
No registration required - here.
Hunh? This is an implementation of 802.11b, it's not exactly proprietary...
Here's a link to the whole story from the NY times - no regsitering required...
FIGHT!
/.? Nope, but a bunch of people got a good man to write the bill and a bunch more got their representatives to make it a law. That's the way it works.
I don't mean take arms, that time has not yet come (history teaches us it must, but it looks to be a looong way off). Fight with your pen, your wallet, and your voice. Tell your representatives how you feel, and let others know so that they can stand with you. Ours is a highly representative government, and your congressman needs you to re-elect him every two years to keep his job.
You may find a place that seem smore attractive on the surface, but what happens in 5 years when things change? What about in 10 years, when you realize that you don't have a bill of rights, or a strong Constitution (say what you will, but 225 years is a damn long time for a document to stand) to protect you. You'll be in the same boat you're in now, but maybe you won't be able to run away then.
Look, not everything is getting worse. As an example, there's a new federal law that protect people from having their computers seized without being charged, and makes it easier to get seized property back - did you read about that on
The thing about freedom is that it's hard work maintaining it. You can't just wave a magic wand and say 'poof - be free', you have to wave the damned wand every single day, every hour, and with every breath. Our rights may be inaliable, but they don't come without cost. We haven't had to shed blood to defend them in our generation, and for that we're fortunate, but it's led many of us to forget just how valuable these freedoms are.
You've recognized something as being broken - well I say pick up your damned toolbox and get your ass in gear, we've got some fixing to do!
it's AMD and Transmeta teaming up, against Intel. Not Intel and Transmeta as you've stated...
We need everyone to lobby congress and the senate for a constitutional ammendment requiring bill titles to accurately describe all of their contents. The use of a 'Medal of Valor' bill to snuff out more personal freedoms is the most ludicrous thing I have seen come out of DC in quite a while.
While we're at it, we should require certain types of laws, ie ones that stomp on our constitution, to garner a 2/3 vote in both the house and senate instead of just a majority.
These will be powered by Sony PS2s...
This gives 'I rewted j00' a whole new, and particularly scary meaning!!
Did you even read the article? This more than proves what we've been saying all along - SPAM uses huge amounts of bandwidth. How can you even think that it only wastes a 'miniscule amount of bandwidth'?
Maybe the amount of SPAM you recieve is 'minuscule', but multiply that by the 200 million or so e-mail addresses (there are many more E-mail addresses than ISP customers) and you have a serious hog. Throw in the millions of failed SPAMs (many spammers use automatically generated 'guesses' at e-mail addresses, with a huge failure rate) that the servers still have to handle, and maybe you'll see the light...
Just because the spammer in the article was the 'little guy', they made him out to be some sort of victim. According to the article, he fires off 17 e-mails per second! That's almost 1.5M per day, obviously these people didn't opt-in. No, he bought, traded, stole, or guessed their addresses in a cheap attempt at promoting his company with our money.
No, I have no sympathy for him whatsoever...
You have two choices, you can blame the vendor and not get anywhere, or you can fix the problems yourself, and take resposibility for the problems. A lot of companies can't handle #2, so they take the 'easy' (for their careers) route of blaming vendors for all of their problems...
You seem to have a basic misunderstanding of how the power system works here. That's ok, I just got a crash-education myself.
;-)
First of all, this is not 'the government' doing this, it is the power companies.
Second, due to massive de-regulation (see the irony?) a few years ago, the responsibility for forecasting power consumption was de-centralized, and took on a slightly more 'customer-oriented' approach. For example, instead of Big Monopoly Power Co deciding how much power the state needed, BMPC ow only decides how much it's customers need, as do all the other LPCs (little power companies). During this re-adjustment, there was a lull in new power plant starts - perfectly understandable, as BMPC had no idea how LPC would affect it's customer base. Taken by itself, this lull wouldn't have caused our current (no pun intended) problem. (see #4)
Third, plants take about 2-3 years from start to finish, and believe me, they are working on them!
Fourth, due to the good economy, people are using more electricity - plain and simple. California has traditionally bought about 20% of it's power from Washington and Oregon, who have recently stopped selling us the power due to their own needs.
And finally, we are only being asked not to run our Christmas lights between 5pm and 7pm, which is peak useage time. Due to the physics of A/C power delivery, all we have to do is cut down on the power we use during peak times, and we'll be fine. Since the elctricity is generated as it's used, that's the only time we're in real danger...
You know, it's amazing how quick people can be to criticize California, must be a jealousy thing