Yeah. But high-speed routing is a minute fraction of the cost of providing bandwith to end-users. The biggest costs are the last-mile costs. They're not so high for each subscriber, but there's darn many of them.
A port on a router capable of effectively routing 10Gb is very expensive -- but that is 10.000 1Mb adsl-connections, assuming they where all used 100% 24/7, which they ain't typical usage is more like in the 5-10% so that port would be able to handle the traffic of the order of 100 to 200 *thousand* end-users. And thus end up costing cents for each of them.
Last-mile on the other hand, for 100K users requires 100K modems, 100K physical installations, 100K times average cabling-length-to-curbside of cabling, a thousand concentrators and various bits and pieces of networking to get the traffic of everyone gathered in your city-central. (and you're a big ISP in a big city for even having 100K customers in one city) This ends up costing atleast $1000/customer, assuming you needed to do it from scratch.
Dropping a square meter of radiator into the sea is a hell of a lot more efficient than having the same square meter of radiatior in the hard vacuum of space.
He is probably refereing to Methane Clathrate, ice-like methane that exists in enormous amounts on the seabed around the world. If a substantial part of this where to be released into the atmosphere it would indeed be a disaster. However we don't have any specific reason to believe global warming would acomplish that, this ice is on the *bottom* of the ocean, where temperatures are low and stable (1-3 degree centigrade), it's unlikely a few degrees of warming would change this much.
The USA is large, many are satisfied with exploring the internal variation and never ventures abroad (bar the occasional mexico/Canada vacation.
Some even think that internal variation in USA is comparable to say variation between countries in Europe (which it isn't, which one would know if one had visited say Sweden and Italy)
English is a large and dominating language. Many don't see the point of learning foreign languages; the foreigners tend to speak better english than you speak foreign in any case.
Your political system is essentially a two-party state, which encourages black/white either/or for/against binary thinking. This also means if you discuss politics in the USA, you quickly end up essentially either on the same side (in which case there's nothing to discuss) or on oposite sides (in which case you're essentially enemies) this makes it safer to drope the entire topic. In most of Europe there's more of an understanding for the *many* possible angles and solutions for any one problem. For cooperation and compromise rather than confrontation. That makes it easier to discuss such things without it turning into a competition about who will "win" the discussion.
The USA is currently the only true superpower. This increases the tendency to think that whatever is outside the USA is irrelevant.
Basically, you guys should get out more. It's a huge and interesting world out here, much more so than many imagine.
You're (on average) rich, you can afford to. My personal opinion is that there's few things more worthwhile to do with your money than experiencing the incredible variation that this world has to offer.
I lived in Germany for the last 4 years, and yes, this 3-tier system is really silly. It *used* to be according to if you wanted more manual work or more theoretical, with Hauptschule being the most practical and gymnasium being the most theoretical. Today however it's just a quality-scale, more or less.
There's *nothing* a Hauptschuler is more qualified for doing than someone with Abitur, it's basically a school where the stupid kids go and learn less, and the split is very early, around 12 years or so ?
This ensures a class-separated society where increasingly the good-offs and the ALG-2 people live in completely separate universes that cross only whenever the good-offs decide to visit McD.
The contrast to Norway is striking. We've got 10 years of compulsory schooling, all of it together. Which gives a much broader common platform than what German kids have. Thereafter we've got 3 years of what *we* call gymnasium, or alternatively you can choose a practical education (including training in a practical labour like in Germany.)
As it is in Germany I question the point of having Hauptschule, Realschule and Gymnasium as 3 "different" schools. What is supposed to be the difference between those 3 alternatives ? Dumb, sligthly dumb, smart ? That's no basis for a separate school !
Allows arbitrary number of tag-categories (default: persons, locations, keywords) So that you can tag person:Eivind person:Anne Location:Norway
Allows hierarchical tags. A group of tags can be members of another tag. (for example, you could define family to mean 'anne or eivind or silvia or magnus' or North-America to mean 'Canada or USA'. This is a real life-saver.
Dead simple for simple use. Finding all pictures of the person Anne in the Location USA is as easy as 4 clicks: "person anne location usa" (or "location usa person anne")
Full support for Exif-information.
Supports the KDE KIPI standard for image-handling-plugins, which means there are and can be written plugins for everything from autorotating jpegs with rotation-info to ordering prints.
Very quick to use for tagging large collections, because you can tag multiple images at once. Drag a square around the 40 images you took on the picnic, rigth-click and select tag, add the tag(s) that apply to all images.
Complex searches easy for nerds. Understands C-like complex searches: "anne & !eivind & (Norway | Germany)" finds pictures that contain anne, but *not* eivind taken in Norway or Germany.
Recognizes the pictures even if you reorganize them on disc due to checksums.
Your data is stored in a easy-to-parse xml-file (optional sql-backend coming) thus they're easy to extract if you should ever regret your choice (which I personally find unlikely)
No, actually, that's not it. You see, I'm not from the USA, but from Norway. The government here have no need for giving anyone IOUs since there are no national debt.
Infact, the government *does* save money for future pensions, at the moment the fund is at around $250billion which works out as aproximately $50.000/Norwegian, that ain't quite enough to cover future pensions, but the fund is quite new only being started in 1990.
So no. My pension "account" does not contain an IOU. It contains real hard cash, bonds, stocks. And it is currently being stocked up a lot *faster* than I pay in to it due to the high oilprice.
So ? In that case it's double stupid to give him what he wants. Fine, lie there on the floor until I can get 3 other guys and we'll carry you out, would you like a banana while you wait ? Would've been much more sensible.
This question is ass-backwards. This ain't a new problem, on the contrary, this is a smaller problem now than it ever was in the past. True an individual book is more durable, and more future-proof than a DVD or a hard-disc. But that ignores the one GIANT advantage that digital media have: the ease with which they can be copied.
My fathers wedding-pictures are film-negatives, stored in a secure-against-fire safe in his apartment. He just has to hope that no fire burns too long or too hot (the safe has limits) that noone breaks in and breaks open or steals the entire safe, that the area is never flooded, etc. They are pretty secure, but there's only one of them and it's terribly expensive to secure against everything, in the end it's just a risk he has to accept.
My wedding-pictures are digital. I don't have a safe. But the pictures exist on around a dozen different physical hard-discs and around a dozen different individual DVDs. 3 of these hard-discs are in professionally run and daily backuped raids, standing in environmentally controlled mountain-halls. There's copies in 4 continents, and in probably 20 different buildings.
It'd literally take a collapse of civilization, global thermonuclear war or similar to even have a chance of wiping all these. Each individual copy ain't much secured (if at all), but the added security that comes automatically with multiple geographically dispersed copies means my pictures are a *LOT* more secure than my fathers pictures.
Lots of information that nobody cares about will be lost. Some of that information will later turn out to have been important, and we'll curse ourselves for not having saved it. But lots of information that peope *do* care about is saved, and will be saved. Since data-storage grows exponentially, the cost of storing old data falls exponentially with time, so there's basically no reason to ever stop saving something once you've saved it in the first place.
If you've taken the time and expense of saving a set of data from 1980 to 2000, you migth aswell save it forever, if it was savable for reasonable cost in 1980, it's savable for trivial cost in 2000.
Yes, saving digital works requires active maintenance. Multiple copies, regular moving to newer storage-media. Documentation of file-formats. (or conversion to file-formats that are well-documented) But the cost of this is more than offset by the gargantuan capacity and the dirt-cheap copying.
That's more or less it. There are stuff that should and must be done, a society would be much worse (for everyone) to live in if those things wheren't done. But individuals can't afford it, and voluntarily pooling resources of individuals suffer from the "free rider" problem. That's where government should step in.
Most governments today, though, do a lot of stuff that people could just aswell be doing themselves, which would give the individual more choice, which in my book is a good thing.
For example, here in Norway, you pay taxes among other reasons to finance your own pensions. People who earn more get a higher pension. I don't see the sense in it. Yes, a basic *minimum* pension is needed, you don't want anyone, old or not, to be starving on the streets. But why do I (earning decently) need to be *forced* to save for my own pensions above the minimum level ?
If a poor person can have an acceptable living-standard for $1500/month, why should I be *forced* to save up (trough taxes) so that I can have $5000/month when I retire ? What if I'd prefer spending my money now and live for $1500 later ? I ain't saying I wouldn't save up (infact I save more than I'm required to) I'm just saying I'd like to have the choice, and I don't see the sense in removing that choice. Yes, I want to be allowed to make even *dumb* choices.
To a european the hilarious thing about this is considering Bill Gates controversial for the reason that he is not religious.
That'd be just about the *least* controversial thing about the man in many parts of Europe.
He has no political experience other than lobbying.
He is/was the leader of a monopolist convicted of abusing that monopoly.
He has more money than most nations. (this in itself ain't bad, but some of the possibilities that come with it are)
He is (for natural reasons) extremely supportive of megacorps controlling more-and-more.
He has an extremist view on patents, copyrights and trademarks.
As for atheists nessecarily being more "business-like", that's up there with atheists nessecarily being less moral or less ethical.
Being an atheist simply means you don't believe in a god or a supernatural being. It does not follow that you believe in nothing unproven. (such as all ethical rules)
I think you will find, for example, that nearly all atheists believe that the human rights should be respected, that stealing is wrong, that every human is valuable, that discrimination is wrong etc etc etc, all of which are stuff that is unproven (and indeed *cannot* be proven)
Some countries, such as Norway, have invested parts of the oil-profit in buying billions of stocks, for the purpose of being able to pay for future pensions even after the oil runs out or gets scarce, without needing to hike taxes trough the roof.
remember all those times when you tried to delete the file it won't let you, saying it is in use
That, aswell as this link-mess is just a result of undergeneralization in the FS.
Under Windows, a file is a collection of bytes without precisely one name.
Under unix a file is a collection of bytes with zero or more names. The difference is significant.
Thus, in Windows, a file can't have two equally valid names. (hardlinks in unix) At best there's "shortcuts" which are sorta like symlinks, only they're implemented as a desktop-hack so they're really more like kdes.desktop-files. Each tool that want to understand shortcuts need to parse and interpret them, they can't just pretend they're files like you can in unix.
Also, this means a file cannot have zero names and still exist, which is what prevents you from deleting open files on Windows. To allow the removal of the one name *MUST* mean to remove the file too (since every file must have precisely one name), and that ain't doable since there's a process with a open filehandle to that file. (not without killing the process or invalidating its filehandle anyway)
Under unix there is no problem: You delete the file, it now has one name less than it used to have. If it used to have only a single name it now has zero names -- which is perfectly fine as far as unix is concerned. It still has one *reference* though, the open filehandle. So the actual blocks on disc aren't freed. That only happens when the *reference-count* of the file falls to zero.
The trick is, under unix the reference-count of a file is a separate thing from the names of a file. A name is a reference to a file, but it's perfectly possible (and normal) to have other kinds of references to a file too. You can try it yourself if you've got two open shells:
echo hallo > file.txt (creates textfile with the text "hallo")
less file.txt
(in other shell) rm file.txt
Verify that file is still there in less, can still be scrolled. (well, would be scrollable if it was bigger) Disc-space is not freed up.
close less
disc-space is now freed as the reference-count is zero.
This, frankly, has worked since literally the 70ies on unix (if not the 60ies) its mindboggling that MS *still* hasn't managed to get this rigth.
Do you know *anyone* who seriously uses a Windows-computer and *hasn't* had the "you can't delete/move/rename this file because it is in use" ? Didn't think so. Under unix, it just works. And has worked for decades.
You think you can handle 100,000 users on single computer if they are all holding an open connection? Probably not, you only have 65,000 ports, and there's many other reasons this doesn't work well.
Perhaps not, but that ain't one of the reasons. Here's a hint for you: It's possible to have more than 1 open connection on a web-server that listens only on port 80. Why do you think that is ?
A tcp-connection needs to be uniquely defined by the quad local-ip:local-port:remote-ip:remote-port, so infact with a single local ip and a single local port, you can have 65536 open connections to *each* of the 4 billion or so ips in ipv4 (or the uncountable ones in ipv6)
There's discount-airlines doing Brazil-Germany now, from 149 euro. Look around. (no idea how much money 149 euros is in terms of working-hours at brazilian salaries)
Copyright law is a default statute. It only applies if there is no agreement.
No. It always applies.
Copyrigth law says: You cannot legally distribute without permission. That *always* applies. Offcourse you can still distribute if you *do* have permission, the law never said anything else.
The presence of an agreement - abided by or not, invokes contract law - per the spin on the Sun V MS case.
Contract-law is relevant if there is a contract. (that's sorta a -duh-)
A contract requires a two (or multi) sided agreement that is actively agreed to by all involved parties. If I write the following sentence: "I will give you a beer if you wash my car." that is not a contract. That is an *offer*. It only becomes a contract the moment you agree to it: You answer: "Ok, I accept your offer" (or something to the same effect). After this we have a valid contract, and contract-law is relevant. *before* you agree though, there *IS* no contract. A contract *requires* active acceptance from atleast 2 parties. Otherwise it's at most an offer.
The GPL (and other free licenses) thus *aren't* contracts up until you voluntarily choose to agree to their terms. You are free to completely ignore their existence. In which case your permissions are ruled by copyrigth-law. (which applies whether you agree to it or not, that's sorta the distinction between contracts and law...)
It is complete bullshit to claim that the mere existance of the GPL (or similar licenses) mean that breaking copyrigth-law with works that are covered by them is automatically a contract-dispute and not a copyrigth-violation.
Any action forbidden by copyrigth-law is a copyrigth-violation if you perform it without permission. Plain and simple. The only way you can claim you're not breaking copyrigth-law would be to claim that you *do* have permission. (well, or that you yourself are the author, or that the work in question is not covered by copyrigth)
If you redistribute without permission, you're breaking copyright-law.
The issue is I do have permission, just not under the terms I'm doing it.
No you most definitely do not. If I say: "If X, then Y" it does *not* follow that Y regardless of X.
Are you saying that if I say: "If you clean my car, you can grab a beer in my fridge", then you can choose to grab the beer without first cleaning the car, and then claim you're *not* guilty of theft (because you have permission to take the beer) only guilty of breach-of-contract because you didn't fulfill your half of the deal ? I suspect you yourself see that that is nonsense.
"Entrance forbidden, unless you're family!"
You enter anyway, despite not being family.
You then claim you're *not* guilty of trespassing, but only of "breach of contract" because you only failed to fulfill your part of the agreement by marrying someone in the family. It won't fly.
"Entrance for authorized personell only"
You enter anyway, despite being in no way authorized. You subsequently claim you're not guilty of trespassing, but only guilty of breach of contract. It's not gonna fly in any court I can think of. (US law is ridicolous, but not *THAT* ridiculous)
No. I mean there's a fair chance that people who buy DRM-infected media today will be unable to play those in the future, after the next "one true format" takes over. People who insist on media in uncrippled formats are golden offcourse, aslong as it doesn't become a felony to posess a naked mp3-file.
Uhm, no. That'd be "data-entry monkeys". The average programmer productivity is not dependant on typing-speed at all, and less so the more challenging the project is. The trick in programming ain't typing quickly, but typing the *correct* stuff.
Brooks in his Mythical Man Month has a good discussion of programmer-productivity in a large project. Average programmer-output is something like 100 lines of code a *day*.
If you're hammering out massive amounts of trivial code where the limiting factor is your typing-speed, you are doing something wrong. Probably, you should think about the problem at hand 10 times as much, and write only 1/10th as much code.
Not really. For some large companies with stupid CEOs, sure. For Joe Average, once he hears a rumour that you can get exactly the same product perfectly legally for free, there's no way in hell he's paying much.
MS is dominant. But not even close to dominant enough that people wouldn't generally hear that rumour pretty soon.
Worse yet, Dell and other PC-manufacturers are even *less* likely to buy "MS-Linux" after they realize they can give their customers exactly the same product and be cheaper by downloading Linux themselves.
That's not the conclusion. Regardless of who you believe:
Oil is a non-renewable resource. (in reasonable timeframes)
Burning oil contributes to increased CO2 in our atmosphere.
A lot of the oil is controlled by regimes we don't like to be dependant upon.
Energy-independence is a good thing in general.
Since we've in general collected the easiest-to-collect oil first, it's reasonable to assume that it'll get harder and harder to collect more oil. (technology-advances will help offcourse, but nevertheless the trend is clear)
Oil-burning also contributes to local pollution (in addition to the CO2-problem which is a global one)
Oil is a valuable raw-material for plastic, fertilizer and much more. It's a shame to simply burn it.
That's all pretty uncontroversial, and good reasons to invest in developing alternative sources of energy.
The problem with the "peak oil" theory is that the near-term doomsday-scenarios that it draws up are highly unlikely to come true, they're FUD, effectively. And FUD is the *wrong* basis for future energy-policy.
Nobody really believes that 2000 was oil-peak and that 2020 will have oil-production similar to that in 1980. Nobody really believes that the US would, if forced to reduce your oil-consumption by 10% "wholly shatter an oil-dependent economy and reduce its citizenry to poverty." that is nonsense, we've had fluctuations in oil-consumption bigger than that with nothing near that bad effects. (I ain't saying it'd have no influence, I'm saying it's fear-mongering to claim it'll "wholly shatter" the economy and make everyone poor.
Claiming that oil-production will decline at 8% yearly (thus being halved in 9 years) is similarily utterly ridicolous. That's *not* a sensible basis for designing a new energy-policy. (and USA desperately needs one)
The peak-oil doomsday-priests also conveniently ignore natural gas, for the reason that we have up until now used a much smaller fraction of our natural-gas deposits, so even *if* they where rigth about oil-production (which I don't think they are) we'd nevertheless be able to produce natural gas at a higher-than-current rate for a long time. A lot of stuff we use oil for today could be done with natural gas instead without large disruption.
I *agree* with the conclusion: we should reduce our dependance on oil.
I just find the FUD distasteful and unbelievable. Peak Oil -- the way it's usually presented, is a mix of crackpot and fud.
This is one of the more insightful ideas behind why DRM will fail. Consumers (eventually) will refuse to accept that the audio from a disc they just bought at the store cannot be played on their portable player.
I think you're rigth, but I unfortunately also think that the pain has to increase by an order of magnitude or so before the average consumer will wake up and smell the coffee.
People haven't experienced (yet), that they require the permission of the seller to transfer 'their' digital music library to a new computer, and that that won't work if the company in question is out of business.
People haven't experienced (yet), that closing the analogue hole means banning general-purpose recording-devices.
People haven't yet seen their collection wither and die when the next "one true format" takes over and Apple/MS brings out new players and new OSes that don't support the old format. (If you're lucky, you *may* be able to convert your collection, but this too only works if Apple *wants* you to be able to do that)
Actually, pretty much every part of your body absorbs electromagnetic radiation at 6.4Mhz. Most of it will get absorbed in the surface (too high frequency to penetrate deeply)
What effects that'll have remains to be seen, at best ignorable skin-heating. Unlikely to induce cancer as the radiation is (several!) magnitudes to weak to be ionizing.
Boarding is actually in principle quicker, because the A380 is capable of being boarded on both decks simultaneously. turnaround-time *is* of big importance to efficient fligth, don't think Airbus didn't consider it.
As for cramped, that's simply so because given a choice about paying more for more space, people tend to, in practice, go for less-space-but-cheaper nearly all the time, atleast aslong as they're actually paying for it. (business-trips is another matter, apparently the extra space/service is worth it when your company is paying....)
anyone gets a licence to distribute my software [SloggyWare] if, and only if you do X, Y, and Z
Then, if you distribute my software without doing X, Y and Z, I can only sue you for "breach of contract", and *not* for copyrigth-violation ?
That makes zero sense whatsoever.
The contract says you are given a licence, if and only if you do to X, Y and Z.
If you haven't, then you also have no licence. If you distribute without being in posession of a licence, you're breaking copyrigth-law.
I would argue that in this case no contact between us exists *at all*. A contract requires active, informed concent from all involved parties to be valid. You never signed the contract, and you never entered into it implicitly by doing what was required of you. On what basis would you claim that there is a contract between us at all ?
You where *offered* a contract, I *declared* that I'll enter into such an agreement with anyone who wishes to. (do X,Y,Z get licence to distribute) But you didn't *take* the offer, thus there *is* no contract.
The GPL says this very explicitly: You are not required to accept this License, since you have not signed it. However, nothing else grants you permission to modify or distribute the Program or its derivative works. These actions are prohibited by law if you do not accept this License.
Yes, this wasn't under GPL, but the GPL here only makes explicit what is true anyway. It's perfectly voluntarily to agree to the GPL, you don't have to at all. If you *don't* however, you have no permission to redistribute. If you redistribute without permission, you're breaking copyright-law.
Longevity hasn't been a problem up until now. I've generally stopped using computers not because they've stopped working, but because there's a much better one available for a price that is low enough to make swapping viable. (economically advantageous even, since I use my computers for a living)
At work it's the same -- very few of our computers gets swapped because they're broken. Most gets swapped because it's bad business to have a $100/hour employee sitting around waiting for a computer worth $1000 to get around to doing it's thing. Especially when there's now a 3 times as powerful computer available for $1000.
This may change, but I doubt it. In my jurisdicaiton consumer protection laws ensure that consumers are covered against (non-abuse) defects for 5 years, so if a substantial fraction of computers start blowing up in less than 5 years, that'll be *really* bad business for Intel/AMD and friends. If they blow up *after* 5 years the consumer is out of luck. But most people are reasonably happy swapping computers every 5 years in any case.
Now power-consumption is a different matter. At work we care about this indirectly -- we demand silent machines, and powerhungry tends to equal noisy-fans (which disturb) At home I care too, even though many people don't. (or aren't aware that theres significant differences)
Slashdot Mirror
A port on a router capable of effectively routing 10Gb is very expensive -- but that is 10.000 1Mb adsl-connections, assuming they where all used 100% 24/7, which they ain't typical usage is more like in the 5-10% so that port would be able to handle the traffic of the order of 100 to 200 *thousand* end-users. And thus end up costing cents for each of them.
Last-mile on the other hand, for 100K users requires 100K modems, 100K physical installations, 100K times average cabling-length-to-curbside of cabling, a thousand concentrators and various bits and pieces of networking to get the traffic of everyone gathered in your city-central. (and you're a big ISP in a big city for even having 100K customers in one city) This ends up costing atleast $1000/customer, assuming you needed to do it from scratch.
Dropping a square meter of radiator into the sea is a hell of a lot more efficient than having the same square meter of radiatior in the hard vacuum of space.
But he's confused. Methane Clathrate ain't concentrated in the Arctic. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methane_clathrate
Basically, you guys should get out more. It's a huge and interesting world out here, much more so than many imagine.
You're (on average) rich, you can afford to. My personal opinion is that there's few things more worthwhile to do with your money than experiencing the incredible variation that this world has to offer.
There's *nothing* a Hauptschuler is more qualified for doing than someone with Abitur, it's basically a school where the stupid kids go and learn less, and the split is very early, around 12 years or so ?
This ensures a class-separated society where increasingly the good-offs and the ALG-2 people live in completely separate universes that cross only whenever the good-offs decide to visit McD.
The contrast to Norway is striking. We've got 10 years of compulsory schooling, all of it together. Which gives a much broader common platform than what German kids have. Thereafter we've got 3 years of what *we* call gymnasium, or alternatively you can choose a practical education (including training in a practical labour like in Germany.)
As it is in Germany I question the point of having Hauptschule, Realschule and Gymnasium as 3 "different" schools. What is supposed to be the difference between those 3 alternatives ? Dumb, sligthly dumb, smart ? That's no basis for a separate school !
Infact, the government *does* save money for future pensions, at the moment the fund is at around $250billion which works out as aproximately $50.000/Norwegian, that ain't quite enough to cover future pensions, but the fund is quite new only being started in 1990.
So no. My pension "account" does not contain an IOU. It contains real hard cash, bonds, stocks. And it is currently being stocked up a lot *faster* than I pay in to it due to the high oilprice.
Next explanation please !
So ? In that case it's double stupid to give him what he wants. Fine, lie there on the floor until I can get 3 other guys and we'll carry you out, would you like a banana while you wait ? Would've been much more sensible.
My fathers wedding-pictures are film-negatives, stored in a secure-against-fire safe in his apartment. He just has to hope that no fire burns too long or too hot (the safe has limits) that noone breaks in and breaks open or steals the entire safe, that the area is never flooded, etc. They are pretty secure, but there's only one of them and it's terribly expensive to secure against everything, in the end it's just a risk he has to accept.
My wedding-pictures are digital. I don't have a safe. But the pictures exist on around a dozen different physical hard-discs and around a dozen different individual DVDs. 3 of these hard-discs are in professionally run and daily backuped raids, standing in environmentally controlled mountain-halls. There's copies in 4 continents, and in probably 20 different buildings.
It'd literally take a collapse of civilization, global thermonuclear war or similar to even have a chance of wiping all these. Each individual copy ain't much secured (if at all), but the added security that comes automatically with multiple geographically dispersed copies means my pictures are a *LOT* more secure than my fathers pictures.
Lots of information that nobody cares about will be lost. Some of that information will later turn out to have been important, and we'll curse ourselves for not having saved it. But lots of information that peope *do* care about is saved, and will be saved. Since data-storage grows exponentially, the cost of storing old data falls exponentially with time, so there's basically no reason to ever stop saving something once you've saved it in the first place.
If you've taken the time and expense of saving a set of data from 1980 to 2000, you migth aswell save it forever, if it was savable for reasonable cost in 1980, it's savable for trivial cost in 2000.
Yes, saving digital works requires active maintenance. Multiple copies, regular moving to newer storage-media. Documentation of file-formats. (or conversion to file-formats that are well-documented) But the cost of this is more than offset by the gargantuan capacity and the dirt-cheap copying.
Infrastructure. Education. Long-term research. Healthcare. Defence. Police. Courts.
Those sorts of things.
Most governments today, though, do a lot of stuff that people could just aswell be doing themselves, which would give the individual more choice, which in my book is a good thing.
For example, here in Norway, you pay taxes among other reasons to finance your own pensions. People who earn more get a higher pension. I don't see the sense in it. Yes, a basic *minimum* pension is needed, you don't want anyone, old or not, to be starving on the streets. But why do I (earning decently) need to be *forced* to save for my own pensions above the minimum level ?
If a poor person can have an acceptable living-standard for $1500/month, why should I be *forced* to save up (trough taxes) so that I can have $5000/month when I retire ? What if I'd prefer spending my money now and live for $1500 later ? I ain't saying I wouldn't save up (infact I save more than I'm required to) I'm just saying I'd like to have the choice, and I don't see the sense in removing that choice. Yes, I want to be allowed to make even *dumb* choices.
That'd be just about the *least* controversial thing about the man in many parts of Europe.
He has no political experience other than lobbying.
He is/was the leader of a monopolist convicted of abusing that monopoly.
He has more money than most nations. (this in itself ain't bad, but some of the possibilities that come with it are)
He is (for natural reasons) extremely supportive of megacorps controlling more-and-more.
He has an extremist view on patents, copyrights and trademarks.
As for atheists nessecarily being more "business-like", that's up there with atheists nessecarily being less moral or less ethical.
Being an atheist simply means you don't believe in a god or a supernatural being. It does not follow that you believe in nothing unproven. (such as all ethical rules)
I think you will find, for example, that nearly all atheists believe that the human rights should be respected, that stealing is wrong, that every human is valuable, that discrimination is wrong etc etc etc, all of which are stuff that is unproven (and indeed *cannot* be proven)
Some countries, such as Norway, have invested parts of the oil-profit in buying billions of stocks, for the purpose of being able to pay for future pensions even after the oil runs out or gets scarce, without needing to hike taxes trough the roof.
That, aswell as this link-mess is just a result of undergeneralization in the FS.
Under Windows, a file is a collection of bytes without precisely one name.
Under unix a file is a collection of bytes with zero or more names. The difference is significant.
Thus, in Windows, a file can't have two equally valid names. (hardlinks in unix) At best there's "shortcuts" which are sorta like symlinks, only they're implemented as a desktop-hack so they're really more like kdes .desktop-files. Each tool that want to understand shortcuts need to parse and interpret them, they can't just pretend they're files like you can in unix.
Also, this means a file cannot have zero names and still exist, which is what prevents you from deleting open files on Windows. To allow the removal of the one name *MUST* mean to remove the file too (since every file must have precisely one name), and that ain't doable since there's a process with a open filehandle to that file. (not without killing the process or invalidating its filehandle anyway)
Under unix there is no problem: You delete the file, it now has one name less than it used to have. If it used to have only a single name it now has zero names -- which is perfectly fine as far as unix is concerned. It still has one *reference* though, the open filehandle. So the actual blocks on disc aren't freed. That only happens when the *reference-count* of the file falls to zero.
The trick is, under unix the reference-count of a file is a separate thing from the names of a file. A name is a reference to a file, but it's perfectly possible (and normal) to have other kinds of references to a file too. You can try it yourself if you've got two open shells:
This, frankly, has worked since literally the 70ies on unix (if not the 60ies) its mindboggling that MS *still* hasn't managed to get this rigth.
Do you know *anyone* who seriously uses a Windows-computer and *hasn't* had the "you can't delete/move/rename this file because it is in use" ? Didn't think so. Under unix, it just works. And has worked for decades.
Perhaps not, but that ain't one of the reasons. Here's a hint for you: It's possible to have more than 1 open connection on a web-server that listens only on port 80. Why do you think that is ?
A tcp-connection needs to be uniquely defined by the quad local-ip:local-port:remote-ip:remote-port, so infact with a single local ip and a single local port, you can have 65536 open connections to *each* of the 4 billion or so ips in ipv4 (or the uncountable ones in ipv6)
There's discount-airlines doing Brazil-Germany now, from 149 euro. Look around. (no idea how much money 149 euros is in terms of working-hours at brazilian salaries)
No. It always applies.
Copyrigth law says: You cannot legally distribute without permission. That *always* applies. Offcourse you can still distribute if you *do* have permission, the law never said anything else.
The presence of an agreement - abided by or not, invokes contract law - per the spin on the Sun V MS case.
Contract-law is relevant if there is a contract. (that's sorta a -duh-)
A contract requires a two (or multi) sided agreement that is actively agreed to by all involved parties. If I write the following sentence: "I will give you a beer if you wash my car." that is not a contract. That is an *offer*. It only becomes a contract the moment you agree to it: You answer: "Ok, I accept your offer" (or something to the same effect). After this we have a valid contract, and contract-law is relevant. *before* you agree though, there *IS* no contract. A contract *requires* active acceptance from atleast 2 parties. Otherwise it's at most an offer.
The GPL (and other free licenses) thus *aren't* contracts up until you voluntarily choose to agree to their terms. You are free to completely ignore their existence. In which case your permissions are ruled by copyrigth-law. (which applies whether you agree to it or not, that's sorta the distinction between contracts and law...)
It is complete bullshit to claim that the mere existance of the GPL (or similar licenses) mean that breaking copyrigth-law with works that are covered by them is automatically a contract-dispute and not a copyrigth-violation.
Any action forbidden by copyrigth-law is a copyrigth-violation if you perform it without permission. Plain and simple. The only way you can claim you're not breaking copyrigth-law would be to claim that you *do* have permission. (well, or that you yourself are the author, or that the work in question is not covered by copyrigth)
If you redistribute without permission, you're breaking copyright-law.
The issue is I do have permission, just not under the terms I'm doing it.
No you most definitely do not. If I say: "If X, then Y" it does *not* follow that Y regardless of X.
Are you saying that if I say: "If you clean my car, you can grab a beer in my fridge", then you can choose to grab the beer without first cleaning the car, and then claim you're *not* guilty of theft (because you have permission to take the beer) only guilty of breach-of-contract because you didn't fulfill your half of the deal ? I suspect you yourself see that that is nonsense.
"Entrance forbidden, unless you're family!"
You enter anyway, despite not being family.
You then claim you're *not* guilty of trespassing, but only of "breach of contract" because you only failed to fulfill your part of the agreement by marrying someone in the family. It won't fly.
"Entrance for authorized personell only"
You enter anyway, despite being in no way authorized. You subsequently claim you're not guilty of trespassing, but only guilty of breach of contract. It's not gonna fly in any court I can think of. (US law is ridicolous, but not *THAT* ridiculous)
No. I mean there's a fair chance that people who buy DRM-infected media today will be unable to play those in the future, after the next "one true format" takes over. People who insist on media in uncrippled formats are golden offcourse, aslong as it doesn't become a felony to posess a naked mp3-file.
Brooks in his Mythical Man Month has a good discussion of programmer-productivity in a large project. Average programmer-output is something like 100 lines of code a *day*.
If you're hammering out massive amounts of trivial code where the limiting factor is your typing-speed, you are doing something wrong. Probably, you should think about the problem at hand 10 times as much, and write only 1/10th as much code.
MS is dominant. But not even close to dominant enough that people wouldn't generally hear that rumour pretty soon.
Worse yet, Dell and other PC-manufacturers are even *less* likely to buy "MS-Linux" after they realize they can give their customers exactly the same product and be cheaper by downloading Linux themselves.
That's all pretty uncontroversial, and good reasons to invest in developing alternative sources of energy.
The problem with the "peak oil" theory is that the near-term doomsday-scenarios that it draws up are highly unlikely to come true, they're FUD, effectively. And FUD is the *wrong* basis for future energy-policy.
Nobody really believes that 2000 was oil-peak and that 2020 will have oil-production similar to that in 1980. Nobody really believes that the US would, if forced to reduce your oil-consumption by 10% "wholly shatter an oil-dependent economy and reduce its citizenry to poverty." that is nonsense, we've had fluctuations in oil-consumption bigger than that with nothing near that bad effects. (I ain't saying it'd have no influence, I'm saying it's fear-mongering to claim it'll "wholly shatter" the economy and make everyone poor.
Claiming that oil-production will decline at 8% yearly (thus being halved in 9 years) is similarily utterly ridicolous. That's *not* a sensible basis for designing a new energy-policy. (and USA desperately needs one)
The peak-oil doomsday-priests also conveniently ignore natural gas, for the reason that we have up until now used a much smaller fraction of our natural-gas deposits, so even *if* they where rigth about oil-production (which I don't think they are) we'd nevertheless be able to produce natural gas at a higher-than-current rate for a long time. A lot of stuff we use oil for today could be done with natural gas instead without large disruption.
I *agree* with the conclusion: we should reduce our dependance on oil.
I just find the FUD distasteful and unbelievable. Peak Oil -- the way it's usually presented, is a mix of crackpot and fud.
I think you're rigth, but I unfortunately also think that the pain has to increase by an order of magnitude or so before the average consumer will wake up and smell the coffee.
People haven't experienced (yet), that they require the permission of the seller to transfer 'their' digital music library to a new computer, and that that won't work if the company in question is out of business.
People haven't experienced (yet), that closing the analogue hole means banning general-purpose recording-devices.
People haven't yet seen their collection wither and die when the next "one true format" takes over and Apple/MS brings out new players and new OSes that don't support the old format. (If you're lucky, you *may* be able to convert your collection, but this too only works if Apple *wants* you to be able to do that)
What effects that'll have remains to be seen, at best ignorable skin-heating. Unlikely to induce cancer as the radiation is (several!) magnitudes to weak to be ionizing.
As for cramped, that's simply so because given a choice about paying more for more space, people tend to, in practice, go for less-space-but-cheaper nearly all the time, atleast aslong as they're actually paying for it. (business-trips is another matter, apparently the extra space/service is worth it when your company is paying....)
anyone gets a licence to distribute my software [SloggyWare] if, and only if you do X, Y, and Z
Then, if you distribute my software without doing X, Y and Z, I can only sue you for "breach of contract", and *not* for copyrigth-violation ?
That makes zero sense whatsoever.
The contract says you are given a licence, if and only if you do to X, Y and Z.
If you haven't, then you also have no licence. If you distribute without being in posession of a licence, you're breaking copyrigth-law.
I would argue that in this case no contact between us exists *at all*. A contract requires active, informed concent from all involved parties to be valid. You never signed the contract, and you never entered into it implicitly by doing what was required of you. On what basis would you claim that there is a contract between us at all ?
You where *offered* a contract, I *declared* that I'll enter into such an agreement with anyone who wishes to. (do X,Y,Z get licence to distribute) But you didn't *take* the offer, thus there *is* no contract.
The GPL says this very explicitly: You are not required to accept this License, since you have not signed it. However, nothing else grants you permission to modify or distribute the Program or its derivative works. These actions are prohibited by law if you do not accept this License.
Yes, this wasn't under GPL, but the GPL here only makes explicit what is true anyway. It's perfectly voluntarily to agree to the GPL, you don't have to at all. If you *don't* however, you have no permission to redistribute. If you redistribute without permission, you're breaking copyright-law.
At work it's the same -- very few of our computers gets swapped because they're broken. Most gets swapped because it's bad business to have a $100/hour employee sitting around waiting for a computer worth $1000 to get around to doing it's thing. Especially when there's now a 3 times as powerful computer available for $1000.
This may change, but I doubt it. In my jurisdicaiton consumer protection laws ensure that consumers are covered against (non-abuse) defects for 5 years, so if a substantial fraction of computers start blowing up in less than 5 years, that'll be *really* bad business for Intel/AMD and friends. If they blow up *after* 5 years the consumer is out of luck. But most people are reasonably happy swapping computers every 5 years in any case.
Now power-consumption is a different matter. At work we care about this indirectly -- we demand silent machines, and powerhungry tends to equal noisy-fans (which disturb) At home I care too, even though many people don't. (or aren't aware that theres significant differences)