Let's say some notable scientist, lets say stephen hawking, has convincing evidence that our sun is about to go nova, and there is only one way to stop it, and it would take everyone getting involved. Donating money, or something.
It should be considered political, even if there is little disagreement about the public good, because it involves gathering people and resources for a public purpose. The scientific discourse is the part where the observations are made and predictions tested. But once you start talking about what government and society should do with the information, then that is political discourse.
The part of the definition of "political" and "politics", that has insinuated itself into our lexicon, is that implication of "political" is to be self serving. "Political" should not have this double meaning. If a person is seeking a power trip, then there are plenty of other words to describe them and their actions, but it is dangerous and just plain wrong to give up yet another word to its insinuating connotations. Especially a word like "political" at a time when we need more healthy political discourse without people having to worry about being branded as "political" and have that be a bad thing. Seems we have allowed our language to become so infected with negative connotations and double meanings that we lose much of our ability to be succinct without the need for further explanation.
Most people go into government to try and do good for people, some just do it for a job, but a few do it to simply ingratiate themselves with their associates. For us to allow the characterization of something as being political to become a purely negative thing is a greater threat to our democracy and freedom than all our external enemies combined.
You have an opinion despite the fact that you have not seen the movie? Now, that is skewed.
My opinion was about the accuracy of the previous post and the meaning of the word "political". Have you seen it? Does Al Gore not suggest we do something collectively? And isn't that political? I think that is a pretty safe assumption that he does, and if so then that certainly is political. Politics isn't a bad thing inherently it just has developed a bad connotation, the comment was directed at the way the poster was using the word. I know what he was trying to say, but it is really bad for representative government if we allow our language to be corrupted along with a few crooked politicians.
Seems now that if we agree with someone's politics we say it isn't political, but if we disagree then we call it political and somehow that undercuts the message because they are trying to raise political support for a cause. Much healthier would be to talk about the merits of Al Gore's political proposals be they good or bad, not get caught in a meta argument and pretending that they are not political proposals just because the word has developed a negative connotation. Or to somehow accept as a valid that calling the message political is a way to dismiss the person delivering the message and avoid confrontation.
I know that ad hominem attacks are forever intertwined in politics, but to say something isn't political just because it does not include either an ad hominem attack or one directed at a political party doesn't mean the message isn't political. Al Gore's movie is political. am image of a swirling hurricane coming out of a smoke stack itself is a particularly potent political message. Unless you are telling me that the content of the movie is just Al Gore dispassionately saying that Global Warming is an interesting prediction and we will just see how it turns out?
Maybe I am fighting against linguistic evolution, but that something should be characterized as political discourse should be a characterization of honor and not disparagement.
Re:Did Al Gore buy advertising on this site?
on
An Inconvenient Truth
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· Score: 1, Flamebait
I disagree. Despite the orator, there's really very little political about this film.
I find it very hard to believe that in 100 minutes of film that Al Gore doesn't suggest that the government do something about Global Warming or whatever he is talking about. Here's a little hint: when you propose things for the government to do on our behalf and try and rally support for those things, then that is politics.
It is a very common yet skewed perspective that sees politics as just a sporting event between two parties.
It's straightforward to do this for 3D games, because the system has real depth information. Just use shutter glasses and render alternate frames with the viewpoint shifted by one eye separation distance. That's easy, and looks good if the system can render upwards of 70 fps.
Nvidia already offers stereo 3d drivers which work great with my eMagin 3d visor. As you say the games already have Z depth information to render a realistic environment, which the software just renders from a slightly offset perspective. I believe it is 30Hz from each perspective for a combined 60Hz. Though, the HUD and crosshairs could use a little work in some games, since the game creators always give them depth. But if it is distracting then they can usually be disabled if you can't get them to line up properly with the 3d background.
The best stereo 3d effects are in games which have a lot of close at hand objects. Looking down the barrel of the gun in Call of Duty for instance is pretty darn cool. Or climbing up a ladder where the ladder looks like it has real depth. I'd say virtual objects out to about a virtual 10 feet or so, just like in the real world, are really compelling in 3d.
Since these are simply just robots (although small robots) that contain no biological agents, this isn't getting anywhere near germ/biological warfare.
I agree that the hornets themselves would not be considered biological warfare, but they would be a good delivery vehicle for biological warfare agents. If they could be further refined and miniaturized to inject the agent without significant detection, say more like mosquitoes, then it might be far less obvious and more damaging to infect the person with an infectious disease.
Imagine infecting a spiritual leader with a cocktail of STDs, the damage to their reputation would be far more effective than killing them and making them a martyr. Or infecting a leader with some other slow acting and incapacitating disease, the evidence for the attack could then be covered up long before the effects were felt. A chemical poison, especially fast acting, means that it would be likely to be detected and then retaliated against.
A lot of the political posts on this form fall into this category. Nobody in the US wants coal-fired power plants, but they don't want the price of electricity to double. They want energy conservation, but they want their server farms burning enough electricity to power 10 homes. On and on....
And politicians have forever been promising us everything, and telling us that they need the fruit of our labor to deliver. All of a sudden they can't deliver what was promised and it is our fault for expecting too much? Yes, people might have been fools for believing the politicians, but at least as bad were the generations of politicians, including this one, that have promised us everything to justify taking more from us.
I think politicians just want a return to the good old days when taxes were low and there was more room to raise them.
Honestly they brought it upon themselves.. The dirty spear campaigns have existed since the civil war and they will continue, the net is simply a new tool they realize they can use.
The difference being that if you paid off the right people then you could have previously squashed scandals and kept them simply word of mouth rumors. Now if there is dirt out there, then someone on some messageboard is going to start a thread on it and instantly they have worldwide distribution potential. I think the key there is "potential", since most people can tell for themselves what is garbage and what is relevant. And only what people think is relevant or particularly shocking is going to get passed on in a word of mouth pattern, except now accelerated by electronic communication.
So, published communications is now no longer just a tool that they can use, it is a tool that everyone can use. Which is really what they are complaining about. I think polticians, like the rest of us, just need to get a little backbone. People say nasty things about eachother which are often exaggerated for effect but have some basis in truth. People should learn to address criticisms not just dismiss it as insult.
I might be the voting machines going haywire, it might be that 18,000 people decided they didn't want either bum (the reason I didn't vote for either of them), but since there's no paper trail, there's no way of knowing.
I often don't vote for the candidates that are presented by the parties when I am not satisfied with the choice or lack of choice. I have begun writing in candidates when this happens to avoid any confusion, but I wonder if a "no vote" option could be made available to make clearer the intent of the voter.
I would expect that since Linux is open source that when a Microsoft engineer does something, then he might use Linux as a reference... which means there are likely significant identifiable blocks of code within the Windows Software that were taken from Linux and other Open Source software and therefore are in violation of the GPL.
If Microsoft sues, then the community should be ready to pump money into FSF and other groups. And we should be ready to counter sue, and subpeona every bit of Microsoft Source code including past versions of the code to find the illegal code in Microsoft products.
7.5 hours isn't that bad if it is done overnight, so it won't tie up your connection. And at current prices 15 Gigabytes of memory runs you about $4 or so, just looking at newegg.com. And you can reuse that space if you don't like the movie or if burning to a BlueRay becomes cheaper.
HDCP would only be needed if HDCP was enabled in whatever format the content was encoded. Last time I checked most content did not have HDCP because it would piss off a lot of people that had HDTVs but not the HDCP enabled HDMI connectors to see it at the full resolution their hardware supports.
The "hassle" as you put it, is what the music companies tried to artificially encumber CDs with so as to prevent the distribution of downloadable mp3s, seems that people got around the hassles pretty well until the content distributors finally figured out that they should probably just give consumers the options that they want.
I've often wondered this myself. What is the reward for developing open source software?
Don't forget that if you open source software, then you yourself can use it later. Think about how much software that you have written for some company or other has gone down the black hole because it is their software to do with what they like. Or been used for 6 months and then discarded. Perfectly good code, which someone else could have used or built upon, but some schmuck CEO decides to merge your company with another company and the new department head decides to standardize on whatever language of the day. All of a sudden years of your life's work is suddenly irrelevant and will see no further use. Might even see the ugly end of the delete key. I think a lot of us don't have to imagine that situation since we have lived it, sometimes over and over.
Perhaps not always even just specific implementations, but certainly having a common repository of open source software to draw upon and contribute to has been a boon for software development. Seems for any profession or society in general to grow it has to let some trade secrets become common knowledge, so that the entire profession can build upon what was already figured out before. Otherwise, we end up paying some guy for the development of the wheel or fire over and over again and get nowhere.
Open Source is simply Software developments way of standardizing practices and providing a more common base for future development. It is how the technology and profession can grow.
Think of any profession and there is an "Open Source" type of knowledge sharing that goes on in order for it to evolve and improve in quality. Where standardized tools are developed and the knowledge of how to use them is passed on without much effort.
Well, don't believe everything you read... Sounds like it is about 15 Gigs (they left off the 1) for a full length movie in HD, so that would be 7 1/2 hours with basic FiOS service and 2 1/2 hours with the 44.95/month FiOS service. Still less time than I sleep most nights. And still faster than Netflix.
And the Fiber is being rolled out now and is available in many communities, it is not just in some distant future. Where BlueRay and HD-DVD still require millions of households to buy a player which costs hundreds of dollars and buy discs that now cost $30 at bestbuy. I think "DOA" is a bit of a exaggeration, since the studios can control to some extent how much content is going to be made downloadable. But if Apple can pull of downloadable HD content with its iTV and Microsoft with its Xbox, then I don't see either BlueRay or HD DVD becoming a dominant format the way that DVDs have, more of a niche or in between technology.
With five times the visual information of a standard-def flick, an HD download of The Matrix, were it even available, could take all day over the average broadband connection.
A full length HD format movie would be around 5 Gigabytes, according to this article. So considering my download of the 1 Gigabyte Battlefield 2142 demo took about 30 minutes last night over my basic $34.95/month FiOS connection, that means it would just take about 2 1/2 hours to download a full length movie. Theoretically less than an hour with the faster service offerings. I really don't see the problem with that. Netflix takes a day or so to get your movie and it is very popular. I could see just leaving the computer on over night to get the download and watch the movie the next day. A torrent like download could even distribute the load.
The only thing holding back distribution over broadband Internet is the studios. If the studios allow distribution like this, then there is a big enough market out there to make this work.
This does not strike me as a particularly practical plan.
Yes, after i posted that I did a bit of math (less than you, thanks for the numbers) and figured similarly that it wasn't within a realm of practicality, since there are simply not enough comets in the inner solar system to go around. Excuse the double meaning. I figure if it could have be done with 10 or so then that could be imaginable as a project if we got a few in a lucky orbit and could give then a little nudge say with some albedo mechanism (dirty snowball push) or something similarly less resource intensive.
I just don't see much point in going to other planets if they can't sustain life and the resources aren't worth it to bring back to Earth. I also don't see a biodome or other type of enclosed settlement being particularly desirable as a place to live. Terra forming is not going to be worth it if the effects only last a thousand years or so, since it is hardly enough time to justify the massive expense. Many thousands of years of self sufficiency should be the goal of terra forming, not short term settlements of dubious value back to the home planet. So what is the point of going to Mars? Much less making it more livable when we are talking about expending resources and time greater than all the works of mankind put together, if it wouldn't give us anything even close to what we have on Earth.
Mars seems very likely never to be able to be self sustaining for very long. Which isn't to say it isn't worth a try, but I think Venus would have a much longer payback period for the effort and could see a sustainable biosphere developed to take advantage of Venus's plentiful Oxygen and Carbon.
With all its CO2 all it requires is a bit of Hydrogen to start making water. The best way to get sustainable hydrogen is to get the planet spinning so that it can form its own magnetic field which would start trapping hydrogen from solar winds. I bet if we started nudging comets towards Venus, hitting it just right and seeded the atmosphere with wee beasties, then we could accelerate the process and have a second planet to call home in a matter of centuries not millennium.
Blizzard does not support Linux. It was great that some enterprising people got WoW working, but that doesn't mean you can complain when Blizzard does something that unintentionally breaks it.
Sure you can complain. Just means they don't legally have to do anything about it. But it is bad customer service not to listen to your customers whether they have to listen or not.
debunk: To expose or ridicule the falseness, sham, or exaggerated claims of
When something is described as a "debunking" then don't start reading expecting a complete expository of reason and science, expect just enough to get buy and throw in a few rhetorical jabs. Debunking is not part of science, debunking is for drunks at cocktail parties and magazine writers... and for Slashdot.
Much like the current crop of popular tv shows such as Lost, Heroes, Jericho, 24, Prison Break, etc.
I agree, but B5 was probably more like the current Battlestar Gallactica in terms of the balance between arc and episodic storylines. But the key thing was that JMS promised us that the main story would be told in no more than 5 seasons, which was almost cut short to 4 seasons. That sort of finiteness really gave a sense to the story that it was more than just leading us along to milk the audience for all it was worth. B5 was in effect the antidote to the original Battlestar Gallactica. A show based on an overarching story which we knew would come to some resolution. Something that I don't necessarily feel is the case with the current crop of soap opera-ish arc focused series.
When a television show asks its viewers to invest years of their lives watching a show and following the story arc over many episodes and seasons, then it helps to have a sense that there will be some point to the story arc. There is a difference between leaving a few loose ends open for dramatic effect and screwing over your audience by having no resolution to the plot. I think an entire generation of television watchers could be treading down the path to disappointment if most of the current crop of shows don't follow through on their main storyline arcs.
On the desktop, backwards compatibility with Windows binaries (through WINE or something) would be better than backwards compatibility with apps written for previous versions of Linux. I think backwards compatibility needs to be looked at carefully and selectively. For years, many Microsoft users just grumbled and accepted it when Microsoft broke backwards compatibility with its.doc format, knowing full well that it was a ploy to get people to upgrade MS Office. Selective backwards compatibility has been Microsofts hallmark, not full backwards compatibility.
There are also occasions when you want to communicate with someone, and not talk, like in the theatre, or a lecture, or a meeting.
Yes, I wonder if privacy is really the key reason for text messaging on a cell phone. If you speak on the phone, then everyone around you hears, but if you text message only those looking over your shoulder would see what you are typing. So, does voice to text really fit the problem?
You've got it wrong. The "shoddy debian patches" were just an excuse mentioned by the Mozilla Corporation, but they weren't the dealbreaker - they could have been negotiated. The dealbreaker were the images (their license is not free), because either debian includes them and then it violates its own standards (DFSG), or doesn't include them and then violates Mozilla's trademark conditions they set forward or they change the name of the package.
You can't have people going around building their own software and calling it firefox and using the logo. Would you really want Microsoft to come out with their own firefox preinstalled in Windows, that crashed on startup and directed you to download Internet Explorer? IceWeasel is a stupid fork. How about Ubuntu? Can someone just come out with their own distribution call it Ubunutu, use Ubuntu logos and have it be something completely different?
Debian wanted to commit a fraud and mozilla called them on it. As well intentioned as patches might be they still have a potential for instability which would reflect badly back on the real firefox. The same will be true with this new Java licensing, if you want to call it Java it is going to have to be Java, otherwise you call it something else. No Open Source project can build support if the name and versioning aren't centrally managed.
Re:I'm reminded of some famous last words....
on
The Zune Cometh
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· Score: 1
I'd say the more famous words are the constant "iPod killer" headlines every few weeks.
Followed by "Zune Disaster" headlines for the next 5 years. With all its Damn DRM, this gadget is DOA.
'Surely if Diebold can make a secure ATM there is no reason why it cannot make secure and reliable e-voting apparatus in which the public has confidence.'
In an ATM you have a distinct advantage in that all parties to the transaction want to have a record of the transaction and who made it. So, there are permanent records that can be audited and verified. With election machines you cannot record identifying information, for anonymity's sake, and you have to assume that a person willing to modify the records will have unrestricted access to the hardware for at least brief periods of time before or during the election. So you need a system that is at least as auditable as paper ballots and can only be verified by the voter at the time the vote is cast. Oh and you need the same surge capacity as paper ballots because you can't assume that you will see an average turnout.
Given that the whole point of ATMs is to reduce the number of people that need to be involved, I don't see an analogous ability to reduce the number of election workers involved with electronic atm like voting machines. What are these Vendors claiming the benefits are compared to optical scanned paper ballots? Just saving trees? Or do these things actually save costs, even when they are implemented properly? Seems to me voting machines invariably cause problems that you otherwise might not have, such as long lines, so any savings should be seen against all the costs and any reduction in capacity from not having enough voting machines per total number of registered voters.
So that if it saves a few thousand dollars per election, but the cost is that 15% of registered voters decide not to vote because they would have to wait outside in the rain while your 5 voting machines are monopolized by indecision, in a precinct of 5,000 registered voters. I grew up in a district that had no more than 5 voting machines for about 5000 people. Given the surge of people that showed up during relatively short period of times near the end of the day, it would have been much better to have had paper ballots which could have meant that you can hand out a few dozen ballots at a time, at least, and then you can easily handle over a thousand people an hour without a wait since scanning the ballots just takes a second.
Just think how easy it is to intentionally cause long lines in large precincts when you don't have enough voting machines to go around, you just need a couple hundred people, lets call them Republicans, to decide to take a little longer deciding who to vote for. If they know the district is Democratic and it is a statewide race, then a relatively small group of uncoordinated individuals could cause hundreds or thousands of voters to just go home. And the difference between indecision and purposefully taking your time is indistinguishable if you say take 5 minutes to vote. Think throughput and process, even forgetting about security, paper ballots are fundamentally superior because you can hand as many as you want out and people can scan them in when they are ready.
I think once you start talking about having this surge capacity in the number of voting computers that are on site, then any purported overall cost savings with ballot printing costs goes away. Even assuming $2000 per 5000 ballots printed. So for one theoretical precinct, $2000 per election plus the cost of optical scan equipment, probably need just one or two scanners, not sure how much they cost, versus the cost of 8 voting computers which still may not give you the same voter throughput as paper ballots and probably don't last as long as the optical scan machines.
but it's hard to ignore the fact that you're getting in bed with a bunch of tax dodging fatcats who could care less about most of the stuff you want.
Eliminating taxes is a bit different than tax dodging... I think tax dodging is more a description of the goals of the Democrats and Republicans who want to give tax loopholes out to their corporate and special interest supporters like candy for votes. Libertarians just want to set a fair (lower) rate and have everyone pay their fair share. It hurts libertarians that they don't want to use the social and economic controls that have served the two parties so well to curry favor. In other words you can't give out tax breaks if the rate is already the lowest it can be in order to run a stripped down version of government.
Slashdot Mirror
Let's say some notable scientist, lets say stephen hawking, has convincing evidence that our sun is about to go nova, and there is only one way to stop it, and it would take everyone getting involved. Donating money, or something.
It should be considered political, even if there is little disagreement about the public good, because it involves gathering people and resources for a public purpose. The scientific discourse is the part where the observations are made and predictions tested. But once you start talking about what government and society should do with the information, then that is political discourse.
The part of the definition of "political" and "politics", that has insinuated itself into our lexicon, is that implication of "political" is to be self serving. "Political" should not have this double meaning. If a person is seeking a power trip, then there are plenty of other words to describe them and their actions, but it is dangerous and just plain wrong to give up yet another word to its insinuating connotations. Especially a word like "political" at a time when we need more healthy political discourse without people having to worry about being branded as "political" and have that be a bad thing. Seems we have allowed our language to become so infected with negative connotations and double meanings that we lose much of our ability to be succinct without the need for further explanation.
Most people go into government to try and do good for people, some just do it for a job, but a few do it to simply ingratiate themselves with their associates. For us to allow the characterization of something as being political to become a purely negative thing is a greater threat to our democracy and freedom than all our external enemies combined.
You have an opinion despite the fact that you have not seen the movie? Now, that is skewed.
My opinion was about the accuracy of the previous post and the meaning of the word "political". Have you seen it? Does Al Gore not suggest we do something collectively? And isn't that political? I think that is a pretty safe assumption that he does, and if so then that certainly is political. Politics isn't a bad thing inherently it just has developed a bad connotation, the comment was directed at the way the poster was using the word. I know what he was trying to say, but it is really bad for representative government if we allow our language to be corrupted along with a few crooked politicians.
Seems now that if we agree with someone's politics we say it isn't political, but if we disagree then we call it political and somehow that undercuts the message because they are trying to raise political support for a cause. Much healthier would be to talk about the merits of Al Gore's political proposals be they good or bad, not get caught in a meta argument and pretending that they are not political proposals just because the word has developed a negative connotation. Or to somehow accept as a valid that calling the message political is a way to dismiss the person delivering the message and avoid confrontation.
I know that ad hominem attacks are forever intertwined in politics, but to say something isn't political just because it does not include either an ad hominem attack or one directed at a political party doesn't mean the message isn't political. Al Gore's movie is political. am image of a swirling hurricane coming out of a smoke stack itself is a particularly potent political message. Unless you are telling me that the content of the movie is just Al Gore dispassionately saying that Global Warming is an interesting prediction and we will just see how it turns out?
Maybe I am fighting against linguistic evolution, but that something should be characterized as political discourse should be a characterization of honor and not disparagement.
I disagree. Despite the orator, there's really very little political about this film.
I find it very hard to believe that in 100 minutes of film that Al Gore doesn't suggest that the government do something about Global Warming or whatever he is talking about. Here's a little hint: when you propose things for the government to do on our behalf and try and rally support for those things, then that is politics.
It is a very common yet skewed perspective that sees politics as just a sporting event between two parties.
It's straightforward to do this for 3D games, because the system has real depth information. Just use shutter glasses and render alternate frames with the viewpoint shifted by one eye separation distance. That's easy, and looks good if the system can render upwards of 70 fps.
Nvidia already offers stereo 3d drivers which work great with my eMagin 3d visor. As you say the games already have Z depth information to render a realistic environment, which the software just renders from a slightly offset perspective. I believe it is 30Hz from each perspective for a combined 60Hz. Though, the HUD and crosshairs could use a little work in some games, since the game creators always give them depth. But if it is distracting then they can usually be disabled if you can't get them to line up properly with the 3d background.
The best stereo 3d effects are in games which have a lot of close at hand objects. Looking down the barrel of the gun in Call of Duty for instance is pretty darn cool. Or climbing up a ladder where the ladder looks like it has real depth. I'd say virtual objects out to about a virtual 10 feet or so, just like in the real world, are really compelling in 3d.
Since these are simply just robots (although small robots) that contain no biological agents, this isn't getting anywhere near germ/biological warfare.
I agree that the hornets themselves would not be considered biological warfare, but they would be a good delivery vehicle for biological warfare agents. If they could be further refined and miniaturized to inject the agent without significant detection, say more like mosquitoes, then it might be far less obvious and more damaging to infect the person with an infectious disease.
Imagine infecting a spiritual leader with a cocktail of STDs, the damage to their reputation would be far more effective than killing them and making them a martyr. Or infecting a leader with some other slow acting and incapacitating disease, the evidence for the attack could then be covered up long before the effects were felt. A chemical poison, especially fast acting, means that it would be likely to be detected and then retaliated against.
A lot of the political posts on this form fall into this category. Nobody in the US wants coal-fired power plants, but they don't want the price of electricity to double. They want energy conservation, but they want their server farms burning enough electricity to power 10 homes. On and on....
And politicians have forever been promising us everything, and telling us that they need the fruit of our labor to deliver. All of a sudden they can't deliver what was promised and it is our fault for expecting too much? Yes, people might have been fools for believing the politicians, but at least as bad were the generations of politicians, including this one, that have promised us everything to justify taking more from us.
I think politicians just want a return to the good old days when taxes were low and there was more room to raise them.
Honestly they brought it upon themselves.. The dirty spear campaigns have existed since the civil war and they will continue, the net is simply a new tool they realize they can use.
The difference being that if you paid off the right people then you could have previously squashed scandals and kept them simply word of mouth rumors. Now if there is dirt out there, then someone on some messageboard is going to start a thread on it and instantly they have worldwide distribution potential. I think the key there is "potential", since most people can tell for themselves what is garbage and what is relevant. And only what people think is relevant or particularly shocking is going to get passed on in a word of mouth pattern, except now accelerated by electronic communication.
So, published communications is now no longer just a tool that they can use, it is a tool that everyone can use. Which is really what they are complaining about. I think polticians, like the rest of us, just need to get a little backbone. People say nasty things about eachother which are often exaggerated for effect but have some basis in truth. People should learn to address criticisms not just dismiss it as insult.
I might be the voting machines going haywire, it might be that 18,000 people decided they didn't want either bum (the reason I didn't vote for either of them), but since there's no paper trail, there's no way of knowing.
I often don't vote for the candidates that are presented by the parties when I am not satisfied with the choice or lack of choice. I have begun writing in candidates when this happens to avoid any confusion, but I wonder if a "no vote" option could be made available to make clearer the intent of the voter.
I would expect that since Linux is open source that when a Microsoft engineer does something, then he might use Linux as a reference... which means there are likely significant identifiable blocks of code within the Windows Software that were taken from Linux and other Open Source software and therefore are in violation of the GPL.
If Microsoft sues, then the community should be ready to pump money into FSF and other groups. And we should be ready to counter sue, and subpeona every bit of Microsoft Source code including past versions of the code to find the illegal code in Microsoft products.
7.5 hours isn't that bad if it is done overnight, so it won't tie up your connection. And at current prices 15 Gigabytes of memory runs you about $4 or so, just looking at newegg.com. And you can reuse that space if you don't like the movie or if burning to a BlueRay becomes cheaper.
HDCP would only be needed if HDCP was enabled in whatever format the content was encoded. Last time I checked most content did not have HDCP because it would piss off a lot of people that had HDTVs but not the HDCP enabled HDMI connectors to see it at the full resolution their hardware supports.
The "hassle" as you put it, is what the music companies tried to artificially encumber CDs with so as to prevent the distribution of downloadable mp3s, seems that people got around the hassles pretty well until the content distributors finally figured out that they should probably just give consumers the options that they want.
I've often wondered this myself. What is the reward for developing open source software?
Don't forget that if you open source software, then you yourself can use it later. Think about how much software that you have written for some company or other has gone down the black hole because it is their software to do with what they like. Or been used for 6 months and then discarded. Perfectly good code, which someone else could have used or built upon, but some schmuck CEO decides to merge your company with another company and the new department head decides to standardize on whatever language of the day. All of a sudden years of your life's work is suddenly irrelevant and will see no further use. Might even see the ugly end of the delete key. I think a lot of us don't have to imagine that situation since we have lived it, sometimes over and over.
Perhaps not always even just specific implementations, but certainly having a common repository of open source software to draw upon and contribute to has been a boon for software development. Seems for any profession or society in general to grow it has to let some trade secrets become common knowledge, so that the entire profession can build upon what was already figured out before. Otherwise, we end up paying some guy for the development of the wheel or fire over and over again and get nowhere.
Open Source is simply Software developments way of standardizing practices and providing a more common base for future development. It is how the technology and profession can grow.
Think of any profession and there is an "Open Source" type of knowledge sharing that goes on in order for it to evolve and improve in quality. Where standardized tools are developed and the knowledge of how to use them is passed on without much effort.
Open source is natural.
Well, don't believe everything you read... Sounds like it is about 15 Gigs (they left off the 1) for a full length movie in HD, so that would be 7 1/2 hours with basic FiOS service and 2 1/2 hours with the 44.95/month FiOS service. Still less time than I sleep most nights. And still faster than Netflix.
And the Fiber is being rolled out now and is available in many communities, it is not just in some distant future. Where BlueRay and HD-DVD still require millions of households to buy a player which costs hundreds of dollars and buy discs that now cost $30 at bestbuy. I think "DOA" is a bit of a exaggeration, since the studios can control to some extent how much content is going to be made downloadable. But if Apple can pull of downloadable HD content with its iTV and Microsoft with its Xbox, then I don't see either BlueRay or HD DVD becoming a dominant format the way that DVDs have, more of a niche or in between technology.
With five times the visual information of a standard-def flick, an HD download of The Matrix, were it even available, could take all day over the average broadband connection.
A full length HD format movie would be around 5 Gigabytes, according to this article. So considering my download of the 1 Gigabyte Battlefield 2142 demo took about 30 minutes last night over my basic $34.95/month FiOS connection, that means it would just take about 2 1/2 hours to download a full length movie. Theoretically less than an hour with the faster service offerings. I really don't see the problem with that. Netflix takes a day or so to get your movie and it is very popular. I could see just leaving the computer on over night to get the download and watch the movie the next day. A torrent like download could even distribute the load.
The only thing holding back distribution over broadband Internet is the studios. If the studios allow distribution like this, then there is a big enough market out there to make this work.
This does not strike me as a particularly practical plan.
Yes, after i posted that I did a bit of math (less than you, thanks for the numbers) and figured similarly that it wasn't within a realm of practicality, since there are simply not enough comets in the inner solar system to go around. Excuse the double meaning. I figure if it could have be done with 10 or so then that could be imaginable as a project if we got a few in a lucky orbit and could give then a little nudge say with some albedo mechanism (dirty snowball push) or something similarly less resource intensive.
I just don't see much point in going to other planets if they can't sustain life and the resources aren't worth it to bring back to Earth. I also don't see a biodome or other type of enclosed settlement being particularly desirable as a place to live. Terra forming is not going to be worth it if the effects only last a thousand years or so, since it is hardly enough time to justify the massive expense. Many thousands of years of self sufficiency should be the goal of terra forming, not short term settlements of dubious value back to the home planet. So what is the point of going to Mars? Much less making it more livable when we are talking about expending resources and time greater than all the works of mankind put together, if it wouldn't give us anything even close to what we have on Earth.
Mars seems very likely never to be able to be self sustaining for very long. Which isn't to say it isn't worth a try, but I think Venus would have a much longer payback period for the effort and could see a sustainable biosphere developed to take advantage of Venus's plentiful Oxygen and Carbon.
With all its CO2 all it requires is a bit of Hydrogen to start making water. The best way to get sustainable hydrogen is to get the planet spinning so that it can form its own magnetic field which would start trapping hydrogen from solar winds. I bet if we started nudging comets towards Venus, hitting it just right and seeded the atmosphere with wee beasties, then we could accelerate the process and have a second planet to call home in a matter of centuries not millennium.
Blizzard does not support Linux. It was great that some enterprising people got WoW working, but that doesn't mean you can complain when Blizzard does something that unintentionally breaks it.
Sure you can complain. Just means they don't legally have to do anything about it. But it is bad customer service not to listen to your customers whether they have to listen or not.
debunk: To expose or ridicule the falseness, sham, or exaggerated claims of
When something is described as a "debunking" then don't start reading expecting a complete expository of reason and science, expect just enough to get buy and throw in a few rhetorical jabs. Debunking is not part of science, debunking is for drunks at cocktail parties and magazine writers... and for Slashdot.
Much like the current crop of popular tv shows such as Lost, Heroes, Jericho, 24, Prison Break, etc.
I agree, but B5 was probably more like the current Battlestar Gallactica in terms of the balance between arc and episodic storylines. But the key thing was that JMS promised us that the main story would be told in no more than 5 seasons, which was almost cut short to 4 seasons. That sort of finiteness really gave a sense to the story that it was more than just leading us along to milk the audience for all it was worth. B5 was in effect the antidote to the original Battlestar Gallactica. A show based on an overarching story which we knew would come to some resolution. Something that I don't necessarily feel is the case with the current crop of soap opera-ish arc focused series.
When a television show asks its viewers to invest years of their lives watching a show and following the story arc over many episodes and seasons, then it helps to have a sense that there will be some point to the story arc. There is a difference between leaving a few loose ends open for dramatic effect and screwing over your audience by having no resolution to the plot. I think an entire generation of television watchers could be treading down the path to disappointment if most of the current crop of shows don't follow through on their main storyline arcs.
On the desktop, backwards compatibility with Windows binaries (through WINE or something) would be better than backwards compatibility with apps written for previous versions of Linux. I think backwards compatibility needs to be looked at carefully and selectively. For years, many Microsoft users just grumbled and accepted it when Microsoft broke backwards compatibility with its .doc format, knowing full well that it was a ploy to get people to upgrade MS Office. Selective backwards compatibility has been Microsofts hallmark, not full backwards compatibility.
There are also occasions when you want to communicate with someone, and not talk, like in the theatre, or a lecture, or a meeting.
Yes, I wonder if privacy is really the key reason for text messaging on a cell phone. If you speak on the phone, then everyone around you hears, but if you text message only those looking over your shoulder would see what you are typing. So, does voice to text really fit the problem?
You've got it wrong. The "shoddy debian patches" were just an excuse mentioned by the Mozilla Corporation, but they weren't the dealbreaker - they could have been negotiated. The dealbreaker were the images (their license is not free), because either debian includes them and then it violates its own standards (DFSG), or doesn't include them and then violates Mozilla's trademark conditions they set forward or they change the name of the package.
You can't have people going around building their own software and calling it firefox and using the logo. Would you really want Microsoft to come out with their own firefox preinstalled in Windows, that crashed on startup and directed you to download Internet Explorer? IceWeasel is a stupid fork. How about Ubuntu? Can someone just come out with their own distribution call it Ubunutu, use Ubuntu logos and have it be something completely different?
Debian wanted to commit a fraud and mozilla called them on it. As well intentioned as patches might be they still have a potential for instability which would reflect badly back on the real firefox. The same will be true with this new Java licensing, if you want to call it Java it is going to have to be Java, otherwise you call it something else. No Open Source project can build support if the name and versioning aren't centrally managed.
I'd say the more famous words are the constant "iPod killer" headlines every few weeks.
Followed by "Zune Disaster" headlines for the next 5 years. With all its Damn DRM, this gadget is DOA.
'Surely if Diebold can make a secure ATM there is no reason why it cannot make secure and reliable e-voting apparatus in which the public has confidence.'
In an ATM you have a distinct advantage in that all parties to the transaction want to have a record of the transaction and who made it. So, there are permanent records that can be audited and verified. With election machines you cannot record identifying information, for anonymity's sake, and you have to assume that a person willing to modify the records will have unrestricted access to the hardware for at least brief periods of time before or during the election. So you need a system that is at least as auditable as paper ballots and can only be verified by the voter at the time the vote is cast. Oh and you need the same surge capacity as paper ballots because you can't assume that you will see an average turnout.
Given that the whole point of ATMs is to reduce the number of people that need to be involved, I don't see an analogous ability to reduce the number of election workers involved with electronic atm like voting machines. What are these Vendors claiming the benefits are compared to optical scanned paper ballots? Just saving trees? Or do these things actually save costs, even when they are implemented properly? Seems to me voting machines invariably cause problems that you otherwise might not have, such as long lines, so any savings should be seen against all the costs and any reduction in capacity from not having enough voting machines per total number of registered voters.
So that if it saves a few thousand dollars per election, but the cost is that 15% of registered voters decide not to vote because they would have to wait outside in the rain while your 5 voting machines are monopolized by indecision, in a precinct of 5,000 registered voters. I grew up in a district that had no more than 5 voting machines for about 5000 people. Given the surge of people that showed up during relatively short period of times near the end of the day, it would have been much better to have had paper ballots which could have meant that you can hand out a few dozen ballots at a time, at least, and then you can easily handle over a thousand people an hour without a wait since scanning the ballots just takes a second.
Just think how easy it is to intentionally cause long lines in large precincts when you don't have enough voting machines to go around, you just need a couple hundred people, lets call them Republicans, to decide to take a little longer deciding who to vote for. If they know the district is Democratic and it is a statewide race, then a relatively small group of uncoordinated individuals could cause hundreds or thousands of voters to just go home. And the difference between indecision and purposefully taking your time is indistinguishable if you say take 5 minutes to vote. Think throughput and process, even forgetting about security, paper ballots are fundamentally superior because you can hand as many as you want out and people can scan them in when they are ready.
I think once you start talking about having this surge capacity in the number of voting computers that are on site, then any purported overall cost savings with ballot printing costs goes away. Even assuming $2000 per 5000 ballots printed. So for one theoretical precinct, $2000 per election plus the cost of optical scan equipment, probably need just one or two scanners, not sure how much they cost, versus the cost of 8 voting computers which still may not give you the same voter throughput as paper ballots and probably don't last as long as the optical scan machines.
Would not have happened if Slashdot used PostgreSQL.
Let the flamewars begin...
Unthreaded flame wars are much less enjoyable.
but it's hard to ignore the fact that you're getting in bed with a bunch of tax dodging fatcats who could care less about most of the stuff you want.
Eliminating taxes is a bit different than tax dodging... I think tax dodging is more a description of the goals of the Democrats and Republicans who want to give tax loopholes out to their corporate and special interest supporters like candy for votes. Libertarians just want to set a fair (lower) rate and have everyone pay their fair share. It hurts libertarians that they don't want to use the social and economic controls that have served the two parties so well to curry favor. In other words you can't give out tax breaks if the rate is already the lowest it can be in order to run a stripped down version of government.