I think, instead, the large manufacturers should not be prohibited from selling "empty" computers. IE, OS installation should be purely optional from the factory. Unfortunately, whenever this is tried, MS comes out of the woodwork and makes noises about suing for encouraging software piracy. Maybe if they threw Ubuntu on there it would appease MS and cost basically nothing for them.
Dell does this for its servers. I recently bought a PowerEdge from them with no OS preloaded, on the configuration screen I just chose RedHat Linux configuration to let them know what I intended to install on it. Though I ended up using Ubuntu server.
Dell could easily do the same thing. And I would be perfectly happy paying the same amount for a linux install as the Windows installed version as long as the hardware just worked under the OS out of the box, but no OS should be cheaper than OS preinstalled.
It would be more appropriate to sue the English language and alphabet, because last time I checked "u" and "you" are pronounced just about the same way, which is the problem, not marketing.
I had problems with Microsoft Office... then it required the CD to patch it, problem was I couldn't find the CD. So, I unistalled Office and downloaded OpenOffice and have never regretted the switch. Now I can actually get some work done.
But why must Linux or FreeBSD or whatever appeal to the average person? We as open source developers don't have limitless time and resources to spend making our software usable by everyone, or EZ enough for grandma to use.
It is also in our self interest to get as many people using linux as possible, because then developers will make more software for use with Linux and more people will work on usability. Look at firefox as an example of a very successful open source project. If the user community was only a quarter as big, then we would likely not see as many improvements made. Look at apache, same thing. Linux on the server is rock solid and being used in millions of servers, those of us that use linux servers benefit from the large market which means bugs get identified and fixed and it becomes easier to get answers to our questions.
If you want to use Linux on the desktop, besides usability for yourself, it makes perfect sense to want to see linux become more widely used as a desktop OS for the same reasons as any other open source product. More people using it means that it will become better software. This has already happened, but would probably reach more critical mass if ubuntu and debian could start reaching a larger percentage of the market as an everyday OS.
The limit's not to do with your connection speed as such - it's to do with being polite and not putting too much drain on the server your downloading from.
The design of the website is what would be causing greater server load, not a browser setting. The total amount of resources is the same if we are just talking about getting all of a pages images in parallel instead of serially. So, if you are just getting all the needed files more quickly then you are just getting out of the way more quickly for when the next guy tries to connect. Seems that this balance should be decided on the server side based on available resources and likely number of connections, not the client.
When I ran a small web server back in the nineties which was serving up large files over a slow connection hosted on slow computers, I remember the biggest benefit to increasing bandwidth was that quicker download times meant that people were no longer tying up processing power and memory because they could complete their downloads more quickly. Being able to handle more simultaneous connections is great, but if you can get the downloads done more quickly then you can free up processing power more quickly.
In order to spend my tax dollars and intrude on the privacy of the people, they need to show a reasonable cause. Blanket surveillance under the assumption that you might be about to commit a criminal act does not meet those criteria.
That is the point. It is a democracy, or supposed to be, and to give this much power to the police and expect then to use it only for good and have no ability to provide effective oversight. We don't have to be anti-police in order to think this is a bad idea. Sure we don't have an individual right to demand this be stopped, but collectively we do.
YouTube has processes in place to receive DMCA takedown notices and remove identified copyright material. Napster didn't have a process in place to do this, and claimed to not be able to do so. The judge disagreed and said Napster had both the ability and duty to remove identified copyrighted material, but did not, so Napster was held liable.
Bingo!
Why do people find this so hard to understand? Napster was held liable for not following the DMCA, Youtube and google are following the DMCA so they are not liable for the copyrighted content that is posted by others. That doesn't mean that individuals are not still liable for illegal copying and distribution on youtube, just that the service provider doesn't share it as long as they respond when they are notified that one of their users has posted something that they didn't have a right to.
This is actually a good provision of the DMCA which should be preserved. Otherwise every messageboard on the internet gets shutdown, every anonymous or even unmanaged file server has its plug pulled, because no Internet Web site or service provider can bear the brunt of infinite liability just for offering a service that its users could potentially abuse. Really if you can't be certain that people's expression is legally copied, then without this provision of the DMCA and a presumption of burden on the copyright holder to actively protect their copyright, then you are left with society which leaves expression to the licensed and verified few.
I think the one thing that companies overlook is. There's no absolute requirement that being carbon neutral requires you to power your own stuff with the energy. How about investment in a wind farm in southwest kansas [excellent location for wind power]. Or 10 acres of Solar pannels in Mexico? I think helping Mexico reduce carbon usage is probably better (polution wise) than helping the US...
I'd prefer to see companies actually benefit from improved efficiencies and sustainable power, otherwise what is it really saying about the concept of sustainable energy? That you can make a lot of money burning coal, oil and gas and then use that money to help poor people waste and pollute less? If it is a good idea, then do for yourself first and prove it is better than burning coal, oil and gas. Otherwise you run the risk of pushing yet another unsustainable infrastructure on a less wealthy country just to make us feel better.
What other nation or organization has a spacecraft capable of servicing Hubble within 24-36 months? Bear in mind, Hubble was designed to be serviced by the shuttle. Everyone else is pretty much using capsules exclusively, which aren't nearly as EVA-friendly nor do they have the necessary robotic arm.
Voting Libertarian in this situation is akin to voting Republican since all the Republicans are doing is attempting to limit Federal spending on embryonic stem cell research, which Libertarians would say should be limited to the private sector anyway.
Except that some Republicans are saying to ban the research altogether and not just limit Federal spending.
Wouldn't it be that once they cross the line and start actually making money directly from the content, as reruns do with commercials, then that is when you would start getting residuals? Or if they were sold as downloadable episodes or packaged as DVDs. Sure the studios could engage in funny business and say they aren't making money off of them, but that seems easier to show by following the money. Well, whatever the contract says... if they would otherwise get residuals if an entire episode were released as downloadable content without commercials or web ads for "promotional purposes", then these should be treated the same way.
I could support a "deposit" like they have on cans and bottles here in the Northeast. Unfortunately, with the growth of the bottled beverage market and inflation it seems that $.05 per bottle isn't quite enough anymore to keep all of our streets and parks clean. But those $10-20 fees on tv monitor disposal are causing a lot of monitors to get left by the side of the road or in public parks here in Massachusetts. Any disposal fees at all cause litter and environmental problems, but the higher ones cause even more problems.
I discovered the simple English version of wikipedia a few weeks ago and after a few chuckles, it seems like a good idea for kids and others that aren't ready for all the details and simply want a broader understanding in some subject area. Though as it says on this page "Someone thinks that this page or section does not use Simple English.", so it is just as complicated as the original article. I wonder how you would simplify the subject without being misleading. I remember getting disillusioned time and time again in elementary school when I found out that what I had been taught the previous year was an over simplification or just plain wrong. Sometimes things just can't be simplified any further without misunderstanding.
I don't know the details of the MS case - did MS do it without permission, maybe?
I think it would be safer to assume based on past behavior that Microsoft called it pdf, but didn't follow the standard. Remember "embrace and extend"?
Have you checked? They do now. So that they don't at all is a myth.
I think you missed the part where I said "consumer desktops" and "as long as the expense was the same or less than Windows."
Sure if you know you want linux you can get a computer from them with red hat preinstalled. But only after you look around and only on workstations for business. They do offer so called open source consumer dimension desktop models for consumers, but they are not preinstalled with Linux, but rather come with a CD that has Free DOS on it. So, I think my point is valid one. People "chose" Windows because that has been the only real choice in consumer desktop computers, at least until Apple's resurgence. Dell is willing to give people all sorts of choices to customize far more technical details of their computer's configuration, so I don't think you can make a complexity argument.
Well, I don't expect technological leadership from Dell in this area, unless Microsoft pisses them off over licensing. Much more likely adoption will come from smaller players. But it has been very hard to compete with Dell on price at least n the consumer side. Though not impossible if you look at the sales rankings for some of the Linspire based computers sold through Amazon. Seems that at least some people are seeing past Windows for home computing.
I did have working sanitation, an electrical grid, viable farming and transportation infrastructures and there were no wars or genocides going on. Seems like the're going about it a bit backwards.
I think that you are overlooking the part where people had to learn how to build for you that working sanitation, an electrical grid, viable farming and transportation. Most countries have the people and natural resources to better the lives of all their people, but what they most lack is communication and the base of knowledge to make it happen. Most importantly we need to not impose yet another unsustainable Western system on a poor nation, whether it be transportation, sanitation, electrical grid or financial institution. With every generation, our society has adapted to the most economically viable resources that we have at our disposal to achieve the goal of providing ourselves with safe and comfortable places to live and form families.
In each of those areas of civilization that you mention it should be up to the local people to figure out what makes the most economic sense... whether it be building codes, regulation, what materials to use, whether to have an electrical grid at all or to have on the spot generation with stored or self manufactured fuel. Whatever they come up with will be the result of communication with their neighbors and it is computers and the Internet that we have found to be a very economical way of communicating ideas.
Sure the Western world got along fine without laptops for a long period of time, but what we did have was an efficient post office and newspaper system for communication. This communication system was based on the relatively cheap availability of trees and wood pulp. So, that might work for places that have easy access to trees and the knowledge to make paper out of them and it may be more economic overall, but that should be something for them to decide. Maybe all the energy is better spent on something else. But communication and knowledge sharing are key to sustaining such a large global population and being able to get resources to those that need them. Except for something theoretical like virtually unlimited cheap power through fusion, the most important thing we can do for the wellbeing of the most number of people is to promote the most efficient communication and sharing of knowledge which will help people get and make the things they need in order to survive and prosper.
Full and native SVG support would be a big feature to have. Sure most big sites would still stay away without IE support, but being able to do flash like things without a plugin and having vector graphics that are xml based and scalable would be enough to entice some smaller sites and application developers to start making some cool applications. Which would spur developement further. So far the basic SVG support that they have has been very good since 1.5, but there is still a lot to do apparently:
I have also bad news for you: attitude like yours is one of the major reasons Linux is just about nowhere in desktop adoption right now.
No this is a myth. That the geek elitist attitude has anything to do with linux adoption misses the mark by a wide margin. That linux adoption even has anything to do with how easy or difficult to install misses the mark also. The fact that you have to install it at all is the issue. It is simple, if Dell, HP and/or Gateway offered Linux preinstalled on their consumer desktops right now, then Linux would have a much wider adoption as long as the expense was the same or less than Windows.
Maybe their "Don't be evil" clause also means keeping YouTube out of the hands of Newscorp.
Even showing interest in YouTube will drive up the eventual price Newscorp would pay. Which benefits google if it forces Newscorp to pay millions of dollars of money that they would have otherwise been able to spend beefing up the service.
How do you deduce, using common sense, that one in a thousand planets could harbor life?
1 in 8 planets harbor life, unless we have missed something. 2 in 8 if those microbes in the martian meteorite are to be believed. Thanks to the IAU that is a fact now, not just an extrapolation, since planets only exist in our solar system.
Seriously though, if we do extrapolate from current observations then we should estimate the number of rocky planets in the galaxy and then estimate how many are around stars like our own and start with that number Based upon how many are in a zone that can support liquid water. But whatever number we come up with is going to be highly speculative until we can either directly or indirectly observe smaller planets outside our solar system. Sure we can model the evolution of the galaxy to some extent and take a few educated guesses, but the more guesses, the more this is just a math exercise rather than based upon solid scientific oservation.
We need bigger telescopes or someone needs to figure out a new way to travel.
Yes, but the Daily Show is not SUPPOSED to have "substance". It's on the COMEDY CHANNEL for chrissakes.
I think you could say the same thing about Fox news. I'm serious, haven't you all figured it out yet? Fox News isn't supposed to have substance either... it is a parody of itself. No different than Comedy Central. At least that is how I watch it.
Re:QoS (Quality of Service or crap for customers?)
on
IPv6 Essentials
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· Score: 1
That being said, we were a local area ISP. Now for big providers, as long as you pay for it (and the service contract covers it), you should receive your bandwidth, IMHO; I do agree that they probably do the same thing in order to conserve bandwidth and the allmighty dollar. Otherwise, if they don't limit UserA's bandwidth (along with probably UserB, C and D), you, being UserZ, wouldn't be able to get much done in a day.
Unfortuneately, once you have effective QoS with differentiated services that will mean that instead of paying for the value of the bandwidth you will be paying for the value of the service to you. It creates an artificial scarcity taylored to demand for certain services. Instead of everyone just getting video communications based on the amount of bandwidth they pay for or use, it will be something you pay for seperately. ISPs have already started doing this and it will only get worse without effective regulation. Instead of paying for the bandwidth we use, we get charged based on the type of use. Even now look at Verizon FiOS service, they currently charge 6 times as much for the same bandwidth just for unblocking port 80 and giving you a static IP address. They are looking for ever more ways to weed out the rich from the poor and to get as much money as they can from each group. Sure the bandwidth relates to capacity and you can't just charge everyone the same rate for infinite bandwidth. But bandwidth throttling based on overall use is one thing, but using QoS to give your ISP the power to decide which types of Internet services you can use and how much latency they will have is going to be a money losing proposition for the public and will mean the least common service to greatest number of people. It simply becomes a matter of supply and demand when the telecoms can artificially reduce supply at the flip of a switch.
You can be indefinately held, with no attorney, and no trial, all they have to do is say you "support terrorism"
Actually, it is the other way around. Habeas corpus has been suspended for "enemy combatants" not "unlawful enemy combatants", meaning terrorists might still have the right to habeas corpus challenges since they are not considered simply enemy combatants. The definition is a lot like that of Dwarf planets which aren't really planets.
The effect of this law is that now you simply have to prove to the President you are a terrorist or support terrorism in order to get a fair trial. Seems simple enough to me, so to get a fair trial you just need to keep good records of all your evil deeds. Like a lawyer keeping track of billable hours. It is just the record keeping overhead of doing business as a terrorist if you want to be eligible for a fair trial. Should make trials go a lot smoother too, if in order to get a trial the person has to prove their guilt beforehand. I think this approach has some potential.
Slashdot Mirror
I think, instead, the large manufacturers should not be prohibited from selling "empty" computers. IE, OS installation should be purely optional from the factory. Unfortunately, whenever this is tried, MS comes out of the woodwork and makes noises about suing for encouraging software piracy. Maybe if they threw Ubuntu on there it would appease MS and cost basically nothing for them.
Dell does this for its servers. I recently bought a PowerEdge from them with no OS preloaded, on the configuration screen I just chose RedHat Linux configuration to let them know what I intended to install on it. Though I ended up using Ubuntu server.
Dell could easily do the same thing. And I would be perfectly happy paying the same amount for a linux install as the Windows installed version as long as the hardware just worked under the OS out of the box, but no OS should be cheaper than OS preinstalled.
Jumped the shark?
Funny. Yes, America has indeed "jumped the shark".
It would be more appropriate to sue the English language and alphabet, because last time I checked "u" and "you" are pronounced just about the same way, which is the problem, not marketing.
I had problems with Microsoft Office... then it required the CD to patch it, problem was I couldn't find the CD. So, I unistalled Office and downloaded OpenOffice and have never regretted the switch. Now I can actually get some work done.
But why must Linux or FreeBSD or whatever appeal to the average person? We as open source developers don't have limitless time and resources to spend making our software usable by everyone, or EZ enough for grandma to use.
It is also in our self interest to get as many people using linux as possible, because then developers will make more software for use with Linux and more people will work on usability. Look at firefox as an example of a very successful open source project. If the user community was only a quarter as big, then we would likely not see as many improvements made. Look at apache, same thing. Linux on the server is rock solid and being used in millions of servers, those of us that use linux servers benefit from the large market which means bugs get identified and fixed and it becomes easier to get answers to our questions.
If you want to use Linux on the desktop, besides usability for yourself, it makes perfect sense to want to see linux become more widely used as a desktop OS for the same reasons as any other open source product. More people using it means that it will become better software. This has already happened, but would probably reach more critical mass if ubuntu and debian could start reaching a larger percentage of the market as an everyday OS.
The limit's not to do with your connection speed as such - it's to do with being polite and not putting too much drain on the server your downloading from.
The design of the website is what would be causing greater server load, not a browser setting. The total amount of resources is the same if we are just talking about getting all of a pages images in parallel instead of serially. So, if you are just getting all the needed files more quickly then you are just getting out of the way more quickly for when the next guy tries to connect. Seems that this balance should be decided on the server side based on available resources and likely number of connections, not the client.
When I ran a small web server back in the nineties which was serving up large files over a slow connection hosted on slow computers, I remember the biggest benefit to increasing bandwidth was that quicker download times meant that people were no longer tying up processing power and memory because they could complete their downloads more quickly. Being able to handle more simultaneous connections is great, but if you can get the downloads done more quickly then you can free up processing power more quickly.
In order to spend my tax dollars and intrude on the privacy of the people, they need to show a reasonable cause. Blanket surveillance under the assumption that you might be about to commit a criminal act does not meet those criteria.
That is the point. It is a democracy, or supposed to be, and to give this much power to the police and expect then to use it only for good and have no ability to provide effective oversight. We don't have to be anti-police in order to think this is a bad idea. Sure we don't have an individual right to demand this be stopped, but collectively we do.
YouTube has processes in place to receive DMCA takedown notices and remove identified copyright material. Napster didn't have a process in place to do this, and claimed to not be able to do so. The judge disagreed and said Napster had both the ability and duty to remove identified copyrighted material, but did not, so Napster was held liable.
Bingo!
Why do people find this so hard to understand? Napster was held liable for not following the DMCA, Youtube and google are following the DMCA so they are not liable for the copyrighted content that is posted by others. That doesn't mean that individuals are not still liable for illegal copying and distribution on youtube, just that the service provider doesn't share it as long as they respond when they are notified that one of their users has posted something that they didn't have a right to.
This is actually a good provision of the DMCA which should be preserved. Otherwise every messageboard on the internet gets shutdown, every anonymous or even unmanaged file server has its plug pulled, because no Internet Web site or service provider can bear the brunt of infinite liability just for offering a service that its users could potentially abuse. Really if you can't be certain that people's expression is legally copied, then without this provision of the DMCA and a presumption of burden on the copyright holder to actively protect their copyright, then you are left with society which leaves expression to the licensed and verified few.
I think the one thing that companies overlook is. There's no absolute requirement that being carbon neutral requires you to power your own stuff with the energy. How about investment in a wind farm in southwest kansas [excellent location for wind power]. Or 10 acres of Solar pannels in Mexico? I think helping Mexico reduce carbon usage is probably better (polution wise) than helping the US...
I'd prefer to see companies actually benefit from improved efficiencies and sustainable power, otherwise what is it really saying about the concept of sustainable energy? That you can make a lot of money burning coal, oil and gas and then use that money to help poor people waste and pollute less? If it is a good idea, then do for yourself first and prove it is better than burning coal, oil and gas. Otherwise you run the risk of pushing yet another unsustainable infrastructure on a less wealthy country just to make us feel better.
What other nation or organization has a spacecraft capable of servicing Hubble within 24-36 months? Bear in mind, Hubble was designed to be serviced by the shuttle. Everyone else is pretty much using capsules exclusively, which aren't nearly as EVA-friendly nor do they have the necessary robotic arm.
Throw in a shuttle as part of the deal.
Voting Libertarian in this situation is akin to voting Republican since all the Republicans are doing is attempting to limit Federal spending on embryonic stem cell research, which Libertarians would say should be limited to the private sector anyway.
Except that some Republicans are saying to ban the research altogether and not just limit Federal spending.
Wouldn't it be that once they cross the line and start actually making money directly from the content, as reruns do with commercials, then that is when you would start getting residuals? Or if they were sold as downloadable episodes or packaged as DVDs. Sure the studios could engage in funny business and say they aren't making money off of them, but that seems easier to show by following the money. Well, whatever the contract says... if they would otherwise get residuals if an entire episode were released as downloadable content without commercials or web ads for "promotional purposes", then these should be treated the same way.
Pay them to do the right thing.
I could support a "deposit" like they have on cans and bottles here in the Northeast. Unfortunately, with the growth of the bottled beverage market and inflation it seems that $.05 per bottle isn't quite enough anymore to keep all of our streets and parks clean. But those $10-20 fees on tv monitor disposal are causing a lot of monitors to get left by the side of the road or in public parks here in Massachusetts. Any disposal fees at all cause litter and environmental problems, but the higher ones cause even more problems.
It would be nice if there were some translations.
t y
Maybe someone can give it a go on the "Simple English" version of the article:
http://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_relativi
I discovered the simple English version of wikipedia a few weeks ago and after a few chuckles, it seems like a good idea for kids and others that aren't ready for all the details and simply want a broader understanding in some subject area. Though as it says on this page "Someone thinks that this page or section does not use Simple English.", so it is just as complicated as the original article. I wonder how you would simplify the subject without being misleading. I remember getting disillusioned time and time again in elementary school when I found out that what I had been taught the previous year was an over simplification or just plain wrong. Sometimes things just can't be simplified any further without misunderstanding.
like their office suite, fail to catch fire.
Unless its a Weber Grill, products that "fail to catch fire" are generally considered to be a good thing.
I don't know the details of the MS case - did MS do it without permission, maybe?
I think it would be safer to assume based on past behavior that Microsoft called it pdf, but didn't follow the standard. Remember "embrace and extend"?
Have you checked? They do now. So that they don't at all is a myth.
I think you missed the part where I said "consumer desktops" and "as long as the expense was the same or less than Windows."
Sure if you know you want linux you can get a computer from them with red hat preinstalled. But only after you look around and only on workstations for business. They do offer so called open source consumer dimension desktop models for consumers, but they are not preinstalled with Linux, but rather come with a CD that has Free DOS on it. So, I think my point is valid one. People "chose" Windows because that has been the only real choice in consumer desktop computers, at least until Apple's resurgence. Dell is willing to give people all sorts of choices to customize far more technical details of their computer's configuration, so I don't think you can make a complexity argument.
Well, I don't expect technological leadership from Dell in this area, unless Microsoft pisses them off over licensing. Much more likely adoption will come from smaller players. But it has been very hard to compete with Dell on price at least n the consumer side. Though not impossible if you look at the sales rankings for some of the Linspire based computers sold through Amazon. Seems that at least some people are seeing past Windows for home computing.
I did have working sanitation, an electrical grid, viable farming and transportation infrastructures and there were no wars or genocides going on. Seems like the're going about it a bit backwards.
I think that you are overlooking the part where people had to learn how to build for you that working sanitation, an electrical grid, viable farming and transportation. Most countries have the people and natural resources to better the lives of all their people, but what they most lack is communication and the base of knowledge to make it happen. Most importantly we need to not impose yet another unsustainable Western system on a poor nation, whether it be transportation, sanitation, electrical grid or financial institution. With every generation, our society has adapted to the most economically viable resources that we have at our disposal to achieve the goal of providing ourselves with safe and comfortable places to live and form families.
In each of those areas of civilization that you mention it should be up to the local people to figure out what makes the most economic sense... whether it be building codes, regulation, what materials to use, whether to have an electrical grid at all or to have on the spot generation with stored or self manufactured fuel. Whatever they come up with will be the result of communication with their neighbors and it is computers and the Internet that we have found to be a very economical way of communicating ideas.
Sure the Western world got along fine without laptops for a long period of time, but what we did have was an efficient post office and newspaper system for communication. This communication system was based on the relatively cheap availability of trees and wood pulp. So, that might work for places that have easy access to trees and the knowledge to make paper out of them and it may be more economic overall, but that should be something for them to decide. Maybe all the energy is better spent on something else. But communication and knowledge sharing are key to sustaining such a large global population and being able to get resources to those that need them. Except for something theoretical like virtually unlimited cheap power through fusion, the most important thing we can do for the wellbeing of the most number of people is to promote the most efficient communication and sharing of knowledge which will help people get and make the things they need in order to survive and prosper.
Full and native SVG support would be a big feature to have. Sure most big sites would still stay away without IE support, but being able to do flash like things without a plugin and having vector graphics that are xml based and scalable would be enough to entice some smaller sites and application developers to start making some cool applications. Which would spur developement further. So far the basic SVG support that they have has been very good since 1.5, but there is still a lot to do apparently:
http://www.mozilla.org/projects/svg/status.html
I have also bad news for you: attitude like yours is one of the major reasons Linux is just about nowhere in desktop adoption right now.
No this is a myth. That the geek elitist attitude has anything to do with linux adoption misses the mark by a wide margin. That linux adoption even has anything to do with how easy or difficult to install misses the mark also. The fact that you have to install it at all is the issue. It is simple, if Dell, HP and/or Gateway offered Linux preinstalled on their consumer desktops right now, then Linux would have a much wider adoption as long as the expense was the same or less than Windows.
Maybe their "Don't be evil" clause also means keeping YouTube out of the hands of Newscorp.
Even showing interest in YouTube will drive up the eventual price Newscorp would pay. Which benefits google if it forces Newscorp to pay millions of dollars of money that they would have otherwise been able to spend beefing up the service.
How do you deduce, using common sense, that one in a thousand planets could harbor life?
1 in 8 planets harbor life, unless we have missed something. 2 in 8 if those microbes in the martian meteorite are to be believed. Thanks to the IAU that is a fact now, not just an extrapolation, since planets only exist in our solar system.
Seriously though, if we do extrapolate from current observations then we should estimate the number of rocky planets in the galaxy and then estimate how many are around stars like our own and start with that number Based upon how many are in a zone that can support liquid water. But whatever number we come up with is going to be highly speculative until we can either directly or indirectly observe smaller planets outside our solar system. Sure we can model the evolution of the galaxy to some extent and take a few educated guesses, but the more guesses, the more this is just a math exercise rather than based upon solid scientific oservation.
We need bigger telescopes or someone needs to figure out a new way to travel.
Yes, but the Daily Show is not SUPPOSED to have "substance". It's on the COMEDY CHANNEL for chrissakes.
I think you could say the same thing about Fox news. I'm serious, haven't you all figured it out yet? Fox News isn't supposed to have substance either... it is a parody of itself. No different than Comedy Central. At least that is how I watch it.
That being said, we were a local area ISP. Now for big providers, as long as you pay for it (and the service contract covers it), you should receive your bandwidth, IMHO; I do agree that they probably do the same thing in order to conserve bandwidth and the allmighty dollar. Otherwise, if they don't limit UserA's bandwidth (along with probably UserB, C and D), you, being UserZ, wouldn't be able to get much done in a day.
Unfortuneately, once you have effective QoS with differentiated services that will mean that instead of paying for the value of the bandwidth you will be paying for the value of the service to you. It creates an artificial scarcity taylored to demand for certain services. Instead of everyone just getting video communications based on the amount of bandwidth they pay for or use, it will be something you pay for seperately. ISPs have already started doing this and it will only get worse without effective regulation. Instead of paying for the bandwidth we use, we get charged based on the type of use. Even now look at Verizon FiOS service, they currently charge 6 times as much for the same bandwidth just for unblocking port 80 and giving you a static IP address. They are looking for ever more ways to weed out the rich from the poor and to get as much money as they can from each group. Sure the bandwidth relates to capacity and you can't just charge everyone the same rate for infinite bandwidth. But bandwidth throttling based on overall use is one thing, but using QoS to give your ISP the power to decide which types of Internet services you can use and how much latency they will have is going to be a money losing proposition for the public and will mean the least common service to greatest number of people. It simply becomes a matter of supply and demand when the telecoms can artificially reduce supply at the flip of a switch.
You can be indefinately held, with no attorney, and no trial, all they have to do is say you "support terrorism"
Actually, it is the other way around. Habeas corpus has been suspended for "enemy combatants" not "unlawful enemy combatants", meaning terrorists might still have the right to habeas corpus challenges since they are not considered simply enemy combatants. The definition is a lot like that of Dwarf planets which aren't really planets.
The effect of this law is that now you simply have to prove to the President you are a terrorist or support terrorism in order to get a fair trial. Seems simple enough to me, so to get a fair trial you just need to keep good records of all your evil deeds. Like a lawyer keeping track of billable hours. It is just the record keeping overhead of doing business as a terrorist if you want to be eligible for a fair trial. Should make trials go a lot smoother too, if in order to get a trial the person has to prove their guilt beforehand. I think this approach has some potential.