Two ideas led to the system, said Regina Barzilay...
Speaking of natural language recognition, I parsed this sentence from the article as reading, "Two ideas led to the system, said Reginald Barclay...":)
The editors of the world reknowned Slashdot has recently proven to the wrld that they are unable to correct small spelling mistackes and grammar issues.
I agree this is the stupidest thing I've ever heard of. Google shouldn't be prohibited from displaying any advertisements based off what people search for.
If I were the chair of Google I would take this to the people of France by making everyone in a.fr domain have to pay for search queries to deal with the hassle of filtering out all the offending trademarks. Either that or just say, "We're not doing business in France any more until you people change your laws" and then shut down access.
The following revolt would probably rival that of the storming of the Bastille and the French Government would immediately rectify the situation.
Promoting the welfare of oneself does not necessarily lead to the "abandonment of the greater good" or a decline in the lifestyles of others. On the contrary, greedy bastards brought us the steam engine, light bulb, computer, and pretty much every other invention known to mankind. Capitalism, and "selfishness" has brought about a greater quality of life for everyone. If Socialism/Communism/etc. were really better why do countries with free markets tend to invent more things? (case and point the Soviet Union vs. U.S)
Furthermore, there are certain government policies like the minimum wage and rent control which are praised by liberals but actually make life for the impoverished much harder.
Will having the FCC permission to add video capabilities to their clients really going to effect users for the worse? I personally am of the opinion that it will not matter too much.
This is a pretty crummy attitude at what could completely revolutionize online communication and end once and for all the concept of a telephone call. Who knows what AOL might have done to promote videoconferencing if they had been allowed to? Every broadband internet user might have a webcam on their desks because of the critical mass videoconferencing could have reached if it had been successfully bundled to an instant-messenging network years ago.
This may seem somewhat trivial to the average slashdot user since none of us videoconference but it amazes me that the government would prevent AOL from doing something like this. If videoconferencing is to take off it needs to reach critical mass and what better way than with it built into an instant messenging application! Apple has got it right but their camera is a bit too pricey. Who knows what would have happened if AOL had been allowed to link videoconferencing with AIM. Because of the FTC ruling, we will never know.
Wonder what format it records in? If it uses MP3, pity because they could have saved on licensing fees if they'd chosen an open format like OGG.
Yes, they also could have made their product non-functional. Realistically, no company is going to come out with a product that doesn't play mp3 files. The best we can manage for now is trying to get a company to include OGG support on the side but even this costs money to implement. OGG is much better sounding than MP3 and also much harder to decode.
That said, death row inmates should be allowed to donate organs if they choose to. I just don't want it to be in some corporation's financial interest to expand the death penalty.
The first problem that you'll have with Freenet is being able to download something that you want. Be prepared to wait a long time for it. Searching would be nice, but I think the first thing they need to do is implement a better routing scheme.
My node presently has 12mb of traffic backed up it's trying to send out to people. The problem is the fast nodes simply aren't being highlighted for the rest of the network to use and people are stuck downloading from my connection (which I limit to about 10,000bps). Imagine if you were trying to download from someone running a nontransient node on an analog modem or something like that!:)
Yeah, don't forget too that Lockheed-Martin and the aerospace industry make millions on every shuttle launch. They are all for keeping the status quo. The shuttle is an expensive cash hog which costs $500 million dollars every time it launches. A more scaled down piece of technology less grandiose could be launched for much less, not to mention the fact that grounding the shuttle flights costs the aerospace industry money right now that they could be making.
The implication that $13,000 has anything to do with that congressman's decision is absurd. If one were to believe that kind of money had an effect on him he would be pushing for continued launches to keep the aerospace industry making money off of their cash cow.
Nice commentary, but don't forget the shuttle costs $500 million to launch per flight which is 100x the original amount they estimated it would cost to launch per flight. Besides being unsafe the shuttle simply costs too much. A half a billion dollars is a lot of tax payer money. If you like this arcane piece of technology so much why don't you pay for it?
Keep in mind, a monopoly doesn't have to be just one company to achieve the same effect in a market. A handful of dominant companies, such as those currently vying for all the airwaves, does not make for any meaningful or valuable competition. A free market is by no means free is competition is limited to a few big well-entrenched players.
Competition would not be limited to a "few big well-entrenched players" if the government actually allowed competition.
Ironically, though, that's the most comfortable place for a corporation. No competition, no need to risk money on content or R&D... just sit back and collect the revenue. That's why a free market ultimately depends on gov't regulation to stay free!
Quit trolling me here. Corporations may feel completely happy sitting back and collecting revenue but it's government which allows them to do this through regulations, licensing, and other mechanisms which prohibit other people from competing.
This article brings up some important points that need to be addressed about government regulation of media. Nobody wants a consolidation of media so that one company ends up controlling all the media in a given area. This would be similar to if K-Mart bought up every retail store in a metropolitan area.
There is a distinct difference between the retail environment and the media environment. If government decided to limit the number of grocery stores in a given area with a new agency called the GCC (Grocery Control Commission) there would be obvious problems. Corporations with the most money would immediately suck up all of the licenses and every mom & pop store would immediately go out of business.
The way things stand now, city councils have some regulatory power over rezoning but for the most part there are no limits on the number of grocery stores in a given area. The market sets the price. Unfortunately, due to the huge amount of regulations by the FCC the radio and televison stations are limited by something that the government calls bandwidth.
The effect is that the barrier to entry to start your own radio station, television channel, etc. is very high due to licensing costs and bandwidth "availability". Thus we really don't have anything resembling a free market in the area of media. As long as the government controls the licenses, the people will not have a voice. I have heard arguments recently on slashdot that there is no such thing as a bandwidth problem. This begs the question exactly what is the government doing limiting the number of radio or television stations in a given area?
I'm not sure what the solution is to the problem with the FCC and giant media companies buying up stations around the country. One thing is clear, though: The present situation is nowhere near capitalism, nor the fault of the free market.
wow this guy said the exact same thing I did at the exact same time less his critique of the/. administration which I happen to agree with anyways.
The slashdot people are morons for not setting up an automated recursive wget on the given links in the story which is done prior to the story going up. They definetly have the bandwidth and the manpower to accomplish this.
I don't understand why you even have to worry about copyright issues with mirroring the site. Nobody sues google for the "Cache" they keep of your webpage which is on their servers. Why would someone sue slashdot for indexing somebody's website prior to linking to them?
Setting aside issues of constitutionality of gun legislation, he major issue I have with gun control is simply that it doesn't work. Making guns illegal will simply enhance the black market that already exists to distribute them. The public will be denied guns to defend themselves with while the criminals will simply continue to buy their guns off of the black market.
Here is some more information on the issue: http://www.lp.org/issues/gun-rights.html
Trustworthy accounting is the BACKBONE of the economy. If investors are not sure they can trust the books of the companies, then they will not invest, companies will not grow, the economy will flounder. The private sector *needs* the government to perform this function. Because the government has failed in its duty to ensure that fraud was not being committed we are now seeing an increased likelihood of a double-dip recession because investors are wary of Who's Next.
Since when has it been the government's responsibility to ensure that fraud is not being committed? If there's one thing the government should be doing it's prosecuting those who do commit fraud. The politicians have been grandstanding on the Enron case for months and I have yet to see anyone arrested. You can't stop people from trying to commit fraud. You can try to convince people to not commit crimes of force and fraud by PROSECUTING the ones who have done so!
I love you free-market people spouting off about how evil the government is, when it's too much free in the market that has the US economy in trouble.
Enron and Worldcom aren't the fault of the free-market. Not that we even have anything resembling a free-market here, anyways. Enron and Worldcom are simply fraud. The executives need to be arrested and tried in court and then sued in civil courts.
The free market isn't perfect, and I can't think of anyone that ever claimed it was. Obviously we should try to stop fraud. But we shouldn't punish the thousands of other companies out there that are honest with burdensome regulations. Let's punish the criminals who caused this mess in the first place.
The problem is government is so big and the money has been tossed around in such a way that no one from Enron will ever be prosecuted. Don't blame the free-market system on this. Blame the size of the federal government. Companies try to make money at any cost. If there exists a way for them to throw money at politicians to get laws passed that they want (ala DMCA, SSSCA, steel tariffs, farm subsidies, etc.) then they will. The solution is to reduce the power of the Federal Government so that companies can't turn to it to enact compulsive laws.
I am forced to agree with the above statement. Anti-Spam legislation, however well intentioned, is a violation of the first ammendment. The government can't even stop drugs from coming into the country. Does anyone actually think they're going to be able to stop SPAM?
The solution to the SPAM problem is _not_ legislation.
As much as I would think it would be funny for the FTC to fine Microsoft, consider the ramifications of what you are saying. Now that the FTC has extended itself into regulating this stuff what is to stop them from fining other companies that provide this technology?
What's the problem with misspelled domain names? People should know how to spell something before they type it in, or if they are unsure they should use a search engine that can correct their misspellings to learn the proper spelling like Google does.
What the guy did was wrong but trying to regulate misspellings is a bad idea. Every inch you give the government to regulate things on the internet is a mile that they will take in the future.
The loopholes for this are abounding. The next guy to try this scam is going to do it in another country to avoid prosecution. There is no way you are going to stop this kind of behavior. We're better off telling people to make sure they have the name spelled correctly before typing it in or to check with a search engine first. Once these con's realize it's no longer profitable they will stop doing what they are doing.
Slashdot Mirror
Two ideas led to the system, said Regina Barzilay...
..." :)
Speaking of natural language recognition, I parsed this sentence from the article as reading, "Two ideas led to the system, said Reginald Barclay
The editors of the world reknowned Slashdot has recently proven to the wrld that they are unable to correct small spelling mistackes and grammar issues.
I agree this is the stupidest thing I've ever heard of. Google shouldn't be prohibited from displaying any advertisements based off what people search for.
.fr domain have to pay for search queries to deal with the hassle of filtering out all the offending trademarks. Either that or just say, "We're not doing business in France any more until you people change your laws" and then shut down access.
If I were the chair of Google I would take this to the people of France by making everyone in a
The following revolt would probably rival that of the storming of the Bastille and the French Government would immediately rectify the situation.
It's too bad he wouldn't back down on the Medical Marijuana deal. The LP actually labelled him as one of the 5 incumbents they were targeting for removal from congress. I'm sure there are other things which place him more as a right-libertarian, but on drug related issues he had no compassion.
Promoting the welfare of oneself does not necessarily lead to the "abandonment of the greater good" or a decline in the lifestyles of others. On the contrary, greedy bastards brought us the steam engine, light bulb, computer, and pretty much every other invention known to mankind. Capitalism, and "selfishness" has brought about a greater quality of life for everyone. If Socialism/Communism/etc. were really better why do countries with free markets tend to invent more things? (case and point the Soviet Union vs. U.S)
Furthermore, there are certain government policies like the minimum wage and rent control which are praised by liberals but actually make life for the impoverished much harder.
Will having the FCC permission to add video capabilities to their clients really going to effect users for the worse? I personally am of the opinion that it will not matter too much.
This is a pretty crummy attitude at what could completely revolutionize online communication and end once and for all the concept of a telephone call. Who knows what AOL might have done to promote videoconferencing if they had been allowed to? Every broadband internet user might have a webcam on their desks because of the critical mass videoconferencing could have reached if it had been successfully bundled to an instant-messenging network years ago.
This may seem somewhat trivial to the average slashdot user since none of us videoconference but it amazes me that the government would prevent AOL from doing something like this. If videoconferencing is to take off it needs to reach critical mass and what better way than with it built into an instant messenging application! Apple has got it right but their camera is a bit too pricey. Who knows what would have happened if AOL had been allowed to link videoconferencing with AIM. Because of the FTC ruling, we will never know.
Wonder what format it records in? If it uses MP3, pity because they could have saved on licensing fees if they'd chosen an open format like OGG. Yes, they also could have made their product non-functional. Realistically, no company is going to come out with a product that doesn't play mp3 files. The best we can manage for now is trying to get a company to include OGG support on the side but even this costs money to implement. OGG is much better sounding than MP3 and also much harder to decode.
That said, death row inmates should be allowed to donate organs if they choose to. I just don't want it to be in some corporation's financial interest to expand the death penalty.
s/corporation/government/
Pay the extra buck and get a color laser printer - it'll do everything you want (sounds like it) and it'll last a while
Don't you mean an extra couple thousand bucks?
The first problem that you'll have with Freenet is being able to download something that you want. Be prepared to wait a long time for it. Searching would be nice, but I think the first thing they need to do is implement a better routing scheme.
:)
My node presently has 12mb of traffic backed up it's trying to send out to people. The problem is the fast nodes simply aren't being highlighted for the rest of the network to use and people are stuck downloading from my connection (which I limit to about 10,000bps). Imagine if you were trying to download from someone running a nontransient node on an analog modem or something like that!
no current internet radio software allows you to pick the songs you want to hear
Tunez also does this and works with icecast.
Yeah, don't forget too that Lockheed-Martin and the aerospace industry make millions on every shuttle launch. They are all for keeping the status quo. The shuttle is an expensive cash hog which costs $500 million dollars every time it launches. A more scaled down piece of technology less grandiose could be launched for much less, not to mention the fact that grounding the shuttle flights costs the aerospace industry money right now that they could be making.
The implication that $13,000 has anything to do with that congressman's decision is absurd. If one were to believe that kind of money had an effect on him he would be pushing for continued launches to keep the aerospace industry making money off of their cash cow.
Nice commentary, but don't forget the shuttle costs $500 million to launch per flight which is 100x the original amount they estimated it would cost to launch per flight. Besides being unsafe the shuttle simply costs too much. A half a billion dollars is a lot of tax payer money. If you like this arcane piece of technology so much why don't you pay for it?
Keep in mind, a monopoly doesn't have to be just one company to achieve the same effect in a market. A handful of dominant companies, such as those currently vying for all the airwaves, does not make for any meaningful or valuable competition. A free market is by no means free is competition is limited to a few big well-entrenched players.
Competition would not be limited to a "few big well-entrenched players" if the government actually allowed competition.
Ironically, though, that's the most comfortable place for a corporation. No competition, no need to risk money on content or R&D... just sit back and collect the revenue. That's why a free market ultimately depends on gov't regulation to stay free!
Quit trolling me here. Corporations may feel completely happy sitting back and collecting revenue but it's government which allows them to do this through regulations, licensing, and other mechanisms which prohibit other people from competing.
This article brings up some important points that need to be addressed about government regulation of media. Nobody wants a consolidation of media so that one company ends up controlling all the media in a given area. This would be similar to if K-Mart bought up every retail store in a metropolitan area.
There is a distinct difference between the retail environment and the media environment. If government decided to limit the number of grocery stores in a given area with a new agency called the GCC (Grocery Control Commission) there would be obvious problems. Corporations with the most money would immediately suck up all of the licenses and every mom & pop store would immediately go out of business.
The way things stand now, city councils have some regulatory power over rezoning but for the most part there are no limits on the number of grocery stores in a given area. The market sets the price. Unfortunately, due to the huge amount of regulations by the FCC the radio and televison stations are limited by something that the government calls bandwidth.
The effect is that the barrier to entry to start your own radio station, television channel, etc. is very high due to licensing costs and bandwidth "availability". Thus we really don't have anything resembling a free market in the area of media. As long as the government controls the licenses, the people will not have a voice. I have heard arguments recently on slashdot that there is no such thing as a bandwidth problem. This begs the question exactly what is the government doing limiting the number of radio or television stations in a given area?
I'm not sure what the solution is to the problem with the FCC and giant media companies buying up stations around the country. One thing is clear, though: The present situation is nowhere near capitalism, nor the fault of the free market.
wow this guy said the exact same thing I did at the exact same time less his critique of the /. administration which I happen to agree with anyways.
The slashdot people are morons for not setting up an automated recursive wget on the given links in the story which is done prior to the story going up. They definetly have the bandwidth and the manpower to accomplish this.
I don't understand why you even have to worry about copyright issues with mirroring the site. Nobody sues google for the "Cache" they keep of your webpage which is on their servers. Why would someone sue slashdot for indexing somebody's website prior to linking to them?
Setting aside issues of constitutionality of gun legislation, he major issue I have with gun control is simply that it doesn't work. Making guns illegal will simply enhance the black market that already exists to distribute them. The public will be denied guns to defend themselves with while the criminals will simply continue to buy their guns off of the black market.
Here is some more information on the issue:
http://www.lp.org/issues/gun-rights.html
I guess we'll just have to wait for the dotGNU project to save us all from this hell.
. ht ml
http://www.gnu.org/projects/dotgnu/web-services
Trustworthy accounting is the BACKBONE of the economy. If investors are not sure they can trust the books of the companies, then they will not invest, companies will not grow, the economy will flounder. The private sector *needs* the government to perform this function. Because the government has failed in its duty to ensure that fraud was not being committed we are now seeing an increased likelihood of a double-dip recession because investors are wary of Who's Next.
Since when has it been the government's responsibility to ensure that fraud is not being committed? If there's one thing the government should be doing it's prosecuting those who do commit fraud. The politicians have been grandstanding on the Enron case for months and I have yet to see anyone arrested. You can't stop people from trying to commit fraud. You can try to convince people to not commit crimes of force and fraud by PROSECUTING the ones who have done so!
I love you free-market people spouting off about how evil the government is, when it's too much free in the market that has the US economy in trouble.
Enron and Worldcom aren't the fault of the free-market. Not that we even have anything resembling a free-market here, anyways. Enron and Worldcom are simply fraud. The executives need to be arrested and tried in court and then sued in civil courts.
The free market isn't perfect, and I can't think of anyone that ever claimed it was. Obviously we should try to stop fraud. But we shouldn't punish the thousands of other companies out there that are honest with burdensome regulations. Let's punish the criminals who caused this mess in the first place.
The problem is government is so big and the money has been tossed around in such a way that no one from Enron will ever be prosecuted. Don't blame the free-market system on this. Blame the size of the federal government. Companies try to make money at any cost. If there exists a way for them to throw money at politicians to get laws passed that they want (ala DMCA, SSSCA, steel tariffs, farm subsidies, etc.) then they will. The solution is to reduce the power of the Federal Government so that companies can't turn to it to enact compulsive laws.
I am forced to agree with the above statement. Anti-Spam legislation, however well intentioned, is a violation of the first ammendment. The government can't even stop drugs from coming into the country. Does anyone actually think they're going to be able to stop SPAM?
The solution to the SPAM problem is _not_ legislation.
As much as I would think it would be funny for the FTC to fine Microsoft, consider the ramifications of what you are saying. Now that the FTC has extended itself into regulating this stuff what is to stop them from fining other companies that provide this technology?
What's the problem with misspelled domain names? People should know how to spell something before they type it in, or if they are unsure they should use a search engine that can correct their misspellings to learn the proper spelling like Google does.
What the guy did was wrong but trying to regulate misspellings is a bad idea. Every inch you give the government to regulate things on the internet is a mile that they will take in the future.
The loopholes for this are abounding. The next guy to try this scam is going to do it in another country to avoid prosecution. There is no way you are going to stop this kind of behavior. We're better off telling people to make sure they have the name spelled correctly before typing it in or to check with a search engine first. Once these con's realize it's no longer profitable they will stop doing what they are doing.
I expect Microsoft to challenge the GPL in court within two years.