and make the rest fair, intuitive, simple and easy to understand.
While I sympathize with your Anarchistic bend, I cannot agree with this very populistic opinion.
If the problem of right and wrong were as simple as you let us believe (something that could be written down intuitive, simple and easy laws) we would have had a perfect society a long ago. Not so. The problem is extremely complex and probably unsolvable. That's why we have myriad, often contradictory laws. There's no conspiracy.
Be afraid, be very afraid when the populists are argumenting that laws should be simplified down to the lowest common denominator in the populace. That way we will eventually end up with a tyranny of idiots.
How does the social security number endanger your privacy? I've never quite understood this American complaint. In Europe everybody gets a social security number at birth and it's used everywhere from renting a video to getting a passport.
If you're using the government sponsored services they have to be able to identify you. The easiest way to do this is to store your information in some database and in a database you have to have a unique key field.
Where I live the hospitals are still not allowed to transfer patient information in a digital form from one place to another. Every time I go to see a different doctor or get treated at a different hospital, I have to take hardcopies of my medical history and receipts with me. It's a royal pain in the ass. It would be so much easier if all that kind of information could be stored in a nation wide database that the officials could access directly.
guarantees European citizens absolute control over data concerning them.
That's correct.
I just got back from hospital following an eye operation. Every time I signed something official over there I was given a copy of the privacy rights of an EU citizen that basically basically that all information concerning me a) will always be accessible (=see, correct, delete) to me b) will not be given to a 3rd party without a sound legal or medical reason.
What has changed is that now the Napster has become one of the first, real electronic distribution channels for commercial music. I guess that those who used Napster mainly to download music that they hadn't bought will move on to OpenNap. Those who used it to sample music before buying it, will pay the subscription fee. I know I will.
What has changed is that now the Napster has become one of the first, real distribution channels for commercial music. I guess that those who used Napster mainly to download music that they hadn't bought will move on to OpenNap. Those who used it to sample music before buying it on CD, will pay the subscription fee. I know I will.
What I'm really looking forward though is the font anti-aliasing. It's almost embarrassing to show screenshots of KDE and Gnome desktops with all the jagged fonts all over the place.
Without reliable information corporations aren't going to be as efficient, and in a free market economy such as ours, this harms us all in the long run, far more than the trivial loss of privacy
Firstly, the loss of privacy is never trivial not the least because it's almost impossible to regain it.
Your point about information being the lifeblood of the corporations who provide services is a good one, but I wouldn't make such blanket statements about it. There are services I need and services I don't. I don't mind giving my profile to corporations I know the services of which I'll need, but if this profiling information is being bought, sold and collected without letting me to know about it (Doubleclick for instance) that's going too far.
As far as I know the reason why certain types of radiation cause cancer is that they ionize molecules in the cells of the human tissue. The energy carried by microwave quanta, however, is not high enough to cause ionization of the atoms and molecules in a human cell and that's why I've always been sceptical of a direct connection between cell phone use and cancer.
The microwave radiation does, however, excite molecular rotations which increases the temperature of the tissue slightly, but then again the intensity of the cell phone radiation is so small that the temperature increase is negligible (less than the natural temperature variation in a human body).
Whereas the neural nets are already useful, DNA and quantum computers are unfortunately still far away in the future (barring unexpected breakthroughs).
Even though I'm a physicist by my profession I'm really excited about the possibilities of genetic manipulation. Just like instruments such as the scanning tunneling microscope allow us to probe and understand the properties of materials at the resolution of individual atoms, decoding and understanding how the DNA works is truly a holy grail of the life sciences.
The nature herself is the ultimate engineer. When we understand the DNA we also have the means to tell her what to build. Customized drugs, spare body parts, molecular machinery,... there are no limits!
As a professional scientist I find this extremely dangerous.
All natural sciences rely on the fair peer review process and the repeatability of the experiments. This is the credo, the consitution, of the scientific community. If data is allowed to be held back or the referees in future will have to comply with "you don't need to know that because it's a trade secret" kind of crap from companies, it's the science as whole that will suffer.
My main problems with XFree86 are its printer support and the antiquated font system. Also, the 3D support is suffering both from the bloat and the people who demand open sourced drivers.
When people complain about Linux being hard to install, they're actually complaining about the installation process being different from what they've grown accustomed to in the MS world.
It doesn't matter if the actual process is just as easy. If the terminology and appearance of the installation program is different from Windows installation, they'll get confused and feel that installing Linux is difficult.
I've used Linux for seven years now. Still, it took a couple of attempts to get my first FreeBSD installation right (dividing the disk into slices and only after that into partitions was very confusing). Figuring out how to compile the kernel was another obstacle. Now in hindsight the FreeBSD installation process isn't any more complex, but because I had to learn it, it felt like one.
What will the effects of this be internationally? Any predictions? Will, for instance, the EU eventually enact a similar law?
A while ago I had a chat with my Danish friend about DMCA and its the implications. At first he wouldn't even believe that someone would consider proposing this kind of a law, but after I showed him some info on the DMCA he thought that not even the EU bureaucrats would be insane enough to try something like this.
Personally I think he'll be in for a nasty surprise in near future...
How do you suppose the free market system is supposed to work with laws like DMCA and UCITA around?
One of the conditions for a healthy free market is that the consumers can freely choose between competing products. How is that possible if corporations are able to prevent the publication of less flattering reviews of their products or test the products themselves (which could be made impossible by the UCITA backed shrink-wraps)?
Initially even the developement of the specialized technology required in the building of the space station (high power solar panels, for instance) as well as the large scale collaboration between several space agencies is very much worthwhile an effort.
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While I sympathize with your Anarchistic bend, I cannot agree with this very populistic opinion.
If the problem of right and wrong were as simple as you let us believe (something that could be written down intuitive, simple and easy laws) we would have had a perfect society a long ago. Not so. The problem is extremely complex and probably unsolvable. That's why we have myriad, often contradictory laws. There's no conspiracy.
Be afraid, be very afraid when the populists are argumenting that laws should be simplified down to the lowest common denominator in the populace. That way we will eventually end up with a tyranny of idiots.
Although the clicking of the hard drive heads is strangely satisfying, I hate the rest of the noise from drives and fans.
If you're using the government sponsored services they have to be able to identify you. The easiest way to do this is to store your information in some database and in a database you have to have a unique key field.
Where I live the hospitals are still not allowed to transfer patient information in a digital form from one place to another. Every time I go to see a different doctor or get treated at a different hospital, I have to take hardcopies of my medical history and receipts with me. It's a royal pain in the ass. It would be so much easier if all that kind of information could be stored in a nation wide database that the officials could access directly.
That's correct.
I just got back from hospital following an eye operation. Every time I signed something official over there I was given a copy of the privacy rights of an EU citizen that basically basically that all information concerning me a) will always be accessible (=see, correct, delete) to me b) will not be given to a 3rd party without a sound legal or medical reason.
What has changed is that now the Napster has become one of the first, real electronic distribution channels for commercial music. I guess that those who used Napster mainly to download music that they hadn't bought will move on to OpenNap. Those who used it to sample music before buying it, will pay the subscription fee. I know I will.
What has changed is that now the Napster has become one of the first, real distribution channels for commercial music. I guess that those who used Napster mainly to download music that they hadn't bought will move on to OpenNap. Those who used it to sample music before buying it on CD, will pay the subscription fee. I know I will.
Do you have to re-compile KDE?
What I'm really looking forward though is the font anti-aliasing. It's almost embarrassing to show screenshots of KDE and Gnome desktops with all the jagged fonts all over the place.
There is evidence for the regrowth of nerve cells but the problem has that only stem cells seem to be able to replace the damaged cells.
This is very promising. Soon fixing spinal injuries and brain damage will be possible.
Firstly, the loss of privacy is never trivial not the least because it's almost impossible to regain it.
Your point about information being the lifeblood of the corporations who provide services is a good one, but I wouldn't make such blanket statements about it. There are services I need and services I don't. I don't mind giving my profile to corporations I know the services of which I'll need, but if this profiling information is being bought, sold and collected without letting me to know about it (Doubleclick for instance) that's going too far.
The DVD-RAM discs come in cartridges but you can remove one-sided (2.6 GB) discs from the cartridge and use them in the ordinary DVD-ROM drives.
As far as I know the reason why certain types of radiation cause cancer is that they ionize molecules in the cells of the human tissue. The energy carried by microwave quanta, however, is not high enough to cause ionization of the atoms and molecules in a human cell and that's why I've always been sceptical of a direct connection between cell phone use and cancer.
The microwave radiation does, however, excite molecular rotations which increases the temperature of the tissue slightly, but then again the intensity of the cell phone radiation is so small that the temperature increase is negligible (less than the natural temperature variation in a human body).
Yeah, but that's really an analog copy. It's the fully digital copies that the studios are afraid of.
Would this make it possible to replace X with a lightweight GUI similar to the GUI on the QNX one floppy distribution?
Can't you opt out simply by putting a sign on your mailbox saying that "No advertisments or unaddressed mail"?
For instance in the case of the SpendMoneyGuy the viewers should be encouraged to phone in and tell him what items he should buy next time.
Even though I'm a physicist by my profession I'm really excited about the possibilities of genetic manipulation. Just like instruments such as the scanning tunneling microscope allow us to probe and understand the properties of materials at the resolution of individual atoms, decoding and understanding how the DNA works is truly a holy grail of the life sciences.
The nature herself is the ultimate engineer. When we understand the DNA we also have the means to tell her what to build. Customized drugs, spare body parts, molecular machinery,... there are no limits!
All natural sciences rely on the fair peer review process and the repeatability of the experiments. This is the credo, the consitution, of the scientific community. If data is allowed to be held back or the referees in future will have to comply with "you don't need to know that because it's a trade secret" kind of crap from companies, it's the science as whole that will suffer.
The article mentions that AMD Duron isn't selling that well in North America, whereas in Europe the sales are "incredible". Why is that?
My main problems with XFree86 are its printer support and the antiquated font system. Also, the 3D support is suffering both from the bloat and the people who demand open sourced drivers.
It doesn't matter if the actual process is just as easy. If the terminology and appearance of the installation program is different from Windows installation, they'll get confused and feel that installing Linux is difficult.
I've used Linux for seven years now. Still, it took a couple of attempts to get my first FreeBSD installation right (dividing the disk into slices and only after that into partitions was very confusing). Figuring out how to compile the kernel was another obstacle. Now in hindsight the FreeBSD installation process isn't any more complex, but because I had to learn it, it felt like one.
A while ago I had a chat with my Danish friend about DMCA and its the implications. At first he wouldn't even believe that someone would consider proposing this kind of a law, but after I showed him some info on the DMCA he thought that not even the EU bureaucrats would be insane enough to try something like this.
Personally I think he'll be in for a nasty surprise in near future...
One of the conditions for a healthy free market is that the consumers can freely choose between competing products. How is that possible if corporations are able to prevent the publication of less flattering reviews of their products or test the products themselves (which could be made impossible by the UCITA backed shrink-wraps)?
How would the corporations be affected differently by UCITA?
Initially even the developement of the specialized technology required in the building of the space station (high power solar panels, for instance) as well as the large scale collaboration between several space agencies is very much worthwhile an effort.