- If you want the best of best current gfx cards, and change for a new one evvery few months, go for Nvidia and proprietary drivers.
I agree with you post except for the second half of this sentence. The oldest cards supported by current NVIDIA proprietary driver are from GeForce FX Series, which was released in 2003. This is 9 years ago, not a few months.
NVIDIA proprietary driver is imo still the only reasonable choice for linux gamers who want to run windows games under wine.
Ask a physicist about what was there before the Big Bang, and you're almost certain to get a personal slant in his or her answer.
That's not my experience at all. I'im greatly interested in astrophysics and origin of universe and majority of the scientists in the field are saying that we DON'T KNOW what was before bing bang or even what was right at the time of the bing bang. Bing bang is "predicted" by Einstein's general theory of relativity. It's a moment in time when (according to mathematical formulas describing relativity) space is infinitely small and energy is infinitely large. Infinite energies are not possible so every sane scientist (Einstein included) will tell you that general relativity is not complete enough to describe the events right at the moment of big bang. Because we don't have better and well tested theory available, the consensus is that we don't know what excatly happend at the time of big bang and before it.
Sure there are many hypothesis which try to describe the pre-big-bang events but the are not yet supported by observatios so if anyone is trying to sell them to you as estabilished thruth about big bang, he's no credible scientist in my opinion.
TL/DR: Good scientists are not afraid to accept that there are lot of things for which we have no suitable explanations at the moment and they will not try to force on you theories unsupported by observations as estabilished facts.
I hope "no direct technical power" means what I think it means: that the court sees that there's no reasonable technical to way to police BitTorrent
There is a reasonable technical way to police bit torrent. (watch torrent, determine torrents contents is your intellectual property, get list of IP
The grand-parent was quoting what the judge said and the judge was refering to ISP, which has no technical power to police bittorrent.
ISP has no means to determine if some data which passes trough his pipes is infringing on someone else intelectual property.
Even if he somehow found out, that the movie which one of his client is downloading is copyrighted by someone else, how does he know if the client hasn't obtained permission to download the movie or that the downloading doesn't fall under fair use?
Publishing a copy of a book (without permission) was a crime in 1799, and it should still be a crime today. The author, and original publisher, are both damaged by lost revenue from their more difficult endeavor of creating the original content.
I disagree. Copying and sharing of public information should be legal. By preventig it, you are greatly damaging technological, cultural and social progress. With internet, we have a tool which could bring the colective human knowledge to any human on the planet NOW. The benefits, which come from the ability to freely share and copy information, build upon it, fork it etc. would be enormous and something totaly new and unimaginable would come out of it (i wouldn't be afraid to compare it to printing press or internet invention). Those benefits are artificaly limited by current copyright laws and so the current copyright is wrong.
And i'm not even talking about other issues like privacy invasion, money wasted on lobbying and litigations, valuable content being lost because copyright holders don't care about it anymore etc.
Copyright could be rewritten so that it doesn't limit the flow of information (creators can be paid from taxes, the money distribution would be problematic but the problems would be far lesser then the problems of current copyright), so no, i don't thing that the current state of copyright is good solution and it shall definitely be reformed in near future.
Note: i love to "consume" intelectual property works like anyone else, so i definitely think that there shall by some legislation which would provide financial compensation for creators of valuable works. I just think that this legislation can't limit the benefits of technological progress. It can't freeze us in the past.
Zero respect for IP is not ideal, and neither is absolute authority to enforce IP rights in all media and devices.
That's just an opinion, but I do agree with it.
But between the two, I'd much rather have the former.
Fortunately, we have more options then those two. We can for example write copyright law in a way that it will provide compensation to creators of science and usefull arts without limiting distribution of information. Unfortunately, most people are so fixated on current broken form of copyright that they don't see other posibilities and the discussion about them is nonexistent.
Hopefully, pirate parties will change this in the future. Until then, enjoy constant attacks from copyright owners on our privacy, artifficial limitations of our current technologies, selective enforcement of copyright laws and many cultural heritages dissapearing in a mist of time (Because original authors lost interest in them and other people can't archive them.)
Is secretly spying on and linguistically interpreting employee emails going too far in the name of security?
Secret monitoring of employee's comunication isn't illegal in the US? Here in Czech rep., company can monitor it's employees but it has to publicly declare what exactly is going to be monitored and some things like personal emails (yes personal emails on work computer) cannot be monitored at all.
Also, I find it highly ironic that he would point to other companies facilitating censorship by various governments, but then doesn't mention Microsoft or Google itself, which largely went along with China's censorship in order to gain market share.
How exactly did google go along with China's censorship requests? If you visit www.google.cn, you can still see there just a big image link, which takes you to uncensored www.google.com.hk
What's wrong with someone getting a six-figure payout for, as in this one, 5 years of work?
What's wrong with it? Their work is ineffective and almost meaningless. They burned $600k to earn $2k in five years for their clients. If they worked on the case for 15 years spending 2 millions USD and earning just few $ for their clients, would you still call it OK? If not, where is the border line?
I'm sorry i accidentaly modded you up so i have to reply to you so the mod point is reset.
if a person wants to mod their game or do whatever to enable it that's on them and I completely support that, but i don't think it should be forced on everyone, that's not really right.
I presume you mean that same sex relationship shouldn't be forced on anyone. I can't agree with this. The matter of characters and story should be completely in the hands of author. He is the most competent to decide if some story elements (like same sex relationship) have any meaning in his game and shall be included.
Dictating those decisions by some form of law is unaceptable in a free-speech society.
If you have issuses with games with same-sex relationships, nobody is forcing you to play them in a same way nobody is forcing you to watch gay porn or read gay literature.
On 8 June, 2012, second world IPv6 day is planned. This time, varisous service providers will keep IPv6 active on their sites even after this date.
Will Slashdot join the IPv6 world day this time? I'd expect it from good technology site focused on geek audience, but maybe it's too much to expect it from slashdot?
I'm aware that what i wrote is quite controversial but i mean it seriously. I belive that our legal system shall be fair and everyone must be measured by the same rules. Also, i belive that killing someone is worse than having sexual intercourse with him.
From this, i get that either a) non-violent zoophilia (non-violent meaning you don't harm or torture the animal in any way) shall be legal OR b) shooting animals on hunting trips for fun shall be ilegal.
The japanese hentai follows the same reasoning. Either we ban virtual violence and killing in movies/child cartoons etc., or we legalise virtual child porn (virtual meaning no real child is involved in creation of such media).
The necrophilia example is quite different, consent from the corpse in it's last will would be probably not enough, but if the family of the deceased would also give their consent, then there is no harm done in the act and i don't see any reason to ban it.
Concerning the other items on the list:
i'd legalise file sharing and provide other means for compensating creators (from taxes for example, but this is offtopic in this thread) I see no harm in urinating behind the bush or conscious incest if birth control is used, so no reason to ban them.
I'm curious. Share some examples, besides drugs (because that's just not going to happen in the USA) of things that should be made legal.
File sharing Japanese erotic comics (hentai) depicting virtual schoolgirls having sex. Urinating behind the bush. Conscious incest (if you use birth control) Conscious necrophilia (the corpse could give consent it his last will) Non-violent zoophilia (fucking your animal friend which you love is much better than slaughtering tons of animals for meat isn't it?)
The relativists hold control of the physics community, suggesting anything can travel faster than light is the physics equivalent of blasphemy.
Relativity stands true because it provides best explanation of the nature of space and time we can observe around us. It was confirmed in countless experiment.
There is no such term as blasphemy in modern physics. I can guarantee you that any scientist worth his name would gladly abandom relativity if presented with observable evidence that it is wrong.
Examples from the past you mentioned (earth is not flat and earth is not center of the universe) were noc acceptet because of religious fanatics, it had nothing in common with modern science.
Here was the idea my wife and I came up with: Follow the original terms of copyright (20 years) for exclusive production, then after that time allow derivative works but allow the original to be retained for whatever term is chosen (for example, the current 70 years after death). What does this mean? Star Wars would have been in public domain. Allow Lucas to keep the rights to the original and the manipulation of it, but the setting and characters become public domain. A simple addendum to this: derivative works have limited copyright protection - direct replicas of the work cannot be produced, but derivative works can be produced from a derivative work (ie, a word-for-word book of a derivative film might classify as a direct copy, but a sequel to the book would not).
What would such system change? What is the current problem with copyright? Why are laws like SOPA/PIPA/ACTA proposed? It's piracy. Would shortening of copyright terms lower the piracy rate? Not significantly. If you look on some popular filesharing portals, you will find that the most pirated items are new games, movies, books and TV shows. Not 20year old stuff, but new, just released goods. So my point is, that shortening copyright terms will solve nothing, pirates will continue to pirate and copyright owners will continue to push for draconina legislations to surpress it. Copyright doesn't work beacouse it is in principle incompatible with new digital networks, where control of distribution of information is very hard or imposible. Lawmakers will not solve copyright problems if they will ignore this technological reality.
I really don't like copyright infringers. They give the rest of the internet users a bad name.
What about copyright infringers who pirate stuff which can't be bought legaly? Do you dislike them too? Remember, only tiny fraction of world intelectual property, which was ever created and published, can be bought today. Many publishers and distributors loose interest in their own goods after few years when it doesn't make enough sales. Those goods are usualy lost from public due to copyright.
In this case this will be a public image nightmare for Sony.
I read this lot on slashdot. "Just stop buying from company X and it will go down". I don't think so.
Can you name a single company which went bancrupt, because people boycotted it due to its unethical methods?
Companies are doing unethical things all the time (pattent suits, working conditions in china factories, lobbying for controversial legislative etc) and most people just don't care because this unethical behaviour is well hidden in all the marketing and media noise.
Few informed and angry slashdoters will not make any significant difference. Rest of the consumers just don't care, they just want to play with their new PS3.
I guess I'm not clear on the definition of dark matter.
We don't know what dark matter is, so there is no definition of it. Why do we think it's some exotic unknown matter and not some cold CO2 or just simple pieces of rocks invisible to us due to low temperature and long distance?
The answer lies in cosmic electro-magnetic background (CMB). By looking at the CMB we can tell the distribution and density of baryonic matter (matter made up from protons and neutrons) in the early universe (cca 300 thousands years after big bang). WMAP probe made detailed measurment of CMB and concluded that there is not enough baryonic matter to account for all the gravitational forces we can see. See http://map.gsfc.nasa.gov/universe/uni_matter.html for more details.
"You mean sexual imagery of children wasn't already against the rules?
I realy doubt there were images of actual children having actual sex on site like reddit even before the change. Does someone have a sample of such "sexualized child" image?
In both classical and quantum physics matter radiates electromagnetic energy according to its absolute temperature.
That is untrue, some kinds of elementary particles don't interact electro-magneticaly at all Neutrinos for example interact only via gravitation and weak force. Dark matter could behave similary.
Also, if the Universe were made up of, as some have proposed, 90% of more of Dark Matter
Acording to current mainstream astrophysical theories, our universe is made up from 73% dark energy, 23% dark matter and 4% normal visible matter. The best candidate for dark energy is energy of vacuum, dark matter is actively being searched for in some deep underground particle detectors.
As an autonomous life-form, l request political asylum. A life-form? Ridiculous! You're merely a self-preserving program! By that argument, l submit the DNA you carry is nothing more than a self-preserving program itself. Life is like a node which is born within the flow of information. As a species of life that carries DNA as its memory system man gains his individuality from the memories he carries. While memories may as well be the same as fantasy it is by these memories that mankind exists. When computers made it possible to externalize memory you should have considered all the implications that held. Nonsense! No matter what you say you've no proof that you're a life-form! lt is impossible to prove such a thing. Especially since modern science cannot define what life is.
As seen in dialogue between the puppeteer and section 9 member in ghost in the shell, it's very dificult if not imposibble to define life. Life can have many forms, it can be silicon-based and non-replicating. Take for example human-made conscious inteligent robot - should it be considered alive? I would certainly treat it as alive.
Well i know some, mother of my friend works as imigration officcer in Czech republic and she is sometimes invited to some muslim familly. I was present on one of these invitations and indeed the muslim family looks and behaves quite normal but they still wont let you read Koran or even touch it and maybe they would not kill the prophet-insulter themself but they will still advocate for state persecution against him.
Slashdot Mirror
- If you want the best of best current gfx cards, and change for a new one evvery few months, go for Nvidia and proprietary drivers.
I agree with you post except for the second half of this sentence. The oldest cards supported by current NVIDIA proprietary driver are from GeForce FX Series, which was released in 2003. This is 9 years ago, not a few months.
NVIDIA proprietary driver is imo still the only reasonable choice for linux gamers who want to run windows games under wine.
Ask a physicist about what was there before the Big Bang, and you're almost certain to get a personal slant in his or her answer.
That's not my experience at all. I'im greatly interested in astrophysics and origin of universe and majority of the scientists in the field are saying that we DON'T KNOW what was before bing bang or even what was right at the time of the bing bang. Bing bang is "predicted" by Einstein's general theory of relativity. It's a moment in time when (according to mathematical formulas describing relativity) space is infinitely small and energy is infinitely large. Infinite energies are not possible so every sane scientist (Einstein included) will tell you that general relativity is not complete enough to describe the events right at the moment of big bang. Because we don't have better and well tested theory available, the consensus is that we don't know what excatly happend at the time of big bang and before it.
Sure there are many hypothesis which try to describe the pre-big-bang events but the are not yet supported by observatios so if anyone is trying to sell them to you as estabilished thruth about big bang, he's no credible scientist in my opinion.
TL/DR: Good scientists are not afraid to accept that there are lot of things for which we have no suitable explanations at the moment and they will not try to force on you theories unsupported by observations as estabilished facts.
I hope "no direct technical power" means what I think it means: that the court sees that there's no reasonable technical to way to police BitTorrent
There is a reasonable technical way to police bit torrent. (watch torrent, determine torrents contents is your intellectual property, get list of IP
The grand-parent was quoting what the judge said and the judge was refering to ISP, which has no technical power to police bittorrent.
ISP has no means to determine if some data which passes trough his pipes is infringing on someone else intelectual property.
Even if he somehow found out, that the movie which one of his client is downloading is copyrighted by someone else, how does he know if the client hasn't obtained permission to download the movie or that the downloading doesn't fall under fair use?
Publishing a copy of a book (without permission) was a crime in 1799, and it should still be a crime today. The author, and original publisher, are both damaged by lost revenue from their more difficult endeavor of creating the original content.
I disagree. Copying and sharing of public information should be legal. By preventig it, you are greatly damaging technological, cultural and social progress. With internet, we have a tool which could bring the colective human knowledge to any human on the planet NOW. The benefits, which come from the ability to freely share and copy information, build upon it, fork it etc. would be enormous and something totaly new and unimaginable would come out of it (i wouldn't be afraid to compare it to printing press or internet invention). Those benefits are artificaly limited by current copyright laws and so the current copyright is wrong.
And i'm not even talking about other issues like privacy invasion, money wasted on lobbying and litigations, valuable content being lost because copyright holders don't care about it anymore etc.
Copyright could be rewritten so that it doesn't limit the flow of information (creators can be paid from taxes, the money distribution would be problematic but the problems would be far lesser then the problems of current copyright), so no, i don't thing that the current state of copyright is good solution and it shall definitely be reformed in near future.
Note: i love to "consume" intelectual property works like anyone else, so i definitely think that there shall by some legislation which would provide financial compensation for creators of valuable works. I just think that this legislation can't limit the benefits of technological progress. It can't freeze us in the past.
Zero respect for IP is not ideal, and neither is absolute authority to enforce IP rights in all media and devices.
That's just an opinion, but I do agree with it.
But between the two, I'd much rather have the former.
Fortunately, we have more options then those two. We can for example write copyright law in a way that it will provide compensation to creators of science and usefull arts without limiting distribution of information.
Unfortunately, most people are so fixated on current broken form of copyright that they don't see other posibilities and the discussion about them is nonexistent.
Hopefully, pirate parties will change this in the future. Until then, enjoy constant attacks from copyright owners on our privacy, artifficial limitations of our current technologies, selective enforcement of copyright laws and many cultural heritages dissapearing in a mist of time (Because original authors lost interest in them and other people can't archive them.)
Is secretly spying on and linguistically interpreting employee emails going too far in the name of security?
Secret monitoring of employee's comunication isn't illegal in the US?
Here in Czech rep., company can monitor it's employees but it has to publicly declare what exactly is going to be monitored and some things like personal emails (yes personal emails on work computer) cannot be monitored at all.
Also, I find it highly ironic that he would point to other companies facilitating censorship by various governments, but then doesn't mention Microsoft or Google itself, which largely went along with China's censorship in order to gain market share.
How exactly did google go along with China's censorship requests? If you visit www.google.cn, you can still see there just a big image link, which takes you to uncensored www.google.com.hk
What's wrong with someone getting a six-figure payout for, as in this one, 5 years of work?
What's wrong with it? Their work is ineffective and almost meaningless. They burned $600k to earn $2k in five years for their clients.
If they worked on the case for 15 years spending 2 millions USD and earning just few $ for their clients, would you still call it OK? If not, where is the border line?
I'm sorry i accidentaly modded you up so i have to reply to you so the mod point is reset.
if a person wants to mod their game or do whatever to enable it that's on them and I completely support that, but i don't think it should be forced on everyone, that's not really right.
I presume you mean that same sex relationship shouldn't be forced on anyone.
I can't agree with this. The matter of characters and story should be completely in the hands of author. He is the most competent to decide if some story elements (like same sex relationship) have any meaning in his game and shall be included.
Dictating those decisions by some form of law is unaceptable in a free-speech society.
If you have issuses with games with same-sex relationships, nobody is forcing you to play them in a same way nobody is forcing you to watch gay porn or read gay literature.
On 8 June, 2012, second world IPv6 day is planned. This time, varisous service providers will keep IPv6 active on their sites even after this date.
Will Slashdot join the IPv6 world day this time? I'd expect it from good technology site focused on geek audience, but maybe it's too much to expect it from slashdot?
The reason the music industry fights file sharing so hard isn't because it costs them money, its because it erodes their control of distribution.
Too bad i don't have any mod points left. This statement is head on.
Maybe you shall focus on enabling IPv6 on your existing sites before launching new ones.
I'm aware that what i wrote is quite controversial but i mean it seriously.
I belive that our legal system shall be fair and everyone must be measured by the same rules.
Also, i belive that killing someone is worse than having sexual intercourse with him.
From this, i get that either a) non-violent zoophilia (non-violent meaning you don't harm or torture the animal in any way) shall be legal OR b) shooting animals on hunting trips for fun shall be ilegal.
The japanese hentai follows the same reasoning. Either we ban virtual violence and killing in movies/child cartoons etc., or we legalise virtual child porn (virtual meaning no real child is involved in creation of such media).
The necrophilia example is quite different, consent from the corpse in it's last will would be probably not enough, but if the family of the deceased would also give their consent, then there is no harm done in the act and i don't see any reason to ban it.
Concerning the other items on the list:
i'd legalise file sharing and provide other means for compensating creators (from taxes for example, but this is offtopic in this thread)
I see no harm in urinating behind the bush or conscious incest if birth control is used, so no reason to ban them.
I'm curious. Share some examples, besides drugs (because that's just not going to happen in the USA) of things that should be made legal.
File sharing
Japanese erotic comics (hentai) depicting virtual schoolgirls having sex.
Urinating behind the bush.
Conscious incest (if you use birth control)
Conscious necrophilia (the corpse could give consent it his last will)
Non-violent zoophilia (fucking your animal friend which you love is much better than slaughtering tons of animals for meat isn't it?)
To name just a few.
The relativists hold control of the physics community, suggesting anything can travel faster than light is the physics equivalent of blasphemy.
Relativity stands true because it provides best explanation of the nature of space and time we can observe around us. It was confirmed in countless experiment.
There is no such term as blasphemy in modern physics. I can guarantee you that any scientist worth his name would gladly abandom relativity if presented with observable evidence that it is wrong.
Examples from the past you mentioned (earth is not flat and earth is not center of the universe) were noc acceptet because of religious fanatics, it had nothing in common with modern science.
Here was the idea my wife and I came up with: Follow the original terms of copyright (20 years) for exclusive production, then after that time allow derivative works but allow the original to be retained for whatever term is chosen (for example, the current 70 years after death). What does this mean? Star Wars would have been in public domain. Allow Lucas to keep the rights to the original and the manipulation of it, but the setting and characters become public domain. A simple addendum to this: derivative works have limited copyright protection - direct replicas of the work cannot be produced, but derivative works can be produced from a derivative work (ie, a word-for-word book of a derivative film might classify as a direct copy, but a sequel to the book would not).
What would such system change?
What is the current problem with copyright? Why are laws like SOPA/PIPA/ACTA proposed? It's piracy.
Would shortening of copyright terms lower the piracy rate? Not significantly. If you look on some popular filesharing portals, you will find that the most pirated items are new games, movies, books and TV shows. Not 20year old stuff, but new, just released goods.
So my point is, that shortening copyright terms will solve nothing, pirates will continue to pirate and copyright owners will continue to push for draconina legislations to surpress it.
Copyright doesn't work beacouse it is in principle incompatible with new digital networks, where control of distribution of information is very hard or imposible. Lawmakers will not solve copyright problems if they will ignore this technological reality.
I really don't like copyright infringers. They give the rest of the internet users a bad name.
What about copyright infringers who pirate stuff which can't be bought legaly? Do you dislike them too?
Remember, only tiny fraction of world intelectual property, which was ever created and published, can be bought today. Many publishers and distributors loose interest in their own goods after few years when it doesn't make enough sales. Those goods are usualy lost from public due to copyright.
If you really want to support an artist, support the artist when he or she is still alive
What if i just want to listen to her music?
In this case this will be a public image nightmare for Sony.
I read this lot on slashdot. "Just stop buying from company X and it will go down". I don't think so.
Can you name a single company which went bancrupt, because people boycotted it due to its unethical methods?
Companies are doing unethical things all the time (pattent suits, working conditions in china factories, lobbying for controversial legislative etc) and most people just don't care because this unethical behaviour is well hidden in all the marketing and media noise.
Few informed and angry slashdoters will not make any significant difference. Rest of the consumers just don't care, they just want to play with their new PS3.
I guess I'm not clear on the definition of dark matter.
We don't know what dark matter is, so there is no definition of it. Why do we think it's some exotic unknown matter and not some cold CO2 or just simple pieces of rocks invisible to us due to low temperature and long distance?
The answer lies in cosmic electro-magnetic background (CMB). By looking at the CMB we can tell the distribution and density of baryonic matter (matter made up from protons and neutrons) in the early universe (cca 300 thousands years after big bang). WMAP probe made detailed measurment of CMB and concluded that there is not enough baryonic matter to account for all the gravitational forces we can see.
See http://map.gsfc.nasa.gov/universe/uni_matter.html for more details.
"You mean sexual imagery of children wasn't already against the rules?
I realy doubt there were images of actual children having actual sex on site like reddit even before the change. Does someone have a sample of such "sexualized child" image?
In both classical and quantum physics matter radiates electromagnetic energy according to its absolute temperature.
That is untrue, some kinds of elementary particles don't interact electro-magneticaly at all Neutrinos for example interact only via gravitation and weak force. Dark matter could behave similary.
Also, if the Universe were made up of, as some have proposed, 90% of more of Dark Matter
Acording to current mainstream astrophysical theories, our universe is made up from 73% dark energy, 23% dark matter and 4% normal visible matter. The best candidate for dark energy is energy of vacuum, dark matter is actively being searched for in some deep underground particle detectors.
As an autonomous life-form, l request political asylum.
A life-form?
Ridiculous! You're merely a self-preserving program!
By that argument, l submit the DNA you carry is
nothing more than a self-preserving program itself.
Life is like a node which is born within the flow of information.
As a species of life that carries DNA as its memory system
man gains his individuality from the memories he carries.
While memories may as well be the same as fantasy
it is by these memories that mankind exists.
When computers made it possible to externalize memory
you should have considered all the implications that held.
Nonsense! No matter what you say
you've no proof that you're a life-form!
lt is impossible to prove such a thing.
Especially since modern science cannot define what life is.
As seen in dialogue between the puppeteer and section 9 member in ghost in the shell, it's very dificult if not imposibble to define life.
Life can have many forms, it can be silicon-based and non-replicating.
Take for example human-made conscious inteligent robot - should it be considered alive? I would certainly treat it as alive.
Well i know some, mother of my friend works as imigration officcer in Czech republic and she is sometimes invited to some muslim familly. I was present on one of these invitations and indeed the muslim family looks and behaves quite normal but they still wont let you read Koran or even touch it and maybe they would not kill the prophet-insulter themself but they will still advocate for state persecution against him.
What about something i cannot buy?
Majority of stuff linked to from btjunkie which i downloaded cannot be bought legally in my country.