Even if 9/11 happened every day for a year more people would have died to car accidents,
That may be a bit of an exaggeration. According to the the DOT 42,196 people died in car crashes in 2001 (and for the next three years within 1,000 of that number). The death toll of 9/11 is 2,986.
2,986 * 365 = 1,089,890, or approximately 26 times the number of automotive fatalities.
Now, one could also interpret your statement as to automotive fatalities for all time, but then one would have to consider all terrorism-related deaths for all time (and debate whether to consider one or both of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, etc).
The point, though, is still clear. The average person appears much more likely (provided the risk of a WMD-based attack on the US is sufficiently small) to be killed in a car accident than be killed by a terrorist attack. Of course, it's that fear of a WMD-based attack that gets people really anxious.
Couldn't that be applied here to give us the right to put files up for sharing on our computers if the material isn't copyrighted?
The summary is misleading. Clicking the/. link, and a link from that page, leads to the actual story. There, it states that (paraphrasing) the RIAA's position is that makingcopyrighted files available for sharing (at least those for which you don't have the permission to distribute), is a violation of copyright law.
Given that, it will still be interesting to see how the courts view the RIAA's arguments. It seems like a huge stretch in interpretation of copyright law, but IANAL.
You seem to assume that economics professors tend to be conservative. I read an article in The Economist a year or two back (can't seem to find it now), that showed that economics professors tended to be left-of-center in their views on average.
I guess it also depends on what you mean by "liberal". Professors can be socially liberal while fiscally "conservative", in the sense they favor free trade and other libertarian viewpoints.
The more common stereotype (I don't know if I've ever seen a survey to back it up) is a more conservative leaning amongst professors in business schools. I really couldn't say one way or the other.
I'm an economics PhD student and an econ and math major as an undergrad. I can't recall a situation where being either strongly conservative or strongly liberal would have significantly impacted one's grade, so long as one's arguments were supported reasonably. In fact, I had few occasions as an undergrad to really debate (at least for a grade) controversial topics in economics courses, since they tended to be based around some simple models and their implications.
Often, the professors would make clear how the models don't match reality well in one way or another, but political leanings did not play a substantial role. Part of this, I think, is because economics deliberately tries to avoid moral decisions about "fairness" as much as possible. In a trade class, for example, the models they discuss provide an overall welfare benefit from free trade, but everyone acknowledges that certain industries will not benefit from trade.
see iaudio. many of their players support ogg, and they appear as a normal usb drive to the computer.
I recently acquired an iAudio X5l 30GB player. Quite simply, it's awesome. It supports not only OGG but FLAC, appears as a USB drive, etc. Compared to an ipod, it has the following advantages and disadvantages:
Pros:
- Supports OGG and FLAC
- Has much longer battery life (especially the l variant)
- Has FM radio, with timed recording (it can wake up, record the radio show of your choice into mp3, and shut down)
- USB drive connectivity, which as a Linux user means I don't have to worry about using software that tries to implement all the features of itunes
- It appears to be much more durable (by that I mean scratch resistant) than the ipod. The black metal look is very sleek.
Cons:
- Thicker, especially compared to new ipods. Not a big deal for my use, but certainly could be for some people.
- No id3-tag browsing (rumored to be added in a new firmware, but I'm not holding my breath and was not considering this possibility when making my choice)
- Accessories are harder to find, though I was given an excellent zCover which protects the unit well without adding a lot of bulk.
- The headphone jack is on the side. I see no advantage for this, and for certain headphone plugs it makes it a bit awkward.
- No wheel. Frankly, the wheel is the single best thing going for the ipod. I liked the (3G? 4G?) with the separate buttons from the wheel, but still.
No. Digital SLRs (pro cameras and higher end consumer cameras) can take pictures in "RAW" format. The exact structure of the file format varies (though some are trying to establish standards), but the file basically contains the data that the sensor receives. Post-processing is left for the computer, which allows a great deal of freedom.
The biggest problems with taking all your photos in this way are that they're large (very large, relative to JPEG), and you either must use proprietary camera software or plugins for software like Photoshop (I'm not too current on this, perhaps Photoshop supports more formats natively than before). The greater size means not only fewer images on your card but a longer time waiting for your camera to write them to disk, and more processing power for your computer to work with them.
My wife owns a Canon 20d, which takes absolutely awesome photos (it is also used by some photographers for various purposes). She shoots in high-quality JPEG because RAW just isn't enough of a benefit for her photos. Most software (I believe) is good about not layering on the JPEG compression with each save (just once per session). Still, I often wonder why these cameras don't include a non-RAW lossless format like LZW-compressed TIFF as an intermediate option (my first digital camera, a 1.3 MP Olympus point and shoot, could take TIFF). I suppose TIFF has most of the disadvantages of RAW with few of the advantages, but a choice would still be nice.
For more info about RAW image formats, see this Wikipedia entry.
a mere 1600 DPI but that should be plenty for most
I'd be wary of buying such a mouse for use on a Linux/BSD system. I realize, though, that most gamers use Windows. It would seem that under many circumstances, there is no way to set the speed of a mouse in xorg/xfree86. Sure, you can set the acceleration, but if you happen to have, say, a shiny new Logitech Cordless MouseMan Optical (800dpi), the thing is so fast that you have to set the acceleration to be
Why is losing mouse acceleration a big deal? It means that you cannot move across the screen with a quick movement while maintaining the ability to make small movements easily. It turns out that in operating system like Mac OS X, they actually "decelerate" for very slow movements - it takes a greater distance to move one pixel. I had never noticed these things before.
This issue is already on the TODO list and in their bugzilla system submitted by someone else. The goal is eventually to have a much smarter system for mouse speed and acceleration, to suit all tastes. I hope it gets some attention (perhaps as an add-on to the new X11R7), as right now I went back to an older mouse that works with acceleration (but isn't optical).
My mouse is simply incredibly fast (and I can't imagine another reason than the doubled dpi from most mice) - plugging it into my Mac Mini showed it was much faster than a wired Logitech optical mouse, and the discrete settings Mac OS X offered for mouse speed proved either too slow or too fast. I think the bundled Logitech software allows for finer control of mouse movement, though.
The "golden rectangle" looks too long if you try and use it for a painting or similar.
That's not true. I own a painting that is (IIRC) 4x2.5ft (exactly 1.6:1). True, it's not quite the 1.618... that is the true ratio, but that's about a third of an inch shorter. At least at that size, it covers the wall it is hanging in quite well, and seems very proportional to the room.
Basically, painting dimensions can look good at many ratios depending on the subject and where it will be displayed. We had our painting done by this guy, from a picture taken by a Chilean amateur astrophotographer. You can see my picture as the 8th picture listed on that site (orion.jpg), though the true colors are hard to capture.
Unfortunately the terminology has, as usual, been co-opted and distorted by the masses, who tend to think that weak atheists are agnostics, and all atheists are strong atheists.
When I did some research about this (admittedly, this was a while ago), the term agnostic could encompass a wide variety of beliefs (including those you attribute to weak atheism).
Indeed, the term was basically coined to describe those who did not hold strong atheist views. A logical interpretation of this is that anyone who claims that we don't know about the existence of God in some way is a certain kind of agnostic. Then one can subdivide agnostics into appropriate categories.
One site gives the following definitions: An agnostic theist, for example, is one "who believe that a deity probably exists", while an agnostic atheist believes "that it is very improbable that a deity exists." On the other hand, an empirical agnostic believes "that God may exist, but that little or nothing can be known about him/her/it/them."
Thus, within this context weak atheists could be described as agnostic atheists. I believe the latter term is more clear, since it encompasses both the "not knowing" meaning of agnost as well as the implications of atheist. Certainly, though, I do not believe that describing people as agnostics when you would describe them as weak atheists is diluting the term. As mentioned earlier, it was devised originally in part (or in full, I'm not sure) for this purpose.
Besides, wouldn't it be a bit counterintuitive to have the definition of agnostic be a narrow one?
I'm delaying my Mac laptop purchase to see if that rumor is true.
Certainly all products need early-adopters, but buying the first generation of any major device, from just about any manufacturer, often comes with issues. I learned that the hard way with products like mp3 CD players. On the other hand, I got a first-generation Mac Mini and have been overall pleased with it. I would describe the mac mini more like an ibook/powerbook in a new case rather than such a major product shift like the first x86 macs... Still, I have a common problem with the hard drive that parks itself when it's not supposed to (you can read about a "marble" clunking noise on forums). Problems like these can even be fixed without Apple releasing a new version (after all, Apple seems averse to marketing products by any sort of code, so you end up talking about 2nd generation ipods and ibooks with 2 USB ports or some such thing). I got my Mac Mini about 6 months after they were announced, though, so ymmv with this approach.
I guess my opinion is just that you should expect issues, perhaps some requiring warranty service, more than typical for Apple. I'm personally eager to see how well this transition goes, both with new hardware designs and software compatibility/transitioning.
Nice, I never heard of that before (would've thought that initrd and vmlinuz didn't include everything you need to start an install). The relevant files for SUSE are on CD1:/boot/loader/linux is the kernel,/boot/loader/initrd is the initrd file.
Floppies are bad, I'm glad I didn't need to setup tftp for this. Thanks.
I've been eager to try SUSE for a while, and their OSS release seems like the ideal time.
I understand the reasoning, but for most Linux distros it's becoming harder and harder to install without a CD (whether it be net install or full CD install). My laptop is usually very low end for its time, and so far I've never had one with a reliably-functioning CD drive (my current laptop doesn't read CDRs reliably). Not that floppy is much better, but this laptop won't boot from PCMCIA CDROM (at least the one I have) nor USB key.
Some modern distros like Ubuntu and Fedora don't seem to have any mechanism to create floppies (correct me if I'm wrong). OpenSUSE wants you to have all of CD1 to run mkbootdisk and generate who knows how many floppies. All I really need is a disk that RH and Mandrake used to have (maybe Mandriva still does) - one that can load pcmcia drivers and finish the install via CD. They also had a net driver alternative to do a net install.
Yeah, I know you can still install Debian via floppy. It's what I'm running now, but I have issues with fonts and power management and other tweaks for laptops that just don't seem to work quite right. The laptop ran various versions of Mandrake when it was my wife's for over 3 years, so I know the hardware is fairly compatible with Linux.
Getting back to SUSE, I'm downloading all the CDs via bittorrent. Considering no mirrors that I checked had the new RPMS yet, it didn't seem like a net install was worth attempting anyway. I think I'll try my hand at a network boot from my desktop.
See my other response, but to sum up: the only copyrightable portion of fonts is the code that generates them. The GPL is a license for code, and thus it's not unreasonable that it should take into consideration the special circumstances that apply to fonts.
Regardings the rarity of GPL fonts, I've come across at least a few. One common set is urw-fonts, which contains an exception for embedding with postscript and PDF (but, it appears, no exception for embedding into a word processing document). If the GPL fixes the everyday usage issues of fonts, it'd be reasonably ideal for the GPL. As it is now, lots of fonts use special licenses (look at Bitstream and LaTeX licensing).
Thus, this problem shouldn't have come up at all. As you say, the GPL isn't a document license- because it's a software license. But, the GPL also is not a font license- again, because it's a software license.
But the only copyrightable part about fonts is the "software" that creates them, namely, the postscript/etc code that defines the font. You can take any font you like, visually reproduce it in any number of methods, give it a new name, and not be guilty of any copyright or trademark infringement (of course, IANAL, but this is pretty common knowledge). This is how we get the confusing situation of identical looking fonts under different names.
So in the sense that the code itself is the only thing copyrightable, the GPL should be able to be used. Making modifications to a font isn't too common (since you can regenerate them from scratch with work), but it's entirely reasonable that some font creator would want to allow derivative works using the same code (so you don't start from scratch). People could use the exact fonts in any embedded way they want, and those few interested in modifying the font files could redistribute them under the GPL. The issue, as I said in the top-level post, is that using GPL fonts in an everyday manner (embedding into pdf, etc) is not legally clear.
With luck, the GPL v3 will clear up the issue of fonts. The issue has been discussed on Slashdot before.Namely, that if I use a GPL font in a document, and subsequently embed that font through a document format (OO's sxw or OpenDocument, pdf, ps, etc), it's unclear as to whether I have the legal ability to do so without declaring the document itself GPL (which isn't really a document license). People sometimes (apparently mistakenly, but IANAL) say that it would force your document to be GPLed, but that's really not the case. You can't be automatically forced to license your work as anything, but you can be guilty of copyright infringement. The issue does also apparently not extend to printed documents and such, since the font itself cannot be copyrighted, only the code (postscript, etc) that generates the font can be.
It's unfortunate that such vagueness persists with the GPL, but it seems to be a trend with copyright issues in general (fair use being the most visible).
i wonder if its possible to do book rental and if amazon will ever do this?
I doubt it, for a few reasons. First, shipping on a book is significantly more expensive than DVDs. Media mail is the cheapest way in the US, and it's something like $1.42/book for a much slower service than priority mail. Netflix gets you DVDs within a day or two of shipping them by using a combination of priority mail and nearby distribution centers.
The second reason is similar, and that is of total cost/revenue. Let's assume (but this is probably optimistic) that the higher shipping cost (nearly $3/book for both directions) is offset by the slower turnover (since people tend to spend longer to read a book than watch a movie). Still, given the reasonable rate of 4 books/month, your monthly fee would have to be quite low to entice people to choose it over buying books used or going to the library. If the fee is too low, it won't cover the rather substantial overhead of dealing with all the other costs of storage, purchasing new books, etc.
If, for whatever reason, the library isn't working well for you personally, there are alternatives. My wife is big into PaperBackSwap which has you mailing books you own to others and in turn other users mail you books back. You can use this either to get rid of books you're no longer interested in and get ones you really are, or use it like a rather expensive rental system. As long as you like the selection, it'd probably be cheaper for you than to try to use a company looking to make profit.
I'd rather pay the full cost for a product than pay a lesser price so I can watch advertising. If you can't produce the thing for a low enough cost such that people value it enough for you to recoup your costs, dont make it.
Funny, I don't see an asterisk by your UID showing that you're a subscriber. I don't have one either, because at this point in my life I'd rather see a few/. ads than pay to view them ad-free.
Truth is, some services work really well subsidized by advertising. Newspapers, magazines, Google, etc. Google is the only place on the internet where I've found ads so relevant to what I'm looking for (especially when I'm looking to buy something) that I've clicked on them a fair amount.
If you're a news junkie like me, are you really willing to pay the full price of something like the NYT, WSJ, etc. to get it completely without advertisement? I'm wondering just how much that would be, but I'd venture to guess that it'd at least triple the cost.
So it's easy to sit there and be up in arms about advertising creeping into your life. Trouble is, most of us enjoy the substantially lower prices. The argument can be made, however, about increasing advertising in public places (highways, malls, etc) becoming more distracting.
For an interesting documentary about modern advertising, check out this Frontline episode on PBS. You'll be pleased to note that PBS programs run without commercial interruption, and that this Frontline episode is available in streaming format.
I tried installing Win2K a few years back on my dual P II 450 with 768 Megs of RAM. [...] The boot alone took 10-15 minutes.
I'm not sure what was going on there, but your numbers are crazy. I ran Win2k on a P II 350 laptop with 128 MB of RAM and it booted in something around 5 minutes, probably less. It also ran reasonably well, but I'll admit I didn't use it for a whole lot (it dual-booted Debian).
So then I installed RedHat 9 and did something you can never do with Windows. I recompiled the kernel for SMP and tweaked it with the realtime patches.
RedHat 9 supported SMP out of the box - it should've loaded an SMP kernel after installation (at least RedHat 8 and RHEL do). Tweaking it for realtime, sure.
Also, Win2k Pro supports SMP for dual processors, so I'm don't see how you can claim that's something "you can never do with Windows"
Basically, I don't disagree with your assertion that Linux can be happier and more usable on old systems. I used WindowMaker, and Debian allowed for a impressively small install image allowing me to dual boot on a 6GB drive.
China's GDP as of 2004 is $7,262,000,000,000 (7.26 trillion) while the GDP of the USA as of 2004 is $11,750,000,000,000 (11.75 trillion). Growing a nations GDP by 1 trillion is a few years let alone more than 4 trillion is just impossible. China has _at least_ 1 billion people. Divide their GDP by their population and you get about $7,262 per person. The USA has about 300 million people. Divide our GDP per person and you get about $39,166.66 per person. A _huge_ difference, more than five time the amount _per person_!
A few notes:
1.) Your figures are probably from the CIA World Factbook, which reports purchasing power parity GDP. Comparing nominal GDP makes your argument stronger, as the PPP GDP for China is substantially smaller. One source has the figure for 2004 at $1.65 trillion US. However, the PPP number is useful in that it's probably a better comparison with US output, I believe due to the rather extraordinary circumstances with the yuan dollar peg kept artificially low. Still, that said...
2.) China's GDP growth is pretty spectacular, and has been so for the past several years (check the World Bank's World Development Indicators database). 9.5% reported growth in 2004 is probably unsustainable, but China had GDP growth of 7-9% for 1999-2003 (according to the WB). The US, by comparison, had growth of 1-4% between 1999 and 2003 (admittedly including a recession).
3.) Your argument about per-capita GDP works against you. Few believe that the average Chinese person will be as wealthy as the average "first world" person any time soon. The point is that China, as a political and economic powerhouse, will likely become even more huge in the near future. The large population bolsters this goal, as it provides low-cost labor and a quick opportunity for growth. One only needs to raise per-capita productivity a small amount to see huge gains in overall GDP for the country as a whole.
4.) Let's take your original figures of $7.26 trillion versus $11.75 trillion. Assuming China can keep up a 7% growth and the US has about 3% growth, China will reach the $11.75 trillion mark within 8 years. At those rates of growth, China will exceed the US within 13 years. Even if these figures are quite off, China is still likely to have a much larger economic role than it does now in the coming decades.
A while back I went to their site to see if they offered DSL in my future hometown (using the address of one of the potential apartments I was looking at). No problem, a little contact info provided and I had my answer - they did. I actually got followup e-mails from a salesperson, asking if I was still interested.
Eventually, with my apartment picked out, I was. I contacted him and received quality responses - he responded to my questions quickly and accurately. My only complaint through this process was that one couldn't go through the order process online; for such a tech-friendly ISP, you have to provide credit card info (to get the order started) over the phone (toll-free number, no big deal).
A week or so later I receive a response; though my address was cleared for DSL service by the automated system, and though the sales rep had my address for a while, it turns out that my new address is more than 16,000 ft away from their location (presumably the company they're reselling from). I'm assuming that the program that initially checks for availability only uses zip codes, and my zip code is probably mostly covered. So after all this back and forth with the sales rep, I can't even get DSL service to the apartment (ISDN/T1 are available, but the rep acknowledged how those just aren't practical).
I ended up ordering SBC, but I'm anticipating issues. I don't get a static IP (those were much more expensive than through Speakeasy), but I do get fast DSL + phone line for about $40/mo + taxes. Since I wasn't planning on getting a phone line (it only saved about $6/mo w/ Speakeasy), it will at least provide a dialup backup when I inevitably have problems with SBC...
I hope I'm wrong about SBC, I really am. I also really wanted to get Speakeasy and really wanted to like them, but I'm pretty disappointed with their order process. Maybe at my next location, or *crosses fingers* they'll have service available in a year or two.
But, how can you complain about major software not supporting Linux when you're writing your own software that doesn't support Windows? Isn't that entirely hypocritical?
I'd argue it's not entirely hypocritical. Sure, it certainly isn't the nicest thing to do and it isn't being entirely consistent, but...
I would think different programmers would choose not to support Windows for different reasons. Some might be toolkit-related (QT isn't free for Windows, last I checked). Others might only have the time/energy to test for one or two platforms - usually the ones they use personally. Finally, some might believe in promoting free and "more open" (think Mac OS X) OSes by refusing to support Windows. If the application is really stellar, it might encourage use of non-Windows operating systems. Perhaps that isn't the nicest thing to do, but hey, it's their software and if it's open source you can port it if you want to (and plenty of projects have non-core developers start a port).
Such as: Try not to recycle paper anymore. Growing trees then burying them is a great way to sequester carbon and take it out of the atmosphere. If you recycle paper, the trees that are growing will just rot and release C02. So recycling paper==bad for environment.
I must be missing something here, but living trees take in CO2 and release oxygen as part of photosynthesis. It's an oversimplification, sure, but the overall effect of living trees is a reduction in CO2 levels.
So provided I'm not missing something, this argument makes no sense.
Let me know when you write an operating system which runs on everything Windows does, and handles upgrades better.
Debian Stable runs on Alpha, ARM, HP PA-RISC, Intel x86, Intel IA-64, Motorola 680x0, MIPS, MIPS (DEC), PowerPC, IBM S/390, and SPARC.
Upgrading to a new version of stable when it comes out is as easy as apt-get install upgrade and hit "y" a few times. Those with dependency problems on Debian are typically trying to mix unstable/testing packages/sources along with it, which while doable sometimes require a little more futzing (I've had to do this on occasion).
For an operating system that supports even more platforms, try NetBSD whose motto is, "Of course it runs NetBSD." I haven't used it personally so I can't speak for its ease of upgrades.
Now for an inevitable rebuttal. No, Linux/BSD does not support each and every x86 winmodem/etc piece of hardware (though I'm told an increasing number of winmodems work). That said, not only does Linux/BSD run on many more platforms but Windows XP has been known to simply not support older drivers from companies who no longer wish to support them (scanner drivers come to mind).
Finally, I fail to see how Installing SP2 should be considered an "upgrade". While there are new features in SP2, few people would justify spending $100 for mostly security fixes and improvements. Apple added a variety of new features in its latest 10.3, but few people seemed to feel like they needed to pay $100 just to have a safer computing experience. And yes, the problem of safely handling a real upgrade (one where there are dramatic changes on all levels) is difficult. To be truly safe, time permitting, it's often a good idea to do a fresh install of any OS to avoid strange problems. Sometimes upgrades work, sometimes they don't. I don't believe Microsoft is any better at this than the OSS alternatives, and I haven't tested enough Apple upgrades to give judgement.
I think of solid machines that work very well, last a long time, and are a plesure to work ok (I love the screwless entry and layout of the Deminsion Desktops).
1.) The layout of the Dell Precision 520/620/etc workstations (beige box) is the absolute worst case I've had to work with since touching Packard Bells back in the day. For those who've never seen this case, it's an incredibly heavy and large case that nonetheless is very cramped inside. All the hard drives are contained in a removable bay, which requires removing the front panel to get at. There is no way in the default setup to take out the bay without unplugging each and every one of the drives, both power and SCSI cable.
In addition, to remove or replace the video card one has to unscrew this, I kid you not, spring loaded bar across the video card. Getting a replacement in is a two person job.
2.) This bug: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi? id=92129 affects PowerEdge 2650s (with Perc 3/Di RAID cards) running Linux seemingly at random. Though not entirely a Dell problem (it's basically an Adaptec problem), the combination of Adaptec, RedHat, and Dell not coming up with guaranteed fixes for this critical problem in more than a year is distressing.
All manufacturers have their problems, their strength showing by how quickly they fix them. That terrible case design lasted through too many revisions of Precision workstations, and this SCSI lockup problem has no universally confirmed fix.
Re:Thanks TMBG!
on
TMBG on DRM
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· Score: 3, Interesting
I just saw TMBG last weekend. Great show. I thought I had kept up with their more recent work, but I was obviously wrong. I only recognized several of the songs that they played. I was actually embarrassed to have mentioned to a friend that told me of the show that I was a "fan".
I felt the same way when I saw them very recently, but they were promoting songs from their new album which just game out Tuesday this week. Don't feel too bad, I suspect most people in the audience didn't know more than half of the songs they played.
I have to say, though, having mostly listened to "Flood" and other CDs of that era from them, that their concert was significantly louder and more "rockish" than I had expected. Apparently they are typically like that in concert, and their new album reflects that tendancy.
On the other hand, they played "Older", which has to be one of the strangest songs I've ever liked. They (well, John Linnell at least) looked pretty bored playing "Birdhouse in your Soul" and "Particle Man". I guess you can't fault them for getting sick of the same couple songs over 14 years.
As a final note, I thought their ticket prices (we paid something along the lines of $20-25, don't remember), T-shirt prices, etc. were all very reasonable. You get a sense that they were really excited to be releasing a new CD and enjoyed playing new music.
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Even if 9/11 happened every day for a year more people would have died to car accidents,
That may be a bit of an exaggeration. According to the the DOT 42,196 people died in car crashes in 2001 (and for the next three years within 1,000 of that number). The death toll of 9/11 is 2,986.
2,986 * 365 = 1,089,890, or approximately 26 times the number of automotive fatalities.
Now, one could also interpret your statement as to automotive fatalities for all time, but then one would have to consider all terrorism-related deaths for all time (and debate whether to consider one or both of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, etc).
The point, though, is still clear. The average person appears much more likely (provided the risk of a WMD-based attack on the US is sufficiently small) to be killed in a car accident than be killed by a terrorist attack. Of course, it's that fear of a WMD-based attack that gets people really anxious.
Couldn't that be applied here to give us the right to put files up for sharing on our computers if the material isn't copyrighted?
/. link, and a link from that page, leads to the actual story. There, it states that (paraphrasing) the RIAA's position is that makingcopyrighted files available for sharing (at least those for which you don't have the permission to distribute), is a violation of copyright law.
The summary is misleading. Clicking the
Given that, it will still be interesting to see how the courts view the RIAA's arguments. It seems like a huge stretch in interpretation of copyright law, but IANAL.
A liberal kid should be able to learn economics.
You seem to assume that economics professors tend to be conservative. I read an article in The Economist a year or two back (can't seem to find it now), that showed that economics professors tended to be left-of-center in their views on average.
I guess it also depends on what you mean by "liberal". Professors can be socially liberal while fiscally "conservative", in the sense they favor free trade and other libertarian viewpoints.
The more common stereotype (I don't know if I've ever seen a survey to back it up) is a more conservative leaning amongst professors in business schools. I really couldn't say one way or the other.
I'm an economics PhD student and an econ and math major as an undergrad. I can't recall a situation where being either strongly conservative or strongly liberal would have significantly impacted one's grade, so long as one's arguments were supported reasonably. In fact, I had few occasions as an undergrad to really debate (at least for a grade) controversial topics in economics courses, since they tended to be based around some simple models and their implications.
Often, the professors would make clear how the models don't match reality well in one way or another, but political leanings did not play a substantial role. Part of this, I think, is because economics deliberately tries to avoid moral decisions about "fairness" as much as possible. In a trade class, for example, the models they discuss provide an overall welfare benefit from free trade, but everyone acknowledges that certain industries will not benefit from trade.
see iaudio. many of their players support ogg, and they appear as a normal usb drive to the computer.
I recently acquired an iAudio X5l 30GB player. Quite simply, it's awesome. It supports not only OGG but FLAC, appears as a USB drive, etc. Compared to an ipod, it has the following advantages and disadvantages:
Pros:
- Supports OGG and FLAC
- Has much longer battery life (especially the l variant)
- Has FM radio, with timed recording (it can wake up, record the radio show of your choice into mp3, and shut down)
- USB drive connectivity, which as a Linux user means I don't have to worry about using software that tries to implement all the features of itunes
- It appears to be much more durable (by that I mean scratch resistant) than the ipod. The black metal look is very sleek.
Cons:
- Thicker, especially compared to new ipods. Not a big deal for my use, but certainly could be for some people.
- No id3-tag browsing (rumored to be added in a new firmware, but I'm not holding my breath and was not considering this possibility when making my choice)
- Accessories are harder to find, though I was given an excellent zCover which protects the unit well without adding a lot of bulk.
- The headphone jack is on the side. I see no advantage for this, and for certain headphone plugs it makes it a bit awkward.
- No wheel. Frankly, the wheel is the single best thing going for the ipod. I liked the (3G? 4G?) with the separate buttons from the wheel, but still.
Do pro cameras force lossy compression as well?
No. Digital SLRs (pro cameras and higher end consumer cameras) can take pictures in "RAW" format. The exact structure of the file format varies (though some are trying to establish standards), but the file basically contains the data that the sensor receives. Post-processing is left for the computer, which allows a great deal of freedom.
The biggest problems with taking all your photos in this way are that they're large (very large, relative to JPEG), and you either must use proprietary camera software or plugins for software like Photoshop (I'm not too current on this, perhaps Photoshop supports more formats natively than before). The greater size means not only fewer images on your card but a longer time waiting for your camera to write them to disk, and more processing power for your computer to work with them.
My wife owns a Canon 20d, which takes absolutely awesome photos (it is also used by some photographers for various purposes). She shoots in high-quality JPEG because RAW just isn't enough of a benefit for her photos. Most software (I believe) is good about not layering on the JPEG compression with each save (just once per session). Still, I often wonder why these cameras don't include a non-RAW lossless format like LZW-compressed TIFF as an intermediate option (my first digital camera, a 1.3 MP Olympus point and shoot, could take TIFF). I suppose TIFF has most of the disadvantages of RAW with few of the advantages, but a choice would still be nice.
For more info about RAW image formats, see this Wikipedia entry.
a mere 1600 DPI but that should be plenty for most
I'd be wary of buying such a mouse for use on a Linux/BSD system. I realize, though, that most gamers use Windows. It would seem that under many circumstances, there is no way to set the speed of a mouse in xorg/xfree86. Sure, you can set the acceleration, but if you happen to have, say, a shiny new Logitech Cordless MouseMan Optical (800dpi), the thing is so fast that you have to set the acceleration to be
Why is losing mouse acceleration a big deal? It means that you cannot move across the screen with a quick movement while maintaining the ability to make small movements easily. It turns out that in operating system like Mac OS X, they actually "decelerate" for very slow movements - it takes a greater distance to move one pixel. I had never noticed these things before.
This issue is already on the TODO list and in their bugzilla system submitted by someone else. The goal is eventually to have a much smarter system for mouse speed and acceleration, to suit all tastes. I hope it gets some attention (perhaps as an add-on to the new X11R7), as right now I went back to an older mouse that works with acceleration (but isn't optical).
My mouse is simply incredibly fast (and I can't imagine another reason than the doubled dpi from most mice) - plugging it into my Mac Mini showed it was much faster than a wired Logitech optical mouse, and the discrete settings Mac OS X offered for mouse speed proved either too slow or too fast. I think the bundled Logitech software allows for finer control of mouse movement, though.
The "golden rectangle" looks too long if you try and use it for a painting or similar.
That's not true. I own a painting that is (IIRC) 4x2.5ft (exactly 1.6:1). True, it's not quite the 1.618... that is the true ratio, but that's about a third of an inch shorter. At least at that size, it covers the wall it is hanging in quite well, and seems very proportional to the room.
Basically, painting dimensions can look good at many ratios depending on the subject and where it will be displayed. We had our painting done by this guy, from a picture taken by a Chilean amateur astrophotographer. You can see my picture as the 8th picture listed on that site (orion.jpg), though the true colors are hard to capture.
Unfortunately the terminology has, as usual, been co-opted and distorted by the masses, who tend to think that weak atheists are agnostics, and all atheists are strong atheists.
When I did some research about this (admittedly, this was a while ago), the term agnostic could encompass a wide variety of beliefs (including those you attribute to weak atheism).
Indeed, the term was basically coined to describe those who did not hold strong atheist views. A logical interpretation of this is that anyone who claims that we don't know about the existence of God in some way is a certain kind of agnostic. Then one can subdivide agnostics into appropriate categories.
One site gives the following definitions: An agnostic theist, for example, is one "who believe that a deity probably exists", while an agnostic atheist believes "that it is very improbable that a deity exists." On the other hand, an empirical agnostic believes "that God may exist, but that little or nothing can be known about him/her/it/them."
Thus, within this context weak atheists could be described as agnostic atheists. I believe the latter term is more clear, since it encompasses both the "not knowing" meaning of agnost as well as the implications of atheist. Certainly, though, I do not believe that describing people as agnostics when you would describe them as weak atheists is diluting the term. As mentioned earlier, it was devised originally in part (or in full, I'm not sure) for this purpose.
Besides, wouldn't it be a bit counterintuitive to have the definition of agnostic be a narrow one?
I'm delaying my Mac laptop purchase to see if that rumor is true.
Certainly all products need early-adopters, but buying the first generation of any major device, from just about any manufacturer, often comes with issues. I learned that the hard way with products like mp3 CD players. On the other hand, I got a first-generation Mac Mini and have been overall pleased with it. I would describe the mac mini more like an ibook/powerbook in a new case rather than such a major product shift like the first x86 macs... Still, I have a common problem with the hard drive that parks itself when it's not supposed to (you can read about a "marble" clunking noise on forums). Problems like these can even be fixed without Apple releasing a new version (after all, Apple seems averse to marketing products by any sort of code, so you end up talking about 2nd generation ipods and ibooks with 2 USB ports or some such thing). I got my Mac Mini about 6 months after they were announced, though, so ymmv with this approach.
I guess my opinion is just that you should expect issues, perhaps some requiring warranty service, more than typical for Apple. I'm personally eager to see how well this transition goes, both with new hardware designs and software compatibility/transitioning.
Nice, I never heard of that before (would've thought that initrd and vmlinuz didn't include everything you need to start an install). The relevant files for SUSE are on CD1: /boot/loader/linux is the kernel, /boot/loader/initrd is the initrd file.
Floppies are bad, I'm glad I didn't need to setup tftp for this. Thanks.
I've been eager to try SUSE for a while, and their OSS release seems like the ideal time.
I understand the reasoning, but for most Linux distros it's becoming harder and harder to install without a CD (whether it be net install or full CD install). My laptop is usually very low end for its time, and so far I've never had one with a reliably-functioning CD drive (my current laptop doesn't read CDRs reliably). Not that floppy is much better, but this laptop won't boot from PCMCIA CDROM (at least the one I have) nor USB key.
Some modern distros like Ubuntu and Fedora don't seem to have any mechanism to create floppies (correct me if I'm wrong). OpenSUSE wants you to have all of CD1 to run mkbootdisk and generate who knows how many floppies. All I really need is a disk that RH and Mandrake used to have (maybe Mandriva still does) - one that can load pcmcia drivers and finish the install via CD. They also had a net driver alternative to do a net install.
Yeah, I know you can still install Debian via floppy. It's what I'm running now, but I have issues with fonts and power management and other tweaks for laptops that just don't seem to work quite right. The laptop ran various versions of Mandrake when it was my wife's for over 3 years, so I know the hardware is fairly compatible with Linux.
Getting back to SUSE, I'm downloading all the CDs via bittorrent. Considering no mirrors that I checked had the new RPMS yet, it didn't seem like a net install was worth attempting anyway. I think I'll try my hand at a network boot from my desktop.
See my other response, but to sum up: the only copyrightable portion of fonts is the code that generates them. The GPL is a license for code, and thus it's not unreasonable that it should take into consideration the special circumstances that apply to fonts.
Regardings the rarity of GPL fonts, I've come across at least a few. One common set is urw-fonts, which contains an exception for embedding with postscript and PDF (but, it appears, no exception for embedding into a word processing document). If the GPL fixes the everyday usage issues of fonts, it'd be reasonably ideal for the GPL. As it is now, lots of fonts use special licenses (look at Bitstream and LaTeX licensing).
Thus, this problem shouldn't have come up at all. As you say, the GPL isn't a document license- because it's a software license. But, the GPL also is not a font license- again, because it's a software license.
But the only copyrightable part about fonts is the "software" that creates them, namely, the postscript/etc code that defines the font. You can take any font you like, visually reproduce it in any number of methods, give it a new name, and not be guilty of any copyright or trademark infringement (of course, IANAL, but this is pretty common knowledge). This is how we get the confusing situation of identical looking fonts under different names.
So in the sense that the code itself is the only thing copyrightable, the GPL should be able to be used. Making modifications to a font isn't too common (since you can regenerate them from scratch with work), but it's entirely reasonable that some font creator would want to allow derivative works using the same code (so you don't start from scratch). People could use the exact fonts in any embedded way they want, and those few interested in modifying the font files could redistribute them under the GPL. The issue, as I said in the top-level post, is that using GPL fonts in an everyday manner (embedding into pdf, etc) is not legally clear.
With luck, the GPL v3 will clear up the issue of fonts. The issue has been discussed on Slashdot before.Namely, that if I use a GPL font in a document, and subsequently embed that font through a document format (OO's sxw or OpenDocument, pdf, ps, etc), it's unclear as to whether I have the legal ability to do so without declaring the document itself GPL (which isn't really a document license). People sometimes (apparently mistakenly, but IANAL) say that it would force your document to be GPLed, but that's really not the case. You can't be automatically forced to license your work as anything, but you can be guilty of copyright infringement. The issue does also apparently not extend to printed documents and such, since the font itself cannot be copyrighted, only the code (postscript, etc) that generates the font can be.
It's unfortunate that such vagueness persists with the GPL, but it seems to be a trend with copyright issues in general (fair use being the most visible).
i wonder if its possible to do book rental and if amazon will ever do this?
I doubt it, for a few reasons. First, shipping on a book is significantly more expensive than DVDs. Media mail is the cheapest way in the US, and it's something like $1.42/book for a much slower service than priority mail. Netflix gets you DVDs within a day or two of shipping them by using a combination of priority mail and nearby distribution centers.
The second reason is similar, and that is of total cost/revenue. Let's assume (but this is probably optimistic) that the higher shipping cost (nearly $3/book for both directions) is offset by the slower turnover (since people tend to spend longer to read a book than watch a movie). Still, given the reasonable rate of 4 books/month, your monthly fee would have to be quite low to entice people to choose it over buying books used or going to the library. If the fee is too low, it won't cover the rather substantial overhead of dealing with all the other costs of storage, purchasing new books, etc.
If, for whatever reason, the library isn't working well for you personally, there are alternatives. My wife is big into PaperBackSwap which has you mailing books you own to others and in turn other users mail you books back. You can use this either to get rid of books you're no longer interested in and get ones you really are, or use it like a rather expensive rental system. As long as you like the selection, it'd probably be cheaper for you than to try to use a company looking to make profit.
I'd rather pay the full cost for a product than pay a lesser price so I can watch advertising. If you can't produce the thing for a low enough cost such that people value it enough for you to recoup your costs, dont make it.
Funny, I don't see an asterisk by your UID showing that you're a subscriber. I don't have one either, because at this point in my life I'd rather see a few
Truth is, some services work really well subsidized by advertising. Newspapers, magazines, Google, etc. Google is the only place on the internet where I've found ads so relevant to what I'm looking for (especially when I'm looking to buy something) that I've clicked on them a fair amount.
If you're a news junkie like me, are you really willing to pay the full price of something like the NYT, WSJ, etc. to get it completely without advertisement? I'm wondering just how much that would be, but I'd venture to guess that it'd at least triple the cost.
So it's easy to sit there and be up in arms about advertising creeping into your life. Trouble is, most of us enjoy the substantially lower prices. The argument can be made, however, about increasing advertising in public places (highways, malls, etc) becoming more distracting.
For an interesting documentary about modern advertising, check out this Frontline episode on PBS. You'll be pleased to note that PBS programs run without commercial interruption, and that this Frontline episode is available in streaming format.
I tried installing Win2K a few years back on my dual P II 450 with 768 Megs of RAM. [...] The boot alone took 10-15 minutes.
I'm not sure what was going on there, but your numbers are crazy. I ran Win2k on a P II 350 laptop with 128 MB of RAM and it booted in something around 5 minutes, probably less. It also ran reasonably well, but I'll admit I didn't use it for a whole lot (it dual-booted Debian).
So then I installed RedHat 9 and did something you can never do with Windows. I recompiled the kernel for SMP and tweaked it with the realtime patches.
RedHat 9 supported SMP out of the box - it should've loaded an SMP kernel after installation (at least RedHat 8 and RHEL do). Tweaking it for realtime, sure.
Also, Win2k Pro supports SMP for dual processors, so I'm don't see how you can claim that's something "you can never do with Windows"
Basically, I don't disagree with your assertion that Linux can be happier and more usable on old systems. I used WindowMaker, and Debian allowed for a impressively small install image allowing me to dual boot on a 6GB drive.
PPP GDP for China is substantially smaller
That should read, "nominal GDP for China is substantially smaller".
China's GDP as of 2004 is $7,262,000,000,000 (7.26 trillion) while the GDP of the USA as of 2004 is $11,750,000,000,000 (11.75 trillion). Growing a nations GDP by 1 trillion is a few years let alone more than 4 trillion is just impossible. China has _at least_ 1 billion people. Divide their GDP by their population and you get about $7,262 per person. The USA has about 300 million people. Divide our GDP per person and you get about $39,166.66 per person. A _huge_ difference, more than five time the amount _per person_!
A few notes:
1.) Your figures are probably from the CIA World Factbook, which reports purchasing power parity GDP. Comparing nominal GDP makes your argument stronger, as the PPP GDP for China is substantially smaller. One source has the figure for 2004 at $1.65 trillion US. However, the PPP number is useful in that it's probably a better comparison with US output, I believe due to the rather extraordinary circumstances with the yuan dollar peg kept artificially low. Still, that said...
2.) China's GDP growth is pretty spectacular, and has been so for the past several years (check the World Bank's World Development Indicators database). 9.5% reported growth in 2004 is probably unsustainable, but China had GDP growth of 7-9% for 1999-2003 (according to the WB). The US, by comparison, had growth of 1-4% between 1999 and 2003 (admittedly including a recession).
3.) Your argument about per-capita GDP works against you. Few believe that the average Chinese person will be as wealthy as the average "first world" person any time soon. The point is that China, as a political and economic powerhouse, will likely become even more huge in the near future. The large population bolsters this goal, as it provides low-cost labor and a quick opportunity for growth. One only needs to raise per-capita productivity a small amount to see huge gains in overall GDP for the country as a whole.
4.) Let's take your original figures of $7.26 trillion versus $11.75 trillion. Assuming China can keep up a 7% growth and the US has about 3% growth, China will reach the $11.75 trillion mark within 8 years. At those rates of growth, China will exceed the US within 13 years. Even if these figures are quite off, China is still likely to have a much larger economic role than it does now in the coming decades.
I wish my experience with speakeasy was as good.
A while back I went to their site to see if they offered DSL in my future hometown (using the address of one of the potential apartments I was looking at). No problem, a little contact info provided and I had my answer - they did. I actually got followup e-mails from a salesperson, asking if I was still interested.
Eventually, with my apartment picked out, I was. I contacted him and received quality responses - he responded to my questions quickly and accurately. My only complaint through this process was that one couldn't go through the order process online; for such a tech-friendly ISP, you have to provide credit card info (to get the order started) over the phone (toll-free number, no big deal).
A week or so later I receive a response; though my address was cleared for DSL service by the automated system, and though the sales rep had my address for a while, it turns out that my new address is more than 16,000 ft away from their location (presumably the company they're reselling from). I'm assuming that the program that initially checks for availability only uses zip codes, and my zip code is probably mostly covered. So after all this back and forth with the sales rep, I can't even get DSL service to the apartment (ISDN/T1 are available, but the rep acknowledged how those just aren't practical).
I ended up ordering SBC, but I'm anticipating issues. I don't get a static IP (those were much more expensive than through Speakeasy), but I do get fast DSL + phone line for about $40/mo + taxes. Since I wasn't planning on getting a phone line (it only saved about $6/mo w/ Speakeasy), it will at least provide a dialup backup when I inevitably have problems with SBC...
I hope I'm wrong about SBC, I really am. I also really wanted to get Speakeasy and really wanted to like them, but I'm pretty disappointed with their order process. Maybe at my next location, or *crosses fingers* they'll have service available in a year or two.
But, how can you complain about major software not supporting Linux when you're writing your own software that doesn't support Windows? Isn't that entirely hypocritical?
I'd argue it's not entirely hypocritical. Sure, it certainly isn't the nicest thing to do and it isn't being entirely consistent, but...
I would think different programmers would choose not to support Windows for different reasons. Some might be toolkit-related (QT isn't free for Windows, last I checked). Others might only have the time/energy to test for one or two platforms - usually the ones they use personally. Finally, some might believe in promoting free and "more open" (think Mac OS X) OSes by refusing to support Windows. If the application is really stellar, it might encourage use of non-Windows operating systems. Perhaps that isn't the nicest thing to do, but hey, it's their software and if it's open source you can port it if you want to (and plenty of projects have non-core developers start a port).
Such as: Try not to recycle paper anymore. Growing trees then burying them is a great way to sequester carbon and take it out of the atmosphere. If you recycle paper, the trees that are growing will just rot and release C02. So recycling paper==bad for environment.
I must be missing something here, but living trees take in CO2 and release oxygen as part of photosynthesis. It's an oversimplification, sure, but the overall effect of living trees is a reduction in CO2 levels.
So provided I'm not missing something, this argument makes no sense.
Let me know when you write an operating system which runs on everything Windows does, and handles upgrades better.
Debian Stable runs on Alpha, ARM, HP PA-RISC, Intel x86, Intel IA-64, Motorola 680x0, MIPS, MIPS (DEC), PowerPC, IBM S/390, and SPARC.
Upgrading to a new version of stable when it comes out is as easy as apt-get install upgrade and hit "y" a few times. Those with dependency problems on Debian are typically trying to mix unstable/testing packages/sources along with it, which while doable sometimes require a little more futzing (I've had to do this on occasion).
For an operating system that supports even more platforms, try NetBSD whose motto is, "Of course it runs NetBSD." I haven't used it personally so I can't speak for its ease of upgrades.
Now for an inevitable rebuttal. No, Linux/BSD does not support each and every x86 winmodem/etc piece of hardware (though I'm told an increasing number of winmodems work). That said, not only does Linux/BSD run on many more platforms but Windows XP has been known to simply not support older drivers from companies who no longer wish to support them (scanner drivers come to mind).
Finally, I fail to see how Installing SP2 should be considered an "upgrade". While there are new features in SP2, few people would justify spending $100 for mostly security fixes and improvements. Apple added a variety of new features in its latest 10.3, but few people seemed to feel like they needed to pay $100 just to have a safer computing experience. And yes, the problem of safely handling a real upgrade (one where there are dramatic changes on all levels) is difficult. To be truly safe, time permitting, it's often a good idea to do a fresh install of any OS to avoid strange problems. Sometimes upgrades work, sometimes they don't. I don't believe Microsoft is any better at this than the OSS alternatives, and I haven't tested enough Apple upgrades to give judgement.
I think of solid machines that work very well, last a long time, and are a plesure to work ok (I love the screwless entry and layout of the Deminsion Desktops).
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1.) The layout of the Dell Precision 520/620/etc workstations (beige box) is the absolute worst case I've had to work with since touching Packard Bells back in the day. For those who've never seen this case, it's an incredibly heavy and large case that nonetheless is very cramped inside. All the hard drives are contained in a removable bay, which requires removing the front panel to get at. There is no way in the default setup to take out the bay without unplugging each and every one of the drives, both power and SCSI cable.
In addition, to remove or replace the video card one has to unscrew this, I kid you not, spring loaded bar across the video card. Getting a replacement in is a two person job.
2.) This bug: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi
affects PowerEdge 2650s (with Perc 3/Di RAID cards) running Linux seemingly at random. Though not entirely a Dell problem (it's basically an Adaptec problem), the combination of Adaptec, RedHat, and Dell not coming up with guaranteed fixes for this critical problem in more than a year is distressing.
All manufacturers have their problems, their strength showing by how quickly they fix them. That terrible case design lasted through too many revisions of Precision workstations, and this SCSI lockup problem has no universally confirmed fix.
I just saw TMBG last weekend. Great show. I thought I had kept up with their more recent work, but I was obviously wrong. I only recognized several of the songs that they played. I was actually embarrassed to have mentioned to a friend that told me of the show that I was a "fan".
I felt the same way when I saw them very recently, but they were promoting songs from their new album which just game out Tuesday this week. Don't feel too bad, I suspect most people in the audience didn't know more than half of the songs they played.
I have to say, though, having mostly listened to "Flood" and other CDs of that era from them, that their concert was significantly louder and more "rockish" than I had expected. Apparently they are typically like that in concert, and their new album reflects that tendancy.
On the other hand, they played "Older", which has to be one of the strangest songs I've ever liked. They (well, John Linnell at least) looked pretty bored playing "Birdhouse in your Soul" and "Particle Man". I guess you can't fault them for getting sick of the same couple songs over 14 years.
As a final note, I thought their ticket prices (we paid something along the lines of $20-25, don't remember), T-shirt prices, etc. were all very reasonable. You get a sense that they were really excited to be releasing a new CD and enjoyed playing new music.