The vehemently anti-copyright stance of Slashdot is, in my view, not entirely thought through.
Slashdot is made up of many different people, with different views and therefore doesn't have a vehemently anti-copyright stance. However I, personally, do.
Remember - GPL (or any other software license) is a *copyright*, protected and upheld by the same laws that protect music distributors and the like.
Yes, I know. You're not the first person to raise this, and it's a fairly obvious objection.
Personally, as long as copyright exists, I'm quite happy to see it subverted by the GPL. However, I'd gladly see the GPL go if it meant that copyright went with it.
For example, first Danger Mouse released the Grey Album to great acclaim, then formed Gnarls Barkley and released music in traditional commercial channels.
Thus becoming part of the 0.01%* of artists who actually benefit from copyright. Why should there be a law that protects only the interests of a tiny minority of artists, who are also the richest and therefore in the least need of protection?
Discarding it for nothing is short sighted at best, and at worst exploitive of artists.
Copyright is short-sighted at best and at worst exploitive of artists.
*Yeah, made up number. "Small percentage" is the concept I'm trying to get across here.
It's strangely different from the way I would use "republic" and "democracy". You seem to contrast the two, whereas from my perspective:
The USA is a representative democracy and a republic. The UK is a representative democracy and a monarchy. China is a single-party state and a republic.
I could go on but I'm sure you get the idea.
It sounds weird when I hear people saying "the US isn't a democracy it's a republic", but I have heard it several times, hence my curiosity.
Particles small enough to float in the air are nowhere near large enough to sandblast anything. Think smoke from a fire, the particles that are floating in the air are about that size, maybe slightly bigger. It would take a hell of a lot of flying in that stuff to see any kind of marked difference from flying in clean air. If anything happens to your windscreen at all, it will be polished by the ash, not obscured.
Reality disagrees with you. Not for the first time.
actual democracies (the federal government is a republic)
I'm curious; where did you hear this (that the federal government is a republic not a democracy)? I don't mean can you give me a link, I mean where did *you* hear it?
Yes, I know about that. I heard about it many years ago (and well before that "research at an English University" article).
So what? Frankly, that post is *easier* to read than yours generally are, because it has capital letters. The mess you leave at the end is nowhere near as coherent. Yes, it's easy enough to decipher, but it can't be read in a flowing manner. So my point remains.
Is your poor, brittle, fragile brain having difficulty coping with the concept you might be wrong?
yes, certain brittle fragile minds can't deal with novel formatting.
Oh please! Nearly everyone tries "novel" forms of writing without capital letters, without punctuation, or of some other kind at least once. Usually when they're teenagers and they usually grow out of it when they realise it's nowhere near as "novel" as they first thought.
Capital letters are not redundant. They are incredibly useful due to the way we read. Once you're reached a certain level of proficiency in reading, you don't read one word at a time. You read whole sentences - sometimes several, or a short paragraph - in one go. You find the beginning, skip to the end, and look over the whole thing finding the meaning. This is a much quicker way of reading than a single word at a time.
Capital letters provide a very useful visual clue that quickly let you find the end of the sentence or block you wish to read and let you read it quickly. When they're absent, it slows you down and makes reading the text much more difficult and frustrating than it needs to be. It's simply poor communication.
Already that vote is split between Liberal, NDP, Green, and (some would argue) the Bloc. This vote split is why the conservatives can continue to hold political power with 38% of the popular vote.
Except, the left didn't lose in Canada because the smaller parties gained votes, it was because the left didn't bother voting at all! There was a large dropoff of votes.
Still, it's the old lie of the losing party which you hear in Canada, the UK and the US alike: "It's not our fault we lost, it's because you voted wrong." Nonsense! People didn't vote for you because you were crap.
If you have a particular issue that you want to advance in a first-past-the-post democracy, the correct move is to identify which of the major parties is most receptive to your goal, and organize within that party.
No, the big parties just want you to join to secure your vote. There's very little you can do to change any views in an entrenched party, particularly one that you know is in thrall to lobbying. The correct move is to vote for someone else.
If instead your constituency says "ha! We're going to take our votes and make our own damn party" then BOTH major parties will simply say "ok, no need to listen to care what those guys want -- they're not going to vote for us anyway". You're only making copyright reform HARDER to achieve.
And of course we have the biggest lie of all, that the main parties are desperate to have you believe: that your vote is wasted on smaller parties.
What happened when the UK Green Party suddenly gained a large number of votes, even though they didn't have any MPs? Did Labour and Conservative suddenly stop caring about environmental issues? No, the exact opposite, they both were suddenly fighting to be the "greenest" main party.
The truth is that in the UK, US or Canada, only a vote for the main parties is wasted. If you want to make a difference, vote for a smaller one, hopefully one that shares some of your ideals.
I'm not sure what part of 'catching up' people seem to think of when they're talking about SSDs replacing HDDs.
They're thinking of SSDs previously being 12 years behind HDDs in $/GB (in 2007!) and now being 7 years behind. That's pretty good "catching up" by any measure!
I found a report here that says the discrepancy is due to the high numbers of preterm births in the US. Though they don't give any explanation why this occurs.
If we're concerned about the effects of medical care, perinatal mortality [who.int] is a better measure.
What?! No it's not. How could it possibly be? That's when an infant is least likely to be receiving any medical care!
That said, I wouldn't say our infant mortality numbers are 'very bad' as the grandparent suggested. Yes, several countries are higher than us. But 2/3 of the countries in WHO's list have more than twice our infant mortality rate.
That is appallingly bad. The USA is the richest nation on Earth and spends way more on healthcare that any other country. It should at least be in the top 5. Frankly, there's no reason it shouldn't be first.
For example, in the US, an infant born at 28 weeks (two months premature) who then dies soon after birth is counted as an infant mortality. This is not the case in countries with "better" child mortality rates.
Incorrect. It's the case in some countries with better child mortality rates. Most of them count exactly the same as the US does. What more, even if you only consider less premature infants, the US still scores very poorly compared to other nations.
Cite. Yeah, it's wikipedia. Read the linked reports if you don't believe it.
Ouch! And you're happy with that? Equivalent private healthcare in the UK would cost me about $50 a month, with zero excess (I assume that's what "co-pay" is?). I understand that you may be happy with the treatment, but surely you can't be happy with the price.
To compare that with your situation, you'd need to figure out what NHS funding does to your tax rate, so it's probably not as nice as it seems at first glance, but I think you're still winning on balance...
Actually, the NHS costs less (per capita) than you pay in taxes for your public healthcare.
For comparison of private health insurance, try here and see what it says for you.
All three types share the characteristic that the government grants rights to the people that in default state they don't have as the government has all power, and they may be rescinded.
This is mostly wrong. In England, it's true that sovereignty rests with the monarch, but as far back as 1320, the Declaration of Arbroath established that in Scotland sovereignty rested with the people and was granted to the monarch. Similarly it is granted to the government now. The French revolution (circa 1789) established the right of the French people to govern themselves and was hugely influential on the development of the USA.
..and for completeness, if you haven't seen this stuff before (not you, that I was replying to, this is for anyone else who's curious), you can run it by: Save it into a plain text file called "hello.s" (or whatever you like; I've assumed that name for the rest) Then assemble and link with: (note that "$" indicates your prompt: you don't type it)
$ as hello.s -o hello.o $ ld hello.o -o hello
Then you can run with:
$./hello
The second-last line "movl $0, %ebx" moves the value "0" into the ebx register. Whatever is in there when you exit is the return value. You can view the return value with:
$ echo $?
Try changing values and see what happens. And try changing the length of the string, or frankly anything you like (it won't break anything; at worst it just won't run). Remember you need to reassemble and link the file. Use your up arrow to get the previous commands or try:
$ !as $ !ld
and note it runs that last command that started with those letters (you could just do "!a" but I prefer to use two letters just in case I've typed something I forgot about!)
We're talking apples and oranges. Two completely different societies and forms of government, as well as completely different economic structures. It's just not a valid comparison.
Then compare with Australia...or France...or Germany...or...what, there's not a single country in the world that you can learn from? The USA isn't *that* unique.
Besides, the USA has the medical care the world comes to when they want the best.
Yeah, if they aren't going to London, or a private clinic in Switzerland...well done, ordinary Americans subsidize healthcare for super-rich foreigners. Shame they can't get the same treatment for themselves.
This is but a stalking horse for moving the US closer to a socialistic/fascistic system of government
Socialism and Fascism are polar opposites: you can't be moving towards both at the same time!
Why is it that you can't pick up an example from some other country on the planet and fix your extreme healthcare spending problems?
Slashdot Mirror
Slashdot is made up of many different people, with different views and therefore doesn't have a vehemently anti-copyright stance. However I, personally, do.
Yes, I know. You're not the first person to raise this, and it's a fairly obvious objection.
Personally, as long as copyright exists, I'm quite happy to see it subverted by the GPL. However, I'd gladly see the GPL go if it meant that copyright went with it.
Does that answer your point?
The avowed aims of a law are irrelevant. The actual outcome of the law is what is important.
Making baseless claims isn't an argument.
Thus becoming part of the 0.01%* of artists who actually benefit from copyright. Why should there be a law that protects only the interests of a tiny minority of artists, who are also the richest and therefore in the least need of protection?
Copyright is short-sighted at best and at worst exploitive of artists.
*Yeah, made up number. "Small percentage" is the concept I'm trying to get across here.
So you pretty much learn it in school. Thanks.
It's strangely different from the way I would use "republic" and "democracy". You seem to contrast the two, whereas from my perspective:
The USA is a representative democracy and a republic.
The UK is a representative democracy and a monarchy.
China is a single-party state and a republic.
I could go on but I'm sure you get the idea.
It sounds weird when I hear people saying "the US isn't a democracy it's a republic", but I have heard it several times, hence my curiosity.
Can't find such a film. Are you sure the title is correct?
Reality disagrees with you. Not for the first time.
I'm curious; where did you hear this (that the federal government is a republic not a democracy)? I don't mean can you give me a link, I mean where did *you* hear it?
Yes, I know about that. I heard about it many years ago (and well before that "research at an English University" article).
So what? Frankly, that post is *easier* to read than yours generally are, because it has capital letters. The mess you leave at the end is nowhere near as coherent. Yes, it's easy enough to decipher, but it can't be read in a flowing manner. So my point remains.
Is your poor, brittle, fragile brain having difficulty coping with the concept you might be wrong?
Oh please! Nearly everyone tries "novel" forms of writing without capital letters, without punctuation, or of some other kind at least once. Usually when they're teenagers and they usually grow out of it when they realise it's nowhere near as "novel" as they first thought.
Capital letters are not redundant. They are incredibly useful due to the way we read. Once you're reached a certain level of proficiency in reading, you don't read one word at a time. You read whole sentences - sometimes several, or a short paragraph - in one go. You find the beginning, skip to the end, and look over the whole thing finding the meaning. This is a much quicker way of reading than a single word at a time.
Capital letters provide a very useful visual clue that quickly let you find the end of the sentence or block you wish to read and let you read it quickly. When they're absent, it slows you down and makes reading the text much more difficult and frustrating than it needs to be. It's simply poor communication.
Erm, well, yes, it is. I certainly do it all the time. e.g. "It's Dave's birthday on Friday, are you coming along?"
I haven't been arrested yet and didn't think it was wrong in any way.
Except, the left didn't lose in Canada because the smaller parties gained votes, it was because the left didn't bother voting at all! There was a large dropoff of votes.
Still, it's the old lie of the losing party which you hear in Canada, the UK and the US alike: "It's not our fault we lost, it's because you voted wrong." Nonsense! People didn't vote for you because you were crap.
No, the big parties just want you to join to secure your vote. There's very little you can do to change any views in an entrenched party, particularly one that you know is in thrall to lobbying. The correct move is to vote for someone else.
And of course we have the biggest lie of all, that the main parties are desperate to have you believe: that your vote is wasted on smaller parties.
What happened when the UK Green Party suddenly gained a large number of votes, even though they didn't have any MPs? Did Labour and Conservative suddenly stop caring about environmental issues? No, the exact opposite, they both were suddenly fighting to be the "greenest" main party.
The truth is that in the UK, US or Canada, only a vote for the main parties is wasted. If you want to make a difference, vote for a smaller one, hopefully one that shares some of your ideals.
Break political duopolies!
Around 2002
They're thinking of SSDs previously being 12 years behind HDDs in $/GB (in 2007!) and now being 7 years behind. That's pretty good "catching up" by any measure!
Isn't this content-aware fill the same as resynthesizer?
I found a report here that says the discrepancy is due to the high numbers of preterm births in the US. Though they don't give any explanation why this occurs.
What?! No it's not. How could it possibly be? That's when an infant is least likely to be receiving any medical care!
That is appallingly bad. The USA is the richest nation on Earth and spends way more on healthcare that any other country. It should at least be in the top 5. Frankly, there's no reason it shouldn't be first.
Incorrect. It's the case in some countries with better child mortality rates. Most of them count exactly the same as the US does. What more, even if you only consider less premature infants, the US still scores very poorly compared to other nations.
Cite. Yeah, it's wikipedia. Read the linked reports if you don't believe it.
Yes, that's correct.
It's extras like no waiting lists, private rooms, things like that.
Difficult to say exactly, but less that yours (i.e. Americans pay more for public health care than we do in the UK).
Yes, this provides extras over and above the standard care.
Ouch! And you're happy with that? Equivalent private healthcare in the UK would cost me about $50 a month, with zero excess (I assume that's what "co-pay" is?). I understand that you may be happy with the treatment, but surely you can't be happy with the price.
Actually, the NHS costs less (per capita) than you pay in taxes for your public healthcare.
For comparison of private health insurance, try here and see what it says for you.
Fair enough. How much does that insurance cost you?
This is mostly wrong. In England, it's true that sovereignty rests with the monarch, but as far back as 1320, the Declaration of Arbroath established that in Scotland sovereignty rested with the people and was granted to the monarch. Similarly it is granted to the government now. The French revolution (circa 1789) established the right of the French people to govern themselves and was hugely influential on the development of the USA.
..and for completeness, if you haven't seen this stuff before (not you, that I was replying to, this is for anyone else who's curious), you can run it by:
Save it into a plain text file called "hello.s" (or whatever you like; I've assumed that name for the rest)
Then assemble and link with: (note that "$" indicates your prompt: you don't type it)
Then you can run with:
The second-last line "movl $0, %ebx" moves the value "0" into the ebx register. Whatever is in there when you exit is the return value. You can view the return value with:
Try changing values and see what happens. And try changing the length of the string, or frankly anything you like (it won't break anything; at worst it just won't run). Remember you need to reassemble and link the file. Use your up arrow to get the previous commands or try:
and note it runs that last command that started with those letters (you could just do "!a" but I prefer to use two letters just in case I've typed something I forgot about!)
I think that's about the lot...
Where is that happening?
Then compare with Australia...or France...or Germany...or...what, there's not a single country in the world that you can learn from? The USA isn't *that* unique.
Yeah, if they aren't going to London, or a private clinic in Switzerland...well done, ordinary Americans subsidize healthcare for super-rich foreigners. Shame they can't get the same treatment for themselves.
Socialism and Fascism are polar opposites: you can't be moving towards both at the same time!
Why is it that you can't pick up an example from some other country on the planet and fix your extreme healthcare spending problems?