I use an Intel Pro Wireless 802.11g device, and I've never run into these problems, at least on Linux. The Windows partition that I have only boots up once in a blue moon, and it actually has different severe networking problems (I only ever get about 33% of my total bandwidth.)
As for the speed of the connection, there are many cable ISPs which promote 9mbps in the US. Plus, lots of people get their internet from their college, which means they could have pretty fat pipes connected to that access point.
With 802.11g in the US, there are only three channels that have no overlap: 1, 6, and 11. If anyone is using 2-5, you'll get interference from their device on channels 1 through 6. If anyone is using 7-10,you'll get interference from their device on channels 6 through 11. If you're lucky (like me) and everyone around you is using channel 6, then you've got two channels to choose from to stay clear of their signals.
Exactly. I'm pretty sick of long EULAs, myself, but at some point, you've got to ask where the responsibility lies. Would it be enough for the disclaimer to be in the software documentation? That's usually longer than the EULA, and while people may be more likely to read parts of it, few people read it all. They find the parts specific to their need, read it, apply the knowledge, and move on.
We're too much of a warning label society as it is. "Warning, about to connect to another VOIP phone." "Warning, about to send caller ID information." "Warning, about to execute machine code instructions." Do you want to allow?
I wonder if they assign all copyrights to Google, or if all articles must be public domain? Otherwise, there will be inevitable problems with copyright when people rewrite an article to fix an error.
Worse, such a scenario would be pretty susceptible to gaming. Someone writes a really good article, someone else copies it and manages to get lots of links to it out on the web, so that they get the money from someone else's effort.
Wikipedia (mostly) works because most of the articles are written for altruistic purposes--to share information. Knols will be written to get a piece of the pie, so it's going to be a bigger target for corruption.
Plus, it's one more case of Google is dipping their fingers in pies where there's already a highly established player. They'll never knock Paypal down with Google Checkout, and they'll never knock Wikipedia down with Google Knols.
So how is that right, given the recognition and control that we grant to creators and owners of content (and their agents, etc.)? "Right" and "wrong" are moral judgments. You're looking for the word "legal."
And lastly about the DMCA: you appear to believe that copyright works and is more or less okay, but the DMCA is wrong/bad. The DMCA is an attempt to allow the continued enforcement of copyright in a realm that makes it quick, easy, and cheap to reproduce content in an instant. Should this realm change the way we think of and handle information as a society and as a world? No doubt. We're only still at the very beginning of the Information Age. But in the meantime, I don't think it should be the least bit surprising that content creators and owners would be a little stunned that people believe it's suddenly right to take their content without paying for it just because it's been made easy by technology. Copyright infringement has been illegal for years, so why is the DMCA necessary? The DMCA shifts power from the people to the copyright owners. It primarily removes fair use--or more specifically, it allows the content owner to decide whether or not to grant fair use. That's not within their purview. It also provides methods for anyone in the world to remove anything online that they don't like for 14 days (by sending a false DMCA notice.) Sure, after that 14 days, the work can go back up, if a counter-notice was filed. Sure, the real copyright owner can try to get perjury charges filed against the person who filed the false-complaint (good luck with that, incidentally.) That may be a small consolation, though.
The DMCA, generally speaking, is a bad law. It grants too much power to individuals at the expense of the people, and it allows for the revocation of rights by a small minority.
Your reasoning is sound, but I don't think that's good enough (if we don't look at actual statistics when dealing with law, if we instead go with our guts, we'll eventually do something really, really bad.)
This indicates that you're right. Compared to other sex offenders, the recidivism rates for child molestoes are higher. However that doesn't negate the fact that sex offenders as a whole (including child molesters) have an overall lower recidivism rate than other criminals. The issue I take is with the fact that the recidivism rate is lower, yet we as a society do so much more to them after they're released from prison. Why isn't there a registry of murderers? Robbers? They're more likely[1] to re-offend.
As I mentioned earlier, it's probably due to the heinous nature of the crime. Some people believe rape to be more heinous than murder. Is that enough of a reason?
It is certainly possible, as I believe you suggested, that the reason sex offenders are targeted is specifically to protect the children. However, most sex offender registries do note the nature of the crime that the individual committed. In the article Slashdot linked to, they worded it poorly in a way that made it seem more likely that he was a pedophile, but that's not always the case. The fact that the registries state the specific offense makes me wonder if there's just a grave misunderstanding in Congress about the psychology of child molesters.
Regardless, I'm not convinced that a registry of even pedophiles is acceptable. I'd rather see something more constructive, like mandatory counciling. But regardless, more research should be done to find a good solution. Unfortunately, given the punative nature of American society, the general dislike of gaining knowledge, and the inability to understand when something is a psychological or genetic condition[2] (pedophilia) rather than a choice that the person makes, I don't think we'll see improvement in this area any time soon.
[1] Here, I'm assuming, since I can't find specific recidivism rates for other crimes.
[2] Indicating that it's beyond the person's control. Pedophilia (which, strictly, is just the attraction to prepubescent children) is seemingly not much different from other sexual preferences. The key is not acting on them, in this case.
The recidivism rate for child molestors is high, but the class of "sex offenders" (taken as a whole, including child molestors) overall has a lower recidivism rate than other convicted criminals.
From http://www.ojp.gov/bjs/crimoff.htm#recidivism
Sex offenders were less likely than non-sex offenders to be rearrested for any offense 43 percent of sex offenders versus 68 percent of non-sex offenders. The line right below it is confusing, however:
Sex offenders were about four times more likely than non-sex offenders to be arrested for another sex crime after their discharge from prison 5.3 percent of sex offenders versus 1.3 percent of non-sex offenders. I think that means that sex offenders are more likely to commit a sex crime after release than non-sex offenders. If my interpretation is correct, that's probably why so many people have it in their heads (just as I did before I started doing actual research) that sex offenders are more likely to re-offend.
You may describe the recidivism rate for pedophiles as "high", but for other crimes, it's higher.
On the other hand, you don't want features that no one will use. OGG and its main codecs are not lightweight enough for mobile browsing (H.264 is) and are old enough that web developers targeting desktop browsers will probably want to use something else, anyway. It's a nice idea, and I'd love to see free codecs get more play, but realistically, it's actually not very pragmatic.
Worse, HTML5 is a long way from ratification, and then it will be a long way from wide acceptance. By that time, Vorbis/Theora will be ancient. Although Vorbis may still be useful, Theora certainly will be completely outdated.
Monopolies as defined by the government tend to be defined within an industry. Within the industry of computing, Apple is not a monopoly.
If you take your argument down a few levels, you could claim that any company has a monopoly. If you said, "Coca Cola has a monopoly, because they won't let me recreate their formula," you'd be laughed out of the room.
Yeah, but that's what standards are all about. You can bet that if rich-content accessibility was in the standard, that you'd see much higher quality browser/server integration.
You don't necessarily use what is popular because what is popular might be proprietary. Flash is extremely popular--do you want to see that in the HTML5 standard?
As for software that plays OGGs, you're looking at it wrong. If OGG was an HTML5 standard, then any HTML5 browser would play OGG files. They weren't suggesting that you switch your audio/video codec of choice for local storage--this was about streaming media to the browser. If they are going to recommend codecs and container formats, they should choose them based upon whether a compliant browser can implement it without paying royalties. There are really few options, and of them, OGG is the best.
I liked the idea of OGG being recommended for HTML5, but realistically, there are a lot of problems.
As a container, OGG is pretty heavyweight. It's not going to be good for mobile devices. All off the Vorbis and Theora decoders I've seen have been extremely resource-intensive. This may well be because more attention is devoted to other codecs like XVid, and so they are more highly optimized. Nevertheless, again, mobile devices will suffer. Quality-wise, Vorbis is pretty nice. Theora, however, is a generation behind, and rapidly losing ground. HTML5 isn't expected to be ratified for over a year. In that time, Theora's generation of codecs will be even older and less efficient to the then-current codecs. For a field as rapidly evolving as streaming video, it doesn't make all that much sense to include it. It would be like suggesting that Indeo be implemented for HTML4.
The biggest benefit to recommending OGG in HTML5 is that it would get a free format out there, but at the cost of efficiency. While bandwidth continues to grow, and computers get faster and faster, waste is still a concern, and mobile devices are becoming more popular (you have to treat these as if they were 10 year old computers with equivalent bandwidth!) OGG misses the mark in most categories--too big and bulky for mobiles, too old for new computers. It's the worst of both worlds.
I was going to write a post as the Devil's Advocate for at least monitoring sex offenders somewhat. As I went to gather some facts based upon what I'd always heard regarding such things as recidivism rates, I have to say that I'm shocked.
The recidivism rates for sex crimes are actually lower than that of other crimes. Now that is probably skewed quite a bit by the war on drugs (many drug-related offenses being victimless crimes), but it's still surprising. The only justification I can imagine for tracking sex offenders after release is because the crime is considered especially heinous, but given the statistics, I can't even manage to play Devil's Advocate on this one. It's just too absurd.
Yes, although companies sue other people all the time for using their marks in unrelated businesses. Just because you can, doesn't mean that it's not going to suck having that lawsuit hit you.
Actually, they can make more money by being family/workplace friendly. I doubt that's an absolute. Most porn sites would not make more money if they were family/workplace friendly, for example. If a lot of people went to fark just for the NSFW links, and Drew started eliminating those, he would be eliminating fanbase.
It's just a different way of thinking. If you don't like it, don't use it. There are plenty of other options.
Re:As a linux neophyte...
on
Hacking VIM
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· Score: 1
Heh, I did a quick search before posting and didn't come up with that. Ah well, thanks for the pointer!
Re:As a linux neophyte...
on
Hacking VIM
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· Score: 1
I feel the same way! I can't tell you how many times I've tried to use vi-keys to control text-boxes on Slashdot!
Someone should make Firefox extension....
Re:As a linux neophyte...
on
Hacking VIM
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· Score: 1
It shouldn't take long, but it depends upon how many of nano's features you use. If you don't use many advanced features, it should be dead simple. The hardest thing to learn will be dealing with the modes (insert and command.)
Honestly, I think the best way to do it is just to dive in. Get a quick reference so that you can undo anything you didn't mean to do and just go for it. Remember that to exit, you need to be in command mode (ctrl-c or escape) and then:q (or:wq if you want to save and quit.) With just that knowledge, you can pretty safely start trying it out.
Just to throw in my opinion, I like vi because it keeps my fingers close to the home keys. I don't have to move my right hand in order to move the cursor (ctrl-c,kjhl(up,down,left,right)). I know that some editors let you use ctrl-key to move, but that's hard on my pinky:)
It's economical because it's like renting. The power company rents your battery for the tiny period of time that they need it. Maybe over the lifetime of your car, they've needed to rent 100 total days (probably a high estimate.) They pay out considerably less than it would cost to buy the battery outright. Then you handle disposing of the battery and buying a new one.
Compare to the cost of buying the batteries outright (they're expensive) and still having to replace them every 5 years or so.
Which is why the power companies need to provide incentives. That means either subsidizing the cars (not a good plan, if customers have the ability to turn this mode off) or paying for the amount of time that you leave it on.
"And thats fine until the second application starts modifying data in that DB."
The system has been in development for 2 months now. It's responsible for modifying all data in the DB and somehow it works just fine. Where did you get the idea that the app is not allowed or should not modify the DB directly? That's not what was said.
Here's what the grandparent was talking about: you write a web application that does a lot of nifty, whiz-bang things. You realize that you want to perform some kind of maintenance on it every night, so you get your co-worker to write a script to do that while you continue to make the main application. Your co-worker doesn't realize that your application maintains data integrity, and could easily do something that screws it up.
Using the above example, perhaps your co-worker fails to update the "last revision" flag. Now your customers may get incorrect data when they ask for the most recent revision.
What if you weren't there? You've moved on, and someone else starts maintaining the application, and the new developer doesn't know about your efficiency trick. The documentation is lost, so you can't rely on that.
Simply put, the database is there to maintain data integrity. The application is not.
What if a developer doesn't know the programming language that the app is written in? What if the developer doesn't know how to breathe? Or more reasonably, what if the developer doesn't know the programming language that you developed in order to perform the task. It's not like a language that everyone knows--the schema and how the application interacts with it is going to be specific to every system.
But really, I think the issue is that you're just thinking too small. You've come up with this one simple example that undoubtably would be easy to document, and you have presented that as a good reason to not adhere to rules regarding data integrity. What if it was a more complex schema? A more complex application? If the database enforces all of the constraints, you never have to worry about the application forgetting to. For anything even moderately complex, this is essential.
Actually, the model class automatically enforces this rule. Upon saving the model class, it will automatically set the is_newest_revision of older revision objects to false. That is what abstraction and object oriented programming is for. It has only been around for, oh you know, 20-30 years? And if you need to interact with the data outside of Ruby? What then?
If it's got eSata, it's a FreeAgent Pro. I wonder if these are affected by the same bug.
I transferred probably 200GB of data to one of these (backing up 4 workstations over the network) without a hitch. The device was connected to an old computer running an older version of Linux. I didn't notice any problems.
Slashdot Mirror
I use an Intel Pro Wireless 802.11g device, and I've never run into these problems, at least on Linux. The Windows partition that I have only boots up once in a blue moon, and it actually has different severe networking problems (I only ever get about 33% of my total bandwidth.)
As for the speed of the connection, there are many cable ISPs which promote 9mbps in the US. Plus, lots of people get their internet from their college, which means they could have pretty fat pipes connected to that access point.
With 802.11g in the US, there are only three channels that have no overlap: 1, 6, and 11. If anyone is using 2-5, you'll get interference from their device on channels 1 through 6. If anyone is using 7-10,you'll get interference from their device on channels 6 through 11. If you're lucky (like me) and everyone around you is using channel 6, then you've got two channels to choose from to stay clear of their signals.
Exactly. I'm pretty sick of long EULAs, myself, but at some point, you've got to ask where the responsibility lies. Would it be enough for the disclaimer to be in the software documentation? That's usually longer than the EULA, and while people may be more likely to read parts of it, few people read it all. They find the parts specific to their need, read it, apply the knowledge, and move on.
We're too much of a warning label society as it is. "Warning, about to connect to another VOIP phone." "Warning, about to send caller ID information." "Warning, about to execute machine code instructions." Do you want to allow?
Interesting. I usually use Google to search Wikipedia. If I want to know more about Marmaduke, I'll use this search string in Google:
Marmaduke+site%3Awikipedia.org
(or Marmaduke site:wikipedia.org in the Google search box.)
I wonder if they assign all copyrights to Google, or if all articles must be public domain? Otherwise, there will be inevitable problems with copyright when people rewrite an article to fix an error.
Worse, such a scenario would be pretty susceptible to gaming. Someone writes a really good article, someone else copies it and manages to get lots of links to it out on the web, so that they get the money from someone else's effort.
Wikipedia (mostly) works because most of the articles are written for altruistic purposes--to share information. Knols will be written to get a piece of the pie, so it's going to be a bigger target for corruption.
Plus, it's one more case of Google is dipping their fingers in pies where there's already a highly established player. They'll never knock Paypal down with Google Checkout, and they'll never knock Wikipedia down with Google Knols.
The DMCA, generally speaking, is a bad law. It grants too much power to individuals at the expense of the people, and it allows for the revocation of rights by a small minority.
Your reasoning is sound, but I don't think that's good enough (if we don't look at actual statistics when dealing with law, if we instead go with our guts, we'll eventually do something really, really bad.)
http://www.csom.org/pubs/recidsexof.html
This indicates that you're right. Compared to other sex offenders, the recidivism rates for child molestoes are higher. However that doesn't negate the fact that sex offenders as a whole (including child molesters) have an overall lower recidivism rate than other criminals. The issue I take is with the fact that the recidivism rate is lower, yet we as a society do so much more to them after they're released from prison. Why isn't there a registry of murderers? Robbers? They're more likely[1] to re-offend.
As I mentioned earlier, it's probably due to the heinous nature of the crime. Some people believe rape to be more heinous than murder. Is that enough of a reason?
It is certainly possible, as I believe you suggested, that the reason sex offenders are targeted is specifically to protect the children. However, most sex offender registries do note the nature of the crime that the individual committed. In the article Slashdot linked to, they worded it poorly in a way that made it seem more likely that he was a pedophile, but that's not always the case. The fact that the registries state the specific offense makes me wonder if there's just a grave misunderstanding in Congress about the psychology of child molesters.
Regardless, I'm not convinced that a registry of even pedophiles is acceptable. I'd rather see something more constructive, like mandatory counciling. But regardless, more research should be done to find a good solution. Unfortunately, given the punative nature of American society, the general dislike of gaining knowledge, and the inability to understand when something is a psychological or genetic condition[2] (pedophilia) rather than a choice that the person makes, I don't think we'll see improvement in this area any time soon.
[1] Here, I'm assuming, since I can't find specific recidivism rates for other crimes.
[2] Indicating that it's beyond the person's control. Pedophilia (which, strictly, is just the attraction to prepubescent children) is seemingly not much different from other sexual preferences. The key is not acting on them, in this case.
From http://www.ojp.gov/bjs/crimoff.htm#recidivism Sex offenders were less likely than non-sex offenders to be rearrested for any offense 43 percent of sex offenders versus 68 percent of non-sex offenders. The line right below it is confusing, however: Sex offenders were about four times more likely than non-sex offenders to be arrested for another sex crime after their discharge from prison 5.3 percent of sex offenders versus 1.3 percent of non-sex offenders. I think that means that sex offenders are more likely to commit a sex crime after release than non-sex offenders. If my interpretation is correct, that's probably why so many people have it in their heads (just as I did before I started doing actual research) that sex offenders are more likely to re-offend.
You may describe the recidivism rate for pedophiles as "high", but for other crimes, it's higher.
On the other hand, you don't want features that no one will use. OGG and its main codecs are not lightweight enough for mobile browsing (H.264 is) and are old enough that web developers targeting desktop browsers will probably want to use something else, anyway. It's a nice idea, and I'd love to see free codecs get more play, but realistically, it's actually not very pragmatic.
Worse, HTML5 is a long way from ratification, and then it will be a long way from wide acceptance. By that time, Vorbis/Theora will be ancient. Although Vorbis may still be useful, Theora certainly will be completely outdated.
Monopolies as defined by the government tend to be defined within an industry. Within the industry of computing, Apple is not a monopoly.
If you take your argument down a few levels, you could claim that any company has a monopoly. If you said, "Coca Cola has a monopoly, because they won't let me recreate their formula," you'd be laughed out of the room.
Yeah, but that's what standards are all about. You can bet that if rich-content accessibility was in the standard, that you'd see much higher quality browser/server integration.
You don't necessarily use what is popular because what is popular might be proprietary. Flash is extremely popular--do you want to see that in the HTML5 standard?
As for software that plays OGGs, you're looking at it wrong. If OGG was an HTML5 standard, then any HTML5 browser would play OGG files. They weren't suggesting that you switch your audio/video codec of choice for local storage--this was about streaming media to the browser. If they are going to recommend codecs and container formats, they should choose them based upon whether a compliant browser can implement it without paying royalties. There are really few options, and of them, OGG is the best.
100% correct.
I liked the idea of OGG being recommended for HTML5, but realistically, there are a lot of problems.
As a container, OGG is pretty heavyweight. It's not going to be good for mobile devices.
All off the Vorbis and Theora decoders I've seen have been extremely resource-intensive. This may well be because more attention is devoted to other codecs like XVid, and so they are more highly optimized. Nevertheless, again, mobile devices will suffer.
Quality-wise, Vorbis is pretty nice. Theora, however, is a generation behind, and rapidly losing ground. HTML5 isn't expected to be ratified for over a year. In that time, Theora's generation of codecs will be even older and less efficient to the then-current codecs. For a field as rapidly evolving as streaming video, it doesn't make all that much sense to include it. It would be like suggesting that Indeo be implemented for HTML4.
The biggest benefit to recommending OGG in HTML5 is that it would get a free format out there, but at the cost of efficiency. While bandwidth continues to grow, and computers get faster and faster, waste is still a concern, and mobile devices are becoming more popular (you have to treat these as if they were 10 year old computers with equivalent bandwidth!) OGG misses the mark in most categories--too big and bulky for mobiles, too old for new computers. It's the worst of both worlds.
I was going to write a post as the Devil's Advocate for at least monitoring sex offenders somewhat. As I went to gather some facts based upon what I'd always heard regarding such things as recidivism rates, I have to say that I'm shocked.
The recidivism rates for sex crimes are actually lower than that of other crimes. Now that is probably skewed quite a bit by the war on drugs (many drug-related offenses being victimless crimes), but it's still surprising. The only justification I can imagine for tracking sex offenders after release is because the crime is considered especially heinous, but given the statistics, I can't even manage to play Devil's Advocate on this one. It's just too absurd.
Yes, although companies sue other people all the time for using their marks in unrelated businesses. Just because you can, doesn't mean that it's not going to suck having that lawsuit hit you.
It's just a different way of thinking. If you don't like it, don't use it. There are plenty of other options.
Heh, I did a quick search before posting and didn't come up with that. Ah well, thanks for the pointer!
I feel the same way! I can't tell you how many times I've tried to use vi-keys to control text-boxes on Slashdot!
Someone should make Firefox extension....
It shouldn't take long, but it depends upon how many of nano's features you use. If you don't use many advanced features, it should be dead simple. The hardest thing to learn will be dealing with the modes (insert and command.)
:q (or :wq if you want to save and quit.) With just that knowledge, you can pretty safely start trying it out.
:)
Honestly, I think the best way to do it is just to dive in. Get a quick reference so that you can undo anything you didn't mean to do and just go for it. Remember that to exit, you need to be in command mode (ctrl-c or escape) and then
Just to throw in my opinion, I like vi because it keeps my fingers close to the home keys. I don't have to move my right hand in order to move the cursor (ctrl-c,kjhl(up,down,left,right)). I know that some editors let you use ctrl-key to move, but that's hard on my pinky
It's economical because it's like renting. The power company rents your battery for the tiny period of time that they need it. Maybe over the lifetime of your car, they've needed to rent 100 total days (probably a high estimate.) They pay out considerably less than it would cost to buy the battery outright. Then you handle disposing of the battery and buying a new one.
Compare to the cost of buying the batteries outright (they're expensive) and still having to replace them every 5 years or so.
Which is why the power companies need to provide incentives. That means either subsidizing the cars (not a good plan, if customers have the ability to turn this mode off) or paying for the amount of time that you leave it on.
Otherwise, yeah, why would a customer do this?
Here's what the grandparent was talking about: you write a web application that does a lot of nifty, whiz-bang things. You realize that you want to perform some kind of maintenance on it every night, so you get your co-worker to write a script to do that while you continue to make the main application. Your co-worker doesn't realize that your application maintains data integrity, and could easily do something that screws it up.
Using the above example, perhaps your co-worker fails to update the "last revision" flag. Now your customers may get incorrect data when they ask for the most recent revision.
What if you weren't there? You've moved on, and someone else starts maintaining the application, and the new developer doesn't know about your efficiency trick. The documentation is lost, so you can't rely on that.
Simply put, the database is there to maintain data integrity. The application is not. What if a developer doesn't know the programming language that the app is written in? What if the developer doesn't know how to breathe? Or more reasonably, what if the developer doesn't know the programming language that you developed in order to perform the task. It's not like a language that everyone knows--the schema and how the application interacts with it is going to be specific to every system.
But really, I think the issue is that you're just thinking too small. You've come up with this one simple example that undoubtably would be easy to document, and you have presented that as a good reason to not adhere to rules regarding data integrity. What if it was a more complex schema? A more complex application? If the database enforces all of the constraints, you never have to worry about the application forgetting to. For anything even moderately complex, this is essential. Actually, the model class automatically enforces this rule. Upon saving the model class, it will automatically set the is_newest_revision of older revision objects to false. That is what abstraction and object oriented programming is for. It has only been around for, oh you know, 20-30 years? And if you need to interact with the data outside of Ruby? What then?
If it's got eSata, it's a FreeAgent Pro. I wonder if these are affected by the same bug.
I transferred probably 200GB of data to one of these (backing up 4 workstations over the network) without a hitch. The device was connected to an old computer running an older version of Linux. I didn't notice any problems.
Better was telling people (who used MIRC back in the day) to hold ALT and type FAX for a virtual fax machine to other IRC users.
ALT+F opened the file menu. A did nothing. X was for eXit.