Some psychologist model the mind as a computer. There is a small amount of processing power, a couple of input modes each connected to a finite amount of short term memory and long term memory store. The long term memory store might be arbitrarily large but without a very sophisticated relational query strategies, it might not be totally random access.
The key is the limited processing power and the small amount of short term memory, which might be around 5 items. A child learning to read sees each character, has to put them together, and understand the meaning of each word. This eats up all the storage and processing. As the child get older, words become single units, word are linked to definitions, and therefore enough words can fit in short term memory and enough processing power is left over so the child begins to comprehend sentences, paragraphs, and, eventually, end user license agreements.
When words are misspelled they no longer form a single unit. Each letter is a unit, and takes up space. Words can no longer be directly connected to definition through the a simple index. One has to manually search through every matching word until a word with the proper characters and definition is retrieved. Once this is done the word can replace the sequence of characters, leaving some memory free for other words. If this process is very fast, then it is possible that someone could get to the end of the sentence before the sentence starts fading.
I think the problem for non-native speakers is if they have to add a translation step. If all the words are spelled correctly, then the speaker has a lot of time to do this task. In this case however, time a processing power were spent correcting the corrupt words. This person might not have enough time to extract a meaning before short term memory clears, and therefore will be unable to comprehend.
You can bet the most valuable employee at MS is the psychologist that not only knows how to write a EULA that cannot be read, but also causes massive internal trauma in anyone who might try!
I agree with you to a point. I run a lot of things in X. I get a lot of real work done in X.
I also get a lot of real work done in the native GUI. I would get a lot more real work done, but the tools have not been ported yet.
The thing about the user interface is that Apple has one thing going for it, and one thing going against it. First, they have been working GUI issues for over 20 years. Kind of even more if you count the NeXt work. It is not like MS who woke up one day and said hey, we need one of them GUI things to compete. X is just as good, but has problem with the implementation on some hardware. The Apple implementation just isn't there yet.
The problem you are having results from the second issue. Apple has a large user base, and just can't change things willy nilly. Even the minimal changes they made to OS X caused a number of problems for the user. OS X is not X, and there is no reason it should try to be X. It is still missing features of OS 9, but lets seem what happens in Panther. Which I will wait a few weeks before purcahasing, just to be safe.
Oh, and virtual destops are nice. Have you thought of getting a second flat screen (~$300) and have two real desktops?
Second, there I have been peeps of negativity. I myself have criticized Apple on several occasions fro releasing a security patch with other updates. It was wrong, and we know this is wrong. Apple forcing the user to patch toys like the audio part (which admittedly some people use to make money) at the same time as the security patches was wrong.
Now, listen closely child: both MS and Apple has irrational fanboys. One reason that MS gets more flack is MS also tends to be more of a target than Apple from the Linux fanboys, and MS has pissed off it's own customers through self-serving licensing, update, and software availability practices.
As far as safe mode is concerned, it's purpose it to turn off most the services so that the computer will boot. In a Mac in OS X, if services do not work, the Mac will still boot, but the services will just not work. In OS 9 we had a feature where the shift key (i think) could be held down, which would turn off the extensions, and do the equivalent of your safe mode.
One last thing, The fact that this update failed showed the problems with updates in general. One can never assume that an update is released and a week later all the security holes will be fixed. On production machines is always necessary to test the patch for a while to make sure that it is not going to break the very machine that brings in the profit. And guess what? In this web economy many of the machines that are the most venerable are also the most necessary for production.
So, if MS issues an update once a month, then you are talking about an almost full time process of validating and installing patches. Unless you just a week until other people have validated the patch, and then install it. Which is what many Mac users do. Except for us the problems usually crop up in a few hours. We just get complacent because lately all the patches have worked.
Generally with extras sound tracks, extra footage, etc, a single season of TV is realased accross 3 to 5 DVDs. This makes sense because a single DVD can store, at most, about 4 hours. For a theatrical release this is the two versions of the movies, the wide screen and fit-your-tv version.
So, with 177 episode and 48 DVDs, one gets 3.8 episode per DVD, which is about as much as one can expect.
For such a price, at this late date, one would expect a lot of extras. OTOH, the best sale price I ever saw on TNG was about $100 a season, so this may be a bargain.
The fact that he can afford a place to stay and clothes implies that it does pay. The fact that it does not pay much is less relevent.
I wish we could say that crime usually doesn't pay any better than a real job, and comes with considerable more risk, so you might as well get a real job.
Of course the government won't fund enough education so the common person could understand what that statement meant, and the government is more concerned with killing people than helping the economy, so perhaps there are no jobs to be had.
Awards are very important. The Oscar's in particular provide a few hours of cheap advertising. The studios make a couple movies a year that are barely good enough to get nominated to get the cheap publicity. Also, winning the occasional awards increases the cheap publicity and make the studio looks like it can make quality movies.
Near the end of the article it states that some conspiracy theorist think this is a way to get the independent out of the oscars. This is in fact a compelling reason. As the related article in the NYT states, most independents cannot afford the kind of pre-Oscar advertising campaign that the major studio put forth. The independents generaly do not put movies into wide release, and if fact often only do so if a movie gets a Oscar. These studios live and die by word of mouth, and therefore have little problems with the judges distributing their movies. The independent seem to respect the Oscar's for what it is: cheap advertisement.
By banning the screeners, the big studios shift the advantage to themselves, and stand a good chance of winning more awards. Now, this may not sound like such a big deal. Who cares who wins. The concern is the quality of the films. The big studios currently have to make a few good films a year to compete with the independents. If this competition no longer exists, then what is to keep the majors producing good films.
And if the independents no longer exist, and if the major no longer have to make a few extra good movies a year, what will this do for the workers. Fewer movies and fewer studios means fewer writers, actors, and other staff. We have seen that the consolidation in broadcast TV has lead to rise in shows that do not need writers, do not need sets, and only need a couple cameras. The consolidation in the movie industry could easily lead to the same thing. The studios are claiming a 1/2 of 1% loss due to screeners. Can they claim that thier ban will result in the loss of less workers?
Not to mention a decline in the kind of intelligent sexuality and sensuality that the independents are just so good at.
And BTW, though Costner is annoying, Thirteen Days was a damn fine movie.
Remember, restricted the importation of controlled substances into this country not only hurt foreign growers, but also domestic transportation workers, retail level sales person, and the fine medical workers that help the O.D. victim recover to 50% of his mental capacity.
IIt is interesting how people throw around these words without really understanding what they mean.
Communism is arguable a reaction to the industrial revolution in which the owners, who were obsessed with wealth, would use any means, including oppressing the worker, to gain that wealth. We see such behavior now with tele-marketers. The communist response might be stated as giving control of the manufacturing resources to the many and operating it for everyones benefit.
As such, OOS, does resemble communism, but there is a key difference. Communism assumes that all production capability will operated on behalf of the society as a whole. This is not true in OSS. The GPL, I believe, allows a member of society to take code. modify it, and use it for his or her own benefit. Am I not correct in assuming that as long as the binaries are distributed, the code can be kept secret. As such, enhancements can be kept within a company providing them with a competitive advantage. Another big difference is there is no stopping anyone from writing code that when released may not be good for society as a whole, as well a the fact that producer of the code retains ownership through the GPL.
Capitalism, on the other, values the individual and tries to motivate the individual to create novel products with promise of wealth. It can also be considered a reaction to the oppression of workers, but in this case with the promise that anyone may become the owner and have workers of their own to oppress for profit. It is not hard to align OSS with capitalism. Code is property, and it remains the right of the producer. As property, and through the GPL and other licensees, we limit the use of that property. The fact that the limits may be different does not alter the fact that the limits are in place. Likewise, individuals can choose how to license their products, and other individuals can choose what type of licenses they wish to which they wish to adhere. As far as profit is concerned, capitalism never guarantees it. It is up to the individual to figure out how to make, and there are no rules on how that might happen. Now some might think there are no oppression of workers, but I bet Red Hat workers has some stories to tell.
Of course, others think the OSS is socialism. They may be correct. Just like any well run state, the model is probably eclectic, picking and choosing the best features of every model to form the best possible service structure for it's citizens.
One more thing, command economies, on certain scales, are very efficient. That is why major companies use them. That is why MS wants no competition. That is why major sports leagues spent much time lobbying congress for their monopoly and still fight any actions that might jeopardize their command status. OSS is inefficient because it has no real central authority to coordinate production, and thus there are probably more GUIs or IM clients than we really need. It is a matter of choosing your devil.
favoring speech by charitable (organizations) over commercial speech
I have to say that i believed the first ruling to be a contrived technicality, while I see this ruling as having some merit. I mean look at the two big reasons why tele-marketers are considered such a scourge. Calling at inopportune time and deceitful statements.
The first applies to any tele-marketer. If I am macking my date, do I care if the person calling me is from 'chaney gas guzzler rewards program' or the 'bush drunk driver defense fund'. Hell no.
The second is not direct, but really applies to both as well. I do not know how things are now, but it was not so long ago that charities were getting in trouble for spending significant percentages of their income on non-serve items. It was also not so long ago when the tele-markets were keeping significant percentages of their take, allegedly up to 90%, for their own profits. Both of these made the charities non-profit in name only. This non-profit status was beneficial because it allowed the officer to run corrupt organizations without getting in trouble with the IRS or shareholdes, both whom would otherwise would require profit to made every once in a while.
Furthermore what would stop tele-markets from combining non-profit and commercial customers. For a donation of X you get a premium and a handy coupon book for further purchases. The non-profit part of the telemarketing company becomes a loss leader, with the telemarketing firm keeping their traditional 85%, but using it to pay for the comical customer for the premium. The commercial customers pays a higher rate for each commercial call in order to pay for the sale through the non-profit channel, and the telemarketing gets further kickbacks if the coupon book is used.
Which is just to say I think the non-profit exemption was a hack to appease certain parties, like the religious right, the public employee unions (most of the calls I get come from the policeman funds) and the powerful medical lobby. It really has no legal basis and quite frankly I think the bill will be much more useful it the exemption is struck. I was kind of thinking that the tele-marketers would use the exemption as an opportunity, like I have shown above, but they obviously are not that smart.
And that, for me is the issue. I want to with music what I have always done with music. I want to copy it, share it, and archive. I am not going to put it up on some peer to peer network and share it, but if five of my closest friends want a copy, I will not say no.
This is the way it has always been. I buy an LP. I make couple of copies on tape for myself. I might make a few copies for friends. The LP is seldom played.
Now, I am not a person who thought twice about spending a big chunk of change upgrading my LPs to CDs. And frankly I have little problem buying CDs at 15 dollars a piece. Before the RIAA began wasting the courts time I did it quite often. Furthermore if hi quality MP3s, or simliar format, say at least 256 kbs directly from the studio masters, were avaible and the price were cut to 10 or so, I would be all over that. As long as the formate was not encumbered.
That is why I only bought a few songs from Apple. Why should I pay money for something that I have to burn and re-rip just to do with it as I please. What kind of degradation is going to occur. I can wait a few months and get the CD for 5 or 6 bucks.
I'm sorry, but this protection racket has been tried in software. It only works sometimes, and only works well if you are a monopoly. It is stupid for musician to want a protection racket. I know in this age of wal mart and best buy assuming all their customers are criminals has destroyed the self esteem of the formerly freedom loving and self respecting U.S. resident, but how much more are we going to take?
I pay for most music. I pay for most software. The companies seem to doing well. The ones that aren't are the small ones who succumb to the questionable competitive behaviors of the big one. Sell me a product that I can use, and I will pay for it. Assume that I am inherently evil, and no matte how cheap the product is, I will just move on.
Of course you are correct that one should not vote against a representative over a disagreement on a single bill, expecially when in this case that vote may be ritualistic.
OTOH, one should take critical votes like these into account in the analysis of the character of the overall person. For instance is the reprsentative worried about the aggregate opinion of the people represented, or does that aggregate get weighted with money contributed.
If this is good or bad depends on how the do it. It's like the anti-drug education. In lower grades, it is not so bad. It takes about how some people use your feeling against you. How some people will do anything to take your money. This is rather good training in our consumer culture, and the sale of action figures as it is to the sale of drugs, legal or illegal.
However, by middle school the lessons on advertiser manipulation are over and the lessons move to the realm of fiction. A minority of the content is supported by peer reviewed research. Most of it is the opinion of the writers of the pamphlet. The ultimate insult is that such fictional content is presented in science class, and therefore steals instructional time from the actual useful development of higher order thinking.
In both cases we could continue the early training and just teach the kids that they do not need to consume. Many kids, and i believe adults, steal music because they are compulsive about owning the content, a compulsion fueled by the machines of the respective industry. The problem is that teaching kids they do not need to consume music would probably do more damage to the music industry that just allowing them to steal it, just like teaching kids they do not need drugs to cope would do more damage to the legal drug industry.
I think it is because the telemarketers want more time to come up with a more graceful and profitable exit.
This is what one truly calls a waste of the courts time. The telemaketers are perfectly away that tens of millions of people agree that they provide no useful function in the U.S. economy. The telemarketers are perfectly aware that have been given many years to clean up predatory tactics but have chosen not to.
So, even though they know they will lose, they use every legal tactic to delay that loss until the very last minute. The purpose is to maximize personal profit. That they profit is at the expense of the defenseless is of no concern to them. That they waste the courts time is of no interest to them.
So we will see a few more rounds of this. The telemarketers will walk away with a lot of money.
I will encourage all people to waste as much of the telemaketers time as possible. When on calls, talk to them. Get information. Remember, if they are talking to you then they are not conning someone else to take a bogus trip of buy 'protection' insurance for credit cards.
Keep laws off the internet, use technology to fix technology.
The biggest misconception in language is the use of the word 'technology'. Technology is more than just the computer or the internet. It is the hammer, the car, the wheel, the pen and paper. And yes, even the political process.
So, although I know what you mean, what you actually saying is what we are doing. We are applying the technologies that allow us to live together without killing each other too often to solve a situation that most of the population who are affected by consider a problem.
Now some want to avoid the technological innovations of 'justice' and 'due process' and 'democracy' and return to the previous technology of 'hang them all and let god sort them out'.
So, I suppose we could construct a DDOS attack against every computer that might possible have sent us spam, but that would probably annoy a number of innocent lusers. I guess we even go to suspected spamers houses and burn them down with the technology of fire. But both of those things could get us arrested. So I guess we will just have to depend on the flawed and antiquated political process.
Well, I assumed the anti-mac frat boys would take mention this, but evidently the years of cheap beer and Dawson Creek has dulled their minds...
I really must say that Apple putting a security patch and a feature update together in the same download is really horrible. We have been justifiable criticizing MS for doing the same things, and they finally got the message.
With the Software Update interface in OS X such combinations are unnecessary. All updates are automatically checked, so there is no extra work for the average user if patches get delivered in 1 or 4 packages. For those who want only the security updates, a few clicks will remove the unneeded packages.
This really bothers me because one thing that Apple does, and the reason I spend my money on Apples, and have for more years than I care to admit, is that they do try not to make the silly mistakes. Like forcing someone to download an Audio update onto a production box that never does audio.
I think what this shows is that security is very hard to do. It is very hard to come up with a good protocol. It is very hard to code that protocol so it is secure. It is very hard to deploy the code so it is secure. The author is of course correct that security code should be left to those that are competent.
The first big difference between OSS and commercial products is often that commercial products want to either invent a new proprietary protocol, or, for marketing reasons, push an obsolete protocol as a new innovated protocol. Both of these leave end users insecure. However, since everything is proprietary, there is no way for the user to know the level of insecurity. And, if we may drop names like in the article, Scheier lists a new company nearly every month who tries to push crap as security, though he has gotten so annoyed that he has skipped months of late.
And to drop the name again, Schneier, has spent his time of late trying to convince people that security is so much more than protocols. The protocols must be implemented in code correctly and deployed correctly. Unless one is a huge national agency with a classified budget and decades of security experience, it is unlikely that one can create a secure product. It is much better to make the code public so that interested parties can investigate. It doesn't mean they will.
The two of these combine in interesting ways in closed software. There are claims of 1,000,000 bit keys. There are situation in which security by obscurity is used as the first line of defense. There are situation in which the DCMA is used as the first line of defense.
Which is just to say that conclusion #1 and #2 does not follow from the text. Just because one finds a few packages that are out of date in OSS, does not mean that finding a few updated packages in closed source software are more secure. Conclusions #3 and #4 are trivially valid, and applies to anyone writing software in any model. All programmer should take the advice to heart, especially if they want to design a right management system using closed protocols.
You know, I was just setting up a *nix box in the command line and thought how unfortunate the kids of today are stuck in their GUI. They will never know the joys of the command line, or line printers or punch cards.
And then it hit me. We should have just stayed with hand switches. Life was so simple. We just flip switches to code, find the moth when the code fails, and then sit back and play chess until we have enough energy to decode the answer.
No, not really on topic. But just to say I think the problem is that people want to use Windows for everything. It is a tool, and not a bad one. I just feel better when I my toolbox contains more than a hammer.
From the point of view of Intel and MS, it is even more dire. In response to NAFTA, China has set up a free trade zone in South East Asia, AFTA. There is enough interest in this trade zone to encompass about a third of the world population, and a significant portion of the world economy, especially in the manufacturing sector. If this area standardizes on a *nix with home-grown electronics, it may be very hard for Wintel vendors to sell to the region. And since China is the economic power of AFTA, it is assume that the other countries in the FTA would standardize on their computer product, which would likely be much cheaper than anything WinTel.
In addition, U.S. firms will have to be interoperable with AFTA if we hope to continue trading with them. As such, I would assume that U.S. firms would demand that vendors supply equipment interoperable with AFTA standards. If MS is not able to supply such an OS, then the firms will just have to go elsewhere.
I think it also has to do with vendors encouraging dangerous behaviors.
For instance, MS and even Apple want HTML email because this allows them to track email and allows advertisers to delivery fancy graphics. At least Apple lets the user turn off the HTML option.
We also see this in MS delivering archives as executable instead of zip or tar. Sure, the executable option saves the user from having an additional program installed, but how hard can it to provide the every user with an archiver when you control the OS.
There is no reason why MS should have ever allowed the user to develop such bad habits.
I have to disagree that not having every computer connected directly to 'The Internet' is a bad thing. The first definition from google for the internet, taken from the american heritage dictionary, is An interconnected system of networks that connects computers around the world via the TCP/IP protocol..
This means that the Internet is made up of networks which may themselves may be made up of networks, etc. These networks use a common protocol. Most would say that not every device on the network, or even every sub network on the network has to be connected to the Internet. It is quite arguable that there are benefits, both personal and for the commons, to not have every device connected to the Internet.
What is for sure is that for the Internet to run, everyone who uses it must contribute to it's well being. There has to be enough devices connected directly to the Intent to process and forward all the packets in an efficient and timely manner. I personally pay a number of services that manage such activity on my behalf. My personal machines, which are not in the primary bussiness of routing packets, are behind a NAT, which is.
Being behind a NAT allows me to manage my network with less effect on the rest of the community. There are still many security issues, and i can still flood others if I get infected, but it is a first step. I would argue that assuming every computer on every network to be directly addressable from every other computer on the every other network might not be the best design decision. It certainly fits in well with the TelCo desire to sell at least one IP per device, as they tried to do in the past with telephones, but other than that I do not see the benifit.
My confusion is that the security claims are bogus based on 'electric' portion of the EM field still being necessarily coded.
An alternating current creates and EM field. The strength of the the two portions of the field related to the strength of the current, the configuration of the 'antennae' and the distance from the 'antennae'
To create a strong magnetic field, it seems one would have loops. The loops would create a strong magnetic field based on number, radius, and current. A electric field would also be created based on the same, but perhaps less so on the radius. So, if we drive the magnetic field, it seems we would also be making similar changes to the electric field.
Therefore, even if they were creating a magnetic field sufficiently weak, which would occur with small loops, so that the natural decay rate made it barely perceptible at a meter or so, it seem that there would still be a detectable electric field.
This might not be a problem if they were varying the radius of the coil using, perhaps, a piezoelectric device, and receiving with a similar piezoelectric device.
Business is all about the numbers. Profit and loss for anyone is based on a few percent.
While i am overjoyed that you have such opulent wealth as not to be concerned about a few percent, most of us work at jobs, if we are very lucky, that pay us just enough to have a place to live, some stuff to eat, a few extravagances, and a bit to put in the bank. These few percent cost us money that we cannot afford to lose.
Under your logic the few tenths of a percent that is tacked onto your financing when you buy a car and then kicked back to the dealer is of no concern. Under your logic a movie theater has every right to charge you for an extra butter toping. Under your logic the bank would have every right to deduct a few cents for random accounts if it's profit needed a bit of a boost for a quarter. In the above cases the only people who will get money are the lawyers. The fact that corruption might be exposed is meaningless.
These types of things are specifically designed to confuse the consumer. The practice is so rampant that the U.S. and the States have felt the need to establish and fund many laws to protect the consumers from the occasional unethical marketing type. The enforcement of such laws instills enough confidence that the average consumer is willing to do deals with untrusted firms.
Of course we could live in la la land and just trust that God and the benevolent capitalist will make it all better.
I think it is interesting to note that Yahoo! seems to be the only good guy left in this mess. MS, though it owns 90% of market and therefore the vast majority of people who would use it's networks are it's customers, seem only want to annoy it's customers by not allowing them to talk to their friends who may have a need not to use the MS client. AOL, who really needs to seriously not give customers any more reason to leave their network, occasionally tries to close it's IM.
So it is left to Yahoo! to push the idea that the best way to win is to provide an open product. Most will use the proper client, as most just do not know how to do any differently. Hopefully the MS people will switch to the Yahoo! client when they find they cannot communicate with their friends.
We should also take this as a lesson if MS ever gets their way with email. We will only be able to email our friends who use the latest version of Outlook. That version of Outlook will filter spam, which MS defines as any UCE that has not paid a monetary tribute to the beast.
Slashdot Mirror
The key is the limited processing power and the small amount of short term memory, which might be around 5 items. A child learning to read sees each character, has to put them together, and understand the meaning of each word. This eats up all the storage and processing. As the child get older, words become single units, word are linked to definitions, and therefore enough words can fit in short term memory and enough processing power is left over so the child begins to comprehend sentences, paragraphs, and, eventually, end user license agreements.
When words are misspelled they no longer form a single unit. Each letter is a unit, and takes up space. Words can no longer be directly connected to definition through the a simple index. One has to manually search through every matching word until a word with the proper characters and definition is retrieved. Once this is done the word can replace the sequence of characters, leaving some memory free for other words. If this process is very fast, then it is possible that someone could get to the end of the sentence before the sentence starts fading.
I think the problem for non-native speakers is if they have to add a translation step. If all the words are spelled correctly, then the speaker has a lot of time to do this task. In this case however, time a processing power were spent correcting the corrupt words. This person might not have enough time to extract a meaning before short term memory clears, and therefore will be unable to comprehend.
You can bet the most valuable employee at MS is the psychologist that not only knows how to write a EULA that cannot be read, but also causes massive internal trauma in anyone who might try!
I also get a lot of real work done in the native GUI. I would get a lot more real work done, but the tools have not been ported yet.
The thing about the user interface is that Apple has one thing going for it, and one thing going against it. First, they have been working GUI issues for over 20 years. Kind of even more if you count the NeXt work. It is not like MS who woke up one day and said hey, we need one of them GUI things to compete. X is just as good, but has problem with the implementation on some hardware. The Apple implementation just isn't there yet.
The problem you are having results from the second issue. Apple has a large user base, and just can't change things willy nilly. Even the minimal changes they made to OS X caused a number of problems for the user. OS X is not X, and there is no reason it should try to be X. It is still missing features of OS 9, but lets seem what happens in Panther. Which I will wait a few weeks before purcahasing, just to be safe.
Oh, and virtual destops are nice. Have you thought of getting a second flat screen (~$300) and have two real desktops?
Second, there I have been peeps of negativity. I myself have criticized Apple on several occasions fro releasing a security patch with other updates. It was wrong, and we know this is wrong. Apple forcing the user to patch toys like the audio part (which admittedly some people use to make money) at the same time as the security patches was wrong.
Now, listen closely child: both MS and Apple has irrational fanboys. One reason that MS gets more flack is MS also tends to be more of a target than Apple from the Linux fanboys, and MS has pissed off it's own customers through self-serving licensing, update, and software availability practices.
As far as safe mode is concerned, it's purpose it to turn off most the services so that the computer will boot. In a Mac in OS X, if services do not work, the Mac will still boot, but the services will just not work. In OS 9 we had a feature where the shift key (i think) could be held down, which would turn off the extensions, and do the equivalent of your safe mode.
One last thing, The fact that this update failed showed the problems with updates in general. One can never assume that an update is released and a week later all the security holes will be fixed. On production machines is always necessary to test the patch for a while to make sure that it is not going to break the very machine that brings in the profit. And guess what? In this web economy many of the machines that are the most venerable are also the most necessary for production.
So, if MS issues an update once a month, then you are talking about an almost full time process of validating and installing patches. Unless you just a week until other people have validated the patch, and then install it. Which is what many Mac users do. Except for us the problems usually crop up in a few hours. We just get complacent because lately all the patches have worked.
So, with 177 episode and 48 DVDs, one gets 3.8 episode per DVD, which is about as much as one can expect.
For such a price, at this late date, one would expect a lot of extras. OTOH, the best sale price I ever saw on TNG was about $100 a season, so this may be a bargain.
I wish we could say that crime usually doesn't pay any better than a real job, and comes with considerable more risk, so you might as well get a real job.
Of course the government won't fund enough education so the common person could understand what that statement meant, and the government is more concerned with killing people than helping the economy, so perhaps there are no jobs to be had.
Near the end of the article it states that some conspiracy theorist think this is a way to get the independent out of the oscars. This is in fact a compelling reason. As the related article in the NYT states, most independents cannot afford the kind of pre-Oscar advertising campaign that the major studio put forth. The independents generaly do not put movies into wide release, and if fact often only do so if a movie gets a Oscar. These studios live and die by word of mouth, and therefore have little problems with the judges distributing their movies. The independent seem to respect the Oscar's for what it is: cheap advertisement.
By banning the screeners, the big studios shift the advantage to themselves, and stand a good chance of winning more awards. Now, this may not sound like such a big deal. Who cares who wins. The concern is the quality of the films. The big studios currently have to make a few good films a year to compete with the independents. If this competition no longer exists, then what is to keep the majors producing good films.
And if the independents no longer exist, and if the major no longer have to make a few extra good movies a year, what will this do for the workers. Fewer movies and fewer studios means fewer writers, actors, and other staff. We have seen that the consolidation in broadcast TV has lead to rise in shows that do not need writers, do not need sets, and only need a couple cameras. The consolidation in the movie industry could easily lead to the same thing. The studios are claiming a 1/2 of 1% loss due to screeners. Can they claim that thier ban will result in the loss of less workers?
Not to mention a decline in the kind of intelligent sexuality and sensuality that the independents are just so good at. And BTW, though Costner is annoying, Thirteen Days was a damn fine movie.
Remember, restricted the importation of controlled substances into this country not only hurt foreign growers, but also domestic transportation workers, retail level sales person, and the fine medical workers that help the O.D. victim recover to 50% of his mental capacity.
Communism is arguable a reaction to the industrial revolution in which the owners, who were obsessed with wealth, would use any means, including oppressing the worker, to gain that wealth. We see such behavior now with tele-marketers. The communist response might be stated as giving control of the manufacturing resources to the many and operating it for everyones benefit.
As such, OOS, does resemble communism, but there is a key difference. Communism assumes that all production capability will operated on behalf of the society as a whole. This is not true in OSS. The GPL, I believe, allows a member of society to take code. modify it, and use it for his or her own benefit. Am I not correct in assuming that as long as the binaries are distributed, the code can be kept secret. As such, enhancements can be kept within a company providing them with a competitive advantage. Another big difference is there is no stopping anyone from writing code that when released may not be good for society as a whole, as well a the fact that producer of the code retains ownership through the GPL.
Capitalism, on the other, values the individual and tries to motivate the individual to create novel products with promise of wealth. It can also be considered a reaction to the oppression of workers, but in this case with the promise that anyone may become the owner and have workers of their own to oppress for profit. It is not hard to align OSS with capitalism. Code is property, and it remains the right of the producer. As property, and through the GPL and other licensees, we limit the use of that property. The fact that the limits may be different does not alter the fact that the limits are in place. Likewise, individuals can choose how to license their products, and other individuals can choose what type of licenses they wish to which they wish to adhere. As far as profit is concerned, capitalism never guarantees it. It is up to the individual to figure out how to make, and there are no rules on how that might happen. Now some might think there are no oppression of workers, but I bet Red Hat workers has some stories to tell.
Of course, others think the OSS is socialism. They may be correct. Just like any well run state, the model is probably eclectic, picking and choosing the best features of every model to form the best possible service structure for it's citizens.
One more thing, command economies, on certain scales, are very efficient. That is why major companies use them. That is why MS wants no competition. That is why major sports leagues spent much time lobbying congress for their monopoly and still fight any actions that might jeopardize their command status. OSS is inefficient because it has no real central authority to coordinate production, and thus there are probably more GUIs or IM clients than we really need. It is a matter of choosing your devil.
I have to say that i believed the first ruling to be a contrived technicality, while I see this ruling as having some merit. I mean look at the two big reasons why tele-marketers are considered such a scourge. Calling at inopportune time and deceitful statements.
The first applies to any tele-marketer. If I am macking my date, do I care if the person calling me is from 'chaney gas guzzler rewards program' or the 'bush drunk driver defense fund'. Hell no.
The second is not direct, but really applies to both as well. I do not know how things are now, but it was not so long ago that charities were getting in trouble for spending significant percentages of their income on non-serve items. It was also not so long ago when the tele-markets were keeping significant percentages of their take, allegedly up to 90%, for their own profits. Both of these made the charities non-profit in name only. This non-profit status was beneficial because it allowed the officer to run corrupt organizations without getting in trouble with the IRS or shareholdes, both whom would otherwise would require profit to made every once in a while.
Furthermore what would stop tele-markets from combining non-profit and commercial customers. For a donation of X you get a premium and a handy coupon book for further purchases. The non-profit part of the telemarketing company becomes a loss leader, with the telemarketing firm keeping their traditional 85%, but using it to pay for the comical customer for the premium. The commercial customers pays a higher rate for each commercial call in order to pay for the sale through the non-profit channel, and the telemarketing gets further kickbacks if the coupon book is used.
Which is just to say I think the non-profit exemption was a hack to appease certain parties, like the religious right, the public employee unions (most of the calls I get come from the policeman funds) and the powerful medical lobby. It really has no legal basis and quite frankly I think the bill will be much more useful it the exemption is struck. I was kind of thinking that the tele-marketers would use the exemption as an opportunity, like I have shown above, but they obviously are not that smart.
This is the way it has always been. I buy an LP. I make couple of copies on tape for myself. I might make a few copies for friends. The LP is seldom played.
Now, I am not a person who thought twice about spending a big chunk of change upgrading my LPs to CDs. And frankly I have little problem buying CDs at 15 dollars a piece. Before the RIAA began wasting the courts time I did it quite often. Furthermore if hi quality MP3s, or simliar format, say at least 256 kbs directly from the studio masters, were avaible and the price were cut to 10 or so, I would be all over that. As long as the formate was not encumbered.
That is why I only bought a few songs from Apple. Why should I pay money for something that I have to burn and re-rip just to do with it as I please. What kind of degradation is going to occur. I can wait a few months and get the CD for 5 or 6 bucks.
I'm sorry, but this protection racket has been tried in software. It only works sometimes, and only works well if you are a monopoly. It is stupid for musician to want a protection racket. I know in this age of wal mart and best buy assuming all their customers are criminals has destroyed the self esteem of the formerly freedom loving and self respecting U.S. resident, but how much more are we going to take?
I pay for most music. I pay for most software. The companies seem to doing well. The ones that aren't are the small ones who succumb to the questionable competitive behaviors of the big one. Sell me a product that I can use, and I will pay for it. Assume that I am inherently evil, and no matte how cheap the product is, I will just move on.
OTOH, one should take critical votes like these into account in the analysis of the character of the overall person. For instance is the reprsentative worried about the aggregate opinion of the people represented, or does that aggregate get weighted with money contributed.
However, by middle school the lessons on advertiser manipulation are over and the lessons move to the realm of fiction. A minority of the content is supported by peer reviewed research. Most of it is the opinion of the writers of the pamphlet. The ultimate insult is that such fictional content is presented in science class, and therefore steals instructional time from the actual useful development of higher order thinking.
In both cases we could continue the early training and just teach the kids that they do not need to consume. Many kids, and i believe adults, steal music because they are compulsive about owning the content, a compulsion fueled by the machines of the respective industry. The problem is that teaching kids they do not need to consume music would probably do more damage to the music industry that just allowing them to steal it, just like teaching kids they do not need drugs to cope would do more damage to the legal drug industry.
This is what one truly calls a waste of the courts time. The telemaketers are perfectly away that tens of millions of people agree that they provide no useful function in the U.S. economy. The telemarketers are perfectly aware that have been given many years to clean up predatory tactics but have chosen not to.
So, even though they know they will lose, they use every legal tactic to delay that loss until the very last minute. The purpose is to maximize personal profit. That they profit is at the expense of the defenseless is of no concern to them. That they waste the courts time is of no interest to them.
So we will see a few more rounds of this. The telemarketers will walk away with a lot of money.
I will encourage all people to waste as much of the telemaketers time as possible. When on calls, talk to them. Get information. Remember, if they are talking to you then they are not conning someone else to take a bogus trip of buy 'protection' insurance for credit cards.
Everyone outside the U.S. is a suspected terrorist. That would make the number 6,000,0000,000.
The biggest misconception in language is the use of the word 'technology'. Technology is more than just the computer or the internet. It is the hammer, the car, the wheel, the pen and paper. And yes, even the political process.
So, although I know what you mean, what you actually saying is what we are doing. We are applying the technologies that allow us to live together without killing each other too often to solve a situation that most of the population who are affected by consider a problem.
Now some want to avoid the technological innovations of 'justice' and 'due process' and 'democracy' and return to the previous technology of 'hang them all and let god sort them out'.
So, I suppose we could construct a DDOS attack against every computer that might possible have sent us spam, but that would probably annoy a number of innocent lusers. I guess we even go to suspected spamers houses and burn them down with the technology of fire. But both of those things could get us arrested. So I guess we will just have to depend on the flawed and antiquated political process.
I really must say that Apple putting a security patch and a feature update together in the same download is really horrible. We have been justifiable criticizing MS for doing the same things, and they finally got the message.
With the Software Update interface in OS X such combinations are unnecessary. All updates are automatically checked, so there is no extra work for the average user if patches get delivered in 1 or 4 packages. For those who want only the security updates, a few clicks will remove the unneeded packages.
This really bothers me because one thing that Apple does, and the reason I spend my money on Apples, and have for more years than I care to admit, is that they do try not to make the silly mistakes. Like forcing someone to download an Audio update onto a production box that never does audio.
The first big difference between OSS and commercial products is often that commercial products want to either invent a new proprietary protocol, or, for marketing reasons, push an obsolete protocol as a new innovated protocol. Both of these leave end users insecure. However, since everything is proprietary, there is no way for the user to know the level of insecurity. And, if we may drop names like in the article, Scheier lists a new company nearly every month who tries to push crap as security, though he has gotten so annoyed that he has skipped months of late.
And to drop the name again, Schneier, has spent his time of late trying to convince people that security is so much more than protocols. The protocols must be implemented in code correctly and deployed correctly. Unless one is a huge national agency with a classified budget and decades of security experience, it is unlikely that one can create a secure product. It is much better to make the code public so that interested parties can investigate. It doesn't mean they will.
The two of these combine in interesting ways in closed software. There are claims of 1,000,000 bit keys. There are situation in which security by obscurity is used as the first line of defense. There are situation in which the DCMA is used as the first line of defense.
Which is just to say that conclusion #1 and #2 does not follow from the text. Just because one finds a few packages that are out of date in OSS, does not mean that finding a few updated packages in closed source software are more secure. Conclusions #3 and #4 are trivially valid, and applies to anyone writing software in any model. All programmer should take the advice to heart, especially if they want to design a right management system using closed protocols.
And then it hit me. We should have just stayed with hand switches. Life was so simple. We just flip switches to code, find the moth when the code fails, and then sit back and play chess until we have enough energy to decode the answer.
No, not really on topic. But just to say I think the problem is that people want to use Windows for everything. It is a tool, and not a bad one. I just feel better when I my toolbox contains more than a hammer.
In addition, U.S. firms will have to be interoperable with AFTA if we hope to continue trading with them. As such, I would assume that U.S. firms would demand that vendors supply equipment interoperable with AFTA standards. If MS is not able to supply such an OS, then the firms will just have to go elsewhere.
For instance, MS and even Apple want HTML email because this allows them to track email and allows advertisers to delivery fancy graphics. At least Apple lets the user turn off the HTML option.
We also see this in MS delivering archives as executable instead of zip or tar. Sure, the executable option saves the user from having an additional program installed, but how hard can it to provide the every user with an archiver when you control the OS.
There is no reason why MS should have ever allowed the user to develop such bad habits.
An interconnected system of networks that connects computers around the world via the TCP/IP protocol..
This means that the Internet is made up of networks which may themselves may be made up of networks, etc. These networks use a common protocol. Most would say that not every device on the network, or even every sub network on the network has to be connected to the Internet. It is quite arguable that there are benefits, both personal and for the commons, to not have every device connected to the Internet.
What is for sure is that for the Internet to run, everyone who uses it must contribute to it's well being. There has to be enough devices connected directly to the Intent to process and forward all the packets in an efficient and timely manner. I personally pay a number of services that manage such activity on my behalf. My personal machines, which are not in the primary bussiness of routing packets, are behind a NAT, which is.
Being behind a NAT allows me to manage my network with less effect on the rest of the community. There are still many security issues, and i can still flood others if I get infected, but it is a first step. I would argue that assuming every computer on every network to be directly addressable from every other computer on the every other network might not be the best design decision. It certainly fits in well with the TelCo desire to sell at least one IP per device, as they tried to do in the past with telephones, but other than that I do not see the benifit.
An alternating current creates and EM field. The strength of the the two portions of the field related to the strength of the current, the configuration of the 'antennae' and the distance from the 'antennae'
To create a strong magnetic field, it seems one would have loops. The loops would create a strong magnetic field based on number, radius, and current. A electric field would also be created based on the same, but perhaps less so on the radius. So, if we drive the magnetic field, it seems we would also be making similar changes to the electric field.
Therefore, even if they were creating a magnetic field sufficiently weak, which would occur with small loops, so that the natural decay rate made it barely perceptible at a meter or so, it seem that there would still be a detectable electric field.
This might not be a problem if they were varying the radius of the coil using, perhaps, a piezoelectric device, and receiving with a similar piezoelectric device.
I am sure someone will correct me if I am wrong.
While i am overjoyed that you have such opulent wealth as not to be concerned about a few percent, most of us work at jobs, if we are very lucky, that pay us just enough to have a place to live, some stuff to eat, a few extravagances, and a bit to put in the bank. These few percent cost us money that we cannot afford to lose.
Under your logic the few tenths of a percent that is tacked onto your financing when you buy a car and then kicked back to the dealer is of no concern. Under your logic a movie theater has every right to charge you for an extra butter toping. Under your logic the bank would have every right to deduct a few cents for random accounts if it's profit needed a bit of a boost for a quarter. In the above cases the only people who will get money are the lawyers. The fact that corruption might be exposed is meaningless.
These types of things are specifically designed to confuse the consumer. The practice is so rampant that the U.S. and the States have felt the need to establish and fund many laws to protect the consumers from the occasional unethical marketing type. The enforcement of such laws instills enough confidence that the average consumer is willing to do deals with untrusted firms.
Of course we could live in la la land and just trust that God and the benevolent capitalist will make it all better.
So it is left to Yahoo! to push the idea that the best way to win is to provide an open product. Most will use the proper client, as most just do not know how to do any differently. Hopefully the MS people will switch to the Yahoo! client when they find they cannot communicate with their friends.
We should also take this as a lesson if MS ever gets their way with email. We will only be able to email our friends who use the latest version of Outlook. That version of Outlook will filter spam, which MS defines as any UCE that has not paid a monetary tribute to the beast.