And does that mean the free speech right of the publisher supercedes that of the person who owns the computer?
Of course not. Ultimately, since it's your computer, you can choose what you do with it... your choice to remove the material does not infringe on the person's right to express themselves since they can always find another way to publish their material. It only becomes a problem if you prevent that person from expressing themselves in the first place. Freenet simply guarantees an uncensored distribution channel which, again, is necessary in order to exercise free speech effectively (especially in this day and age of terrorism paranoia, etc).
Well, I have a right to exert control over my property, so I could just take those pictures down and charge the person with trespass. *shrug* There are other ways to deal with these issues outside of censorship (like preventing kiddy porn production in the first place... but that's way too obvious, right?)
No. No less useful, however, neither one pass through, nor reside in my house....freenet kiddie-pron might...
That's a reasonable argument for snail mail, but what about email? If you run an SMTP server (or better yet, relay), it's entirely possible that people are sending PGP encrypted kiddy porn through your servers, which are likely caching that data...
So, if someone hacks an FTP server you run and copies kiddy porn to it, that makes you liable? Somehow, I doubt that... it's called plausable deniability.
Another example, you own a field and someone grows weed on it, does that make you liable? I double that, too...
The fact is, Freenet protects the node operator because they honestly have no idea what content is on their computer. Moreover, they aren't even likely to have the full contents of any given file... only parts of it. Therefore, I suspect there's a real defence for people running Freenet nodes.
No, it's the ultimate form of freedom for the publisher. No one can censor you, not even the members of Freenet. Heck, I could post a massive rant about how much I hate the authors of Freenet, and they couldn't do a thing about it. THAT is the ultimate protection of free speech, and that is what Freenet is all about. The fact that you don't get that just proves that you don't really understand what free speech (and Freenet) are all about.
Ahhh, the now-infamous kiddy-porn rhetoric. I know you're probably joking, but this always comes up... "Oh no, private communications! But, now they'll distribute kiddy-porn! Think of the children! Oh god, won't someone please think of the children!" Puhlease... yes, something like this will be used for illegal means. So does the US postal service, or PGP for that matter. Does that make it any less useful? No.
The fact is, the minute you guarantee anonymity (something which, IMHO, is required for free speech... after all, what's the point of free speech if you're afraid to exercise that right?), people will abuse it. However, if you truly believe in the right to free speech, you must be willing to take the good with the bad. Anyone who suggests anything else doesn't truly believe in free speech.
Re:Java is bad for our industry
on
Head First Java
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· Score: 1
I would change a few things if I could. The schools I am referring to are the ones that are essentially teaching the students nothing more than how to write code in Java and passing this as an education in Computer Science.
Ahh... glorified technical colleges. I conceed the point, in this case. Then again, if I was aware of a school like this, I'd probably never consider hiring them in the first place.:)
Err, so? The statistical trends are still valid. ie, assuming a constant factor of, say, three copyrights per one musical work, the two data sets will still display a correlation. Basically, what you're describing should disappear in the analysis.
Re:Java is bad for our industry
on
Head First Java
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· Score: 1
Part of what I was including in "Computer Science Fundamentals" is the way the language itself implements the various features that are offered. In order to make Java platform independent, these features are so abstracted from the surface that it is difficult to actually study how they are implemented. In languages like C, C++, Lisp, Scheme, etc the implementations are easy to see and study.
Yes, but that's a very small part of the whole of computing science. Moreover, there are specialized classes for teaching this sort of thing (at least at my school). For example, you can take the Compilers course to understand how a C/C++ compiler works. And you can take a course in non-procedural programming languages to learn how Lisp does it's thing. But I see nothing wrong in teaching, say, a software engineering course, or a UI design course, or even a basic programming class in Java. Those courses aren't concerned with these low-level details you speak of, nor should they be.
Frankly, I have no idea why you'd ever use a programming language to "teach students the innermost functionality of how a computer works"... that's what a course in computer architectures is for. And as for teaching the fundamentals about *computing*, like I said, any language will do. About the only benefit I can think of to using C is to teach students the concepts of memory management, pointers, and so forth which, admittedly, is incredibly important. (although, even in the days of C, very few students fully understood pointers). Although, a good course in, say, assembly programming, with a smattering of C, on some sort of embedded device would be sufficient in teaching these concepts... we had a course something like this when I went through school. We did M68k assembly coding on little embedded boxes... you'd be amazed how many people understood pointers after a class like that.:) Nowadays they do it all in MIPS simulators, but the effect is the same...
Basically, my point is that Java is a perfectly useful teaching tool. It ain't perfect. It's not ideal for teaching all concepts, but it's certainly sufficient for the vast majority of classes the average CS grad will take. And if a student chooses to coast through the program, only ever learning Java, again, that's their problem.
And as for the rep of the University, I highly doubt companies base their opinions about a CS program solely on the quality of the crappiest grads... after all, I'm sure MIT has it's fair share of slackers, too.
Re:Java is bad for our industry
on
Head First Java
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· Score: 1
But a primary language to teach computer science fundamentals, it is not.
Hah, this is hilarious. I think what you meant to say was "a primary language to teach software engineering fundamentals, it is not.". Java is a perfectly valid language to teach computing *science*... ie, the science of information processing, algorithms, computability, etc, etc. In fact, any language would suffice for this... as long as it's Turing complete, anyway. Although, admittedly, some languages are better than others.
In fact, even in the realm of software engineering, Java is a perfectly useful tool for teaching these concepts. The problem is that you assume University exists to teach people all the practical skills necessary to succeed in the IT industry. However, I believe many Universities look at their courses as a means to teach students the fundamental concepts of software design, from which a student should be able to migrate to any other language with ease... after all, design patterns learned in Java should translate just as well to, say, C++, assuming you understand the concepts underpinning them.
In fact, IMHO, your assertion that "a graduate who has NEVER had any experience in any sort of low (or even middle) level language [cannot] possibly hope to develop anything other than a pretty GUI with some network support" is overly simplistic. After all, if all you can get out of a University course is how to code a pretty GUI, you've missed a LOT. University is there to teach high level concepts... concepts which, in the end, are language agnostic. If you miss out on those concepts, it's your own damn fault, and you should have probably gone to a technical college.
I prefer the phrase object-supporting language. An object-based language, in my mind, would be somthing like Self or Smalltalk... the very basic building block of the language is the object (heck, in the two aforementioned languages, many of the language constructs are implemented using objects), as opposed to languages which have built-in support for objects but are really fundamentally procedural.
This still sounds awfully wierd, i'm surprised the U.S. would be able to get away with something like that and I suspect the cnn.com author *may* be glossing over something, but that's not the article submitters' fault.
Hardly. The US participates in economic protectionism on a very regular basis. Hell, with Canada, their #1 trading partner, there was the soft wood lumber dispute, not to mention embargos on Canadian grain. And we're part of a free trade agreement! I can only imagine what the US does to it's other trading partners...
Second: You can have a satellite in geostationary orbit without it being around the equator. A good example would be the GPS satellites (not going to double check that, flame me if I'm wrong...).
Actually, in this I believe you are mistaken. In case you didn't realize, the first requirement for a geostationary satellite is that it's orbital velocity happens to match, exactly, the rotational velocity of the earth. Meaning the satellite orbits the earth once every 24 hours, and as a result, just happens to stay over the say point on the earth. In addition, your orbital direction must match exactly the rotational direction of the earth... makes sense, since you want to be over the same point at all times.
Now, what I've said so far doesn't rule out geostationary satellites at places other than the equator (well, it sort of does... what I'm about to say is related to the "orbital direction" mentioned above). However, the following does: Your orbit must always pass through the equator, meaning that if you, say, want to orbit over some point at the 40th parallel, then your orbit must be tilted, such that you pass through the equator, and also through the -40th parallel. BUT, if your orbit is tilted, it's obviously not geostationary... I'm sure I don't have to explain this.
So, the conclusion: yes, all geostationary orbits must travel around the equator at a very specific velocity. Anything different, and it's no longer geostationary. Which does beg the obvious question of how GPS works... my guess here (I'm not going to research... why would I do that?) is that the satellites *aren't* geostationary. Each satellite has a known flight path, and when you try to figure out where you are, you simply pick up signals from three of the satellites which happen to be over you at the time, and triangulate accordingly at the device.
You missed the point. All the socialist states mentioned commited mass murder and genocide. Socialist states have a bad track record of going bad and doing this. I do not want to live in a socialist state. Why do socialists think that everyone else want to live like they do? It's not worth the risk.
And you missed my point about correlation versus causation. In fact, it's entirely possible (and, IMHO, likely) you have the argument entirely backwards. ie, you claim that socialist states lend themselves to dictatorships. However, perhaps it's the reverse that is true... dictatorships just happen to take the form of socialist states. In this case, it's not socialism you should fear, but the dictators themselves, since it's not the socialist state that creates the dictator, but the dictator which creates the socialist state. Which implies that there can be socialist states which aren't run by dicatators, as is evidenced by most of the countries in Europe, Canada, Australia, etc.
In addition, I would argue that the reason you haven't seen a capitalist country go bad is because there haven't been that many... the US is, really, one of the few (only?) (theoretically) real capitalist states out there. And just because it hasn't gone the way of the dictatorship (yet), doesn't mean it can't, or that capitalist states in general are immune to it. A sample of one isn't statistically significant.
Incidentally, as a supporter of socialism, I say you Americans can do whatever the heck you want. It's your country. However, as a person who wouldn't be able to afford healthcare in your country (I work in a company which is too small to provide benefits, and my budget is tight enough that $900/yr is too much to afford), I have to say I prefer our system.:)
You should keep in mind that the transition from what they're doing to full animation is an order of magnitude increase in raw work. Because of the model they've gone with, they only need a few still shots per sequence. If they actually did full-blown animation, that would mean at least 24 shots per second, and given 18 minutes just for the first episode, we're talking ~26000 frames! Basically, what you ask for is NOT easy, and very well may not be in the realm of feasibility given the resources they have available.
And this is ignoring all the styalistic issues (those pesky "comic pursists" you alluded to). What they're doing is rather new and unique... a moving comic book, which is, IMHO, actually kind of cool. Going to full animation takes this away, and thus their work loses some of its uniqueness (at least, IMHO).
Some believed further U.S. legislation was necessary to implement U.S. adherence to the treaty.
Note, the phrase "some believed". Now, as I mentioned in another post, Canada currently does not have a DMCA-like law, nor is there one in the works (that I know of, I'd love to be proven wrong). Which begs the question, what exactly does this supposed new WIPO treaty require? The site you linked to doesn't appear to have the text of the particular treaty available which references DMCA-like laws (again, I'd love a link to it). And without the text, we cannot know what is required of the member states. Now, coming back to Canada, perhaps it is the case that it is up to the government to decide whether existing laws regarding copyright, et al, are sufficient to meet treaty obligations (the above text implies that). And if that is indeed the case, I wonder why it is that some countries feel the ned to ammend/pass new legislation (eg, the US) and some do not (eg, Canada).
Now, don't get me wrong, I'm no fan of the WTO or WIPO, but I really do wonder what the situation is regarding this treaty, and if I should be paying close attention in case Canada gets strong-armed into attempting to implement a DMCA-like law.
it used to be that good artists were the only ones who could get an audience
Hah! You are kidding, right? I think you meant to say "it used to be that artists who had mass market appeal were the only ones who could get an audience". Of course, this typically translates to artists who appeal to the 12-20 age bracket, or so, since they have massive amounts of disposable spending cash which they are willing to spend on the latest fad.
The fact is, for nigh on 20 years now (at least), art has been all about demographics and marketability. This applies to music, books, movies, and pretty well any other form of popular art (as opposed to "high" art, which is a different beast altogether) you can think of.
So, the hope now is that, maybe, artists will be able to mass distribute their art without having to worry about marketing, etc, etc, meaning that new, unique stuff might start appearing. Of course, you do have to wade through the crap to get to the good stuff, but at least you CAN get to the good stuff, now. And new technology can help people find the high quality art. For example, imagine a site where you could submit a site for an indie piece of art which can been reviewed by peers. With something like this, it should be quite easy to weed out the less interesting material and get to the good stuff.
Nazi Germany was a socialist state. The former Soviet Union was a socialiat state. Pol Pots Cambodia was a socialst state. China is a socialist state. More dead have piled up due to socialist states than capitalist ones. Hitler,Stalin, Lenin and Pol Pot. Wonder why educated people think socialism is bad news?
So? Correlation versus causation, people. Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union, Cambodia, China... those were also dictatorships of various kinds. Among states which are socialist (to various degrees) also include basically all of Western Europe, such as France, Sweden, Switzerland, Britain, etc, not to mention Canada, and none of these countries have taken to killing their own people (in recent times).
Incidentally, capitalism in the US hasn't worked all that great either... remember the red scare in the 50's? Or how 'bout the terroism paranoia of today? A non-socialist country is every bit as vulnerable to paranoia and rhetoric as any other...
Personally, I wonder how you can have such a biased, coloured view of the world... you are truly adept at selecting facts which support your personal beliefs.
Erm... if this is true, why is it that Canada has no such law, either enacted or drafted for legislation? Sure, we have a few somewhat draconian laws (levies on blank media being the most obvious), but nothing so onerous as the DMCA.
Okay, I'm normally not a vocal C++ basher (although I do dislike the language), but this is a really excellent example of the kind of cruft that has made it into C++. It's like everyone and their dog had some pet feature they wanted included in the standard, and the result is a huge mess of stuff that most people won't use but the compiler is forced to support.
I suppose this is what happens when you allow a programming language to be designed by a committee...
Question: WTF does socialism have to do with an oppressive government? Why is it that "socialism" "utopia" and "black heart of the oppressors" is always connected in the eyes of the right wing in the US? Are you *still* paranoid about communism? Or is it just a rabid obsession with the capitalist religion? I mean, socialism is no more tied to corruption than capitalism is immune to it (heck, here in Canada (an arguably "socialist" state), the government is far less corrupt than its American counterpart).
Yes, but what you're conveniently leaving out is that the ARM Thumb instruction set is also RISC... it's simply a subset of the full ARM ISA with a more compact encoding. In fact, every Thumb instruction maps directly onto a full ARM instruction. Thus, what you're describing has little to do with the RISC vs CISC debate and more to do with ISA design and the various tradeoffs.
Incidentally, the compactness of the Thumb instruction set depends greatly on the operations being performed. In the Thumb set you can't leverage conditional execution of instructions, you can't perform direct operations on the high eight registers (minus a few limited operations on r14 and r15), you can't perform shift-combined operations (ie, add-and-shift, etc), and many other limitations, there are a variety of cases where multiple Thumb instructions are required to do the work of a single ARM instruction. So, depending on what you're doing, Thumb may, in fact, not be the ideal instruction set to use, either for speed or for compactness.
Re:A touch niche to break into...
on
Opengroupware
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· Score: 2, Interesting
And why? Because it's Open Source? That is no reason to throw previously invested money out the window.
I think you're forgetting that it is possible that an MS Exchange outfit may very well have a higher TCO than an open source solution. As a result, companies may choose to switch simply because it's cost effective. For example, suppose it cost you x to switch over to another system, but in the long run, it'll save you 2x every year. Sounds like a great deal to me. After all, it's arguments like this that are allowing Linux to displace more proprietary solutions in the rest of the server space... why can't groupware be the same?
Slashdot Mirror
And does that mean the free speech right of the publisher supercedes that of the person who owns the computer?
Of course not. Ultimately, since it's your computer, you can choose what you do with it... your choice to remove the material does not infringe on the person's right to express themselves since they can always find another way to publish their material. It only becomes a problem if you prevent that person from expressing themselves in the first place. Freenet simply guarantees an uncensored distribution channel which, again, is necessary in order to exercise free speech effectively (especially in this day and age of terrorism paranoia, etc).
Well, I have a right to exert control over my property, so I could just take those pictures down and charge the person with trespass. *shrug* There are other ways to deal with these issues outside of censorship (like preventing kiddy porn production in the first place... but that's way too obvious, right?)
No. No less useful, however, neither one pass through, nor reside in my house....freenet kiddie-pron might...
That's a reasonable argument for snail mail, but what about email? If you run an SMTP server (or better yet, relay), it's entirely possible that people are sending PGP encrypted kiddy porn through your servers, which are likely caching that data...
So, if someone hacks an FTP server you run and copies kiddy porn to it, that makes you liable? Somehow, I doubt that... it's called plausable deniability.
Another example, you own a field and someone grows weed on it, does that make you liable? I double that, too...
The fact is, Freenet protects the node operator because they honestly have no idea what content is on their computer. Moreover, they aren't even likely to have the full contents of any given file... only parts of it. Therefore, I suspect there's a real defence for people running Freenet nodes.
No, it's the ultimate form of freedom for the publisher. No one can censor you, not even the members of Freenet. Heck, I could post a massive rant about how much I hate the authors of Freenet, and they couldn't do a thing about it. THAT is the ultimate protection of free speech, and that is what Freenet is all about. The fact that you don't get that just proves that you don't really understand what free speech (and Freenet) are all about.
Ahhh, the now-infamous kiddy-porn rhetoric. I know you're probably joking, but this always comes up... "Oh no, private communications! But, now they'll distribute kiddy-porn! Think of the children! Oh god, won't someone please think of the children!" Puhlease... yes, something like this will be used for illegal means. So does the US postal service, or PGP for that matter. Does that make it any less useful? No.
The fact is, the minute you guarantee anonymity (something which, IMHO, is required for free speech... after all, what's the point of free speech if you're afraid to exercise that right?), people will abuse it. However, if you truly believe in the right to free speech, you must be willing to take the good with the bad. Anyone who suggests anything else doesn't truly believe in free speech.
I would change a few things if I could. The schools I am referring to are the ones that are essentially teaching the students nothing more than how to write code in Java and passing this as an education in Computer Science.
:)
Ahh... glorified technical colleges. I conceed the point, in this case. Then again, if I was aware of a school like this, I'd probably never consider hiring them in the first place.
Err, so? The statistical trends are still valid. ie, assuming a constant factor of, say, three copyrights per one musical work, the two data sets will still display a correlation. Basically, what you're describing should disappear in the analysis.
No, not at all. But thanks for asking. Cheers!
Part of what I was including in "Computer Science Fundamentals" is the way the language itself implements the various features that are offered. In order to make Java platform independent, these features are so abstracted from the surface that it is difficult to actually study how they are implemented. In languages like C, C++, Lisp, Scheme, etc the implementations are easy to see and study.
:) Nowadays they do it all in MIPS simulators, but the effect is the same...
Yes, but that's a very small part of the whole of computing science. Moreover, there are specialized classes for teaching this sort of thing (at least at my school). For example, you can take the Compilers course to understand how a C/C++ compiler works. And you can take a course in non-procedural programming languages to learn how Lisp does it's thing. But I see nothing wrong in teaching, say, a software engineering course, or a UI design course, or even a basic programming class in Java. Those courses aren't concerned with these low-level details you speak of, nor should they be.
Frankly, I have no idea why you'd ever use a programming language to "teach students the innermost functionality of how a computer works"... that's what a course in computer architectures is for. And as for teaching the fundamentals about *computing*, like I said, any language will do. About the only benefit I can think of to using C is to teach students the concepts of memory management, pointers, and so forth which, admittedly, is incredibly important. (although, even in the days of C, very few students fully understood pointers). Although, a good course in, say, assembly programming, with a smattering of C, on some sort of embedded device would be sufficient in teaching these concepts... we had a course something like this when I went through school. We did M68k assembly coding on little embedded boxes... you'd be amazed how many people understood pointers after a class like that.
Basically, my point is that Java is a perfectly useful teaching tool. It ain't perfect. It's not ideal for teaching all concepts, but it's certainly sufficient for the vast majority of classes the average CS grad will take. And if a student chooses to coast through the program, only ever learning Java, again, that's their problem.
And as for the rep of the University, I highly doubt companies base their opinions about a CS program solely on the quality of the crappiest grads... after all, I'm sure MIT has it's fair share of slackers, too.
But a primary language to teach computer science fundamentals, it is not.
Hah, this is hilarious. I think what you meant to say was "a primary language to teach software engineering fundamentals, it is not.". Java is a perfectly valid language to teach computing *science*... ie, the science of information processing, algorithms, computability, etc, etc. In fact, any language would suffice for this... as long as it's Turing complete, anyway. Although, admittedly, some languages are better than others.
In fact, even in the realm of software engineering, Java is a perfectly useful tool for teaching these concepts. The problem is that you assume University exists to teach people all the practical skills necessary to succeed in the IT industry. However, I believe many Universities look at their courses as a means to teach students the fundamental concepts of software design, from which a student should be able to migrate to any other language with ease... after all, design patterns learned in Java should translate just as well to, say, C++, assuming you understand the concepts underpinning them.
In fact, IMHO, your assertion that "a graduate who has NEVER had any experience in any sort of low (or even middle) level language [cannot] possibly hope to develop anything other than a pretty GUI with some network support" is overly simplistic. After all, if all you can get out of a University course is how to code a pretty GUI, you've missed a LOT. University is there to teach high level concepts... concepts which, in the end, are language agnostic. If you miss out on those concepts, it's your own damn fault, and you should have probably gone to a technical college.
I prefer the phrase object-supporting language. An object-based language, in my mind, would be somthing like Self or Smalltalk... the very basic building block of the language is the object (heck, in the two aforementioned languages, many of the language constructs are implemented using objects), as opposed to languages which have built-in support for objects but are really fundamentally procedural.
This still sounds awfully wierd, i'm surprised the U.S. would be able to get away with something like that and I suspect the cnn.com author *may* be glossing over something, but that's not the article submitters' fault.
Hardly. The US participates in economic protectionism on a very regular basis. Hell, with Canada, their #1 trading partner, there was the soft wood lumber dispute, not to mention embargos on Canadian grain. And we're part of a free trade agreement! I can only imagine what the US does to it's other trading partners...
Second: You can have a satellite in geostationary orbit without it being around the equator. A good example would be the GPS satellites (not going to double check that, flame me if I'm wrong...).
Actually, in this I believe you are mistaken. In case you didn't realize, the first requirement for a geostationary satellite is that it's orbital velocity happens to match, exactly, the rotational velocity of the earth. Meaning the satellite orbits the earth once every 24 hours, and as a result, just happens to stay over the say point on the earth. In addition, your orbital direction must match exactly the rotational direction of the earth... makes sense, since you want to be over the same point at all times.
Now, what I've said so far doesn't rule out geostationary satellites at places other than the equator (well, it sort of does... what I'm about to say is related to the "orbital direction" mentioned above). However, the following does: Your orbit must always pass through the equator, meaning that if you, say, want to orbit over some point at the 40th parallel, then your orbit must be tilted, such that you pass through the equator, and also through the -40th parallel. BUT, if your orbit is tilted, it's obviously not geostationary... I'm sure I don't have to explain this.
So, the conclusion: yes, all geostationary orbits must travel around the equator at a very specific velocity. Anything different, and it's no longer geostationary. Which does beg the obvious question of how GPS works... my guess here (I'm not going to research... why would I do that?) is that the satellites *aren't* geostationary. Each satellite has a known flight path, and when you try to figure out where you are, you simply pick up signals from three of the satellites which happen to be over you at the time, and triangulate accordingly at the device.
You missed the point. All the socialist states mentioned commited mass murder and genocide. Socialist states have a bad track record of going bad and doing this. I do not want to live in a socialist state. Why do socialists think that everyone else want to live like they do? It's not worth the risk.
:)
And you missed my point about correlation versus causation. In fact, it's entirely possible (and, IMHO, likely) you have the argument entirely backwards. ie, you claim that socialist states lend themselves to dictatorships. However, perhaps it's the reverse that is true... dictatorships just happen to take the form of socialist states. In this case, it's not socialism you should fear, but the dictators themselves, since it's not the socialist state that creates the dictator, but the dictator which creates the socialist state. Which implies that there can be socialist states which aren't run by dicatators, as is evidenced by most of the countries in Europe, Canada, Australia, etc.
In addition, I would argue that the reason you haven't seen a capitalist country go bad is because there haven't been that many... the US is, really, one of the few (only?) (theoretically) real capitalist states out there. And just because it hasn't gone the way of the dictatorship (yet), doesn't mean it can't, or that capitalist states in general are immune to it. A sample of one isn't statistically significant.
Incidentally, as a supporter of socialism, I say you Americans can do whatever the heck you want. It's your country. However, as a person who wouldn't be able to afford healthcare in your country (I work in a company which is too small to provide benefits, and my budget is tight enough that $900/yr is too much to afford), I have to say I prefer our system.
Which is not very useful since google caches the text of the email, but not the actual images (which are presented as links rather than inline).
You should keep in mind that the transition from what they're doing to full animation is an order of magnitude increase in raw work. Because of the model they've gone with, they only need a few still shots per sequence. If they actually did full-blown animation, that would mean at least 24 shots per second, and given 18 minutes just for the first episode, we're talking ~26000 frames! Basically, what you ask for is NOT easy, and very well may not be in the realm of feasibility given the resources they have available.
And this is ignoring all the styalistic issues (those pesky "comic pursists" you alluded to). What they're doing is rather new and unique... a moving comic book, which is, IMHO, actually kind of cool. Going to full animation takes this away, and thus their work loses some of its uniqueness (at least, IMHO).
Incidentally, the site you linked to says this:
Some believed further U.S. legislation was necessary to implement U.S. adherence to the treaty.
Note, the phrase "some believed". Now, as I mentioned in another post, Canada currently does not have a DMCA-like law, nor is there one in the works (that I know of, I'd love to be proven wrong). Which begs the question, what exactly does this supposed new WIPO treaty require? The site you linked to doesn't appear to have the text of the particular treaty available which references DMCA-like laws (again, I'd love a link to it). And without the text, we cannot know what is required of the member states. Now, coming back to Canada, perhaps it is the case that it is up to the government to decide whether existing laws regarding copyright, et al, are sufficient to meet treaty obligations (the above text implies that). And if that is indeed the case, I wonder why it is that some countries feel the ned to ammend/pass new legislation (eg, the US) and some do not (eg, Canada).
Now, don't get me wrong, I'm no fan of the WTO or WIPO, but I really do wonder what the situation is regarding this treaty, and if I should be paying close attention in case Canada gets strong-armed into attempting to implement a DMCA-like law.
it used to be that good artists were the only ones who could get an audience
Hah! You are kidding, right? I think you meant to say "it used to be that artists who had mass market appeal were the only ones who could get an audience". Of course, this typically translates to artists who appeal to the 12-20 age bracket, or so, since they have massive amounts of disposable spending cash which they are willing to spend on the latest fad.
The fact is, for nigh on 20 years now (at least), art has been all about demographics and marketability. This applies to music, books, movies, and pretty well any other form of popular art (as opposed to "high" art, which is a different beast altogether) you can think of.
So, the hope now is that, maybe, artists will be able to mass distribute their art without having to worry about marketing, etc, etc, meaning that new, unique stuff might start appearing. Of course, you do have to wade through the crap to get to the good stuff, but at least you CAN get to the good stuff, now. And new technology can help people find the high quality art. For example, imagine a site where you could submit a site for an indie piece of art which can been reviewed by peers. With something like this, it should be quite easy to weed out the less interesting material and get to the good stuff.
Nazi Germany was a socialist state. The former Soviet Union was a socialiat state. Pol Pots Cambodia was a socialst state. China is a socialist state. More dead have piled up due to socialist states than capitalist ones. Hitler,Stalin, Lenin and Pol Pot. Wonder why educated people think socialism is bad news?
So? Correlation versus causation, people. Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union, Cambodia, China... those were also dictatorships of various kinds. Among states which are socialist (to various degrees) also include basically all of Western Europe, such as France, Sweden, Switzerland, Britain, etc, not to mention Canada, and none of these countries have taken to killing their own people (in recent times).
Incidentally, capitalism in the US hasn't worked all that great either... remember the red scare in the 50's? Or how 'bout the terroism paranoia of today? A non-socialist country is every bit as vulnerable to paranoia and rhetoric as any other...
Personally, I wonder how you can have such a biased, coloured view of the world... you are truly adept at selecting facts which support your personal beliefs.
Erm... if this is true, why is it that Canada has no such law, either enacted or drafted for legislation? Sure, we have a few somewhat draconian laws (levies on blank media being the most obvious), but nothing so onerous as the DMCA.
Okay, I'm normally not a vocal C++ basher (although I do dislike the language), but this is a really excellent example of the kind of cruft that has made it into C++. It's like everyone and their dog had some pet feature they wanted included in the standard, and the result is a huge mess of stuff that most people won't use but the compiler is forced to support.
I suppose this is what happens when you allow a programming language to be designed by a committee...
Question: WTF does socialism have to do with an oppressive government? Why is it that "socialism" "utopia" and "black heart of the oppressors" is always connected in the eyes of the right wing in the US? Are you *still* paranoid about communism? Or is it just a rabid obsession with the capitalist religion? I mean, socialism is no more tied to corruption than capitalism is immune to it (heck, here in Canada (an arguably "socialist" state), the government is far less corrupt than its American counterpart).
Yes, but what you're conveniently leaving out is that the ARM Thumb instruction set is also RISC... it's simply a subset of the full ARM ISA with a more compact encoding. In fact, every Thumb instruction maps directly onto a full ARM instruction. Thus, what you're describing has little to do with the RISC vs CISC debate and more to do with ISA design and the various tradeoffs.
Incidentally, the compactness of the Thumb instruction set depends greatly on the operations being performed. In the Thumb set you can't leverage conditional execution of instructions, you can't perform direct operations on the high eight registers (minus a few limited operations on r14 and r15), you can't perform shift-combined operations (ie, add-and-shift, etc), and many other limitations, there are a variety of cases where multiple Thumb instructions are required to do the work of a single ARM instruction. So, depending on what you're doing, Thumb may, in fact, not be the ideal instruction set to use, either for speed or for compactness.
And why? Because it's Open Source? That is no reason to throw previously invested money out the window.
I think you're forgetting that it is possible that an MS Exchange outfit may very well have a higher TCO than an open source solution. As a result, companies may choose to switch simply because it's cost effective. For example, suppose it cost you x to switch over to another system, but in the long run, it'll save you 2x every year. Sounds like a great deal to me. After all, it's arguments like this that are allowing Linux to displace more proprietary solutions in the rest of the server space... why can't groupware be the same?