Rumor has it J. Edgar Hoover maintained his position by keeping a file cabinet full of nasty stuff on powerful politicians in his office. He ordered his assistant to destroy all of his "personal" files in the cabinet upon his death, which she did. I wonder how much history could have been re-written if those files had been retained.
If one of the targets found out he'd told his assistant to destroy the blackmail material then that target would have a very powerful motive to have Hoover killed. If it were me I'd have my assistant release it all in the case of my death.
The rules said that the pac man's general knows everyones position. Does each player (pac man and all ghosts) all have to report to the pac man's general. i.e. Each ghost is making 5 calls on each corner?
If they use phones for position reporting they'd make one call to the control center where all 5 generals are situated. However they mention GPS and WIFI so I'd say the position reporting is or will be automated and the phones are just for orders from the generals to the runners.
2) His argument is simple: Don't copy what you don't have permission to copy.
That is not his argument at all. His argument is: you have not legitimate reason to want to bypass a DVDs encryption.
Why should Valenti or the RIAA or anyone else assure that there is fucking DVD viewer for Linux????
Because the fact that there is no licensed Linux DVD player provides a counter to his argument: there is a legitimate reason for bypassing the encryption.
This has all been gone over before, but it isn't new to kde/gnome. X*, win* go back farther probably.
The difference is that most of these groups are prepending the names with a letter or two, but one of these groups insists on changing C's to K's. I find the KDE approach far too 1337 for my tastes.
A purchaser of a DVD should be able to do whatever they like with the DVD and it's content provided they don't break any copyright laws.
No they shouldn't...
You are talking about the law as it is. I am talking about the law as it was, and as it should be (thus "should" rather than "has a right to"). Explain to me what it is about DVDs and movies that makes them require stronger protection in the law than other copyrighted works.
If you want decryption and sharing to both be legal, then you become just as bad as the MPAA because you want the laws to be determined by what is best for you financially.
Note that I never said anything about sharing. I specifically talked about the rights users of copyrighted material have to use the material privately. Sharing was already illegal before the DMCA, which is exactly why the DMCA is a bad law: it creates a new group of criminals (people who break the encryption) in the attempt to stop sharing when sharing was already illegal. And don't even get me started on the provisions which have allowed the DMCA to be used by corporations to stifle free speach on the Net.
Linux users do not have a God or country given right to watch American Wedding on their Linux box.
The point is that they should. A purchaser of a DVD should be able to do whatever they like with the DVD and it's content provided they don't break any copyright laws. They should be able to access the content however they like, they should be able to transfer that content between devices and media they own, they should be able to edit it for private viewing, and they should be able to quote small parts of it as fair use permits. You are allowed to do all these things with other media such as books and CDs, there is no reason you shouldn't be able to do the same with DVDs (or TV broadcasts). Prior to the DCMA you could, but the DCMA removes all of these rights in an underhanded way. The DCMA removed the country given right that Linux users used to have to watch American Wedding on their Linux box. That is why we hate it.
1. Is there anything we can do to reduce the human component in global warming?
2. Would the impact of these actions be significant in comparison to the natural warming trend?
The answer to one is almost certainly yes. Reduction of C02 output will definitely slow global warming. There is a secondary question that should be asked along side this one: is there anything we can do to reduce the natural component of global warming?
The answer to 2 is unknown. It is probably best to err on the side of doing something that may be ineffective.
The answer to three is almost certainly yes if you look at a long enough time period (e.g. 100-200 years). If predictions for climate change based on current warming trends are correct the economic costs will be higher than anything mankind has faced before.
What it boils down to is that action now is insurance: we pay a cost now in the hopes that we'll reduce a potentially larger cost in the future. I'm willing to bet that very few Slashdotters aren't covered by some form of insurance so I find it difficult to understand why so many of us are against any action when it comes to climate change.
Now someone with a Nobel prize in physics is going to be a very smart person, but he or she will be no more able to assess claims in climatology than myself.
Interesting philosophical debate: If humans are a product of nature, and humans do something, shouldn't that still be considered "natural"? If the evolution of a species such as humans is then natural, and that evolution "naturally" results in technology which stresses an ecosystem in strange ways, is that bad? Is it good?
Interesting, but completely irrelevant. All the matters is "is the climate warming?", "can we do anything about it?", and "should we do anything about it?".
I think when people say environmental issues are about our survival as a species, they overstate the case.
When people say environmental issues are about our survival as a species they mean survival of our species as it is today. Your three doomsday contenders all have the potential to reduce our population drastically, maybe by as much as 90-99%. Most people would not really distinguish between that occurance and extinction. For most people survival is measured in terms of their descendants survival and a 1-10% chance of being in the chosen few is not an acceptable risk.
The best way to improve our odds of avoiding extinction is to get off this planet. Apart from the "alien war" and "galactic calamity" scenarios that should ensure our survival no matter what. Even if we do that though it doesn't mean we should ignore other potential disasters that we can do something about.
You've just rolled out all the usual arguments: it might not have been us, it's all a natural cycle, it's used to be warmer. But those arugments miss the point: the cause of warming and the existance of previous episodes of warming are irrelevant. The only relevant issues are "is the global climate warming?", "what is the cost of that warming?", and "can we reduce the cost, either by slowing or negating the warming, or otherwise?".
There is an overwhelming quantity of evidence that the climate is warming, so that question is answered. Studies like this one attempt to quantify that cost and consistently show that the cost is very high. The next step is to determine what measures we can implement to reduce warming. Clearly reducing the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere will slow the warming process. Whether the Kyoto protocol is the right solution for implementing CO2 reduction is still being debated, specifically how does the high economic cost of Kyoto compare with the risk of a disasterous economic cost that may occur due to global warming.
We went from densities of around 10gb when CF became mainstreamed to now having 250GB hd's ship in computers, and 350GB hd's available for purchase.
That being said, none of the flash memory densities have really scaled like this, and are just being left in the dust, sadly.
What capacity did CF appear at? 16MB? Now you can buy 1GB CF cards (and I'm not refering to Microdrives). That's a higher factor of improvement than 10GB -> 350GB, by almost double.
A slashdot editor actually copping to posting a dupe?
Given that the first story appeared on Slashdot three weeks ago I think the story submittor has to take some blame for this dup. There is no reason NathanJ couldn't have done a 30 second search before submitting his story.
A pot of boiling water will never get over 100C until after all the water has boiled off (or if you increase the pressure, ie. a pressure cooker or a steam engine - PV = nRT!). Likewise, this will never let the processor get above 50C until all the coolant has boiled off.
Not quite. The water in a pot of boiling water will never get over approximately 100C, the pot however can be higher than that. It all depends on the efficiency of the heat transfer from the element to the pot to the water. You think an element on a stove suddenly drops to 100C when the water in the pot starts boiling? So the phase change in this Sapphire-based system won't limit the processor to 50C. Infact once the stuff starts boiling the system will probably lose efficiency. That's why most cooling systems work on the principle of circulating coolant rather than phase changes.
Clearly Rutan and company are not entirely doing this for the money as they have easily spent more than the $10M prize already.
You are right that Scaled Composites will have spent more than $10M. I've heard that their budget is $30-40M. But they are trying to develop a commercial venture so they are certainly "in it for the money", not the X-Prize (although that will obviously help), but the money to be made in space tourism.
Dawes has already pulled the rug out once. He backed down on the license change to the libraries but still stated that it might happen later. I'd rather trust the groups who have done something about the situation than the group who has caused the situation.
Whether or not David Dawes was a part of why it wasn't so open is hard to say, you have to remember he is the voice of the XFree86 board, and as such he speaks for them, not himself.
He speaks for the board in a particularly abrasive, arrogant, and uncompromising voice. That has been a cause of a number of problems IMHO, and it comes from him, not the board.
The press release talks about MD players. Nowhere does it say they expect to be able to recharge a laptop battery in 30s. Your calculation is all well and good, but completely irrelevant.
No, it's about the same size as the Chunnel one! The two main Chunnel tunnels are 7.6m diameter, but that is probably thier finished diameter rather than the diameter of the TBM.
The funny thing, but not unexpected, is that most businesses would be jumping for joy if a study like this came out. That percieved threats to your business in fact turned out not to be that bad after all. The RIAA/MPAA *should* be pleased by this study. IF it was about economics.
Their response is entirely logical. If file sharing can't be used as a convenient patsy to explain away the 139 million unit ($2B) drop in sales between 2000 and 2002 then shareholders are going to demand other answers as to why sales are dropping. Those answers are clear: declining product quality and declining product variety, but if the record company executives are forced to admit them then their positions will be in doubt. Naturally the RIAA will attack this survey in order to preserve their patsy. This is also why the RIAA are far more active in attcking file sharing, while the MPAA appears to be along for the ride as much as anything. The motion picture industry is not losing sales like the recording industry is.
Slashdot Mirror
Critics and the public disagree:
IMDB: #86 highest rated movie,
Rottentomatoes.com: 100%
The rules said that the pac man's general knows everyones position. Does each player (pac man and all ghosts) all have to report to the pac man's general. i.e. Each ghost is making 5 calls on each corner? If they use phones for position reporting they'd make one call to the control center where all 5 generals are situated. However they mention GPS and WIFI so I'd say the position reporting is or will be automated and the phones are just for orders from the generals to the runners.
The answer to 2 is unknown. It is probably best to err on the side of doing something that may be ineffective.
The answer to three is almost certainly yes if you look at a long enough time period (e.g. 100-200 years). If predictions for climate change based on current warming trends are correct the economic costs will be higher than anything mankind has faced before.
What it boils down to is that action now is insurance: we pay a cost now in the hopes that we'll reduce a potentially larger cost in the future. I'm willing to bet that very few Slashdotters aren't covered by some form of insurance so I find it difficult to understand why so many of us are against any action when it comes to climate change.
The best way to improve our odds of avoiding extinction is to get off this planet. Apart from the "alien war" and "galactic calamity" scenarios that should ensure our survival no matter what. Even if we do that though it doesn't mean we should ignore other potential disasters that we can do something about.
There is an overwhelming quantity of evidence that the climate is warming, so that question is answered. Studies like this one attempt to quantify that cost and consistently show that the cost is very high. The next step is to determine what measures we can implement to reduce warming. Clearly reducing the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere will slow the warming process. Whether the Kyoto protocol is the right solution for implementing CO2 reduction is still being debated, specifically how does the high economic cost of Kyoto compare with the risk of a disasterous economic cost that may occur due to global warming.
Has it occurred to you that the question might have been asked in order to point out the US-centricity of the previous poster?
Dawes has already pulled the rug out once. He backed down on the license change to the libraries but still stated that it might happen later. I'd rather trust the groups who have done something about the situation than the group who has caused the situation.
The press release talks about MD players. Nowhere does it say they expect to be able to recharge a laptop battery in 30s. Your calculation is all well and good, but completely irrelevant.