Re:What distros include 2.4?
on
eWeek on Linux
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· Score: 1
RedHat 7 uses it.
/bluesninja
Re:What control of web viewing means...
on
Clever Girl Bess
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· Score: 1
I think a better question would be: why the hell would we want Kindergarten kids to be surfing the net at all? Are they checking their stocks? Downloading the latest kernel update? Christ, this blows my mind...
(then again, i guess that explains all the SlashDot trolls...:) )
If the music should be free, shouldn't that belief extent to making your own MP3 collection available for others, no matter what?
I don't think so. Having a right to something is different from having a obligation to it. I have a right to free speech, that is, nobody can impinge my ability to speak my mind in a public forum. It doesn't follow that i am morally compelled to speak my mind in public forums. Even if i had knowledge that other people would value.
Analogously, if i have the right to free music (software, etc.), and so does everybody else, i am not compelled to release music, or software i possess. even if i didn't create it.
Although i agree with you to the extent that its just common decency to give something back to a community you gain benefit from. i just don't think the imperative is a strong as you seem to believe. In other words, take the "no matter what" of the end of the quoted sentence and i agree with you.
(note that i'm not making assumptions about the morality of exchanging other people's music. personally, i'd love to see the artists get compensated for their hard work. i'd also like to see the major labels bite the big one. but somehow i don't think either of those things are going to happen anytime soon, and i think screwing the major labels is probably better for everyone in the long term... but thats another issue.)
I think you're confusing issues of clear language with ideological issues. People must refer to MP3 libraries as "yours" or "mine" for expository purposes, regardless of their philosophical stance on fair use.
You are 100% right. Most people only use Napster so they can get something for free. That may be selfish, but it isn't hypocritical. The question is whether they are correct in asserting that they are legally and/or ethically permitted to do so.
Remember, the author stressed that contracts would replace IP protectionism. The author of this essay can easily engage in a contract with the National Post for payment for permission to publish her essay. Once that contract has been made, and the essay is released on the web (or in print), any other copies can be legitimately made by third parties who have not signed a contract. No problem. The NP gains no "rights" to the duplication of the essay. Nor does the author. But the NP, like all newspapers, is in the business of providing content, and is forced to make contracts with writers to obtain its product. The writers win. The National Post wins. The readers of the story win. Everybody wins. Except the recording industry's business model. Too bad for them.
I find it interesting (and a little inconsistent) that Katz complains about both (a) people having access to 'personal data' (like criminal behaviour), and (b) computers making bank loan decisions.
Wouldn't the two cancel each other out? The programs banks use to calculate loan risk are just huge neural networks (essentially), that impersonally feature-match between the applicant and the huge database of people who have or have not defaulted on their loans. Then the program determines whether the applicant is similar in important ways to bad credit risks, and rejects (or approves) accordingly. Very impersonal, i agree, but also balances the interests the Jon Katz brings up.
The computer doesn't care about your arrest for grafitti when you were twelve. Unless that makes you a bad risk (which i doubt). A human looking at that might be irrationally biases against that and deny a loan based on their coloured perceptions.
So, only a machine "sees" your personal data. It doesn't have irrational biases or prejudices. These programs are frighteningly accurate.
So, Jon, where's the problem? Getting a loan is not a natural right. I agree that privacy is a right, but sometimes you have to give out information to get something you want, like a loan. I think machine-driven decision-making balances these interests well.
/bluesninja
Re:...but will it keep up with the upgrades?
on
Laser-equipped 747
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· Score: 1
If you have any info relating to weapon systems having difficulties like this, please divulge.
I do (sort of).
A while ago at Berkeley (might have been Stanford, i can't remember), there was some DoD funded research into using neural nets to recognize (feature-detect) tanks of various sorts. So they cranked out this network trained on a huge library of photographs.
When they demoed this thing for DoD, it failed miserably on photo's that weren't in the testing/training library. Why? Because, as it turned out, all the pictures the network was trained on were taken at the same time of day. The network was accidentally trained to recognize certain angles of shadows! So it failed miserably and the project was shitcanned.
i only heard about this anecdotally from my AI professor, so i have no idea about the veridicacy of these facts.
Never, ever, forget that computers don't percieve the world like we do. Detecting a missile is not trivial.
who gives a shit what desktop environment is being used in a television program or movie? It's now the civic responsibility of geeks to midlessly support any tripe that happens to include a computer with linux running in the background? Get a life.
Hint: nobody chooses their next OS based on what they saw someone in some crappy movie/tv-show using.
And Antitrust looks like a shitty movie. Despite having Tim Robbins in it. Gnome or no Gnome.
As a Canadian, I agree with the above post. Unfortunately, Canada has a US-as-big-brother complex in that we always imitate American trends. The relative conservatism of our government mirrors the United States almost exactly, except with about a four-year lag.
In four years, we will elect a conservative government (mirroring the election of GWB) -- looking at Canadian politics, I'd call this extremely likely. Our current leader will be pretty much cashed out, and the Stockwell Day (conservative) cult of personality will continue to grow.
We just follow the American political trends around. So I wouldn't look here for freedom. I'd recommend the Netherlands.
And besides, we let in all your hippies during Nam. Never Again!:)
is it just me, or does the web seem to resemble Calvinball more and more every day? "You forgot to pay me for linking! Lose three points!" "Oh yeah? You viewed the source of my web page and used my Javascript: go back to fifth base!" "You didn't surf slashdot three times before checking your email. HOME RUN!!!".
Is this just a USA thing, or is this sort of "rabid packs of wild lawyers" problem worldwide?
Pretty sure its just a US thing. You guys are nuts. I've never heard of a country run entirely by lawsuit before (what do you call this anyways? lawyerocracy? judicocracy? tyranny?)
hell, you even choose your governing bodies by lawsuit:)
"The more popular the service is among users, the more expensive it gets for MP3.com to run," said Heath Terry, an analyst at Credit Suisse First Boston.
Suit #1: so, you're telling me that the more people using our service, the less money we make...
Suit #2: we've already come up with a proactive solution: simply make the service as useless and customer-unfriendly as possible! It stands to reason that if more users is bad, then less users is good!
Suit #1: now that's thinking outside the box! good work!
Well duh. Are you saying that you are entitled to recieve free products and services without disclosing any information whatsoever?
If you've got a problem with it, don't use their services. I'd only allow a company to set a cookie if i trusted them enough not to steal or cheat me. If i didn't think that was the case, i wouldn't do business with them period.
the problem with things like ad cookies is that you usually aren't getting anything out of the bargain, and don't know what their intentions are. You can't choose who delivers ads to you.
What scared me is the comment about "lets tax things we don't like." Fuck you and what you don't like!!! I thought liberalism was about not telling people what to think? Leftist hypocrite motherfucker...
I think Bush has more of a brain than this guy (or at least his supporters). Unfortunately, Bush actually has a chance...
Yeah, but what actually happened was that somebody "grafitti-ed" some private property. If I went and scrawled "Yankees suck!" on franchise HQ, I'd expect a response, but not a full-scale FBI investigation.
Their response was so out of line with the crime, I can't even believe it.
because he rips off everything from William Gibson, thats why.
Okay, so I've only read Snow Crash. But what a derivative piece of generic "cyberpunk" tripe! I couldn't figure out why anyone got excited over that piece of crap. "Lets see: two parts Neuromancer; one part Shadowrun; mix until lumpy and stale." - Neal Stephenson.
this is not a troll. i repeat: this is not a troll. this is actually my opinion.
In very well controlled, scientific experiements, the parts of the human brain responsible for processing visual information have been found to activate few milliseconds before the actual light signal has been delivered to the eye
Howsabout giving us a citation on that? I'm a bit sceptical about this, having studied cognitive science for the past four years and heard nothing about this magnificent, knock-down argument for quantum processing...
It's been speculated heavily that the brain uses quantumn computing, for various reasons.
That's the problem with all the quantum models of cognition that I've ever seen -- it could be happening anywhere at any time. There's just no way to tell. The most precice I can recall Roger Penrose getting is "quantum events in the neuronal microtubules".
My suspicion (completely unfounded, mind you) is that the glial cells serve to modulate neural firing, perhaps to assist synchrony between neurons. Recent models of neural computation use synchrony to "bind" neural groups representing different aspects of the same objects.
But then, the abstract didn't appear to be in anything resembling english, and the news report was devoid of actual information, so who can say?
And, whether the kid is sixteen years old or eighty years old, he has to show some common sense and learn that he just can't say what he feels about people no matter how much it may be the truth about them, because the truth can hurt. Actually, yes he can. That's the point of free speech -- one's inalienable right to be an asshole. America is doomed if you start incarcerating people for hurting other people's feelings. What a ridiculous thing! play the blues punk. -bluesninja
Re:I disagree with his anti-corporate stance
on
At The Crossroads
·
· Score: 1
More regulation of the net is not the answer - anything which stifles the growth of potential markets is a bad thing and must be avoided at all costs.
This, I think, is exactly the problem that is leading to this crossroad. When the net was young, it was about the free exchange of (mostly scientific and CS-related) ideas and information. Thats not what it is anymore, as AC's post unwittingly points out: it's a marketplace full of tourists with no respect for the local customs. Not that everybody who signed up after 1994 is a tourist, but the mentality of those using the net is different now. People aren't using it for exchanging ideas; they're using it to be consumers, just like they are in real life. If the corporations maintain control of the net, this is exactly what we should expect: corporations like consumers. But it's death for a culture.
So, is the Internet a marketplace or a society? I think that is the real crossroads. If it's a marketplace, then copyright law should just extend straightforwardly from realworld marketplace law. If it's a society, then considerations of freedom and privacy should be paramount.
I for one would love to for the Internet to be a society. That necessarily means separating it from corporate interest./bluesninja
Slashdot Mirror
RedHat 7 uses it.
/bluesninja
I think a better question would be: why the hell would we want Kindergarten kids to be surfing the net at all? Are they checking their stocks? Downloading the latest kernel update? Christ, this blows my mind...
(then again, i guess that explains all the SlashDot trolls... :) )
/bluesninja
If the music should be free, shouldn't that belief extent to making your own MP3 collection available for others, no matter what?
I don't think so. Having a right to something is different from having a obligation to it. I have a right to free speech, that is, nobody can impinge my ability to speak my mind in a public forum. It doesn't follow that i am morally compelled to speak my mind in public forums. Even if i had knowledge that other people would value.
Analogously, if i have the right to free music (software, etc.), and so does everybody else, i am not compelled to release music, or software i possess. even if i didn't create it.
Although i agree with you to the extent that its just common decency to give something back to a community you gain benefit from. i just don't think the imperative is a strong as you seem to believe. In other words, take the "no matter what" of the end of the quoted sentence and i agree with you.
(note that i'm not making assumptions about the morality of exchanging other people's music. personally, i'd love to see the artists get compensated for their hard work. i'd also like to see the major labels bite the big one. but somehow i don't think either of those things are going to happen anytime soon, and i think screwing the major labels is probably better for everyone in the long term... but thats another issue.)
/bluesninja
I think you're confusing issues of clear language with ideological issues. People must refer to MP3 libraries as "yours" or "mine" for expository purposes, regardless of their philosophical stance on fair use.
You are 100% right. Most people only use Napster so they can get something for free. That may be selfish, but it isn't hypocritical. The question is whether they are correct in asserting that they are legally and/or ethically permitted to do so.
/bluesninja
this is no more (or less) unfair than paying the tithe on blank cassettes/CD-Rs when you're just recording your own tunes.
its all a matter of whether Napster is worth what you pay for. i would very much doubt that.
/bluesninja
Your quibble is completely beside the point.
Remember, the author stressed that contracts would replace IP protectionism. The author of this essay can easily engage in a contract with the National Post for payment for permission to publish her essay. Once that contract has been made, and the essay is released on the web (or in print), any other copies can be legitimately made by third parties who have not signed a contract. No problem. The NP gains no "rights" to the duplication of the essay. Nor does the author. But the NP, like all newspapers, is in the business of providing content, and is forced to make contracts with writers to obtain its product. The writers win. The National Post wins. The readers of the story win. Everybody wins. Except the recording industry's business model. Too bad for them.
/bluesninja
I find it interesting (and a little inconsistent) that Katz complains about both (a) people having access to 'personal data' (like criminal behaviour), and (b) computers making bank loan decisions.
Wouldn't the two cancel each other out? The programs banks use to calculate loan risk are just huge neural networks (essentially), that impersonally feature-match between the applicant and the huge database of people who have or have not defaulted on their loans. Then the program determines whether the applicant is similar in important ways to bad credit risks, and rejects (or approves) accordingly. Very impersonal, i agree, but also balances the interests the Jon Katz brings up.
The computer doesn't care about your arrest for grafitti when you were twelve. Unless that makes you a bad risk (which i doubt). A human looking at that might be irrationally biases against that and deny a loan based on their coloured perceptions.
So, only a machine "sees" your personal data. It doesn't have irrational biases or prejudices. These programs are frighteningly accurate.
So, Jon, where's the problem? Getting a loan is not a natural right. I agree that privacy is a right, but sometimes you have to give out information to get something you want, like a loan. I think machine-driven decision-making balances these interests well.
/bluesninja
If you have any info relating to weapon systems having difficulties like this, please divulge.
I do (sort of).
A while ago at Berkeley (might have been Stanford, i can't remember), there was some DoD funded research into using neural nets to recognize (feature-detect) tanks of various sorts. So they cranked out this network trained on a huge library of photographs.
When they demoed this thing for DoD, it failed miserably on photo's that weren't in the testing/training library. Why? Because, as it turned out, all the pictures the network was trained on were taken at the same time of day. The network was accidentally trained to recognize certain angles of shadows! So it failed miserably and the project was shitcanned.
i only heard about this anecdotally from my AI professor, so i have no idea about the veridicacy of these facts.
Never, ever, forget that computers don't percieve the world like we do. Detecting a missile is not trivial.
/bluesninja
My ping is a negative number! You received it before you sent it :)
/bluesninja
"Do our part to say thanks"?
who gives a shit what desktop environment is being used in a television program or movie? It's now the civic responsibility of geeks to midlessly support any tripe that happens to include a computer with linux running in the background? Get a life.
Hint: nobody chooses their next OS based on what they saw someone in some crappy movie/tv-show using.
And Antitrust looks like a shitty movie. Despite having Tim Robbins in it. Gnome or no Gnome.
/bluesninja
As a Canadian, I agree with the above post. Unfortunately, Canada has a US-as-big-brother complex in that we always imitate American trends. The relative conservatism of our government mirrors the United States almost exactly, except with about a four-year lag.
In four years, we will elect a conservative government (mirroring the election of GWB) -- looking at Canadian politics, I'd call this extremely likely. Our current leader will be pretty much cashed out, and the Stockwell Day (conservative) cult of personality will continue to grow.
We just follow the American political trends around. So I wouldn't look here for freedom. I'd recommend the Netherlands.
And besides, we let in all your hippies during Nam. Never Again! :)
/bluesninja
the Internet has concluded its broadcast day.
is it just me, or does the web seem to resemble Calvinball more and more every day? "You forgot to pay me for linking! Lose three points!" "Oh yeah? You viewed the source of my web page and used my Javascript: go back to fifth base!" "You didn't surf slashdot three times before checking your email. HOME RUN!!!".
/bluesninja
in highschool, visiting SlashDot is probably concidered an inappropriate web site. What with all the cursing and goatsex and all...
/bluesninja
Is this just a USA thing, or is this sort of "rabid packs of wild lawyers" problem worldwide?
Pretty sure its just a US thing. You guys are nuts. I've never heard of a country run entirely by lawsuit before (what do you call this anyways? lawyerocracy? judicocracy? tyranny?)
hell, you even choose your governing bodies by lawsuit :)
/bluesninja
"The more popular the service is among users, the more expensive it gets for MP3.com to run," said Heath Terry, an analyst at Credit Suisse First Boston.
Suit #1: so, you're telling me that the more people using our service, the less money we make...
Suit #2: we've already come up with a proactive solution: simply make the service as useless and customer-unfriendly as possible! It stands to reason that if more users is bad, then less users is good!
Suit #1: now that's thinking outside the box! good work!
/bluesninja
Well duh. Are you saying that you are entitled to recieve free products and services without disclosing any information whatsoever?
If you've got a problem with it, don't use their services. I'd only allow a company to set a cookie if i trusted them enough not to steal or cheat me. If i didn't think that was the case, i wouldn't do business with them period.
the problem with things like ad cookies is that you usually aren't getting anything out of the bargain, and don't know what their intentions are. You can't choose who delivers ads to you.
wouldn't that be 1.4 stockwell day's for 1 nader?
/bluesninja
What scared me is the comment about "lets tax things we don't like." Fuck you and what you don't like!!! I thought liberalism was about not telling people what to think? Leftist hypocrite motherfucker...
I think Bush has more of a brain than this guy (or at least his supporters). Unfortunately, Bush actually has a chance...
/bluesninja
Yeah, but what actually happened was that somebody "grafitti-ed" some private property. If I went and scrawled "Yankees suck!" on franchise HQ, I'd expect a response, but not a full-scale FBI investigation.
Their response was so out of line with the crime, I can't even believe it.
/bluesninja
because he rips off everything from William Gibson, thats why.
Okay, so I've only read Snow Crash. But what a derivative piece of generic "cyberpunk" tripe! I couldn't figure out why anyone got excited over that piece of crap. "Lets see: two parts Neuromancer; one part Shadowrun; mix until lumpy and stale." - Neal Stephenson.
this is not a troll. i repeat: this is not a troll. this is actually my opinion.
/bluesninja
In very well controlled, scientific experiements, the parts of the human brain responsible for processing visual information have been found to activate few milliseconds before the actual light signal has been delivered to the eye
Howsabout giving us a citation on that? I'm a bit sceptical about this, having studied cognitive science for the past four years and heard nothing about this magnificent, knock-down argument for quantum processing...
That was bitchy. Sorry.
/bluesninja
It's been speculated heavily that the brain uses quantumn computing, for various reasons.
That's the problem with all the quantum models of cognition that I've ever seen -- it could be happening anywhere at any time. There's just no way to tell. The most precice I can recall Roger Penrose getting is "quantum events in the neuronal microtubules".
My suspicion (completely unfounded, mind you) is that the glial cells serve to modulate neural firing, perhaps to assist synchrony between neurons. Recent models of neural computation use synchrony to "bind" neural groups representing different aspects of the same objects.
But then, the abstract didn't appear to be in anything resembling english, and the news report was devoid of actual information, so who can say?
/bluesninja
Or hunter-gatherers, who have to work maybe four hours per day to ensure their survival.
How many hours do we have to work to ensure our survival? Hint: Cable TV and Diablo II don't count as necessities for survival.
/bluesninja
And, whether the kid is sixteen years old or eighty years old, he has to show some common sense and learn that he just can't say what he feels about people no matter how much it may be the truth about them, because the truth can hurt. Actually, yes he can. That's the point of free speech -- one's inalienable right to be an asshole. America is doomed if you start incarcerating people for hurting other people's feelings. What a ridiculous thing! play the blues punk. -bluesninja
More regulation of the net is not the answer - anything which stifles the growth of potential markets is a bad thing and must be avoided at all costs.
This, I think, is exactly the problem that is leading to this crossroad. When the net was young, it was about the free exchange of (mostly scientific and CS-related) ideas and information. Thats not what it is anymore, as AC's post unwittingly points out: it's a marketplace full of tourists with no respect for the local customs. Not that everybody who signed up after 1994 is a tourist, but the mentality of those using the net is different now. People aren't using it for exchanging ideas; they're using it to be consumers, just like they are in real life. If the corporations maintain control of the net, this is exactly what we should expect: corporations like consumers. But it's death for a culture.
So, is the Internet a marketplace or a society? I think that is the real crossroads. If it's a marketplace, then copyright law should just extend straightforwardly from realworld marketplace law. If it's a society, then considerations of freedom and privacy should be paramount.
I for one would love to for the Internet to be a society. That necessarily means separating it from corporate interest. /bluesninja