You currently get to effectivly choose between two parties.
I'm not too fond of the US system either, but you have more options than just chose between the democratic and the republican candidate. You can also be active within a party and influence the choice of candidate, or you can influence candidates and elected officials by lobbying them.
so I fail to see how it has given me any self-rule or self-determination.
You are not a serf, right? You can move around the country, pick a job for yourself, decide who you want to marry? You can have your own money, decicde yourself what to spend it on, have the right to own property?
Historically it hasn't always been that way.
I think the previous poster chose the words "greatest amount of self-rule and self-determination" deliberately - you might be
dissatisfied with that amount, but without democracy you would very likely have far less.
The school has lobbyists who change the curriculum so the school is teaching sex education to 6th graders.
It definately has lobbyists who want to change the biology curriculum to teach fundamentalists christian doctrine instead of science.
Then the gay activists get involved and want to teach tolerance. So much for taking the kid to church and trying to teach them good values.
Personally I don't see bigotry as a value.
Some people like to pretend that their obvious lobbying for their own values does not actually exist, or that they are the only group possessing values while other people are decadent egoists.
The reality is that there are different sets of life philosophies which are in stark conflict with each other. Some people want to follow the ideas of enlightenment, using their minds to search for truth and think of tolerance and freedom as central values. Others base their life on faith and want to follow rules set out thousands of years ago. All these groups push for their own values.
I've been wondering about this: if the original machine is broadcasting using the same MAC address, won't this make a mess out of the wardriver's data stream?
Of course, if the MAC address is not used by the original machine it couldn't be a problem. How does a wardriver go about finding the MAC address, though? Does he need to wait for the original machine to broadcast?
First, how would you propose we detect a gamma ray burst, which travels at the speed of light (of course), before it gets here?
Not sure whether it's feasible, but assuming we manage to learn enough about the physics involved, we might be able to calculate the time at which the gamma rays would hit us. E.g. if we'd detect that two neutron stars are about to collide [1] we could potentially calculate the time at which the gamma rays would arrive.
[1] Of course when we observe that the neutron stars are "about" to collide, they already have, but then the effects of the collision (the gamma ray burst) will be just as delayed as our observation.
I dunno - let's assume you build a state-of-the-art safe with heavy metal doors and then tape a post-it to said door reading "spare key is under the door mat". Are you then being careless with the contents of the safe? Even if you don't think this is an analogeous situation I don't think you can fault the editor for seeing it this way. (Ok, I don't know either whether he analyzed the topic and came to that conclusion, or whether he just posted it...)
I agree with part of what you write: when switching from one system to another, training costs, costs of rewriting internal applications etc need to be taken into account.
However for governments making that switch it's also very important to consider where that money is being spent. If they need to hire people to train their civil servants, they spend their money in their own country. If they contract a local company to convert their internal applications, they push money into their own economy. Part of the money will come directly back to them in the form of taxes and knowledge is built in their own country. On the other hand if they import software the money just leaves the country.
Some discounters will make use of that - they'll just install another media player and save a few bucks (either to keep as profit, or to lower prices and increase their sales). Also companies who need the OS for office use will want to save a bit of money - in most cases WMP is useless for them.
Uhmm - sorry for attaching this here, but is there any English info for installing Chinese support on Linux? All the docs seem to be in Mandarin (which makes sense) but I don't speak Mandarin and my girlfriend (who is from Taiwan) has no Linux experience. So any pointers would be much appreciated.
Furthermore - some people dual-boot. My dad prefers to access the net via Linux, but for most of his work he uses Windows. Why shouldn't he be able to download his updates via Linux? He paid for the application and he paid for the OS, too.
I agree - also I think it's fair to consider the statistics: millions of people play these video games, just one goes out and kills cops. How likely is it that there is causality between these events? He also ate bread, drove a car etc - millions of people do that too and don't kill, do we want to outlaw every single thing this person did?
you give something to somebody for free they will NOT respect it
These statement are repeated so often, that apparently now they are just accepted as fact, without verification. It's nowhere near that simple. If you compare the experiences described in the article you'll find that over a period of 3 years they had one broken laptop out of 25. So at least in some cases this statement is demonstartably not correct.
Looking at housing projects it's not so simple either, neither is everything free always disrespected, nor are things which cost something necessarily respected. You find many people who buy things and wreck them, and you find people who cherish the things given to them. Broken disfunctional families and drug abuse have a lot to do with the way people interact with their surroundings, too.
The target of this program are not people who have trouble making their own way in a free society or junkies - they are normal people living in poor areas of the world.
Depends on your definition of "free" - I agree with yours btw, but RMS would perhaps argue that using the BSD license as GPLv99 could reduce the freedom of the user in the long term. Now companies could branch off and stop providing the source to the users - the user would no longer have the freedom to make modifications.
Can you elaborate on this? What modifications can the GPL make to accomodate the Swedish government? I don't think a change in the GPL's content can do much to change the perception of the already non-existent restrictions which you mention...
While I agree that the 'spiteful employee' arguement is largely bunk, the 'employee who quit, got fired, or otherwise left unexpectedly' arguement is not.
Yes, I remember a very sad case at a previous employer - one of the system administrators died in a motor cycle crash. Statistically, large companies will encounter cases like this regularly.
You should never set up backdoors like this without telling the users, just because it's unethical and unnecessary - however having this backdoor access can be a useful and sensible practice.
And related to that: the Euro is currently trading high against the Dollar. That means it should be cheaper for Europeans to buy US products, however HP wants to prevent that and keep the prices artificially high. Now let's assume the Dollar soars - now HP will keep the prices in Europe lower? Even though their costs are increasing? I dunno, I suspect things won't quite go that way...:-)
Not sure about that. If HP imanufactures printer ink in Europe, too (no idea whether they do) then they can sell their more expensively produced ink in Europe rather than having it imported from their US sites. So potentially: fewer jobs lower exports for the US.
The price will be set by supply and demand. If they use region coding it will limit the supply. There is no way for the customer to win, no matter what the exchange rate is.
I think the "ability to price-discriminate" is basically an illegal trade barrier. I don't see why WTO rules should apply only to workers who have to experience outsourced jobs, but not to companies selling products in a global market. Hopefully the bastards will get the fines they deserve.
I'm thinking of something related to that. How about being able to share via the earphones?
It's not really about copying, but about being able to listen to music together - e.g. on a train or at the office, mall, school etc. You'd have a wireless headset, and with your player you'd be able to set the volume etc, but you'd also be able to select to which player you'd want to listen. Basically the players would act both as little "radio stations" and controllers for the headsets, the headsets would be receivers.
One application would be to have a spare headset which you could hand to a friend, and then be able to listen to your player.
Another application would be to have a group of people (all with the same players), and they'd be able to listen to each of the players in turn. (Like on a WLAN, but instead of picking a router (e.g. your own) you'd pick a player to listen to.)
Slashdot Mirror
People like you will take any criticism as an attack on the US, regardless how nonsensical the action proposed.
Something like "support bracket for AS/12/44". So that would point to AS/12/44 being a part number rather than a date.
I'm not too fond of the US system either, but you have more options than just chose between the democratic and the republican candidate. You can also be active within a party and influence the choice of candidate, or you can influence candidates and elected officials by lobbying them.
You are not a serf, right? You can move around the country, pick a job for yourself, decide who you want to marry? You can have your own money, decicde yourself what to spend it on, have the right to own property?
Historically it hasn't always been that way. I think the previous poster chose the words "greatest amount of self-rule and self-determination" deliberately - you might be dissatisfied with that amount, but without democracy you would very likely have far less.
It definately has lobbyists who want to change the biology curriculum to teach fundamentalists christian doctrine instead of science.
Then the gay activists get involved and want to teach tolerance. So much for taking the kid to church and trying to teach them good values.
Personally I don't see bigotry as a value.
Some people like to pretend that their obvious lobbying for their own values does not actually exist, or that they are the only group possessing values while other people are decadent egoists.
The reality is that there are different sets of life philosophies which are in stark conflict with each other. Some people want to follow the ideas of enlightenment, using their minds to search for truth and think of tolerance and freedom as central values. Others base their life on faith and want to follow rules set out thousands of years ago. All these groups push for their own values.
Of course, if the MAC address is not used by the original machine it couldn't be a problem. How does a wardriver go about finding the MAC address, though? Does he need to wait for the original machine to broadcast?
I've been thinking about VDR, too - although I'm kinda used to MythTV... Which make of DVB cards do you use?
Ok, really OT, but: what DVB-T cards work well with MythTV? DVB-T is coming to Munich and I need to switch...
Maybe it says "I want to support the developement of open source software"? The article states:
the net proceeds from each $5/month subscription will go to sponsor Open Source Development
Not sure whether it's feasible, but assuming we manage to learn enough about the physics involved, we might be able to calculate the time at which the gamma rays would hit us. E.g. if we'd detect that two neutron stars are about to collide [1] we could potentially calculate the time at which the gamma rays would arrive.
[1] Of course when we observe that the neutron stars are "about" to collide, they already have, but then the effects of the collision (the gamma ray burst) will be just as delayed as our observation.
I dunno - let's assume you build a state-of-the-art safe with heavy metal doors and then tape a post-it to said door reading "spare key is under the door mat". Are you then being careless with the contents of the safe? Even if you don't think this is an analogeous situation I don't think you can fault the editor for seeing it this way. (Ok, I don't know either whether he analyzed the topic and came to that conclusion, or whether he just posted it...)
However for governments making that switch it's also very important to consider where that money is being spent. If they need to hire people to train their civil servants, they spend their money in their own country. If they contract a local company to convert their internal applications, they push money into their own economy. Part of the money will come directly back to them in the form of taxes and knowledge is built in their own country. On the other hand if they import software the money just leaves the country.
Some discounters will make use of that - they'll just install another media player and save a few bucks (either to keep as profit, or to lower prices and increase their sales). Also companies who need the OS for office use will want to save a bit of money - in most cases WMP is useless for them.
Uhmm - sorry for attaching this here, but is there any English info for installing Chinese support on Linux? All the docs seem to be in Mandarin (which makes sense) but I don't speak Mandarin and my girlfriend (who is from Taiwan) has no Linux experience. So any pointers would be much appreciated.
Furthermore - some people dual-boot. My dad prefers to access the net via Linux, but for most of his work he uses Windows. Why shouldn't he be able to download his updates via Linux? He paid for the application and he paid for the OS, too.
I agree - also I think it's fair to consider the statistics: millions of people play these video games, just one goes out and kills cops. How likely is it that there is causality between these events? He also ate bread, drove a car etc - millions of people do that too and don't kill, do we want to outlaw every single thing this person did?
These statement are repeated so often, that apparently now they are just accepted as fact, without verification. It's nowhere near that simple. If you compare the experiences described in the article you'll find that over a period of 3 years they had one broken laptop out of 25. So at least in some cases this statement is demonstartably not correct.
Looking at housing projects it's not so simple either, neither is everything free always disrespected, nor are things which cost something necessarily respected. You find many people who buy things and wreck them, and you find people who cherish the things given to them. Broken disfunctional families and drug abuse have a lot to do with the way people interact with their surroundings, too.
The target of this program are not people who have trouble making their own way in a free society or junkies - they are normal people living in poor areas of the world.
Depends on your definition of "free" - I agree with yours btw, but RMS would perhaps argue that using the BSD license as GPLv99 could reduce the freedom of the user in the long term. Now companies could branch off and stop providing the source to the users - the user would no longer have the freedom to make modifications.
Can you elaborate on this? What modifications can the GPL make to accomodate the Swedish government? I don't think a change in the GPL's content can do much to change the perception of the already non-existent restrictions which you mention...
Yes, I remember a very sad case at a previous employer - one of the system administrators died in a motor cycle crash. Statistically, large companies will encounter cases like this regularly.
You should never set up backdoors like this without telling the users, just because it's unethical and unnecessary - however having this backdoor access can be a useful and sensible practice.
And related to that: the Euro is currently trading high against the Dollar. That means it should be cheaper for Europeans to buy US products, however HP wants to prevent that and keep the prices artificially high. Now let's assume the Dollar soars - now HP will keep the prices in Europe lower? Even though their costs are increasing? I dunno, I suspect things won't quite go that way... :-)
Not sure about that. If HP imanufactures printer ink in Europe, too (no idea whether they do) then they can sell their more expensively produced ink in Europe rather than having it imported from their US sites. So potentially: fewer jobs lower exports for the US.
The price will be set by supply and demand. If they use region coding it will limit the supply. There is no way for the customer to win, no matter what the exchange rate is.
I think the "ability to price-discriminate" is basically an illegal trade barrier. I don't see why WTO rules should apply only to workers who have to experience outsourced jobs, but not to companies selling products in a global market. Hopefully the bastards will get the fines they deserve.
It's not really about copying, but about being able to listen to music together - e.g. on a train or at the office, mall, school etc. You'd have a wireless headset, and with your player you'd be able to set the volume etc, but you'd also be able to select to which player you'd want to listen. Basically the players would act both as little "radio stations" and controllers for the headsets, the headsets would be receivers.
One application would be to have a spare headset which you could hand to a friend, and then be able to listen to your player.
Another application would be to have a group of people (all with the same players), and they'd be able to listen to each of the players in turn. (Like on a WLAN, but instead of picking a router (e.g. your own) you'd pick a player to listen to.)