No, they make all the sound of moral authority, but the christians as a group don't hold moral high ground over atheists.
This is the exact opposite of my observation so far — at least, in America. And, by the way, I don't limit "religion" to mean "Christianity" in this thread...
kill/invade/torture/ for faith, whereas your decent religious people do it all the time.
Only a handful of individuals in remote areas of backwards countries have killed/invaded/tortured for faith in recent memory. Their religions don't consider them "decent religious people" at all, even when denouncing these apostates and their tactics costs the denouncers their own lives.
All real mass-murders — or attempts at same — over the last 100 years have been perpetrated by folks either actively (like Communists) or passively (like Nazis) godless. The only possible exception is the Ottoman's decimation of the Armenians — shocking in itself, however, it is dwarfed by the "achievements" of Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, Mao, or Rwanda's thugs. Osama bin Laden — the worst religious murderer of recent memory — does not stand near those guys, because, in no small part, the fate of innocent people actually bothered him somewhat and he tried (if unconvincingly) to distance himself from the 9/11 attack.
Even when you are cornered by religious zealots bent on killing "infidels", one can escape death by converting. But there is/was no escape for "kulaks" from Stalin and Mao, for Jews from Hitler, or for Bosnjaks from Milosevic...
Which takes one to the major point/revelation — religion is not the reason. Like a gun or a hammer, it is a tool, that could be used for good or evil depending on the user's motivations and desires, which are usually far deeper seated, than the religion can penetrate. If anything, religion softens the rough edges we've all inherited.
I strongly suspect that you have been indoctrinated heavily against Com.
That's true. I was heavily indoctrinated against Communism — by Communists...
Your comment about the lamppost I will not even attempt to answer - it is so childish and shallow....
It is not at all shallow — I'm against death penalty in general for fear of uncorrectable mistake. But a person, who openly admits sharing the most murderous ideology known so far (Nazism is not even close), is an unmistakable danger. Killing such people is the least we can do in memory of the millions of innocent victims of Communism.
You actually trust people whose moral standards are from an old book
I don't trust — I trust them more than others. There is a difference...
Some religions actively promote things that I find immoral.
Not sure, what you have in mind... I have not yet personally encountered a person of religion, whose opinion on a subject, that matters to my relationship with him I find immoral...
For example, Islam's oft-mentioned polygamy does not affect me, while Khalal meat is of above average quality — about as good as Kosher — but much cheaper. So I don't care, until/unless my daughter is courted by a Muslim man, when she grows up. And even that aspect is hardly "actively promoted" by Islam — quite the opposite, it is barely tolerated and some Muslim countries (such as Malaysia) have taken secular steps to curb the practice much to the dismay of poor families, who'd rather their daughter were the second wife of a rich man, than the one-and-only wife of a poor man...
So, no, a person with a deep religious adherence to one of the major religions (minor sects could be seriously wicked) is less likely to do wrong, in my opinion, than someone (like myself) without a "fear of God". In game theory terms, being religious is beneficial for a society, but detrimental to an individual — I'd like everyone around me to be religious (except for the hot girls I may want to pursue), while I'm allowed to remain an atheist. But I wouldn't begrudge anybody viewing me with some suspicion over it.
atheists are obviously distrusted even more than homosexuals.
And for a good reasons. While there is nothing wrong with homosexuality, the atheists are only as moral as they choose to be. Having no fear of a deity, they don't answer to anyone other than themselves. And the government. But the government can only enforce laws. Things immoral, but legal are more likely to seem acceptable to atheists than to religious people.
This is not to say, that a religious man is not going to screw you. Just that he is less likely to...
Having grown up in the USSR, I am an atheist myself. But, other things being equal, I prefer to deal with religious folk.
I guess that communists would have similar ratings
No, Communists are the worst of the worst. By far. Anyone identifying himself as such deserves prompt hanging on a lamp-post.
Patent Claim Could Block Import of Toyota's Hybrid Cars on 17:10 Thursday 08 October 2009
Contrary to oft-repeated headlines, a patent-holder never wants to block a patent-using technology from the market. They just want to get paid for it. If, indeed, the patent is valid — and the size of the patent-holder is no indication either way — Toyota simply needs to pay for the technology...
The article write-up seems like it is written by a Toyota-shill. If a Paice-shill were to write it, it could've been rephrased along the following lines:
After over 3 years of trying to dodge its responsibility, Toyota may finally be forced by the US International Trade Commission to respect America's Intellectual Property laws and pay a small American firm for the valuable technology, that Toyota found so useful for its hybrid vehicles.
Because with huge servers and clustering you can get some insanely huge numbers when it comes to HDD space. But as I'm sure we all know when it comes to a 128 OS, we are usually talking about addressing, ala 16bit, 32bit, 64bit.
You don't need 128 bits for addressing. 2^32 is "only" 4 gigabytes, which was always achievable in theory and actually achieved in practice over a decade ago.
Having a memory — RAM or disk — above 2^64, however, is not achievable in even in theory... 2^64 is only 100 times less, for example, than the estimated number of sand-grains on Earth.
Being able to process as much as 128 bits in one CPU-instruction is nice, and SSE extensions allow that. But neither size_t nor off_t need to exceed 64 bits. Ever... In fact, in the amd64 instruction set, only 48 bits can be used to address memory — the rest are for the CPU instruction, so that both the operation and the operand fit in one 64-bit word. The amd64-architecture is thus "limited" to 256 TB — that's the largest RAM an amd64-machine can have and the largest file and amd64-machine can mmap.
64-bit systems were truly useful, because — by making size_t and off_tthe same, they allowed software to be rid of having to segment access to files, which could, potentially, be too large to memory-map in their entirety (many legacy mmap-implementations are still limited to 2- or 4-Gb files). 128-bit systems are not adding that benefit...
(And, of course, most systems — including even the most modern Linux and BSD — still have rather poor mmap-implementations, compared to their highly-optimized read and write calls... But that's another topic...)
Both EVITE and Wikipedia have deleted the little picture, that I wanted to use as my own logo on my own user-page. Evite simply suspected I used someone else's artwork, but Wikipedia acted in full knowledge, that it was mine — they just wanted me to change the license to allow everyone in the world to use it...
Instead, PACER is designed to allow the government to recoup the costs of digitizing these documents
Well, the government is charged with keeping the documents in the first place already. You are free to come to the court-house and read them. You can also use the copy-machines to make copies. My point is, using those copy-machines costs about the same — no more than 25 cents per page. Allowing you to download the same pages ought to cost fractions of a penny per page...
Unless, indeed, some intelligent thought has been put into digitizing the texts to not just scan them (as giant bitmaps), but to also make the text searchable (as, well, text). And even then it should, probably, be paid for from the same allocations currently used to pay for storage of these papers and the mousetraps.
Further, anyone who wants to compete with PACER is perfectly free to do so.
It would seem from the article, that PACER is some sort of a government/private organization. Competing with them would be quite difficult for a purely private enterprise, which would have to defend itself from mindless accusations of "profiteering off public records" or something, even if they end up offering the same service for less. Oh, and just when someone does prevail in those fights, PACER becomes free...
I suspect that most companies are in no hurry to digitize millions of obscure documents that are generally only of use to a half-dozen people
Half-dozen? There are certainly many more lawyers in this country than that:) I guess, you mean, each document may only be of interest to six people or so...
Anyway, the real solution is to make these documents be in some textual electronic form to begin with. Obama's administration (like, the most high-tech administration ever) could begin by making the Federal Courts and the Federal Prosecutors use that in all their proceedings... Unlike with health-care (that does need to use standardized-format data too), the federal government has Constitutional right to control the Justice Department...
electronically through the PACER system at a nominal per-page cost (currently 8 cents).
I'd understand, if they charged 5-10 cents per page for a copy on actual paper (whoever needs that). For an electronic download this is an insane amount of money. Unless, of course, they convert each scan to searchable text using really fancy text-recognition software (like Google do with their book-archive). And even then it sounds like huge price — good for them, if they can get it, but these guys need serious competition.
Sea-faring vessels are a major contributor of greenhouse gas production due to a deficit in international laws [...] toxic to marine animals and thus outlawed by several nations
It seems, that when it really matters, national laws banning undesirable practices are quite effective...
If engineers and scientists really were like 'Big Corporations", patents would last for 150 years plus the life of the longest lived member of the originating team.
And had they been like the Slashdot's creator-wannabes, there would've been no patents, because "information wants to be free".
patents aren't a means of seeing researchers get paid, only possibly for compensating a percentage of successful ones.
Successful research pays for all the research. How to run it so that there are enough successes for everyone involved to be paid nicely is up to each outfit, be it a Big Corporation, a genius in his garage, or anything in between...
Except, you know, she didn't have to come up with the idea, and she didn't have to do any of the original research
Wait just a cotton-picking minute, here, buster! Are you implying, ideas can have value like some kind of property (spit)? That anybody doing research should be paid on top of the altruistic joy they ought to be having from a discovery?
No! Everybody on Slashdot knows, that scientists (just like artists) aren't the selfish greedy bastards, and it is only the Big Corporations (TM), who insist on collecting money under the pretense of having to pay these creators of Intellectual Property...
A perfect example of how much better private entrepreneurs can be, than whoever, who is government-paid... Yes, I know, that DHS bought their design from a private company, but they are spending other people's money and so care more for how attractive each bidder's saleswoman was, than about the cost of the device...
Israel has been stirring up shit with its neighbors for DECADES [...]
Israel was and remains at war with its neighbors (except Egypt and Jordan) since the day it was founded. The war was not started by Israel. This multi-generation conflict is not of Israel's doing, and whatever they do to defend themselves, including "stirring up shit", is perfectly just.
"[...] I did that, and Laskov and Chara did that, and Yitzhak did that, but it seemed to me that the person who most enjoyed these games was Dado."
Nothing wrong with hurting your enemy. "Insightful" my behind...
Frankly as long as we are running deficits we shouldn't be sending jack shit to anybody
Yeah, and while we are it, let's also abandon Taiwan to China, South Korea to the North, Eastern Europe to Russia (oops, that's pretty much done already) — what have I forgotten?
especially when the country we are sending it to is gonna use it to act like douches.
There is nothing Israel has done, that is not matched (with gusto!) by either its enemies or other countries, so that "especially" qualifier is a no-op...
I did just check and was very surprised that Iran had signed it.
So, up until now you were equating Israel's and Iran's nuclear programs?!? And you dare posting again instead of registering a new Slashdot ID in shame to distance yourself from the blabbering idiot, who would open his (very loud) mouth despite stunning ignorance? Yes, Iran has signed it — not only that, they continue to insist, their research is "for peaceful purposes only". You seem to agree with just about everyone, that that's a lie, but defend them nonetheless...
Are you actually saying that it is ok to breach international treaties if you do it openly and refuse to sign them in the first place?
If you refused to sign them in the first place, then you have not breached anything, have you?.. Otherwise — haven't you just breached an agreement to marry 6 billion people (something tells me, you don't insist on marriage being heterosexual) — by refusing to propose to each of them "in the first place"?
Neither of these two, nor Pakistan, which you forgot to mention, signed up to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). Iran (and North Korea) — did sign on to it, thus promising, they will not seek nuclear weapons.
I do find it interesting, that you implicitly admit, that Iran is, indeed, developing nuclear weapons, and thus continuing to lie through its teeth, whenever they publicly deny doing so...
Also FreeBSD 8 is a little faster than FreeBSD 7.2 but a lot slower than Ubuntu Linux 9.10
Not disputing the conclusions of the memory, I/O benchmakrs, part of what they benchmarked is the compiler — FreeBSD's gcc-4.2.1 vs. Ubuntu's 4.4.1. I'm not surprised, GCC's newer release both compiles faster and produces faster binaries.
You could say, FreeBSD is at fault (and thus deserves bad rep) for including an outdated compiler, but, on the other hand, FreeBSD's choice may prove wiser, when bugs in the hot new compiler surface... The compiler's history — as, really, that of any sufficiently complex piece of software — teaches, it is wise to stay several releases behind. Bugs in the older releases are known and all platforms — certainly including FreeBSD — merge fixes into their repositories.
Their choice of using ImageMagick as a test is particularly suspect — that software has so many options (which graphics back-ends to include, whether to use OpenMP, etc.) and varies so greatly between its own frequent minor releases, that I'm sure they built it with subtle (but timing-affecting) differences between platforms... For just one example, FreeBSD's port of ImageMagick runs all of their bundled self-tests after compilation by default, which takes quite a while. Unfortunately, the testers don't even mention, how exactly they built the stuff. If they used the port on FreeBSD, did they change any options? If they did not use the port, then they didn't build ImageMagick the way the users will be building it... And if they did use the port and flipped some features, did they ensure an identical match between two FreeBSD versions and Ubuntu?
So then you feel that I should be able to operate out on a major highway an 18-wheeler dragging along 2+ trailers without having received any sort of training?
Why would you do such a thing, and who would trust you with the vehicle?
If you are doing a prank or are simply being suicidal, requiring a license is not going to stop you. If — as most such drivers — you are simply earning a living, getting proper training is in your (and your employer's) best interest.
The idea behind the drivers license is that the state is vouching that you understand how to operate the vehicles listed on your license.
What is that vouching good for? Will the state compensate me, when a licensed dimwit hits me? No, it will not — the state has zero liability. They aren't responsible for anything, but the licensing gives them a very convenient short cut when prosecuting. Because, as long as driving is a privilege, it can be withdrawn without much fuss...
It does not end with driving — almost all business activities are also subject to licensing, which the government can withdraw (or not renew) at its whim. Once that happens, the burden is on the accused to prove their innocence. Whether it is a small restaurant struggling to retain a "liquor license" (why do we even have these 80 years after Prohibition?), or a giant ISP fighting an FCC rule, the government's ability to impose major punishment (such as heavy fines and closing of business) without bothering with judiciary is outrageously unconstitutional...
You weren't complaining when region free DVD players stopped honoring the "intellectual property" of the DVD content "owners".
Excellent point!
I for one applaud these hardware makers, particularly in Asia, for cutting this twisted Gordian knot and just loading up their devices will all the features they can download. [...] If anyone wants to complain, they can just go ahead and make their own, real physical devices and bring them to market.
You are inviting honest people to compete with the dishonest on the price... That's simply not possible — the stuff that "fell from the back of a truck" will always be cheaper. The Intellectual Property regime does not prevent hardware makers from using other people's property. It is only illegal for them to use it without permission — and such permission is almost always granted, when sufficient monies are paid or promised. For example, the widely-used HDMI technology costs adopters from 5 to 15 cents per item.
In other words, the alternative to manufacturers "cutting this twisted Gordian knot" is not absence of products, but rather the slightly higher prices, so that the patent-holders get paid...
They, probably, are unconstitutional, but they are so deeply spread everywhere, you'll be considered a "lunatic fringe" for bringing it up... The fundamental problem is that engaging in certain activities — such as driving, or cutting other people's hair, or providing Internet access — is not deemed to be a right (contrary to the Declaration of Independence), but a privilege...
Once you accept that distinction, and most people do, you've handed everything over to the government...
Because whereas to strip a person off a rights, the government needs to prove wrong-doing in a trial (presided over by independent judiciary), revoking (or simply not renewing) a privilege is easy and requires no effort...
Driving "on public roads or where public has legal access" is deemed a privilege, controlled by the government's licenses. The entire nation accepts that, mysteriously...
The exact procedures, by which a license can be taken away are up to the (executive) government. In most locales this is overseen by the judiciary, but in NYC, for example, a driver's only recourse is the "traffic" court, which is simply a division of the city's executive government.
We are the frogs in the jar, and some of us have been complaining about the heat for a long time now... Nice to see others realize it, but it may be too late.
Extremists never classify themselves as extremists.
You are attempting to imply, that I myself is an extremist and therefor fail to recognize fellow extremists (who rushed Russia's reforms). First of all such soundbites don't prove anything, but only obscure the discussion. It would've been a lot easier, if you were honestly stating your accusation...
Back to the point, free market is the best — and must be an ultimate goal of every society. It is not any more a matter of faith, than the "belief" in personal liberty — because the liberty is what makes free market the only possible way for an economy — the market's participants are simply the people pursuing happiness.
This is a moot point, because Russia never got a free market — the mistakes of their administration of the 1990ies (and its foreign advisers, if any) was not in the goal, but in the means of getting there...
The shades of grey are there, you simply do not wish them to be.
This statement is so easy to turn 180 degrees — while keeping its accusatory arrogance intact — that I leave it as a reader's exercise...
As to your disapproval of "extremes", allow me to rephrase some other "extremists" to demonstrate my point:
"We'll pay a bargain price, bear a reasonable burden, inconvenience ourselves a little, argue with friends, apologize to foes, in order to facilitate preconditions for the success of compliance."
"I've been half-way up the mountain."
"I have a sleeping disorder."
Mr. Gorbachev, Tear Down Half This Wall
Let he, who is without Class 1 Felony and has no pending warrants, cast the first stone.
There is more, where these came from and all of them mock the notion, that extremism is automatically bad...
You wanted to try the soviet leadership in order to extend the US's penis size, not to attain any meaningful goals.
False. I want to a) extract vengeance; b) provide historical disincentive for the future generations of assholes; c) get the corrupt criminals off the backs of the Russians, so they can rebuild their country. I don't know, why you had to bring "penis" into a discussion...
Crimes against humanity or war crimes are not punishable by the US
In Nuremberg they were... In Japan they were... Both Germany and Japan became prosperous free countries within 20-30 years afterward. Russia is not even close — maybe, purging the higher crust of a rotten criminal regime was needed?..
you are not judge, jury and executioner.
And you are not the defense counsel, what's your point?
Besides this, the perpetrators were long since dead.
First, monsters like Lazar Kaganovich demonstrated amazing longevity... Second, there were plenty of crimes (against humanity) committed after Stalin's passing — by people not only alive, but not even retired in the 1990ies.
More importantly, the Communist Party itself should've been disbanded, its assets confiscated, its ideology banned — like the National Socialists of Germany and the Baath of Iraq (all three had very small differences in goals and tactics, BTW). Instead, they are the second-largest party in today's Russian Duma...
if the US had of asserted control over the Russian people it would have been even worse... some people just do not want you to control their lives.
And Germans and Japanese did?..
Instead of poverty and crime, you'd have civil war and another dictator in place by the end of it
They certainly do, but there is nothing "extremist" about them — not in the usual negative meaning of the word. The free market is not unlike fresh sturgeon (to paraphrase a famous Russian writer), you see — there is only one level of freshness: the FIRST. It is also the last... Either you accept the free market or you don't — the "shades of grey" aren't really there.
What precisely gives the US the right to interfere with the internal machinations of another sovereign nation?
Crimes against humanity are not shielded by notions of "sovereignty". If the West put its compassion aside and demanded, Communist thugs (some of them still active, others — collecting personal pensions occupying lavish Moscow apartments) be handed over for prosecution before any aid was delivered — the way it later pressured Serbia over Milosevic and his gang — the world in general and Russia in particular would've been a better place today.
Contrary to popular US opinion, the US never defeated Soviet Russia. The Soviets were defeated by none other then Joseph Stalin who after WWII put the Russian economy on an inevitable decline by placing the vast majority of it's limited resources into increasing the size and power of its military.
And Joseph Stalin did so because he perceived NATO's and America's in particular threat to both USSR and the USSR's expansionist ambitions to be real. America was able to outspend the evil empire (which, as Kennedy quipped, tried to maintain 1st-world military on top of 3rd-world economy) and thus won the Cold War.
The US didn't destroy the Soviet Union, the Soviet Union was destroyed by the Soviet Union.
That's a meaningless statement — in every fight some of the blame for a loss lies with the loser himself. But the winner still gets the credit for the win. Not that any of this is on-topic, mind you...
The biggest mistake of 90s was to let free market extremists advise on the transition.
There is no such thing as a "free market extremist", but that's beside the point. It may have been Russia's mistake to rush the reforms, but America's mistake was to not pursue the Communists (in particular — the KGB). Those people should've been treated like the defeated rulers of Germany and Japan 40 years earlier, with the high-placed ones all going before special courts, which would punish those found guilty of crimes against humanity. Or, at the very least, something like South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission should've been set up with the old regime's functionaries getting amnesty, but only in exchange for providing details and evidence of their misdeeds...
Russia simply doesn't have any real capability to restore the "great empire"
Contrary to the teary memories of some, Russia has never been a great empire in any respectable sense — because that requires the population to have a respectable relative standard of living. Russia was never able to clear that requirement in recent memory — neither under the tzars, nor under the Communists. And they aren't moving in the right direction today either.
But they almost always managed to remain a threat to others, which is why Cato, had he been an American Senator today, would've insisted on destroying them...
You may be right about Russia's sorry demographics (Indeed, the next big war on Earth is most likely to be between China and Russia — over the lands of Siberia, which Russia holds, but can not populate.), but one needs not many soldiers to threaten the world with nuclear weapons — which are, mind you, the subject of TFA... And Russia's Muslim soldiers will have even fewer qualms about invading countries like Georgia, Armenia, Poland, Bolgaria, Moldova, Romania, Latvia, Estonia, Finland, Lithuenia, Ukraine, et al, then the atheist or Christian folks...
I am not calling for an attack on Russia. I'm just stating, that the next round of confrontation is already on (despite the best efforts of the post Cold War American Presidents, including the current neophyte) and is likely to get worse again. We will be fighting Russia again — and when we win, I hope, we will not repeat the mistakes of the 1990ies...
Slashdot Mirror
This is the exact opposite of my observation so far — at least, in America. And, by the way, I don't limit "religion" to mean "Christianity" in this thread...
Only a handful of individuals in remote areas of backwards countries have killed/invaded/tortured for faith in recent memory. Their religions don't consider them "decent religious people" at all, even when denouncing these apostates and their tactics costs the denouncers their own lives.
All real mass-murders — or attempts at same — over the last 100 years have been perpetrated by folks either actively (like Communists) or passively (like Nazis) godless. The only possible exception is the Ottoman's decimation of the Armenians — shocking in itself, however, it is dwarfed by the "achievements" of Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, Mao, or Rwanda's thugs. Osama bin Laden — the worst religious murderer of recent memory — does not stand near those guys, because, in no small part, the fate of innocent people actually bothered him somewhat and he tried (if unconvincingly) to distance himself from the 9/11 attack.
Even when you are cornered by religious zealots bent on killing "infidels", one can escape death by converting. But there is/was no escape for "kulaks" from Stalin and Mao, for Jews from Hitler, or for Bosnjaks from Milosevic...
Which takes one to the major point/revelation — religion is not the reason. Like a gun or a hammer, it is a tool, that could be used for good or evil depending on the user's motivations and desires, which are usually far deeper seated, than the religion can penetrate. If anything, religion softens the rough edges we've all inherited.
That's true. I was heavily indoctrinated against Communism — by Communists...
It is not at all shallow — I'm against death penalty in general for fear of uncorrectable mistake. But a person, who openly admits sharing the most murderous ideology known so far (Nazism is not even close), is an unmistakable danger. Killing such people is the least we can do in memory of the millions of innocent victims of Communism.
I don't trust — I trust them more than others. There is a difference...
Not sure, what you have in mind... I have not yet personally encountered a person of religion, whose opinion on a subject, that matters to my relationship with him I find immoral...
For example, Islam's oft-mentioned polygamy does not affect me, while Khalal meat is of above average quality — about as good as Kosher — but much cheaper. So I don't care, until/unless my daughter is courted by a Muslim man, when she grows up. And even that aspect is hardly "actively promoted" by Islam — quite the opposite, it is barely tolerated and some Muslim countries (such as Malaysia) have taken secular steps to curb the practice much to the dismay of poor families, who'd rather their daughter were the second wife of a rich man, than the one-and-only wife of a poor man...
So, no, a person with a deep religious adherence to one of the major religions (minor sects could be seriously wicked) is less likely to do wrong, in my opinion, than someone (like myself) without a "fear of God". In game theory terms, being religious is beneficial for a society, but detrimental to an individual — I'd like everyone around me to be religious (except for the hot girls I may want to pursue), while I'm allowed to remain an atheist. But I wouldn't begrudge anybody viewing me with some suspicion over it.
And for a good reasons. While there is nothing wrong with homosexuality, the atheists are only as moral as they choose to be. Having no fear of a deity, they don't answer to anyone other than themselves. And the government. But the government can only enforce laws. Things immoral, but legal are more likely to seem acceptable to atheists than to religious people.
This is not to say, that a religious man is not going to screw you. Just that he is less likely to...
Having grown up in the USSR, I am an atheist myself. But, other things being equal, I prefer to deal with religious folk.
No, Communists are the worst of the worst. By far. Anyone identifying himself as such deserves prompt hanging on a lamp-post.
Contrary to oft-repeated headlines, a patent-holder never wants to block a patent-using technology from the market. They just want to get paid for it. If, indeed, the patent is valid — and the size of the patent-holder is no indication either way — Toyota simply needs to pay for the technology...
The article write-up seems like it is written by a Toyota-shill. If a Paice-shill were to write it, it could've been rephrased along the following lines:
You don't need 128 bits for addressing. 2^32 is "only" 4 gigabytes, which was always achievable in theory and actually achieved in practice over a decade ago.
Having a memory — RAM or disk — above 2^64, however, is not achievable in even in theory... 2^64 is only 100 times less, for example, than the estimated number of sand-grains on Earth.
Being able to process as much as 128 bits in one CPU-instruction is nice, and SSE extensions allow that. But neither size_t nor off_t need to exceed 64 bits. Ever... In fact, in the amd64 instruction set, only 48 bits can be used to address memory — the rest are for the CPU instruction, so that both the operation and the operand fit in one 64-bit word. The amd64-architecture is thus "limited" to 256 TB — that's the largest RAM an amd64-machine can have and the largest file and amd64-machine can mmap.
64-bit systems were truly useful, because — by making size_t and off_t the same, they allowed software to be rid of having to segment access to files, which could, potentially, be too large to memory-map in their entirety (many legacy mmap-implementations are still limited to 2- or 4-Gb files). 128-bit systems are not adding that benefit...
(And, of course, most systems — including even the most modern Linux and BSD — still have rather poor mmap-implementations, compared to their highly-optimized read and write calls... But that's another topic...)
Both EVITE and Wikipedia have deleted the little picture, that I wanted to use as my own logo on my own user-page. Evite simply suspected I used someone else's artwork, but Wikipedia acted in full knowledge, that it was mine — they just wanted me to change the license to allow everyone in the world to use it...
Well, the government is charged with keeping the documents in the first place already. You are free to come to the court-house and read them. You can also use the copy-machines to make copies. My point is, using those copy-machines costs about the same — no more than 25 cents per page. Allowing you to download the same pages ought to cost fractions of a penny per page...
Unless, indeed, some intelligent thought has been put into digitizing the texts to not just scan them (as giant bitmaps), but to also make the text searchable (as, well, text). And even then it should, probably, be paid for from the same allocations currently used to pay for storage of these papers and the mousetraps.
It would seem from the article, that PACER is some sort of a government/private organization. Competing with them would be quite difficult for a purely private enterprise, which would have to defend itself from mindless accusations of "profiteering off public records" or something, even if they end up offering the same service for less. Oh, and just when someone does prevail in those fights, PACER becomes free...
Half-dozen? There are certainly many more lawyers in this country than that :) I guess, you mean, each document may only be of interest to six people or so...
Anyway, the real solution is to make these documents be in some textual electronic form to begin with. Obama's administration (like, the most high-tech administration ever) could begin by making the Federal Courts and the Federal Prosecutors use that in all their proceedings... Unlike with health-care (that does need to use standardized-format data too), the federal government has Constitutional right to control the Justice Department...
I'd understand, if they charged 5-10 cents per page for a copy on actual paper (whoever needs that). For an electronic download this is an insane amount of money. Unless, of course, they convert each scan to searchable text using really fancy text-recognition software (like Google do with their book-archive). And even then it sounds like huge price — good for them, if they can get it, but these guys need serious competition.
Khmm, I wonder, why you did not ask Artifakt this question...
It seems, that when it really matters, national laws banning undesirable practices are quite effective...
And had they been like the Slashdot's creator-wannabes, there would've been no patents, because "information wants to be free".
Successful research pays for all the research. How to run it so that there are enough successes for everyone involved to be paid nicely is up to each outfit, be it a Big Corporation, a genius in his garage, or anything in between...
Wait just a cotton-picking minute, here, buster! Are you implying, ideas can have value like some kind of property (spit)? That anybody doing research should be paid on top of the altruistic joy they ought to be having from a discovery?
No! Everybody on Slashdot knows, that scientists (just like artists) aren't the selfish greedy bastards, and it is only the Big Corporations (TM), who insist on collecting money under the pretense of having to pay these creators of Intellectual Property...
A perfect example of how much better private entrepreneurs can be, than whoever, who is government-paid... Yes, I know, that DHS bought their design from a private company, but they are spending other people's money and so care more for how attractive each bidder's saleswoman was, than about the cost of the device...
Israel was and remains at war with its neighbors (except Egypt and Jordan) since the day it was founded. The war was not started by Israel. This multi-generation conflict is not of Israel's doing, and whatever they do to defend themselves, including "stirring up shit", is perfectly just.
Nothing wrong with hurting your enemy. "Insightful" my behind...
Yeah, and while we are it, let's also abandon Taiwan to China, South Korea to the North, Eastern Europe to Russia (oops, that's pretty much done already) — what have I forgotten?
There is nothing Israel has done, that is not matched (with gusto!) by either its enemies or other countries, so that "especially" qualifier is a no-op...
So, up until now you were equating Israel's and Iran's nuclear programs?!? And you dare posting again instead of registering a new Slashdot ID in shame to distance yourself from the blabbering idiot, who would open his (very loud) mouth despite stunning ignorance? Yes, Iran has signed it — not only that, they continue to insist, their research is "for peaceful purposes only". You seem to agree with just about everyone, that that's a lie, but defend them nonetheless...
If you refused to sign them in the first place, then you have not breached anything, have you?.. Otherwise — haven't you just breached an agreement to marry 6 billion people (something tells me, you don't insist on marriage being heterosexual) — by refusing to propose to each of them "in the first place"?
Neither of these two, nor Pakistan, which you forgot to mention, signed up to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). Iran (and North Korea) — did sign on to it, thus promising, they will not seek nuclear weapons.
I do find it interesting, that you implicitly admit, that Iran is, indeed, developing nuclear weapons, and thus continuing to lie through its teeth, whenever they publicly deny doing so...
Whatever it takes to demolish a sworn enemy...
Not disputing the conclusions of the memory, I/O benchmakrs, part of what they benchmarked is the compiler — FreeBSD's gcc-4.2.1 vs. Ubuntu's 4.4.1. I'm not surprised, GCC's newer release both compiles faster and produces faster binaries.
You could say, FreeBSD is at fault (and thus deserves bad rep) for including an outdated compiler, but, on the other hand, FreeBSD's choice may prove wiser, when bugs in the hot new compiler surface... The compiler's history — as, really, that of any sufficiently complex piece of software — teaches, it is wise to stay several releases behind. Bugs in the older releases are known and all platforms — certainly including FreeBSD — merge fixes into their repositories.
Their choice of using ImageMagick as a test is particularly suspect — that software has so many options (which graphics back-ends to include, whether to use OpenMP, etc.) and varies so greatly between its own frequent minor releases, that I'm sure they built it with subtle (but timing-affecting) differences between platforms... For just one example, FreeBSD's port of ImageMagick runs all of their bundled self-tests after compilation by default, which takes quite a while. Unfortunately, the testers don't even mention, how exactly they built the stuff. If they used the port on FreeBSD, did they change any options? If they did not use the port, then they didn't build ImageMagick the way the users will be building it... And if they did use the port and flipped some features, did they ensure an identical match between two FreeBSD versions and Ubuntu?
Why would you do such a thing, and who would trust you with the vehicle?
If you are doing a prank or are simply being suicidal, requiring a license is not going to stop you. If — as most such drivers — you are simply earning a living, getting proper training is in your (and your employer's) best interest.
What is that vouching good for? Will the state compensate me, when a licensed dimwit hits me? No, it will not — the state has zero liability. They aren't responsible for anything, but the licensing gives them a very convenient short cut when prosecuting. Because, as long as driving is a privilege, it can be withdrawn without much fuss...
It does not end with driving — almost all business activities are also subject to licensing, which the government can withdraw (or not renew) at its whim. Once that happens, the burden is on the accused to prove their innocence. Whether it is a small restaurant struggling to retain a "liquor license" (why do we even have these 80 years after Prohibition?), or a giant ISP fighting an FCC rule, the government's ability to impose major punishment (such as heavy fines and closing of business) without bothering with judiciary is outrageously unconstitutional...
Excellent point!
You are inviting honest people to compete with the dishonest on the price... That's simply not possible — the stuff that "fell from the back of a truck" will always be cheaper. The Intellectual Property regime does not prevent hardware makers from using other people's property. It is only illegal for them to use it without permission — and such permission is almost always granted, when sufficient monies are paid or promised. For example, the widely-used HDMI technology costs adopters from 5 to 15 cents per item.
In other words, the alternative to manufacturers "cutting this twisted Gordian knot" is not absence of products, but rather the slightly higher prices, so that the patent-holders get paid...
They, probably, are unconstitutional, but they are so deeply spread everywhere, you'll be considered a "lunatic fringe" for bringing it up... The fundamental problem is that engaging in certain activities — such as driving, or cutting other people's hair, or providing Internet access — is not deemed to be a right (contrary to the Declaration of Independence), but a privilege...
Once you accept that distinction, and most people do, you've handed everything over to the government...
Because whereas to strip a person off a rights, the government needs to prove wrong-doing in a trial (presided over by independent judiciary), revoking (or simply not renewing) a privilege is easy and requires no effort...
Driving "on public roads or where public has legal access" is deemed a privilege, controlled by the government's licenses. The entire nation accepts that, mysteriously...
The exact procedures, by which a license can be taken away are up to the (executive) government. In most locales this is overseen by the judiciary, but in NYC, for example, a driver's only recourse is the "traffic" court, which is simply a division of the city's executive government.
We are the frogs in the jar, and some of us have been complaining about the heat for a long time now... Nice to see others realize it, but it may be too late.
You are attempting to imply, that I myself is an extremist and therefor fail to recognize fellow extremists (who rushed Russia's reforms). First of all such soundbites don't prove anything, but only obscure the discussion. It would've been a lot easier, if you were honestly stating your accusation...
Back to the point, free market is the best — and must be an ultimate goal of every society. It is not any more a matter of faith, than the "belief" in personal liberty — because the liberty is what makes free market the only possible way for an economy — the market's participants are simply the people pursuing happiness.
This is a moot point, because Russia never got a free market — the mistakes of their administration of the 1990ies (and its foreign advisers, if any) was not in the goal, but in the means of getting there...
This statement is so easy to turn 180 degrees — while keeping its accusatory arrogance intact — that I leave it as a reader's exercise...
As to your disapproval of "extremes", allow me to rephrase some other "extremists" to demonstrate my point:
There is more, where these came from and all of them mock the notion, that extremism is automatically bad...
False. I want to a) extract vengeance; b) provide historical disincentive for the future generations of assholes; c) get the corrupt criminals off the backs of the Russians, so they can rebuild their country. I don't know, why you had to bring "penis" into a discussion...
In Nuremberg they were... In Japan they were... Both Germany and Japan became prosperous free countries within 20-30 years afterward. Russia is not even close — maybe, purging the higher crust of a rotten criminal regime was needed?..
And you are not the defense counsel, what's your point?
First, monsters like Lazar Kaganovich demonstrated amazing longevity... Second, there were plenty of crimes (against humanity) committed after Stalin's passing — by people not only alive, but not even retired in the 1990ies.
More importantly, the Communist Party itself should've been disbanded, its assets confiscated, its ideology banned — like the National Socialists of Germany and the Baath of Iraq (all three had very small differences in goals and tactics, BTW). Instead, they are the second-largest party in today's Russian Duma...
And Germans and Japanese did?..
Your dire scenario
They certainly do, but there is nothing "extremist" about them — not in the usual negative meaning of the word. The free market is not unlike fresh sturgeon (to paraphrase a famous Russian writer), you see — there is only one level of freshness: the FIRST. It is also the last... Either you accept the free market or you don't — the "shades of grey" aren't really there.
Crimes against humanity are not shielded by notions of "sovereignty". If the West put its compassion aside and demanded, Communist thugs (some of them still active, others — collecting personal pensions occupying lavish Moscow apartments) be handed over for prosecution before any aid was delivered — the way it later pressured Serbia over Milosevic and his gang — the world in general and Russia in particular would've been a better place today.
And Joseph Stalin did so because he perceived NATO's and America's in particular threat to both USSR and the USSR's expansionist ambitions to be real. America was able to outspend the evil empire (which, as Kennedy quipped, tried to maintain 1st-world military on top of 3rd-world economy) and thus won the Cold War.
That's a meaningless statement — in every fight some of the blame for a loss lies with the loser himself. But the winner still gets the credit for the win. Not that any of this is on-topic, mind you...
There is no such thing as a "free market extremist", but that's beside the point. It may have been Russia's mistake to rush the reforms, but America's mistake was to not pursue the Communists (in particular — the KGB). Those people should've been treated like the defeated rulers of Germany and Japan 40 years earlier, with the high-placed ones all going before special courts, which would punish those found guilty of crimes against humanity. Or, at the very least, something like South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission should've been set up with the old regime's functionaries getting amnesty, but only in exchange for providing details and evidence of their misdeeds...
Contrary to the teary memories of some, Russia has never been a great empire in any respectable sense — because that requires the population to have a respectable relative standard of living. Russia was never able to clear that requirement in recent memory — neither under the tzars, nor under the Communists. And they aren't moving in the right direction today either.
But they almost always managed to remain a threat to others, which is why Cato, had he been an American Senator today, would've insisted on destroying them...
You may be right about Russia's sorry demographics (Indeed, the next big war on Earth is most likely to be between China and Russia — over the lands of Siberia, which Russia holds, but can not populate.), but one needs not many soldiers to threaten the world with nuclear weapons — which are, mind you, the subject of TFA... And Russia's Muslim soldiers will have even fewer qualms about invading countries like Georgia, Armenia, Poland, Bolgaria, Moldova, Romania, Latvia, Estonia, Finland, Lithuenia, Ukraine, et al, then the atheist or Christian folks...
I am not calling for an attack on Russia. I'm just stating, that the next round of confrontation is already on (despite the best efforts of the post Cold War American Presidents, including the current neophyte) and is likely to get worse again. We will be fighting Russia again — and when we win, I hope, we will not repeat the mistakes of the 1990ies...