The technology, if works as described, is perfectly awesome in itself — a way to build electronics, that's cheaper, water-proof, and needs no external casing. That it is also "greener" is a nice addition, but the editor's write-up over-emphasizes it, like it is the most important aspect. It simply is not...
As far as I can tell, the laws and public opinion about freedom of speech issues are dysfunctional.
I think, the belief is, we'd rather suffer through annoyances of some fools/assholes/weirdos saying stuff we don't like, than have the Government decide, what can and can not be said.
Also I'm absolutely convinced that corporate speech and political speech is more dangerous than hate speech. And the US has completely failed to deal with them... or for that matter even discuss them openly and honestly.
"Corporate speech" is advertising and is very restricted already — way too much, in this immigrant's opinion. They can't advertise cigarettes. They can't even tell you, their food is good for you!
As for political speech, well, that's what the First Amendment, actually, is about, even if it was misused in the past to claim the right to sell pornography. So hands off! I wish, I could shout that into the ears of Senators McCain and Feingold, when they were pushing their unconstitutional law...
Back to your statement, both political and corporate speech in the US has, in fact, been discussed and dealt with, so you are 100% wrong. Which is very unfortunate...
If you prevent public displays of it, the distribution of hate speech, and the dissemination of such practices, you prevent societies' young from learning and eventually deifying that type of behavior.
Yes, because it worked so well against drug abuse...
X, although designed explicitly from the beginning to host remote applications, sucks at it. It is unusable on a link with any significant latency
This is not entirely fair, because the networks, for which X was designed, did not have "significant" latency, even if bandwidth was not that great. In 1993, working for a Boston university, I would routinely log in to a friend's account in an LA school and run xclock on my X-terminal — right next to the one running on the server downstairs.
Both processes — one running two stories below and one thousands miles away — ran smoothly, the seconds-hands were moving at the same time, and it would've been easy to mistake one for the other, had it not been for the 3-hour difference between them...
As for migrating the client, X-protocol does not prevent the client from reconnecting to a different X-server, etc. Most just didn't implement it — probably, because of the load this would put on the application server... BTW, with Remote Desktop (and vnc) this tasks are also the responsibility of the client — it is just implemented now, because the need arose due to drastically different usage patterns...
VNC and Remote Desktop, though seemingly less elegant solutions, work much better, mainly because they are synchronized more loosely
That loose synchronization is the price, that X-windows designers did not want to pay. Time has shown, that it is a reasonable trade-off, but it was not obvious. And, again, the networks, that had such bad latency, weren't all that common.
I'm sorry, but I wouldn't count the outing of the Abu Ghraib abuses as a win for the terrorists.
It did hand the enemy a major propaganda tool.
That was a win for human rights and for freedom as we know it. The human rights abuses themselves were a huge loss for humanity.
This is very true, but it could've been done differently. They could've published the accounts, but not the pictures, for example. They could've contacted the government and give them a heads-up. But they didn't — for one or both of the already outlined reasons.
But now that one of their own got into trouble, and they are suddenly all thoughtfulness and consideration...
So yes, if the news had got out the terrorists would have won. Literally.
Terrorists did win (a major propaganda score), when the photos of Abu Ghraib abuses were published. But New York Times and other news-papers published them in a heart-beat — either
out of the journalistic principle of publishing everything noteworthy, and/or
No, it did not. None of the photographed prisoners' lives were endangered. "Butt-pyramid" was degrading, but not dangerous... In fact, some of the "abuse" consisted of guards having sex in front of the "victims". But it did help the enemy's propaganda and thus was harmful to us.
It would have different to publish a story like...
Yes, there are a lot of things, that would've been different.
"Reporter X has been kidnapped" is information. But is it worth knowing six months in advance, risking to have him killed?
Well, as I said, they could've applied the same principle to the abuse-pictures... They could even have described the abuses — to help ensure, they end. But they didn't have to publish the pictures themselves — unless they either hated the military and the Bush Administration with passion and wanted it to fail, or simply followed the journalistic principles of informing readers of everything...
"The land of the free is sending people to torture prisoners" is also information.
Only inasmuch as a lie can be "information" — we did not send those guards to Iraq to torture anyone. But even if it were information, suppressing it would've saved lives — and yet, papers published those photos and want Obama to release more of them...
The double standard, that NYT, other papers, and yourself apply here, is quite disgusting...
Our supposed "right to know" ends when it can cost someone else their life in exchange
This is all very convincing, and I nearly swallowed NYT's argument myself, until I realized, that it could have (should have?) been applied to some inflammatory things they did publish earlier.
The Abu Ghraib abuse photos are the most obvious example — imagine NYT and wire-agencies respecting a Bush administration's request not to publish them so as not to "negatively affect" the US military's mission — and cost a lot of lives...
What else are the media and Wikipedia valiantly suppressing right now for the "greater good"?..
There are external influences in every country on earth.
Well, this may obviate the AC's qualification as a meaningless "hedge", but the truth is, external meddling differs widely: from subtle sponsoring of the country's journalists and politicians, as, for a more obvious example, the USSR was doing to India, to logistical help, to massive military support, to outright invasions...
In the Korean War, for example, China has lost about hundreds of thousands soldiers — fighting against the UN forces in support of the Communists. It is hard to name a more substantial foreign influence in a country's internal affairs in recent history...
I have to ask, do you think the people in N. Korea are happy with their lot in life?
North Korea's regime would've collapsed decades ago, had it not been for China's and USSR's support — exactly the external factors, that the GP is talking about. Today China continues to be the major backer of the dictatorship, supplying them with much needed goods and preventing North Koreans from escaping the oppression...
What you miss is that the fact of having biased judges on trials is a human right violation
Yes, if indeed the judge was biased, it was a violation. But it a much lesser (hence our talk of proportion) one, than those, that make serious headlines. TPB had a trial — in a free country, with competent legal help and with abundant mass-media coverage of every aspect... They also have a meaningful appeal going on right now.
In addition to these quantitative differences, there is a qualitative one — unlike the dissidents I listed, TPB are/were not fighting against the State. Which means, the State — which appoints judges and pays them — has no inherent interest in the trial's outcome. Thus it is far less likely, that TPB will be treated particularly badly.
Very nice of you. Unfortunately, the legislation being discussed was just passed without most Congressmen even reading it. Do you think, any of them have read "the science" behind it?
The 1934 issue was for the US, not global data. The U.S. makes up what pct. of global land area (hint: it's much less than 100%). Sloppy on your part.
No data even exists for large parts of the world in 1930ies. My point was to emphasize the unreliability of NASA's data — it would've been enough to give reasonable doubt in jury trial. Applying a lesser standard to a life-changing decision affecting the entire nation is lunacy...
No one argues that mankind is solely responsible for climate variability.
Hair-splitting. Do you suppose, Al Gore bothers to point this out in his scare-mongering presentations? You don't have to argue it explicitly, to leave the audience with the impression, that we are all responsible — especially, the capitalists (acting all corporationy) among us.
Honest debates on science and policy are welcome.
Well, the passing of the "bill of the century" has shown, that the above words have no truth in them. There was no debate — it was not welcome. The legislators didn't even have time to read the bill, that was voted on almost entirely on the party-lines. Hopefully, it will die in the Senate now and we'll be able to conduct those "honest debates" you are talking about. The ball is rolling already...
low quality mortgages were only 10 or 15 percent of the overall mortgage market... So it seems tough to blame them for everything.
Actually, it is not. The low quality mortgages pushed up the prices of all houses, because, suddenly, there were 10-15% fewer houses on the market — that's a huge figure, actually, and caused a great distortion. Our Capitalist system is very efficient, and it proceeded to address the imbalance between the supply and demand. It just was not prepared for the demand to be artificially exaggerated by the government's meddling...
And you can go ahead and pretend that the 1999 gutting of Glass-Steagall had no effect
It did have an effect, making the markets more efficient — a good thing, generally. Blaming these measures is like blaming a better engine for a car's crashing into log on the highway. Yes, if it was going slower, the crash would not have been as devastating, but the problem is the log thrown across the pavement by the Democratic meddlers — not the technical improvements...
You might want to catch up on the climatology research a bit.
Did you mean scientology? Just as sound, and just as tolerant of the doubters...
Yeah, 2008 was really cool, being hotter than any year before 2000 save (super-hot) 1998
Actually, the hottest year on record was 1934. NASA screwed up its own methodology, apparently. But even based on your own facts, how do you explain the cool down of the last decade — China and India (and the US, of course) have all only grown their contributions over the years...
Wanna bet what'll happen when that sucker turns the corner and heads back up?
Which "sucker"? The Sun? Oh, no, are you saying, something other than humanity may be responsible? So responsible, that despite rapidly growing contribution by humanity, the climate cooled down anyway?..
Face it, the theory we are urged to follow is full of holes and gives ample ground for perfectly reasonable skepticism. And yet, a vastly expensive initiative is about to forced down our throats based on it.
Heck, Bush's theory of "WMDs in Iraq" had much more going for it (and was less expensive too), but you would burn at the stake anybody, who accepted his argument, wouldn't you? And so, if your requirements or so much less rigorous now, one must suspect, you have some other goal in mind...
Insinuating Obama is more responsible than Bush for the state of today's economy is a particularly impressive piece of mental Judo.
My current sig is a play on somebody else's from about 8 years ago, when Bush was dealing with Clinton-era recession (NASDAQ did halve in 2000, remember?) A very prolific poster claimed to know about Bush only that he had a job, when Clinton was president...
... folks from every nook and cranny of American politics.
Oh, no, not from "every nook and cranny" — the Democratic nooks and crannies are the primary culprits, forcing the government (Fannie and Freddie) to extend credit to people, who should not be buying real estate at all, and thus creating a bubble for the rest of us. And they are at it again...
But honestly, if our Congressmen and women won't even read the bills they pass why the hell are they signing their names on them in the first place?
Did not stop them from signing the "Stimulus" bill (the one they promised to post to the Internet for 3 days before voting — and lied) earlier this year...
According to Wall Street Journal, at least, the "Cap & Trade" law will constitute the biggest tax in US history...
The sad part is, even after the human-caused "global warming" proves to be either grossly overstated or completely bogus, the tax will stay on for decades — just like all other taxes have...
Global warming advocates don't bother with proofs, burdening the skeptics (branded "deniers") with that instead. They only adjust their PR-campaigning, such as switching to the term "climate change", when the actual weather changes from hotter to colder such as over the past two years. Indeed, as Che Guevarra repeats from millions of their T-shirts:
To send men to the firing squad, judicial proof is unnecessary. These procedures are an archaic bourgeois detail.
("Flamebait" my capitalist behind.)
But, hey, if the true goal is destruction of Capitalism, one should not bother with too much honesty — it only slows down the fall of the hated civilization.
Seriously, how many cow-burps and -farts was this eruption equivalent to, as far as "global warming" is concerned? People seem to seriously engage in breeding cows, that produce less methane. If a volcano can negate the benefits of such research for decades in a single eruption, perhaps there is no point in doing it — better concentrate on eruption-prevention...
These kind of studies are largely pointless. We already know this
Actually, no we don't know this, but, most importantly, it does not matter. This misses the point. The copyrights ought to exist, because the creators of things, that are hard to create but easy to replicate — like software, literature, music, video, fashion design, what have you — ought to enjoy to lesser control of their creations, than creators of things tangible.
This derives not from it being economically beneficial (which it may or may not be), but from simple fairness. A book-writer ought to be no less protected from thieves, than a shoemaker...
Letting humans decide what is preferable would definitely be some kind of selection and would create "evolution" in a sense. But I believe that the time-tested natural selection is more reliable when it comes to the survival of our species.
The same logic, that's used to justify abortions, ought to discourage any attempts to regulate, what women choose to put inside their bodies. If no one can order an abortion clinic to close, why do we accept "public outrage" affecting a hair-color selection service?
Slashdot Mirror
The technology, if works as described, is perfectly awesome in itself — a way to build electronics, that's cheaper, water-proof, and needs no external casing. That it is also "greener" is a nice addition, but the editor's write-up over-emphasizes it, like it is the most important aspect. It simply is not...
I think, the belief is, we'd rather suffer through annoyances of some fools/assholes/weirdos saying stuff we don't like, than have the Government decide, what can and can not be said.
"Corporate speech" is advertising and is very restricted already — way too much, in this immigrant's opinion. They can't advertise cigarettes. They can't even tell you, their food is good for you!
As for political speech, well, that's what the First Amendment, actually, is about, even if it was misused in the past to claim the right to sell pornography. So hands off! I wish, I could shout that into the ears of Senators McCain and Feingold, when they were pushing their unconstitutional law...
Back to your statement, both political and corporate speech in the US has, in fact, been discussed and dealt with, so you are 100% wrong. Which is very unfortunate...
Yes, because it worked so well against drug abuse...
The commas do belong there in Ukrainian and Russian — my first two languages — and seem to keep the sentences clearer in English too...
This is not entirely fair, because the networks, for which X was designed, did not have "significant" latency, even if bandwidth was not that great. In 1993, working for a Boston university, I would routinely log in to a friend's account in an LA school and run xclock on my X-terminal — right next to the one running on the server downstairs.
Both processes — one running two stories below and one thousands miles away — ran smoothly, the seconds-hands were moving at the same time, and it would've been easy to mistake one for the other, had it not been for the 3-hour difference between them...
As for migrating the client, X-protocol does not prevent the client from reconnecting to a different X-server, etc. Most just didn't implement it — probably, because of the load this would put on the application server... BTW, with Remote Desktop (and vnc) this tasks are also the responsibility of the client — it is just implemented now, because the need arose due to drastically different usage patterns...
That loose synchronization is the price, that X-windows designers did not want to pay. Time has shown, that it is a reasonable trade-off, but it was not obvious. And, again, the networks, that had such bad latency, weren't all that common.
DragonFlyBSD are working towards migration of processes between different systems...
That's been one of their goals ever since splitting from FreeBSD years ago. Maybe, some day, they'll get there...
It did hand the enemy a major propaganda tool.
This is very true, but it could've been done differently. They could've published the accounts, but not the pictures, for example. They could've contacted the government and give them a heads-up. But they didn't — for one or both of the already outlined reasons.
But now that one of their own got into trouble, and they are suddenly all thoughtfulness and consideration...
Terrorists did win (a major propaganda score), when the photos of Abu Ghraib abuses were published. But New York Times and other news-papers published them in a heart-beat — either
Whichever way you look at it, a large set of double- (and triple-) standards is perfectly obvious.
No, it did not. None of the photographed prisoners' lives were endangered. "Butt-pyramid" was degrading, but not dangerous... In fact, some of the "abuse" consisted of guards having sex in front of the "victims". But it did help the enemy's propaganda and thus was harmful to us.
Yes, there are a lot of things, that would've been different.
Well, as I said, they could've applied the same principle to the abuse-pictures... They could even have described the abuses — to help ensure, they end. But they didn't have to publish the pictures themselves — unless they either hated the military and the Bush Administration with passion and wanted it to fail, or simply followed the journalistic principles of informing readers of everything...
Only inasmuch as a lie can be "information" — we did not send those guards to Iraq to torture anyone. But even if it were information, suppressing it would've saved lives — and yet, papers published those photos and want Obama to release more of them...
The double standard, that NYT, other papers, and yourself apply here, is quite disgusting...
This is all very convincing, and I nearly swallowed NYT's argument myself, until I realized, that it could have (should have?) been applied to some inflammatory things they did publish earlier.
The Abu Ghraib abuse photos are the most obvious example — imagine NYT and wire-agencies respecting a Bush administration's request not to publish them so as not to "negatively affect" the US military's mission — and cost a lot of lives...
What else are the media and Wikipedia valiantly suppressing right now for the "greater good"?..
Well, this may obviate the AC's qualification as a meaningless "hedge", but the truth is, external meddling differs widely: from subtle sponsoring of the country's journalists and politicians, as, for a more obvious example, the USSR was doing to India, to logistical help, to massive military support, to outright invasions...
In the Korean War, for example, China has lost about hundreds of thousands soldiers — fighting against the UN forces in support of the Communists. It is hard to name a more substantial foreign influence in a country's internal affairs in recent history...
North Korea's regime would've collapsed decades ago, had it not been for China's and USSR's support — exactly the external factors, that the GP is talking about. Today China continues to be the major backer of the dictatorship, supplying them with much needed goods and preventing North Koreans from escaping the oppression...
Yes, if indeed the judge was biased, it was a violation. But it a much lesser (hence our talk of proportion) one, than those, that make serious headlines. TPB had a trial — in a free country, with competent legal help and with abundant mass-media coverage of every aspect... They also have a meaningful appeal going on right now.
In addition to these quantitative differences, there is a qualitative one — unlike the dissidents I listed, TPB are/were not fighting against the State. Which means, the State — which appoints judges and pays them — has no inherent interest in the trial's outcome. Thus it is far less likely, that TPB will be treated particularly badly.
Very nice of you. Unfortunately, the legislation being discussed was just passed without most Congressmen even reading it. Do you think, any of them have read "the science" behind it?
No data even exists for large parts of the world in 1930ies. My point was to emphasize the unreliability of NASA's data — it would've been enough to give reasonable doubt in jury trial. Applying a lesser standard to a life-changing decision affecting the entire nation is lunacy...
Hair-splitting. Do you suppose, Al Gore bothers to point this out in his scare-mongering presentations? You don't have to argue it explicitly, to leave the audience with the impression, that we are all responsible — especially, the capitalists (acting all corporationy) among us.
Well, the passing of the "bill of the century" has shown, that the above words have no truth in them. There was no debate — it was not welcome. The legislators didn't even have time to read the bill, that was voted on almost entirely on the party-lines. Hopefully, it will die in the Senate now and we'll be able to conduct those "honest debates" you are talking about. The ball is rolling already...
Whereas _cooperatives_ and _communes_ are all working hard to help them...
Actually, it is not. The low quality mortgages pushed up the prices of all houses, because, suddenly, there were 10-15% fewer houses on the market — that's a huge figure, actually, and caused a great distortion. Our Capitalist system is very efficient, and it proceeded to address the imbalance between the supply and demand. It just was not prepared for the demand to be artificially exaggerated by the government's meddling...
It did have an effect, making the markets more efficient — a good thing, generally. Blaming these measures is like blaming a better engine for a car's crashing into log on the highway. Yes, if it was going slower, the crash would not have been as devastating, but the problem is the log thrown across the pavement by the Democratic meddlers — not the technical improvements...
Did you mean scientology? Just as sound, and just as tolerant of the doubters...
Actually, the hottest year on record was 1934. NASA screwed up its own methodology, apparently. But even based on your own facts, how do you explain the cool down of the last decade — China and India (and the US, of course) have all only grown their contributions over the years...
Which "sucker"? The Sun? Oh, no, are you saying, something other than humanity may be responsible? So responsible, that despite rapidly growing contribution by humanity, the climate cooled down anyway?..
Face it, the theory we are urged to follow is full of holes and gives ample ground for perfectly reasonable skepticism. And yet, a vastly expensive initiative is about to forced down our throats based on it.
Heck, Bush's theory of "WMDs in Iraq" had much more going for it (and was less expensive too), but you would burn at the stake anybody, who accepted his argument, wouldn't you? And so, if your requirements or so much less rigorous now, one must suspect, you have some other goal in mind...
My current sig is a play on somebody else's from about 8 years ago, when Bush was dealing with Clinton-era recession (NASDAQ did halve in 2000, remember?) A very prolific poster claimed to know about Bush only that he had a job, when Clinton was president...
Oh, no, not from "every nook and cranny" — the Democratic nooks and crannies are the primary culprits, forcing the government (Fannie and Freddie) to extend credit to people, who should not be buying real estate at all, and thus creating a bubble for the rest of us. And they are at it again...
Did not stop them from signing the "Stimulus" bill (the one they promised to post to the Internet for 3 days before voting — and lied) earlier this year...
According to Wall Street Journal, at least, the "Cap & Trade" law will constitute the biggest tax in US history...
The sad part is, even after the human-caused "global warming" proves to be either grossly overstated or completely bogus, the tax will stay on for decades — just like all other taxes have...
Global warming advocates don't bother with proofs, burdening the skeptics (branded "deniers") with that instead. They only adjust their PR-campaigning, such as switching to the term "climate change", when the actual weather changes from hotter to colder such as over the past two years. Indeed, as Che Guevarra repeats from millions of their T-shirts:
("Flamebait" my capitalist behind.)
But, hey, if the true goal is destruction of Capitalism, one should not bother with too much honesty — it only slows down the fall of the hated civilization.
I'm talking about the sense of proportion, that ought to prevent a reasonable person from implicitly (or even explicitly) equating:
And speeding is a crime. Right. Get some sense of proportion — that's what the GP was talking about.
Seriously, how many cow-burps and -farts was this eruption equivalent to, as far as "global warming" is concerned? People seem to seriously engage in breeding cows, that produce less methane. If a volcano can negate the benefits of such research for decades in a single eruption, perhaps there is no point in doing it — better concentrate on eruption-prevention...
Actually, no we don't know this, but, most importantly, it does not matter. This misses the point. The copyrights ought to exist, because the creators of things, that are hard to create but easy to replicate — like software, literature, music, video, fashion design, what have you — ought to enjoy to lesser control of their creations, than creators of things tangible.
This derives not from it being economically beneficial (which it may or may not be), but from simple fairness. A book-writer ought to be no less protected from thieves, than a shoemaker...
The same logic, that's used to justify abortions, ought to discourage any attempts to regulate, what women choose to put inside their bodies. If no one can order an abortion clinic to close, why do we accept "public outrage" affecting a hair-color selection service?