Google's is not the DoJ's research assistant. Subpoenas are for gathering evidence about a specific crime by a specific, not for forcing a company to do research for the government.
This was not Google's argument. They fought the subpoena on privacy grounds.
Their real reasons may be different, but they chose to use "privacy" to ennoble their case. Which illustrates my point...
They are fighting tooth-and-nail against a US government's request for rather innocent piece of statistics -- a million of randomly selected queries over the course of one random week in 2005 -- something no other search engine found in any way objectionable.
And yet they agree to China's much more intrusive demands.
No, I don't think they are "doing evil" with any of it. But heros they are not either.
That organizers and many participants find explicit sexual behavior at a public trade convention distracting and unrelated to business should be enough.
people whose knowledge of history is taken entirely from recent propaganda speeches.
"Recent"? Robert Conquest's "Harvest of Sorrow" was published twenty years ago -- and he concludes, it was a deliberate mass murder or even genocide. The only "recent" speeches on the subject are by Russia's Holodomor-deniers -- like yourself.
[...]works great with US population because most of Americans themselves are disgustingly racist, and can relate.
Ha-ha! "Most Americans"? How about this -- to keep you on topic of Russia? But, anyway, for this attempt to deflect to hold water, you need to accuse "Most Ukrainians" of being racists, not Americans.
If anything can be said about Americans on this subject, the stupid American Left gave one of their own the Pulitzer Prize for either being totally duped by the Commies, or for deliberately helping them.
And yes, Russians suffered too. But this thread began with the reasons, Ukrainians want to escape Russia's influence and are happy to embrace that of America. America's clients tend to fare much better off -- South Korea, Chile, Taiwan, Japan, West Germany, whereas Russia's "area of influence" is that of gloom, poverty, and oppression -- Belarus, Cuba, North Korea.
And at the end it does not even matter, whether it is so by evil design or by sheer incompetence.
Aren't you forgetting the execution of the entire Polish officer's Corps by KGB? That war-crime (a real one -- not a "butt piramid") was blamed on the Germans (German-made weapons were used in executions!) for decades until Gorbachev finally admitted to it...
All neighbors have a long list of grievances against Russia, and the Russians better start asking for forgiveness (as Germany did decades ago) instead of denying the horrible past.
Contrary to the popular in US belief, the drought and famine in 30's were natural disasters.
My grandmother and her family survived Holodomor, thanks to the occasional $10 or $20, sent by the relatives in Connecticut, who left in tzar's times, with which one could by flour in the "foreign currency only" stores ("Torgsin") -- in the Ukrainian village of Narodichi. You are lying. USSR was exporting grain while its own citizens were dying of hunger. It was not a "natural disaster", but a targeted campaign to genocide the (relatively) rich Ukrainian peasants for being less than anxious to join the proletariat and the poorer Russian peasants (worse climate, worse soil made them poorer).
You call these numbers "natural disaster"? From Robert Conquest's "Harvest of Sorrow", quoted by Wikipedia:
At the height of the famine, while confiscating crops from the starving peasants, the USSR exported 1.70 million tons of grain in 1932 and 1.84 million tons in 1933 (close to a quarter of a ton per each victim in each year). The Soviet authorities also banned travel out of the famine affected areas under the pretext that people travelling for food spread "anti-kolkhoz agitation".
Peasants of the Russian "Povolzhje" (along Volga) were, likely, similarly targeted, although they never had the Diaspora to keep the memory alive. Their lands were also fairly decent and, consequently, they also had something else to lose "besides their chains".
Holodomor deniers are hardly better than Holocaust deniers -- and my family was hit by both of these genocide attempts...
And while you visit Wikipedia, check out Godwin's Law. Calling the newly free Baltic countries "Nazis" was remarkably stupid and offensive. Russia has a lot to atone for, and you are not even trying...
Apparantly nVidia are awaiting Page Attribute Table support before they can release a FreeBSD/amd64 driver.
Yes, there is a rumor, that something in FreeBSD is missing for them. But that is a lame excuse. A driver without the feature, that requires PAT, is MUCH better, than no driver at all, even if the PAT (whatever it is) could make it a whopping 10% faster.
FreeBSD/amd64 is adequately supported by the drivers.
Oh, radeon appears to be supported by Xorg, but it does not seem stable at all.
With the feature set of the modern graphics hardware, the drivers ought to be maintained by the manufacturers with access to the hardware and the specs.
NVidia is doing a good enough job with the Linux and FreeBSD on i386, but they don't have anything for FreeBSD/amd64 (despite posts begging for it on their forums for the last 2 years) and I am greatly disappointed...
it's fully compatible as it uses both its own and the GPS protocol
Is it? I recall reading somewhere, that it was not going to be. Still, one has to wonder, whether the compatibility will be of the infamous "embrace and extend" kind...
or is it merely a politicised 'anything you can do we can do better' by the European Space Agency?
The short answer is: "Yes, is". The longer answer is, the new system promises more precision and guarantees of the navigation quality. Both of these would be much easier to achieve withing the GPS' framework, but providing credible competition is usually the best way to shove almost any service provider into improving their offering.
When the provider is US Government, it may be the only way... Still, there is no reason for Galileo to be incompatible with the existing GPS clients, that's just evil...
Hotmail's suckiness is a management problem, not a technology problem. The technology is there, but [...]
Paul Graham argues convincingly, that a tool can make all the difference (he advocates Lisp).
He submits, of course, that any program can be written in any reasonable language -- for they all are, after all Turing machine's equivalents. But the quality of the tools can make a difference between a feature being added next week and not at all.
If Hotmail's admins are back to command line and scripting anyway, maybe, they should've stuck with FreeBSD.
Look at how quickly Google is rolling new things out -- their platform allows them to.
Stars of about 10 to 25 solar masses will collapse into compact spheres about 10 miles across, called neutron stars. These objects have a hard surface and no event horizon.
I'd imagine there being a lot of very useful stuff in those compact spheres. Is it theoretically possible to mine these things?
Getting even a small bit off is going to be very hard, of course, but if the light can escape, it should still be possible, no?
The story has such an introduction, that instead of discussing the scientific breakthrough, most of the posts are going to be on Intelligent Design...
Were the scientists really concerning themselves with spiting the ID advocates?.. If so, ID may be good for something afterall, but I strongly doubt it...
It's ironic that an individual excercising thier rights to privacy becomes the basis for probable cause to violate that privacy.
Does it become such basis? Got evidence? Anecdotal would do...
Although police tried that in the past (long before our current "oppressed" state), the courts held repeatedly, that one's refusal to be "volunterely" searched does not qualify as the probable cause.
Good time to be living in a freer country, don't you think?
"Chances are the majority of accused John Does are guilty..."
at best, they can only see that there are music files on a computer.
The GP is talking about actual (as in known to deities) guilt. You are talking about RIAA's ability to prove it.
Yes, maybe 1 out of the 25 John Does wanted to share new Debian CD-images, but had her computer hijacked by the evil mp3-sharers. Chances are very good, however, every one of them was illegally sharing the protected works knowingly.
Objectively, RIAA is being wronged here. The answer to someone's zeal in protecting their works from copying is in not buying them, not in buying and then distributing them anyway (illegaly)... The burden of proof is on RIAA, of course, but we should not be cheering the people, getting off on a technicality, too much either.
Anyway, boycotting restricts me from the popular culture. That's from experience - I've done boycott of TV for years (reading books instead.)
Both -- you and the FreeBSD project benefited:-)
The comparision between the pairs of options of being 1) killed vs. going on hunger strike in prison and 2) boycotting the movie houses vs. legally forcing them to stop trying to protect their intellectual property is not entirely valid.
Whereas locking someone up was (presumably) unjust, selling one's works on one's own terms is no more than unethical (if that). Thus not buying such works on such terms is enough of a reaction, whereas a hunger strike may need to be accompanied by other actions (such as changes in laws or international sanctions).
WRT the ethics, the present situation involves actively forcing people to not break copy protections or create extra copies.
It is, actually, a passive forcing -- it only applies to people, who volunterely purchased the works.
The works in question have a large part of their value - maybe their primary value - because they end up as part of culture (people buy/see them due to recommendations and cultural habit). As a such, evaluating them as "only entertainment" is to miss a significant part of them.
This is a slippery slope to venture on. This is the same logic, that robs other property owners of their rights, because someone sees some "higher purpose" in someone else's property. For example:
"historical" building can not be altered by the owners -- because they are precious,
tenants often can not be evicted -- because, although it is the landlord's house, it is the tenants' "home".
Any protest against "unfair" practices by movie studios must begin with acknowledging, that they own the rights to the works... I think, boycott is best because it will ultimately either:
prove the protestors wrong, by showing, that the general public does not care;
force the companies to change their ways through general public's sentiment.
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From what I read, the wiretaps in question involve international calls only. No?
Their real reasons may be different, but they chose to use "privacy" to ennoble their case. Which illustrates my point...
And yet they agree to China's much more intrusive demands.
No, I don't think they are "doing evil" with any of it. But heros they are not either.
If anything can be said about Americans on this subject, the stupid American Left gave one of their own the Pulitzer Prize for either being totally duped by the Commies, or for deliberately helping them.
And yes, Russians suffered too. But this thread began with the reasons, Ukrainians want to escape Russia's influence and are happy to embrace that of America. America's clients tend to fare much better off -- South Korea, Chile, Taiwan, Japan, West Germany, whereas Russia's "area of influence" is that of gloom, poverty, and oppression -- Belarus, Cuba, North Korea.
And at the end it does not even matter, whether it is so by evil design or by sheer incompetence.
All neighbors have a long list of grievances against Russia, and the Russians better start asking for forgiveness (as Germany did decades ago) instead of denying the horrible past.
You call these numbers "natural disaster"? From Robert Conquest's "Harvest of Sorrow", quoted by Wikipedia:
Peasants of the Russian "Povolzhje" (along Volga) were, likely, similarly targeted, although they never had the Diaspora to keep the memory alive. Their lands were also fairly decent and, consequently, they also had something else to lose "besides their chains".
Holodomor deniers are hardly better than Holocaust deniers -- and my family was hit by both of these genocide attempts...
And while you visit Wikipedia, check out Godwin's Law. Calling the newly free Baltic countries "Nazis" was remarkably stupid and offensive. Russia has a lot to atone for, and you are not even trying...
As well as by the "good guys" -- as shown in "Men in Black".
Oh, radeon appears to be supported by Xorg, but it does not seem stable at all.
With the feature set of the modern graphics hardware, the drivers ought to be maintained by the manufacturers with access to the hardware and the specs.
NVidia is doing a good enough job with the Linux and FreeBSD on i386, but they don't have anything for FreeBSD/amd64 (despite posts begging for it on their forums for the last 2 years) and I am greatly disappointed...
When the provider is US Government, it may be the only way... Still, there is no reason for Galileo to be incompatible with the existing GPS clients, that's just evil...
He submits, of course, that any program can be written in any reasonable language -- for they all are, after all Turing machine's equivalents. But the quality of the tools can make a difference between a feature being added next week and not at all.
If Hotmail's admins are back to command line and scripting anyway, maybe, they should've stuck with FreeBSD.
Look at how quickly Google is rolling new things out -- their platform allows them to.
The only two keys: "DO" and "Undo". The software is supposed to be able to figure out (correctly!), what to do (or undo).
How do you measure energy in volts? Why not in bytes, pascals, or miles?
I'd imagine there being a lot of very useful stuff in those compact spheres. Is it theoretically possible to mine these things?
Getting even a small bit off is going to be very hard, of course, but if the light can escape, it should still be possible, no?
Were the scientists really concerning themselves with spiting the ID advocates?.. If so, ID may be good for something afterall, but I strongly doubt it...
I remember these being all the rage some time ago...
They are not the ones, who built the exploitable system. They just use it -- legally.
Although police tried that in the past (long before our current "oppressed" state), the courts held repeatedly, that one's refusal to be "volunterely" searched does not qualify as the probable cause.
It always is...Ethics are in the eyes of beholder... You don't approve of vigilante justice, do you?
Yes, maybe 1 out of the 25 John Does wanted to share new Debian CD-images, but had her computer hijacked by the evil mp3-sharers. Chances are very good, however, every one of them was illegally sharing the protected works knowingly.
Objectively, RIAA is being wronged here. The answer to someone's zeal in protecting their works from copying is in not buying them, not in buying and then distributing them anyway (illegaly)... The burden of proof is on RIAA, of course, but we should not be cheering the people, getting off on a technicality, too much either.
The comparision between the pairs of options of being 1) killed vs. going on hunger strike in prison and 2) boycotting the movie houses vs. legally forcing them to stop trying to protect their intellectual property is not entirely valid.
Whereas locking someone up was (presumably) unjust, selling one's works on one's own terms is no more than unethical (if that). Thus not buying such works on such terms is enough of a reaction, whereas a hunger strike may need to be accompanied by other actions (such as changes in laws or international sanctions).
It is, actually, a passive forcing -- it only applies to people, who volunterely purchased the works. This is a slippery slope to venture on. This is the same logic, that robs other property owners of their rights, because someone sees some "higher purpose" in someone else's property. For example:Any protest against "unfair" practices by movie studios must begin with acknowledging, that they own the rights to the works... I think, boycott is best because it will ultimately either:
In other words, let the market decide ;-)