I don't particularly like spending time in the library, I'd prefer it if I could get all that information at home. It's just that if I could get everything in the library at home I wouldn't have much incentive to buy any books. Nor would other people. That's why I don't see it happening for public libraries - it would be too damaging to the publishing industry.
On-line != public access. The trend is to make them available on-line for a fee. My library card doesn't get me access to Safari from home and I very much doubt it ever will. I can't see on-line public libraries happening, because that would completely destroy the business of every publisher which would result in far, far fewer books being written. Nobody wants that to happen. Perhaps all the books will be electronic, but you'll still have to go to the library to access them, because the library's terminals will have access to the electronic copies and the subscriptions.
Your argument seems to be that because you don't have much need for them they don't need to exist. Well, I hate to break it to you, but the world doesn't revolve around you and most people aren't in your situation.
Like most people, I'm not at university (any more), so libraries are the only access I have to a wide range of textbooks, scientific journals etc. I do buy books and the odd journal, but I couldn't hope to afford a collection even remotely close to what is on offer even at the public library, let alone the local university libraries (which the public can enter for free and join for a modest fee).
There are a hell of a lot of people for whom libraries are the only form of access to high-quality information. The internet hasn't changed that very much, because most of the best information still costs money.
Re:Note that Mapmakers make intentional mistakes..
on
Open US GPS Data?
·
· Score: 1
I don't know how accurate the height is, I'm just going by the 2D overlay of my GPS position on Google Maps satellite imagery. Only a few miles to the East is an OS passive GPS station (precisely surveyed concrete block) and that's spot on, as is my dad's house a few miles to the South. I wouldn't expect it to vary so much over such short distances, but I'm not a cartographer. I do recall reading that Google did shift things deliberately, but I can't find a reference. I'm in the UK too.
If you can lay fibre across the bottom of an ocean and drag it through conduits you can sure has hell run it up your stairs. You're just using shitty fibre leads. I work in a telephone exchange and trust me, it take more than a dog stepping on it to kill one of the fibre patch leads used there. Terminating it does suck, but most people don't terminate their own CAT-5 either.
6 x as fast as 32-bit 2.8GHz HyperTransport 16 x as fast as x16 PCIe 2.0 60 x as fast as 20GFC fibre channel 400 x as fast as SATA-300 700 uncompressed 1080p HDTV streams (24bpp, 30fps) 15 million telephone calls
Other than the LHC, who the hells needs that kind of bandwidth?
Given my point is that I don't believe there are, in any meaningful sense, rights without enforcement (i.e. no inherent rights) your question doesn't make any sense to me at all.
Surely a superstar would have found where he works and answered the question of location for themselves. It took me about a minute (not that that necessarily makes me a superstar of course).
Good men will fight to ensure the inherent rights of others if that's what they believe in. Good men with no concept of inherent rights will fight to ensure others are treated the way they think people should be treated.
Anyway, my problem with the concept of inherent rights is that anybody can say they have a right to do anything and then feel justified in doing it. The declaration of independence essentially says "we have these rights because we say we do". Well, I can say that too. I can say I have a right to roam the land and use the Earth's natural resources, that that right is inherent to every creature on the planet. If I were religious I could say God created the Earth for us all and no-one should have a monopoly on any part of it. I would then feel justified in camping in your field and eating from your orchard. When we all have different idea of what our rights are conflicts arise and, as both parties think they have a right to be doing what they are doing, neither is willing to back down. If you define rights as those which are mutually agreed and enshrined in law this problem does not arise.
You say a civilised person will assert they have a right before they enforce it, I say a civilised society will agree upon what everybody's rights should be and then enforce them.
Do you think you need a concept of inherent rights to defend others? You don't at all. You just fight to ensure people are treated the way you think they should be treated, rather than the way we were born to be treated or the way God intended us to be treated.
Not believing rights are inherent doesn't mean I don't think they're important or worth fighting for, quite the contrary in fact. I know I have no rights without something to enforce them. Knowing that without enforcement I have no rights, I will fight hard to ensure the rights I want are enshrined in law. I don't need to believe I have inherent rights to fight to preserve and extend my freedoms - your suggesting that I do is a complete non-sequitor. I find your attitude, which suggests the government cannot take your rights away, dangerous. I fight because I stand to lose my rights if I do not. If I had nothing to lose, why would I fight? I do stand up for my rights and the rights of my fellows, not because I think that's the way God intended things to be or because the rights are inherent to humanity, but because that's the way I think things should be.
You fight for enforcement of rights you believe you have anyway, I'll fight for the rights I don't believe exist without enforcement. I bet we'd pretty much agree on what those rights are / should be. We'll be fighting for the same thing, the only difference will be that I won't be deluding myself about what I am fighting for;)
First, this is not about some single fabriacation device, but about personal fabrication in general. I had to post that in bold, because judging by the comments so far, everybody thinks this is about stereolithography or machines from the Diamond Age. It is not about the machines per se. It is about the convergence of computing and manufacturing. It is about the social possibilities (they made a fabrication lab, not a single machine, and were surprised at the enthusiasm with which it was received by normal people and the ingenuity of the results - three people at MIT are doing PhDs on something invented by an 8 year-old in one of the labs). It is about self-organising and replicating systems.
The exciting bit for me was the comparison of the current state of personal fabrication to the minicomputer era in computing. The transition from mainframes (factories, expensive machines shops with skilled staff) to PCs (Diamond Age) is under way.
Stereolithography machines aren't magic. They're a useful way of making plastic shapes in small quantities, expensively. But that's about it.
Evidently you didn't watch the video, but there's no mention of stereolithography in the summary either, so I'm not sure why you went off on that tangent. The video is about personal fabrication, the technologies used for it are almost an aside - he gives examples of everything from CNC to proteins. They do, however, have a collection of technologies, called a Fab Lab. It's not a stereolithography machine or indeed any single machine or technology, but a $25 000 lab of kit which is sufficient to make stuff that does stuff. Think machine shop + electronics lab + design tools.
You should watch the video, it's pretty interesting.
Whether or not you believe in God, people existed before governments. Did those people not have rights?
They had the de-facto right to do whatever the hell they liked, but no other rights. Can you tell me what the difference would be if they did or did not have rights, given there was no government to enforce them? I can't see how things would be different at all whether you considered them to have rights or not. That's why I think the concept of rights in the absence of a means of enforcement is entirely meaningless.
You also seem unclear on the concept of a "right". A right is something that a person intrinsically may do.
I can intrinsically sneak into your home, stab you to death, rape your wife and take all your property. You might want to come up with a better definition of what a right is. After enough thought you'll come to realise that what you call rights are just things you want to be able to do and think would make for a fair society. The desire for these things may be intrinsic, but without enforcement these "rights" are pure mental masturbation.
Are you nuts? Governments do NOT have the power the grant rights! As a human being, YOU have all the rights.
I love it when people say things like that, it gives me a good chuckle. You do know it's completely and utterly meaningless, yes? Rights mean exactly fuck all if they're not backed up by men with guns. The governments have the most guns, so they're the only ones who can, in any practical sense at all, grant rights.
What the hell does "the success of OS X and Firefox, and RealPlayer and Quicktime" have to do with the price Microsoft charge for interface documentation for workgroup servers? That is what Microsoft have been fined for - failure to comply with the 2004 judgment, which "required Microsoft to disclose interface documentation which would allow non-Microsoft work group servers to achieve full interoperability with Windows PCs and servers at a reasonable price".
Re:Note that Mapmakers make intentional mistakes..
on
Open US GPS Data?
·
· Score: 1
Well, I don't work for Google or whoever they get their data from so I can't be absolutely sure, but they resemble known "easter eggs" I've seen examples of. I guess misplaced data points could be responsible for some of the errors. I suspect it's pretty hard to accidentally invent a road name for a nameless footpath though.
Maemo Mapper just pulls tiles from OpenStreetMap (or Google, Yahoo or MSN). The earlier versions of MM were hardly fast, but the latest is so slow as to be entirely useless. Perhaps it's usable on an N800 or N810, but given Nokia stopped bothering to fix the bug-ridden software for the 770 while the units were still on sale I'm in no hurry to spend a load more cash upgrading to another bug-ridden device they will abandon before bothering to make it work properly.
I believe the Yahoo satellite imagery was originally collected by a US government agency, so has no copyright restrictions.
Re:Note that Mapmakers make intentional mistakes..
on
Open US GPS Data?
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
Folks, be aware that one way that a mapmaker "improves" on a copyright protection is to intentionally alter a small section of a map (and in a book, a few at random) that is hopefully not used.
Having mapped a couple of square miles for OpenStreetMap, I can attest to the fact that these alterations are incredibly common on Google Maps. There are half a dozen within half a mile of my house, most being added curves or extensions to dead-end roads and added or removed traffic islands. Google also cunningly add fake roads to the map data which correlate with features which look like roads on the satellite imagery but actually aren't - they're private drives, streams, paths rather than roads through woodland etc. The ones near me wouldn't seriously affect navigation, but some I've seen in the past would. Oh yes, Google Maps is also shifted by about 5m from WGS84 (GPS coordinates) round here, I presume this is intentional too.
So this form of copyright infringement is illegal, but the law impossible to enforce?
IANAL, but I don't think that's the gist. The law as it stands can be (and is) enforced, the question is over what evidence is required to "prove" a violation. At the moment, the RIAA are only providing evidence of "making available". If this judgment goes against them they'll just have to gather evidence of actual distribution. In short, they have to show that somebody actually broke the law, not just show that somebody could easily break the law and might already have done so.
MS lives on the fact that binaries for the most part just keep working.
I get the feeling that Microsoft are losing their backwards-compatibility focus. Recent examples: Word disabling older file formats, Vista SP1 knowingly breaking popular software.
Re:It is all about the platform.
on
Is AMD Dead Yet?
·
· Score: 1
The last AMD that was a decent overclocker was the T-bird
I was heftily OCing Bartons a few years after T-birds. Hardly up-to-date I know, but I don't build my own any more.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't particularly like spending time in the library, I'd prefer it if I could get all that information at home. It's just that if I could get everything in the library at home I wouldn't have much incentive to buy any books. Nor would other people. That's why I don't see it happening for public libraries - it would be too damaging to the publishing industry.
Tim Leatherman killed the Swiss Army knife 25 years ago.
On-line != public access. The trend is to make them available on-line for a fee. My library card doesn't get me access to Safari from home and I very much doubt it ever will. I can't see on-line public libraries happening, because that would completely destroy the business of every publisher which would result in far, far fewer books being written. Nobody wants that to happen. Perhaps all the books will be electronic, but you'll still have to go to the library to access them, because the library's terminals will have access to the electronic copies and the subscriptions.
Your argument seems to be that because you don't have much need for them they don't need to exist. Well, I hate to break it to you, but the world doesn't revolve around you and most people aren't in your situation.
Like most people, I'm not at university (any more), so libraries are the only access I have to a wide range of textbooks, scientific journals etc. I do buy books and the odd journal, but I couldn't hope to afford a collection even remotely close to what is on offer even at the public library, let alone the local university libraries (which the public can enter for free and join for a modest fee).
There are a hell of a lot of people for whom libraries are the only form of access to high-quality information. The internet hasn't changed that very much, because most of the best information still costs money.
I don't know how accurate the height is, I'm just going by the 2D overlay of my GPS position on Google Maps satellite imagery. Only a few miles to the East is an OS passive GPS station (precisely surveyed concrete block) and that's spot on, as is my dad's house a few miles to the South. I wouldn't expect it to vary so much over such short distances, but I'm not a cartographer. I do recall reading that Google did shift things deliberately, but I can't find a reference. I'm in the UK too.
If you can lay fibre across the bottom of an ocean and drag it through conduits you can sure has hell run it up your stairs. You're just using shitty fibre leads. I work in a telephone exchange and trust me, it take more than a dog stepping on it to kill one of the fibre patch leads used there. Terminating it does suck, but most people don't terminate their own CAT-5 either.
One terrabit per second is roughly:
6 x as fast as 32-bit 2.8GHz HyperTransport
16 x as fast as x16 PCIe 2.0
60 x as fast as 20GFC fibre channel
400 x as fast as SATA-300
700 uncompressed 1080p HDTV streams (24bpp, 30fps)
15 million telephone calls
Other than the LHC, who the hells needs that kind of bandwidth?
Given my point is that I don't believe there are, in any meaningful sense, rights without enforcement (i.e. no inherent rights) your question doesn't make any sense to me at all.
One month of vacation is an "excellent benefit" over there? Holy crap. That's now the legally mandated minimum in the UK and was the norm before that.
Surely a superstar would have found where he works and answered the question of location for themselves. It took me about a minute (not that that necessarily makes me a superstar of course).
Good men will fight to ensure the inherent rights of others if that's what they believe in. Good men with no concept of inherent rights will fight to ensure others are treated the way they think people should be treated.
Anyway, my problem with the concept of inherent rights is that anybody can say they have a right to do anything and then feel justified in doing it. The declaration of independence essentially says "we have these rights because we say we do". Well, I can say that too. I can say I have a right to roam the land and use the Earth's natural resources, that that right is inherent to every creature on the planet. If I were religious I could say God created the Earth for us all and no-one should have a monopoly on any part of it. I would then feel justified in camping in your field and eating from your orchard. When we all have different idea of what our rights are conflicts arise and, as both parties think they have a right to be doing what they are doing, neither is willing to back down. If you define rights as those which are mutually agreed and enshrined in law this problem does not arise.
You say a civilised person will assert they have a right before they enforce it, I say a civilised society will agree upon what everybody's rights should be and then enforce them.
Do you think you need a concept of inherent rights to defend others? You don't at all. You just fight to ensure people are treated the way you think they should be treated, rather than the way we were born to be treated or the way God intended us to be treated.
;)
Not believing rights are inherent doesn't mean I don't think they're important or worth fighting for, quite the contrary in fact. I know I have no rights without something to enforce them. Knowing that without enforcement I have no rights, I will fight hard to ensure the rights I want are enshrined in law. I don't need to believe I have inherent rights to fight to preserve and extend my freedoms - your suggesting that I do is a complete non-sequitor. I find your attitude, which suggests the government cannot take your rights away, dangerous. I fight because I stand to lose my rights if I do not. If I had nothing to lose, why would I fight? I do stand up for my rights and the rights of my fellows, not because I think that's the way God intended things to be or because the rights are inherent to humanity, but because that's the way I think things should be.
You fight for enforcement of rights you believe you have anyway, I'll fight for the rights I don't believe exist without enforcement. I bet we'd pretty much agree on what those rights are / should be. We'll be fighting for the same thing, the only difference will be that I won't be deluding myself about what I am fighting for
Not a transcript, but...
First, this is not about some single fabriacation device, but about personal fabrication in general. I had to post that in bold, because judging by the comments so far, everybody thinks this is about stereolithography or machines from the Diamond Age. It is not about the machines per se. It is about the convergence of computing and manufacturing. It is about the social possibilities (they made a fabrication lab, not a single machine, and were surprised at the enthusiasm with which it was received by normal people and the ingenuity of the results - three people at MIT are doing PhDs on something invented by an 8 year-old in one of the labs). It is about self-organising and replicating systems.
The exciting bit for me was the comparison of the current state of personal fabrication to the minicomputer era in computing. The transition from mainframes (factories, expensive machines shops with skilled staff) to PCs (Diamond Age) is under way.
Evidently you didn't watch the video, but there's no mention of stereolithography in the summary either, so I'm not sure why you went off on that tangent. The video is about personal fabrication, the technologies used for it are almost an aside - he gives examples of everything from CNC to proteins. They do, however, have a collection of technologies, called a Fab Lab. It's not a stereolithography machine or indeed any single machine or technology, but a $25 000 lab of kit which is sufficient to make stuff that does stuff. Think machine shop + electronics lab + design tools.
You should watch the video, it's pretty interesting.
They had the de-facto right to do whatever the hell they liked, but no other rights. Can you tell me what the difference would be if they did or did not have rights, given there was no government to enforce them? I can't see how things would be different at all whether you considered them to have rights or not. That's why I think the concept of rights in the absence of a means of enforcement is entirely meaningless.
I can intrinsically sneak into your home, stab you to death, rape your wife and take all your property. You might want to come up with a better definition of what a right is. After enough thought you'll come to realise that what you call rights are just things you want to be able to do and think would make for a fair society. The desire for these things may be intrinsic, but without enforcement these "rights" are pure mental masturbation.
I love it when people say things like that, it gives me a good chuckle. You do know it's completely and utterly meaningless, yes? Rights mean exactly fuck all if they're not backed up by men with guns. The governments have the most guns, so they're the only ones who can, in any practical sense at all, grant rights.
What the hell does "the success of OS X and Firefox, and RealPlayer and Quicktime" have to do with the price Microsoft charge for interface documentation for workgroup servers? That is what Microsoft have been fined for - failure to comply with the 2004 judgment, which "required Microsoft to disclose interface documentation which would allow non-Microsoft work group servers to achieve full interoperability with Windows PCs and servers at a reasonable price".
Well, I don't work for Google or whoever they get their data from so I can't be absolutely sure, but they resemble known "easter eggs" I've seen examples of. I guess misplaced data points could be responsible for some of the errors. I suspect it's pretty hard to accidentally invent a road name for a nameless footpath though.
Maemo Mapper just pulls tiles from OpenStreetMap (or Google, Yahoo or MSN). The earlier versions of MM were hardly fast, but the latest is so slow as to be entirely useless. Perhaps it's usable on an N800 or N810, but given Nokia stopped bothering to fix the bug-ridden software for the 770 while the units were still on sale I'm in no hurry to spend a load more cash upgrading to another bug-ridden device they will abandon before bothering to make it work properly.
I believe the Yahoo satellite imagery was originally collected by a US government agency, so has no copyright restrictions.
Having mapped a couple of square miles for OpenStreetMap, I can attest to the fact that these alterations are incredibly common on Google Maps. There are half a dozen within half a mile of my house, most being added curves or extensions to dead-end roads and added or removed traffic islands. Google also cunningly add fake roads to the map data which correlate with features which look like roads on the satellite imagery but actually aren't - they're private drives, streams, paths rather than roads through woodland etc. The ones near me wouldn't seriously affect navigation, but some I've seen in the past would. Oh yes, Google Maps is also shifted by about 5m from WGS84 (GPS coordinates) round here, I presume this is intentional too.
IANAL, but I don't think that's the gist. The law as it stands can be (and is) enforced, the question is over what evidence is required to "prove" a violation. At the moment, the RIAA are only providing evidence of "making available". If this judgment goes against them they'll just have to gather evidence of actual distribution. In short, they have to show that somebody actually broke the law, not just show that somebody could easily break the law and might already have done so.
I get the feeling that Microsoft are losing their backwards-compatibility focus. Recent examples: Word disabling older file formats, Vista SP1 knowingly breaking popular software.
I was heftily OCing Bartons a few years after T-birds. Hardly up-to-date I know, but I don't build my own any more.