In other words, MS will be offering a semblance of what *Linux and *BSD already offer, except with the addition of DRM to violate our fair use rights and enslave us to the RIAA/MPAA.
How much is the RIAA/MPAA funding this behind the scenes?
This is really little more than a giant smoke screen to interweave DRM into the very fabric of all software.
Also, why would anyone use this over what *Linux and *BSD offer? Linux and BSD already great security and stability, but they don't shove DRM down your throat. Furthermore, Linux and BSD will also be able to take advantage of these new "security-class chips".
Finally, consider the source. When has MS ever given anyone a good reason to trust them? MS saying they'll help us is sort of like Jack The Ripper saying he's a protector of prostitutes.
Communism is not practiced in the US, not even in families. Though within a house-hold, there may be many things that are shared for the group benefit (similarly in a scientific lab), there are also some things that belong to one person and not another. Of course, the ratio of shared to private objects within a house or lab varies from one to the other.
But communism on a national scale in its pure form does not look good on paper: it looks like all of our property rights have vanished; thus, our privacy rights are gone.
So, you're going to base your criticism of the intelligence community on a version of it depicted in a Hollywood film?
No, actually I was using that as a humorous example.
Having watchers of watchers to the nth itineration does not eliminate corruption. It simply makes the system less efficient, more bloated, more costly, and creates more points where corruption can occur.
The problem with our system isn't the system itself, but the implementation of the system
But that's the problem with every form of government. Communism looks good on paper, but it was never, and will never be implemented well. The real problem is us.
Actually, I disagree. Communism does not look great on paper, nor does fascism, or any of that other totalitarian despotic crap. Communism -- on paper -- basically states that all of the things that individual's have worked to obtain will be taken away and given to the community pot: in other words, your right to property is completely lost, along with many other rights (i.e., w/o the right to property, there can be no privacy -- thus the right to privacy is meaningless).
I'm a libertarian, and I strongly value the important of our freedom of speech rights. That, however, does not mean we should have fifteen layers of Oversight.
Anyone here watch La Femme Nikita? Well, gee, lets see, there was Section, which was the anti-terrorist organization. Then there was Oversight, which was supposed to watch over Section and make sure everything was going alright. Then there was Center, which was supposed to make sure that everything was going ok in Oversight and Section. Then there was The Agency, which was supposed to make sure everything was going fine in Center, Oversight, and Section.
Do you see my point? We should not have a zillion layers over oversight -- watchers upon watchers upon watchers upon watchers, etc. Bad idea. That just means higher taxes, more beurocracy, less efficiency, and less accountability.
What you need is checks and balances, like the three government branches set up, as well as electability, and amendments.
In our government, the legislative, executive, and judicial branches all put checks and balances on each-other. Meanwhile, we the people, elect the legislative and executive branches, and in some cases, parts of the judicial branches (i.e., local judges).
Meanwhile, there is this little thing called The Constitution and The Amendments, which gaurentee that no branch goes way overboard; thus, protecting (sort of) our rights. Its not perfect, but its decent.
The same thing should be set up for government spying and information gathering.
The problem with our system isn't the system itself, but the implementation of the system, where there are layers upon layers of beurocratic bullshit, and where varioius government officials are bought off and paid for by organizations like the RIAA, MPAA, BSA, etc.
So what's needed is two things: (1) Eliminate the beurocratic bullshit; (2) Get serious on political contributions, bribes, blackmail, etc.
Only these two things, and our system would be much better? Well, for the most part, yes. It wouldn't deal with Christian Conservative idiots getting elected who think that the worst crime on earth is homosexuality and prostitution, and who think that the purple teletubby is gay, and who also believe that we should all be brainwashed in school to be Christians. But it would deal with alot of problems.
Of course, accomplishing those two things -- eliminating hte beurocratic bullshit and dealing with politicians being owned -- is a difficult goal. To eliminate beurocratic BS, you have to destroy useless organizations and eliminate useless positions -- something w/c is not favored by some of those in power b/c they'd be put out of a job. To stop politicians from being owned, you'd have to eliminate political campaign contributions -- something w/c politicians won't like as it won't help them get elected, and will actually allow people other than Democrats and Republican's to win.
I'm not familiar with the intimate details of ISP-services, but here's a question.
Why can't ISP's just offer users the option of how much upload/download bandwidth they want. On my cable modem, I get about 100-300 KB/s download bandwidth, and about 40 KB/s upload bandwidth. That amounts to about 140-340 KB/s bandwidth total. Lets say that its 240 KB/s.
So why can't my ISP just offer me any combination of upload/download bandwidth totalling up to that?
Or any percentage combination?
Or why can't they set up a dynamic system where the amount of upload and download bandwidth automatically shifts depending on what I'm doing?
The idea that you can infringe on a patent by purifying a protein is ludacrous.
All purification techniques are basically the same. There are basically say about 20 ways to purify a protein (i.e., by size when folded, size when denatured, charge, substrate binding, shape, pH, hydrophobicity, genetically fusing the protein to a tag such as GST and using affinity for that tag to purify, etc). Any procedure used to purify a protein not-before-purified is simply the right implementation of these processes. This is something which takes a while (usually about a year, reserved for grad. students) to get right, because you basically have to have an assay for your protein activity and find a way to purify the protein via these methods by trial and error; you can tell how pure the protein is by measuring activity levels.
In other words, there is NO NEW technique that anyone invents now-a-days when purifying a protein. People figure out new applications and combinations of old techniques, or new specific implementations. However, these are NOT new techniques themselves (i.e., often times, the new implementation may be running the purification at pH 6 rather than pH 7). They are certainly not worthy of patents.
Of course, the greed of biotech companies and the gneral plundering of science knows no limit in the corporate world. They aren't real scientists. Like there are basketball players who play for the love of the game (i.e., Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson, Larry Bird), and then there's the guys who play and its all about themselves and making money (i.e., Allen Iverson and Latrell Sprewell). Same thing with biology. There are real scientists who do what they do for the love of science (i.e., Watson and Crick, Rosalin Franklin), and then there's scientists who are all about their own ego and making money (i.e., Creig Ventor).
Had scientists realized that their discoveries would be used as the basis for patents restricting the progress of science, they would have thought up the idea of patent-left, and forced anything based off their ideas to remain free for all to use.
When Linus Pauling pioneered the first protein techniques, he assumed that any modifications to his techniques would be made freely available for all; that was the culture of science. When Rosalin Franklin, Watson, and Crick discovered the structure of DNA, they assumed that the knowledge and benefits gained resulting from the knowledge of that structure would be made freely available to all; that was the culture of science. In most scientists minds today, that is still the assumption. Unfortunately, due to proprietary parasites on the scientific community, that assumption is invalid. These proprietary parasites are not members of the scientific community -- they are parasites on it. They add nothing or very little, and hurt the community at large. They are much like the corporate raiders of the net today, who have become a plague to *our* internet.
The scientific community needs to wake up and disinfect itself of these parasites. The scientific community should start copylefting publications and patent-lefting inventions.
What really needs to happen is that the court needs to rule that any "technology" which could infringe upon fair use, restrict it, or make it inordinantly difficult to excercise fair-use rights, should be illegal. Fair use rights should be gauranteed.
Failing that, however, here's the only acceptable outcome for this case:
1. Anyone who bought these defective CD's should get their money back, damages in time lost, and damages in terms of equipment damage (i.e., these CD's lock up some CD-drive).
2. A warning must be placed on the "CD" case, saying exactly what limitations are imposed, what quality problems exist, and what hardware incompatabilities exist.
3. Anyone who buys one of these defective CD's should be able to return it for a refund.
In reference to giving control of.org to Open Sourced Advocates, Jay Maynard said:
giving it to them just because they're open source advocates is a Bad Idea. Give it to the mif and only if they're the best qualified to do the job."
In contrast to the current system, where control of things is handed over to people paid for and bought by big business, who were given the job simply because they're advocates of business interests?
They may not be the best qualified to do the job -- but they're certainly better than ANYONE who's affiliated with a business or has special business/proprietary interests. Anyone affiliated with business will for sure screw over the netizens in favor of the Raiders of the Lost Net.
A simple rule for this should be that whoever's going to be involved in controlling dot.org should have NOTHING to do with business. The people running dot.org should be people interested in the ideals of the internet -- people like Lawrence Lessig -- not people who want to milk the internet for all its worth.
We the netizens -- and I distinguish netizens from neticrooks like ICANN, BSA, RIAA, MPAA, and other organizations who stand united AGAINST the ideals of we the netizens -- need to reclaim the internet from the corporate raiders.
The corporate raiders have won the first of the Internet-Wars: they already completely control the dot.com's. There are two more wars to fight: the dot.net's, and the dot.org's. The dot.net's seem to be at a standstill, and we the netizen's seem to have the upper edge on the dot.org's.
It was expected that the enemy neticrooks -- the internet-nazi's, the net-raiders, the spamalots -- would win the dot.com's: that's their home turf. Dot.com, as in commercial.
The dot.net's are more neutral ground, where the playing field is relatively level. There are many commercial interests in dot.net addresses, and many non-commercial interests in the dot.net addresses.
But the dot.org's, thats OUR home turf. That's OUR state, our town. That's a battle WE can not afford to lose. That would be as bad as when Al Gore lost his home state to GW Bush. If you have any shot of winning a war, you have to be able to defend YOUR territory. Dot.org is our territory. But the Axis powers aligned against us -- the spammers, the scammers, the net-raiders, the corporate interests, the RIAA's, the BSA's, the Microsofts, the MPAA's -- they have already begun to launch their invasion of our territory.
If we the netizens can't even defend what's clearly OURS, the dot.org's, and have them regulated by people concerned with the true ideals of the net; the ideals of freedom of speech; of privacy, communication, information, efficiency; if we can't achieve at least that, then we're doomed.
The dot.org's are, in short, Our Last Hope.
And we need to stand together in defending them. We cannot be concerned about petty differences among the different factions of the information-freedom movement -- i.e., the eternal conflict between OSS and FS, between Stallman and Raymond -- nor can we even be concerned about the major differences between us netizens, such as those between people at the Christian Coalition and at NARAL. If we're going to do that, we will be defeated from within from internal conflict. Nor can we invite traitors among our ranks simply to help us win the immediate battle -- i.e., RIAA.org, which does not really stand for the ideals of the net, despite being an "organization"; in reality, such "organizations" are really little more than businesses in disguise. What we need, as Netanyahu says in "Fighting Terrorism", is MORAL CLARITY.
We do not stop to ask "why the corporations want to raid and destroy dot.org". We do not try to understand it from "their point of view," nor do we get "touchy-feely" with them. We do not compromise with them, for any compromise with them would not be worth the paper it was written on; a compromise with such net-nazi's would be little different than the "treaties" signed with Hitler that said "ok, he would stop expanding now".
What these net-nazi's want is breathing room. And the more breathing room THEY have, the more difficult it is for US netizens to breath.
What we need to do is treat these Net-Raiders like what they are: parasites, virus', infections, plagues. And we are the host; we, the netizens; and the home we built, the Internet. And like parasites, these net-raiders, the stronger they get, the weaker we get; but we the host will not die -- a fate much worse is in store for us if we don't fight this infection. They are like a virus which infects its host and gives it extreme pain, taking away all its strength and all its capacity for pleasure, leaving only the capacity for pain, but does not kill. If we allow this infection to spread, the internet will not die -- it will live on in eternal torture and disfigurement: a fate worse than death.
So here's a simple three-step plan to reclaim what is OURS:
1. Fight off the onslaught of this plague in our capital, dot.org. We must eliminate every trace of corporatism from dot.org: both in the organizations and in its control/infrastructure. All regulations and protocols must be transparent. There must be a constitution similar to our own, gauranteeing the rights of the.org netizens. Any control of.org must be through democratic means. Those controlling it should be democratically elected via a 50/50 combination of "electoral votes" and "majority rule". One-time terms of 4 years ONLY will be given to those voted in, with a 2-year phase out while the next elected member if "phasing in". I suggest a system similar to the one in the US, w/ three branches -- the legislative, the judicial, and the executive. This keeps checks and balances in effect. Importantly, however, the number of people in the 3 branches should not total over more than 100, and each persons role should be unique and clearly defined. There should not be so many people in it so that accountability is impossible.
2. Reclaim the neutral zone, dot.net. Dot.net can be likened to a suburbs surrounding our capital.
3. Launch a full strike into the land the neti-nazi's stole from us, dot.com. By this time, dot.org and dot.net will be under our control. You'd think that would make taking dot.com easier: wrong. The more you take from the greedy, the harder they will hold on to what is remaining. The only way to reclaim dot.com will be out of the dying hands of the Net-Raiders.
Strategies.
1. Identify traitors in their ranks. It is important that we obtain some corporate allies. Not all corporations are Net-Raiders, greedily milking the gold-mine for all its worth. IBM may be an example of such a case. We must forge alliances with such corporate forces which are not netinazi's. Redhat's another good example, though their trademark gripe is questionable.
2. Make them fight amongst themselves. We must take advantages of differences between the netinazi's. You don't take on the most powerful economic forces in the world by yourself. You make them fight amongst eachother. We want the RIAA to sue the BSA for supporting clients who make programs which can copy songs; we want the BSA to sue the RIAA for having unlicensed copies of MS Windows. While they're doing that, we want to be taking shots at them from the site. The more resources they spend fighting amongst eachother, the less they can spend fighting us or defending themselves from us.
3. Retain moral clarity. In "Fighting Terrorism," Netanyahu said that the standard for entrance into the coalition against terrorism must be that "those nations entering the coalition must expunge the terrorist groups within their own nation". Similarly, our standard for entry into our coalition must be that all members must believe that the internet should not be controlled by special interests, and decisions should not be made for special interest (i.e., Intel Insite & Yoga Inside) benefits. Rather, it should be decisions be made in respect to the rights of netizens; and where those are in conflict, to benefit the net-community.
4. Remain united. If we allow our differences to become the focus, we will surely lose. There will be plenty of time for fighting out differences later, after the war's won; and there's even a place for airing differences while fighting the war. But when standing against the forces of evil -- the Raiders of the Lost Net -- we must be united.
Netanyahu sued by Yahoo! for Netanyahu.com
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Ruling the Root
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· Score: 3, Funny
In other news today, Benjamin Netanyahu, Prime Minister of Israel, was sued today by Yahoo! for trademark infringement. Apparently, Benjamin Netanyahu had the audacity -- despite being a well-known public figure -- to violate Yahoo!'s trademarks by registering his own personal website, Netanyahu.com. Apparently, Yahoo! is suing Netanyahu for taking advantage of the Yahoo! sound that Yahoo! worked so hard to market. Yahoo! claims that the sound of Netanyahu.com inherently takes advantage of Yahoo!'s trademarks.
Good idea, needs more development
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Carbon Sequestration
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· Score: 3, Insightful
This is a good idea, but it needs more development -- studies need to be done on the possible side-effects of storing CO2 in water.
People are reacting prematurely paranoid about this. The best one in the article was a criticism of the plan to reforest with genetic modifications so trees can take up more CO2: "What if there's a fire in these reforested areas?" Gee, brilliant comment. Back in the Jurassic period, when more of the world was covered with forest than ever before, there didn't seem to be much of a problem from a few local forest areas burning.
Natural forest fires are often a good thing -- they often occur in regions with many old, dry, dead trees, which are blocking out light and preventing new trees from sprouting up.
This is the dumbest scheme I've ever heard of, because the ISP' are limiting the bandwidth available to users.
The best thing for ISP' is if people pay a certain amount for a PRIORITY. I.e., you pay $100 for top level priority, $75 for high priority, $50 for average priority, $25 for low priority, and so on. What this would mean is that people pay an extra rate for the extra priority they want. Avid file-sharers need top level priority, so they can override other requests for bandwidth and get quick downloads. People who just surf the net need low priority, because its more than enough to quickly display most web sites.
This way, people pay for exactly what they get. You want to be gaurenteed to download files as fast as possible, given the conditions (i.e., having priority over everyone else), fine. You pay the higher priority rate.
Priorities would work like this. The percent of the time that your request for bandwidth over-rides your neighbor depends on how many more times you're paying than he is. You neighbor pays $50 and you pay $100? Then in that case, your requests are granted 2x as often as his; that is, if both of you request bandwidth, 66% of the time it goes to you first, 33% of the time to him first. And so on and so forth.
I don't mean to put a damper on your party, but when it comes to a choice, c'mon, you choose your woman, whatever it is she wants.
Eating out your girlfriend's pussy beats sitting in front of a computer any day, and that's coming from me -- a guy who's a major game player and uses his computer for evolutionary studies.
I mean, do you really need all that stuff? And does it really need to run throughout the entire place? I can't blame her if she wants parts of the house like the bathroom and bedroom to be old-fashioned -- i.e., lots of wood, maybe a fireplace (if you had a house) -- and non-technological.
Unless your girlfriend happens to be interested in computers, I doubt it'll be an avenue of quality time spent together. About the only thing your computers will be good for in your relationship might be setting the tone with music. So maybe download some romantic songs like the Moonlight Sonata parts I and III, and Fuer Elise.
Your neighbors probably have no legal grounds for such a request, as one can hardly be considered to have privacy in one's yard, which is in the view of numerous neighbors.
However, if they have built a wall around their yard for privacy, and your camera is such that it can see over their wall, they might have better legal grounds.
However, despite the legal grounds, you may want to keep on good terms with your neighbors. Since your camera is in fixed position, a certain part of what it videorecords will always be yard, another (higher) part will be sky. Simply black out the yard part with some software. I don't know of what software may do this, but its a relatively simple thing -- you just black out say the lower fourth of what your webcam records, which is ground anyways and not sky.
And the anti-cheating organization? Come on. Don't these people have lives'? Its just a game. Lets not bring this to the level where we destroy the game because we take it so seriously, which sucks the fun out of it (prime example, chess). Also, many non-cheating players have no problem playing with players who use cheats.
When I played Descent 2 on Kali, I used to play against some of the people who had hacks so they could fire two EarthShaker missles at a rate as fast as Gauss cannons. It made me better, and was fun.
I played Descent 2 for a long time on Kali, and there were always lots of cheaters. No need for Interplay to crack down.
Come on.
The fact is, most people don't use the hacks, thus its not a serious problem. Of those who do use the hacks, many of them only play against other cheaters.
The solution is to give the host of a game -- the person who started it -- the power to kick users out of the game temporarily or permanently; also give them the power to permanently ban IP addresses from that game.
I played Descent 2 on Kali for about 5 years (now I play Descent 3), and cheaters were never a serious problem.
Also, everyone seems to accuse you of cheating when you're just better than they are. "You move so fast in Descent, you must cheat"; "No, I just use triple strafing: travel in 3 directions at once".
Reform? Ha. Only in the sense that "America's return to traditional family values (i.e., chastizing teenagers for exploring their developing sexuality)" is a reform.
This is not a reform. This is a throwback, a de-evolution.
How can anyone buy the idea that eliminating democratic elections for the representatives is somehow beneficial?
ALL members of a group deciding domain-name issues should be elected (like congressmen). There needs to be a constitution of sorts to resolve domain-name conflicts. Conflicts should be decided so as to respect indivual's rights and protect the public interest, NOT to benefit corporations. To ensure that the members of such an organization don't violate that constitution, there needs to be a panel which can over-turn any ruling the elected board makes as being unconstitutional.
Really, the problem is that ICANN is private. Private organizations DO NOT work well to benefit the public if they are monopolies and have no competition, as is the case with ICANN. If the government wanted to try a private solution, they should have set it up so that there is competition. Without competition, private solutions to "protect the public interest" invariably degenerate into protecting corporate and special interests, at the expense of the public good and invidual rights.
Firstly, I'm not suggesting we do it all at once. We can deregulate part of it first, then the rest later once things are worked out.
Secondly, there's a difference between the government regulating air-pollution and the governmnet saying "you can't breathe the air". In effect, what the government is doing here is saying "you can't breathe the air, unless you can pay alot of money for it". That's wrong.
At the very least, the priviledge to use the airwaves should not be decided by who can pay the most.
Everyone should have an opportunity to use the airwaves. The scheme proposed by Lawrence Lessig is what I'm thinking of here.
Even without increased capacity, there are ways to share the airwaves without having anyone own them.
Sorry, but the idea of the government -- or a company -- controlling or having the rights to a certain frequency is about as obnoxious as the government saying they own all the air in the US.
The very same technology that regulates printing in LAN's at universities can regulate the airwaves. Two people send a request to a printer to print a document at the same time; the printer doesn't know which to process first, so it waits a random number of milliseconds (different # for each terminal) and then sends a repeat request; whichever one gets back first is printed first. Another way to do it would be to have the printer just randomly pick one. An alternate, and superior way, would be for the printer to print the shorter document first.
Similar algorithms could govern who is using any particular frequency at any particular time.
Furthermore, let us not forget that we don't have to deregulate the entire spectrum in one swoop. We could deregulate half of it first and let the technologies for controlling access to that half perfect.
The point is, everyone should have access to the airwaves. It should not be based on how much money you have. No one has any right to claim they own the air or the airwaves, just as no one has the right to claim they own their air: that's bullshit.
Sorry, I can't much help you there, since I don't use Python, Perl, or any other scripting languages aside from sed (alot) and awk (rarely).
But here's my conjecture for starters. Sorry if this is typical, but its the first thing that comes to mind and the easiest to fix if wrong: (1) Either your version of nohup has a bug or is corrupted; (2) or your version of Python has a bug or is corrupted. I suggest you try "reinstalling" nohup and Python. If that doesn't work, check the BUG history on these things and try using a different version of each.
I know, this is the typical help you get when you call your computer's support service:
YOU: One specific feature of this program isn't working.
THEM: Well, when did it start happening and what was the last thing you did before it started happening?
YOU: I haven't changed anything, it just started happening.
...then he takes you through a lot of pointless bullshit which has nothing to do with solving your problem, but makes it seem like he's doing his job.
THEM: Ok, sir, after performing 1000 useless tests, I've determined that your program is corrupted. Since re-installing it didn't fix it, I'm going to have to request that you delete your entire hard drive and reinstall everything.
YOU: What? You want me to wipe my freakin' hard drive?
THEM: Yes, sir, that appears to be the solution.
YOU: Well fuck that. I could've "fixed" the problem that way.
I'm sure everyone knows about this...except newcomers to UNIX.
Its called nohup. Nohup is a command that will prevent your job from being terminated once you log out of your account. Always leaving those "please do not log out of this account" message to your co-workers? Well, that's all fine unless your co-workers are assholes. Also, even if they're not, you might want to do them a favor by doing this.
What you do is type (wihout the quotes) "nohup " where is the command or program you want not to be interrupted upon logout. You can type in normal syntax.
Another essential "command" if your at the command line and are going to start somethin which takes awhile is (w/o quotes) " but newcomers won't know them, nor will people who just download cygwin to use on their Windows OS, because some scientific applications require Linux.
This is yet another example of a good project being hindered by the meritless DMCA. Because they feel that it would be against the DMCA for them to open up their source, due to copy-protection crap, they have to split from the LGPL'ed project.
How many times must a Jack Valentini and the MPAA Cry wolf, Before we listen no more
And how many more Billions must he make before we believe him no more
Seriously, how many times does this paranoid schizophrenic have yell, "the bogeyman, video's or peer-to-peers, coming to steal all the money I worked so hard to steal from consumers" before we ignore him?
Slashdot Mirror
In other words, MS will be offering a semblance of what *Linux and *BSD already offer, except with the addition of DRM to violate our fair use rights and enslave us to the RIAA/MPAA.
How much is the RIAA/MPAA funding this behind the scenes?
This is really little more than a giant smoke screen to interweave DRM into the very fabric of all software.
Also, why would anyone use this over what *Linux and *BSD offer? Linux and BSD already great security and stability, but they don't shove DRM down your throat. Furthermore, Linux and BSD will also be able to take advantage of these new "security-class chips".
Finally, consider the source. When has MS ever given anyone a good reason to trust them? MS saying they'll help us is sort of like Jack The Ripper saying he's a protector of prostitutes.
Communism is not practiced in the US, not even in families. Though within a house-hold, there may be many things that are shared for the group benefit (similarly in a scientific lab), there are also some things that belong to one person and not another. Of course, the ratio of shared to private objects within a house or lab varies from one to the other.
But communism on a national scale in its pure form does not look good on paper: it looks like all of our property rights have vanished; thus, our privacy rights are gone.
So, you're going to base your criticism of the intelligence community on a version of it depicted in a Hollywood film?
No, actually I was using that as a humorous example.
Having watchers of watchers to the nth itineration does not eliminate corruption. It simply makes the system less efficient, more bloated, more costly, and creates more points where corruption can occur.
What you need is circular watcher-ism.
The problem with our system isn't the system itself, but the implementation of the system
But that's the problem with every form of government. Communism looks good on paper, but it was never, and will never be implemented well. The real problem is us.
Actually, I disagree. Communism does not look great on paper, nor does fascism, or any of that other totalitarian despotic crap. Communism -- on paper -- basically states that all of the things that individual's have worked to obtain will be taken away and given to the community pot: in other words, your right to property is completely lost, along with many other rights (i.e., w/o the right to property, there can be no privacy -- thus the right to privacy is meaningless).
I'm a libertarian, and I strongly value the important of our freedom of speech rights. That, however, does not mean we should have fifteen layers of Oversight.
Anyone here watch La Femme Nikita? Well, gee, lets see, there was Section, which was the anti-terrorist organization. Then there was Oversight, which was supposed to watch over Section and make sure everything was going alright. Then there was Center, which was supposed to make sure that everything was going ok in Oversight and Section. Then there was The Agency, which was supposed to make sure everything was going fine in Center, Oversight, and Section.
Do you see my point? We should not have a zillion layers over oversight -- watchers upon watchers upon watchers upon watchers, etc. Bad idea. That just means higher taxes, more beurocracy, less efficiency, and less accountability.
What you need is checks and balances, like the three government branches set up, as well as electability, and amendments.
In our government, the legislative, executive, and judicial branches all put checks and balances on each-other. Meanwhile, we the people, elect the legislative and executive branches, and in some cases, parts of the judicial branches (i.e., local judges).
Meanwhile, there is this little thing called The Constitution and The Amendments, which gaurentee that no branch goes way overboard; thus, protecting (sort of) our rights. Its not perfect, but its decent.
The same thing should be set up for government spying and information gathering.
The problem with our system isn't the system itself, but the implementation of the system, where there are layers upon layers of beurocratic bullshit, and where varioius government officials are bought off and paid for by organizations like the RIAA, MPAA, BSA, etc.
So what's needed is two things: (1) Eliminate the beurocratic bullshit; (2) Get serious on political contributions, bribes, blackmail, etc.
Only these two things, and our system would be much better? Well, for the most part, yes. It wouldn't deal with Christian Conservative idiots getting elected who think that the worst crime on earth is homosexuality and prostitution, and who think that the purple teletubby is gay, and who also believe that we should all be brainwashed in school to be Christians. But it would deal with alot of problems.
Of course, accomplishing those two things -- eliminating hte beurocratic bullshit and dealing with politicians being owned -- is a difficult goal. To eliminate beurocratic BS, you have to destroy useless organizations and eliminate useless positions -- something w/c is not favored by some of those in power b/c they'd be put out of a job. To stop politicians from being owned, you'd have to eliminate political campaign contributions -- something w/c politicians won't like as it won't help them get elected, and will actually allow people other than Democrats and Republican's to win.
But my question was this:
Is there anything physically preventing them from offering a dynamic upload/download pipe, where it adjusts to what the users are doing automatically?
Or is it just that they choose not to do that?
I'm not familiar with the intimate details of ISP-services, but here's a question.
Why can't ISP's just offer users the option of how much upload/download bandwidth they want. On my cable modem, I get about 100-300 KB/s download bandwidth, and about 40 KB/s upload bandwidth. That amounts to about 140-340 KB/s bandwidth total. Lets say that its 240 KB/s.
So why can't my ISP just offer me any combination of upload/download bandwidth totalling up to that?
Or any percentage combination?
Or why can't they set up a dynamic system where the amount of upload and download bandwidth automatically shifts depending on what I'm doing?
The idea that you can infringe on a patent by purifying a protein is ludacrous.
All purification techniques are basically the same. There are basically say about 20 ways to purify a protein (i.e., by size when folded, size when denatured, charge, substrate binding, shape, pH, hydrophobicity, genetically fusing the protein to a tag such as GST and using affinity for that tag to purify, etc). Any procedure used to purify a protein not-before-purified is simply the right implementation of these processes. This is something which takes a while (usually about a year, reserved for grad. students) to get right, because you basically have to have an assay for your protein activity and find a way to purify the protein via these methods by trial and error; you can tell how pure the protein is by measuring activity levels.
In other words, there is NO NEW technique that anyone invents now-a-days when purifying a protein. People figure out new applications and combinations of old techniques, or new specific implementations. However, these are NOT new techniques themselves (i.e., often times, the new implementation may be running the purification at pH 6 rather than pH 7). They are certainly not worthy of patents.
Of course, the greed of biotech companies and the gneral plundering of science knows no limit in the corporate world. They aren't real scientists. Like there are basketball players who play for the love of the game (i.e., Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson, Larry Bird), and then there's the guys who play and its all about themselves and making money (i.e., Allen Iverson and Latrell Sprewell). Same thing with biology. There are real scientists who do what they do for the love of science (i.e., Watson and Crick, Rosalin Franklin), and then there's scientists who are all about their own ego and making money (i.e., Creig Ventor).
Had scientists realized that their discoveries would be used as the basis for patents restricting the progress of science, they would have thought up the idea of patent-left, and forced anything based off their ideas to remain free for all to use.
When Linus Pauling pioneered the first protein techniques, he assumed that any modifications to his techniques would be made freely available for all; that was the culture of science. When Rosalin Franklin, Watson, and Crick discovered the structure of DNA, they assumed that the knowledge and benefits gained resulting from the knowledge of that structure would be made freely available to all; that was the culture of science. In most scientists minds today, that is still the assumption. Unfortunately, due to proprietary parasites on the scientific community, that assumption is invalid. These proprietary parasites are not members of the scientific community -- they are parasites on it. They add nothing or very little, and hurt the community at large. They are much like the corporate raiders of the net today, who have become a plague to *our* internet.
The scientific community needs to wake up and disinfect itself of these parasites. The scientific community should start copylefting publications and patent-lefting inventions.
What really needs to happen is that the court needs to rule that any "technology" which could infringe upon fair use, restrict it, or make it inordinantly difficult to excercise fair-use rights, should be illegal. Fair use rights should be gauranteed.
Failing that, however, here's the only acceptable outcome for this case:
1. Anyone who bought these defective CD's should get their money back, damages in time lost, and damages in terms of equipment damage (i.e., these CD's lock up some CD-drive).
2. A warning must be placed on the "CD" case, saying exactly what limitations are imposed, what quality problems exist, and what hardware incompatabilities exist.
3. Anyone who buys one of these defective CD's should be able to return it for a refund.
In reference to giving control of .org to Open Sourced Advocates, Jay Maynard said:
.org netizens. Any control of .org must be through democratic means. Those controlling it should be democratically elected via a 50/50 combination of "electoral votes" and "majority rule". One-time terms of 4 years ONLY will be given to those voted in, with a 2-year phase out while the next elected member if "phasing in". I suggest a system similar to the one in the US, w/ three branches -- the legislative, the judicial, and the executive. This keeps checks and balances in effect. Importantly, however, the number of people in the 3 branches should not total over more than 100, and each persons role should be unique and clearly defined. There should not be so many people in it so that accountability is impossible.
giving it to them just because they're open source advocates is a Bad Idea. Give it to the mif and only if they're the best qualified to do the job."
In contrast to the current system, where control of things is handed over to people paid for and bought by big business, who were given the job simply because they're advocates of business interests?
They may not be the best qualified to do the job -- but they're certainly better than ANYONE who's affiliated with a business or has special business/proprietary interests. Anyone affiliated with business will for sure screw over the netizens in favor of the Raiders of the Lost Net.
A simple rule for this should be that whoever's going to be involved in controlling dot.org should have NOTHING to do with business. The people running dot.org should be people interested in the ideals of the internet -- people like Lawrence Lessig -- not people who want to milk the internet for all its worth.
We the netizens -- and I distinguish netizens from neticrooks like ICANN, BSA, RIAA, MPAA, and other organizations who stand united AGAINST the ideals of we the netizens -- need to reclaim the internet from the corporate raiders.
The corporate raiders have won the first of the Internet-Wars: they already completely control the dot.com's. There are two more wars to fight: the dot.net's, and the dot.org's. The dot.net's seem to be at a standstill, and we the netizen's seem to have the upper edge on the dot.org's.
It was expected that the enemy neticrooks -- the internet-nazi's, the net-raiders, the spamalots -- would win the dot.com's: that's their home turf. Dot.com, as in commercial.
The dot.net's are more neutral ground, where the playing field is relatively level. There are many commercial interests in dot.net addresses, and many non-commercial interests in the dot.net addresses.
But the dot.org's, thats OUR home turf. That's OUR state, our town. That's a battle WE can not afford to lose. That would be as bad as when Al Gore lost his home state to GW Bush. If you have any shot of winning a war, you have to be able to defend YOUR territory. Dot.org is our territory. But the Axis powers aligned against us -- the spammers, the scammers, the net-raiders, the corporate interests, the RIAA's, the BSA's, the Microsofts, the MPAA's -- they have already begun to launch their invasion of our territory.
If we the netizens can't even defend what's clearly OURS, the dot.org's, and have them regulated by people concerned with the true ideals of the net; the ideals of freedom of speech; of privacy, communication, information, efficiency; if we can't achieve at least that, then we're doomed.
The dot.org's are, in short, Our Last Hope.
And we need to stand together in defending them. We cannot be concerned about petty differences among the different factions of the information-freedom movement -- i.e., the eternal conflict between OSS and FS, between Stallman and Raymond -- nor can we even be concerned about the major differences between us netizens, such as those between people at the Christian Coalition and at NARAL. If we're going to do that, we will be defeated from within from internal conflict. Nor can we invite traitors among our ranks simply to help us win the immediate battle -- i.e., RIAA.org, which does not really stand for the ideals of the net, despite being an "organization"; in reality, such "organizations" are really little more than businesses in disguise. What we need, as Netanyahu says in "Fighting Terrorism", is MORAL CLARITY.
We do not stop to ask "why the corporations want to raid and destroy dot.org". We do not try to understand it from "their point of view," nor do we get "touchy-feely" with them. We do not compromise with them, for any compromise with them would not be worth the paper it was written on; a compromise with such net-nazi's would be little different than the "treaties" signed with Hitler that said "ok, he would stop expanding now".
What these net-nazi's want is breathing room. And the more breathing room THEY have, the more difficult it is for US netizens to breath.
What we need to do is treat these Net-Raiders like what they are: parasites, virus', infections, plagues. And we are the host; we, the netizens; and the home we built, the Internet. And like parasites, these net-raiders, the stronger they get, the weaker we get; but we the host will not die -- a fate much worse is in store for us if we don't fight this infection. They are like a virus which infects its host and gives it extreme pain, taking away all its strength and all its capacity for pleasure, leaving only the capacity for pain, but does not kill. If we allow this infection to spread, the internet will not die -- it will live on in eternal torture and disfigurement: a fate worse than death.
So here's a simple three-step plan to reclaim what is OURS:
1. Fight off the onslaught of this plague in our capital, dot.org. We must eliminate every trace of corporatism from dot.org: both in the organizations and in its control/infrastructure. All regulations and protocols must be transparent. There must be a constitution similar to our own, gauranteeing the rights of the
2. Reclaim the neutral zone, dot.net. Dot.net can be likened to a suburbs surrounding our capital.
3. Launch a full strike into the land the neti-nazi's stole from us, dot.com. By this time, dot.org and dot.net will be under our control. You'd think that would make taking dot.com easier: wrong. The more you take from the greedy, the harder they will hold on to what is remaining. The only way to reclaim dot.com will be out of the dying hands of the Net-Raiders.
Strategies.
1. Identify traitors in their ranks. It is important that we obtain some corporate allies. Not all corporations are Net-Raiders, greedily milking the gold-mine for all its worth. IBM may be an example of such a case. We must forge alliances with such corporate forces which are not netinazi's. Redhat's another good example, though their trademark gripe is questionable.
2. Make them fight amongst themselves. We must take advantages of differences between the netinazi's. You don't take on the most powerful economic forces in the world by yourself. You make them fight amongst eachother. We want the RIAA to sue the BSA for supporting clients who make programs which can copy songs; we want the BSA to sue the RIAA for having unlicensed copies of MS Windows. While they're doing that, we want to be taking shots at them from the site. The more resources they spend fighting amongst eachother, the less they can spend fighting us or defending themselves from us.
3. Retain moral clarity. In "Fighting Terrorism," Netanyahu said that the standard for entrance into the coalition against terrorism must be that "those nations entering the coalition must expunge the terrorist groups within their own nation". Similarly, our standard for entry into our coalition must be that all members must believe that the internet should not be controlled by special interests, and decisions should not be made for special interest (i.e., Intel Insite & Yoga Inside) benefits. Rather, it should be decisions be made in respect to the rights of netizens; and where those are in conflict, to benefit the net-community.
4. Remain united. If we allow our differences to become the focus, we will surely lose. There will be plenty of time for fighting out differences later, after the war's won; and there's even a place for airing differences while fighting the war. But when standing against the forces of evil -- the Raiders of the Lost Net -- we must be united.
In other news today, Benjamin Netanyahu, Prime Minister of Israel, was sued today by Yahoo! for trademark infringement. Apparently, Benjamin Netanyahu had the audacity -- despite being a well-known public figure -- to violate Yahoo!'s trademarks by registering his own personal website, Netanyahu.com. Apparently, Yahoo! is suing Netanyahu for taking advantage of the Yahoo! sound that Yahoo! worked so hard to market. Yahoo! claims that the sound of Netanyahu.com inherently takes advantage of Yahoo!'s trademarks.
This is a good idea, but it needs more development -- studies need to be done on the possible side-effects of storing CO2 in water.
People are reacting prematurely paranoid about this. The best one in the article was a criticism of the plan to reforest with genetic modifications so trees can take up more CO2: "What if there's a fire in these reforested areas?" Gee, brilliant comment. Back in the Jurassic period, when more of the world was covered with forest than ever before, there didn't seem to be much of a problem from a few local forest areas burning.
Natural forest fires are often a good thing -- they often occur in regions with many old, dry, dead trees, which are blocking out light and preventing new trees from sprouting up.
This is the dumbest scheme I've ever heard of, because the ISP' are limiting the bandwidth available to users.
The best thing for ISP' is if people pay a certain amount for a PRIORITY. I.e., you pay $100 for top level priority, $75 for high priority, $50 for average priority, $25 for low priority, and so on. What this would mean is that people pay an extra rate for the extra priority they want. Avid file-sharers need top level priority, so they can override other requests for bandwidth and get quick downloads. People who just surf the net need low priority, because its more than enough to quickly display most web sites.
This way, people pay for exactly what they get. You want to be gaurenteed to download files as fast as possible, given the conditions (i.e., having priority over everyone else), fine. You pay the higher priority rate.
Priorities would work like this. The percent of the time that your request for bandwidth over-rides your neighbor depends on how many more times you're paying than he is. You neighbor pays $50 and you pay $100? Then in that case, your requests are granted 2x as often as his; that is, if both of you request bandwidth, 66% of the time it goes to you first, 33% of the time to him first. And so on and so forth.
A network point in the bathroom?
I don't mean to put a damper on your party, but when it comes to a choice, c'mon, you choose your woman, whatever it is she wants.
Eating out your girlfriend's pussy beats sitting in front of a computer any day, and that's coming from me -- a guy who's a major game player and uses his computer for evolutionary studies.
I mean, do you really need all that stuff? And does it really need to run throughout the entire place? I can't blame her if she wants parts of the house like the bathroom and bedroom to be old-fashioned -- i.e., lots of wood, maybe a fireplace (if you had a house) -- and non-technological.
Unless your girlfriend happens to be interested in computers, I doubt it'll be an avenue of quality time spent together. About the only thing your computers will be good for in your relationship might be setting the tone with music. So maybe download some romantic songs like the Moonlight Sonata parts I and III, and Fuer Elise.
Your neighbors probably have no legal grounds for such a request, as one can hardly be considered to have privacy in one's yard, which is in the view of numerous neighbors.
However, if they have built a wall around their yard for privacy, and your camera is such that it can see over their wall, they might have better legal grounds.
However, despite the legal grounds, you may want to keep on good terms with your neighbors. Since your camera is in fixed position, a certain part of what it videorecords will always be yard, another (higher) part will be sky. Simply black out the yard part with some software. I don't know of what software may do this, but its a relatively simple thing -- you just black out say the lower fourth of what your webcam records, which is ground anyways and not sky.
And the anti-cheating organization? Come on. Don't these people have lives'? Its just a game. Lets not bring this to the level where we destroy the game because we take it so seriously, which sucks the fun out of it (prime example, chess). Also, many non-cheating players have no problem playing with players who use cheats.
When I played Descent 2 on Kali, I used to play against some of the people who had hacks so they could fire two EarthShaker missles at a rate as fast as Gauss cannons. It made me better, and was fun.
I played Descent 2 for a long time on Kali, and there were always lots of cheaters. No need for Interplay to crack down.
Come on.
The fact is, most people don't use the hacks, thus its not a serious problem. Of those who do use the hacks, many of them only play against other cheaters.
The solution is to give the host of a game -- the person who started it -- the power to kick users out of the game temporarily or permanently; also give them the power to permanently ban IP addresses from that game.
I played Descent 2 on Kali for about 5 years (now I play Descent 3), and cheaters were never a serious problem.
Also, everyone seems to accuse you of cheating when you're just better than they are. "You move so fast in Descent, you must cheat"; "No, I just use triple strafing: travel in 3 directions at once".
Reform? Ha. Only in the sense that "America's return to traditional family values (i.e., chastizing teenagers for exploring their developing sexuality)" is a reform.
This is not a reform. This is a throwback, a de-evolution.
How can anyone buy the idea that eliminating democratic elections for the representatives is somehow beneficial?
ALL members of a group deciding domain-name issues should be elected (like congressmen). There needs to be a constitution of sorts to resolve domain-name conflicts. Conflicts should be decided so as to respect indivual's rights and protect the public interest, NOT to benefit corporations. To ensure that the members of such an organization don't violate that constitution, there needs to be a panel which can over-turn any ruling the elected board makes as being unconstitutional.
Really, the problem is that ICANN is private. Private organizations DO NOT work well to benefit the public if they are monopolies and have no competition, as is the case with ICANN. If the government wanted to try a private solution, they should have set it up so that there is competition. Without competition, private solutions to "protect the public interest" invariably degenerate into protecting corporate and special interests, at the expense of the public good and invidual rights.
Firstly, I'm not suggesting we do it all at once. We can deregulate part of it first, then the rest later once things are worked out.
Secondly, there's a difference between the government regulating air-pollution and the governmnet saying "you can't breathe the air". In effect, what the government is doing here is saying "you can't breathe the air, unless you can pay alot of money for it". That's wrong.
At the very least, the priviledge to use the airwaves should not be decided by who can pay the most.
Everyone should have an opportunity to use the airwaves. The scheme proposed by Lawrence Lessig is what I'm thinking of here.
Even without increased capacity, there are ways to share the airwaves without having anyone own them.
Sorry, but the idea of the government -- or a company -- controlling or having the rights to a certain frequency is about as obnoxious as the government saying they own all the air in the US.
The very same technology that regulates printing in LAN's at universities can regulate the airwaves. Two people send a request to a printer to print a document at the same time; the printer doesn't know which to process first, so it waits a random number of milliseconds (different # for each terminal) and then sends a repeat request; whichever one gets back first is printed first. Another way to do it would be to have the printer just randomly pick one. An alternate, and superior way, would be for the printer to print the shorter document first.
Similar algorithms could govern who is using any particular frequency at any particular time.
Furthermore, let us not forget that we don't have to deregulate the entire spectrum in one swoop. We could deregulate half of it first and let the technologies for controlling access to that half perfect.
The point is, everyone should have access to the airwaves. It should not be based on how much money you have. No one has any right to claim they own the air or the airwaves, just as no one has the right to claim they own their air: that's bullshit.
Sorry, I can't much help you there, since I don't use Python, Perl, or any other scripting languages aside from sed (alot) and awk (rarely).
But here's my conjecture for starters. Sorry if this is typical, but its the first thing that comes to mind and the easiest to fix if wrong: (1) Either your version of nohup has a bug or is corrupted; (2) or your version of Python has a bug or is corrupted. I suggest you try "reinstalling" nohup and Python. If that doesn't work, check the BUG history on these things and try using a different version of each.
I know, this is the typical help you get when you call your computer's support service:
YOU: One specific feature of this program isn't working.
THEM: Well, when did it start happening and what was the last thing you did before it started happening?
YOU: I haven't changed anything, it just started happening.
...then he takes you through a lot of pointless bullshit which has nothing to do with solving your problem, but makes it seem like he's doing his job.
THEM: Ok, sir, after performing 1000 useless tests, I've determined that your program is corrupted. Since re-installing it didn't fix it, I'm going to have to request that you delete your entire hard drive and reinstall everything.
YOU: What? You want me to wipe my freakin' hard drive?
THEM: Yes, sir, that appears to be the solution.
YOU: Well fuck that. I could've "fixed" the problem that way.
I'm sure everyone knows about this...except newcomers to UNIX.
Its called nohup. Nohup is a command that will prevent your job from being terminated once you log out of your account. Always leaving those "please do not log out of this account" message to your co-workers? Well, that's all fine unless your co-workers are assholes. Also, even if they're not, you might want to do them a favor by doing this.
What you do is type (wihout the quotes) "nohup " where is the command or program you want not to be interrupted upon logout. You can type in normal syntax.
Another essential "command" if your at the command line and are going to start somethin which takes awhile is (w/o quotes) " but newcomers won't know them, nor will people who just download cygwin to use on their Windows OS, because some scientific applications require Linux.
Who cares? Its a GAMING platform, not something your going to store your banking statements on.
The worst that can happen is you'll have to reinstall a few games.
And lets be realistic here, who wants to break into a gaming system?
This is yet another example of a good project being hindered by the meritless DMCA. Because they feel that it would be against the DMCA for them to open up their source, due to copy-protection crap, they have to split from the LGPL'ed project.
Yep, that DMCA sure is helping innovation.
How many times must a
Jack Valentini and the MPAA
Cry wolf,
Before we listen no more
And how many more
Billions must he make
before we believe him no more
Seriously, how many times does this paranoid schizophrenic have yell, "the bogeyman, video's or peer-to-peers, coming to steal all the money I worked so hard to steal from consumers" before we ignore him?