The people most harmed are the musicians. When you pirate music, you are stealing from the artist who slaved to create it for you. Gnutella and Napster are theft on a huge and organised scale.
Pirate:Robber on high seas, one who by open violence takes the property of another on the high seas. Where Do you see a ship?
theft:The act of stealing; specifically, the felonious taking and removing of personal property, with an intent to deprive the rightful owner of the same.
When I steal someone's car, I have a car, he doesn't, I stole it. When I copy someone else's movie or MP3, I have it, he has it. I didn't steal anything, I copied it.
I'm copying things I wouldn't have bought. Not a chance in hell I buy the things I download, and if there's something I find valuable: I buy it. Besides, listening to more songs gives me a chance to hear new artists whose music I might buy.
What you say is true if and only if EVERYONE has no (or limited) privacy. What we're heading to though, is that most people would have little (or no) privacy while others (read: politicians) would be almost totally hidden from the other's view.
I wouldn't mind getting rid of privacy at all. Sure, let's wipe it out. But for everyone then...
An agent from the DEA standing around in the airport knows what constitutes suspicious activity and/or a suspicious appearance. They know which nationalities courier what drugs. They know what kind of "cargo" to look for. They know nervousness and evasiveness when they see it.
Some guy has been watching TV too much... Next you're going to tell me they're all kung-fu black belts, run faster than michael jordan and actually can taste the origin and degree of purity of a drug by tasting a bit of it? Sure, some of them are good agents, but the crowd, I don't think so... Being trained is one thing, being able is another one...
Side note: rest the comment I liked, but geeze, this is the kind of thing that makes me wonder how much influence TV really has. How many DEA agents do you know?
From what I read at fsf.org a couple of months back, it sounds like they are now adopting Linux for that role. As best I can recall the claim went something like -
All we needed was a kernel. Linux provides that kernel.
If I remember well what RMS said 2 months ago, they're adopting it only until the GNU kernel is ready, not giving up the gnu kernel in favour of the linux one... So, I don't really know about adoption, RMS just doesn't have anything against it as it doesn't go against his beliefs.
I've been bothered by a lot of faxes at home recently. The problem is that I'm using my phone line for both telephone and fax, so what happens is that the phone rings in the middle of the night, I have to go downstairs, take the phone only to find out that it's some stupid advertisement.
sending back emtpy (or heavily loaded) prepaid letters back to the sender might be a good thing, but how to get rid of the fax spam? Ideas anyone?
Looking at the thing, I assume the white is 0 and black 1 and I can only wonder why they didn't do it the other way around. white 1, black 0, after all, there is more white on this page than back, and what is more noticeable? an absence of signal or a signal?
Err, sorry to appear dumb with my IQ being 146, but what is Mensa?
By the way, you can have the highest IQ you want, without a good EQ, you're worthless to the society, however superior you might consider yourself to be.
IQ isn't the answer to everything, far from that... Actually it's pretty worthless as the current tests have to be changed every 10(?) years and are only useable on occidental persons, africans for example, who don't follow the same way of thinking as us white heterosexual anglo-saxons types, rate poorly with our tests, although not being less intelligent (if I remember well, that's an argument right-wing people use).
Just my 2 cents to say that IQ isn't what people with IQ inferior to 100 make it look like:)
People who wear spectacles have a harder time getting jobs flying aeroplanes.
People who aren't coordinated or fit have a harder time getting jobs as aerobic instructors.
People who are short have a hard time getting jobs as basketball players.
Your examples are not discrimination, just suitability for a job. Would you trust a blind surgeon? I wouldn't. So, of course, some people have a harder time getting some jobs requiring some abilities. What you say is like saying that a trisomic will have a harder time finding a rocket scientist job. This is the case because the person isn't apt for the job in the first place.
Discrimination occurs when someone is refused a job because of something that is not related to his/her abilities to perform the task. Such as gender, skin color and I will include here "the POSSIBILITY that one gets a health problem in the future".
Nonsense, people are already "branded" according to their genetic makeup.
So, in your opinion, because you already lost a bit of something, you should loose everything?
Discrimination is nothing new, nor is it necessarily something to worry about.
Discrimination is indeed nothing new, but I think that they should be worried about. After all, that's why there are LAWS against discrimination already...
Genetic testing just increases the range of knowledge beyond the first glance.
That is why it should not be possible for employers to get access to that kind of information. Judging on aspect is already bad enough...
No offence to you, but there's also that type of people who are described by this fortune:
"Those who can, do. Those who can't, teach".
I know quite a few of teachers who know little, to say the least (my very father included). Seeing how easy it is to become a teacher nowadays, that's not a wonder.
But there are indeed valuable teachers out there. They're just hard to find IMO.
On a side note, although I'd love to teach personally, having to face dozens of morons who don't give a shit about my class sure isn't a happy prospect... So kuddos to all you guys who have the courage to face that every day
What is called "french fries" in english are actually disgusting (to put it mildly) in France. The french themselves admit that the best (and only real, but that's MY opinion) fries in the word are BELGIAN ones.
Just my.02 of belgian nationalism:)
Like someone said before, people who try to get your data, serious people I mean, don't boot your system, they copy the data bit by bit and hack that, not booting your system...
Further, how many times have you failed typing your password correctly at login time? I know it sometimes takes me 3 attempts to do it, mainly because of the mangling of figures, letters and other "signs".
32-bit keys would only give a cracker a possible 4.3 billion keys to search. You should really use at least 128-bit keys (3.4E+38 possible keys) to keep data secure for any length of time
Isn't what you say about 128 bit encryption what they used to say a couple of years ago about 32-bit?
Granted, in a couple of years, that very sensitive data might not be as sensitive:)...
Because there are few cases where such a great destructive power is needed I suppose.
Also, it is "easy" to determine what damage a vial of nytroglycerine will do, harder if you put 20, the imprecision scales with the damage done. So it's probably better to do the work with small, controlable charges than with large somewhat unpredictable ones.
To answer the last part, I'm no physicist but AFAIK, a H-bomb does not generate radioactivity.
I think "controllability" is really the key there...
Actually, this has been an issue with my fiancée and I for quite some time. She's a christian and I'm not.
She has a hard time understanding the big bang theory, being unable to get along well with what are called "exact sciences".
After 4 years of discussion together and with representants of various christian religions, the answer for her is that the Big Bang happened and God was the one who initiated it, then He created Adam and Eve and put them on Earth (forget the monkeys:) ).
I, for one, consider that there was a quark/gluon soup, but whatever lies before 1E-43s is not my problem, the anthropic principle being enough to satisfy my curiosity.
It is also to be noted that the Bible and the Big Bang theory are not in contradiction. If you remember well, Monseigneur Lemaitre, the belgian monk who designed the "primitive atom" theory (in 1927 if I remember well) - the prelude to the Big Bang theory - did have the christians support. Albert Einstein even reproached him to create a theory that was too close of what the Bible:).( I have no link to this as this was told to me by one of Lemaitre's students ).
For those who agree with the "there is more than one universe" or the "Big Bang-Big Crunch" theories, it is to be remembered that the first words of the bible, commonly translated to "in the beginning" can also be translated to "in the beginningS".
Conclusion: What I think is that the universe exists, we exist, if the universe didn't evolve into what it did, there would be no one to wonder why it evolved the way it did (this is relevant too if another lifeform asks itself why it exists). The cause of the Big Bang being God or nothing is irrelevant (to me) but both the Big Band theory and the Creationsim can certainly coexist.
What would it need to make up a document of prior art (for this thing).
The question really is whether it's possible to make up a fake document that doesn't look fake. this one-click shopping has been around for too long and shouldn't exist...
Breaking a single one of these connections usually crashes the computer.
Well, at least then I know something is broken, I want the maximum performance for my computer, now if I get a computer that works at half of what it could because of broken connexions, no interest...
Just my $.02
the solution to spam as free speech.
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MAPS Sued Again
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· Score: 1
Although I hate spam as much as everyone, I have to admit that, just like hateful speech or whatever, it might be considered free speech
In that regard, there is something easy to do. Have the users, when signing up at an ISP, give the ISP the right to block the mails as advised by MAPS.
I wonder when there will be a law forcing newborns to have such a device implanted. ( One that can't be turned off that is... )
Politician geek instead of "Geek vs Politicians"?
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Selfish Society
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· Score: 1
I read, agree and understand that there is a misunderstanding between the political world and the tech community.
Why isn't there some tech guy showing up at the elections?
I have to agree that the mere idea of becoming a politician is somewhat horrible to me, but then, since the congressmen are supposed to represent the people, why couldn't a techie become one?
Is it because in the process of becoming a politian, a tech guy would probably loose his geekness and thus loose contact, a terrible idea?
Is it because everyone has given up having any hope in politics as we know it?
I know that if a [reasonable] tech guy showed up at the elections down here, I'd vote for him. After all, who can understand the tech world better than a tech guy?
If someone posts something I don't like, I don't read it.
How can you know you don't like it before you read it, heh? I think that's one of the nice aspects of moderation, if an anonymous person posts something interesting, it's usually modded up.
Well, this sounds to me very much like we're going to be monitored more and more.
We have rich decision software called Bayesian Inference Software that we can build down into the system that can track your usage and adjust in an automatic fashion
As someone mentioned already, this can be used for many another thing than what this is intended.
A couple of these uses c(w)ould be: - Permanent monitoring of the users with the camera. It can already be done right now actually, but a boss deciding to put a webcam on every machine for supervision purposes will make everyone feel 'spied'. This system would provide an 'excuse' for having webcams on every machine. - Advertisement banners can now position themselves where you're looking. - Since the thing would monitor the user's activities in order to determine what to give the focus to (or what to prevent being given focus to actually), it'll be easy to keep trace of the activities of the user: slashdot reading 2 hours, coding 4 hours, speaking jokes with colleages 30 minutes...
This thing really raises a couple of disturbing issues. I may be paranoid but I don't like monitoring systems. At least are they aware of that: And Horvitz and his researchers themselves acknowledge that the information collected by the notification manager software -- potentially, information on the personal activities and movements of millions of people that would be stored on the Internet -- raises privacy and security issues that have yet to be resolved. But I doubt those issues will be resolved.
Ignoring the system requirements to run the thing - that certainly aren't trivial - the system could be useful, if the user is given to set the "disturbance value" (or "worth") of possibly disturbing events. But that would be a hell to configure, imagine every morning having to say to the program "I'm waiting for urgent messages from person X and Y" and changing that everyday. I doubt very much that a program will be able to determine what I think important and what not. A simple example of this would be that a message I receive from a colleage might very well be the information I've been waiting for 2 days but also an email to, for example, notify me of a colleague's birthday party.
Another thing I'm skeptical about in the article is: He expects that the system will be able to greet and converse with new visitors. The conversation, he says, will be on par with speaking to a person who is hard-of-hearing.
AFAIK (As Far As I Know [I realised that acronysm's meaning only very recently...]) no current software is able to converse with a human being. Answer a couple of pre defined questions maybe, but certainly not converse.
Slashdot Mirror
Where Do you see a ship?
theft:The act of stealing; specifically, the felonious taking and removing of personal property, with an intent to deprive the rightful owner of the same.
When I steal someone's car, I have a car, he doesn't, I stole it. When I copy someone else's movie or MP3, I have it, he has it. I didn't steal anything, I copied it.
I'm copying things I wouldn't have bought. Not a chance in hell I buy the things I download, and if there's something I find valuable: I buy it. Besides, listening to more songs gives me a chance to hear new artists whose music I might buy.
Well, just my $.02
What you say is true if and only if EVERYONE has no (or limited) privacy. What we're heading to though, is that most people would have little (or no) privacy while others (read: politicians) would be almost totally hidden from the other's view.
I wouldn't mind getting rid of privacy at all. Sure, let's wipe it out. But for everyone then...
Just my $.02
Sure, some of them are good agents, but the crowd, I don't think so... Being trained is one thing, being able is another one...
Side note: rest the comment I liked, but geeze, this is the kind of thing that makes me wonder how much influence TV really has. How many DEA agents do you know?
So, I don't really know about adoption, RMS just doesn't have anything against it as it doesn't go against his beliefs.
I've been bothered by a lot of faxes at home recently. The problem is that I'm using my phone line for both telephone and fax, so what happens is that the phone rings in the middle of the night, I have to go downstairs, take the phone only to find out that it's some stupid advertisement.
sending back emtpy (or heavily loaded) prepaid letters back to the sender might be a good thing, but how to get rid of the fax spam?
Ideas anyone?
I'm afraid speaking like a babelfish translation would only get you laughed at by natives though...
Looking at the thing, I assume the white is 0 and black 1 and I can only wonder why they didn't do it the other way around. white 1, black 0, after all, there is more white on this page than back, and what is more noticeable? an absence of signal or a signal?
Just my 2 cents
because what we want is what's most available?
Err, sorry to appear dumb with my IQ being 146, but what is Mensa?
:)
By the way, you can have the highest IQ you want, without a good EQ, you're worthless to the society, however superior you might consider yourself to be.
IQ isn't the answer to everything, far from that... Actually it's pretty worthless as the current tests have to be changed every 10(?) years and are only useable on occidental persons, africans for example, who don't follow the same way of thinking as us white heterosexual anglo-saxons types, rate poorly with our tests, although not being less intelligent (if I remember well, that's an argument right-wing people use).
Just my 2 cents to say that IQ isn't what people with IQ inferior to 100 make it look like
Discrimination occurs when someone is refused a job because of something that is not related to his/her abilities to perform the task. Such as gender, skin color and I will include here "the POSSIBILITY that one gets a health problem in the future".
So, in your opinion, because you already lost a bit of something, you should loose everything?
Discrimination is indeed nothing new, but I think that they should be worried about. After all, that's why there are LAWS against discrimination already...
That is why it should not be possible for employers to get access to that kind of information. Judging on aspect is already bad enough...
No offence to you, but there's also that type of people who are described by this fortune: "Those who can, do. Those who can't, teach".
I know quite a few of teachers who know little, to say the least (my very father included). Seeing how easy it is to become a teacher nowadays, that's not a wonder.
But there are indeed valuable teachers out there. They're just hard to find IMO.
On a side note, although I'd love to teach personally, having to face dozens of morons who don't give a shit about my class sure isn't a happy prospect... So kuddos to all you guys who have the courage to face that every day
Man, I'll get a -1 or something but I don't care, I've been laughing my ass off of this joke for 20 minutes non stop. Just wanted to let you know...
What is called "french fries" in english are actually disgusting (to put it mildly) in France. The french themselves admit that the best (and only real, but that's MY opinion) fries in the word are BELGIAN ones. Just my .02 of belgian nationalism :)
Further, how many times have you failed typing your password correctly at login time? I know it sometimes takes me 3 attempts to do it, mainly because of the mangling of figures, letters and other "signs".
Isn't what you say about 128 bit encryption what they used to say a couple of years ago about 32-bit?
Granted, in a couple of years, that very sensitive data might not be as sensitive :)...
Also, it is "easy" to determine what damage a vial of nytroglycerine will do, harder if you put 20, the imprecision scales with the damage done. So it's probably better to do the work with small, controlable charges than with large somewhat unpredictable ones.
To answer the last part, I'm no physicist but AFAIK, a H-bomb does not generate radioactivity.
I think "controllability" is really the key there...
She has a hard time understanding the big bang theory, being unable to get along well with what are called "exact sciences".
After 4 years of discussion together and with representants of various christian religions, the answer for her is that the Big Bang happened and God was the one who initiated it, then He created Adam and Eve and put them on Earth (forget the monkeys :) ).
I, for one, consider that there was a quark/gluon soup, but whatever lies before 1E-43s is not my problem, the anthropic principle being enough to satisfy my curiosity.
It is also to be noted that the Bible and the Big Bang theory are not in contradiction. If you remember well, Monseigneur Lemaitre, the belgian monk who designed the "primitive atom" theory (in 1927 if I remember well) - the prelude to the Big Bang theory - did have the christians support. Albert Einstein even reproached him to create a theory that was too close of what the Bible :).( I have no link to this as this was told to me by one of Lemaitre's students ).
For those who agree with the "there is more than one universe" or the "Big Bang-Big Crunch" theories, it is to be remembered that the first words of the bible, commonly translated to "in the beginning" can also be translated to "in the beginningS".
Conclusion: What I think is that the universe exists, we exist, if the universe didn't evolve into what it did, there would be no one to wonder why it evolved the way it did (this is relevant too if another lifeform asks itself why it exists). The cause of the Big Bang being God or nothing is irrelevant (to me) but both the Big Band theory and the Creationsim can certainly coexist.
The question really is whether it's possible to make up a fake document that doesn't look fake. this one-click shopping has been around for too long and shouldn't exist...
Well, at least then I know something is broken, I want the maximum performance for my computer, now if I get a computer that works at half of what it could because of broken connexions, no interest...
Just my $.02
In that regard, there is something easy to do. Have the users, when signing up at an ISP, give the ISP the right to block the mails as advised by MAPS.
Just an easy and useful option.
I wonder when there will be a law forcing newborns to have such a device implanted. ( One that can't be turned off that is... )
Why isn't there some tech guy showing up at the elections?
I have to agree that the mere idea of becoming a politician is somewhat horrible to me, but then, since the congressmen are supposed to represent the people, why couldn't a techie become one?
Is it because in the process of becoming a politian, a tech guy would probably loose his geekness and thus loose contact, a terrible idea?
Is it because everyone has given up having any hope in politics as we know it?
I know that if a [reasonable] tech guy showed up at the elections down here, I'd vote for him. After all, who can understand the tech world better than a tech guy?
Thanks in advance
How can you know you don't like it before you read it, heh?
I think that's one of the nice aspects of moderation, if an anonymous person posts something interesting, it's usually modded up.
Just my .02
We have rich decision software called Bayesian Inference Software that we can build down into the system that can track your usage and adjust in an automatic fashion
As someone mentioned already, this can be used for many another thing than what this is intended.
A couple of these uses c(w)ould be:
- Permanent monitoring of the users with the camera. It can already be done right now actually, but a boss deciding to put a webcam on every machine for supervision purposes will make everyone feel 'spied'. This system would provide an 'excuse' for having webcams on every machine.
- Advertisement banners can now position themselves where you're looking.
- Since the thing would monitor the user's activities in order to determine what to give the focus to (or what to prevent being given focus to actually), it'll be easy to keep trace of the activities of the user: slashdot reading 2 hours, coding 4 hours, speaking jokes with colleages 30 minutes...
This thing really raises a couple of disturbing issues. I may be paranoid but I don't like monitoring systems. At least are they aware of that: And Horvitz and his researchers themselves acknowledge that the information collected by the notification manager software -- potentially, information on the personal activities and movements of millions of people that would be stored on the Internet -- raises privacy and security issues that have yet to be resolved. But I doubt those issues will be resolved.
Ignoring the system requirements to run the thing - that certainly aren't trivial - the system could be useful, if the user is given to set the "disturbance value" (or "worth") of possibly disturbing events. But that would be a hell to configure, imagine every morning having to say to the program "I'm waiting for urgent messages from person X and Y" and changing that everyday. I doubt very much that a program will be able to determine what I think important and what not.
A simple example of this would be that a message I receive from a colleage might very well be the information I've been waiting for 2 days but also an email to, for example, notify me of a colleague's birthday party.
Another thing I'm skeptical about in the article is: He expects that the system will be able to greet and converse with new visitors. The conversation, he says, will be on par with speaking to a person who is hard-of-hearing.
AFAIK (As Far As I Know [I realised that acronysm's meaning only very recently...]) no current software is able to converse with a human being. Answer a couple of pre defined questions maybe, but certainly not converse.