Phones should be based on programmable-chips so that they could easilly evolve to newer technologies,
They are. Newer technologies, however, tend to involve such vulgar real-world-electron things like radio transmission. As such they tend to need new physical parts and not just a BIOS reflash.
Phones should be small computer parts
I assume you mean they should be able to interface to your home PC. Most newer models already can.
Phones should be free. Somebody should pay instead of people.
A wonderful idea! But why stop at phones? Computers should be free also, somebody (as in "not me") should pay for them. And cars should be free, too. And houses, and clothes, and...
Phones could also be used in the car as the GPS system.
GPS and cell phones are different systems. You can build a GPS chip into a cell phone (Casio already built one into a watch), but why? There is significant power drain and GPS doesn't work well in a city anyway.
A phone could also be a wallet,
Well, I don't know about your wallet, but I would find it really hard to replace it with a cell phone. How would you do this? I am curious.
Last week, my friend got a call at 2am in the middle of the forest while camping, one of his companies servers needed rebooted and the tech didn't know the command!! I don't want that..
Psss... Wanna know a secret? It's an important one and may change your life. Ready to listen? Pretty much all electrical and electronic devices have this little thing called an "off button" or an "on/off switch". If you look carefully at your cell phone you should be able to find one. Try pushing it -- you'll be amazed at the results.
And yes, you can tell this secret to your friend, too.
I'm not the original poster, but this bullshit requires some commenting
If you're suggesting that the government, or anybody for that matter, believes that "ducking and covering" under desks is an appropriate way to defend against an atomic blast, you are a cretin of unimaginable proportions.
Have you seen any of the civil defence drills from the 50s? Ducking and covering was exactly what you were supposed to do if an evil Russkie nuclear bomb just went off around the corner.
I am not saying that anybody actually believed that, but kids *were* taught that this is what they should do.
China does not have the military strength to successfully invade Taiwan, a tiny island a stone's throw off of its own shores, and yet you claim that it is somehow a threat to the United States.
First of all you don't understand the difference between "invade" and "attack". China has nuclear ballistic missiles which are can reach US. It is not capable of invading US, but it is capable of attacking it.
Second, a standard US army doctrine (and one of the very, very few issues that I and they agree on) is that they evaluate threats based on their capabilities and not their intentions. There are very few countries in the world that could hurt US even if they really want to. China is one of them.
terrified of the idea of a peaceful, united world.
Because it has never happened in the history of mankind and doesn't seem likely to happen in the next 50 years at least? Sure we can all sing "Let there be peace on Earth", but what about some reality checks?
Communism is on its way out in China.
So? Who told you that communism is the only evil in the world? China is a huge authoritarian country with imperial (and imperialist) leanings. It doesn't have to be communist to play very nasty games.
In the meantime, think for yourself. You are allowed to disagree with the Rush Limbaughs and Michael Reagans and Jerry Falwells of the world.
Ditto for yourself. You, too, are allowed to disagree with Noam Chomsky and NPR.
General rule of thumb: If you're doing something on the Internet, you're being logged.
Generally true, but if you are willing to suffer some inconveniences, you *can* significantly raise the level of your anonymity on the web. A simple way is to use Freedom anonymizer (non-free in both senses and no Linux version, but very useful nonetheless). The logging goes on, but logging content-free data is not very useful.
Do something useful: read "Transparent Society" and/or work on making yourself a more tolerant person, rather than fretting about your "privacy" (unaccountability).
Thankyouverymuch. I don't like Brin's ideas and would do a lot NOT to live in a society as he describes. I also don't see why you think that tolerance and desire for privacy are opposites or at least negatively correlated. Not to mention that privacy != unaccountability (you probably had anonymity in mind, but even then != stands).
All the arguments how the console (PS2 or XBox or...) will replace a gaming PC tend to forget a simple fact: all consoles use a TV as their display device. And TVs really suck when used as computer monitors. I mean it. They suck bowling balls through a garden hose. They have ridiculously low resolution, they are blurry, and they flicker at 60Hz. Sorry, I'll pass.
If you are a manager, and the choice is take the NDA, and get good service, or risk going bust - there is no decision to make here. Let someone else make a stand: principles are nice, working webservers/databases are much, much nicer when your business is on the line.
You don't understand. What makes you believe that signing an NDA is going to give you better service than not signing one? Just because Sun says so? Corporations say a lot of interesting things when they believe they are in trouble and not all of them are true. It has been pointed out many times here that you are giving away your leverage for some promises to do what they have to do anyway.
So long as everyone plays nicely for Sun, they get all their customers to sign NDAs, and their customers all get good service
Oh, you mean Sun can give good service to everyone, but chooses to give it only to those who sign NDAs? In other words, no NDA -- no service? That's at least a breach of contract and I am sure a lawyer can find plenty of other things to sue for. Legal niceties aside, it stinks to high heaven as well.
Think about it. There is nothing legally requiring Sun to deal with problems in the order that they are informed about them. There is nothing wrong with Sun implementing a high priority queue, of people who sign NDAs, and a low priority queue, of people who don't.
Think about it. Sun is a corporation that sells hardware and software. If it pisses off enough of its customers (all within its legal rights), they will go away and stop buying highly overpriced Sun hardware.
Legal rights are one thing. Keeping customers happy is an entirely another one.
Yes, that is exactly what I'm claiming. Look at oil companies earlier this century, phone companies a little later and Microsoft right now. The "invisible hand" only applies to a free economy with perfect information.
I think you are confused about what the "invisible hand" is. All this concept claims is that common good can and does arise out of egoistical and selfish actions of individuals. It has nothing to do with the efficiency of the market (and it is perfect efficiency that needs perfect information), it doesn't have much to do with monopolies (oil companies, Microsoft et al), and it is not related at all to business cycles (dampening swings).
I think you mistakenly believe that the invisible hand argument claims that a "pure capitalist" economy is a completely efficient one and will self-regulate to maintain itself at the high level of efficiency. It does not claim that. There are other arguments that make similar claims and they have more or less relevance to the real world. However, remember, we started by talking about a tide that raises all boats. The invisible hand is that, without any efficiency arguments needed.
I wasn't aware that statistics were non-mathematical.
In math, a number is a number is a number. In statistics a number is a, let's call it a "probability field" that has a bunch of characteristics which you can never know for certain, but can only estimate. The difference in attitude and philosophy between math and statistics is very pronounced.
Yes, it's messy--so is a nuclear bomb, but we still do physics
Sigh. A nuclear bomb is not messy, it's complicated. These words are not synonyms. Physics (non-quantum, anyway) deals with a deterministic world where situations can be repeated to see if the results are the same. That's what makes it science. You can test stuff, make hypotheses, and then prove or disprove them. "Soft" sciences like history or economics do not work this way. No situation ever repeats itself exactly. You can never "prove" anything. The laws in soft sciences do not dictate what will happen -- they just indicate what's likely to happen if the situation is somewhat similar.
I am saying that a qualitative, but mathematical, statement is possible, powerful and necessary.
Obviously, you haven't worked in the field. Let me assure you that it's much more complicated than it appears at first glance.
Adam Smith's invisible hand is a means, "a rising tide" is a goal.
Not really. The invisible hand is a mechanism by which selfish and greedy individual actions are transformed into common good. Thus "rising tide" is the result of the invisible hand. It's not a goal because the invisible hand is not goal-oriented, it "just happens":-)
The invisible hand is a meta-statement about a free economy. However, we don't have a free economy, we have built in certain restrictions (patents, copyrights, anti-monopoly laws, etc). Also, the real world is not identical to theory
So? It still works. Do you claim that the "invisible hand" mechanism does not operate in the real world?
Phrased correctly, these problems are amenable to mathematical analysis.
No, they are not. You probably meant statistical anyway, but they are not really amenable to it either. The world is too messy a place for that to work. Just ask any economist (honest enough to admit it).
So VSTi wines and dines the university president and suddenly all the students are required to either pay the extortion or withdraw from that univerity.
You are quite correct, but that's a problem with the university and not with the VSTi, isn't it?
If the university decides to force all students to use Macs and nothing but Macs, you will not say that it's Apple's fault, right? It's the university being [insert your favorite designation here] about it.
Same thing here. Just because a school decides to sell its students wholesale to some publisher does not mean this particular publishing technique must be prohibited.
Publishers are guaranteed 100% market penetration at partner schools
That's what they want to have. I doubt that'll come to pass. One of the reasons is that professors in the academia are notoriously touchy about being able to teach what they want. If a school tells them they can assign material to students only from a fixed list, they are going to be quite unhappy.
removal of used book sales.
Just because a school removes a used-book bookstore from the campus grounds does not mean it'll not be able to reopen on the next street. In any case, I bought my used textbooks at student-run flea-market-type garage sales. Let me see them forbid this.
What should prevent people from cracking the encryption system like it has been done with other systems?
Nothing:-)
Other that DMCA, that is.
How do they make sure that the time they check against to see if the user is still allowed to read isn't faked?
They don't. They just hope that it's too much of a bother to people to reset system clock. In general, getting authenticated time is highly non-trivial.
What about the well-known problem of people not liking to read from the screen?
Simple solution: fuck 'em.
If I have a printing privilege (as is mentioned on the website), can't I simply print into a PostScript file and read that file as long as I wish (and distribute it)?
Because that would be a violation of the license. And we all know what a violation of an IP license is: it is theft. Theft, THEFT! Do you hear me, all you criminals, it's *T*H*E*F*T* and you'll all burn in hell! Aaaaaah...!!
There is no way to say "a rising tide lifts all boats" in Capitalismese.
Ahem. You haven't thought about it at all, did you? One of the major advantages of capitalism is its, as Adam Smith put it, "invisible hand". He was the first to point out that out of millions of people all trying to further their own petty and greedy aims, a great deal of common good spontaneously arises. I am amazed how often that very old insight is forgotten.
And, in a simpler vein, not all capitalist games are zero-sum (meaning if one wins, another loses). The stock market is a prime example of non-zero-sum game: since "the world is long", rising stock market actually creates wealth. Yeah, yeah, I know, it mostly doesn't create wealth, but reflects wealth creation in the underlying economy, plus that wealth can be very unstable. It still doesn't change the point: a rising stock market does lift all boats.
Before everybody starts to scream about having these guys drawn and quartered, I'd like to remind the esteemed Slashdot audience about such thing as freedom, and in particular, the freedom of contract. If there is no monopoly situation (and it doesn't seem like it) then why in the world should anybody be prevented from making a product (even if you believe it's bad) and trying to sell it? After all, that's what market economy means: good products succeed and bad products fail. For a good example look at Divx (Circuit City idea to sell time-limited movies, etc.) Was there any regulation/legislation necessary? No. Did the stupid idea die on its own? Yes.
Same thing here. These guys have to compete with real textbooks which, among other things, have resale value. If you think that you'd like to keep that textbook as a reference even after the course is over, why, then, don't buy the time-limited version. As long as there is a choice, I don't see any problems.
Granted, if any attempt is made to force such textbooks on people, I'd be in the front rows of the lynching mob. Other than that I have no objections to having a choice between a $120 paper textbook and (hopefully) $20 time-limited DVD.
It's funny how all the pseudo-libertarians around here are unwilling to let the market decide...
So Toshiba's backlight is a power hog and that's Transmeta's fault?
You don't understand. The question is not one of "fault" -- we are not trying to find somebody to blame. The question is whether it makes sense to make long and expensive efforts in order to reduce the CPU power consumption when it may not be all that important. Especially given that it involves performance trade-off.
Everyone using pornography instead of getting married and having real sex resulting in children (or, for that matter, doing anything sex-related except seeking and getting a child-producing marriage) would mean the downfall of a society. That's why it's considered immoral by many (not that they thought it out that way, but through darwinian survival of societies the ones with such "puritanical" morals are more likely to survive, and are thus quite common).
Your logic is quite flawed. It implies that any birth control is highly immoral -- and only the Catholic Church believes that. It further implies that it is the moral duty of a woman to have as many children as possible and the duty of a man is to father as many children as possible. There are a couple of societies where this is practiced, more or less, (e.g. orthodox Jews) but they are very rare.
Not to mention that Puritanism and its morals are quite Christian in character and so is restricted to the Western world...
Can you honestly say that you think that people who search for "sex" on the internet actually have more sex in real life?
Of course not. But that's not the point: the original poster I was replying to implied that looking for sex on the 'net is a dirty, shameful, bad thing to do. I was actually taking a swipe at his puritanical leanings.
the privacy of a modern household has greatly increased the incidents of child abuse. In the society that we evolved in, one large factor that stopped people from abusing their child was the fact that there was no privacy--if you abuse your child, the whole village knew about it.
I am highly suspicious of such claims. Let me point out the two most obvious problems with it. First of all, reliable child abuse statistics are very hard to come by. I suspect that it is impossible to find meaningful (not plus/minus orders of magnitude) child abuse statistics earlier than the middle of century, certainly earlier than the beginning of the century. The fact that, say, prosecution records, show that from 1890 to 1900 there were X child abuse cases and from 1990 to 2000 there were Y such cases does not mean much. It's fairly obvious that at the end of the XIX century most child abuse went unreported and unprosecuted. The rates of actual child abuse at that time are open to wild guessing.
The second problem is that definition of child abuse changed considerably. Right now in the US leaving your, say, 10-year old kid alone in the house for a couple of hours is, technically, child abuse (that depends on the state you live in). Beating your kid regularly is definitely child abuse now, but was totally socially acceptable a hundred years ago.
So, sorry, I don't buy that argument about anonymity breeding child abuse. I think it's completely bogus.
I have heard it said that the most common term asked for in the leading search engines is "pornography".
People are simpler. The most common search term (at least according the current urban legend) is "sex". Pornography is hard to spell;-)
And in any case, what's wrong with that? Evolution is very efficient at weeding out people who are not interested in sex.
While pornography is somewhat harmless, other activity on the internet isn't
Okay, it's "mostly harmless"...
But you are really arguing for a police state: with a cop at every corner and with all you do compiled into your record that stays with you all your life. I do not want to live in such a world. I don't think many people on Slashdot do. Of course there are always those who like such worlds (after all, it's safe -- unless the government takes a dislike to you) and unfortunately they are not too rare. Oh well.
What confuses me is that the judge's ruling is directly at odds with both other caselaw (namely, the Bernstein/PGP ruling) and supreme court cases such as flag burning.
Well, first of all a judge can basically do whatever he wants. The appeals courts are there exactly to deal with bloopers, judge prejudice and just plain ol' stupidity. A judge doesn't have to follow case law. He makes case law. [nitpick] Well, really in the US it's the Circuit Courts that make case law, not lower-level judges, but the idea is still valid[/nitpick].
Second, even technically, the Bernstein/PGP ruling took place in California AFAIK. This is a different circuit and it is not binding on Judge Kaplan. Of course he would have been wise to read it carefully and think about it, but I as sure that his wisdom has already been commented on.
And I don't see much in common between flag burning and source code, other than the fairly obvuous fact that "speech" does not necessarily have to be speech, or even text.
I am not so sure that this decision is a good thing. Yes, the four items from the so-called "FBI punch list" were stricken, but two others, the ones that made EPIC concerned, were left in force.
Basically, the court has thrown out the requirement that telecom carriers capture any digit tones (made by pressing buttons on the phone keypad) trasmitted after the call has already connected. Example: calling-card calls -- the original call is to an 800 number and then, after the call has connected, you dial the number you actually want. Note that this could include also such things as bank account numbers and voicemail passwords.
However the court left in force the requirement to supply the physical location of the closest-to-the-caller antenna tower (thus providing the ability to track the caller). It also left in force the interception of packet-mode communications.
So: win some, lose some. The decision to allow tapping packet-mode communications *could* set the wrong precedent for TCP/IP interception...
Are there any? [non-English programming languages]
Sure. The Russians had and have a bunch of programming languages in pure Russian. Some are just translations (e.g. Pascal) and some are true originals, unavailable in anything but Russian.
It is not the intent of this text to prohibit customers from establishing a connection for residential purposes. Activities such as online banking, online trading and making purchases online are not considered in violation of the Subscriber Agreement. The Comcast Online residential service is not intended for those that attempt to host a VPN connection or for those persons attempting to establish a VPN connection with their workplace.
And how, I wonder, are they going to be able to tell the difference? Sure, they'll probably look for the default port numbers, but not going to stop anybody for more that a couple of seconds, will it?
Ahem. Should somebody walk up to Mr.Gore and ask him whether he thinks the war on drugs is a Bad Thing and must be stopped? Or any ranking Democrat, for that matter?
That's not a Republican-Democrat difference. That's political scaremongering vs. real life difference.
Oh, except for corporate welfare.
We have the wonderful Democratic tendency to sue whole industries into the ground to balance that...
Oh, yes, and federal involvement in education.
Err isn't it mostly Democrats who think that the main qualification to teach is a union card and that charter schools are the worst abomination this country has ever seen?
why are our GPS receivers still cell phone sized and operate for only 18h on a bunch of standard batteries?
GPS handheld units are cell phone size because most people like to have a screen of certain size to look at. GPS-on-a-chip systems are commercially available now and somebody (Casio?) already sells a consumer GPS watch. Power requirements -- I don't know. If you take away all the extras and leave just the basics -- signal receiving circuitry and minimal calculating capabilities -- the drain might be very small.
Why aren't there lots of simple implantable medical monitors that monitor on a much smaller scale?
"Simple" and "implantable" is a contradiction in terms. Implanting stuff is complicated, expensive and scary. Often not necessary, as well.
Why do this in humans first, when there are so many applications in animals and property tracking?
It is already being done on a wide scale for animal and property tracking. Not implant, though, because it's much simpler and cheaper to put a collar onto an animal than to perform a surgical procedure.
Even though devices are less regulated than drugs, what about human testing?
This IS human testing 8-)
In any case, given that it's very easy to block the GPS signal (e.g. go inside a building or under heavy tree cover), I doubt that this technology is useful for arbitraty tracking of people. I think that what they have in mind is more like tracking people inside highly classified buldings.
Although the day a government will insist on implanting a chip in me as a precondition for a job will be the day I move on to friendlier shores...
The core idea is not giving power to a state per se... [snip]... The core is putting the means of production into the hands of the workers...[snip]... The idea is to reward all forms of socially productive work
That's all good and well, but isn't much different from saying "Wouldn't it be nice if there were peace on Earth and we would all be friends!". If you think that communism has some relationship to reality, you should be able to show how a viable society could be constructed on its basis.
Besides, in the balance between the community and the individual, communism very very heavily comes down on the side of the community (surprise!). So what about individual freedoms? What happens to nonconformists? What if I don't want your nice, ordered and polite commune?
Slashdot Mirror
Phones should be based on programmable-chips so that they could easilly evolve to newer technologies,
...
They are. Newer technologies, however, tend to involve such vulgar real-world-electron things like radio transmission. As such they tend to need new physical parts and not just a BIOS reflash.
Phones should be small computer parts
I assume you mean they should be able to interface to your home PC. Most newer models already can.
Phones should be free. Somebody should pay instead of people.
A wonderful idea! But why stop at phones? Computers should be free also, somebody (as in "not me") should pay for them. And cars should be free, too. And houses, and clothes, and
Phones could also be used in the car as the GPS system.
GPS and cell phones are different systems. You can build a GPS chip into a cell phone (Casio already built one into a watch), but why? There is significant power drain and GPS doesn't work well in a city anyway.
A phone could also be a wallet,
Well, I don't know about your wallet, but I would find it really hard to replace it with a cell phone. How would you do this? I am curious.
Kaa
Last week, my friend got a call at 2am in the middle of the forest while camping, one of his companies servers needed rebooted and the tech didn't know the command!! I don't want that..
Psss... Wanna know a secret? It's an important one and may change your life. Ready to listen? Pretty much all electrical and electronic devices have this little thing called an "off button" or an "on/off switch". If you look carefully at your cell phone you should be able to find one. Try pushing it -- you'll be amazed at the results.
And yes, you can tell this secret to your friend, too.
Kaa
I'm not the original poster, but this bullshit requires some commenting
If you're suggesting that the government, or anybody for that matter, believes that "ducking and covering" under desks is an appropriate way to defend against an atomic blast, you are a cretin of unimaginable proportions.
Have you seen any of the civil defence drills from the 50s? Ducking and covering was exactly what you were supposed to do if an evil Russkie nuclear bomb just went off around the corner.
I am not saying that anybody actually believed that, but kids *were* taught that this is what they should do.
China does not have the military strength to successfully invade Taiwan, a tiny island a stone's throw off of its own shores, and yet you claim that it is somehow a threat to the United States.
First of all you don't understand the difference between "invade" and "attack". China has nuclear ballistic missiles which are can reach US. It is not capable of invading US, but it is capable of attacking it.
Second, a standard US army doctrine (and one of the very, very few issues that I and they agree on) is that they evaluate threats based on their capabilities and not their intentions. There are very few countries in the world that could hurt US even if they really want to. China is one of them.
terrified of the idea of a peaceful, united world.
Because it has never happened in the history of mankind and doesn't seem likely to happen in the next 50 years at least? Sure we can all sing "Let there be peace on Earth", but what about some reality checks?
Communism is on its way out in China.
So? Who told you that communism is the only evil in the world? China is a huge authoritarian country with imperial (and imperialist) leanings. It doesn't have to be communist to play very nasty games.
In the meantime, think for yourself. You are allowed to disagree with the Rush Limbaughs and Michael Reagans and Jerry Falwells of the world.
Ditto for yourself. You, too, are allowed to disagree with Noam Chomsky and NPR.
Kaa
General rule of thumb: If you're doing something on the Internet, you're being logged.
Generally true, but if you are willing to suffer some inconveniences, you *can* significantly raise the level of your anonymity on the web. A simple way is to use Freedom anonymizer (non-free in both senses and no Linux version, but very useful nonetheless). The logging goes on, but logging content-free data is not very useful.
Do something useful: read "Transparent Society" and/or work on making yourself a more tolerant person, rather than fretting about your "privacy" (unaccountability).
Thankyouverymuch. I don't like Brin's ideas and would do a lot NOT to live in a society as he describes. I also don't see why you think that tolerance and desire for privacy are opposites or at least negatively correlated. Not to mention that privacy != unaccountability (you probably had anonymity in mind, but even then != stands).
Kaa
All the arguments how the console (PS2 or XBox or ...) will replace a gaming PC tend to forget a simple fact: all consoles use a TV as their display device. And TVs really suck when used as computer monitors. I mean it. They suck bowling balls through a garden hose. They have ridiculously low resolution, they are blurry, and they flicker at 60Hz. Sorry, I'll pass.
Kaa
If you are a manager, and the choice is take the NDA, and get good service, or risk going bust - there is no decision to make here. Let someone else make a stand: principles are nice, working webservers/databases are much, much nicer when your business is on the line.
You don't understand. What makes you believe that signing an NDA is going to give you better service than not signing one? Just because Sun says so? Corporations say a lot of interesting things when they believe they are in trouble and not all of them are true. It has been pointed out many times here that you are giving away your leverage for some promises to do what they have to do anyway.
So long as everyone plays nicely for Sun, they get all their customers to sign NDAs, and their customers all get good service
Oh, you mean Sun can give good service to everyone, but chooses to give it only to those who sign NDAs? In other words, no NDA -- no service? That's at least a breach of contract and I am sure a lawyer can find plenty of other things to sue for. Legal niceties aside, it stinks to high heaven as well.
Kaa
Think about it. There is nothing legally requiring Sun to deal with problems in the order that they are informed about them. There is nothing wrong with Sun implementing a high priority queue, of people who sign NDAs, and a low priority queue, of people who don't.
Think about it. Sun is a corporation that sells hardware and software. If it pisses off enough of its customers (all within its legal rights), they will go away and stop buying highly overpriced Sun hardware.
Legal rights are one thing. Keeping customers happy is an entirely another one.
Kaa
Yes, that is exactly what I'm claiming. Look at oil companies earlier this century, phone companies a little later and Microsoft right now. The "invisible hand" only applies to a free economy with perfect information.
I think you are confused about what the "invisible hand" is. All this concept claims is that common good can and does arise out of egoistical and selfish actions of individuals. It has nothing to do with the efficiency of the market (and it is perfect efficiency that needs perfect information), it doesn't have much to do with monopolies (oil companies, Microsoft et al), and it is not related at all to business cycles (dampening swings).
I think you mistakenly believe that the invisible hand argument claims that a "pure capitalist" economy is a completely efficient one and will self-regulate to maintain itself at the high level of efficiency. It does not claim that. There are other arguments that make similar claims and they have more or less relevance to the real world. However, remember, we started by talking about a tide that raises all boats. The invisible hand is that, without any efficiency arguments needed.
I wasn't aware that statistics were non-mathematical.
In math, a number is a number is a number. In statistics a number is a, let's call it a "probability field" that has a bunch of characteristics which you can never know for certain, but can only estimate. The difference in attitude and philosophy between math and statistics is very pronounced.
Yes, it's messy--so is a nuclear bomb, but we still do physics
Sigh. A nuclear bomb is not messy, it's complicated. These words are not synonyms. Physics (non-quantum, anyway) deals with a deterministic world where situations can be repeated to see if the results are the same. That's what makes it science. You can test stuff, make hypotheses, and then prove or disprove them. "Soft" sciences like history or economics do not work this way. No situation ever repeats itself exactly. You can never "prove" anything. The laws in soft sciences do not dictate what will happen -- they just indicate what's likely to happen if the situation is somewhat similar.
I am saying that a qualitative, but mathematical, statement is possible, powerful and necessary.
Obviously, you haven't worked in the field. Let me assure you that it's much more complicated than it appears at first glance.
Kaa
Adam Smith's invisible hand is a means, "a rising tide" is a goal.
:-)
Not really. The invisible hand is a mechanism by which selfish and greedy individual actions are transformed into common good. Thus "rising tide" is the result of the invisible hand. It's not a goal because the invisible hand is not goal-oriented, it "just happens"
The invisible hand is a meta-statement about a free economy. However, we don't have a free economy, we have built in certain restrictions (patents, copyrights, anti-monopoly laws, etc). Also, the real world is not identical to theory
So? It still works. Do you claim that the "invisible hand" mechanism does not operate in the real world?
Phrased correctly, these problems are amenable to mathematical analysis.
No, they are not. You probably meant statistical anyway, but they are not really amenable to it either. The world is too messy a place for that to work. Just ask any economist (honest enough to admit it).
Kaa
So VSTi wines and dines the university president and suddenly all the students are required to either pay the extortion or withdraw from that univerity.
You are quite correct, but that's a problem with the university and not with the VSTi, isn't it?
If the university decides to force all students to use Macs and nothing but Macs, you will not say that it's Apple's fault, right? It's the university being [insert your favorite designation here] about it.
Same thing here. Just because a school decides to sell its students wholesale to some publisher does not mean this particular publishing technique must be prohibited.
Kaa
Publishers are guaranteed 100% market penetration at partner schools
That's what they want to have. I doubt that'll come to pass. One of the reasons is that professors in the academia are notoriously touchy about being able to teach what they want. If a school tells them they can assign material to students only from a fixed list, they are going to be quite unhappy.
removal of used book sales.
Just because a school removes a used-book bookstore from the campus grounds does not mean it'll not be able to reopen on the next street. In any case, I bought my used textbooks at student-run flea-market-type garage sales. Let me see them forbid this.
Kaa
I'll take some wild guesses:
:-)
:-)
What should prevent people from cracking the encryption system like it has been done with other systems?
Nothing
Other that DMCA, that is.
How do they make sure that the time they check against to see if the user is still allowed to read isn't faked?
They don't. They just hope that it's too much of a bother to people to reset system clock. In general, getting authenticated time is highly non-trivial.
What about the well-known problem of people not liking to read from the screen?
Simple solution: fuck 'em.
If I have a printing privilege (as is mentioned on the website), can't I simply print into a PostScript file and read that file as long as I wish (and distribute it)?
Because that would be a violation of the license. And we all know what a violation of an IP license is: it is theft. Theft, THEFT! Do you hear me, all you criminals, it's *T*H*E*F*T* and you'll all burn in hell! Aaaaaah...!!
Sorry. Got carried away a bit
Kaa
There is no way to say "a rising tide lifts all boats" in Capitalismese.
Ahem. You haven't thought about it at all, did you? One of the major advantages of capitalism is its, as Adam Smith put it, "invisible hand". He was the first to point out that out of millions of people all trying to further their own petty and greedy aims, a great deal of common good spontaneously arises. I am amazed how often that very old insight is forgotten.
And, in a simpler vein, not all capitalist games are zero-sum (meaning if one wins, another loses). The stock market is a prime example of non-zero-sum game: since "the world is long", rising stock market actually creates wealth. Yeah, yeah, I know, it mostly doesn't create wealth, but reflects wealth creation in the underlying economy, plus that wealth can be very unstable. It still doesn't change the point: a rising stock market does lift all boats.
Kaa
Before everybody starts to scream about having these guys drawn and quartered, I'd like to remind the esteemed Slashdot audience about such thing as freedom, and in particular, the freedom of contract. If there is no monopoly situation (and it doesn't seem like it) then why in the world should anybody be prevented from making a product (even if you believe it's bad) and trying to sell it? After all, that's what market economy means: good products succeed and bad products fail. For a good example look at Divx (Circuit City idea to sell time-limited movies, etc.) Was there any regulation/legislation necessary? No. Did the stupid idea die on its own? Yes.
Same thing here. These guys have to compete with real textbooks which, among other things, have resale value. If you think that you'd like to keep that textbook as a reference even after the course is over, why, then, don't buy the time-limited version. As long as there is a choice, I don't see any problems.
Granted, if any attempt is made to force such textbooks on people, I'd be in the front rows of the lynching mob. Other than that I have no objections to having a choice between a $120 paper textbook and (hopefully) $20 time-limited DVD.
It's funny how all the pseudo-libertarians around here are unwilling to let the market decide...
Kaa
So Toshiba's backlight is a power hog and that's Transmeta's fault?
You don't understand. The question is not one of "fault" -- we are not trying to find somebody to blame. The question is whether it makes sense to make long and expensive efforts in order to reduce the CPU power consumption when it may not be all that important. Especially given that it involves performance trade-off.
Kaa
Everyone using pornography instead of getting married and having real sex resulting in children (or, for that matter, doing anything sex-related except seeking and getting a child-producing marriage) would mean the downfall of a society. That's why it's considered immoral by many (not that they thought it out that way, but through darwinian survival of societies the ones with such "puritanical" morals are more likely to survive, and are thus quite common).
Your logic is quite flawed. It implies that any birth control is highly immoral -- and only the Catholic Church believes that. It further implies that it is the moral duty of a woman to have as many children as possible and the duty of a man is to father as many children as possible. There are a couple of societies where this is practiced, more or less, (e.g. orthodox Jews) but they are very rare.
Not to mention that Puritanism and its morals are quite Christian in character and so is restricted to the Western world...
Kaa
Can you honestly say that you think that people who search for "sex" on the internet actually have more sex in real life?
Of course not. But that's not the point: the original poster I was replying to implied that looking for sex on the 'net is a dirty, shameful, bad thing to do. I was actually taking a swipe at his puritanical leanings.
Kaa
the privacy of a modern household has greatly increased the incidents of child abuse. In the society that we evolved in, one large factor that stopped people from abusing their child was the fact that there was no privacy--if you abuse your child, the whole village knew about it.
;-)
I am highly suspicious of such claims. Let me point out the two most obvious problems with it. First of all, reliable child abuse statistics are very hard to come by. I suspect that it is impossible to find meaningful (not plus/minus orders of magnitude) child abuse statistics earlier than the middle of century, certainly earlier than the beginning of the century. The fact that, say, prosecution records, show that from 1890 to 1900 there were X child abuse cases and from 1990 to 2000 there were Y such cases does not mean much. It's fairly obvious that at the end of the XIX century most child abuse went unreported and unprosecuted. The rates of actual child abuse at that time are open to wild guessing.
The second problem is that definition of child abuse changed considerably. Right now in the US leaving your, say, 10-year old kid alone in the house for a couple of hours is, technically, child abuse (that depends on the state you live in). Beating your kid regularly is definitely child abuse now, but was totally socially acceptable a hundred years ago.
So, sorry, I don't buy that argument about anonymity breeding child abuse. I think it's completely bogus.
I have heard it said that the most common term asked for in the leading search engines is "pornography".
People are simpler. The most common search term (at least according the current urban legend) is "sex". Pornography is hard to spell
And in any case, what's wrong with that? Evolution is very efficient at weeding out people who are not interested in sex.
While pornography is somewhat harmless, other activity on the internet isn't
Okay, it's "mostly harmless"...
But you are really arguing for a police state: with a cop at every corner and with all you do compiled into your record that stays with you all your life. I do not want to live in such a world. I don't think many people on Slashdot do. Of course there are always those who like such worlds (after all, it's safe -- unless the government takes a dislike to you) and unfortunately they are not too rare. Oh well.
Kaa
What confuses me is that the judge's ruling is directly at odds with both other caselaw (namely, the Bernstein/PGP ruling) and supreme court cases such as flag burning.
Well, first of all a judge can basically do whatever he wants. The appeals courts are there exactly to deal with bloopers, judge prejudice and just plain ol' stupidity. A judge doesn't have to follow case law. He makes case law. [nitpick] Well, really in the US it's the Circuit Courts that make case law, not lower-level judges, but the idea is still valid[/nitpick].
Second, even technically, the Bernstein/PGP ruling took place in California AFAIK. This is a different circuit and it is not binding on Judge Kaplan. Of course he would have been wise to read it carefully and think about it, but I as sure that his wisdom has already been commented on.
And I don't see much in common between flag burning and source code, other than the fairly obvuous fact that "speech" does not necessarily have to be speech, or even text.
Kaa
I am not so sure that this decision is a good thing. Yes, the four items from the so-called "FBI punch list" were stricken, but two others, the ones that made EPIC concerned, were left in force.
Basically, the court has thrown out the requirement that telecom carriers capture any digit tones (made by pressing buttons on the phone keypad) trasmitted after the call has already connected. Example: calling-card calls -- the original call is to an 800 number and then, after the call has connected, you dial the number you actually want. Note that this could include also such things as bank account numbers and voicemail passwords.
However the court left in force the requirement to supply the physical location of the closest-to-the-caller antenna tower (thus providing the ability to track the caller). It also left in force the interception of packet-mode communications.
So: win some, lose some. The decision to allow tapping packet-mode communications *could* set the wrong precedent for TCP/IP interception...
Kaa
Are there any? [non-English programming languages]
Sure. The Russians had and have a bunch of programming languages in pure Russian. Some are just translations (e.g. Pascal) and some are true originals, unavailable in anything but Russian.
Kaa
It is not the intent of this text to prohibit customers from establishing a connection for residential purposes. Activities such as online banking, online trading and making purchases online are not considered in violation of the Subscriber Agreement. The Comcast Online residential service is not intended for those that attempt to host a VPN connection or for those persons attempting to establish a VPN connection with their workplace.
And how, I wonder, are they going to be able to tell the difference? Sure, they'll probably look for the default port numbers, but not going to stop anybody for more that a couple of seconds, will it?
Kaa
Yup, except for the war on drugs,
Ahem. Should somebody walk up to Mr.Gore and ask him whether he thinks the war on drugs is a Bad Thing and must be stopped? Or any ranking Democrat, for that matter?
That's not a Republican-Democrat difference. That's political scaremongering vs. real life difference.
Oh, except for corporate welfare.
We have the wonderful Democratic tendency to sue whole industries into the ground to balance that...
Oh, yes, and federal involvement in education.
Err isn't it mostly Democrats who think that the main qualification to teach is a union card and that charter schools are the worst abomination this country has ever seen?
Kaa
why are our GPS receivers still cell phone sized and operate for only 18h on a bunch of standard batteries?
GPS handheld units are cell phone size because most people like to have a screen of certain size to look at. GPS-on-a-chip systems are commercially available now and somebody (Casio?) already sells a consumer GPS watch. Power requirements -- I don't know. If you take away all the extras and leave just the basics -- signal receiving circuitry and minimal calculating capabilities -- the drain might be very small.
Why aren't there lots of simple implantable medical monitors that monitor on a much smaller scale?
"Simple" and "implantable" is a contradiction in terms. Implanting stuff is complicated, expensive and scary. Often not necessary, as well.
Why do this in humans first, when there are so many applications in animals and property tracking?
It is already being done on a wide scale for animal and property tracking. Not implant, though, because it's much simpler and cheaper to put a collar onto an animal than to perform a surgical procedure.
Even though devices are less regulated than drugs, what about human testing?
This IS human testing 8-)
In any case, given that it's very easy to block the GPS signal (e.g. go inside a building or under heavy tree cover), I doubt that this technology is useful for arbitraty tracking of people. I think that what they have in mind is more like tracking people inside highly classified buldings.
Although the day a government will insist on implanting a chip in me as a precondition for a job will be the day I move on to friendlier shores...
Kaa
The core idea is not giving power to a state per se ... [snip]... The core is putting the means of production into the hands of the workers ...[snip]... The idea is to reward all forms of socially productive work
That's all good and well, but isn't much different from saying "Wouldn't it be nice if there were peace on Earth and we would all be friends!". If you think that communism has some relationship to reality, you should be able to show how a viable society could be constructed on its basis.
Besides, in the balance between the community and the individual, communism very very heavily comes down on the side of the community (surprise!). So what about individual freedoms? What happens to nonconformists? What if I don't want your nice, ordered and polite commune?
Kaa