What the People In Charge don't mention,
on
Copyright Rumblings
·
· Score: 1
is that they don't want people to be entertained for free.
Free entertainment is bad for the economy.
Could this secretly motivate "good-hearted" politicians (who are trying to serve the public) to give more control to corporations?
After all, what happens if you can't enjoy a 50 year old work without paying $15 to a big corporation. That money accumulates in the hands of the rich, but they don't keep it under their mattresses. They keep it in banks, and banks invest the money right back into the economy, financing the ventures of big corporations.
Imagine if every American grew all his or her own food, spun all his or her own clothing, and spent the day at home with friends enjoying 50+ year old content (jazz, classical recordings, books, old movies) for free or playing Go, etc. That is, without ever going out shopping for anything with much added value.
Would our economy be scrod?
Because money-spenidng is what makes our economy go around, and as long as there are laws to keep corporations from e.g. committing human rights violations, etc, perhaps their very existence (fiscal responsibility) really does serve the public good?
After all, corporations are taxed. The more more money we can democratically vote for them to EXTORT from us, the more money our democratic process has to IMPROVE LIVES.
(Now, this is anathema to my own views. I am the oppsoite of a capitalist; I don't believe a strong government should exist to force people to behave in ways to stimulate the economy. My own views are still developing, though, and subject to change. Right now, I'm asking to hear a response to the Capitalist Argument.)
As an aside, an earlier q-bit demo had 25 ops in 9 nanoseconds... which scales to about 25 billion hertz, kinda leaving most Athlons and PIVs in the dust. That's 8 orders of magnitude faster. I'm sorry, faster than what? Your post is unclear.
for weeks if not months has had a segway in its upper left-hand corner. (Go to their main page now to see it[1])
I found the page it links to (if this doesn't work, click the segway logo in the link above) interesting, especially the lengthy Amazon.com Review, which somehow fails to mention once how you charge the damned thing. Although apparently Amazon.com staff got to test-drive it, I doubt they got to play with it above 20 minutes.
[1] This promotion might not be served to logged in users, depending on your shopping preferences. Apparently amazon customizes their content heavily, to the point that some time ago they got in trouble for giving different customers different prices.)
"fastest supercomputing server per square foot"
on
SGI launches R16000
·
· Score: 2, Funny
Uh, can I have that in libraries of congress, please? (Or at least cubic foot of server space / "per 1U rackspace").
Earlier this semester I'd called up prospective students, most of whom had signed up at a college fair or something, to talk with them (if they were still interested) about my college, answer any questions, etc. Almost universally they said that they remembered doing that, and then went on either to tell me they were no longer interested (in which case I told them I'd take them off the list and asked if they would tell me where they were now looking at instead, for our records -- almost everyone gave me a detailed list of where they were now looking, or in some cases had been accepted), or else to talk to me about the college, ask questions, etc. How would this system affect "telemarketers" who get their numbers from something other than phone books. Every single time I've ever given out my phone number to any organization, it was with the understanding that I'd be willing to receive calls from that organization in the future, had enough interest that I'd say "hello" if they called and introduced themselves, and listened to what they had to say. That's how opt-in works. It's probably already illegal for such organizations to share my number (or should be), and if I were being terribly bothered by people calling me from the phone book, I'd have my number unlisted. (This is actually not much of a problem, in spite of my living in a large city.) So, is it really necessary to have a do-not-call list, over it being necessary to have a "not legal to share opt-ins"? Basically, if it takes as much effort for me to opt-out of a single organization's list as it ever took me to opt-in (because there's no number-sharing), why is it bad to call people? What's the need for this national DNC list?
I was shocked that I couldn't find a Go board.
on
Low Tech Toys?
·
· Score: 5, Funny
I bet most people who read slashdot regularly have heard of Go. But when I was in New York over the summer, none of the big huge retail stores carried a board! Grrrr.
Crackpot theory: The reason stores don't carry kaleidescopes anymore is that they're not under patent or copyright, and so no one can overprice them. If one company started selling it, another company would sell them for less, until you approached the cost of production. If toys started selling for $1 or $2 for something fun and lasting, stores would cannibalize their own sales. (And profit percentages.) End crackpot theory.
We live in a society in which there is a large population of people who think it perfectly natural to do a risk/gain analysis of the idea of murdering someone, threatening to murder someone, etc.
This does not need to be the case...while a huge number of people are willing to beat up other people, cut or stab them, or shoot them, there are very very few people who are willing to gauge someone's eye out.
Our art and media does not portray eye-gaugings, and the very thought is sickening to people.
Well you know what? I think that if the very thought of what is portrayed in violent materials made us feel the way we feel about eye-gauging, that is, if we weren't desensitized to it, then it would not even occur to people to do a risk/gain analysis. (However irrationally).
You can really hurt someone by gauging their eyes out and letting them continue to live. There are a lot of people who want to hurt other people, who don't know any other way to live.
As long as our art shows us what it means to do x, in a context that does not sicken us, there will be x.
Policy-makers should look closely at the work of sociologists in Honduras over the next generation, looking especially at the ways in which violent crime changes.
Let me reiterate my main point: There are certain things in society that people don't think to do, because they are, and by rights should be, disgusting and wrong actions.
Violence and carnage should be one of these.
Honestly, I can get just as worked up over an abstract game (tetris, space invaders) as one in which I see the human form maimed and injured.
Look outside yourself for a moment: Do you think it is possible that we can redefine our ethos such that certain thoughts are sickening to people, and that among these thoughts there could be all actions violent?
ADHD is one of the most overapplied, blanket "diagnoses" in the psychological industry. Very very few people who are diagnosed with ADHD have any medical condition that justifies medication. ADHD has become basically a way of applying a clinical label to a personality trait. Deal with your child for who she is -- not for what label someone applies to her.
Anecdotal note: I hear (from considerably fewer sources than have informed my opinion above, which had been echoed by many qualified professionals) that Ritalin is a "smart drug". Do something intellectually stimulating (e.g. learn from a physics textbook), pop a few pills, and continue until the effect kicks in. Notice an improvement? Lots and lots of college students use Ritalin simply to make themselves smarter, regardless of whether an ADHD label has been applied to them. It's like drinking some coffee before your test if you're taking it first thing in the morning, or eating a candy bar. Obviously, it's a controlled substance, so look into it before doing it regularly. However, I would discontinue your child's use of it.
A patriot has nothing to hide from his [sic] Country. A patriot is glad, glad with all his heart to hear that his country is taking the initiative, a patriot supports the party -- if the party wants to know whom Sam or Sally is speaking with, let the party know. If the party wants to know where every Citizen is, what every Citizen does, what every Citizen knows, then let the party know.
A patriot believes. A patriot is the opposite of the dissident.
A patriot does not support laws that allow terrorists, those who do not believe in the strength and ideals of our country, to hide behind anonymity. A patriot does not support anarchy, the total chaos that results when you allow dissidents to mess with public awareness, to spread their lies about our country.
And a patriot does not call for public hearings, checks and balances, handcuffs to hold the hand of Justice, to keep our men [sic] in uniforms -- who believe -- from doing what they believe in, what Americans -- real Americans, not bleeding-heart-liberals need for their protection.
One of my favorite things to do with CD's after I don't need them any more is to make the lovely soup in the following recipe (it's a kind of minestrone).
CD Soup Ingredients: 4cupsvegetable soup stock 2 clean, discardable CDs, preferably newish (unused AOL CD's are perfect!) 2(14.5 ounce) cansstewed tomatoes 1largepotato, cubed 1onion, chopped 2stalkscelery, chopped 2carrots, chopped 1large headcabbage, finely chopped 2tablespoonsItalian seasoning 1(15 ounce) cankidney beans 3cupsfresh corn kernals 1largezucchini, sliced 1cupuncooked orzo pasta salt and pepper to taste
Preparation: 1. In a large soup pot combine the vegetable stock, the undrained tomatoes, potato, onion, celery, carrot, cabbage and Italian seasoning. Bring to a boil and reduce heat. Simmer for about 15 minutes. 2. Stir in the beans, corn, zucchini and pasta; simmer for 10 to 15 more minutes until the vegetables are tender. Kill heat, add CDs and stir vigorously for about three minutes. Allow to set for five minutes.
Season with salt and pepper. Note: The CD's are not edible.
"Imagine... A machine that inhales oxygen, combines with hydrogen and exhales electricity.
While it sounds like science fiction, fuel cell technology is now readily available to industrial users!"
Okay, now let me try: Imagine... A machine that inhales oxygen, combines with [anything flammable] and exhales [any carrier of work].
Sound like science fiction? Think again, this so-called "combustion engine" will revolutionize...
wait! wait!
Don't leave.
I have more.
Okay, watch:
How do you back up data during a power outage?
Put it in reverse! {rimshot} (i.e. have your backup solution produce energy instead of using it, thereby turning back the direction of time in much the same way that backing up the wrong way down a one-way road --
Wait! Don't leave!
I have a parenthesis to close:
)
There. Uhm, yeah.
Seriously though. And here I put on my insightful hat.
What does your CPU utilization look like when you're doing that 180 MBytes/sec? You're doing software-raid, yes? (You didn't mention a RAID controller) -- are you doing RAID-5?
Do you think you could pump the 20-gig file over gigabit ethernet at a saturated 125 MB/sec?
That is to say, for sequential read, would this sub-$10k solution be a media server limited only by gigabit ethernet bandwidth? Holy cow!
How about sequential write? Can you copy a 20-gig file from the network at the same speed? (i.e. sequential write.)
What does the highest your CPU utilization gets to? Are both processors used?
Is this "shared-source" (MS-lingo) type "open source" (note lowercase) hardware or is it truly open-source hardware?
Further: If this is under the GPL (although I doubt it is -- still, it's a good question for the future) and I modify the source organically (through breeding), am I required to release the resulting code? HOW? I don't HAVE the resulting code! (Unless I pay a lot of money to have scientists in six countries sequence it for me...)
No way! Whereas today there are lots of commercials that annoy the SHIT out of a lot of people, but which happen to work all right at keeping the brand in people's minds, in the future commercials will be designed NOT to annoy people -- more specifically, me.
...whether it's FreeBSD or OpenBSD, but probably either way it's a good idea to address OS X in any book about BSD -- after all, OS X has been called the best unix desktop by loads of hardcore unix journalists. Since "BSD is dying" according to my sources (slashdot trolls below my threshold), OS X may be the most important issue to address.
MS-DOS -- no remote root exploit in 27 years against an UNPATCHED system.
We would want this in only certain kinds of plastics. (e.g. drinking cups).
There was an article not-long ago about an old iBook infested with ants, and someone said that plastics, after a long time, separate, and some of the "corn syrup solids" or whatever float to the top or something, making it like attractive to ants? Ah screw that.... ...google-google-google....
p.s. funny, I didn't even use google this time! Now that's branding -- using Kleenex not just for "facial tissue" but for anything used to wipe anything. I LOVE YOU GOOGLE!!!
I was perplexed, since it's only Tuesday, until I collated this with buy nothing day (more) and realized that November 29th was, in fact, on Friday. (I was out of town for Thanksgiving and wasn't going to buy anything that day anyway).
So, uh, yeah.
Robert. [1] (Yes, every editor is Taco -- esp. the ones who go by Ed.)
I have legally bought every one of the full-length CD's, ripped at 196 kbps, sitting on my hard-drive. I'm at college and did not bring with me the physical compact disks on which I originally bought the content.
Am I a pirate? Is it up to me to prove that I'm not? ("Show me the original CDs" -- maybe when you replace scratched ones at production-cost...until then, why should I hang on to broken stuff?)
I dunno', maybe this digital-rights-management stuff isn't so bad -- it lets me prove that what's mine is mine.
Also, with DRM I can by doctrine of first-sale (which says that you can't impose limitations on what I do with a CD once I've bought it, including restrictions on who I resell the whole package to) says that I can buy someone's scratched CD "virtually" at half.com, and then, owning that CD, I have fair-use rights to the content on it.
Conversely, I can virtually sell the CD when I'm done listening to it. The Internet allows for instant transfer of virtual-property, so really there only need to be as many licenses floating around as concurrent listeners. It's like a superfast transfer of the physical compact disk -- if we had teleportation, and CD's that didn't scratch, we could have a communal pile of CD's, which you'd tele-take whenever you want to listen to them and tele-return whenever you're done. Only with "digital" rights and "virtual" property we do have teleportation of property. Interesting, interesting.
Therefore, in conclusion, DRM advocates -- BRING IT ON!!!
The sooner we have ubiquitous digital rights management, the sooner my audio software can play anything that exists in the world, by buying it at $4.04 when I begin to listen to it and selling it at $4.04 +/- 0.04 when I'm done.
I'm sure it would only take a few pennies per hour of listening to finance the logistics of such an operation.
I just received the happy news that my wife is two weeks pregnant. I will be a father for the first time, and I have 8.5 months to prepare for it.
My question is: What distro would you recommend for a new-born? Does anyone here have experience teaching unix administration to infants?
A follow-up question:
I generally spend my time on the command line, but I could see how it might be a difficult concept for a child to grasp in its first few years, especially while its motor controls are still developing. (i.e. no touch-typing yet). I guess I'd be willing to load down the old box with a gui, but the question is, which one? I'm thinking KDE 3.0., but is there maybe a more lightweight desktop that could be more intuitive for a young child? Remember, it won't be able to read menu items for a few years, so an intuitive graphical interface is very important.
Slashdot Mirror
is that they don't want people to be entertained for free.
Free entertainment is bad for the economy.
Could this secretly motivate "good-hearted" politicians (who are trying to serve the public) to give more control to corporations?
After all, what happens if you can't enjoy a 50 year old work without paying $15 to a big corporation. That money accumulates in the hands of the rich, but they don't keep it under their mattresses. They keep it in banks, and banks invest the money right back into the economy, financing the ventures of big corporations.
Imagine if every American grew all his or her own food, spun all his or her own clothing, and spent the day at home with friends enjoying 50+ year old content (jazz, classical recordings, books, old movies) for free or playing Go, etc. That is, without ever going out shopping for anything with much added value.
Would our economy be scrod?
Because money-spenidng is what makes our economy go around, and as long as there are laws to keep corporations from e.g. committing human rights violations, etc, perhaps their very existence (fiscal responsibility) really does serve the public good?
After all, corporations are taxed. The more more money we can democratically vote for them to EXTORT from us, the more money our democratic process has to IMPROVE LIVES.
(Now, this is anathema to my own views. I am the oppsoite of a capitalist; I don't believe a strong government should exist to force people to behave in ways to stimulate the economy. My own views are still developing, though, and subject to change. Right now, I'm asking to hear a response to the Capitalist Argument.)
Thoughts?
As an aside, an earlier q-bit demo had 25 ops in 9 nanoseconds ... which scales to about 25 billion hertz, kinda leaving most Athlons and PIVs in the dust. That's 8 orders of magnitude faster.
I'm sorry, faster than what? Your post is unclear.
A billion hertz is one gigahertz.
for weeks if not months has had a segway in its upper left-hand corner. (Go to their main page now to see it[1])
I found the page it links to (if this doesn't work, click the segway logo in the link above) interesting, especially the lengthy Amazon.com Review, which somehow fails to mention once how you charge the damned thing. Although apparently Amazon.com staff got to test-drive it, I doubt they got to play with it above 20 minutes.
[1] This promotion might not be served to logged in users, depending on your shopping preferences. Apparently amazon customizes their content heavily, to the point that some time ago they got in trouble for giving different customers different prices.)
Uh, can I have that in libraries of congress, please? (Or at least cubic foot of server space / "per 1U rackspace").
Hey, pal. What are you doing in Hungary?
Earlier this semester I'd called up prospective students, most of whom had signed up at a college fair or something, to talk with them (if they were still interested) about my college, answer any questions, etc. Almost universally they said that they remembered doing that, and then went on either to tell me they were no longer interested (in which case I told them I'd take them off the list and asked if they would tell me where they were now looking at instead, for our records -- almost everyone gave me a detailed list of where they were now looking, or in some cases had been accepted), or else to talk to me about the college, ask questions, etc.
How would this system affect "telemarketers" who get their numbers from something other than phone books. Every single time I've ever given out my phone number to any organization, it was with the understanding that I'd be willing to receive calls from that organization in the future, had enough interest that I'd say "hello" if they called and introduced themselves, and listened to what they had to say.
That's how opt-in works.
It's probably already illegal for such organizations to share my number (or should be), and if I were being terribly bothered by people calling me from the phone book, I'd have my number unlisted. (This is actually not much of a problem, in spite of my living in a large city.)
So, is it really necessary to have a do-not-call list, over it being necessary to have a "not legal to share opt-ins"? Basically, if it takes as much effort for me to opt-out of a single organization's list as it ever took me to opt-in (because there's no number-sharing), why is it bad to call people? What's the need for this national DNC list?
I bet most people who read slashdot regularly have heard of Go. But when I was in New York over the summer, none of the big huge retail stores carried a board! Grrrr.
Crackpot theory:
The reason stores don't carry kaleidescopes anymore is that they're not under patent or copyright, and so no one can overprice them. If one company started selling it, another company would sell them for less, until you approached the cost of production. If toys started selling for $1 or $2 for something fun and lasting, stores would cannibalize their own sales. (And profit percentages.)
End crackpot theory.
View source. Go ahead. Right now.
I dare you to glance through it.
You'll not sleep tonight.
We live in a society in which there is a large population of people who think it perfectly natural to do a risk/gain analysis of the idea of murdering someone, threatening to murder someone, etc.
This does not need to be the case...while a huge number of people are willing to beat up other people, cut or stab them, or shoot them, there are very very few people who are willing to gauge someone's eye out.
Our art and media does not portray eye-gaugings, and the very thought is sickening to people.
Well you know what? I think that if the very thought of what is portrayed in violent materials made us feel the way we feel about eye-gauging, that is, if we weren't desensitized to it, then it would not even occur to people to do a risk/gain analysis. (However irrationally).
You can really hurt someone by gauging their eyes out and letting them continue to live. There are a lot of people who want to hurt other people, who don't know any other way to live.
As long as our art shows us what it means to do x, in a context that does not sicken us, there will be x.
Policy-makers should look closely at the work of sociologists in Honduras over the next generation, looking especially at the ways in which violent crime changes.
Let me reiterate my main point: There are certain things in society that people don't think to do, because they are, and by rights should be, disgusting and wrong actions.
Violence and carnage should be one of these.
Honestly, I can get just as worked up over an abstract game (tetris, space invaders) as one in which I see the human form maimed and injured.
Look outside yourself for a moment: Do you think it is possible that we can redefine our ethos such that certain thoughts are sickening to people, and that among these thoughts there could be all actions violent?
IANAD.
ADHD is one of the most overapplied, blanket "diagnoses" in the psychological industry. Very very few people who are diagnosed with ADHD have any medical condition that justifies medication. ADHD has become basically a way of applying a clinical label to a personality trait. Deal with your child for who she is -- not for what label someone applies to her.
A few random sources:
one
two
three
Anecdotal note: I hear (from considerably fewer sources than have informed my opinion above, which had been echoed by many qualified professionals) that Ritalin is a "smart drug". Do something intellectually stimulating (e.g. learn from a physics textbook), pop a few pills, and continue until the effect kicks in. Notice an improvement? Lots and lots of college students use Ritalin simply to make themselves smarter, regardless of whether an ADHD label has been applied to them. It's like drinking some coffee before your test if you're taking it first thing in the morning, or eating a candy bar. Obviously, it's a controlled substance, so look into it before doing it regularly. However, I would discontinue your child's use of it.
Are you a patriot, or are you a terrorist?
Because if you're not with us, you're against us.
And if you're not a patriot, you're a terrorist.
A patriot has nothing to hide from his [sic] Country. A patriot is glad, glad with all his heart to hear that his country is taking the initiative, a patriot supports the party -- if the party wants to know whom Sam or Sally is speaking with, let the party know. If the party wants to know where every Citizen is, what every Citizen does, what every Citizen knows, then let the party know.
A patriot believes. A patriot is the opposite of the dissident.
A patriot does not support laws that allow terrorists, those who do not believe in the strength and ideals of our country, to hide behind anonymity. A patriot does not support anarchy, the total chaos that results when you allow dissidents to mess with public awareness, to spread their lies about our country.
And a patriot does not call for public hearings, checks and balances, handcuffs to hold the hand of Justice, to keep our men [sic] in uniforms -- who believe -- from doing what they believe in, what Americans -- real Americans, not bleeding-heart-liberals need for their protection.
A patriot does not question.
You're either with us, or against us.
If you're not a patriot, you're a terrorist.
I guess I'm a terrorist.
One of my favorite things to do with CD's after I don't need them any more is to make the lovely soup in the following recipe (it's a kind of minestrone).
CD Soup
Ingredients:
4cupsvegetable soup stock
2 clean, discardable CDs, preferably newish (unused AOL CD's are perfect!)
2(14.5 ounce) cansstewed tomatoes
1largepotato, cubed
1onion, chopped
2stalkscelery, chopped
2carrots, chopped
1large headcabbage, finely chopped
2tablespoonsItalian seasoning
1(15 ounce) cankidney beans
3cupsfresh corn kernals
1largezucchini, sliced
1cupuncooked orzo pasta
salt and pepper to taste
Preparation:
1. In a large soup pot combine the vegetable stock, the undrained tomatoes, potato, onion, celery, carrot, cabbage and Italian seasoning. Bring to a boil and reduce heat. Simmer for about 15 minutes.
2. Stir in the beans, corn, zucchini and pasta; simmer for 10 to 15 more minutes until the vegetables are tender. Kill heat, add CDs and stir vigorously for about three minutes.
Allow to set for five minutes.
Season with salt and pepper.
Note: The CD's are not edible.
Hey Ekrout:
I actually saw Pearl Harbor about a month ago, so it's kind of ironic that you're posting with your sig just now.
In fact, one of my three machines there has an uptime of 355 days (tomorrow is a whole year!!!)
Don't you mean 255 days then?
Like any new technology, it's a bit pricey at $6K.
Bullshit! I can think of lots of new technologies that would be a bargain at twice the price!
(rimshot)
Wait! Don't leave! I have more...
A-hem.
From the page:
"Imagine... A machine that inhales oxygen, combines with hydrogen and exhales electricity.
While it sounds like science fiction, fuel cell technology is now readily available to industrial users!"
Okay, now let me try:
Imagine... A machine that inhales oxygen, combines with [anything flammable] and exhales [any carrier of work].
Sound like science fiction? Think again, this so-called "combustion engine" will revolutionize...
wait! wait!
Don't leave.
I have more.
Okay, watch:
How do you back up data during a power outage?
Put it in reverse! {rimshot}
(i.e. have your backup solution produce energy instead of using it, thereby turning back the direction of time in much the same way that backing up the wrong way down a one-way road --
Wait! Don't leave!
I have a parenthesis to close:
)
There.
Uhm, yeah.
Seriously though.
And here I put on my insightful hat.
This could be great in hospitals!
What does your CPU utilization look like when you're doing that 180 MBytes/sec? You're doing software-raid, yes? (You didn't mention a RAID controller) -- are you doing RAID-5?
Do you think you could pump the 20-gig file over gigabit ethernet at a saturated 125 MB/sec?
That is to say, for sequential read, would this sub-$10k solution be a media server limited only by gigabit ethernet bandwidth? Holy cow!
How about sequential write? Can you copy a 20-gig file from the network at the same speed? (i.e. sequential write.)
What does the highest your CPU utilization gets to? Are both processors used?
Very interesting...
Is this "shared-source" (MS-lingo) type "open source" (note lowercase) hardware or is it truly open-source hardware?
Further: If this is under the GPL (although I doubt it is -- still, it's a good question for the future) and I modify the source organically (through breeding), am I required to release the resulting code? HOW? I don't HAVE the resulting code! (Unless I pay a lot of money to have scientists in six countries sequence it for me...)
Anyway, yeah.
No way!
Whereas today there are lots of commercials that annoy the SHIT out of a lot of people, but which happen to work all right at keeping the brand in people's minds, in the future commercials will be designed NOT to annoy people -- more specifically, me.
Aw, who am I kidding?
...whether it's FreeBSD or OpenBSD, but probably either way it's a good idea to address OS X in any book about BSD -- after all, OS X has been called the best unix desktop by loads of hardcore unix journalists. Since "BSD is dying" according to my sources (slashdot trolls below my threshold), OS X may be the most important issue to address.
MS-DOS -- no remote root exploit in 27 years against an UNPATCHED system.
We would want this in only certain kinds of plastics. (e.g. drinking cups).
...google-google-google....
There was an article not-long ago about an old iBook infested with ants, and someone said that plastics, after a long time, separate, and some of the "corn syrup solids" or whatever float to the top or something, making it like attractive to ants?
Ah screw that....
Actual comment. (Attached to story)
p.s. funny, I didn't even use google this time! Now that's branding -- using Kleenex not just for "facial tissue" but for anything used to wipe anything. I LOVE YOU GOOGLE!!!
I was perplexed, since it's only Tuesday, until I collated this with buy nothing day (more) and realized that November 29th was, in fact, on Friday. (I was out of town for Thanksgiving and wasn't going to buy anything that day anyway).
So, uh, yeah.
Robert.
[1] (Yes, every editor is Taco -- esp. the ones who go by Ed.)
I have legally bought every one of the full-length CD's, ripped at 196 kbps, sitting on my hard-drive. I'm at college and did not bring with me the physical compact disks on which I originally bought the content.
Am I a pirate? Is it up to me to prove that I'm not? ("Show me the original CDs" -- maybe when you replace scratched ones at production-cost...until then, why should I hang on to broken stuff?)
I dunno', maybe this digital-rights-management stuff isn't so bad -- it lets me prove that what's mine is mine.
Also, with DRM I can by doctrine of first-sale (which says that you can't impose limitations on what I do with a CD once I've bought it, including restrictions on who I resell the whole package to) says that I can buy someone's scratched CD "virtually" at half.com, and then, owning that CD, I have fair-use rights to the content on it.
Conversely, I can virtually sell the CD when I'm done listening to it. The Internet allows for instant transfer of virtual-property, so really there only need to be as many licenses floating around as concurrent listeners. It's like a superfast transfer of the physical compact disk -- if we had teleportation, and CD's that didn't scratch, we could have a communal pile of CD's, which you'd tele-take whenever you want to listen to them and tele-return whenever you're done. Only with "digital" rights and "virtual" property we do have teleportation of property. Interesting, interesting.
Therefore, in conclusion, DRM advocates -- BRING IT ON!!!
The sooner we have ubiquitous digital rights management, the sooner my audio software can play anything that exists in the world, by buying it at $4.04 when I begin to listen to it and selling it at $4.04 +/- 0.04 when I'm done.
I'm sure it would only take a few pennies per hour of listening to finance the logistics of such an operation.
So any reasons why this couldn't work?
What are you, a terrorist?
>when Christopher Plummer was felled by a kidney stone
I'm sorry, I can't stop laughing at the way you phrased that.
I just received the happy news that my wife is two weeks pregnant. I will be a father for the first time, and I have 8.5 months to prepare for it.
My question is: What distro would you recommend for a new-born? Does anyone here have experience teaching unix administration to infants?
A follow-up question:
I generally spend my time on the command line, but I could see how it might be a difficult concept for a child to grasp in its first few years, especially while its motor controls are still developing. (i.e. no touch-typing yet).
I guess I'd be willing to load down the old box with a gui, but the question is, which one?
I'm thinking KDE 3.0., but is there maybe a more lightweight desktop that could be more intuitive for a young child? Remember, it won't be able to read menu items for a few years, so an intuitive graphical interface is very important.
Any thoughts are welcome.