I'd like to be free to know that upon returning to Canada, the Canadian Customs agents will
treat me as well as the friendly, chipper, informative, helpful and welcoming American
Customs staff always do.
What crossing are you using?!? Maybe it's because I usually cross the BC-WA border and it's assumed I have a ounce or two of pot for the trip.
My German friends love signing the "I'm not a Nazi" form every time too.:-)
I was at a meeting of CS educators recently. Several of the local colleges had switched to Java a year or two ago. They had begun to find that their students don't have as good a grasp on the concepts of object oriented programming as they did before (probably starting with C++).
I don't know why this is (no direct experience), but it's troubling. Does anyone else have similar experiences?
I was about to suggest that LaTeX is much harder to parse, but given the length of time it takes to display some of the web pages out there, I don't know.
There's the added bonus that TeX works. For years, Donald Knuth was offering monetary rewards for bugs. He recently declared that he didn't think there were any more bugs in TeX and was going to halt development to maintain compatibility.
I really don't see that this matters for most of us. I mean, if domains with "fuck" in them were allowed, don't you think they would all have been snapped up by porn sites?
But the electoral college substitutes the problem of 50.0001% of the electoral-college-vote-controllers (however one might say that) thinking something and the rest having to live with it. The electoral college doesn't solve the tyranny of the majority problem, it only obfuscates it.
* Small states and areas with low population density are not ignored
So, people in a small state deserve more say in who gets to be the president than those in larger states?
* In the case that something awful happens (the president-elect turns out to be psycho
after the election, we've elected the Anti-Christ, or god forbid they die in a plane crash,
etc...) the electors don't HAVE to go with the people's vote
And what happens if the President turns out to be a psycho after the Electoral College? His handlers just have to keep him in line for another couple of months. There is no more safety here than having the election later.
* It turns out that each person's vote is more powerful that way.
Impossible. All of the votes put together have exactly the same amount of "power": they choose the next president. What the electoral college does is make the votes in the "swing" states more powerful, at the expense of those in the stronghold states.
* Finally, it's the only thing that prevents the presidential election from being a full-blown
popularity contest.
I'm note sure I understand this assertion. It's simply a state-by-state popularity contest instead of an overall popularity contest.
Anyway, it's not like our electoral system in Canada sucks less--just differently.
2) What will you do to protect the rights of athiests and those who
hold minority faiths, such as Wicca, Santaria, Shinto, et al?
Bush:
I am committed to the First Amendment principles of religious
freedom, tolerance, and diversity. Whether Mormon, Methodist,
Jewish, or Muslim, Americans should be able to participate in
their constitutional free exercise of religion.
After the questions gives three examples of religions, it's curious that Bush responded to the question, citing four totally different ones.
I'm no religious scholar, but isn't the message here "I am committed to the First Amendment principles of religious freedom, tolerance, and diversity, for all people who worship exactly one God."
All of Bush's examples are monotheistic, yes? That certainly isn't the case for some of the
"minority religions." The implication is that he will be tolerant to those who are already tolerated.
Boy, I'm sure glad I'm not in a country where this guy might be the President in a few days.
So, the obvious thing to the Slashdot crowd is that you might not want to pay for Windows if you use Linux. That's my situation at home, and that's why I bought a "Naked PC".
I just purchased a computer for my office, where I need to run NT. Again, I bought a naked PC. I'm not about to install an illegal copy of Windows. Why? Because my department has a site license (or similar such thing) for NT Client.
That seems to be an even more annoying aspect to this attitude of "you must buy Windows with a PC" idea. Those in institutions and large companies who's techs bought a site license to "save money", or even better (for MS, anyway), to "standardize" on an MS OS, will actually end up paying twice for every workstation.
What insentive do I have to post meaningful posts?
So, the only purpose of posting meaningful stuff on Slashdot is getting a higher karma? Is Slashdot some kind of huge interactive video game to everyone else?
I try to contribute when I have something meaningful to say. Usually that results in me getting moderated up and increasing my karma. So the system works, right?
Maybe Rob should introduce a "-1 per post" option where you can optionally loose one karma point per post. Would that increase the "challenge"?
Starting a subscription-based service is supposed to appease the RIAA? Doesn't copyright law (or precident at least) treat profit-makers much differently from those giving stuff away for free?
I seem to remember reading that in the Wired interview with David Boies (can't find it online, sorry).
Is this just a ploy by the RIAA to be able to waltz into court for the next round and say "See, now they're *selling* our^H^H^H the artist's music!"
Really, if Universities behave as they should, the conversation should be simple:
Lars: Ban Napster
University Administrator: Is Napster illegal?
Lars: Well, not exactly...
UA: Well then, push off. We don't censor the members of our communities except where required to by law.
Unfortunately, there's been a trend towards hiring business-types, not academics, as University administrators. Nobody could ever quite put their finger on why that was a bad idea besides saying that "they don't understand the culture of academic freedom." Here's a fine example.
The lesson: when your school solicits input into hiring their next president/VP/dean, tell them to go with an academic.
Agreed. Imagine if Mastercard or Visa decided to create some secure method of "micropaying" directly to someone's credit card balance.
They could certainly do this. Imagine a system where you just call up Visa and get a micropayment ID number associated with your card. Then, put a link on your web page to allow users to make a transfer directly from their card to your micropayment ID.
It would be easy for them to implement and, if handled in a non-stupid way, could totally dominate. Or, so I imagine.
It's probably not the answer you want, but since MetaFont it Turing-complete, you can use it to calculate anying.:-)
In a reasonable sense, probably not. MF is made to spit out PK (TeX bitmap) fonts, and probably won't easily do anything else.
You might be able to get MF to give you a PK bitmap and then hack up a converter which converts that to a bitmaped font of a given size. It's probably even possible to integrate that with XFree so it happens on the fly.
If Napster prevails on the misuse front, do the RIAA copyrights fall into public domain? When they fix their misuse, do they revert to the copyright? What, then, of copies made during the frenzy that will certianly ensue?
On p. 23 of the brief, lines 14-15, it says that showing that the RIAA was bad with their copyrights is
... an affirmative defense that bars the copyright holder from enforcing its copyright unless and until its misuse is cured.
It sounds like nothing actually happens to the copyright, but the RIAA would have no right to enforce it until they made nice again.
After a quick read of the claims, there's very little here that isn't part of "POST request with a load-balancing server" (claim 16 requires a load-balancing setup).
I'm not sure about claim 17, "The apparatus of claim 13, wherein said local host computer comprises a plurality of physical hosts, interconnected to act together as a single local host computing means." That implies some sort of load-balancing at the client. I don't know why you'd ever want to do that, but it seems like it would be an obvious thing to do if it was necessary.
So, as far as I can see, this patent describes any HTML form submission (POST or GET) to a database front-end, with an obvious extension or two.
Digitals are great for snapshots, web-related stuff, and the like, but most individuals that have a serious interest in photography will own a digital, plus one or more "film" cameras.
Part of the problem here, is not the digital technology, but the digital camera itself. For most work, two megapixels should provide enough resolution and clarity. The problem is the camera.
Digital cameras (with a couple of exceptions) seem to be aimed at the point-and-shoot crowd. There are only a few (one or two?) digital bodies with a reasonable set of controls to allow depth-of-field, exposure time, etc. control. The ones that exist are outrageously expensive. (Somebody please correct me if I'm wrong and tell me where I can buy one.)
"I believe in making money the old fashioned way--generating earnings and cash" -- Lou Gerstner, CEO of IBM
I cut that quote out of the paper a while ago. I try to remember it whenever I think about jumping on the bandwagon and buying the latest tech stock. Gerstner's philosophy doesn't seem to have had any effect on IBM's stock, though--they've slid this week too.
Slashdot Mirror
What crossing are you using?!? Maybe it's because I usually cross the BC-WA border and it's assumed I have a ounce or two of pot for the trip.
My German friends love signing the "I'm not a Nazi" form every time too. :-)
Note: That link is to actually to http://www.goatse.cx.
I don't know why this is (no direct experience), but it's troubling. Does anyone else have similar experiences?
Greg
I was about to suggest that LaTeX is much harder to parse, but given the length of time it takes to display some of the web pages out there, I don't know.
There's the added bonus that TeX works. For years, Donald Knuth was offering monetary rewards for bugs. He recently declared that he didn't think there were any more bugs in TeX and was going to halt development to maintain compatibility.
Compare you favourite browser's bugs.
Greg
Just a thought.
Greg
Do the fish get lead poisoning? I mean, the glass is chocked-full of lead, right?
Greg
Typically, yes. Luckily, my significant other is very understanding about this.
Greg
But the electoral college substitutes the problem of 50.0001% of the electoral-college-vote-controllers (however one might say that) thinking something and the rest having to live with it. The electoral college doesn't solve the tyranny of the majority problem, it only obfuscates it.
So, people in a small state deserve more say in who gets to be the president than those in larger states?
And what happens if the President turns out to be a psycho after the Electoral College? His handlers just have to keep him in line for another couple of months. There is no more safety here than having the election later.
Impossible. All of the votes put together have exactly the same amount of "power": they choose the next president. What the electoral college does is make the votes in the "swing" states more powerful, at the expense of those in the stronghold states.
I'm note sure I understand this assertion. It's simply a state-by-state popularity contest instead of an overall popularity contest.
Anyway, it's not like our electoral system in Canada sucks less--just differently.
Greg
I'll have you know that it's a copy of Access. Thank you very much.
Greg
After the questions gives three examples of religions, it's curious that Bush responded to the question, citing four totally different ones. I'm no religious scholar, but isn't the message here "I am committed to the First Amendment principles of religious freedom, tolerance, and diversity, for all people who worship exactly one God."
All of Bush's examples are monotheistic, yes? That certainly isn't the case for some of the "minority religions." The implication is that he will be tolerant to those who are already tolerated.
Boy, I'm sure glad I'm not in a country where this guy might be the President in a few days.
I just purchased a computer for my office, where I need to run NT. Again, I bought a naked PC. I'm not about to install an illegal copy of Windows. Why? Because my department has a site license (or similar such thing) for NT Client.
That seems to be an even more annoying aspect to this attitude of "you must buy Windows with a PC" idea. Those in institutions and large companies who's techs bought a site license to "save money", or even better (for MS, anyway), to "standardize" on an MS OS, will actually end up paying twice for every workstation.
Greg
It could be optional... like "willing to moderate"
So, the only purpose of posting meaningful stuff on Slashdot is getting a higher karma? Is Slashdot some kind of huge interactive video game to everyone else?
I try to contribute when I have something meaningful to say. Usually that results in me getting moderated up and increasing my karma. So the system works, right?
Maybe Rob should introduce a "-1 per post" option where you can optionally loose one karma point per post. Would that increase the "challenge"?
Greg
Is this just a ploy by the RIAA to be able to waltz into court for the next round and say "See, now they're *selling* our^H^H^H the artist's music!"
Greg
Lars: Ban Napster
University Administrator: Is Napster illegal?
Lars: Well, not exactly...
UA: Well then, push off. We don't censor the members of our communities except where required to by law.
Unfortunately, there's been a trend towards hiring business-types, not academics, as University administrators. Nobody could ever quite put their finger on why that was a bad idea besides saying that "they don't understand the culture of academic freedom." Here's a fine example.
The lesson: when your school solicits input into hiring their next president/VP/dean, tell them to go with an academic.
Greg
I ran some CAT5 cable, picked up a hub and got a cable modem. It all works great and you get to be the alpha geek for sure.
Plus, you get to live with people that you actually like. Strong advice: live with people you like because you have to live with these people.
Greg
They could certainly do this. Imagine a system where you just call up Visa and get a micropayment ID number associated with your card. Then, put a link on your web page to allow users to make a transfer directly from their card to your micropayment ID.
It would be easy for them to implement and, if handled in a non-stupid way, could totally dominate. Or, so I imagine.
Greg
In a reasonable sense, probably not. MF is made to spit out PK (TeX bitmap) fonts, and probably won't easily do anything else.
You might be able to get MF to give you a PK bitmap and then hack up a converter which converts that to a bitmaped font of a given size. It's probably even possible to integrate that with XFree so it happens on the fly.
Probably not worth it, though.
Greg
On p. 23 of the brief, lines 14-15, it says that showing that the RIAA was bad with their copyrights is
It sounds like nothing actually happens to the copyright, but the RIAA would have no right to enforce it until they made nice again.
Greg
I'm not sure about claim 17, "The apparatus of claim 13, wherein said local host computer comprises a plurality of physical hosts, interconnected to act together as a single local host computing means." That implies some sort of load-balancing at the client. I don't know why you'd ever want to do that, but it seems like it would be an obvious thing to do if it was necessary.
So, as far as I can see, this patent describes any HTML form submission (POST or GET) to a database front-end, with an obvious extension or two.
Greg
Greg
Part of the problem here, is not the digital technology, but the digital camera itself. For most work, two megapixels should provide enough resolution and clarity. The problem is the camera.
Digital cameras (with a couple of exceptions) seem to be aimed at the point-and-shoot crowd. There are only a few (one or two?) digital bodies with a reasonable set of controls to allow depth-of-field, exposure time, etc. control. The ones that exist are outrageously expensive. (Somebody please correct me if I'm wrong and tell me where I can buy one.)
Greg
I cut that quote out of the paper a while ago. I try to remember it whenever I think about jumping on the bandwagon and buying the latest tech stock. Gerstner's philosophy doesn't seem to have had any effect on IBM's stock, though--they've slid this week too.
Greg