For the vast majority of people, science is just another religion: taken on faith or rejected as heresy.
But science is just another religion. It seeks to answer the questions of life just like every other religion. It just accomplishes that task through (mostly) logic and reason. Science seeks revelation from the human mind instead of an outside supreme being.
Science even has its own set of beliefs that all scientists take on faith. Chief among those are causality and repeatability. Causality means that action A causes action B: "Letting go of the ball causes it to fall towards the floor". Similarily, repeatability means that action A will always cause action B under the same or similar circumstances: "Letting go of the ball will always cause it to fall towards the Earth". There's no way to really prove that. Just because the experimenter let go of a ball 1000 times and it fell towards the floor doesn't mean it will the next time. Maybe gravity won't work the next time -- can you prove that it will? Forever? The only things you can really prove are mathematical.
The First Amendment only applies when the GOVERNMENT is attempting to prevent you from doing what you stated above. Microsoft, on the other hand, is a private company...
Microsoft can make whatever rules they fell like, as long as they don't get the courts (and therefore the government) involved in the enforcement of those rules. The Government cannot enforce rules that violate any of the Amendments. See for example Shelley v. Kraemer.
Of course, IANAL, so I may be interpreting that caese incorrectly...
Generally, I agree... but try using Equation Editor in Word. Lots of times. Usually, it's pretty stable, but it has crashed Word on me before (with the associated loss of data). The COM framework itself is pretty stable, but the components may not be.
I wonder if they'll be as full of lies as the current "Truth" ads. Maybe thousands of planes flying past a beach with signs reading "mov" and "add" -- showing the swimmers all the different instructions in EQ. Or maybe they'll show a giant blue-screened computer and say the Everquest has code that can do that.
I respect what they're trying to do, but the FUD they spread is really bad. I'm not sure they have a truthful bone in their bodies. Maybe they're ex-Microsoft advertisers:) Their only good ad I've seen was their April Fools day commercial (cigarette company announcing they have a safe cigarette).
It's not just driving a car you need a driver's license for. Try buying alcohol without one if you're under 25 (and over 21 of course). It's bad enough trying to buy alcohol with an out of state ID. Same goes for writing a check.
Sure, you can go to the DMV and get a non-driving ID, but isn't that the same? (it would have the same data on it, you just aren't allowed to drive)
The fact is, you can't do a lot of things in our society without your papers, er, government issued ID. Not that I see an easy solution, but a driver's license isn't just for driving anymore.
Re:bye bye tivo
on
PVR For Linux
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· Score: 3, Insightful
Yeah! Stupid competition! Don't those Free Software people know that companies should be entitled to profits forever? They've already innovated once, how much more do they have to keep working?
If TiVo or ReplayTV want to compete with this product, they're free to. Just because it's open source doesn't mean it's immune from competition. Profits are not guarenteed in a free economy.
And no, just because a company is going out of business doesn't give it the right to sue everyone around it an attempt to bring them down too. That sort of thing is irresponsible to society at large.
the_2nd_coming's post wasn't libel. His first statement asked a question, and wasn't a statement of fact. His next two statements were purely his opinion of Valenti. Saying "I'm sure he has connections" and "He has connections" are two entirely different statements.
WTF are you talking about? IE is not the shell on Windows, explorer.exe is. There are parts of explorer.exe that use the same HTML renderer that IE does, but you can safely delete iexplore.exe without killing your system. The HTML renderer (which some people consider to be IE) is still installed, however. You can't easily get rid of that without causing some problems.
But if you still think that IE is your shell, I encourage you to go look at HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon\shell and see what it says.
Not only is it complete BS, it's a downright lie! The entire point of COM was to make the system modular so that components could be replaced with different implementations. If someone really worked at it, they could probably get IE to use the Mozilla rendering engine by writing a COM wrapper that implemented the right interfaces (I forget their names at the moment). I'm not saying it would be easy, but definietly possible. All of COM is like that, and hence all of Windows (since Windows relies so heavily on COM).
Their other two points are more valid, though. The system would be less user-friendly (since MS and most of the world defines user-friendly as how close the interface is to MS software) and it would be a real PITA to support. How many things can go wrong with Windows when most all of the stuff is comes from MS? Now start adding in third party stuff into the system creating all sorts of new configuration permutations. Definitely more work to figure out what's wrong.
"Pirates seek to profit off the enormous popularity of DVDs by using the latest in technology to illegally manufacture DVD copies of Hollywood films, and again dupe consumers into purchasing a wholly inferior product," MPAA Chief Executive Jack Valenti said in a statement. [emphasis mine]
Funny... I thought the whole reason the MPAA was scared of digital data was because it could be copied perfectly and not create a wholly inferior product. Or maybe it's inferior because Jack doesn't make lots of money off of it.
(not that I support this sort of copying -- this guy was obviously a parasite, trying to live off the work of others)
My college has a similar set up because it saves an incredible amount of bandwidth. It's not to be mean, or malicious, or spy on your browsing habits, it's just to save bandwidth. And it does (I wish I had numbers to back this up, but I don't run the proxy).
There have been problems with the proxy in the past (it not returning any data) and there are still some minor issues, but on the whole it works well (in that you don't ever notice it).
It sounds like the ISP in question has a bug in their web cache code. If the web cache doesn't have the particular URL cached, it forward the request to the intended destination. I'd bet it's trying, but it can't lookup whatever OpenNIC URL is being specified (because it doesn't use OpenNIC). The ISP really should report this bug to the manufacturer.
My advice is this -- get the ISP on your side to fix the problem. They won't remove the proxy, and they shouldn't have to if the bug is fixed.
1) Java code is almost inherently open source. You can always decompile the.class code into.java files. There are obfuscators out there that change the names of the variables, etc, but you still have the basic logic of the code (it's just harder to figure out). If your company thinks a competitor wouldn't be able use this, they're probably mistaken.
2) The obfuscation process, if applied to the source code is essentially another compiliation. IANAL, but I think a lawyer could successfully argue that the obfuscated code is an intermediate step in the compiling process being used and doesn't constitue the original source code.
3) If the company wants to license the GPL'd code, they should comply with the restrictions and GPL their modifications or derivative works to it. Or, they can simply not license the GPL'd work!. There's a cost involved with everything, this is that cost.
If I want to respond to a mailing list group, I use reply to all and take out the sender's address (so he/she doesn't get the message twice). If I just hit reply, then only the sender's address is in the To: field, which I have to delete then type the list address. Reply to all is much eaiser in that case (though I would prefer a "reply to group" option).
Why the heck not? If you work in the office, the business has to pay for office space, parking, restrooms, water, electricity, heating, air conditioning, etc. If you're not working in the office, then they don't have to pay for these things, why shouldn't they pay for the bandwidth for you to do your job? Maybe they shouldn't pay for the whole cost, but I think at least a partial reimbursement would be appropriate.
It's nice to see that after all the talk and jokes about open-sourcing the law, that it is happening.
The law is already, for the most part, open source. It's all there, waiting for you to read it -- every act of Congress, every supreme court decision. The problem is that it's often obfuscated to hell (some more than others, some are very readable). Just like the common computer user couldn't make heads or tails of the Linux kernel source code, the common (U.S., maybe it's different in other countries?) citizen doesn't understand most of the law. It's all a matter of training (law school), and most people don't have the training.
So, I think it's great that people who know what they're doing are helping those of us who don't.
*sigh* they're all gone now (at least a pseudo-random sample that I tried). I'll have to look elsewhere I guess (anyone with a nice fast Internet2 connection want to offer them?:)
But after reading through the episode descriptions, I've found that my local TV station is a season and a half behind... they were just showing episode 15 from season 4 last week (they show them on Saturdays). And somehow I missed episode 14:( I had no idea that there were so many already made episodes that I was missing... of course, that means I have a whole new season with Daniel Jackson to look forward to:P
Have animals become creatures who advertise their presence to their predators?
Some do. Some brightly colored animals advertise warnings to others -- don't eat me or you'll regret it. Some have consequences (bad tasting, poisonous, or smelly like skunks) while others are just pretending, capitolizing on the predetors not wanting to chance it. Other animals, like the peacock, brightly advertise themselves to their mates. Bioluminescent animals also attrack attention to themselves.
The idea that information wants to be free is more of a property than a drive. Saying that information wants to be free is like saying that fire wants to spread. Fire doesn't conciously try to spread, it just does. In the same way, information tends to spread and be free (not contained to a select group of people).
Re:Bah. Weak argument at best.
on
The Crime of Sharing
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· Score: 2, Informative
According to the 1997 Indiana Criminal Code (that's the only copy I have handy and I doubt theft's definition has changed that much in 5 years), theft is defined as:
A person who knowingly or intentionally exerts unauthorized control over property of another person,
with intent to deprive the other person of any part of its value or use, commits theft, a class D felony.
IANAL, but the intent part is very crucial here. When most people download a song or movie, their intent is probably not to screw the copyright owner but to get the media for the least possible price (though I'm sure some do it just to screw the RIAA/MPAA).
Of course, this isn't that useful since copyright infringement is also a crime, and would probably be the charge and not some form of theft.
Re:Something that isn't pointed out enough
on
SuSE 7.3 vs XP
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· Score: 1
I think you can start multiple versions of X, but, like with XP, it would take God-awful amounts of RAM (so I've never actually done it). You'd think there'd be a cleaner solution...
LOGO was awesome! It was probably my first trip into the wonderful world of programming. My school even had a little mechanical turtle we could hook up to the computer and command through LOGO (even a pen to draw with).
LOGO was one of the best programs that my school had!
You're kidding, right? They didn't think to figure this out before they ran in guns blazing? Seems to me like the smart thing to do is to investigate him for a couple months to see if he really is dangerous, and if so, then act appropriately. If they honestly didn't know, and he had lots of explosives somewhere, how do they know he wouldn't have blown them all up?
Now, this guy was out cracking sites, and he should face punishment for that (something reasonable, not decades in prison), but was all the show of force really necessary? Is this something a couple of squad cars and dectives can't do? The police arrest actual dangerous criminals all the time without huge guns -- just because this particular criminal had a website doesn't make him a trained killer.
I don't remember (too young), but we used to have a phone with no ringer. Apparently, the phone company used to call their customers and test the voltage used by the phones for ringing (or something like that) to tell how many phones were in use. The phone still worked, it just didn't ring. Gotta love that circumvention technology!
I don't remember what happened to the phone. Either it finally broke and we got rid of it, or it's sitting somewhere unused since we don't have any phone jacks that support it (it's cord looks like a power cord except it has 4 prongs).
Slashdot Mirror
For the vast majority of people, science is just another religion: taken on faith or rejected as heresy.
:)
But science is just another religion. It seeks to answer the questions of life just like every other religion. It just accomplishes that task through (mostly) logic and reason. Science seeks revelation from the human mind instead of an outside supreme being.
Science even has its own set of beliefs that all scientists take on faith. Chief among those are causality and repeatability. Causality means that action A causes action B: "Letting go of the ball causes it to fall towards the floor". Similarily, repeatability means that action A will always cause action B under the same or similar circumstances: "Letting go of the ball will always cause it to fall towards the Earth". There's no way to really prove that. Just because the experimenter let go of a ball 1000 times and it fell towards the floor doesn't mean it will the next time. Maybe gravity won't work the next time -- can you prove that it will? Forever? The only things you can really prove are mathematical.
But of course, these are just my beliefs
Only your enemy's life would be saved -- you'd still be dead...
The First Amendment only applies when the GOVERNMENT is attempting to prevent you from doing what you stated above. Microsoft, on the other hand, is a private company ...
Microsoft can make whatever rules they fell like, as long as they don't get the courts (and therefore the government) involved in the enforcement of those rules. The Government cannot enforce rules that violate any of the Amendments. See for example Shelley v. Kraemer.
Of course, IANAL, so I may be interpreting that caese incorrectly...
Generally, I agree... but try using Equation Editor in Word. Lots of times. Usually, it's pretty stable, but it has crashed Word on me before (with the associated loss of data). The COM framework itself is pretty stable, but the components may not be.
Maybe I should just learn LaTeX...
I wonder if they'll be as full of lies as the current "Truth" ads. Maybe thousands of planes flying past a beach with signs reading "mov" and "add" -- showing the swimmers all the different instructions in EQ. Or maybe they'll show a giant blue-screened computer and say the Everquest has code that can do that.
:) Their only good ad I've seen was their April Fools day commercial (cigarette company announcing they have a safe cigarette).
I respect what they're trying to do, but the FUD they spread is really bad. I'm not sure they have a truthful bone in their bodies. Maybe they're ex-Microsoft advertisers
It's not just driving a car you need a driver's license for. Try buying alcohol without one if you're under 25 (and over 21 of course). It's bad enough trying to buy alcohol with an out of state ID. Same goes for writing a check.
Sure, you can go to the DMV and get a non-driving ID, but isn't that the same? (it would have the same data on it, you just aren't allowed to drive)
The fact is, you can't do a lot of things in our society without your papers, er, government issued ID. Not that I see an easy solution, but a driver's license isn't just for driving anymore.
Yeah! Stupid competition! Don't those Free Software people know that companies should be entitled to profits forever? They've already innovated once, how much more do they have to keep working?
If TiVo or ReplayTV want to compete with this product, they're free to. Just because it's open source doesn't mean it's immune from competition. Profits are not guarenteed in a free economy.
And no, just because a company is going out of business doesn't give it the right to sue everyone around it an attempt to bring them down too. That sort of thing is irresponsible to society at large.
That's all well and good until your writing a paper about Monopoly:
"Bob landed on the chance square and drew a card that said move back 3 spaces."
comes out
"Bob landed on the chance square and drew a card spaces. Aw, crap, stupid voice recognition softare! ARGH! Stop that!"
the_2nd_coming's post wasn't libel. His first statement asked a question, and wasn't a statement of fact. His next two statements were purely his opinion of Valenti. Saying "I'm sure he has connections" and "He has connections" are two entirely different statements.
Of course, IANAL.
WTF are you talking about? IE is not the shell on Windows, explorer.exe is. There are parts of explorer.exe that use the same HTML renderer that IE does, but you can safely delete iexplore.exe without killing your system. The HTML renderer (which some people consider to be IE) is still installed, however. You can't easily get rid of that without causing some problems.
But if you still think that IE is your shell, I encourage you to go look at
HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon\shell
and see what it says.
Not only is it complete BS, it's a downright lie! The entire point of COM was to make the system modular so that components could be replaced with different implementations. If someone really worked at it, they could probably get IE to use the Mozilla rendering engine by writing a COM wrapper that implemented the right interfaces (I forget their names at the moment). I'm not saying it would be easy, but definietly possible. All of COM is like that, and hence all of Windows (since Windows relies so heavily on COM).
Their other two points are more valid, though. The system would be less user-friendly (since MS and most of the world defines user-friendly as how close the interface is to MS software) and it would be a real PITA to support. How many things can go wrong with Windows when most all of the stuff is comes from MS? Now start adding in third party stuff into the system creating all sorts of new configuration permutations. Definitely more work to figure out what's wrong.
"Pirates seek to profit off the enormous popularity of DVDs by using the latest in technology to illegally manufacture DVD copies of Hollywood films, and again dupe consumers into purchasing a wholly inferior product," MPAA Chief Executive Jack Valenti said in a statement.
[emphasis mine]
Funny... I thought the whole reason the MPAA was scared of digital data was because it could be copied perfectly and not create a wholly inferior product. Or maybe it's inferior because Jack doesn't make lots of money off of it.
(not that I support this sort of copying -- this guy was obviously a parasite, trying to live off the work of others)
My college has a similar set up because it saves an incredible amount of bandwidth. It's not to be mean, or malicious, or spy on your browsing habits, it's just to save bandwidth. And it does (I wish I had numbers to back this up, but I don't run the proxy).
There have been problems with the proxy in the past (it not returning any data) and there are still some minor issues, but on the whole it works well (in that you don't ever notice it).
It sounds like the ISP in question has a bug in their web cache code. If the web cache doesn't have the particular URL cached, it forward the request to the intended destination. I'd bet it's trying, but it can't lookup whatever OpenNIC URL is being specified (because it doesn't use OpenNIC). The ISP really should report this bug to the manufacturer.
My advice is this -- get the ISP on your side to fix the problem. They won't remove the proxy, and they shouldn't have to if the bug is fixed.
1) Java code is almost inherently open source. You can always decompile the .class code into .java files. There are obfuscators out there that change the names of the variables, etc, but you still have the basic logic of the code (it's just harder to figure out). If your company thinks a competitor wouldn't be able use this, they're probably mistaken.
2) The obfuscation process, if applied to the source code is essentially another compiliation. IANAL, but I think a lawyer could successfully argue that the obfuscated code is an intermediate step in the compiling process being used and doesn't constitue the original source code.
3) If the company wants to license the GPL'd code, they should comply with the restrictions and GPL their modifications or derivative works to it. Or, they can simply not license the GPL'd work!. There's a cost involved with everything, this is that cost.
If I want to respond to a mailing list group, I use reply to all and take out the sender's address (so he/she doesn't get the message twice). If I just hit reply, then only the sender's address is in the To: field, which I have to delete then type the list address. Reply to all is much eaiser in that case (though I would prefer a "reply to group" option).
Just a thought.
Why the heck not? If you work in the office, the business has to pay for office space, parking, restrooms, water, electricity, heating, air conditioning, etc. If you're not working in the office, then they don't have to pay for these things, why shouldn't they pay for the bandwidth for you to do your job? Maybe they shouldn't pay for the whole cost, but I think at least a partial reimbursement would be appropriate.
It's nice to see that after all the talk and jokes about open-sourcing the law, that it is happening.
The law is already, for the most part, open source. It's all there, waiting for you to read it -- every act of Congress, every supreme court decision. The problem is that it's often obfuscated to hell (some more than others, some are very readable). Just like the common computer user couldn't make heads or tails of the Linux kernel source code, the common (U.S., maybe it's different in other countries?) citizen doesn't understand most of the law. It's all a matter of training (law school), and most people don't have the training.
So, I think it's great that people who know what they're doing are helping those of us who don't.
RPMFind also seems to still have the RPMs for bnetd.
*sigh* they're all gone now (at least a pseudo-random sample that I tried). I'll have to look elsewhere I guess (anyone with a nice fast Internet2 connection want to offer them? :)
:( I had no idea that there were so many already made episodes that I was missing... of course, that means I have a whole new season with Daniel Jackson to look forward to :P
But after reading through the episode descriptions, I've found that my local TV station is a season and a half behind... they were just showing episode 15 from season 4 last week (they show them on Saturdays). And somehow I missed episode 14
Have animals become creatures who advertise their presence to their predators?
Some do. Some brightly colored animals advertise warnings to others -- don't eat me or you'll regret it. Some have consequences (bad tasting, poisonous, or smelly like skunks) while others are just pretending, capitolizing on the predetors not wanting to chance it. Other animals, like the peacock, brightly advertise themselves to their mates. Bioluminescent animals also attrack attention to themselves.
The idea that information wants to be free is more of a property than a drive. Saying that information wants to be free is like saying that fire wants to spread. Fire doesn't conciously try to spread, it just does. In the same way, information tends to spread and be free (not contained to a select group of people).
IANAL, but the intent part is very crucial here. When most people download a song or movie, their intent is probably not to screw the copyright owner but to get the media for the least possible price (though I'm sure some do it just to screw the RIAA/MPAA).
Of course, this isn't that useful since copyright infringement is also a crime, and would probably be the charge and not some form of theft.
I think you can start multiple versions of X, but, like with XP, it would take God-awful amounts of RAM (so I've never actually done it). You'd think there'd be a cleaner solution...
LOGO was awesome! It was probably my first trip into the wonderful world of programming. My school even had a little mechanical turtle we could hook up to the computer and command through LOGO (even a pen to draw with).
LOGO was one of the best programs that my school had!
You're kidding, right? They didn't think to figure this out before they ran in guns blazing? Seems to me like the smart thing to do is to investigate him for a couple months to see if he really is dangerous, and if so, then act appropriately. If they honestly didn't know, and he had lots of explosives somewhere, how do they know he wouldn't have blown them all up?
Now, this guy was out cracking sites, and he should face punishment for that (something reasonable, not decades in prison), but was all the show of force really necessary? Is this something a couple of squad cars and dectives can't do? The police arrest actual dangerous criminals all the time without huge guns -- just because this particular criminal had a website doesn't make him a trained killer.
I don't remember (too young), but we used to have a phone with no ringer. Apparently, the phone company used to call their customers and test the voltage used by the phones for ringing (or something like that) to tell how many phones were in use. The phone still worked, it just didn't ring. Gotta love that circumvention technology!
I don't remember what happened to the phone. Either it finally broke and we got rid of it, or it's sitting somewhere unused since we don't have any phone jacks that support it (it's cord looks like a power cord except it has 4 prongs).