Re:Not the creation...the propogation...
on
Palm to go Linux
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Microsoft did not create generic hardware operating systems -- if you are college age today you were not old enough back then. But long before MS and its PC DOS there was a company called Digital Research and CP/M, in the age of 8-bit computers. Also Unix variations were coming with the same "run on many hardware platforms" angle -- although back then Unix was not a "personal computer" thing.
It is alright to say that cheap hardware came due to the unbundling of soft/hardware. It is also fine to say that cheap hardware was great for Linux propagation. But it is not fair to say IMHO that without MS there would be no unbundling.
Hydrogen is a storage medium, not an energy source.
So? Neither is petroleum, coal, or biodiesel.
There is not a single energy positive creation source on the face of the planet. 99.9% of everything all our energy sources come from the sun (excluding geothermal and uranium) which oil and coal was from plants and animals from millions of years ago that got their energy from the sun, while biodiesel is from more recent plants.
Excuse me while I say "FLAMEBAIT!".
You seem about ready to bring in the First Law of Thermodynamics, and state things like "energy can be changed from one form to another, but it cannot be created or destroyed" and "the total amount of energy and matter in the Universe remains constant, merely changing from one form to another".
No matter what you say petroleum and coal remain, for all practical purposes, energy sources. Hydrogen, sorry, does not qualify as one.
"Researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute have created 'the world's first material that reflects virtually no light.'
Researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute have created 'the world's toughest-to-keep-clean material': if you look at it and can see anything, it's dirty already.
Does it matter? Under one set of theories, we have to bury a bunch of biomass, wait a couple hundred million years, and we have more oil. Under the other theory, the oil is a natural part of planetary development, so we have to wait... a couple billion years?
It matters greatly. Think about it. The earth is a sphere of roughly 8,000-mile diameter, biomass exists as a less than one mile deep layer over sections of that sphere (exclude the poles). Actually, much less than one mile. Plant bio mass (which matters the most due to photosynthesis) generally cover a less than 100 feet (0,02 mile) deep layer over the earth surface. The proportions are equivalent to a pool ball (the earth) spray-painted (plant coverage). And the conditions for that bio mass to turn into oil had to be a very specific (and not terribly probable) series of geological events.
Supposedly there would be much more oil if it came from the core material of the pool ball than if it was scrapped (even over a long time) from the pool ball paint. Well I am not sure whether I used the best analogy here, but I hope you get the angle.
Re:Call me a stickler for language...
on
DRM Causes Piracy
·
· Score: 1
Interesting angle. Your insight about the incompatibility between what the law dictates and what people think is fair is a *very* important consideration. I think about that often, and in much more general terms than simply copyright laws.
Legislators in any modern (or not so modern) country have created many more laws and regulations than we can imagine (see The Death of Common Sense), while libertarians took refuge in transgression of the law (e.g. speeding). However this world, thanks to information technology, is clearly becoming much easier to police -- here where I live cameras everywhere will take pictures of your license plate and automatically mail you a ticket if you speed. They can also control where your car has been (was it supposed to be there?).
But I digress. What I really wanted to add to your insight is just this: more than the size of the penalty, the probability of getting caught influences how people behave towards the law. And there is a very important "crowd mentality" phenomenon -- if more people break the law, the probability of getting caught goes down, causing yet more people to break the law, which reinforces the cycle. But technology (think spyware, think speed radar cameras, think data base mining in the IRS and, perhaps, DRM) can revert the cycle.
Thinking about law+police+technology makes one think about hackers as the white-hat cowboys: the last guardians of the libertarian spirit.
First things you don't need a vista, music, movies, or anything else of that sort. No I don't. I may want it. I may really desire it. But I don't need it in the sense I need air, water or food. Is that your point ?
Second piracy is NOT an answer. (...) Stealing it instead of supporting that industry is theft, not "your right". Piracy is not an answer to which question ? It may be an answer to several questions, like, how does one kid who cannot afford an specific computer game (operating system, spreadsheet, compiler, graphic program) gets one ? Of course piracy is an answer to THAT question. You may say you think that's wrong because the law defines that as stealing. The kid may say, who writes the law, and for whom ? Certainly the law was not written for THAT kid. Theft is a concept which applies to phisical things -- if I take an object from you, you no longer have it. Electronic content is not stolen in the same sense. If you light your candle on my candle have you "stolen" or "pirated" my fire ? Nonsense.
Prices for content have to go down enough to make it *less convenient* to pirate than to buy original. So in this sense piracy IS an effective answer to fix industry behavior. As effective, and more realistic, than boycotting. Content owners will find a way to still extract heaps of money from every piece of content, exactly for the "candlelight" reason I gave. BTW this month my cable TV company here in Brazil is offering payperview movies at a special R$ 1,99 price. That's slightly less than a Dollar for a movie. Sort of beats going to Blockbuster or bittorrent, doesn't it ?
But even not considering what I wrote above... Think movie content. Box Office and TV rights income will pay just fine. Think music content. Real musicians will play their music even if they have to pay for playing. There are many, many more amateur musicians than professional ones, and not so much quality as the "being paid" attribute separates them. Fear not for music. Software ? It will eventually get done, even computer games, as open source initiatives show. Anyway, net interactivity (such as MMORPG) will make the model more like the "pay a little, play a little".
Third, start boycotting. You must be really young (or naive) to think this could work. Ask people to boycott McDonald's out of the market (did you watch "SuperSize Me"?). Ask everyone you know to break poultry farms by boicotting meat (look http://www.peta.org/). Ask people to save the earth by giving up their cars and going bike-only. That will make you a romantic, not someone who will fix the world. If you think you can move/influence so many people you should not be here at/. but rather running for president.
Voting machines are simpler, faster, easier and, given enough honest thought, also safer against fraud and interpretation mistakes. If you think paper records are less falsifiable just put a paper-roll printer inside each voting machine, print on it and let the voter see, through a small glass windoes, what is printed for his vote in the serially numbered paper roll. But there are other ways if you think enough.
One thing I wonder is whether cheaper voting transactions could not change the way voters participate in government decision (by allowing a greater number of public consultations). Think about making your representatives guide you, not vote for you.
Anyway, talking about personal experiences in other countries, here in Brazil we have gone, several years ago, from paper ballots to 100% electronic voting machines. It is *much* easier to coordinate and execute, much faster for everyone involved (voting lines are negligible even though voting is obligatory for 100% of adults). There is no going back from that. And benchmark for benchmark, one has to agree that the larger the pool of voters, the harder the challenge of coordinating and counting. Classroom voting is one thing, city voting another, country voting yet another. Anyway, the population of Croatia is 4 Million. The population of Brazil is 190 Million. The population of the US is 300 Million.
Its not the criminal, its the gun Its not the owner, its the pit bull Its not the parents, its the website
I guess we could go on playing this shifting game... Its not social problems and broken homes, its the criminal. Its not the "macho/mean m*f*" sub-culture, its the pitbull owner. Its not modern professional demands in husbands and _wifes_, its the parents.
So much for trying to comprehend the world. No wonder there are still religions around.
Well you feed the data, among zillions of other data, to neural-network type computer programs, which will constantly "learn" what may be a suspicious person. Computer will spill a list out, and probably government agents will fine comb the top "supposedly suspect" elements.
Every piece of data is both information, in itself, and a link to other information. So they learn not simply from what (or where, or when) you spent money with your credit card, but also are able to link the traveler with other "identities" he/she may have -- from Amazon.com wish lists to online bbs comments, from bank accounts to phone records, from vehicle ownership to insurance policies, from university courses to criminal records. Did I mention inconsistencies too ?
Well, data is a very powerful thing, given enough data analysis power (which of course government, if anyone, can certainly afford). The REALLY scary thing is that all this power, once in place, can be used for anything, to watch anyone. Don't for a second think they wouldn't. I am not sure what the consequences will be -- but I don't like it already, and I don't think it will be kind to the concept of "freedom".
I am always amazed at how the USA (an admirable country) is morphing more and more into that which it used to despise. Remember the "1984" book by George Orwell was supposed to be describing a soviet/communist world, not "the land of the free". And yet, step by step, America is becoming like "1984". I seem to remember a tale by a certain "George Lucas" which shows how a free republic becomes an "evil empire" by rotting at the top. (insert darth vader track:daaah daaah daaah da da-daah da da-daah)
I'm even more amazed at eBay sellers that sell for more than the best prices on Froogle or other search sites. The shocking thing, though, is that people actually buy this stuff at those higher prices.... Apparently, there are still plenty of suckers out there.
Well, there are a lot of suckers out there for sure. But plenty of people in the other end of the sucker scale are paying those higher prices you are talking about. For instance the smartest Brazilian buyers will pay higher prices to eBay sellers because they will ship to Brazil, and be flexible on what they declare to the post office as the package contents. Oh, and before you get too imaginative, it just needs to be declared as worth less than US$ 50 so that it goes through customs without the 60% import taxes. How smart is that ? Well, an unlocked Treo 650 will cost, shipping included, less than 50% of what you would pay at a Brazilian cell phone store.
Even if I could convice pricewatch and froogle stores to ship to Brazil, they certainly would not be flexible on what they declare for customs, and the "Sender" label not being "John Smith" would also be a magnet for customs inspection/taxing.
I do not really know how much this "international consumer arbitrage" is a factor compared to regular suckers, but I can tell you it is a factor that will only grow over time, as people get used to it.
And what happens to liquid hidrogen continuously evaporating, as it absorbs heat from the surroundings, inside a sealed container/pipe with no leaks or escape valves ?
> If the DOE Assistant Secretary thinks that electricity production has any meaningful impact on oil imports, the DOE is in trouble. > With the possible exception of AK and HI, not much oil is burned for electricity generation in the US.
If you think that the cost differential between oil and electricity has no meaningful impact on oil imports, your reasoning is troubled. What energy application cannot change from oil to electricity, given economic incentives (which by the way will come naturally from market rules regarding scarcity and abundance of the two competing sources) ?
"Software developers have become adept at the difficult art of building reasonably reliable systems out of unreliable parts. The snag is that often we do not know exactly how we did it." is one of the most insightful things I've read since Fred Brooks.
The "We do not know exactly how we did it" part is insightful, though in the obvious-when-you-consider and most-other-things-are-like-that kind of way.
The "building reliable systems out of unreliable parts" part sounds like a mystical revelation but is in fact incoherent garbage. The definition of reliable (from the dictionary) is "giving the same results on successive trials". What software, be it a system, be it a module, is not reliable in that sense ? It may have a bug, but a bug which happens under specific, repeatable and avoidable conditions, does not make a software system or part any less reliable.
But by bringing this up you completely miss the point of the statement you are trying to criticize.
There are two meanings for "energy". There is the physical meaning, in which the 1st law applies. And there is the practical meaning, in which energy means useful energy.
Without putting some restriction there is no theoretical maximum. If you remember RAM "Page Flipping" as we had in the early x86 board designs you will know that.
> The "darkness" of the dark ages is severely exaggerated.
Well, Schumpeter would probably call the Dark Ages, post Rome, a period of "creative destruction". That being, of course, a term describing the main positive dynamic of Capitalism.
So it could be argued that it was that precise turmoil that was able to breed over time, darwin-style, the best states, organizations, philosophies, art, war techs, which ultimately brought the renaissance and the modern world in which we live today.
Would we count that messy period as progress, though ? Maybe...
>What is PSDB-MG, anyway? Piece of Shit Damn British MG?
This is slashdot, and you didn't think a question like that would go unanswered, did you ?
PSDB is Partido da Social Democracia Brasileira (http://www.psdb.org.br/) translates to the Brazilian Socio-Democracy Party. MG stands for Minas Gerais, the state Senator Azeredo represents.
As a Brazilian I should add: * PSDB is the leading opposition party in Brazil. Its candidate just lost the presidential race (39% to 61%). * Normally I wouldn't think this sort of thing to come out of PSDB (usually more liberal than the government). But heck... * Mr Azeredo has been involved in an unrelated corruption scandal after proposing the law ("valerioduto"). * I also do not agree with such a law, as many brazilians don't (babelfish this, for instance: A Liberdade da Rede corre Perigo) * This law may not pass (be approved) -- I hope it won't. * Even if it does, it may not be enforceable, as someone here already pointed out -- Freenet comes to mind.
> I see a good, or interesting looking add I will stop to watch it.
Good point. I guess this will mean that advertisers may invest to make many different 30s commercials instead of repeating the same every break, therefore changing the allocation of ad expenditures between film production and media cost.
Could one build a series of 30s commercials in such a way that watching one will increase the likelihood of you watching the next ? Could advertisers possibly make you rewind your PVR recording looking for other "episodes" of the same ad campaign ? Could they interest you in collecting them in your PVR HD ?
I guess it is unlikely, but it may make for an interesting goal for advertisers.
What is the goal behind war ? What is the goal behind Diplomacy ? What is the goal behind Propaganda ? These are all tools, and have no fixed goal per se. Any number of causes can use these tools, and they all should be complemented in order to maximize progress. But neither tool will give you a cause.
All this SLA, technical support, loser/user interaction reminds me of... Well, I don't know if the younger/.ers were exposed to him. The BOFH.
Excerpt: So, to relieve the boredom, I get some iron filings and pour them into the back of my Terminal until it fizzes out (Which doesn't take all that long, surprisingly enough), then call our maintenance contractors and log a fault on the device. Sometimes they'll send someone who knows what they're doing, but it's a lot more fun when they don't - which is about 98% of the time.
So their maintenance guy comes in, and I can tell he's NEW because the photo on his ID actually LOOKS like him, not like the head engineer, whose photo's a black and white tin-type (he's that old).
Maintenance Contractors always dress up nice, with a tie and everything because they believe that a customer will trust a nicely dressed guy with their million dollar equipment *just* because he's got a nice tie..
Because he's NEW and ALONE, he's what you call an appeasement engineer, the new guy they send so they respond within the 4 hour guaranteed response period. (Things are getting better and better) Your average appeasement engineer is about as clued-up on computers as the average computer "hacker" is about B.O, and their main job is to make sure the power plug is in and switched on, then call back to the office for "PARTS". The really keen ones will sometimes even take a cover off the equipment and pretend that they see this stuff all the time. I wonder what sort today's is...
I'm not a liberal weenie by any stretch of the imagination, but I just get annoyed that many people will buy a $600 PS3 than would donate that amount to the suffering in our world.
When smiling at yourself in the mirror, look for these pointy teeth called 'canines'. Question #1 is Why are they there ? Question #2 is Does the analogy depreciate men, or dogs ?
'Tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when you walk into an open sewer and die.' Mel Brooks
I wonder, and I am too lazy to research, whether being open source also means that I could download the 3d models they used and create my own film stories, TV commercial, product endorsements, pron, etc...
Is there any "open source", copyright-free 3d model characters out there that one could just grab and use ?
Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft did not create generic hardware operating systems -- if you are college age today you were not old enough back then. But long before MS and its PC DOS there was a company called Digital Research and CP/M, in the age of 8-bit computers. Also Unix variations were coming with the same "run on many hardware platforms" angle -- although back then Unix was not a "personal computer" thing.
It is alright to say that cheap hardware came due to the unbundling of soft/hardware. It is also fine to say that cheap hardware was great for Linux propagation. But it is not fair to say IMHO that without MS there would be no unbundling.
Excuse me while I say "FLAMEBAIT!".
You seem about ready to bring in the First Law of Thermodynamics, and state things like "energy can be changed from one form to another, but it cannot be created or destroyed" and "the total amount of energy and matter in the Universe remains constant, merely changing from one form to another".
No matter what you say petroleum and coal remain, for all practical purposes, energy sources. Hydrogen, sorry, does not qualify as one.
"Researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute have created 'the world's first material that reflects virtually no light.'
Researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute have created 'the world's toughest-to-keep-clean material': if you look at it and can see anything, it's dirty already.
Does it matter? Under one set of theories, we have to bury a bunch of biomass, wait a couple hundred million years, and we have more oil. Under the other theory, the oil is a natural part of planetary development, so we have to wait ... a couple billion years?
It matters greatly. Think about it. The earth is a sphere of roughly 8,000-mile diameter, biomass exists as a less than one mile deep layer over sections of that sphere (exclude the poles). Actually, much less than one mile. Plant bio mass (which matters the most due to photosynthesis) generally cover a less than 100 feet (0,02 mile) deep layer over the earth surface. The proportions are equivalent to a pool ball (the earth) spray-painted (plant coverage). And the conditions for that bio mass to turn into oil had to be a very specific (and not terribly probable) series of geological events.
Supposedly there would be much more oil if it came from the core material of the pool ball than if it was scrapped (even over a long time) from the pool ball paint. Well I am not sure whether I used the best analogy here, but I hope you get the angle.
Interesting angle. Your insight about the incompatibility between what the law dictates and what people think is fair is a *very* important consideration. I think about that often, and in much more general terms than simply copyright laws.
Legislators in any modern (or not so modern) country have created many more laws and regulations than we can imagine (see The Death of Common Sense), while libertarians took refuge in transgression of the law (e.g. speeding). However this world, thanks to information technology, is clearly becoming much easier to police -- here where I live cameras everywhere will take pictures of your license plate and automatically mail you a ticket if you speed. They can also control where your car has been (was it supposed to be there?).
But I digress. What I really wanted to add to your insight is just this: more than the size of the penalty, the probability of getting caught influences how people behave towards the law. And there is a very important "crowd mentality" phenomenon -- if more people break the law, the probability of getting caught goes down, causing yet more people to break the law, which reinforces the cycle. But technology (think spyware, think speed radar cameras, think data base mining in the IRS and, perhaps, DRM) can revert the cycle.
Thinking about law+police+technology makes one think about hackers as the white-hat cowboys: the last guardians of the libertarian spirit.
First things you don't need a vista, music, movies, or anything else of that sort.
/. but rather running for president.
No I don't. I may want it. I may really desire it. But I don't need it in the sense I need air, water or food. Is that your point ?
Second piracy is NOT an answer. (...) Stealing it instead of supporting that industry is theft, not "your right".
Piracy is not an answer to which question ? It may be an answer to several questions, like, how does one kid who cannot afford an specific computer game (operating system, spreadsheet, compiler, graphic program) gets one ? Of course piracy is an answer to THAT question. You may say you think that's wrong because the law defines that as stealing. The kid may say, who writes the law, and for whom ? Certainly the law was not written for THAT kid. Theft is a concept which applies to phisical things -- if I take an object from you, you no longer have it. Electronic content is not stolen in the same sense. If you light your candle on my candle have you "stolen" or "pirated" my fire ? Nonsense.
Prices for content have to go down enough to make it *less convenient* to pirate than to buy original. So in this sense piracy IS an effective answer to fix industry behavior. As effective, and more realistic, than boycotting. Content owners will find a way to still extract heaps of money from every piece of content, exactly for the "candlelight" reason I gave. BTW this month my cable TV company here in Brazil is offering payperview movies at a special R$ 1,99 price. That's slightly less than a Dollar for a movie. Sort of beats going to Blockbuster or bittorrent, doesn't it ?
But even not considering what I wrote above... Think movie content. Box Office and TV rights income will pay just fine. Think music content. Real musicians will play their music even if they have to pay for playing. There are many, many more amateur musicians than professional ones, and not so much quality as the "being paid" attribute separates them. Fear not for music. Software ? It will eventually get done, even computer games, as open source initiatives show. Anyway, net interactivity (such as MMORPG) will make the model more like the "pay a little, play a little".
Third, start boycotting.
You must be really young (or naive) to think this could work. Ask people to boycott McDonald's out of the market (did you watch "SuperSize Me"?). Ask everyone you know to break poultry farms by boicotting meat (look http://www.peta.org/). Ask people to save the earth by giving up their cars and going bike-only. That will make you a romantic, not someone who will fix the world. If you think you can move/influence so many people you should not be here at
Voting machines are simpler, faster, easier and, given enough
honest thought, also safer against fraud and interpretation
mistakes. If you think paper records are less falsifiable just
put a paper-roll printer inside each voting machine, print on
it and let the voter see, through a small glass windoes, what
is printed for his vote in the serially numbered paper roll.
But there are other ways if you think enough.
One thing I wonder is whether cheaper voting transactions
could not change the way voters participate in government
decision (by allowing a greater number of public consultations).
Think about making your representatives guide you, not vote
for you.
Anyway, talking about personal experiences in other countries,
here in Brazil we have gone, several years ago, from paper ballots
to 100% electronic voting machines. It is *much* easier to
coordinate and execute, much faster for everyone involved (voting
lines are negligible even though voting is obligatory for 100% of
adults). There is no going back from that. And benchmark for
benchmark, one has to agree that the larger the pool of voters, the
harder the challenge of coordinating and counting. Classroom voting
is one thing, city voting another, country voting yet another.
Anyway, the population of Croatia is 4 Million. The population of
Brazil is 190 Million. The population of the US is 300 Million.
-Ricardo
Its not the criminal, its the gun
Its not the owner, its the pit bull
Its not the parents, its the website
I guess we could go on playing this shifting game...
Its not social problems and broken homes, its the criminal.
Its not the "macho/mean m*f*" sub-culture, its the pitbull owner.
Its not modern professional demands in husbands and _wifes_, its the parents.
So much for trying to comprehend the world. No wonder there are still
religions around.
Well you feed the data, among zillions of other data, to neural-network type computer programs, which will constantly "learn" what may be a suspicious person. Computer will spill a list out, and probably government agents will fine comb the top "supposedly suspect" elements.
Every piece of data is both information, in itself, and a link to other information. So they learn not simply from what (or where, or when) you spent money with your credit card, but also are able to link the traveler with other "identities" he/she may have -- from Amazon.com wish lists to online bbs comments, from bank accounts to phone records, from vehicle ownership to insurance policies, from university courses to criminal records. Did I mention inconsistencies too ?
Well, data is a very powerful thing, given enough data analysis power (which of course government, if anyone, can certainly afford). The REALLY scary thing is that all this power, once in place, can be used for anything, to watch anyone. Don't for a second think they wouldn't. I am not sure what the consequences will be -- but I don't like it already, and I don't think it will be kind to the concept of "freedom".
I am always amazed at how the USA (an admirable country) is morphing more and more into that which it used to despise. Remember the "1984" book by George Orwell was supposed to be describing a soviet/communist world, not "the land of the free". And yet, step by step, America is becoming like "1984". I seem to remember a tale by a certain "George Lucas" which shows how a free republic becomes an "evil empire" by rotting at the top. (insert darth vader track:daaah daaah daaah da da-daah da da-daah)
Well, there are a lot of suckers out there for sure. But plenty of people in the other end of the sucker scale are paying those higher prices you are talking about. For instance the smartest Brazilian buyers will pay higher prices to eBay sellers because they will ship to Brazil, and be flexible on what they declare to the post office as the package contents. Oh, and before you get too imaginative, it just needs to be declared as worth less than US$ 50 so that it goes through customs without the 60% import taxes. How smart is that ? Well, an unlocked Treo 650 will cost, shipping included, less than 50% of what you would pay at a Brazilian cell phone store.
Even if I could convice pricewatch and froogle stores to ship to Brazil, they certainly would not be flexible on what they declare for customs, and the "Sender" label not being "John Smith" would also be a magnet for customs inspection/taxing.
I do not really know how much this "international consumer arbitrage" is a factor compared to regular suckers, but I can tell you it is a factor that will only grow over time, as people get used to it.
And what happens to liquid hidrogen continuously evaporating, as it absorbs heat from the surroundings, inside a sealed container/pipe with no leaks or escape valves ?
> If the DOE Assistant Secretary thinks that electricity production has any meaningful impact on oil imports, the DOE is in trouble.
> With the possible exception of AK and HI, not much oil is burned for electricity generation in the US.
If you think that the cost differential between oil and electricity has no meaningful impact on oil imports, your reasoning is troubled. What energy application cannot change from oil to electricity, given economic incentives (which by the way will come naturally from market rules regarding scarcity and abundance of the two competing sources) ?
And if you are worried about oil used for transportation, don't:
http://www.teslamotors.com/
"Software developers have become adept at the difficult art of building reasonably reliable systems out of unreliable parts. The snag is that often we do not know exactly how we did it." is one of the most insightful things I've read since Fred Brooks.
The "We do not know exactly how we did it" part is insightful, though in the obvious-when-you-consider and most-other-things-are-like-that kind of way.
The "building reliable systems out of unreliable parts" part sounds like a mystical revelation but is in fact incoherent garbage. The definition of reliable (from the dictionary) is "giving the same results on successive trials". What software, be it a system, be it a module, is not reliable in that sense ? It may have a bug, but a bug which happens under specific, repeatable and avoidable conditions, does not make a software system or part any less reliable.
AFAIK nothing can produce more energy than it uses.
So we could say... Energy can be neither created nor destroyed.
Or... The energy of the world is constant. Or any of the other
30 ways to state the first law of thermodynamics.
But by bringing this up you completely miss the point of
the statement you are trying to criticize.
There are two meanings for "energy". There is the physical
meaning, in which the 1st law applies. And there is the practical
meaning, in which energy means useful energy.
Without putting some restriction there is no theoretical maximum.
If you remember RAM "Page Flipping" as we had in the early x86
board designs you will know that.
> The "darkness" of the dark ages is severely exaggerated.
Well, Schumpeter would probably call the Dark Ages, post Rome,
a period of "creative destruction". That being, of course, a
term describing the main positive dynamic of Capitalism.
So it could be argued that it was that precise turmoil that
was able to breed over time, darwin-style, the best states,
organizations, philosophies, art, war techs, which ultimately
brought the renaissance and the modern world in which we live
today.
Would we count that messy period as progress, though ?
Maybe...
>What is PSDB-MG, anyway? Piece of Shit Damn British MG?
This is slashdot, and you didn't think a question like that would go unanswered, did you ?
PSDB is Partido da Social Democracia Brasileira (http://www.psdb.org.br/) translates to the Brazilian Socio-Democracy Party. MG stands for Minas Gerais, the state Senator Azeredo represents.
As a Brazilian I should add:
* PSDB is the leading opposition party in Brazil. Its candidate just lost the presidential race (39% to 61%).
* Normally I wouldn't think this sort of thing to come out of PSDB (usually more liberal than the government). But heck...
* Mr Azeredo has been involved in an unrelated corruption scandal after proposing the law ("valerioduto").
* I also do not agree with such a law, as many brazilians don't (babelfish this, for instance: A Liberdade da Rede corre Perigo)
* This law may not pass (be approved) -- I hope it won't.
* Even if it does, it may not be enforceable, as someone here already pointed out -- Freenet comes to mind.
> I see a good, or interesting looking add I will stop to watch it.
Good point. I guess this will mean that advertisers may invest to
make many different 30s commercials instead of repeating the same
every break, therefore changing the allocation of ad expenditures
between film production and media cost.
Could one build a series of 30s commercials in such a way that watching
one will increase the likelihood of you watching the next ? Could advertisers
possibly make you rewind your PVR recording looking for other "episodes"
of the same ad campaign ? Could they interest you in collecting them
in your PVR HD ?
I guess it is unlikely, but it may make for an interesting goal for
advertisers.
My first computer, a Power Mac, came with a 256 MB hard drive(...)
/.
You probably have no idea how unimpressive that sounds here at
My first computer, a ZX 81, came with 2kb of main memory and stored data
and programs in a cassete tape at a 300bps rate.
My first computer with a floppy drive, an Apple II Plus, stored 127 kb in
a 5 1/4 inches floppy.
My first computer with a hard drive, an IBM PC XT compatible, had a 10 MB
Winchester.
My cell phone today (a SonyEricsson K700) has more memory than that first HD.
Honestly what is the goal behind terrorism?
What is the goal behind war ? What is the goal
behind Diplomacy ? What is the goal behind Propaganda ?
These are all tools, and have no fixed goal per se.
Any number of causes can use these tools, and they
all should be complemented in order to maximize
progress. But neither tool will give you a cause.
All this SLA, technical support, loser/user interaction reminds me of... /.ers were exposed to him. The BOFH.
Well, I don't know if the younger
Excerpt:
So, to relieve the boredom, I get some iron filings and pour them into the back of my Terminal until it fizzes out (Which doesn't take all that long, surprisingly enough), then call our maintenance contractors and log a fault on the device. Sometimes they'll send someone who knows what they're doing, but it's a lot more fun when they don't - which is about 98% of the time.
So their maintenance guy comes in, and I can tell he's NEW because the photo on his ID actually LOOKS like him, not like the head engineer, whose photo's a black and white tin-type (he's that old).
Maintenance Contractors always dress up nice, with a tie and everything because they believe that a customer will trust a nicely dressed guy with their million dollar equipment *just* because he's got a nice tie..
Because he's NEW and ALONE, he's what you call an appeasement engineer, the new guy they send so they respond within the 4 hour guaranteed response period. (Things are getting better and better) Your average appeasement engineer is about as clued-up on computers as the average computer "hacker" is about B.O, and their main job is to make sure the power plug is in and switched on, then call back to the office for "PARTS". The really keen ones will sometimes even take a cover off the equipment and pretend that they see this stuff all the time. I wonder what sort today's is...
Complete story here.
All about BOFH@Wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PFY
Guess who wins?
Spoiler Alert: Answers posted below
(to save your mouse three clicks)
PS3: 389 appearances on a Slashdot title
XBOX 360: 334 appearances
Wii (or Nintendor Revolution): 70 appearances
*looks around suspiciously*
I'm not a liberal weenie by any stretch of the imagination, but I just get annoyed that many people will buy a $600 PS3 than would donate that amount to the suffering in our world.
When smiling at yourself in the mirror, look for these pointy teeth called 'canines'.
Question #1 is Why are they there ?
Question #2 is Does the analogy depreciate men, or dogs ?
'Tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when you walk into an open sewer and die.'
Mel Brooks
I wonder, and I am too lazy to research, whether being open source
also means that I could download the 3d models they used and create
my own film stories, TV commercial, product endorsements, pron, etc...
Is there any "open source", copyright-free 3d model characters out there
that one could just grab and use ?