The first is the argument people around here call "occam's razor". It says that apparently the simplest explanation is the correct one. A simple exercise in thinking can reveal that this isn't true. After all, Newtonian mechanics is far simpler than quantum field theory. But it is more incorrect. Even QFT is incorrect, and physicists readily admit to its limits and ponder what could be used to replace it. Physicists and mathematicians wish the world were as simple as the theory of electrodynamics (thanks to Maxwell's insight), but even that model is incorrect and limited
Occam's razor states that the simplest theory which adequately explains the situation is probably the correct one. Newtonian mechanics has been proven to be inadequate, therefore it's no longer a viable theory. Put it this way: If a cop came upon a scene where a body was found, bullet through the temple, gun in hand, and suicide note on the table, would you trust him if he said "I believe that a robot did this, faking the suicide and writing the note. I further believe that the robot was sent millions of years ago from an undiscovered planet orbiting a star in the Andromeda galaxy."? Okay, it's not the simplest explanation, but it's not impossible. Somehow, I think I'd give a better chance to the theory that the the despondent person committed suicide.
Re:Safe? they should find a more efficient way
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The classical use of the term - especially in regard to politics - is of a "live and let live" nature.
It is you who believe that smokers should be able to kill non-smokers with secondhand smoke, trigger asthmatic attacks, etc. You want to snort cocaine? Go for it. You want to inject heroin? I don't care. You want to injest LSD? Have at it. As long as it doesn't enter my body, you use whatever drugs you please.
Ergo, you are not for freedom, you don't even know what the fuck it is. My recommendation: an education.
I either received a lot more education than you or yours didn't take very well.
You think "freedom" means that having a right to trigger potentially fatal asthma attacks (like the one that killed my friend's adult sister), having a right to put non-smokers at increased risk of developing cancer, and having a right to make ruin restaurant meals for non-smokers with the stench of tobacco smoke. That's not "live and let live." That's "live and let impose and endanger."
Your commentary was not relevant to what you state you desired:
If you were half as smart as you think you are, you would have realized that I was not the original poster. See that user ID & number?
"Personally i think smoking should be completely banned." A ban means non, zilch, nada. Not in your house and not in my house even if I so desire it.
Can you keep the smoke from escaping your house? Can you keep it from ending up in the air that we all breathe? No. Why should my car be prohibited from emitting carcinogenic smoke while cigarette smokers are allowed to belch it out? Don't you realize that the smoke from billions of cigarettes enters the atmosphere every day?
Oh, and I do hope you are a kid (under 30 in my book), as it confirms my worldview that they have been totally brainwashed on the smoking issue.
I'm 44. I'm also a lifelong asthmatic and someone who took allergy shots for ten years. I'm also someone who has lost a father and grandfather to cancer and a grandmother to a stroke. They were smokers.
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What has caused your mind to get so fucked up?
I'm all for freedom, too. Does that mean that I should be free to pound the living snot out of you?
And don't suggest I took the first quote out of context.
You did. You cut out all of the very relevent commentary on how your freedom should not impinge on the health, safety, and freedom of others.
your mail has some routing on it. I can easily tell what postal facility it went through to begin with.
Your Internet traffic has routing data, too. I can easily tell the IP address it went through to begin with. The police can use that to find the wifi connection and then figure out the small area from which you could have been operating. That's no more anonymous than a public mailbox.
Not to mention, paper types, and envelope glues are on record with the FBI, so they can find out what batch it came from, and where that was sold.
Untrue. The FBI can analyze the packaging and sometimes determine the manufacturer of it, but there's no central repository like they have for ballistics.
And don't forget forensics on those (fingerprint, dna, etc).
It takes only a small bit of effort to avoid such contamination.
Not nearly as anonymous as most people think. Very few get away with it (anthrax attacks notably).
Actually, most get away with it, whether it's a threatening letter, a letter bomb, or anthrax. You mentioned anthrax. What about the Unabomber, who'd still probably be free today had his brother not turned him in?
P.S. I worked for the Postal Service and even did computer forensic work for the USPS Inspection Service. I'm certain that you overestimate law enforcement's ability to track conventional mail.
Not true. Show me caselaw or legislation that supports that contention. And explain why large ISPs aren't charged under those supposed laws. Why wouldn't my running of an open wifi connection give me common carrier status?
Personally, I'm still convinced unsecure WiFi poses to large of a risk.
I'm sure that many cowards could identify with that thought. But to those of us who truly value freedom, it's a reasonable price to pay. I'm not going to quietly give up my rights to anonymous free speech just because someone else could use anonymity for dastardly purposes.
If you want state-controlled and monitored Internet access, then move to China.
This is a good idea unless you want your access point open.
*UNLESS*
That's the key word. Suppose I want to, as a public service, leave an open, unencrypted wifi connection.
Suppose I want people to be able to access the Internet with some degree of anonymity. This law is trying to make an end-run around free speech by taking away anonymity.
I wonder if this law is being pushed by telecoms, cable providers, and other ISPs who want to make sure that everyone pays them for Internet access...
No doubt. I've installed all the new versions too. I just got no value from it. All my e-mail and system files are organized; I don't need any kind of search function. Mod parent up.
Then you don't have many e-mails and files. Anyone who has several tens of thousands of e-mails (personal, listservers, etc.) will find Google Desktop search useful. When all that you can remember is that someone sent you something in e-mail that, as an aside, mentioned a problem with program XYZ, you won't be able to find it without a good search tool. Unless you're some newbie whose idea of a long time is back to 2002.
Yes, you can. Under federal copyright law, Title 17
504. Remedies for infringement: Damages and profits:
(a) In General. - Except as otherwise provided by this title, an infringer of copyright is liable for either -
(1) the copyright owner's actual damages and any additional profits of the infringer, as provided by subsection (b); or
(2) statutory damages, as provided by subsection (c).
If you commit the crime of copyright infringement, you may be criminally prosectuted and/or sued in civil court. For further details, go here
This is not unique to copyright. Countless federal, state, and local laws provide prescribe a right of private action for violation of criminal laws. For example, the "Telephone Consumer Protection Act" (Title 47 227) allows a consumer to sue for damages when someone sends them a "junk fax" (I know, because I collected $500 under that statute).
I think it is fair of me to assume that you have a basic understanding of the difference between criminal law and civil law.
In the last message, you suggested that I might be on crack. This is a big step forward.;)
Unfortunately there are criminal copyright infringement laws, but if the MPAA thought they could get this guy on those laws they wouldn't sue them, they'd just call the police and have them arrested and charged. Thankfully, these laws are not yet draconian enough to be applicable to simple filesharing. But give it time.
Those laws are applicable to so-called "filesharing." Law enforcement could bring criminal charges against filesharers if they chose to -- just as they've done numerous times to the "warez" traders. Fortunately, law enforcement can choose which cases to prosecute and has chosen to reserve such prosecutions for people involved in massive for-profit piracy of copyrighted books, movies, music, etc. But criminal copyright law still provides for private rights of actions.
Maybe you're on crack, but all of us are talking about liability not crimes.
I'd still be smarter than you even if I were on crack.
Copyright infringement is a crime. That's what he's being sued for. The MPAA is claiming that he is liable for damages for the crime of copyright infringement.
If you lend your machete to your neighbour and he chops off a finger because you failed to keep the handle well maintained you are liable.
So what? The MPAA is suing him for copyright infringement, not negligence. This case is not analogous, in any way, to a failure to maintain a tool, steps at a house, etc.
If they were to turn a blind eye to copyright infringement, or even just fail to have a policy of monitoring the use of their computer, they would be liable for the copyright infringement made on their machines.
If they knowingly turn a blind eye, then, yes, they would have legal exposure. But there is no requirement that I'm aware of that requires that they police the use of their computers by their customers. Nor am I aware of laws or rulings making an Internet cafe liable for their customers' actions should the business elect to have a policy which respects customer privacy by not monitoring usage.
But if you had read my entire post you would have seen that I wasn't condoning these fucked up laws, I was stating that they are so complex and impossible to obey that they should be immediately abolished.
I did read your entire post. I always do before replying.
Claiming that he isn't liable because his grandson was the one doing it, not him, is about as rediculous as saying that he's not liable if someone cracks their head open on faulty steps in his house because his grandson lives there not him.
You have no understanding of the law at all, so please stop posting about it.
The owner of a device used in the commission of a crime does not become, by reason of property ownership, liable.
If your neighbor borrows your machete "to clear some brush" and hacks his ex-wife to bits with it, are you liable for his crime? If you go to the library and use their computer to download copyrighted music, are the librarians liable for your copyright infringement? If you borrow a DVD from Blockbuster and make copies of it, are they liable for your crime? Of course not.
As to slip-and-fall, that's completely unrelated. That is an issue of the owner's negligence resulting in someone being injured. This case is more like your grandson pushing someone down the steps and you being sued for it. That you owned the steps does not make you responsible for his actions.
A well executed vision turns into profit! Apple still has a long way to go.
Apple just reported fiscal fourth-quarter profits of $430m, or 50 cents per share, on revenue of $3.68bn. That compares with profits of $106m, or 13 cents per share, on revenue of $2.35bn for the same period a year earlier.
But sometimes well-executed, visionary products are commercial failures anyway -- especially in a tech industry where uninformed consumers are making purchasing decisions.
But I would also argue that the "personal computer turned into an appliance" is exactly what is making the Playstation, XBOX and TiVo machines so successful now, and to a certain extent, that idea inspiring the Windows Media Center PCs and the new iMacs with FrontRow.
But the XBOX, TiVo, etc., don't pretend to be personal computers. They are not sold as general-purpose computers any more than a microwave oven, setback thermostat, or any other embedded system is. I've got no problem with that, but the computer-for-the-unwashed-masses movement has lead to consumers with no technical knowledge making technology purchasing decisions. That's lead to substandard OSs that stress "pretty" over secure, efficient, and stable.
I would also argue calling MS-DOS's circa 1984 BASIC interpreter as a "programming language".:D
It may not have been the language of choice for developing kernels or digital signal processing software, but it was an accessible language on which the masses could successfully create software. 'Hello World!' was nothing more than "PRINT "Hello World!" Compare that to the machinations one has to go through using C++ under MacOS, Windows, or any other GUI-based OS to accomplish the same thing. And it had a growth path. Start with interpreted BASIC, move to the QuickBASIC compiler, and then migrate to Microsoft's BASIC Professional Development System.
I think you hate the wrong unwashed masses OS, or perhaps you have other reasons.
Apple gets my ire for being first. When the Macintosh was introduced, Microsoft had a command-line operating system which included a BASIC interpreter, IBM was shipping the source code to the BIOS with every IBM PC that they sold, and the PC was an open architecture. The MAC was a closed architecture system and there was not even a programming language included with the OS. It was the personal computer turned into an appliance. To me, that was a sad turn of events.
So in other words you are a fanboy - and a masturbating fanboy at that.
Yeah. That must be it. Anyone who can recognize that the importance of Apple's products must be a "masturbating fanboy." Or do you just like to think about guys jerking off?
He takes other people's ideas, inventions, and products, talks them up, call them his own, and makes a buck - and the expense of everyone else.
Every CEO is reselling the ideas, inventions, and products of others. Bill Gates doesn't stay up at night inventing new technologies. He gets product ideas from his employees and his competitors. Do you think that he invented the graphics editor, firewall, e-mail client, web browser, or word processor? Nope. Nor did he invent the ergonomic keyboard, the optical mouse, or the joystick, but Microsoft has sold many of them, too.
What distinguishes a CEO, and what makes Jobs such a valuable commodity, is the ability to recognize a good idea and know how to refine it for the marketplace. Jobs has an uncanny ability to recognize what is important to an end-user in the mass-market. Despite huge investments by such giants as Toshiba and Samsung, it is still Apple, with the iPod, setting the gold standard for personal music players.
Here are listed most valuable brands in 2005. Apple is on 41. place. Following technology companies are before Apple in the list:
That list is largely based on profit and size. It's not a list of companies that are visionary.
Apple has consistently been a visionary company. They introduced the Apple II as a completely assembled computer when the majority of the market was for S100 bus systems assembled from a hodge-podge of boards -- for which the owner had to create his own BIOS. They introduced the GUI and mouse into mainstream computers back when Microsoft thought that MS-DOS was the right direction to go. Their products have been displayed at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
Go into any store and look at a modern iPod. Compare it to the offerings from Creative Labs, Philips, Samsung, Toshiba, and the others and you'll be amazed. It's like you're looking at a product from the future when you first see the iPod. It's less than half the size of similar capacity competing models, more elegantly designed, and has an intuitive user interface.
Lest anyone label me an "Apple fanboy," I have owned exactly one Apple product in the 20+ years that I've been in the technology industry: An iPod with video. I hated the Apple II when it came out. To me, it signaled the end of computers as a hobby just for the intellectually gifted and, instead, was a pre-built toy for the unwashed masses. I hated the Macintosh. I hated the MacOS. But my personal dislike of them doesn't change the fact that they were visionary products.
I'm not coming down on one side or the other on this debate, but you should be careful with that "vast majority of reputable scientists worldwide believe..." rational.
That's fine if we're discussing a new scientific theory, but Intelligent Design is simply religious bunk with no grounding in science. My opponent is claiming that evolution is inadequate to explain the diversity and complexity of life on Earth, yet reputable scientists worldwide see it as a fully adequate explanation.
Nuclear fission? Impossible! Communication without wires? Unthinkable! Heavier then air flight? You're mad!
I'll call you on that one. Man had seen birds fly for as long as he had been on Earth. The general public was skeptical about manned heavier than air flight, but most scientists, even back to Leonard DaVinci, thought that it was achievable.
Heart Transplants? Surely you jest!
You're mistaking technology for pure science. I'll agree that scientists have a poor record of seeing into the future when it comes to technology. But look at the many pure scientific theories which have held up for decades or even centuries. Newton's theory of "Universal Gravitation" comes to mind.
The point of intelligent design is that absolutely nothing, no evidence or experiment ever found or conducted, demonstrates that the diversity of life could have come about thorough evolution alone.
So any time that you and the other luddites can't comprehend something in science, you whip out God -- I mean "intelligent designer." "The universe is too complex for me to understand -- so we should teach children that there was an 'intelligent designer' (God) responsible for the whole thing." Despite the fact that the vast majority of reputable scientists worldwide believe that the theory of evolution is adequate to explain the diversity and complexity of life on Earth, it confuses you, so you want to push your religious dogma in science classes. You are disgusting.
This is a strange country we live in. I find it disturbing that nobody seems nearly as upset by all of the violent imagery that children are subjected to. It's pretty sad, really.
Agreed.
But let's not ignore the non-violent, but disgusting and disturbing images that American children see. What is more deviant: Two people having sex or people eating live slugs and drinking cow bile until they vomit?
and therefore not allow to buy or use Apple products.
You're allowed to buy them. You just can't afford them.
I'll be sure to check the iAudio out! Some of us don't need anally insertable consumer products, strange as that may sound to an Apple fagboy.
Since the iPod with video is 2.4" wide, you must be the goatse.cx guy. Sure, you can anally insert something 2.4" wide and your "heterosexual." Whatever you say...
P.S. This is the first Apple product that I have ever bought and I was into personal computers when the Apple II was introducted. The difference between us is that I buy products based on their quality, design, and features while you buy them to try to convince people that you're straight.
While the extremist Christian right in the U.S. (AKA the American Taliban) will exert pressure on the porn industry and legislators to keep porn off of the iPod, there will be many overseas porn producers who will gladly fill that market niche.
In Europe, children might catch a glimpse a 2.5" screen showing people having sex. In the U.S., children will be able to see, on large-screen home theatre systems, Fear Factor episodes where people eat live spiders, worms, and slugs, drink cow bile, eat coagulated blood, and bite open -- and drink the liquid from -- cow's eyes. After they tire of that, they can watch people get brutally murdered in countless television shows and movies.
Boy, those poor kids in Europe are going to be scarred for life...
Neither is EAC. It is just a ripper, but it can also invoke the encoder of your choice.
If you wish to begin a discussion of why cdparanoia isn't as good a ripper as EAC, then you can perhaps make some valid arguments and perhaps educate some of us.
I was really only answering the other poster, who wrote "I suppose you've been putting up with that buggy piece of shit [EAC] for years, convincing yourself that it's doing some funky mojo that makes it so much better than cdparanoia." I felt that I did a pretty good job of that with just the audio cache issue (without going into esoteric stuff about C2 error detection, overread into lead-in/lead-out, etc.).
A much more fair and reasonable comparison would be EAC to GRiP - don't tell me, I know. EAC is MUCH better. Clearly. Wow. I'm thoroughly impressed. Now, clearly there's no comparison (because EAC is the gold standard) but at least there is some correspondence between what those two programs are intended to do.
If you like GRiP better, don't care that cdparanoia misses errors with most modern cacheing drives, or don't run a Windows box for ripping, then GRiP is the better choice for you. My comments on EAC are not solely personal opinion. They take into account the multiple awards that EAC has won from reputable sources, the opinions and test results posted by experts on forums like Hydrogen Audio, and the fact that there are trading groups which only accept EAC-ripped audio.
I would have assumed that you, being a moderator on the EAC Yahoo! forum, do know the difference between a ripper and an encoder. Was I mistaken, or are you simply in a mood to stir up shit?
An encoder doesn't rip from CDs. EAC does. LAME, FLAC and Monkey's Audio are examples of encoders. They don't rip from CDs.
If your intent is to point out to the great unwashed here on Slashdot that their precious open source is usually deficient to closed source
Not usually. Just often. And I want people to be open-minded and not assume that Open Source is automatically the better choice.
1) Don't be a prick. At least, don't be the first to be a prick.
I'd give that award to the person who replied to my initial post by writing "That's pretty fucking stupid.
2) You'll need more street cred than "I'm a moderator on a Yahoo! group!" Sorry. See if you can convince Ken Pohlman to endorse your audio godhood.
That's more than enough to show that I'm a lot more informed about the subject than my foul-mouthed adversary.
3) Assertions of superiority are best supported with either unassailable facts ("Bill Gates sucks Satan's cock!") or legitimate, supportable testing performed by qualified persons.
Like the fact that modern drives which cache audio data get no error detection and correction under cdparanoia?
4) "If you knew a bit more about this subject, then you would know that..." convinces no one. It neither convinces anyone that you are right, or that you know more than they do.
So I should shoot for something more akin to "I would have assumed that you, being a moderator on the EAC Yahoo! forum, do know the difference between a ripper and an encoder. Was I mistaken, or are you simply in a mood to stir up shit?"
These are just some little helpful tidbits that might get you through your day with a bit less frustration and a bit more success. Cheers!
Had WMDs/would get them as soon as allowed. Again, a distinction without a difference.
You actually believe it is okay to invade a country because of what you believe that their leader will do in the future? Is Bush a mind-reader now? You Republicans are scary!
I find it funny that people like you want to label Bush as a warmonger, but then later accuse him of inconsistency because he doesn't invade every shithole on Earth. Make up your fucking minds, please. Your arguments are those of a child.
No, my arguments are being made to a child. Bush and his apologists, after the WMD thing turned out to be untrue, declared that we invaded because Saddam was a bad guy. That was a blatant lie, as evidenced by the even more evil dictators who he ignored. That's not a call to invade those countries -- just proof that the 'Saddam's a bad guy' argument is just a concocted excuse that came after the realization that the WMD thing was completely bogus.
Like I said, it's not allowed to take place. No scientific journal would touch ID because of the reactions from people like you--both shrill and overly defensive.
It's not science any more than astrology, palm reading, voodoo, or tarot cards is. It's simply an assertion of faith. If it was science, it would be peer-reviewed and published.
You also misstate the aim of ID, which is not creationism.
Liar.
Here's a structure: evolutionary theory does not sufficiently explain how it could occur; it shows indications of design.
Yes, it is sufficient as an explanation. Scientists in Darwin's time accepted it as so and rejected William Paley's version of ID that existed up to that time. Paley wrote:
"The marks of design are too strong to be got over. Design must have had a designer. That designer must have been a person. That person is GOD."
So this modern theory of "Intelligent Design" is really nothing more than an elaboration on something written by Anglican Church leader who died back in 1805. It was religious bunk then and it still is today -- even when you let the conclusion about the "designer" being God go unspoken.
That's it. It goes no further than that. Creationists certainly do latch on to the idea, but that's got nothing to do with the theory itself.
Evolutionary theory gives a perfectly sufficient explanation of the mechanisms of
From Wikipedia:
Though publicly ID advocates state that their focus is on detecting evidence of design in nature without regard to who or what the designer might be, in statements to their constituents and supporters, nearly all state explicitly that they believe the designer to be the Christian God.
Adherents of ID claim it stands on equal footing with, or superior to, the current scientific theories regarding the origin of life and the origin of the universe. This claim has not been accepted by the scientific community and ID does not constitute serious research in biology. Despite ID sometimes being referred to popularly and in the media as "Intelligent Design Theory," it is not regarded as a scientific theory by the mainstream scientific community, which holds it to be creationist pseudoscience or junk science. The National Academy of Sciences has said that ID "and other claims of supernatural intervention in the origin of life" are not science because their claims cannot be tested by experiment and propose no new hypotheses of their own. Critics argue that ID proponents try to find gaps within current evolutionary theory and fill them in with speculative beliefs, and that ID in this context may ultimately amount to the "God of the gaps."
If Intelligent Design is a valid scientific theory (as you claim), then show me some atheist scientists who believe in it. "Oh, it's not about God" you all claim, yet practically every proponent of this so-called theory is born-again or evangelical Christian.
Slashdot Mirror
The first is the argument people around here call "occam's razor". It says that apparently the simplest explanation is the correct one. A simple exercise in thinking can reveal that this isn't true. After all, Newtonian mechanics is far simpler than quantum field theory. But it is more incorrect. Even QFT is incorrect, and physicists readily admit to its limits and ponder what could be used to replace it. Physicists and mathematicians wish the world were as simple as the theory of electrodynamics (thanks to Maxwell's insight), but even that model is incorrect and limited
Occam's razor states that the simplest theory which adequately explains the situation is probably the correct one. Newtonian mechanics has been proven to be inadequate, therefore it's no longer a viable theory. Put it this way: If a cop came upon a scene where a body was found, bullet through the temple, gun in hand, and suicide note on the table, would you trust him if he said "I believe that a robot did this, faking the suicide and writing the note. I further believe that the robot was sent millions of years ago from an undiscovered planet orbiting a star in the Andromeda galaxy."? Okay, it's not the simplest explanation, but it's not impossible. Somehow, I think I'd give a better chance to the theory that the the despondent person committed suicide.
The classical use of the term - especially in regard to politics - is of a "live and let live" nature.
It is you who believe that smokers should be able to kill non-smokers with secondhand smoke, trigger asthmatic attacks, etc. You want to snort cocaine? Go for it. You want to inject heroin? I don't care. You want to injest LSD? Have at it. As long as it doesn't enter my body, you use whatever drugs you please.
Ergo, you are not for freedom, you don't even know what the fuck it is. My recommendation: an education.
I either received a lot more education than you or yours didn't take very well.
You think "freedom" means that having a right to trigger potentially fatal asthma attacks (like the one that killed my friend's adult sister), having a right to put non-smokers at increased risk of developing cancer, and having a right to make ruin restaurant meals for non-smokers with the stench of tobacco smoke. That's not "live and let live." That's "live and let impose and endanger."
Your commentary was not relevant to what you state you desired:
If you were half as smart as you think you are, you would have realized that I was not the original poster. See that user ID & number?
"Personally i think smoking should be completely banned." A ban means non, zilch, nada. Not in your house and not in my house even if I so desire it.
Can you keep the smoke from escaping your house? Can you keep it from ending up in the air that we all breathe? No. Why should my car be prohibited from emitting carcinogenic smoke while cigarette smokers are allowed to belch it out? Don't you realize that the smoke from billions of cigarettes enters the atmosphere every day?
Oh, and I do hope you are a kid (under 30 in my book), as it confirms my worldview that they have been totally brainwashed on the smoking issue.
I'm 44. I'm also a lifelong asthmatic and someone who took allergy shots for ten years. I'm also someone who has lost a father and grandfather to cancer and a grandmother to a stroke. They were smokers.
What has caused your mind to get so fucked up?
I'm all for freedom, too. Does that mean that I should be free to pound the living snot out of you?
And don't suggest I took the first quote out of context.
You did. You cut out all of the very relevent commentary on how your freedom should not impinge on the health, safety, and freedom of others.
your mail has some routing on it. I can easily tell what postal facility it went through to begin with.
Your Internet traffic has routing data, too. I can easily tell the IP address it went through to begin with. The police can use that to find the wifi connection and then figure out the small area from which you could have been operating. That's no more anonymous than a public mailbox.
Not to mention, paper types, and envelope glues are on record with the FBI, so they can find out what batch it came from, and where that was sold.
Untrue. The FBI can analyze the packaging and sometimes determine the manufacturer of it, but there's no central repository like they have for ballistics.
And don't forget forensics on those (fingerprint, dna, etc).
It takes only a small bit of effort to avoid such contamination.
Not nearly as anonymous as most people think. Very few get away with it (anthrax attacks notably).
Actually, most get away with it, whether it's a threatening letter, a letter bomb, or anthrax. You mentioned anthrax. What about the Unabomber, who'd still probably be free today had his brother not turned him in?
P.S. I worked for the Postal Service and even did computer forensic work for the USPS Inspection Service. I'm certain that you overestimate law enforcement's ability to track conventional mail.
Not true. Show me caselaw or legislation that supports that contention. And explain why large ISPs aren't charged under those supposed laws. Why wouldn't my running of an open wifi connection give me common carrier status?
Personally, I'm still convinced unsecure WiFi poses to large of a risk.
I'm sure that many cowards could identify with that thought. But to those of us who truly value freedom, it's a reasonable price to pay. I'm not going to quietly give up my rights to anonymous free speech just because someone else could use anonymity for dastardly purposes.
If you want state-controlled and monitored Internet access, then move to China.
This is a good idea unless you want your access point open.
*UNLESS*
That's the key word. Suppose I want to, as a public service, leave an open, unencrypted wifi connection.
Suppose I want people to be able to access the Internet with some degree of anonymity. This law is trying to make an end-run around free speech by taking away anonymity.
I wonder if this law is being pushed by telecoms, cable providers, and other ISPs who want to make sure that everyone pays them for Internet access...
No doubt. I've installed all the new versions too. I just got no value from it. All my e-mail and system files are organized; I don't need any kind of search function. Mod parent up.
Then you don't have many e-mails and files. Anyone who has several tens of thousands of e-mails (personal, listservers, etc.) will find Google Desktop search useful. When all that you can remember is that someone sent you something in e-mail that, as an aside, mentioned a problem with program XYZ, you won't be able to find it without a good search tool. Unless you're some newbie whose idea of a long time is back to 2002.
They only run on OSs with minimal market penetration, so most people can't run them.
Yes, you can. Under federal copyright law, Title 17
If you commit the crime of copyright infringement, you may be criminally prosectuted and/or sued in civil court. For further details, go here
This is not unique to copyright. Countless federal, state, and local laws provide prescribe a right of private action for violation of criminal laws. For example, the "Telephone Consumer Protection Act" (Title 47 227) allows a consumer to sue for damages when someone sends them a "junk fax" (I know, because I collected $500 under that statute).
I think it is fair of me to assume that you have a basic understanding of the difference between criminal law and civil law.
In the last message, you suggested that I might be on crack. This is a big step forward.
Unfortunately there are criminal copyright infringement laws, but if the MPAA thought they could get this guy on those laws they wouldn't sue them, they'd just call the police and have them arrested and charged. Thankfully, these laws are not yet draconian enough to be applicable to simple filesharing. But give it time.
Those laws are applicable to so-called "filesharing." Law enforcement could bring criminal charges against filesharers if they chose to -- just as they've done numerous times to the "warez" traders. Fortunately, law enforcement can choose which cases to prosecute and has chosen to reserve such prosecutions for people involved in massive for-profit piracy of copyrighted books, movies, music, etc. But criminal copyright law still provides for private rights of actions.
Maybe you're on crack, but all of us are talking about liability not crimes.
I'd still be smarter than you even if I were on crack.
Copyright infringement is a crime. That's what he's being sued for. The MPAA is claiming that he is liable for damages for the crime of copyright infringement.
If you lend your machete to your neighbour and he chops off a finger because you failed to keep the handle well maintained you are liable.
So what? The MPAA is suing him for copyright infringement, not negligence. This case is not analogous, in any way, to a failure to maintain a tool, steps at a house, etc.
If they were to turn a blind eye to copyright infringement, or even just fail to have a policy of monitoring the use of their computer, they would be liable for the copyright infringement made on their machines.
If they knowingly turn a blind eye, then, yes, they would have legal exposure. But there is no requirement that I'm aware of that requires that they police the use of their computers by their customers. Nor am I aware of laws or rulings making an Internet cafe liable for their customers' actions should the business elect to have a policy which respects customer privacy by not monitoring usage.
But if you had read my entire post you would have seen that I wasn't condoning these fucked up laws, I was stating that they are so complex and impossible to obey that they should be immediately abolished.
I did read your entire post. I always do before replying.
Claiming that he isn't liable because his grandson was the one doing it, not him, is about as rediculous as saying that he's not liable if someone cracks their head open on faulty steps in his house because his grandson lives there not him.
You have no understanding of the law at all, so please stop posting about it.
The owner of a device used in the commission of a crime does not become, by reason of property ownership, liable.
If your neighbor borrows your machete "to clear some brush" and hacks his ex-wife to bits with it, are you liable for his crime? If you go to the library and use their computer to download copyrighted music, are the librarians liable for your copyright infringement? If you borrow a DVD from Blockbuster and make copies of it, are they liable for your crime? Of course not.
As to slip-and-fall, that's completely unrelated. That is an issue of the owner's negligence resulting in someone being injured. This case is more like your grandson pushing someone down the steps and you being sued for it. That you owned the steps does not make you responsible for his actions.
A well executed vision turns into profit! Apple still has a long way to go.
Apple just reported fiscal fourth-quarter profits of $430m, or 50 cents per share, on revenue of $3.68bn. That compares with profits of $106m, or 13 cents per share, on revenue of $2.35bn for the same period a year earlier.
But sometimes well-executed, visionary products are commercial failures anyway -- especially in a tech industry where uninformed consumers are making purchasing decisions.
But I would also argue that the "personal computer turned into an appliance" is exactly what is making the Playstation, XBOX and TiVo machines so successful now, and to a certain extent, that idea inspiring the Windows Media Center PCs and the new iMacs with FrontRow.
:D
But the XBOX, TiVo, etc., don't pretend to be personal computers. They are not sold as general-purpose computers any more than a microwave oven, setback thermostat, or any other embedded system is. I've got no problem with that, but the computer-for-the-unwashed-masses movement has lead to consumers with no technical knowledge making technology purchasing decisions. That's lead to substandard OSs that stress "pretty" over secure, efficient, and stable.
I would also argue calling MS-DOS's circa 1984 BASIC interpreter as a "programming language".
It may not have been the language of choice for developing kernels or digital signal processing software, but it was an accessible language on which the masses could successfully create software. 'Hello World!' was nothing more than "PRINT "Hello World!" Compare that to the machinations one has to go through using C++ under MacOS, Windows, or any other GUI-based OS to accomplish the same thing. And it had a growth path. Start with interpreted BASIC, move to the QuickBASIC compiler, and then migrate to Microsoft's BASIC Professional Development System.
I think you hate the wrong unwashed masses OS, or perhaps you have other reasons.
Apple gets my ire for being first. When the Macintosh was introduced, Microsoft had a command-line operating system which included a BASIC interpreter, IBM was shipping the source code to the BIOS with every IBM PC that they sold, and the PC was an open architecture. The MAC was a closed architecture system and there was not even a programming language included with the OS. It was the personal computer turned into an appliance. To me, that was a sad turn of events.
So in other words you are a fanboy - and a masturbating fanboy at that.
Yeah. That must be it. Anyone who can recognize that the importance of Apple's products must be a "masturbating fanboy." Or do you just like to think about guys jerking off?
He takes other people's ideas, inventions, and products, talks them up, call them his own, and makes a buck - and the expense of everyone else.
Every CEO is reselling the ideas, inventions, and products of others. Bill Gates doesn't stay up at night inventing new technologies. He gets product ideas from his employees and his competitors. Do you think that he invented the graphics editor, firewall, e-mail client, web browser, or word processor? Nope. Nor did he invent the ergonomic keyboard, the optical mouse, or the joystick, but Microsoft has sold many of them, too.
What distinguishes a CEO, and what makes Jobs such a valuable commodity, is the ability to recognize a good idea and know how to refine it for the marketplace. Jobs has an uncanny ability to recognize what is important to an end-user in the mass-market. Despite huge investments by such giants as Toshiba and Samsung, it is still Apple, with the iPod, setting the gold standard for personal music players.
Pathetic.
At least you signed your post.
This Apple worshipping has gone a bit too far...
Here are listed most valuable brands in 2005. Apple is on 41. place. Following technology companies are before Apple in the list:
That list is largely based on profit and size. It's not a list of companies that are visionary.
Apple has consistently been a visionary company. They introduced the Apple II as a completely assembled computer when the majority of the market was for S100 bus systems assembled from a hodge-podge of boards -- for which the owner had to create his own BIOS. They introduced the GUI and mouse into mainstream computers back when Microsoft thought that MS-DOS was the right direction to go. Their products have been displayed at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
Go into any store and look at a modern iPod. Compare it to the offerings from Creative Labs, Philips, Samsung, Toshiba, and the others and you'll be amazed. It's like you're looking at a product from the future when you first see the iPod. It's less than half the size of similar capacity competing models, more elegantly designed, and has an intuitive user interface.
Lest anyone label me an "Apple fanboy," I have owned exactly one Apple product in the 20+ years that I've been in the technology industry: An iPod with video. I hated the Apple II when it came out. To me, it signaled the end of computers as a hobby just for the intellectually gifted and, instead, was a pre-built toy for the unwashed masses. I hated the Macintosh. I hated the MacOS. But my personal dislike of them doesn't change the fact that they were visionary products.
I'm not coming down on one side or the other on this debate, but you should be careful with that "vast majority of reputable scientists worldwide believe..." rational.
That's fine if we're discussing a new scientific theory, but Intelligent Design is simply religious bunk with no grounding in science. My opponent is claiming that evolution is inadequate to explain the diversity and complexity of life on Earth, yet reputable scientists worldwide see it as a fully adequate explanation.
Nuclear fission? Impossible!
Communication without wires? Unthinkable!
Heavier then air flight? You're mad!
I'll call you on that one. Man had seen birds fly for as long as he had been on Earth. The general public was skeptical about manned heavier than air flight, but most scientists, even back to Leonard DaVinci, thought that it was achievable.
Heart Transplants? Surely you jest!
You're mistaking technology for pure science. I'll agree that scientists have a poor record of seeing into the future when it comes to technology. But look at the many pure scientific theories which have held up for decades or even centuries. Newton's theory of "Universal Gravitation" comes to mind.
The point of intelligent design is that absolutely nothing, no evidence or experiment ever found or conducted, demonstrates that the diversity of life could have come about thorough evolution alone.
So any time that you and the other luddites can't comprehend something in science, you whip out God -- I mean "intelligent designer." "The universe is too complex for me to understand -- so we should teach children that there was an 'intelligent designer' (God) responsible for the whole thing." Despite the fact that the vast majority of reputable scientists worldwide believe that the theory of evolution is adequate to explain the diversity and complexity of life on Earth, it confuses you, so you want to push your religious dogma in science classes. You are disgusting.
This is a strange country we live in. I find it disturbing that nobody seems nearly as upset by all of the violent imagery that children are subjected to. It's pretty sad, really.
Agreed.
But let's not ignore the non-violent, but disgusting and disturbing images that American children see. What is more deviant: Two people having sex or people eating live slugs and drinking cow bile until they vomit?
Sadly, I'm heterosexual,
It's only sad for the women you encounter.
and therefore not allow to buy or use Apple products.
You're allowed to buy them. You just can't afford them.
I'll be sure to check the iAudio out! Some of us don't need anally insertable consumer products, strange as that may sound to an Apple fagboy.
Since the iPod with video is 2.4" wide, you must be the goatse.cx guy. Sure, you can anally insert something 2.4" wide and your "heterosexual." Whatever you say...
P.S. This is the first Apple product that I have ever bought and I was into personal computers when the Apple II was introducted. The difference between us is that I buy products based on their quality, design, and features while you buy them to try to convince people that you're straight.
While the extremist Christian right in the U.S. (AKA the American Taliban) will exert pressure on the porn industry and legislators to keep porn off of the iPod, there will be many overseas porn producers who will gladly fill that market niche.
In Europe, children might catch a glimpse a 2.5" screen showing people having sex. In the U.S., children will be able to see, on large-screen home theatre systems, Fear Factor episodes where people eat live spiders, worms, and slugs, drink cow bile, eat coagulated blood, and bite open -- and drink the liquid from -- cow's eyes. After they tire of that, they can watch people get brutally murdered in countless television shows and movies.
Boy, those poor kids in Europe are going to be scarred for life...
Unless you really need audio recording, the iPod quite clearly spanks the iAudio on all fronts.
The new iPod with Video will do 44.1khz stereo audio recording, so the iPod spanks the iAudio even if you do need audio recording.
cdparanoia isn't an encoder.
Neither is EAC. It is just a ripper, but it can also invoke the encoder of your choice.
If you wish to begin a discussion of why cdparanoia isn't as good a ripper as EAC, then you can perhaps make some valid arguments and perhaps educate some of us.
I was really only answering the other poster, who wrote "I suppose you've been putting up with that buggy piece of shit [EAC] for years, convincing yourself that it's doing some funky mojo that makes it so much better than cdparanoia." I felt that I did a pretty good job of that with just the audio cache issue (without going into esoteric stuff about C2 error detection, overread into lead-in/lead-out, etc.).
A much more fair and reasonable comparison would be EAC to GRiP - don't tell me, I know. EAC is MUCH better. Clearly. Wow. I'm thoroughly impressed. Now, clearly there's no comparison (because EAC is the gold standard) but at least there is some correspondence between what those two programs are intended to do.
If you like GRiP better, don't care that cdparanoia misses errors with most modern cacheing drives, or don't run a Windows box for ripping, then GRiP is the better choice for you. My comments on EAC are not solely personal opinion. They take into account the multiple awards that EAC has won from reputable sources, the opinions and test results posted by experts on forums like Hydrogen Audio, and the fact that there are trading groups which only accept EAC-ripped audio.
I would have assumed that you, being a moderator on the EAC Yahoo! forum, do know the difference between a ripper and an encoder. Was I mistaken, or are you simply in a mood to stir up shit?
An encoder doesn't rip from CDs. EAC does. LAME, FLAC and Monkey's Audio are examples of encoders. They don't rip from CDs.
If your intent is to point out to the great unwashed here on Slashdot that their precious open source is usually deficient to closed source
Not usually. Just often. And I want people to be open-minded and not assume that Open Source is automatically the better choice.
1) Don't be a prick. At least, don't be the first to be a prick.
I'd give that award to the person who replied to my initial post by writing "That's pretty fucking stupid.
2) You'll need more street cred than "I'm a moderator on a Yahoo! group!" Sorry. See if you can convince Ken Pohlman to endorse your audio godhood.
That's more than enough to show that I'm a lot more informed about the subject than my foul-mouthed adversary.
3) Assertions of superiority are best supported with either unassailable facts ("Bill Gates sucks Satan's cock!") or legitimate, supportable testing performed by qualified persons.
Like the fact that modern drives which cache audio data get no error detection and correction under cdparanoia?
4) "If you knew a bit more about this subject, then you would know that..." convinces no one. It neither convinces anyone that you are right, or that you know more than they do.
So I should shoot for something more akin to "I would have assumed that you, being a moderator on the EAC Yahoo! forum, do know the difference between a ripper and an encoder. Was I mistaken, or are you simply in a mood to stir up shit?"
These are just some little helpful tidbits that might get you through your day with a bit less frustration and a bit more success. Cheers!
Have a good one!
You actually believe it is okay to invade a country because of what you believe that their leader will do in the future? Is Bush a mind-reader now? You Republicans are scary!
I find it funny that people like you want to label Bush as a warmonger, but then later accuse him of inconsistency because he doesn't invade every shithole on Earth. Make up your fucking minds, please. Your arguments are those of a child.
No, my arguments are being made to a child. Bush and his apologists, after the WMD thing turned out to be untrue, declared that we invaded because Saddam was a bad guy. That was a blatant lie, as evidenced by the even more evil dictators who he ignored. That's not a call to invade those countries -- just proof that the 'Saddam's a bad guy' argument is just a concocted excuse that came after the realization that the WMD thing was completely bogus.
Like I said, it's not allowed to take place. No scientific journal would touch ID because of the reactions from people like you--both shrill and overly defensive.
It's not science any more than astrology, palm reading, voodoo, or tarot cards is. It's simply an assertion of faith. If it was science, it would be peer-reviewed and published.
You also misstate the aim of ID, which is not creationism.
Liar.
Here's a structure: evolutionary theory does not sufficiently explain how it could occur; it shows indications of design.
Yes, it is sufficient as an explanation. Scientists in Darwin's time accepted it as so and rejected William Paley's version of ID that existed up to that time. Paley wrote:
"The marks of design are too strong to be got over. Design must have had a designer. That designer must have been a person. That person is GOD."
So this modern theory of "Intelligent Design" is really nothing more than an elaboration on something written by Anglican Church leader who died back in 1805. It was religious bunk then and it still is today -- even when you let the conclusion about the "designer" being God go unspoken.
That's it. It goes no further than that. Creationists certainly do latch on to the idea, but that's got nothing to do with the theory itself.
Evolutionary theory gives a perfectly sufficient explanation of the mechanisms of
From Wikipedia:
If Intelligent Design is a valid scientific theory (as you claim), then show me some atheist scientists who believe in it. "Oh, it's not about God" you all claim, yet practically every proponent of this so-called theory is born-again or evangelical Christian.
So you advocate government indo