India 2005 est. GDP: $3.678 trillion US 2005 est. GDP: $12.370 trillion
Taking the ratio with your numbers,
India: $1.12 billion per sq. km US: $1.28 billion per sq. km
Obviously that's not a terribly telling statistic, but neither is yours. I hear a lot of people claiming that coverage in the US is worse than in other countries/areas. However, I haven't seen hard numbers -- only anecdotes. Are we really comparing apples to apples? Is internet coverage in backwoods India really better than that in the backwoods United States? I'm willing to bet not.
Sure, I bet net service in Bombay is better than service in Palookaville, but that's hardly a fair comparison. Service in Boston is better than Palookaville too. How many reports of the lousy net access in the Indian equivalent of Palookaville do we actually hear? Every Indian friend I know comes from one of the big cities, so that's all the anecdotal evidence I've heard directly.
I was hoping to find information about internet coverage by geographic area and/or population by country, but all I could find were these statistics sorted by continent. It looks like North America does pretty well with 68.1% penetration compared to less than 10% in Asia.
I agree that trusted computing is an insidious, scary thing.
However, none of this has much to do with the GPL, IMO. If I have the full source code to someone's DRM-enabled software and my CPU can operate in non-DRM mode, I can simply remove the calls to the DRM routines and the software will operate. If it won't, then the call to the CPU DRM rouine is really an external library.
As for re-defining programming languages to obfuscate the meaning of code... Remember that they cannot take away the already free source code that they got via the GPL. All they can do is add to that. If they add an obfuscated JPG decoder to your graphics library and you can't get that to run, you're not any worse off because of that. Further, any piece of their code that is derived from GPL code needs to be shared. If they really just added a line to your code that calls a separate non-derivative library, then I'm not sure what grounds for demanding access to their work the original author has. The GPL v2 explicitly states they're not trying to contest ownership of independently developed code.
But really, your example of redefining "+" is hardly plausible. Something analogous to that could be done with CPU opcodes, sure, but under the GPL the source code must be published. According to v2 of the GPL,
The source code for a work means the preferred form of the work for making modifications to it.
This precludes them from taking their source and running it through an obfuscator into some wacky format for a special hacked compiler before they share it. Unless you think all the evil closed source programmers are going to write in a dialect of C with redefined operators. If so, I don't think we'll have to worry about those poor programmers actually developing anything worthwhile enough to want to backport it out of a DRM system.
I know your example was not intended as a real-world system, but I have trouble imagining a system for doing this that would actually work. Remember, it's got to both make it prohibitively difficult for someone who has the source code to reverse engineer and allow authorized users to actually get work done. If you have information about a practical such system, please share.
As for other people writing closed-source software that will only operate on a DRM-enabled CPU, well... what they do with their time and effort is their business. I think it's unfortunate, but it's their choice.
Ok -- thanks for clarifying. Now that I understand, I see that your position is coherent.
In fact, I think I generally agree, although perhaps not in detail. I think that copyrights, even for software, are valuable (though the terms of enforcement *must* be reduced to something reasonable). The GPL is a fair license for people who *choose* to release their software freely, but I am not convinced that the laws should be changed to make it effectively mandatory. However, this is a position that I reconsider frequently and I have sympathy for arguments on both sides.
You're absolutely right that laws that criminalize circumvention of DRM are ridiculous. Given the existence of copyrights, violating a copyright should be a crime, but to criminalize activities that simply could contribute is going too far. It might make enforcement more difficult, but I don't see how stifling innovation in the name of profit protection is consistent with the moral foundations of copyright law.
So, I guess I'd like to see the second part of your bargain without the first part, as it hardly seems necessary. I imagine you'd be happy with that arrangement, too.
Under the current GPL, they'd be required to release *all* their source code but not the key that would allow that code to run on the DRM-enforcing CPU. You get all the code, but you may not be able to trivially build it to run on their hardware platform. You're still free to recompile and run it on a DRM-free CPU.
I'm assuming here that the only purpose of the key is to authorize the CPU to execute the code. If it's locking up other functions -- such as access to a library only available on the DRM CPU -- then the source code is not completely available. As long as the issue is only one of getting your code to run on the particular hardware platform, I don't see the problem.
If I ported a piece of GPL software to a platform that is supported only by commercial compilers, should I be forced to divulge the source code to the compiler? Sure, you can't build your own version that runs on the platform without it, but I don't see that as something impeding the freedom of the GPL software.
I apparently misunderstood what you were saying, though I'm still not sure I get it. When you refer to "binaries" in your original post, do you mean the binary executable the results from compiling GPL'ed code, to a binary piece of content like a song or video, to both of these, or to something else entirely?
Are you saying that you'd prefer an environment that offers no legal protection to either "side"? In other words, are you advocating the removal of all copyright on software (disarming the GPL software producers) in exchange for the removal of laws that require respect for access controls to content?
Actually forcing the person to distribute the source and binary together is an added effect, but it's largely secondary in my eyes [...]
and then go on to say
DRM essentially threatens the most important part of the GPL (in my eyes that is) without harming the weaker part. Now the binaries can be distributed but you can't run them if you don't have the user-specific key to unlock the DRM around the binaries.
The source code provisions of the GPL (the part you see as secondary) prevent the problem you raise in your second paragraph. If I have the source code to an application or driver, it doesn't matter whether the binaries are distributable -- I'm free to build my own version. If that version won't run on my processor (because it's got DRM built in), then I've got the source and I can build it for an unhindered processor.
Actually, Negroponte and the people behind this project *are* developing technologies for this. Or, at least, paying other people specifically to do so. My former company (made up of a number of people who knew Negroponte from the MIT Media Lab) was involved in some of this work. I'm not 100% sure whether the development was successful in producing a workable solution, but there's a lot more going on than just taking parts of a shelf and assembling them.
If people in the laptop industry aren't interested in this market, it's because they make better money selling new $1500 laptops rather than new $100 laptops. Negroponte & co have done a lot to encourage development of something that simply would not have been done had they not pushed for it. Pushing the production cost down to that level simply requires development that has not been done. Contrary to your unfounded assertions, if we do find $100 laptops on the market, this work *will* have been an influence on that.
Firstly, I don't think the Internet per se should receive any special treatment in law. The activities it facilitates -- such as making and distributing digital copies of works very quickly and cheaply -- may have dramatic implications, but then any applications of the law should be based on those activities, not on one particular medium.
The law doesn't need to treat the Internet specially just to recognize that it has its own customs and norms. Part of the ordinary practice of operating a web server on the Internet entails configuring your robots.txt file to keep spiders away from things you don't want them to index. A law that required that an author take "reasonable and customary precautions suitable to the publication medium," for example, would handle this well, IMO. I didn't read the decision, just the linked article, but it sounds more or less like that is what they upheld. That seems eminently reasonable to me.
I agree. Plus, there is a lot of value from Google, even censored Google. 99.9% of the things I do with Google would not be affected in the slightest bit by political censorship, and I get an enormous benefit from doing those searches. The PRC is *not* going to bow down before Google and stop being evil, they'll just go without. Remind me, how does it help a Chinese peasant not to give him partial access to Google?
I think you're reading the text you've quoted incorrectly.
One needs to maintain some perspective, though. Do you really *hate* your job, as in find it so repugnant that you'd rather do *anything* else? Not everyone can have his or her first choice in careers -- inevitably, some folks will wind up with jobs they would rather not have to do. However, as your quote claims, almost everyone in the developed world has it pretty good compared to what it could be.
People tend to use a lot of hyperbole when they describe their jobs. Hating a job, for most people, just means it's not their ultimate dream. It usually doesn't mean they are about to snap and kill a bunch of people in rage over it (unless they work in telemarketing). It's great to aspire to doing work you really do love, but if you don't get there, you gotta keep perspective about how much worse it could be.
A company releasing a radio transmitter for public consumption really does have to certify that the end-user cannot control the device in such a way as to cause it to violate the FCC regulations. It could be difficult for them to do this if they're simultaneously helping external developers get low-level control. I've not heard of anyone getting called on this, but it's quite possible that it could happen.
It's possible to write the firmware in such a way as to separate legal requirements from the work a driver needs to do, but this is not easy. Also, since the same hardware can often support multiple regulatory areas with only a changed driver, there is incentive to keep the low-level hardware/firmware as flexible as possible.
For an end user, it is, in fact, illegal to modify radio hardware to operate in contravention of FCC rules. Realistically, you're not likely to get nailed because you're not likely to cause harm (so no one will notice) and it takes substantial resources to track you down. I'm not sure what the status of a project distributing code would be, though. I don't imagine it would be encouraged, but would probably have to get to be pretty big before it would draw enough attention to be in danger.
I think you're right -- they're undoubtedly using the transition from pre-production to production to iron out a few last kinks. It's quite possible that some of these will have impact on the battery life. If that's the case, better not to say anything now than to give a wrong answer. If the answer ends up too low, you risk giving your product a bad reputation. If it's too high, you'll be accused of padding your numbers or outright lying for marketing purposes.
It tells me that a number of fields taught at universities are inherently at odds with conservative political philosophy.
Physics, astronomy, computer science, engineering, are these at odds with conservative politics? Because that's what I've had the most experience with personally and I have also observed a majority of world-class faculty with liberal leanings socially and politically.
Yet you still get those who insist that so-called "Native Americans" discovered Columbus, despite the fact that the latter sailed thousands of miles over several weeks while the former didn't leave their mud huts.
I have no idea what you are trying to say here.
Back to the standard "ideas that come from Europe must be valid, just beacuse they come from Europe" argument.
That was not at all the argument that was made, but don't let that stop you. The grandparent referred to "Europe and elsewhere" which is clearly intended to mean "outside the U.S." Europe is particularly worth singling out in this context because it has a strong history (and modern presence) of socialist politics, especially compared to the U.S.
Especially when at least half of them are damn near illiterate
Well then what the hell are they doing in college? If this is as serious a problem as the recent highly publicized studies would have one believe, then liberal bias is not at the top of the list of things to worry about in academia.
I don't particularly mind dupes, but it's just a little hard to believe they're actually doing anything. As several people have pointed out, other similar blogs don't seem to suffer from this problem.
In fact, I just typed the text from the single link in this article into the Slashdot search box. That is, the text "50 milliseconds." The first hit on this search was the previous story and the text was in the link text of that article.
It is just hard to swallow the claim that they actually give a damn when something that should be as obvious to detect as this dupe gets through. Even if you accept that it's too much to ask the person who's about to accept the article to actually search himself, there is no excuse for this one getting through. Heck, if the editors are paid even reasonably well (I see frequent references to their being paid, but I don't know this for a fact), it's hardly an onerous task to ask them to search for dupes. It really doesn't matter how many submissions come in. They've already done the hard part -- they picked out an article to accept. Adding 30 seconds to search recent accepted articles adds 30 seconds per accepted article, not per submitted article.
Even if that's unacceptable, even the simplest automated tool should detect most of the dupes that I notice. It's clear to me that the editors and the management just don't care. That's fine, I don't subscribe so I don't really care either. I find it kind of amusing, actually.
I've spent my share of time in the real world and I've dealt with plenty of people, competent and otherwise. My point is that if you're in an organization with a need for "real" security and you are really the only person capable of keeping track of passwords, there's a problem. That organization simply isn't capable of managing real security.
For most organizations, though, real security is not that important. For those instances where it is necessary, though, having a single employee in a position to compromise every layer of security is an utterly ridiculous prospect.
That's not true. Each IT person or group needs only enough access to maintain the systems it is responsible for maintaining. If your company is small, that may mean that the IT guy has access to all the systems. If it's larger, though, it is a very good idea to partition access. This is not just a question of trust -- it also forces the person responsible for each element to be involved in (and therefore aware of) any changes made to it.
Data is another matter. IT does not need access to sensitive business data to do its job. Encrypt the data with a password known only to those who need access. Obviously this will preclude IT from recovering the data when the password is lost, but if the data is that sensitive and valuable, it's quite reasonable to expect extreme diligence on the part its custodians.
If I were in IT in a company with extremely sensitive data, I would actually prefer to have access to less than everything. When there is a leak, it makes it that much less likely that I'll be falsely accused.
I'm not sure what you are trying to say. The one thing that seems crystal clear is that it's illegal to make a copy of the data on the disc and sell that copy.
If you are buying a license to use the data and somehow that license prevents you from selling the disc, then ok, you can't cut it up and resell a modified disc. As far as I know, however, no one is currently arguing that you can't sell your used copy of an xbox game. At least, no one who is being taken seriously.
Regardless, you don't have a legal right to copy the data in any case. A license to use the software doesn't grant you license to duplicate it. You can debate whether this is ethical, but the law is not really vague on this point.
It's not uncommon to run longer burn-in tests on at least a fraction of the product comming off the line. We did a 24-hour burn-in for 100% of the devices we produced, at least during the first production runs. They were somewhat more expensive than a 360, but still, given that they are a professional production company, they're doing testing.
I'm sure they've been running a fairly large number of 360s for longer than customers have had them. Undoubtedly they've seen at least some of these problems and decided that they were acceptable. Perhaps they didn't realize the full magnitude and blew it. Maybe the rates are acceptable -- I don't know, I haven't seen trustworthy numbers.
And I'll bet my hat that if you can do this by cutting apart the disc that contains the graphics engine and gluing it together with the part of another disc that contains game data, no one will be able to sue you when you sell the resulting product. No fair making a copy for commercial purposes and putting it on to a new disc, that'd be illegal.
You have an extremely dim view of human relationships that seems to go far beyond simply choosing a "single, childless" lifestyle. That's why I asked what happened -- most people I know who pursue that same lifestyle don't seem as bitter about it as you do. That said, the particular phrasing was mostly my being trollish and I'm sorry about that.
You may note that I never said anything at all about the "married with children" lifestyle being an ideal. It's the particular choice I'm in the process of making, but I am quite aware that it's not the choice for everyone.
As for my "word usage betray[ing my] bias," I'm just baffled at your comment. As far as I know, "single, childless lifestyle" is a pretty emotionally neutral and accurate description of the lifestyle you choose. But since it seems you use the language differently from me, I'll define my terms. "Single" means "without a partner or spouse." "Childless" means "not having any offspring." "Lifestyle" means "way of living." That sounds pretty accurate to me. Any connotations you may draw from that phrase are purely your own -- I certainly did not imply anything, nor did I intend to. Don't blame me that the English language uses the same four letters for the suffix "-less" and the word "less." You're welcome to use "free" in place of "single" I suppose, but I think that makes it pretty clear which of us is trying to play lame rhetorical games.
I'm glad you are comfortable with your choices, but I find it unfortunate that you seem to have little respect for those who choose otherwise. Fulfillment in particular means very different things to different people.
Wow, whatever has happened to make you so bitter, I'm sorry man. Believe it or not, not everyone shares your materialistic, misogynistic view of the world. You would do well to learn how to look at things from a perspective other than your own.
You have made a choice -- you find that the single, childless lifestyle suits you. Great. You know what? It doesn't suit everyone. Some of us tried it and found that, despite the benefits it may afford, we weren't happy. Having another person involved in your life can (gasp) enrich it in ways that toys and cars just can't.
I actually agree with you on a lot, it seems. Getting married too young is usually a big mistake. Children should be born into a stable, supportive situation (whether or not it's a marriage). Fair prenups are a good thing.
On that last point -- I don't at all share your view that marriage is a universally a windfall for the woman and a burden for the man and that the purpose of the prenup is to protect his assets from being stolen. At least, it should not be. When you get into a marriage, you're forming an agreement that (in most cases) is going to set up a partnership to build and support a family. One aspect of that is that someone is likely going to have to forego a financially motivated career in order to maintain the household and rear the children. The agreement is normally that the one who doesn't give up that career compensates for this by supporting the other partner. That is absolutely fair and reasonable.
If the marriage doesn't survive, it's hardly unreasonable to share some portion of the assets and/or demand that the partner who maintained his/her career at least temporarily help support the homemaking partner. The assets belong to the family, regardless of whose name was on the paycheck that paid for them. Maintaining a home/raising children is a non-trivial contribution to the family's well-being.
A prenup that specifies exactly what the agreement is with respect to these sorts of things is, IMO, a good thing. It protects both partners and, since it's drawn up when everyone is on good terms, can be a fairer agreement. If you can't get together with your spouse-to-be and come to a reasonable, honest agreement about the terms, that's not going to be the biggest problem in your marriage.
Hey, you might want to look at the post headers and see who here has enough of a spine to put his name beside his post.
Actually, you're right, I do appreciate people in the service sector and the important work they do. I apologize to any fry cooks who were offended by my insinuation that the original troll might count among their ranks.
Slashdot Mirror
India 2005 est. GDP: $3.678 trillion
US 2005 est. GDP: $12.370 trillion
Taking the ratio with your numbers,
India: $1.12 billion per sq. km
US: $1.28 billion per sq. km
Obviously that's not a terribly telling statistic, but neither is yours. I hear a lot of people claiming that coverage in the US is worse than in other countries/areas. However, I haven't seen hard numbers -- only anecdotes. Are we really comparing apples to apples? Is internet coverage in backwoods India really better than that in the backwoods United States? I'm willing to bet not.
Sure, I bet net service in Bombay is better than service in Palookaville, but that's hardly a fair comparison. Service in Boston is better than Palookaville too. How many reports of the lousy net access in the Indian equivalent of Palookaville do we actually hear? Every Indian friend I know comes from one of the big cities, so that's all the anecdotal evidence I've heard directly.
I was hoping to find information about internet coverage by geographic area and/or population by country, but all I could find were these statistics sorted by continent. It looks like North America does pretty well with 68.1% penetration compared to less than 10% in Asia.
However, none of this has much to do with the GPL, IMO. If I have the full source code to someone's DRM-enabled software and my CPU can operate in non-DRM mode, I can simply remove the calls to the DRM routines and the software will operate. If it won't, then the call to the CPU DRM rouine is really an external library.
As for re-defining programming languages to obfuscate the meaning of code... Remember that they cannot take away the already free source code that they got via the GPL. All they can do is add to that. If they add an obfuscated JPG decoder to your graphics library and you can't get that to run, you're not any worse off because of that. Further, any piece of their code that is derived from GPL code needs to be shared. If they really just added a line to your code that calls a separate non-derivative library, then I'm not sure what grounds for demanding access to their work the original author has. The GPL v2 explicitly states they're not trying to contest ownership of independently developed code.
But really, your example of redefining "+" is hardly plausible. Something analogous to that could be done with CPU opcodes, sure, but under the GPL the source code must be published. According to v2 of the GPL,
This precludes them from taking their source and running it through an obfuscator into some wacky format for a special hacked compiler before they share it. Unless you think all the evil closed source programmers are going to write in a dialect of C with redefined operators. If so, I don't think we'll have to worry about those poor programmers actually developing anything worthwhile enough to want to backport it out of a DRM system.
I know your example was not intended as a real-world system, but I have trouble imagining a system for doing this that would actually work. Remember, it's got to both make it prohibitively difficult for someone who has the source code to reverse engineer and allow authorized users to actually get work done. If you have information about a practical such system, please share.
As for other people writing closed-source software that will only operate on a DRM-enabled CPU, well... what they do with their time and effort is their business. I think it's unfortunate, but it's their choice.
Ok -- thanks for clarifying. Now that I understand, I see that your position is coherent.
In fact, I think I generally agree, although perhaps not in detail. I think that copyrights, even for software, are valuable (though the terms of enforcement *must* be reduced to something reasonable). The GPL is a fair license for people who *choose* to release their software freely, but I am not convinced that the laws should be changed to make it effectively mandatory. However, this is a position that I reconsider frequently and I have sympathy for arguments on both sides.
You're absolutely right that laws that criminalize circumvention of DRM are ridiculous. Given the existence of copyrights, violating a copyright should be a crime, but to criminalize activities that simply could contribute is going too far. It might make enforcement more difficult, but I don't see how stifling innovation in the name of profit protection is consistent with the moral foundations of copyright law.
So, I guess I'd like to see the second part of your bargain without the first part, as it hardly seems necessary. I imagine you'd be happy with that arrangement, too.
Under the current GPL, they'd be required to release *all* their source code but not the key that would allow that code to run on the DRM-enforcing CPU. You get all the code, but you may not be able to trivially build it to run on their hardware platform. You're still free to recompile and run it on a DRM-free CPU.
I'm assuming here that the only purpose of the key is to authorize the CPU to execute the code. If it's locking up other functions -- such as access to a library only available on the DRM CPU -- then the source code is not completely available. As long as the issue is only one of getting your code to run on the particular hardware platform, I don't see the problem.
If I ported a piece of GPL software to a platform that is supported only by commercial compilers, should I be forced to divulge the source code to the compiler? Sure, you can't build your own version that runs on the platform without it, but I don't see that as something impeding the freedom of the GPL software.
I apparently misunderstood what you were saying, though I'm still not sure I get it. When you refer to "binaries" in your original post, do you mean the binary executable the results from compiling GPL'ed code, to a binary piece of content like a song or video, to both of these, or to something else entirely?
Are you saying that you'd prefer an environment that offers no legal protection to either "side"? In other words, are you advocating the removal of all copyright on software (disarming the GPL software producers) in exchange for the removal of laws that require respect for access controls to content?
and then go on to say
The source code provisions of the GPL (the part you see as secondary) prevent the problem you raise in your second paragraph. If I have the source code to an application or driver, it doesn't matter whether the binaries are distributable -- I'm free to build my own version. If that version won't run on my processor (because it's got DRM built in), then I've got the source and I can build it for an unhindered processor.
Actually, Negroponte and the people behind this project *are* developing technologies for this. Or, at least, paying other people specifically to do so. My former company (made up of a number of people who knew Negroponte from the MIT Media Lab) was involved in some of this work. I'm not 100% sure whether the development was successful in producing a workable solution, but there's a lot more going on than just taking parts of a shelf and assembling them.
If people in the laptop industry aren't interested in this market, it's because they make better money selling new $1500 laptops rather than new $100 laptops. Negroponte & co have done a lot to encourage development of something that simply would not have been done had they not pushed for it. Pushing the production cost down to that level simply requires development that has not been done. Contrary to your unfounded assertions, if we do find $100 laptops on the market, this work *will* have been an influence on that.
The law doesn't need to treat the Internet specially just to recognize that it has its own customs and norms. Part of the ordinary practice of operating a web server on the Internet entails configuring your robots.txt file to keep spiders away from things you don't want them to index. A law that required that an author take "reasonable and customary precautions suitable to the publication medium," for example, would handle this well, IMO. I didn't read the decision, just the linked article, but it sounds more or less like that is what they upheld. That seems eminently reasonable to me.
I agree. Plus, there is a lot of value from Google, even censored Google. 99.9% of the things I do with Google would not be affected in the slightest bit by political censorship, and I get an enormous benefit from doing those searches. The PRC is *not* going to bow down before Google and stop being evil, they'll just go without. Remind me, how does it help a Chinese peasant not to give him partial access to Google?
No Google < Censored Google < Uncensored Google
I think you're reading the text you've quoted incorrectly.
One needs to maintain some perspective, though. Do you really *hate* your job, as in find it so repugnant that you'd rather do *anything* else? Not everyone can have his or her first choice in careers -- inevitably, some folks will wind up with jobs they would rather not have to do. However, as your quote claims, almost everyone in the developed world has it pretty good compared to what it could be.
People tend to use a lot of hyperbole when they describe their jobs. Hating a job, for most people, just means it's not their ultimate dream. It usually doesn't mean they are about to snap and kill a bunch of people in rage over it (unless they work in telemarketing). It's great to aspire to doing work you really do love, but if you don't get there, you gotta keep perspective about how much worse it could be.
A company releasing a radio transmitter for public consumption really does have to certify that the end-user cannot control the device in such a way as to cause it to violate the FCC regulations. It could be difficult for them to do this if they're simultaneously helping external developers get low-level control. I've not heard of anyone getting called on this, but it's quite possible that it could happen.
It's possible to write the firmware in such a way as to separate legal requirements from the work a driver needs to do, but this is not easy. Also, since the same hardware can often support multiple regulatory areas with only a changed driver, there is incentive to keep the low-level hardware/firmware as flexible as possible.
For an end user, it is, in fact, illegal to modify radio hardware to operate in contravention of FCC rules. Realistically, you're not likely to get nailed because you're not likely to cause harm (so no one will notice) and it takes substantial resources to track you down. I'm not sure what the status of a project distributing code would be, though. I don't imagine it would be encouraged, but would probably have to get to be pretty big before it would draw enough attention to be in danger.
I think you're right -- they're undoubtedly using the transition from pre-production to production to iron out a few last kinks. It's quite possible that some of these will have impact on the battery life. If that's the case, better not to say anything now than to give a wrong answer. If the answer ends up too low, you risk giving your product a bad reputation. If it's too high, you'll be accused of padding your numbers or outright lying for marketing purposes.
It tells me that a number of fields taught at universities are inherently at odds with conservative political philosophy.
Physics, astronomy, computer science, engineering, are these at odds with conservative politics? Because that's what I've had the most experience with personally and I have also observed a majority of world-class faculty with liberal leanings socially and politically.
Yet you still get those who insist that so-called "Native Americans" discovered Columbus, despite the fact that the latter sailed thousands of miles over several weeks while the former didn't leave their mud huts.
I have no idea what you are trying to say here.
Back to the standard "ideas that come from Europe must be valid, just beacuse they come from Europe" argument.
That was not at all the argument that was made, but don't let that stop you. The grandparent referred to "Europe and elsewhere" which is clearly intended to mean "outside the U.S." Europe is particularly worth singling out in this context because it has a strong history (and modern presence) of socialist politics, especially compared to the U.S.
Especially when at least half of them are damn near illiterate
Well then what the hell are they doing in college? If this is as serious a problem as the recent highly publicized studies would have one believe, then liberal bias is not at the top of the list of things to worry about in academia.
Great. Thanks for your insight.
I don't particularly mind dupes, but it's just a little hard to believe they're actually doing anything. As several people have pointed out, other similar blogs don't seem to suffer from this problem.
In fact, I just typed the text from the single link in this article into the Slashdot search box. That is, the text "50 milliseconds." The first hit on this search was the previous story and the text was in the link text of that article.
It is just hard to swallow the claim that they actually give a damn when something that should be as obvious to detect as this dupe gets through. Even if you accept that it's too much to ask the person who's about to accept the article to actually search himself, there is no excuse for this one getting through. Heck, if the editors are paid even reasonably well (I see frequent references to their being paid, but I don't know this for a fact), it's hardly an onerous task to ask them to search for dupes. It really doesn't matter how many submissions come in. They've already done the hard part -- they picked out an article to accept. Adding 30 seconds to search recent accepted articles adds 30 seconds per accepted article, not per submitted article.
Even if that's unacceptable, even the simplest automated tool should detect most of the dupes that I notice. It's clear to me that the editors and the management just don't care. That's fine, I don't subscribe so I don't really care either. I find it kind of amusing, actually.
I've spent my share of time in the real world and I've dealt with plenty of people, competent and otherwise. My point is that if you're in an organization with a need for "real" security and you are really the only person capable of keeping track of passwords, there's a problem. That organization simply isn't capable of managing real security.
For most organizations, though, real security is not that important. For those instances where it is necessary, though, having a single employee in a position to compromise every layer of security is an utterly ridiculous prospect.
Doesn't sound like you've been working with competent users.
Good luck with that attitude if you ever work for competent people who are actually interested in the security of their organization.
That's not true. Each IT person or group needs only enough access to maintain the systems it is responsible for maintaining. If your company is small, that may mean that the IT guy has access to all the systems. If it's larger, though, it is a very good idea to partition access. This is not just a question of trust -- it also forces the person responsible for each element to be involved in (and therefore aware of) any changes made to it.
Data is another matter. IT does not need access to sensitive business data to do its job. Encrypt the data with a password known only to those who need access. Obviously this will preclude IT from recovering the data when the password is lost, but if the data is that sensitive and valuable, it's quite reasonable to expect extreme diligence on the part its custodians.
If I were in IT in a company with extremely sensitive data, I would actually prefer to have access to less than everything. When there is a leak, it makes it that much less likely that I'll be falsely accused.
I'm not sure what you are trying to say. The one thing that seems crystal clear is that it's illegal to make a copy of the data on the disc and sell that copy.
If you are buying a license to use the data and somehow that license prevents you from selling the disc, then ok, you can't cut it up and resell a modified disc. As far as I know, however, no one is currently arguing that you can't sell your used copy of an xbox game. At least, no one who is being taken seriously.
Regardless, you don't have a legal right to copy the data in any case. A license to use the software doesn't grant you license to duplicate it. You can debate whether this is ethical, but the law is not really vague on this point.
It's not uncommon to run longer burn-in tests on at least a fraction of the product comming off the line. We did a 24-hour burn-in for 100% of the devices we produced, at least during the first production runs. They were somewhat more expensive than a 360, but still, given that they are a professional production company, they're doing testing.
I'm sure they've been running a fairly large number of 360s for longer than customers have had them. Undoubtedly they've seen at least some of these problems and decided that they were acceptable. Perhaps they didn't realize the full magnitude and blew it. Maybe the rates are acceptable -- I don't know, I haven't seen trustworthy numbers.
And I'll bet my hat that if you can do this by cutting apart the disc that contains the graphics engine and gluing it together with the part of another disc that contains game data, no one will be able to sue you when you sell the resulting product. No fair making a copy for commercial purposes and putting it on to a new disc, that'd be illegal.
You have an extremely dim view of human relationships that seems to go far beyond simply choosing a "single, childless" lifestyle. That's why I asked what happened -- most people I know who pursue that same lifestyle don't seem as bitter about it as you do. That said, the particular phrasing was mostly my being trollish and I'm sorry about that.
You may note that I never said anything at all about the "married with children" lifestyle being an ideal. It's the particular choice I'm in the process of making, but I am quite aware that it's not the choice for everyone.
As for my "word usage betray[ing my] bias," I'm just baffled at your comment. As far as I know, "single, childless lifestyle" is a pretty emotionally neutral and accurate description of the lifestyle you choose. But since it seems you use the language differently from me, I'll define my terms. "Single" means "without a partner or spouse." "Childless" means "not having any offspring." "Lifestyle" means "way of living." That sounds pretty accurate to me. Any connotations you may draw from that phrase are purely your own -- I certainly did not imply anything, nor did I intend to. Don't blame me that the English language uses the same four letters for the suffix "-less" and the word "less." You're welcome to use "free" in place of "single" I suppose, but I think that makes it pretty clear which of us is trying to play lame rhetorical games.
I'm glad you are comfortable with your choices, but I find it unfortunate that you seem to have little respect for those who choose otherwise. Fulfillment in particular means very different things to different people.
Wow, whatever has happened to make you so bitter, I'm sorry man. Believe it or not, not everyone shares your materialistic, misogynistic view of the world. You would do well to learn how to look at things from a perspective other than your own.
You have made a choice -- you find that the single, childless lifestyle suits you. Great. You know what? It doesn't suit everyone. Some of us tried it and found that, despite the benefits it may afford, we weren't happy. Having another person involved in your life can (gasp) enrich it in ways that toys and cars just can't.
I actually agree with you on a lot, it seems. Getting married too young is usually a big mistake. Children should be born into a stable, supportive situation (whether or not it's a marriage). Fair prenups are a good thing.
On that last point -- I don't at all share your view that marriage is a universally a windfall for the woman and a burden for the man and that the purpose of the prenup is to protect his assets from being stolen. At least, it should not be. When you get into a marriage, you're forming an agreement that (in most cases) is going to set up a partnership to build and support a family. One aspect of that is that someone is likely going to have to forego a financially motivated career in order to maintain the household and rear the children. The agreement is normally that the one who doesn't give up that career compensates for this by supporting the other partner. That is absolutely fair and reasonable.
If the marriage doesn't survive, it's hardly unreasonable to share some portion of the assets and/or demand that the partner who maintained his/her career at least temporarily help support the homemaking partner. The assets belong to the family, regardless of whose name was on the paycheck that paid for them. Maintaining a home/raising children is a non-trivial contribution to the family's well-being.
A prenup that specifies exactly what the agreement is with respect to these sorts of things is, IMO, a good thing. It protects both partners and, since it's drawn up when everyone is on good terms, can be a fairer agreement. If you can't get together with your spouse-to-be and come to a reasonable, honest agreement about the terms, that's not going to be the biggest problem in your marriage.
Hey, you might want to look at the post headers and see who here has enough of a spine to put his name beside his post.
Actually, you're right, I do appreciate people in the service sector and the important work they do. I apologize to any fry cooks who were offended by my insinuation that the original troll might count among their ranks.