While there are a number of stories of God "smiting" people, this is always in response to an offense directly against God, e.g. claiming to be God (while mentally competent). Furthermore, I'm not aware of any use of lightning in such stories. The methods used can be pretty gruesome, however:
Acts 12:22-23 The people kept crying out, "The voice of a god and not of a man!" And immediately an angel of the Lord struck him because he did not give God the glory, and he was eaten by worms and died.
Big distributors get their cut, fine. But now there is less money to spend on artists directly at concerts and CD sales. It is probably not so great for artist friendly distributors like http://magnatune.com/ either - although they would have a better chance of fighting for their (and their artists) share.
Anyway, this isn't a huge deal. There is a process involved in fighting these things, like a long if-then-else statement. All that's happened here is that the first 'then' that could help the defendant didn't work out. There's little doubt that one of the later ones will, but the case hasn't gotten to there yet.
It's not a huge deal - unless the innocent victim doesn't have the money to see the long process through. And even when the victim has plenty of money (e.g. SCO vs. IBM), it is a huge waste of time, money, and emotion.
Since constant cell phone use has been shown to measurably raise brain temperature, could walking around with a cell phone to your ear have the same effect? Maybe if you put one on each ear? You could call one with the other. Reverse Alzheimers while talking to yourself!
I have a hard time getting excited about this. In the email world, the saying goes, "My server, my rules." Every organization has their own policies on how to deal with spam and bend the rfc2821 rules in different ways. They won't accept your mail because they don't like certain (perfectly legal) characters in the MAIL FROM (like '+')? You can either cross them off your list or make special exceptions when sending them mail.
In the same vein, this is not a fundamental justice issue. France determines the rules to trade in their country. If you don't like them, you don't have to trade there. Or, you can program in special exceptions (no free shipping) for French customers. We can argue about whether their rules are stupid or not (rejecting email based on legal MAIL FROM chars is stupid). But this isn't a case of oppression or murder.
Amen. Shouldn't they replace say 20% - 50%, and see if any of the problems are in the new set? Maybe the problem is the batteries environment, and not the battery itself.
People with unused cores can just sign up with SETI@Home or Folding@Home, or join some math team to factor large numbers or whatever. AMD/Intel/IBM should talk this up. If people buy into it, chipmakers get full price for their parts up front, and get good PR to boot. If the software to enable easy and reliable *sandboxed* remote computation improves fast enough, there may even be a market for selling unused capacity (micro payments for work units completed).
Did the priest notice that in his story the swimmer is much better off with the liberal?
Oh yes. That was kind of the point, without offending a mostly conservative congregation. (Although maybe I added the lifepreserver in my memory of the story.) It was about meeting people at the point of their need and learning to discern that point. Not erring on the side of either degrading handouts or "love" so "tough" it leads to despair. That tension is in a lot of stories as well as real life.
Or a flamewar to end all flamewars: heartless Rayndian let the poor starve on the streets -style Libertarianists vs. Socialists who steal every last penny which you have righfully earned with your very own hands to build a Gulag and lock you there for your own good with a robotic nanny named "State".
Or, as our priest put it yesterday, "A swimmer is drowning 100 feet from shore. A conservative throws a lifesaver on a 50 foot rope, and yells at them to swim half way. A liberal sees them, calls the conservative hard hearted, and throws a lifesaver all the way to the drowning man - at the end of a 200 foot rope, and pats himself smugly on the back while holding the other end."
The foolish man repeats his mistakes (except when trying for a Darwin award).
The intelligent man learns from his mistakes (unless they are fatal).
But, the wise man learns from the mistakes of others.
Congress, being the pawn of those corporations, is obviously upset. UNTIL CAPITALISM IS ABOLISHED IN THIS COUNTRY WE WILL HAVE NO FREEDOM.
Replace capitalism and corporatism and I'll agree with you. The corporations with all the rights and none of the limitations or moral compunctions of actual citizens, created along with government schools at the turn of the 20th century, have given real capitalism a bad name.
However, don't expect me to support efforts to give yet more unconstitutional power to the most corrupt and powerful corporation of all: the US Federal Government.
While the Classmate is more powerful than OLPC, it also uses 10 times the power. Intel had to donate generators to their pilot projects before they could use the classmate. OLPC can run on hand cranks. I would say the Classmate is a better fit for industrialized countries with easy access to clean power, but not for the places OLPC is trying to reach. I believe that Classmate also doesn't have mesh, so that connectivity from the school would only reach as far as a WAP.
I actually don't mind marketing that actually *is* clever. Be it entertaining, informative, or just cool, when a company spends enough bucks to make an Ad truly worth watching/reading, I won't complain. For such ads on the internet, they usually don't even need to spend much on distribution - people will pass it on of their own accord. "Viral Marketing." I do think companies that do this should include a Creative Commons type license so people know it's ok to pass it on.
But that's not what the lenders wanted, so it's not what they chose. They wanted more business, so they marketed non-traditional loans agressively.
I think we can agree that ARMs are bad for low income borrowers - because, as you say, they disguise the loan requirements for those who aren't whizzes on their financial calculator. Given the lose-lose nature of a default, I still think there is more to it than abject stupidity / short-term greed on the part of lenders. But I've underestimated greed induced stupidity before.
An interest-only loan could make a lot of sense for someone who is planning to move in a few years. I can see the initial payment being used to sell someone who doesn't fully understand that their payment kicks up in 2 years. But since the bank is out half the value of the house at that point, it is not in their long term interest to push such loans to the point of default. As the motto goes, never attribute to malice what is adequately explained by incompetence.
The law is the Equal Housing Opportunity Act. While not explicitly requiring that loans be given to anyone who asks, what happens in practice is that if you deny a loan to a member of a minority that participates in racial politics, you are inviting a law suit - and everyone will see you as the "bad guy" regardless of the finances of the rejectee. Having a policy that says "always give loans to racial group X" is a non-starter also. So the effect of the law is that lenders are required to always give loans to whoever asks. As a matter of self interest, they try to cover the risk with higher interest rates. But this doesn't really work, since a foreclosure is a losing situation to everyone except the buyer who gets a bargain on a house.
Ironically, the ARMs and subprime loans are given
disproportionally to blacks and hispanics, even when looking only at higher
income subgroups. So the effect of the law is the opposite of what was
intended.
I have a daughter with migraine headaches. Florescent lighting is a common migraine trigger - so it doesn't belong in her bedroom. I have been buying a few CFLs for 15 years, hoping for the technology to improve. The first ones I bought died in 6 months (electronics died), and you couldn't buy a new base to reuse the perfectly good bulb (with mercury). So I have been installing traditional magnetic ballast flourescents - which actually do last 12 years. I bought a batch of CFs at WalMart 6 months ago, and they aren't dead yet - a good sign. They are annoying because they are dim when you first turn them on, and reach full brightness only after several minutes. This is probably a good thing, and means the electronics are designed to run hot.
There are energy saving applications that CFs are no good at. "On demand" lighting, that is turned on for only a few minutes while you are in the room (florescent lights of all kinds hate rapid power cycling). Dimmers. Winter. Incandescent lights are great for winter. The light is warmer both literally (90% infrared) and psychologically.
Fortunately, banning a particular technology, while boneheaded, is not nearly as boneheaded as mandating a particular technology. People with flicker sensitive migraines can purchase LED lighting - although it is currently quite a bit more expensive. I suppose christmas lights will have to go the LED route also. Sigh. At least the expense will discourage those gaudy "cover the entire house with tiny lights on 2 inch spacing" displays.
ARMs are not the problem. The foreclosures are mostly in the "subprime" market of weak credit. A decade ago, the US government passed laws basically making it illegal to deny someone a loan just because they didn't have enough income. Seems lots of people were unable to "own" their home due to lack of means. So US Congress tried to "fix" this by forcing lenders to give them loans anyway. Lo and behold, they didn't have enough income to sustain the loan. Now congress is proposing to "fix" this by punishing lenders for "luring" people into unsustainable debt as required by their previous law. While ARMs can be more punishing when interest goes up, there is a huge surge in fixed rate loan foreclosures also.
Since lenders are prohibited from denying home loans except under extreme circumstances, that puts the responsibility for taking on too much debt 100% in the hands of borrowers. If the mortgage limits liability to foreclosure on the home, the borrower is no worse off than if they had rented. The lender is stuck trying to recover their investment from a heavily discounted foreclosure sale. An honest borrower should try to make a normal sale to repay in full and possibly have a little left over (not always possible in a down market).
In the big bang model, time and space form a hypersphere (in the case of the "big crunch") or an open shape in case of eternal expansion. Time does not "begin" or "end", any more than land begins or ends at the north or south pole. The situation does call into question the meaning of questions like "how old is the universe". We try to measure our (time+space) distance from the big bang (south pole) in our frame of reference. The measure will be different in other frames of reference.
The problem is groups like the RIAA want *all* devices to enforce DRM... meaning there is no choice for the artist that wants to release music (or even sound bites) unDRM'd.
Oh, really? Where are these devices that ONLY play DRMed content? Every media player and DVD player I have ever seen has always been able to play unprotected content in various forms. The only way to fully enforce DRM is for the vendor to fully control the device. This might be acceptable for stand alone DVD players. But currently, you have to buy M$ Windows to legally play purchased DVDs on your non-Apple computer. And while running Windows, you have about as much control over your computer as over your standalone DVD player.
What DRM boils down to is a proposal to prevent digital copyright infringement by outlawing the general purpose computer. And, of course, it works just like gun control. Actual outlaws will continue to use general purpose computers for anything they want, including to illegally copy DVDs (and successors) and sell them on street corners (or sell downloads on shady web sites). Innocent paying customers are banned from fully using one of the most important technologies produced by our culture. It is once again the elite seeking to keep the peasants under their thumb - using the fact that a few peasants are thieving hoodlums to justify their oppression.
Not every privileged member of society is wicked. The proportion is probably about the same as for plebians (interesting study: how much does power corrupt?). But a wicked aristocrat has so much more potential for far reaching evil than some small time bandit in an alley. And all the time, they think of themselves as "better" than the bandit because they wear nice clothes and smell nice.
It is easy to teach a cat tricks - you just have to work within what cats naturally like to do. Farmers have been using cats to catch mice for a long time. In my own case, I've taught our cat several games that it loves to play - taking the initiative in getting a game started. His favorite is "who can sneak up on who". The human takes off shoes, and attempts to quietly sneak up on the cat. Watch out for shadows - any movement of your shadow in the cats field of vision will alert him to your position. Meanwhile, the cat attempts the same on you. If the cat gets close enough first (the usual case), he leaps out, and "tags" the calves of the human with a bat of his (claws retracted) paw. And then runs off to start another round. If the human manages to get close enough (a rare but not impossible occurrence), they reach out and give the cat a quick stroke down the back. The cat, generally miffed that the clumsy human managed to win the round, looks annoyed and grooms himself for a few seconds, then runs off to start another round.
Another good one is "monkey in the middle". Two humans sit 10 or 20 feet apart, with a small plush toy. One of the humans makes the plush toy wiggle like a small mammal, and peep temptingly from behind his leg or back. The cat crouches low to the ground, his tail lashing with small movements, and his eyes shifting back and forth. When you're least expecting it he springs, and if he caught you off guard, grabs the toy with his claws and stalks triumphantly with it in his teeth and drops it in the middle. The other human then takes the toy and makes it wiggle. If the human has managed to stay focused when the cat leaps, he tosses the toy over the cats head to the other human. The cat then leaps high into the air in an attempt to intercept it - often succeeding.
My dog growing up (a miniature collie) was raised by a cat who had lost her kittens (to the CO gas chamber). She used a litter box, or buried her business when relieving herself outside. She wouldn't go in lawns (too hard to dig), but looked for leaf or sand covered areas.
Since the article is about *video*, not audio, let me ask a question. Isn't the constant bit rate feature of MP3 important for video, so that keeping audio in sync with video frames is easier? Ogg may have better quality for a given bucket of bits, but it is not a constant bit rate, making synchronization with video more complex. Of course, with the advent of Youtube, no one expects video and audio to be in sync anyway...
If the router is owned by Verizon, and merely rented or provided for use by customers, then Verizon is not under GPL obligations - regardless of whether it is on customer premises. It is only if Verizon is selling or giving away the routers that they need to meet GPL obligations. The case of DRMed media and devices is weird. While ostensibly a "sale", you can't actually do anything with the product without permission from the maker. Thus Tivo and *AA companies are lying to consumers when they offer to "sell" DRMed media and devices. The media/device is still effectively owned and controlled by the maker. The best way for such companies to avoid GPL 3, stop lying to their customers, and still maintain the desired control, is to call a spade a spade and rent DRMed media and equipment. Call it a "long term rental" if you want. When I go to the theatre, I don't expect to be able to do what I want with their equipment.
There are businesses which are not corrupt, and which would not insist on keeping control of a "standard" once it became a standard. And that's the way it should be, and when did so many people become so fucking complacent about corporate corruption?
Name three. The concept of original sin sees every human person as bearing seeds of moral corruption that, barring a miracle, will eventually result in spiritual death. Corporations, formed from individual people, seem to manifest the same principle. Like Google, they can resolve to do good, but keep slipping further from the goal. Like IBM, they can reform, but the downward spiral is only delayed, not reversed. Healthy diet and exercise can delay, but not prevent bodily decay and physical death. Good deeds and moral resolve can delay, but not prevent spiritual decay and death.
But along with this, people - and corporations - are not at the same place morally. Many people you know are good moral people (regardless of religion or lack of it). And many corporations are still trying to remain focused on worthy goals. That is the original purpose of "mission statements". I personally predict that Microsoft will repent and enter a reform period like IBM after the current principals lose their influence.
Here are three corps that are currently struggling to be good. Of course, I may be ignorant of recent sins which might change my judgment.
1) Google
2) IBM
3) Ben and Jerry
Slashdot Mirror
Acts 12:22-23 The people kept crying out, "The voice of a god and not of a man!" And immediately an angel of the Lord struck him because he did not give God the glory, and he was eaten by worms and died.
Big distributors get their cut, fine. But now there is less money to spend on artists directly at concerts and CD sales. It is probably not so great for artist friendly distributors like http://magnatune.com/ either - although they would have a better chance of fighting for their (and their artists) share.
It's not a huge deal - unless the innocent victim doesn't have the money to see the long process through. And even when the victim has plenty of money (e.g. SCO vs. IBM), it is a huge waste of time, money, and emotion.
Since constant cell phone use has been shown to measurably raise brain temperature, could walking around with a cell phone to your ear have the same effect? Maybe if you put one on each ear? You could call one with the other. Reverse Alzheimers while talking to yourself!
In the same vein, this is not a fundamental justice issue. France determines the rules to trade in their country. If you don't like them, you don't have to trade there. Or, you can program in special exceptions (no free shipping) for French customers. We can argue about whether their rules are stupid or not (rejecting email based on legal MAIL FROM chars is stupid). But this isn't a case of oppression or murder.
Amen. Shouldn't they replace say 20% - 50%, and see if any of the problems are in the new set? Maybe the problem is the batteries environment, and not the battery itself.
People with unused cores can just sign up with SETI@Home or Folding@Home, or join some math team to factor large numbers or whatever. AMD/Intel/IBM should talk this up. If people buy into it, chipmakers get full price for their parts up front, and get good PR to boot. If the software to enable easy and reliable *sandboxed* remote computation improves fast enough, there may even be a market for selling unused capacity (micro payments for work units completed).
Oh yes. That was kind of the point, without offending a mostly conservative congregation. (Although maybe I added the lifepreserver in my memory of the story.) It was about meeting people at the point of their need and learning to discern that point. Not erring on the side of either degrading handouts or "love" so "tough" it leads to despair. That tension is in a lot of stories as well as real life.
Or, as our priest put it yesterday, "A swimmer is drowning 100 feet from shore. A conservative throws a lifesaver on a 50 foot rope, and yells at them to swim half way. A liberal sees them, calls the conservative hard hearted, and throws a lifesaver all the way to the drowning man - at the end of a 200 foot rope, and pats himself smugly on the back while holding the other end."
The foolish man repeats his mistakes (except when trying for a Darwin award).
The intelligent man learns from his mistakes (unless they are fatal).
But, the wise man learns from the mistakes of others.
Replace capitalism and corporatism and I'll agree with you. The corporations with all the rights and none of the limitations or moral compunctions of actual citizens, created along with government schools at the turn of the 20th century, have given real capitalism a bad name.
However, don't expect me to support efforts to give yet more unconstitutional power to the most corrupt and powerful corporation of all: the US Federal Government.
While the Classmate is more powerful than OLPC, it also uses 10 times the power. Intel had to donate generators to their pilot projects before they could use the classmate. OLPC can run on hand cranks. I would say the Classmate is a better fit for industrialized countries with easy access to clean power, but not for the places OLPC is trying to reach. I believe that Classmate also doesn't have mesh, so that connectivity from the school would only reach as far as a WAP.
I actually don't mind marketing that actually *is* clever. Be it entertaining, informative, or just cool, when a company spends enough bucks to make an Ad truly worth watching/reading, I won't complain. For such ads on the internet, they usually don't even need to spend much on distribution - people will pass it on of their own accord. "Viral Marketing." I do think companies that do this should include a Creative Commons type license so people know it's ok to pass it on.
I think we can agree that ARMs are bad for low income borrowers - because, as you say, they disguise the loan requirements for those who aren't whizzes on their financial calculator. Given the lose-lose nature of a default, I still think there is more to it than abject stupidity / short-term greed on the part of lenders. But I've underestimated greed induced stupidity before.
An interest-only loan could make a lot of sense for someone who is planning to move in a few years. I can see the initial payment being used to sell someone who doesn't fully understand that their payment kicks up in 2 years. But since the bank is out half the value of the house at that point, it is not in their long term interest to push such loans to the point of default. As the motto goes, never attribute to malice what is adequately explained by incompetence.
Ironically, the ARMs and subprime loans are given disproportionally to blacks and hispanics, even when looking only at higher income subgroups. So the effect of the law is the opposite of what was intended.
I have a daughter with migraine headaches. Florescent lighting is a common migraine trigger - so it doesn't belong in her bedroom. I have been buying a few CFLs for 15 years, hoping for the technology to improve. The first ones I bought died in 6 months (electronics died), and you couldn't buy a new base to reuse the perfectly good bulb (with mercury). So I have been installing traditional magnetic ballast flourescents - which actually do last 12 years. I bought a batch of CFs at WalMart 6 months ago, and they aren't dead yet - a good sign. They are annoying because they are dim when you first turn them on, and reach full brightness only after several minutes. This is probably a good thing, and means the electronics are designed to run hot.
There are energy saving applications that CFs are no good at. "On demand" lighting, that is turned on for only a few minutes while you are in the room (florescent lights of all kinds hate rapid power cycling). Dimmers. Winter. Incandescent lights are great for winter. The light is warmer both literally (90% infrared) and psychologically.
Fortunately, banning a particular technology, while boneheaded, is not nearly as boneheaded as mandating a particular technology. People with flicker sensitive migraines can purchase LED lighting - although it is currently quite a bit more expensive. I suppose christmas lights will have to go the LED route also. Sigh. At least the expense will discourage those gaudy "cover the entire house with tiny lights on 2 inch spacing" displays.
I am really sick of this nanny state business.
ARMs are not the problem. The foreclosures are mostly in the "subprime" market of weak credit. A decade ago, the US government passed laws basically making it illegal to deny someone a loan just because they didn't have enough income. Seems lots of people were unable to "own" their home due to lack of means. So US Congress tried to "fix" this by forcing lenders to give them loans anyway. Lo and behold, they didn't have enough income to sustain the loan. Now congress is proposing to "fix" this by punishing lenders for "luring" people into unsustainable debt as required by their previous law. While ARMs can be more punishing when interest goes up, there is a huge surge in fixed rate loan foreclosures also.
Since lenders are prohibited from denying home loans except under extreme circumstances, that puts the responsibility for taking on too much debt 100% in the hands of borrowers. If the mortgage limits liability to foreclosure on the home, the borrower is no worse off than if they had rented. The lender is stuck trying to recover their investment from a heavily discounted foreclosure sale. An honest borrower should try to make a normal sale to repay in full and possibly have a little left over (not always possible in a down market).
In the big bang model, time and space form a hypersphere (in the case of the "big crunch") or an open shape in case of eternal expansion. Time does not "begin" or "end", any more than land begins or ends at the north or south pole. The situation does call into question the meaning of questions like "how old is the universe". We try to measure our (time+space) distance from the big bang (south pole) in our frame of reference. The measure will be different in other frames of reference.
Oh, really? Where are these devices that ONLY play DRMed content? Every media player and DVD player I have ever seen has always been able to play unprotected content in various forms.
The only way to fully enforce DRM is for the vendor to fully control the device. This might be acceptable for stand alone DVD players. But currently, you have to buy M$ Windows to legally play purchased DVDs on your non-Apple computer. And while running Windows, you have about as much control over your computer as over your standalone DVD player.
What DRM boils down to is a proposal to prevent digital copyright infringement by outlawing the general purpose computer. And, of course, it works just like gun control. Actual outlaws will continue to use general purpose computers for anything they want, including to illegally copy DVDs (and successors) and sell them on street corners (or sell downloads on shady web sites). Innocent paying customers are banned from fully using one of the most important technologies produced by our culture. It is once again the elite seeking to keep the peasants under their thumb - using the fact that a few peasants are thieving hoodlums to justify their oppression.
Not every privileged member of society is wicked. The proportion is probably about the same as for plebians (interesting study: how much does power corrupt?). But a wicked aristocrat has so much more potential for far reaching evil than some small time bandit in an alley. And all the time, they think of themselves as "better" than the bandit because they wear nice clothes and smell nice.
I don't drink, but I am feeling very sheepish for missing such an important option. Thank you for informing my ignorance - the insult is deserved.
Another good one is "monkey in the middle". Two humans sit 10 or 20 feet apart, with a small plush toy. One of the humans makes the plush toy wiggle like a small mammal, and peep temptingly from behind his leg or back. The cat crouches low to the ground, his tail lashing with small movements, and his eyes shifting back and forth. When you're least expecting it he springs, and if he caught you off guard, grabs the toy with his claws and stalks triumphantly with it in his teeth and drops it in the middle. The other human then takes the toy and makes it wiggle. If the human has managed to stay focused when the cat leaps, he tosses the toy over the cats head to the other human. The cat then leaps high into the air in an attempt to intercept it - often succeeding.
My dog growing up (a miniature collie) was raised by a cat who had lost her kittens (to the CO gas chamber). She used a litter box, or buried her business when relieving herself outside. She wouldn't go in lawns (too hard to dig), but looked for leaf or sand covered areas.
Since the article is about *video*, not audio, let me ask a question. Isn't the constant bit rate feature of MP3 important for video, so that keeping audio in sync with video frames is easier? Ogg may have better quality for a given bucket of bits, but it is not a constant bit rate, making synchronization with video more complex. Of course, with the advent of Youtube, no one expects video and audio to be in sync anyway ...
If the router is owned by Verizon, and merely rented or provided for use by customers, then Verizon is not under GPL obligations - regardless of whether it is on customer premises. It is only if Verizon is selling or giving away the routers that they need to meet GPL obligations. The case of DRMed media and devices is weird. While ostensibly a "sale", you can't actually do anything with the product without permission from the maker. Thus Tivo and *AA companies are lying to consumers when they offer to "sell" DRMed media and devices. The media/device is still effectively owned and controlled by the maker. The best way for such companies to avoid GPL 3, stop lying to their customers, and still maintain the desired control, is to call a spade a spade and rent DRMed media and equipment. Call it a "long term rental" if you want. When I go to the theatre, I don't expect to be able to do what I want with their equipment.
Name three. The concept of original sin sees every human person as bearing seeds of moral corruption that, barring a miracle, will eventually result in spiritual death. Corporations, formed from individual people, seem to manifest the same principle. Like Google, they can resolve to do good, but keep slipping further from the goal. Like IBM, they can reform, but the downward spiral is only delayed, not reversed. Healthy diet and exercise can delay, but not prevent bodily decay and physical death. Good deeds and moral resolve can delay, but not prevent spiritual decay and death.
But along with this, people - and corporations - are not at the same place morally. Many people you know are good moral people (regardless of religion or lack of it). And many corporations are still trying to remain focused on worthy goals. That is the original purpose of "mission statements". I personally predict that Microsoft will repent and enter a reform period like IBM after the current principals lose their influence.
Here are three corps that are currently struggling to be good. Of course, I may be ignorant of recent sins which might change my judgment. 1) Google 2) IBM 3) Ben and Jerry