About the time that banner ads started using animated gifs I got annoyed with them. I looked around and pretty quickly found I wasn't alone. Other people had already developed solutions to eliminate ads. Since that time every computer I use has had something in place to remove banner ads before I ever see them. These days my filters are good enough that I very rarely ever see a banner, and once I do I won't see another one on that site again.
My approach was technical enough that a lot of people couldn't easily do the same thing. A lot of people I know have simply become desensitized to banner ads. They can read an article while ignoring the flashing, spinning, blinking, ads that surround it. The end result is that they don't notice the ads either.
Advertising on the internet can work, but the problem is that people have^H^H^Hhad too much confidence in places like doubleclick.
The creation of the "banner ad" was a double-edged sword. By making all the banners the same size they made it easy to rotate ads and not alter the look of a page. But they also made all ads look pretty much the same, and they made the ads less relevant to the page they were on.
By using cookies companies like doubleclick tried to make the ads target the user. But unless I'm wrong they don't relate to the page they're on at all.
Doubleclick's dominance in online advertising was another double edged sword. With most pages on the 'net showing doubleclick ads and serving doubleclick cookies they are able to profile a person pretty well. But at the same time they show this person the same ads on every site they go to. So the person quickly begins to tune them out.
Ads work best when they:
Provide something of benefit to the person seeing the ad
Relate to the content that surrounds them
The perfect example of this is the link to a book on amazon at the end of a book review. It provides value to the person seeing it because if they want to buy the book it's easy to do. It also relates to the content (the book review).
There are drawbacks to this method, however. One is that the impartiality of the content (book review, news item, whatever) is now suspect, afterall there's a financial incentive to get more people to buy the book or whatever. The second is that it takes more work -- I think this is the one that matters. People are pretty lazy. It's much easier to drop a banner-generator into your web page than to figure out what kind of relevant ads you can drop in. But the easier it is for a web page author to put an ad into a web page, the easier it is for someone else to take it out.
The fundamentally important thing that advertisers need to learn is this. If you're showing me ads on my computer is that I'm not a captive audience anymore.
I can selectively block cookies and choose who can identify me
I can blackhole doubleclick.com in my hosts file
I can hack mozilla source to not show animated gifs
I can remove ad displaying libraries in my applications
I can crack an application so it thinks it's registered
I can filter HTML before my browser sees it and strip out or change things as I see fit
If you won't provide me with a value to seeing your ad, I'll make sure I won't see it.
Sure, there's an easy way around patents. You go to a company and say:
"I have a really great idea that I can't afford to make on my own but that's right up your alley. If you'll just sign this contract I'll tell you all about it"
The contract would essentially say "If you use this idea you agree to pay me XXX dollars or YY cents per unit sold. In exchange I won't tell anybody else about the idea".
Now once the company starts producing the units anybody can duplicate the invention and make their own, even improving on it. If the company is smart they'll keep the project under wraps until they're ready to hit the market, then they'll go out there with a reasonable price and large quantities. If they do things right it will take a while for competitors to have a means to challenge them. They will have trouble meeting the price unless they can take advantage of economies of scale, and if the invention is fairly complex it will take a while for them to figure it all out so they can make their own version.
The only tricky thing is making that initial contract well. You have to make sure they don't get away with building something just different enough that it doesn't qualify then not paying you anything. But any good lawyer should be able to word it properly.
The best thing about this system is that it only works for useful, non-obvious inventions. If someone were to try this with an invention like "you click once on something to buy it", copying the invention would be so trivial that nobody would want to pay much for the right to use it first.
"There is no "mp3.com" of movies with tons of decent amateur movies"
Well there are a few good sources of non-hollywood movies on the 'net, some of which are pretty good. There are also all kinds of festivals with cheap movies in meat-space.
I'm one of those people who basically thinks IP rules are BS. I download MP3s of songs that aren't public domain, I play pirated games, but not exclusively. When a game is good, I'll often go out and buy a copy even if the illegal version works fine, why? I think the price is right for that game, I want to encourage more games like it to be made, and plus I get manuals and stuff. Many of the pirated games I try out last a day or 2 on my drive because they turn out to be crap. This isn't something you can always determine using the demos of the games. Who is hurt by this? Nobody really. If I had to buy every single game I played I'd be very careful what I bought. This would mean I'd never take a risk on an interesting concept, and would stick to well known, well reviewed games.
Anyhow, that's my take on it. I also think movies are an interesting case. I don't mind shelling out big bucks to see a movie in the theatre. Why? Because I don't feel like I'm paying for a license to see the movie once in a particular setting, I feel like I'm paying big bucks to be shown the movie on a huge screen with a great sound system, comfy chairs, and someone to clean up after me. For similar reasons I'll sometimes pay to play games in an arcade that I already have at home. They have better controllers, they make it easier to play against someone, they have great big screens, etc.
Ok, so Mozart died nearly penniless. You claim he had to "fight for every penny he did get", implying that he went through much of his life poor. Where do you get this from? From the biographies I've seen he was bad at managing his money but was paid lavish sums at various points in his life for his work.
You also claim that "He may have been able to create more incredible music had he had the luxury of not having to take students". Yes, that's true. But it could also be that if he had had a very easy life his music would have been less intense and emotional. It's sad, but often the best art is the result of suffering.
The fact is, Mozart did produce amazing music back when the concept of Intellectual Property didn't exist, and he's not an isolated case. The economics change when IP exists, but the fact is that great art will be produced whether or not IP rules exist.
It's debatable whether or not IP rules benefit the artist in these days where IP is everywhere. Most IP producers are simply forced to hand over IP rights to their employers/managers/producers, whatever. But even more debatable is whether or not IP rules benefit society in general.
In an extremely simplified case, which is better for society?
A few great pieces of intellectual material that can be freely redistributed to anybody interested
A large number of pieces of great intellectual material which are only distributed to those willing/able to pay
RedHat has the biggest name recognition of all the Linux distributions. To many non-tech types Linux == RedHat. And you are now breaking even, yet despite that RedHat's stock went from $80 a share to less than $5 and there doesn't seem to be a sign of that turning around.
What do you say to people who ask why they should invest in RedHat? Also, as a high-tech company I'm sure employees got stock options, how are they dealing with the crash in share prices and how do you convince them their options are still worth something?
I wonder, is there anybody at Microsoft with a somewhat senior position who isn't a drone? This whole thing just sounds like the questions any other senior MS employee would give, with a bit of Unix knowledge thrown in for seasoning.
On question 1 he says "Microsoft has received unwarranted criticism by some for its [in]ability to interoperate with other operating systems" and that "I actually believe we have better interoperability today than any other OS out there". I think just the opposite is true. Linux could read FAT32 partitions when NT couldn't. You can open a Windows formatted floppy in an Apple OS, Linux, or any number of other OSes, but try going the other way. Because MS is the dominant desktop OS, they have no real need to play well with the other desktop OSes. The other OSes, on the other hand, have to play well with MS just to be useful. When MS does make something work well with a competitor's product it's often because that competitor is dominant in that particular area. That's just business.
He could have answered "We're the dominant player in the desktop OS market space, so obviously it adds more value to our competitors products when they make their offerings work well with ours than making ours work well with theirs." That would have been honest and nobody would have faulted him for it. (Well some rabid MS haters would have but they'd fault him no matter what he said). By claiming that MS has better interoperability than any other OS out there he just comes off as yet another MS drone. It really looks like MS is founded on intellectual dishonesty.
Next, on question 2 he seems to lay out a few backhanded attacks like "... Mac OS X, as a result of the new UNIX-like features". Saying that OS X has "UNIX-like features" is like saying that ice has some very water-like qualities. Now it could just be unflattering wording, but it just looks like more incidental MS FUD. "OS X has UNIX-like features but don't get your hopes up".
With the question of MS security WRT outlook and the VBScript viruses he slipped by the question like a seasoned politician. Instead of addressing the issue -- "what caused this horrible security model" he addressed how they fixed one particular problem, then quickly tried to change the focus to something else. It's a model so often used in politics:
Q: Some people are concerned with [LARGE ISSUE W] after [INCIDENT X]. What do you have to say about this criticism?
A: [INCIDENT X] was unfortunate, but we quickly came up with [QUICK FIX Y] and since then there have been no further issues. We'll be doing great things in the future, as evidenced by [DISTRACTING SHINY THING Z].
His answer to the next question tries to take an isolated incident: Corel's poor results in their one and only foray into the Linux area, and turn it into proof of a bigger issue. Corel failed and they had cool stuff, so what hope does anyone else have? Anybody who knows the whole Corel incident well knows that there were a huge number of problems in the way Corel went about doing things, from arguably violating the GPL in their beta test agreements to making their version of Linux look like a bad Windows rip-off.
The next question actually started with a truly honest and straightforward answer "We definitely take Linux very seriously." In less than a paragraph he was again slipping in the FUD: "But looking at Linux technically, there is no real revolution here. Linux looks and feels like UNIX and isn't any better than a commercial version of UNIX."
If Linux isn't better, but is just as good as a commercial version of UNIX then isn't that a revolution right there? An OS as good as a commercial UNIX where every standard component is Free is revolutionary.
Next he tries to dismiss Linux because the concept of a free OS isn't new. But he's again missing what makes Linux such an important thing. Not only is it free (no cost) but it's Free (libre). And not just as a whole, but free *per component*. The GPL, and its widespread use, is revolutionary, and obviously MS recognizes this because they're now lobbying the government to rid the world of this unAmerican scourge.
The next question? Dodged. But if you read between the lines the answer is obvious: "For companies that choose to charge money for their software, there should be ways to ensure they are paid appropriately... and have some legal or technical assistance to protect their property."
My guess is that as soon as MS builds hardware copy protection into their OS they'll launch a FUD attack against Linux claiming that Linux doesn't care about protecting someone's IP, and that it's a system for "hackers" who only use it so they can get around The Law.
The issue of hardware fingerprints in the next question was ignored completely. He only mentioned RedHat and Caldera enough to insult them. But the end result the attitude was perfectly clear. "We're a propriety software company and that's what we're going to stay, no matter what".
The next answer was actually well written FUD. So well written I missed what he was doing the first time around. He built up a straw man pretending the issue was building software that did what a standard said and nothing more, then showed how ridiculous that was.
At the same time he dodged the real issue of Microsoft breaking standards. Apache can do some really cool things that aren't part of any HTTP standard, but when it comes right down to it, Apache still is a web server that follows the relevant standards. An end-user will never have to know what kind of web server he's using to know if his browser can use it (pages are another matter). Is Microsoft Kerberos truly Kerberos? What about Microsoft's Java? If they had simply added keywords to the language that affected how the code was compiled but the code still ran on all JVMs that would be one issue. But Microsoft's Java extensions made bytecode that could no longer truly be called Java bytecode.
The last answer actually seems like it comes from the heart (I guess his wasn't completly removed when he became part of the collective -- they have it on standby so it can be used in an emergency like this).
Anyhow, I wasn't impressed. Are there any senior level Microsoft employees who can do any one of these things?
Admit the company made a serious design mistake in a product (say a horrible security model in outlook)
Concede the company in the past has used shadey business practices
Say that there are areas they are seriously behind their competition
Admit that they haven't discouraged piracy at times in order to broaden their market share
Most teachers are there because they like to teach. If the class is 1/2 full, it may be easier for them, as they're teaching to a dedicated few who want to listen to them.
If you went to a university where your profs liked to teach, I think you're in the minority. Most university profs are there to do their research, and not to teach. Some are good at both, but for a university prof, life is about publishing papers, not about educating students.
One of my best profs (one of the few good ones) quit his job as a professor to teach at a community college. He wanted to teach students but was always pressured to do research and publish papers. He wasn't allowed to be "a teacher" even though all the students loved him and learned a lot from him.
That's one of the big flaws of the educational system as I see it. Enough people want to be high-school teachers that the supply of available teachers stays high so salaries stay low. But that means the truly talented people who want to be teachers have to give up making very good money elsewhere to become teachers. Many don't, so the end result is a lot of mediocre high-school teachers.
Then there's university. While having a PhD doesn't guarantee that someone is intelligent or skilled, it is often the case. To become a prof basically means dedicating yourself to learning, discovering, etc. Unfortunately being a good learner doesn't necessarily make someone a good teacher. Universities tend to make a lot of money off research grants, and not a lot off students' tuitions. Because of that they want their professors to produce -- to publish papers and get grants and stuff. This then breeds an attitude that time spent in the classroom is time spent away from the important research. Obviously this hurts the quality of the teaching, and the result is mediocre quality University "teachers".
Can anything be done to fix the system? I think so, but it could be tough. Basically society needs to put more emphasis on having quality teachers. In the long run the results of this are clear, but the question is who pays in the short term?
All in all though, I think this is great news from MIT. It won't be an easy thing to do, and they'll probably stumble a lot on the way. Think about it though, 20 years from now there'll be a huge amount of GPLed code out there in everything from appliances to satellites (I'm guessing). If you're having trouble understanding what exactly is going on in a kernel module in the ISS control system, just go over to MIT's web site and browse through 20 years of online course notes. For the world at large, this is a great thing.
If you haven't already got the 2.0 software you have two choices. Give up on getting the TiVo service, no updates, no guide data, etc. and keep the features you like in v1.3, or accept the change.
I have no hard choice to make. I just recently got a TiVo, and made sure that it had the 1.3 software, because I live where there is no service. So far it's by far the best VCR I've ever owned. Buffering live TV is amazing, having about 16 shows queued up for recording is wonderful. Not having to search for a blank tape, or the blank part of a tape is sooo convenient. Having the service would be nice, but I can live without it.
Besides, the system runs Linux. Sure it's stripped down, running on a PPC chip with some strange libraries but it's Linux -- BASH shell and all. I've been poking around with it for about a week and I think within a month or so I should be able to give it my own guide data from sources I can find on the web. And you know what? It's *fun* to hack.
I agree that it kinda sucks that the upgrade is not optional and breaks some things that people counted on. But you do have a choice -- until you get 2.0 you don't *need* the service for the thing to work.
Are you sure about that? Where's the documentation? From what I remember it was the other way around. If someone built something that wasn't compatible with the original it couldn't be called SSH.
Argh. I shoulda hit the preview button. Please mod this down. And if someone can help me get past the lameness filters I'll try to post it as plain text. Every time I try it rejects it because of "junk characters" or something.
Re:The true effects of quantum computers
on
Quantum Computers
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· Score: 3
First, quantum computers have to be perfectly reversible. That means for every output there's an input and vice versa. And there has to be no way of knowing the initial states of the data. You don't process data, you process probabilities in a quantum computer; if you know exactly what any one value is throughout the computation, you can find out all of the values: the superposition ends and you're stuck with a useless chunk of machinery.
Actually let me clarify a bit of this. First of all an example of what it means to be reversible. The best example of this is that you can't clear memory / registers. Setting something to zero is a destructive, non-reversible process. Basically any "program" run on a quantum computer would be runnable backwards and using the all the outputs you could find all the inputs. Even a simple program like C = A | B would have to keep another bit of data, a "D" that would enable you to reconstruct A and B using C.
Now the types of things that quantum computers would in theory do really well take advantage of being able to use an input state that is a superposition of all possible inputs. The prime example is factoring huge numbers. The number to be factored is entered as one input to the process, and the second input to the process is a superposition of every number from zero to the number to be factored.
The quantum computer then divides the number to be factored by this input vector, and retains the remainder, which is a superposition of all possible remainders from that division.
Now there will be patterns in the remainders from the division, and if you take a fourier transform of those remainders you will get big peaks that correspond to the factors.
At this point your calculation is done so you measure the output. Remember that everything that has happened so far has been happening internally to the "quantum computer" and has not been observed. Your observation of the output collapses the probability and you get one output point, but if you repeat this operation a hundred times or so, most of your output points will be somewhere in this peak.
The cool thing about this process is that it takes advantage of the fact that you can do a fourier transform in the intermediate step before you collapse the probability. To get enough points to do a Fourier Transform in the intermediate state in a traditional computer you'd need to get thousands input vectors, but the quantum computer only needs one.
(btw, IANLAPBITEPIS (I am no longer a physicist but I took engineering physics in school), so if I messed up somewhere here and someone can correct me please do)
Name one time in the past 300 or so years when the US Government has reversed a decision because some citizens had guns.
Democracies and democratic republics make decisions based on what's popular to most people, or at least to a vocal minority. They don't care if the people are armed or not, they care about how many votes they get at the next election.
Do you honestly doubt that if the US government thought it was popular enough they'd find a way to limit people's access to "naughty things"? They'd do it if it seemed to them that enough people supported them. If a small vocal minority disagreed with them, it wouldn't matter much. If that small vocal minority had guns, it woudn't matter much. If that small vocal minority used their guns they would be either arrested or killed.
Face it, "the right to bear arms" is an anchronism. A small group armed with rifles has about as much chance of affecting political change as an email to the whitehouse.
If you want to make a difference you need a lot of supporters or a lot of money. A lot of guns will just get you killed.
Ok, this time I did a bit more thorough check of the numbers. I agree with the first half, the traffic generated by the request half of the message. What I'm not as convinced of is the response side of the equation.
I don't know what the typical percentage of Gnutella users sharing files is, so I'll accept your figure of 30%. But 40% of those sharing files having a match? Even with your reduced number here I think it's high. If 40% of people sharing files had a match that would mean with default settings you'd get: (N=4, T=5) 484*(0.3*0.4) = 58 people finding a match. And with the numbers you use later of 10 matches a person you'd get 580 matching entries. I've never received anything near that high. But if I did, I certainly would have no motivation to increase T or N.
What happens if it's only 10% of those sharing that have a match? With the default settings you'd still get 14 people matching, or about 140 matching entries. That's still a *lot* of responses, more than I've ever received.
If all your default numbers are used, your nightmare scenario would yield 0.3*0.4*7,686,400*10 "found" responses to your query. That's 9 million 223 thousand 680 "grateful dead live" songs (though not unique) shared among 900 thousand deadheads who are all simultaneously online. Whoa.
I'm not an expert in human psychology by any means, but let me suggest this. With most tools, people don't feel any need to "tweak" them unless they're not working right. With 480 songs returned, I don't think many people would feel a need to tweak their settings. If someone was having a hard time finding something they might then change their settings -- but if they were having a hard time finding it they wouldn't get so many responses returned.
The only way I can imagine those monstrous amounts of data resulting from querries is if it happens by maliciousness or mistake.
You also highlight the really big scary numbers that come from doubling the default gnutella settings.
I appreciate the fact you sharing the equations and methodologies you used, and I'm in the process of looking over the math right now. If I had a nice math package to help me and if I weren't brain-dead after a long day of work it would be going a lot quicker.
Anyhow, I don't mean to offend. I'm expecting the math will be correct and the methodologies you used will be ok. The point I was trying to make is that the speed at which most people posted comments meant they had only skimmed the article too, and some people were saying "You can't argue with him, he's using Math!!" I really think people should check over the math for themselves before they agree with what you're saying.
A hobby of mine is poking holes in things too. Mostly TV commercials. I try to figure out the loopholes that let them say the things they say. "7 out of 8 math profs say your analysis is flawed" (I just haven't told you their names or what mental institution they're currently in).
Have the math background? The math is very straightforward, it's high-school level stuff, so yeah, I have the math skills to handle it. I read the paper and skimmed over the math, and now I'm going back and reading it and doing the math.
Fudlike? Hmm... I disagree. While the information may be 100% accurate, the analysis might be perfect, the way it is presented is very FUDlike.
Big scary numbers
Values changed from default settings
Presented by a competitor
It's well known that Math and Stats can be used to prove just about anything. Don't just trust something because it looks scientific. To me, big scary numbers presented by a compeititor generally feel wrong, so I make sure to check the math carefully when I see things like that.
Of the tens of thousands (?) of current Slashdot readers, who here has ever talked to Mr. Torvalds? I'm not saying "who has seen him onstage at a trade show", or "who has been part of a mailing list he writes on", but who has talked to him one-on-one, face-to-face? Who knows him well enough to consider him a friend?
Ok, now the rest of you. Why do you care that he just had a kid? Is this any different than following hollywood celebrity gossip? What difference does it make to you that he just procreated? I'm sure at this point he doesn't mind having his new baby announced on Slashdot, but that's because it's good, happy news. If he has a vasectomy next week will that show up here?
He may be an amazing programmer. I don't know. I have never seen any code he's written himself. In fact, I don't particularly care to see code he's written just because he wrote it. To me it seems pretty unhealthy to fixate on one person like this.
Let the man share his personal life with his family and friends and look to your own personal life instead.
Everybody's saying "it all hinges on Florida". Um... Why? If Florida had counted really quickly it wouldn't all depend on Florida right? And that's all that's happening right now, counting. So "it all hangs on florida" because it's close and they're slow counting?
That's really all that's going on now, it's counting. The polls are closed. If the counting took a week instead of a night, would it really make a huge difference?
I understand watching a close football game (like that great one on Monday night) to see who will win. The winner isn't yet determined, it will depend on the plays that follow. But this is different. The events that will cause the win or loss are over. All that's left is to figure out who won. So... why do we care so much about counting? Yes, I include myself. I'm watching Peter Jennings right now (a fellow Canadian) as he presides over the reporting of the count, 242 each right now....
I think we should pay the right price for things. I would be happy to pay more both for gas and for food, both of which are relatively cheap.
Economics says that if there are fewer farmers, the supply will drop on a relatively inelastic demand item. That means the price will go way up. Unfortunately subsidies screw up the economics. I think they should be lessened or tossed out.
And guess what, if there is less money being paid in subdidies, then the government has that much money to spend elsewhere, or taxes could be lowered. Total costs won't necessarily go up because groceries cost more. They might just go up in that one area.
That's just flawed reasoning. I'm sorry but I've seen this too many times not to say something. I know many people will disagree with me but that's just the way it is. Just please keep it civil.
Here are some of the flawed arguments I've heard on why you should vote:
People died so that you have the right to vote. People also died for the right to keep slaves. Religious fanatics die for their religion. Just because someone else believed strongly enough in something to die for it doesn't make them right.
Black people were intimidated, or otherwise blocked from voting. Just because someone blocks you from doing something doesn't make that thing important. If I block you from picking your nose in my restaurant, does your nose-picking somehow become important? No. The you were blocked from doing something may be important, but the act being blocked isn't necessarily important.
In this case, the racists blocking the black people from voting might have been doing it just because they didn't want black people getting in the way. But if the racists did because they thought voting was important it doesn't necessarily make the racists right. Afterall, they are known to be way wrong on some of their beliefs anyhow.
If you don't vote you have no right to complain. Sorry, but voting doesn't magically give you the right to complain. If you pay taxes then you have the right to complain about how they're used, whether you're a US citizen who voted, a US citizen who didn't vote, or a landed immigrant who didn't (and couldn't) vote. Even if you don't pay taxes you have the right to complain. What about Mexicans? They have no vote, they don't pay taxes, but they're hugely affected by US policies. They have every right to complain.
Voting is the only way to make a difference. Voting rarely makes any difference. From a mathematical standpoint, the vote of one person, even a person in a swing state, will only make a difference if he/she is the deciding vote in the state. In some ways it matters whether a candidate got 51% or 99% of the vote in a state, but it doesn't affect the final outcome. There are a lot of other, more effective ways of making a difference. Get out and protest, tell people why none of the candidates is any good. Tell them why the government is flawed. Write a book. Make a movie. Throw a Boston Tea Party. These are ways of getting a point across and most make a bigger difference than a small checkmark in a tiny box.
Voting may be important, but these are not reasons why. I personally don't feel voting is important. I think complaining loudly is much more important. One single voice has changed history a lot more often than one single vote.
Ya know what really annoyed me? I saw on CNN today that some places were using these fancy touch-screen voting machines, and the lady was really proud to say:
"And with this machine you can't spoil your ballot, it checks to make sure that the choices you've made are legitimate and only then does it accept your vote"
I say, vote, or don't vote. It doesn't make that much difference anyhow. What does make a difference is talking about why you did what you did. One single vote, even in a "swing state" really won't make a big difference, but one single voice can make all the difference.
It really pisses me off to see yet another person spewing that same BS. You only have the right to complain if you vote? Is it some kind of magic process that gives you complaining rights??
What if you were shot and hospitalized on your way to vote and missed your chance? Would that mean that for the next 4 years you would not be allowed to complain about politics?
"Man this medical equipment is shoddy! The stupid government should sure put more money into..."
"I'm sorry Jim, but did you vote? No? Then SHUT THE FUCK UP!!!"
Or does this guy get a special "complaint dispensation" because he really meant to vote but couldn't?
Just because you vote doesn't mean that your vote makes a difference. Sometimes you can make a much bigger difference by refusing to vote. When people indignantly ask you "Why not?" you explain to them what you feel about the candidates, the issues, the governmental system, etc.
Let's make a slashdot-user-acceptable analogy. Which makes a bigger statement. A person who bitches about closed-source software and sends out newsletters using his Linux system, or someone who does the same but uses Microsoft Outlook, because with its wonderful automation features it's easy to send out the newsletter?
If you have huge misgivings about the way government works, the failings of democracy, etc. it is pretty hypocritical to go vote. But according to StormyMonday and so many others such a person must become a hypocrite to earn the right to complain. Riiiight.
There are some places in the United States where driving and travel are not luxuries.
Yes, and to some, living in those places is a luxury. Someone who lives in an apartment building is generally much more "environmentally friendly" than someone who lives in a big home in the country:
I can walk to stores.
Heating the building and its water is cheaper because you can have one big heating system instead of a bunch of individual ones.
Garbage collection / recycling is more efficient because it's done in mass quantities
...
Do people who live in small communities have the right to live there? Sure. Do they have the right to live there cheaply? No! If they can live there cheaply that's great, but it's not a right. If the price of living in remote places goes up because of something like higher gas prices that's just too bad. Because I choose to live in the downtown core of my city rent is higher. If the rent got too high I'd move away. I don't have the right to live downtown cheaply, I choose to live here because I like it, and I enjoy the additional side-benefit that I pollute less and spend less time commuting than other people I know.
If gas is taxed higher, it's true that the price of goods transported by trucks will go up. But unless I'm wrong, the portion of the final retail price that comes from the cost of the gas used in transportation is pretty small, my guess is less than 10% on average. So if gas prices doubled you might have to pay 10% more for some things. That's not trivial but it's not like the total cost of goods will double.
But this money that goes into taxes doesn't disappear from the economy. It is collected by the government who can use it to fund new things, or they can cut the equivalent amount of taxes elsewhere. It could even go into reducing sales taxes so that the final cost of goods transported by trucks doesn't change, though I think that would be a bad idea. Trucks are some of the worst polluters out there, and I think trains should see more use moving things around.
Just think about it in the abstract. I can drive a huge hunk of steel 400 km on one tank of gas that costs me $20 to fill up. That's cheap!! That's the price of 2 movie tickets, a pitcher of beer or a large pizza.
The problem is that that $20 is not the real price of moving that hunk of steel around. It only takes into account the cost of getting the gas out of the ground, refined, and to the gas station. It doesn't include the cost to people's health from smog, or the damage to the environment, or all the other side effects from moving a car around.
Say someone is hospitalized because of the effect of smog on their athsma. In Canada heath care is paid for by the government, so everybody pays there share of this person's health care. Why should someone who doesn't own a car pay the same share as someone whose big oversize SUV caused the smog that put this person in the hospital?
Gas shouldn't be taxed more because it's an easy target. It should be taxed more because people who drive SUVs should pay for the pollution they cause, not just for the up-front cost of getting the gas to their gas station.
Sure the "street performer protocol" works in the real world. But the real world and the 'net are not the same thing. How does the saying go? On the 'net nobody knows you're a dog. In the real world they do.
A large part of the reason why street performers make money in the real world is the same reason why street people make money. They don't "perform" but they get paid. Why? Two reasons I can think of off the top of my head:
Peer Pressure
Guilt
Peer Pressure: This is more true of street performances than someone begging for money. Here you have a big crowd of people all throwing in money when the hat is passed around, there is pressure for you to do the same. Depending on the crowd, how many people you know, etc. the pressure may be greater or lesser, but it'll always be there.
Guilt: This one is pretty obvious. There you are, you stuck around for the performance, you know this is how the person makes money... If the street performer actually looks at you and hands you the hat this is a huge bit of extra pressure.
On the net nobody knows you downloaded the book / saw the performance. This pretty much cancels the "peer pressure" aspect of the event. As for the guilt -- picture the difference between a bomber pilot and a footsoldier. It's a lot harder to kill the enemy when you can look him in the eye. If you can't see the person who's producing the work you're profiting from it's much easier to rip him/her off. He'll never look you in the eye and make you feel guilty. And when the artist is Stephen King it's not hard to convince yourself you're not denying him much.
Slashdot Mirror
Oh yeah... right. See, I filter those.
About the time that banner ads started using animated gifs I got annoyed with them. I looked around and pretty quickly found I wasn't alone. Other people had already developed solutions to eliminate ads. Since that time every computer I use has had something in place to remove banner ads before I ever see them. These days my filters are good enough that I very rarely ever see a banner, and once I do I won't see another one on that site again.
My approach was technical enough that a lot of people couldn't easily do the same thing. A lot of people I know have simply become desensitized to banner ads. They can read an article while ignoring the flashing, spinning, blinking, ads that surround it. The end result is that they don't notice the ads either.
Advertising on the internet can work, but the problem is that people have^H^H^Hhad too much confidence in places like doubleclick.
The creation of the "banner ad" was a double-edged sword. By making all the banners the same size they made it easy to rotate ads and not alter the look of a page. But they also made all ads look pretty much the same, and they made the ads less relevant to the page they were on.
By using cookies companies like doubleclick tried to make the ads target the user. But unless I'm wrong they don't relate to the page they're on at all.
Doubleclick's dominance in online advertising was another double edged sword. With most pages on the 'net showing doubleclick ads and serving doubleclick cookies they are able to profile a person pretty well. But at the same time they show this person the same ads on every site they go to. So the person quickly begins to tune them out.
Ads work best when they:
The perfect example of this is the link to a book on amazon at the end of a book review. It provides value to the person seeing it because if they want to buy the book it's easy to do. It also relates to the content (the book review).
There are drawbacks to this method, however. One is that the impartiality of the content (book review, news item, whatever) is now suspect, afterall there's a financial incentive to get more people to buy the book or whatever. The second is that it takes more work -- I think this is the one that matters. People are pretty lazy. It's much easier to drop a banner-generator into your web page than to figure out what kind of relevant ads you can drop in. But the easier it is for a web page author to put an ad into a web page, the easier it is for someone else to take it out.
The fundamentally important thing that advertisers need to learn is this. If you're showing me ads on my computer is that I'm not a captive audience anymore.
If you won't provide me with a value to seeing your ad, I'll make sure I won't see it.
Sure, there's an easy way around patents. You go to a company and say:
"I have a really great idea that I can't afford to make on my own but that's right up your alley. If you'll just sign this contract I'll tell you all about it"
The contract would essentially say "If you use this idea you agree to pay me XXX dollars or YY cents per unit sold. In exchange I won't tell anybody else about the idea".
Now once the company starts producing the units anybody can duplicate the invention and make their own, even improving on it. If the company is smart they'll keep the project under wraps until they're ready to hit the market, then they'll go out there with a reasonable price and large quantities. If they do things right it will take a while for competitors to have a means to challenge them. They will have trouble meeting the price unless they can take advantage of economies of scale, and if the invention is fairly complex it will take a while for them to figure it all out so they can make their own version.
The only tricky thing is making that initial contract well. You have to make sure they don't get away with building something just different enough that it doesn't qualify then not paying you anything. But any good lawyer should be able to word it properly.
The best thing about this system is that it only works for useful, non-obvious inventions. If someone were to try this with an invention like "you click once on something to buy it", copying the invention would be so trivial that nobody would want to pay much for the right to use it first.
Well there are a few good sources of non-hollywood movies on the 'net, some of which are pretty good. There are also all kinds of festivals with cheap movies in meat-space.
I'm one of those people who basically thinks IP rules are BS. I download MP3s of songs that aren't public domain, I play pirated games, but not exclusively. When a game is good, I'll often go out and buy a copy even if the illegal version works fine, why? I think the price is right for that game, I want to encourage more games like it to be made, and plus I get manuals and stuff. Many of the pirated games I try out last a day or 2 on my drive because they turn out to be crap. This isn't something you can always determine using the demos of the games. Who is hurt by this? Nobody really. If I had to buy every single game I played I'd be very careful what I bought. This would mean I'd never take a risk on an interesting concept, and would stick to well known, well reviewed games.
Anyhow, that's my take on it. I also think movies are an interesting case. I don't mind shelling out big bucks to see a movie in the theatre. Why? Because I don't feel like I'm paying for a license to see the movie once in a particular setting, I feel like I'm paying big bucks to be shown the movie on a huge screen with a great sound system, comfy chairs, and someone to clean up after me. For similar reasons I'll sometimes pay to play games in an arcade that I already have at home. They have better controllers, they make it easier to play against someone, they have great big screens, etc.
Ok, so Mozart died nearly penniless. You claim he had to "fight for every penny he did get", implying that he went through much of his life poor. Where do you get this from? From the biographies I've seen he was bad at managing his money but was paid lavish sums at various points in his life for his work.
You also claim that "He may have been able to create more incredible music had he had the luxury of not having to take students". Yes, that's true. But it could also be that if he had had a very easy life his music would have been less intense and emotional. It's sad, but often the best art is the result of suffering.
The fact is, Mozart did produce amazing music back when the concept of Intellectual Property didn't exist, and he's not an isolated case. The economics change when IP exists, but the fact is that great art will be produced whether or not IP rules exist.
It's debatable whether or not IP rules benefit the artist in these days where IP is everywhere. Most IP producers are simply forced to hand over IP rights to their employers/managers/producers, whatever. But even more debatable is whether or not IP rules benefit society in general.
In an extremely simplified case, which is better for society?
RedHat has the biggest name recognition of all the Linux distributions. To many non-tech types Linux == RedHat. And you are now breaking even, yet despite that RedHat's stock went from $80 a share to less than $5 and there doesn't seem to be a sign of that turning around.
What do you say to people who ask why they should invest in RedHat? Also, as a high-tech company I'm sure employees got stock options, how are they dealing with the crash in share prices and how do you convince them their options are still worth something?
Nope, eh, I live in Canada eh. I've been trying to get them to bring TiVo here for over a year, eh, but no luck, eh.
I wonder, is there anybody at Microsoft with a somewhat senior position who isn't a drone? This whole thing just sounds like the questions any other senior MS employee would give, with a bit of Unix knowledge thrown in for seasoning.
On question 1 he says "Microsoft has received unwarranted criticism by some for its [in]ability to interoperate with other operating systems" and that "I actually believe we have better interoperability today than any other OS out there". I think just the opposite is true. Linux could read FAT32 partitions when NT couldn't. You can open a Windows formatted floppy in an Apple OS, Linux, or any number of other OSes, but try going the other way. Because MS is the dominant desktop OS, they have no real need to play well with the other desktop OSes. The other OSes, on the other hand, have to play well with MS just to be useful. When MS does make something work well with a competitor's product it's often because that competitor is dominant in that particular area. That's just business.
He could have answered "We're the dominant player in the desktop OS market space, so obviously it adds more value to our competitors products when they make their offerings work well with ours than making ours work well with theirs." That would have been honest and nobody would have faulted him for it. (Well some rabid MS haters would have but they'd fault him no matter what he said). By claiming that MS has better interoperability than any other OS out there he just comes off as yet another MS drone. It really looks like MS is founded on intellectual dishonesty.
Next, on question 2 he seems to lay out a few backhanded attacks like "... Mac OS X, as a result of the new UNIX-like features". Saying that OS X has "UNIX-like features" is like saying that ice has some very water-like qualities. Now it could just be unflattering wording, but it just looks like more incidental MS FUD. "OS X has UNIX-like features but don't get your hopes up".
With the question of MS security WRT outlook and the VBScript viruses he slipped by the question like a seasoned politician. Instead of addressing the issue -- "what caused this horrible security model" he addressed how they fixed one particular problem, then quickly tried to change the focus to something else. It's a model so often used in politics:
Q: Some people are concerned with [LARGE ISSUE W] after [INCIDENT X]. What do you have to say about this criticism?
A: [INCIDENT X] was unfortunate, but we quickly came up with [QUICK FIX Y] and since then there have been no further issues. We'll be doing great things in the future, as evidenced by [DISTRACTING SHINY THING Z].
His answer to the next question tries to take an isolated incident: Corel's poor results in their one and only foray into the Linux area, and turn it into proof of a bigger issue. Corel failed and they had cool stuff, so what hope does anyone else have? Anybody who knows the whole Corel incident well knows that there were a huge number of problems in the way Corel went about doing things, from arguably violating the GPL in their beta test agreements to making their version of Linux look like a bad Windows rip-off.
The next question actually started with a truly honest and straightforward answer "We definitely take Linux very seriously." In less than a paragraph he was again slipping in the FUD: "But looking at Linux technically, there is no real revolution here. Linux looks and feels like UNIX and isn't any better than a commercial version of UNIX."
If Linux isn't better, but is just as good as a commercial version of UNIX then isn't that a revolution right there? An OS as good as a commercial UNIX where every standard component is Free is revolutionary.
Next he tries to dismiss Linux because the concept of a free OS isn't new. But he's again missing what makes Linux such an important thing. Not only is it free (no cost) but it's Free (libre). And not just as a whole, but free *per component*. The GPL, and its widespread use, is revolutionary, and obviously MS recognizes this because they're now lobbying the government to rid the world of this unAmerican scourge.
The next question? Dodged. But if you read between the lines the answer is obvious: "For companies that choose to charge money for their software, there should be ways to ensure they are paid appropriately ... and have some legal or technical assistance to protect their property."
My guess is that as soon as MS builds hardware copy protection into their OS they'll launch a FUD attack against Linux claiming that Linux doesn't care about protecting someone's IP, and that it's a system for "hackers" who only use it so they can get around The Law.
The issue of hardware fingerprints in the next question was ignored completely. He only mentioned RedHat and Caldera enough to insult them. But the end result the attitude was perfectly clear. "We're a propriety software company and that's what we're going to stay, no matter what".
The next answer was actually well written FUD. So well written I missed what he was doing the first time around. He built up a straw man pretending the issue was building software that did what a standard said and nothing more, then showed how ridiculous that was.
At the same time he dodged the real issue of Microsoft breaking standards. Apache can do some really cool things that aren't part of any HTTP standard, but when it comes right down to it, Apache still is a web server that follows the relevant standards. An end-user will never have to know what kind of web server he's using to know if his browser can use it (pages are another matter). Is Microsoft Kerberos truly Kerberos? What about Microsoft's Java? If they had simply added keywords to the language that affected how the code was compiled but the code still ran on all JVMs that would be one issue. But Microsoft's Java extensions made bytecode that could no longer truly be called Java bytecode.
The last answer actually seems like it comes from the heart (I guess his wasn't completly removed when he became part of the collective -- they have it on standby so it can be used in an emergency like this).
Anyhow, I wasn't impressed. Are there any senior level Microsoft employees who can do any one of these things?
If you went to a university where your profs liked to teach, I think you're in the minority. Most university profs are there to do their research, and not to teach. Some are good at both, but for a university prof, life is about publishing papers, not about educating students.
One of my best profs (one of the few good ones) quit his job as a professor to teach at a community college. He wanted to teach students but was always pressured to do research and publish papers. He wasn't allowed to be "a teacher" even though all the students loved him and learned a lot from him.
That's one of the big flaws of the educational system as I see it. Enough people want to be high-school teachers that the supply of available teachers stays high so salaries stay low. But that means the truly talented people who want to be teachers have to give up making very good money elsewhere to become teachers. Many don't, so the end result is a lot of mediocre high-school teachers.
Then there's university. While having a PhD doesn't guarantee that someone is intelligent or skilled, it is often the case. To become a prof basically means dedicating yourself to learning, discovering, etc. Unfortunately being a good learner doesn't necessarily make someone a good teacher. Universities tend to make a lot of money off research grants, and not a lot off students' tuitions. Because of that they want their professors to produce -- to publish papers and get grants and stuff. This then breeds an attitude that time spent in the classroom is time spent away from the important research. Obviously this hurts the quality of the teaching, and the result is mediocre quality University "teachers".
Can anything be done to fix the system? I think so, but it could be tough. Basically society needs to put more emphasis on having quality teachers. In the long run the results of this are clear, but the question is who pays in the short term?
All in all though, I think this is great news from MIT. It won't be an easy thing to do, and they'll probably stumble a lot on the way. Think about it though, 20 years from now there'll be a huge amount of GPLed code out there in everything from appliances to satellites (I'm guessing). If you're having trouble understanding what exactly is going on in a kernel module in the ISS control system, just go over to MIT's web site and browse through 20 years of online course notes. For the world at large, this is a great thing.
If you haven't already got the 2.0 software you have two choices. Give up on getting the TiVo service, no updates, no guide data, etc. and keep the features you like in v1.3, or accept the change.
I have no hard choice to make. I just recently got a TiVo, and made sure that it had the 1.3 software, because I live where there is no service. So far it's by far the best VCR I've ever owned. Buffering live TV is amazing, having about 16 shows queued up for recording is wonderful. Not having to search for a blank tape, or the blank part of a tape is sooo convenient. Having the service would be nice, but I can live without it.
Besides, the system runs Linux. Sure it's stripped down, running on a PPC chip with some strange libraries but it's Linux -- BASH shell and all. I've been poking around with it for about a week and I think within a month or so I should be able to give it my own guide data from sources I can find on the web. And you know what? It's *fun* to hack.
I agree that it kinda sucks that the upgrade is not optional and breaks some things that people counted on. But you do have a choice -- until you get 2.0 you don't *need* the service for the thing to work.
Are you sure about that? Where's the documentation? From what I remember it was the other way around. If someone built something that wasn't compatible with the original it couldn't be called SSH.
Argh. I shoulda hit the preview button. Please mod this down. And if someone can help me get past the lameness filters I'll try to post it as plain text. Every time I try it rejects it because of "junk characters" or something.
Actually let me clarify a bit of this. First of all an example of what it means to be reversible. The best example of this is that you can't clear memory / registers. Setting something to zero is a destructive, non-reversible process. Basically any "program" run on a quantum computer would be runnable backwards and using the all the outputs you could find all the inputs. Even a simple program like C = A | B would have to keep another bit of data, a "D" that would enable you to reconstruct A and B using C.
Now the types of things that quantum computers would in theory do really well take advantage of being able to use an input state that is a superposition of all possible inputs. The prime example is factoring huge numbers. The number to be factored is entered as one input to the process, and the second input to the process is a superposition of every number from zero to the number to be factored.
The quantum computer then divides the number to be factored by this input vector, and retains the remainder, which is a superposition of all possible remainders from that division.
Now there will be patterns in the remainders from the division, and if you take a fourier transform of those remainders you will get big peaks that correspond to the factors.
At this point your calculation is done so you measure the output. Remember that everything that has happened so far has been happening internally to the "quantum computer" and has not been observed. Your observation of the output collapses the probability and you get one output point, but if you repeat this operation a hundred times or so, most of your output points will be somewhere in this peak.
The cool thing about this process is that it takes advantage of the fact that you can do a fourier transform in the intermediate step before you collapse the probability. To get enough points to do a Fourier Transform in the intermediate state in a traditional computer you'd need to get thousands input vectors, but the quantum computer only needs one.
(btw, IANLAPBITEPIS (I am no longer a physicist but I took engineering physics in school), so if I messed up somewhere here and someone can correct me please do)
Are you an idiot or just a troll?
Name one time in the past 300 or so years when the US Government has reversed a decision because some citizens had guns.
Democracies and democratic republics make decisions based on what's popular to most people, or at least to a vocal minority. They don't care if the people are armed or not, they care about how many votes they get at the next election.
Do you honestly doubt that if the US government thought it was popular enough they'd find a way to limit people's access to "naughty things"? They'd do it if it seemed to them that enough people supported them. If a small vocal minority disagreed with them, it wouldn't matter much. If that small vocal minority had guns, it woudn't matter much. If that small vocal minority used their guns they would be either arrested or killed.
Face it, "the right to bear arms" is an anchronism. A small group armed with rifles has about as much chance of affecting political change as an email to the whitehouse.
If you want to make a difference you need a lot of supporters or a lot of money. A lot of guns will just get you killed.
Ok, this time I did a bit more thorough check of the numbers. I agree with the first half, the traffic generated by the request half of the message. What I'm not as convinced of is the response side of the equation.
I don't know what the typical percentage of Gnutella users sharing files is, so I'll accept your figure of 30%. But 40% of those sharing files having a match? Even with your reduced number here I think it's high. If 40% of people sharing files had a match that would mean with default settings you'd get: (N=4, T=5) 484*(0.3*0.4) = 58 people finding a match. And with the numbers you use later of 10 matches a person you'd get 580 matching entries. I've never received anything near that high. But if I did, I certainly would have no motivation to increase T or N.
What happens if it's only 10% of those sharing that have a match? With the default settings you'd still get 14 people matching, or about 140 matching entries. That's still a *lot* of responses, more than I've ever received.
If all your default numbers are used, your nightmare scenario would yield 0.3*0.4*7,686,400*10 "found" responses to your query. That's 9 million 223 thousand 680 "grateful dead live" songs (though not unique) shared among 900 thousand deadheads who are all simultaneously online. Whoa.
I'm not an expert in human psychology by any means, but let me suggest this. With most tools, people don't feel any need to "tweak" them unless they're not working right. With 480 songs returned, I don't think many people would feel a need to tweak their settings. If someone was having a hard time finding something they might then change their settings -- but if they were having a hard time finding it they wouldn't get so many responses returned.
The only way I can imagine those monstrous amounts of data resulting from querries is if it happens by maliciousness or mistake.
Am I missing something?
You also highlight the really big scary numbers that come from doubling the default gnutella settings.
I appreciate the fact you sharing the equations and methodologies you used, and I'm in the process of looking over the math right now. If I had a nice math package to help me and if I weren't brain-dead after a long day of work it would be going a lot quicker.
Anyhow, I don't mean to offend. I'm expecting the math will be correct and the methodologies you used will be ok. The point I was trying to make is that the speed at which most people posted comments meant they had only skimmed the article too, and some people were saying "You can't argue with him, he's using Math!!" I really think people should check over the math for themselves before they agree with what you're saying.
A hobby of mine is poking holes in things too. Mostly TV commercials. I try to figure out the loopholes that let them say the things they say. "7 out of 8 math profs say your analysis is flawed" (I just haven't told you their names or what mental institution they're currently in).
Have the math background? The math is very straightforward, it's high-school level stuff, so yeah, I have the math skills to handle it. I read the paper and skimmed over the math, and now I'm going back and reading it and doing the math.
Fudlike? Hmm... I disagree. While the information may be 100% accurate, the analysis might be perfect, the way it is presented is very FUDlike.
It's well known that Math and Stats can be used to prove just about anything. Don't just trust something because it looks scientific. To me, big scary numbers presented by a compeititor generally feel wrong, so I make sure to check the math carefully when I see things like that.
Of the tens of thousands (?) of current Slashdot readers, who here has ever talked to Mr. Torvalds? I'm not saying "who has seen him onstage at a trade show", or "who has been part of a mailing list he writes on", but who has talked to him one-on-one, face-to-face? Who knows him well enough to consider him a friend?
Ok, now the rest of you. Why do you care that he just had a kid? Is this any different than following hollywood celebrity gossip? What difference does it make to you that he just procreated? I'm sure at this point he doesn't mind having his new baby announced on Slashdot, but that's because it's good, happy news. If he has a vasectomy next week will that show up here?
He may be an amazing programmer. I don't know. I have never seen any code he's written himself. In fact, I don't particularly care to see code he's written just because he wrote it. To me it seems pretty unhealthy to fixate on one person like this.
Let the man share his personal life with his family and friends and look to your own personal life instead.
Everybody's saying "it all hinges on Florida". Um... Why? If Florida had counted really quickly it wouldn't all depend on Florida right? And that's all that's happening right now, counting. So "it all hangs on florida" because it's close and they're slow counting?
That's really all that's going on now, it's counting. The polls are closed. If the counting took a week instead of a night, would it really make a huge difference?
I understand watching a close football game (like that great one on Monday night) to see who will win. The winner isn't yet determined, it will depend on the plays that follow. But this is different. The events that will cause the win or loss are over. All that's left is to figure out who won. So... why do we care so much about counting? Yes, I include myself. I'm watching Peter Jennings right now (a fellow Canadian) as he presides over the reporting of the count, 242 each right now....
I think we should pay the right price for things. I would be happy to pay more both for gas and for food, both of which are relatively cheap.
Economics says that if there are fewer farmers, the supply will drop on a relatively inelastic demand item. That means the price will go way up. Unfortunately subsidies screw up the economics. I think they should be lessened or tossed out.
And guess what, if there is less money being paid in subdidies, then the government has that much money to spend elsewhere, or taxes could be lowered. Total costs won't necessarily go up because groceries cost more. They might just go up in that one area.
That's just flawed reasoning. I'm sorry but I've seen this too many times not to say something. I know many people will disagree with me but that's just the way it is. Just please keep it civil.
Here are some of the flawed arguments I've heard on why you should vote:
People died so that you have the right to vote. People also died for the right to keep slaves. Religious fanatics die for their religion. Just because someone else believed strongly enough in something to die for it doesn't make them right.
Black people were intimidated, or otherwise blocked from voting. Just because someone blocks you from doing something doesn't make that thing important. If I block you from picking your nose in my restaurant, does your nose-picking somehow become important? No. The you were blocked from doing something may be important, but the act being blocked isn't necessarily important. In this case, the racists blocking the black people from voting might have been doing it just because they didn't want black people getting in the way. But if the racists did because they thought voting was important it doesn't necessarily make the racists right. Afterall, they are known to be way wrong on some of their beliefs anyhow.
If you don't vote you have no right to complain. Sorry, but voting doesn't magically give you the right to complain. If you pay taxes then you have the right to complain about how they're used, whether you're a US citizen who voted, a US citizen who didn't vote, or a landed immigrant who didn't (and couldn't) vote. Even if you don't pay taxes you have the right to complain. What about Mexicans? They have no vote, they don't pay taxes, but they're hugely affected by US policies. They have every right to complain.
Voting is the only way to make a difference. Voting rarely makes any difference. From a mathematical standpoint, the vote of one person, even a person in a swing state, will only make a difference if he/she is the deciding vote in the state. In some ways it matters whether a candidate got 51% or 99% of the vote in a state, but it doesn't affect the final outcome. There are a lot of other, more effective ways of making a difference. Get out and protest, tell people why none of the candidates is any good. Tell them why the government is flawed. Write a book. Make a movie. Throw a Boston Tea Party. These are ways of getting a point across and most make a bigger difference than a small checkmark in a tiny box.
Voting may be important, but these are not reasons why. I personally don't feel voting is important. I think complaining loudly is much more important. One single voice has changed history a lot more often than one single vote.
Ya know what really annoyed me? I saw on CNN today that some places were using these fancy touch-screen voting machines, and the lady was really proud to say:
"And with this machine you can't spoil your ballot, it checks to make sure that the choices you've made are legitimate and only then does it accept your vote"
I say, vote, or don't vote. It doesn't make that much difference anyhow. What does make a difference is talking about why you did what you did. One single vote, even in a "swing state" really won't make a big difference, but one single voice can make all the difference.
It really pisses me off to see yet another person spewing that same BS. You only have the right to complain if you vote? Is it some kind of magic process that gives you complaining rights??
What if you were shot and hospitalized on your way to vote and missed your chance? Would that mean that for the next 4 years you would not be allowed to complain about politics?
"Man this medical equipment is shoddy! The stupid government should sure put more money into..."
"I'm sorry Jim, but did you vote? No? Then SHUT THE FUCK UP!!!"
Or does this guy get a special "complaint dispensation" because he really meant to vote but couldn't?
Just because you vote doesn't mean that your vote makes a difference. Sometimes you can make a much bigger difference by refusing to vote. When people indignantly ask you "Why not?" you explain to them what you feel about the candidates, the issues, the governmental system, etc.
Let's make a slashdot-user-acceptable analogy. Which makes a bigger statement. A person who bitches about closed-source software and sends out newsletters using his Linux system, or someone who does the same but uses Microsoft Outlook, because with its wonderful automation features it's easy to send out the newsletter?
If you have huge misgivings about the way government works, the failings of democracy, etc. it is pretty hypocritical to go vote. But according to StormyMonday and so many others such a person must become a hypocrite to earn the right to complain. Riiiight.
Yes, and to some, living in those places is a luxury. Someone who lives in an apartment building is generally much more "environmentally friendly" than someone who lives in a big home in the country:
Do people who live in small communities have the right to live there? Sure. Do they have the right to live there cheaply? No! If they can live there cheaply that's great, but it's not a right. If the price of living in remote places goes up because of something like higher gas prices that's just too bad. Because I choose to live in the downtown core of my city rent is higher. If the rent got too high I'd move away. I don't have the right to live downtown cheaply, I choose to live here because I like it, and I enjoy the additional side-benefit that I pollute less and spend less time commuting than other people I know.
If gas is taxed higher, it's true that the price of goods transported by trucks will go up. But unless I'm wrong, the portion of the final retail price that comes from the cost of the gas used in transportation is pretty small, my guess is less than 10% on average. So if gas prices doubled you might have to pay 10% more for some things. That's not trivial but it's not like the total cost of goods will double.
But this money that goes into taxes doesn't disappear from the economy. It is collected by the government who can use it to fund new things, or they can cut the equivalent amount of taxes elsewhere. It could even go into reducing sales taxes so that the final cost of goods transported by trucks doesn't change, though I think that would be a bad idea. Trucks are some of the worst polluters out there, and I think trains should see more use moving things around.
Just think about it in the abstract. I can drive a huge hunk of steel 400 km on one tank of gas that costs me $20 to fill up. That's cheap!! That's the price of 2 movie tickets, a pitcher of beer or a large pizza.
The problem is that that $20 is not the real price of moving that hunk of steel around. It only takes into account the cost of getting the gas out of the ground, refined, and to the gas station. It doesn't include the cost to people's health from smog, or the damage to the environment, or all the other side effects from moving a car around.
Say someone is hospitalized because of the effect of smog on their athsma. In Canada heath care is paid for by the government, so everybody pays there share of this person's health care. Why should someone who doesn't own a car pay the same share as someone whose big oversize SUV caused the smog that put this person in the hospital?
Gas shouldn't be taxed more because it's an easy target. It should be taxed more because people who drive SUVs should pay for the pollution they cause, not just for the up-front cost of getting the gas to their gas station.
Sure the "street performer protocol" works in the real world. But the real world and the 'net are not the same thing. How does the saying go? On the 'net nobody knows you're a dog. In the real world they do.
A large part of the reason why street performers make money in the real world is the same reason why street people make money. They don't "perform" but they get paid. Why? Two reasons I can think of off the top of my head:
Peer Pressure: This is more true of street performances than someone begging for money. Here you have a big crowd of people all throwing in money when the hat is passed around, there is pressure for you to do the same. Depending on the crowd, how many people you know, etc. the pressure may be greater or lesser, but it'll always be there.
Guilt: This one is pretty obvious. There you are, you stuck around for the performance, you know this is how the person makes money... If the street performer actually looks at you and hands you the hat this is a huge bit of extra pressure.
On the net nobody knows you downloaded the book / saw the performance. This pretty much cancels the "peer pressure" aspect of the event. As for the guilt -- picture the difference between a bomber pilot and a footsoldier. It's a lot harder to kill the enemy when you can look him in the eye. If you can't see the person who's producing the work you're profiting from it's much easier to rip him/her off. He'll never look you in the eye and make you feel guilty. And when the artist is Stephen King it's not hard to convince yourself you're not denying him much.