I don't see what this could possibly
accomplish that a tax on gasoline
couldn't
For the simple answer, a tax on fuel rather than
miles "unfairly" nails those who chose to destroy
our environment (quicker than the rest) by driving
big gas-guzzlers.
Of course, one could counter with the idea that
gas-guzzlers also tend to weigh more, causing
more damage to the road, thus warranting a
higher tax regardless of the environmental
impact, but, don't say that too loud around the
current US oligarchy...
Now me, I think we should tax based on total
time spent on the road, to penalize
grannies out to cause their regular Sunday
afternoon traffic-jam.;-)
why is it that downloading a 1meg file full
of ZEROS still takes ages on a modem?
Because v.42bis has a maximum compression ratio
of 4:1 (MNP5 only does 2:1).
Now, for a file of all zeros, hey, I agree,
you can do a lot better. So, how often
do you download files containing nothing but
zero? For a typical text file, you might get
better than 90% with gzip (while still only 75%
from v.42bis). But from binary content? very
rarely better than 50%.
In any case, web content consists of five basic
types of information - Text, graphics, sound,
multimedia (flash, MPEGs, AVIs, etc), and already-Zipped packages.
Of those, only the first benefits from any
lossless method, and only the second really
leaves any room for saving bits via lossy
compression without horrible loss of quality
at the same time. (Some of the fourth type
could also possibly endure lossy compression,
but takes far too long to recompress
on-the-fly).
Unfortunately, text comprises the least
bothersome (in terms of relative size) of all
of those major types of web content.
Don't get me wrong, I fully encourage people to
turn mod_gzip on in their Apache installs. But
When a company hawks its product with claims
that simply cannot occur in a normal webbrowsing
situation, I have to call foul.
I see only two situations whereby they could
claim 5:1 compression - Either VERY text-heavy
material, such as reading something from Project
Gutenberg, or they strip every possible
non-critical image from a page. I already
do the latter via my hosts file and a paranoid
userContent.css, so what does that leave?
Hope you only like reading text, in which case,
have you ever heard of "Gopher"?
"Web accelerators"...You mean highly-advanced
technology like mod-gzip?
Sounds pretty much like that... Which Apache
already supports, and the major browsers
already support, making something like this
redundant.
Moreover, dialup modems already use a fairly
high level of compression at the hardware layer.
While not exactly "gzip -9" quality, you can
only realistically squeeze another 10% out of
those streams no matter how much CPU power
you devote to the task.
Others have mentioned image recompression,
which has traditionally used VERY poor
implementations, nothing more than converting
everything to a low quality JPEG. I would
point out that a more intelligent approach
to image compression could yield a
2-3x savings without noticeable loss of
quality (smoothing undifferentiated backgrounds,
stripping headers, drop the quality a tad
(ie, to 75-85%, not the 20-40% AOL tried to pass
off as acceptible), downgrading the subsampling
on anything better than 2:2, etc). But no, not
a 5x savings.
Is there some reason this kind of
comment doesn't get modded redundant.
Presumeably because/.'s editors would
need to declare themselves redundant, for
posting yet another SCO story?
I've seen one of these on every single
SCO story
Well then, you need a life. I couldn't even
count all the FPs on SCO, nevermind
track similar comments between them.
I bet this karma whore has even
use this comment before.
Feel free to check my posting history. It
may not count as an original thought, but I
did think of it, all by my lonesome,
in response to the quote I gave from the
main story.
Incidentally, I believe whining about poor
moderation would count as redundant as
well. Funny, that...
instead of a simple line by line comparison,
if they were really interested in seeing if any
source was copied at all, maybe they should
compare how many groups of 4 or more lines are
the same?
Agreed, that would tend to provide somewhat
more meaningful evidence, while still allowing
a fully automated comparison of the code base
in question.
I think, though, that this boils down to the
same thing most of us have said since the
start of this whole SCO mess - They don't
really care about the reality of the case,
the SCO execs only care about boosting stock
prices long enough to slowly unload their
formerly-worthless shares.
The entire "100k+ infringing lines" crap just
gave them a way to leak a teensy bit more
inconclusive data to the public, to keep the
stock up for another month.
Sad, really. Not so much that they would resort
to potentially destroying three+ other companies
and the entire open source movement just to gain
a few bucks - I have come to consider that as
a standard business practice. Rather, because
their tactics have so far worked. SCO
stock has stayed fairly high during this crap,
very effectively accomplishing the only sane
goal Darl can possibly have. So even when
they inevitably lose, they still win.
How meaningful.
on
Back To SCO
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
what if they just compared linewise? All
those empty lines in the code would have the
same content.
They wouldn't even need to include things like
empty lines to get a large number of matches,
in a line-by-line comparison...
How many of the following do you suppose exist
in any large code base?
int i;
int j;
for(i=0;i<size;i++)
if(flag)
if(!flag)
while(!done)
while(count)
memset(data, 0, sizeof(data));
I could go on, but don't really need to. At
least in most code I've seen, almost every
single function would contain at least one
of just what I presented above (taking into
consideration a few other common variable
names for similar purposes, of course).
Yes, indeed, I am twitchy about the
idea that someone would be excited use
deadly force
Alright, I can agree with you to that extent.
If I came across as "excited" about it in more
than a "don't screw with me or mine" way, then I
spoke (wrote) poorly. I do not look forward
to someone breaking into my house so that I can
kill them and have it legally justified (I'd
join the army if I wanted to do that).
I would consider someone wandering unannounced
around inside my house at 2am as quite likely
a very real threat, and deal with them accordingly.
Nothing more, nothing less. No joy in it, just
a likely course of action.
I consider it unfortunate, though, that most people
who responded to me chose that particular point to
take issue with - I meant that as little more
than a throw-away (if serious) aside, more meaning
to convey the idea that I would not take lightly
to anyone else without any particularly
special legal status "searching" my house, so why
would I let the RIAA do so?
I was responding to this. Lots of places
are owned but w/o protective measures. Lawns,
fields, etc.
Ah, fair 'nuff. I apologize for my sarcasm,
we apparently took his statement in the
exact opposite way... You that such an act
would satisfy my conditions for shooting the
person; and me, that a reasonable person
wouldn't consider simple tresspass (as opposed
to criminal tresspass along with B&E) as a
reason to use deadly force.
But a fair misunderstanding, on both our
parts, I think. On rereading it, I see
that he could have meant it either way.:-)
This is the really scary thing about
many gun rights folks--they really look
forward to the *opportunity* to shoot
somebody.
This strikes me as the really scary thing
about anti-gun folks - They get twitchy
about the very thought that someone,
somewhere, might actually have a gun and,
*GASP*, use it.
Guess what?
I do not have a gun. I did not mention
guns in my post. And yet, more than one
person assumed that the term "deadly force"
means "gun".
That's a pretty dim view. Since you
mention Swift's "Modest Proposal" without
mentioning that it was satirical and gloss
over a lot of other things, I would guess
you're just a troll.
No, not a troll, I quite fully mean and
believe what I said.
As for Swift writing satire, I realize that,
but you may have missed the point of my
reference. Though of a satirical bent, "A
Modest Proposal" addressed an issue that
even 300 years ago people had already
recognized - Namely, that the world has
too many people. And since Swift's time,
that number has grown by a factor of 12.
So call me a troll if you will, or just
extremely grim, but quite seriously, not
a single one of our lives matters one whit.
Sure, a few people may mourn our deaths,
but a century after we die, people will
only remember the worst liars among us
(ie, the major politicians). And a
thousand years from that, only the
heads-of-state of major economic or military
states will remain in the books. And
in 10,000 years? Probably not even them
(or do you happen to know the leader
of the Mo'oklawa-i tribe, of present day
Ghana, in 7052 BCE? And yes, I made that
up, but feel free to substitute any
real tribe anywhere in the world, in that
same year).
So no trolling involved. Simply a
statement that we live a cold, souless
universe that will retain no trace of
our existance in another 4.5 billion
years - Humans may still exist in some
form, but nobody currently alive will
make it beyond our solar system.
Many genera more populous than humans
exist, but not specific species. Well, in
fairness, you could say that all E. coli belong
to the same species, and all humans have
millions living inside them, but, dealing
only with multicellular organisms, my statement
holds true.
Things are not as valuable as a person,
no matter how much of a scumbag the person
is.
Ah, now there, you have it wrong.
Humans have no value. We have made it
as the single most populous species on
Earth, by a a factor of 3 over the second
most populous (rats, who only made it that
high because they do well in the shadow of
human settlements).
We have no value. Any one of us can
dissapear, with no real loss to the rest
of the universe. You could even wipe out
four or five billion of us (as long as
that didn't include all of one gender),
with no real loss to the world - That would
still leave more people alive than existed
at any time prior to the 17th century (you
know, one of those major times of unrest
when people realize that if they didn't find
a way to increase food production, most of
them would starve, leading to such Modest
Proposals as Swift's to deal with
overpopulation?)
So no, your fundamental premise does not
hold true. We have no reason to allow
someone to threaten our safety by inquiring
why they've entered our house without our
permission, because the loss of that person
means absolutely nothing. One more
walking bag of pondscum placed a safe distance
underground, and a thousand other walking bags
of pondscum get the message not to break into
my house.
But if they act with the authority of the
courts, they need to obey they same rules as any
other agent of the courts, a point that they have
publically rejected (and the very statement that
lead to this thread).
I can see the outcome of this case right now:
The RIAA will probably have to respond to the
negative publicity and probably drop the suit
against the twelve-year-old girl.
Although not a proper "legal" precedent, that
would hurt them rather a lot... Even in the linked
article, the RIAA spokesdroid says they expect
many people to say "my kids did it and I didn't
know".
So, while they have no obligation to act fairly
in who they choose to sue, dropping the suit
against one little girl will reflect rather
poorly on all their other cases against others
who may use a similar defense.
In this one, I suspect they don't want to,
but they'll have to go throught with it. If
they lose, no big deal, they can even parade
the somewhat unfair circumstances around as
the reason for losing. But if they win...
Damn. The guy who made the joke about pirate
Barney-and-the-squirrel MP3s might not have it
far from the truth. Fresh round of subpoenas
against Kazaa's entire user base.
What about that last quote, where they said
that because they weren't a legal organization,
they weren't bound by the limits of search?
Wouldn't that tend to imply that they have no
right to conduct a search in the first place?
I have signed no contracts granting the RIAA the
right to conduct a search of myself, my property,
my history, or even for my car keys that I keep
misplacing.
Baring some official status, or a contract...
Why should it matter that normal proceedural
limitations do not apply to them? My neighbors
don't need to observe due process in considering
me annoying, but if they decide to search my
house to prove it, the police will get a call
right after the use of deadly force in
self defense.
I find it disturbing that they seem to
be confusing distributing music online with
copyright violations.
Ah, you haven't seen HR1911, defining
"Music" as a trademark of the RIAA member
corporations, and everything else as "pornography
induced instrument torturing"? Tsktsktsk. Gotta
keep on top of these things.;-)
Maybe then I won't have to put up hearing
penis length wars like "Oh yeah, I got more
gigs of MP3s than you do!"
Hmm, I don't think I've ever heard anyone
brag about that. Golly, to think of all
I've missed out on...
Okay... Free "PLA's Tip of the Day" to anyone
who thinks the size of an MP3 collection
reflects on its owner's penis lenght - Store
raw CD rips. You'll increase your
MP3-virtual-penis length by a factor of
10 overnight!
Of course, since only pussies use MP3s, while
"Real Men(tm)" use OGG, 10 times nothing still
leaves nothing.;-)
let me tell you that simply remembering
how to use a phone let alone summoning the
concentration needed to read a phone book
is damn near impossible when you are in
severe pain, can scarcely breathe or speak,
profoundly disoriented, and within minutes
of losing consciousness
I can see this represents an emotional
issue to you, but your emotions, even
phrased in all-bold, do not have the
least bearing on any rational discussion
of the merits of a social service
you find valuable. You may seem like a
great person, have a nice family, great
job, do community service, all the standard
eulogia. I do not, however, value your
ability to save two seconds in an important
phone call in exchange for $1.77 per month
on my phone bill. If you value it
that much, I fully encourage you to pay any
of a a number of private companies (such as
ADT or LifeCall) quite a lot more than two
bucks a month to provide a similar service.
But I should not need to subsidize that if
I believe I can deal with normal use of a
telephone.
Anyway, I did say I considered it really
quite convenient, to the point that I even suggested
that, if the FCC really needs to stick their noses
where they don't belong, they could more usefully
direct their efforts toward services like that
rather than protecting the telecom industry's
hegemony over all forms of voice communication.
You appear to have ignored that point, however.
In any event, the fact that YOU might
have lost your head in an emergency does not
particularly interest or concern me. I know
my local emergency numbers (and, in fact,
usually only knowing one, the fire department,
will suffice, since most "emergency" services
end up in their hands anyway), and can (and
have) remained calm enough to use them. Four
extra numbers, nothing more. If a person "can
scarcely breathe", they have bigger problems
than hitting those extra four buttons.
Or, to put it another way - Why not just a
single digit for emergencies? Something like
"hold down 9 until you hear a voice"? Ah,
so we all seem stupid and helpless, but not
that stupid and helpless? We can deal
with three numbers, but not seven (originally
chosen, incidentally, as the number of digits
most people can readily remember in short
term memory)?
I don't mean to belittle your need to make
an emergency phone call... But do you really
mean to say you think you would have died if
you had to press another four buttons? If
so, I would have to call you a statistical anomaly,
not the norm. If one out of every 10 million
people die because they have to press another
four buttons, that quite simply does not
bother me (and yes, I say that after fully
contemplating it happening to myself, my friends,
my family).
We all die, but put bluntly, throwing a few bucks
in the boot will do more to save you than throwing
10x as much at the FCC.
Do you want reliable telephone service?
Even if there is a power failure?
Yup. But if the local CO loses power as well,
I still lose phone service (as the recent NE
blackout demonstrated).
Moreover, cell phones do not require a wired
power connection - For that matter, *most* people
I know (with cell phones) exclusively use their
cars to charge their phones. So local blackouts
have no effect, as long as the phone company still
has power.
Do you want guaranteed availability of
telephone service at uniform and reasonable
rates, even if you live on a farm or in a
slum?
Again, cellular has made the "last mile"
issue, as it applies to telephone service,
irrelevant.
Do you want 911 service that works?
Not particularly... I can manage a phonebook
just fine, and PDs, FDs, and hospitals all still
have standard everyday phone numbers we can call.
911 makes it slightly easier, when away
from your local area, to call these. But nothing
we can't do without (as proven by people "doing
without" it entirely in most places, as recently
as two decades ago).
That could result in the loss of universal
and reliable, even if somewhat overpriced,
telephone service in this country.
Yes, it could. I agree completely with your
point, to that extent. I think you may have
missed the larger idea, though, that we no longer
need any of that. If the FCC really wants
to get involved, they could work to guarantee
things such as 911 (which I admit makes a nice
convenience, even if not necessary), number
portability, service provider interoperability,
things of that nature. But to cripple VoIP by
treating it as just part of the existing
infrastructure... Well, perhaps it would help
if I pose to you the exact question that popped
into my mind while reading the links from the main
article...
"To whom do the termination fees go when using VoiP?"
Really, who? Okay, the taxes vanish in the same
way that all taxes do, but the rest? If I make
a data connection, from Adelphia (who I already
pay for my connection), via Vonage (who I could
pay for that connection), to COX (who the person
I call already pays for their data connection),
exactly who do all the middleman fees go to?
Sprint, for the optical backbone that both
Adelphia and COX already pay to use? Verizon,
because they have a monopoly in most of the
local areas served by Adelphia and COX, but
which has no role whatsoever in the call going
through? Who?
Yeah, this issue has some meaning as long as
we route from VoIP to POTS (and the examples
from the linked article seemed to only involve
that one situation, while the proposed regulation
goes quite a lot further). But if we stick with
VoIP-to-VoIP (the obvious end result assuming
stupid laws don't make such an outcome
impossible), no middleman exists, period.
So who would the mandatory fees (not taxes) go
to?
My only hope is he doesn't ruin the iTunes
music store for the rest of us somehow.
Ruin what, excatly?
I fully applaud Apple for taking the first
leap into a new model of music distribution,
one far more compatible with the modern
world. However, iTunes has quite a few flaws
that make it... Well, at best useless, and
at worst even less sweet for the artists than
the RIAA's traditional screwing.
A buck per song... Most CDs have between 10 and
20 songs on them, and cost, surprise surprise,
between 10 and 20 dollars. A buck per song,
on average. Now, you can say that you don't
need to buy the 12 crappy songs on an album
of 15 songs, but you could always just buy the
single in the first place, for a dollar or
three.
Second, Apple gets 35% off the top of each
sale. The rest goes to the RIAA, which it
diffuses through its normal chain of profit
sucking. This has the net effect of the
artists themselves getting 35% less (and
possibly worse than that, if portions of the
standard breakdown include a flat fee per sale
rather than a percentage of the gross). Yay
Apple! Screw the artists (the only
ones I feel sympathy for in the current war
against IP) even harder!.
Next, shareability - I can loan a CD to as
many people as I want to. Can you loan (more
than three friends) your new purchase from
Apple? Okay, you can burn it to CD and loan
that out, but doing so requires spending time
and money on burning a CD, and, see my next
point...
Finally, if you buy a CD, you get 44KHz
two-channel PCM music. If you buy from iTunes,
you get 128Kbps AAC. Perhaps better than the
same bitrate MP3, but still lossy. It really
doesn't matter if "most people can't tell the
difference" from the raw CD track, they simply
don't sell the same product as exists on the
CD.
Overall, iTunes has done what many of us asked
for - Moved music distrubution to a model
compatible with a wired world. In doing so,
however, they've managed to incorporate the
WORST aspects of the RIAA's stranglehold
on both consumers and artists. Apple has
done little more than find a way to insert
itself into the musical food chain.
A product which doesn't come with its own
manual? Wow that's useful. Now I'll rush out
and buy an iDVD [whatever that is] *and* the
iNot iIncluded iManual for an additional low
price...
I don't know if the original post meant it
in this way, but buying a 3rd party book
to replace a so-called "missing manual"
usually happens as a euphemism for "I
pirated the software and don't already
know how to use it".
In this case, I don't think he meant that,
but at the very least the book's
author presumeably knew this and used the
association to pick his title.
It returned 90100 hits. But wait, I used the
"advanced search" page, let's try the normal
one...
Oh, 361,000 hits. Wouldja lookit that!
Apparently, Google either hoped to do this
quietly, which Slashdot thwarted so Google
undid it, or Google has decided t grow some
balls and ignore such requests. I would
personally hope the latter, or else we'll
start seeing a new regular Slashdot posting,
"Google's censorship of the week".;-)
It is a purely statistical engine, using
simple filterbanks (FFT) to partition and
quantify the sound. It then picks the "most
statistically important" pieces back together
in a semi-intelligent manner.
Fair enough...
So might I change my suggestion to
"Try using decaying weights for each
bin it considers important"?
Unless you really want that level
of abrupt change, that would give you the
same basic result, with somewhat smoother
transitions.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't see what this could possibly accomplish that a tax on gasoline couldn't
;-)
For the simple answer, a tax on fuel rather than miles "unfairly" nails those who chose to destroy our environment (quicker than the rest) by driving big gas-guzzlers.
Of course, one could counter with the idea that gas-guzzlers also tend to weigh more, causing more damage to the road, thus warranting a higher tax regardless of the environmental impact, but, don't say that too loud around the current US oligarchy...
Now me, I think we should tax based on total time spent on the road, to penalize grannies out to cause their regular Sunday afternoon traffic-jam.
why is it that downloading a 1meg file full of ZEROS still takes ages on a modem?
Because v.42bis has a maximum compression ratio of 4:1 (MNP5 only does 2:1).
Now, for a file of all zeros, hey, I agree, you can do a lot better. So, how often do you download files containing nothing but zero? For a typical text file, you might get better than 90% with gzip (while still only 75% from v.42bis). But from binary content? very rarely better than 50%.
In any case, web content consists of five basic types of information - Text, graphics, sound, multimedia (flash, MPEGs, AVIs, etc), and already-Zipped packages.
Of those, only the first benefits from any lossless method, and only the second really leaves any room for saving bits via lossy compression without horrible loss of quality at the same time. (Some of the fourth type could also possibly endure lossy compression, but takes far too long to recompress on-the-fly).
Unfortunately, text comprises the least bothersome (in terms of relative size) of all of those major types of web content.
Don't get me wrong, I fully encourage people to turn mod_gzip on in their Apache installs. But When a company hawks its product with claims that simply cannot occur in a normal webbrowsing situation, I have to call foul.
I see only two situations whereby they could claim 5:1 compression - Either VERY text-heavy material, such as reading something from Project Gutenberg, or they strip every possible non-critical image from a page. I already do the latter via my hosts file and a paranoid userContent.css, so what does that leave?
Hope you only like reading text, in which case, have you ever heard of "Gopher"?
"Web accelerators"...You mean highly-advanced technology like mod-gzip?
Sounds pretty much like that... Which Apache already supports, and the major browsers already support, making something like this redundant.
Moreover, dialup modems already use a fairly high level of compression at the hardware layer. While not exactly "gzip -9" quality, you can only realistically squeeze another 10% out of those streams no matter how much CPU power you devote to the task.
Others have mentioned image recompression, which has traditionally used VERY poor implementations, nothing more than converting everything to a low quality JPEG. I would point out that a more intelligent approach to image compression could yield a 2-3x savings without noticeable loss of quality (smoothing undifferentiated backgrounds, stripping headers, drop the quality a tad (ie, to 75-85%, not the 20-40% AOL tried to pass off as acceptible), downgrading the subsampling on anything better than 2:2, etc). But no, not a 5x savings.
Is there some reason this kind of comment doesn't get modded redundant.
/.'s editors would
need to declare themselves redundant, for
posting yet another SCO story?
Presumeably because
I've seen one of these on every single SCO story
Well then, you need a life. I couldn't even count all the FPs on SCO, nevermind track similar comments between them.
I bet this karma whore has even use this comment before.
Feel free to check my posting history. It may not count as an original thought, but I did think of it, all by my lonesome, in response to the quote I gave from the main story.
Incidentally, I believe whining about poor moderation would count as redundant as well. Funny, that...
instead of a simple line by line comparison, if they were really interested in seeing if any source was copied at all, maybe they should compare how many groups of 4 or more lines are the same?
Agreed, that would tend to provide somewhat more meaningful evidence, while still allowing a fully automated comparison of the code base in question.
I think, though, that this boils down to the same thing most of us have said since the start of this whole SCO mess - They don't really care about the reality of the case, the SCO execs only care about boosting stock prices long enough to slowly unload their formerly-worthless shares.
The entire "100k+ infringing lines" crap just gave them a way to leak a teensy bit more inconclusive data to the public, to keep the stock up for another month.
Sad, really. Not so much that they would resort to potentially destroying three+ other companies and the entire open source movement just to gain a few bucks - I have come to consider that as a standard business practice. Rather, because their tactics have so far worked. SCO stock has stayed fairly high during this crap, very effectively accomplishing the only sane goal Darl can possibly have. So even when they inevitably lose, they still win.
They wouldn't even need to include things like empty lines to get a large number of matches, in a line-by-line comparison...
How many of the following do you suppose exist in any large code base?
int i;
int j;
for(i=0;i<size;i++)
if(flag)
if(!flag)
while(!done)
while(count)
memset(data, 0, sizeof(data));
I could go on, but don't really need to. At least in most code I've seen, almost every single function would contain at least one of just what I presented above (taking into consideration a few other common variable names for similar purposes, of course).
Not an impressive way to measure plaguerism.
Yes, indeed, I am twitchy about the idea that someone would be excited use deadly force
Alright, I can agree with you to that extent.
If I came across as "excited" about it in more than a "don't screw with me or mine" way, then I spoke (wrote) poorly. I do not look forward to someone breaking into my house so that I can kill them and have it legally justified (I'd join the army if I wanted to do that). I would consider someone wandering unannounced around inside my house at 2am as quite likely a very real threat, and deal with them accordingly. Nothing more, nothing less. No joy in it, just a likely course of action.
I consider it unfortunate, though, that most people who responded to me chose that particular point to take issue with - I meant that as little more than a throw-away (if serious) aside, more meaning to convey the idea that I would not take lightly to anyone else without any particularly special legal status "searching" my house, so why would I let the RIAA do so?
I was responding to this. Lots of places are owned but w/o protective measures. Lawns, fields, etc.
:-)
Ah, fair 'nuff. I apologize for my sarcasm, we apparently took his statement in the exact opposite way... You that such an act would satisfy my conditions for shooting the person; and me, that a reasonable person wouldn't consider simple tresspass (as opposed to criminal tresspass along with B&E) as a reason to use deadly force.
But a fair misunderstanding, on both our parts, I think. On rereading it, I see that he could have meant it either way.
This is the really scary thing about many gun rights folks--they really look forward to the *opportunity* to shoot somebody.
This strikes me as the really scary thing about anti-gun folks - They get twitchy about the very thought that someone, somewhere, might actually have a gun and, *GASP*, use it.
Guess what?
I do not have a gun. I did not mention guns in my post. And yet, more than one person assumed that the term "deadly force" means "gun".
Odd, that.
That's a pretty dim view. Since you mention Swift's "Modest Proposal" without mentioning that it was satirical and gloss over a lot of other things, I would guess you're just a troll.
No, not a troll, I quite fully mean and believe what I said.
As for Swift writing satire, I realize that, but you may have missed the point of my reference. Though of a satirical bent, "A Modest Proposal" addressed an issue that even 300 years ago people had already recognized - Namely, that the world has too many people. And since Swift's time, that number has grown by a factor of 12.
So call me a troll if you will, or just extremely grim, but quite seriously, not a single one of our lives matters one whit. Sure, a few people may mourn our deaths, but a century after we die, people will only remember the worst liars among us (ie, the major politicians). And a thousand years from that, only the heads-of-state of major economic or military states will remain in the books. And in 10,000 years? Probably not even them (or do you happen to know the leader of the Mo'oklawa-i tribe, of present day Ghana, in 7052 BCE? And yes, I made that up, but feel free to substitute any real tribe anywhere in the world, in that same year).
So no trolling involved. Simply a statement that we live a cold, souless universe that will retain no trace of our existance in another 4.5 billion years - Humans may still exist in some form, but nobody currently alive will make it beyond our solar system.
There are many species far more populous than us.
Many genera more populous than humans exist, but not specific species. Well, in fairness, you could say that all E. coli belong to the same species, and all humans have millions living inside them, but, dealing only with multicellular organisms, my statement holds true.
Things are not as valuable as a person, no matter how much of a scumbag the person is.
Ah, now there, you have it wrong.
Humans have no value. We have made it as the single most populous species on Earth, by a a factor of 3 over the second most populous (rats, who only made it that high because they do well in the shadow of human settlements).
We have no value. Any one of us can dissapear, with no real loss to the rest of the universe. You could even wipe out four or five billion of us (as long as that didn't include all of one gender), with no real loss to the world - That would still leave more people alive than existed at any time prior to the 17th century (you know, one of those major times of unrest when people realize that if they didn't find a way to increase food production, most of them would starve, leading to such Modest Proposals as Swift's to deal with overpopulation?)
So no, your fundamental premise does not hold true. We have no reason to allow someone to threaten our safety by inquiring why they've entered our house without our permission, because the loss of that person means absolutely nothing. One more walking bag of pondscum placed a safe distance underground, and a thousand other walking bags of pondscum get the message not to break into my house.
or a significant mechanism to stop you (door, fence)
So, where exactly do you live, where most houses lack doors?
The RIAA is acting legally. Get over it.
Fine. I can accept that as well.
But if they act with the authority of the courts, they need to obey they same rules as any other agent of the courts, a point that they have publically rejected (and the very statement that lead to this thread).
We come in peace (shoot to kill!).
I can see the outcome of this case right now: The RIAA will probably have to respond to the negative publicity and probably drop the suit against the twelve-year-old girl.
Although not a proper "legal" precedent, that would hurt them rather a lot... Even in the linked article, the RIAA spokesdroid says they expect many people to say "my kids did it and I didn't know".
So, while they have no obligation to act fairly in who they choose to sue, dropping the suit against one little girl will reflect rather poorly on all their other cases against others who may use a similar defense.
In this one, I suspect they don't want to, but they'll have to go throught with it. If they lose, no big deal, they can even parade the somewhat unfair circumstances around as the reason for losing. But if they win... Damn. The guy who made the joke about pirate Barney-and-the-squirrel MP3s might not have it far from the truth. Fresh round of subpoenas against Kazaa's entire user base.
What about that last quote, where they said that because they weren't a legal organization, they weren't bound by the limits of search?
Wouldn't that tend to imply that they have no right to conduct a search in the first place?
I have signed no contracts granting the RIAA the right to conduct a search of myself, my property, my history, or even for my car keys that I keep misplacing.
Baring some official status, or a contract... Why should it matter that normal proceedural limitations do not apply to them? My neighbors don't need to observe due process in considering me annoying, but if they decide to search my house to prove it, the police will get a call right after the use of deadly force in self defense.
I find it disturbing that they seem to be confusing distributing music online with copyright violations.
;-)
Ah, you haven't seen HR1911, defining "Music" as a trademark of the RIAA member corporations, and everything else as "pornography induced instrument torturing"? Tsktsktsk. Gotta keep on top of these things.
Maybe then I won't have to put up hearing penis length wars like "Oh yeah, I got more gigs of MP3s than you do!"
;-)
Hmm, I don't think I've ever heard anyone brag about that. Golly, to think of all I've missed out on...
Okay... Free "PLA's Tip of the Day" to anyone who thinks the size of an MP3 collection reflects on its owner's penis lenght - Store raw CD rips. You'll increase your MP3-virtual-penis length by a factor of 10 overnight!
Of course, since only pussies use MP3s, while "Real Men(tm)" use OGG, 10 times nothing still leaves nothing.
get a clue
Get a closing "bold" tag.
let me tell you that simply remembering how to use a phone let alone summoning the concentration needed to read a phone book is damn near impossible when you are in severe pain, can scarcely breathe or speak, profoundly disoriented, and within minutes of losing consciousness
I can see this represents an emotional issue to you, but your emotions, even phrased in all-bold, do not have the least bearing on any rational discussion of the merits of a social service you find valuable. You may seem like a great person, have a nice family, great job, do community service, all the standard eulogia. I do not, however, value your ability to save two seconds in an important phone call in exchange for $1.77 per month on my phone bill. If you value it that much, I fully encourage you to pay any of a a number of private companies (such as ADT or LifeCall) quite a lot more than two bucks a month to provide a similar service. But I should not need to subsidize that if I believe I can deal with normal use of a telephone.
Anyway, I did say I considered it really quite convenient, to the point that I even suggested that, if the FCC really needs to stick their noses where they don't belong, they could more usefully direct their efforts toward services like that rather than protecting the telecom industry's hegemony over all forms of voice communication. You appear to have ignored that point, however.
In any event, the fact that YOU might have lost your head in an emergency does not particularly interest or concern me. I know my local emergency numbers (and, in fact, usually only knowing one, the fire department, will suffice, since most "emergency" services end up in their hands anyway), and can (and have) remained calm enough to use them. Four extra numbers, nothing more. If a person "can scarcely breathe", they have bigger problems than hitting those extra four buttons.
Or, to put it another way - Why not just a single digit for emergencies? Something like "hold down 9 until you hear a voice"? Ah, so we all seem stupid and helpless, but not that stupid and helpless? We can deal with three numbers, but not seven (originally chosen, incidentally, as the number of digits most people can readily remember in short term memory)?
I don't mean to belittle your need to make an emergency phone call... But do you really mean to say you think you would have died if you had to press another four buttons? If so, I would have to call you a statistical anomaly, not the norm. If one out of every 10 million people die because they have to press another four buttons, that quite simply does not bother me (and yes, I say that after fully contemplating it happening to myself, my friends, my family).
We all die, but put bluntly, throwing a few bucks in the boot will do more to save you than throwing 10x as much at the FCC.
Do you want reliable telephone service? Even if there is a power failure?
Yup. But if the local CO loses power as well, I still lose phone service (as the recent NE blackout demonstrated).
Moreover, cell phones do not require a wired power connection - For that matter, *most* people I know (with cell phones) exclusively use their cars to charge their phones. So local blackouts have no effect, as long as the phone company still has power.
Do you want guaranteed availability of telephone service at uniform and reasonable rates, even if you live on a farm or in a slum?
Again, cellular has made the "last mile" issue, as it applies to telephone service, irrelevant.
Do you want 911 service that works?
Not particularly... I can manage a phonebook just fine, and PDs, FDs, and hospitals all still have standard everyday phone numbers we can call. 911 makes it slightly easier, when away from your local area, to call these. But nothing we can't do without (as proven by people "doing without" it entirely in most places, as recently as two decades ago).
That could result in the loss of universal and reliable, even if somewhat overpriced, telephone service in this country.
Yes, it could. I agree completely with your point, to that extent. I think you may have missed the larger idea, though, that we no longer need any of that. If the FCC really wants to get involved, they could work to guarantee things such as 911 (which I admit makes a nice convenience, even if not necessary), number portability, service provider interoperability, things of that nature. But to cripple VoIP by treating it as just part of the existing infrastructure... Well, perhaps it would help if I pose to you the exact question that popped into my mind while reading the links from the main article...
"To whom do the termination fees go when using VoiP?"
Really, who? Okay, the taxes vanish in the same way that all taxes do, but the rest? If I make a data connection, from Adelphia (who I already pay for my connection), via Vonage (who I could pay for that connection), to COX (who the person I call already pays for their data connection), exactly who do all the middleman fees go to? Sprint, for the optical backbone that both Adelphia and COX already pay to use? Verizon, because they have a monopoly in most of the local areas served by Adelphia and COX, but which has no role whatsoever in the call going through? Who?
Yeah, this issue has some meaning as long as we route from VoIP to POTS (and the examples from the linked article seemed to only involve that one situation, while the proposed regulation goes quite a lot further). But if we stick with VoIP-to-VoIP (the obvious end result assuming stupid laws don't make such an outcome impossible), no middleman exists, period.
So who would the mandatory fees (not taxes) go to?
My only hope is he doesn't ruin the iTunes music store for the rest of us somehow.
Ruin what, excatly?
I fully applaud Apple for taking the first leap into a new model of music distribution, one far more compatible with the modern world. However, iTunes has quite a few flaws that make it... Well, at best useless, and at worst even less sweet for the artists than the RIAA's traditional screwing.
A buck per song... Most CDs have between 10 and 20 songs on them, and cost, surprise surprise, between 10 and 20 dollars. A buck per song, on average. Now, you can say that you don't need to buy the 12 crappy songs on an album of 15 songs, but you could always just buy the single in the first place, for a dollar or three.
Second, Apple gets 35% off the top of each sale. The rest goes to the RIAA, which it diffuses through its normal chain of profit sucking. This has the net effect of the artists themselves getting 35% less (and possibly worse than that, if portions of the standard breakdown include a flat fee per sale rather than a percentage of the gross). Yay Apple! Screw the artists (the only ones I feel sympathy for in the current war against IP) even harder!.
Next, shareability - I can loan a CD to as many people as I want to. Can you loan (more than three friends) your new purchase from Apple? Okay, you can burn it to CD and loan that out, but doing so requires spending time and money on burning a CD, and, see my next point...
Finally, if you buy a CD, you get 44KHz two-channel PCM music. If you buy from iTunes, you get 128Kbps AAC. Perhaps better than the same bitrate MP3, but still lossy. It really doesn't matter if "most people can't tell the difference" from the raw CD track, they simply don't sell the same product as exists on the CD.
Overall, iTunes has done what many of us asked for - Moved music distrubution to a model compatible with a wired world. In doing so, however, they've managed to incorporate the WORST aspects of the RIAA's stranglehold on both consumers and artists. Apple has done little more than find a way to insert itself into the musical food chain.
Sorry, but you know you don't even have a Mac.
Which has what exactly to do with my statement?
And, I'll have you know that I do have a Mac - A PPC7100 running Linux, but a Mac none-the-less.
So... Pbpbpbpbpbpbtttttttt.
A product which doesn't come with its own manual? Wow that's useful. Now I'll rush out and buy an iDVD [whatever that is] *and* the iNot iIncluded iManual for an additional low price...
I don't know if the original post meant it in this way, but buying a 3rd party book to replace a so-called "missing manual" usually happens as a euphemism for "I pirated the software and don't already know how to use it".
In this case, I don't think he meant that, but at the very least the book's author presumeably knew this and used the association to pick his title.
More than "still visible"...
;-)
I just did a google search for "kazaa lite".
It returned 90100 hits. But wait, I used the "advanced search" page, let's try the normal one...
Oh, 361,000 hits. Wouldja lookit that!
Apparently, Google either hoped to do this quietly, which Slashdot thwarted so Google undid it, or Google has decided t grow some balls and ignore such requests. I would personally hope the latter, or else we'll start seeing a new regular Slashdot posting, "Google's censorship of the week".
It is a purely statistical engine, using simple filterbanks (FFT) to partition and quantify the sound. It then picks the "most statistically important" pieces back together in a semi-intelligent manner.
:-)
Fair enough...
So might I change my suggestion to "Try using decaying weights for each bin it considers important"?
Unless you really want that level of abrupt change, that would give you the same basic result, with somewhat smoother transitions.
Cool idea, anyway. Wish I'd thought of it.