Problem is, Asia is already more in love with Linux than nearly anywhere else on the planet
Not really.
Or, say instead that Asia has 3 reasons for their stance.
1) They don't want a trade deficit. They've learned the problems of that from the US. Homegrown technology is better than paying a foreign company. 2) They have national security concerns, and reviewing source code for critical infrastructure is a good thing. See #1 about not being dependent on a foreign company for security fixes. 3) The people (not the governments, not the businesses) care about free speech.
Only the third reason there has anything to do with "in love with Linux".
But how else would we know what our boss feels like when we say the harddrive just died on the RAID attached to the mailserver, and even though the machine is chugging along just fine, we really
do need a new disk?
There's a small difference here...
When you tell the boss you need a new harddrive for the RAID, you don't personally benefit from the company's expenditure. (Even if the RAID is really fine, you just needed more storage on the system, right? You're not going to take the harddrive home for your personal mp3 server... right?)
When your car dealership calls you up and tells you that you need a $800 brake job, they do benefit from the expenditure. The dealership directly benefits from lying to you.
It may feel the same to the person spending the money, but the possibility for mis-use is rather different.
Only 400 charges though... I think most people can easily charge more than 400 times if they don't be careful about using all of it before doing so.
They say this because, as they also say, it uses a Lithium-Ion battery.
That's the standard answer for *any* Lithium-Ion battery.
300-400 charges, for full charges, less than 30% charge remaining when you recharge it. 500-600 charges, for partial charges (generally defined as 70%+ charge remaining when you recharge it)
If you want more charge cycles, you don't want Lithium-Ion batteries. Do some reading on rechargable batteries, most of them have a rating of "number of charge cycles" before you have a paperweight.
NiMH are 350-450 charge cycles. NiCD are 400-500 charge cycles.
Never heard a rating for Lead-Acid rechargable batteries (aka, car batteries) but considering they are usually rated for some number of miles in your car... they have a charge cycle rating too.
Incidentally, if you have an old cell phone, where the battery doesn't last as long as it used to when it was new... don't blame the cell phone, blame the battery. This is why I like the extended-life batteries on cell phones. Not just so I can talk longer, but so I can recharge it only once every 3 days (assuming low usage). This way, the battery will get 300 charge cycles in about 2 years, and I'll be replacing the phone then anyway.
"Free Software" exists to sell the idea of freedom. "Open Source" exists to sell the reality of freedom.
I'd really rather be cautious is saying what a diverse movement like FS and OSS exist for, but I think you only have it half right.
"Free Software" exists to sell the idea of freedom. Correct. I agree with this.
"Open Source" exists to sell the reality of freedom. Incorrect. Try this instead: "Open Source" exists to sell the reality of better software. Open Source is only marginally about freedom. Most discussions/evangelizing of Open Source talks about software quality. Not freedom. It's about better software, with better quality, for lower cost, purely a pragmatic decision. Freedom is a "oh, yeah, that's nice too" with Open Source.
This is part of why Richard Stallman hates it when Free Software and Open Source Software get confused or blurred.
Personally I think victimless crimes such as speeding are the heart of the problem.
I generally agree with your comment on victimless crimes.
The problem comes in when you decide what a victimless crime means. Speeding is one of those nice grey-area examples of victimless crimes.
As a general rule, an accident involving vehicles at speed 2*X will be worse than an accident involving vehicles at speed X. This may be worse as property damage, it may be injury level, it may be injury vs death.
"Society" has determined that there is a correlation between high speeds and injury/death rates from accidents. (Don't know about correlating speed vs accident rate itself... decreased reaction times from higher speed probably do correlate to higher accident rates too.) A certain percentage of the cost of that injury/death is paid by society, in the form of uninsured motorists and public health care.
Therefore, the "victim" of speeding is your government's budget. That's an indirect way of saying speeding costs the taxpayer money, and someone decided that the speeder herself should pay part of that cost burden, therefore... speeding tickets.
I don't have to like it, to understand the original reasoning. Of course, this also has nothing to do with "speeding tickets as a primary form of county revenue" that seems very common today.
"very vocal", as in "I would think that if you understood what communism was you would hope, you would pray on your knees, that we would someday become communists." - Jane Fonda, MSU, 1970
This is a fun little quote.
It's all in the meaning and persprective.
"understand what communism was" meant as "if we could stop having conflicts and actually work for the good of society instead of individual gain (i.e., stop being human)" that's maybe not such a bad thing, when referring to idealistic communism, which doesn't work in the real world because people don't work that way. But you can (try to) stretch it to "improve humanity so we become better as a race" which is a nice goal. Capt Picard keeps pretending that has happened in ST:TNG. (Yet he likes having the biggest guns...)
"someday become communists" as "accept that humans are flawed and this crazy system will never work, but we should do it anyway"... well, I'd hope no one would honestly support such a position. But humans being human... God-given right to be stupid, and all that.
when should you start seriously looking for shelter?
My answer? Probably on the day that a judge announces that he agrees with SCO's interpretation of what it acquired from Novell.
He comes back after seeing that I had minor history, says he wants to check the car.
and
I was broke down, waiting for a tow truck. They searched me, searched the car.
The cops will say "We'd like to search your vehicle."
Then they stop, and wait, and look at you significantly. They are waiting for you to say "Okay, go ahead and search it."
This is a consent search. They are fishing, and need your permission to search your vehicle. Simply say "No, I'd rather you didn't" and, not having your consent, they won't search the vehicle.
Yes, it really is that simple.
Cops will ask for a lot of stuff they have no right to demand. And when you say "Okay" you gave permission. Simply don't say okay. Don't be impolite. Don't be insulting. Just respectfully say "No." ==
Why, you're right! People should just _put up_ with having their belongings stolen! Taking measures to protect their stuff is just asking for trouble -- they deserve whatever they get!
That's not what he said, nor is it what he meant.
The real message here is to think through the consequences of the security change you are making. If you make a car that can only be started with the correct key, as a lot of car security systems work, then the only way to steal a car is to steal the key first. The key is on the body of the driver. Therefore, you turned a simple property crime into an armed confrontation, where instead of losing your car (made-up odds, 1:10,000), you can lose your life trying to protect a damn car key (made-up odds, 1:1,000,000).
Very low odds, but a damned bad result. I'd rather let the insurance replace the car.
Or, more properly, I'd rather have a protection measure that is not defeated by confronting me at gunpoint. *That* is the proper way to take measures to protect your stuff.
Think through the consequences of the changes you are proposing, before doing it.
As a percentage of total spending, 2.2% seems low. But this isn't a "total spending" comparison that people are making.
Fair warning, I'm going to ask questions here that I don't know the answers to (which isn't very fair). Feel free to pop in with answers, I'm honestly curious.
A more proper "percent of spending" for IT in a school budget would be after taking out some other costs. Take out teacher/admin labor costs. That's salary, health care, retirement, etc. (Yes, I'm assuming teacher retirement is funded from that $357billion/year, possibly a false assumption.) Take out building maintenance/construction costs, and heating and cooling costs. Add back in a bit of that to cover "network upgrades" and similar IT-related costs
Now, what's left? Compare that $80billion over ten years (we'll pretend that's flat spending and call it $8billion per year) to what's left from that $357billion per year.
That's the percentage of IT costs from funding available to "school programs" which includes everything from classroom books, to field trips, to art supplies, to music and athletics programs, to papers for photocopies for handouts.
That's a better percentage to look at, because it reflects more of the "discretionary" spending that IT really comes out of.
And I'd really like to know what that works out to. It's a lot higher than 2.2%.
How do small content creators cope with DRM? [snip] I mean, a small time music producer or a small time comic book creator will have trouble in this environment, especially if they're just doing it because they love the art.
That isn't really the major problem, though you shouldn't ignore it.
How do you take a video of your kid's birthday party and send it to the grandparents?
There are a lot more people with video cameras than there are small music producers and comic artists. And I'd really like to see who you'd trust to certify that the video of you and your wife on your anniversary night is original, and not a copy of something. (And wouldn't it be a terrible blow to your ego if it was denied because it "looked just like the last 30 of those we saw".)
Right now, you can do this reasonably well with a miniDV camcorder, the right software, and a dvd-+r burner. Make it too burdensome, and you'll lose a major market.
Frankly, I don't want a camera anywhere *near* me in a bedroom, but this is one of the markets consumer electronics companies are supposed to pay attention to, right?
Most of us use and trust ATMs without any knowledge of how they communicate back to their banks.
I don't trust ATMs. I don't care, because I have no liability. The bank does.
Most of us use credit cards without knowing the encryption level of the network.
I don't trust credit cards (I know better), but I don't care, because I have only $50 liability. The credit card company is liable for anything beyond that amount.
Most of us trust the air bags will work without actually knowing how they work.
I *do* trust the air bags will work, because car makers have a great deal of liability if they don't. If the air bags don't work, either I or my heirs will become very wealthy, at the expense of the car maker.
None of these three really have anything to do with trust, They have to do with liability.
What is Phoenix's liability if my computer stops working? Nothing? They might provide another no-liability version with a "here, this might work, or maybe not" for me to attempt to use? Ahh... that gives me great confidence in them.
What is Microsoft's liability if my business is destroyed by a virus that exploits a bug MS didn't release a patch for? The purchase price of the OS, if that much? Oh, but only if I bought directly from MS, and not if I got it from an OEM. That's reassuring, one destroyed business and you get a refund of $299.95.
The whole problem with trust is that I don't necessarily trust either phoenix or ms.
You have the wrong view of trust.
This isn't about you trusting them. This is about them *not* trusting you.
The entire point of all these Trusted Computing initiatives is that the software/content makers do not trust their users to follow the limitations that the manufacturers want them to follow. Therefore, they want a hardware design that they can trust to enforce these limitations.
Let me say that again.
It's about the content providers trusting the hardware, because they don't trust you.
You trusting them has nothing to do with it. Be a good consumer and buy what you're told.
Yes, this is the "customer as enemy" worldview. You are, by definition, the enemy here. And it says a lot about the limitations they want, that they automatically assume you will want to violate those limitations, doesn't it?
Multimedia will encourage 64-bit CPUs without much of a problem. It isn't required, by any means, but it makes things a lot simpler.
Take a 10gig MiniDV file off your camcorder and edit it on your computer. You as a user don't care how it is accessed or used, but the programmer will be a *lot* happier to just memory-map the entire file, and let the OS only actually load those pieces needed as they are needed.
It isn't required by any means, but it makes a lot of things simpler.
Any time you mess with larger-than-2gig data files, you want a 64-bit cpu.
Oh, and...
Perhaps you are right, 64-bit is inevitable. If so, I predict a massive windfall for distributed computing projects like SETI@Home when home PC users find their CPU utilization in the single digits.
64-bit doesn't really have anything to do with CPU utilization. A blazingly-fast 32-bit CPU, and a blazingly-fast 64-bit CPU, are both blazingly fast. Both are still overkill for just reading email, browsing static web pages, and writing memos. 64-bit doesn't necessarily mean fast, it just means (usually) a wider memory bus.
But technology's most amusing when it all blows up. I wish I could find the link, but I distinctly remember reading about some lady who tried to plot an intracity voyage, and got routed through about 12 states -- even venturing into Canada for a while. (Does anyone else remember this?)
Wouldn't a breakup by a measure of the size in bytes of content served by the various web servers make a much more realistic figure?
I mean, if the traffic logs and stats are not available for all the sites around, surely, a measure of the size of the content would give one a fair idea of where the heavy weights really lie?
Yeah, it would be interesting, but it would require the active assistance of the web admin. Or a serious change to the netcraft survey software.
Right now they mostly just pay attention to the html headers and defined server name stuff. To get what you want (which I agree, would be more interesting) you'd need to do one of several things, depending on exactly what info you wanted...
For "bytes of content served" you need to: A) have the web admin send you the server stats B) break into the system and get stats yourself C) monitor all traffic from that server on the local loop
For "size of content" you need to: A) have the web admin send you the server stats B) break into the system and get stats yourself C) ignore the robots.txt file and crawl the entire site
Another interesting one might be "size of content accessed" which ignores how many times it was accessed, but gives a nice measure of "dead" pages when compared to "size of content". But for that, again, you need the standard A/B.
You see why this is unlikely to ever occur? Or do you think it is reasonable for site stats to be publicly accessible? (Personally, I don't thing that is reasonable. If you want to put that info up, feel free, but don't tell me I have to do it too.)
- paper discriminates against tree huggers and caters to the logging community
- electronic voting discriminates against technology luddites and caters to the techno-savvy
These two are easy to solve. And you can do it with a perfectly Australian solution, too.
Make the "paper copy" be printed on plastic. You get your permenent record that doesn't bother the tree huggers or cater to the logging industry. And you can't claim it discriminates against luddites, because luddites are more likely to use paper money than those new-fangled credit cards anyway... and Australia uses plastic for their "paper" currency. So they are familiar with that. (They also find the plastic "paper" currency last longer than US paper bills do.)
If the company they licensed the 30k worth of music from didn't have the rights to license it under these terms, then that's hardly MIT's fault.
But that's the wonderful thing about copyright infringement...
It may not be MIT's fault. They may have made an honest effort be fully legally compliant.
But it doesn't matter.
They are still fully liable.
Copyright infringement is one of those wonderful "we don't care why you did it, we don't care that you thought you were legal, we don't care that you tried to actually be legal... you did it, and you're guilty, and you'll burn in hell!!!!". Oh, sorry, went a bit overboard there.
But copyright infringement is one of those things where "I didn't know" is no defense. For that matter "I tried to follow the law" is no defense either.
MIT tried to be legal. They thought they were legal. They paid $30,000 to license the music for this effort. They can *still* be sued by the RIAA for $150,000 per occurrence of infringement. How many songs were "broadcast" in that week of operation?
Isn't is amazing the laws you can buy when you consistently purchase congresspeople for 70 years?
Politics campains should be maid on the streets, squares, not on TV. We should be able to contact in person our representatives.
According to the US Census, New York state has a population of 18,976,457 (2000 Census).
Please explain to me how, in a democracy (okay, a republic) with involved citizens, 18,976,455 people can have contact in person with 2 people? (NY state has 2 US Senators, who, theoretically, each directly represents the entire population of NY state.) (Or even the 14.2 miilion that are over 18.)
Much as I like and support being politically involved, your solution does not scale well. You need PACs, organizations, lobbyists, and political staff.
Every once in a while, I enjoy being a selfish human being. This is one of those times.
I can deal with taking line of sight from others, so I get it myself.
You see, not only am I selfish, I'm also conceited. I believe that my chances of avoiding an accident are better if I can see and others can't, than if we all can not see equally. Because if everyone drives the same vehicle, we all see equally badly.
Egotistical of me, isn't it? (Am I allowed to laugh at myself while I'm being selfish and conceited?)
I don't actually want to disagree with much of your rant/rambling, but I do want to provide some extra information about one point you raise, because I think it detracts from your rambling.
I'm not talking about frivolous lawsuits for spilled hot coffee,
Read up on that lawsuit a little more. I agree, on first look, it sounds silly. Check out some details, and it sounds a bit less silly.
McDonalds has company policy for the temperature at which they serve coffee. (160deg F? that's from memory, don't trust that number, but at a "hurts but safe if spilled on skin" temperature.) This McDonalds was serving coffee about 30deg F higher than that temp, hot enough to scald skin on contact. They had previously logged a maintenance problem with the coffee maker, noting "it makes coffee too hot" or something to that effect. They ignored the need for maintenance.
They were knowing serving a product outside of company guidelines, and at a level that would cause harm from a simple accident. Probably didn't feel too good on the lips or tongue when you tried to drink it, either.
The verdict against them was correct. However, the judge reducing the punitive damages from some ridiculously high number the jury gave, to something much more reasonable (reduced by a factor of about 15?) was also correct.
Learn a bit more, so you can pick better examples. It'll make your rambling better.:)
Slashdot Mirror
It's a Yes album... 73 minutes, 3 songs.
In that one way, they were something like the Grateful Dead... 2 hour concert, 4 songs...
Or, say instead that Asia has 3 reasons for their stance.
1) They don't want a trade deficit. They've learned the problems of that from the US. Homegrown technology is better than paying a foreign company.
2) They have national security concerns, and reviewing source code for critical infrastructure is a good thing. See #1 about not being dependent on a foreign company for security fixes.
3) The people (not the governments, not the businesses) care about free speech.
Only the third reason there has anything to do with "in love with Linux".
When you tell the boss you need a new harddrive for the RAID, you don't personally benefit from the company's expenditure. (Even if the RAID is really fine, you just needed more storage on the system, right? You're not going to take the harddrive home for your personal mp3 server... right?)
When your car dealership calls you up and tells you that you need a $800 brake job, they do benefit from the expenditure. The dealership directly benefits from lying to you.
It may feel the same to the person spending the money, but the possibility for mis-use is rather different.
That's the standard answer for *any* Lithium-Ion battery.
300-400 charges, for full charges, less than 30% charge remaining when you recharge it.
500-600 charges, for partial charges (generally defined as 70%+ charge remaining when you recharge it)
If you want more charge cycles, you don't want Lithium-Ion batteries. Do some reading on rechargable batteries, most of them have a rating of "number of charge cycles" before you have a paperweight.
NiMH are 350-450 charge cycles.
NiCD are 400-500 charge cycles.
Never heard a rating for Lead-Acid rechargable batteries (aka, car batteries) but considering they are usually rated for some number of miles in your car... they have a charge cycle rating too.
Incidentally, if you have an old cell phone, where the battery doesn't last as long as it used to when it was new... don't blame the cell phone, blame the battery. This is why I like the extended-life batteries on cell phones. Not just so I can talk longer, but so I can recharge it only once every 3 days (assuming low usage). This way, the battery will get 300 charge cycles in about 2 years, and I'll be replacing the phone then anyway.
"Free Software" exists to sell the idea of freedom.
Correct. I agree with this.
"Open Source" exists to sell the reality of freedom.
Incorrect. Try this instead:
"Open Source" exists to sell the reality of better software.
Open Source is only marginally about freedom. Most discussions/evangelizing of Open Source talks about software quality. Not freedom. It's about better software, with better quality, for lower cost, purely a pragmatic decision. Freedom is a "oh, yeah, that's nice too" with Open Source.
This is part of why Richard Stallman hates it when Free Software and Open Source Software get confused or blurred.
I live in Florida. I want the engine on, for the air conditioning.
You need to modify your metric.
The problem comes in when you decide what a victimless crime means. Speeding is one of those nice grey-area examples of victimless crimes.
As a general rule, an accident involving vehicles at speed 2*X will be worse than an accident involving vehicles at speed X. This may be worse as property damage, it may be injury level, it may be injury vs death.
"Society" has determined that there is a correlation between high speeds and injury/death rates from accidents. (Don't know about correlating speed vs accident rate itself... decreased reaction times from higher speed probably do correlate to higher accident rates too.) A certain percentage of the cost of that injury/death is paid by society, in the form of uninsured motorists and public health care.
Therefore, the "victim" of speeding is your government's budget. That's an indirect way of saying speeding costs the taxpayer money, and someone decided that the speeder herself should pay part of that cost burden, therefore... speeding tickets.
I don't have to like it, to understand the original reasoning. Of course, this also has nothing to do with "speeding tickets as a primary form of county revenue" that seems very common today.
It's all in the meaning and persprective.
"understand what communism was" meant as "if we could stop having conflicts and actually work for the good of society instead of individual gain (i.e., stop being human)" that's maybe not such a bad thing, when referring to idealistic communism, which doesn't work in the real world because people don't work that way. But you can (try to) stretch it to "improve humanity so we become better as a race" which is a nice goal. Capt Picard keeps pretending that has happened in ST:TNG. (Yet he likes having the biggest guns...)
"someday become communists" as "accept that humans are flawed and this crazy system will never work, but we should do it anyway"... well, I'd hope no one would honestly support such a position. But humans being human... God-given right to be stupid, and all that.
==
You don't need to worry.
Read Groklaw. Sit back. Laugh.
Worry? I don't think so.
==
The cops will say "We'd like to search your vehicle."
Then they stop, and wait, and look at you significantly. They are waiting for you to say "Okay, go ahead and search it."
This is a consent search. They are fishing, and need your permission to search your vehicle. Simply say "No, I'd rather you didn't" and, not having your consent, they won't search the vehicle.
Yes, it really is that simple.
Cops will ask for a lot of stuff they have no right to demand. And when you say "Okay" you gave permission. Simply don't say okay. Don't be impolite. Don't be insulting. Just respectfully say "No."
==
That's not what he said, nor is it what he meant.
The real message here is to think through the consequences of the security change you are making. If you make a car that can only be started with the correct key, as a lot of car security systems work, then the only way to steal a car is to steal the key first. The key is on the body of the driver. Therefore, you turned a simple property crime into an armed confrontation, where instead of losing your car (made-up odds, 1:10,000), you can lose your life trying to protect a damn car key (made-up odds, 1:1,000,000).
Very low odds, but a damned bad result. I'd rather let the insurance replace the car.
Or, more properly, I'd rather have a protection measure that is not defeated by confronting me at gunpoint. *That* is the proper way to take measures to protect your stuff.
Think through the consequences of the changes you are proposing, before doing it.
As a percentage of total spending, 2.2% seems low. But this isn't a "total spending" comparison that people are making.
Fair warning, I'm going to ask questions here that I don't know the answers to (which isn't very fair). Feel free to pop in with answers, I'm honestly curious.
A more proper "percent of spending" for IT in a school budget would be after taking out some other costs.
Take out teacher/admin labor costs. That's salary, health care, retirement, etc. (Yes, I'm assuming teacher retirement is funded from that $357billion/year, possibly a false assumption.)
Take out building maintenance/construction costs, and heating and cooling costs.
Add back in a bit of that to cover "network upgrades" and similar IT-related costs
Now, what's left? Compare that $80billion over ten years (we'll pretend that's flat spending and call it $8billion per year) to what's left from that $357billion per year.
That's the percentage of IT costs from funding available to "school programs" which includes everything from classroom books, to field trips, to art supplies, to music and athletics programs, to papers for photocopies for handouts.
That's a better percentage to look at, because it reflects more of the "discretionary" spending that IT really comes out of.
And I'd really like to know what that works out to. It's a lot higher than 2.2%.
How do you take a video of your kid's birthday party and send it to the grandparents?
There are a lot more people with video cameras than there are small music producers and comic artists. And I'd really like to see who you'd trust to certify that the video of you and your wife on your anniversary night is original, and not a copy of something. (And wouldn't it be a terrible blow to your ego if it was denied because it "looked just like the last 30 of those we saw".)
Right now, you can do this reasonably well with a miniDV camcorder, the right software, and a dvd-+r burner. Make it too burdensome, and you'll lose a major market.
Frankly, I don't want a camera anywhere *near* me in a bedroom, but this is one of the markets consumer electronics companies are supposed to pay attention to, right?
I don't trust credit cards (I know better), but I don't care, because I have only $50 liability. The credit card company is liable for anything beyond that amount.
I *do* trust the air bags will work, because car makers have a great deal of liability if they don't. If the air bags don't work, either I or my heirs will become very wealthy, at the expense of the car maker.
None of these three really have anything to do with trust, They have to do with liability.
What is Phoenix's liability if my computer stops working? Nothing? They might provide another no-liability version with a "here, this might work, or maybe not" for me to attempt to use? Ahh... that gives me great confidence in them.
What is Microsoft's liability if my business is destroyed by a virus that exploits a bug MS didn't release a patch for? The purchase price of the OS, if that much? Oh, but only if I bought directly from MS, and not if I got it from an OEM. That's reassuring, one destroyed business and you get a refund of $299.95.
This isn't about you trusting them. This is about them *not* trusting you.
The entire point of all these Trusted Computing initiatives is that the software/content makers do not trust their users to follow the limitations that the manufacturers want them to follow. Therefore, they want a hardware design that they can trust to enforce these limitations.
Let me say that again.
It's about the content providers trusting the hardware, because they don't trust you.
You trusting them has nothing to do with it. Be a good consumer and buy what you're told.
Yes, this is the "customer as enemy" worldview. You are, by definition, the enemy here. And it says a lot about the limitations they want, that they automatically assume you will want to violate those limitations, doesn't it?
Take a 10gig MiniDV file off your camcorder and edit it on your computer. You as a user don't care how it is accessed or used, but the programmer will be a *lot* happier to just memory-map the entire file, and let the OS only actually load those pieces needed as they are needed.
It isn't required by any means, but it makes a lot of things simpler.
Any time you mess with larger-than-2gig data files, you want a 64-bit cpu.
Oh, and...
64-bit doesn't really have anything to do with CPU utilization. A blazingly-fast 32-bit CPU, and a blazingly-fast 64-bit CPU, are both blazingly fast. Both are still overkill for just reading email, browsing static web pages, and writing memos. 64-bit doesn't necessarily mean fast, it just means (usually) a wider memory bus.
Scroll down about half way to "Subject: Maybe Microsoft owns stock in Canada?".
Google search for "mapquest ferry funny"... link #6 for me. You have to know what you're loking for in order to find it. Isn't it always that way?
Right now they mostly just pay attention to the html headers and defined server name stuff. To get what you want (which I agree, would be more interesting) you'd need to do one of several things, depending on exactly what info you wanted...
For "bytes of content served" you need to:
A) have the web admin send you the server stats
B) break into the system and get stats yourself
C) monitor all traffic from that server on the local loop
For "size of content" you need to:
A) have the web admin send you the server stats
B) break into the system and get stats yourself
C) ignore the robots.txt file and crawl the entire site
Another interesting one might be "size of content accessed" which ignores how many times it was accessed, but gives a nice measure of "dead" pages when compared to "size of content". But for that, again, you need the standard A/B.
You see why this is unlikely to ever occur? Or do you think it is reasonable for site stats to be publicly accessible? (Personally, I don't thing that is reasonable. If you want to put that info up, feel free, but don't tell me I have to do it too.)
Make the "paper copy" be printed on plastic. You get your permenent record that doesn't bother the tree huggers or cater to the logging industry. And you can't claim it discriminates against luddites, because luddites are more likely to use paper money than those new-fangled credit cards anyway... and Australia uses plastic for their "paper" currency. So they are familiar with that. (They also find the plastic "paper" currency last longer than US paper bills do.)
A perfect Australian solution.
It may not be MIT's fault. They may have made an honest effort be fully legally compliant.
But it doesn't matter.
They are still fully liable.
Copyright infringement is one of those wonderful "we don't care why you did it, we don't care that you thought you were legal, we don't care that you tried to actually be legal... you did it, and you're guilty, and you'll burn in hell!!!!". Oh, sorry, went a bit overboard there.
But copyright infringement is one of those things where "I didn't know" is no defense. For that matter "I tried to follow the law" is no defense either.
MIT tried to be legal. They thought they were legal. They paid $30,000 to license the music for this effort. They can *still* be sued by the RIAA for $150,000 per occurrence of infringement. How many songs were "broadcast" in that week of operation?
Isn't is amazing the laws you can buy when you consistently purchase congresspeople for 70 years?
Is this not really funny, because it is too true?
Or is this funny because is is so true?
Moby is really a closet Huey Lewis and the News fan.
I never would have believed it...
According to the US Census, New York state has a population of 18,976,457 (2000 Census).
Please explain to me how, in a democracy (okay, a republic) with involved citizens, 18,976,455 people can have contact in person with 2 people? (NY state has 2 US Senators, who, theoretically, each directly represents the entire population of NY state.) (Or even the 14.2 miilion that are over 18.)
Much as I like and support being politically involved, your solution does not scale well. You need PACs, organizations, lobbyists, and political staff.
Every once in a while, I enjoy being a selfish human being. This is one of those times.
I can deal with taking line of sight from others, so I get it myself.
You see, not only am I selfish, I'm also conceited. I believe that my chances of avoiding an accident are better if I can see and others can't, than if we all can not see equally. Because if everyone drives the same vehicle, we all see equally badly.
Egotistical of me, isn't it? (Am I allowed to laugh at myself while I'm being selfish and conceited?)
Read up on that lawsuit a little more. I agree, on first look, it sounds silly. Check out some details, and it sounds a bit less silly.
McDonalds has company policy for the temperature at which they serve coffee. (160deg F? that's from memory, don't trust that number, but at a "hurts but safe if spilled on skin" temperature.) This McDonalds was serving coffee about 30deg F higher than that temp, hot enough to scald skin on contact. They had previously logged a maintenance problem with the coffee maker, noting "it makes coffee too hot" or something to that effect. They ignored the need for maintenance.
They were knowing serving a product outside of company guidelines, and at a level that would cause harm from a simple accident. Probably didn't feel too good on the lips or tongue when you tried to drink it, either.
The verdict against them was correct. However, the judge reducing the punitive damages from some ridiculously high number the jury gave, to something much more reasonable (reduced by a factor of about 15?) was also correct.
Learn a bit more, so you can pick better examples. It'll make your rambling better.