I've been searching for a while for anything to do with geographical profiling, specifically systems that narrow the search area in the hunt for serial criminals (burglars, robbers, rapists etc). So far, the only system I've found is Rigel, a commercial software package, only available through leasing from ECRI. I wonder, aren't there any Open Source alternatives?
Why should there be open source alternatives? You have a fairly narrow problem domain with a very narrow customer base that requires specialized techniques... Exactly the last thing I'd expect to be found as OSS.
Frankly, I suspect you are doing a disservice to your clients by choosing philosophy over functionality.
As a fairly lazy but extremely serious songwriter, I use creative commons quite a lot. I have not released a cd, but unlike some folks covered here, I do release my studio stuff up on the net. With creative Commons i am assured that it won't be altered, or sold commercially, or profited from.
Umm... No. You are assured so such thing - as CC won't deter a thief/pirate/whatever any more or less than any other license.
The songs can be performed by someone if they wish, but even those performances cannot be shipped and sold for profit.
Umm... No. CC doesn't stop someone from selling copies of performances containing your song.
In both cases, CC allows you legal remedies if someone does do or attempt to do those things; but it doesn't stop them.
OK, it's a dupr as many have pointed out. What strikes me is that these are just JPG files. This company that hold the copyright was so kind to at least let them be put online for others to read.
The majority of other companies and books will never be officially published. A lot of books are not in publication anymore and even if they are, the older versions (like this one) give an insight on how we thought at a certain time.
It is depressing to know that this way most of our knowledge will be just as lost as the books of the library of Alexandia.
ummm.... No.
Not being online does not equate to lost. Tens of thousands (if not more) of book collectors and collections across the globe contain copies of this book, and many many others. Online data on the other hand typically resides in only a handful of places.
Seriously, I wonder what it would take to rebuild the Saturn 5 program and send the rest of the ISS up in one or two big shots, instead of 20 little shuttle trips.
Money. Money in semi-trailer sized lots. Enough money to make the Shuttle look cheap by comparison.
Did you RTFA? The authors were able to unlock 'hot coffee' while running the game from a manufacturers CD-ROM. You can't patch or mod software on a CD-ROM, therefore - it most certainly is 'in the game'.
Sooo, what were you expecting, thermonuclear noisemakers?
The big debate is example. Imagine if the US had blown up a small ghost town or uninhabited island - maybe even right next to Japan and said "surrender now or this will happen to you." There's a peaeful means to every quetion. Flame me for that if you want, but it's a simple truth.
Sadly, it's not a simple truth - but self delusion. Japan (prior to the bombs being dropped) had already had numerous cities erased from the face of the Earth - with no apparent change in their attitudes. They had one bomb dropped on them - with no apparent change in their attitudes. They had a second bomb dropped on them - with no apparent change in their attitudes.
Finally, the Russians invaded, and they couldn't surrender to the US fast enough.
Nothing in the historical record indicates any reason to believe they would have given up after a demonstration.
Every board of directors and management team is accountable to their shareholders, regardless of how the company is capitalized.
Google's shareholders are not.
Wrt dividends...there are fewer companies paying dividends nowadays. The cash is instead getting reinvested back into the company to fuel its growth.
That's the theory. The practice however is very different... The practice is that we get illusions and tricks to make the short term bottom line look better, thus bolstering stock prices, with little regard to long term ROI in real cash value.
Capital appreciation is what long-term investors are looking for.
Because many investors have chosen to believe illusion (stock prices based on appearances) rather than facts (stock prices based on P/E.)
"The people who have bought it don't have the voting rights as the insiders. They can't even vote those clowns out of power."
This same structure also allows the company to focus on long-term growth, instead of having to worry about frequent changes in power due to shortsighted investors. It's the best of both worlds, IMO...a publicly traded company that's managed like a privately held one.
It's the worst of all possible worlds - it's a company that has taken the public's money, but is not actually accountable to the public for that money.
Which is why I'm not invested in Google - I invest for the long term, and there are plenty of companies who manage for the long haul, and pay dividends, and are accountable if they fail to do so. After all, that's what stock companies were invented for - to pay cash returns to investors. Shortsighted investors and management are products of the perverted (and fairly recent) belief that perception (of stock value) is more important than reality (those checks in my account).
Word to the wise - if you are putting stocks in your IRA, pay attention to P/E. Re-invest your dividends. You'll be the richer for it.
I know exactly how they'll be making enormous gobs of money in ten years. They'll have most of the first-world by the throat, in total depedence on Google Magic for their day-to-day needs related to the flow of information.
The disturbing part is this - if this was Microsoft, folks would be foaming at the mouth. But 'since its just Google', they are instead willingly forging their own chains.
But with the minds they have employed at Google, the infrastructure and highly-prized domain-specific knowledge they've built up, and their brand name, good luck to any company that wants to overtake them at their own game.
Twenty years ago, that could have been said of Microsoft.
Zoning laws and long term urban planning can reduce the need for cars by making urban sparl less desirable for developers.
However, it does so at the cost of raising the cost of housing - making it vastly less affordable.
Say put a constuction surcharge of X dollars on developement and have X grow as the distance from downtown increases,
The problem is this - as you get away from downtown, you get away from the area controlled by the city in question. For example, Seattle's ability to tax in this manner runs out within 5-8 miles of downtown. The suburbs exist because the goverments there want growth.
make incentives for residentual reclamation of parts of the downtown areas ect...
And what happens to the commercial developments already there in many downtowns? From where will the city get the tax revenue to pay the owners of the land/buildings to replace high paying commercial tenants with much lower paying residential tenants?
All these things can reduce emission by making distant suburbs less desirable.
In theory. In practice, it's a thorny problem that real experts have been adressing for thirty years - with no real sucess.
NASA cowboyed the Challenger launch over the heads of the engineers who BUILT the damn SRBs
If the engineers who built the things say "its not safe" and you ignore them that is pointless risk.
Had that been what NASA or the engineers did - you'd have a point. But the engineers didn't say it wasn't safe - they hemmed and hawed and handwaved, and in the end they caved because they were unable (or unwilling) to actually say it wasn't safe.
Another thing to think about, how is it that we can have a couple thousand ICBM's ready to launch hot molten death on a few minutes notice, but don't have a space program capable of launching humans every few days?
Because we've spent billions of dollars and millions of man-hours, and multiple generations of birds to get to that point. We haven't spent a fraction of that on the same capability for manned flight. (Most of the money spent on Shuttle has been for operations - not R&D.)
Is is a ridiculous distinction when taken in context.
When the context is an incredible stretch, as it is, then it's the context that is ridiculous.
Whether those facts are actually printed on the page or redirected to, it doesn't change the fact that the collection itself can't be copyrighted.
The problem is - it does change whether or not the collection can be copyrighted. A phone directory (a collection of pointers) cannot be copyrighted. An encyclopedia (a collection of content) can be copyrighted
If I assembled an encylopedia by copying pages from material whose copyright is held by others, binding the copies together, and making the result available to the public - I'd be liable for violating their copyright. The Wayback Machine is a collection that is exactly the same as this proposed encyclopedia - it's a collection of other peoples content.
Thus by extension of existing precedent; the Wayback Machine, by copying other peoples content violates copyright.
I believe the point was that, because the archive merely aggregates facts, it cannot infringe on the copyright because the collection that they make is not subject to copyright. I don't know if this argument holds any water at all, but trying to split hairs about how the data is stored doesn't change the basic principle.
The Wayback machine isn't aggregation of facts, it's a direct copy of other peoples content. (The difference is unsubtle and important - no reasonable individual would confuse a phone book with an encyclopedia.) As I demonstrate above, content is subject to copyright. Your arguement fails to hold water because it presupposes that there is no difference between content and pointers to content. The issue isn't how the data is stored, by what data is stored (pointers or content).
The Internet Archive is sincere in their desire to preserve an accurate record for the sake of history, although admittedly recent. I for one believe that this is more important than the copy rights of any particular individual. The truth is more important than any IP, and what was said and done in the public sphere should be recalled by those who can.
As it happens, I agree with you 100%. All I'm adressing is the OP's attempts to call a tail a leg. Just because something is right doesn't make it legal. The law does need to be changed - but we must understand what we are changing from and what we want to change to. The same laws that shield other people shield us too, and I want my rights protected. There will have to be compromise - and intelligent compromise requires understanding and clarity, not sophmoric handwaving.
Are we becoming so risk averse that we will significantly slow or stop the tide of exploration?
How the heck did NASA put men on the moon in a decade? They did not have a bunch of high tech crap that they have now, it was the ability to take risks.
When you actually study the history of NASA's spaceflight, you'll find numerous scrubs during the Mercury/Gemini/Apollo era. Sheppards flight was scrubbed somthing like 9 times. We missed having the first man in space because NASA decided to perform some additional tests on the escape system. There was serious consideration made of setting back Apollo 11 for a month because of crew fatigue from their heavy training schedule. Serious consideration was given to delaying Apollo 13 rather than insert an untried crewman into the crew. (And in both cases the decision to proceed was close.) Several of the later Apollo missions were delayed for one reason or another.
Perhaps Nasa should take a lesson from Henry Ford. Forget multi-billion dollar boondoggles (with quadruple backups out the wazzoo) like the shuttle. build a freaking factory to mass produce a SIMPLE, STANDARDIZED rocket.
The Russians do that - and their safety record is no better than NASA's.
Completely incorrect. There are only two ways for material to enter the public domain - 1) by explicitly stating that you release the material into the public domain, or 2) expiration of the copyright period.
Do you have a source for this? I ask because my comment came from a source I do trust, and I don't know you from anyone.
It's basic copyright law. Learn to do your own research and be careful who you trust.
That paragraph can be written much more simply: I don't like laws that protect other peoples rights. They should be changed.
That wouldn't exactly be a fair characterisation of the paragraph though would it?
It's completely fair characterization. You advocate changing the laws from protecting people's rights to protecting rather than punishing those who wish to violate those rights.
No, it's an important distinction - and one that does not rely on calling a tail a leg. One item is a pointer towards content, the other is a copy of the content. These are two very different things at every level.
Those pages were accessable on the internet when the archive crawler archived them.
So? That doesn't destroy the rights of the owners of content over that content. The CNN coverage of the Discovery launch I am currently watching is publically available, but even if I were taping it, I don't have the right to then make copies available to third parties. This is basic copyright law, well supported by precedent.
They existed at that time for anyone to view. You can't take it back.
Thats an assumption (read 'wishful thinking'), not a fact.
I believe in some cases, if you fail to assert your copyright and (and yes, there's an "and" in there) you distribute your content to all-comers for free, it's considered public domain.
Completely incorrect. There are only two ways for material to enter the public domain - 1) by explicitly stating that you release the material into the public domain, or 2) expiration of the copyright period.
My personal opinion? The law needs to be changed to protect groups who do exactly this. This is one of many areas where copyright law needs to be diluted in order to remain credible. If people performing what is obviously a public service, who do make best-efforts to honour the wishes of those who do not consent to be a part of what they're doing, need to worry about the legality of doing so, the law is wrong and liable to fall into disrepute.
That paragraph can be written much more simply: I don't like laws that protect other peoples rights. They should be changed.
Does this mean "all information is free"? No. But trying to treat electronic information like a book is useless. Web sites are put out to be publicly consumed. It is contradictory to say that someone cannot cache it for non-profit purposes. Trying to reuse the "creative" parts of the web site for commercial purposes should be prohibited.
Bottom line: Stop with the analogies. Start thinking fresh.
The problem is - the analogies attempt to explain why people/companies have rights and how they should be extended to the web. Your 'fresh thinking' merely try to justify stripping away those rights.
Actually there is a simple principle here. The supreme court has ruled that directories cannot be copyrighted if the information they contain is purely factual in FEIST v. RURAL TELEPHONE, 1991 An example is the telephone book, those are all facts and that was what the case was about.
The wayback machine could be called a directory of old web pages, cached as they existed at the time.
No. Yahoo! is a directory of webpages - that is pointers to locations of web pages in the same fashion that a phone book is a pointer towards the locations of people/businesses. (I.E. the legal distinction between a URL and a phone number can be seen as being quite sleder.)
The Wayback Machine on the other hand stores copies of pages, not copies of their adresses.
Remember people, the simpler the design the fewer points of failure there are. Seems like if Burt Rutan can get it right NASA should be able to too.
Well, given that Rutan hasn't yet 'gotten it right', your thesis fails. SS1 is a high performance airplane - not a spacecraft. It's no more in the Shuttle's league than a Matchbox car is in that of a Formula 1 racer. (Rutan and co. have made an outstanding first step - but let's compare apples to apples.)
I have no experience of education outside the US, but I can say confidently that public education in my country sucks. And it may always suck.
Thats what the recieved wisdom says - but in reality it varies wildly, not only from district to district but from school to school and individual to individual. I number among my friends/acquaintances around 15-20 recent, local, high schools grads - and the quality of their education varies wildly. The contempt of the average Slashdot prima donna towards modern education comes from the pillar that they mostly believe they belong on - and that the educational system didn't agree.
However, what can we do to make it suck less?
Get involved. Not in the confrontational or underhanded style typically advocated on Slashdot - but openly and constructively.
Similarly, many Slashdot readers are brilliant people who have educated themselves to a large extent.
Judging by those readers who post, their experiment is self education is an utter failure. There is a distinct lack of critical thinking, and large amount of knee-jerk reactions. In one topic (Space) I routinely have to debunk the same myths again and again - Slashgeeks in general are almost completely ignorant on that topic.
My guess is that they'll never see it coming, whatever it is. NASA is too focused on making sure the foam doesn't cause another problem.
Your guess would be wrong - as NASA has a medium strong track record of spotting flaws. They aren't so good at fixing them however.
However, the foam was fine for 20+ years and the chances of the same exact thing happening again are infinitely smaller than the chances of a new problem occurring.
No, the foam hasn't been good for twenty years - it's been falling in a steady rain since STS-1. A program to fix the foam once and for all was already in work at the time Columbia was lost. (Equally, a fix was already designed for the joint rotation problem that destroyed Challenger - the problem was finding money for a fix to something that (like the foam) wasn't believed to be a big enough problem to ground the fleet.)
Nobody needs to ask the Russians - to students of space issues the answers are well known.
How do the Russians launch their vehicles one after another without lots of funfare but with almost success?
By having an extremely simple booster with low-to-modest performance and vast amounts of margin built in. This means pretty reliable, but it means not much room for growth and not much in the way of accomplishments. (What accomplishments they do have are because of the larger, and much less reliable and more expensive Proton - not the Soyuz.)
There have been almost 2,300 successful Soyuz launches and just 11 Soyuz failures ever...!
You have to be careful there - the Russian have two spacecraft that they call Soyuz, don't confuse the two.
The Soyuz booster has indeed flown 2000-odd time, with a sucess rate of 98%. Oddly enough, thats the same sucess rate that the US has achieved.
The Soyuz capsule on the other hand, has flown only 90-odd times, and has had significant (life threatening) accidents no fewer then 8 times, plus two fatal accidents, plus about 8 loss-of-mission accidents.
That's a success rate that cant be beat!
That's a sucess rate no better than the US, and from some angles far worse. It's a sucess rate that in any other industry would cause headlines in 72-point type on a daily basis. (If 1% of 747 flights failed, there's be something like 20-30 747 crashes daily.)
To make matters worse, they do it cheaper too!
Umm... Maybe. Nobody knows how much a Soyuz (booster or capsule) flight actually costs. There's no direct conversion - and the prices they've quoted/charged have varied widely. No doubt not having to amortize the cost of your infrastructure helps, as does paying your engineers wages equivalent to your average third-world Nike sweat shop worker.
Slashdot Mirror
Frankly, I suspect you are doing a disservice to your clients by choosing philosophy over functionality.
In both cases, CC allows you legal remedies if someone does do or attempt to do those things; but it doesn't stop them.
Not being online does not equate to lost. Tens of thousands (if not more) of book collectors and collections across the globe contain copies of this book, and many many others. Online data on the other hand typically resides in only a handful of places.
Finally, the Russians invaded, and they couldn't surrender to the US fast enough.
Nothing in the historical record indicates any reason to believe they would have given up after a demonstration.
Which is why I'm not invested in Google - I invest for the long term, and there are plenty of companies who manage for the long haul, and pay dividends, and are accountable if they fail to do so. After all, that's what stock companies were invented for - to pay cash returns to investors. Shortsighted investors and management are products of the perverted (and fairly recent) belief that perception (of stock value) is more important than reality (those checks in my account).
Word to the wise - if you are putting stocks in your IRA, pay attention to P/E. Re-invest your dividends. You'll be the richer for it.
If I assembled an encylopedia by copying pages from material whose copyright is held by others, binding the copies together, and making the result available to the public - I'd be liable for violating their copyright. The Wayback Machine is a collection that is exactly the same as this proposed encyclopedia - it's a collection of other peoples content.
Thus by extension of existing precedent; the Wayback Machine, by copying other peoples content violates copyright.
The Wayback machine isn't aggregation of facts, it's a direct copy of other peoples content. (The difference is unsubtle and important - no reasonable individual would confuse a phone book with an encyclopedia.) As I demonstrate above, content is subject to copyright. Your arguement fails to hold water because it presupposes that there is no difference between content and pointers to content. The issue isn't how the data is stored, by what data is stored (pointers or content).As it happens, I agree with you 100%. All I'm adressing is the OP's attempts to call a tail a leg. Just because something is right doesn't make it legal. The law does need to be changed - but we must understand what we are changing from and what we want to change to. The same laws that shield other people shield us too, and I want my rights protected. There will have to be compromise - and intelligent compromise requires understanding and clarity, not sophmoric handwaving.You need a low level sensor for two reasons;
The Wayback Machine on the other hand stores copies of pages, not copies of their adresses.
By having an extremely simple booster with low-to-modest performance and vast amounts of margin built in. This means pretty reliable, but it means not much room for growth and not much in the way of accomplishments. (What accomplishments they do have are because of the larger, and much less reliable and more expensive Proton - not the Soyuz.)You have to be careful there - the Russian have two spacecraft that they call Soyuz, don't confuse the two.
The Soyuz booster has indeed flown 2000-odd time, with a sucess rate of 98%. Oddly enough, thats the same sucess rate that the US has achieved.
The Soyuz capsule on the other hand, has flown only 90-odd times, and has had significant (life threatening) accidents no fewer then 8 times, plus two fatal accidents, plus about 8 loss-of-mission accidents.
That's a sucess rate no better than the US, and from some angles far worse. It's a sucess rate that in any other industry would cause headlines in 72-point type on a daily basis. (If 1% of 747 flights failed, there's be something like 20-30 747 crashes daily.)Umm... Maybe. Nobody knows how much a Soyuz (booster or capsule) flight actually costs. There's no direct conversion - and the prices they've quoted/charged have varied widely. No doubt not having to amortize the cost of your infrastructure helps, as does paying your engineers wages equivalent to your average third-world Nike sweat shop worker.