I was very much in favor of what they were trying to do in the Eldred v. Ashcroft case, and can't understand why any judge could possibly think that extending copyright terms on existing works could encourage innovation. But I have to say that my initial reaction to this is that I don't like it at all. One of the nice features of copyright in my mind is the fact that it doesn't require going through a beurocratic agency - your copyright is assumed at the time of creation. If we go back to the old system it will create an unnecisarry burden on both the government and content creators.
All of the problems mentioned in the FAQ are really due to the fact that copyright is too long. Furthermore, I don't see how unconditional copyright creates a violation of free speech. (I haven't read the whole complaint yet, just the FAQ) But this is a good time to remind people to write their congress critters about the Public Domain Enhancement Act It will acheive the exact same goal of releasing "orphanware" into the public domain, but only requires people to register for copyright after 50 years - only putting the burden on money grubbers who want copyright for longer than it should exist anyway.
Very happy constitutes those who rated their level of happiness as 10 out of 10. Respondents were asked to grade their level of happiness on a scale of 1-10 with 1 being very unhappy and 10 being very happy
I wish that they would have provided the rest of the data. I can't think of any job that I have that I would rate as 10/10. It would be interesting to see, for example, what percentage of people like their job more than they dislike it (ranked it 6 or better).
Another reason I'm skeptical is that this was put out by the City&Guild, which is primarily a vocational training organization, so naturally they would pick the data that would make their services look best. Not that there are not a lot of unhappy IT people - I just think that this exagerates it.
Again, kids are very flexible about learning new things. They latched onto that Aptosaurus like nothing. Actually I think they kind of enjoyed being able to correct all the adults that still called it brontosaurus.
If you were to tell them that we have learned that Charon is not really a moon of Pluto, but that they are close to the same size so they revolve around each other like people dancing, they would think that is really cool. If you further went on to tell them that we have found out that there are a whole bunch of icy subplanets like Pluto and Charon but smaller, and maybe one day we will find one that is bigger, and maybe they could be the one to find it, they will get even more excited about astronomy.
Honestly, it is the adults that are stubborn about keeping the status quo, not the kids.
I think part of the problem is the fact that memorizing the 9 planets are all most people really know about our solar system, and so they tend to be fairly sentimental about it. I think a much more accurate and interesting approach to teaching kids would be to start of by brainstorming all the different types of objects in space - galaxies, solar systems, stars, moons, astroids, comets, nebulas. Then instead of memorizing just the planets memorize all the different regions of our solar system and what makes them special. Start with the sun, then you get to the inner planets, then astroid belt made mostly of rock, then giant gass planets, then the Kupier Belt full of icy objects and finally the Oort cloud. Then lastly you describe the interesting features of each area, including the planets and what makes them unique.
This journey approach would be far more interesting to the kids and by the time you got to the point of describing pluto and charon, they would have an understanding of how diverse (for lack of non PC word) matter in space is and would be less concerned about sticking a specific catagory on it, and just be excited that it was yet another unique and interesting thing.
It's the difference between decribing the cool terrain, people and features in country as opposed to just memorizing the state capitals. The former is far more interesting, and informative, and kids will eat it up.
Actually you can take that one more step, and do away with regulation altogether. People forget that the government's power as a consumer is often just a big as it's power as a regulator. Imagine what would happen if the DoD created (or picked an existing) open file format for word processors and mandated that in 5 years all word processing documents created by the DoD or contractors must be in this open format.
And the clintcher is that they have a legitimate reason to do so. If you have ever worked for the government you know that record retention of up to 50 years is not an uncommon requirement. With proprietary formats the only option is to print everything out and store it as hard copies (which is not a bad idea anyway for extremely long retention requirements, but a pain for medium term). Not to mention the fact that the could would likely get a better product if the feild was open to competition.
Anti-trust offenses always hurt the customer in the long run. That is why we have laws against them. So why doesn't the biggest customer in the world - the US government - leverage it's position and demand a better product?
It's still based on KHTML. I don't know to what extent CSS selection is done by KHTML and what is done by the surrounding app.
A quick check however shows that the problem appears to be with cookies. Even after changing settings to allow all cookies, the cookie 'kavlonLook' did not appear in my cookie db after submitting your form.
They didn't pull out because it was not making money. They have said this many times before. They started Fedora because they wanted a testing bed with rapid turn around and short release cycle. While I am sad to see RHL go it really is a boon to linux to have something like Fedora to pound out bugs on all the bleeding edge software releases. Furthermore, with a short release cycle it is impractical to provide support for long periods of time - you would end up supporting a dozen different releases all at once. Lastly, they didn't have the man-power to properly develop both Fedora and RHL, so they axed RHL, thinking that a test bed was more important than a desktop product.
Again, dropping RHL was a strategic decision (for good or bad) not a failure of the business model.
To add to the previous three posters who all made excelent points - RedHat GPL'd most everything and provided ISO's for download, and still managed to make money off of Red Hat Linux. This will just increase install base, not decrease sales.
How about you decide if you are competent. If you want to administrate your own server, you get a "business connection" with fat upload and no firewall. Everyone else will just go with the normal connection that has "virus blocking built-in". It's not perfect, but much better than what we have now.
You're no longer part of the network. You're only a consumer and spectator.
No you are not. You can contribute to the content on the internet in a million ways. You can add content to forums and Wikis. You can chat with friends in IRC and IM. You can write email to anyone. You can have your own site at places who will give you space for free. Or you can pay for space on a multitude of hosts, at a wide range of pricing options. You can contribute to the internet as much as anyone on an unfettered T1.
The only thing you can't do is be a system administrator. And that is a good thing. These connections need to be administered - improperly administrated computers are what make virus and spam possible. 99% of people on broadband are not qualified to administer network security, and it is absolutely rediculus for slashdotters to get angry at them for failing to live up to that expectation. The ISP's are the IT department for the home user, and they need to start acting like it.
If you wan't to be your own system administrator, there are accounts for that. You will be much happier if you just get one, and everyone will be happier when the stability of the internet is not dependant on average users being network security experts.
Yeah, it is better but still a major pain because you never know what devices will actually be able to read those disks once you make them.
Out of curiosity, for people that are using +/-RW, what are you using it for? All the applications that I can think of needing large amounts of rewritable space, it would be better to just use an external drive than DVD.
I can think of many uses for +/-R : archiving, home videos, cheap enough to give to people. But I haven't stumpled upon any uses for +/- RW.
That is an awesome idea! I'm surprized the Libertarians didn't think of it sooner.
Quick Mr President, you must get down to the bomb shelter, for good of mankind. This television will show what is happening on the ground and this gauge will tell you when the radiation is safe enough to come out.
Meanwhile, we cue the ILM generated apocoliptic images and get on with our life. It's like the B-Ark, only cheaper!
Why would our world leaders have anything to do with it? It is the scientists that know what is going on, and the people that they would tell, in this order would be 1) other astronomers, 2) their families 3) the politicians 4) the journalists. There would be enough people that knew about it before the politicians that it would be impossible to cover up even if they wanted to.
Ahh, Wrong. If the wings fold up at 90 angles during re-entry, it will reduce the amount of friction on the wings, not increase it. Folding up the wings allows it to accellerate negatively at a slower rate, without having its wings snap off from the force.
Huh? I don't understand. How does less friction => slower acceleration? Also, their site did not mention anything about concern that the wings would snap off as a reason for the design.
Why do you "fold" the wings to come back down? In space, the wings are folded up to provide a shuttle-cock or "feather" effect to give the ship extremely high drag for reentry. This allows the reentry deceleration to occur at a higher altitude and greatly reduces the forces and heating on the structure. Also, the ship, in the feathered configuration, will align itself automatically such that the pilot has a less-critical flight control task. We refer to this as "care-free reentry". The atmosphere orients the vehicle to a belly-first attitude without pilot input. Another benefit is that, since the altitude is higher, the pilot can glide further after the entry deceleration. A SpaceShipOne pilot can glide more than 60 miles after he converts back to the non-feathered glider shape.
Anyways, even at 100km I would think that re-entry like conditions would be encountered and you'd need the high angle of attack.
If you read thier site (after the slashdotting subsides) you will see that the wings fold up 90 degrees during reentry which gives them a very large amount of drag, while maintaining a stable angle of decent.
Don't you know? In Japan all cars transform into fighting robots! Being able to pilot a fighting robot is required of everyone who gets a drivers licence. My friend Mark once saw this giant moth just think about attacking his town and Fighting Robots chopped it head off just like that! I mean, with the restrictions on their official military, it's either that or have you country taken over giant monsters. It's an easy choice in my opinion.
Seriously though, this is by far the coolest robot I have ever seen in my life. Look at the stop test. That is something that I would be excited to see in a movie, moving in real life.
Did you know the Golden Rule of humanity "do unto others as you would have them do unto you" is from Confucious? That "unto" King James lingo bullshit was added in to make people think only the Bible has any wisdom in the world.
Give it a break:) First, there is no evidence that Jesus (or the writers of the new testimant) stole that from confucious. It is a good idea that many cultures have "discovered" independently. Second that "unto bullshit" is in there because that is how the language was spoken when the King James translation was done.
Yeah, New Mexico and Arizona are also left out. I destinctly remember the last summer when they came (about 12 years ago I think). Us kids though it was great fun to kill as many as we could, and collected them in 5 gallon buckets.
Try seemlessly switching between access points, while maintaining a connection to another server. You can't because with IP you are assigned an address based on your upstream provider which can't float from network to network. If you are using an application protocol like HTTP you don't notice that much because you open a new connection everytime you request a page. But if you are using something like ftp or streaming video, you drop connection when switching access points and thus IP addresses.
I can see a lot of military applications for a true wireless protocol. In fact most all of miltary applications I can think of would require it to work reliably.
Slashdot Mirror
I was very much in favor of what they were trying to do in the Eldred v. Ashcroft case, and can't understand why any judge could possibly think that extending copyright terms on existing works could encourage innovation. But I have to say that my initial reaction to this is that I don't like it at all. One of the nice features of copyright in my mind is the fact that it doesn't require going through a beurocratic agency - your copyright is assumed at the time of creation. If we go back to the old system it will create an unnecisarry burden on both the government and content creators.
All of the problems mentioned in the FAQ are really due to the fact that copyright is too long. Furthermore, I don't see how unconditional copyright creates a violation of free speech. (I haven't read the whole complaint yet, just the FAQ) But this is a good time to remind people to write their congress critters about the Public Domain Enhancement Act It will acheive the exact same goal of releasing "orphanware" into the public domain, but only requires people to register for copyright after 50 years - only putting the burden on money grubbers who want copyright for longer than it should exist anyway.
Very happy constitutes those who rated their level of happiness as 10 out of 10. Respondents were asked to grade their level of happiness on a scale of 1-10 with 1 being very unhappy and 10 being very happy
I wish that they would have provided the rest of the data. I can't think of any job that I have that I would rate as 10/10. It would be interesting to see, for example, what percentage of people like their job more than they dislike it (ranked it 6 or better).
Another reason I'm skeptical is that this was put out by the City&Guild, which is primarily a vocational training organization, so naturally they would pick the data that would make their services look best. Not that there are not a lot of unhappy IT people - I just think that this exagerates it.
Again, kids are very flexible about learning new things. They latched onto that Aptosaurus like nothing. Actually I think they kind of enjoyed being able to correct all the adults that still called it brontosaurus.
If you were to tell them that we have learned that Charon is not really a moon of Pluto, but that they are close to the same size so they revolve around each other like people dancing, they would think that is really cool. If you further went on to tell them that we have found out that there are a whole bunch of icy subplanets like Pluto and Charon but smaller, and maybe one day we will find one that is bigger, and maybe they could be the one to find it, they will get even more excited about astronomy.
Honestly, it is the adults that are stubborn about keeping the status quo, not the kids.
I think part of the problem is the fact that memorizing the 9 planets are all most people really know about our solar system, and so they tend to be fairly sentimental about it. I think a much more accurate and interesting approach to teaching kids would be to start of by brainstorming all the different types of objects in space - galaxies, solar systems, stars, moons, astroids, comets, nebulas. Then instead of memorizing just the planets memorize all the different regions of our solar system and what makes them special. Start with the sun, then you get to the inner planets, then astroid belt made mostly of rock, then giant gass planets, then the Kupier Belt full of icy objects and finally the Oort cloud. Then lastly you describe the interesting features of each area, including the planets and what makes them unique.
This journey approach would be far more interesting to the kids and by the time you got to the point of describing pluto and charon, they would have an understanding of how diverse (for lack of non PC word) matter in space is and would be less concerned about sticking a specific catagory on it, and just be excited that it was yet another unique and interesting thing.
It's the difference between decribing the cool terrain, people and features in country as opposed to just memorizing the state capitals. The former is far more interesting, and informative, and kids will eat it up.
Actually you can take that one more step, and do away with regulation altogether. People forget that the government's power as a consumer is often just a big as it's power as a regulator. Imagine what would happen if the DoD created (or picked an existing) open file format for word processors and mandated that in 5 years all word processing documents created by the DoD or contractors must be in this open format.
And the clintcher is that they have a legitimate reason to do so. If you have ever worked for the government you know that record retention of up to 50 years is not an uncommon requirement. With proprietary formats the only option is to print everything out and store it as hard copies (which is not a bad idea anyway for extremely long retention requirements, but a pain for medium term). Not to mention the fact that the could would likely get a better product if the feild was open to competition.
Anti-trust offenses always hurt the customer in the long run. That is why we have laws against them. So why doesn't the biggest customer in the world - the US government - leverage it's position and demand a better product?
I have never noticed any problems with cookies not working on another site before.
It's still based on KHTML. I don't know to what extent CSS selection is done by KHTML and what is done by the surrounding app.
A quick check however shows that the problem appears to be with cookies. Even after changing settings to allow all cookies, the cookie 'kavlonLook' did not appear in my cookie db after submitting your form.
FYI, this isn't working for safari.
That will only let you read the into, which doesn't say much more than the slashdot blurb.
But gol'darnit fish is much too expensive here in the desert for me to give it up just to read a professional troll.
They didn't pull out because it was not making money. They have said this many times before. They started Fedora because they wanted a testing bed with rapid turn around and short release cycle. While I am sad to see RHL go it really is a boon to linux to have something like Fedora to pound out bugs on all the bleeding edge software releases. Furthermore, with a short release cycle it is impractical to provide support for long periods of time - you would end up supporting a dozen different releases all at once. Lastly, they didn't have the man-power to properly develop both Fedora and RHL, so they axed RHL, thinking that a test bed was more important than a desktop product.
Again, dropping RHL was a strategic decision (for good or bad) not a failure of the business model.
To add to the previous three posters who all made excelent points - RedHat GPL'd most everything and provided ISO's for download, and still managed to make money off of Red Hat Linux. This will just increase install base, not decrease sales.
How about you decide if you are competent. If you want to administrate your own server, you get a "business connection" with fat upload and no firewall. Everyone else will just go with the normal connection that has "virus blocking built-in". It's not perfect, but much better than what we have now.
You're no longer part of the network. You're only a consumer and spectator.
No you are not. You can contribute to the content on the internet in a million ways. You can add content to forums and Wikis. You can chat with friends in IRC and IM. You can write email to anyone. You can have your own site at places who will give you space for free. Or you can pay for space on a multitude of hosts, at a wide range of pricing options. You can contribute to the internet as much as anyone on an unfettered T1.
The only thing you can't do is be a system administrator. And that is a good thing. These connections need to be administered - improperly administrated computers are what make virus and spam possible. 99% of people on broadband are not qualified to administer network security, and it is absolutely rediculus for slashdotters to get angry at them for failing to live up to that expectation. The ISP's are the IT department for the home user, and they need to start acting like it.
If you wan't to be your own system administrator, there are accounts for that. You will be much happier if you just get one, and everyone will be happier when the stability of the internet is not dependant on average users being network security experts.
Yeah, it is better but still a major pain because you never know what devices will actually be able to read those disks once you make them.
Out of curiosity, for people that are using +/-RW, what are you using it for? All the applications that I can think of needing large amounts of rewritable space, it would be better to just use an external drive than DVD.
I can think of many uses for +/-R : archiving, home videos, cheap enough to give to people. But I haven't stumpled upon any uses for +/- RW.
That is an awesome idea! I'm surprized the Libertarians didn't think of it sooner.
Quick Mr President, you must get down to the bomb shelter, for good of mankind. This television will show what is happening on the ground and this gauge will tell you when the radiation is safe enough to come out.
Meanwhile, we cue the ILM generated apocoliptic images and get on with our life. It's like the B-Ark, only cheaper!
Yes, I recomend Rob Schneider.
Why would our world leaders have anything to do with it? It is the scientists that know what is going on, and the people that they would tell, in this order would be 1) other astronomers, 2) their families 3) the politicians 4) the journalists. There would be enough people that knew about it before the politicians that it would be impossible to cover up even if they wanted to.
Huh? I don't understand. How does less friction => slower acceleration? Also, their site did not mention anything about concern that the wings would snap off as a reason for the design.
Anyways, even at 100km I would think that re-entry like conditions would be encountered and you'd need the high angle of attack.
If you read thier site (after the slashdotting subsides) you will see that the wings fold up 90 degrees during reentry which gives them a very large amount of drag, while maintaining a stable angle of decent.
Don't you know? In Japan all cars transform into fighting robots! Being able to pilot a fighting robot is required of everyone who gets a drivers licence. My friend Mark once saw this giant moth just think about attacking his town and Fighting Robots chopped it head off just like that! I mean, with the restrictions on their official military, it's either that or have you country taken over giant monsters. It's an easy choice in my opinion.
Seriously though, this is by far the coolest robot I have ever seen in my life. Look at the stop test. That is something that I would be excited to see in a movie, moving in real life.
If this is hoax I am going to be so pissed.
Good point on Tao Te Ching.
:) First, there is no evidence that Jesus (or the writers of the new testimant) stole that from confucious. It is a good idea that many cultures have "discovered" independently. Second that "unto bullshit" is in there because that is how the language was spoken when the King James translation was done.
Did you know the Golden Rule of humanity "do unto others as you would have them do unto you" is from Confucious? That "unto" King James lingo bullshit was added in to make people think only the Bible has any wisdom in the world.
Give it a break
So what does this mean for the job security of this guy ?
Yeah, New Mexico and Arizona are also left out. I destinctly remember the last summer when they came (about 12 years ago I think). Us kids though it was great fun to kill as many as we could, and collected them in 5 gallon buckets.
Try seemlessly switching between access points, while maintaining a connection to another server. You can't because with IP you are assigned an address based on your upstream provider which can't float from network to network. If you are using an application protocol like HTTP you don't notice that much because you open a new connection everytime you request a page. But if you are using something like ftp or streaming video, you drop connection when switching access points and thus IP addresses.
I can see a lot of military applications for a true wireless protocol. In fact most all of miltary applications I can think of would require it to work reliably.