That happens a lot - similar bills are introduced, debated in committee, etc. Some are better than others, and if the process isn't completely broken (not even going there...) the various ideas get consolidated into something that meets everyone's needs and is then introduced to the floor.
In this case, it seems like a law protecting any of your password-protected/private information (email, photo sharing, online backups, whatever) would be much more powerful than the previous one that focused mostly on your "social networking" accounts...
Yeah, it didn't make sense. After reading the article, it was clearly a typo, and should have said "from accessing information on any computer that isn't owned or controlled by an employer". Ie. employers can still demand you hand over passwords on *their* systems, which seems reasonable enough.
Yeah, that's part of what is so stupid about the article. Why does every technology company even NEED to be all about "social networking" and "Web X.Y"?
If they continue with the obscene profitability they have so far had no problem maintaining, I'm sure their shareholders won't care what idiotic label a hack journalist wants to pin on them...
Actually, it's the same Patti Hart who was thrown under the bus by AT&T and the E@H board when at Excite@Home.
Jermoluk (@Home's CEO) and George Bell (Excite's CEO) ran the company into the ground (along with AT&T, who screwed E@H at the last minute by pulling promised funding - to the tune of an eventual $350M settlement against them!). Patti was hired after all of the actual bad decisions were made and the end was inevitable - her biggest mistake was being naive enough to take the job.
And now she has the dubious distinction of being a scapegoat for not one, but two irrelevant search engine companies!
None of those force any federal regulation on anyone.
That's absurd, they absolutely force many federal regulations on people. DOMA specifically states that for any federal purposes a same sex marriage is NOT RECOGNIZED, which in itself discriminates against a large range of federal issues, from income tax to social security benefits to inheritance laws and even immigration.
And from that very link you provided:
"he would have voted for the Defense of Marriage Act, had he been in Congress in 1996."
"Paul has been a cosponsor of the Marriage Protection Act in each Congress since the bill's original introduction. It would bar federal judges from hearing cases pertaining to the constitutionality of the Defense of Marriage Act. Speaking in support of the Marriage Protection Act in 2004, he urged those of his fellow congressional representatives who “believe Congress needs to take immediate action to protect marriage”
So he clearly believes same-sex married couples should not receive any of the benefits of marriage, and he is even a co-sponsor of a bill to try to prevent the judicial branch from doing its Constitutionally appointed duty to judge the constitutionality of a law (which is even more insane in and of itself, and ironically if ever passed would of course itself be deemed unconstitutional by the courts).
Actually, recent GPUs *were* meant to do exactly this type of thing, and have been marketed by Nvidia and ATI heavily for this purpose. Of course there needs to be a CPU as well. The CPU runs the operating system and application code, and offloads very specific, parallelizable work to the GPU. This sort of architecture has existed almost as long as modern CPUs have existed.
And Quick Sync is even less of a general purpose CPU solution than using a GPU. Quick Sync uses dedicated application specific hardware on the die to do its encoding.
You mean those large, established "dinosaurs" like Oracle, Intel, or Microsoft? Just because they are not in every headline doesn't mean they are "MySpace gone". Microsoft made $23B in income on $80B in sales last year. That's more than Google, Facebook, Twitter, and a dozen other "popular" tech companies *combined*.
Hell, Apple only made $26B, and they are considered the most valuable company in the world. They sure don't seem to have an inertia problem adapting, either.
If you *really* think there is any remote chance Facebook or Google will be irrelevant in 5 years (the assertion of the article we are discussing), I'd highly encourage you to short them now, you'll make a killing! Just like all of those people who said the same thing about Oracle, Intel, Microsoft, and Apple 5 years ago did, I'm sure...
Wow, wasn't that just hilariously clever. Problem is most of your version is NOT true now, sorry.
There are not a lot of *decent* social networks that have grown huge and then failed over the years. Friendster and Myspace were horribly engineered with almost no reasonable design or long term plans (the first version of Myspace was hacked together in a couple weeks as a Friendster ripoff). Facebook actually built a platform with public APIs, that let other people do a lot of the work developing useful apps for them. But even so, Facebook's value is still mostly the *customer* base, not the technology. Of course, that customer base is so large now it will still be a significant barrier to entry...
Google, on the other hand, basically has a 5-10 year lead on anyone trying to compete with them on an advertising and search platform. Microsoft/Bing is the only one even trying to compete right now and they have burned billions with no profits to show for it yet.
Google? Anyone claiming they can be replaced in 5 years just has NO idea how much work it really was to get to where they are today. The fact that it's trivially simple to search for something on Google and find decent results in 100ms does NOT MEAN it's a trivially simple thing to implement. It means they have spent an insane amount of time and money to make it trivially simple to use.
There are a LOT of search engines that failed over the years... but why? Because Google was so much better there was no reason to use them. Until someone makes something better, I don't think they are in any danger of irrelevance...
It seems valid only to people who will not learn the lessons of history.
If you want to learn the lessons of history, just look at HOW the US and NATO eventually conquered the Soviet Union. It wasn't though a SINGLE weapon used in war, it was by forcing them to spend money on their military until it basically bankrupted them.
And big surprise, that's exactly what terrorist networks have done, what China, North Korea, Iran, etc have done. Create perceived threats with little expense and goad the US into responding with trillions of dollars in useless wars and weapons development. In China's case, they are even providing the shovel (ie loans) to dig the hole.
Which in fact seems to be China's exact strategy with the J-20. Build a barely working prototype that superficially looks like the F-22, and let the US continue to spend billions (borrowed from them!) to pay for development of something to "counter" it.
There is a point for the F22, and that is to suppress all other power's desire to make stuff that will encounter it.
If that's true, then the "other powers" are pretty much guaranteed to win. You know that's how NATO eventually defeated the Soviet Union, right? No need to fight, just make your opponent spend so much money on perceived threats it bankrupts them.
His point seems valid. Air superiority hasn't been remotely in question in any war the US has been involved in since WWII. $80B was a massive waste of money for a plane that after 15 years of development is still not combat-ready (and more notably hasn't been missed in the slightest).
And I should have added - the same applies to anyone - elderly, mentally ill, or just destitute (not just a fetus/baby) that can't care for themselves. If you (as in "an absolute libertarian" as that's what you are arguing against in my post) demand they have a right not to be left in the gutter to die, then you should stop whining and pay your taxes to support that demand. Yes, that's welfare, and you can't pretend to be moral without "putting your money where your mouth is."
But what does that have to do with a *libertarian* definition? If the government is not responsible for sustaining a non-viable life, then what right does the government have have towards legislating it be preserved!?!
Federal and state government are both still government. Saying "the states should decide" does not make Rand Paul a libertarian, it's just a cop-out answer from the typical political tool.
You can oppose marriage (or have arbitrarily complicated conditions for when you think it's a good idea and when it's not) and be a libertarian; to be a libertarian you have to oppose government taking a position on marriage.
You can have an *opinion* on marriage, sure. But *opposing* it (for OTHERS) is by definition imposing your opinion on someone else. That's not respecting an individual's rights in any sense. Rand Paul said he thought the Federal govt should stay out and let the states impose their own definition. That's not libertarianism, that's just passing the buck to another government body, and a total wimpout answer to preserve conservative political capital.
And I disagree that the abortion issue is fuzzy form a PURELY libertarian (ie non-religious) view. A purely libertarian definition would be that a fetus is a life when it can live on its own. What right does anyone but the woman who is spending resources (money, nutrition, etc) to keep it alive have in the decision? If it's viable, it's murder, if not, it's not. And in either case, if you disagree, put up the money to back your IMPOSITION on someone else and don't be a hypocrite who imposes a burden while claiming it's their own problem to pay for *your* decision (ie. the conservative pseudo-libertarian pro-life-anti-government aid position).
Oh well, I was going to agree with you on that one, if it's been more than 9 months! (or even 6-7, really).
Anything else, and I think a pretty simple libertarian definition in absence of religion is "able to sustain itself". A woman has a right to decide what to do with her body, and if she wants a fetus (that is affecting her own health in many ways and using her ingested nutrients, etc) out that's her right. If it can live on its own every effort should be made to ensure that, but if not, it's not a viable organism.
And this is one example of why "true" libertarianism is bogus, IMO. Why should a woman be responsible for an unwanted pregnancy? If others want to enforce it on her against her wishes, they should pay for all costs (IMO after it's viable and born/removed, as before that everything should be the woman's decision). And that includes all costs of fostering, adoption, etc.
If you want to make it your problem, pony up your money. If not, stay the hell out of it.
Rand has stated "life begins at conception". That's a pretty clear line he drew.
Until organogenesis begins (after a month or so) it's still basically a blob of undifferentiated cells, with less complexity than the cells you lose when you skin your knee.
Abortion is an almost purely religious debate at its core.
It's only open to interpretation if you believe a "god" has given a "soul" to a blastula. If you don't believe in that god or soul then it's pretty clear a small sphere of undifferentiated stem cells is not a person. And what libertarian believes they have the right to impose their religious beliefs on someone else?
Extreme is in the eye of the beholder, but any *real* libertarian would most definitely call opposing abortion (even in the case of rape or incest), gay marriage, and drug legalization extreme. Basically he wants the government to stay out of *his* life, but is happy to let it meddle in others' if he disagrees with them.
He's a sham of a libertarian. A libertarian believes the government should stay out of your personal business all the time, not just when it suits his own political and/or religious beliefs. Someone who opposes same sex marriage, legalization of drugs, racial integration/equality, and abortion (even in the case of rape or incest) is NOT a real libertarian.
Yeah, as I already said I don't think it was a useful thing to do in the end.
But if someone mailed you an anonymous bomb threat on a company's letterhead, you'd at least be obligated to investigate the company. You'd think it could be done in a less disruptive and generally assholish manner, though.
Well, they had a warrant to seize the server and enough reasonable cause (the actual bomb threat email came from that server). So it was due process, and done according to the Constitutional requirement for a warrant.
Now, if they knew anything about anonymous remailers (which shouldn't be that hard, doesn't the FBI have any technical staff??) they should have known it was a useless action that just cost everyone time and money with no results...
Slashdot Mirror
That happens a lot - similar bills are introduced, debated in committee, etc. Some are better than others, and if the process isn't completely broken (not even going there...) the various ideas get consolidated into something that meets everyone's needs and is then introduced to the floor.
In this case, it seems like a law protecting any of your password-protected/private information (email, photo sharing, online backups, whatever) would be much more powerful than the previous one that focused mostly on your "social networking" accounts...
Yeah, it didn't make sense. After reading the article, it was clearly a typo, and should have said "from accessing information on any computer that isn't owned or controlled by an employer". Ie. employers can still demand you hand over passwords on *their* systems, which seems reasonable enough.
Yeah, that's part of what is so stupid about the article. Why does every technology company even NEED to be all about "social networking" and "Web X.Y"?
If they continue with the obscene profitability they have so far had no problem maintaining, I'm sure their shareholders won't care what idiotic label a hack journalist wants to pin on them...
Actually, it's the same Patti Hart who was thrown under the bus by AT&T and the E@H board when at Excite@Home.
Jermoluk (@Home's CEO) and George Bell (Excite's CEO) ran the company into the ground (along with AT&T, who screwed E@H at the last minute by pulling promised funding - to the tune of an eventual $350M settlement against them!). Patti was hired after all of the actual bad decisions were made and the end was inevitable - her biggest mistake was being naive enough to take the job.
And now she has the dubious distinction of being a scapegoat for not one, but two irrelevant search engine companies!
None of those force any federal regulation on anyone.
That's absurd, they absolutely force many federal regulations on people. DOMA specifically states that for any federal purposes a same sex marriage is NOT RECOGNIZED, which in itself discriminates against a large range of federal issues, from income tax to social security benefits to inheritance laws and even immigration.
And from that very link you provided:
"he would have voted for the Defense of Marriage Act, had he been in Congress in 1996."
"Paul has been a cosponsor of the Marriage Protection Act in each Congress since the bill's original introduction. It would bar federal judges from hearing cases pertaining to the constitutionality of the Defense of Marriage Act. Speaking in support of the Marriage Protection Act in 2004, he urged those of his fellow congressional representatives who “believe Congress needs to take immediate action to protect marriage”
So he clearly believes same-sex married couples should not receive any of the benefits of marriage, and he is even a co-sponsor of a bill to try to prevent the judicial branch from doing its Constitutionally appointed duty to judge the constitutionality of a law (which is even more insane in and of itself, and ironically if ever passed would of course itself be deemed unconstitutional by the courts).
Handwaving, indeed.
Actually, recent GPUs *were* meant to do exactly this type of thing, and have been marketed by Nvidia and ATI heavily for this purpose. Of course there needs to be a CPU as well. The CPU runs the operating system and application code, and offloads very specific, parallelizable work to the GPU. This sort of architecture has existed almost as long as modern CPUs have existed.
And Quick Sync is even less of a general purpose CPU solution than using a GPU. Quick Sync uses dedicated application specific hardware on the die to do its encoding.
Quick Sync uses dedicated HW on the die. Intel's solution that uses their GPU is called Clear Video.
You mean those large, established "dinosaurs" like Oracle, Intel, or Microsoft? Just because they are not in every headline doesn't mean they are "MySpace gone". Microsoft made $23B in income on $80B in sales last year. That's more than Google, Facebook, Twitter, and a dozen other "popular" tech companies *combined*.
Hell, Apple only made $26B, and they are considered the most valuable company in the world. They sure don't seem to have an inertia problem adapting, either.
If you *really* think there is any remote chance Facebook or Google will be irrelevant in 5 years (the assertion of the article we are discussing), I'd highly encourage you to short them now, you'll make a killing! Just like all of those people who said the same thing about Oracle, Intel, Microsoft, and Apple 5 years ago did, I'm sure...
Wow, wasn't that just hilariously clever. Problem is most of your version is NOT true now, sorry.
There are not a lot of *decent* social networks that have grown huge and then failed over the years. Friendster and Myspace were horribly engineered with almost no reasonable design or long term plans (the first version of Myspace was hacked together in a couple weeks as a Friendster ripoff). Facebook actually built a platform with public APIs, that let other people do a lot of the work developing useful apps for them. But even so, Facebook's value is still mostly the *customer* base, not the technology. Of course, that customer base is so large now it will still be a significant barrier to entry...
Google, on the other hand, basically has a 5-10 year lead on anyone trying to compete with them on an advertising and search platform. Microsoft/Bing is the only one even trying to compete right now and they have burned billions with no profits to show for it yet.
Facebook, maybe (but no, not really).
Google? Anyone claiming they can be replaced in 5 years just has NO idea how much work it really was to get to where they are today. The fact that it's trivially simple to search for something on Google and find decent results in 100ms does NOT MEAN it's a trivially simple thing to implement. It means they have spent an insane amount of time and money to make it trivially simple to use.
There are a LOT of search engines that failed over the years... but why? Because Google was so much better there was no reason to use them. Until someone makes something better, I don't think they are in any danger of irrelevance...
It seems valid only to people who will not learn the lessons of history.
If you want to learn the lessons of history, just look at HOW the US and NATO eventually conquered the Soviet Union. It wasn't though a SINGLE weapon used in war, it was by forcing them to spend money on their military until it basically bankrupted them.
And big surprise, that's exactly what terrorist networks have done, what China, North Korea, Iran, etc have done. Create perceived threats with little expense and goad the US into responding with trillions of dollars in useless wars and weapons development. In China's case, they are even providing the shovel (ie loans) to dig the hole.
Which in fact seems to be China's exact strategy with the J-20. Build a barely working prototype that superficially looks like the F-22, and let the US continue to spend billions (borrowed from them!) to pay for development of something to "counter" it.
There is a point for the F22, and that is to suppress all other power's desire to make stuff that will encounter it.
If that's true, then the "other powers" are pretty much guaranteed to win. You know that's how NATO eventually defeated the Soviet Union, right? No need to fight, just make your opponent spend so much money on perceived threats it bankrupts them.
His point seems valid. Air superiority hasn't been remotely in question in any war the US has been involved in since WWII. $80B was a massive waste of money for a plane that after 15 years of development is still not combat-ready (and more notably hasn't been missed in the slightest).
And I should have added - the same applies to anyone - elderly, mentally ill, or just destitute (not just a fetus/baby) that can't care for themselves. If you (as in "an absolute libertarian" as that's what you are arguing against in my post) demand they have a right not to be left in the gutter to die, then you should stop whining and pay your taxes to support that demand. Yes, that's welfare, and you can't pretend to be moral without "putting your money where your mouth is."
But what does that have to do with a *libertarian* definition? If the government is not responsible for sustaining a non-viable life, then what right does the government have have towards legislating it be preserved!?!
Federal and state government are both still government. Saying "the states should decide" does not make Rand Paul a libertarian, it's just a cop-out answer from the typical political tool.
You can oppose marriage (or have arbitrarily complicated conditions for when you think it's a good idea and when it's not) and be a libertarian; to be a libertarian you have to oppose government taking a position on marriage.
You can have an *opinion* on marriage, sure. But *opposing* it (for OTHERS) is by definition imposing your opinion on someone else. That's not respecting an individual's rights in any sense. Rand Paul said he thought the Federal govt should stay out and let the states impose their own definition. That's not libertarianism, that's just passing the buck to another government body, and a total wimpout answer to preserve conservative political capital.
And I disagree that the abortion issue is fuzzy form a PURELY libertarian (ie non-religious) view. A purely libertarian definition would be that a fetus is a life when it can live on its own. What right does anyone but the woman who is spending resources (money, nutrition, etc) to keep it alive have in the decision? If it's viable, it's murder, if not, it's not. And in either case, if you disagree, put up the money to back your IMPOSITION on someone else and don't be a hypocrite who imposes a burden while claiming it's their own problem to pay for *your* decision (ie. the conservative pseudo-libertarian pro-life-anti-government aid position).
Oh well, I was going to agree with you on that one, if it's been more than 9 months! (or even 6-7, really).
Anything else, and I think a pretty simple libertarian definition in absence of religion is "able to sustain itself". A woman has a right to decide what to do with her body, and if she wants a fetus (that is affecting her own health in many ways and using her ingested nutrients, etc) out that's her right. If it can live on its own every effort should be made to ensure that, but if not, it's not a viable organism.
And this is one example of why "true" libertarianism is bogus, IMO. Why should a woman be responsible for an unwanted pregnancy? If others want to enforce it on her against her wishes, they should pay for all costs (IMO after it's viable and born/removed, as before that everything should be the woman's decision). And that includes all costs of fostering, adoption, etc.
If you want to make it your problem, pony up your money. If not, stay the hell out of it.
Rand has stated "life begins at conception". That's a pretty clear line he drew.
Until organogenesis begins (after a month or so) it's still basically a blob of undifferentiated cells, with less complexity than the cells you lose when you skin your knee.
Abortion is an almost purely religious debate at its core.
It's only open to interpretation if you believe a "god" has given a "soul" to a blastula. If you don't believe in that god or soul then it's pretty clear a small sphere of undifferentiated stem cells is not a person. And what libertarian believes they have the right to impose their religious beliefs on someone else?
Extreme is in the eye of the beholder, but any *real* libertarian would most definitely call opposing abortion (even in the case of rape or incest), gay marriage, and drug legalization extreme. Basically he wants the government to stay out of *his* life, but is happy to let it meddle in others' if he disagrees with them.
He's a sham of a libertarian. A libertarian believes the government should stay out of your personal business all the time, not just when it suits his own political and/or religious beliefs. Someone who opposes same sex marriage, legalization of drugs, racial integration/equality, and abortion (even in the case of rape or incest) is NOT a real libertarian.
Yeah, as I already said I don't think it was a useful thing to do in the end.
But if someone mailed you an anonymous bomb threat on a company's letterhead, you'd at least be obligated to investigate the company. You'd think it could be done in a less disruptive and generally assholish manner, though.
Well, they had a warrant to seize the server and enough reasonable cause (the actual bomb threat email came from that server). So it was due process, and done according to the Constitutional requirement for a warrant.
Now, if they knew anything about anonymous remailers (which shouldn't be that hard, doesn't the FBI have any technical staff??) they should have known it was a useless action that just cost everyone time and money with no results...