Why in the world did the parent get modded Troll? The slashdot collective is at it again. "Dissent shall be supressed!"
Seriously people, take greater care with your mod points. A reasoned argument that you don't agree with is not a troll, its a reasoned argument. A troll does not want to discuss, but inflame. The parent had a point. You can disagree with it. You can counter-argue it, but modding it troll undermines your own argument.
Bootlegging videos has become a flag waving issue now? Justified because of whatever faults America has? Until now, I never considered piracy a nation or nation-block issue, but rather a consumer versus company issue. That kind of thinking says it is okay to drive a BMW that I snatched from the factory because it is German.
Don't make me laugh about the EU being a superpower or about democracy in Europe.
Real power? Jeez, I have never seen so much heartache over deploying a few guys to the Congo for the election there. If you are going to do it, just park an amphibious ship off the coast and deploy some marines. France and Britain both possess such vessels and the marines to go with them. Oh wait... they hold them close in their own national interest.
Democracy? Bush is and always was an asshat, but I know what I have in government. Do you? I don't mean your national capital where the showboating happens, but in Brussels and Strassbourg where the real buttons are pushed. When was the last time you saw the evening newscast talking about what was happening in Brussels? Do you even know what laws are in the process of being debated or voted on in Strassbourg? You should. The local parliament in your country will be dutifully rubber stamping them soon.
No, I am not a fan of multilateralism and it is precisely because the opinion of the average citizen gets lost when nations decide things. If you don't like the result and persuade your elected officials to not ratify it (as has happened several times with the US on treaties in the last ten years), you get vilified for being unilateral I have no right to dislike a treaty or think it was badly conceived? What are my rights as a citizen in this wonderful multilateral world? Once the diplomats have agreed to something I have no say in the matter? The reaction in other European countries when some nation goes against consensus is similar.
Which leads to something else. Vivendi is one of the big entertainment producers. Vivendi is French. Rather than going to Sweden and dealing with them (btw - is that allegation proven or is it just a cheapshot to stir up support by playing the America card?), go to Brussels. The EU would see its own interest in protecting Vivendi, if for no other reason than the French see an interest in protecting Vivendi. Thusly... I can see the EU rather easily aligning itself with the MPAA here. And everyone in Europe will accept it with a smile because that was "multilateralism". Mark my words. It will happen and Stockholm will be forced to enact such laws by the EU.
I have voted against Bush twice and look forward to him going down a peg in November. But I've also watched the unrestrained America bashing in Europe of the last few years and feel no particular desire to play by their tune. I was once an enthusiastic Europhile, but being slagged as the root of all evil for a few years has changed my opinion.
Tsk tsk... going against the stashdot collective will get you modded down.
Its interesting how the whole downloading thing is being recast as a U.S.-vs-freedom thing.
And I do wonder about people who bitch about America and consume its pop culture at the same time. Even if their laws say they are not breaking the law, it is interesting.
I don't mean not pay for them, but boycott them. What I see coming out of this whole Pirate Bay thing is that people want to put up their middle finger to the US by not paying, but are still seduced by American pop culture enough to download it.
This "Gia/humans are a disease" crap is something that humans pulled out of their collective arses. Nature is a lot more resilient on geological timescales than you give it credit for. In the long term, we don't destroy, only change state.
Well... if we physically blew the planet up...
Anyway, this "deserving" bit is opinion only an opinion and not any universal law. My own opinion says it would be cool to go forth.
Nah, they would have been ripping off WPS, which would have made a better Linux. I used to run OS/2 back in the early 90's and the win95 interface was a step backwards.
Let me get this straight... You judge a people based on a single politician voted in on the slimest of majorities? It is a good thing I know some Canadians in person and you are not defining the country for me.
Look, Airbus is showing us images of bars and water fountains inside these planes. Boeing did the same thing when the 747 first came out 35 years or so ago. I have flown in a lot of 747s and have NEVER seena bar.
I expect to be seeing 800 seat flights in the next few years that are just going to suck becasue the gates, customs and baggage handling have not caught up. As it is, I already prefer to take a 767 or 777 over a 747 for becasue the stampeede is smaller.
Now if it was IE that was picky about html and Firefox that could render any junk, that would be considered a good thing. I still consider it a good thing. The purpose of the browser is to render content and facilitate communication, not teach webpage authors to be better html writers.
Nah, what we need is European style "industrial policy". I do not undersatnd how a country that continually runs a net trade deficit (translation - Americans buy more from abroad than they sell) can be called one of the most protectionist places on Earth. That trade deficit is what fuels growth in Asia and it is what fueled the exceptional growth in Europe in the 50's and 60's.
Certain people from a certain continent like to sneer at American "consumerism" and other isms while they themselves maintain a policy of mercantalism on the subject of trade. They then laud themselves on how generous they are with aid. Mercantilism is... ummm... ungenerous. Aid money just makes them feel better.
A positive trade imbalance is mercantalism. It is perfectly ok for a poor country to use it to join the ranks of the rich world, but most of the worlds rich countries still maintain such policy. This leaves Americans as everybodies consumers of last resort. So before you get up on your soapbox, check to make sure that your economy is not dependent on selling things to these fat, stupid, protectionist, bible thumping, gun toting, (did I miss anything?) loosers.
Actually, I know a guy who does wear his around his neck and he is a fellow/.er.
Ummm, also my el-cheapo mp3 player is also a flash drive and the wacky headphone integrated into neclace pretty much forces me to wear it around my neck, so does that count?
Sounds like a good job for a Firefox plugin. Check the wikpedia search result and compare the paragraph bodies to other high score results. Add those that copy wikpedia paragraphs verbatim to a blacklist. Then conduct your searches with lots of -"whatever".
Perhaps, but I think it may be less of an enhanced risk.
I am not sure that a company would be willing to sell its information that they do not want competitors to have and we already have these aggregators. This sort of thing happens already, but it is usually not the retailer that does it. I once bought a bottle of wine with a credit card. Mysteriously, I began to get wine related junkmail. This was clearly the credit card company as the wine shop (in downtown Montreal in this case) has no interest in advertising me as one of their customers; it risks a competitor "stealing me".
The wine shop itself may more likely be interested in using one of those tags that launches a DOS attack against unauthorized readers (I once read an RSA whitepaper on these, but I do not have the link handy) than in advertising me as somebody that buys expensive bottles of wine.
I could be wrong here. It boils down to a company weighing the cost of having customers "stolen" versus the gain in selling this data to an aggregator.
What I consider more likely is a clearing house for product master data. You enter a store and there are say six rfid tags on you. These six tags are queried against the clearing house database and return xml messages containing the product info, which you can now use to increase the "depth" of knowledge about a customer. Manufacturers would be willing to provide this information for a cut of the revenues and they would not be at risk to loose customers.
But they apparently can already get this information from your credit card company...
As most RFID tags in use are the el-cheapo "just respond with a serial number" type, I would be hard pressed to find a way that it would be terribly useful to a third party. At the moment, there is not even a standard ID system for RFID tags, but lets assume that there is for a moment; e.g. one similar to EAN. So you walk into a store and the scanner at the door reads SN#s 123456789, 987654321, blah, blah. Great! The store's CRM system is going to love this.
Now how do they correlate that with product information? Or, where do they get the "master data" (name, maker, stats, etc - catalog info) for that product? If it is something in their database already (e.g. a product that they sell), then they might be able to do a match against it. Otherwise, you have some anonymous product in your possession. Oh yeah, and do this all in realtime.
Now assuming they managed to score all that info from someplace. What will they do with it? Most stories about what CRM can do, such as men buying beer between 5 and 6 PM tend to correlate with men buying diapers in the same time frame; hence the store put diapers and beer together and profits went up, are just that; stories. In fact, they don't put the wealth of information they already get from customer cards to very sophisticated use.
Now if I could put a custom RFID tag on my keys and shoes, I could figure out where I put my keys and wallet what my kids did with my left shoe.
OK, I am not sure how Star Trek warp drives are supposed to work, but I remember a RPC circa 1990 called Traveller 2300 had something called "stutterwarp". The idea was this, take a starship and do the transporter trick to jump a few meters, or a couple of kilometers. Now do this at a few Mhz and you have near lightspeed with very little velocity.
" I am sure terrorists would have an easier time attacking our airports than in most third-world countries (they might not be able to attack the planes, but then it might not matter if they can cause massive economic damage without doing so)."
I flew through Heathrow a couple of months ago. What creeped me out was the security checkpoint. There were probably 400 people crowded into two ling queues that snaked back and forth in front of the security check. Perfect target for a suicide bomber and he need never actually go through security. The traffic jam outside of the security check is a better target than anyplace inside, including the plane.
Slashdot Mirror
Why in the world did the parent get modded Troll? The slashdot collective is at it again. "Dissent shall be supressed!"
Seriously people, take greater care with your mod points. A reasoned argument that you don't agree with is not a troll, its a reasoned argument. A troll does not want to discuss, but inflame. The parent had a point. You can disagree with it. You can counter-argue it, but modding it troll undermines your own argument.
Bootlegging videos has become a flag waving issue now? Justified because of whatever faults America has? Until now, I never considered piracy a nation or nation-block issue, but rather a consumer versus company issue. That kind of thinking says it is okay to drive a BMW that I snatched from the factory because it is German.
Don't make me laugh about the EU being a superpower or about democracy in Europe.
Real power? Jeez, I have never seen so much heartache over deploying a few guys to the Congo for the election there. If you are going to do it, just park an amphibious ship off the coast and deploy some marines. France and Britain both possess such vessels and the marines to go with them. Oh wait... they hold them close in their own national interest.
Democracy? Bush is and always was an asshat, but I know what I have in government. Do you? I don't mean your national capital where the showboating happens, but in Brussels and Strassbourg where the real buttons are pushed. When was the last time you saw the evening newscast talking about what was happening in Brussels? Do you even know what laws are in the process of being debated or voted on in Strassbourg? You should. The local parliament in your country will be dutifully rubber stamping them soon.
No, I am not a fan of multilateralism and it is precisely because the opinion of the average citizen gets lost when nations decide things. If you don't like the result and persuade your elected officials to not ratify it (as has happened several times with the US on treaties in the last ten years), you get vilified for being unilateral I have no right to dislike a treaty or think it was badly conceived? What are my rights as a citizen in this wonderful multilateral world? Once the diplomats have agreed to something I have no say in the matter? The reaction in other European countries when some nation goes against consensus is similar.
Which leads to something else. Vivendi is one of the big entertainment producers. Vivendi is French. Rather than going to Sweden and dealing with them (btw - is that allegation proven or is it just a cheapshot to stir up support by playing the America card?), go to Brussels. The EU would see its own interest in protecting Vivendi, if for no other reason than the French see an interest in protecting Vivendi. Thusly... I can see the EU rather easily aligning itself with the MPAA here. And everyone in Europe will accept it with a smile because that was "multilateralism". Mark my words. It will happen and Stockholm will be forced to enact such laws by the EU.
I have voted against Bush twice and look forward to him going down a peg in November. But I've also watched the unrestrained America bashing in Europe of the last few years and feel no particular desire to play by their tune. I was once an enthusiastic Europhile, but being slagged as the root of all evil for a few years has changed my opinion.
Dave
Tsk tsk... going against the stashdot collective will get you modded down.
Its interesting how the whole downloading thing is being recast as a U.S.-vs-freedom thing.
And I do wonder about people who bitch about America and consume its pop culture at the same time. Even if their laws say they are not breaking the law, it is interesting.
Feel free not to watch any hollywood movies then.
I don't mean not pay for them, but boycott them. What I see coming out of this whole Pirate Bay thing is that people want to put up their middle finger to the US by not paying, but are still seduced by American pop culture enough to download it.
Gah!
"does not stand up to examination"
This "Gia/humans are a disease" crap is something that humans pulled out of their collective arses. Nature is a lot more resilient on geological timescales than you give it credit for. In the long term, we don't destroy, only change state.
Well... if we physically blew the planet up...
Anyway, this "deserving" bit is opinion only an opinion and not any universal law. My own opinion says it would be cool to go forth.
Nah, they would have been ripping off WPS, which would have made a better Linux. I used to run OS/2 back in the early 90's and the win95 interface was a step backwards.
Interesting...
I voted for Kerry and you tell me to $%&/
The only response I can say is that the "Fuck ALL Them" attitude of many of my countrymen might just have a point.
Ummm... dude, the Canadians are in on the whole Echelon thing. It is more an English speakers snooping on everybody else thing.
Let me get this straight... You judge a people based on a single politician voted in on the slimest of majorities? It is a good thing I know some Canadians in person and you are not defining the country for me.
And why am I responding to an AC?
Look, Airbus is showing us images of bars and water fountains inside these planes. Boeing did the same thing when the 747 first came out 35 years or so ago. I have flown in a lot of 747s and have NEVER seena bar.
I expect to be seeing 800 seat flights in the next few years that are just going to suck becasue the gates, customs and baggage handling have not caught up. As it is, I already prefer to take a 767 or 777 over a 747 for becasue the stampeede is smaller.
Now if it was IE that was picky about html and Firefox that could render any junk, that would be considered a good thing. I still consider it a good thing. The purpose of the browser is to render content and facilitate communication, not teach webpage authors to be better html writers.
Does your country have a positive or negative trade imbalance? If it is positive, what right have you to complain?
Nah, what we need is European style "industrial policy". I do not undersatnd how a country that continually runs a net trade deficit (translation - Americans buy more from abroad than they sell) can be called one of the most protectionist places on Earth. That trade deficit is what fuels growth in Asia and it is what fueled the exceptional growth in Europe in the 50's and 60's.
Certain people from a certain continent like to sneer at American "consumerism" and other isms while they themselves maintain a policy of mercantalism on the subject of trade. They then laud themselves on how generous they are with aid. Mercantilism is... ummm... ungenerous. Aid money just makes them feel better.
A positive trade imbalance is mercantalism. It is perfectly ok for a poor country to use it to join the ranks of the rich world, but most of the worlds rich countries still maintain such policy. This leaves Americans as everybodies consumers of last resort. So before you get up on your soapbox, check to make sure that your economy is not dependent on selling things to these fat, stupid, protectionist, bible thumping, gun toting, (did I miss anything?) loosers.
Are you going to be using the rest of the gas in your tank? Becasue if not, I can light my BBQ with it.
Not likely. IIRC- he was not going much faster than the legal freeway limit in France. I think it is 150 kmph.
I assume that the iterator you mention is something different than the iterator available in java.util.Iterator.
Pardon my ignorance, but what are the other three C# goodies and why would I ever want a "partial" class?
Actually, I know a guy who does wear his around his neck and he is a fellow /.er.
Ummm, also my el-cheapo mp3 player is also a flash drive and the wacky headphone integrated into neclace pretty much forces me to wear it around my neck, so does that count?
I think I will wrap an orange tie wrap around mine to make it faster.
Sounds like a good job for a Firefox plugin. Check the wikpedia search result and compare the paragraph bodies to other high score results. Add those that copy wikpedia paragraphs verbatim to a blacklist. Then conduct your searches with lots of -"whatever".
Perhaps, but I think it may be less of an enhanced risk.
I am not sure that a company would be willing to sell its information that they do not want competitors to have and we already have these aggregators. This sort of thing happens already, but it is usually not the retailer that does it. I once bought a bottle of wine with a credit card. Mysteriously, I began to get wine related junkmail. This was clearly the credit card company as the wine shop (in downtown Montreal in this case) has no interest in advertising me as one of their customers; it risks a competitor "stealing me".
The wine shop itself may more likely be interested in using one of those tags that launches a DOS attack against unauthorized readers (I once read an RSA whitepaper on these, but I do not have the link handy) than in advertising me as somebody that buys expensive bottles of wine.
I could be wrong here. It boils down to a company weighing the cost of having customers "stolen" versus the gain in selling this data to an aggregator.
What I consider more likely is a clearing house for product master data. You enter a store and there are say six rfid tags on you. These six tags are queried against the clearing house database and return xml messages containing the product info, which you can now use to increase the "depth" of knowledge about a customer. Manufacturers would be willing to provide this information for a cut of the revenues and they would not be at risk to loose customers.
But they apparently can already get this information from your credit card company...
As most RFID tags in use are the el-cheapo "just respond with a serial number" type, I would be hard pressed to find a way that it would be terribly useful to a third party. At the moment, there is not even a standard ID system for RFID tags, but lets assume that there is for a moment; e.g. one similar to EAN. So you walk into a store and the scanner at the door reads SN#s 123456789, 987654321, blah, blah. Great! The store's CRM system is going to love this.
Now how do they correlate that with product information? Or, where do they get the "master data" (name, maker, stats, etc - catalog info) for that product? If it is something in their database already (e.g. a product that they sell), then they might be able to do a match against it. Otherwise, you have some anonymous product in your possession. Oh yeah, and do this all in realtime.
Now assuming they managed to score all that info from someplace. What will they do with it? Most stories about what CRM can do, such as men buying beer between 5 and 6 PM tend to correlate with men buying diapers in the same time frame; hence the store put diapers and beer together and profits went up, are just that; stories. In fact, they don't put the wealth of information they already get from customer cards to very sophisticated use.
Now if I could put a custom RFID tag on my keys and shoes, I could figure out where I put my keys and wallet what my kids did with my left shoe.
Well unless you want to stretch the defintiion of transporters to include transporting only quantum states, that would be true.
"Ok, we're missing the big one, warp drive,"
OK, I am not sure how Star Trek warp drives are supposed to work, but I remember a RPC circa 1990 called Traveller 2300 had something called "stutterwarp". The idea was this, take a starship and do the transporter trick to jump a few meters, or a couple of kilometers. Now do this at a few Mhz and you have near lightspeed with very little velocity.
Do you know what happens to people who ask such questions?
" I am sure terrorists would have an easier time attacking our airports than in most third-world countries (they might not be able to attack the planes, but then it might not matter if they can cause massive economic damage without doing so)."
I flew through Heathrow a couple of months ago. What creeped me out was the security checkpoint. There were probably 400 people crowded into two ling queues that snaked back and forth in front of the security check. Perfect target for a suicide bomber and he need never actually go through security. The traffic jam outside of the security check is a better target than anyplace inside, including the plane.