So long as it is disclosed during the debate before the vote that Plan B is the AT&T/Comcast plan. So long as the vote is not manipulated. So long as discussing Plan B is not, itself, just a stalling tactic. Then there is nothing wrong with Plan B being heard.
The OP is probably so young that he thinks fresh produce at the corner grocery store all winter long is 'normal'.
Decent roads. Fast vehicles. Electricity. Refrigeration. Perhaps plastics and cleaning/sealing tech to delay spoilage. It takes a lot of techs to get me a fresh, crisp cucumber in February.
Why haven't geeks solved all the world's problems yet? Perhaps because they have been busy solving the world's problems.
For example: --invented and built out mobile telephony, improving personal safety and convenience --built global data network (the Internet) that continues to enlighten populations and shake repressive governments --invented gps sats and provided cheap handheld receivers --invented geographic information systems (which allows not just MapQuest, but Yelp, gas buddy, and the self-driving car, among others) --911 service was a geek project from start to finish --proved the existence and cause of global warming back when it was still possible to fix it (too bad the money refused to listen) --provided micro targeted (per zip code) weather forecasts that are many times more accurate than anything we had 20 years ago (try MinuteCast sometime) --sequenced the genome, telling us what is likely to kill us, and, one day soon, repairing those defects (a work in progress) --invented recorded music (c. 1877) and made it ubiquitous (c. 1962) --created design tools that make it possible to build amazing stuff, e.g. successful 2700 ft buildings --visited the moon (in person) and the planets (via camera probes)
Not that the amount of effort spent chasing short term profits isn't appalling (e.g. the entire video delivery and drm industry), but some of the things that computer geeks have built actually have changed the world for the better.
approach to fighting [telephone] spam. Their idea will not work. Here is why it won't work. (One or more of the following may apply to their particular idea, and it may have other flaws which used to vary from state to state before a bad federal law was passed.)
( ) No one will be able to find the guy or collect the money ( ) It is defenseless against brute force attacks (X) It will stop spam for two weeks and then we'll be stuck with it (X) Users of telephones will not put up with it (X) Telcos will not put up with doing this work for free ( ) The police will not put up with it ( ) Requires too much cooperation from spammers ( ) Requires immediate total cooperation from everybody at once (X) Many telephone users cannot afford to lose business or miss critical calls ( ) Spammers don't care about invalid phone numbers in their lists (X) Anyone could anonymously destroy anyone else's career or business (X) If a spoofer gets their number banned, you would be unable to call for help (X) Authorities could abuse it to suppress viewpoints they dislike ( ) Spammers can easily use it to harvest telephone numbers (X) Organization's phone trees and other legitimate telephone uses would be affected
Specifically, their plan fails to account for
(X) Monetary incentives for telcos to conduct as many calls as possible, billing both parties ( ) Laws expressly prohibiting it (X) Lack of centrally controlling authority for callerID (X) It would break telephone connectivity even for correctly dialed numbers ( ) Open relays in foreign countries ( ) Ease of searching tiny alphanumeric address space of all telephone numbers (X) Asshats (X) Jurisdictional problems ( ) Unpopularity of weird new taxes ( ) Public reluctance to accept weird new forms of money (X) Huge portions of existing telco equipment base cannot be retrofitted (X) UnWillingness of users to activate optional teleco services (X) Eternal arms race involved in all filtering approaches (X) Extreme profitability of spam ( ) Joe jobs and/or identity theft (X) Technically illiterate politicians (X) Extreme stupidity on the part of people who do business with spammers (X) Dishonesty on the part of spammers themselves (X) Huge categories of political, charitable, etc. calls that many users want prohibited (X) Huge categories of political, charitable, etc. calls that many users don't want prohibited (X) Huge categories of political, charitable, etc. calls that politicians don't want prohibited
and the following philosophical objections may also apply:
(X) Ideas similar to theirs are easy to come up with, yet none have ever been shown practical (X) Any scheme based on opt-in is unacceptable (X) phone connectivity should not be the subject of legislation (X) Blacklists suck (X) Whitelists suck ( ) We should be able to talk about Viagra without being censored ( ) Countermeasures should not involve wire fraud or credit card fraud (X) Countermeasures should not involve sabotage of public networks ( ) Countermeasures must work if phased in gradually (X) Sending telephone calls should be allowed for the good guys (opinions vary) (X) Why should we have to trust you and their servers? ( ) Incompatiblity with open source or open source licenses ( ) Feel-good measures do nothing to solve the problem (X) Temporary/one-time telephone numbers are cheap (X) I don't want the government approving/disapproving my telephone calls (X) Killing them that way is not slow and painful enough
Furthermore, this is what I think about you:
(X) Sorry dude, but I don't think it would work. ( ) This is a stupid idea, and you're a stupid person for suggesting it. ( ) Nice try, assh0le! I'm going to find out where you live and burn their house down!
*I shamelessly borrowed this form from the first place I found a copy. If you know the original author, please reply to credit him.
By 2020, 80% of adults on earth will have an internet-connected smartphone.
In the U.S.*, operating a smartphone for a year (to say nothing of purchasing one to begin with) costs well north of $50x12=$600.
The median per capita income worldwide is something like* $2,920.
Even if the 50% of world adults above the median all bought smartphone service, he'd need to get another 30% of adults from below the median to reach his 80%. Those people would be spending something like* 20% of their yearly income on this. No way.
*To be sure, this post uses several approximations (U.S. data plan costs, Gallup's income methodology, etc.), but 80% is a still a fantasy.
Well, it wasn't a robbery since nothing was taken...
A. I would expect a robber to be motivated to take the wallet, especially the cash. B. I would expect a political assassin to be motivated to fake a robbery by taking the cash and/or the wallet, so as to throw off suspicion.
Here, 'nothing' was taken. So, was it an unsuccessful robber or an unsuccessful assassin?
they'd be heartbreakingly naive in assuming that this wouldn't give rise to demands for DRM,
No, they'd be lying. Does anyone believe that they have not already received demands for such DRM? Surely, they've been receiving such demands for years.
Publishing this statement now permits Tor to stop publishing this statement as soon as they are forced to backdoor their service. For instance, in the event of a gag order forbidding them from speaking about the new back door.
Every security service should make a public statement like this that they can withdraw when circumstances force them to.
Plurality voting needs to be replaced, but IRV has serious problems with 1. spoiler candidates and 2. central counting (i.e., no votes can be counted until all IRV ballots are collected for an entire state, at least).
Approval voting allows local precinct counting, and always elects the candidate that the least voters disapprove of. How easy is it to implement? Just change the ballot instruction to say, "Vote for as many as you like."
Approval voting satisfies the one ballot per voter criterion (aka, each voter gets an equal say). Approval voting is easy for voters to understand. And, voting for your ideal-candidate cannot detract from your vote for your acceptable-second-choice, even in those (nontrivial!) situations where IRV would betray you.
Now, the MPIAA can go sue Cisco for infringement whenever Cisco had control of the infringing router, knew or should have known of the infringement, and didn't act quickly enough to prevent it.
fsck round! There is no value in sphericality to _the owner_ of this device. The shape is a marketing gimmick to make it look enticing to a purchaser. I don't mind a little marketing, so long as it stays out of the way of usefulness.
Please go back to building me flat, stackable, rectangular boxen.
We have just proved to his next target that this guy has the power to stymie a conference of nations with a letter. Whether or not his previous statement was "powerful", his next one will be.
OK, so Piers Anthony's Xanth doesn't qualify as literature, but I was as addicted to it as a teenager as I ever was to the Hardy Boys in grade school. It was _fun_, people. Admit it: you laughed, too. It's not like you can hand the boy Red Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson until he's at least thirteen. The thing is 500 pages long.
Come to think of it, I wouldn't hand him Xanth until then either. He might accuse you of trying to sneak in a kissing book.
Lloyd Alexander: The Chronicles of Prydain. All 5 are compelling, but book 4, Taran Wanderer, is a sneaky-wonderful coming-of-age story.
Cressida Cowell: How to Train Your Dragon and its nine sequels. The movie was great, but when I began reading the books to my then-3-year-old, I discovered a different, equally compelling story from that of the movie (both tales get props from me). We eventually read all 10 books together.
Both series are not too long, child-appropriate, and not childish. If your child has contended with Asimov, he/she can handle Alexander and might be able to read Cowell alone.
Slashdot hosts good debates on, e.g., whether a particular patent really describes something new or whether patents even ought to be available in particular technological areas.
But please justify, with citations, your position that the expiration dates of patents mean "jack".
Patents expire. They do not get arbitrarily big extensions at the end of their lives for no reason. The only extension a patent might get is tied to time spent getting regulatory approval and is measured in days. Wouldn't it be nice if any of those things were true about copyrights?
A denial of service attack works best when you don't care about the packets or the machines sending them.
TFA is suggesting is that real people disregard their own best interests (plea bargains, lesser charges) for an experiment (jury demands) that is unlikely to achieve anything unless nearly everyone participates at once.
Howsa bout I vote for you again and then you introduce these proposals as actual Constitutional Amendments. You know--the kind that bind the executive branch.
Otherwise, your so-called "Privacy Bill of Rights" is not only a shallow gimmick, but also confuses the citizenry about what the real Bill of Rights used to be.
Of course the earth has gotten hotter; of course human activity is the major cause; of course we must fix it.
BUT, I cannot abide people who write statistical summaries (even non-false ones) for shock value. Sure, 2011 was "the 9th hottest year out of the past 130", but it's also true that 2011 was cooler than 9 of the past 14 years.
Tired as I am of trying to enlighten fools, I still say we should stick to the heart of the statistics and eschew convenient sophistry. We'll leave that for our opponents.
Slashdot Mirror
So long as it is disclosed during the debate before the vote that Plan B is the AT&T/Comcast plan. So long as the vote is not manipulated. So long as discussing Plan B is not, itself, just a stalling tactic. Then there is nothing wrong with Plan B being heard.
Next step: the council votes.
The OP is probably so young that he thinks fresh produce at the corner grocery store all winter long is 'normal'.
Decent roads. Fast vehicles. Electricity. Refrigeration. Perhaps plastics and cleaning/sealing tech to delay spoilage. It takes a lot of techs to get me a fresh, crisp cucumber in February.
Why haven't geeks solved all the world's problems yet? Perhaps because they have been busy solving the world's problems.
For example:
--invented and built out mobile telephony, improving personal safety and convenience
--built global data network (the Internet) that continues to enlighten populations and shake repressive governments
--invented gps sats and provided cheap handheld receivers
--invented geographic information systems (which allows not just MapQuest, but Yelp, gas buddy, and the self-driving car, among others)
--911 service was a geek project from start to finish
--proved the existence and cause of global warming back when it was still possible to fix it (too bad the money refused to listen)
--provided micro targeted (per zip code) weather forecasts that are many times more accurate than anything we had 20 years ago (try MinuteCast sometime)
--sequenced the genome, telling us what is likely to kill us, and, one day soon, repairing those defects (a work in progress)
--invented recorded music (c. 1877) and made it ubiquitous (c. 1962)
--created design tools that make it possible to build amazing stuff, e.g. successful 2700 ft buildings
--visited the moon (in person) and the planets (via camera probes)
Not that the amount of effort spent chasing short term profits isn't appalling (e.g. the entire video delivery and drm industry), but some of the things that computer geeks have built actually have changed the world for the better.
Obligatory Critique*:
Their plan proposes a
(X) technical (X) legislative ( ) market-based ( ) vigilante
approach to fighting [telephone] spam. Their idea will not work. Here is why it won't work. (One or more of the following may apply to their particular idea, and it may have other flaws which used to vary from state to state before a bad federal law was passed.)
( ) No one will be able to find the guy or collect the money
( ) It is defenseless against brute force attacks
(X) It will stop spam for two weeks and then we'll be stuck with it
(X) Users of telephones will not put up with it
(X) Telcos will not put up with doing this work for free
( ) The police will not put up with it
( ) Requires too much cooperation from spammers
( ) Requires immediate total cooperation from everybody at once
(X) Many telephone users cannot afford to lose business or miss critical calls
( ) Spammers don't care about invalid phone numbers in their lists
(X) Anyone could anonymously destroy anyone else's career or business
(X) If a spoofer gets their number banned, you would be unable to call for help
(X) Authorities could abuse it to suppress viewpoints they dislike
( ) Spammers can easily use it to harvest telephone numbers
(X) Organization's phone trees and other legitimate telephone uses would be affected
Specifically, their plan fails to account for
(X) Monetary incentives for telcos to conduct as many calls as possible, billing both parties
( ) Laws expressly prohibiting it
(X) Lack of centrally controlling authority for callerID
(X) It would break telephone connectivity even for correctly dialed numbers
( ) Open relays in foreign countries
( ) Ease of searching tiny alphanumeric address space of all telephone numbers
(X) Asshats
(X) Jurisdictional problems
( ) Unpopularity of weird new taxes
( ) Public reluctance to accept weird new forms of money
(X) Huge portions of existing telco equipment base cannot be retrofitted
(X) UnWillingness of users to activate optional teleco services
(X) Eternal arms race involved in all filtering approaches
(X) Extreme profitability of spam
( ) Joe jobs and/or identity theft
(X) Technically illiterate politicians
(X) Extreme stupidity on the part of people who do business with spammers
(X) Dishonesty on the part of spammers themselves
(X) Huge categories of political, charitable, etc. calls that many users want prohibited
(X) Huge categories of political, charitable, etc. calls that many users don't want prohibited
(X) Huge categories of political, charitable, etc. calls that politicians don't want prohibited
and the following philosophical objections may also apply:
(X) Ideas similar to theirs are easy to come up with, yet none have ever
been shown practical
(X) Any scheme based on opt-in is unacceptable
(X) phone connectivity should not be the subject of legislation
(X) Blacklists suck
(X) Whitelists suck
( ) We should be able to talk about Viagra without being censored
( ) Countermeasures should not involve wire fraud or credit card fraud
(X) Countermeasures should not involve sabotage of public networks
( ) Countermeasures must work if phased in gradually
(X) Sending telephone calls should be allowed for the good guys (opinions vary)
(X) Why should we have to trust you and their servers?
( ) Incompatiblity with open source or open source licenses
( ) Feel-good measures do nothing to solve the problem
(X) Temporary/one-time telephone numbers are cheap
(X) I don't want the government approving/disapproving my telephone calls
(X) Killing them that way is not slow and painful enough
Furthermore, this is what I think about you:
(X) Sorry dude, but I don't think it would work.
( ) This is a stupid idea, and you're a stupid person for suggesting it.
( ) Nice try, assh0le! I'm going to find out where you live and burn their
house down!
*I shamelessly borrowed this form from the first place I found a copy. If you know the original author, please reply to credit him.
By 2020, 80% of adults on earth will have an internet-connected smartphone.
In the U.S.*, operating a smartphone for a year (to say nothing of purchasing one to begin with) costs well north of $50x12=$600.
The median per capita income worldwide is something like* $2,920.
Even if the 50% of world adults above the median all bought smartphone service, he'd need to get another 30% of adults from below the median to reach his 80%. Those people would be spending something like* 20% of their yearly income on this. No way.
*To be sure, this post uses several approximations (U.S. data plan costs, Gallup's income methodology, etc.), but 80% is a still a fantasy.
It quickly becomes a highly politicized process ripe^H^H^H^H rife with anonymous sources and little solid fact.
There. Fixed that for ya.
Well, it wasn't a robbery since nothing was taken...
A. I would expect a robber to be motivated to take the wallet, especially the cash.
B. I would expect a political assassin to be motivated to fake a robbery by taking the cash and/or the wallet, so as to throw off suspicion.
Here, 'nothing' was taken. So, was it an unsuccessful robber or an unsuccessful assassin?
they'd be heartbreakingly naive in assuming that this wouldn't give rise to demands for DRM,
No, they'd be lying. Does anyone believe that they have not already received demands for such DRM? Surely, they've been receiving such demands for years.
Publishing this statement now permits Tor to stop publishing this statement as soon as they are forced to backdoor their service. For instance, in the event of a gag order forbidding them from speaking about the new back door.
Every security service should make a public statement like this that they can withdraw when circumstances force them to.
Plurality voting needs to be replaced, but IRV has serious problems with 1. spoiler candidates and 2. central counting (i.e., no votes can be counted until all IRV ballots are collected for an entire state, at least).
Approval voting allows local precinct counting, and always elects the candidate that the least voters disapprove of. How easy is it to implement? Just change the ballot instruction to say, "Vote for as many as you like."
Approval voting satisfies the one ballot per voter criterion (aka, each voter gets an equal say). Approval voting is easy for voters to understand. And, voting for your ideal-candidate cannot detract from your vote for your acceptable-second-choice, even in those (nontrivial!) situations where IRV would betray you.
Don't sugar-coat it, PJ.
Tell us how you really feel.
Though I had the opposite feeling while I was reading them, I'm going to have to say that Huxley's vision is lot scarier than Orwell's.
That Winston Smith is clearly a little $h!t, but I'd vote to elect Bernard Marx.
Nah, it's still the ending of 1984 that depresses me.
It's one thing for governments to be horrible to the people they're supposed to care for. I've come to terms with that.
It's when people are horrible to the people they care for that continues to surprise me.
Now, the MPIAA can go sue Cisco for infringement whenever Cisco had control of the infringing router, knew or should have known of the infringement, and didn't act quickly enough to prevent it.
fsck round! There is no value in sphericality to _the owner_ of this device. The shape is a marketing gimmick to make it look enticing to a purchaser. I don't mind a little marketing, so long as it stays out of the way of usefulness.
Please go back to building me flat, stackable, rectangular boxen.
Beige ones.
And get off my lawn.
Congratulations, /.
We have just proved to his next target that this guy has the power to stymie a conference of nations with a letter. Whether or not his previous statement was "powerful", his next one will be.
OK, so Piers Anthony's Xanth doesn't qualify as literature, but I was as addicted to it as a teenager as I ever was to the Hardy Boys in grade school. It was _fun_, people. Admit it: you laughed, too. It's not like you can hand the boy Red Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson until he's at least thirteen. The thing is 500 pages long.
Come to think of it, I wouldn't hand him Xanth until then either. He might accuse you of trying to sneak in a kissing book.
Lloyd Alexander: The Chronicles of Prydain. All 5 are compelling, but book 4, Taran Wanderer, is a sneaky-wonderful coming-of-age story.
Cressida Cowell: How to Train Your Dragon and its nine sequels. The movie was great, but when I began reading the books to my then-3-year-old, I discovered a different, equally compelling story from that of the movie (both tales get props from me). We eventually read all 10 books together.
Both series are not too long, child-appropriate, and not childish. If your child has contended with Asimov, he/she can handle Alexander and might be able to read Cowell alone.
Slashdot hosts good debates on, e.g., whether a particular patent really describes something new or whether patents even ought to be available in particular technological areas.
But please justify, with citations, your position that the expiration dates of patents mean "jack".
Patents expire. They do not get arbitrarily big extensions at the end of their lives for no reason. The only extension a patent might get is tied to time spent getting regulatory approval and is measured in days. Wouldn't it be nice if any of those things were true about copyrights?
According to TFA, things should be better now that:
Or maybe things won't be much better, since even the police trainers seem to think that laws confer a "right of arrest" on police officers.
Authority? Yes.
Duty? Yes.
A "right"? Never. That's severely twisted thinking.
People don't want their kids exposed to things that'll make them think about sex.
A wise (and frequently stoned) man once wrote:
A denial of service attack works best when you don't care about the packets or the machines sending them.
TFA is suggesting is that real people disregard their own best interests (plea bargains, lesser charges) for an experiment (jury demands) that is unlikely to achieve anything unless nearly everyone participates at once.
count(papers_published)
does seems like a ridiculously primitive metric. Surely we could at least advance to some proxy for the importance of the work, such as
count(citations_received)
Dear Mr. President,
Howsa bout I vote for you again and then you introduce these proposals as actual Constitutional Amendments. You know--the kind that bind the executive branch.
Otherwise, your so-called "Privacy Bill of Rights" is not only a shallow gimmick, but also confuses the citizenry about what the real Bill of Rights used to be.
Of course the earth has gotten hotter; of course human activity is the major cause; of course we must fix it.
BUT, I cannot abide people who write statistical summaries (even non-false ones) for shock value. Sure, 2011 was "the 9th hottest year out of the past 130", but it's also true that 2011 was cooler than 9 of the past 14 years.
Tired as I am of trying to enlighten fools, I still say we should stick to the heart of the statistics and eschew convenient sophistry. We'll leave that for our opponents.