There's an interesting assumption here: that the people criticizing Al Gore believe what he has to say but don't want to admit it - that Big Oil, Big Business, the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy, etc. are lying when they say that they don't think "global warming" is happening. Or alternately, that only the "little people" can have valid opinions on the subject.
Yeah, well you know.. Maybe it's just me, but I tend to be pursuaded to an opinion by rational and civilized argument. If you're going to try to convince me of your cause with faux-amateur videos mocking your opponents instead of making such an argument, then I'm automatically going to assume that it's because you don't have any.
Besides which, the opinion of Big Oil is invalid. It doesn't matter whether it's an honest one or not, because representatives of any business can and should be expected never to admit some fact detrimental to their business. They'll only do that if it's so blatantly obvious that they'd look like fools otherwise. The question is why you think their opinion should be trusted as an honest one in the first place, given that there is plenty of evidence of the opposite. The dangers of asbestos was known since the 19th century. Took until the 60's before the manufacturers would admit that. Need I mention tobacco? Auto safety? Dioxins?
Then there's the fact that such businesses have previously used the tactic of smearing their opposition. (As I said, that's all there's left to do if you don't have a real argument). GM hired private detectives to go after Ralph Nader for daring to claim that they were designing cars with reckless disregard for safety. Now we get amateur videos. Well, at least they're not invading Gore's privacy.
So on one hand, I have this fact-based argument, based on controversies in the past, and how the related industries acted then. On the other hand, I have your argument that "Just because they have money their opinion is dishonest?" argument. That argument is made from a basis of nothing. It's a straw-man. Because nobody said their opinion was dishonest (you decided to make that assumption yourself), and nobody certainly said their opinion didn't matter because they had money. What I'm saying here is that their opinion doesn't matter because they have no credibility on the subject.
As for the people (not businesses) who disbelieve Global Warming, yes, there are certainly a lot of them who hold it as an honest opinion. But most of them (on either side) who do so haven't weighed the scientific evidence. (Neither are they competent to do so).
The fact of the matter remains that the majority of those competent to weigh the evidence believe in Global Warming. The most prudent thing to do for a non-expert in that situation would therefore be to trust, or at least not distrust, that opinion. If a non-expert decides to distrust that opinion, then you've got to ask yourself why. Because noone would ever side with the minority on some issue which was irrelevant to them. The answer to that is quite simple. They choose to disbelieve Global Warming because that's what they'd like to believe. Because as long as it's not irrefutably clear that it exists (and where that limit goes is very individual), they'll go with the version of reality that's more convenient to them.
That doesn't mean their opinion is dishonest. Only that it's intellectually dishonest, because it's an emotionally-based one. As such, that doesn't carry much weight with me, at least.
How does that make sense? If I, as an average citizen, espouse the opinion "Al Gore is a boring, irrelevant blowhard", I am being honest, but once I do something like rise to the presidency of my company or amass more than a million dollars in personal net worth, suddenly a statement like "I think Al Gore is a boring, irrelevant blowhard" is disingenuous?
That statement is pretty disingenuous, regardless. All that says is "I don't like him because I disagree with what he has to
One question I found myself asking (upon seeing the map) was, "Is the `piracy hurts OSS' argument true?" There don't seem to be many ticks where wholesale software piracy is rampant. (i.e. China, India, Russia, etc.)
Now, as so many people pointed out, the map shows vendors, not developers, so the map doesn't actually do much to answer that question. Can anyone offer some insight?
Not only vendors, but as people have also pointed out the map shows an arbitrarily chosen set of vendors. In short, that means it's completely meaningless. You can't draw any conclusions from that.
If you would want to make a somewhat serious comparison, you'd choose two sets of vendors from some predetermined metric (revenue, # of employees, whatever..) with one group of OSS vendors and one group of ordinary software vendors, and then you could compare for geographic differences. I doubt you'd find any significant ones.
Anyway, my answer is: No, not at all. Places like Russia, China and India are not underrepresented in the FOSS world. But "underrepresented" does not mean "underrepresented with respect to their population". They're certainly underrepresented with respect to that. The real factors that are important here are Computer use, Internet use, Education level and Language skills (in particular English).
A more decent (but still very crude) metric, which reflects my own experiences of the FOSS world can be found on the http://www.wikipedia.org/wikipedia main page. Look at the number of articles in different languages. There are more articles in Dutch (22 million speakers) and Swedish (9 million) than in Spanish (400 million) or even Chinese (1.3 billion).
Why? Software piracy can hardly be the answer to that. Rather, it's because Holland and Sweden have high computer use, very high Internet penetration, very high education levels, and they all know English as a second language. So you'd also expect more Dutch and Swedish OSS developers than Chinese or South American ones, and in my experience, that seems to be the case.
So if you take the "Wikipedia articles metric" as a measurement of most of the factors needed for OSS development, then I don't think these countries are particularily underrepresented at all. And I don't think piracy is a factor. And if it is, it'd be impossible measure accurately because of all the other factors which seem a lot more significant.
The results, if any, will be presented in courts, with experts from defense and prosecution debating their merits in front of juries. This happens to fingerprints, DNA, speed radars, and all other technologies used in crime-fighting.
In short, I feel, my ACLU donation is being misused...
But not your tax dollars? (Which unlike your donation, isn't voluntary..)
Basically what you're saying here seems to be that law enforcement should be allowed to use whatever hokey crackpot ideas it wants to, and it's up to the courts to say if it's no good or not?
First off, if the government is subjecting people to any kind of scans, be it speed radars or palm-reading, that is a civil rights issue, and something we should be given the full and complete details of. That is definitely an ACLU issue in my book.
Second, the courts can only test what's being put in front of them. Should this stuff go unquestioned as long as noone uses it in court? I don't think so. In particular when it's being used on non-US citizens which you apparently can incarcerate nowadays without bothering with a trial.
Third, as a taxpayer, why the heck shouldn't I be concerned about the validity of any law-enforcement method (or any method in general) the government is blowing my money on? If the FBI is making phone calls to the Psychic Hotline to find out where Osama is, then you bet I'm concerned, regardless if that'll hold up in court or not!
Unfortunately, the higher level a language you use, the more inefficency there is.
That's complete nonsense. What do you support that on? A higher level language is only as inefficient as the compiler and/or libraries used. Which is just as true for a low-level language.
C is the best compramise. While assembly might give you the theoritical best code
As someone who's actually spent some years coding assembler, I'll tell you this: Hand-coded assembler is rarely ever better. And with the developments in processors today, it's not even theoretically better. If the Linux kernel had been written in assembler, then , besides being completely unportable they'd have to rewrite the whole thing to take advantage of the 486 instruction set. Then the Pentium instruction set, then MMX and so on. Unless you're going to provide hand-coded routines for every single processor out there, hand-coded assembler is never better.
And the whole basis of your argument is just wrong. You're assumimg that a human will always produce better assembler code than a compiler. That is not true. That's not even true most of the time.
Of course that wouldn't pass. The Federal Communications Commission doesn't exist to provide government regulation of the communications sector in order to protect consumer interests. That would be patently ridiculous because the USA is a free-market economy, which means you can just run your own copper wire to your neighbor's house and start your own network if you're not happy with the one that exists. And if you don't get a permit to dig you can always use a pair of tin cans and a string.
No people, the Federal Communications Commission exists to censor those communications from swearwords and nudity, which is obviously a much more important thing for government to be doing.
I think they are kind of thinking of stuff invented after the microprocessor was in use. I mean, the rotary phone is kind of bonehead idea now, but back in the 1950's it was about the best the average Joe could hope for.
Ah, but they're not even that good. See for instance the inclusion of the Apple Portable, which they lambast for being big and not-so-portable. Well, if you compare that machine to any other "portable" from 1989 (or the Apple Lisa for that matter) it doesn't look much like a flop at all.
As for 50's stuff.. How about "Find Uranium! Build your very own uranium detector with this practical kit!" To paraphrase an ad I saw in a 50's popular mechanics or similar. Let's see.. So that assumes 1) You can easily find uranium with a geiger counter.. Yeah right. and 2) People are interested in finding uranium. Um, not very..
And that doesn't even include totally insane stuff like the X-ray tubes they were selling in the 20's as on the idea that radiation exposure would "invigorate" you.
However, that's largely moot - PNG is lossless and often compresses better than JPEG
PNG rarely ever compresses better than JPEG. In particular for photographs. You're probably thinking about GIF.
If freedom was sufficient, in itself, the format would have been dead and buried within 60 seconds of the patents being filed.
Nonsense. The Forgent patents haven't stopped anyone from using JPEG. The free software libjpeg library from IJG has been out there the whole time, Gimp and similar programs never dropped JPEG. Again, I think you're thinking about GIF.
The core problems are ignorance (most people don't know what options exist), inertia (those who do often won't take advantage of them because it requires change) and stagnation (sufficient inertia kills all incentive to further develop alternatives). I would not be against compulsary education on how to be versatile, for this reason.
Again, you're thinking about GIF. There was never any "problem" with JPEG because noone ever though the Forgent patents were valid. The FSF themselves use JPEGs all over their web site, and always have. You won't find a GIF there, though.
Which has absolutely nothing to do with which library it is implemented in. The fact is that the functionality is available in a widely available library commonly used with X. So what if it's not in Xlib? The end user doesn't care which library it's implemented in, and there's little reason for a developer to care much either.
Ok, so first you say that everything Keith Packard (who certainly knows more about X than either you or me) brought up there was implemented. And when I point out things he brought up which are not, you tell me that they don't need to be.
Secondly, which library widely available and commonly used with X does text layouting? Why does Qt have their enginge for it and Gnome another, and any lesstif or whatever apps have to do it themselves as well.
And naturally it is immature given how new it is. But neither is an argument for throwing it out and developing something new instead, which would then surely be even more immature.
I wasn't the one to advocate throwing it out.
Took 18 years to catch up to what???
Did you read? As I said, NEXSTEP's Display Postscript system.
X has NEVER been 18 years behind any widely deployed graphics system. That's even MORE of a strawman than the earlier arguments.
That's just a denial and a particularily weak one at that, as I gave several examples. So what the heck is your position? You think Cairo is great but you refuse to accept the fact that the same API (that it indeed is modelled on) was introduced 18 years ago? That's just denying reality. NEXTSTEP was indeed widely deployed. And Java AWT even more so.
In other words, if you want to be constructive, propose specific features or areas of improvement that are not addressed by X together with commonly available libraries. Don't just rant about things missing from the core of X. That's the point of it being the "core"; other things build up around it to add additional features.
That's also ridiculous. Basically nothing can be missing from X, because you've now expanded your definition to include "commonly availabel libraries". Of course, you and I know perfectly well that any major deficiency in X is usually already augmented by libraries. If it wasn't, people wouldn't be using X at all. For instance, the aforementioned text-layouting code. There is no reason for all software that uses X to reinvent the wheel. Bidi is bidi and kerning is kerning. Text layout is all the same and, I should be provided at a lower level, and KeithP certainly seems to think so as well.
Yet you first say that that this had already been implemented, and that X is just fine. When I point out that's wrong, you say it doesn't matter since "commonly available" libraries provide that functionality. (which they did in 2000, as well) In fact, according to your argument now, it doesn't even belong in X. (Which is strange, since it already has font support which is pretty deprecated. )
Besides which, it's a moot point because the question was whether everything brought up in that link had been implemented or not. So I take it you concede now that it isn't in X?
And I don't care if I'm not being "constructive" or not. At least I'm making a consistent and coherent point, unlike your position which seems to be that X cannot be criticized for anything, and that you should change your argument as you go along to counter any criticism.
But X can now do all the things he was talking about in that article, so nothing in that article is evidence that there's a problem with today's X.
First off, that's simply not true. For instance, X still has severely lacking text rendering support. X does not support access to glyph structures and such things. Yes, you can do it via freetype, but FT is not X. Nor does X or FT provide any text layouting routines. Which is frankly ridiculous. Laying out and kerning bidirectional text is not some high-level functionality that should be relegated to a high-level library. It's a quite fundamental and basic thing that all apps need to do.
Secondly, just because Cairo exists now doesn't invalidate the criticism. Cairo is still relatively slow and immature software. This needs to be contrasted against what Packard is reffering to, which is that the Display Postscript API on NEXTSTEP was developed in 1987, and is in principle identical to Cairo, with the exception of compositing which is a more recent thing.
The fact that it took 18 years for X to catch up to that is not a strawman, it's an indication that something is seriously flawed either with X, or with the X development process as it was. Even Java, seven years ago, had all the same functionality that Cairo now provides. (and could layout text to boot)
Now it's true that X is progressing a lot better now. And I'm glad for it. But it is a far from being the cutting-edge of windowing systems it was when it was introduced. If you can't find anything wrong with today's X, then you either haven't looked hard enough, or you haven't looked at the alternatives.
Yeah, I guess it does take a talent of a kind to write up so many rehashes of press releases and still manage to misunderstand and misinterpret every single one.
All you coders keen for a life project have a crack at it.
You do know it's not primarily a programming issue?
Its the analysis of that 3D shape that will solve: - all cancer - modelling protein shapes means instant cancer cures
Nonsense. Knowing the shape of a protein does not cure cancer in itself. You do know that the structures of thousands of proteins, hundreds of which are cancer related, are already known?
bird flu - again modelling proteins means instant antibodies to diseases
No, knowing the structure of a protein does not automatically give you a suitable antibody for a vaccine.
the most toxic substance ever invented
What?
- it will also open up designer drugs
What? "Designer drugs" is a term used to mean "illegal drugs with certain nonessential groups substituted to circumvent existing drug laws".
They two traits were related somehow, even though you wouldn't think it.
Which is more of a typical example of Science challenging our preconceptions than actual "oddity".
To make an analogy, if you came across a switchboard with 100 light bulbs and 100 switches, you'd probably assume each switch turned on a light. Then you'd be confused to discover that some switches turned on two lights, some lights needed several switches to be on, and some switches did nothing at all.
Of course, if you looked under the hood and saw how the thing was wired, you'd then find that there wasn't actually anything strange going on, just that your assumption of how the thing worked was oversimplified.
I think this oversimplification is one of the reasons some people have trouble understanding evolution. It's a bit hard to understand how things like heireditary genetic diseases could exist if you assume that it's a completely independent property (and indeed, most of them probably wouldn't exist if it was).
Another fun example of non-obvious traits in humans is that a single SNP (prevalent in East Asians) causes you to sweat less, but also causes you to have dry and crumbly earwax instead of the gooey, sticky stuff most people have.
Oh yeah. Lots of lives at stake... Let's review the biggest intelligence "leaks" of the last few years:
* The CIA running secret prisons in East Europe * The NSA's illegal and unconstitutional wiretapping of US citizens without oversight * The CIA secretly extraditing terror suspects (even from non-US nations) to countries which often use torture, such as Egypt and Afghanistan
I don't see how a single life was endangered by any of those leaks. In fact, they seem like perfectly normal whistle-blowing on a Govenment which is grossly overstepping the bounds of the power granted to it, and avoiding the Congressional checks and balances which exist.
But there's one more leak: * The exposure of Valerie Plame and an entire CIA front company. Now there we have a leak which actually had the potential to endanger lives. But wait.. who was behind that leak? The White House themselves. - And for what? Petty revenge on a critic.
So we've got an administration here who themselves leak classified intel when convenient to them, who harshly persue those whistleblowers who leak anything which might be damaging to the Administration. An administration who misconstrued, misrepresented, and outright lied about intelligence in the run-up to the Iraq War.
And now you expect me to believe that this same Administration, in their quest to find out who's talking to who, is not interested in finding whistleblowers and critics, but rather acting purely out of an interest of protecting national security and saving lives?
Bullshit.
No administration has ever used the intelligence community for partisan poltical gain to the extent that the current one has. None. There are people in the intelligence community, be they Democrats, people critical of these wiretaps, or simply professionals who are pissed off of having their agency's work misused for partisan political goals, and then being the scapegoat once things turn sour. What this bullshit is about is nothing less than an attempt by the administration to purge the agencies of these critics.
It is not about national security. It's not about saving lives. People working in intelligence don't look kindly on that kind of leaks. It is their lives which are at stake. But leaking the fact that they're secretly running prisons - knowledge of that is NOT a threat to national security or lives in the intelligence community.
The only thing that knowledge threatens is the political goals of the Bush administration. If that's what they're going to use the CIA for, then I fully support any CIA employee who does the moral thing and tells the American people what the heck their government is up to behind their backs. Those people are not leakers and traitors. They are heroes and patriots.
What is it with Hollywood's fascination with prequels anyway?
Hollywood's fascination is with making money. Sequels and prequels are a good way to do that, given that the fan-base is established and the risks are lower.
I feel doing prequels is a bad idea and will never produce great entertainment.
(1) Future is Known
This is not, and has never been a problem. Take the Illiad, for example. You don't think the Greeks knew how the Trojan War ended already? Or that Shakespeare's audiences knew how Richard III died? Not to mention the very common dramatic technique of starting with the ending and then jumping back to see how things unfolded to reach that point. Or the even more common technique of having a character as the narrator (which thus establishes that that character must've survived the events). Knowing what will happen in the end is not and has never been a dramatical problem.
(2) Risk to Established Canon
So what? The only people who care a lot about that stuff are diehard geeks. Blatant plot-holes is one thing, but inconsistencies in the actual 'universe' of the story in relation to other ones are not something most people care about. Nor is it important for good drama. Although I'm sure some Elizabethan geeks were very pissed off that Shakespeare's "The Merry Wives of Windsor" had Falstaff in it since it was already mentioned in "Henry V" that he died, over a century earlier.
This is the fallacy of the fanboy: Just because you're more of a fan, doesn't mean your opinion is more important.
Minor details don't bother most people watching shows on TV. And the hardcore fans that they do bother watch the thing anyway, so why care?
(3) Anachronistic Special Effects
See above.
There is no real reason why a prequel can't be just as good, or better, than the original. Sure, since the characters already exist, and because some of the possible plots have been used already it makes it more difficult to be original. The same thing goes for sequels, which are also worse, usually. By their nature, even if a prequel or sequel is just as good as the original, it is worse, because the novelty of the thing is gone.
But there is nothing inherent to a prequel that automatically makes it worse.
American copyright conflicting with foreign freedom of speech laws? That's happened too.
For instance in the Zenon Panoussis case, where the US government officially lobbied Sweden to amend their constitution just to protect some copyrighted Scientology documents.
First, the viruses aren't making any batteries, they're making wires which may be used in batteries?
Second.. it seems unclear that the virus is actually doing any work..
They modified the M13 virus' genes so its outside layer, or coat, would bind with certain metal ions. They incubated the virus in a cobalt chloride solution so that cobalt oxide crystals mineralised uniformly along its length.
They added a bit of gold for the desired electrical effects.
So basically, it seems they're pulling an Auric Goldfinger on those poor viruses, smothering them with conducting gold metal. Seems a bit misleading to characterize that as making the virus produce wire (much less a battery).
Rather, the viruses were modified to form a suitable substrate to cover with metal and turn into a wire, which is something a bit different.
I know these are "stupid" questions, on many levels (especially in this venue), but does MSFT even make 200-million Euros a day in sales to the EU? No.
Stupid is relying on The Register as a source. It's Euros a day.
Does that really matter? No. What matters is that the law is enforced. What's your bright idea to get businesses to follow the law then, if not to fine them?
What if they don't pay?
Then they can expect even harsher penalties.
What if they said "screw you, I'm going home" and stopped officially selling product in the EU?
Then they don't have to follow EU laws. Fine by me.
As much as many do not like MSFT, this stinks of some sort of politicical extortion, plain and simple.
Bullshit. Or do you really think foreign companies shouldn't have to follow US laws in their US operations? They do. And there have been antitrust suits against foreign companies in the US. And in case you missed it, Microsoft was found guilty of antitrust violations in the USA too.
You assert that the thing is "political extortion" without any proof - as if it's obvious that any foreign court which takes action against an American interest must be doing so for purely political reasons. As if the USA had a monopoly on justice and fairness. That's a blindly nationalistic and xenophobic form of reasoning.
Europe needs to recognize that free speech means free speech for everyone, especially the loathsome, or it's going to wind up with a problem soon....As if a (sub)continent of 25-30 countries with half a billion people can be expected to have homogenous views and legislation on everything.
What exactly kind of message does it send that racial agitation against arabs is being championed and celebrated as a "we must do this to demonstrate we have freedom of speech" kind of thing-- at the same time that search engines are being censored, and people are being arrested for writing books?
Let's see, you're taking the Danish Muhammed drawings controversy, and applying it to the German anti-Nazi laws, despite the fact that Denmark has no such laws? Or are you referring to the German magazines that republished the pictures once the controversy started? Well, that's a good question that you should ask the publishers. But making the assumption that the actions of individual publishers represents prevailing opinion just as well as their consitition does is just ridiculous.
It says that being a fascist racist is okay in europe, unless you're the wrong kind of fascist racist.
You'll be hard-pressed to find any substantial number of people subscribing to that view.
By analogy, the USA has a ban on the import of "any obscene book, pamphlet, paper, writing, advertisement, circular, print, picture, drawing, or other representation, figure, or image on or of paper or other material, or any cast, instrument, or other article which is obscene or immoral" (Title 19 section 1305). But there are plenty of American porno magazines.
So by the same line of reasoning: Americans think that foreign obscenity is bad, but domestic obscenity is okay?
Are these really the only countries that significantly censor the internet?
No.
(Or are these the only ones that google cooperates with?)
No. AFAIK, the local Googles cooperate with national laws in all their respective countries. However, in terms of pages filtered, I think Germany and France are some of the more restrictive countries in the West, with their anti-Nazi laws.
For instance, some countries ban child pornography (possession, not just dissemination), so that material gets filtered in those countries.
You have to have blind trust that you're doing the right thing and that the orders you got are good to go and that for the vast majority of people is impossible.
In a democracy, the military is the extended arm of the people. As such, the will of the soldiers must represent the will of the people. And that means sharing the political opinions of the people.
Soldiers are entitled to a political opinion. In fact, it's a very good thing if they hold political opinions. That's what keeps them in touch with the will of the people. That's what seperates the army of a democracy from that in a military dictatorship.
That doesn't mean you can disobey orders just because they don't suit your political opinions. A civilian isn't entitled to break laws he or she doesn't agree with either.
However, a soldier not only has the right, but the duty to disobey an illegal order. Orders are not supposed to be followed blindly. There are any number of war-crimes trials, including ones held against Americans, that'll tell you that.
Blindly obedient soldiers with no popular convictions are great for a fascist, communist or other totalitarian government. They're the only kind such a government can use. But a democracy does not need that kind of soldier. Nor should they have them: Their first loyalty should be to the people, not to their military leaders.
It does take a special kind of soldier to blindly follow orders. It does take a special kind of soldier to fight his own people, like the Chinese troops who crushed the Tiananmen square protests.
Most MLM/Pyramid schemes are outright scams and illigal. Some few are not, if they actually sell a legitimate product. They are also the cause of a huge amount of spam.
Not always the case. In a lot of places, MLM schemes have been found in court to be illegal despite the fact that they've been selling a product. It hinges on how much of the revenue is from actual product sales.
If only a small fraction of the money moving around is from sales and the vast majority is from recruiting new members, then it's still a pyramid scheme.
My employer (a Swedish university) does not ban Skype. (although they don't have any explicit policy permitting it either)
There is, however, a general policy not to abuse computer resources, although I doubt they'd go after anyone for this. They're quite liberal, and someone running Skype off their desktop wouldn't be considered abuse unless it seriously affected their work.
I'd say the experiences are on the opposite side, for instance we have several starving post-docs from foreign countries who routinely use it to talk to their families back home without going broke. That is probably very good for their morale, and therefore their work.
How can code released under the GPL be relicensed at all, even GPLv3?
1) Because the GPL license can optionally include the statement that it's covered by the GPL and/or any later version.
2) Because a copyright holder can relicense, dual-license and in general put any conditions he or she wants on their copyrighted work, including multiple different sets of conditions (licenses).
What you are asking is akin to saying "If someone lends a book to me on a set of conditions, how can they be allowed to lend it to someone else on different ones?".
If it can be, why can't I take it and license it with a BSD-style or completely closed source license?
Slashdot Mirror
There's an interesting assumption here: that the people criticizing Al Gore believe what he has to say but don't want to admit it - that Big Oil, Big Business, the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy, etc. are lying when they say that they don't think "global warming" is happening. Or alternately, that only the "little people" can have valid opinions on the subject.
Yeah, well you know.. Maybe it's just me, but I tend to be pursuaded to an opinion by rational and civilized argument. If you're going to try to convince me of your cause with faux-amateur videos mocking your opponents instead of making such an argument, then I'm automatically going to assume that it's because you don't have any.
Besides which, the opinion of Big Oil is invalid. It doesn't matter whether it's an honest one or not, because representatives of any business can and should be expected never to admit some fact detrimental to their business. They'll only do that if it's so blatantly obvious that they'd look like fools otherwise. The question is why you think their opinion should be trusted as an honest one in the first place, given that there is plenty of evidence of the opposite. The dangers of asbestos was known since the 19th century. Took until the 60's before the manufacturers would admit that. Need I mention tobacco? Auto safety? Dioxins?
Then there's the fact that such businesses have previously used the tactic of smearing their opposition. (As I said, that's all there's left to do if you don't have a real argument). GM hired private detectives to go after Ralph Nader for daring to claim that they were designing cars with reckless disregard for safety. Now we get amateur videos. Well, at least they're not invading Gore's privacy.
So on one hand, I have this fact-based argument, based on controversies in the past, and how the related industries acted then. On the other hand, I have your argument that "Just because they have money their opinion is dishonest?" argument. That argument is made from a basis of nothing. It's a straw-man. Because nobody said their opinion was dishonest (you decided to make that assumption yourself), and nobody certainly said their opinion didn't matter because they had money. What I'm saying here is that their opinion doesn't matter because they have no credibility on the subject.
As for the people (not businesses) who disbelieve Global Warming, yes, there are certainly a lot of them who hold it as an honest opinion. But most of them (on either side) who do so haven't weighed the scientific evidence. (Neither are they competent to do so).
The fact of the matter remains that the majority of those competent to weigh the evidence believe in Global Warming. The most prudent thing to do for a non-expert in that situation would therefore be to trust, or at least not distrust, that opinion. If a non-expert decides to distrust that opinion, then you've got to ask yourself why. Because noone would ever side with the minority on some issue which was irrelevant to them. The answer to that is quite simple. They choose to disbelieve Global Warming because that's what they'd like to believe. Because as long as it's not irrefutably clear that it exists (and where that limit goes is very individual), they'll go with the version of reality that's more convenient to them.
That doesn't mean their opinion is dishonest. Only that it's intellectually dishonest, because it's an emotionally-based one. As such, that doesn't carry much weight with me, at least.
How does that make sense? If I, as an average citizen, espouse the opinion "Al Gore is a boring, irrelevant blowhard", I am being honest, but once I do something like rise to the presidency of my company or amass more than a million dollars in personal net worth, suddenly a statement like "I think Al Gore is a boring, irrelevant blowhard" is disingenuous?
That statement is pretty disingenuous, regardless. All that says is "I don't like him because I disagree with what he has to
One question I found myself asking (upon seeing the map) was, "Is the `piracy hurts OSS' argument true?" There don't seem to be many ticks where wholesale software piracy is rampant. (i.e. China, India, Russia, etc.)
Now, as so many people pointed out, the map shows vendors, not developers, so the map doesn't actually do much to answer that question. Can anyone offer some insight?
Not only vendors, but as people have also pointed out the map shows an arbitrarily chosen set of vendors.
In short, that means it's completely meaningless. You can't draw any conclusions from that.
If you would want to make a somewhat serious comparison, you'd choose two sets of vendors from some predetermined metric (revenue, # of employees, whatever..) with one group of OSS vendors and one group of ordinary software vendors, and then you could compare for geographic differences. I doubt you'd find any significant ones.
Anyway, my answer is: No, not at all. Places like Russia, China and India are not underrepresented in the FOSS world. But "underrepresented" does not mean "underrepresented with respect to their population". They're certainly underrepresented with respect to that. The real factors that are important here are Computer use, Internet use, Education level and Language skills (in particular English).
A more decent (but still very crude) metric, which reflects my own experiences of the FOSS world can be found on the http://www.wikipedia.org/wikipedia main page. Look at the number of articles in different languages. There are more articles in Dutch (22 million speakers) and Swedish (9 million) than in Spanish (400 million) or even Chinese (1.3 billion).
Why? Software piracy can hardly be the answer to that. Rather, it's because Holland and Sweden have high computer use, very high Internet penetration, very high education levels, and they all know English as a second language. So you'd also expect more Dutch and Swedish OSS developers than Chinese or South American ones, and in my experience, that seems to be the case.
So if you take the "Wikipedia articles metric" as a measurement of most of the factors needed for OSS development, then I don't think these countries are particularily underrepresented at all. And I don't think piracy is a factor. And if it is, it'd be impossible measure accurately because of all the other factors which seem a lot more significant.
The results, if any, will be presented in courts, with experts from defense and prosecution debating their merits in front of juries. This happens to fingerprints, DNA, speed radars, and all other technologies used in crime-fighting.
In short, I feel, my ACLU donation is being misused...
But not your tax dollars? (Which unlike your donation, isn't voluntary..)
Basically what you're saying here seems to be that law enforcement should be allowed to use whatever hokey crackpot ideas it wants to, and it's up to the courts to say if it's no good or not?
First off, if the government is subjecting people to any kind of scans, be it speed radars or palm-reading, that is a civil rights issue, and something we should be given the full and complete details of. That is definitely an ACLU issue in my book.
Second, the courts can only test what's being put in front of them. Should this stuff go unquestioned as long as noone uses it in court? I don't think so. In particular when it's being used on non-US citizens which you apparently can incarcerate nowadays without bothering with a trial.
Third, as a taxpayer, why the heck shouldn't I be concerned about the validity of any law-enforcement method (or any method in general) the government is blowing my money on? If the FBI is making phone calls to the Psychic Hotline to find out where Osama is, then you bet I'm concerned, regardless if that'll hold up in court or not!
Unfortunately, the higher level a language you use, the more inefficency there is.
That's complete nonsense. What do you support that on? A higher level language is only as inefficient as the compiler and/or libraries used. Which is just as true for a low-level language.
C is the best compramise. While assembly might give you the theoritical best code
As someone who's actually spent some years coding assembler, I'll tell you this: Hand-coded assembler is rarely ever better. And with the developments in processors today, it's not even theoretically better. If the Linux kernel had been written in assembler, then , besides being completely unportable they'd have to rewrite the whole thing to take advantage of the 486 instruction set. Then the Pentium instruction set, then MMX and so on. Unless you're going to provide hand-coded routines for every single processor out there, hand-coded assembler is never better.
And the whole basis of your argument is just wrong. You're assumimg that a human will always produce better assembler code than a compiler. That is not true. That's not even true most of the time.
Of course that wouldn't pass. The Federal Communications Commission doesn't exist to provide government regulation of the communications sector in order to protect consumer interests. That would be patently ridiculous because the USA is a free-market economy, which means you can just run your own copper wire to your neighbor's house and start your own network if you're not happy with the one that exists. And if you don't get a permit to dig you can always use a pair of tin cans and a string.
No people, the Federal Communications Commission exists to censor those communications from swearwords and nudity, which is obviously a much more important thing for government to be doing.
I think they are kind of thinking of stuff invented after the microprocessor was in use. I mean, the rotary phone is kind of bonehead idea now, but back in the 1950's it was about the best the average Joe could hope for.
Ah, but they're not even that good. See for instance the inclusion of the Apple Portable, which they lambast for being big and not-so-portable. Well, if you compare that machine to any other "portable" from 1989 (or the Apple Lisa for that matter) it doesn't look much like a flop at all.
As for 50's stuff.. How about "Find Uranium! Build your very own uranium detector with this practical kit!" To paraphrase an ad I saw in a 50's popular mechanics or similar. Let's see.. So that assumes 1) You can easily find uranium with a geiger counter.. Yeah right. and 2) People are interested in finding uranium. Um, not very..
And that doesn't even include totally insane stuff like the X-ray tubes they were selling in the 20's as on the idea that radiation exposure would "invigorate" you.
However, that's largely moot - PNG is lossless and often compresses better than JPEG
PNG rarely ever compresses better than JPEG. In particular for photographs. You're probably thinking about GIF.
If freedom was sufficient, in itself, the format would have been dead and buried within 60 seconds of the patents being filed.
Nonsense. The Forgent patents haven't stopped anyone from using JPEG. The free software libjpeg library from IJG has been out there the whole time, Gimp and similar programs never dropped JPEG. Again, I think you're thinking about GIF.
The core problems are ignorance (most people don't know what options exist), inertia (those who do often won't take advantage of them because it requires change) and stagnation (sufficient inertia kills all incentive to further develop alternatives). I would not be against compulsary education on how to be versatile, for this reason.
Again, you're thinking about GIF. There was never any "problem" with JPEG because noone ever though the Forgent patents were valid. The FSF themselves use JPEGs all over their web site, and always have. You won't find a GIF there, though.
Which has absolutely nothing to do with which library it is implemented in. The fact is that the functionality is available in a widely available library commonly used with X. So what if it's not in Xlib? The end user doesn't care which library it's implemented in, and there's little reason for a developer to care much either.
Ok, so first you say that everything Keith Packard (who certainly knows more about X than either you or me) brought up there was implemented. And when I point out things he brought up which are not, you tell me that they don't need to be.
Secondly, which library widely available and commonly used with X does text layouting? Why does Qt have their enginge for it and Gnome another, and any lesstif or whatever apps have to do it themselves as well.
And naturally it is immature given how new it is. But neither is an argument for throwing it out and developing something new instead, which would then surely be even more immature.
I wasn't the one to advocate throwing it out.
Took 18 years to catch up to what???
Did you read? As I said, NEXSTEP's Display Postscript system.
X has NEVER been 18 years behind any widely deployed graphics system. That's even MORE of a strawman than the earlier arguments.
That's just a denial and a particularily weak one at that, as I gave several examples. So what the heck is your position? You think Cairo is great but you refuse to accept the fact that the same API (that it indeed is modelled on) was introduced 18 years ago? That's just denying reality. NEXTSTEP was indeed widely deployed. And Java AWT even more so.
In other words, if you want to be constructive, propose specific features or areas of improvement that are not addressed by X together with commonly available libraries. Don't just rant about things missing from the core of X. That's the point of it being the "core"; other things build up around it to add additional features.
That's also ridiculous. Basically nothing can be missing from X, because you've now expanded your definition to include "commonly availabel libraries". Of course, you and I know perfectly well that any major deficiency in X is usually already augmented by libraries. If it wasn't, people wouldn't be using X at all. For instance, the aforementioned text-layouting code. There is no reason for all software that uses X to reinvent the wheel. Bidi is bidi and kerning is kerning. Text layout is all the same and, I should be provided at a lower level, and KeithP certainly seems to think so as well.
Yet you first say that that this had already been implemented, and that X is just fine. When I point out that's wrong, you say it doesn't matter since "commonly available" libraries provide that functionality. (which they did in 2000, as well) In fact, according to your argument now, it doesn't even belong in X. (Which is strange, since it already has font support which is pretty deprecated. )
Besides which, it's a moot point because the question was whether everything brought up in that link had been implemented or not. So I take it you concede now that it isn't in X?
And I don't care if I'm not being "constructive" or not. At least I'm making a consistent and coherent point, unlike your position which seems to be that X cannot be criticized for anything, and that you should change your argument as you go along to counter any criticism.
But X can now do all the things he was talking about in that article, so nothing in that article is evidence that there's a problem with today's X.
First off, that's simply not true. For instance, X still has severely lacking text rendering support. X does not support access to glyph structures and such things. Yes, you can do it via freetype, but FT is not X. Nor does X or FT provide any text layouting routines. Which is frankly ridiculous. Laying out and kerning bidirectional text is not some high-level functionality that should be relegated to a high-level library. It's a quite fundamental and basic thing that all apps need to do.
Secondly, just because Cairo exists now doesn't invalidate the criticism. Cairo is still relatively slow and immature software. This needs to be contrasted against what Packard is reffering to, which is that the Display Postscript API on NEXTSTEP was developed in 1987, and is in principle identical to Cairo, with the exception of compositing which is a more recent thing.
The fact that it took 18 years for X to catch up to that is not a strawman, it's an indication that something is seriously flawed either with X, or with the X development process as it was. Even Java, seven years ago, had all the same functionality that Cairo now provides. (and could layout text to boot)
Now it's true that X is progressing a lot better now. And I'm glad for it. But it is a far from being the cutting-edge of windowing systems it was when it was introduced. If you can't find anything wrong with today's X, then you either haven't looked hard enough, or you haven't looked at the alternatives.
Jealous?
Yeah, I guess it does take a talent of a kind to write up so many rehashes of press releases and still manage to misunderstand and misinterpret every single one.
All you coders keen for a life project have a crack at it.
You do know it's not primarily a programming issue?
Its the analysis of that 3D shape that will solve:
- all cancer - modelling protein shapes means instant cancer cures
Nonsense. Knowing the shape of a protein does not cure cancer in itself. You do know that the structures of thousands of proteins, hundreds of which are cancer related, are already known?
bird flu - again modelling proteins means instant antibodies to diseases
No, knowing the structure of a protein does not automatically give you a suitable antibody for a vaccine.
the most toxic substance ever invented
What?
- it will also open up designer drugs
What? "Designer drugs" is a term used to mean "illegal drugs with certain nonessential groups substituted to circumvent existing drug laws".
They two traits were related somehow, even though you wouldn't think it.
Which is more of a typical example of Science challenging our preconceptions than actual "oddity".
To make an analogy, if you came across a switchboard with 100 light bulbs and 100 switches, you'd probably assume each switch turned on a light. Then you'd be confused to discover that some switches turned on two lights, some lights needed several switches to be on, and some switches did nothing at all.
Of course, if you looked under the hood and saw how the thing was wired, you'd then find that there wasn't actually anything strange going on, just that your assumption of how the thing worked was oversimplified.
I think this oversimplification is one of the reasons some people have trouble understanding evolution. It's a bit hard to understand how things like heireditary genetic diseases could exist if you assume that it's a completely independent property (and indeed, most of them probably wouldn't exist if it was).
Another fun example of non-obvious traits in humans is that a single SNP (prevalent in East Asians) causes you to sweat less, but also causes you to have dry and crumbly earwax instead of the gooey, sticky stuff most people have.
Oh yeah. Lots of lives at stake... Let's review the biggest intelligence "leaks" of the last few years:
* The CIA running secret prisons in East Europe
* The NSA's illegal and unconstitutional wiretapping of US citizens without oversight
* The CIA secretly extraditing terror suspects (even from non-US nations) to countries which often use torture, such as Egypt and Afghanistan
I don't see how a single life was endangered by any of those leaks. In fact, they seem like perfectly normal whistle-blowing on a Govenment which is grossly overstepping the bounds of the power granted to it, and avoiding the Congressional checks and balances which exist.
But there's one more leak:
* The exposure of Valerie Plame and an entire CIA front company. Now there we have a leak which actually had the potential to endanger lives. But wait.. who was behind that leak? The White House themselves. - And for what? Petty revenge on a critic.
So we've got an administration here who themselves leak classified intel when convenient to them, who harshly persue those whistleblowers who leak anything which might be damaging to the Administration. An administration who misconstrued, misrepresented, and outright lied about intelligence in the run-up to the Iraq War.
And now you expect me to believe that this same Administration, in their quest to find out who's talking to who, is not interested in finding whistleblowers and critics, but rather acting purely out of an interest of protecting national security and saving lives?
Bullshit.
No administration has ever used the intelligence community for partisan poltical gain to the extent that the current one has. None. There are people in the intelligence community, be they Democrats, people critical of these wiretaps, or simply professionals who are pissed off of having their agency's work misused for partisan political goals, and then being the scapegoat once things turn sour. What this bullshit is about is nothing less than an attempt by the administration to purge the agencies of these critics.
It is not about national security. It's not about saving lives. People working in intelligence don't look kindly on that kind of leaks. It is their lives which are at stake. But leaking the fact that they're secretly running prisons - knowledge of that is NOT a threat to national security or lives in the intelligence community.
The only thing that knowledge threatens is the political goals of the Bush administration. If that's what they're going to use the CIA for, then I fully support any CIA employee who does the moral thing and tells the American people what the heck their government is up to behind their backs. Those people are not leakers and traitors. They are heroes and patriots.
What is it with Hollywood's fascination with prequels anyway?
Hollywood's fascination is with making money. Sequels and prequels are a good way to do that, given that the fan-base is established and the risks are lower.
I feel doing prequels is a bad idea and will never produce great entertainment.
(1) Future is Known
This is not, and has never been a problem. Take the Illiad, for example. You don't think the Greeks knew how the Trojan War ended already? Or that Shakespeare's audiences knew how Richard III died? Not to mention the very common dramatic technique of starting with the ending and then jumping back to see how things unfolded to reach that point. Or the even more common technique of having a character as the narrator (which thus establishes that that character must've survived the events). Knowing what will happen in the end is not and has never been a dramatical problem.
(2) Risk to Established Canon
So what? The only people who care a lot about that stuff are diehard geeks. Blatant plot-holes is one thing, but inconsistencies in the actual 'universe' of the story in relation to other ones are not something most people care about. Nor is it important for good drama. Although I'm sure some Elizabethan geeks were very pissed off that Shakespeare's "The Merry Wives of Windsor" had Falstaff in it since it was already mentioned in "Henry V" that he died, over a century earlier.
This is the fallacy of the fanboy: Just because you're more of a fan, doesn't mean your opinion is more important.
Minor details don't bother most people watching shows on TV. And the hardcore fans that they do bother watch the thing anyway, so why care?
(3) Anachronistic Special Effects
See above.
There is no real reason why a prequel can't be just as good, or better, than the original.
Sure, since the characters already exist, and because some of the possible plots have been used already it makes it more difficult to be original. The same thing goes for sequels, which are also worse, usually. By their nature, even if a prequel or sequel is just as good as the original, it is worse, because the novelty of the thing is gone.
But there is nothing inherent to a prequel that automatically makes it worse.
American copyright conflicting with foreign freedom of speech laws? That's happened too.
For instance in the Zenon Panoussis case, where the US government officially lobbied Sweden to amend their constitution just to protect some copyrighted Scientology documents.
Second.. it seems unclear that the virus is actually doing any work..
So basically, it seems they're pulling an Auric Goldfinger on those poor viruses, smothering them with conducting gold metal. Seems a bit misleading to characterize that as making the virus produce wire (much less a battery).
Rather, the viruses were modified to form a suitable substrate to cover with metal and turn into a wire, which is something a bit different.
I know these are "stupid" questions, on many levels (especially in this venue), but does MSFT even make 200-million Euros a day in sales to the EU? No.
Stupid is relying on The Register as a source. It's Euros a day.
Does that really matter? No. What matters is that the law is enforced. What's your bright idea to get businesses to follow the law then, if not to fine them?
What if they don't pay?
Then they can expect even harsher penalties.
What if they said "screw you, I'm going home" and stopped officially selling product in the EU?
Then they don't have to follow EU laws. Fine by me.
As much as many do not like MSFT, this stinks of some sort of politicical extortion, plain and simple.
Bullshit. Or do you really think foreign companies shouldn't have to follow US laws in their US operations? They do. And there have been antitrust suits against foreign companies in the US. And in case you missed it, Microsoft was found guilty of antitrust violations in the USA too.
You assert that the thing is "political extortion" without any proof - as if it's obvious that any foreign court which takes action against an American interest must be doing so for purely political reasons. As if the USA had a monopoly on justice and fairness. That's a blindly nationalistic and xenophobic form of reasoning.
Europe needs to recognize that free speech means free speech for everyone, especially the loathsome, or it's going to wind up with a problem soon. ...As if a (sub)continent of 25-30 countries with half a billion people can be expected to have homogenous views and legislation on everything.
What exactly kind of message does it send that racial agitation against arabs is being championed and celebrated as a "we must do this to demonstrate we have freedom of speech" kind of thing-- at the same time that search engines are being censored, and people are being arrested for writing books?
Let's see, you're taking the Danish Muhammed drawings controversy, and applying it to the German anti-Nazi laws, despite the fact that Denmark has no such laws? Or are you referring to the German magazines that republished the pictures once the controversy started? Well, that's a good question that you should ask the publishers. But making the assumption that the actions of individual publishers represents prevailing opinion just as well as their consitition does is just ridiculous.
It says that being a fascist racist is okay in europe, unless you're the wrong kind of fascist racist.
You'll be hard-pressed to find any substantial number of people subscribing to that view.
By analogy, the USA has a ban on the import of "any obscene book, pamphlet, paper, writing, advertisement, circular, print, picture, drawing, or other representation, figure, or image on or of paper or other material, or any cast, instrument, or other article which is obscene or immoral" (Title 19 section 1305). But there are plenty of American porno magazines.
So by the same line of reasoning: Americans think that foreign obscenity is bad, but domestic obscenity is okay?
Are these really the only countries that significantly censor the internet?
No.
(Or are these the only ones that google cooperates with?)
No. AFAIK, the local Googles cooperate with national laws in all their respective countries. However, in terms of pages filtered, I think Germany and France are some of the more restrictive countries in the West, with their anti-Nazi laws.
For instance, some countries ban child pornography (possession, not just dissemination), so that material gets filtered in those countries.
You have to have blind trust that you're doing the right thing and that the orders you got are good to go and that for the vast majority of people is impossible.
In a democracy, the military is the extended arm of the people. As such, the will of the soldiers must represent the will of the people. And that means sharing the political opinions of the people.
Soldiers are entitled to a political opinion. In fact, it's a very good thing if they hold political opinions. That's what keeps them in touch with the will of the people. That's what seperates the army of a democracy from that in a military dictatorship.
That doesn't mean you can disobey orders just because they don't suit your political opinions. A civilian isn't entitled to break laws he or she doesn't agree with either.
However, a soldier not only has the right, but the duty to disobey an illegal order. Orders are not supposed to be followed blindly. There are any number of war-crimes trials, including ones held against Americans, that'll tell you that.
Blindly obedient soldiers with no popular convictions are great for a fascist, communist or other totalitarian government. They're the only kind such a government can use. But a democracy does not need that kind of soldier. Nor should they have them: Their first loyalty should be to the people, not to their military leaders.
It does take a special kind of soldier to blindly follow orders. It does take a special kind of soldier to fight his own people, like the Chinese troops who crushed the Tiananmen square protests.
Most MLM/Pyramid schemes are outright scams and illigal. Some few are not, if they actually sell a legitimate product. They are also the cause of a huge amount of spam.
Not always the case. In a lot of places, MLM schemes have been found in court to be illegal despite the fact that they've been selling a product. It hinges on how much of the revenue is from actual product sales.
If only a small fraction of the money moving around is from sales and the vast majority is from recruiting new members, then it's still a pyramid scheme.
If you're so smart, you'd be able to make your point without ad hominem attacks.
My employer (a Swedish university) does not ban Skype. (although they don't have any explicit policy permitting it either)
There is, however, a general policy not to abuse computer resources, although I doubt they'd go after anyone for this. They're quite liberal, and someone running Skype off their desktop wouldn't be considered abuse unless it seriously affected their work.
I'd say the experiences are on the opposite side, for instance we have several starving post-docs from foreign countries who routinely use it to talk to their families back home without going broke. That is probably very good for their morale, and therefore their work.
I hope these guys are in a state with anti-SLAPP legislation, so Cory can go after them if they do file suit.
How can code released under the GPL be relicensed at all, even GPLv3?
1) Because the GPL license can optionally include the statement that it's covered by the GPL and/or any later version.
2) Because a copyright holder can relicense, dual-license and in general put any conditions he or she wants on their copyrighted work, including multiple different sets of conditions (licenses).
What you are asking is akin to saying "If someone lends a book to me on a set of conditions, how can they be allowed to lend it to someone else on different ones?".
If it can be, why can't I take it and license it with a BSD-style or completely closed source license?
Because you don't own the copyright.