"Some laws exist so that a certain degree of orderliness can be achieved. Highways are for high-speed transportation. Use them however you want, as long as its for that purpose."
The purpose of anything paid by the public should be subject to (peaceable, non-destructive, mutually compatible) human desires, not the other way around. Transportation, Yes. High-speed is nice, but not the only possibility. I've seen lots of wide-loads going slower than some bikes go, for instance, and plenty of different types of traffic which might not fit together aesthetically. (Semis and Harleys on the same road, there *is* danger, but there's danger everywhere.) (Though as yerricide wrote in his own reply, 'The government has provided an "alternative interface" for bikers, namely, the federal highway system.' I did not know that.)
"You just have to ask yourself, what if something you liked, that you happen to know does or might peeve someone else, were banned? Where's the freedom in that?"
Hmmm. Maybe we're talking at cross purposes, but I am not generally on the "ban it!" side of things:)
"As I said elsewhere, discrimination is unlawful when it's based on something the person can't control (sex, race) or something society considers sacrosanct (religion). In virtually every case, your browser is your choice, so crying "non-IE discrimination!" doesn't win much sympathy from me when phrased that way."
oh, *lawful* discrimination. I was just thinking 'discrimination.':) There are lots of situations where it's OK to discriminate based even on the characteristics you mention (let's say my Catholic church is hiring a new priest), but I understand that's not the sense you mean. Probably there is no law that makes IE-only sites illegal, but I can / do / will justifiably call it discrimination all I want. In this case, I'm not particularly interested in the specific sense that some people use that word in. (And it's not the first word that would come to mind, I was just reacting to your reaction to someone's use of the word... I'd call it stupid, pig-headed, poor stewardship, myopic and a lot of other things. Appealing to 'discrimination' I think is a weak argument.)
And again, IE only sites are like requiring Cross pens to fill out forms, or requiring Ford cars to use the highway (the poor highway is being abused). Driving a certain make of car is as much a choice as using a particular web browser, more so in fact, since many people don't realize that web browser *is* a choice.
Further responses read, but likely not responded to, hands tired;)
Re: Roads -- well, the post offices are pretty well established, and so are the post roads. Time to turn them over to better management, any day now...
"The government should not require that residents or citizens deal with a specific private entity; so requiring would run afoul of the spirit of antitrust law. However, patents throw a monkey wrench into this: how could the government have provided instructional videos while VHS was still patented?"
Good point, interesting example. Surely this is an argument for modern equivalents, though, the more abstract from their physical medium the better:) Ogg Theora (could be streamed, could be on a CD-R, could be transmitted very slowly on a telegraph clacker...) would be better than VHS instructional videos.
Hey, wait a minute, why is the government providing instructional videos? Is this from that PO box in Pueblo, Colorado?
"One may be able to make the argument that the government ought to conform to established standards rather than the arbitrary behaviors of any given product, so that any conforming interface would work with it. But this is hardly the same thing as discrimination."
It seems that this is discrimination to a tee:)
I think something else you said ("Private entities should have the right to freedom of association") gets forgotten too much, and Yes, people do too often cry Discrimination! or look for things like freedom of the press on someone else's Press.
But I have a much different, stronger reaction than you do when it comes to tax-funded things, even specifically your example with the bicycles. Though I am not a long-distance biker, I always glare at the signs prohibiting non-motorized traffic on highways. (Not true of all roads, and I don't understand the rules on which ones.) Rules about use, sure (for visibility to the faster vehicles, in particular), but prohibition seems like an unfair policy unless there's absolutely no other way.
Whether roads should be publically funded is another issue, but at present, roads in the U.S. are paid for "by the public" (and by bonds etc, of course) and are allegedly for the public's use. A lot of people have pet vehicle peeves because the peeving vehicles are "dangerous" -- my dad would love to ban semis, and a lot of people would like to ban motorcycles.
To use Internet Explorer requires the user (or somone else) to have bought either Microsoft Windows or some other product (Mac OS, CrossOver Office) to let IE run, and -- not to overstate this -- it requires the user to be using a particular company's product (that it happens to be Microsoft is not the point), even though established standards (many partly or wholly tax-funded, too) exist and are met by freely available, cross-platform browsers as well.
Tax-paid pages should be designed to *work* with IE (and other browsers), but not to *rely* on any one of them. That's like requiring that tax forms be filled out with a Cross-brand pen. (Sorry, we installed automatic readers, and they only pick up a certain, patented ink with a specific pigment.)
I (conditionally) disagree with the claim of the quoted blurb, that "Our response to being bored and rich is not to discard our possessions and live more simply, but to buy more stuff to reduce the space in which we might contemplate our shame."
Actually, one particularly nice thing about technology, especially the "high" and semi-high kinds, is the way space can be reclaimed. Sitting at my elbow are not one, but two computers of the general size and shape that people describe as a cube, even though they're far from cubical. Together, they take up less room than the case of my previous main computer, and use less energy. If my job didnt' involve being online so much, I'd try to pare it down to one machine at my elbow.
Does your kitchen have a microwave raised off the counter? That's space that (just a few years ago) you'd have had to sacrifice if you wanted the convenience of a microwave.
Two minor examples, but you can think of many more around the typical 1st-world dwelling: it doesn't *have* to, since you can be as Rube Goldberg as you'd like, but technology can be a force for genuine simplification and comfort. Which is pretty obvious:)
There's a reason besides one-upmanship that many people are willing to pay thousands of dollars for flat-screen plasma TV monitors, and in a sense it's the same reason that others forgo television entirely -- because a thin rectangle on the wall is less intrusive than a many-hundreds-of-pounds behemoth looking like a shrine, taking up half the living room.
I plan to move in a few months to Washington state (from eastern TN) and have been investigating internet options along the way, was thinking about buying a T-Mobile subscription, parking near Starbucks locations with a 802.11 antenna. That is... sketchy.
The yearly subscription rate is a lot less than I pay for my (backup) service from Mindspring; I just talked to a rep there, confirmed that anyone (you don't have to be in a truckers' union or anything;)) can get a subscription, and according to the rep, Linux and Mac OS are just fine with them. Since there is a location nearby, I will go there and try out the hour-long version first to make sure it works as advertised, and then mark up my national map with locations;)
Well, OK, spam isn't a "sausage" but if sterile canning systems had been around in abundance equal to that of instestines when people were first thinking up sausage, do you think anyone would quite recognize the difference? Go with sausage, just for a minute.
Despite being of a basically liberal bent, I have at times so despaired of spam that even *new laws* sounded attractive. Various anti-spam measures (I like the *potential*-payment plan of pennyblack, mentioned on Slashdot at least once before), including of late vastly improved spam-filtering methods, I think are a better solution. (Yes, Declan McCullagh has made this argument better than I am ready to right now;))
Even though it sounds nice to say that we should "ban spam," unless all email is routed through a big Spam Whittler, any such ban is no better than just enforcing property rights laws re: trespass etc. In Italy, CDs are all stamped with a little pink stamp of government approval / taxation (at least 10 years ago there were... still true?); I don't want little pink stamps of inspection / taxation on all my emails.
A visit today to a franchise location of the U.S. Postal "Service" (remember, "dot-com, not dot-gov" since [hold the guffaws in the rear] they're not a government agency, according to so high an authority as... the U.S. Postal Service) reminded me of what sort of people, if not which people per se, will increasingly hold power to approve email as any such laws click into bureaucratic place.
People often use "tradtional" when what they mean is "conventional." I think that's the case here. That's a pet peeve of mine: 'traditional' implies something closer to (as you point out) the Free Software Foundation's vision of the world, because (duh!) it has something to do with *tradition* (complete with a shared set of ideas / attitudes / oral history etc). "Conventional" would better sum up what the writer is talking about IMO, basically "this is sorta how it's mostly done now, at least in the world of packaged software."
Yes, that's exactly what it is. Chris Eigeman makes me laugh so hard in that movie, yet friends get annoyed whenever I suggest watching it for the jillionth time. Taylor Nichols is great too, plays a convincing nice, conflicted guy, and all three of the leading women are drop-dead gorgeous. Mira Sorvino naked...:)
I like the space savings etc, but... the hotel managers better be careful about who they let stay in each room;) When my family made road trips (and my siblings and I were small) I'm sure we could have accidentally done a bit more damage than the 'rents would have liked to put on the family credit cards. One well-aimed pillow / baseball / souvenier frisbee, and that $5000 TV is looking less well.
No different from a corporation, schools often have undertakings that are caught up in precedent and convention.
If your school has a newspaper, consider showing them how to set up Linux file server or some story-typing / editing stations.
If they have an advertising crew, show them that Gnumeric and Open Office offer high-quality, free spreadsheets. (And if they're pretty simple, there should be no probs with converting to / from Excel format.)
Graphics: there are decent-enough vector graphics now (Carbon14 is one) and excellent image-retouching programs (GIMP, Image Magick), available built into most distros and downloadable for others.
Web browsing: School newspapers often use the Web for research, and for other purposes when they're not "working." Show them with a 5-minute demo that with Mozilla they can forget most popup ads, open tabs for organization, bookmark groups of tabs for a useful start-up state, search using keywords, etc.
If they can afford it in the first place, they probably are stuck on a DTP program like Quark, PageMaker, InDesign, etc: that's OK, and hard to replace with Free software right now. The fantastic Scribus is getting better and better, though.
Still, you can show them that a cheap, even discarded computer can be a useful and reliable adjunct for many *other* purposes when set up with Linux. (Which lets you save the DTP machine(s) for the ones using it for that purpose.)
People like things to be customized and personalized. A cool project I'd like to see is a distro-creation kit for schools that might include a distro like Knoppix customized with:
- splash screens with school logo - school colors as appropriate - directory (if your school permits such, make sure all students with listed numbers are fully aware of their inclusion in advance) - likewise, yearbook pictures or just some fun snapshots - first-person-shooter with layout of your school. (But no weapons! Just call it a 3D tour, ok?) - Mozilla / other browsers with useful-to-students links - a lot of educational software
This is not a joke: I would not mind phone ads, under certain (not current) circumstances.
In the same way that I like advertisers to subsidize the creation of Futurama (well, past tense) and for me to watch reruns of Columbo, I would happily allow advertisers to pay for my phone use.
How? Imagine a system where between each phone call, you agree to listen to an advertisement, which would be (you guessed it) *very* closely tailored to you. e.g., no tampax ads for men, no thinning hair cures for men for 16-year-old girls.
Would I like to have *unsolicted* spam sent to me? No. Would I voluntarily let through a few ads each day in exchange for a bill of zero dollars? Yes.
Note there are a lot of permutations here, could be a limit of free calls, longer ads for more air time, maximum call length without hitting a surcharge, etc.
I would not want an hour of this, but there's probably a happy medium. Ask yourself, are you completely opposed to letting advertisers subsidize other things? And if the answer is No, wouldn't you rather let the spammers (who could be "advertisers") at least chip in toward the useful side of things?
the XBox does have the parts you mention, but it's missing one that would be necessary, which is some sort of video capture.
There *are* external capture devices (USB), which I don't own / use, never have, but I've never heard kind words about their quality. The Xbox, without a place for PCI cards, seems amenable only to such an external one.
I agree, one of the most underrated projects out there:)
However, no, I'm just imagining something much simpler. MythTV is complicated to set up (which makes sense, considering it's a complex, full-featured thing...) -- what I think would be better (for many people, not all) is a simple schedule / record / pause / playback system. Maybe something which, if these things were all beers, could be called "MythTV Lite."
Not that the video codec is the only important part of this, but the fact that unlike most, Ogg Theora is completely free of patent / royalty issues.
Imagine (it's not a great stretch anymore, though it might have been a few years ago) being able to assemble a box with a hard drive, motherboard, memory, then popping in a CD ala Knoppix or Gentoo Live, and BOOM there's a DVR. Movix is one side of the instant multi-media computer, but does not offer capture / record functions.
Built-to-purpose, such a computer ought to have a TV-out (and the live ISO would have to support it;) -- including well-designed menus like the ones for freevo and mythTV, suitable for low-res TV screens -- so it could be used without a conventional monitor attached).
If the room is to be shared (correctly), I'd want certain things: there should be a large, comfortable bed, extra pillows, sheets and blankets that don't constantly fall off the bed (!!! arrgh !!!), and a microfridge stocked with actually decent food. There should be a bathroom for each player, well stocked with necessaries like mouthwash, extra toothpaste, deodorant, linens, large comfy terry robe, etc. Television etc, eh, maybe, but should be smaller than the gigantic DO NOT DISTURB sign. No alarm clock.
If the room is *not* shared in the sense implied above, that is, if it's just a place to work, sleep and eat while on the road or after having been kicked out, the things it needs are different:
- wireless broadband - pizza slot - microfridge again, well loaded - big honkin' alarm clock - temperfoam pallet or maybe a straw tick. - TV via projector; projector should have a VGA input, too, to hook up laptop.
The eyemodule came from a Walmart in eastern Knoxville, TN (2 days ago), and the backup unit came from another Knoxville location, but that was 6 months ago. I have not been looking at springboard units particularly in the meantime, since the only one I figured I needed was the backup; there's a GPS unit that used to be insanely expensive that I imagine really might now have come down considerably, if you can find a store that still has one:)
Several months ago, I bought a springboard backup unit, which used to cost around $50 I think, for $8 at Walmart on clearance. Yesterday, bought an EyeModule2 (the 640x480 digital camera, also a springboard module) for $50. While those take care of the main things I had wanted for that slot (after 4 years of use, I figured I wanted a backup;)), I wonder if anyone can point to other interesting, now-cheap springboard units...
I'd like to find an ultra-cheap GPS springboard, but so far those are still sort of expensive (and hard to find anyhow).
Just read a book about Digital, which had a note I found interesting / amusing: When Apple was a young company, they bought DEC computers for company record-keeping / infrastructure. DEC no longer exists per se, but it would be an interesting turnaround if at least some workgroup of former DEC employees at HPaq runs *their* infrastructure on an Apple server;)
Reading through the responses so far, some common responses resonate with me, as in "boy, that's how I should have done it during college!"
The things I'm listing here all require money, but need not be extravagant. (Besides which, wearing clothes takes money, eating ramen takes money, etc. Serving Suggestion, YMMV, etc, not every*thing* is for every*one*, why when I was a boy we didn't have "feet" -- we were too poor, yammina, yammina, yammina.)
1) I favor notebooks for students (iBook, ThinkPad, etc) but not for notetaking. Aside from games and recreational use, they're good for research and for typing your papers. Paper notes are often better than typed, so "laptop to class" (for notetaking purposes) is overstated in value. YM(and your Professors / classes / note-taking style)MV. However, if you have the discipline to do so, scanning your notes in (and Hey, maybe eventually retyping them) can give you a *lot* of notes very portably. If you do have a notebook, you can take all your notes with you for quickly reviewing.
2) minidisc for recording lectures. Buy a bunch of discs, don't erase anything until you're absolutely sure you ought to. Re-use them... next semester. Or when you've backed up to hard drive, or otherwise extracted the valuable bits. You might be able to sell extracts toward final exam time;) There are also some decent-looking MP3 recorders, shame about Ogg so far though...
3) Whatever computer you have to use (spankin' new Tadpole SPARCbook, borrowed junker your roommate doesn't know you're borrowing...), use a keyboard that's comfy for you. It could be the one that's built into your laptop, or it could be from the $2 shelf at goodwill like the one I'm using right now. If you type a 10-page paper just once, you'll be happy to have a decent keyboard. USB PS/2 adapters are cheap, and so are PS/2 AT adapters.
4) Laser printer. Share it (and split the cost) with your room- / suite- / hall- or housemates. It can be a used but working old LaserJet, or whatever brand's cheap at CompUSA. My lexmark was $100, lives an easy life but has not complained yet. Check the toner once in a while, keep it in "economy" mode. Inkjets have ruined lives. Just say No! to inkjets, except for printing out high-resolution photos on $1/sheet paper. (And if you're even thinking about considering that, you better be a photo major unless you've taken care of the earlier items on this list;))
Yes, iTunes + plug-in will play them. Today, I put on my iBook a little app (freeware, used to be shareware, but not open source... at least, I don't *see* a link to source;)) called Whamb.
Which has zero zilch nada to do with all the *other* things iTunes can do wrt streaming etc, just a note if that's the reason you're bringing up Ye Olde Medyia Player, and since it's the reason I'm bringing up mine...
If I were to draw up a map of all the things I'd like my computer to be able to easily do (*easily* that is, since most of these are possible, just not as easy to achieve as they should be), I don't think any available OS would score a 6/10 or even a 5/10, and not for want of trying -- just because human desires are for practical purposes infinite.
I'd like a computer to:
- work seamlessly (open, edit, save, convert format) with all my current documents - feature well-designed apps for recording and editing video and audio - come with an actually useful, contextually flexible help system -- man pages *and* For Dummies -style tutorials, and a searchable index linking to sections of both - never need the help system, since it's so intuitive - run on sunlight (or moonlight) - feature perfect voice recognition and synthesis - autodetect, configure, and if necessary, create new drivers on the fly for all my current and future peripherals - know what *I* want when I click a certain spot on a window. - (etc, etc)
That the Munich gov't drew up high standards is smart on their part, recognizes the imperfection of software (as part of the imperfection of all human systems) in meeting all desires.
A high standard partially met is more useful long-term than a low-standard which would have been met by a warehouse of C64s:)
krispykringle -- Apologies, but this really is getting more involved than I have time to pursue right now, so I hope you don't mind if I call this my last contribution to this thread:)
In more direct regard to guns, though, we clearly acknowledge limits. You would be in the great minority (not that that discredits your beliefs, to be sure) if you truly believed that "anything [one] can bear is fair.""
Well, that's why I used the past tense... the nuke-in-a-briefcase does give me the willies. Depending on who you believe or refuse to, there may be one or more of these in cities around the U.S.; reasonable sources suggest that the Soviet Embassy had one. (Or maybe this is now to the level of proven or disproven fact, I am not sure.)
"Does this apply to everyone? Are licensing schemes to make sure owners have proper training illegal?"
That's a good question. The Constitution specifies the right to "keep and bear" arms, does not address matters of acquisition directly. Certain types of legislation could obviously subvert the intent of such a statement of rights (banning ammunition, or outlawing guns with a capactity for >0 rounds of ammunition, mandating a 131-year waiting period etc), but I am not certain whether a mandatory training or competency test would do the same. I've considered this only a little bit in my life, but I don't see it as clearly unconstutional (or immoral, fattening etc) to require a basic competency test. (General welfare might cover this, though I think the general welfare is basically best served by leaving people the hell alone.) Driving licenses don't bother me so much, since they apply to public spaces; I think a decent analog in the gun world are the courses required, I believe in every state which allows concealed handgun carry, before people can carry. I think it's important that any such requirements be reasonable and liberal -- the law should defer to the gun owner and the public, rather than force the owner to defer to the state.
"What about preventing minors or mental patients or felons from owning guns? I know this will probably make you shake your head and mutter, "it's a slippery slope," but clearly once you acknowledge that some restrictions are OK, the debate becomes a bit more complex."
Well, I do acknowledge that some restrictions are OK, but I think this slippery slope is far less slippery than the point you raised earlier re: scope of arms ownership rights (the MiG). Felons who have served their full term ought IMO have the full rights of citizenship restored. It's not good to have a stratified society where people have different levels of rights. (For that matter, I'd like to see a lot of age restrictions done away with, on both ends of the age spectrum. Mandatory retirement ages disgust me.) Parolees by definition do not have all the rights of ordinary citizens, but I don't want a permanent parolee class.
"There are, of course, those who argue that in a historical context, the 2nd Amendment didn't mean what it has been said to mean, namely that the "well funded militia" means the intention was for a regulated militia, not rampant gun ownership in any home."
The Constituion specifies "well regulated" rather than "well funded;" that well regulated though is in a subordinate clause, subordinate to the "right of the people shall not be infringed" part. And, in a historical context, the founding dads expressing an opinion (looking for counterexamples) were pretty pro-gun.
See for instance this page, with gems like "Little more can reasonably be aimed at with respect to the people at large than to have them properly armed and equipped." (Alexander Hamilton, Federalist Papers #29)
(Though see also this page of bogus founders' quotes, which casts some doubt on the top quote from G. Washington listed in
Still, surely some sort of guidelines for parents, even if voluntary, are a reasonable measure; since parents are not always there to enforce their own preferences, the hard-and-fast restrictions are most likely to serve as surrogate measures of convenience rather than as laws to override a parental preference.
Sure. I like voluntary guidelines just fine. It doesn't bother me that Wal-Mart (or anywhere) sets their own rules about selling to young customers etc, because such guidelines do serve as useful surrogates. So long as there is free entry to the market, I see no abrogation of rights in EB Games refusing to carry "Pornographic Adventure II: Come Again?" A free market defines conditions, not outcomes...
[re: guns] so is it just that its a fundamental constitutional right? Do you believe that there are reasonable limits to this right (i.e. no machine guns, no surface-to-air missiles, etc)? Should I be allowed to own a fully armed ex-Soviet MiG if I'd like?
Yes, I think the right to keep and bear arms is well expressed in the Constitution. There are lots (lots!) of things which have gone wrong or violated citizens' rights* in the U.S. over its history, but by and large this country is and has been the freest country in the world. I don't mean to be jingoistic about that, and I'm always interested in evidence to the contrary. I hear lots of disillusioned Americans declare that they're going to leave the unfree and oppressive U.S. to head out to... Canada? Australia? Where?
wrt: "reasonable limits," that's a good question I've thought about and have no great conclusions to express. Obvious dilemma: if you believe that an armed populace is a good vaccine for tyranny, it would be silly to restrict weapons ownership to peashooters and slingshots; on the other hand, I'm not sure I want *every* bowling club to have their own tank. (Or, more to the point, every church, mosque and synagogue to have their own suitcase nukes.)
I used to say "anything [one] can bear is fair!" but those pesky suitcase nukes... maybe I'd impose an aimed-fire requirement;) Product of growing up in the 70s and 80s, but nuclear weapons scare me more than conventional ones, no matter than you're just as dead either way.
[On that front, I'll note that "assault weapon" bans are silly (among other things that they are). The Steyr Scout I linked to doesn't look like a traditional hunting rifle, nor does it look like the stereotyped "assault rifle" -- but so what? So are hysteria-driven bans on, for instance,.50 cal rifles.]
timothy
* Witch trials**. Slavery. Segregation. Tuskegee experiment. Subway nerve gas testing. Japanese segregation. The IRS. The draft. Unconstitutional wiretapping and harrassment. Etc, etc. Far from perfect record, but balanced by vigorous reactions and (in context) a decent showing vs. contemporaries.
** OK, this is before the U.S. per se, but I consider the U.S. a continuum;)***
Slashdot Mirror
"Just because something is publicly funded doesn't mean you can use it for any purpose you want."
:) Those that are ought to answer to as many purposes as possible.
;) And sometimes the kids can play *nearly* on the freeway.
:)
:) There are lots of situations where it's OK to discriminate based even on the characteristics you mention (let's say my Catholic church is hiring a new priest), but I understand that's not the sense you mean. Probably there is no law that makes IE-only sites illegal, but I can / do / will justifiably call it discrimination all I want. In this case, I'm not particularly interested in the specific sense that some people use that word in. (And it's not the first word that would come to mind, I was just reacting to your reaction to someone's use of the word ... I'd call it stupid, pig-headed, poor stewardship, myopic and a lot of other things. Appealing to 'discrimination' I think is a weak argument.)
;)
True -- but I also believe that not many things should be publically funded
"Your kids don't play on the interstate. Nor do you drive your car through the park."
You can drive through, for instance, Central Park, though
"Some laws exist so that a certain degree of orderliness can be achieved. Highways are for high-speed transportation. Use them however you want, as long as its for that purpose."
The purpose of anything paid by the public should be subject to (peaceable, non-destructive, mutually compatible) human desires, not the other way around. Transportation, Yes. High-speed is nice, but not the only possibility. I've seen lots of wide-loads going slower than some bikes go, for instance, and plenty of different types of traffic which might not fit together aesthetically. (Semis and Harleys on the same road, there *is* danger, but there's danger everywhere.) (Though as yerricide wrote in his own reply, 'The government has provided an "alternative interface" for bikers, namely, the federal highway system.' I did not know that.)
"You just have to ask yourself, what if something you liked, that you happen to know does or might peeve someone else, were banned? Where's the freedom in that?"
Hmmm. Maybe we're talking at cross purposes, but I am not generally on the "ban it!" side of things
"As I said elsewhere, discrimination is unlawful when it's based on something the person can't control (sex, race) or something society considers sacrosanct (religion). In virtually every case, your browser is your choice, so crying "non-IE discrimination!" doesn't win much sympathy from me when phrased that way."
oh, *lawful* discrimination. I was just thinking 'discrimination.'
And again, IE only sites are like requiring Cross pens to fill out forms, or requiring Ford cars to use the highway (the poor highway is being abused). Driving a certain make of car is as much a choice as using a particular web browser, more so in fact, since many people don't realize that web browser *is* a choice.
Further responses read, but likely not responded to, hands tired
timothy
Re: Roads -- well, the post offices are pretty well established, and so are the post roads. Time to turn them over to better management, any day now ...
:) Ogg Theora (could be streamed, could be on a CD-R, could be transmitted very slowly on a telegraph clacker ...) would be better than VHS instructional videos.
"The government should not require that residents or citizens deal with a specific private entity; so requiring would run afoul of the spirit of antitrust law. However, patents throw a monkey wrench into this: how could the government have provided instructional videos while VHS was still patented?"
Good point, interesting example. Surely this is an argument for modern equivalents, though, the more abstract from their physical medium the better
Hey, wait a minute, why is the government providing instructional videos? Is this from that PO box in Pueblo, Colorado?
timothy
"One may be able to make the argument that the government ought to conform to established standards rather than the arbitrary behaviors of any given product, so that any conforming interface would work with it. But this is hardly the same thing as discrimination."
:)
It seems that this is discrimination to a tee
I think something else you said ("Private entities should have the right to freedom of association") gets forgotten too much, and Yes, people do too often cry Discrimination! or look for things like freedom of the press on someone else's Press.
But I have a much different, stronger reaction than you do when it comes to tax-funded things, even specifically your example with the bicycles. Though I am not a long-distance biker, I always glare at the signs prohibiting non-motorized traffic on highways. (Not true of all roads, and I don't understand the rules on which ones.) Rules about use, sure (for visibility to the faster vehicles, in particular), but prohibition seems like an unfair policy unless there's absolutely no other way.
Whether roads should be publically funded is another issue, but at present, roads in the U.S. are paid for "by the public" (and by bonds etc, of course) and are allegedly for the public's use. A lot of people have pet vehicle peeves because the peeving vehicles are "dangerous" -- my dad would love to ban semis, and a lot of people would like to ban motorcycles.
To use Internet Explorer requires the user (or somone else) to have bought either Microsoft Windows or some other product (Mac OS, CrossOver Office) to let IE run, and -- not to overstate this -- it requires the user to be using a particular company's product (that it happens to be Microsoft is not the point), even though established standards (many partly or wholly tax-funded, too) exist and are met by freely available, cross-platform browsers as well.
Tax-paid pages should be designed to *work* with IE (and other browsers), but not to *rely* on any one of them. That's like requiring that tax forms be filled out with a Cross-brand pen. (Sorry, we installed automatic readers, and they only pick up a certain, patented ink with a specific pigment.)
timothy
This is only partly off-topic ;)
:)
I (conditionally) disagree with the claim of the quoted blurb, that "Our response to being bored and rich is not to discard our possessions and live more simply, but to buy more stuff to reduce the space in which we might contemplate our shame."
Actually, one particularly nice thing about technology, especially the "high" and semi-high kinds, is the way space can be reclaimed. Sitting at my elbow are not one, but two computers of the general size and shape that people describe as a cube, even though they're far from cubical. Together, they take up less room than the case of my previous main computer, and use less energy. If my job didnt' involve being online so much, I'd try to pare it down to one machine at my elbow.
Does your kitchen have a microwave raised off the counter? That's space that (just a few years ago) you'd have had to sacrifice if you wanted the convenience of a microwave.
Two minor examples, but you can think of many more around the typical 1st-world dwelling: it doesn't *have* to, since you can be as Rube Goldberg as you'd like, but technology can be a force for genuine simplification and comfort. Which is pretty obvious
There's a reason besides one-upmanship that many people are willing to pay thousands of dollars for flat-screen plasma TV monitors, and in a sense it's the same reason that others forgo television entirely -- because a thin rectangle on the wall is less intrusive than a many-hundreds-of-pounds behemoth looking like a shrine, taking up half the living room.
timothy
RedLeg:
... sketchy.
;)) can get a subscription, and according to the rep, Linux and Mac OS are just fine with them. Since there is a location nearby, I will go there and try out the hour-long version first to make sure it works as advertised, and then mark up my national map with locations ;)
Thanks for the information on this.
I plan to move in a few months to Washington state (from eastern TN) and have been investigating internet options along the way, was thinking about buying a T-Mobile subscription, parking near Starbucks locations with a 802.11 antenna. That is
The yearly subscription rate is a lot less than I pay for my (backup) service from Mindspring; I just talked to a rep there, confirmed that anyone (you don't have to be in a truckers' union or anything
timothy
Well, OK, spam isn't a "sausage" but if sterile canning systems had been around in abundance equal to that of instestines when people were first thinking up sausage, do you think anyone would quite recognize the difference? Go with sausage, just for a minute.
;))
... still true?); I don't want little pink stamps of inspection / taxation on all my emails.
... the U.S. Postal Service) reminded me of what sort of people, if not which people per se, will increasingly hold power to approve email as any such laws click into bureaucratic place.
Despite being of a basically liberal bent, I have at times so despaired of spam that even *new laws* sounded attractive. Various anti-spam measures (I like the *potential*-payment plan of pennyblack, mentioned on Slashdot at least once before), including of late vastly improved spam-filtering methods, I think are a better solution. (Yes, Declan McCullagh has made this argument better than I am ready to right now
Even though it sounds nice to say that we should "ban spam," unless all email is routed through a big Spam Whittler, any such ban is no better than just enforcing property rights laws re: trespass etc. In Italy, CDs are all stamped with a little pink stamp of government approval / taxation (at least 10 years ago there were
A visit today to a franchise location of the U.S. Postal "Service" (remember, "dot-com, not dot-gov" since [hold the guffaws in the rear] they're not a government agency, according to so high an authority as
timothy
People often use "tradtional" when what they mean is "conventional." I think that's the case here. That's a pet peeve of mine: 'traditional' implies something closer to (as you point out) the Free Software Foundation's vision of the world, because (duh!) it has something to do with *tradition* (complete with a shared set of ideas / attitudes / oral history etc). "Conventional" would better sum up what the writer is talking about IMO, basically "this is sorta how it's mostly done now, at least in the world of packaged software."
timothy
Yes, that's exactly what it is. Chris Eigeman makes me laugh so hard in that movie, yet friends get annoyed whenever I suggest watching it for the jillionth time. Taylor Nichols is great too, plays a convincing nice, conflicted guy, and all three of the leading women are drop-dead gorgeous. Mira Sorvino naked ... :)
Tim
No, really :)
... the hotel managers better be careful about who they let stay in each room ;) When my family made road trips (and my siblings and I were small) I'm sure we could have accidentally done a bit more damage than the 'rents would have liked to put on the family credit cards. One well-aimed pillow / baseball / souvenier frisbee, and that $5000 TV is looking less well.
I like the space savings etc, but
timothy
No different from a corporation, schools often have undertakings that are caught up in precedent and convention.
If your school has a newspaper, consider showing them how to set up Linux file server or some story-typing / editing stations.
If they have an advertising crew, show them that Gnumeric and Open Office offer high-quality, free spreadsheets. (And if they're pretty simple, there should be no probs with converting to / from Excel format.)
Graphics: there are decent-enough vector graphics now (Carbon14 is one) and excellent image-retouching programs (GIMP, Image Magick), available built into most distros and downloadable for others.
Web browsing: School newspapers often use the Web for research, and for other purposes when they're not "working." Show them with a 5-minute demo that with Mozilla they can forget most popup ads, open tabs for organization, bookmark groups of tabs for a useful start-up state, search using keywords, etc.
If they can afford it in the first place, they probably are stuck on a DTP program like Quark, PageMaker, InDesign, etc: that's OK, and hard to replace with Free software right now. The fantastic Scribus is getting better and better, though.
Still, you can show them that a cheap, even discarded computer can be a useful and reliable adjunct for many *other* purposes when set up with Linux. (Which lets you save the DTP machine(s) for the ones using it for that purpose.)
timothy
People like things to be customized and personalized. A cool project I'd like to see is a distro-creation kit for schools that might include a distro like Knoppix customized with:
- splash screens with school logo
- school colors as appropriate
- directory (if your school permits such, make sure all students with listed numbers are fully aware of their inclusion in advance)
- likewise, yearbook pictures or just some fun snapshots
- first-person-shooter with layout of your school. (But no weapons! Just call it a 3D tour, ok?)
- Mozilla / other browsers with useful-to-students links
- a lot of educational software
timothy
This is not a joke: I would not mind phone ads, under certain (not current) circumstances.
In the same way that I like advertisers to subsidize the creation of Futurama (well, past tense) and for me to watch reruns of Columbo, I would happily allow advertisers to pay for my phone use.
How? Imagine a system where between each phone call, you agree to listen to an advertisement, which would be (you guessed it) *very* closely tailored to you. e.g., no tampax ads for men, no thinning hair cures for men for 16-year-old girls.
Would I like to have *unsolicted* spam sent to me? No. Would I voluntarily let through a few ads each day in exchange for a bill of zero dollars? Yes.
Note there are a lot of permutations here, could be a limit of free calls, longer ads for more air time, maximum call length without hitting a surcharge, etc.
I would not want an hour of this, but there's probably a happy medium. Ask yourself, are you completely opposed to letting advertisers subsidize other things? And if the answer is No, wouldn't you rather let the spammers (who could be "advertisers") at least chip in toward the useful side of things?
timothy
the XBox does have the parts you mention, but it's missing one that would be necessary, which is some sort of video capture.
;)
There *are* external capture devices (USB), which I don't own / use, never have, but I've never heard kind words about their quality. The Xbox, without a place for PCI cards, seems amenable only to such an external one.
The *next* gen Xbox, might be a different story
timothy
I agree, one of the most underrated projects out there :)
...) -- what I think would be better (for many people, not all) is a simple schedule / record / pause / playback system. Maybe something which, if these things were all beers, could be called "MythTV Lite."
However, no, I'm just imagining something much simpler. MythTV is complicated to set up (which makes sense, considering it's a complex, full-featured thing
timothy
Not that the video codec is the only important part of this, but the fact that unlike most, Ogg Theora is completely free of patent / royalty issues.
;) -- including well-designed menus like the ones for freevo and mythTV, suitable for low-res TV screens -- so it could be used without a conventional monitor attached).
Imagine (it's not a great stretch anymore, though it might have been a few years ago) being able to assemble a box with a hard drive, motherboard, memory, then popping in a CD ala Knoppix or Gentoo Live, and BOOM there's a DVR. Movix is one side of the instant multi-media computer, but does not offer capture / record functions.
Built-to-purpose, such a computer ought to have a TV-out (and the live ISO would have to support it
timothy
If the room is to be shared (correctly), I'd want certain things: there should be a large, comfortable bed, extra pillows, sheets and blankets that don't constantly fall off the bed (!!! arrgh !!!), and a microfridge stocked with actually decent food. There should be a bathroom for each player, well stocked with necessaries like mouthwash, extra toothpaste, deodorant, linens, large comfy terry robe, etc. Television etc, eh, maybe, but should be smaller than the gigantic DO NOT DISTURB sign. No alarm clock.
If the room is *not* shared in the sense implied above, that is, if it's just a place to work, sleep and eat while on the road or after having been kicked out, the things it needs are different:
- wireless broadband
- pizza slot
- microfridge again, well loaded
- big honkin' alarm clock
- temperfoam pallet or maybe a straw tick.
- TV via projector; projector should have a VGA input, too, to hook up laptop.
timothy
The eyemodule came from a Walmart in eastern Knoxville, TN (2 days ago), and the backup unit came from another Knoxville location, but that was 6 months ago. I have not been looking at springboard units particularly in the meantime, since the only one I figured I needed was the backup; there's a GPS unit that used to be insanely expensive that I imagine really might now have come down considerably, if you can find a store that still has one :)
timothy
Several months ago, I bought a springboard backup unit, which used to cost around $50 I think, for $8 at Walmart on clearance. Yesterday, bought an EyeModule2 (the 640x480 digital camera, also a springboard module) for $50. While those take care of the main things I had wanted for that slot (after 4 years of use, I figured I wanted a backup ;)), I wonder if anyone can point to other interesting, now-cheap springboard units ...
I'd like to find an ultra-cheap GPS springboard, but so far those are still sort of expensive (and hard to find anyhow).
timothy
Just read a book about Digital, which had a note I found interesting / amusing: When Apple was a young company, they bought DEC computers for company record-keeping / infrastructure. DEC no longer exists per se, but it would be an interesting turnaround if at least some workgroup of former DEC employees at HPaq runs *their* infrastructure on an Apple server ;)
timothy
Reading through the responses so far, some common responses resonate with me, as in "boy, that's how I should have done it during college!"
... next semester. Or when you've backed up to hard drive, or otherwise extracted the valuable bits. You might be able to sell extracts toward final exam time ;) There are also some decent-looking MP3 recorders, shame about Ogg so far though ...
...), use a keyboard that's comfy for you. It could be the one that's built into your laptop, or it could be from the $2 shelf at goodwill like the one I'm using right now. If you type a 10-page paper just once, you'll be happy to have a decent keyboard. USB PS/2 adapters are cheap, and so are PS/2 AT adapters.
;))
The things I'm listing here all require money, but need not be extravagant. (Besides which, wearing clothes takes money, eating ramen takes money, etc. Serving Suggestion, YMMV, etc, not every*thing* is for every*one*, why when I was a boy we didn't have "feet" -- we were too poor, yammina, yammina, yammina.)
1) I favor notebooks for students (iBook, ThinkPad, etc) but not for notetaking. Aside from games and recreational use, they're good for research and for typing your papers. Paper notes are often better than typed, so "laptop to class" (for notetaking purposes) is overstated in value. YM(and your Professors / classes / note-taking style)MV. However, if you have the discipline to do so, scanning your notes in (and Hey, maybe eventually retyping them) can give you a *lot* of notes very portably. If you do have a notebook, you can take all your notes with you for quickly reviewing.
2) minidisc for recording lectures. Buy a bunch of discs, don't erase anything until you're absolutely sure you ought to. Re-use them
3) Whatever computer you have to use (spankin' new Tadpole SPARCbook, borrowed junker your roommate doesn't know you're borrowing
4) Laser printer. Share it (and split the cost) with your room- / suite- / hall- or housemates. It can be a used but working old LaserJet, or whatever brand's cheap at CompUSA. My lexmark was $100, lives an easy life but has not complained yet. Check the toner once in a while, keep it in "economy" mode. Inkjets have ruined lives. Just say No! to inkjets, except for printing out high-resolution photos on $1/sheet paper. (And if you're even thinking about considering that, you better be a photo major unless you've taken care of the earlier items on this list
timothy
Random entry in the microship chronicles
timothy
Yes, iTunes + plug-in will play them. Today, I put on my iBook a little app (freeware, used to be shareware, but not open source ... at least, I don't *see* a link to source ;)) called Whamb.
...
Which has zero zilch nada to do with all the *other* things iTunes can do wrt streaming etc, just a note if that's the reason you're bringing up Ye Olde Medyia Player, and since it's the reason I'm bringing up mine
timothy
If I were to draw up a map of all the things I'd like my computer to be able to easily do (*easily* that is, since most of these are possible, just not as easy to achieve as they should be), I don't think any available OS would score a 6/10 or even a 5/10, and not for want of trying -- just because human desires are for practical purposes infinite.
:)
I'd like a computer to:
- work seamlessly (open, edit, save, convert format) with all my current documents
- feature well-designed apps for recording and editing video and audio
- come with an actually useful, contextually flexible help system -- man pages *and* For Dummies -style tutorials, and a searchable index linking to sections of both
- never need the help system, since it's so intuitive
- run on sunlight (or moonlight)
- feature perfect voice recognition and synthesis
- autodetect, configure, and if necessary, create new drivers on the fly for all my current and future peripherals
- know what *I* want when I click a certain spot on a window.
- (etc, etc)
That the Munich gov't drew up high standards is smart on their part, recognizes the imperfection of software (as part of the imperfection of all human systems) in meeting all desires.
A high standard partially met is more useful long-term than a low-standard which would have been met by a warehouse of C64s
timothy
krispykringle -- Apologies, but this really is getting more involved than I have time to pursue right now, so I hope you don't mind if I call this my last contribution to this thread :)
... the nuke-in-a-briefcase does give me the willies. Depending on who you believe or refuse to, there may be one or more of these in cities around the U.S.; reasonable sources suggest that the Soviet Embassy had one. (Or maybe this is now to the level of proven or disproven fact, I am not sure.)
In more direct regard to guns, though, we clearly acknowledge limits. You would be in the great minority (not that that discredits your beliefs, to be sure) if you truly believed that "anything [one] can bear is fair.""
Well, that's why I used the past tense
"Does this apply to everyone? Are licensing schemes to make sure owners have proper training illegal?"
That's a good question. The Constitution specifies the right to "keep and bear" arms, does not address matters of acquisition directly. Certain types of legislation could obviously subvert the intent of such a statement of rights (banning ammunition, or outlawing guns with a capactity for >0 rounds of ammunition, mandating a 131-year waiting period etc), but I am not certain whether a mandatory training or competency test would do the same. I've considered this only a little bit in my life, but I don't see it as clearly unconstutional (or immoral, fattening etc) to require a basic competency test. (General welfare might cover this, though I think the general welfare is basically best served by leaving people the hell alone.) Driving licenses don't bother me so much, since they apply to public spaces; I think a decent analog in the gun world are the courses required, I believe in every state which allows concealed handgun carry, before people can carry. I think it's important that any such requirements be reasonable and liberal -- the law should defer to the gun owner and the public, rather than force the owner to defer to the state.
"What about preventing minors or mental patients or felons from owning guns? I know this will probably make you shake your head and mutter, "it's a slippery slope," but clearly once you acknowledge that some restrictions are OK, the debate becomes a bit more complex."
Well, I do acknowledge that some restrictions are OK, but I think this slippery slope is far less slippery than the point you raised earlier re: scope of arms ownership rights (the MiG). Felons who have served their full term ought IMO have the full rights of citizenship restored. It's not good to have a stratified society where people have different levels of rights. (For that matter, I'd like to see a lot of age restrictions done away with, on both ends of the age spectrum. Mandatory retirement ages disgust me.) Parolees by definition do not have all the rights of ordinary citizens, but I don't want a permanent parolee class.
"There are, of course, those who argue that in a historical context, the 2nd Amendment didn't mean what it has been said to mean, namely that the "well funded militia" means the intention was for a regulated militia, not rampant gun ownership in any home."
The Constituion specifies "well regulated" rather than "well funded;" that well regulated though is in a subordinate clause, subordinate to the "right of the people shall not be infringed" part. And, in a historical context, the founding dads expressing an opinion (looking for counterexamples) were pretty pro-gun.
See for instance this page, with gems like "Little more can reasonably be aimed at with respect to the people at large than to have them properly armed and equipped." (Alexander Hamilton, Federalist Papers #29)
(Though see also this page of bogus founders' quotes, which casts some doubt on the top quote from G. Washington listed in
Still, surely some sort of guidelines for parents, even if voluntary, are a reasonable measure; since parents are not always there to enforce their own preferences, the hard-and-fast restrictions are most likely to serve as surrogate measures of convenience rather than as laws to override a parental preference.
...
... Canada? Australia? Where?
... maybe I'd impose an aimed-fire requirement ;) Product of growing up in the 70s and 80s, but nuclear weapons scare me more than conventional ones, no matter than you're just as dead either way.
.50 cal rifles.]
;)***
Sure. I like voluntary guidelines just fine. It doesn't bother me that Wal-Mart (or anywhere) sets their own rules about selling to young customers etc, because such guidelines do serve as useful surrogates. So long as there is free entry to the market, I see no abrogation of rights in EB Games refusing to carry "Pornographic Adventure II: Come Again?" A free market defines conditions, not outcomes
[re: guns] so is it just that its a fundamental constitutional right? Do you believe that there are reasonable limits to this right (i.e. no machine guns, no surface-to-air missiles, etc)? Should I be allowed to own a fully armed ex-Soviet MiG if I'd like?
Yes, I think the right to keep and bear arms is well expressed in the Constitution. There are lots (lots!) of things which have gone wrong or violated citizens' rights* in the U.S. over its history, but by and large this country is and has been the freest country in the world. I don't mean to be jingoistic about that, and I'm always interested in evidence to the contrary. I hear lots of disillusioned Americans declare that they're going to leave the unfree and oppressive U.S. to head out to
wrt: "reasonable limits," that's a good question I've thought about and have no great conclusions to express. Obvious dilemma: if you believe that an armed populace is a good vaccine for tyranny, it would be silly to restrict weapons ownership to peashooters and slingshots; on the other hand, I'm not sure I want *every* bowling club to have their own tank. (Or, more to the point, every church, mosque and synagogue to have their own suitcase nukes.)
I used to say "anything [one] can bear is fair!" but those pesky suitcase nukes
[On that front, I'll note that "assault weapon" bans are silly (among other things that they are). The Steyr Scout I linked to doesn't look like a traditional hunting rifle, nor does it look like the stereotyped "assault rifle" -- but so what? So are hysteria-driven bans on, for instance,
timothy
* Witch trials**. Slavery. Segregation. Tuskegee experiment. Subway nerve gas testing. Japanese segregation. The IRS. The draft. Unconstitutional wiretapping and harrassment. Etc, etc. Far from perfect record, but balanced by vigorous reactions and (in context) a decent showing vs. contemporaries.
** OK, this is before the U.S. per se, but I consider the U.S. a continuum
*** mmm, nested footnotes.