Unfortunately, it happenned in the late '70s (I got my M.Sc. in math from Ohio State in 1980). I still remember this since it was especially cute when we (several TAs) asked the guy about how he got the answer because he even crossed out the sixes. I don't remember now why we grilled him on it (suspected of cheating or just trying to see if he really knew what he was doing).
Still, this makes a great example of how you can missapply a rule in a specific example and get the right answer. I'll have to remember the 65/26 since it seems to show that this technique really works. I'm amazed at how many times having an example like this has come in handy when I needed to disabuse someone of a similar mistake.
This is especially true for introductory classes at larger universities. I was a math teaching assistant at Ohio State in the late '70s. Typical introductory classes (algebra II through second quarter calculus) had about 150 to 180 students in a large lecture hall. Very easy to get lost in that size crowd. The recitation sections were taught by T.A.s like me with usually around 25 to 30 students. You would probably be noticed there. Generally, the exams were given at the lecture hall so you need to attend regularly enough to know when NOT to show up becuase IDs were checked at midterms and finals to make sure somebody wasn't sending in a substitute to get them through the class.
Generally, if you have a decent cover story like you've been away from it for a while (actually true) and just need a refresher before you jumb back into the next course (who knows, maybe someday), most (but not necessarily all) instructors would let you sit in as long as you don't create a disturbance. The school mainly wants to get paid if they're going to issue you a sheepskin. The instructor probably doesn't really care as long as nobody official notices and you're not a problem.
This should make it illegal for someone to include what UCITA (Uniform Computer Information Transactions Act) calls "electronic remedies", sell the product in England and then use the electronic remedy to disable the product. Here's a link to the Inforworld site that has more information about UCITA.
Hopefully I won't go blind replying to my own posting but current is now 2.5.24. It compiles and seems to be stable on my dualie AMD box. Is it my imagination or are the odd development kernels a little more "developmental" than the even ones? So far 2.5.20, 2.5.22 and 2.5.24 have all built with little or no pain while 2.5.21 and 2.5.23 were DOA.
A ditto on start with pricewatch. It also lets you calibrate what the going rate is for a particular item. You can then swing by your local computer store and see how much they want. Some things like cases and monitors will be very competitive when you add in the shipping for something big and/or heavy. Also a good place to buy even if you have to pay a small price premium if you think you may need to be able to return something (e.g., video card that may not be compatible with the motherboard).
Put my last box together from stuff ordered from companies I found on Pricewatch. Didn't have any problems with anything I ordered which also means I can't give you any feedback as to how easy it is to return stuff, get support, etc. I also was able to narrow everything down to just two vendors. Might have been able to save a $ or two if I'd split things up but the more different people you have to deal with, the more likely it is that at least one of them will be a problem. Also, like the original post said, the more different places you order from, the more shipping charges you'll get hit with.
My $.02: if you want to put something cutting edge together (The box I mentioned above is a dualie athlon), build it yourself. You'll save a bundle. If you're going to try to put a bargain system together, you may actually end up paying more than if you just went out and bought it. The more comoditized the components, the better the price point that someone like Dell or Gateway can get since they buy thousands of whatever it is (disk drive, CD, video card, etc.). The more cutting edge something is, the fewer somebody like that sells and the more they jack up their margin.
"Wow, if it's a monopoly, then it certainly hasn't hurt prices."
Without government action to limit competition, it is very difficult to establish and maintain an effective monopoly. Micro$oft is one of the very few. Generally, when someone tries to establish a monopoly they do it by making it unprofitable for their competitors. This LOWERS prices. Its only once the monopoly has been established that they can raise prices. Worked that way with Standard Oil at the end of the 19th century/beginning of the 20th. Still holds true now. What Standard Oil did that was uncompetitive was to also attempt to buy out other refiners. This only had the effect of people starting new refineries so they could sell them. And there were always enough upstarts around that the price of oil stayed low. Most people don't study history... they really should.
Just out of interest, how many books by Ayn Rand have you read? At least one, I would hope, before you would use her name in this way. If you read a few you will find that Rand argued primarily for people to be able to do what they choose, including not work for payment. I can site several passages in "Atlas Shrugged" where this is the case. What she argued against was government taking away what an individual had created and, above all, taking away an individual's right to choose.
**NOTE In case you missed the implication **
This would include our right to contribute to free software. Microsft cannot make it illegal to use free software; only the government can (possibly in response to campaign contributions from Microsoft, RIAA, et al). Personally, I contribute to open source because its in my own selfish best interest. With open source, I get better quality software, a lower price and, by contributing, I learn; very selfish of me.
BTW, in addition to a thesaurus (so you can find a different adjective), I suggest you also invest in a dictionary. The word is spelled "dinosaur."
Exams primarily test how well you take the exam. There are some people out there who test "well" and there are others who don't but who, by other measures, know the material equally well. Unfortunately, exams are one of the few metrics available in a formal education environment that give some measure of the individual's knowledge with little or no room for cheating and can be accomplished in a reasonable amount of time.
I used to teach math at the junior college level and never liked it that some people just had trouble under the pressure of a test. I gave them the benefit of the doubt to the extent I could but the bottom line was that, if somebody could do the work AND show they knew the material on a test, I had to grade them higher than someone who seemed to know the material but had trouble taking the test. I didn't have a brain probe to use to see if the people who couldn't take a test really understood the material.
I worked for a defense contractor from 1980 until 1992. During that time software developed under contract for the government became government property. If we worked on a project that was related to another project, we could request the software developed for that project be furnished to us. I know of at least one project that I was personally involved with where we were able to obtain applicable software that had been developed by another company this way. Has this changed? Or are we only talking about the equivalent of shrink wrap or minimally customized software? From some of the articles (such as the one at Newsforge), either people who don't know about developing software for the governement are saying things that have no basis or how the governement treats software it pays to have developed has changed a lot in the past 10 years... and since I keep up on such things, I don't think so.
BTW, we also made use of open source software (I remember one project in particular that used X for the user interface). It was buggy as all get out but it was "free."
Just put together a dualie Athlon system using an Antec case (SX1040B). This has to be the sweetest case I have ever worked with in terms of easy accessibility, well thought out design, little extras (e.g., there are holders in the bottom of the case for the extra drive rails so you can keep them with the case and find them when you add another drive sometime later), etc. Its also doing a great job of keeping two Athlon 1900+s cool and supplied with juice.
So far the only complaint I have is that I can't get their EasyUSB front panel USB adapter in black to match the case.
Re:A libertarian perspective...
on
Fair IP Laws?
·
· Score: 1
Having been accused of being a libertarian myself, I have to ask the question: why do you differentiate between intellectual property and say either physical property or financial property? Or are you suggesting that we all just arm ourselves and defend our inventions, our property and, for that matter, our own selves to the best of our own ability?
Whether I build something physical or create something intangible, I have expended my efforts (a part of my life) to create it. If it is taken from me without compensation, I no longer have the income it once generated and I have the right to defend my property against this eventuality or, in a civilised society, ask that my government take on this police function. From the perspective of the person who expended the effort to create something, there is no difference between theft of physical property and theft of intellectual property.
BTW, I tend to be more of a Randian than a Libertarian. Government, per se, is not bad. Government protecting private property (including intellectual property) is good. Government sticking its nose (or other parts) into commercial transactions is bad.
A challenge (and there are many others besides this one) is to come up with something that ballances preventing the patenting of the mundane by using innovative language with something that allows a patent holder to make a profit from a "natural" substance. The/. community is all too familliar with people who patent or try to patent everything from web links to silverware by simply describing the item or process using obfuscatory language. Any change to patent law or the patent process should protect against this.
A different shortcoming of existing patent law is that it makes it unprofitable to bring a natural substance to market. As examples, there are several herbal remedies and natural substances that don't have the nasty side-effects of the equivalent man-made drug or concoction but for which there is little or no incentive to make them commercially available by doing the expensive product testing, etc. required to claim they are "safe and effective." A business will only spend the money to do this if the business thinks it has a reasonable expectation of making a profit on the resulting product.
So instead of just coming up with changes to the existing law that will just let you download MP3s again, consider what it would take to actually make a real improvement.
Re:Examples, please!
on
Bitter Java
·
· Score: 3, Funny
I have to say it... There are no concrete examples; only abstract super class examples.
I worked for a defense contractor for more than half of my career (12 out of 22) and I'm quite proud of creating the technology that helped prevent World War III, brought down the Soviet Union, kicked Sadam's ass and is now kicking the ass of the terrorists who killed several thousand Americans. When your make believe, Barney, "I love you, you love me" world gets interupted by some insane fanatic crashing an airliner into your office you might have a blinding flash of insight that says, "Duh, maybe somebody should have defended me," right before you go up in smoke. But I doubt it.
As I see it, the folks in Hollyweird have two very legitimate reasons to complain:
1) Professional piracy operations who create and sell illegal reproductions of copyrighted material and
2) Posting of copyrighted material for sharing/download.
Any one person burning copies of CDs or DVDs isn't the real problem. They simply can't make enough of them to significantly harm the copyright holder. Trying to eliminate this would be like figuring out a way to make every photocopier not allow you to copy a page from a book or a magazine and just as unneeded. Who wants to do the equivalent of standing at a copier and copying a book one page at a time?
Back to the real problem. There are already laws on the books to prevent piracy operations. If necessary, the penalties can be made more severe or additional money can be allocated for stricter enforcement. There are also laws in place to prevent people from operating sharing/download sites that provide copyrighted material. Same alternatives as for piraters but go after whoever is providing the server(s) to include peer-to-peer sharing schemes. The only way these can cause significant harm to a copyright holder is if they are known to a large number of people which immediately puts them on the law enforcement radar screen.
This may not be popular here on/. but the bottom line is that the owner of intellectual property has the right to be compensated for people taking advantage of their creation. If someone has something you want, the market provides a mechanism for you to acquire it: you pay them money. If you don't like their terms, don't buy it. If they choose to give it away, that is their choice; not yours.
According to my Vericept Network Security monitoring device, I've been hit with 250 IIS Unicode attacks TODAY and its just noon here in Denver. Since I run Apache on Linux, this isn't that much of a concern to me but its scary that the media wants to convince people that they don't really have to worry. Of course, it isn't much of a story when some virus gets out in the wild but doesn't do any damage because people have current anti-virus software. Look back on how much mileage the media got out of the damage caused by "Mellisa", "I love you", and "Code Red". I guess the media would also like it if we went back to the lax airline security we had before 9/11 so they could have some real-world disasters to write about too.
Absolutely true but I find the "translation" I use to be clearer. Face it, if William were here speaking to us now, neither of us would probably understand a word he was saying. I will change the attribution on the sig to be Occam's Razor. I think this is actually what the statement I use is correctly known as... regardless of whether William actually said it... but after I post the reply.
One of the local TV stations did an investigative report on the "Make Thousands Working from Home" street signs last summer. What they found were that many were simple frauds. That is, you send them money, they send you nothing. One of the more interesting "Work from Homes" scams that they found worked like this: you send them money, they send you "Work from Home" signs with YOUR phone number and a contact for making custom signs! Yep, a simple pyramid scheme. You post the signs, people send you money. You send them signs and a contact for making customized "Work from Home" signs...
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
I used to work for a L-A-R-G-E defense contractor and kept suggesting we name some of our servers "waste, fraud and abuse." This didn't go over well in some circles so I had to wait until I no longer worked there. My three home boxes though are now named "waste", "fraud" and "abuse." I ran into a similar problem when I added some additional hardware but these became "bend" and "fold". What I'll do after I add "spindle" and "mutilate" remains to be seen. I guess I'll see what some of the suggestions here are...
Slashdot Mirror
Unfortunately, it happenned in the late '70s (I got my M.Sc. in math from Ohio State in 1980). I still remember this since it was especially cute when we (several TAs) asked the guy about how he got the answer because he even crossed out the sixes. I don't remember now why we grilled him on it (suspected of cheating or just trying to see if he really knew what he was doing).
Still, this makes a great example of how you can missapply a rule in a specific example and get the right answer. I'll have to remember the 65/26 since it seems to show that this technique really works. I'm amazed at how many times having an example like this has come in handy when I needed to disabuse someone of a similar mistake.
I wish I were just making this up.
This is especially true for introductory classes at larger universities. I was a math teaching assistant at Ohio State in the late '70s. Typical introductory classes (algebra II through second quarter calculus) had about 150 to 180 students in a large lecture hall. Very easy to get lost in that size crowd. The recitation sections were taught by T.A.s like me with usually around 25 to 30 students. You would probably be noticed there. Generally, the exams were given at the lecture hall so you need to attend regularly enough to know when NOT to show up becuase IDs were checked at midterms and finals to make sure somebody wasn't sending in a substitute to get them through the class.
Generally, if you have a decent cover story like you've been away from it for a while (actually true) and just need a refresher before you jumb back into the next course (who knows, maybe someday), most (but not necessarily all) instructors would let you sit in as long as you don't create a disturbance. The school mainly wants to get paid if they're going to issue you a sheepskin. The instructor probably doesn't really care as long as nobody official notices and you're not a problem.
I'm trying to get ALSA working with the 2.5.24 kernel and now I'm going to have to pay royalties on all of the silence. AHHHhhhhhhh!!!!!!
This should make it illegal for someone to include what UCITA (Uniform Computer Information Transactions Act) calls "electronic remedies", sell the product in England and then use the electronic remedy to disable the product. Here's a link to the Inforworld site that has more information about UCITA.
Hopefully I won't go blind replying to my own posting but current is now 2.5.24. It compiles and seems to be stable on my dualie AMD box. Is it my imagination or are the odd development kernels a little more "developmental" than the even ones? So far 2.5.20, 2.5.22 and 2.5.24 have all built with little or no pain while 2.5.21 and 2.5.23 were DOA.
A ditto on start with pricewatch. It also lets you calibrate what the going rate is for a particular item. You can then swing by your local computer store and see how much they want. Some things like cases and monitors will be very competitive when you add in the shipping for something big and/or heavy. Also a good place to buy even if you have to pay a small price premium if you think you may need to be able to return something (e.g., video card that may not be compatible with the motherboard).
Put my last box together from stuff ordered from companies I found on Pricewatch. Didn't have any problems with anything I ordered which also means I can't give you any feedback as to how easy it is to return stuff, get support, etc. I also was able to narrow everything down to just two vendors. Might have been able to save a $ or two if I'd split things up but the more different people you have to deal with, the more likely it is that at least one of them will be a problem. Also, like the original post said, the more different places you order from, the more shipping charges you'll get hit with.
My $.02: if you want to put something cutting edge together (The box I mentioned above is a dualie athlon), build it yourself. You'll save a bundle. If you're going to try to put a bargain system together, you may actually end up paying more than if you just went out and bought it. The more comoditized the components, the better the price point that someone like Dell or Gateway can get since they buy thousands of whatever it is (disk drive, CD, video card, etc.). The more cutting edge something is, the fewer somebody like that sells and the more they jack up their margin.
And missleading interpretation:
"Wow, if it's a monopoly, then it certainly hasn't hurt prices."
Without government action to limit competition, it is very difficult to establish and maintain an effective monopoly. Micro$oft is one of the very few. Generally, when someone tries to establish a monopoly they do it by making it unprofitable for their competitors. This LOWERS prices. Its only once the monopoly has been established that they can raise prices. Worked that way with Standard Oil at the end of the 19th century/beginning of the 20th. Still holds true now. What Standard Oil did that was uncompetitive was to also attempt to buy out other refiners. This only had the effect of people starting new refineries so they could sell them. And there were always enough upstarts around that the price of oil stayed low. Most people don't study history... they really should.
Just out of interest, how many books by Ayn Rand have you read? At least one, I would hope, before you would use her name in this way. If you read a few you will find that Rand argued primarily for people to be able to do what they choose, including not work for payment. I can site several passages in "Atlas Shrugged" where this is the case. What she argued against was government taking away what an individual had created and, above all, taking away an individual's right to choose.
**NOTE In case you missed the implication **
This would include our right to contribute to free software. Microsft cannot make it illegal to use free software; only the government can (possibly in response to campaign contributions from Microsoft, RIAA, et al). Personally, I contribute to open source because its in my own selfish best interest. With open source, I get better quality software, a lower price and, by contributing, I learn; very selfish of me.
BTW, in addition to a thesaurus (so you can find a different adjective), I suggest you also invest in a dictionary. The word is spelled "dinosaur."
Exams primarily test how well you take the exam. There are some people out there who test "well" and there are others who don't but who, by other measures, know the material equally well. Unfortunately, exams are one of the few metrics available in a formal education environment that give some measure of the individual's knowledge with little or no room for cheating and can be accomplished in a reasonable amount of time.
I used to teach math at the junior college level and never liked it that some people just had trouble under the pressure of a test. I gave them the benefit of the doubt to the extent I could but the bottom line was that, if somebody could do the work AND show they knew the material on a test, I had to grade them higher than someone who seemed to know the material but had trouble taking the test. I didn't have a brain probe to use to see if the people who couldn't take a test really understood the material.
I worked for a defense contractor from 1980 until 1992. During that time software developed under contract for the government became government property. If we worked on a project that was related to another project, we could request the software developed for that project be furnished to us. I know of at least one project that I was personally involved with where we were able to obtain applicable software that had been developed by another company this way. Has this changed? Or are we only talking about the equivalent of shrink wrap or minimally customized software? From some of the articles (such as the one at Newsforge), either people who don't know about developing software for the governement are saying things that have no basis or how the governement treats software it pays to have developed has changed a lot in the past 10 years... and since I keep up on such things, I don't think so.
BTW, we also made use of open source software (I remember one project in particular that used X for the user interface). It was buggy as all get out but it was "free."
Just put together a dualie Athlon system using an Antec case (SX1040B). This has to be the sweetest case I have ever worked with in terms of easy accessibility, well thought out design, little extras (e.g., there are holders in the bottom of the case for the extra drive rails so you can keep them with the case and find them when you add another drive sometime later), etc. Its also doing a great job of keeping two Athlon 1900+s cool and supplied with juice.
So far the only complaint I have is that I can't get their EasyUSB front panel USB adapter in black to match the case.
Having been accused of being a libertarian myself, I have to ask the question: why do you differentiate between intellectual property and say either physical property or financial property? Or are you suggesting that we all just arm ourselves and defend our inventions, our property and, for that matter, our own selves to the best of our own ability?
Whether I build something physical or create something intangible, I have expended my efforts (a part of my life) to create it. If it is taken from me without compensation, I no longer have the income it once generated and I have the right to defend my property against this eventuality or, in a civilised society, ask that my government take on this police function. From the perspective of the person who expended the effort to create something, there is no difference between theft of physical property and theft of intellectual property.
BTW, I tend to be more of a Randian than a Libertarian. Government, per se, is not bad. Government protecting private property (including intellectual property) is good. Government sticking its nose (or other parts) into commercial transactions is bad.
A challenge (and there are many others besides this one) is to come up with something that ballances preventing the patenting of the mundane by using innovative language with something that allows a patent holder to make a profit from a "natural" substance. The /. community is all too familliar with people who patent or try to patent everything from web links to silverware by simply describing the item or process using obfuscatory language. Any change to patent law or the patent process should protect against this.
A different shortcoming of existing patent law is that it makes it unprofitable to bring a natural substance to market. As examples, there are several herbal remedies and natural substances that don't have the nasty side-effects of the equivalent man-made drug or concoction but for which there is little or no incentive to make them commercially available by doing the expensive product testing, etc. required to claim they are "safe and effective." A business will only spend the money to do this if the business thinks it has a reasonable expectation of making a profit on the resulting product.
So instead of just coming up with changes to the existing law that will just let you download MP3s again, consider what it would take to actually make a real improvement.
I have to say it... There are no concrete examples; only abstract super class examples.
I worked for a defense contractor for more than half of my career (12 out of 22) and I'm quite proud of creating the technology that helped prevent World War III, brought down the Soviet Union, kicked Sadam's ass and is now kicking the ass of the terrorists who killed several thousand Americans. When your make believe, Barney, "I love you, you love me" world gets interupted by some insane fanatic crashing an airliner into your office you might have a blinding flash of insight that says, "Duh, maybe somebody should have defended me," right before you go up in smoke. But I doubt it.
As I see it, the folks in Hollyweird have two very legitimate reasons to complain:
/. but the bottom line is that the owner of intellectual property has the right to be compensated for people taking advantage of their creation. If someone has something you want, the market provides a mechanism for you to acquire it: you pay them money. If you don't like their terms, don't buy it. If they choose to give it away, that is their choice; not yours.
1) Professional piracy operations who create and sell illegal reproductions of copyrighted material and
2) Posting of copyrighted material for sharing/download.
Any one person burning copies of CDs or DVDs isn't the real problem. They simply can't make enough of them to significantly harm the copyright holder. Trying to eliminate this would be like figuring out a way to make every photocopier not allow you to copy a page from a book or a magazine and just as unneeded. Who wants to do the equivalent of standing at a copier and copying a book one page at a time?
Back to the real problem. There are already laws on the books to prevent piracy operations. If necessary, the penalties can be made more severe or additional money can be allocated for stricter enforcement. There are also laws in place to prevent people from operating sharing/download sites that provide copyrighted material. Same alternatives as for piraters but go after whoever is providing the server(s) to include peer-to-peer sharing schemes. The only way these can cause significant harm to a copyright holder is if they are known to a large number of people which immediately puts them on the law enforcement radar screen.
This may not be popular here on
A truly great science fiction epic.
Absolutely true but I find the "translation" I use to be clearer. Face it, if William were here speaking to us now, neither of us would probably understand a word he was saying. I will change the attribution on the sig to be Occam's Razor. I think this is actually what the statement I use is correctly known as... regardless of whether William actually said it... but after I post the reply.
Dave
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
... and as any perl programmer will tell you: "There's more than on way to do it."
And, besides, doesn't mauve have the most RAM?
I used to work for a L-A-R-G-E defense contractor and kept suggesting we name some of our servers "waste, fraud and abuse." This didn't go over well in some circles so I had to wait until I no longer worked there. My three home boxes though are now named "waste", "fraud" and "abuse." I ran into a similar problem when I added some additional hardware but these became "bend" and "fold". What I'll do after I add "spindle" and "mutilate" remains to be seen. I guess I'll see what some of the suggestions here are...