I did some research and programming in this field over a decade ago. The really frustrating thing about this field is how slow moving it is and how little it is taken seriously.
When you have constructed an environment and electronic "organisms" that can breed within that environment, and then watched the generations gradually improve and adapt to the environment, you get the feeling of a new kind of power that we haven't really tapped yet - evolution.
I think one of the problems is that people don't get what is happening in these types of projects. When I showed people the projects I was working on - even biologists and computer scientists - the first reaction was that what they were seeing was just a simulation - i.e. that I had programmed in the fact that the organisms adapted to the environment. It took a lot of explaining to convince some people that what they were seeing was actual evolution, albeit in digital form.
The fact that this research is just looking at breeding cars which are used in a computer game just demonstrates how slow moving developments in this area are. Evolution could be used to improve many aspects of cars -- their engineering, efficiency, production and even visual design. It will happen one day, but it's taking us a hell of a time to realise that we can exploit the force that produced all the wonderful things we see in nature.
They should make them a bit more exciting. When you have finished watching the DVD it should display "This DVD will self-destruct in ten, nine, eight..." so you have to quickly take it out of the player and throw it out of the window just before it explodes. Would make watching DVDs much more fun, and would stop you falling asleep during movies.
I think it is time to remind everyone how things once were...
Do you remember some years ago, that the Mozilla project was held up as an example of an OSS failure? By the majority of people, even here on Slashdot?
It was taking too long to develop, was too bloated, Microsoft would always be one step ahead...
These days Mozilla is now one of the trophy projects of the OSS community. But it was that same community that derided it not so long ago. We should be thankful for the persistence and long term vision of the Mozilla team.
It works the same in reverse and gets round a lot of sticky legal issues for both the US and the UK
Yes. It is fairly common knowledge that this type of thing goes on.
People in the UK get very confused about why its government always supports the USA, and why an intelligent politician like Blair - someone who is naturally a consensus builder and compromise former - can support seemingly dumb and bellicose politicians like Bush. I think the answer lies in all the intelligence and defence agreements that the USA and the UK have joined into over the years means that the UK really has its hands tied by the USA.
Especially, as you say, they get each others intelligence services to do their dirty work for them. It means the USA knows all of the UK secrets...
It seriously gives me the creeps when I hear Bush and the rest of them say this. It's as if they like war, and they're itching to start World War III. There only problem is that they don't have enough of an excuse yet...
The funny thing is that if you point this out to people, they say there isn't or that they hadn't noticed, until you point them out that is. And then they don't seem to see it as an issue.
However, I think the attitude is understandable to an extent because the UK has a history of hundreds of years of fairly benevolent government and policing. The Btits I'm sure are the most spied on people in the world and the UK has one of the biggest "intelligence" operations in the world relative to the country's size, but people are unaware and/or unconcerned about it because it rarely if ever affects the man in the street.
The only time the average Brit sees evidence of the dark side of their country is when some public figure has an accident or commits suicide at a very opportunistic moment for the country.
I think the truth is that people in the UK get upset about what the newspapers tell them to get upset about. There is very little about this kind of thing in the papers, so people don't get upset about it.
However, you can be sure that if the EU proposed RFID license plates, the newspapers would be all over it and there would be national outrage. People seem so concerned with opposing anything the EU does that they don't notice the things their own government is doing.
therefore I know exactly what information is being given to anyone who sees my plate
Surely the problem is not the information that is transmitted, but how it can be related to other information?
If a policeman can scan your numberplate and from that tell who you are and access your medical records to see that you went to the doctors last week to have your piles examined, does it matter that they only thing that is transmitted is a number?
Those people that want mean, lean systems can install the distro they prefer. The commercial distros need to complete with other commercial operating systems, including Windows. So if they need an equivalent amount of memory, I have no problem with that.
Recording the transit of Venus was the official reason for Cooks voyage to Tahiti - he carried precise scientific instruments to record it, as recording it from different locations around the world would provide valuable information.
Once this was done, Cook opened a secret envelope which contained the real reason for his voyage - to discover the great unknown land mass in the south (Australia) and claim it for England.
Not so simple when you are talking about something like a thin Sony Vaio laptop. They don't have standard parts, and anyway unscrewing them and fitting them back together again is not a simple task.
One thing that worries me is sending machines away to get repaired.
I have a Sony Vaio laptop which I had to send to be repaired. I phoned the support number to tell them I was going to take the hard disc out before sending it. They said that if I did I would be charged for a new hard disc (at a hugely inflated price) and they wouldn't repair it without one.
I once sent a PC for repair and the teenage dork who repaired it actually said I had some great games on my machine and that he had played them. In another case in the UK, some padeophile was caught (was it Garry Glitter?) when he sent his PC in for repair. Now, I'm all for catching kiddie fiddlers, but that is not the way to do it.
I don't want the repair staff looking through the stuff on my hard disc. There should be a standard industry guarantee that this won't happen, or a privacy law about it or something.
They have a legal right to sell it (maybe) in russia. However, the same company that owns the music in russia does not own it in America and does not own it in the UK or Canada or Japan.
Can I buy, say, a book or a DVD from another country and get it posted to me? Yes. In fact I do this quite a bit. The only legal issue is import duties. If that DVD or book or whatever is cheaper that in my own country, then the company that sells it here may not like it but tough, I'm not doing anything wrong. The company selling it to me may be doing something wrong if their country has export restrictions on the product, or if they are breaking a contract they have with the producers by selling that product to someone from another country. Otherwise, they're probably in the clear.
So, you haven't convinced me and I don't think I've "failed Law 101" - I think a lot of the people who argue that it is illegal to use allofmp3 would fail because they jump to conclusions without actually considering what the law actually says.
I expect this issue actually comes down to trade agreements between Russia and the rest of the world. Russia, you may be aware, is not currently a member of the WTO.
I'm just asking if it is in fact legal to use within the USA and elsewhere? I haven't seen a definitive yes or no.
I don't think there is a definitive answer to that question at the moment.
Lots of people argue that buying from allofmp3.com is illegal, but when you ask why, they say "it's obvious". From a legal perspective, I don't think it is obvious at all.
Now, distributing copyrighted material that you don't own is clearly illegal. But you're not doing that if you are downloading music from allofmp3.
Copying content that you do not have permission to copy is not legal, unless it meets certain criteria such an amount for research purposes. So doesn't that make it not legal to download from allofmp3? Not as far as I can see - you are purchasing something from someone who has a legal right to sell it. The fact that they are in another country doesn't matter - there's no law against you buying from foreign companies.
Now, it would be different if they were selling something that is clearly illegal in the USA (or something that was illegal to import), like child pornography. But they are not. Owning or purchasing mp3s is not illegal in itself.
To some people allofmp3 is clearly "not fair", but that doesn't make it illegal. I think the fact of the matter is that the laws surrounding these issues - purchasing digital content over the internet from other countries - are not yet clear. I expect the USA is putting pressure on Russia to change how internet companies are treated - currently they are classified as broadcasters, which allows allofmp3.com to do what it does legally. But until that happens, I have yet to see a convincing argument that downloading from allofmp3.com is illegal. Wrong, maybe, but then a lot of what the record companies do is wrong if we are looking at this from a moral perspective.
Since presumably most of the world does not live in Russia, its legality elsewhere is still in question.
But that's a dumb argument. There are American porns sites that would be illegal in many countries in the world, but that doesn't mean that the sites are of dubious legality. They are legal. Or if you don't like that example, many American web sites share personal data in a way that is not allowed by law in the EU, but again that doesn't mean they are illegal or dubious.
I think what you mean is that it may not be legal for people in the USA to use the allofmp3 web site. That may be the case. But allofmp3 is not "a legally questionable operation", unless you believe that all American porn sites are legally questionable because they would be illegal in certain other countries.
Absolutely not! Cloud cover turns a hard, directional light (the sun during the middle of the day) into a soft, diffuse light.
Ok. I shouldn't have added the bit about cloudy days, because as you say, sometimes the light can be great even when it's cloudy. But the rule about good light still stands - it's just it's true that you can have good light on cloudy days.
I stick by my three rules, because they are just general very basic guidelines - what I try to drum into my mum, for instance, so she doesn't take dozens of lousy shots of her grandchilren.
If, however, you want to take photography more seriously, then of course my rules don't really apply. There have been great photographers who hate the "take more" rule (people of the "Ansel Adams" school, for instance).
Yep. This drives me nuts too. But it's better if you have a digital camera which you can manually focus, then it doesn't check the focusing is correct before taking the pic. Some cheap digital cameras allow this.
David Bailey, a famous British photographer, once said (something like) "The quickest way to double your skill as a photograph is to throw away half your photographs".
It is absolutely true - most professional photographers take hundreds of photographs a day, only one or two of which are likely to be actually seen. This used to be one big advantage professionals had over amateurs - amateurs couldn't afford all that film and developing. With digital cameras, now you can take as many photos as you like.
Personally I just follow three simple rules:
1) Is the light nice? This is fundamental - if you've got nice evening or morning sunlight, your change of a good photo increases enormously. If it's a cloudy grey day, put the camera away.
2) Get closer. Just a step closer would improve so many amateur photos.
3) Take lots of photos. Even if you are taking the same subject again and again, one will of them be better than the others - especially if you are photographing people. Even more so if they are children.
To summarise: 1) Good light? 2) Get closer! 3) Take more!
"'We do not provide a 100 percent guarantee that the backup will take place' of customers' data being stored with them for a fee."
If they promote themselves as providing a backup service then it probably doesn't matter if they say they don't guarantee it in the fine print. They would almost certainly be legally liable for failure to provide the service as advertised if they didn't provide that service. There are legal customer rights which companies you can't get round, forunately. (At least in Europe, but I suspect it is the same in the USA).
Slashdot Mirror
I did some research and programming in this field over a decade ago. The really frustrating thing about this field is how slow moving it is and how little it is taken seriously.
When you have constructed an environment and electronic "organisms" that can breed within that environment, and then watched the generations gradually improve and adapt to the environment, you get the feeling of a new kind of power that we haven't really tapped yet - evolution.
I think one of the problems is that people don't get what is happening in these types of projects. When I showed people the projects I was working on - even biologists and computer scientists - the first reaction was that what they were seeing was just a simulation - i.e. that I had programmed in the fact that the organisms adapted to the environment. It took a lot of explaining to convince some people that what they were seeing was actual evolution, albeit in digital form.
The fact that this research is just looking at breeding cars which are used in a computer game just demonstrates how slow moving developments in this area are. Evolution could be used to improve many aspects of cars -- their engineering, efficiency, production and even visual design. It will happen one day, but it's taking us a hell of a time to realise that we can exploit the force that produced all the wonderful things we see in nature.
They should make them a bit more exciting. When you have finished watching the DVD it should display "This DVD will self-destruct in ten, nine, eight..." so you have to quickly take it out of the player and throw it out of the window just before it explodes. Would make watching DVDs much more fun, and would stop you falling asleep during movies.
I think it is time to remind everyone how things once were...
Do you remember some years ago, that the Mozilla project was held up as an example of an OSS failure? By the majority of people, even here on Slashdot?
It was taking too long to develop, was too bloated, Microsoft would always be one step ahead...
These days Mozilla is now one of the trophy projects of the OSS community. But it was that same community that derided it not so long ago. We should be thankful for the persistence and long term vision of the Mozilla team.
It works the same in reverse and gets round a lot of sticky legal issues for both the US and the UK
Yes. It is fairly common knowledge that this type of thing goes on.
People in the UK get very confused about why its government always supports the USA, and why an intelligent politician like Blair - someone who is naturally a consensus builder and compromise former - can support seemingly dumb and bellicose politicians like Bush. I think the answer lies in all the intelligence and defence agreements that the USA and the UK have joined into over the years means that the UK really has its hands tied by the USA.
Especially, as you say, they get each others intelligence services to do their dirty work for them. It means the USA knows all of the UK secrets...
We're at war
It seriously gives me the creeps when I hear Bush and the rest of them say this. It's as if they like war, and they're itching to start World War III. There only problem is that they don't have enough of an excuse yet...
There are cameras everywhere in the UK.
The funny thing is that if you point this out to people, they say there isn't or that they hadn't noticed, until you point them out that is. And then they don't seem to see it as an issue.
However, I think the attitude is understandable to an extent because the UK has a history of hundreds of years of fairly benevolent government and policing. The Btits I'm sure are the most spied on people in the world and the UK has one of the biggest "intelligence" operations in the world relative to the country's size, but people are unaware and/or unconcerned about it because it rarely if ever affects the man in the street.
The only time the average Brit sees evidence of the dark side of their country is when some public figure has an accident or commits suicide at a very opportunistic moment for the country.
The UK is not really like the rest of Europe. Many Europeans, and Brits too, think that the UK is just another state of the USA.
I think the truth is that people in the UK get upset about what the newspapers tell them to get upset about. There is very little about this kind of thing in the papers, so people don't get upset about it.
However, you can be sure that if the EU proposed RFID license plates, the newspapers would be all over it and there would be national outrage. People seem so concerned with opposing anything the EU does that they don't notice the things their own government is doing.
therefore I know exactly what information is being given to anyone who sees my plate
Surely the problem is not the information that is transmitted, but how it can be related to other information?
If a policeman can scan your numberplate and from that tell who you are and access your medical records to see that you went to the doctors last week to have your piles examined, does it matter that they only thing that is transmitted is a number?
Those people that want mean, lean systems can install the distro they prefer. The commercial distros need to complete with other commercial operating systems, including Windows. So if they need an equivalent amount of memory, I have no problem with that.
Recording the transit of Venus was the official reason for Cooks voyage to Tahiti - he carried precise scientific instruments to record it, as recording it from different locations around the world would provide valuable information.
Once this was done, Cook opened a secret envelope which contained the real reason for his voyage - to discover the great unknown land mass in the south (Australia) and claim it for England.
simple solution, repair your own machines.
Not so simple when you are talking about something like a thin Sony Vaio laptop. They don't have standard parts, and anyway unscrewing them and fitting them back together again is not a simple task.
One thing that worries me is sending machines away to get repaired.
I have a Sony Vaio laptop which I had to send to be repaired. I phoned the support number to tell them I was going to take the hard disc out before sending it. They said that if I did I would be charged for a new hard disc (at a hugely inflated price) and they wouldn't repair it without one.
I once sent a PC for repair and the teenage dork who repaired it actually said I had some great games on my machine and that he had played them. In another case in the UK, some padeophile was caught (was it Garry Glitter?) when he sent his PC in for repair. Now, I'm all for catching kiddie fiddlers, but that is not the way to do it.
I don't want the repair staff looking through the stuff on my hard disc. There should be a standard industry guarantee that this won't happen, or a privacy law about it or something.
AllOfMp3 is illegal. There have already been arrests in Russia and Germany, and this is only the beginning
Can you point me to information about this on a legitimate news site, mr Anonymous? Because a Google search does not turn anything up.
And this is where you fail Law 101.
I need further convincing.
They have a legal right to sell it (maybe) in russia. However, the same company that owns the music in russia does not own it in America and does not own it in the UK or Canada or Japan.
Can I buy, say, a book or a DVD from another country and get it posted to me? Yes. In fact I do this quite a bit. The only legal issue is import duties. If that DVD or book or whatever is cheaper that in my own country, then the company that sells it here may not like it but tough, I'm not doing anything wrong. The company selling it to me may be doing something wrong if their country has export restrictions on the product, or if they are breaking a contract they have with the producers by selling that product to someone from another country. Otherwise, they're probably in the clear.
So, you haven't convinced me and I don't think I've "failed Law 101" - I think a lot of the people who argue that it is illegal to use allofmp3 would fail because they jump to conclusions without actually considering what the law actually says.
I expect this issue actually comes down to trade agreements between Russia and the rest of the world. Russia, you may be aware, is not currently a member of the WTO.
I'm just asking if it is in fact legal to use within the USA and elsewhere? I haven't seen a definitive yes or no.
I don't think there is a definitive answer to that question at the moment.
Lots of people argue that buying from allofmp3.com is illegal, but when you ask why, they say "it's obvious". From a legal perspective, I don't think it is obvious at all.
Now, distributing copyrighted material that you don't own is clearly illegal. But you're not doing that if you are downloading music from allofmp3.
Copying content that you do not have permission to copy is not legal, unless it meets certain criteria such an amount for research purposes. So doesn't that make it not legal to download from allofmp3? Not as far as I can see - you are purchasing something from someone who has a legal right to sell it. The fact that they are in another country doesn't matter - there's no law against you buying from foreign companies.
Now, it would be different if they were selling something that is clearly illegal in the USA (or something that was illegal to import), like child pornography. But they are not. Owning or purchasing mp3s is not illegal in itself.
To some people allofmp3 is clearly "not fair", but that doesn't make it illegal. I think the fact of the matter is that the laws surrounding these issues - purchasing digital content over the internet from other countries - are not yet clear. I expect the USA is putting pressure on Russia to change how internet companies are treated - currently they are classified as broadcasters, which allows allofmp3.com to do what it does legally. But until that happens, I have yet to see a convincing argument that downloading from allofmp3.com is illegal. Wrong, maybe, but then a lot of what the record companies do is wrong if we are looking at this from a moral perspective.
Since presumably most of the world does not live in Russia, its legality elsewhere is still in question.
But that's a dumb argument. There are American porns sites that would be illegal in many countries in the world, but that doesn't mean that the sites are of dubious legality. They are legal. Or if you don't like that example, many American web sites share personal data in a way that is not allowed by law in the EU, but again that doesn't mean they are illegal or dubious.
I think what you mean is that it may not be legal for people in the USA to use the allofmp3 web site. That may be the case. But allofmp3 is not "a legally questionable operation", unless you believe that all American porn sites are legally questionable because they would be illegal in certain other countries.
I fail to see...
Read up on antitrust laws and why they exist.
Though AllOfMP3.com is a legally questionable operation
It's not a legally questionable operation. It is legal according to Russian law, and it's a Russian company, so it's legal.
Well really, what _is_ the difference?
Microsoft has a monopoly. Apple doesn't.
That's it. Different rules apply if you have a monopoly. Microsoft may consider this "unfair", but there are good reasons for it.
Absolutely not! Cloud cover turns a hard, directional light (the sun during the middle of the day) into a soft, diffuse light.
Ok. I shouldn't have added the bit about cloudy days, because as you say, sometimes the light can be great even when it's cloudy. But the rule about good light still stands - it's just it's true that you can have good light on cloudy days.
I stick by my three rules, because they are just general very basic guidelines - what I try to drum into my mum, for instance, so she doesn't take dozens of lousy shots of her grandchilren.
If, however, you want to take photography more seriously, then of course my rules don't really apply. There have been great photographers who hate the "take more" rule (people of the "Ansel Adams" school, for instance).
Yep. This drives me nuts too. But it's better if you have a digital camera which you can manually focus, then it doesn't check the focusing is correct before taking the pic. Some cheap digital cameras allow this.
David Bailey, a famous British photographer, once said (something like) "The quickest way to double your skill as a photograph is to throw away half your photographs".
It is absolutely true - most professional photographers take hundreds of photographs a day, only one or two of which are likely to be actually seen. This used to be one big advantage professionals had over amateurs - amateurs couldn't afford all that film and developing. With digital cameras, now you can take as many photos as you like.
Personally I just follow three simple rules:
1) Is the light nice? This is fundamental - if you've got nice evening or morning sunlight, your change of a good photo increases enormously. If it's a cloudy grey day, put the camera away.
2) Get closer. Just a step closer would improve so many amateur photos.
3) Take lots of photos. Even if you are taking the same subject again and again, one will of them be better than the others - especially if you are photographing people. Even more so if they are children.
To summarise:
1) Good light?
2) Get closer!
3) Take more!
"'We do not provide a 100 percent guarantee that the backup will take place' of customers' data being stored with them for a fee."
If they promote themselves as providing a backup service then it probably doesn't matter if they say they don't guarantee it in the fine print. They would almost certainly be legally liable for failure to provide the service as advertised if they didn't provide that service. There are legal customer rights which companies you can't get round, forunately. (At least in Europe, but I suspect it is the same in the USA).