Snotty Scotty was interviewed on the Daily Show. He claims to be a "high volume email deployer" and not a spammer.
That was one of the Daily Show's best stories ever. Scott's email address was displayed on screen. "I provide a service." "Oh, so you're sort of like a garbageman. Only in reverse." And of course, after claiming to be a "high volume email deployer" he then called his opponents anti-spammers. When the interviewer corrected him ("anti-high volume email deployers") Scott tripped over himself trying to use the phrase. Watching a spammer be publically humiliated on national television was definately a highlight of that evening.
Personally, I just try to keep my memory usage below the physical memory in my machine, but I guess that's not always possible...
I've seen a number of posts echoing this point, overlooking one of the key reasons for swapping. It's not just because you're out of memeory for applications, it's because sometimes there are better things to be doing with your memory. Mainstream operating systems use otherwise unused memory to cache disk access, dramatically speading things up. If you've got an process that hasn't been run for a a while it may actually be more efficient to swap it to disk. This frees up memory to cache data that may be being hit quite frequently. inetd hasn't been needed for a while? Swap it out so that your disk cache is larger, benefitting your heavily used web server.
To be fair, when to make that trade off is very tricky and will never work perfectly 100% of the time. Inevitably you'll occasionally be burned by a bad decision. But there are real benefits. The real question is not how to turn it off, the question is how to improve it and perhaps how to allow users to tune it for their needs.
They're searching for a more clinical term which also has the cathartic effect of being a euphemism, similar to how many alcoholics prefer the word "dependency."
...
So, let's all pick the word that makes us feel good, while we download away.
Like "illegal copying" (one of the examples I specifically gave). Or "copyright violation." Heck, I'm even willing to stand by "immoral copying."
Exactly how are those, "mild, indirect, or vague term[s]"? Does saying that I engage in illegal and immoral copying make me feel good? I'm not trying to say that copyright infringement is all good and happy. I'm trying to put forth a neutral term. The nature of copyright is something we should rationally discuss. There are many groups, primarily copyright based industries, that want to avoid rational discussion. Thus, they like words like piracy, they want people thinking this is a Copyright Is Good, Everything Else Is Bad.
At which point in my post did I suggest that I was or wanted to be a pirate or a downloader? Where did I say that I should be free to download anything I want without repercussions? I didn't. I think we need a middle ground, that warez groups are wrong and industries seeking copyrights that last two lifespans are also wrong. Unfortunately the debate has turned into a "you're for law and copyright, or your a filthy pirate."
If you advocate that perhaps the situation is more complex you get lumped in with the pirates.
You did this yourself, you selected my post as representative of people "who still see nothing wrong with helping themselves to all the MP3s they can 'share.'" I wasn't arguing for that at all! I specifically said I believe copyright law is a good idea nd that enforcement should continue. Apparently simply for arguing that the language is being abused is grounds to convict me and others with similar viewpoints as pirates. This is exactly why we need to be more careful about the use of language.
I'm arguing for such crazy ideas as accurate language, the language used in the laws in question. Many in copyright industries are actively attempting to confuse the issues and slander anyone who disagrees, even about small issues.
Mind you, I'm in favor of copyright, but I do believe that after a certain reasonable period of time (50 years should do it) that I should be able to reproduce other people's works however I want without paying for it. Similarly for Lessig. Stallman is... a bit more nuanced.
"information wants to be free"
You're definately right to attack this argument. Anyone who argues that this means you should copy information is missing the entire point. IWTBF isn't a moral statement, it's a summary (perhaps an overly cute one) of human nature and the growth of technology. IWTBF in much the same way that water wants to flow downhill.
The public may be behind such arguments with respect to music, but I doubt you're going to see your grandmother downloading AutoCAD 2004 and being surprised (or upset) that it is illegal to do so given the opportunity.
Actually, I expect my grandmother would be very surprised to discover sometimes it's legal to click on a link and download a program and sometimes it isn't and that sometimes it is. It's not obvious in any way. Copyright law being something that individuals need to even know about is a relatively new idea; when it was first created it was really a set of laws intended to limit publishers. It's still surprising to people to think that there is anything wrong with their individual actions. Giving friends mix-tapes is a popular pasttime that technically infringes on copyright. Good luck convincing the public as a whole that it's wrong and should be illegal.
Copyright based industries have a lot of work to do if they want to convince people to follow this much more complicated system ("You can click here and download this and it's good. But if you click here and download that it's bad.").
Okay, that's an amusing list of arguments, many of which are actually made by some of the kids online.
I get the feeling that your intention is to suggest that these are the only arguments for widespread distribution (a straw man argument), but *shrug*, maybe I'm just misinterpreting. However, one of the arguments you're mocking isn't quite as obviously wrong as you suggest.
(1) I don't personally believe in copying CDs illegally-- but I think we should avoid using unkind words like "piracy" to describe those that do -- instead, we should describe it as an "infringement", much like a parking infringement.
I've never heard of a parking infringement, but I suppose. I do hear "illegally parked" or "parking violation" (which was what my last parking ticket read). Those are perfectly reasonable terms, after all, one is illegally parked and one has violated parking laws. I'm perfectly fine with copyright violation or illegal copying. Both are accurate descriptions of the crime. Copyright infringment is arguably more accurate (since you're infringing on exclusivity granted to someone else), but violation or illegal is certainly nice and accurate.
Piracy, on the other hand, isn't terribly accurate.
Piracy's has multiple definitions and those different definitions are governed by different laws and punishments. Many people (myself included) feel that we need to reconsider our intellectual property laws, that perhaps they've become unbalanced and no longer serve the common good. It's important to have accurate language in such a discussion; colorful terms and phrases like piracy cloud the issue. Those people and businesses interested in maximizing the power of copyright deliberately chose words like piracy and theft because they know they have emotion impact, it's easier to get people to agree with ideas like "theft is wrong" without having them consider the details of what they are agreeing too. If they used words and phrases like illegal copying they know that some people will step back and ask, "why is the illegal? What is the real harm?" This sort of misdirection is unnecessary. I certainly believe that copyright law is a good thing. I would be against abolishing copyright law or eliminating enforcement. However I arrived at those conclusions through reason and the facts, not through emotional arguments and colorful phrases. Shoplifting a CD is a very different action from downloading an illegal copy online, trying to confuse the two is a false analogy. If copyright really is right why not defend it without descending into logical fallacies?
No... I have a better idea, instead of getting the government involved if you don't like it then you can choose to use a email service more to your liking.
Isn't that exactly what the quote you gave was suggesting? Except instead of immediately jumping ship he thought he would actually ask his email service to change to better serve him as a customer. Is asking companies to serve you better somehow government involvement?
You don't have content-based filtering on other primary methods of
communication. It's a federal crime to go through mail; (at least before
Patriot) you needed a court order to tap phones. E-mail should be an equally
sacred communication medium that shouldn't be subject to "strip searches"
before it hits your inbox.
Ummmm, the hell? It's perfectly legal to go through mail. My own mail,
naturally. And it's legal to tell someone else (say, a secretary) to go
through your and filter it. Ditto phone calls. I agree, I wouldn't want the
government or any other random person or organization rummaging through my
email. But I'm more than happy to run a program to do it myself. I appreciate
ISPs that offer me the service. (I'm less keen on ISPs that make the service
mandatory, but that's another issue.)
And this whole boneheaded scheme will NEVER stop spam in the first
place, so let's stop pursuing these efforts.
Attacking the source varies from extremely difficult to impossible. Spam
filtering systems (especially multiple technique systems like SpamAssassin) are
a good stopgap measure. Sure, the spammer is still wasting my bandwidth, that
sucks, but having it disappear into my IN.spam folder reduces my irritation.
Ultimately even legal measures have limitations as spammers move overseas. Too
suggest that we should just give up and drown in spam (I'm at a 2:1 spam:ham
ratio these days) until we get a full solution is foolish. Much like medicine,
sometimes a cure isn't a real option; all you can do is treat the symptoms. I
hope a real cure is on the horizon, we should certainly look for one, but in
the mean time I'll treat my own symptoms.
Feel free to call it whatever you like, but don't expect your end-users to use a potentially suprising pronunciation. If someone reading your name in print is going to come to a different conclusion, you've probably got a problem. I certainly hear lots of 'Ess-Queue-Ell' instead of Sequel for SQL. There's the ever popular Tex and Latex with the surprising Tech and La-Tech. (And for some reason people get really touchy over that one.) And so Cute is, well, cute, but expect lots of Queue-Tee (or more likely, Cutie).
It all comes down to that great axiom of libertarianism:
If you don't want to [agree to Microsoft's EULA], you don't have to. The onus is on the non-MS community to get the word out and inform people that it might be time to start reading and understanding those EULAs before clicking "Accept"
You're right! I'll take control of my own actions and my destiny!
As it happens, I was just installing Windows XP right now... wait a moment. Ah, here's the EULA. Mmmmhmmm, Mmmmhmmm. Well, it's a terrible license and I can't abide by it. I'll take responsibility and refuse. I'll just click "I Decline" and... oh, it went away. It says I can't install XP. But I've already paid for it. It says I need to return XP to the store where I bought it. That doesn't seem terribly reasonable, but I guess. Off to the store.
...
Well, I'm back. I tried to return the software, but they refused. It seems store policy is to never accept returns on opened software. Asking to be recompensed for my time and travel was apparently out of the question.
...
Look, I'm not sure this personal responsibility thing is working out. It was a fun fling, but I don't think it can work. Our relationship is entirely one way: I give and take responsibility, but the other side doesn't. I'm sorry to have to do this, I hope we can still be friends.
While true, actual implementation would require an unfeasible number of police and police cars to maintain a regular presence. So, given the limited resources, let's find another option.
Instead, they hide in alleys and behind bushes waiting to jump out and fine people. Isn't it obvious what their real motivation is?
Actually, the motiviation of "we must reduce speeding" could also describe their actions. You know cops are, as you phrase it, hiding in alleys and behind bushes. You don't know which alleys and bushes. To be safe, you need to treat all alleys and bushes as suspect. The result: they effectively cover more area than they can afford. If the cops were always easily visible you would have no incentive to not speed; instead you've have incentive to slow down when you saw the police car. That completely defeats the purpose.
One might point out that it doesn't entirely work, as people regularlly speed. Possible reasons: 1. The speeder has decided that the risk of being cause multiplied by the cost of being caught is worth the benefits of driving faster, or 2. the person has bad judgement. This doesn't eliminate the logic from the enforcement side.
Can't the merchants just require the 3-digit security code on the back of the credit cards , if they're losing money?
You mean the security code that many online businesses (including reputable ones) require me to enter? If the source of stolen numbers is a hacked business database the number will likely be exposed. Similarly, if the stolen number was just copied down by the rare dishonest waiter, he can easily copy the 3 digit code at the same time.
The 3-digit security code doesn't really help much, it certainly doesn't provide guaranteed proof.
The first few times we took it seriously, but since then we've refused to take relay calls. If we hear the operator say "This is a relay call" we interrupt and say "Sorry, we don't take relay calls" and then HANG UP.
Which is exactly the problem. You're taking a perfectly reasonable position: every single relay call you get is a scam artist, you don't want to waste your time talking to them. However, as a result you're blocking off the very, very rare deaf person who really needs the relay system. It's a damn shame.
I wish great ill on these scam artists for abusing a system that helps many people. I suspect this means that the IP relay system will be dramatically restricted or eliminated; it's very prone to abuse.
For a historical example, look at the tobacco settlement money the states got. Think that went to pay for tobacco healthcare problems? No.
I believe the argument was that the states had already been paying for those healthcare problems. The money was already gone out of state coffers and ate into funds potentially spent elsewhere. The settlements were, in part, payback.
And at least in Wisconsin the funds were being used to fund a big anti-smoking campaign. Well, until Wisconsin joined the "we're in debt, panic!" crowd, at which point nothing was sacred any more.
I'm referring to the majority mindset--the one reflected by the number of +4/+5 mods and the headlines that the editors post. You seriously disagree that it isn't the majority mindset?
A majority mindset? No. A collection of popular beliefs held by vary
varying people? Yes. Slashdot is a large group. Contrary to popular opinion
there is quite a bit of variance of opinion here. If one were to take the
highly rated posts and and headlines as a whole, one must come to the
conclusion that Slashdot both loves and hates both Gnome and KDE. The
"majority mindset" of Slashdot, such that it exists is amazingly conflicted.
I'm glad for it, it keeps the place more interesting.
As for the articles, well, the editors post what they get and what their
audience wants. Their audiance submits and wants this strange mix of things,
so they post it.
The fact that my post went from +5 to +1 in 10 minutes doesn't
surprise me--clearly I ticked off the majority mindset who disagreed with me,
and instead of replying as you did, modded me down. Which is, of course,
fascism.
Fascism?
"A system of government marked by centralization of authority under a dictator,
stringent socioeconomic controls, suppression of the opposition through terror
and censorship, and typically a policy of belligerent nationalism and racism."
Heck, even the most appropriate definition, "Oppressive, dictatorial control,"
suggests a dictatorship that doesn't exist. I think the worst you can
realistically charge is mob-rule and group-think, dangerous possibilities of
democracy.
An equally valid possibility is that the moderators genuinely believed your
post wasn't worth their time for any of a wide variety of reasons. Regretably,
neither one of us can really support either theory. We don't have the data.
So disregard my opinion if it doesn't apply to you--nice and clear?
followed a bit later with...
It was an example of the double-standard that Slashdot holds due to its views on the RIAA.
You're not talking about some small subset of Slashdot. You repeatedly refer to Slashdot as a singular entity. As a member of that entity (as, indeed, are you), I felt it appropriate to refute what I see as incorrect views of Slashdot.
Slashdot editors will post pro-piracy articles and claim they increase sales, thereby supporting copyright infringement. In the next breath, they will post an article criticizing some inane violation of the GPL. How can one expect people to follow one copyright scheme if they profess not following another?
Okay, accepting that there are people who might hold both ideas in their head at the same time, just a few possibilities how one can do it:
"I should be free to redistribute any content I want, whenever I want." or
it's cousin "All content should be free." Well, no problems here. The whole
point of the GPL is to ensure that content can be redistributed. Someone
violating the GPL is attempting to stop the redistribution of content. The two
ideas certainly don't conflict.
"I'm against copyright on every level." This is seemingly at odds with the
GPL. However, the GPL represents a compromise. Copyright exists today. If
you release software for absolutely free into the public domain, someone else
can take it and turn it into a proprietary, copyright protected program. So by
using the GPL you ensure that at least some things remain (basically) free in a
society in which copyright exists while you work to eliminate copyright.
Ultimately, the GPL is about giving people the right to share your work. Is
it so surprising that someone who feels that their work should be shared (and
remain free to be shared) should want the same thing of others?
"America's Most Wanted" is basically a made-for-TV blotter sheet, but with a much stronger assertion of guilt, right? Yet people have seen suspects from that show in real life and called the police to report them - several hundred times, in fact. For that matter, all of those picture in the post office are basically detailed blotter sheets that list fugitives, aren't they?
America's Most Wanted is, most importantly, high profile. People pay attention in a way that they don't to local blotters. You've got millions of people paying attention to a relatively small number of suspects.
As for the wanted posters, most people don't look at them.
In both cases the situation is different because we're not talking about collecting evidence for a trial on someone already in police custody: we're talking about a fugitive, someone actively evading the police.
On the other hand, what if you read about someone that was arrested for a crime that occurred at a certain time, and you happened to see them far from the crime scene at that moment? Evidence works both ways, you know.
Still statistically unlikely. If you need a witness for an alibi your best bet is to try and seek them out. If you're relying on luck and strangers then you are doomed. To make the odds worse, a change of a stranger seeing your (unknown) name and connecting it to the incident is very small. The people most likely to see your name in the blotter and connect it with something are people who already know you and whom your lawyer better be tracking down.
The idea of voluntary public participation seems to be very deeply ingrained in our justice system.
Mind you, I'm not against the idea of such participation. Indeed, someone who had important evidence about a crime and came forward with it is a doing their civic and moral duty in my book. My argument is that it's just unlikely. I don't think that the very small potential benefit matches the larger potential harm.
The arrest records in the newspaper are full of information of vital interest to a community.
Interest, or even value, is not necessarily the right thing in the big picture. Arrest reports can and in some cases do destroy the lives of innocent people. You're asking to destroy the life of the occasional innocent person in exchange for a bit more information that might protect your child. I'm not willing to make that trade off, especially since the information gained is only of marginal use. The arrest reports won't tell you about your kid's friends who are dangerous and good at avoiding the law. The arrest reports won't help for for those friends your kids have that they don't tell you about. Yes, it can help, in some cases. I don't think it's nearly enough cases.
Just a question--why do you think it's okay to violate everybody's copyrights and dictate to others how they should distribute their own intellectual property, and then post an article berating some company for "violating the GPL?"
Just a question-- why do you think that Slashdot is some sort of hivemind with a single thought process? Slashdot is a large number of people (several hundred thousand if user ID numbers are to be believed). These people cross the spectrum. Some are against any copyright at all. Some think copyright is a perfect and should be expanded in power. Some hold more moderate positions. Some even hold more nuianced positions that appear contradictory on the surface. This diverse population posts the comments you read and submit the articles that the editor's post. End result: a huge pile of amazingly inconsistent content with little to no pattern to the belief system. All nice and clear?
Of course, I suspect you're just looking for an opportunity to troll. The situation isn't new, and it's been explained. Repeatedly. Furthermore, the post you replied to doesn't make any claims about the GPL or copyright!
...you realize that you have some information that the police might find interesting.
How so? If he's been arrested then they probably have some useful evidence already. Searching the suspect's home for stolen goods is one of the first things they would do. If having testimony about susicious behavior would be useful, I would hope that canvassing neighbors for information would be standard procedure. Most people don't read the police blotter (In many places most people don't read a daily paper). Hoping that someone who saw something suspicious recognizes the behavior as suspicious and reads the police blotter and connects the blotter entry with the suspicious behavior and has genuinely useful information is wishful thinking. It would be rare enough that it's probably not worth considering.
Alternatively, if someone on my street were arrested for possessing child pornography, I darn well want to know about it. S?he may eventually be found innocent, but in the mean time, I don't want my kids playing near their house.
Sheeesh, it's always about the children, isn't it. Unfortunately it's not always about the children. A bogus charge might lead to being refused job offers. A charge can last as a social stigma long after someone is cleared. Even when it's about the children it might destroy someone's career: a child abuse charge against a day care provider, no matter how unfounded, is likely going to severely damage their career. In the particular case you're citing, it's prudent caution that doesn't really hurt anyone. But the general case of making the information available can seriously hurt innocent people who have been charged with crimes.
Re:Alpha works great in Photoshop 8.0
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Gimp Hits 2.0
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· Score: 2, Interesting
It's been out for 6 months; the fact that you've not seen it casts serious doubt on your claim of being a "porfessional" that produces live television graphics systems.
Because real professionals have lots of time and money to spend upgrading.
Here the real world lots of people live with older software because they are too busy to upgrade or because management refuses to pay for the upgrade. If your job is producing print media, especially photographic work, regular upgrades to PhotoShop are something you probably plan for. If your job is producing television content it's probably not so high on your list of requirements, especially if you've got something that basically works now.
If you plan on doing any sort of printed work (newsletter, flyers, posters, magazine graphics), GIMP is completely useless without CMYK.
Bwuhuhahahahahahahahaha. Nice elitism. It might come as a shock to you that there are people across the world doing exactly this sort of printed work who just don't worry about it. These same people are often working on cruddy monitors that have never been color calibrated to match their output devices. Yet millions of newsletters, flyers, and newspapers manage to get printed and sold despite imperfect color reproduction. Yes, large magazine and big companies have exacting color standards, but there is a huge undercurrent of small-time publications that just don't care. The bread and butter work of print shops is small runs of publications for local businesses. These local businesses don't really understand color correction and CMYK, yet they manage to get output that is good enough for their needs.
Maybe you're in a situation where you need the power of PhotoShop, but don't forget, you are in a minority.
Re:No 48 bit support !!!
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Gimp Hits 2.0
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· Score: 2, Insightful
Sorry to sound like a troll, but in the meanwhile Gimp will be little more than a toy.
Was PhotoShop little more than a toy in 1994? It lacked 16 bit per channel support. Apparently that made it a toy. Dispite this it was heavily used and lots of great work was done with it. Even today most PhotoShop users are not working with 48 bit per pixel images.
Yes, 48 bpp image work is the future and the Gimp definately needs to catch up. But to suggest that it's just a toy, unsuitable for professional work makes it clear that you either don't do professional work or are oblivious to your fellow professionals. Not everyone is doing the level of work that demands 48 bpp work. Maybe you need the functionality, but not everyone does. You might as well mock Microsoft Money for being a toy in face of Peachtree Accounting. Is Microsoft Word unsuitable for real work because QuarkXPress exists?
Whenever the Gimp advances there is a stream of "The Gimp is just a toy until it gets X" posts. Yes, the Gimp trails Photoshop in functionality. It's likely going to for the foreseeable future. But reality is that these same features are completely unused by most people. It's not surprising since people got on just fine until PhotoShop added the feature in the first place.
To pick a popular target (Gimp's lack of color correction) a friend of mine works for a newspaper and often prepares images for publication. I was surprised when 1. she said that the Gimp was just about as easy to use as PhotoShop, and 2. She was certain no one had ever done any color calibration, so she didn't miss it in the Gimp.
Well, you sum up one of the problems with MMORPGs - when everyone is a hero, no one is a hero.
With truly creative design this isn't a problem. The universe is a big place. Even limiting the Star Wars universe to the handful of planets currently in the game, we're talking (assuming modern-Earth densities) billions of people. Given the limited number of players on a given server (thousands) you can still be one-in-a-million.
One of the problems with MMORPGS is that they are some sort of bizarro world where the basic economy is apparently run by a few hundred people across the world. That's silly. We need huge, NPC populated cities. Sure, most of them won't have anything to say, but they'll give the cities a sense of size. Furthermore, it means that players won't in generally see each other unless they seek each other out. On the whole, seeing other players going about their lives is boring, as well as slightly disbelief destroying. Other people are only fun when you're interacting with them; you don't interact with most players on your server. When I head online I should get together with my friends, or perhaps head to the known hero-hangouts (Rebel Base, Imperial Recruiting center) where I can meet other heroes or be assigned to missions. Then it's off to our own little section of world with almost no chance of encountering anyone else. In one part of the world we could be heroes! For a game that pulled this off I would cheerfully pay $20 a month.
(To be fair, I'm hand-waving a number of tricky problems. This sort of system really means dynamically generated cities, population, and general world, but it's a solvable problem.)
You can cry censorship and First Amendment rights till you're blue in the face, but it's perfectly reasonable to set aside a small part of the media and allow the government to regulate it to a reasonable level.
Nice dodge! You managed to completely avoid the key claims the parent post brought up:
1. The free market should be able to sort out what people want on the radio by itself without any government meddling.
2. That people who heavily promote small government, free speech, and the free markets are being hypocritical when they support FCC regulation of speech on the airwaves.
The parent post brought up specific (if debatable) complaints. You've rebutted with "Well, it's reasonable." The only argument is that radio and broadcast TV are a small part of the media. If it's so small why bother regulating it at all?
Hence, if we in the so-called "developed nations" don't fix our legal systems, third-world countries, where "intellectual property law" cannot be enforced for lack of a functional legal system, will become the leaders in creative industries, including IT, right?
There is at least some historical evidence for this. During the infancy of the United States we pretty much ignored copyrights from other countries; American publishers would happily reprint foreign books without compensating the author. One could argue that this gave the US a much needed boost early on.
Furthermore, I'm not a BT expert, but I've heard murmers about huge issues regarding Windows users and hard disk fragmentation brought on by extended use of BT.
I'd be very surprised if BT itself were to blame. That you're using BT to create vey large files regularlly, then proceeding to unpack them and delete them probably is the source. Myself, I use BitTorrent to download demos of games. When I install the demo the game will typically create a few hundred files. Then I play the demo, then delete the demo (hundreds of files and the big honking zip). That's a recipe for fragmentation. Given that BitTorrent makes it so easy to download, try, and delete things I expect your usage pattern changed in a way that promoted fragmentation.
Anyway, the official client stubs out the entire file when you start downloading. That's just about the optimal thing it can do to minimize fragmentation.
Personally I just try to avoid using file systems that fragment badly. It is the 21st century.
Slashdot Mirror
That was one of the Daily Show's best stories ever. Scott's email address was displayed on screen. "I provide a service." "Oh, so you're sort of like a garbageman. Only in reverse." And of course, after claiming to be a "high volume email deployer" he then called his opponents anti-spammers. When the interviewer corrected him ("anti-high volume email deployers") Scott tripped over himself trying to use the phrase. Watching a spammer be publically humiliated on national television was definately a highlight of that evening.
I've seen a number of posts echoing this point, overlooking one of the key reasons for swapping. It's not just because you're out of memeory for applications, it's because sometimes there are better things to be doing with your memory. Mainstream operating systems use otherwise unused memory to cache disk access, dramatically speading things up. If you've got an process that hasn't been run for a a while it may actually be more efficient to swap it to disk. This frees up memory to cache data that may be being hit quite frequently. inetd hasn't been needed for a while? Swap it out so that your disk cache is larger, benefitting your heavily used web server.
To be fair, when to make that trade off is very tricky and will never work perfectly 100% of the time. Inevitably you'll occasionally be burned by a bad decision. But there are real benefits. The real question is not how to turn it off, the question is how to improve it and perhaps how to allow users to tune it for their needs.
Only on bizarro world. Here on earth it's the Recording Industry Association of America.
Like "illegal copying" (one of the examples I specifically gave). Or "copyright violation." Heck, I'm even willing to stand by "immoral copying." Exactly how are those, "mild, indirect, or vague term[s]"? Does saying that I engage in illegal and immoral copying make me feel good? I'm not trying to say that copyright infringement is all good and happy. I'm trying to put forth a neutral term. The nature of copyright is something we should rationally discuss. There are many groups, primarily copyright based industries, that want to avoid rational discussion. Thus, they like words like piracy, they want people thinking this is a Copyright Is Good, Everything Else Is Bad.
At which point in my post did I suggest that I was or wanted to be a pirate or a downloader? Where did I say that I should be free to download anything I want without repercussions? I didn't. I think we need a middle ground, that warez groups are wrong and industries seeking copyrights that last two lifespans are also wrong. Unfortunately the debate has turned into a "you're for law and copyright, or your a filthy pirate." If you advocate that perhaps the situation is more complex you get lumped in with the pirates. You did this yourself, you selected my post as representative of people "who still see nothing wrong with helping themselves to all the MP3s they can 'share.'" I wasn't arguing for that at all! I specifically said I believe copyright law is a good idea nd that enforcement should continue. Apparently simply for arguing that the language is being abused is grounds to convict me and others with similar viewpoints as pirates. This is exactly why we need to be more careful about the use of language. I'm arguing for such crazy ideas as accurate language, the language used in the laws in question. Many in copyright industries are actively attempting to confuse the issues and slander anyone who disagrees, even about small issues.
This guy is. This guy is. I am.
Mind you, I'm in favor of copyright, but I do believe that after a certain reasonable period of time (50 years should do it) that I should be able to reproduce other people's works however I want without paying for it. Similarly for Lessig. Stallman is... a bit more nuanced.
You're definately right to attack this argument. Anyone who argues that this means you should copy information is missing the entire point. IWTBF isn't a moral statement, it's a summary (perhaps an overly cute one) of human nature and the growth of technology. IWTBF in much the same way that water wants to flow downhill.
Actually, I expect my grandmother would be very surprised to discover sometimes it's legal to click on a link and download a program and sometimes it isn't and that sometimes it is. It's not obvious in any way. Copyright law being something that individuals need to even know about is a relatively new idea; when it was first created it was really a set of laws intended to limit publishers. It's still surprising to people to think that there is anything wrong with their individual actions. Giving friends mix-tapes is a popular pasttime that technically infringes on copyright. Good luck convincing the public as a whole that it's wrong and should be illegal. Copyright based industries have a lot of work to do if they want to convince people to follow this much more complicated system ("You can click here and download this and it's good. But if you click here and download that it's bad.").
Okay, that's an amusing list of arguments, many of which are actually made by some of the kids online. I get the feeling that your intention is to suggest that these are the only arguments for widespread distribution (a straw man argument), but *shrug*, maybe I'm just misinterpreting. However, one of the arguments you're mocking isn't quite as obviously wrong as you suggest.
I've never heard of a parking infringement, but I suppose. I do hear "illegally parked" or "parking violation" (which was what my last parking ticket read). Those are perfectly reasonable terms, after all, one is illegally parked and one has violated parking laws. I'm perfectly fine with copyright violation or illegal copying. Both are accurate descriptions of the crime. Copyright infringment is arguably more accurate (since you're infringing on exclusivity granted to someone else), but violation or illegal is certainly nice and accurate.
Piracy, on the other hand, isn't terribly accurate. Piracy's has multiple definitions and those different definitions are governed by different laws and punishments. Many people (myself included) feel that we need to reconsider our intellectual property laws, that perhaps they've become unbalanced and no longer serve the common good. It's important to have accurate language in such a discussion; colorful terms and phrases like piracy cloud the issue. Those people and businesses interested in maximizing the power of copyright deliberately chose words like piracy and theft because they know they have emotion impact, it's easier to get people to agree with ideas like "theft is wrong" without having them consider the details of what they are agreeing too. If they used words and phrases like illegal copying they know that some people will step back and ask, "why is the illegal? What is the real harm?" This sort of misdirection is unnecessary. I certainly believe that copyright law is a good thing. I would be against abolishing copyright law or eliminating enforcement. However I arrived at those conclusions through reason and the facts, not through emotional arguments and colorful phrases. Shoplifting a CD is a very different action from downloading an illegal copy online, trying to confuse the two is a false analogy. If copyright really is right why not defend it without descending into logical fallacies?
Isn't that exactly what the quote you gave was suggesting? Except instead of immediately jumping ship he thought he would actually ask his email service to change to better serve him as a customer. Is asking companies to serve you better somehow government involvement?
Ummmm, the hell? It's perfectly legal to go through mail. My own mail, naturally. And it's legal to tell someone else (say, a secretary) to go through your and filter it. Ditto phone calls. I agree, I wouldn't want the government or any other random person or organization rummaging through my email. But I'm more than happy to run a program to do it myself. I appreciate ISPs that offer me the service. (I'm less keen on ISPs that make the service mandatory, but that's another issue.)
Attacking the source varies from extremely difficult to impossible. Spam filtering systems (especially multiple technique systems like SpamAssassin) are a good stopgap measure. Sure, the spammer is still wasting my bandwidth, that sucks, but having it disappear into my IN.spam folder reduces my irritation. Ultimately even legal measures have limitations as spammers move overseas. Too suggest that we should just give up and drown in spam (I'm at a 2:1 spam:ham ratio these days) until we get a full solution is foolish. Much like medicine, sometimes a cure isn't a real option; all you can do is treat the symptoms. I hope a real cure is on the horizon, we should certainly look for one, but in the mean time I'll treat my own symptoms.
Feel free to call it whatever you like, but don't expect your end-users to use a potentially suprising pronunciation. If someone reading your name in print is going to come to a different conclusion, you've probably got a problem. I certainly hear lots of 'Ess-Queue-Ell' instead of Sequel for SQL. There's the ever popular Tex and Latex with the surprising Tech and La-Tech. (And for some reason people get really touchy over that one.) And so Cute is, well, cute, but expect lots of Queue-Tee (or more likely, Cutie).
You're right! I'll take control of my own actions and my destiny!
As it happens, I was just installing Windows XP right now... wait a moment. Ah, here's the EULA. Mmmmhmmm, Mmmmhmmm. Well, it's a terrible license and I can't abide by it. I'll take responsibility and refuse. I'll just click "I Decline" and... oh, it went away. It says I can't install XP. But I've already paid for it. It says I need to return XP to the store where I bought it. That doesn't seem terribly reasonable, but I guess. Off to the store.
...
Well, I'm back. I tried to return the software, but they refused. It seems store policy is to never accept returns on opened software. Asking to be recompensed for my time and travel was apparently out of the question.
...
Look, I'm not sure this personal responsibility thing is working out. It was a fun fling, but I don't think it can work. Our relationship is entirely one way: I give and take responsibility, but the other side doesn't. I'm sorry to have to do this, I hope we can still be friends.
You mean the security code that many online businesses (including reputable ones) require me to enter? If the source of stolen numbers is a hacked business database the number will likely be exposed. Similarly, if the stolen number was just copied down by the rare dishonest waiter, he can easily copy the 3 digit code at the same time.
The 3-digit security code doesn't really help much, it certainly doesn't provide guaranteed proof.
Which is exactly the problem. You're taking a perfectly reasonable position: every single relay call you get is a scam artist, you don't want to waste your time talking to them. However, as a result you're blocking off the very, very rare deaf person who really needs the relay system. It's a damn shame.
I wish great ill on these scam artists for abusing a system that helps many people. I suspect this means that the IP relay system will be dramatically restricted or eliminated; it's very prone to abuse.
I believe the argument was that the states had already been paying for those healthcare problems. The money was already gone out of state coffers and ate into funds potentially spent elsewhere. The settlements were, in part, payback.
And at least in Wisconsin the funds were being used to fund a big anti-smoking campaign. Well, until Wisconsin joined the "we're in debt, panic!" crowd, at which point nothing was sacred any more.
A majority mindset? No. A collection of popular beliefs held by vary varying people? Yes. Slashdot is a large group. Contrary to popular opinion there is quite a bit of variance of opinion here. If one were to take the highly rated posts and and headlines as a whole, one must come to the conclusion that Slashdot both loves and hates both Gnome and KDE. The "majority mindset" of Slashdot, such that it exists is amazingly conflicted. I'm glad for it, it keeps the place more interesting.
As for the articles, well, the editors post what they get and what their audience wants. Their audiance submits and wants this strange mix of things, so they post it.
Fascism? "A system of government marked by centralization of authority under a dictator, stringent socioeconomic controls, suppression of the opposition through terror and censorship, and typically a policy of belligerent nationalism and racism." Heck, even the most appropriate definition, "Oppressive, dictatorial control," suggests a dictatorship that doesn't exist. I think the worst you can realistically charge is mob-rule and group-think, dangerous possibilities of democracy.
An equally valid possibility is that the moderators genuinely believed your post wasn't worth their time for any of a wide variety of reasons. Regretably, neither one of us can really support either theory. We don't have the data.
followed a bit later with...
You're not talking about some small subset of Slashdot. You repeatedly refer to Slashdot as a singular entity. As a member of that entity (as, indeed, are you), I felt it appropriate to refute what I see as incorrect views of Slashdot.
Okay, accepting that there are people who might hold both ideas in their head at the same time, just a few possibilities how one can do it:
"I should be free to redistribute any content I want, whenever I want." or it's cousin "All content should be free." Well, no problems here. The whole point of the GPL is to ensure that content can be redistributed. Someone violating the GPL is attempting to stop the redistribution of content. The two ideas certainly don't conflict.
"I'm against copyright on every level." This is seemingly at odds with the GPL. However, the GPL represents a compromise. Copyright exists today. If you release software for absolutely free into the public domain, someone else can take it and turn it into a proprietary, copyright protected program. So by using the GPL you ensure that at least some things remain (basically) free in a society in which copyright exists while you work to eliminate copyright.
Ultimately, the GPL is about giving people the right to share your work. Is it so surprising that someone who feels that their work should be shared (and remain free to be shared) should want the same thing of others?
America's Most Wanted is, most importantly, high profile. People pay attention in a way that they don't to local blotters. You've got millions of people paying attention to a relatively small number of suspects.
As for the wanted posters, most people don't look at them.
In both cases the situation is different because we're not talking about collecting evidence for a trial on someone already in police custody: we're talking about a fugitive, someone actively evading the police.
Still statistically unlikely. If you need a witness for an alibi your best bet is to try and seek them out. If you're relying on luck and strangers then you are doomed. To make the odds worse, a change of a stranger seeing your (unknown) name and connecting it to the incident is very small. The people most likely to see your name in the blotter and connect it with something are people who already know you and whom your lawyer better be tracking down.
Mind you, I'm not against the idea of such participation. Indeed, someone who had important evidence about a crime and came forward with it is a doing their civic and moral duty in my book. My argument is that it's just unlikely. I don't think that the very small potential benefit matches the larger potential harm.
Interest, or even value, is not necessarily the right thing in the big picture. Arrest reports can and in some cases do destroy the lives of innocent people. You're asking to destroy the life of the occasional innocent person in exchange for a bit more information that might protect your child. I'm not willing to make that trade off, especially since the information gained is only of marginal use. The arrest reports won't tell you about your kid's friends who are dangerous and good at avoiding the law. The arrest reports won't help for for those friends your kids have that they don't tell you about. Yes, it can help, in some cases. I don't think it's nearly enough cases.
Just a question-- why do you think that Slashdot is some sort of hivemind with a single thought process? Slashdot is a large number of people (several hundred thousand if user ID numbers are to be believed). These people cross the spectrum. Some are against any copyright at all. Some think copyright is a perfect and should be expanded in power. Some hold more moderate positions. Some even hold more nuianced positions that appear contradictory on the surface. This diverse population posts the comments you read and submit the articles that the editor's post. End result: a huge pile of amazingly inconsistent content with little to no pattern to the belief system. All nice and clear?
Of course, I suspect you're just looking for an opportunity to troll. The situation isn't new, and it's been explained. Repeatedly. Furthermore, the post you replied to doesn't make any claims about the GPL or copyright!
How so? If he's been arrested then they probably have some useful evidence already. Searching the suspect's home for stolen goods is one of the first things they would do. If having testimony about susicious behavior would be useful, I would hope that canvassing neighbors for information would be standard procedure. Most people don't read the police blotter (In many places most people don't read a daily paper). Hoping that someone who saw something suspicious recognizes the behavior as suspicious and reads the police blotter and connects the blotter entry with the suspicious behavior and has genuinely useful information is wishful thinking. It would be rare enough that it's probably not worth considering.
Sheeesh, it's always about the children, isn't it. Unfortunately it's not always about the children. A bogus charge might lead to being refused job offers. A charge can last as a social stigma long after someone is cleared. Even when it's about the children it might destroy someone's career: a child abuse charge against a day care provider, no matter how unfounded, is likely going to severely damage their career. In the particular case you're citing, it's prudent caution that doesn't really hurt anyone. But the general case of making the information available can seriously hurt innocent people who have been charged with crimes.
Because real professionals have lots of time and money to spend upgrading.
Here the real world lots of people live with older software because they are too busy to upgrade or because management refuses to pay for the upgrade. If your job is producing print media, especially photographic work, regular upgrades to PhotoShop are something you probably plan for. If your job is producing television content it's probably not so high on your list of requirements, especially if you've got something that basically works now.
Bwuhuhahahahahahahahaha. Nice elitism. It might come as a shock to you that there are people across the world doing exactly this sort of printed work who just don't worry about it. These same people are often working on cruddy monitors that have never been color calibrated to match their output devices. Yet millions of newsletters, flyers, and newspapers manage to get printed and sold despite imperfect color reproduction. Yes, large magazine and big companies have exacting color standards, but there is a huge undercurrent of small-time publications that just don't care. The bread and butter work of print shops is small runs of publications for local businesses. These local businesses don't really understand color correction and CMYK, yet they manage to get output that is good enough for their needs.
Maybe you're in a situation where you need the power of PhotoShop, but don't forget, you are in a minority.
Was PhotoShop little more than a toy in 1994? It lacked 16 bit per channel support. Apparently that made it a toy. Dispite this it was heavily used and lots of great work was done with it. Even today most PhotoShop users are not working with 48 bit per pixel images.
Yes, 48 bpp image work is the future and the Gimp definately needs to catch up. But to suggest that it's just a toy, unsuitable for professional work makes it clear that you either don't do professional work or are oblivious to your fellow professionals. Not everyone is doing the level of work that demands 48 bpp work. Maybe you need the functionality, but not everyone does. You might as well mock Microsoft Money for being a toy in face of Peachtree Accounting. Is Microsoft Word unsuitable for real work because QuarkXPress exists?
Whenever the Gimp advances there is a stream of "The Gimp is just a toy until it gets X" posts. Yes, the Gimp trails Photoshop in functionality. It's likely going to for the foreseeable future. But reality is that these same features are completely unused by most people. It's not surprising since people got on just fine until PhotoShop added the feature in the first place.
To pick a popular target (Gimp's lack of color correction) a friend of mine works for a newspaper and often prepares images for publication. I was surprised when 1. she said that the Gimp was just about as easy to use as PhotoShop, and 2. She was certain no one had ever done any color calibration, so she didn't miss it in the Gimp.
I suggest comparing my post with common critiques of Open Source / Free Software, perhaps followed by a consideration of the term irony.
With truly creative design this isn't a problem. The universe is a big place. Even limiting the Star Wars universe to the handful of planets currently in the game, we're talking (assuming modern-Earth densities) billions of people. Given the limited number of players on a given server (thousands) you can still be one-in-a-million.
One of the problems with MMORPGS is that they are some sort of bizarro world where the basic economy is apparently run by a few hundred people across the world. That's silly. We need huge, NPC populated cities. Sure, most of them won't have anything to say, but they'll give the cities a sense of size. Furthermore, it means that players won't in generally see each other unless they seek each other out. On the whole, seeing other players going about their lives is boring, as well as slightly disbelief destroying. Other people are only fun when you're interacting with them; you don't interact with most players on your server. When I head online I should get together with my friends, or perhaps head to the known hero-hangouts (Rebel Base, Imperial Recruiting center) where I can meet other heroes or be assigned to missions. Then it's off to our own little section of world with almost no chance of encountering anyone else. In one part of the world we could be heroes! For a game that pulled this off I would cheerfully pay $20 a month.
(To be fair, I'm hand-waving a number of tricky problems. This sort of system really means dynamically generated cities, population, and general world, but it's a solvable problem.)
Nice dodge! You managed to completely avoid the key claims the parent post brought up:
1. The free market should be able to sort out what people want on the radio by itself without any government meddling.
2. That people who heavily promote small government, free speech, and the free markets are being hypocritical when they support FCC regulation of speech on the airwaves.
The parent post brought up specific (if debatable) complaints. You've rebutted with "Well, it's reasonable." The only argument is that radio and broadcast TV are a small part of the media. If it's so small why bother regulating it at all?
There is at least some historical evidence for this. During the infancy of the United States we pretty much ignored copyrights from other countries; American publishers would happily reprint foreign books without compensating the author. One could argue that this gave the US a much needed boost early on.
I'd be very surprised if BT itself were to blame. That you're using BT to create vey large files regularlly, then proceeding to unpack them and delete them probably is the source. Myself, I use BitTorrent to download demos of games. When I install the demo the game will typically create a few hundred files. Then I play the demo, then delete the demo (hundreds of files and the big honking zip). That's a recipe for fragmentation. Given that BitTorrent makes it so easy to download, try, and delete things I expect your usage pattern changed in a way that promoted fragmentation.
Anyway, the official client stubs out the entire file when you start downloading. That's just about the optimal thing it can do to minimize fragmentation.
Personally I just try to avoid using file systems that fragment badly. It is the 21st century.