If you look at the number of teams to population size for Software Freedom Day (which often involves people handing out CDs with Firefox and other free software) you'll see some correlation to these usage stats.
For example, compare the USA (24 teams) with Australia (19 teams). When you consider that the US population is over ten times bigger than Australia's population (298,444,215 vs 20,264,082), is it any wonder that Software Freedom Day is more effective in "Oceania" than it is in the US?
Not to mention the cultural differences in accepting software from random people on the street in the US, Europe and Australia.
Err.. you mean GTA3.. there were a bunch of GTA games before it ya know.
I really don't think this is the same kind of censorship. GTA3 was removed from store shelves because it failed to meet the required classification of "Mature" and there is no "Restricted" rating for video games.
This, on the other hand, is the deliberate surpression of political speech under the guise of "terrorism".
If you wanna compare the lack of R ratings for video games to something, compare it to our stupid "net bet" laws. Fuckin' nanny state.
The fact that people can sell books has little to do with copyright and a lot to do with the expense of making books.
If every book were scanned in and placed on the Internet, along with a like to a shop where you can buy the dead tree, the sale of books would go through the roof. Why? Because you could search the contents of books for what you're looking for and people like books.
If you're going to permit people other than the copyright owner to make copies of a work, why should the exchange of monies change that? Instead of limiting the scope of the law to non-commercial activities, how about just defining a minimum royalty payment requirement.
LHOTP touched on racial inequity many times. I remember an episode where a black kid runs away from his family to live with the Ingalls (that's the white family the show focuses on) and everyone learns some life lessons about racial equality and love for your fellow man (the usual thing). He goes back to his family in the end.
There was another episode where the blind school shuts down and the town decides to start a new one, turns out the new teacher is black, the blind kids don't know why some people seem to dislike the new teacher - everyone liked the last teacher. It's a big literal lesson about the virtue of being "color blind".
There was another episode where everyone got together and colluded on what price to sell their wheat at.. but one guy broke ranks and they decided to shun him.. when asked why he wouldn't go along he said he saw no reason why black people should get the same price as him for their wheat. Of course, rather than exposing the difficulty and danger of manipulating market prices, the moral of the story was that black people and white people can produce as good wheat. In a similar vein, there's another episode where the town doctor places an ad to hire a new doctor.. a black doctor answers the ad. He only gets given minor cases until he saves a baby that was being born strangely. The white doctor realises the black doctor is just as good as him.
The shows were made in the seventies.. racial issues were a hot topic.
And yeah, there were more episodes about how great indians are and how badly the colonials treated em than I care to remember.
I'm saying it is nonsensical to claim that you can design a building that can withstand a plane crashing into it.. and that a building falling down after a plane crashes into it is a perfectly reasonable thing for a building to do.
What the conspiracy theorists are claiming is that this isn't reasonable and therefore there must have been secret caches of explosives in the building which were systematically detonated sometime after the planes flew into it.
I'm also saying that the stupidity of the second claim is so great that the majority of structural engineers in the world have not even bothered to come forward and refute it because it should be obvious to any reasonable person that it requires no refute.
I don't care who knows it, I loved LHOTP. Every episode was social commentary of the finest.
In episode 42, Centennial (first aired 17 March 1976) people are celebrating Independance Day, as you do, when the festivities are interrupted by news that taxes are to be raised. People are kind of upset about this, being that they only have a few days to come up with the extra money to pay their taxes for the year.
One farmer is heard to remark to another farmer, "I swear, one day land taxes won't be enough.. they'll start to tax a man's income too!" and everyone has a good laugh at the silly old kook.
People start talking about not paying the extra money. Other people start talking about not paying any taxes at all. Thankfully a Russian immigrant takes the time to explain how even though he lost his land back in Russia for not paying his taxes, and that's why he came to America, it's still the best place in the world to live.
And as you watch this peaceful show with its idilic scenary, you just can't help believing it really was.
If it was really the case that these buildings shouldn't have fallen down and something like a "controlled demolition" was going on, every structural engineer in the US would be on the phone to the press. There would be a flood of expert opinion saying this was a stunt. There isn't. There's a few crackpots.
There's the thing. You jump to outlaw something cause you assume:
1. the majority of people don't like junk mail 2. the minority of people who do like junk mail don't matter 3. the majority has to the right to dictate what the people can and cannot send
When in actual fact, for all we know, only a small minority are opposed to junk mail, the majority of people don't care about junk mail, and a minority of people actually like it.
Oh, and being ruled by the majority is still being ruled.. can't we just live and let live?
Well, it certainly is the case that people who stuff snail mail boxes tend to do it with their own mail delivery agents.. but that's primarily a cost issue. I'm not the first person to suggest it, but maybe email should cost something.. the problem is that any system which prohibits people from sending spam can also be used to prohibit people from sending protected speech.
I prefer to think that "viral marketing" refers to faking word of mouth. Ya know, paying people to astroturf for you in the hope that people will pass on what they've heard without sampling it themselves.
There is something wrong with pay for comment. It's a kind of fraud in my book. You're telling people you've independantly come to a decision which you'd like to share where in fact you haven't.
As such, when every celebrity gets up on tv and says that X product is the best, when they don't actually believe that, I really do think they are doing something unethical. Every celebrity who says some product tastes great should be hooked up to a polygraph or an MRI machine and made to eat/drink it.
There's 1.5 million structural engineers in the US. Are you seriously trying to say that all of them are "keeping quiet" on this "impossible" event. Pah-lease.
It's not their content. We don't have that kind of property in the western world. We have copyright which is a system where the public interest is balanced against the desire to encourage the creation of more works. Any argument for or against Google's use of the works Viacom owns the copyright on must be made in terms of the public interest.. otherwise they're just irrelevant to our society.
That's the absolute best kind of conspiracy theory. Make a claim so stupid that no professional engineer would ever bother to come forward and refute it.
Let me try to make a parrallel to computing, as there's probably more software engineers here than there are structural engineers.
Say the so called "digital Pearl Harbor" that has been widely speculated about was to happen. Maybe someone hacks into a power plant and shuts down the power to a hospital and a few thousand people die or something. The world is shocked. CNN have their mood music turned up high and are saying how evil chinese hackers did this, etc, etc.
Someone wants to cast doubt on these assumptions so they claim that no power plant in the history of power plants has ever failed due to a computer attack.
People who are naive of computer security hear this claim and say "man, you're right!" Throw in a few more easily confirmable claims and a few unconfirmable claims and you've got yourself a nice conspiracy theory.
Meanwhile, all the software engineers are sitting there going "they connected a power plant up to the internet? What a bunch of idiots."
Much like all the structural engineers are sitting there, right now, going "yeah, of course if you fly a jet plane into a building it is going to fall down."
Power plants are not something you should connect to an untrusted network.. they're not designed to be secure in that kind of environment.
Buildings are not something you should fly planes into.. they're not designed to keep standing up under that kind of stress.
I also recommend the South Park episode where Cartman accuses Kyle of causing 9/11.. it's quality.
Some people say the only acceptable advertising communications via e-mail is opt-in, everything else should be illegal. Call me crazy, but I'm kinda of the opinion that people should opt-in to spam blocking.
I realised something the other day that is a bit frightening to contemplate: some people actually like spam. They like junk mail in their snail mail box too. They like hearing about the new things they can buy and how much things cost. They like to hear about the things happening in their local area with "free" newspapers that are funded almost entirely by advertisements. Ultimately, they go and buy the products in these advertisements, which is why advertisers continue to advertise.
As long as these people continue to exist, is it even right to make spam illegal or, as many ISPs do, block it without even asking the receipiant if they want it blocked?
Are we at the point in history where we can design a building completely inside a computer and simulate the effect earthquakes of various degrees will have on the building?
Another way to look at it is historically accurate.
There were many "locked down" information networks available for people to connect to before the Internet got popular. Like Compuserve, AOL, and others. For a period, the Internet was in direct competition with these big online information services (as were smaller bulletin board systems).
The Internet won because it wasn't controlled.
So any new Internet that tries to compete with the now Internet surely must be as free.
Slashdot Mirror
like most things related to music. How popular the wax is depends on who is saying it is great.
If you look at the number of teams to population size for Software Freedom Day (which often involves people handing out CDs with Firefox and other free software) you'll see some correlation to these usage stats.
For example, compare the USA (24 teams) with Australia (19 teams). When you consider that the US population is over ten times bigger than Australia's population (298,444,215 vs 20,264,082), is it any wonder that Software Freedom Day is more effective in "Oceania" than it is in the US?
Not to mention the cultural differences in accepting software from random people on the street in the US, Europe and Australia.
Quick, lock up George A. Romero!
Err.. you mean GTA3.. there were a bunch of GTA games before it ya know.
I really don't think this is the same kind of censorship. GTA3 was removed from store shelves because it failed to meet the required classification of "Mature" and there is no "Restricted" rating for video games.
This, on the other hand, is the deliberate surpression of political speech under the guise of "terrorism".
If you wanna compare the lack of R ratings for video games to something, compare it to our stupid "net bet" laws. Fuckin' nanny state.
Anyone who thinks Google aint the number one search site in the world is on crack.
And then the system will have to change again. Ain't life a bitch?
The fact that people can sell books has little to do with copyright and a lot to do with the expense of making books.
If every book were scanned in and placed on the Internet, along with a like to a shop where you can buy the dead tree, the sale of books would go through the roof. Why? Because you could search the contents of books for what you're looking for and people like books.
If you're going to permit people other than the copyright owner to make copies of a work, why should the exchange of monies change that? Instead of limiting the scope of the law to non-commercial activities, how about just defining a minimum royalty payment requirement.
LHOTP touched on racial inequity many times. I remember an episode where a black kid runs away from his family to live with the Ingalls (that's the white family the show focuses on) and everyone learns some life lessons about racial equality and love for your fellow man (the usual thing). He goes back to his family in the end.
There was another episode where the blind school shuts down and the town decides to start a new one, turns out the new teacher is black, the blind kids don't know why some people seem to dislike the new teacher - everyone liked the last teacher. It's a big literal lesson about the virtue of being "color blind".
There was another episode where everyone got together and colluded on what price to sell their wheat at.. but one guy broke ranks and they decided to shun him.. when asked why he wouldn't go along he said he saw no reason why black people should get the same price as him for their wheat. Of course, rather than exposing the difficulty and danger of manipulating market prices, the moral of the story was that black people and white people can produce as good wheat. In a similar vein, there's another episode where the town doctor places an ad to hire a new doctor.. a black doctor answers the ad. He only gets given minor cases until he saves a baby that was being born strangely. The white doctor realises the black doctor is just as good as him.
The shows were made in the seventies.. racial issues were a hot topic.
And yeah, there were more episodes about how great indians are and how badly the colonials treated em than I care to remember.
I'm saying it is nonsensical to claim that you can design a building that can withstand a plane crashing into it.. and that a building falling down after a plane crashes into it is a perfectly reasonable thing for a building to do.
What the conspiracy theorists are claiming is that this isn't reasonable and therefore there must have been secret caches of explosives in the building which were systematically detonated sometime after the planes flew into it.
I'm also saying that the stupidity of the second claim is so great that the majority of structural engineers in the world have not even bothered to come forward and refute it because it should be obvious to any reasonable person that it requires no refute.
I don't care who knows it, I loved LHOTP. Every episode was social commentary of the finest.
In episode 42, Centennial (first aired 17 March 1976) people are celebrating Independance Day, as you do, when the festivities are interrupted by news that taxes are to be raised. People are kind of upset about this, being that they only have a few days to come up with the extra money to pay their taxes for the year.
One farmer is heard to remark to another farmer, "I swear, one day land taxes won't be enough.. they'll start to tax a man's income too!" and everyone has a good laugh at the silly old kook.
People start talking about not paying the extra money. Other people start talking about not paying any taxes at all. Thankfully a Russian immigrant takes the time to explain how even though he lost his land back in Russia for not paying his taxes, and that's why he came to America, it's still the best place in the world to live.
And as you watch this peaceful show with its idilic scenary, you just can't help believing it really was.
heh, buying a few bananas and heading off to ask the monkeys at the zoo would be more productive than asking Slashdot.
If it was really the case that these buildings shouldn't have fallen down and something like a "controlled demolition" was going on, every structural engineer in the US would be on the phone to the press. There would be a flood of expert opinion saying this was a stunt. There isn't. There's a few crackpots.
There's the thing. You jump to outlaw something cause you assume:
1. the majority of people don't like junk mail
2. the minority of people who do like junk mail don't matter
3. the majority has to the right to dictate what the people can and cannot send
When in actual fact, for all we know, only a small minority are opposed to junk mail, the majority of people don't care about junk mail, and a minority of people actually like it.
Oh, and being ruled by the majority is still being ruled.. can't we just live and let live?
No-one is being hurt, why get the law involved?
Well, it certainly is the case that people who stuff snail mail boxes tend to do it with their own mail delivery agents.. but that's primarily a cost issue. I'm not the first person to suggest it, but maybe email should cost something.. the problem is that any system which prohibits people from sending spam can also be used to prohibit people from sending protected speech.
I prefer to think that "viral marketing" refers to faking word of mouth. Ya know, paying people to astroturf for you in the hope that people will pass on what they've heard without sampling it themselves.
There is something wrong with pay for comment. It's a kind of fraud in my book. You're telling people you've independantly come to a decision which you'd like to share where in fact you haven't.
As such, when every celebrity gets up on tv and says that X product is the best, when they don't actually believe that, I really do think they are doing something unethical. Every celebrity who says some product tastes great should be hooked up to a polygraph or an MRI machine and made to eat/drink it.
There's 1.5 million structural engineers in the US. Are you seriously trying to say that all of them are "keeping quiet" on this "impossible" event. Pah-lease.
It's not their content. We don't have that kind of property in the western world. We have copyright which is a system where the public interest is balanced against the desire to encourage the creation of more works. Any argument for or against Google's use of the works Viacom owns the copyright on must be made in terms of the public interest.. otherwise they're just irrelevant to our society.
That's the absolute best kind of conspiracy theory. Make a claim so stupid that no professional engineer would ever bother to come forward and refute it.
Let me try to make a parrallel to computing, as there's probably more software engineers here than there are structural engineers.
Say the so called "digital Pearl Harbor" that has been widely speculated about was to happen. Maybe someone hacks into a power plant and shuts down the power to a hospital and a few thousand people die or something. The world is shocked. CNN have their mood music turned up high and are saying how evil chinese hackers did this, etc, etc.
Someone wants to cast doubt on these assumptions so they claim that no power plant in the history of power plants has ever failed due to a computer attack.
People who are naive of computer security hear this claim and say "man, you're right!" Throw in a few more easily confirmable claims and a few unconfirmable claims and you've got yourself a nice conspiracy theory.
Meanwhile, all the software engineers are sitting there going "they connected a power plant up to the internet? What a bunch of idiots."
Much like all the structural engineers are sitting there, right now, going "yeah, of course if you fly a jet plane into a building it is going to fall down."
Power plants are not something you should connect to an untrusted network.. they're not designed to be secure in that kind of environment.
Buildings are not something you should fly planes into.. they're not designed to keep standing up under that kind of stress.
I also recommend the South Park episode where Cartman accuses Kyle of causing 9/11.. it's quality.
Some people say the only acceptable advertising communications via e-mail is opt-in, everything else should be illegal. Call me crazy, but I'm kinda of the opinion that people should opt-in to spam blocking.
I realised something the other day that is a bit frightening to contemplate: some people actually like spam. They like junk mail in their snail mail box too. They like hearing about the new things they can buy and how much things cost. They like to hear about the things happening in their local area with "free" newspapers that are funded almost entirely by advertisements. Ultimately, they go and buy the products in these advertisements, which is why advertisers continue to advertise.
As long as these people continue to exist, is it even right to make spam illegal or, as many ISPs do, block it without even asking the receipiant if they want it blocked?
Are we at the point in history where we can design a building completely inside a computer and simulate the effect earthquakes of various degrees will have on the building?
Who makes that software?
How much does it cost?
Yeah, that last paragraph is a doozy.. that's the whole point of the internet. Real networks are frequently broken, disconnected and unpredictable.
A simple bandwidth guarentee system is at the top of my wishlist.
if you think it's as insightful as I do. If not, don't, fine with me.
That's one way to look at it.
Another way to look at it is historically accurate.
There were many "locked down" information networks available for people to connect to before the Internet got popular. Like Compuserve, AOL, and others. For a period, the Internet was in direct competition with these big online information services (as were smaller bulletin board systems).
The Internet won because it wasn't controlled.
So any new Internet that tries to compete with the now Internet surely must be as free.