Um, wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong. What will sway the lawmaker's opinions is votes dangled in front of them. The only reasons big money can sway lawmakers is either they are (illegally) getting kick backs from the corp or they believe the campaign dollars will help them get re-elected.
They will pay attention, if you make it clear to them that there are an appreciable number of voters who pay attention to how they vote on these issues and who will boot them out if they screw up.
The last thing we need is defeatist nay-saying. Action can make a difference. Excuses for inaction can only be detrimental.
At http://www.aclu.org/action/liberty107.html, the ACLU will find your senators and representative for you and fax them whatever you like. It's even easier than emailing them. Probably not quite as good as snail-mail, but better than an email.
You can send a fax to all of your congressmen even easier than you can send an email via aclu.org. If you go to
http://www.aclu.org/action/liberty107.html
at the bottom of the page you will see an option to fax your congressmen. It will figure out who they are based on your physical address and fax them whatever content you enter into their web form.
Here's what I sent to my congressmen:
A second attack on the freedoms of Americans is happening right now, and you're on the front lines. Please help defend my freedom.
I know that times like these compel one to try to do something about it, to fight for our freedoms and security. I can only assume that this urge
is what is driving the current push for laws that ostensibly increase our national security, but in fact restrict our freedoms without measurable increase in security.
You are doing more than your fair share to fight for the American way if you resist the urge to pass oppressive laws in a time of crisis. Please don't let national law be driven by current events. The strength of our nation lies in the freedom it grants its citizens, not the power of the government to control those citizens.
That said, I would like to list some laws which I believe are currently under consideration, and which I feel gravely impact the freedoms on which America is founded. I strongly urge you to vote AGAINST the following legislation:
1) The Mobilization Against Terrorism Act a.k.a. Anti-Terrorism Act proposed by Attorney General Ashcroft. If I understand this bill correctly, it would for example treat computerized graffiti (defacing a governmental web page) as an act of terrorism punishable by life in prison. While defacing government property is obviously a crime, there are already laws on the books with reasonable punishments for these crimes. This bill also appears to violate our ex post facto protections granted by Article I, Section 9 of the Constitution.
2) Amendment S.A. 1562 of H.R. 2500, the Combating Terrorism Act, sections 816, 832, 833 and 834. This bill appears to grant broad rights to government agencies regarding computerized wire taps. There are already mechanisms for obtaining the right to a wire tap (warrants). I feel this act is an abridgement of our fourth amendment protections against unreasonable search and seizure.
3) The draft Public Safety and Cyber Security Enhancement Act (PSCSEA). Restrictions on cryptography can only hurt legitimate uses, never criminal or terroristic uses. Cryptographic algorithms are well known and software providing strong encryption is easily obtainable, regardless of US law. If its use is criminalized, will that stop criminals from using it? Also, encrypted communications can NOT be identified if the communicating parties use commonly known methods of steganography. The kind of messages that terrorists would send back and forth could easily be hidden undetectably in any public internet forum, video stream, photograph, sound or other file. Criminalizing encryption will only restrict law abiding citizens from protecting personal and financial information.
4) The draft legislation titled "Security Systems Standards and Certification Act" (SSSCA). This law grants unprecented rights to intellectual property holders (including virtually eliminating Fair Use rights, first sale doctrine, and public domain rights). At the same time, it increases the cost of all computer systems and eliminates an entire computing industry founded on openness and freedom. (There is publicly available software which allows one to operate a computer while legally paying no license fees. This software and any like it would be untenable since anyone could alter the program to disable the copy protections required under the SSSCA. This software (Linux) is an incredible boon to students, non-profit organizations, and low income users everywhere.)
I am a computer software developer. Intellectual property is my livelihood. Please follow the guidelines given by the founding fathers in our Constitution with respect to IP. The limited monopoly on intellectual property is a sacrifice we make to satisfy the real goal.
From the US Constitution: "To promote the progress of science and useful arts by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries." The goal of intellectual property rights is to promote the progress of science and useful arts, not to guarantee income in perpetuity.
How you vote affects how I vote. Please help protect the freedom of American citizens.
Here is a list of articles further enumerating the concerns about current legislation: http://www.securityfocus.com/news/257
http://www.aclu.org/action/liberty107.html
http://www.politechbot.com/docs/hollings.090701. ht ml
http://www.eff.org/alerts/20010921_eff_wiretap_a le rt.html
Sen. Phil Gramm,
Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison,
Rep. Joe Barton,
A second attack on the freedoms of Americans is happening right now, and you're on the front lines. Please help defend my freedom.
I know that times like these compel one to try to do something about it, to fight for our freedoms and security. I can only assume that this urge is what is driving the current push for laws that ostensibly increase our national security, but in fact restrict our freedoms without measurable increase in security.
You are doing more than your fair share to fight for the American way if you resist the urge to pass oppressive laws in a time of crisis. Please don't let national law be driven by current events. The strength of our nation lies in the freedom it grants its citizens, not the power of the government to control those citizens.
That said, I would like to list some laws which I believe are currently under consideration, and which I feel gravely impact the freedoms on which America is founded.
1) The Mobilization Against Terrorism Act a.k.a. Anti-Terrorism Act proposed by Attorney General Ashcroft. If I understand this bill correctly, it would for example treat computerized graffiti (defacing a governmental web page) as an act of terrorism punishable by life in prison. While defacing government property is obviously a crime, there are already laws on the books with reasonable punishments for these crimes. This bill also appears to violate our ex post facto protections granted by Article I, Section 9 of the Constitution.
2) Amendment S.A. 1562 of H.R. 2500, the Combating Terrorism Act, sections 816, 832, 833 and 834. This bill appears to grant broad rights to government agencies regarding computerized wire taps. There are already mechanisms for obtaining the right to a wire tap (warrants). I feel this act is an abridgement of our fourth amendment protections against unreasonable search and seizure.
3) The draft Public Safety and Cyber Security Enhancement Act (PSCSEA). Restrictions on cryptography can only hurt legitimate uses, never criminal or terroristic uses. Cryptographic algorithms are well known and software providing strong encryption is easily obtainable, regardless of US law. If its use is criminalized, will that stop criminals from using it? Also, encrypted communications can NOT be identified if the communicating parties use commonly known methods of steganography. The kind of messages that terrorists would send back and forth could easily be hidden undetectably in any public internet forum, video stream, photograph, sound or other file. Criminalizing encryption will only restrict law abiding citizens from protecting personal and financial information.
4) The draft legislation titled "Security Systems Standards and Certification Act" (SSSCA). This law grants unprecented rights to intellectual property holders (including virtually eliminating Fair Use rights, first sale doctrine, and public domain rights). At the same time, it increases the cost of all computer systems and eliminates an entire computing industry founded on openness and freedom. (There is publically available software which allows one to operate a computer while legally paying no license fees. This software and any like it would be untenable since anyone could alter the program to disable the copy protections required under the SSSCA. This software (Linux) is an incredible boon to students, non-profit organizations, and low income users everywhere.)
I am a computer software developer. Intellectual property is my livelihood. Please follow the guidelines given by the founding fathers in our Constitution with respect to IP. The limited monopoly on intellectual property is a sacrifice we make to satisfy the real goal.
From the US Constitution: "To promote the progress of science and useful arts by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries." The goal of intellectual property rights is to promote the progress of science and useful arts, not to guarantee income in perpetuity.
How you vote affects how I vote. Please help protect the freedom of American citizens.
Regards,
Bobby Martin
CEO NavTools Inc.
Here is a list of articles further enumerating the concerns about current legistlation:
http://www.securityfocus.com/news/257
http://www.aclu.org/action/liberty107.html
http://www.politechbot.com/docs/hollings.090701. ht ml
http://www.eff.org/alerts/20010921_eff_wiretap_a le rt.html
And this is but a fraction of the money donated to the Red Cross. I donated directly ($250 - so there!) as I'm sure many others did. Note that this link is to their Yahoo store; you can get there even when www.redcross.org is overloaded.
I'll repeat that more plainly...
EVEN IF THE RED CROSS WEB SITE IS DOWN, YOU CAN DONATE MONEY HERE (http://store.yahoo.com/redcross-wtc/).
That may be your idea of what an American is, but it is certainly not mine.
Needless consumption is bad. Ignoring the evil uses to which our tax dollars are put is bad. Your vision of an American is terrifying, and more terrifying is that right now, it is at Score: 5. Come on, people, do you all really think this is what we should be doing?
And (to paraphrase): hopefully we can prove that our culture only seems shallow because we refuse to surrender it? That makes no sense whatsoever to me.
By all means, don't let the fact that there are terrorists out there make you live in fear. But, please, people - someone out there is making a powerful statement about how they see us. Those people were sick, deluded monsters, but that doesn't mean that the evil that they saw in us isn't there. We need to spend some time thinking about what we might have done wrong.
I've seen a few posts out there that I think are spot-on. Our reaction to this needs to be:
a) find out WITH CERTAINTY who caused this and spank them hard, with as little loss of innocent lives as possible
b) figure out what we did to inspire such hatred and take a long, hard look as to whether or not we should continue in the same vein.
As an analogy, you're living next door to a guy who keeps asking you to turn down your stereo. You ignore him, and, being the psychopath that he is, he breaks down your door and smashes your stereo. Do you buy another stereo, crank it even louder and continue ignore him? Or do you have him hauled off to jail and then keep your stereo quieter in the future?
I don't know about in Europe, but in the US patents are not "to protect the inventor so they could profit from their invention". The limited monopoly is a sacrifice we make to satisfy the real goal. From the US Constitution: "To promote the progress of science and useful arts by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries."
Here in the US, people seem to lose sight of the real goal (to promote the progress of science and useful arts) and think that the purpose of patent law is to let them make more money. Any time patent law gives a company or individual a monopoly that hinders rather than advancing the state of the art, then the law has failed to meet its goals. This can happen because the length of the patent was longer than the usefulness of the technique patented, because the technique patented was already common knowledge or obvious to anyone trying to solve the problem, or for any number of other reasons.
Excellent! That was just the piece of information I needed. I'm using Guidescope (apparently from the same folks who bring you JunkBuster) and it has the same options to lie about the User Agent that JunkBuster does.
Mozilla definitely does allow you to disable popups. See http://www.mozilla.org/projects/security/component s/configPolicy.html
Even more off-topic:
Does anyone know how to make Mozilla lie about what User-Agent it is? My bank software rejects Mozilla, claiming it's not compatible. I'm pretty sure it is, and I want to try to make Mozilla claim to be IE on that domain.
I think they're referring to the wireless piggybackers as parasites on the DSL or cable provider, not the guy who runs the base station and is thus inviting them to use his bandwidth.
ISPs sell based on expected usage rather than on maximum throughput, and if you do things to put yourself at maximum throughput all the time, they are losing money. And we may say 'tough luck, they shouldn't allow that if they don't want to lose money', but eventually prices will go up to accomodate it and we will pay for it.
As has been pointed out several times, this is for embedded systems. I don't want to have a processor farm with hot-swappable processors controlling my car's engine, brakes, steering, or my doctor's medical equipment.
Of course, I didn't catch that until I read posts pointing it out, and you probably have caught it by now too, but I couldn't resist;)
One thing to note is that the mike on the Visor is not attached to anything but connectors in the springboard slot. You can't use it except with the hardware in a springboard module, unless you rig something up homebrew.
I don't think your gf's experience was as atypical as you think it is. I also don't think most DSL problems are related to the interaction between the DSL provider and the ISP.
I requested DSL to be installed in Fayetteville, Arkansas by Southwestern Bell. They told me to expect it to take four weeks. That seemed like pretty crummy response time, but it was the only high speed option I had. Note that SWB was both the ISP and the DSL provider.
Well, four weeks came and went. No DSL. I called them once a week for several months; still no DSL. They also never, ever returned any of the ~20 phone calls that they said they would return.
Finally, a friend of mine pushed me into asking one of his buddies, who runs an ISP, to get the service for me. The new ISP told me it would be two weeks to get the DSL. Four days later, DSL was up & running!! So, after _10 MONTHS_ of waiting for SWB to set up my DSL, the 3rd party ISP got me set up in less than a week!
The moral of the story is that sometimes, the 3rd party ISP can get your DSL service to you faster than interacting directly with those bastards at Southwestern Bell.
And if that one solution was a greatest common denominator instead of the worst piece of crap that they think they can foist off on the average consumer, that would be great. But it isn't, so it's not.
Hrm, I see now. The only requirement is that, if given the same data in reverse order, and you run the program in reverse, you get back the original data. I can see that doesn't require that all of the data put in be stored by the computer. All it says is that the state at any given time can be recovered if given all the input between then and now.
Very nice! I really should investigate this more sometime, but there aren't enough hours in the day.
I'm not an expert, but some rudimentary examination and common sense indicate to me...
you don't need to actually reverse the operations to 'recover' energy in reversible operations. Reversible operations don't destroy information, and thus don't incur the minimum entropy increase caused by destroying information. This means that it is theoretically possible for them to dissipate arbitrarily small amounts of heat, and thus consume arbitrarily small amounts of energy.
In other words, reversible operations don't allow recovering the energy, they make it possible to not have to pay the energy in the first place.
One problem to note with reversible computing is that your computer has to have enough memory to store every bit of information ever entered into it. I'm pretty sure that it can compress the info, but eventually you'll have to have an energy expensive and very hot 'information dumping' process. I say it's a problem, but of course normal computing requires the same thing, and doesn't let you choose when you do it.
Yaknow, maybe I should've blasted the guy and removed any indications of uncertainty in my reply. That's the only way I've ever gotten modded up...
Um, while I may not agree with the way all of the income tax dollars are spent...
Do you never drive on public roads? Get no value from the disincentive to rob/murder/rape you from the police? If you didn't get fire control services for free, wouldn't you pay for them?
I doubt very many people can honestly say that income tax doesn't do them any good. Most of it may be wasted, but some of that money is responsible for the comfortable life you lead.
Oh, sorry, I can't believe I put U of A instead of University of Arkansas.
Is this the same Dr. Hardy who was at the U of Arkansas about ten years ago working with Dr. Sheng? If it is, and I'm not saying it is, I always got the impression that he was a public relations guy and Sheng was the real horsepower. He left for a higher paying job, I thought in Colorado, but I have no idea where he would be now. He was a big trumpet player (I think, one of those t-word horns : )
Again, I don't doubt that Canada leads the way in various physics programs, it was just the 'leads the world in superconductor research' that threw me off. It wasn't one of the names that I heard when I was in the biz.
I'm not trying to disrespect Canada, but I'm curious what leads you to say that Canada leads superconductor research. I'm not in the know any more, but I used to work in a superconductor lab under Dr. Sheng at the U of A.
I've heard about records for high temperature superconductors from Japan (initially discovered high temp superconductors, I believe), Dr. Sheng (held the world record for high temp sc (via Y1Ba2Ca2Cu3Ox) for 5 years) and from France, but I've not heard anything about Canada.
Well, "it has revolutionized my life" indicates a life that is a little too reliant on TV, in my opinion, but it has certainly revolutionized the way I watch television.
How many programs do you record on VCR? Have you ever missed an episode of a program that you watch regularly? Have you ever turned on the TV and either
a) turned it back off after surfing for 10 min
b) ended up watching crap
because there was nothing on that you wanted to watch?
That never happens to me. Never. There's always something good on TV, I never miss an episode of my favorite shows, and I watch it whenever I want.
TiVo is not a very important part of my life. The part of my life that I spend watching TV, though, it has revolutionized completely.
Well, the reason that I went with Tivo instead of Replay probably boils down to the fact that Tivo runs on Linux. I'm sorry to say that I didn't do enough investigation to see if Replay does too : (
Also, I thought I remembered that Replay didn't have the 'back 8 seconds instantly' button. I find myself using that so much to catch lines that I missed the first time, sometimes I find myself reaching for the remote at movies or with radio programs!
BTW, Tivo also offers lifetime memberships for $200, so with Replay you must get a lifetime subscription, whereas Tivo (until recently) at least offered the option of subscribing month-to-month. I say until recently because these practices being implemented in the new upgrade screw the guy who wants end his month-to-month subscription.
Oh yeah, just remembered - the fact that I could choose to pay month to month for the subscription on Tivo was part of my decision making process. Also that Tivo has so many big name corporate partners.
Slashdot Mirror
Oh, by the way, feel free to use the text in the parent, whole or in part, for any damn thing you feel like.
Oooh... *backpedals rapidly*
I'm with you 100% on that. And thank you for not firing flame from the hip in response to my flame from the hip. *hangs head*
Um, wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong. What will sway the lawmaker's opinions is votes dangled in front of them. The only reasons big money can sway lawmakers is either they are (illegally) getting kick backs from the corp or they believe the campaign dollars will help them get re-elected.
They will pay attention, if you make it clear to them that there are an appreciable number of voters who pay attention to how they vote on these issues and who will boot them out if they screw up.
The last thing we need is defeatist nay-saying. Action can make a difference. Excuses for inaction can only be detrimental.
At http://www.aclu.org/action/liberty107.html, the ACLU will find your senators and representative for you and fax them whatever you like. It's even easier than emailing them. Probably not quite as good as snail-mail, but better than an email.
You can send a fax to all of your congressmen even easier than you can send an email via aclu.org. If you go to
. ht ml
a le rt.html
http://www.aclu.org/action/liberty107.html
at the bottom of the page you will see an option to fax your congressmen. It will figure out who they are based on your physical address and fax them whatever content you enter into their web form.
Here's what I sent to my congressmen:
A second attack on the freedoms of Americans is happening right now, and you're on the front lines. Please help defend my freedom.
I know that times like these compel one to try to do something about it, to fight for our freedoms and security. I can only assume that this urge
is what is driving the current push for laws that ostensibly increase our national security, but in fact restrict our freedoms without measurable increase in security.
You are doing more than your fair share to fight for the American way if you resist the urge to pass oppressive laws in a time of crisis. Please don't let national law be driven by current events. The strength of our nation lies in the freedom it grants its citizens, not the power of the government to control those citizens.
That said, I would like to list some laws which I believe are currently under consideration, and which I feel gravely impact the freedoms on which America is founded. I strongly urge you to vote AGAINST the following legislation:
1) The Mobilization Against Terrorism Act a.k.a. Anti-Terrorism Act proposed by Attorney General Ashcroft. If I understand this bill correctly, it would for example treat computerized graffiti (defacing a governmental web page) as an act of terrorism punishable by life in prison. While defacing government property is obviously a crime, there are already laws on the books with reasonable punishments for these crimes. This bill also appears to violate our ex post facto protections granted by Article I, Section 9 of the Constitution.
2) Amendment S.A. 1562 of H.R. 2500, the Combating Terrorism Act, sections 816, 832, 833 and 834. This bill appears to grant broad rights to government agencies regarding computerized wire taps. There are already mechanisms for obtaining the right to a wire tap (warrants). I feel this act is an abridgement of our fourth amendment protections against unreasonable search and seizure.
3) The draft Public Safety and Cyber Security Enhancement Act (PSCSEA). Restrictions on cryptography can only hurt legitimate uses, never criminal or terroristic uses. Cryptographic algorithms are well known and software providing strong encryption is easily obtainable, regardless of US law. If its use is criminalized, will that stop criminals from using it? Also, encrypted communications can NOT be identified if the communicating parties use commonly known methods of steganography. The kind of messages that terrorists would send back and forth could easily be hidden undetectably in any public internet forum, video stream, photograph, sound or other file. Criminalizing encryption will only restrict law abiding citizens from protecting personal and financial information.
4) The draft legislation titled "Security Systems Standards and Certification Act" (SSSCA). This law grants unprecented rights to intellectual property holders (including virtually eliminating Fair Use rights, first sale doctrine, and public domain rights). At the same time, it increases the cost of all computer systems and eliminates an entire computing industry founded on openness and freedom. (There is publicly available software which allows one to operate a computer while legally paying no license fees. This software and any like it would be untenable since anyone could alter the program to disable the copy protections required under the SSSCA. This software (Linux) is an incredible boon to students, non-profit organizations, and low income users everywhere.)
I am a computer software developer. Intellectual property is my livelihood. Please follow the guidelines given by the founding fathers in our Constitution with respect to IP. The limited monopoly on intellectual property is a sacrifice we make to satisfy the real goal.
From the US Constitution: "To promote the progress of science and useful arts by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries." The goal of intellectual property rights is to promote the progress of science and useful arts, not to guarantee income in perpetuity.
How you vote affects how I vote. Please help protect the freedom of American citizens.
Here is a list of articles further enumerating the concerns about current legislation: http://www.securityfocus.com/news/257
http://www.aclu.org/action/liberty107.html
http://www.politechbot.com/docs/hollings.090701
http://www.eff.org/alerts/20010921_eff_wiretap_
Sincerely,
Bobby Martin, CEO NavTools Inc.
Sen. Phil Gramm,
. ht ml
a le rt.html
Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison,
Rep. Joe Barton,
A second attack on the freedoms of Americans is happening right now, and you're on the front lines. Please help defend my freedom.
I know that times like these compel one to try to do something about it, to fight for our freedoms and security. I can only assume that this urge is what is driving the current push for laws that ostensibly increase our national security, but in fact restrict our freedoms without measurable increase in security.
You are doing more than your fair share to fight for the American way if you resist the urge to pass oppressive laws in a time of crisis. Please don't let national law be driven by current events. The strength of our nation lies in the freedom it grants its citizens, not the power of the government to control those citizens.
That said, I would like to list some laws which I believe are currently under consideration, and which I feel gravely impact the freedoms on which America is founded.
1) The Mobilization Against Terrorism Act a.k.a. Anti-Terrorism Act proposed by Attorney General Ashcroft. If I understand this bill correctly, it would for example treat computerized graffiti (defacing a governmental web page) as an act of terrorism punishable by life in prison. While defacing government property is obviously a crime, there are already laws on the books with reasonable punishments for these crimes. This bill also appears to violate our ex post facto protections granted by Article I, Section 9 of the Constitution.
2) Amendment S.A. 1562 of H.R. 2500, the Combating Terrorism Act, sections 816, 832, 833 and 834. This bill appears to grant broad rights to government agencies regarding computerized wire taps. There are already mechanisms for obtaining the right to a wire tap (warrants). I feel this act is an abridgement of our fourth amendment protections against unreasonable search and seizure.
3) The draft Public Safety and Cyber Security Enhancement Act (PSCSEA). Restrictions on cryptography can only hurt legitimate uses, never criminal or terroristic uses. Cryptographic algorithms are well known and software providing strong encryption is easily obtainable, regardless of US law. If its use is criminalized, will that stop criminals from using it? Also, encrypted communications can NOT be identified if the communicating parties use commonly known methods of steganography. The kind of messages that terrorists would send back and forth could easily be hidden undetectably in any public internet forum, video stream, photograph, sound or other file. Criminalizing encryption will only restrict law abiding citizens from protecting personal and financial information.
4) The draft legislation titled "Security Systems Standards and Certification Act" (SSSCA). This law grants unprecented rights to intellectual property holders (including virtually eliminating Fair Use rights, first sale doctrine, and public domain rights). At the same time, it increases the cost of all computer systems and eliminates an entire computing industry founded on openness and freedom. (There is publically available software which allows one to operate a computer while legally paying no license fees. This software and any like it would be untenable since anyone could alter the program to disable the copy protections required under the SSSCA. This software (Linux) is an incredible boon to students, non-profit organizations, and low income users everywhere.)
I am a computer software developer. Intellectual property is my livelihood. Please follow the guidelines given by the founding fathers in our Constitution with respect to IP. The limited monopoly on intellectual property is a sacrifice we make to satisfy the real goal.
From the US Constitution: "To promote the progress of science and useful arts by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries." The goal of intellectual property rights is to promote the progress of science and useful arts, not to guarantee income in perpetuity.
How you vote affects how I vote. Please help protect the freedom of American citizens.
Regards,
Bobby Martin
CEO NavTools Inc.
Here is a list of articles further enumerating the concerns about current legistlation:
http://www.securityfocus.com/news/257
http://www.aclu.org/action/liberty107.html
http://www.politechbot.com/docs/hollings.090701
http://www.eff.org/alerts/20010921_eff_wiretap_
testing my posting abilities...
And this is but a fraction of the money donated to the Red Cross. I donated directly ($250 - so there!) as I'm sure many others did. Note that this link is to their Yahoo store; you can get there even when www.redcross.org is overloaded.
I'll repeat that more plainly...
EVEN IF THE RED CROSS WEB SITE IS DOWN, YOU CAN DONATE MONEY HERE (http://store.yahoo.com/redcross-wtc/).
That may be your idea of what an American is, but it is certainly not mine.
Needless consumption is bad. Ignoring the evil uses to which our tax dollars are put is bad. Your vision of an American is terrifying, and more terrifying is that right now, it is at Score: 5. Come on, people, do you all really think this is what we should be doing?
And (to paraphrase): hopefully we can prove that our culture only seems shallow because we refuse to surrender it? That makes no sense whatsoever to me.
By all means, don't let the fact that there are terrorists out there make you live in fear. But, please, people - someone out there is making a powerful statement about how they see us. Those people were sick, deluded monsters, but that doesn't mean that the evil that they saw in us isn't there. We need to spend some time thinking about what we might have done wrong.
I've seen a few posts out there that I think are spot-on. Our reaction to this needs to be:
a) find out WITH CERTAINTY who caused this and spank them hard, with as little loss of innocent lives as possible
b) figure out what we did to inspire such hatred and take a long, hard look as to whether or not we should continue in the same vein.
As an analogy, you're living next door to a guy who keeps asking you to turn down your stereo. You ignore him, and, being the psychopath that he is, he breaks down your door and smashes your stereo. Do you buy another stereo, crank it even louder and continue ignore him? Or do you have him hauled off to jail and then keep your stereo quieter in the future?
I don't know about in Europe, but in the US patents are not "to protect the inventor so they could profit from their invention". The limited monopoly is a sacrifice we make to satisfy the real goal. From the US Constitution: "To promote the progress of science and useful arts by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries."
Here in the US, people seem to lose sight of the real goal (to promote the progress of science and useful arts) and think that the purpose of patent law is to let them make more money. Any time patent law gives a company or individual a monopoly that hinders rather than advancing the state of the art, then the law has failed to meet its goals. This can happen because the length of the patent was longer than the usefulness of the technique patented, because the technique patented was already common knowledge or obvious to anyone trying to solve the problem, or for any number of other reasons.
And I'm not a patent examiner, or a lawyer.
Excellent! That was just the piece of information I needed. I'm using Guidescope (apparently from the same folks who bring you JunkBuster) and it has the same options to lie about the User Agent that JunkBuster does.
Thanks again!
Mozilla definitely does allow you to disable popups. See http://www.mozilla.org/projects/security/component s/configPolicy.html
Even more off-topic:
Does anyone know how to make Mozilla lie about what User-Agent it is? My bank software rejects Mozilla, claiming it's not compatible. I'm pretty sure it is, and I want to try to make Mozilla claim to be IE on that domain.
I think they're referring to the wireless piggybackers as parasites on the DSL or cable provider, not the guy who runs the base station and is thus inviting them to use his bandwidth.
ISPs sell based on expected usage rather than on maximum throughput, and if you do things to put yourself at maximum throughput all the time, they are losing money. And we may say 'tough luck, they shouldn't allow that if they don't want to lose money', but eventually prices will go up to accomodate it and we will pay for it.
As has been pointed out several times, this is for embedded systems. I don't want to have a processor farm with hot-swappable processors controlling my car's engine, brakes, steering, or my doctor's medical equipment.
;)
Of course, I didn't catch that until I read posts pointing it out, and you probably have caught it by now too, but I couldn't resist
One thing to note is that the mike on the Visor is not attached to anything but connectors in the springboard slot. You can't use it except with the hardware in a springboard module, unless you rig something up homebrew.
I requested DSL to be installed in Fayetteville, Arkansas by Southwestern Bell. They told me to expect it to take four weeks. That seemed like pretty crummy response time, but it was the only high speed option I had. Note that SWB was both the ISP and the DSL provider.
Well, four weeks came and went. No DSL. I called them once a week for several months; still no DSL. They also never, ever returned any of the ~20 phone calls that they said they would return.
Finally, a friend of mine pushed me into asking one of his buddies, who runs an ISP, to get the service for me. The new ISP told me it would be two weeks to get the DSL. Four days later, DSL was up & running!! So, after _10 MONTHS_ of waiting for SWB to set up my DSL, the 3rd party ISP got me set up in less than a week!
The moral of the story is that sometimes, the 3rd party ISP can get your DSL service to you faster than interacting directly with those bastards at Southwestern Bell.
Bobby Martin aka Wurp
Cosm Development Team
Bobby Martin aka Wurp
Cosm Development Team
Bobby Martin aka Wurp
Cosm Development Team
Very nice! I really should investigate this more sometime, but there aren't enough hours in the day.
Thanks for the correction.
Bobby Martin aka Wurp
Cosm Development Team
you don't need to actually reverse the operations to 'recover' energy in reversible operations. Reversible operations don't destroy information, and thus don't incur the minimum entropy increase caused by destroying information. This means that it is theoretically possible for them to dissipate arbitrarily small amounts of heat, and thus consume arbitrarily small amounts of energy.
In other words, reversible operations don't allow recovering the energy, they make it possible to not have to pay the energy in the first place.
One problem to note with reversible computing is that your computer has to have enough memory to store every bit of information ever entered into it. I'm pretty sure that it can compress the info, but eventually you'll have to have an energy expensive and very hot 'information dumping' process. I say it's a problem, but of course normal computing requires the same thing, and doesn't let you choose when you do it.
Yaknow, maybe I should've blasted the guy and removed any indications of uncertainty in my reply. That's the only way I've ever gotten modded up...
Regards,
Bobby
Bobby Martin aka Wurp
Cosm Development Team
Do you never drive on public roads? Get no value from the disincentive to rob/murder/rape you from the police? If you didn't get fire control services for free, wouldn't you pay for them?
I doubt very many people can honestly say that income tax doesn't do them any good. Most of it may be wasted, but some of that money is responsible for the comfortable life you lead.
Bobby Martin aka Wurp
Cosm Development Team
Is this the same Dr. Hardy who was at the U of Arkansas about ten years ago working with Dr. Sheng? If it is, and I'm not saying it is, I always got the impression that he was a public relations guy and Sheng was the real horsepower. He left for a higher paying job, I thought in Colorado, but I have no idea where he would be now. He was a big trumpet player (I think, one of those t-word horns : )
Again, I don't doubt that Canada leads the way in various physics programs, it was just the 'leads the world in superconductor research' that threw me off. It wasn't one of the names that I heard when I was in the biz.
Bobby Martin aka Wurp
Cosm Development Team
I've heard about records for high temperature superconductors from Japan (initially discovered high temp superconductors, I believe), Dr. Sheng (held the world record for high temp sc (via Y1Ba2Ca2Cu3Ox) for 5 years) and from France, but I've not heard anything about Canada.
Bobby Martin aka Wurp
Cosm Development Team
Well, "it has revolutionized my life" indicates a life that is a little too reliant on TV, in my opinion, but it has certainly revolutionized the way I watch television.
How many programs do you record on VCR? Have you ever missed an episode of a program that you watch regularly? Have you ever turned on the TV and either
a) turned it back off after surfing for 10 min
b) ended up watching crap
because there was nothing on that you wanted to watch?
That never happens to me. Never. There's always something good on TV, I never miss an episode of my favorite shows, and I watch it whenever I want.
TiVo is not a very important part of my life. The part of my life that I spend watching TV, though, it has revolutionized completely.
Well, the reason that I went with Tivo instead of Replay probably boils down to the fact that Tivo runs on Linux. I'm sorry to say that I didn't do enough investigation to see if Replay does too : (
Also, I thought I remembered that Replay didn't have the 'back 8 seconds instantly' button. I find myself using that so much to catch lines that I missed the first time, sometimes I find myself reaching for the remote at movies or with radio programs!
BTW, Tivo also offers lifetime memberships for $200, so with Replay you must get a lifetime subscription, whereas Tivo (until recently) at least offered the option of subscribing month-to-month. I say until recently because these practices being implemented in the new upgrade screw the guy who wants end his month-to-month subscription.
Oh yeah, just remembered - the fact that I could choose to pay month to month for the subscription on Tivo was part of my decision making process. Also that Tivo has so many big name corporate partners.