IMHO, People who build computers from components should get a cut of recycling tax since avid hobbyists are some of the most frugle recyclers of all. Hey...don't toss that EDO memory, I can use in my toaster...
It's the Free Beer loving software pirate that lives within deep within the Spanish psyche that's driven them to OSS.
Isn't it the same pirate spirit that attracts most/. users to Linux. My bet is that a third of the/.ers have a parrot sitting on their shoulders as they hack, a tenth have a false eye earned in MUD challenge, and a good 70% say "har" when they think a post is funny.
A hardy and light hearted bunch they be. But if ye break the prirate code (GPL) then to to plank with ye mateys.
Really? Care to back that bold assertion [more people killed by their governments than wars] up with an actual fact?
The book Death by Government tallies up the different murdering sprees. The Communist/Socialist/Fascist governments pretty much dominate the list. This is all well known data.
I agree the technology is neutral. The question is whether or not the implementation is designed to help the individual people or to empower an institution. In this article it appears as though the technology is weighted toward the institution and not the individual.
A group scientist and insurance execs want to install a black box in every car, so they can judge against individuals in accidents. This is like the ultimate in scientific arrogance.
Better monitoring technology is not bad. Why not design a car monitor so it provides good information to the driver. A monitor could give inidividuals information their driving patterns with clues on how to make the car last longer and improve gas mileage. A well design monitoring program could help people save money.
If the defined users of the technology are insurance executives, crash investigators, or other state agencies, then I don't want one of those things in my car. If it is designed to provide benefits to me, then I will sign up. (Please don't just repond back by saying that if scientists have more power then we are benefit from their inherent goodness.)
Of course, anyone who doesn't want a monitoring device is probably a criminal with something to hide.
Bandwidth is just a matter of migrating bottle necks. As local access continues to build, the places that excess capacity today will be the bottle necks to tomorrow.
If a company digs a big expensive hole for fiber, they better be smart enough to be planting more than current capacity demands. It will be expensive to dig the hole again. When that hole becomes a bottleneck it will be extremely expensive to upgrade.
BTW, the fact that companies digging expensive holes for fiber planted more than current needs that maybe there might be a little bit of hope for American companies after all. We will find in a few years years their foresight was probably not enought.
Most interstate truckers these days have satellite tracking devices. The primary use of the satellites is mondane stuff like tracking shipments, filling out driving laws, routing and the like.
One of the first four trucks my company installed the system on was stolen. After stealing the truck, they drove it to several warehouses; so one GPS/Satellite unit took down both the thief, but several chop shops and stolen goods warehouses.
Having even a small percentage of cars with tracking devices will take a big bite out of car theft. It would be cool if someday we did the same thing with bikes; Then I could ride my bike to University without having it or its parts stolen.
This blurb from Microsoft is absurd, but in many cases the software on the machine is worth more than the hardware. Both the donor and the charity should be attentive to the value of the software. I assume you would get an extra tax break if you donate your unused software licenses with the computer.
BTW: It is also good to take all of the pictures of nekkid ladies off the computer as well. You don't want your donation to be too educational.
Wouldn't it be ironic if the 10,000 dead were killed by a plague and the virus had survived this long, only to wreak havok on the world?
The article mentioned that the mummies were about 500 years old (2002-500 = 1502). This puts them in the ground just about the time Columbus was in the area. If there was a plague is likely something they caught from Europeans. So it's something we already had.
I think most of the kid site designers are people trying their hardest to live second childhoods. They really, really want to make flashy graphics whirlygigs and the like, then claim it is a kids site after the fact for self-justification.
Eventually, Amazon and Half.com are going to really hurt the publishing industry too.
The appearance of Half.com and Amazon.com used book sales pulled millions of used books off shelves and threw them back in the market. This happened right at the beginning of a recession. As a result, the programs have magnified the hurt of the recession. Who knows, there may even be publishers that go under because of the double witching.
In the long run, however, cleaning off all the bookshelves, and putting a little more money in the book buying public will probably not be that big of a hurt. I face book buying with a totally different attitude now that I know I can unload the books I don't want to keep.
Printing and distribution technologies are changing quite rapidly. So it will be impossible to say what caused publisher a to go under while publisher b survived.
The constitution, the idea of rule by law, christianity, buddhism, open source... are all viruses of the mind. The US founding fathers distributed the Declaration of Indepence around with the express malicious intent of throwing the Brits out on the arses.
Come to think of i1t, the anti virus law itself is a piece of logic a lawyer designed and executed in the court system with the intent of getting back at the people who made their computer crash.
A virus is a piece of software that distributes itself.
Making "virus distribution" illegal would pose a an interesting logical debate. It is the computer code that distributes itself, so it is the computer code that is breaking the law.
I am sure that the article was referring to the people who executed the program that distributes the virus, but you can get into a lot of hairy technicalities about what action caused the distribution. Is leaving an unmarked disket with a boot sector virus on it in a public place a distribution?
Is knowingly not deleting a virus an act of distribution?
The Internet prides itself, or, the users of the Internet, on anonymity.
We may pride ourselves on anonymity, but the rampant fraud has created a very big economic incentive to rid the web of this precious anonymity. When you create an extraordinary economic incentive to perform an specific act, please, don't be surprised if the act occurs.
Fortunately, I learned to never purchase through online auctions on a $10 purchase.
I recall that IBM was hoping, at the time, that Lotus Notes would become the defacto directory server and groupware program, and Domino would become the defacto web server.
The article should have thrown the $3B Lotus purchase into the swings IBM took at trying to regain the dominant position in the personal computer market.
Of course, an IBM/Sun Merger would put Lotus 123 into an office package with WordStar...which could give us all flash backs to the early 80s when WS and 123 were the coolest things on the PC.
First off, I should not have used the words "Great Deal." According to my logs, Google reads a little under 100MB from my sites each month. That's like a dollar each month.
I am not unhappy with Google. I am just pointing out a contradiction. My argument is that in some cases Google will incur a bandwidth cost on a site, and have the affect of taking traffic from the site.
In the Google paradigm there are two types of sites. There are expert and content sites. An expert site is a site with a bunch of links. Content sites have articles.
Google is the ultimate expert site. It aggregates other expert sites. As a result, people use Google rather than the independent expert site.
Remember an expert site is a link site. The goal of the expert site to direct traffic...not to deliver content. Google hits the expert site with a bandwidth charge. They use the information from the expert site to take traffic from the expert site.
BTW, this is precisely the reason that Google prohibits you from indexing the Google Site. They do not want you to use the information they gathered to take traffic from Google.
I am not saying this is bad, just pointing out contradictions...It's a Google eat goto world out there.
This is not a complaint. I just want to point out that the whole Google Concept is built on a subtle contradicitons or, dare I say, hypocracy. From the User Agreement:
The search results that appear from Google's indices are indexed by Google's automated machinery and computers
The User Agreement precludes you from automatically querying their site:
You may not send automated queries of any sort to Google's system without express permission in advance from Google.
The google agreement demands express permission to automatically scan its site, while Google assumes the permission to index all sites on the net.
Google also pretty much make the claim that if it is on the Internet they will index it. Their terms of service states that the only way not to have a site indexed is remove it from the net:
For each web site reflected in Google's indices, if either (i) a site owner restricts access to his or her web site or (ii) a site is taken down from the web, then, upon receipt of a request by the site owner or a third party in the second instance, Google would consider on a case-by-case basis requests to remove the link to that site from its indices.
I think Google is providing a great service, but I hope you can see the subtle contradictions in their product. They basically are saying that anything on the web is fair game for Google. Yet, Google is on the web, it is not fair game for other organizations. This is a very blatant double standard.
Google is a derivative work.
The product model of Google is to determine expert sites by aggregating the link lists on other expert sites. In other words, they are taking other people's work, aggregating it and providing the results. Google's aggregation program is a derivative work. Not only that, they fail to give any compensation to the expert sites.
As for the issue of intergallactic karma, they actually expect the expert site to pay for the bandwidth needed by Google to aggregate the site. They then use this information to draw human traffic from the expert site.
Again, to the Google worshippers, I am not complaining or flaming Google, but simply pointing out a logical contradiction. Jack's Expert Site is harmed by Google in two ways: The googlebots take up a great deal of bandwidth that Jack pays for. Google then uses this information to draw actual human traffic from Jack's Expert Site. From this vantage Google is a big guy stomping on the small guy. When Microsoft does this type of stuff, we call it evil.
If Google charges for the service, then the people who use the API will have to find some way to make money to pay the charge. The other alternative is for Google to compromise the integrity of content and deliver page links with ads. Of course, if Google doesn't charge then they go under. Anyone foolish enough to have written code around the API will now have broken, defunct pages.
Down with the capitalist pigs. Up with living in dank caves.
I hope he has supernatural powers. In his last episode, didn't he turn into supernatural god type thing that not only mastered Linux, but could navigate through the stars with his mind.
Most people would consider it an individual liberty to be able to use what they paid for in any way the choose
Excuse me, but exactly what do you pay for when you buy a book, a CD or other copyrighted material?
The whole point of the copyright law is to determine what you paid for. To clarify what you are purchasing, the courts have separated the rights into two categories: There is the right to use something and the right to distribute it.
When you purchase a CD, you are purchasing the right to use that CD. You are not purchasing the right to distribute the music.
Your claim that people aren't getting what they paid for is totally bogus because you are getting exactly what they paid for. You purchased the rights to use the music. The courts have even extended that right, and consider your copying the music from your CD into your RIO player as simply transporting the music through space and time.
Slashdot Mirror
If nothing else, computers are great at replicating errors.
If you can't beat 'em you can at least dyslexify the acronymn.
IMHO, People who build computers from components should get a cut of recycling tax since avid hobbyists are some of the most frugle recyclers of all. Hey...don't toss that EDO memory, I can use in my toaster...
It's the Free Beer loving software pirate that lives within deep within the Spanish psyche that's driven them to OSS.
/. users to Linux. My bet is that a third of the /.ers have a parrot sitting on their shoulders as they hack, a tenth have a false eye earned in MUD challenge, and a good 70% say "har" when they think a post is funny.
Isn't it the same pirate spirit that attracts most
A hardy and light hearted bunch they be. But if ye break the prirate code (GPL) then to to plank with ye mateys.
Really? Care to back that bold assertion [more people killed by their governments than wars] up with an actual fact?
The book Death by Government tallies up the different murdering sprees. The Communist/Socialist/Fascist governments pretty much dominate the list. This is all well known data.
I agree the technology is neutral. The question is whether or not the implementation is designed to help the individual people or to empower an institution. In this article it appears as though the technology is weighted toward the institution and not the individual.
A group scientist and insurance execs want to install a black box in every car, so they can judge against individuals in accidents. This is like the ultimate in scientific arrogance.
Better monitoring technology is not bad. Why not design a car monitor so it provides good information to the driver. A monitor could give inidividuals information their driving patterns with clues on how to make the car last longer and improve gas mileage. A well design monitoring program could help people save money.
If the defined users of the technology are insurance executives, crash investigators, or other state agencies, then I don't want one of those things in my car. If it is designed to provide benefits to me, then I will sign up. (Please don't just repond back by saying that if scientists have more power then we are benefit from their inherent goodness.)
Of course, anyone who doesn't want a monitoring device is probably a criminal with something to hide.
I would take the advice, but my old Schwinn Varsity had the seat and both wheels stolen.
Bandwidth is just a matter of migrating bottle necks. As local access continues to build, the places that excess capacity today will be the bottle necks to tomorrow.
If a company digs a big expensive hole for fiber, they better be smart enough to be planting more than current capacity demands. It will be expensive to dig the hole again. When that hole becomes a bottleneck it will be extremely expensive to upgrade.
BTW, the fact that companies digging expensive holes for fiber planted more than current needs that maybe there might be a little bit of hope for American companies after all. We will find in a few years years their foresight was probably not enought.
protophoto
Most interstate truckers these days have satellite tracking devices. The primary use of the satellites is mondane stuff like tracking shipments, filling out driving laws, routing and the like.
One of the first four trucks my company installed the system on was stolen. After stealing the truck, they drove it to several warehouses; so one GPS/Satellite unit took down both the thief, but several chop shops and stolen goods warehouses.
Having even a small percentage of cars with tracking devices will take a big bite out of car theft. It would be cool if someday we did the same thing with bikes; Then I could ride my bike to University without having it or its parts stolen.
This blurb from Microsoft is absurd, but in many cases the software on the machine is worth more than the hardware. Both the donor and the charity should be attentive to the value of the software. I assume you would get an extra tax break if you donate your unused software licenses with the computer. BTW: It is also good to take all of the pictures of nekkid ladies off the computer as well. You don't want your donation to be too educational.
Wouldn't it be ironic if the 10,000 dead were killed by a plague and the virus had survived this long, only to wreak havok on the world?
The article mentioned that the mummies were about 500 years old (2002-500 = 1502). This puts them in the ground just about the time Columbus was in the area. If there was a plague is likely something they caught from Europeans. So it's something we already had.
It is not surprising to see MS specifically trying to put viral wording into their contracts to counterstrike the viral nature of the GPL contract.
MS probably sees themselves as the antedote to a the evil GPL virus.
That's what "freedom" is all about
Both the MS and GPL are trying to control the behavior of others.
I think most of the kid site designers are people trying their hardest to live second childhoods. They really, really want to make flashy graphics whirlygigs and the like, then claim it is a kids site after the fact for self-justification.
Eventually, Amazon and Half.com are going to really hurt the publishing industry too.
The appearance of Half.com and Amazon.com used book sales pulled millions of used books off shelves and threw them back in the market. This happened right at the beginning of a recession. As a result, the programs have magnified the hurt of the recession. Who knows, there may even be publishers that go under because of the double witching.
In the long run, however, cleaning off all the bookshelves, and putting a little more money in the book buying public will probably not be that big of a hurt. I face book buying with a totally different attitude now that I know I can unload the books I don't want to keep.
Printing and distribution technologies are changing quite rapidly. So it will be impossible to say what caused publisher a to go under while publisher b survived.
the Constitution is illegal to distribute!
The constitution, the idea of rule by law, christianity, buddhism, open source... are all viruses of the mind. The US founding fathers distributed the Declaration of Indepence around with the express malicious intent of throwing the Brits out on the arses.
Come to think of i1t, the anti virus law itself is a piece of logic a lawyer designed and executed in the court system with the intent of getting back at the people who made their computer crash.
A virus is a piece of software that distributes itself.
Making "virus distribution" illegal would pose a an interesting logical debate. It is the computer code that distributes itself, so it is the computer code that is breaking the law.
I am sure that the article was referring to the people who executed the program that distributes the virus, but you can get into a lot of hairy technicalities about what action caused the distribution. Is leaving an unmarked disket with a boot sector virus on it in a public place a distribution?
Is knowingly not deleting a virus an act of distribution?
This project is dedicated to my cat, Precious, who passed away January 8, 2002, the same day construction was completed.
Wow, so its not just a lego church, it is a haunted lego church...now that's cool.
The Internet prides itself, or, the users of the Internet, on anonymity.
We may pride ourselves on anonymity, but the rampant fraud has created a very big economic incentive to rid the web of this precious anonymity. When you create an extraordinary economic incentive to perform an specific act, please, don't be surprised if the act occurs.
Fortunately, I learned to never purchase through online auctions on a $10 purchase.
They own Lotus!
I recall that IBM was hoping, at the time, that Lotus Notes would become the defacto directory server and groupware program, and Domino would become the defacto web server.
The article should have thrown the $3B Lotus purchase into the swings IBM took at trying to regain the dominant position in the personal computer market.
Of course, an IBM/Sun Merger would put Lotus 123 into an office package with WordStar...which could give us all flash backs to the early 80s when WS and 123 were the coolest things on the PC.
This will help encourage people to install adsubtract and other bandwidth savers.
Of course, increased adsubtract usage will decrease ad revenue at commercial web sites.
First off, I should not have used the words "Great Deal." According to my logs, Google reads a little under 100MB from my sites each month. That's like a dollar each month.
I am not unhappy with Google. I am just pointing out a contradiction. My argument is that in some cases Google will incur a bandwidth cost on a site, and have the affect of taking traffic from the site.
In the Google paradigm there are two types of sites. There are expert and content sites. An expert site is a site with a bunch of links. Content sites have articles.
Google is the ultimate expert site. It aggregates other expert sites. As a result, people use Google rather than the independent expert site.
Remember an expert site is a link site. The goal of the expert site to direct traffic...not to deliver content. Google hits the expert site with a bandwidth charge. They use the information from the expert site to take traffic from the expert site.
BTW, this is precisely the reason that Google prohibits you from indexing the Google Site. They do not want you to use the information they gathered to take traffic from Google.
I am not saying this is bad, just pointing out contradictions...It's a Google eat goto world out there.
protophoto
If they kill us three times over...Why, we will just kill them forty times over. That will show 'em.
protophoto
This is not a complaint. I just want to point out that the whole Google Concept is built on a subtle contradicitons or, dare I say, hypocracy. From the User Agreement:
The search results that appear from Google's indices are indexed by Google's automated machinery and computers
The User Agreement precludes you from automatically querying their site:
You may not send automated queries of any sort to Google's system without express permission in advance from Google.
The google agreement demands express permission to automatically scan its site, while Google assumes the permission to index all sites on the net.
Google also pretty much make the claim that if it is on the Internet they will index it. Their terms of service states that the only way not to have a site indexed is remove it from the net:
For each web site reflected in Google's indices, if either (i) a site owner restricts access to his or her web site or (ii) a site is taken down from the web, then, upon receipt of a request by the site owner or a third party in the second instance, Google would consider on a case-by-case basis requests to remove the link to that site from its indices.
I think Google is providing a great service, but I hope you can see the subtle contradictions in their product. They basically are saying that anything on the web is fair game for Google. Yet, Google is on the web, it is not fair game for other organizations. This is a very blatant double standard.
Google is a derivative work. The product model of Google is to determine expert sites by aggregating the link lists on other expert sites. In other words, they are taking other people's work, aggregating it and providing the results. Google's aggregation program is a derivative work. Not only that, they fail to give any compensation to the expert sites.
As for the issue of intergallactic karma, they actually expect the expert site to pay for the bandwidth needed by Google to aggregate the site. They then use this information to draw human traffic from the expert site.
Again, to the Google worshippers, I am not complaining or flaming Google, but simply pointing out a logical contradiction. Jack's Expert Site is harmed by Google in two ways: The googlebots take up a great deal of bandwidth that Jack pays for. Google then uses this information to draw actual human traffic from Jack's Expert Site. From this vantage Google is a big guy stomping on the small guy. When Microsoft does this type of stuff, we call it evil.
If Google charges for the service, then the people who use the API will have to find some way to make money to pay the charge. The other alternative is for Google to compromise the integrity of content and deliver page links with ads. Of course, if Google doesn't charge then they go under. Anyone foolish enough to have written code around the API will now have broken, defunct pages.
Down with the capitalist pigs. Up with living in dank caves.
I hope he has supernatural powers. In his last episode, didn't he turn into supernatural god type thing that not only mastered Linux, but could navigate through the stars with his mind.
Most people would consider it an individual liberty to be able to use what they paid for in any way the choose
Excuse me, but exactly what do you pay for when you buy a book, a CD or other copyrighted material?
The whole point of the copyright law is to determine what you paid for. To clarify what you are purchasing, the courts have separated the rights into two categories: There is the right to use something and the right to distribute it.
When you purchase a CD, you are purchasing the right to use that CD. You are not purchasing the right to distribute the music.
Your claim that people aren't getting what they paid for is totally bogus because you are getting exactly what they paid for. You purchased the rights to use the music. The courts have even extended that right, and consider your copying the music from your CD into your RIO player as simply transporting the music through space and time.