What is totally absurd is your suggestion that the "founding fathers" were pushing "Christian beliefs" or even had them...Ever hear of Jefferson, Franklin, or Adams (Samuel)? What do you think their attitude was towards religion?
The US of A was very clearly founded on a separation of Church and State, not institutionalizing brainwashing. We should be free to believe what we want to believe, and have the freedom of religion even if that means having none.
Or, perhaps, you're just busy setting up strawmen because you don't understand/agree with the USian point of view? Maybe?
Hmmm...Bryant wouldn't have been pleased
on
Greenbacks No More
·
· Score: 1
While I love your handle, I have to point out that this was not the way the gold & silver standards worked...The original poster is pointing out that you had a system where the value of the dollar was tied to a set amount of precious metal (i.e.: ten dollars, for example, would always be worth an ounce of silver). When the gold and silver standards were abolished, then the dollar was no longer tied to any particular value in the material world, and precious metals became merely another commodity.
What is a "bizarre notion" is that some people find it difficult to look at a simple number (from a nearly-universal numbering system, I might add) and make the intuitive leap to equating that to monetary denomination.
If you can't figure out what a number means on a dollar bill, and rapidly interpret that number as equalling the value of the note, you probably shouldn't be in charge of your own money anyway.
CNN represents the conservative american viewpoint...ha! thats a laugh
Sorry to say, but they do -- ask any friends or family abroad how CNN is viewed overseas. I'd guess in most of the world they're seen on par with Al-Jazeera...and much of the world sees them as more biased. Even that supposed bastion of the Left, the New York Times, is very reluctant to criticize either Bush.
If you don't think the USian has their biases, you've got your head in the sand.
Have you uploaded this week's service update (10.1) for Office v.X? From what I've heard, this takes care of most anti-aliasing problems with Quartz & Office.
Re:The next thing you know...
on
PDAs For Kids
·
· Score: 1
Amd, ironically, you're referring to a German automobile, and British web site.
Now, while I love my Handspring and think its both a great tool and a great time-waster, I have never found arcade style games on such a minute screen to be particularly compelling.
Honestly, even the best efforts in that genre -- and even with the new color, back-lit screens -- are just damn uncomfortable to try and see. After a long gaming session, I'd expect one's eyes to bleed.
There are exceptions, but there's always going to be the limitations of the straining human eye to overcome, and I don't think even Sega can do that with the restrictions that the current PDA architecture imposes.
Ben Barber was a professor of mine at Rutgers, and I found his theories as expounded in both his lectures and writings to be over-simplified and wrongheaded. Additionally, the man is a putz.
Re:Being anti-Republican doesn't make it false...
on
Why ADCo?
·
· Score: 1
You're right -- the author was, I suppose, pointing out how something like this new form of service provider (in a general sense of the term) could do more to stimulate the (local, Sili-Valley) economy than a poorly-thought-out corporate rebate.
My bad for writing faster than I was thinking.
Re:Being anti-Republican doesn't make it false...
on
Why ADCo?
·
· Score: 1
The rich don't sign my paycheck -- I actually charge them for services. As for your other comments, I'm a doctor (almost), so I'm hardly a "nerd" who's interested in "investment" from the feudal-lord-gazillionaries that the USian government seems hell-bent on creating and supporting. And, personally, I don't see how your stawman about me "hating the rich" is accurate or relevant, since I'd gladly be rich myself.
Wealth isn't evil, but it doesn't take a genius to know that to help the greatest number of people you shouldn't be giving huge sums to a very small number of people who don't need it, don't deserve it, and certainly won't be pumping it back into the economy -- "trickle-down" bullshit be damned.
Being anti-Republican doesn't make it false...
on
Why ADCo?
·
· Score: 1
...nor strictly irrelevant. In fact, it think it was quite apropos -- the author was pointing out that, if stupid and expensive laws that benefit a few rich people can get passed in the name of "economic stimulus", a less-expensive and more egalitarian and more effective law should be able to be passed for the same reason.
It is another attempt to impose power structures from the "real world" onto the net... This is an attempt to draw a line in the sand between the 'respectable' who deserve the title of museum (the narrow closed circuit of fundraising dinners and inherited wealth) and the unwashed masses who might try to extend the idea of museum to something internet-centric.
In a sense, you've summed up both the great strength and weakness of this naming convention in a nutshell. When I first saw this announcement, like many other non-technical "end-users", I thought it was great. It seemed an easy, logical method of finding another category of something I could be interested in -- I particularly liked the "second-level" convention with subdivisions of museum types (e.g.: "art", "science", etc.).
But, then I started thinking about the odd and unusual -- such as the LED museum, or the (now-defunct) MIT hack museum, which don't have the common-culture credibility or an easy-to-pigeonhole classification -- and realized that this method would also leave many institutions out in the cold.
A trade-off, certainly, since your average-Joe user won't be thinking about LEDs or MIT pranks when s/he thinks of "Museum" with a capital "M", but a bittersweet one, nonetheless. This will certainly decrease the level of frustration for your average user looking for the typical establishment museums...and, really, that's a large part of what drives the 'net these days. But I can't help but wondering -- was there a better naming convention that would have been logical and easy to use, but more inclusive?
Perhaps adding a few more second-level domains like "xxxx.odd.museum" and "xxxx.misc.museum" and "xxxx.planetarium.museum"("xxxx.astro.museum")?
Sorta seems like the ".edu" debate -- sure, its easy to say "assign them to institutions of 'higher learning'" off the top of your head, but...who draws the line on what is and is not qualified?
My point would be that we should respect what the author of a piece of music wants. If the author says they do not want people copying his music, they should respect that. If another author or musician says that people can freely copy their work, let people do so. In the end, I see it as a matter of morality (if that exists anymore...).
"Morality"? You have got to be kidding me. How is it somehow "moral" to say that the creator/discoverer of something is entitled to dictate its use? What about the morality of societally-determined "fair-use"? Doesn't that supercede the wishes of an individual?
You say "that we should respect what the author of a piece of music wants" -- well, what if s/he only wants members of a certain race/religion/gender/ethnicity to be allowed to listen to it? What if s/he thinks that only certain groups should be allowed to make archival copies, and others are SOL? What if s/he thinks you should pay them $1,000,000 every time you happen to hear a song they wrote, even if you just were flipping radio channels or walking down the street?
Do you really mean that the artists get to dictate ALL the terms of a work's use, no matter how restrictive and irrational???
Fact is, no matter how much the producers of a product want to control use, they don't hold all the aces (and they shouldn't, either).
Not when they send the signal down the line encrypted. The speaker has an onboard processor that decrypts the stream.
At which point, we arrange to interrupt the signal further down the line, after the decode. Seriously, unless the system somehow convinces the speaker hardware itself to do the decoding, or we get used to listening to raw encrypted sound, there'll always be SOME point down the line that the unencrypted signal can be retrieved before it hits the speakers themselves...
Perhaps the RIAA is looking to come up with watermarking magnets?
That's a load of crap -- just because they are the seller does not allow them to set the rules. Just because they produced something does not let them set how we can or can't use the product (DMCA be damned -- that's an illegal law that needs to be overturned on constitutional grounds ASAP).
Fair use is being stepped on left and right, and if the large media companies continue to sell crippled products, its up to us to protest this illegitimate end-run around consumers' rights.
Furthermore, this is an excellent example of how consumers can "vote with their dollars" -- by making pointed complaints and showing the whole distribution network will lose money, we can possibly reign in this kind of abuse.
I got my copy from an Apple retail store (Boston, MA area) where the staff was practically tossing them out to the crowds. My girlfriend and I both got a copy without showing any proof of purchase of any kind; anyone who expressed interest in the upgrade got a package.
They say its not there to look at your girlfriend, and intially it might even be there to "find filth"...but who's to say that -- without oversight -- it will stay that way? And, who's to say that what's OK today won't be considered "filth" by some reactionary in power tomorrow?
Just because you feel OK with how freedoms are being ignored today doesn't mean that the abuses won't get more malevolent, and (unfortunately) putting these things in is easier than keeping track of them and convincing the groups and agencies that installed them to remove them.
With the way the USian government and society is going lately, I'd be careful about just "going along with things" when it comes to surveillence.
I think your examples may not be applicable to this ruling, simply because you were making statements that were to be represented as fact, not opinion. In your first example, it appears that you were OK until you made the statement of what the group did with the money. Your second example does not look like opinion at all nor rumor, but out-and-out accusation (well, except for the "like kiddy p0rn [sic]" part).
Sure, you have to take into account the forum, and that is part of the ruling as well. For example, you couldn't compare something overheard at a bar in a drunk discussion between malcontented employees to an advertisement/article in a national newspaper. I think the ruling just places chatrooms and message boards more into the first category than the second.
Anyway, your second example seems far more a "statement of fact" than your first example. Admittedly, the line can be very fine, but the addition of "I feel that..." and "I think..." or "I believe..." go a long way to changing the representation of statements, and would also have tempered the tone of your hypothetical examples.
A thought keeps occurring to me whenever I see anything about FreeCiv -- why on EARTH hasn't someone set it up for Mac OS X installation?
Admittedly, I'm a medical-geek, and my hobby/interests lie in history and not coding, so I could very easily be overlooking something that most/.'ers would see as an obvious impediment...
...but still -- I was under the distinct impression that OS X/Darwin was very BSD-ish, and that a package allowing easy Mac installation should be easy...Not trivial, but certainly more do-able than the Windows port.
So, I ask again, is there a good reason why I can't install this on my OS X machine?
I know you prefaced this comment with "As far as I'm concerned", but you then proceeded to add the contradictory:
...no one can argue with the fact that, at the very least, Enterprise is well-acted.
and, well, I'd argue that point, quite emphatically.
While the plotlines are pretty awful, and the sets/special effects are third-rate, the true horribleness of "Enterprise" can't be pinned strictly on these areas alone. The acting from the "support" cast has been pretty wooden and one dimensional (which, I admit, is hard to disentangle from bad writing), but Bakula is really at his worst -- he completely fails to emote, and even his expression never changes. And I won't even bring up how "Vulcan-babe" tries to use the "cold and logical" facade to cover up her inability to act (I didn't know that "testy, snide and laconic" were traits of the inhabitants of Vulcan).
I'm admittedly not a big Trek fan, but I thought I'd tune in to see what all the hype was about...I should have realized from the opening song that this was a big mistake, but I gave it a chance (or three).
Perhaps they can turn it around over the next couple of seasons, but, the point is, I'd argue that the acting IS a weak spot that they have to work on.
NHL 2K2 will be released very soon. Although it'll be in the last batch of games for the DC, this plus the low cost of the consoles make it worth having around for a couple of years of fun.
Is it OK with you if my family and I carve flesh from your carcase and live off that for a while? Because that would help us to survive, since only those who are still alive need to do that, and you wouldn't be using your earthly body anymore.
Uhhh -- sure, go right ahead. I'd think that, if it was truly a matter of survival, you should (Donner party, anyone?). Honestly, I don't really care what happens to my body after I'm dead (unless there's a reasonable chance for reanimation, in which case, I'd prefer you wait a bit).
If you're into cannibalism (which, I'd advise against on the basis of medical grounds), you're welcome to your meal.
People with fewer illogical qualms often donate their bodies to science, which -- IMO -- is equally practical and thoughtful as providing food to the hungry.
Slashdot Mirror
What is totally absurd is your suggestion that the "founding fathers" were pushing "Christian beliefs" or even had them...Ever hear of Jefferson, Franklin, or Adams (Samuel)? What do you think their attitude was towards religion?
The US of A was very clearly founded on a separation of Church and State, not institutionalizing brainwashing. We should be free to believe what we want to believe, and have the freedom of religion even if that means having none.
Or, perhaps, you're just busy setting up strawmen because you don't understand/agree with the USian point of view? Maybe?
While I love your handle, I have to point out that this was not the way the gold & silver standards worked...The original poster is pointing out that you had a system where the value of the dollar was tied to a set amount of precious metal (i.e.: ten dollars, for example, would always be worth an ounce of silver). When the gold and silver standards were abolished, then the dollar was no longer tied to any particular value in the material world, and precious metals became merely another commodity.
What is a "bizarre notion" is that some people find it difficult to look at a simple number (from a nearly-universal numbering system, I might add) and make the intuitive leap to equating that to monetary denomination.
If you can't figure out what a number means on a dollar bill, and rapidly interpret that number as equalling the value of the note, you probably shouldn't be in charge of your own money anyway.
CNN represents the conservative american viewpoint...ha! thats a laugh
Sorry to say, but they do -- ask any friends or family abroad how CNN is viewed overseas. I'd guess in most of the world they're seen on par with Al-Jazeera...and much of the world sees them as more biased. Even that supposed bastion of the Left, the New York Times, is very reluctant to criticize either Bush.
If you don't think the USian has their biases, you've got your head in the sand.
Sounds like this guy's seen "Enemy of the State" one too many times...
Have you uploaded this week's service update (10.1) for Office v.X? From what I've heard, this takes care of most anti-aliasing problems with Quartz & Office.
Amd, ironically, you're referring to a German automobile, and British web site.
Sorta like hiding manure inside a bouquet of flowers -- what a great evil trick to pull on someone!
Another way to go blind!
Now, while I love my Handspring and think its both a great tool and a great time-waster, I have never found arcade style games on such a minute screen to be particularly compelling.
Honestly, even the best efforts in that genre -- and even with the new color, back-lit screens -- are just damn uncomfortable to try and see. After a long gaming session, I'd expect one's eyes to bleed.
There are exceptions, but there's always going to be the limitations of the straining human eye to overcome, and I don't think even Sega can do that with the restrictions that the current PDA architecture imposes.
Ben Barber was a professor of mine at Rutgers, and I found his theories as expounded in both his lectures and writings to be over-simplified and wrongheaded. Additionally, the man is a putz.
You're right -- the author was, I suppose, pointing out how something like this new form of service provider (in a general sense of the term) could do more to stimulate the (local, Sili-Valley) economy than a poorly-thought-out corporate rebate.
My bad for writing faster than I was thinking.
The rich don't sign my paycheck -- I actually charge them for services. As for your other comments, I'm a doctor (almost), so I'm hardly a "nerd" who's interested in "investment" from the feudal-lord-gazillionaries that the USian government seems hell-bent on creating and supporting. And, personally, I don't see how your stawman about me "hating the rich" is accurate or relevant, since I'd gladly be rich myself.
Wealth isn't evil, but it doesn't take a genius to know that to help the greatest number of people you shouldn't be giving huge sums to a very small number of people who don't need it, don't deserve it, and certainly won't be pumping it back into the economy -- "trickle-down" bullshit be damned.
...nor strictly irrelevant. In fact, it think it was quite apropos -- the author was pointing out that, if stupid and expensive laws that benefit a few rich people can get passed in the name of "economic stimulus", a less-expensive and more egalitarian and more effective law should be able to be passed for the same reason.
Nothing wrong with that.
It is another attempt to impose power structures from the "real world" onto the net... This is an attempt to draw a line in the sand between the 'respectable' who deserve the title of museum (the narrow closed circuit of fundraising dinners and inherited wealth) and the unwashed masses who might try to extend the idea of museum to something internet-centric.
In a sense, you've summed up both the great strength and weakness of this naming convention in a nutshell. When I first saw this announcement, like many other non-technical "end-users", I thought it was great. It seemed an easy, logical method of finding another category of something I could be interested in -- I particularly liked the "second-level" convention with subdivisions of museum types (e.g.: "art", "science", etc.).
But, then I started thinking about the odd and unusual -- such as the LED museum, or the (now-defunct) MIT hack museum, which don't have the common-culture credibility or an easy-to-pigeonhole classification -- and realized that this method would also leave many institutions out in the cold.
A trade-off, certainly, since your average-Joe user won't be thinking about LEDs or MIT pranks when s/he thinks of "Museum" with a capital "M", but a bittersweet one, nonetheless. This will certainly decrease the level of frustration for your average user looking for the typical establishment museums...and, really, that's a large part of what drives the 'net these days. But I can't help but wondering -- was there a better naming convention that would have been logical and easy to use, but more inclusive?
Perhaps adding a few more second-level domains like "xxxx.odd.museum" and "xxxx.misc.museum" and "xxxx.planetarium.museum"("xxxx.astro.museum")?
Sorta seems like the ".edu" debate -- sure, its easy to say "assign them to institutions of 'higher learning'" off the top of your head, but...who draws the line on what is and is not qualified?
My point would be that we should respect what the author of a piece of music wants. If the author says they do not want people copying his music, they should respect that. If another author or musician says that people can freely copy their work, let people do so. In the end, I see it as a matter of morality (if that exists anymore...).
"Morality"? You have got to be kidding me. How is it somehow "moral" to say that the creator/discoverer of something is entitled to dictate its use? What about the morality of societally-determined "fair-use"? Doesn't that supercede the wishes of an individual?
You say "that we should respect what the author of a piece of music wants" -- well, what if s/he only wants members of a certain race/religion/gender/ethnicity to be allowed to listen to it?
What if s/he thinks that only certain groups should be allowed to make archival copies, and others are SOL?
What if s/he thinks you should pay them $1,000,000 every time you happen to hear a song they wrote, even if you just were flipping radio channels or walking down the street?
Do you really mean that the artists get to dictate ALL the terms of a work's use, no matter how restrictive and irrational???
Fact is, no matter how much the producers of a product want to control use, they don't hold all the aces (and they shouldn't, either).
Not when they send the signal down the line encrypted. The speaker has an onboard processor that decrypts the stream.
At which point, we arrange to interrupt the signal further down the line, after the decode. Seriously, unless the system somehow convinces the speaker hardware itself to do the decoding, or we get used to listening to raw encrypted sound, there'll always be SOME point down the line that the unencrypted signal can be retrieved before it hits the speakers themselves...
Perhaps the RIAA is looking to come up with watermarking magnets?
That's a load of crap -- just because they are the seller does not allow them to set the rules. Just because they produced something does not let them set how we can or can't use the product (DMCA be damned -- that's an illegal law that needs to be overturned on constitutional grounds ASAP).
Fair use is being stepped on left and right, and if the large media companies continue to sell crippled products, its up to us to protest this illegitimate end-run around consumers' rights.
Furthermore, this is an excellent example of how consumers can "vote with their dollars" -- by making pointed complaints and showing the whole distribution network will lose money, we can possibly reign in this kind of abuse.
Except the dealer you talked to was wrong.
I got my copy from an Apple retail store (Boston, MA area) where the staff was practically tossing them out to the crowds. My girlfriend and I both got a copy without showing any proof of purchase of any kind; anyone who expressed interest in the upgrade got a package.
They say its not there to look at your girlfriend, and intially it might even be there to "find filth"...but who's to say that -- without oversight -- it will stay that way? And, who's to say that what's OK today won't be considered "filth" by some reactionary in power tomorrow?
Just because you feel OK with how freedoms are being ignored today doesn't mean that the abuses won't get more malevolent, and (unfortunately) putting these things in is easier than keeping track of them and convincing the groups and agencies that installed them to remove them.
With the way the USian government and society is going lately, I'd be careful about just "going along with things" when it comes to surveillence.
I think your examples may not be applicable to this ruling, simply because you were making statements that were to be represented as fact, not opinion. In your first example, it appears that you were OK until you made the statement of what the group did with the money. Your second example does not look like opinion at all nor rumor, but out-and-out accusation (well, except for the "like kiddy p0rn [sic]" part).
Sure, you have to take into account the forum, and that is part of the ruling as well. For example, you couldn't compare something overheard at a bar in a drunk discussion between malcontented employees to an advertisement/article in a national newspaper. I think the ruling just places chatrooms and message boards more into the first category than the second.
Anyway, your second example seems far more a "statement of fact" than your first example. Admittedly, the line can be very fine, but the addition of "I feel that..." and "I think..." or "I believe..." go a long way to changing the representation of statements, and would also have tempered the tone of your hypothetical examples.
A thought keeps occurring to me whenever I see anything about FreeCiv -- why on EARTH hasn't someone set it up for Mac OS X installation?
/.'ers would see as an obvious impediment...
Admittedly, I'm a medical-geek, and my hobby/interests lie in history and not coding, so I could very easily be overlooking something that most
...but still -- I was under the distinct impression that OS X/Darwin was very BSD-ish, and that a package allowing easy Mac installation should be easy...Not trivial, but certainly more do-able than the Windows port.
So, I ask again, is there a good reason why I can't install this on my OS X machine?
I know you prefaced this comment with "As far as I'm concerned", but you then proceeded to add the contradictory:
...no one can argue with the fact that, at the very least, Enterprise is well-acted.
and, well, I'd argue that point, quite emphatically.
While the plotlines are pretty awful, and the sets/special effects are third-rate, the true horribleness of "Enterprise" can't be pinned strictly on these areas alone. The acting from the "support" cast has been pretty wooden and one dimensional (which, I admit, is hard to disentangle from bad writing), but Bakula is really at his worst -- he completely fails to emote, and even his expression never changes. And I won't even bring up how "Vulcan-babe" tries to use the "cold and logical" facade to cover up her inability to act (I didn't know that "testy, snide and laconic" were traits of the inhabitants of Vulcan).
I'm admittedly not a big Trek fan, but I thought I'd tune in to see what all the hype was about...I should have realized from the opening song that this was a big mistake, but I gave it a chance (or three).
Perhaps they can turn it around over the next couple of seasons, but, the point is, I'd argue that the acting IS a weak spot that they have to work on.
NHL 2K2 will be released very soon. Although it'll be in the last batch of games for the DC, this plus the low cost of the consoles make it worth having around for a couple of years of fun.
Is it OK with you if my family and I carve flesh from your carcase and live off that for a while? Because that would help us to survive, since only those who are still alive need to do that, and you wouldn't be using your earthly body anymore.
Uhhh -- sure, go right ahead. I'd think that, if it was truly a matter of survival, you should (Donner party, anyone?). Honestly, I don't really care what happens to my body after I'm dead (unless there's a reasonable chance for reanimation, in which case, I'd prefer you wait a bit).
If you're into cannibalism (which, I'd advise against on the basis of medical grounds), you're welcome to your meal.
People with fewer illogical qualms often donate their bodies to science, which -- IMO -- is equally practical and thoughtful as providing food to the hungry.