So they are invalid because it points out for all to see the huge whole in your argument? Besides, anyone who has been to Newzbin can clearly see that there is a huge bias towards indexing copyrighted material. Or do you actually have proof to the contrary?
There would only be a bias towards indexing copyrighted material if the ratio of [copyrighted indexed]/[copyrighted available on usenet] is greater than [non-copyrighted indexed]/[non-copyrighted available on usenet]. Otherwise they are just faithfully indexing what is there.
If they succeed in making this indexer "play ball", does this not set the precedence for all other indexers? I don't use Newzbin so this currently doesn't affect me but could it possibly down the line?
Thanks for the SSL recommendation BTW, I will check that today.
Newzbin is unique (as far as I know) in that it has people (editors) create the "reports" which indicate which files are what. Other services that exist don't use people and use an AI to try to determine what each file/post is. It appears it's Newzbin's help documentation for the editors that got them in trouble.
1) will they get a copy of users search history (complete with creditcard logs linking them to the account)? (and no, I've never been a member)
This was posted on Newzbin a while back:
Server logs and user activity
Some subscribers are a little concerned about privacy in the light of the current litigation so to put their minds at rest we thought we would explain what the privacy implications are of our logs.
We are currently keeping webserver logs for a period which is sufficient to allow us to defend ourselves against web attacks. However we cannot tell from our logs what NZBs you have downloaded. At all. If we can't do this then neither can any complainant with access to our logs. Furthermore we rotate old logs so that they are deleted.
No request has been made for our logs during the discovery phase of litigation and due to the nature of the legal process that request would have to have been made a long time ago: it wasn't. They cannot now, legally, have it; and moreover they dont actually seem that interested either. The fact is this: they are gunning for Newzbin not you.
Bottom line:
We cannot tell anyone what NZBs you have been using whether those are for Linux distros, porn or just embarrassing lawful material. Don't worry.
Because that way you can pay for other things people need, like roads, hospital, military protection, police, fire, etc. There honestly isn't really anything taxable other than income that can cover these things.
Either you're joking, or you have a serious lack of imagination. Hospitals, military protection, police, fire are all localized services and could easily be included in property tax (hence you live in an area with lots of hospitals or a higher need for said services then you pay more than if you live in podunk town with 1 fire engine and one police officer). Roads could easily be incorporated into your driver's license or license plate fee.
For text based websites there's instapaper.com - you use a bookmarklet on the website you want to send to the device (it's even easier than del.icio.us - it doesn't ask you any questions, it just does it).
More to the point, if the software that is supposed to analyze your typing patterns is on the server (and it would have to be, who would let somebody install this locally on their computer?) then they'd have to change the way their chat application works so that every keystroke is sent to the server instead of just sending the whole message when somebody hits "send". Can you say lag?
Or the java/flash applet that presents the client interface can send some extra data about speed and rhythm after you hit post....
The government should regulate anything that one person's actions directly affect another person's rights. ie. FDA makes sure some company doesn't sell you shitty drugs. however, health insurance doesn't affect me if you don't have it.
If you live in a bubble this is true; if you live in society, it's not. If enough people don't have insurance that enough people don't get vaccinated then it will affect you. You may say that doesn't matter because you have insurance so you'll have the vaccines. Do you have children (or will you)? You can't get the measles vaccine until you're one year old - what happens when your three month old comes into contact with someone who couldn't afford the measles vaccine? Even for other vaccines that there aren't an age requirement - if it's given enough human hosts it can mutate to the point that our vaccines aren't affective.
Its a no skill job. you sit, you drive, you talk. Hard to throw your weight around when we are one good innovation away from removing the need for a human to do it. Someday in the not too distant future we are going to wake up and hail a Johnny Cab, (Total Recall). Ive been thinking about this for a while, how far are we realistically away from driveless cars on (mostly)* unmodified roads? How hard is it to automate driving a car on a known circuit (city grid).
*Allowing for sensor installations and machine instruction signage, failsafes, etc.
Technologically? Not that far. Socially - very far. Think about it - thousands of people die in auto accidents each year and that's considered unfortunate, but "acceptable". With an automated car - if even ONE person died to a computer's mistake - that'd be unacceptable and the company that made the computer would be sued into oblivion. People will ignore that fact that it would in all likelihood save thousands upon thousands of lives because A COMPUTER KILLED A PERSON, OMG!
The link you gave is dead for me (500 unexpected error), so forgive me if this is answered there.
Is that per-patient that's on private insurance but could be on Medicare vs patient on Medicare or is it just random patient on private insurance vs Medicare patient? I'd imagine the average Medicare patient to require more medical treatment than the average person on private insurance due to the fact that the qualify for Medicare in the first place.
Studies have shown that cutting your calorie intake by 30% of the recommend intake will lengthen your life. How long until some idiot wants to make that a law "for the good of the people"?
Government health coverage would actually mandate just the opposite, if anything. Living longer = more health care costs (if it were reducing caloric intake made you healthier and get sick less often and less prone to expensive illnesses, then that's another story, but this is just about living longer but still dying).
Or a house that locks you out when the power fails? Or worse, one that "fails safe" and DOESN'T lock strangers out when the power fails?
If you have this be the lock on the door, then you deserve it. It's much more likely to be like the buzzer system to an apartment where it's part of the door frame. You can still use the key to unlock the door, but the buzzer/ikey portion makes it so the "locked" door opens when you pull on it.
Can't claim each others income together when applying for the mortage?
I was under the impression you could apply for a mortgage jointly, regardless of marital status. I base this solely on the fact that when I was applying for my mortgage, they knew of my girlfriend (and that we were not married) and asked if I was applying jointly or singly.
Whereas, the reasons I hear in opposition of same-sex marriage are simple: traditional marriage is intended to incentivize childbearing, which is how we perpetuate our species, a practice without which our society will inevitably terminate
If this is our intent, we could gather a lot of extra taxes from those people who are married but unable or unwilling to conceive. Why should they get the benefit when they have no intention or are unable to fulfill the requirements of the incentive?
They like teaching being a low status career, because it makes it easier for them to argue with teachers and blame them for their own and their children's failures.
Ironically if they had better teachers, they might not fail:P
Regarding libraries - I think there's actually a fairly simple solution (though the publishers may dislike it):
A library buys a digital copy of a book when someone requests it for the first time. They have a "check out" iPad application (and/or other application) that will log in a database that the book is checked out for 2 weeks, and not let that copy be checked out until that copy is either manually checked back in or it automatically expires after two weeks. When a book is attempted to be opened in the application it makes sure that the check out is still valid before allowing the book to be opened. If there is more than a 2 - 3 month wait for a book, another digital copy is purchased and added to the pool. This could easily be a national library as there are no physical copies to store (only servers storing the files) and no need to check things out in person. I would love this system and would probably use it even if it was not government funded and had a monthly fee. I'm aware of safari books online, but I'd like something with a broader appeal.
User complaints would force you to remove this pretty quickly, I'd think. Nice idea though.
If your program is crashing/erroring that frequently then you have bigger problems then employees not reading the errors. Assumming the errors are infrequent enough, I think requiring the user to call you on all errors would be a good idea for effectively getting the error messages and finding out exactly what the user was doing.
Just put a timer on the buttons that won't let them click it for 10 seconds... but ultimately you can't fix stupid.
And employees will love you because now they have mandatory coffee break. Seriously, they won't read it, they'll do something else until they can just click the button.
I put a disc in or download a game and there's nothing I need to worry about - no installation, no activation, no online only presence.
And no selection of innovative games from independent developers. Companies like Nintendo and Sony have a blanket policy of "your company must be this tall to develop for our platform." For which platform should a startup game developer release its first title?
iPhone/iPod/iPad? $100 to get started (if you already have a Mac), and I'd imagine you'd get a much larger cut of the profits than any start-up would on a console game, anyway. Granted that's hinging on the fact you said platform instead of "console".
It is quite a lot more than KDE, Gnome, Linux, OpenOffice, a couple of SQLs, GNU utilities and compiler collection put together.
BTW, I did not even bother to check how many lines of code those have (in the ballbark "few millions", take or leave one order of magnitude).
From your example there would need to be about 2 million PID controllers... which is a tad big figure.
My guess would be when they say 100 million they mean 100 million assembler instructions. I could easily see the high level code of one of those projects taking that many assembler instructions (don't forget to add in the standard libraries which would create instructions).
Disclaimer: I've done zero verification of this, nor have I even looked at the code base of any of those projects.
"I think therefore I am" sounds a bit bold an affirmation.
It's more like "I think I think, therefore I think I think I think" IMHO.
It's not really all that bold. According to my philosophy professors (I was a philosophy major), the statement Descartes made actually translates a bit better to "I think, I am". When taken in context (attempting to doubt every possible thing), this statement means that I can be certain that I am thinking (whatever that may mean, it may mean I am creating the sounds that I hear in my head or it may mean that those sounds are being put into me). If I am thinking, then there is something that definitely exists (otherwise there would be no one to have thought) - and further more that something is me. Everything else in the world may be a lie or deception, but with certainty: I exist by the virtue of having thought (though I may not be what I think I am and the world may not be what I think it is).
Slashdot Mirror
So they are invalid because it points out for all to see the huge whole in your argument? Besides, anyone who has been to Newzbin can clearly see that there is a huge bias towards indexing copyrighted material. Or do you actually have proof to the contrary?
There would only be a bias towards indexing copyrighted material if the ratio of [copyrighted indexed]/[copyrighted available on usenet] is greater than [non-copyrighted indexed]/[non-copyrighted available on usenet]. Otherwise they are just faithfully indexing what is there.
If they succeed in making this indexer "play ball", does this not set the precedence for all other indexers? I don't use Newzbin so this currently doesn't affect me but could it possibly down the line?
Thanks for the SSL recommendation BTW, I will check that today.
Newzbin is unique (as far as I know) in that it has people (editors) create the "reports" which indicate which files are what. Other services that exist don't use people and use an AI to try to determine what each file/post is. It appears it's Newzbin's help documentation for the editors that got them in trouble.
1) will they get a copy of users search history (complete with creditcard logs linking them to the account)? (and no, I've never been a member)
This was posted on Newzbin a while back:
Server logs and user activity Some subscribers are a little concerned about privacy in the light of the current litigation so to put their minds at rest we thought we would explain what the privacy implications are of our logs. We are currently keeping webserver logs for a period which is sufficient to allow us to defend ourselves against web attacks. However we cannot tell from our logs what NZBs you have downloaded. At all. If we can't do this then neither can any complainant with access to our logs. Furthermore we rotate old logs so that they are deleted. No request has been made for our logs during the discovery phase of litigation and due to the nature of the legal process that request would have to have been made a long time ago: it wasn't. They cannot now, legally, have it; and moreover they dont actually seem that interested either. The fact is this: they are gunning for Newzbin not you. Bottom line: We cannot tell anyone what NZBs you have been using whether those are for Linux distros, porn or just embarrassing lawful material. Don't worry.
Because that way you can pay for other things people need, like roads, hospital, military protection, police, fire, etc. There honestly isn't really anything taxable other than income that can cover these things.
Either you're joking, or you have a serious lack of imagination. Hospitals, military protection, police, fire are all localized services and could easily be included in property tax (hence you live in an area with lots of hospitals or a higher need for said services then you pay more than if you live in podunk town with 1 fire engine and one police officer). Roads could easily be incorporated into your driver's license or license plate fee.
For text based websites there's instapaper.com - you use a bookmarklet on the website you want to send to the device (it's even easier than del.icio.us - it doesn't ask you any questions, it just does it).
um, there is a continent populated entirely by children?
Clearly you've never heard of Neverland. Pirates don't count, they belong to no nation :P
More to the point, if the software that is supposed to analyze your typing patterns is on the server (and it would have to be, who would let somebody install this locally on their computer?) then they'd have to change the way their chat application works so that every keystroke is sent to the server instead of just sending the whole message when somebody hits "send". Can you say lag?
Or the java/flash applet that presents the client interface can send some extra data about speed and rhythm after you hit post....
The government should regulate anything that one person's actions directly affect another person's rights. ie. FDA makes sure some company doesn't sell you shitty drugs. however, health insurance doesn't affect me if you don't have it.
If you live in a bubble this is true; if you live in society, it's not. If enough people don't have insurance that enough people don't get vaccinated then it will affect you. You may say that doesn't matter because you have insurance so you'll have the vaccines. Do you have children (or will you)? You can't get the measles vaccine until you're one year old - what happens when your three month old comes into contact with someone who couldn't afford the measles vaccine? Even for other vaccines that there aren't an age requirement - if it's given enough human hosts it can mutate to the point that our vaccines aren't affective.
here you go. you made me curious. http://www.filibustercartoons.com/allcountries.htm
That list has 239 countries total. I have to wonder which 9 aren't infected...
Its a no skill job. you sit, you drive, you talk. Hard to throw your weight around when we are one good innovation away from removing the need for a human to do it. Someday in the not too distant future we are going to wake up and hail a Johnny Cab, (Total Recall). Ive been thinking about this for a while, how far are we realistically away from driveless cars on (mostly)* unmodified roads? How hard is it to automate driving a car on a known circuit (city grid). *Allowing for sensor installations and machine instruction signage, failsafes, etc.
Technologically? Not that far. Socially - very far. Think about it - thousands of people die in auto accidents each year and that's considered unfortunate, but "acceptable". With an automated car - if even ONE person died to a computer's mistake - that'd be unacceptable and the company that made the computer would be sued into oblivion. People will ignore that fact that it would in all likelihood save thousands upon thousands of lives because A COMPUTER KILLED A PERSON, OMG!
On a per-patient basis, not a per-dollar basis, Medicare's administrative costs are higher than private insurance.
The link you gave is dead for me (500 unexpected error), so forgive me if this is answered there.
Is that per-patient that's on private insurance but could be on Medicare vs patient on Medicare or is it just random patient on private insurance vs Medicare patient? I'd imagine the average Medicare patient to require more medical treatment than the average person on private insurance due to the fact that the qualify for Medicare in the first place.
Studies have shown that cutting your calorie intake by 30% of the recommend intake will lengthen your life. How long until some idiot wants to make that a law "for the good of the people"?
Government health coverage would actually mandate just the opposite, if anything. Living longer = more health care costs (if it were reducing caloric intake made you healthier and get sick less often and less prone to expensive illnesses, then that's another story, but this is just about living longer but still dying).
For the record, I'm pro-choice. About everything. If you want to get an abortion or use heroin, that's your business.
So I have to choose between my abortion and my heroin? :(
I may lose my card at some point. Can I opt to have the chip put directly into my body?
Sure can! It comes in this neat little configuration that looks like three lowercase g's. Wait, I'm looking at it upside down.
Or a house that locks you out when the power fails? Or worse, one that "fails safe" and DOESN'T lock strangers out when the power fails?
If you have this be the lock on the door, then you deserve it. It's much more likely to be like the buzzer system to an apartment where it's part of the door frame. You can still use the key to unlock the door, but the buzzer/ikey portion makes it so the "locked" door opens when you pull on it.
Can't claim each others income together when applying for the mortage?
I was under the impression you could apply for a mortgage jointly, regardless of marital status. I base this solely on the fact that when I was applying for my mortgage, they knew of my girlfriend (and that we were not married) and asked if I was applying jointly or singly.
Whereas, the reasons I hear in opposition of same-sex marriage are simple: traditional marriage is intended to incentivize childbearing, which is how we perpetuate our species, a practice without which our society will inevitably terminate
If this is our intent, we could gather a lot of extra taxes from those people who are married but unable or unwilling to conceive. Why should they get the benefit when they have no intention or are unable to fulfill the requirements of the incentive?
They like teaching being a low status career, because it makes it easier for them to argue with teachers and blame them for their own and their children's failures.
Ironically if they had better teachers, they might not fail :P
Regarding libraries - I think there's actually a fairly simple solution (though the publishers may dislike it):
A library buys a digital copy of a book when someone requests it for the first time. They have a "check out" iPad application (and/or other application) that will log in a database that the book is checked out for 2 weeks, and not let that copy be checked out until that copy is either manually checked back in or it automatically expires after two weeks. When a book is attempted to be opened in the application it makes sure that the check out is still valid before allowing the book to be opened. If there is more than a 2 - 3 month wait for a book, another digital copy is purchased and added to the pool. This could easily be a national library as there are no physical copies to store (only servers storing the files) and no need to check things out in person. I would love this system and would probably use it even if it was not government funded and had a monthly fee. I'm aware of safari books online, but I'd like something with a broader appeal.
User complaints would force you to remove this pretty quickly, I'd think. Nice idea though.
If your program is crashing/erroring that frequently then you have bigger problems then employees not reading the errors. Assumming the errors are infrequent enough, I think requiring the user to call you on all errors would be a good idea for effectively getting the error messages and finding out exactly what the user was doing.
Just put a timer on the buttons that won't let them click it for 10 seconds... but ultimately you can't fix stupid.
And employees will love you because now they have mandatory coffee break. Seriously, they won't read it, they'll do something else until they can just click the button.
I put a disc in or download a game and there's nothing I need to worry about - no installation, no activation, no online only presence.
And no selection of innovative games from independent developers. Companies like Nintendo and Sony have a blanket policy of "your company must be this tall to develop for our platform." For which platform should a startup game developer release its first title?
iPhone/iPod/iPad? $100 to get started (if you already have a Mac), and I'd imagine you'd get a much larger cut of the profits than any start-up would on a console game, anyway. Granted that's hinging on the fact you said platform instead of "console".
I still do not believe the 100 million figure.
It is quite a lot more than KDE, Gnome, Linux, OpenOffice, a couple of SQLs, GNU utilities and compiler collection put together.
BTW, I did not even bother to check how many lines of code those have (in the ballbark "few millions", take or leave one order of magnitude).
From your example there would need to be about 2 million PID controllers ... which is a tad big figure.
My guess would be when they say 100 million they mean 100 million assembler instructions. I could easily see the high level code of one of those projects taking that many assembler instructions (don't forget to add in the standard libraries which would create instructions).
Disclaimer: I've done zero verification of this, nor have I even looked at the code base of any of those projects.
"I think therefore I am" sounds a bit bold an affirmation. It's more like "I think I think, therefore I think I think I think" IMHO.
It's not really all that bold. According to my philosophy professors (I was a philosophy major), the statement Descartes made actually translates a bit better to "I think, I am". When taken in context (attempting to doubt every possible thing), this statement means that I can be certain that I am thinking (whatever that may mean, it may mean I am creating the sounds that I hear in my head or it may mean that those sounds are being put into me). If I am thinking, then there is something that definitely exists (otherwise there would be no one to have thought) - and further more that something is me. Everything else in the world may be a lie or deception, but with certainty: I exist by the virtue of having thought (though I may not be what I think I am and the world may not be what I think it is).
Why is it that whenever twitter makes any random change to some part of its infrastructure that we need a front page story about it?
Because the change prevented them from posting it to twitter.