The entire fiasco with people getting arrested for modifying their own property is due to the DMCA's circumvention clause. Because the DMCA casts doubt on basic ownership rights I think that the base law is flawed.
If I want to buy a cheap super-computer or mod my Xbox 360 into a media center that should be a given-right: I bought the hardware so go to hell without my Freedom to Tinker.
On Techdirt. It's a censorship and surveillance map. Notice how Australia already shares the dubious distinction of spying on their Citizens with Russia? Of course we're spied on here to but not to the same degree.
The issue at hand is less of "does Israel have justification to exist" and more "should Iran have both nuclear capability and delivery means." Focusing on the second issue I, as a Westerner, do not think that Iran has peaceful intentions. Rather I think they are positioning themselves as a regional military power through developing weapons programs under the guise of "peaceful nuclear energy" and "space exploration." What to do about this? Well, there is not much the West can do in today's conflicted world short of either glassing the country as an example or wholesale invasion which the USA already used their free card with Iraq.
So what will we actually do? Simple, make it as difficult as possible for Iran knowing we can only slow them and not stop them and at the same time perfect our Missile Defense Shields. They're gonna get nuclear warheads and missiles for them but by the time Iran can actually point them at us we'll just shoot them down. For the region however, Iran will remain a problem.
Facts are facts regardless of the source. I originally read and took note of the fact ages ago on CNN, now the search I performed through expediency gave that link. It is still a factual statement. Rather than beat around the bush, what do you think of the beliefs of the Iranian president?
He's a nutjob and I think the world would be a safer place if Iran did not pursue "peaceful" nuclear energy and ballistic missiles at the same time. Call me rational when I think that is wise.
Maybe I think we should nuke them first because Ahmadinejad (you know, the Iranian "President" - well if you don't count those pesky votes..) believes that it is his duty to trigger a period of chaos, war and bloodshed, which will lead to the coming of the 12th Imam who will eventually rule the world.
Seriously, Iran is fucked in the head when it comes to thinking. I don't want their kind of thinking having access to nuclear warheads and ballistic missiles.
Or why don't companies build out more infrastructure? They cut corners to save every penny they can while charging as much as possible for the service. Tiered Internet plans are applying the "tv" broadcast model to a medium that is peer to peer (yes, servers are peers). I think that Internet capacity should be as over-built as possible and damn the upfront costs! It would enable countless things: imagine watching any episode of any television program or any movie or listening to any music on demand - all in the highest definition possible. And everyone doing it with capacity to spare. Gone would be the days of "scheduled tv programming" and it would herald an era where you follow your interests wherever that leads.
As a Canadian and as someone who signed the: Petition, I am thrilled to see this reversal! Bandwidth while having a huge upfront cost is almost negligible in costs after that. When it costs a penny a gigabyte on the wire there is absolutely no reason to be charging near-two dollars for it! What we ultimately need is a country-wide backbone that is operated as a non-profit and allows anyone to sub-let it!
When Linux comes back to the PS3 I'll make the perfect test case of who actually owns the hardware when I have Linux and only Linux installed on it. I bought it, I own it, Sony can take a long walk off a short pier.
The overriding issue is that the DMCA anti-circumvention provisions are simply bad laws and as such they serve to bring themselves into contempt.
Or in today's language: the revolution will not be tweeted.
Does anyone think it is still a good idea to give the President an "Internet Kill Switch"?
Really, those in power tend to cling to it even if their forms are outmoded for the population they rule. I think our democracies only grow stronger through a little unrest and political replacement every once in a while. What do you think?
Regulatory Capture is the name for what is going on here. The USA suffers from it in many industries and Canada is not far behind. Lobbying is how it started and now you have organizations like the RIAA basically writing their own laws. The government is supposed to step in and put their foot down when a provider (especially since the providers are virtual monopolies in most places) begins to charge the "many, many, many" times more rate than their cost. We're being fleeced and our government is complicit in it.
What is this "democracy" you speak of? With lobbyists and general scratching each others backs and no real choice among both corrupt parties the USA is properly a plutarchy. Argue all you like, if you had any real power you'd be dead if you didn't tow the line.
You will note the USA is called out specifically in that linked article.
My sister's laptop has 1GB RAM, some value-segment AMD Turion processor, and Vista 32-bit. It's not a speed demon but it's no dog either. 7 is undeniably better than Vista, but Vista, now at Service Pack 2, I reiterate, is not that bad.
All I know is that every Christmas when she comes by I do a complete format on that machine to refresh it for another year for her. She never complains about it!;)
Vista was actually ok and now it's up to Service Pack 2 it's not that bad. What gave Vista the bad reputation was that at launch drivers were horrible. Vista was the re-architecture step for Windows and vendors by being late to develop well-behaved drivers significantly contributed to it's negative reception. Now, fast forward to today: 7 is Vista+ and vendors are already up to speed with their drivers and it had a 1 year open beta to nail everything down. No hassles, good support.
Vista took the hits that prepared the wider software-ecosystem for 7.
Another thing to think about is that with Windows 7 64-bit is now entering the mainstream. My 7 machine is 64-bit and I have 8GB in the puppy. Of course, my Ubuntu laptop is also 64-bit even though it only has 2GB of RAM.
=) Yup. The salient point to take away from that wall of text is: equivalence. Any abstract thing has an equal "realness" to any other abstract thing. Quanta are the only "real" things. The reality we experience through our senses is abstract. Therefore networks of actions also being abstract have an equal "realness" to our sensory perceptions. "God" can exist in practically any scale of the network of things. "Collective Consciousness" is a way to say that we compute - or have relationships that follow an order - in groups. This computation can be called "God." Not all abstract things have "coherence" as well. Some things persist longer than others. Those things are called phenomena and the concept of "God" is a phenomena in that it persists and has effects on our plane of "reality" while existing itself in a higher order of "reality."
Heresy, but it is an explanation that I can reason through.
The proper position to take is igtheism. Basically being an igtheist means saying we can't talk about the existence or non-existence of God without defining better what God is. Right now, Physics is not complete. This means that until we have a full understanding of Physics (if ever, see Godel's incompleteness theorem) then the existence of God must remain undecided. God may very well be hiding behind the last theorem. Beware!;)
Now, the argument for "God," exists but it is absolutely not anything that is given in a traditional teaching. It is meta-physical. Consider the most fundamental unit in our Universe, the Quanta. Anything that requires exactly more than a single quanta to represent is abstract. This means that the definition of the thing relies on having a relationship across multiple real things versus just being a singular real thing. Only Quanta are "real," everything else is abstract. The reality we experience through our senses is not real, it is spread over countless quanta and is far removed from the base, real, Universe which is just the quanta without relationships. There are abstract layers of reality on all scales and any relationships between them qualifies for a "name." One of these names is "God," and in a pantheistic viewpoint it can be the sum of all relationships in the totality of our Universe. God's thought on you is you. With any relationship qualifying as an entity in itself then any computation or action that causes another action is just as "real" as the reality you and I perceive. GOD can be thought of as existing within the network of actions in how we treat each other. If I am a right Christian and I treat you well, that tenet of how you treat others spread across many like-minded individuals has a measurable affect. The nebulous web of actions, or computations, has a reality that is equal in "realness" to what you and I experience through our senses.
So, God is undecided for now but of all the levels of reality there are plenty God could fit into. Just not a traditional definition of "God."
There was no mental illness in Jesus' time. I have no doubt that he existed and has had an obviously enormous impact on our modern world but if he was alive today he'd be diagnosed probably with schizophrenia and given medication to alleviate his belief that he was the son of God. I speak from personal experience, I have schizophrenia. I respond well to my medicine and at the same time I remember the irrational periods. It makes me value the rational ones that much more. Science does take just as much faith as traditional belief systems. However, you can replicate over and over a nuclear explosion with Science. Try to do that through prayer.
It's easy to develop mental blind-spots when you are receiving your primary programming. Try teaching belief systems to someone who has been raised without myths and given reason and critical thinking skills. In that fully formed individual, they usually tear the mythos to shreds and do not accept it. When you are a child you do not have the thinking skills to reject fantastical ideas. Those basic thinking patterns are then used to "hang" your later learning off of. I'd be ashamed to handicap my children with such outmoded ideas. Religion fulfills a societal function only which is diminishing rapidly, at least in first-world nations.
Slashdot Mirror
The entire fiasco with people getting arrested for modifying their own property is due to the DMCA's circumvention clause. Because the DMCA casts doubt on basic ownership rights I think that the base law is flawed.
If I want to buy a cheap super-computer or mod my Xbox 360 into a media center that should be a given-right: I bought the hardware so go to hell without my Freedom to Tinker.
On Techdirt. It's a censorship and surveillance map. Notice how Australia already shares the dubious distinction of spying on their Citizens with Russia? Of course we're spied on here to but not to the same degree.
If the Stanford Prison Experiment has taught one and only one thing is that given power without oversight always leads to abuse and corruption.
How much different is this from the dystopia in THX-1138 where they have Automated Confession Booths?
The issue at hand is less of "does Israel have justification to exist" and more "should Iran have both nuclear capability and delivery means." Focusing on the second issue I, as a Westerner, do not think that Iran has peaceful intentions. Rather I think they are positioning themselves as a regional military power through developing weapons programs under the guise of "peaceful nuclear energy" and "space exploration." What to do about this? Well, there is not much the West can do in today's conflicted world short of either glassing the country as an example or wholesale invasion which the USA already used their free card with Iraq.
So what will we actually do? Simple, make it as difficult as possible for Iran knowing we can only slow them and not stop them and at the same time perfect our Missile Defense Shields. They're gonna get nuclear warheads and missiles for them but by the time Iran can actually point them at us we'll just shoot them down. For the region however, Iran will remain a problem.
Facts are facts regardless of the source. I originally read and took note of the fact ages ago on CNN, now the search I performed through expediency gave that link. It is still a factual statement. Rather than beat around the bush, what do you think of the beliefs of the Iranian president?
Good sir, fuck off.
It is perfectly biased from my perspective. Of course, I'm not a nut.. ;)
He's a nutjob and I think the world would be a safer place if Iran did not pursue "peaceful" nuclear energy and ballistic missiles at the same time. Call me rational when I think that is wise.
Maybe I think we should nuke them first because Ahmadinejad (you know, the Iranian "President" - well if you don't count those pesky votes..) believes that it is his duty to trigger a period of chaos, war and bloodshed, which will lead to the coming of the 12th Imam who will eventually rule the world.
Citation.
Seriously, Iran is fucked in the head when it comes to thinking. I don't want their kind of thinking having access to nuclear warheads and ballistic missiles.
Or why don't companies build out more infrastructure? They cut corners to save every penny they can while charging as much as possible for the service. Tiered Internet plans are applying the "tv" broadcast model to a medium that is peer to peer (yes, servers are peers). I think that Internet capacity should be as over-built as possible and damn the upfront costs! It would enable countless things: imagine watching any episode of any television program or any movie or listening to any music on demand - all in the highest definition possible. And everyone doing it with capacity to spare. Gone would be the days of "scheduled tv programming" and it would herald an era where you follow your interests wherever that leads.
As a Canadian and as someone who signed the: Petition, I am thrilled to see this reversal! Bandwidth while having a huge upfront cost is almost negligible in costs after that. When it costs a penny a gigabyte on the wire there is absolutely no reason to be charging near-two dollars for it! What we ultimately need is a country-wide backbone that is operated as a non-profit and allows anyone to sub-let it!
When Linux comes back to the PS3 I'll make the perfect test case of who actually owns the hardware when I have Linux and only Linux installed on it. I bought it, I own it, Sony can take a long walk off a short pier.
The overriding issue is that the DMCA anti-circumvention provisions are simply bad laws and as such they serve to bring themselves into contempt.
Or in today's language: the revolution will not be tweeted.
Does anyone think it is still a good idea to give the President an "Internet Kill Switch"?
Really, those in power tend to cling to it even if their forms are outmoded for the population they rule. I think our democracies only grow stronger through a little unrest and political replacement every once in a while. What do you think?
Just pay us all hourly. And remember, we can anonymously talk about unionizing.. Many places to do that!
Regulatory Capture is the name for what is going on here. The USA suffers from it in many industries and Canada is not far behind. Lobbying is how it started and now you have organizations like the RIAA basically writing their own laws. The government is supposed to step in and put their foot down when a provider (especially since the providers are virtual monopolies in most places) begins to charge the "many, many, many" times more rate than their cost. We're being fleeced and our government is complicit in it.
What is this "democracy" you speak of? With lobbyists and general scratching each others backs and no real choice among both corrupt parties the USA is properly a plutarchy. Argue all you like, if you had any real power you'd be dead if you didn't tow the line.
You will note the USA is called out specifically in that linked article.
No matter how many votes you got to get in, it only takes one "vote" to take you out.
My sister's laptop has 1GB RAM, some value-segment AMD Turion processor, and Vista 32-bit. It's not a speed demon but it's no dog either. 7 is undeniably better than Vista, but Vista, now at Service Pack 2, I reiterate, is not that bad.
;)
All I know is that every Christmas when she comes by I do a complete format on that machine to refresh it for another year for her. She never complains about it!
If it wasn't for games I'd be Linux only too. Fact is WINE doesn't cut it and I don't want an XBox 360.
Vista was actually ok and now it's up to Service Pack 2 it's not that bad. What gave Vista the bad reputation was that at launch drivers were horrible. Vista was the re-architecture step for Windows and vendors by being late to develop well-behaved drivers significantly contributed to it's negative reception. Now, fast forward to today: 7 is Vista+ and vendors are already up to speed with their drivers and it had a 1 year open beta to nail everything down. No hassles, good support.
Vista took the hits that prepared the wider software-ecosystem for 7.
Another thing to think about is that with Windows 7 64-bit is now entering the mainstream. My 7 machine is 64-bit and I have 8GB in the puppy. Of course, my Ubuntu laptop is also 64-bit even though it only has 2GB of RAM.
=) Yup. The salient point to take away from that wall of text is: equivalence. Any abstract thing has an equal "realness" to any other abstract thing. Quanta are the only "real" things. The reality we experience through our senses is abstract. Therefore networks of actions also being abstract have an equal "realness" to our sensory perceptions. "God" can exist in practically any scale of the network of things. "Collective Consciousness" is a way to say that we compute - or have relationships that follow an order - in groups. This computation can be called "God." Not all abstract things have "coherence" as well. Some things persist longer than others. Those things are called phenomena and the concept of "God" is a phenomena in that it persists and has effects on our plane of "reality" while existing itself in a higher order of "reality."
Heresy, but it is an explanation that I can reason through.
Ok, I'm going to settle the issue for now! ;)
;)
The proper position to take is igtheism. Basically being an igtheist means saying we can't talk about the existence or non-existence of God without defining better what God is. Right now, Physics is not complete. This means that until we have a full understanding of Physics (if ever, see Godel's incompleteness theorem) then the existence of God must remain undecided. God may very well be hiding behind the last theorem. Beware!
Now, the argument for "God," exists but it is absolutely not anything that is given in a traditional teaching. It is meta-physical. Consider the most fundamental unit in our Universe, the Quanta. Anything that requires exactly more than a single quanta to represent is abstract. This means that the definition of the thing relies on having a relationship across multiple real things versus just being a singular real thing. Only Quanta are "real," everything else is abstract. The reality we experience through our senses is not real, it is spread over countless quanta and is far removed from the base, real, Universe which is just the quanta without relationships. There are abstract layers of reality on all scales and any relationships between them qualifies for a "name." One of these names is "God," and in a pantheistic viewpoint it can be the sum of all relationships in the totality of our Universe. God's thought on you is you. With any relationship qualifying as an entity in itself then any computation or action that causes another action is just as "real" as the reality you and I perceive. GOD can be thought of as existing within the network of actions in how we treat each other. If I am a right Christian and I treat you well, that tenet of how you treat others spread across many like-minded individuals has a measurable affect. The nebulous web of actions, or computations, has a reality that is equal in "realness" to what you and I experience through our senses.
So, God is undecided for now but of all the levels of reality there are plenty God could fit into. Just not a traditional definition of "God."
There was no mental illness in Jesus' time. I have no doubt that he existed and has had an obviously enormous impact on our modern world but if he was alive today he'd be diagnosed probably with schizophrenia and given medication to alleviate his belief that he was the son of God. I speak from personal experience, I have schizophrenia. I respond well to my medicine and at the same time I remember the irrational periods. It makes me value the rational ones that much more. Science does take just as much faith as traditional belief systems. However, you can replicate over and over a nuclear explosion with Science. Try to do that through prayer.
It's easy to develop mental blind-spots when you are receiving your primary programming. Try teaching belief systems to someone who has been raised without myths and given reason and critical thinking skills. In that fully formed individual, they usually tear the mythos to shreds and do not accept it. When you are a child you do not have the thinking skills to reject fantastical ideas. Those basic thinking patterns are then used to "hang" your later learning off of. I'd be ashamed to handicap my children with such outmoded ideas. Religion fulfills a societal function only which is diminishing rapidly, at least in first-world nations.