You're quoting an article based on a report from one strident advocacy group (Center for Consumer Freedom), published in one of the Britain's least trustworthy media outlets (The Daily Mail), criticising another stident advocacy group (PETA).
It's sad that such a cesspit of sources rates as "informative".
My first impression of the situation described in the summary is it sounds somewhat similar to a web host shutting down a user's account because their site was a magnet for DDoS attacks - a response which would be uncontroversial. Another analogy that comes to mind is the removal of users' comments in a discussion forum, following a legal threats to the site operator.
The fundamental similarity in all three circumstances seems to be the website operator not wanting to deal with a website user's "baggage", as an earlier poster here termed it. But the next question in my mind is what the differences are in the Kickstart case. Notwishtanding the fact that it's "their site, their rules", is there a point at which nature of the "baggage" may be trivial enough to deal with (e.g. a user being targeted by a spammer, rather than a DDoS botnet) that it's fair to criticise the website operator for being too ready to wash their hands of the victim?
The NYT and BBC prefaced their stories with the qualifiers "probably" and "may have", while these disappeared from the Slashdot summary. The reports may well turn out to be true, but the summary is assigning a level of certainty about the claims that does not yet exist.
Acceptance of this sort of distortion seems to have become so routine in Slashdot's selection of story submissions, it sometimes feels a bit like reading the Daily Mail.
I recently bought an ASUS netbook which not only came with no recovery discs, but no utility to create recovery media (either optical or USB). If the hard disk dies or the recovery partition is corrupted (e.g. by a failed test restore of your self-created drive image), there's no way to restore the system to its factory state yourself. This has been raised in the ASUS forums and their response is sorry, but you have to return the system to them if you need it restored. Remarkably, people who noted this issue in Amazon.com reviews had their criticism thumbed-down, and ridiculed by "most helpful" reviews containing the narrowminded suggestion that recovery media is unecessary because you can "simply restore from the hard disk!".
I absolutely, positively do NOT want government requirements for labeling. If I am concerned with labeling, I will call the manufacturer of the product and ASK. I already do it because I don't consume trans fats (except for naturally occuring ones in beef). The government was "supposed" to regulate trans fat labels, but they haven't. Many items say 0 trans fats but contain a significant amount below 1 gram, and your government allows it to be labeled 0 grams. Nice. That's government at its finest. When I see 0 grams of trans fats, I will call the manufacturer and ask them to confirm the fact that there are zero, and most of the time they'll say "there's a negligible amount" which is the equivalent of saying "yeah, they're in there."
I understand someone calling a manufacturer themselves may give one a sense of self-reliance and individualistic pride, but do you really think that customer service representatives individually responding to millions of incoming enquiries from each consumer would lead to the most accurate dissemination of this sort of information? Knowing most companies, one individual will often get a different answer each time, and the fantasy they may have about suing if they receive inaccurate information certainly won't scare most companies enough to make them devote sufficient resources to responding to individual customer enquiries with the same degree of accuracy as would be required for a label.
And unless a consumer uses an unusually narrow range of produts, they'll be making an awful lot of calls or writing a lot of letters. Twenty, thirty or more on the trans fat issue alone? What happens when product formulations change? Do you have to make fifty phone calls or write thirty letters every three months or so to make sure you have up-to-date information?
That would be extremely inefficient, both for the consumers and companies - far worse than labelling regulations. The only reason companies push for this concept is that they know this concept is a pipe dream - people aren't be so diligent as to make even one call or write one letter, let alone hundreds a year.
If you believe a labelling system is flawed, responding with an absolute opposition to labelling as a concept doesn't make a lot of sense unless you have a government so dysfunctional it makes improvements impossible (in which case, you have much more important issues to devote your efforts to than worrying about trivial amounts of trans fat).
It's like saying nobody should steal, so I won't lock my car/house/whatever.
Sure, in the long term, and a perfect world, you might want to get rid of software patents. Right now however they are real and are here and measure that combat them face to face have some merit.
IMHO, a closer analogy to Stallman's position would be: "it's like saying people shouldn't spend money on wireless home security cameras if it makes them neglect securing their windows and doors, and particularly if it will make them even less secure when burglars pick up the wireless signal to monitor their potential targets from a safe distance".
"If the worst thing about the project were its inability to solve the whole problem, it would still be better than nothing. But given that it can also backfire, it can be worse than nothing."
Docu's used to be slow paced, informative and somewhat quiet, mythbusters didn't exactly follow this formula since it's not a docu but it was simpler and more charming originally. Now documentaries need to have hardcore music and cgi sections, instead of just showing what is happening or speculating on what might happen from a proffessor no no they have to render something add that boomy music, have the excitable sounding narrator go at it hardcore etc.
And I thought I was all alone in noticing and lamenting this decline in documentaries.
One of the worst offenders, much to my disgust, is the BBC. Their documentaries are ridiculously flashy nowadays - many of their nature docos, for example, are smothered with CGI and sound effects. They can be showing a beautifully filmed nature scene, then all of a sudden computer graphics will burst onto the screen with matching machine-like noises. Or you'll be watching a relaxing scene of a mallard in flight, then in a sort of wacky attempt at analogy, they'll cut to video of Harrier jets. Even their current affairs docos haven't been spared - the dry, authoritative tone has been dropped in favour of lots of visual gimmicks and a more upbeat narration.
The only recent docos I've seen that haved retained the virtue of being "slow paced, informative and somewhat quiet" were, interestingly, from PBS.
You're mistaking the rationale of Stallman's call for people to use "GNU/Linux" (or some other name containing "GNU"). It has nothing to do with assigning credit to whichever part of the OS one considers most significant or whoever played the most important role in the project.
Stallman considers it merely a device to draw attention to the Free Software philosophy. It's a response to his observation - certainly in line with my own experience - that many new users know exactly who Linus "Linux" Torvalds is and about his "Just for Fun" philosophy, but relatively few learn about the importance of freedom. The result being, when later confronted with Free Software ideals, such people often consider them unrealistic and impractical, not realising they formed the basis of the "Linux" operating system they're so enthusiastic about.
This matters to Free Software advocates because they measure success by the number of users who come to value their freedom, not those who've installed GNU/Linux solely for its technical advantanges or as a status symbol, who'll readily switch back to a proprietary OS when tempted with a sexier product.
Whether or not you think it's an effective tactic, that's the reasoning. As for the idea of it being an "ego" thing, as RMS himself has responded, why isn't he asking that people call it "Stallmanix"?
The Khmer Rougue could make a convincing case for the moral high ground against Hezbollah.
Anyone who thinks they could place the Khmer Rouge on higher moral ground than Hezbollah has no business criticising others for having agendas.
You'd have to be a grandmaster of spin to credibly equate a terrorist group that has killed fewer than a thousand people in its 20+ year existence with a regime that executed hundreds of thousands of its own people (and caused the deaths hundreds of thousands more) in the space of a few years, and not have any regard for the disservice such an odious comparison does to the memory of those who died in the Cambodian genocide.
Exxon got their point out to millions of viewers, DCI got paid, and ABC/WSJ/Slashdot did a good job of uncovering the "truth" of the situation, which pleases their readers and viewers just as much as any other story.
Whether that's true or not, I see a deeper effect that works to serve their interests. These sorts of stories reinforce the cynicism people have about politics, which instead of getting more ordinary people to demand their voices be heard, has lead to a disengagement from the political process. The younger generation particularly seem to respond to politics with sarcasm or a helpless attitude - things can't be changed, it's pointless to try (though a possible subtext is that this is a hedonistic generation giving itself an excuse to focus on more selfish pursuits). By contrast, corporations are overwhelmingly engaged, with a record number of lobbyists involved in the policy making process.
In other words, it's turned out that it's in the interests of the establishment to encourage public cynicism about politics. Paradoxically, efforts ostensibly intended to "open the public's eyes" can result in more people looking the other way.
One unfortunate realisation in my years as a slashdot reader is that if a story is so outrageous makes my blood boil, it often turns out to be based on distortions or blatant lies. So just as soon as I began typing my enraged reply, I paused to check its veracity. I found the same lack of coverage you mentioned on Google News, and not being familiar with Britain's Daily Mail, I checked its Wikipedia entry and wasn't surprised to read indications it's one of their most dubious tabloids.
But I also found the following article on the website of the "West Midlands Police Federation", which appears at least to confirm the story is not a complete fabrication:
I must say that their actions seem outrageous even if you rely on their account of children "vandalising" a "council-owned" "ornamental cherry tree" and leave out The Daily Mail's telling of the story. Most revealing, I think, is this quote:
"West Midlands Police deals robustly with anti-social behaviour. By targeting what may seem relatively low-level crime, we aim to prevent it developing into more serious matters."
In other words, "zero-tolerance" appears to be the basis for their actions, and this mindset has become entrenched so deeply into police culture that they can consider children messing about with a tree to be grounds for their arrest and a precursor to more serious "crime".
You can't create an "exact digital copy" via this method unless you store the file in an uncompressed format
May I add that, even if you did the above, it would still not be exact in many cases, since screenshots are usually taken after the player has filtered the video (brightness/colour adjustments, deinterlacing, etc.), so you'd see a lot of irritating variability between different rips. Someone who downloads an unauthorised copy for free may not care so much, but it'd hardly be ideal for things like personal backups of your discs.
You can't create an "exact digital copy" via this method unless you store the file in an uncompressed format, which would be monstrously large. You can create a lossy version the same size as the original. Whether the loss in quality is significant is an open question (one would suppose HD users are relatively fussy about quality...), but the fact is it doesn't allow the same type of ripping you can do with DVDs where the copy is exact apart from the removal of contect protection.
This is not a first for Intel to try this though. MMX makes the internet go faster. Anyone remember that?
Indeed. I recall the one of the first major web ad campaigns was one in which websites carried the ridiculous message to the effect that "this site is optimised for the Intel Pentium Processor with MMX Technology". Or, as I read it, "this website is best viewed with ad-blocking technology" (which, unfortunately, I don't believe was readily available at the time, so I went through a long stretch of browsing without images).
It sounds to me like this proposal simply makes mandatory practices that are probably already widespread but rarely discussed. Where I live, ISPs provide practically zero information to users regarding the degree to which they record their activities - what is logged, how long it is retained, and who has access - and privacy policies are quite vague. Given that many people live such a large portion of their lives online nowadays, what I find remarkable is how rarely people show some interest and merely ask about how they're being monitored, and when they do, the frequency with which such inquisitiveness and concern is ridiculed with the standard "what have you got to hide?" line of retort.
Does your ISP retain the contents of the e-mails you've sent and received? Lists of each URL you've visited? IM traffic? Roughly how long do they retain such data? Two days, two months, two years? Who has access? 99% of people wouldn't have a clue as to the answer to any of these questions, and most don't show much concern, which is scary. I'm with an ISP that is relatively open and conversant with its users, and even though I received long-winded and seemingly earnest replies when I raised the matter some time ago, none contained a direct answer to any of the aforementioned questions. Good luck to anyone else who tries.
The speech the article extracts from was delivered at ANU back in 2004. I believe that was his last visit to Australia (he also spoke at UNSW). There are numerous, more recent speeches by RMS available in audio and video format on the same subjects, and I don't see why this one makes news.
Am I the only one who suspects the reason we now have a ridiculously confusing range of video chips is less to do with product differentiation and manufacturing efficiency than the publicity that accompanies each new launch? ATI and nVidia seem to have themselves stuck in this game where if one were to announce a new product every month and the other every two months, the relative disadvantage in the reporting on the latter company will result in a significant loss of consumer recognition.
So they keep coming up with new variations that are trivially different from the existing products - a clock speed adjustment here, a few pipes disabled there - primarily to keep their name in the media. Even the "unannounced" chips are broadly reported, usually with something like "quietly released" in the headline.
Anyone know of any others? One of the big problems in the hardware review site industry is that they all review the same stuff and duplicate one another's work 100 times over (for various reasons which I won't go into), while you'd be hard pressed to find a single review of many low-mid range cards. Even if the purpose of such reviews would simply be to inform people about how poorly they perform, it's a major oversight. There is still a heavy bias toward high-end stuff in the above linked reviews, but at least there are a few low-end and mid-range cards chucked in.
P.S. Another pity is slashdot's poor editorial standards, accepting the description of the linked article as a "review" being the latest example. I guess I could just stop visiting, but then I'd miss out on all the insightful comments from visitors who actually do produce some worthwhile content. So I just block the ads, so as not to reward the editors' laziness.
I swear, I think Greenpeace is more concerned about making sure nobody builds any new powerplants than they are about protecting the environment.
The Reuters article is not very balanced, and your post reflects this. Here's how the BBC decided to quote Greenpeace:
Some green groups criticised Tuesday's announcement as a waste of money. They are doubtful whether Iter will ever deliver practical technologies.
"With 10 billion [euros], we could build 10,000MW offshore windfarms, delivering electricity for 7.5 million European households," said Jan Vande Putte of Greenpeace International.
"Governments should not waste our money on a dangerous toy which will never deliver any useful energy. Instead, they should invest in renewable energy which is abundantly available, not in 2080 but today."
Sounds a bit more reasonable, whether you agree with that position or not.
I think your post was a bit of a cheap shot designed to appeal to the current Slashdot groupthink. It wasn't all that long ago Microsoft-bashing was the favourite karma whoring method. Now that blatantly one-sided criticism of Microsoft is passe, the Greenpeaces and PETAs of the world have become our favourite whipping boys:-/
eBay are only being ordered to enforce those WHO ARE registered for the GST to include it in the final sale price. If you are not registered for the GST (or if you're selling a personal item), these changes do not apply to you.
Despite being technically accurate owing to a couple of where applicables, their announcement was bound to cause confusion--ABC News Online also got it wrong in their initial report. Failure to foresee this confusion is one thing, but particularly annoying is that they sent out a clarification e-mail just a few days later in which they could have made clear the distinction between small individual sellers and businesses registered for the GST. Instead, the clarification was simply to correct the date that the policy would come into effect.
Anyway, I'm all for the GST policy, but I wonder if the ACCC (or whoever has the power) would also be interested in cracking down on eBay's policy against surcharges for credit card payments. Merchant service providers used to force businesses to agree not to pass on the real cost of credit cards to their customers in the form of a surcharge, but this was disallowed in Australia a few years ago. It seems eBay is an exception to this rule and can force all sellers to hide the fact that some forms of payment (e.g. PayPal) cost more to accept. This suits eBay as they try to steer everyone toward PayPal, but prevents sellers and buyers from properly factoring in the cost-efficiency of different payment methods when choosing which one to use for their transaction.
What about the operating system's role in multitasking efficiency? Just a few days before joining the latest dual-core drumbeat, Scott Wasson of The Tech Report posted the following item:
We've already asked you for some input on our possible multitasking tests, but let's talk for a sec about that creamy smoothness that comes from having multiple processors in a well-tuned system. I've said many times that it smoothes over potholes and allows the user experience to feel friction-free. In fact, if you pick up the latest copy of PC Enthusiast magazine, my column this month extols the virtues of dual-core CPUs for multitasking. I use an example of a problem with my own PC slowing down to a halt while checking mail, caused by the convergence of too much client-side spam, virus, and mail filtering. Dual-core processors should make problems like this almost a thing of the past.
However...
After writing that article, I decided to troubleshoot the mail-checking slowdown problem one more time, and I realized that I hadn't applied some basic tweaks to this installation of Windows XP Pro. Once I set the OS scheduler preferences to optimize for "background tasks" instead of "applications," my mail problem was largely resolved. I also used registry tweaks to increase the size of the system disk cache and to disable paging of the Windows executive, and all told, my system is much more responsive now.
Now, I still think dual-core CPUs will be a great thing for multitasking, but this raises the question: How much creamy smoothness can you squeeze out of a box with only one CPU, with or without Hyper-Threading? And what proportion of PC slowdowns and performance "hiccups" are really caused by inadequate CPU power as opposed to lousy OS scheduling, hard drive bottlenecks, running out of RAM, lousy drivers, or the like? Is multitasking nirvana really just a second CPU core away? What, in your experience, has the most impact on your PC's responsiveness, and what upgrades have helped the most?
Unfortunately, it seemed the question was mostly rhetorical, as The Tech Report prompted their users to "discuss" the issue subjectively rather than getting some multitasking benchmarks going to back up the anecdote.
It seems to me that a lot of frustration could be avoided if the developer of the most popular consumer OS took the issue of backups a bit more seriously.
As things are, the first time Jane Average is introduced to the concept of backups comes after she's lost something important. Oh, in some cases, a techie friend may have mentioned in passing the importance of backing up, or she may have seen some box labelled "Ultra Backup" in a store. But for most people, if they get any message at all telling them they should do backups, it will be very little. I think Jane could be forgiven for thinking that anything they punch into a computer will always be there and of backups as some sort of optional extra you can buy.
What is needed is for the idea of backing up to become a core part of the OS in a way that tells users regular backups are a normal and necessary aspect of computing, and reinforces the message. At the moment, a stock machine will nag a user about petty things like removing unused icons from their desktop, but never ever tell them that they ought to do a backup. If only more programs like Wordpad did auto-saves (transparently and as a default option, of course), if only Windows XP had a rudimentary backup program and reminded users every so often that it's time to back up their files to some form of removable media (similar to the way it now reminds people to check their virus definitions are up-to-date), there would be far less lost data and far fewer irate calls to tech support.
Certainly there are BOFH-types out there who derive pleasure from lusers losing hours of work, and "tough love" types who would view Jane's loss of precious wedding or baby photos to a HD disaster as a result of her own ignorance. If a user ignores the message and prefers to learn the hard way, fair enough. But as stewards of the industry who are well aware of the importance of backups, and well aware of users' default ignorance of the issue, what do OS developers do to send the message that backups are important? At the moment, not even the bare minimum.
"The U.N. is a place where governments opposed to free speech demand to be heard!"
Which is true, but it's only part of the story not a very enlightening one, as democracies demand the right to ignore that free speech and veto the decisions of the majority. When that isn't sufficient, they threaten to ignore the organisation altogether and revert to power politics, so it usually falls into line to stay relevant. The result? The US has by far the most control over the UN, and while despotic countries can have all the free speech they want in the General Assembly, they've no power.
Some also paint the UN as an organisation where the democratic, free US is told what to do by despotic, repressive Libyas and Syrias. It's a false picture, both for the reason given above, and for this reason: the UN is also made up of Finland, Spain, India, Japan, South Africa, Brazil and numerous other democracies. When the US votes in virtual isolation on an issue, as it has done far more times than any other country in both the General Assembly and Security Council, it's voting against all those other democracies. And the way the US votes, isolated or otherwise, basically decides the issue.
Slashdot Mirror
You're quoting an article based on a report from one strident advocacy group (Center for Consumer Freedom), published in one of the Britain's least trustworthy media outlets (The Daily Mail), criticising another stident advocacy group (PETA).
It's sad that such a cesspit of sources rates as "informative".
My first impression of the situation described in the summary is it sounds somewhat similar to a web host shutting down a user's account because their site was a magnet for DDoS attacks - a response which would be uncontroversial. Another analogy that comes to mind is the removal of users' comments in a discussion forum, following a legal threats to the site operator.
The fundamental similarity in all three circumstances seems to be the website operator not wanting to deal with a website user's "baggage", as an earlier poster here termed it. But the next question in my mind is what the differences are in the Kickstart case. Notwishtanding the fact that it's "their site, their rules", is there a point at which nature of the "baggage" may be trivial enough to deal with (e.g. a user being targeted by a spammer, rather than a DDoS botnet) that it's fair to criticise the website operator for being too ready to wash their hands of the victim?
The NYT and BBC prefaced their stories with the qualifiers "probably" and "may have", while these disappeared from the Slashdot summary. The reports may well turn out to be true, but the summary is assigning a level of certainty about the claims that does not yet exist.
Acceptance of this sort of distortion seems to have become so routine in Slashdot's selection of story submissions, it sometimes feels a bit like reading the Daily Mail.
I recently bought an ASUS netbook which not only came with no recovery discs, but no utility to create recovery media (either optical or USB). If the hard disk dies or the recovery partition is corrupted (e.g. by a failed test restore of your self-created drive image), there's no way to restore the system to its factory state yourself. This has been raised in the ASUS forums and their response is sorry, but you have to return the system to them if you need it restored. Remarkably, people who noted this issue in Amazon.com reviews had their criticism thumbed-down, and ridiculed by "most helpful" reviews containing the narrowminded suggestion that recovery media is unecessary because you can "simply restore from the hard disk!".
I absolutely, positively do NOT want government requirements for labeling. If I am concerned with labeling, I will call the manufacturer of the product and ASK. I already do it because I don't consume trans fats (except for naturally occuring ones in beef). The government was "supposed" to regulate trans fat labels, but they haven't. Many items say 0 trans fats but contain a significant amount below 1 gram, and your government allows it to be labeled 0 grams. Nice. That's government at its finest. When I see 0 grams of trans fats, I will call the manufacturer and ask them to confirm the fact that there are zero, and most of the time they'll say "there's a negligible amount" which is the equivalent of saying "yeah, they're in there."
I understand someone calling a manufacturer themselves may give one a sense of self-reliance and individualistic pride, but do you really think that customer service representatives individually responding to millions of incoming enquiries from each consumer would lead to the most accurate dissemination of this sort of information? Knowing most companies, one individual will often get a different answer each time, and the fantasy they may have about suing if they receive inaccurate information certainly won't scare most companies enough to make them devote sufficient resources to responding to individual customer enquiries with the same degree of accuracy as would be required for a label.
And unless a consumer uses an unusually narrow range of produts, they'll be making an awful lot of calls or writing a lot of letters. Twenty, thirty or more on the trans fat issue alone? What happens when product formulations change? Do you have to make fifty phone calls or write thirty letters every three months or so to make sure you have up-to-date information?
That would be extremely inefficient, both for the consumers and companies - far worse than labelling regulations. The only reason companies push for this concept is that they know this concept is a pipe dream - people aren't be so diligent as to make even one call or write one letter, let alone hundreds a year.
If you believe a labelling system is flawed, responding with an absolute opposition to labelling as a concept doesn't make a lot of sense unless you have a government so dysfunctional it makes improvements impossible (in which case, you have much more important issues to devote your efforts to than worrying about trivial amounts of trans fat).
It's like saying nobody should steal, so I won't lock my car/house/whatever.
Sure, in the long term, and a perfect world, you might want to get rid of software patents. Right now however they are real and are here and measure that combat them face to face have some merit.
IMHO, a closer analogy to Stallman's position would be: "it's like saying people shouldn't spend money on wireless home security cameras if it makes them neglect securing their windows and doors, and particularly if it will make them even less secure when burglars pick up the wireless signal to monitor their potential targets from a safe distance".
Stallman himself preempted your thoughts:
"If the worst thing about the project were its inability to solve the whole problem, it would still be better than nothing. But given that it can also backfire, it can be worse than nothing."
Docu's used to be slow paced, informative and somewhat quiet, mythbusters didn't exactly follow this formula since it's not a docu but it was simpler and more charming originally.
Now documentaries need to have hardcore music and cgi sections, instead of just showing what is happening or speculating on what might happen from a proffessor no no they have to render something add that boomy music, have the excitable sounding narrator go at it hardcore etc.
And I thought I was all alone in noticing and lamenting this decline in documentaries.
One of the worst offenders, much to my disgust, is the BBC. Their documentaries are ridiculously flashy nowadays - many of their nature docos, for example, are smothered with CGI and sound effects. They can be showing a beautifully filmed nature scene, then all of a sudden computer graphics will burst onto the screen with matching machine-like noises. Or you'll be watching a relaxing scene of a mallard in flight, then in a sort of wacky attempt at analogy, they'll cut to video of Harrier jets. Even their current affairs docos haven't been spared - the dry, authoritative tone has been dropped in favour of lots of visual gimmicks and a more upbeat narration.
The only recent docos I've seen that haved retained the virtue of being "slow paced, informative and somewhat quiet" were, interestingly, from PBS.
you're going to have to get by without your OGG supporting iPod
No, you don't have to:
http://www.rockbox.org/
Supports: iPod 4th gen (grayscale and color), 5th gen (Video), Nano and Mini 1st/2nd gen
You're mistaking the rationale of Stallman's call for people to use "GNU/Linux" (or some other name containing "GNU"). It has nothing to do with assigning credit to whichever part of the OS one considers most significant or whoever played the most important role in the project.
Stallman considers it merely a device to draw attention to the Free Software philosophy. It's a response to his observation - certainly in line with my own experience - that many new users know exactly who Linus "Linux" Torvalds is and about his "Just for Fun" philosophy, but relatively few learn about the importance of freedom. The result being, when later confronted with Free Software ideals, such people often consider them unrealistic and impractical, not realising they formed the basis of the "Linux" operating system they're so enthusiastic about.
This matters to Free Software advocates because they measure success by the number of users who come to value their freedom, not those who've installed GNU/Linux solely for its technical advantanges or as a status symbol, who'll readily switch back to a proprietary OS when tempted with a sexier product.
Whether or not you think it's an effective tactic, that's the reasoning. As for the idea of it being an "ego" thing, as RMS himself has responded, why isn't he asking that people call it "Stallmanix"?
The Khmer Rougue could make a convincing case for the moral high ground against Hezbollah.
Anyone who thinks they could place the Khmer Rouge on higher moral ground than Hezbollah has no business criticising others for having agendas.
You'd have to be a grandmaster of spin to credibly equate a terrorist group that has killed fewer than a thousand people in its 20+ year existence with a regime that executed hundreds of thousands of its own people (and caused the deaths hundreds of thousands more) in the space of a few years, and not have any regard for the disservice such an odious comparison does to the memory of those who died in the Cambodian genocide.
Exxon got their point out to millions of viewers, DCI got paid, and ABC/WSJ/Slashdot did a good job of uncovering the "truth" of the situation, which pleases their readers and viewers just as much as any other story.
Whether that's true or not, I see a deeper effect that works to serve their interests. These sorts of stories reinforce the cynicism people have about politics, which instead of getting more ordinary people to demand their voices be heard, has lead to a disengagement from the political process. The younger generation particularly seem to respond to politics with sarcasm or a helpless attitude - things can't be changed, it's pointless to try (though a possible subtext is that this is a hedonistic generation giving itself an excuse to focus on more selfish pursuits). By contrast, corporations are overwhelmingly engaged, with a record number of lobbyists involved in the policy making process.
In other words, it's turned out that it's in the interests of the establishment to encourage public cynicism about politics. Paradoxically, efforts ostensibly intended to "open the public's eyes" can result in more people looking the other way.
One unfortunate realisation in my years as a slashdot reader is that if a story is so outrageous makes my blood boil, it often turns out to be based on distortions or blatant lies. So just as soon as I began typing my enraged reply, I paused to check its veracity. I found the same lack of coverage you mentioned on Google News, and not being familiar with Britain's Daily Mail, I checked its Wikipedia entry and wasn't surprised to read indications it's one of their most dubious tabloids.
a sp?articleid=17383816
But I also found the following article on the website of the "West Midlands Police Federation", which appears at least to confirm the story is not a complete fabrication:
http://www.westmidspolfed.com/directnews/article.
I must say that their actions seem outrageous even if you rely on their account of children "vandalising" a "council-owned" "ornamental cherry tree" and leave out The Daily Mail's telling of the story. Most revealing, I think, is this quote:
"West Midlands Police deals robustly with anti-social behaviour. By targeting what may seem relatively low-level crime, we aim to prevent it developing into more serious matters."
In other words, "zero-tolerance" appears to be the basis for their actions, and this mindset has become entrenched so deeply into police culture that they can consider children messing about with a tree to be grounds for their arrest and a precursor to more serious "crime".
You can't create an "exact digital copy" via this method unless you store the file in an uncompressed format
May I add that, even if you did the above, it would still not be exact in many cases, since screenshots are usually taken after the player has filtered the video (brightness/colour adjustments, deinterlacing, etc.), so you'd see a lot of irritating variability between different rips. Someone who downloads an unauthorised copy for free may not care so much, but it'd hardly be ideal for things like personal backups of your discs.
You can't create an "exact digital copy" via this method unless you store the file in an uncompressed format, which would be monstrously large. You can create a lossy version the same size as the original. Whether the loss in quality is significant is an open question (one would suppose HD users are relatively fussy about quality...), but the fact is it doesn't allow the same type of ripping you can do with DVDs where the copy is exact apart from the removal of contect protection.
Pity this iTunes-only link got modded up - made me overlook the fact that there is a direct MP3 download available in TFA...
This is not a first for Intel to try this though. MMX makes the internet go faster. Anyone remember that?
Indeed. I recall the one of the first major web ad campaigns was one in which websites carried the ridiculous message to the effect that "this site is optimised for the Intel Pentium Processor with MMX Technology". Or, as I read it, "this website is best viewed with ad-blocking technology" (which, unfortunately, I don't believe was readily available at the time, so I went through a long stretch of browsing without images).
It sounds to me like this proposal simply makes mandatory practices that are probably already widespread but rarely discussed. Where I live, ISPs provide practically zero information to users regarding the degree to which they record their activities - what is logged, how long it is retained, and who has access - and privacy policies are quite vague. Given that many people live such a large portion of their lives online nowadays, what I find remarkable is how rarely people show some interest and merely ask about how they're being monitored, and when they do, the frequency with which such inquisitiveness and concern is ridiculed with the standard "what have you got to hide?" line of retort.
Does your ISP retain the contents of the e-mails you've sent and received? Lists of each URL you've visited? IM traffic? Roughly how long do they retain such data? Two days, two months, two years? Who has access? 99% of people wouldn't have a clue as to the answer to any of these questions, and most don't show much concern, which is scary. I'm with an ISP that is relatively open and conversant with its users, and even though I received long-winded and seemingly earnest replies when I raised the matter some time ago, none contained a direct answer to any of the aforementioned questions. Good luck to anyone else who tries.
The speech the article extracts from was delivered at ANU back in 2004. I believe that was his last visit to Australia (he also spoke at UNSW). There are numerous, more recent speeches by RMS available in audio and video format on the same subjects, and I don't see why this one makes news.
Am I the only one who suspects the reason we now have a ridiculously confusing range of video chips is less to do with product differentiation and manufacturing efficiency than the publicity that accompanies each new launch? ATI and nVidia seem to have themselves stuck in this game where if one were to announce a new product every month and the other every two months, the relative disadvantage in the reporting on the latter company will result in a significant loss of consumer recognition.
So they keep coming up with new variations that are trivially different from the existing products - a clock speed adjustment here, a few pipes disabled there - primarily to keep their name in the media. Even the "unannounced" chips are broadly reported, usually with something like "quietly released" in the headline.
Here are a couple of actual "reviews" comparing a broad sweep of video cards:
Digit-Life's 3Digest
Tom's Hardware's VGA Charts
Anyone know of any others? One of the big problems in the hardware review site industry is that they all review the same stuff and duplicate one another's work 100 times over (for various reasons which I won't go into), while you'd be hard pressed to find a single review of many low-mid range cards. Even if the purpose of such reviews would simply be to inform people about how poorly they perform, it's a major oversight. There is still a heavy bias toward high-end stuff in the above linked reviews, but at least there are a few low-end and mid-range cards chucked in.
P.S. Another pity is slashdot's poor editorial standards, accepting the description of the linked article as a "review" being the latest example. I guess I could just stop visiting, but then I'd miss out on all the insightful comments from visitors who actually do produce some worthwhile content. So I just block the ads, so as not to reward the editors' laziness.
The Reuters article is not very balanced, and your post reflects this. Here's how the BBC decided to quote Greenpeace:
Sounds a bit more reasonable, whether you agree with that position or not.
I think your post was a bit of a cheap shot designed to appeal to the current Slashdot groupthink. It wasn't all that long ago Microsoft-bashing was the favourite karma whoring method. Now that blatantly one-sided criticism of Microsoft is passe, the Greenpeaces and PETAs of the world have become our favourite whipping boys
eBay are only being ordered to enforce those WHO ARE registered for the GST to include it in the final sale price. If you are not registered for the GST (or if you're selling a personal item), these changes do not apply to you.
Despite being technically accurate owing to a couple of where applicables, their announcement was bound to cause confusion--ABC News Online also got it wrong in their initial report. Failure to foresee this confusion is one thing, but particularly annoying is that they sent out a clarification e-mail just a few days later in which they could have made clear the distinction between small individual sellers and businesses registered for the GST. Instead, the clarification was simply to correct the date that the policy would come into effect.
Anyway, I'm all for the GST policy, but I wonder if the ACCC (or whoever has the power) would also be interested in cracking down on eBay's policy against surcharges for credit card payments. Merchant service providers used to force businesses to agree not to pass on the real cost of credit cards to their customers in the form of a surcharge, but this was disallowed in Australia a few years ago. It seems eBay is an exception to this rule and can force all sellers to hide the fact that some forms of payment (e.g. PayPal) cost more to accept. This suits eBay as they try to steer everyone toward PayPal, but prevents sellers and buyers from properly factoring in the cost-efficiency of different payment methods when choosing which one to use for their transaction.
Unfortunately, it seemed the question was mostly rhetorical, as The Tech Report prompted their users to "discuss" the issue subjectively rather than getting some multitasking benchmarks going to back up the anecdote.
It seems to me that a lot of frustration could be avoided if the developer of the most popular consumer OS took the issue of backups a bit more seriously.
As things are, the first time Jane Average is introduced to the concept of backups comes after she's lost something important. Oh, in some cases, a techie friend may have mentioned in passing the importance of backing up, or she may have seen some box labelled "Ultra Backup" in a store. But for most people, if they get any message at all telling them they should do backups, it will be very little. I think Jane could be forgiven for thinking that anything they punch into a computer will always be there and of backups as some sort of optional extra you can buy.
What is needed is for the idea of backing up to become a core part of the OS in a way that tells users regular backups are a normal and necessary aspect of computing, and reinforces the message. At the moment, a stock machine will nag a user about petty things like removing unused icons from their desktop, but never ever tell them that they ought to do a backup. If only more programs like Wordpad did auto-saves (transparently and as a default option, of course), if only Windows XP had a rudimentary backup program and reminded users every so often that it's time to back up their files to some form of removable media (similar to the way it now reminds people to check their virus definitions are up-to-date), there would be far less lost data and far fewer irate calls to tech support.
Certainly there are BOFH-types out there who derive pleasure from lusers losing hours of work, and "tough love" types who would view Jane's loss of precious wedding or baby photos to a HD disaster as a result of her own ignorance. If a user ignores the message and prefers to learn the hard way, fair enough. But as stewards of the industry who are well aware of the importance of backups, and well aware of users' default ignorance of the issue, what do OS developers do to send the message that backups are important? At the moment, not even the bare minimum.
"The U.N. is a place where governments opposed to free speech demand to be heard!"
Which is true, but it's only part of the story not a very enlightening one, as democracies demand the right to ignore that free speech and veto the decisions of the majority. When that isn't sufficient, they threaten to ignore the organisation altogether and revert to power politics, so it usually falls into line to stay relevant. The result? The US has by far the most control over the UN, and while despotic countries can have all the free speech they want in the General Assembly, they've no power.
Some also paint the UN as an organisation where the democratic, free US is told what to do by despotic, repressive Libyas and Syrias. It's a false picture, both for the reason given above, and for this reason: the UN is also made up of Finland, Spain, India, Japan, South Africa, Brazil and numerous other democracies. When the US votes in virtual isolation on an issue, as it has done far more times than any other country in both the General Assembly and Security Council, it's voting against all those other democracies. And the way the US votes, isolated or otherwise, basically decides the issue.