I believe the GP said "works well with version control". As in the same collaborative version control systems used for other documents (e.g. Subversion, Mercurial, Git, even Visual SourceSafe). The kind that support simultaneous, independent check-outs and automatic and/or guided merges. Word does have its own internal version control with basic change tracking, but it requires that all users modify the same copy of the document, and--so far as I know--does not permit simultaneous read-write access.
As plain text, a team working on TeX documents can take advantage of the full feature set of whatever VCS they prefer.
Who said anything about sudden changes? You could ramp the vibration up over a set period, and then back down again. Setting it to slowly cycle on and off at random intervals rather than a predictable pattern would also make it feel more natural, and cut down on the level of distraction.
The brain isn't exactly built to translate continuous vibration into a sense of direction, either. The low-power version of the belt may take longer to get used to, but I have no doubt the brain would adapt to it in the end, just as it adapts to utilize the unnatural input from the continuous variant.
I don't think the GP meant that the user would manually turn the belt on and off, but rather that you could get the same effect by running the motors/piezos in short bursts every couple of seconds. The lower duty cycle should considerably increase your battery life.
That's what the article was about, but the GGP was referring to Linux in general: "Linux's ship has sailed"; "Linux is a hobby systyem [sic]"; "The code is donated mostly by amateurs... and is therefore not within the normal disciplines of IT developemt [sic]". Classic troll behavior.
Most likely they just wanted to be certain of what they'd found before exposing it to intense, world-wide scrutiny. I don't blame them for waiting in the slightest; if they're wrong--for whatever reason--regarding a finding of this magnitude it will almost certainly mean a sudden and final end to any further scientific aspirations they may have entertained.
If one could count on others to view preliminary findings with a measure of rational skepticism, early publication would be the best policy. However, that is simply not the case. These findings will no doubt be highly controversial, and it would be horrendously bad PR for science in general (not to mention these scientists in particular) were their research to become public knowledge early on only to be overturned shortly afterward as some kind of mistake or hoax.
Luckily the vague concept of "simplicity" isn't part of the formal definition of Occam's Razor. The actual principle is that given two or more hypothesis, each consistent with all the known evidence, one should prefer the hypothesis which makes the fewest assumptions and posits the fewest entities. This has nothing to do with whether "simpler" explanations are more likely to be true; Occam's Razor has nothing at all to do with the concepts of truth and falsehood. Rather, it is merely the formalization of the common-sense principle that it is irrational to make assumptions or posit the existence of entities which are not required to explain the evidence.
Occam's Razor is often misapplied, but the GP is using it correctly. Given two viable hypotheses, one of which posits only the universe vs. another which posits both the universe and God, the former is the rational choice.
P.S. Simplicity can be defined objectively in terms of the minimum number of symbols required to express a concept in a given universal description language. See also Occam's Razor: Objective razor and Kolmogorov complexity.
They might be counting on some people buying the hardcopies just for the sake of having them in printed form. I don't understand it myself, but apparently not everyone is comfortable reading long articles or books on a computer screen.
If you only want to support the project you'd be far better off just donating to it, thus saving the cost (in money and resources) of printing up an unwanted book. On the other hand, if you actually want the printed book, the legal copies provided by the "bootleggers" offer a less expensive alternative.
What's to stop some ant-capitalistic [sic] individual from setting up a non-commercial organisation to distribute the texts cheaper than Bloomsbury...?
What about this do you consider "anti-capitalistic"? Actions need not be motivated by currency to be compatible with capitalism; rational self-interest includes such factors as goodwill and self-esteem in addition to the direct and indirect exchange of material goods and services.
This approach is suggested often, but has it ever been shown to work?
A model much more in line with historical evidence is that once strange new taxes are written into law, they almost never get repealed. If you really don't want yet more behavior-based taxes, the smart thing to do is oppose them from the start, not wait indefinitely for people to eventually get fed up--something that is highly unlikely to happen in your lifetime.
The GP is far from the only one thinking that such advertisements and "solicitation" should be permitted. After all, there are cases where it would be perfectly reasonable to take someone up on such an offer. Perhaps the target is a known murderer, for example, and you're acting on behalf of someone they killed. Or perhaps they've made credible threats against your life, and you want to hire someone to act as your proxy in self-defense should they happen to come after you.
In any event, until the deed is actually done what you propose to outlaw is nothing more than communication. In other words, pure speech. As such, the 1st Amendment should definitely apply.
Obviously true, but that adds no value over the $0.01 data-only copy when all you wanted was a copy of the data. I think that's the point; even if the DVD was sold at cost--around, say, $1.50--that would still be $1.49 too much for what the GP considers to be the exact same good, the physical packaging being nothing more than unwanted junk.
Either this is done with something like onion routing, or sites like rapidshare are used as the intermediaries.
These are completely different approaches. Both use "intermediaries", but nested encryption is inherent in onion routing (and similar protocols as used e.g. by I2P), and there is no need to trust those adjacent to you, since they never know who you're communicating with or what data you're transferring. A site like Rapidshare, on the other hand, can see the content being shared as well as the IP addresses of both the uploader and the downloaders, and is thus fully capable of betraying all those involved.
There is also an additional incentive to participate in some onion-routing networks beyond the benefits of "background noise": the more bandwidth you make available to others, the better your own transfer rates become. (At least that's how I2P works.) It's rather similar to the incentive for seeding in BitTorrent itself.
This is handled in Fedora with the use of the yum extension package-cleanup and using one of the "leaf-node" options.
Just out of curiosity, does it actually track which packages were automatically installed, like apt, or does it simply remove all the seemingly-unused dependencies, even the ones specifically requested by the user?
If the law removes your ability to consent to certain risks (such as the risks associated with using untested software), then you'll be able to sue for the losses you would incur as a result of using untested software.
True, but in that case you could never know just how much useful but "untested" software will never be produced due to the additional legal risks the law imposes on developers.
Personally, I'm of the opinion that the law should never prevent someone from waiving any of their rights should they happen make a reasonably informed choice to do so. You can't truly help people by outlawing what seem to you to be bad choices; you have to offer them a better way, and be willing to live with their decision should they choose not to do what you want. Anything less denies them the presumption of free will which is a fundamental right of all sentient beings.
First, the GP said "only a victim would pay what a capitalist says their work is worth", not what they think it's worth. The GP singled out "capitalists", whatever he or she meant by that--certainly not the formal definition, which is basically those who create, own, or utilize capital goods--but it really applies to negotiation with anyone. Even if you assume the other party is acting altruistically, which is never a safe thing to do, they can't possibly know what the product will be worth to you, relative to the available alternatives, which is what matters when deciding whether to make a purchase.
Second, it is frankly ridiculous to claim, as you have, that simply choosing not to purchase a product victimizes those who would attempt to sell it to you. There are two factors which fully determine whether a given trade will take place: the price below which it makes no sense for the seller to agree to the trade (because they would be taking a loss, or others are offering more for the same good), and the price above which the trade makes no sense for the buyer (because the cost would outweigh the benefit, or others are offering the same good for less). If the former is above the latter then no trade will occur, and buyer and seller go their separate ways no better or worse off than they were before. Otherwise, an effective price will be set somewhere between the seller's asking price and the buyer's offer, and both benefit from the exchange (ex ante). Either way there is no victim; no one loses.
The sibling comment by "bug1" isn't quite correct; a fair price can be reached in any case where two or more parties agree to trade voluntarily. Competition tends to drive prices down, but the price remains fair--not less than the seller's costs, or more than what the buyer believes the product to be worth--even in its absence. The problem with force-backed monopolies lies in the way they prevent voluntary trade from taking place. Those who rely on copyrights and patents for their income are not wrong for setting "unfair prices"; on the contrary, they are accomplices and beneficiaries of the government-sponsored aggression with which said monopolies are enforced, which is a far more serious charge.
The RF protocol for Wireless USB has already been decided, and it's definitely UWB. From the Wikipedia article on Wireless USB:
Wireless USB is based on the WiMedia Alliance's Ultra-WideBand (UWB) common radio platform, which is capable of sending 480 Mbit/s at distances up to 3 meters and 110 Mbit/s at up to 10 meters.
Also, from the official USB Implementer's Forum page on Wireless USB:
Wireless USB will support robust high-speed wireless connectivity by utilizing the common WiMedia MB-OFDM Ultra-wideband (UWB) radio platform as developed by the WiMedia Alliance.
One has to look around a bit to find them, but there are devices on the market right now which implement the UWB-based Wireless USB interface, e.g. the IOGear Wireless USB Hub and Adapter. It is highly unlikely that the USB-IF would switch to WiFi (or anything else) so late into the development process.
How can the expert generate md5 hashes of files he or she isn't allowed to examine? It seems to me that the only way to meet the requirement that non-music files not be examined would be to detect music files through something other than their contents: file extension, path, 'Recently Used' list in a media player, etc. Even then you could have false positives.
On the contrary, property rights are the only thing. If you don't have the right to your own property then you have no rights at all; without them you cannot provide for yourself in security, and are left entirely dependent on the dubious charity of others.
Microsoft already had a working plugin for ODF documents; the new behavior is a significant regression. They didn't fail to implement an incomplete standard; they discarded a working implementation in favor of something incompatible.
The standard doesn't list out the entire formula language, but it does incorporate the current behavior of OpenOffice.org by reference. The details are all there in the (open) source code; the only deficiency is that it lacks the style and formality of a published standard. That deficiency will be resolved in ODF 1.2.
Microsoft's ODF spreadsheets store all formulas in a private XML namespace. While such namespaces are permitted by the ODF standard for the sake of extensibility, MS is not encouraging interoperability by using their own proprietary language -- compatible with ODF, but completely separate from it -- to represent standard formulas.
When loading and re-saving existing ODF spreadsheets, Office '07 discards any standard formulas previously present in the document and writes out new ones in the private Office '07 formula namespace. Even if one argues that Office need not support the OO.o formula language, it should preserve all existing data, just as other ODF applications should preserve anything in MS's private namespaces.
You're right. Taxes almost never get "passed on" to customers directly. However, the effect is the same. The taxes makes the marginal producers unprofitable, which results in a decrease in supply. As everyone knows from basic economics, a decrease in supply with no change in demand causes prices to increase. Part of the tax is thus paid by the customers, either in higher prices or by going without, and the rest comes out of the company's profits (i.e. jobs, R&D, growth, capital investment), with various residual effects. The total loss to the company, the customers, and others who would have benefited in the absence of the tax is necessarily greater (a priori) than the value of the tax money in anyone else's hands.
The only real point of corporate taxes is to give the government the ability to punish companies that fall out of favor.
...I must point out that taxing companies can also be used for shaping or encouraging a specific type of behavior. E.g. 10% tax rate for all companies and then you get.5% off for being green or.5% off for R&D spending.
I'm fairly sure that's exactly what the GP was referring to; it's the same as having a base rate of 9.5% and taxing non-green or non-R&D companies 0.5% extra. You're just looking at it from the opposite side. Whether worded as a punishment or a reward, the cost of politically-influenced and discriminatory taxation is always greater than any possible benefit.
Slashdot Mirror
Word does have version control.
I believe the GP said "works well with version control". As in the same collaborative version control systems used for other documents (e.g. Subversion, Mercurial, Git, even Visual SourceSafe). The kind that support simultaneous, independent check-outs and automatic and/or guided merges. Word does have its own internal version control with basic change tracking, but it requires that all users modify the same copy of the document, and--so far as I know--does not permit simultaneous read-write access.
As plain text, a team working on TeX documents can take advantage of the full feature set of whatever VCS they prefer.
Who said anything about sudden changes? You could ramp the vibration up over a set period, and then back down again. Setting it to slowly cycle on and off at random intervals rather than a predictable pattern would also make it feel more natural, and cut down on the level of distraction.
The brain isn't exactly built to translate continuous vibration into a sense of direction, either. The low-power version of the belt may take longer to get used to, but I have no doubt the brain would adapt to it in the end, just as it adapts to utilize the unnatural input from the continuous variant.
I don't think the GP meant that the user would manually turn the belt on and off, but rather that you could get the same effect by running the motors/piezos in short bursts every couple of seconds. The lower duty cycle should considerably increase your battery life.
That's what the article was about, but the GGP was referring to Linux in general: "Linux's ship has sailed"; "Linux is a hobby systyem [sic]"; "The code is donated mostly by amateurs ... and is therefore not within the normal disciplines of IT developemt [sic]". Classic troll behavior.
Most likely they just wanted to be certain of what they'd found before exposing it to intense, world-wide scrutiny. I don't blame them for waiting in the slightest; if they're wrong--for whatever reason--regarding a finding of this magnitude it will almost certainly mean a sudden and final end to any further scientific aspirations they may have entertained.
If one could count on others to view preliminary findings with a measure of rational skepticism, early publication would be the best policy. However, that is simply not the case. These findings will no doubt be highly controversial, and it would be horrendously bad PR for science in general (not to mention these scientists in particular) were their research to become public knowledge early on only to be overturned shortly afterward as some kind of mistake or hoax.
Luckily the vague concept of "simplicity" isn't part of the formal definition of Occam's Razor. The actual principle is that given two or more hypothesis, each consistent with all the known evidence, one should prefer the hypothesis which makes the fewest assumptions and posits the fewest entities. This has nothing to do with whether "simpler" explanations are more likely to be true; Occam's Razor has nothing at all to do with the concepts of truth and falsehood. Rather, it is merely the formalization of the common-sense principle that it is irrational to make assumptions or posit the existence of entities which are not required to explain the evidence.
Occam's Razor is often misapplied, but the GP is using it correctly. Given two viable hypotheses, one of which posits only the universe vs. another which posits both the universe and God, the former is the rational choice.
P.S. Simplicity can be defined objectively in terms of the minimum number of symbols required to express a concept in a given universal description language. See also Occam's Razor: Objective razor and Kolmogorov complexity.
They might be counting on some people buying the hardcopies just for the sake of having them in printed form. I don't understand it myself, but apparently not everyone is comfortable reading long articles or books on a computer screen.
If you only want to support the project you'd be far better off just donating to it, thus saving the cost (in money and resources) of printing up an unwanted book. On the other hand, if you actually want the printed book, the legal copies provided by the "bootleggers" offer a less expensive alternative.
What's to stop some ant-capitalistic [sic] individual from setting up a non-commercial organisation to distribute the texts cheaper than Bloomsbury...?
What about this do you consider "anti-capitalistic"? Actions need not be motivated by currency to be compatible with capitalism; rational self-interest includes such factors as goodwill and self-esteem in addition to the direct and indirect exchange of material goods and services.
This approach is suggested often, but has it ever been shown to work?
A model much more in line with historical evidence is that once strange new taxes are written into law, they almost never get repealed. If you really don't want yet more behavior-based taxes, the smart thing to do is oppose them from the start, not wait indefinitely for people to eventually get fed up--something that is highly unlikely to happen in your lifetime.
fully libertarian ... regulated and taxed
Something about this doesn't seem quite right.
The GP is far from the only one thinking that such advertisements and "solicitation" should be permitted. After all, there are cases where it would be perfectly reasonable to take someone up on such an offer. Perhaps the target is a known murderer, for example, and you're acting on behalf of someone they killed. Or perhaps they've made credible threats against your life, and you want to hire someone to act as your proxy in self-defense should they happen to come after you.
In any event, until the deed is actually done what you propose to outlaw is nothing more than communication. In other words, pure speech. As such, the 1st Amendment should definitely apply.
It's only "false" if there are actually other possibilities. Feel free to name one.
When you buy a DVD, you physically have a DVD.
Obviously true, but that adds no value over the $0.01 data-only copy when all you wanted was a copy of the data. I think that's the point; even if the DVD was sold at cost--around, say, $1.50--that would still be $1.49 too much for what the GP considers to be the exact same good, the physical packaging being nothing more than unwanted junk.
Either this is done with something like onion routing, or sites like rapidshare are used as the intermediaries.
These are completely different approaches. Both use "intermediaries", but nested encryption is inherent in onion routing (and similar protocols as used e.g. by I2P), and there is no need to trust those adjacent to you, since they never know who you're communicating with or what data you're transferring. A site like Rapidshare, on the other hand, can see the content being shared as well as the IP addresses of both the uploader and the downloaders, and is thus fully capable of betraying all those involved.
There is also an additional incentive to participate in some onion-routing networks beyond the benefits of "background noise": the more bandwidth you make available to others, the better your own transfer rates become. (At least that's how I2P works.) It's rather similar to the incentive for seeding in BitTorrent itself.
This is handled in Fedora with the use of the yum extension package-cleanup and using one of the "leaf-node" options.
Just out of curiosity, does it actually track which packages were automatically installed, like apt, or does it simply remove all the seemingly-unused dependencies, even the ones specifically requested by the user?
If the law removes your ability to consent to certain risks (such as the risks associated with using untested software), then you'll be able to sue for the losses you would incur as a result of using untested software.
True, but in that case you could never know just how much useful but "untested" software will never be produced due to the additional legal risks the law imposes on developers.
Personally, I'm of the opinion that the law should never prevent someone from waiving any of their rights should they happen make a reasonably informed choice to do so. You can't truly help people by outlawing what seem to you to be bad choices; you have to offer them a better way, and be willing to live with their decision should they choose not to do what you want. Anything less denies them the presumption of free will which is a fundamental right of all sentient beings.
First, the GP said "only a victim would pay what a capitalist says their work is worth", not what they think it's worth. The GP singled out "capitalists", whatever he or she meant by that--certainly not the formal definition, which is basically those who create, own, or utilize capital goods--but it really applies to negotiation with anyone. Even if you assume the other party is acting altruistically, which is never a safe thing to do, they can't possibly know what the product will be worth to you, relative to the available alternatives, which is what matters when deciding whether to make a purchase.
Second, it is frankly ridiculous to claim, as you have, that simply choosing not to purchase a product victimizes those who would attempt to sell it to you. There are two factors which fully determine whether a given trade will take place: the price below which it makes no sense for the seller to agree to the trade (because they would be taking a loss, or others are offering more for the same good), and the price above which the trade makes no sense for the buyer (because the cost would outweigh the benefit, or others are offering the same good for less). If the former is above the latter then no trade will occur, and buyer and seller go their separate ways no better or worse off than they were before. Otherwise, an effective price will be set somewhere between the seller's asking price and the buyer's offer, and both benefit from the exchange (ex ante). Either way there is no victim; no one loses.
The sibling comment by "bug1" isn't quite correct; a fair price can be reached in any case where two or more parties agree to trade voluntarily. Competition tends to drive prices down, but the price remains fair--not less than the seller's costs, or more than what the buyer believes the product to be worth--even in its absence. The problem with force-backed monopolies lies in the way they prevent voluntary trade from taking place. Those who rely on copyrights and patents for their income are not wrong for setting "unfair prices"; on the contrary, they are accomplices and beneficiaries of the government-sponsored aggression with which said monopolies are enforced, which is a far more serious charge.
The RF protocol for Wireless USB has already been decided, and it's definitely UWB. From the Wikipedia article on Wireless USB:
Wireless USB is based on the WiMedia Alliance's Ultra-WideBand (UWB) common radio platform, which is capable of sending 480 Mbit/s at distances up to 3 meters and 110 Mbit/s at up to 10 meters.
Also, from the official USB Implementer's Forum page on Wireless USB:
Wireless USB will support robust high-speed wireless connectivity by utilizing the common WiMedia MB-OFDM Ultra-wideband (UWB) radio platform as developed by the WiMedia Alliance.
One has to look around a bit to find them, but there are devices on the market right now which implement the UWB-based Wireless USB interface, e.g. the IOGear Wireless USB Hub and Adapter. It is highly unlikely that the USB-IF would switch to WiFi (or anything else) so late into the development process.
What about Wireless USB, which will be coming to mass-market shortly? It's based on UWB. The UWB brand might be dead, but the technology isn't.
How can the expert generate md5 hashes of files he or she isn't allowed to examine? It seems to me that the only way to meet the requirement that non-music files not be examined would be to detect music files through something other than their contents: file extension, path, 'Recently Used' list in a media player, etc. Even then you could have false positives.
"The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men." ~Plato (427-347 BC)
What Plato forgot to mention is that the price good men pay for being involved in public affairs is to become evil men.
It seems to me being on the right side is more important than being on the winning side, though others may disagree.
On the contrary, property rights are the only thing. If you don't have the right to your own property then you have no rights at all; without them you cannot provide for yourself in security, and are left entirely dependent on the dubious charity of others.
A couple of issues with that reasoning:
You're right. Taxes almost never get "passed on" to customers directly. However, the effect is the same. The taxes makes the marginal producers unprofitable, which results in a decrease in supply. As everyone knows from basic economics, a decrease in supply with no change in demand causes prices to increase. Part of the tax is thus paid by the customers, either in higher prices or by going without, and the rest comes out of the company's profits (i.e. jobs, R&D, growth, capital investment), with various residual effects. The total loss to the company, the customers, and others who would have benefited in the absence of the tax is necessarily greater (a priori) than the value of the tax money in anyone else's hands.
The only real point of corporate taxes is to give the government the ability to punish companies that fall out of favor.
...I must point out that taxing companies can also be used for shaping or encouraging a specific type of behavior. E.g. 10% tax rate for all companies and then you get .5% off for being green or .5% off for R&D spending.
I'm fairly sure that's exactly what the GP was referring to; it's the same as having a base rate of 9.5% and taxing non-green or non-R&D companies 0.5% extra. You're just looking at it from the opposite side. Whether worded as a punishment or a reward, the cost of politically-influenced and discriminatory taxation is always greater than any possible benefit.