I never said that I can't understand Lisp, only that my code tended to be undreadable (at first glance) after a while when using pico to do my text editing, when working on a large program (the 80 char wrap on the terminal I was working on did not help.) Everything was UNIX command line in the classes I took, which made the edit, load, run, and debug process rather tedious - at least to someone who was used to coding in a GUI ide.
I'm quite proud of the fact that I learned Lisp, and that I learned it the RIGHT way (ie, using recursion). Lisp is quite elegant, but it takes some thinking to code simply - a good form of mental training, no matter what language you code in.
LISP?!? Someone please tell me that there's a full-featured IDE for LISP. I remember by bad-old days as an undergrad, stiching together CARs and CDRS in a rat's nest of parentheses, trying to figure out which left paren matched the right paren that was causing an error message...
Say a bank robber runs into a bank, waving a gun around. If nobody in the bank is armed, then the tellers can give him the money, he'll have no reason to shoot anybody, and that's the end of that. The police will probably be able to track him down later, but even if they don't, at least nobody died.
Interesting. So as long as nobody is hurt, you would be willing to be a victim in a crime?
But humans are fallible, and guns are just too potentially destructive to be put in the hands of such fallible people, even if the conservatives are right and they are "good" people.
I hate to point this out to you, but if humans are fallible, and guns are too potentially destructive to be entrusted to them, then you are proposing the universal disarmament of every human being? What happens then when 6ft thugs dress up in leather jackets and motorcycle helmets, and start beating the crap out of people with baseball bats and butcher knives? Do you pay them protection money, or hire your own group of thugs to protect you? It seems to me that this is a development that has happened many times before in history, where nomadic raiders eventually become a ruling class, because they were able to take control via force, and the peasants were unable, or unwilling to stop them.
To move your argument a step in a different direction, what is your take on the following sets of statements:
But humans are fallible, and cars are just too potentially destructive to be put in the hands of such fallible people, even if the conservatives are right and they are "good" people.
But humans are fallible, and scientific knowledge is just too potentially destructive to be put in the hands of such fallible people, even if the conservatives are right and they are "good" people./I?
I have to say, Webscriptions is a really good deal. You get a month's worth of releases for $15, and you can get most of the books months before that particular set of books is released. So, for example, if you were dying to get your Rats, Vats, and the Ugly fix, after getting hooked by reading the sample chapters that they have online, you could read the rest of the book, RIGHT NOW.
Baen operates on the "rats pushing levers to get crack" model of publishing - they give away free product because once you get addicted, you'll gladly pay to buy dead-tree and e-book versions of new stuff. Not everybody can do this, but Baen has been getting it right so far...
The big problem with time travel on Star Trek is that it's used as a convenient reset button - get the crew into an impossible situation, blow everything up, kill everyone off, and push the reset button at the end of the episode to restore the timeline. Other than being really annoying, it contributes nothing to the storyline (the alternate future/past/present doesn't exist anymore) and usually nobody realizes this, or only one person does, but they never make anything of it. As a consequence, it does nothing to develop character either, which is one of the critical components of sustaining a series.
This is why, aside from them giving the Doctor a holo-emitter, and changing Janeway's hairstyle, you can pretty much watch any episode of Voyager, and everybody is exactly the same - no development. At least DS9 had an ongoing storyline...
Lots of people are in love with biometrics because everybody has a fingerprint or a retina (usually), they're unique (usually), and you can't copy somebody's fingerprint or retina (unless you chop off their fingers, scoop their eyeballs out of the sockets, or bypass the biometric security protocols by duplicating fingerprints extracted from physical traces, reconstructing key features, or re-feeding recorded information into the system.)
But what happens when your fingerprints, or retina change? For example, with age? Or due to disease, or accident? If you wanted to totally screw someone over, who was using their palmprint to secure some vital data, you could disfigure the hand, or burn it. Same with the retina - selective laser surgery could wipe out enough landmarks to invalidate your retinal pattern.
Don't forget to put in discount factors for future costs of electricity, growing demands on the local grid from other development, and utility of having an independent power source in the event of generation plant or transmission line failure.
The entire 'act' was a joke in the first place. Purely a political maneuver to gain votes ( remember an election race was over the horizon )
I'm surprised nobody (well, nobody that I've heard of, so far) has used this as a campaign issue - "vote against incumbent X, because he/she wasted taxpayer money voting for a stupid law that made it possible to LEGALLY fill your mailboxes with spam!"
If you really need to have one huge ballot for everything at once, what prevents using white circles instead of punch holes next to names?
Nothing but logistics. Last year, Los Angeles switched from punch cards to scan-tron sheets, with little circles that you marked with a blotter-stamp, identical in form and function to the old push-pin that we used to punch out the chads in the cards. Everything else, from the tables, to the gizmo that held the card and registered the voting sheets to the card, stayed the same.
If we could do it, anybody else could, with the caveat that you're really just substituing one machine-readable card for another (the sheets with the names and hole guides stays in the booth, you bring the card, which just has numbers and spots for marking each slot in, vote, and take the card out and turn it in.)
Mind you, I'm talking about trial lawyers here. I have nothing against contract attorneys, since the whole reason they exist is to KEEP disputes that could lead to trials from occuring.
This only works as long as there are people to sue (it's kind of like the idea that welfare/subsidies only work so long as there are wage-earners who you can tax). At some point in the future, people will stop working in industries that are lawsuit-prone, because you can't make a living at it (ie, medicine), and then the lawyers will have to find a new target. Eventually, either there will be tort reform, or else productive members of society will emigrate to some place where there aren't hordes of bloodsucking lawyers convincing plaintiffs that "You TOO can get rich off the blood of others, without lifting a finger!"
Re:Penguin has been ignoring the issue since 2000
on
The Saga of Katie.com
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· Score: 2, Informative
Penguin has been ignoring the issue since 2000
on
The Saga of Katie.com
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· Score: 5, Insightful
What's really been disgusting is that Penguin has refused to acknowledge Katie Jones since 2000, when the book was first published, and the massive traffic began swamping Katie.com. They created a massive slashdot effect on purpose, against someone who had no connection with the book, and now have clearly decided to complete what they started, and take over the domain for themselves. Pretty ugly preceedent if they succeed - misappropriate someone's trademark, slashdot somebody for a few years, then file suit to take over the domain.
Big corporation with millions of dollars, against a small businesswoman with limited resources. I say a legal defense fund is in order here, if it ever goes to trial (and of course, WHERE would it go to trial - the US, or the UK?)
The way to avoid service is to come up with a reason for them not to want you.
All this to avoid 6 months of mandatory military service? I can understand if you're a conscientious objector, or if you stand a good chance of being assigned to demining mine fields by hand, but what are they going to do to you in 6 months, aside from spending a chunk of it putting you through basic?
Never said they didn't. Just saying that we've had "finance reform" and the same money is still pouring into races - it's just bypassing going to the party and candidate, and going straight onto the street and into the media.
How about we pass a law that says only U.S. citizens can contribute or financially support a candidate? No PAC funding. No "soft" party funding. No corporate funding. No foriegn funding. If any of those want to help a candidate financially, they have to get out and get citizens to open their wallets for their chosen cattle-herder.
And how does this help? The PACs, corporations, and foreign interest will just run "issue ads", and fund "action groups" with no ties (direct or indirect) to the campaign in question. It's what they're doing now on behalf of the Democrats, in order to get around the McCain-Feingold campaign reform law, because they don't have the same kind of direct-donor money machine the Republicans do.
Face it. The problem isn't the money machines that the major parties use. It's US. We should be able to distinguish fact from fiction, do our own research, and discount the MTV/PepsiSmash-ized media circus that passes for news and commentary today. There should be unbiased sources for news, accurate and in-depth debate, clear discussions of party planks with the general public, and a reasoned and insightful choice come voting day.
Instead, we have lies delivered as truth. Emotion and hyperbole delivered as matter-of-fact. Sound bites and media campaigns designed to influence public opinion. Bread and circuses to corral votes and keep incumbents in power. AND WE (as in the American people) ACCEPT IT.
Do you honestly think that we can restrict their money, and keep them to the spirit of the law, when we can't even keep them in check now? We need to take the foxes out of the henhouse before we staple the wire netting in place. Otherwise, we're just ensconing the foxes right where they want to be.
Personally, I think two things would help to change the political landscape in this country, money or no:
1. Move election day to the first Tuesday after Tax Day. Let's see the politicians try and raise their salaries for themselves and justify it when people see how much money the government is taking.
2. Regularize redistricting, and get rid of the winner-take all system. Right now, gerrymandering continues across the country with the consent of both parties, in an effort to create districts that are bulletproof for the incumbent party. We should regularize districts on a grid basis by population, and combine the elections for multiple districts in order to prevent the 50%+1 system from ensuring that only major party candidates can secure representation.
Number one isn't going to happen, not with the current politicos in power. Number two might happen on a local basis, assuming you have a voter initiative system in place, and someone with enough guts and money to ram it through. But you're going to need to break the legislative stranglehold on things - one reason why I like governor Schwartzenegger's proposed plan to cut the California legislature to part-time status.
In the meantime, what can WE (as in the Slashdot crowd) do? Well, first thing is to get that GeekPAC running (geekpac.org, supposedly - and it's down, for who knows how long.) The second is to break up the media empires that politicians cater to for positive spin and information control. The third is to encourage competition on all fronts, in order to churn up the layers of sediment, and get proper representation going. Lastly, is to educate the populace (not an easy task) and get them to treat the vote with more respect than they treat the rest of government.
There are four boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order.
The analogy I like to use is that prions are the protein version of "The Living Dead". One zombie protein will convert any healthy proteins it comes into contact with, those newly created zombie proteins will convert other ones, etc., until there aren't any healthy proteins left. It doesn't hurt that the analogy involves brains...
I realize this may be anathema most folks, but you can get used, or refurb phones that are basic, cheap, and durable. I bought a $20 Nokia 5100 series phone, basic black and white screen, quite a bit bulkier than most current phones, but my phone is a tool (emergency use), not a status symbol. Batteries are cheap (closeouts on 900mah batts are $9 per), accessories are easy to come by, and if I break it, I can always buy another one for $20.
Oh, and I'm not on any damn service plan either - prepaid all the way.
In the old days, drives would occasionally "stick" as they grew older. The commonly accepted practice was to "tap" the drive, to force the head to pop off the platter, and allow the drive to spin up to speed. One day, my 1gb Micropolis SCSI drive, which had served me loyally for years, refused to spin up. The lights were on, I could hear the motor laboring get the platter started, but no motion. So I hit it. It wouldn't budge. I hit it again. Then again. No dice. Figuring I had nothing to lose, and needing to get the data off, I got a 2x4 and started bashing the hell out of the drive in hopes that the platter would get unstuck (I had taken the cover off an external case.)
Finally, I came to my senses, and decided to plug it into a different case. It spun up, albeit rather noisily. Apparently, the problem wasn't the drive, but the power supply in the external case - there may have been stiction, but it wouldn't have been a problem had the other power supply been able to supply enough amps... The exterior of the drive was intact, but the drive itself was suffering hardware errors (after the beating I gave it, I'm surprised it was working at all.) I managed to get all of the data off of it, and sadly, retired the poor thing. A victim of misidentification and utter stupidity I'm afraid...
Nowadays, if a old drive starts acting up (ie, incomplete spinup, or stiction), the first thing I suspect is the power supply. Live and learn.
Then of course, there was my computer, which was shipped UPS and ended up looking like a trapezoid...
There are two methods that I know of. The first is to measure the sound volume - breaks for advertising often will have a pause in audio, then the actual advertising audio level will usually be higher than the programming audio. There was actually such a project (muting audio from commercials automatically) featured in an electronics magazine a number of years back - try looking up back issues of Popular Electronics.
The second way is to measure the video signal in much the same way as you would audio. There used to be a blanking interval as the advertisments were cut into the program feed. ReplayTV relies on this, along with the MPEG scene-detection algorithms to determine when a scene starts and stops, and whether that scene is likely to be an advertisement.
Of course, TV stations are wise to this these days. ReplayTV units often have problems detecting commercials because of the stupid station ID logo burned into the screen - this prevents the screen from going totally black, which usually signals a commercial (not always - I've had my ReplayTV mistakenly cut out a chunk of the program because there was a lightning effect). Also, TV stations have begun putting in sidebars and strips at the top and bottom for advertising and junk messages, which also spoils the commercial detection algorithm, and cross-dissolve to commercials, which eliminates a pause in either the video or audio.
Checking the sound level seems to be the best bet, and if you can couple that with scene detection, and some sort of intelligent algorithm that figures out that the next 5 scenes are a collection of 30 sec and 1 min spots, and are likely to be commercials, that, I think is the way to go. Of course, if you want to do that, you'd probably have to buffer the programming, which then precludes you from channel surfing.
Ok, here's my sample text for a Google adwords text ad, targeting "Barbara Boxer" and "Orrin Hatch" as keywords, restricting the geographical distribution to California and Utah, as a test case. (I checked out the rates for iPod and VCR as keywords, and was shocked to see it would take $20-$60 a day to land those words - they're expensive!)
Congress to Ban iPods! Keep Your iPods and VCRs Legal Tell Your Senator to Stop INDUCE
stopbadlaws.org
stopbadlaws.org doesn't exist, but the idea would be for someone to set up the site, put up a paypal link to fund more ads, and maybe include a short essay on why INDUCE is bad, with links to relevant sources (Wired, CNET, EFF), and a link for the viewer to find out who their Senator/Congresscritter is.
Slashdotters have been talking about assembling a GEEKPAC for years (ever since the DMCA passed.) Late 2002 somebody actually organized one (geekpac.org), but I haven't seen anything come out of it. In fact, I can't even get to the website.
Best bet is to get a bunch of like minded individuals together (maybe via a Slashdot Journal), pool your funds, and start hitting them wherever you can. Maybe something as simple as a website with a donation counter to let people buy more ad impressions, an overall description of the plan so people can go out and set up their own sites and execute their own ad campaigns. EFF has a page on the Induce act, but it's rather low-key.
Big problem with the Dana (I have one) is that the default package doesn't include a screen cover or a case - those come extra, and you'll WANT a case to keep the dust out. However, on the plus side, the keyboard is good, the screen is very legible (think 1st generation b&w screens, like the Pilot 5000), it has TWO SD slots, USB ports (limited use though), IR, and the newest models have built-in wifi.
Oh, and for something that looks like a variant of 1996 technology, be prepared to pay upwards of $300 for one. There's no included backup application (like my Clie has), meaning you have to manually copy files to your memory cards, or get a 3rd party backup application (HotSyncing requires a computer, a problem when you're on the road...) Makes a dandy word processor though (the included word processing program is quite decent), I only have to plug it into the charger once every couple of days, even when using it for hours. And it is tough - reminds me of the eMate, only smaller and thinner...
One of the CD they got was even smashed. I'm sure that the record companies where able to claim the full value of the CD as being donated, hell they are probably even going to get to write it off!
Of course they're going to write it off. According to US Tax code, if you have to pay out a judgement, that counts as a loss against profits, and IT IS PERFECTLY LEGAL TO WRITE THE ENTIRE THING OFF. In other words, if they win the lawsuit, they win. If they lose the lawsuit, they still win, money-wise, by getting a chance to write off garbage that was taking up valuable warehouse space, further reducing apparent profits, and thus cutting the amount of taxes they have to pay for the fiscal year.
What they should have done was to force the music industry to grant a certain number of yearly "credits" that could be used, either to purchase new CDs from current stock, or used to duplicate old stock (ie, via CD burners) so that libraries and schools could legally purchase and copy a "master" CD, instead of having to buy new recordings when the old ones wear out.
I'm curious as to how long you think Tivo has in your scenario. Years? Months?
Years, hopefully - I own some of their stock:). However, Tivo needs to do HD to stay in the game long term, with the ongoing changeover to HiDef television. The media companies have been busy trying to lock Tivo out of the game, and to try and revoke some of their current capabilities. I think Tivo will continue to be around in some form, but not in the convenient, user-friendly form it is today. I say, 2-3 years worst case scenario.
is there some sort of OSS equivalent to the downloadable program guide
Yes. There are OSS "scrapers" that mine data off of TV-Guide type websites (like TV Guide, Titan TV, etc.), put it into a database (usually built on mySQL), and then feed it to your PVR software. You can also buy packaged solutions from companies like Hauppage, if you have a Windows box, which include PVR software, or from companies like El Gato, if you have a Mac OS X machine.
Disclaimer, I own Tivo stock, but I don't have a Tivo machine - I use ReplayTV instead.
Slashdot Mirror
I never said that I can't understand Lisp, only that my code tended to be undreadable (at first glance) after a while when using pico to do my text editing, when working on a large program (the 80 char wrap on the terminal I was working on did not help.) Everything was UNIX command line in the classes I took, which made the edit, load, run, and debug process rather tedious - at least to someone who was used to coding in a GUI ide.
I'm quite proud of the fact that I learned Lisp, and that I learned it the RIGHT way (ie, using recursion). Lisp is quite elegant, but it takes some thinking to code simply - a good form of mental training, no matter what language you code in.
LISP?!? Someone please tell me that there's a full-featured IDE for LISP. I remember by bad-old days as an undergrad, stiching together CARs and CDRS in a rat's nest of parentheses, trying to figure out which left paren matched the right paren that was causing an error message...
Say a bank robber runs into a bank, waving a gun around. If nobody in the bank is armed, then the tellers can give him the money, he'll have no reason to shoot anybody, and that's the end of that. The police will probably be able to track him down later, but even if they don't, at least nobody died.
Interesting. So as long as nobody is hurt, you would be willing to be a victim in a crime?
But humans are fallible, and guns are just too potentially destructive to be put in the hands of such fallible people, even if the conservatives are right and they are "good" people.
I hate to point this out to you, but if humans are fallible, and guns are too potentially destructive to be entrusted to them, then you are proposing the universal disarmament of every human being? What happens then when 6ft thugs dress up in leather jackets and motorcycle helmets, and start beating the crap out of people with baseball bats and butcher knives? Do you pay them protection money, or hire your own group of thugs to protect you? It seems to me that this is a development that has happened many times before in history, where nomadic raiders eventually become a ruling class, because they were able to take control via force, and the peasants were unable, or unwilling to stop them.
To move your argument a step in a different direction, what is your take on the following sets of statements:
But humans are fallible, and cars are just too potentially destructive to be put in the hands of such fallible people, even if the conservatives are right and they are "good" people.
But humans are fallible, and scientific knowledge is just too potentially destructive to be put in the hands of such fallible people, even if the conservatives are right and they are "good" people./I?
I have to say, Webscriptions is a really good deal. You get a month's worth of releases for $15, and you can get most of the books months before that particular set of books is released. So, for example, if you were dying to get your Rats, Vats, and the Ugly fix, after getting hooked by reading the sample chapters that they have online, you could read the rest of the book, RIGHT NOW.
Baen operates on the "rats pushing levers to get crack" model of publishing - they give away free product because once you get addicted, you'll gladly pay to buy dead-tree and e-book versions of new stuff. Not everybody can do this, but Baen has been getting it right so far...
The big problem with time travel on Star Trek is that it's used as a convenient reset button - get the crew into an impossible situation, blow everything up, kill everyone off, and push the reset button at the end of the episode to restore the timeline. Other than being really annoying, it contributes nothing to the storyline (the alternate future/past/present doesn't exist anymore) and usually nobody realizes this, or only one person does, but they never make anything of it. As a consequence, it does nothing to develop character either, which is one of the critical components of sustaining a series.
This is why, aside from them giving the Doctor a holo-emitter, and changing Janeway's hairstyle, you can pretty much watch any episode of Voyager, and everybody is exactly the same - no development. At least DS9 had an ongoing storyline...
Lots of people are in love with biometrics because everybody has a fingerprint or a retina (usually), they're unique (usually), and you can't copy somebody's fingerprint or retina (unless you chop off their fingers, scoop their eyeballs out of the sockets, or bypass the biometric security protocols by duplicating fingerprints extracted from physical traces, reconstructing key features, or re-feeding recorded information into the system.)
But what happens when your fingerprints, or retina change? For example, with age? Or due to disease, or accident? If you wanted to totally screw someone over, who was using their palmprint to secure some vital data, you could disfigure the hand, or burn it. Same with the retina - selective laser surgery could wipe out enough landmarks to invalidate your retinal pattern.
Don't forget to put in discount factors for future costs of electricity, growing demands on the local grid from other development, and utility of having an independent power source in the event of generation plant or transmission line failure.
The entire 'act' was a joke in the first place. Purely a political maneuver to gain votes ( remember an election race was over the horizon )
I'm surprised nobody (well, nobody that I've heard of, so far) has used this as a campaign issue - "vote against incumbent X, because he/she wasted taxpayer money voting for a stupid law that made it possible to LEGALLY fill your mailboxes with spam!"
If you really need to have one huge ballot for everything at once, what prevents using white circles instead of punch holes next to names?
Nothing but logistics. Last year, Los Angeles switched from punch cards to scan-tron sheets, with little circles that you marked with a blotter-stamp, identical in form and function to the old push-pin that we used to punch out the chads in the cards. Everything else, from the tables, to the gizmo that held the card and registered the voting sheets to the card, stayed the same.
If we could do it, anybody else could, with the caveat that you're really just substituing one machine-readable card for another (the sheets with the names and hole guides stays in the booth, you bring the card, which just has numbers and spots for marking each slot in, vote, and take the card out and turn it in.)
Mind you, I'm talking about trial lawyers here. I have nothing against contract attorneys, since the whole reason they exist is to KEEP disputes that could lead to trials from occuring.
This only works as long as there are people to sue (it's kind of like the idea that welfare/subsidies only work so long as there are wage-earners who you can tax). At some point in the future, people will stop working in industries that are lawsuit-prone, because you can't make a living at it (ie, medicine), and then the lawyers will have to find a new target. Eventually, either there will be tort reform, or else productive members of society will emigrate to some place where there aren't hordes of bloodsucking lawyers convincing plaintiffs that "You TOO can get rich off the blood of others, without lifting a finger!"
Whoops, forgot to close the quote on the URL: refused to acknowledge Katie Jones since 2000
What's really been disgusting is that Penguin has refused to acknowledge Katie Jones since 2000, when the book was first published, and the massive traffic began swamping Katie.com. They created a massive slashdot effect on purpose, against someone who had no connection with the book, and now have clearly decided to complete what they started, and take over the domain for themselves. Pretty ugly preceedent if they succeed - misappropriate someone's trademark, slashdot somebody for a few years, then file suit to take over the domain.
Big corporation with millions of dollars, against a small businesswoman with limited resources. I say a legal defense fund is in order here, if it ever goes to trial (and of course, WHERE would it go to trial - the US, or the UK?)
The way to avoid service is to come up with a reason for them not to want you.
All this to avoid 6 months of mandatory military service? I can understand if you're a conscientious objector, or if you stand a good chance of being assigned to demining mine fields by hand, but what are they going to do to you in 6 months, aside from spending a chunk of it putting you through basic?
Never said they didn't. Just saying that we've had "finance reform" and the same money is still pouring into races - it's just bypassing going to the party and candidate, and going straight onto the street and into the media.
How about we pass a law that says only U.S. citizens can contribute or financially support a candidate? No PAC funding. No "soft" party funding. No corporate funding. No foriegn funding. If any of those want to help a candidate financially, they have to get out and get citizens to open their wallets for their chosen cattle-herder.
And how does this help? The PACs, corporations, and foreign interest will just run "issue ads", and fund "action groups" with no ties (direct or indirect) to the campaign in question. It's what they're doing now on behalf of the Democrats, in order to get around the McCain-Feingold campaign reform law, because they don't have the same kind of direct-donor money machine the Republicans do.
Face it. The problem isn't the money machines that the major parties use. It's US. We should be able to distinguish fact from fiction, do our own research, and discount the MTV/PepsiSmash-ized media circus that passes for news and commentary today. There should be unbiased sources for news, accurate and in-depth debate, clear discussions of party planks with the general public, and a reasoned and insightful choice come voting day.
Instead, we have lies delivered as truth. Emotion and hyperbole delivered as matter-of-fact. Sound bites and media campaigns designed to influence public opinion. Bread and circuses to corral votes and keep incumbents in power. AND WE (as in the American people) ACCEPT IT.
Do you honestly think that we can restrict their money, and keep them to the spirit of the law, when we can't even keep them in check now? We need to take the foxes out of the henhouse before we staple the wire netting in place. Otherwise, we're just ensconing the foxes right where they want to be.
Personally, I think two things would help to change the political landscape in this country, money or no:
1. Move election day to the first Tuesday after Tax Day. Let's see the politicians try and raise their salaries for themselves and justify it when people see how much money the government is taking.
2. Regularize redistricting, and get rid of the winner-take all system. Right now, gerrymandering continues across the country with the consent of both parties, in an effort to create districts that are bulletproof for the incumbent party. We should regularize districts on a grid basis by population, and combine the elections for multiple districts in order to prevent the 50%+1 system from ensuring that only major party candidates can secure representation.
Number one isn't going to happen, not with the current politicos in power. Number two might happen on a local basis, assuming you have a voter initiative system in place, and someone with enough guts and money to ram it through. But you're going to need to break the legislative stranglehold on things - one reason why I like governor Schwartzenegger's proposed plan to cut the California legislature to part-time status.
In the meantime, what can WE (as in the Slashdot crowd) do? Well, first thing is to get that GeekPAC running (geekpac.org, supposedly - and it's down, for who knows how long.) The second is to break up the media empires that politicians cater to for positive spin and information control. The third is to encourage competition on all fronts, in order to churn up the layers of sediment, and get proper representation going. Lastly, is to educate the populace (not an easy task) and get them to treat the vote with more respect than they treat the rest of government.
There are four boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order.
The analogy I like to use is that prions are the protein version of "The Living Dead". One zombie protein will convert any healthy proteins it comes into contact with, those newly created zombie proteins will convert other ones, etc., until there aren't any healthy proteins left. It doesn't hurt that the analogy involves brains...
I realize this may be anathema most folks, but you can get used, or refurb phones that are basic, cheap, and durable. I bought a $20 Nokia 5100 series phone, basic black and white screen, quite a bit bulkier than most current phones, but my phone is a tool (emergency use), not a status symbol. Batteries are cheap (closeouts on 900mah batts are $9 per), accessories are easy to come by, and if I break it, I can always buy another one for $20.
Oh, and I'm not on any damn service plan either - prepaid all the way.
In the old days, drives would occasionally "stick" as they grew older. The commonly accepted practice was to "tap" the drive, to force the head to pop off the platter, and allow the drive to spin up to speed. One day, my 1gb Micropolis SCSI drive, which had served me loyally for years, refused to spin up. The lights were on, I could hear the motor laboring get the platter started, but no motion. So I hit it. It wouldn't budge. I hit it again. Then again. No dice. Figuring I had nothing to lose, and needing to get the data off, I got a 2x4 and started bashing the hell out of the drive in hopes that the platter would get unstuck (I had taken the cover off an external case.)
Finally, I came to my senses, and decided to plug it into a different case. It spun up, albeit rather noisily. Apparently, the problem wasn't the drive, but the power supply in the external case - there may have been stiction, but it wouldn't have been a problem had the other power supply been able to supply enough amps... The exterior of the drive was intact, but the drive itself was suffering hardware errors (after the beating I gave it, I'm surprised it was working at all.) I managed to get all of the data off of it, and sadly, retired the poor thing. A victim of misidentification and utter stupidity I'm afraid...
Nowadays, if a old drive starts acting up (ie, incomplete spinup, or stiction), the first thing I suspect is the power supply. Live and learn.
Then of course, there was my computer, which was shipped UPS and ended up looking like a trapezoid...
One question though: how does it detect adverts?
There are two methods that I know of. The first is to measure the sound volume - breaks for advertising often will have a pause in audio, then the actual advertising audio level will usually be higher than the programming audio. There was actually such a project (muting audio from commercials automatically) featured in an electronics magazine a number of years back - try looking up back issues of Popular Electronics.
The second way is to measure the video signal in much the same way as you would audio. There used to be a blanking interval as the advertisments were cut into the program feed. ReplayTV relies on this, along with the MPEG scene-detection algorithms to determine when a scene starts and stops, and whether that scene is likely to be an advertisement.
Of course, TV stations are wise to this these days. ReplayTV units often have problems detecting commercials because of the stupid station ID logo burned into the screen - this prevents the screen from going totally black, which usually signals a commercial (not always - I've had my ReplayTV mistakenly cut out a chunk of the program because there was a lightning effect). Also, TV stations have begun putting in sidebars and strips at the top and bottom for advertising and junk messages, which also spoils the commercial detection algorithm, and cross-dissolve to commercials, which eliminates a pause in either the video or audio.
Checking the sound level seems to be the best bet, and if you can couple that with scene detection, and some sort of intelligent algorithm that figures out that the next 5 scenes are a collection of 30 sec and 1 min spots, and are likely to be commercials, that, I think is the way to go. Of course, if you want to do that, you'd probably have to buffer the programming, which then precludes you from channel surfing.
Ok, here's my sample text for a Google adwords text ad, targeting "Barbara Boxer" and "Orrin Hatch" as keywords, restricting the geographical distribution to California and Utah, as a test case. (I checked out the rates for iPod and VCR as keywords, and was shocked to see it would take $20-$60 a day to land those words - they're expensive!)
Congress to Ban iPods!
Keep Your iPods and VCRs Legal
Tell Your Senator to Stop INDUCE
stopbadlaws.org
stopbadlaws.org doesn't exist, but the idea would be for someone to set up the site, put up a paypal link to fund more ads, and maybe include a short essay on why INDUCE is bad, with links to relevant sources (Wired, CNET, EFF), and a link for the viewer to find out who their Senator/Congresscritter is.
Slashdotters have been talking about assembling a GEEKPAC for years (ever since the DMCA passed.) Late 2002 somebody actually organized one (geekpac.org), but I haven't seen anything come out of it. In fact, I can't even get to the website.
Best bet is to get a bunch of like minded individuals together (maybe via a Slashdot Journal), pool your funds, and start hitting them wherever you can. Maybe something as simple as a website with a donation counter to let people buy more ad impressions, an overall description of the plan so people can go out and set up their own sites and execute their own ad campaigns. EFF has a page on the Induce act, but it's rather low-key.
Big problem with the Dana (I have one) is that the default package doesn't include a screen cover or a case - those come extra, and you'll WANT a case to keep the dust out. However, on the plus side, the keyboard is good, the screen is very legible (think 1st generation b&w screens, like the Pilot 5000), it has TWO SD slots, USB ports (limited use though), IR, and the newest models have built-in wifi.
Oh, and for something that looks like a variant of 1996 technology, be prepared to pay upwards of $300 for one. There's no included backup application (like my Clie has), meaning you have to manually copy files to your memory cards, or get a 3rd party backup application (HotSyncing requires a computer, a problem when you're on the road...) Makes a dandy word processor though (the included word processing program is quite decent), I only have to plug it into the charger once every couple of days, even when using it for hours. And it is tough - reminds me of the eMate, only smaller and thinner...
One of the CD they got was even smashed. I'm sure that the record companies where able to claim the full value of the CD as being donated, hell they are probably even going to get to write it off!
Of course they're going to write it off. According to US Tax code, if you have to pay out a judgement, that counts as a loss against profits, and IT IS PERFECTLY LEGAL TO WRITE THE ENTIRE THING OFF. In other words, if they win the lawsuit, they win. If they lose the lawsuit, they still win, money-wise, by getting a chance to write off garbage that was taking up valuable warehouse space, further reducing apparent profits, and thus cutting the amount of taxes they have to pay for the fiscal year.
What they should have done was to force the music industry to grant a certain number of yearly "credits" that could be used, either to purchase new CDs from current stock, or used to duplicate old stock (ie, via CD burners) so that libraries and schools could legally purchase and copy a "master" CD, instead of having to buy new recordings when the old ones wear out.
I'm curious as to how long you think Tivo has in your scenario. Years? Months?
:). However, Tivo needs to do HD to stay in the game long term, with the ongoing changeover to HiDef television. The media companies have been busy trying to lock Tivo out of the game, and to try and revoke some of their current capabilities. I think Tivo will continue to be around in some form, but not in the convenient, user-friendly form it is today. I say, 2-3 years worst case scenario.
Years, hopefully - I own some of their stock
is there some sort of OSS equivalent to the downloadable program guide
Yes. There are OSS "scrapers" that mine data off of TV-Guide type websites (like TV Guide, Titan TV, etc.), put it into a database (usually built on mySQL), and then feed it to your PVR software. You can also buy packaged solutions from companies like Hauppage, if you have a Windows box, which include PVR software, or from companies like El Gato, if you have a Mac OS X machine.
Disclaimer, I own Tivo stock, but I don't have a Tivo machine - I use ReplayTV instead.