...but the judge is probably right that it should have come out of the FCC...
The problem with this assumption is that Congress created the FCC and the FTC. Congress defines the roles of these organizations. Congress picked the FTC to create the Do Not Call List. So I don't understand your assertion that the FCC should have done it. The Justice system has no Constitutional right to overrule the Congress on which agency should perform a function.
...claimed maybe 5000 lives in the past 30 years....
I would argue that the deaths in the last 30 years far exceed 5000, although the exact numbers depend on how you define terrorism. If you include the various separatist movements such as in Ireland, the Phillipines, and other countries you would easily exceed 5,000. Or look at some of the cross-border disputes, such as Pakistan-India, many of the deaths are due to so-called terrorist activities. Thousands have died there in the last few years.
I will admit that defining terrorism is a squishy subject, that politicians modify to their advantage, but saying only 5,000 have died in the last 30 years wildly underestimates the death toll.
is only 0.001 percent of the world population. If you consider that "suspected terrorist" includes groups besides al Qaeda, such as some of the separatist movements in various parts of the world, 78,000 is not very many people. To put it another way, there are 191 nations in the UN, so this gives 408 people per country on average. I could believe there are 408 people who could be "suspected terrorists" in the US without putting on my tinfoil hat -- just think of groups like ELF, various right-wing militias, etc.
I remember a Nova program on horoscopes that I saw years ago. The Amazing Randy had asked a class of college students for the birthdates, and wrote a horoscope for each them. He asked them, by a show of hands, whether the horoscopes were accurate. They overwhelmingly said yes. He then asked them to pass their horoscopes to the person behind them. That's when they found out that he had written only one horoscope for the entire class.
Horoscopes are based on simple concepts that are almost univeral. That if I ask you if you are having conflict with your mate, you will probably say yes. It may be because of a divorce, or it might be a disagreement over what movie to see this weekend.
Remember diamond semiconductors that were going to revolutionise processors, from around 1990?
As I understand it, the problem has been creating diamond wafers big enough, and cheap enough to create chips. Recent press reports (Wired) have discussed a couple of American firms that have made some breakthrus. So give it another 10 years...
There are a few things you need to understand about stupid American lawsuits...
It is a tiny minority of Americans that file stupid lawsuits.
Americans laugh at these idiots too.
Frequently, the media portrays the lawsuits as idiotic, but when you dig into the details and hear the other side it is not so idiotic. Case in point, the famous case of the old women suing McDonald's for the hot coffee spilled on her. Stupid lawsuit until you read the full story behind it. That McDonald's coffee was the hottest in the industry. That McDonald's coffee temperature was on the "knee of the curve" where a few degrees made the difference between a minor burn and a 3rd degree burn. The women received 3rd degree burns and had to go to a hospital. By pushing their coffee temperature to an extreme, well beyond industry practice, McDonald's created a hazard. The lawsuit is not so stupid in that context.
The case sited in this story does sound stupid, but I would like to hear the whole story before I judge.
Your assumption is wrong, that the American people ignored the actions of the CIA. Many people in the US objected to the CIA sponsored coups. The events in Chile along other CIA sponsored coups were the primary reason that the American people forced the government to put the CIA on a leash. So did the American people recognize that something wrong was being committed in their names? Yes. Did they act to stop it? Yes.
This was somewhat the idea behind Skylab. They used the upper stage as the space station. However, the upper stage was converted to a space station on the ground.
If I understand your friend, he proposes converting the upper stages in space. This would be difficult. You would need to rip out the machinery. Then if humans are to go inside, decontaminate them of any hazardous chemicals, left-over fuel, etc. Then install the equipment to turn it into something useful, which has to be brought up separately. Considering the difficulties of working in space, it is probably easier to do all of this on the ground.
From the articles that I have seen, I don't believe GPL will play any significant role in the case. The issues are whether IBM broke its contract with SCO by creating a "derivative work" and whether SCO source code was improperly copied into source code that IBM released. The fact that the source code is under GPL is only marginally important. The same issues would be raised if the source IBM released was under BSD, MIT or any other license. I seriously doubt whether the validity of the GPL license will even be raised.
I know some will say that the fact that SCO continues to provide Linux source code means that GPL is involved. But once again, that issue would be valid if the released source code were BSD, MIT,... license.
I think has a lot of years to go before it's actually important in any sense due to the slow growth of broadband
I would like to know your definition of important. Take blogging for example. Do a lot of people read and write blogs. Without a doubt. But are they truly important? Do they change public opinion? I don't know. The average blog that I have read, has a rather small group of people of maybe 10 to 20 people who regularly post. Is this impact?
I see a lot of talk about businesses collecting personal data, and how it will help them and possibly me. I want to know when this will happen. To give just one example, my family uses the "Frequent Buyer" card at the local supermarket. They have a complete list of every food item my family has ever bought. They know who we are and where we live. When am I going to see targeted advertisements and targeted coupons based on my historic purchases? Right now, I get the same junk mail from the supermarket that all of neighbors get. No customization. Right now, I'll believe when I see it.
and VividLogic is based in California. It appears that 25 percent of them are American companies. Although I agree with the other poster who noted most American companies have exited the field. It is area with low profit margins, that tends to rely on cheap labor in third world countries.
As part of that agreement, Bell Atlantic agreed to have 20% of the state broadband wired by 1998, and 50% by 2004
I would not be surprised to find out there is hanky-panky going on here. However, before I condemn Verizon, I have some questions -- primarily what were the other parts of the agreement alluded to in the article? Were there other requirements besides providing broadband support? Were those other requirements met? Did Verizon receive all the tax breaks negotiated, or just a portion because they didn't do everything?
I know this is slashdot, but before I condemn "the capitalist pigs and their puppets in the government," I would like to know the whole story.
No question the US government companies have backed such legislation. But there are many large European companies that also back this legislation. To blame the US and only the US is naive. Take for example one of the world's biggest media companies, Vivendi-Universal, its a French company. Or Murdoch and his media conglomerate, he's an Australian...
You are incorrect, Russia is not the largest. The US defense budget for 2004 is $390 billion. The total world expenditures in 2002 was $784 billion. So US defense spending is about half of all spending. For more info see this article.
The US frequently does this with other ships such as frigates and destroyers. However, very few countries want an aircraft carrier. And the few that do, do not operate carriers as large as ours. They are very expensive to operate. Never forget that the US military budget is larger than the rest of the world combined.
The Constellation is old for a Navy ship. It has been ridden hard, and needs a lot of work. But some of the things the Navy wants to do, can never been done on Connie, for example installing new, more capable radars. The underlying structure of the ship will not support such changes. Why would the Navy want to upgrade systems? Well when radars, electrical motors, computers etc. get too old you can't buy parts. At some point, it actually becomes cheaper to start all over again.Its a little like telling someone with an original IBM AT to install a new ATI Radeon graphics card. By the time they upgraded everything for the new graphics card, they could have had a whole new machine.
BTW, mothballing old ships is standard Navy practice, just in case a big war causes them to need more ships. For example, in Gulf War I, many of the transportion ships used to move supplies to the Gulf were pulled out of mothballs.
It is not uncommon for companies to have merchants dispose of surplus merchandise. For example, paperbacks have their covers ripped-off. The bookseller returns the cover for a refund. The rest of the book is not suppose to be sold or given away. This process is designed to keep costs low (they don't have to pay shipping for the heavy books).
Apparently, McCall has a similar process for excess patterns. The understanding with the merchants is that the excess patterns are NOT to be sold. Monsterpatterns is disrupting this process. While other means could be used (e.g., shredding the patterns) this would increase costs for the merchants. And is not a good thing.
So while DMCA may be hated on Slashdot, I believe McCalls has a right to protect their copyrighted materials, which they want to have removed from the marketplace.
The press release is short on details. But I think it raises two points. First, Futuremark is no longer calling it cheating. Second, Futuremark is considering changes to the way it benchmarks cards.
So the question in my mind is did Futuremark learn something from the discussions? Is there something it was ignoring in its tests?
I'm trying to not be a cynic and assume a big fat envelope was passed under the table. That what Nvidia did was legitimate.
The military does not connect secure networks to the public Internet. I.E., they use an airgap, not a firewall.
Wrong solution to the wrong problem
on
Open Source Music
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· Score: 2, Insightful
If a musician wants to freely distribute his work, he doesn't need an open source license. Plenty of musicians do that already within the current copyright law.
The problem with Napster is that some musicians want to be rich. They want the big break. They want to be famous. So they sell their soul to the "Big Labels." The Devil is the Devil.
I think it depends on the person and your needs. For example, I travel a lot. So my Palm is always loaded with books and things to keep me occupied on planes. Its a lot lighter than carrying books and magazines. My wife has a Palm and detachable keyboard. She uses it to take notes at meetings, its smaller than a notebook computer, it fits in her purse, and she never has to look for a plug-in.
OTOH, If all I needed was a place to keep phone numbers and a few appointments, I probably wouldn't use it. I'd used a phone like you do.
The article says, "Ames will lay off 23 contractors and reassign 23 employees as a result of the shutdowns. The moves will save $12 million a year in operational costs, said George Kidwell, director of research and development at Ames."
So yes, I say it takes major defense programs. Because only a tiny fraction of a programs overall budget will be dedicated to windtunnel work. And much of the analysis will be subscale. You'll only go full scale once the design is nailed down. Even then you need programs that are at subsonic speeds and require a tunnel of that is really big. Right now the defense department is making very few new fighters and bombers. Most of the work is on smaller UAVs, e.g. Predator.
My question is if they need to think out of the box, particularly for the manned portion. I wonder if it might be better to go with the Mercury-Gemini-Apollo-Soyuz technology. Forget wings. Come back on retrorockets and parachutes. Focus the reusable technology on the boosters and other rockets.
Slashdot Mirror
The problem with this assumption is that Congress created the FCC and the FTC. Congress defines the roles of these organizations. Congress picked the FTC to create the Do Not Call List. So I don't understand your assertion that the FCC should have done it. The Justice system has no Constitutional right to overrule the Congress on which agency should perform a function.
I would argue that the deaths in the last 30 years far exceed 5000, although the exact numbers depend on how you define terrorism. If you include the various separatist movements such as in Ireland, the Phillipines, and other countries you would easily exceed 5,000. Or look at some of the cross-border disputes, such as Pakistan-India, many of the deaths are due to so-called terrorist activities. Thousands have died there in the last few years.
I will admit that defining terrorism is a squishy subject, that politicians modify to their advantage, but saying only 5,000 have died in the last 30 years wildly underestimates the death toll.
is only 0.001 percent of the world population. If you consider that "suspected terrorist" includes groups besides al Qaeda, such as some of the separatist movements in various parts of the world, 78,000 is not very many people. To put it another way, there are 191 nations in the UN, so this gives 408 people per country on average. I could believe there are 408 people who could be "suspected terrorists" in the US without putting on my tinfoil hat -- just think of groups like ELF, various right-wing militias, etc.
Horoscopes are based on simple concepts that are almost univeral. That if I ask you if you are having conflict with your mate, you will probably say yes. It may be because of a divorce, or it might be a disagreement over what movie to see this weekend.
It is a tiny minority of Americans that file stupid lawsuits.
Americans laugh at these idiots too.
Frequently, the media portrays the lawsuits as idiotic, but when you dig into the details and hear the other side it is not so idiotic. Case in point, the famous case of the old women suing McDonald's for the hot coffee spilled on her. Stupid lawsuit until you read the full story behind it. That McDonald's coffee was the hottest in the industry. That McDonald's coffee temperature was on the "knee of the curve" where a few degrees made the difference between a minor burn and a 3rd degree burn. The women received 3rd degree burns and had to go to a hospital. By pushing their coffee temperature to an extreme, well beyond industry practice, McDonald's created a hazard. The lawsuit is not so stupid in that context.
The case sited in this story does sound stupid, but I would like to hear the whole story before I judge.
Your assumption is wrong, that the American people ignored the actions of the CIA. Many people in the US objected to the CIA sponsored coups. The events in Chile along other CIA sponsored coups were the primary reason that the American people forced the government to put the CIA on a leash. So did the American people recognize that something wrong was being committed in their names? Yes. Did they act to stop it? Yes.
If I understand your friend, he proposes converting the upper stages in space. This would be difficult. You would need to rip out the machinery. Then if humans are to go inside, decontaminate them of any hazardous chemicals, left-over fuel, etc. Then install the equipment to turn it into something useful, which has to be brought up separately. Considering the difficulties of working in space, it is probably easier to do all of this on the ground.
that Apple has over 100,000 pre-orders of the Power Mac G5. See the link.
I know some will say that the fact that SCO continues to provide Linux source code means that GPL is involved. But once again, that issue would be valid if the released source code were BSD, MIT, ... license.
I see a lot of talk about businesses collecting personal data, and how it will help them and possibly me. I want to know when this will happen. To give just one example, my family uses the "Frequent Buyer" card at the local supermarket. They have a complete list of every food item my family has ever bought. They know who we are and where we live. When am I going to see targeted advertisements and targeted coupons based on my historic purchases? Right now, I get the same junk mail from the supermarket that all of neighbors get. No customization. Right now, I'll believe when I see it.
and VividLogic is based in California. It appears that 25 percent of them are American companies. Although I agree with the other poster who noted most American companies have exited the field. It is area with low profit margins, that tends to rely on cheap labor in third world countries.
I know this is slashdot, but before I condemn "the capitalist pigs and their puppets in the government," I would like to know the whole story.
No question the US government companies have backed such legislation. But there are many large European companies that also back this legislation. To blame the US and only the US is naive. Take for example one of the world's biggest media companies, Vivendi-Universal, its a French company. Or Murdoch and his media conglomerate, he's an Australian...
You are incorrect, Russia is not the largest. The US defense budget for 2004 is $390 billion. The total world expenditures in 2002 was $784 billion. So US defense spending is about half of all spending. For more info see this article.
The US frequently does this with other ships such as frigates and destroyers. However, very few countries want an aircraft carrier. And the few that do, do not operate carriers as large as ours. They are very expensive to operate. Never forget that the US military budget is larger than the rest of the world combined.
BTW, mothballing old ships is standard Navy practice, just in case a big war causes them to need more ships. For example, in Gulf War I, many of the transportion ships used to move supplies to the Gulf were pulled out of mothballs.
Apparently, McCall has a similar process for excess patterns. The understanding with the merchants is that the excess patterns are NOT to be sold. Monsterpatterns is disrupting this process. While other means could be used (e.g., shredding the patterns) this would increase costs for the merchants. And is not a good thing.
So while DMCA may be hated on Slashdot, I believe McCalls has a right to protect their copyrighted materials, which they want to have removed from the marketplace.
So the question in my mind is did Futuremark learn something from the discussions? Is there something it was ignoring in its tests?
I'm trying to not be a cynic and assume a big fat envelope was passed under the table. That what Nvidia did was legitimate.
The military does not connect secure networks to the public Internet. I.E., they use an airgap, not a firewall.
The problem with Napster is that some musicians want to be rich. They want the big break. They want to be famous. So they sell their soul to the "Big Labels." The Devil is the Devil.
OTOH, If all I needed was a place to keep phone numbers and a few appointments, I probably wouldn't use it. I'd used a phone like you do.
So yes, I say it takes major defense programs. Because only a tiny fraction of a programs overall budget will be dedicated to windtunnel work. And much of the analysis will be subscale. You'll only go full scale once the design is nailed down. Even then you need programs that are at subsonic speeds and require a tunnel of that is really big. Right now the defense department is making very few new fighters and bombers. Most of the work is on smaller UAVs, e.g. Predator.
My question is if they need to think out of the box, particularly for the manned portion. I wonder if it might be better to go with the Mercury-Gemini-Apollo-Soyuz technology. Forget wings. Come back on retrorockets and parachutes. Focus the reusable technology on the boosters and other rockets.