Just because hordes of twenty something males at Slashdot, Reddit and similar
sites think they have a fundamental right to download whatever they please
for free, doesn't mean that the US government and courts will turn their
backs on one of this country's major export businesses and sources of
comparative economic advantage.
Just because the US government and courts think they can legislate innovation and technological progress doesn't mean that the slashdot readers who actually innovate and make technological progress won't call them out on their retarded and ignorant views, either.
No it's not. A large company like Amazon can easily handle 50 different sales tax regimes. So can companies which do a lot of business interstate.
It's only a problem for tiny companies with occasional sales, but EVERYTHING is a problem for tiny companies, since there are only so many hours in the day and people can't know everything.
That's a great idea, but how can you ensure that the fake data still
"looks right"? If it's completely random, it's going to be relatively
easy to filter out. It needs to be consistent so that the cookie data
is well formed according to the tracking company's system, I guess.
One possibility might be to set up a server that 1) receives tracking
cookies from people, and 2) returns a random tracking cookie from its
collection whenever asked by anyone. Think of it like a cookie swap exchange, where your browser gives your cookie to random people, and they give theirs to you automatically.
Because C++ is not intended as a mathematical expressions language? Such
things belong in a library.
You're being too vague. Some things mathematical belong in a library, eg the special functions or even exp and log. However, the C++ language explicitly supports the elementary mathematical operations of addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. Exponentiation is clearly a natural and very simple iteration of multiplication and therefore optimizing it falls in the purview of the C++ language.
It is no different than eg optimizing a loop
int i = 0; while(i < 10) i++;// same as int i = 10;
No more than 1 in 100,000 users are paid. Do you really think one user is
going to pay the costs to serve 100,000 freeloaders? Obviously not, hence
ads.
You're not thinking right. The number of users, freeloaders or otherwise, is irrelevant. What matters are the actual operating costs, which include paying the editors, and paying for the hardware and the bandwidth used. That's pretty much it. Anything else Slashdot might pay for is inessential to its continued existence.
So, compute what it would cost to pay the editors each month, compute the cost of the hardware over several years of use (converting to monthly), and compute the cost of the network access (again converting to monthly from the full contract terms). That's what Slashdot costs per month or thereabouts. If those costs can be covered, it can survive.
Prior to std::string, everyone wrote their own proprietary, incompatible, C++ string classes, and if you used third party libs, you'd end up with several such. So the mere fact that std::string exists has reduced bloat and complexity.
However, the std::string classes were designed too soon, and a lot of the member functions are clumsy and should have been offered as generic stl algorithms. It's probably best to consider them deprecated.
Apparently, you have a slight difficulty with the concepts "some" and "all". Clearly, "some" slashdot readers are willing to pay, and a critical mass of these allows the site to continue existing. It is not necessary that "all" readers be willing to pay.
Moreover, as you no doubt are aware, paying readers get certain perks. I did not suggest this last bit in the case of the site mentioned in TFA, as it didn't seem like a generic solution. Slashdot's main attraction are the comments
contributed by readers in the forum, so having perks for some users makes sense. If the main attraction is some journalist's articles, that doesn't apply. Although come to think of it, they could offer perks like being able to have private conversations with the journalists, or get access to their unpublished drafts or whatever. Doubtful, however.
Or they could sell subscriptions (to readers) and syndication rights (to other newspapers, and aggregators like Google). Presumably the original content has value. I'd be suspicious if the content was supposed valuable, but nobody but advertisers was actually willing to pay for it.
What's the problem with selling student data? Schools are under funding
pressure - so if those schools can sell student information, it saves them
money that they can spend on other things.
There are *many* things wrong with selling student data, but since you're American, let's just say that schools don't own their students' data, the students do. Selling somebody else's property: bad.
I love the glases too! The algorithm actually works by digitally stripping a person's clothing, and then rapidly making them wear a whole bunch of alternatives, until there's a match with a previous photo. (BTW, if during this process you move your eye in the sequence up,up,down,down,left,right,left,right, you get to watch the whole process happening in debug mode). I've picked your wife out from the crowd several times now, the system works flawlessly!
The problem is the artificial scarcity, enormous wastefulness of our economy and way of
life, and the profit motive of capitalism. Everyone wants more, so they come up with new
activities to make more money - and then there's less in circulation, so the Fed does
"quantitative easing" i.e. prints more money, so what you have is devalued and you need
to obtain more.
People don't, as a rule, always want more *if* they have a guarantee of the basics: shelter, food, health care, etc. What you are observing in America in particular is that the basics aren't guaranteed for many levels of society: Not just for the poor, but also for the middle classes and sometimes higher.
This leads to a precarious existence which works something like this: even though people have money, health care is not affordable unless they are continually employed. And continued employment is always precarious due to at-will employement laws. So most people in America are two steps removed from destitution and misery, and being aware of it, cannot be comfortable with their income. There are other mechanisms, but this one is vary simple.
Infringing on copyright, however, weakens its practicality for *ALL*
copyright holders, and as confidence in copyright to protect a holder's
interest wanes, they can and almost certainly will resort to other means to
protect their interests which can only result in a vastly reduced practical
availability of future works as they resort to self-censorship, artificially
limiting distribution, and other tactics.
Interesting, but a very passive, and mostly reactive, outlook. In particular, the repeated changes in copyright timelines, and the retroactive extinguishments of public domain already weaken copyright while you wait.
I generally prefer the proactive outlook of supporting (anonymous,not-for-profit) piracy, so that we may *guarantee* that future generations have access to past and present works, even if it is considered illegal by current standards and causes momentary inconvenience to our generation.
I did something like that before I wrote my comment. I put my left hand
between my eyes like a curtain, held up my right hand close enough that it
wasn't visible to my left eye. And just now, a better example; holding up a
small notepad page and reading what's written on it. I just don't have the
problem you are describing (nor the "readjustment" that Mann is describing.)
I focus just as easily as I can with one eye closed.
I don't think that experiment has much value, unless you try to model the cumulative effect involved. Consider how easy it is to do one pushup even if you're not in shape. But try doing 100 in a short time and you'll have a problem if you're not used to it.
Same issue in this case. Doing a quick test won't cause much strain. Doing a continuous test of about 4 hours would probably give much more interesting resutls, and you may also be able to test TFA's claim that *after the test is over*, the eyes have trouble readjusting back.
Of course, from the point of Google there may be nothing wrong with causing a bit of discomfort when people take off the glasses after a full day's use, as it would encourage them to wear them longer and more frequently.
Unlike the kind of youtube popularity that can happen overnight, the popularity of academic journals takes time, as it is based upon the evidence of many issues. You can't just pick the very first issue of a new journal and see straight away if this journal is going to have quality content throughout its life. It takes many issues to form a complete opinion, and many issues take many years to publish.
Basically, I think TFA's author is too impatient. Let the open access journals publish for 10-20 years, and the good ones will naturally replace the for-profit ones. Best of all, due to the low cost of creating and operating open access journals compared with commercial ones, waiting 10-20 years is entirely feasible and realistic.
Science moves slowly. That's a feature, as its role is to be at the foundation of knowledge.
That's what university (and public) libraries are for. They already have the funding and the mandate to do this. What's stopping them is copyright, whose default mode prevents cheap duplication, copying, archiving.
Only works whose license explicitly allows free redistribution and copying can be preserved for posterity with high probability. Basically, if enough scientific journals change their copyright terms (or better, the law is changed to be more permissive), then the libraries will see that there is enough material to justify redundant scanning/copying/archiving, and they will form teams whose job it is to do exactly that.
Are you telling me that people don't know there are commercials on TV or that the TV networks try to conceal this fact?
No. People know that TV networks show ads, but neither expect, nor agree to, ads being payment in lieu. The rest of your objections about my claims are moot, since you're off on a strawman.
Ads are shown as a private agreement between the networks and the advertisers, an agreement the cable customers are not a party to.
The basic car analogy fails to capture that vulnerabilities in computer systems are often used as stepping stones for further attacks on other computer systems. In the car analogy proper, the only person affected by a break-in is the unlocked car's owner, while the other car owners are safe provided their car doors are locked.
But say the criminal is a joyrider.
He picks an unlocked car, and then drives around the parking lot smashing into other locked cars for fun, and then runs away. Now the question: is it wrong to check if some other car in the lot is unlocked and shame its owner? The chance that your car, even if locked, will be damaged due to some other car being unlocked and used as an attack vector is now non negligible.
Would you pay $80 more for all that content
without the commercials?
That's a ridiculous question, no, and nobody should. Your argument is rationalizing a bait-and-switch tactic. "Oh, you already paid $X for our cable product as agreed? Sorry, but our product is now worth $X + $80, and you're going to have to pay the difference or watch some ads on your existing service.
If cable companies can't stay within budget, that's their problem, not their customers'.
Why bother with emoji, though? Just use Chinese ideographs. They're the natural final progression of this idea, after all. Moreover, if you're just after basic emoticons, there's a Unicode range from 1F600 to 1F64F.
On the other hand, if you'd paid money for them to do this project, then you'd have more expressive emoticons than * to represent your abject fear and loathing of this whole emoticon nonsense.
Slashdot Mirror
Just because the US government and courts think they can legislate innovation and technological progress doesn't mean that the slashdot readers who actually innovate and make technological progress won't call them out on their retarded and ignorant views, either.
It's only a problem for tiny companies with occasional sales, but EVERYTHING is a problem for tiny companies, since there are only so many hours in the day and people can't know everything.
One possibility might be to set up a server that 1) receives tracking cookies from people, and 2) returns a random tracking cookie from its collection whenever asked by anyone. Think of it like a cookie swap exchange, where your browser gives your cookie to random people, and they give theirs to you automatically.
Unrecognized file type .DOC
"D'Oh!"
You're being too vague. Some things mathematical belong in a library, eg the special functions or even exp and log. However, the C++ language explicitly supports the elementary mathematical operations of addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. Exponentiation is clearly a natural and very simple iteration of multiplication and therefore optimizing it falls in the purview of the C++ language. It is no different than eg optimizing a loop
int i = 0; while(i < 10) i++; // same as int i = 10;
You're not thinking right. The number of users, freeloaders or otherwise, is irrelevant. What matters are the actual operating costs, which include paying the editors, and paying for the hardware and the bandwidth used. That's pretty much it. Anything else Slashdot might pay for is inessential to its continued existence.
So, compute what it would cost to pay the editors each month, compute the cost of the hardware over several years of use (converting to monthly), and compute the cost of the network access (again converting to monthly from the full contract terms). That's what Slashdot costs per month or thereabouts. If those costs can be covered, it can survive.
However, the std::string classes were designed too soon, and a lot of the member functions are clumsy and should have been offered as generic stl algorithms. It's probably best to consider them deprecated.
Moreover, as you no doubt are aware, paying readers get certain perks. I did not suggest this last bit in the case of the site mentioned in TFA, as it didn't seem like a generic solution. Slashdot's main attraction are the comments contributed by readers in the forum, so having perks for some users makes sense. If the main attraction is some journalist's articles, that doesn't apply. Although come to think of it, they could offer perks like being able to have private conversations with the journalists, or get access to their unpublished drafts or whatever. Doubtful, however.
Or they could sell subscriptions (to readers) and syndication rights (to other newspapers, and aggregators like Google). Presumably the original content has value. I'd be suspicious if the content was supposed valuable, but nobody but advertisers was actually willing to pay for it.
Or for that matter, keeping the girlfriend out of the bed if you're called Sheldon.
There are *many* things wrong with selling student data, but since you're American, let's just say that schools don't own their students' data, the students do. Selling somebody else's property: bad.
I love the glases too! The algorithm actually works by digitally stripping a person's clothing, and then rapidly making them wear a whole bunch of alternatives, until there's a match with a previous photo. (BTW, if during this process you move your eye in the sequence up,up,down,down,left,right,left,right, you get to watch the whole process happening in debug mode). I've picked your wife out from the crowd several times now, the system works flawlessly!
People don't, as a rule, always want more *if* they have a guarantee of the basics: shelter, food, health care, etc. What you are observing in America in particular is that the basics aren't guaranteed for many levels of society: Not just for the poor, but also for the middle classes and sometimes higher.
This leads to a precarious existence which works something like this: even though people have money, health care is not affordable unless they are continually employed. And continued employment is always precarious due to at-will employement laws. So most people in America are two steps removed from destitution and misery, and being aware of it, cannot be comfortable with their income. There are other mechanisms, but this one is vary simple.
Nuh-uh! I've been watching Dollhouse, and it's clearly possible. Why would the cable TV lie to me?
And copyright laws do not prohibit owning or perusing a copy, only creating and distributing a copy. So you are merely confirming the parent's point.
Interesting, but a very passive, and mostly reactive, outlook. In particular, the repeated changes in copyright timelines, and the retroactive extinguishments of public domain already weaken copyright while you wait.
I generally prefer the proactive outlook of supporting (anonymous,not-for-profit) piracy, so that we may *guarantee* that future generations have access to past and present works, even if it is considered illegal by current standards and causes momentary inconvenience to our generation.
I don't think that experiment has much value, unless you try to model the cumulative effect involved. Consider how easy it is to do one pushup even if you're not in shape. But try doing 100 in a short time and you'll have a problem if you're not used to it.
Same issue in this case. Doing a quick test won't cause much strain. Doing a continuous test of about 4 hours would probably give much more interesting resutls, and you may also be able to test TFA's claim that *after the test is over*, the eyes have trouble readjusting back.
Of course, from the point of Google there may be nothing wrong with causing a bit of discomfort when people take off the glasses after a full day's use, as it would encourage them to wear them longer and more frequently.
Basically, I think TFA's author is too impatient. Let the open access journals publish for 10-20 years, and the good ones will naturally replace the for-profit ones. Best of all, due to the low cost of creating and operating open access journals compared with commercial ones, waiting 10-20 years is entirely feasible and realistic.
Science moves slowly. That's a feature, as its role is to be at the foundation of knowledge.
Only works whose license explicitly allows free redistribution and copying can be preserved for posterity with high probability. Basically, if enough scientific journals change their copyright terms (or better, the law is changed to be more permissive), then the libraries will see that there is enough material to justify redundant scanning/copying/archiving, and they will form teams whose job it is to do exactly that.
Linguists are particularly interested in both single words, pairs of words, triples and so on. The Google Ngram database fits on several dvds.
No. People know that TV networks show ads, but neither expect, nor agree to, ads being payment in lieu. The rest of your objections about my claims are moot, since you're off on a strawman.
Ads are shown as a private agreement between the networks and the advertisers, an agreement the cable customers are not a party to.
But say the criminal is a joyrider. He picks an unlocked car, and then drives around the parking lot smashing into other locked cars for fun, and then runs away. Now the question: is it wrong to check if some other car in the lot is unlocked and shame its owner? The chance that your car, even if locked, will be damaged due to some other car being unlocked and used as an attack vector is now non negligible.
That's a ridiculous question, no, and nobody should. Your argument is rationalizing a bait-and-switch tactic. "Oh, you already paid $X for our cable product as agreed? Sorry, but our product is now worth $X + $80, and you're going to have to pay the difference or watch some ads on your existing service.
If cable companies can't stay within budget, that's their problem, not their customers'.
Why bother with emoji, though? Just use Chinese ideographs. They're the natural final progression of this idea, after all. Moreover, if you're just after basic emoticons, there's a Unicode range from 1F600 to 1F64F.
On the other hand, if you'd paid money for them to do this project, then you'd have more expressive emoticons than * to represent your abject fear and loathing of this whole emoticon nonsense.