Again - none of these costs apply if you're just running linux on servers.
Also - none of these costs would exist if linux started gaining market share. The reason that people need retraining on linux is because they weren't taught it in school/college/previous job/home/etc. If linux does take off (for whatever reason), then all these issues will apply to trying to switch back to windows after a decade.
In any case, linux is becoming more and more popular in the corporate datacenter. Even those win 2K3 app servers tend to run on vmware on linux.
Don't get me wrong - I'm not trying to sponsor some kind of linux desktop migration at work. Although, if I were on the MS negotiating team I'd certainly be studying it. However, recently when there was talk of utilizing vmware, I did mention the linux option, since that is becoming mainstream and has the potential to increase performance and reduce downtime (no need to reboot all the virtual PCs simulaneously twice a month).
Uh, who said anything about running linux on the clients? You can run windows on the clients, but not have to pay a client license on the server.
With windows as a server you pay three times.
1. $100/workstation 2. $$$$/server (I'm not sure what retail is, but it is a LOT more) 3. A fee per client that will connect to the server beyond five. This fee gets smaller as you add more and more, but it is a big chunk of the total cost.
If you deploy linux on a server you get rid of both #2 and #3 (but not #1). Samba doesn't limit the number of incoming connections simply because people will more employees can afford to pay more for the server...
remember that linux is not taking over the corporate IT market because of training costs and other costs that comes with linux over windows
Uh, linux is already slowly taking over the corporate IT department for servers. And that is a chunk of change - ever see the cost for a windows server product, and for all the associated client licenses? You don't need either when you replace one of those boxes with linux, and even if you pay for a supported linux distro it is still cheaper with many fringe benefits.
Linux is already making stuff cheaper. It just isn't installed on every secretary's desk. One day it may be.
The fact is that MS is a convicted monopolist, so it is the position of a variety of court systems that MS overcharged for windows. MS made the "we give people better value" argument time and time again in those cases, and it just doesn't seem like the courts are buying it...
You could argue that open source software makes steak cheaper for everyone. It also makes drugs cheaper for everyone, and genetically-modified food, etc...
I'm happy that Gates gave away some of his excessive wealth. It will at least do some good this way. On the other hand, I won't belittle people like Linus Torvalds just because he didn't make billions of dollars. If Gates didn't charge so much for windows, many people and companies would have hundreds of billions of dollars in cash that they gave to MS, and some of that money would be donated. Granted, it wouldn't get Gates' face in the papers that way.
Lots of people give sacrificially to causes all the time. Most never receive any recognition for it at all, and this isn't a bad thing.
You're all jealous you didn't do it first.
Well, I might not be first, but I'll stand up to be number two! I'll donate 100% of all wealth I receive after the first $25 billion. Just think of what all that money will do for the starving poor of the world!
And yes, I donate fairly frequently to various needy groups. And no, I don't want a medal for it...
The point is, that when most average people donate money to charity, they have to give something up.
Nobody is suggesting that it is morally wrong to eat anything more expensive than oatmeal, or live in anything bigger than a shed, or to own a car.
However, the fact is that I need to sacrifice less to give $100 to charity than somebody who makes 1/10th my income has to sacrifice to give $10 to charity. It just doesn't scale linearly.
Somebody who makes 10 times my income can consequently give far more than a 10X increase without giving up much.
Somebody with a billion dollars in the bank can pretty much give away everything beyond that and still have more money than they could figure out how to spend. Gates just doesn't have enough time in a day to spend that kind of money on himself, or even on anybody that he personally knows. The extra money is essentially worthless to him.
Don't get me wrong - donations to charity are great. However, when you have that much money you aren't making the same kind of tradeoffs that a normal person makes.
As far as keeping enough to guarantee future contribution to society goes - how much is that?
I don't have even $100k in the bank. Does that mean that I'm unable to contribute to society? Did Bill Gates contribute nothing to society until he had billions of dollars? Arguably he has his money because he DID contribute to society before then.
The point was that Gates gave away about half of his money after keeping a nice nest-egg for himself (say $1 billion). Just about everybody reading this post has done that (that is, they've given at least nothing).
It is kind of like saying how somebody who makes $60k per year who gave $1000 to Tsunami relief did a lot of good, when talking to a bunch of people making minimum wage (about $12k per year). If you just compare relative income, it would seem like somebody making $12k could give $200 with a similar level of pain - but in reality that is NOT the case. Most likely somebody making $12k can barely pay the rent - and probably is in debt besides. They don't even have $200 truly to their name...
Don't get me wrong - it is nice to see an occassional rich person do something big for charity. However, Bill Gates could spend 95% of his wealth on charity and not drop his standard of living even the tiniest amount (seriously - how many billions of dollars can a person actually spend in a lifetime without literally hiring people to burn it?). If I give ANYTHING to charity I sacrifice the ability to eat out once or maybe buy some computer parts, or save up some money that I know I'll need for retirement.
That is why progressive tax systems are so popular - those with huge amounts of wealth can afford to carry a disproportionate share of the tax burden...
I'm all for privitization in general, although in this case we're talking about information necessary to ensure safety and I'm not sure it makes as much sense here.
When a commercial plane goes down, it isn't just the pilots who were too cheap to pay $1000/year for a aviation weather service who die. It isn't even just the people on the plane either (it has to land somewhere).
Also - if we're gonna privatize something, let's go ahead and do it for real. Taxpayers shouldn't be paying $1,000 for a weather balloon reading, and then charging a corporation $10 for the results of that reading, and then paying the corporation $10 per citizen to get the results back. If we're going to have to pay for the results, then the corporation will have to bear the costs of obtaining the data. For the sake of standardization it might still make sense to have the government launch the balloons, but the cost of the operation should be borne completely by the private interests.
In general, however, weather data is of so much benefit to everyone it is questionable whether this is a good candidate for privitization. As it is, we already have markets for value-added services like TV networks who compete to give the most accurate forecasts, etc.
Actually, DVDs use MPEG2, which is also what many digital satellite/cable offerings use.
MPEG4 is newer technology. Keep in mind that all the technology for consumer hardware like satellite receivers and DVD players was developed about ten years ago now. You may be used to using DivX to encode MPEG4 on your PC, but that is only because you can download the codec-of-the-week in 15 minutes. DVDs all had to use lowest-common-denominator technology that couldn't be upgraded - so they had to use what was cheap to develop back when a DVD player cost $600.
Still, a quantum computer turns crypto back into an arms race again.
Back in the days of enigma and such, when one side upped its computer technology, the other side added a wheel to its cipher machines. That would last a few years and then everybody is upgrading again.
RSA has been around since the 70's, and has remained stable the whole time. It made crypto practical to use, and ended the arms race by making crypto hundreds of orders of magnitude harder to crack. Ditto for modern symmetric ciphers, which aren't prone to cracking by quantum computers, but which are less practical to use.
If quantum computers come out, then RSA is basically dead. Sure, you'll be able to use 1 million bits, for a few years, until somebody adds a few more qbits to their machines and improves their implementation. It could potentially lower the utility of crypto in general unless you're protecting a secret for only a few years.
The policy is now such that if the original company does not respond to the request within 5 days, the company asking for transfer will by default have rights to the domain. Everyone who owns a domain effectively must monitor their whois e-mail address at least every 5 days in order to ensure they keep their domain.
That's just dumb. I could see having such a policy if domains were free, but they aren't.
You should be notified by post and have a little longer than that to respond. You could be optionally notified by email in addition to allow you to more quickly respond, but a regular eamil should go through.
Can you imagine how much spam gets sent to whois contact addresses? That database is open for harvesting. So, we're not just talking about somebody being too lazy to check mail - we're also talking about making sure that your spam filters are good enough to delete potentially thousands of junk messages per day without touching a DNS transfer request potentially coming in from an unknown sender. And if they were to use a standardized from address for such emails, you'll find every spammer in existance using it for their own messages.
Email is great - but it does not have guaranteed delivery. Snail mail should be the standard.
It would be one thing if an org like cacert.org had a no-snail-mail policy - they do not collect registration fees. However, an organization which collects a fee can afford a few stamps now and then...
Usually they patent the molecule and every conceivable use for it. Then they patent the way of making it. Then they patent its metabolites. Then they patent the idea of putting it into a red/green/white/blue/whatever pill. Then they patent new ways of prescribing it (once a week, once a month, whatever).
Blockbuster drugs earn millions of dollars PER DAY. Patent applications cost $10k or so. Trust me, they patent EVERYTHING. That way when some patent is lost on a technicality the company doesn't lose 10% of its revenue stream overnight.
Different countries have different rules, but in the US the standard patent is on the drug itself as it is used to treat some particular problem. Generic companies can't just come up with an alternative synthesis of the compound and market it themselves (otherwise there would be no brand-named drugs - trust me, if the drug is worth $1 million per day, some chemist can find another way to make it).
To the degree that the drug was genuinely discovered by the drug company and is innovative, I see no problem with this. The drug is only patented for a decade of marketable time, and then anybody can have it cheap. Sure, we can debate fine-tuning patent durations a little, or argue about me-too drugs, but true innovative drugs are a service to all of mankind, and all of mankind can certainly afford a few billion dollars in exchange.
On the other hand, many companies employ various tricks to extend patent life via technicalities. This should be harshly penalized. Fair is fair - the drug company gets obscene profits for a decade in exchange for brining life-saving medicine to the world. However, after the time is up, the medicine should belong to the world.
One thing that I like about the effects is that it leaves the original data intact. You can go back and unapply an effect at any time, so no need to do a save-as at every step. If you export pictures, it applies the effects to the exported jpegs.
Also - while it doesn't prompt for jpeg quality settings when you save effects, it seems to err on the side of too much quality rather than too little - which I like. If I'm burning my photos to CD to have prints made, I don't want shots from my $300 camera compressed as if I were putting them on a floppy...
This is actually a common problem when studying humanity, as the ideal experiment is often impossible/inhumane.
Hardly - just establish a bunch of breeding colonies until you get some geneticly uniform human strains, and then divide 100 siblings into two groups from birth. They are handled via glove boxes with one-way mirrors (that prevent seeing into the box). Handlers are told that one group is male, the other female, but in reality they are both 50% mixed. As they get older you educate them with responses via text messenging to prevent unbliding.
Then you see how many of each gender turn into sientists, mathemeticians, engineers, and beauticians. You also see whether the group which was thought to be male/female by the handlers turns out different. A more interesting statistic might be how many turn out to be psychopaths compared to a group of more normally-treated children.
You could repeat the experiment using a variety of strains and figure out which genes cause one to become a good hairdresser.
I couldn't agree more - I've on many occassions questioned why ads are pay-per-click. When was the last time you clicked on a billboard? You'd be stupid to think that billboards don't have an effect, however.
I just think that there is some truth in the fact that we are all diverse, and that certain groups might have propencities towards certain aptitudes.
I'm glad you brought that up.
It seems like everybody is always happy to celebrate diversity? But why is diversity good?
Simple - a group with a diverse set of skills/backgrounds has a better chance of finding an innovative solution than a group where everybody is the same.
As a result, we go to all kinds of pains to ensure that groups become diverse by race/gender/orientation/whatever.
Now, isn't it kind of absurd to admit that having a bunch of different people on a team makes the team stronger, but then turn around and say that the people on the team aren't really different at all?
Are men and women different, or the same? If everybody is the same, then what is the point in trying to achieve diversity, since if everybody is the same then there is no such thing as diversity?
In any case, it seems silly that there are effects in society where it is forbidden to investigate their causes comprehensively. A parent post states that there is no difference between men and women besides the obvious one that more men go into science. Well, that is a difference - why is that? Maybe it is just because 3-year-old girls tend to be given dolls, and 3-year-old boys tend to be given calculators and protractors. But, maybe it isn't. In any case, we have hypotheses, and the way to refute them is via experiment...
Hell... drug companies advertise and sell drugs without even telling you what the drug does!
This is a somewhat unique phenomenon which is the result of advertising regulations in the industry.
Drug ads are required to be balanced, so to the extent that they tell you about a drug's benefits, they also have to tell you about its side-effects.
Sometimes this borders on the absurd - most drugs have some significant side-effects, but there are a few where it is questionable whether the effects are actually genuine or statistical noise. Nevertheless, when you hear an ad for such a drug you get a long litany of every disease known to man - basically the same litany you might hear for a drug with serious side effects. As a result, consumers can't really tell which drug is safer. In an ideal world, of course, the doctor will be able to help out there, but most consumers aren't going to take time off work and pay cash to visit a doctor to ask about the latest ad unless they aren't taking treatment at all. (And, in many cases, the doctor just prescribes drugs based on who gives them the biggest kickbacks - I had a friend who was a pharma sales rep, and she was shocked when a doctor openly said that he wouldn't prescribe the drugs she was peddling unless she got him tickets or other perks.)
In any case, the logic is that if you don't talk about the benefits of a drug at all, you don't have to mention much at all about its downside. Advertisers have even gone a step further with branding so that they can run ads which don't even suggest that they're advertising a drug (do you know what the "purple pill" is? Half of its ads drop the "pill" part and just have people excited about purple backdrops...).
There is a flaw in your logic. Just because the majority of the people want to speed, does not mean that they should raise the speed limit.
The NCSA stated that the leading cause of death for ages 3 to 33 in 2002 was Moter Vehicle Traffic Crashes http://www-nrd.nhtsa.dot.gov/pdf/nrd-30/NCSA/RNote s/2004/809831.pdf. In fact, Highway fatalities (based on 2002 numbers) are at an all-time high.
Not every one of those traffic fatalities would be prevented by having speed limits. However, EVERY traffic fatality would be prevented by not allowing people to drive cars. Therefore, cars should be banned. There is no reason that employers can't hire from the local community within walking distance, and that people can't live close to their jobs. There is also no reason for family and friends to move far away from each other, so there really is no reason for people to ever go more than five miles from where they were born.
I concede that raising the speed limit will cause more traffic fatalities. I also believe that the limits should be raised nonetheless. Now, if we can come up with non-intrusive technology to make cars safer, I can see benefit from requiring its use. However, speed limits are intrusive, since they lower the productivity of the nation as a whole. Also, by turning a 12 hour drive into a 16 hour drive they can contribute to falling asleep at the wheel.
Don't get me wrong - roads should have speed limits. Otherwise you'd have idiots driving 200 mph in an area where 70 or 80 is a safe speed. I'm also fine with draconian limit enforcement - if a section of highway is safe up to 90 mph and you want mandatory jail time for going 95, that is fine - most normal people would probably only drive 80 on such a highway anyway.
Speed limits should be set so that the majority of the population feels no inclination to even match them, let alone exceed them. I've seen 55 mph country roads, and often I find myself not going more than 35 or 45 mph depending on conditions. That is an example of a GOOD speed limit. People will naturally regulate themselves, and travelers would benefit from advisory signs with suggested speeds. However, laws are for the sake of the fringe of society that cannot live responsibly.
A normal citizen shouldn't really have to be too concerned with the law. I'm not too concerned with breaking and entering - I couldn't fathom ever doing such a thing unless I had somebody bleeding and I had to break into a home to find some makeshift bandages or some other clearly legal scenario (assuming nobody was around).
Lawbreakers should be punished, and severely when it makes sense to do so. However, ordinary citizens should never be put in the situation of being called lawbreakers...
is that theres something wrong with society when society is breaking laws at such an extent that it requires an automated process to identify and punish those offenders
I couldn't agree more. There is certainly something wrong when a society's legislative process allows it to enact laws that the vast majority of the population is willing to endure fines and impriosonment in order to violate the laws.
Seriously, is your next suggestion going to be that we need harsher penalties for speeding, and that perhaps if we tortured people for going 60 in a 55 zone at the Ministry of Love that perhaps society would be better-molded to the ideals of its leaders?
As someone else has pointed out, a lot of people speed. Should we get rid of speeding offences?
Not necessarily, but we should reconsider what the limits are set at. When 95% of people are driving faster than the limit, the general consensus would seem to be that the limit is too low.
Laws are meant to serve the people, not the other way around.
I bet if you put out a referandum to the population at large and asked what the speed limit on I-95 should be, they wouldn't come up with 55 mph.
A lot of people think breaking into peoples homes is fair game (Im not making the theft comparison), should we amend those laws to allow it?
If you define "a lot" as the 0.2% of any given local population which likes to steal stuff, then I guess you're right. Speeding is a mainstream practice. Breaking and entering is not.
Again, put out a poll and ask people whether people should be allowed to just walk into people's homes at night. Any reasonable person knows what the answer would be...
A lot of people think gays shouldnt be allowed in the armed forces, should we amend laws to disallow them?
Ah, a personal liberty / discrimination issue. I will concede that at times the majority of the US population has wanted things which were unjust, and that it was right to set the laws contrary to majority-rules. Regardless, if you took a poll, you'd find that this is a genuine disputed issue (although I'm guessing a majority would embrace the don't-ask-don't-tell compromise - I'm not stating my opinion of the right answer to this problem here, just my opinion as to what the majority would decide). There is consequently room for debate.
There are a lot of laws that a lot of people break, it doesnt mean the laws should be changed.
If the majority of the population breaks a law, the presumption should be that the law SHOULD be changed. Now, if there is a really good reason not to change the law (such as discrimination, etc.), then maybe it shouldn't be changed. However, the assumtion should not automatically be that the politicians know better than the people.
You brought up three scenarios. Two are really non-controversial issues in the eyes of the majority, and laws should be set accordingly. One is genuinely controversial, and the laws shouldn't be based on whether this year's referandum goes 49-51 or 51-49. There is room for leaders to be leaders.
I would still suggest that if you need automation to keep up with offenders, perhaps the laws shouldn't be enforced. When criminals can be hidden because the majority of the population gives them shelter, we should probably rethink whether they are actually criminals. The police are supposed to serve the community, not the other way around. When it starts going the other way around, it tends to lead to violence, as problems build and build until you get riots.
You always talk about assets as if only the wealthy have them.
For the most part, they are the only ones that have them. He is excluding primary residences, which is about the only asset of any value that 99% of Americans have.
If the Federal government operated off of an asset tax, the tax rate would probably be less than 1% per year. I don't mind sending in less than 1% of my savings account each year - I'd be saving a bundle over what I pay now. Bill Gates might owe half a billion dollars each year, however, under that scheme.
Almost all of US assets are held by about 2% of the population. So, asset taxes of any kind are mainly going to affect that group. Sure, your furniature has some value, and maybe you'll end up paying $50 a year for everything you own, but it really won't be a big deal even to the most impoverished (who probably don't even have that much furniature to tax anyway).
Most assets are not presently taxed. The majority of assets in the USA is cash in banks, or stock/bonds. None of that is taxed as an asset (though income gained on these instruments is taxed). Property is a big asset area, but we aren't talking about taxing homes. In any case, homes are probably only a minor percentage of US asset value anyway - I'm sure it is under 10%. Look at Bill Gates - his home might be worth a few million dollars, but that is probably 0.1% of his wealth.
Remember, when we talk about assets we're mainly talking about the rich. You and I may have some assets, but in the big scheme of things we get rounded down to zero for the most part.
Uh, the computer I'm typing on is an AMD64 3200. It cost me all of $600 to build - mainly because I didn't waste money on stuff I didn't really need.
My graphics card? A Riva TNT2. I'm not even sure it decodes MPEG...
Why? Because that's all I need, and $80 was better spent on RAM than a graphics card that will render KDE menus... If I had to spend an extra $80 I would have either gotten another hard drive, or more RAM.
Hey, if somebody wants to make 3D menus that is fine by me, as long as I can disable them.
I was originally copying files, then gpg'ing them and then tarring the result. This has the benefit of better fault-tolerance. However, it doesn't encrypt the filenames. Granted, filenames aren't everything, but I'd rather if anybody with access to my backup media (such as my employer) wasn't able to just browse them.
In the end I'm tarring first, then gpg'ing second. The downside is that I'm not sure how much fault-tolerance I have. I think gpg can be coaxed to generate as much output as it can, but I'll have to cross my fingers and just hope I don't lose anything. Since I'm backing up to a hard drive, I'm less worried about that.
The spammer doesn't log into an SMTP server, but runs their own.
Nothing annoys me more than the fact that I need to log into my ISP's mail server. I should be able to run my own outgoing mail. The problem is that because of spam most ISPs would block my mail if I did that (since I'm using a dynamic IP).
Don't get me wrong, I understand completely the need to block dynamic IPs doing direct SMTP (I spam filter them myself). However, this isn't an ideal situation. In an ideal world, people wouldn't send spam and so nobody would have to block what would be an otherwise legitimate use of SMTP. In a slightly less ideal world I could publish an SPF record for my dynamic DNS entry, and then everybody wouldn't need to block me simply for having a dynamic IP.
The only problem with this solution is that there is no encryption. If you plan on storing your backups offsite, then you should probably consider having it encrypted.
I've yet to find an adequate FOSS backup solution that meets the following requirements:
1. Able to backup only specified directories (I really don't need a backup of/usr/bin).
2. Backups are strongly encrypted.
3. Backups are fault-tolerent. (If I lose one byte in the middle of a CD, I don't want to lose the whole thing.)
Right now my solution is to tar/bzip/split/gpg everything into a couple of files. Then I copy to some spare space on a work laptop. The gpg private key is backed up separately and stored in a safe place not with the backups.
Unfortunately, this does not handle #3, but since I'm storing this on a hard drive I'm not as concerned about that. If I were burning to CD, I would definitely want some kind of error recoverability and graceful failure (maybe losing a file, but not the whole thing).
Any suggestions? Conceptually I could see a solution using bzip and then separately encrypting each compressed block of data. A fast implementation would use a single session key for all the blocks so as to minimize the amount of RSA involved.
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Again - none of these costs apply if you're just running linux on servers.
Also - none of these costs would exist if linux started gaining market share. The reason that people need retraining on linux is because they weren't taught it in school/college/previous job/home/etc. If linux does take off (for whatever reason), then all these issues will apply to trying to switch back to windows after a decade.
In any case, linux is becoming more and more popular in the corporate datacenter. Even those win 2K3 app servers tend to run on vmware on linux.
Don't get me wrong - I'm not trying to sponsor some kind of linux desktop migration at work. Although, if I were on the MS negotiating team I'd certainly be studying it. However, recently when there was talk of utilizing vmware, I did mention the linux option, since that is becoming mainstream and has the potential to increase performance and reduce downtime (no need to reboot all the virtual PCs simulaneously twice a month).
Uh, who said anything about running linux on the clients? You can run windows on the clients, but not have to pay a client license on the server.
With windows as a server you pay three times.
1. $100/workstation
2. $$$$/server (I'm not sure what retail is, but it is a LOT more)
3. A fee per client that will connect to the server beyond five. This fee gets smaller as you add more and more, but it is a big chunk of the total cost.
If you deploy linux on a server you get rid of both #2 and #3 (but not #1). Samba doesn't limit the number of incoming connections simply because people will more employees can afford to pay more for the server...
remember that linux is not taking over the corporate IT market because of training costs and other costs that comes with linux over windows
Uh, linux is already slowly taking over the corporate IT department for servers. And that is a chunk of change - ever see the cost for a windows server product, and for all the associated client licenses? You don't need either when you replace one of those boxes with linux, and even if you pay for a supported linux distro it is still cheaper with many fringe benefits.
Linux is already making stuff cheaper. It just isn't installed on every secretary's desk. One day it may be.
The fact is that MS is a convicted monopolist, so it is the position of a variety of court systems that MS overcharged for windows. MS made the "we give people better value" argument time and time again in those cases, and it just doesn't seem like the courts are buying it...
You could argue that open source software makes steak cheaper for everyone. It also makes drugs cheaper for everyone, and genetically-modified food, etc...
I'm happy that Gates gave away some of his excessive wealth. It will at least do some good this way. On the other hand, I won't belittle people like Linus Torvalds just because he didn't make billions of dollars. If Gates didn't charge so much for windows, many people and companies would have hundreds of billions of dollars in cash that they gave to MS, and some of that money would be donated. Granted, it wouldn't get Gates' face in the papers that way.
Lots of people give sacrificially to causes all the time. Most never receive any recognition for it at all, and this isn't a bad thing.
You're all jealous you didn't do it first.
Well, I might not be first, but I'll stand up to be number two! I'll donate 100% of all wealth I receive after the first $25 billion. Just think of what all that money will do for the starving poor of the world!
And yes, I donate fairly frequently to various needy groups. And no, I don't want a medal for it...
The point is, that when most average people donate money to charity, they have to give something up.
Nobody is suggesting that it is morally wrong to eat anything more expensive than oatmeal, or live in anything bigger than a shed, or to own a car.
However, the fact is that I need to sacrifice less to give $100 to charity than somebody who makes 1/10th my income has to sacrifice to give $10 to charity. It just doesn't scale linearly.
Somebody who makes 10 times my income can consequently give far more than a 10X increase without giving up much.
Somebody with a billion dollars in the bank can pretty much give away everything beyond that and still have more money than they could figure out how to spend. Gates just doesn't have enough time in a day to spend that kind of money on himself, or even on anybody that he personally knows. The extra money is essentially worthless to him.
Don't get me wrong - donations to charity are great. However, when you have that much money you aren't making the same kind of tradeoffs that a normal person makes.
As far as keeping enough to guarantee future contribution to society goes - how much is that?
I don't have even $100k in the bank. Does that mean that I'm unable to contribute to society? Did Bill Gates contribute nothing to society until he had billions of dollars? Arguably he has his money because he DID contribute to society before then.
The point was that Gates gave away about half of his money after keeping a nice nest-egg for himself (say $1 billion). Just about everybody reading this post has done that (that is, they've given at least nothing).
It is kind of like saying how somebody who makes $60k per year who gave $1000 to Tsunami relief did a lot of good, when talking to a bunch of people making minimum wage (about $12k per year). If you just compare relative income, it would seem like somebody making $12k could give $200 with a similar level of pain - but in reality that is NOT the case. Most likely somebody making $12k can barely pay the rent - and probably is in debt besides. They don't even have $200 truly to their name...
Don't get me wrong - it is nice to see an occassional rich person do something big for charity. However, Bill Gates could spend 95% of his wealth on charity and not drop his standard of living even the tiniest amount (seriously - how many billions of dollars can a person actually spend in a lifetime without literally hiring people to burn it?). If I give ANYTHING to charity I sacrifice the ability to eat out once or maybe buy some computer parts, or save up some money that I know I'll need for retirement.
That is why progressive tax systems are so popular - those with huge amounts of wealth can afford to carry a disproportionate share of the tax burden...
I'm all for privitization in general, although in this case we're talking about information necessary to ensure safety and I'm not sure it makes as much sense here.
When a commercial plane goes down, it isn't just the pilots who were too cheap to pay $1000/year for a aviation weather service who die. It isn't even just the people on the plane either (it has to land somewhere).
Also - if we're gonna privatize something, let's go ahead and do it for real. Taxpayers shouldn't be paying $1,000 for a weather balloon reading, and then charging a corporation $10 for the results of that reading, and then paying the corporation $10 per citizen to get the results back. If we're going to have to pay for the results, then the corporation will have to bear the costs of obtaining the data. For the sake of standardization it might still make sense to have the government launch the balloons, but the cost of the operation should be borne completely by the private interests.
In general, however, weather data is of so much benefit to everyone it is questionable whether this is a good candidate for privitization. As it is, we already have markets for value-added services like TV networks who compete to give the most accurate forecasts, etc.
Actually, DVDs use MPEG2, which is also what many digital satellite/cable offerings use.
MPEG4 is newer technology. Keep in mind that all the technology for consumer hardware like satellite receivers and DVD players was developed about ten years ago now. You may be used to using DivX to encode MPEG4 on your PC, but that is only because you can download the codec-of-the-week in 15 minutes. DVDs all had to use lowest-common-denominator technology that couldn't be upgraded - so they had to use what was cheap to develop back when a DVD player cost $600.
Still, a quantum computer turns crypto back into an arms race again.
Back in the days of enigma and such, when one side upped its computer technology, the other side added a wheel to its cipher machines. That would last a few years and then everybody is upgrading again.
RSA has been around since the 70's, and has remained stable the whole time. It made crypto practical to use, and ended the arms race by making crypto hundreds of orders of magnitude harder to crack. Ditto for modern symmetric ciphers, which aren't prone to cracking by quantum computers, but which are less practical to use.
If quantum computers come out, then RSA is basically dead. Sure, you'll be able to use 1 million bits, for a few years, until somebody adds a few more qbits to their machines and improves their implementation. It could potentially lower the utility of crypto in general unless you're protecting a secret for only a few years.
The policy is now such that if the original company does not respond to the request within 5 days, the company asking for transfer will by default have rights to the domain. Everyone who owns a domain effectively must monitor their whois e-mail address at least every 5 days in order to ensure they keep their domain.
That's just dumb. I could see having such a policy if domains were free, but they aren't.
You should be notified by post and have a little longer than that to respond. You could be optionally notified by email in addition to allow you to more quickly respond, but a regular eamil should go through.
Can you imagine how much spam gets sent to whois contact addresses? That database is open for harvesting. So, we're not just talking about somebody being too lazy to check mail - we're also talking about making sure that your spam filters are good enough to delete potentially thousands of junk messages per day without touching a DNS transfer request potentially coming in from an unknown sender. And if they were to use a standardized from address for such emails, you'll find every spammer in existance using it for their own messages.
Email is great - but it does not have guaranteed delivery. Snail mail should be the standard.
It would be one thing if an org like cacert.org had a no-snail-mail policy - they do not collect registration fees. However, an organization which collects a fee can afford a few stamps now and then...
Usually they patent the molecule and every conceivable use for it. Then they patent the way of making it. Then they patent its metabolites. Then they patent the idea of putting it into a red/green/white/blue/whatever pill. Then they patent new ways of prescribing it (once a week, once a month, whatever).
Blockbuster drugs earn millions of dollars PER DAY. Patent applications cost $10k or so. Trust me, they patent EVERYTHING. That way when some patent is lost on a technicality the company doesn't lose 10% of its revenue stream overnight.
Different countries have different rules, but in the US the standard patent is on the drug itself as it is used to treat some particular problem. Generic companies can't just come up with an alternative synthesis of the compound and market it themselves (otherwise there would be no brand-named drugs - trust me, if the drug is worth $1 million per day, some chemist can find another way to make it).
To the degree that the drug was genuinely discovered by the drug company and is innovative, I see no problem with this. The drug is only patented for a decade of marketable time, and then anybody can have it cheap. Sure, we can debate fine-tuning patent durations a little, or argue about me-too drugs, but true innovative drugs are a service to all of mankind, and all of mankind can certainly afford a few billion dollars in exchange.
On the other hand, many companies employ various tricks to extend patent life via technicalities. This should be harshly penalized. Fair is fair - the drug company gets obscene profits for a decade in exchange for brining life-saving medicine to the world. However, after the time is up, the medicine should belong to the world.
One thing that I like about the effects is that it leaves the original data intact. You can go back and unapply an effect at any time, so no need to do a save-as at every step. If you export pictures, it applies the effects to the exported jpegs.
Also - while it doesn't prompt for jpeg quality settings when you save effects, it seems to err on the side of too much quality rather than too little - which I like. If I'm burning my photos to CD to have prints made, I don't want shots from my $300 camera compressed as if I were putting them on a floppy...
This is actually a common problem when studying humanity, as the ideal experiment is often impossible/inhumane.
:)
Hardly - just establish a bunch of breeding colonies until you get some geneticly uniform human strains, and then divide 100 siblings into two groups from birth. They are handled via glove boxes with one-way mirrors (that prevent seeing into the box). Handlers are told that one group is male, the other female, but in reality they are both 50% mixed. As they get older you educate them with responses via text messenging to prevent unbliding.
Then you see how many of each gender turn into sientists, mathemeticians, engineers, and beauticians. You also see whether the group which was thought to be male/female by the handlers turns out different. A more interesting statistic might be how many turn out to be psychopaths compared to a group of more normally-treated children.
You could repeat the experiment using a variety of strains and figure out which genes cause one to become a good hairdresser.
What could be inhumane about that?
I couldn't agree more - I've on many occassions questioned why ads are pay-per-click. When was the last time you clicked on a billboard? You'd be stupid to think that billboards don't have an effect, however.
I just think that there is some truth in the fact that we are all diverse, and that certain groups might have propencities towards certain aptitudes.
I'm glad you brought that up.
It seems like everybody is always happy to celebrate diversity? But why is diversity good?
Simple - a group with a diverse set of skills/backgrounds has a better chance of finding an innovative solution than a group where everybody is the same.
As a result, we go to all kinds of pains to ensure that groups become diverse by race/gender/orientation/whatever.
Now, isn't it kind of absurd to admit that having a bunch of different people on a team makes the team stronger, but then turn around and say that the people on the team aren't really different at all?
Are men and women different, or the same? If everybody is the same, then what is the point in trying to achieve diversity, since if everybody is the same then there is no such thing as diversity?
In any case, it seems silly that there are effects in society where it is forbidden to investigate their causes comprehensively. A parent post states that there is no difference between men and women besides the obvious one that more men go into science. Well, that is a difference - why is that? Maybe it is just because 3-year-old girls tend to be given dolls, and 3-year-old boys tend to be given calculators and protractors. But, maybe it isn't. In any case, we have hypotheses, and the way to refute them is via experiment...
Hell... drug companies advertise and sell drugs without even telling you what the drug does!
This is a somewhat unique phenomenon which is the result of advertising regulations in the industry.
Drug ads are required to be balanced, so to the extent that they tell you about a drug's benefits, they also have to tell you about its side-effects.
Sometimes this borders on the absurd - most drugs have some significant side-effects, but there are a few where it is questionable whether the effects are actually genuine or statistical noise. Nevertheless, when you hear an ad for such a drug you get a long litany of every disease known to man - basically the same litany you might hear for a drug with serious side effects. As a result, consumers can't really tell which drug is safer. In an ideal world, of course, the doctor will be able to help out there, but most consumers aren't going to take time off work and pay cash to visit a doctor to ask about the latest ad unless they aren't taking treatment at all. (And, in many cases, the doctor just prescribes drugs based on who gives them the biggest kickbacks - I had a friend who was a pharma sales rep, and she was shocked when a doctor openly said that he wouldn't prescribe the drugs she was peddling unless she got him tickets or other perks.)
In any case, the logic is that if you don't talk about the benefits of a drug at all, you don't have to mention much at all about its downside. Advertisers have even gone a step further with branding so that they can run ads which don't even suggest that they're advertising a drug (do you know what the "purple pill" is? Half of its ads drop the "pill" part and just have people excited about purple backdrops...).
Oh brother, tell me that the system won't be based on Firefox in some way?
There is a flaw in your logic. Just because the majority of the people want to speed, does not mean that they should raise the speed limit.
e s/2004/809831.pdf. In fact, Highway fatalities (based on 2002 numbers) are at an all-time high.
The NCSA stated that the leading cause of death for ages 3 to 33 in 2002 was Moter Vehicle Traffic Crashes http://www-nrd.nhtsa.dot.gov/pdf/nrd-30/NCSA/RNot
Not every one of those traffic fatalities would be prevented by having speed limits. However, EVERY traffic fatality would be prevented by not allowing people to drive cars. Therefore, cars should be banned. There is no reason that employers can't hire from the local community within walking distance, and that people can't live close to their jobs. There is also no reason for family and friends to move far away from each other, so there really is no reason for people to ever go more than five miles from where they were born.
I concede that raising the speed limit will cause more traffic fatalities. I also believe that the limits should be raised nonetheless. Now, if we can come up with non-intrusive technology to make cars safer, I can see benefit from requiring its use. However, speed limits are intrusive, since they lower the productivity of the nation as a whole. Also, by turning a 12 hour drive into a 16 hour drive they can contribute to falling asleep at the wheel.
Don't get me wrong - roads should have speed limits. Otherwise you'd have idiots driving 200 mph in an area where 70 or 80 is a safe speed. I'm also fine with draconian limit enforcement - if a section of highway is safe up to 90 mph and you want mandatory jail time for going 95, that is fine - most normal people would probably only drive 80 on such a highway anyway.
Speed limits should be set so that the majority of the population feels no inclination to even match them, let alone exceed them. I've seen 55 mph country roads, and often I find myself not going more than 35 or 45 mph depending on conditions. That is an example of a GOOD speed limit. People will naturally regulate themselves, and travelers would benefit from advisory signs with suggested speeds. However, laws are for the sake of the fringe of society that cannot live responsibly.
A normal citizen shouldn't really have to be too concerned with the law. I'm not too concerned with breaking and entering - I couldn't fathom ever doing such a thing unless I had somebody bleeding and I had to break into a home to find some makeshift bandages or some other clearly legal scenario (assuming nobody was around).
Lawbreakers should be punished, and severely when it makes sense to do so. However, ordinary citizens should never be put in the situation of being called lawbreakers...
is that theres something wrong with society when society is breaking laws at such an extent that it requires an automated process to identify and punish those offenders
I couldn't agree more. There is certainly something wrong when a society's legislative process allows it to enact laws that the vast majority of the population is willing to endure fines and impriosonment in order to violate the laws.
Seriously, is your next suggestion going to be that we need harsher penalties for speeding, and that perhaps if we tortured people for going 60 in a 55 zone at the Ministry of Love that perhaps society would be better-molded to the ideals of its leaders?
As someone else has pointed out, a lot of people speed. Should we get rid of speeding offences?
Not necessarily, but we should reconsider what the limits are set at. When 95% of people are driving faster than the limit, the general consensus would seem to be that the limit is too low.
Laws are meant to serve the people, not the other way around.
I bet if you put out a referandum to the population at large and asked what the speed limit on I-95 should be, they wouldn't come up with 55 mph.
A lot of people think breaking into peoples homes is fair game (Im not making the theft comparison), should we amend those laws to allow it?
If you define "a lot" as the 0.2% of any given local population which likes to steal stuff, then I guess you're right. Speeding is a mainstream practice. Breaking and entering is not.
Again, put out a poll and ask people whether people should be allowed to just walk into people's homes at night. Any reasonable person knows what the answer would be...
A lot of people think gays shouldnt be allowed in the armed forces, should we amend laws to disallow them?
Ah, a personal liberty / discrimination issue. I will concede that at times the majority of the US population has wanted things which were unjust, and that it was right to set the laws contrary to majority-rules. Regardless, if you took a poll, you'd find that this is a genuine disputed issue (although I'm guessing a majority would embrace the don't-ask-don't-tell compromise - I'm not stating my opinion of the right answer to this problem here, just my opinion as to what the majority would decide). There is consequently room for debate.
There are a lot of laws that a lot of people break, it doesnt mean the laws should be changed.
If the majority of the population breaks a law, the presumption should be that the law SHOULD be changed. Now, if there is a really good reason not to change the law (such as discrimination, etc.), then maybe it shouldn't be changed. However, the assumtion should not automatically be that the politicians know better than the people.
You brought up three scenarios. Two are really non-controversial issues in the eyes of the majority, and laws should be set accordingly. One is genuinely controversial, and the laws shouldn't be based on whether this year's referandum goes 49-51 or 51-49. There is room for leaders to be leaders.
I would still suggest that if you need automation to keep up with offenders, perhaps the laws shouldn't be enforced. When criminals can be hidden because the majority of the population gives them shelter, we should probably rethink whether they are actually criminals. The police are supposed to serve the community, not the other way around. When it starts going the other way around, it tends to lead to violence, as problems build and build until you get riots.
You always talk about assets as if only the wealthy have them.
For the most part, they are the only ones that have them. He is excluding primary residences, which is about the only asset of any value that 99% of Americans have.
If the Federal government operated off of an asset tax, the tax rate would probably be less than 1% per year. I don't mind sending in less than 1% of my savings account each year - I'd be saving a bundle over what I pay now. Bill Gates might owe half a billion dollars each year, however, under that scheme.
Almost all of US assets are held by about 2% of the population. So, asset taxes of any kind are mainly going to affect that group. Sure, your furniature has some value, and maybe you'll end up paying $50 a year for everything you own, but it really won't be a big deal even to the most impoverished (who probably don't even have that much furniature to tax anyway).
Most assets are not presently taxed. The majority of assets in the USA is cash in banks, or stock/bonds. None of that is taxed as an asset (though income gained on these instruments is taxed). Property is a big asset area, but we aren't talking about taxing homes. In any case, homes are probably only a minor percentage of US asset value anyway - I'm sure it is under 10%. Look at Bill Gates - his home might be worth a few million dollars, but that is probably 0.1% of his wealth.
Remember, when we talk about assets we're mainly talking about the rich. You and I may have some assets, but in the big scheme of things we get rounded down to zero for the most part.
Uh, the computer I'm typing on is an AMD64 3200. It cost me all of $600 to build - mainly because I didn't waste money on stuff I didn't really need.
My graphics card? A Riva TNT2. I'm not even sure it decodes MPEG...
Why? Because that's all I need, and $80 was better spent on RAM than a graphics card that will render KDE menus... If I had to spend an extra $80 I would have either gotten another hard drive, or more RAM.
Hey, if somebody wants to make 3D menus that is fine by me, as long as I can disable them.
I was originally copying files, then gpg'ing them and then tarring the result. This has the benefit of better fault-tolerance. However, it doesn't encrypt the filenames. Granted, filenames aren't everything, but I'd rather if anybody with access to my backup media (such as my employer) wasn't able to just browse them.
In the end I'm tarring first, then gpg'ing second. The downside is that I'm not sure how much fault-tolerance I have. I think gpg can be coaxed to generate as much output as it can, but I'll have to cross my fingers and just hope I don't lose anything. Since I'm backing up to a hard drive, I'm less worried about that.
The spammer doesn't log into an SMTP server, but runs their own.
Nothing annoys me more than the fact that I need to log into my ISP's mail server. I should be able to run my own outgoing mail. The problem is that because of spam most ISPs would block my mail if I did that (since I'm using a dynamic IP).
Don't get me wrong, I understand completely the need to block dynamic IPs doing direct SMTP (I spam filter them myself). However, this isn't an ideal situation. In an ideal world, people wouldn't send spam and so nobody would have to block what would be an otherwise legitimate use of SMTP. In a slightly less ideal world I could publish an SPF record for my dynamic DNS entry, and then everybody wouldn't need to block me simply for having a dynamic IP.
The only problem with this solution is that there is no encryption. If you plan on storing your backups offsite, then you should probably consider having it encrypted.
/usr/bin).
I've yet to find an adequate FOSS backup solution that meets the following requirements:
1. Able to backup only specified directories (I really don't need a backup of
2. Backups are strongly encrypted.
3. Backups are fault-tolerent. (If I lose one byte in the middle of a CD, I don't want to lose the whole thing.)
Right now my solution is to tar/bzip/split/gpg everything into a couple of files. Then I copy to some spare space on a work laptop. The gpg private key is backed up separately and stored in a safe place not with the backups.
Unfortunately, this does not handle #3, but since I'm storing this on a hard drive I'm not as concerned about that. If I were burning to CD, I would definitely want some kind of error recoverability and graceful failure (maybe losing a file, but not the whole thing).
Any suggestions? Conceptually I could see a solution using bzip and then separately encrypting each compressed block of data. A fast implementation would use a single session key for all the blocks so as to minimize the amount of RSA involved.