NOT NECESSARILY
Light is good for handling, braking and acceleration, but there's this obsucre concept called CONSERVATION OF MOMENTUM that you might want to look into. Then then of course things like decent cumple zones add weight to a car.
Run-over = myth
The risk that it will be "run over" are also highly overrated. If a big vehicle hits a smart car, it becomes a wedge, pushing the larger vehicle into the air so that the larger vehicle can dissipate its energy on other things, like concrete, pavement and telephone poles.
Now this is just silly. IF THE CAR IS BEING A "WEDGE" IT IS BEING RUN OVER. Wherever the car ends up after running over you isn't a big deal beacuse YOU"VE ALREADY BEEN RUN OVER.
Believe me, the risk of you being run over is significant. My friend needed a new paint job on his jeep after the last car he ran over. Ok, so he really only made it up onto the hood with his left front wheel, but you can guess where that wheel would have gone if they had been going any more than 30 MPH.
Solid cage = safer
Second, this little critter has a solid cage that can withstand the problem I just mentioned - its own mass. Most vehicles will crumple under their own mass at moderate speeds. At 65 km/h, head-on this car will walk away mostly unscathed, and the passenger will only have minor injuries.
This really isn't that impressive. Just about any car these days has some sort of saftey cage, and a 65 km/hr collision really isn't that bad.
Anyways if you want to actually be safe you need a safety cage AND crumple zones. As another poster put it: "I can build a car that's strong enough to withstand an impact and drive away, but you'd have to scrape the occupants out with a paper towel."
Look, I drive a small car and I love it, but I'm also willing to admit the limitations of a small car.
While I feel more confident behind the wheel of my '86 Mazda RX-7 due to its better braking, cornering and acceleration, if I knew I was going to hit something I would MUCH rather be in one of my parents' Volvo's. They simply are better able to dissipate the energy of the crash. (And also less likely to get run over.)
The advantage of a small car is in accident avoidance, not during an actual collision. During an actual collsion there is no advantage to being lighter. You need all the steel beams and crumple zones you can get.
Think about this:
What if you fired a person at 60 MPH at a wall?
You'd end up with a bloddy mess, wouldn't you?
That why the car needs to not just have a "safety cage" but to actually dissipate some of the energy from the impact while spreading the decelleration out over time (by crumpling).
Given the stupendously low speed limit on the highways in the US, you obviously don't know what you're talking about. The car absolutely has enough acceleration to get up to over 75mph on the access ramp, allowing you to merge into normal European motorway traffic without problems. If that works in Europe, why should it not in the US?
You must have some frickin LONG access ramps in Europe.
Seriously, people always try to brush off crappy acceleration as unimportant, but it really is a safety issue. Somebody driving a dump-truck doesn't typically care as much because they weigh so much they can reasonably expect to survive getting hit.
To actually be SAFE though, you should be merging AT THE SPEED OF TRAFFIC.
Getting caught behind someone who doesn't know this always pisses me off because it means that I'm the one who's going to get rear-ended because of their incompetence.
Re:Old school hackers vs. new school hackers.
on
Good Bad Attitude
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Fortunately it isn't up to folks like you to decide which endeavors are worthy of the opportunity to make a profit and which are not. If it were I'm sure that you'd be screaming about how 'plumbing wants to be free' every time a pipe burst in your home, simply so you wouldn't have to pay for repairs.
See... the key difference is that plumbing can't be replicated at virtually zero cost.
If it could, you can bet we'd hear lots of people bitching about how plumbing cost are to high (and they'd be right).
Look, I'm an engineer. I produce "IP" for a living, but I recognize that US IP law totally fucked up. I'm not saying that the whole concept should necessarily be scrapped, but those "grey beards" everyone is talking about grew up in a different time when "IP" was handled less stupidly by our society and distribution costs were naturally higher.
Look there are some realy, fundamental problems with copyright that have become more and more obvious and corporations find new ways to abuse the system (& tecnology lowers distribution costs). I think the whole thing needs to be seriously re-examined.
One of the major idelogical problems with copyright is that it attempts to regulate what two adults do behind closed doors. Another is that copyright terms are now effectively infinate. If you write a piece of code for your employer today, chances are I will be dead by the time the copyright expires.
I think a lot less respect is displayed by copyright by the younger generation because, consiously or not, they know that copyright is not helping them, it is fucking them over.
Sure, it might inspire the production of some new work, but at a HUGE cost to the public domain. 20 years would be a sensible copyright term. 40 even. Any more than that is just stupid. NO ONE, individual or business plans further ahead than that when deciding to produce a copyrighted work. Expiration dates outside a reasonable planning timeline are clearly outside the original mandate of copyright anyways.
Add into this all sorts of other problems that are surfacing, predatory IP liscensing companies, allowing companies to claim a trademark on terms like "windows", etc, etc.
Here's an analogy for you: How low would they have to lower the speed limit on your road before you stop respecting it?
30MPH?
10MPH?
2MPH?
What if you knew that the city-wide speed limit had been reduced to 2MPH at the request of a private train company?
What if at the same time, new technology was developed that allowed cars to go twice as fast, at the same level of safety?
At some point, most people just say screw the law and do whatever makes sense.....with good reason.
OK, not to pick on you--you aren't the only one to post that here--but how the fuck does Linux prevent spyware?
By not having a totally broken and f'ed up security model. (I CAN'T reformat my HD clicking a link on the freakin internet which takes advantage of an exploit in just ONE piece of software.)
By changing the API when there's a problem with the API. (Windows places compatibility over security.)
peer review
fast response time
taking security issues more seriously in the first place
Linux has the technological capability to be infected with spyware.
Sure, but you're just using that as an excuse to ignore all the huge differences in system architecture. You can still die if you're shot while wearing a bullet-proof vest, does that make them worthless or bullet-proof vests a bad idea? This type of argument is just plain silly. You could still steal my bike if I keep it in a bank vault. It's still "technologically possible", but it's a hell of a lot safer than tying it to a lamp post with a piece of rope and a funky knot.
But the only thing I can think of that might make Linux marginally safer is the lack of an ActiveX browser.
Then you should read more about it. There are lots of other bad things MS does.
I use Linux full-time. I push it when it makes sense, and even put plenty of spare hours back into my favorite distribution. But every once in a while, when I decide to revisit Slashdot, I'm just embarassed by the blind fanboy-ism. It's annoying. Get a fucking life.
Translation:
Hey mods! I don't want to sound like a total troll so I use Linux (whether or not I really do). This way I can aviod being modded into oblivion for making fun of people who advocate the use of a better designed system.
If you really do use linux full time, you should have a better appreeciation of its security features.
So I guess we can all just watch PBS and listen to NPR and this problem goes away, right?
Obviously there are problems with state run media as well.
The problem in this case case been pretty well spelled out by Ted turner himself: link
A. He has zero chance of winning like all the current crop of 3rd party candidates.
Acutally, the funny thing about a winner-take-all election is that is give the media MASSIVE amounts of power to control the outcome. People tend to vote their fears instead of their hopes. Thus, whoever the media reports are the leading two canidates will be the two who get the most votes.
Again, we see the massive effect that the media has on an election.
Nader has pissed off basically every entrenched interest and power in the U.S. and the world, far beyond just the corporate media, just like Michael Moore. That is their appeal to most of us. Why are you thinking the entrenched powers would or should encourage them, at all?
Actually, what I'm thinking is that THOSE ENTRENCHED POWERS SHOULD NOT CONTROL THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION. This is SUPPOSED to be a democaracy of, by, and for the people... NOT for corporations.
Nope, You're wrong. The Commission on Presidential Debates is a bipartisan, not nonpartisan nonprofit founded by the Republicans and Democrats togather. Nader wasn't allowed in because they don't want him in.
I'm not wrong, you're just blind.
"The Commission on Presidential Debates" is nothing but the embodiment of the combined will fo 3 groups:
Republicans
Democrats
Corporate Media
Those are the groups who control the presidential debates. The Commission on Presidential Debates is a nothing in the grand scheme of things. If it chose to ignore the will of any of those groups, the three groups would get to gether and form another group that would do as they wished.
If the MEDIA had a motivation for leaving Nader off, it would be because Bush v. Kerry would be a lot more interesting than Bush v. Kerry v. Nader. You forget the public's limited attention span and lack of focus.
No I do not. Having a thrid party there who would actually answer the questions asked of him and calls others on their BS would make things MORE INTERESTING.
(actually the MEDIA doesn't decide who gets to debate so your whole premise is flawed)
The debate format is controlled by two parties, the canidates and the media. The "Debate Society" or whatever the hell they choose to call it is nothing but the embodiment of these two seperate interests.
The second it tried to exert it's OWN opinion, the canidates and the media would just go off and create a new debate club.
And as you pointed out, Nader hurt the Democrats a lot more than Republicans in the last election. The corporations and MEDIA would want Nader on because Bush's re-election would be much more of a boon to them than Kerry's (whose positions are much closer to Nader's than Bush's are).
When you contribute money to both sides (Enron, Microsoft, etc), you don't care who wins as long as it's one of the two guys you paid off.
But there is a flaw in Stewart's arguement. The news shows are like they are because people watch them. If their ratings suck they will go off the air, but if people watch them they will keep doing what they do.
Actually, the flaw is in your reasoning.
Channels like CNN are owned by large corporations with significant politcal interests. To pretend it's all about what the viewers want is to display extreme ignorance of the system.
The corporate media in this country have their own interests.
A really quick and easy example would be these channels' coverage of new movie releases:
Ever notice how new movies tend to get reported on/advertised by the channels who just happen to be associated with the company that made the movie?
Try thinking about this one for a second:
Maybe Nader wasn't allowed in the poresidential debates because the MEDIA's interests did not want him there. Say what you will, Nader basically decided the last election. If there was no Nader, we would have a different president right now.
In addition, I think most americans recognize that having a third party in the debates would have made them much more interesting.
Perhaps the REAL reason Nader was not allow in the presidential debates was because neither the corporate new media, nor their advertisers had bought him off. Seems logical doesn't it?
If the cost of saving your life is more than the future taxes we'll make off you, it's in the government's interest to let you die.
In the case of a business, the busniess owner makes the decisions.
In the case of the gov't, politicians make the decisions and WE pay for them. Thus, the gov't does many things that are "cost effective". War on Iraq for example.
You're trying to apply economic theories where they don't apply. Not all actions are motivated by money.
This is true, but it does not mean that it is not rational or even essential to cut losses; you could make the HMO pay those excess costs and you'd still have a point where it makes the most sense to withdraw care.
If the only value you but one a human life is money and you believe that our ridiculously inflated health care costs don't have anything to do with the problem.
No, that's possible. "Average" is not terribly specific, but the mean is a form of average and you can have 95% be below the mean. Consider these data points blah blah blah
Sure it's POSSIBLE, but it's also possible for a 5 pound wieght to weigh two pounds. Does that mean you need to go around pointing out that rare case where the 5 pound weight just happens to be on another planet?
OP was right, this guy needs to get himself to a stats class. Things like intelligence are normally distributed. They teach you that in stats class.
Given that intelligence is going to have a probabilty distribution function that looks most like a normal distribution, it IS just silly to say the 95% of people are below the mean. Just like it would be stupid to say the 95% of people are below the mean height.
OP was obviously talking out his ass and deserves a good ribbing for complaing about the intelligence of others while not displaying much of it himself.
I'm not even going to debate your comments as your statements are completely ridiculous.
Because you would loose....badly.
It's undisputed that the US has far superior health care than another other country.
I'm disputing it.
We lead the world in health care research, innovation and technology.
It doesn't matter if we have the cure for cancer if no one can afford to buy it.
The quality of a nation's health care system should be measured not just by what treatments they have, but on whether it's population actually has access to them. It's estimated that over 41 million Americans are WITHOUT health insurance. Those who have it, aren't necessarily guaranteed those treatments you're talking about either. If the cost of saving your life is more than the future profits they'll make off your health insurance payments, it's in the HMO's interest to let you die. Even if you're a freak who believes that human beings have no right to live, this is terrible because anyone's contribution to society is MUCH more than they pay in health insurance premiums.
Good health care is not cheap.
In America. There are plenty of other countries who manage to have the same drugs and treatments for a fraction of what they cost here.
Unless you're a communist, capitalism is good for our society.
Holy crap are you ignorant.
You need to do a little research on the concpet of "market failure".
Capitaism SUCKS at TONS of things. To believe otherwise is to be pathetically uninformed.
A great example of this is the current US health care situation. People in other civilized countries are getting better health care cheaper because they have socialized health care.
Why?... For one, because "capitalism" doesn't take into account the cost of my death to society.
For a more academic, widely accepted example of how capitalism can totally suck hairy donkey balls, read up on something called the "prisoner's dilemma".
If you're making furbies, capitalism is great but for a great many of the problems that plague society at large, it just plain sucks.
I guess people just rolled over and died before there were cellphones.
Well, before cellphones they used pagers but otherwise, yes. If you got to the emergency room and they didn't have anyone to work on you, good luck.
If the cellphone isn't working, the 30 seconds to run out of the theater will not make that much of a difference. I promise.
You're totally missing the point. The INCOMING calls are the big deal. Who gives a fuck about outgoing calls? You just go outside.
The problem comes for emergency services personell who are on call, sometimes 24/7.
I wonder if it's possible to relay outgoing calls, but block incomming calls though? That would solve both problems...
The solution is to go back to having a guy in a red jacket with a flashlight. That not only solves the cellphone problem, but as solves the problem or people talking loudly to other people sitting next to them AND doesn't put anyone's life at risk, however slightly.
I ALREADY HAVE AN MP3 PLAYER!
I already have MP3s on it.
It's just that the user interface was not designed for in car use. Read my current MP3 player as a standard mass storage device and give me a better user interface. Once designed for a guy who's driving.
I don't want another MP3 player, I just want a better interface for the one I have.
Hopefully this works out for iRiver. Otherwise there probably not going to last long. They're getting creamed (at 5.6%).
It's possible to have a very small fraction of the market and still do quite well.
Do you think your local plumber has even 1% of the US market for plumbing?
iRiver makes some good products that, while not dominating the market do sell. As long as they aren't being totally stupid with their money, I expect they're doing quite fine.
Look at it this way:
What percentage of the car market do you think Ferrari has? Does this automatically mean they're facing bankruptcy?
IRiver's products appeal very much to those of us who care about audio quality, lack of DRM, etc. Unfortunately we're not the majority.
Fortunately, there are enough of us out there that there are companies which cater to our desires.
How many people own Crown amplifiers?
IMO, iRiver's doing great. They're they only company out there making a DRM-less device, with all the bells and whistles necessary for it to be a total replacement for a portable minidsc recorder. As long as they keep doing this, they'll have a nice niche in the market, and won't have to compete quite so desperately on price as certain other manufacturers.
As for why Linus is always reluctant to accept new code in the kernel? simple: Firstly, if he accepted all (good or less good) ideas into the kernel, the damn thing would make coffee already, and I don't blame him to want to narrow the kernel's focus.
Ah, there's the problem.
The law defines a copy as being a tangible object (17 USC 101). You cannot send a tangible object over a network connection. Rather, the infringly made copy we're talking about is the RAM, or hard disk, or other memory of the downloader's computer.
Which doesn't make any sense in this case. The electric charge that is used to send the data across the internet is just as "tangible" as the electric charge that is stored in RAM at the end of the chain (or magnetic field in a HDD).
What you're saying amounts to very flawed reasoning. If a change of electric or magnetic state amount to creating a "tangible object" then the signaling of the bits onto the network should count. If a change of electric or magnetic state does not count, then I'm not violating copyright unless I burn the infringing work to CD, print it to a piece of paper, etc since for some reason electric charge doesn't count.
It's important, when discussing legal matters, to use the relevant legal definitions of words, since they override everyday definitions. Many people overlook this, and you seem to have done so.
If you'd like, I can cite some caselaw backing me up on this, but even a cursory glance at the statutes themselves will reveal the truth of my post.
I wouldn't mind a couple links because it seems to fly in the face of common sense. Additionally, I believe that the law treats me borrowing your CD and copying it for myself differently than you copying your CD and giving me the copy .
It's a fairly common sense rule, especially given that the reproduction occurs on the downloader's end.
No, actually it occurs on the upload side of things. Otherwise the person uploading the file wouldn't have a copy anymore.
The uploaded has 1 copy of foobar. In order to send a copy of foobar, they need to either remove that single copy from the disk and send it out the network connection or they are making a copy.
What you are saying is like saying that someone who is RECEIVING pirate radio is the one who's guilty of copyright violation. Of course they aren't. Whether or not they recieve and store the information, it's still out there. It's still been copied.
It doesn't matter what's on the other end of the wire, the bits had to be copied to make it there in the first place.
Don't most movie theatres already have actual humans?
They have customers but they don't actually have somebody there watching those customers, throwing out annoying SOBs.
Customers really can't do much about the situation, they just don't have the legal status.
Sure the law "says" emergency calls will make it through, but writing it down doesn't make it so.
Okay, what asshole moderator modded my comment troll? The point I made above is 100% valid.
Maybe you don't like it, but it's a real problem.
Do me a favor metamods, look at my comments and look at my history.
The reality of the situation is that they simply cannot guarantee that "emergency" calls do make it through.
There's really no reason to risk interfering with emergency services. Put a frickin human in the theatre, have them throw out people who talk on their cellphone. It's not really a difficult concept people.
Sure the law "says" emergency calls will make it through, but writing it down doesn't make it so.
Emergencies tend to be just that, emergencies. Sometimes that might me a doctor calling up another doctor on their cellphone. Or even a payphone.
They simply CANNOT guarantee that emergency calls will make it through. What if you're on the bomb squad and you decide to go see a movie on your day off? etc, etc.
That's what makes this absolutely stupid. THEY ARE RISKING THE LIVES OF HUMAN BEINGS BECAUSE OF A FEW FRICKIN WHINERS.
It's not worth it.
If you want to have a super-silent theatre then DO WHAT LIVE SHOWS HAVE DONE FOR CENTURIES: HAVE AN ACTUAL HUMAN IN THE CROWD.
The no-copy flag is believed to be largely responsible for the minimal penetration of audio DAT in the US.
And Minidisc...
If I was a hardware vendor, I would be fighting this "broadcast flag" tooth and nail. I think current estimates of how much the average joe wants HDTV are already massively overstated, add in the inability to record monday night football and forget about it.
I was in Walmart today and there was a display trying to explain that images are made of "pixels"....it really made me laugh at the kind of uphill battle these guys are creating for themselves.
people aren't going to want HTDV unless it makes their experience better and the broadcast flag isn't going to do that.
Color TV vs. B&W TV was a no-brainer. It was just better, the only issue was money. These guys are screwiing themselves HARD.
Especially since in my view of they world, these guys only have a limited time in which they're going to be able to sell HDTVs in the first place.
Eventually the segmentation between internet and TV is going to get blown away and so will the difference between a TV and a computer.
(Look at what PCs have already done to blur the line WRT music playback.)
If they don't watch it, many of US may skip HDTV entirely and just wait for TV over IP.
Slashdot Mirror
Lighter = safer
NOT NECESSARILY
Light is good for handling, braking and acceleration, but there's this obsucre concept called CONSERVATION OF MOMENTUM that you might want to look into. Then then of course things like decent cumple zones add weight to a car.
Run-over = myth The risk that it will be "run over" are also highly overrated. If a big vehicle hits a smart car, it becomes a wedge, pushing the larger vehicle into the air so that the larger vehicle can dissipate its energy on other things, like concrete, pavement and telephone poles.
Now this is just silly. IF THE CAR IS BEING A "WEDGE" IT IS BEING RUN OVER. Wherever the car ends up after running over you isn't a big deal beacuse YOU"VE ALREADY BEEN RUN OVER.
Believe me, the risk of you being run over is significant. My friend needed a new paint job on his jeep after the last car he ran over. Ok, so he really only made it up onto the hood with his left front wheel, but you can guess where that wheel would have gone if they had been going any more than 30 MPH.
Solid cage = safer
Second, this little critter has a solid cage that can withstand the problem I just mentioned - its own mass. Most vehicles will crumple under their own mass at moderate speeds. At 65 km/h, head-on this car will walk away mostly unscathed, and the passenger will only have minor injuries.
This really isn't that impressive. Just about any car these days has some sort of saftey cage, and a 65 km/hr collision really isn't that bad.
Anyways if you want to actually be safe you need a safety cage AND crumple zones. As another poster put it: "I can build a car that's strong enough to withstand an impact and drive away, but you'd have to scrape the occupants out with a paper towel."
Look, I drive a small car and I love it, but I'm also willing to admit the limitations of a small car.
While I feel more confident behind the wheel of my '86 Mazda RX-7 due to its better braking, cornering and acceleration, if I knew I was going to hit something I would MUCH rather be in one of my parents' Volvo's. They simply are better able to dissipate the energy of the crash. (And also less likely to get run over.)
The advantage of a small car is in accident avoidance, not during an actual collision. During an actual collsion there is no advantage to being lighter. You need all the steel beams and crumple zones you can get.
Think about this:
What if you fired a person at 60 MPH at a wall?
You'd end up with a bloddy mess, wouldn't you?
That why the car needs to not just have a "safety cage" but to actually dissipate some of the energy from the impact while spreading the decelleration out over time (by crumpling).
As for a welded-shut hood, good luck trying to weld plastic,
Here ya go.
It's a sort of strongly focused heat gun.
Given the stupendously low speed limit on the highways in the US, you obviously don't know what you're talking about. The car absolutely has enough acceleration to get up to over 75mph on the access ramp, allowing you to merge into normal European motorway traffic without problems. If that works in Europe, why should it not in the US?
You must have some frickin LONG access ramps in Europe.
Seriously, people always try to brush off crappy acceleration as unimportant, but it really is a safety issue. Somebody driving a dump-truck doesn't typically care as much because they weigh so much they can reasonably expect to survive getting hit.
To actually be SAFE though, you should be merging AT THE SPEED OF TRAFFIC.
Getting caught behind someone who doesn't know this always pisses me off because it means that I'm the one who's going to get rear-ended because of their incompetence.
Fortunately it isn't up to folks like you to decide which endeavors are worthy of the opportunity to make a profit and which are not. If it were I'm sure that you'd be screaming about how 'plumbing wants to be free' every time a pipe burst in your home, simply so you wouldn't have to pay for repairs.
See... the key difference is that plumbing can't be replicated at virtually zero cost.
If it could, you can bet we'd hear lots of people bitching about how plumbing cost are to high (and they'd be right).
Look, I'm an engineer. I produce "IP" for a living, but I recognize that US IP law totally fucked up. I'm not saying that the whole concept should necessarily be scrapped, but those "grey beards" everyone is talking about grew up in a different time when "IP" was handled less stupidly by our society and distribution costs were naturally higher.
Look there are some realy, fundamental problems with copyright that have become more and more obvious and corporations find new ways to abuse the system (& tecnology lowers distribution costs). I think the whole thing needs to be seriously re-examined.
One of the major idelogical problems with copyright is that it attempts to regulate what two adults do behind closed doors. Another is that copyright terms are now effectively infinate. If you write a piece of code for your employer today, chances are I will be dead by the time the copyright expires.
I think a lot less respect is displayed by copyright by the younger generation because, consiously or not, they know that copyright is not helping them, it is fucking them over.
Sure, it might inspire the production of some new work, but at a HUGE cost to the public domain. 20 years would be a sensible copyright term. 40 even. Any more than that is just stupid. NO ONE, individual or business plans further ahead than that when deciding to produce a copyrighted work. Expiration dates outside a reasonable planning timeline are clearly outside the original mandate of copyright anyways.
Add into this all sorts of other problems that are surfacing, predatory IP liscensing companies, allowing companies to claim a trademark on terms like "windows", etc, etc.
Here's an analogy for you:
How low would they have to lower the speed limit on your road before you stop respecting it?
30MPH?
10MPH?
2MPH?
What if you knew that the city-wide speed limit had been reduced to 2MPH at the request of a private train company?
What if at the same time, new technology was developed that allowed cars to go twice as fast, at the same level of safety?
At some point, most people just say screw the law and do whatever makes sense.....with good reason.
- By not having a totally broken and f'ed up security model. (I CAN'T reformat my HD clicking a link on the freakin internet which takes advantage of an exploit in just ONE piece of software.)
- By changing the API when there's a problem with the API. (Windows places compatibility over security.)
- peer review
- fast response time
- taking security issues more seriously in the first place
Linux has the technological capability to be infected with spyware.Sure, but you're just using that as an excuse to ignore all the huge differences in system architecture. You can still die if you're shot while wearing a bullet-proof vest, does that make them worthless or bullet-proof vests a bad idea? This type of argument is just plain silly. You could still steal my bike if I keep it in a bank vault. It's still "technologically possible", but it's a hell of a lot safer than tying it to a lamp post with a piece of rope and a funky knot.
But the only thing I can think of that might make Linux marginally safer is the lack of an ActiveX browser.
Then you should read more about it. There are lots of other bad things MS does.
I use Linux full-time. I push it when it makes sense, and even put plenty of spare hours back into my favorite distribution. But every once in a while, when I decide to revisit Slashdot, I'm just embarassed by the blind fanboy-ism. It's annoying. Get a fucking life.
Translation:
Hey mods! I don't want to sound like a total troll so I use Linux (whether or not I really do). This way I can aviod being modded into oblivion for making fun of people who advocate the use of a better designed system.
If you really do use linux full time, you should have a better appreeciation of its security features.
So I guess we can all just watch PBS and listen to NPR and this problem goes away, right?
Obviously there are problems with state run media as well.
The problem in this case case been pretty well spelled out by Ted turner himself: link
A. He has zero chance of winning like all the current crop of 3rd party candidates.
Acutally, the funny thing about a winner-take-all election is that is give the media MASSIVE amounts of power to control the outcome. People tend to vote their fears instead of their hopes. Thus, whoever the media reports are the leading two canidates will be the two who get the most votes.
Again, we see the massive effect that the media has on an election.
Nader has pissed off basically every entrenched interest and power in the U.S. and the world, far beyond just the corporate media, just like Michael Moore. That is their appeal to most of us. Why are you thinking the entrenched powers would or should encourage them, at all?
Actually, what I'm thinking is that THOSE ENTRENCHED POWERS SHOULD NOT CONTROL THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION. This is SUPPOSED to be a democaracy of, by, and for the people... NOT for corporations.
I'm not wrong, you're just blind.
"The Commission on Presidential Debates" is nothing but the embodiment of the combined will fo 3 groups:
Those are the groups who control the presidential debates. The Commission on Presidential Debates is a nothing in the grand scheme of things. If it chose to ignore the will of any of those groups, the three groups would get to gether and form another group that would do as they wished.
If the MEDIA had a motivation for leaving Nader off, it would be because Bush v. Kerry would be a lot more interesting than Bush v. Kerry v. Nader. You forget the public's limited attention span and lack of focus.
No I do not. Having a thrid party there who would actually answer the questions asked of him and calls others on their BS would make things MORE INTERESTING.
(actually the MEDIA doesn't decide who gets to debate so your whole premise is flawed)
The debate format is controlled by two parties, the canidates and the media. The "Debate Society" or whatever the hell they choose to call it is nothing but the embodiment of these two seperate interests.
The second it tried to exert it's OWN opinion, the canidates and the media would just go off and create a new debate club.
And as you pointed out, Nader hurt the Democrats a lot more than Republicans in the last election. The corporations and MEDIA would want Nader on because Bush's re-election would be much more of a boon to them than Kerry's (whose positions are much closer to Nader's than Bush's are).
When you contribute money to both sides (Enron, Microsoft, etc), you don't care who wins as long as it's one of the two guys you paid off.
But there is a flaw in Stewart's arguement. The news shows are like they are because people watch them. If their ratings suck they will go off the air, but if people watch them they will keep doing what they do.
Actually, the flaw is in your reasoning.
Channels like CNN are owned by large corporations with significant politcal interests. To pretend it's all about what the viewers want is to display extreme ignorance of the system.
The corporate media in this country have their own interests.
A really quick and easy example would be these channels' coverage of new movie releases:
Ever notice how new movies tend to get reported on/advertised by the channels who just happen to be associated with the company that made the movie?
Try thinking about this one for a second:
Maybe Nader wasn't allowed in the poresidential debates because the MEDIA's interests did not want him there. Say what you will, Nader basically decided the last election. If there was no Nader, we would have a different president right now.
In addition, I think most americans recognize that having a third party in the debates would have made them much more interesting.
Perhaps the REAL reason Nader was not allow in the presidential debates was because neither the corporate new media, nor their advertisers had bought him off. Seems logical doesn't it?
If the cost of saving your life is more than the future taxes we'll make off you, it's in the government's interest to let you die.
In the case of a business, the busniess owner makes the decisions.
In the case of the gov't, politicians make the decisions and WE pay for them. Thus, the gov't does many things that are "cost effective". War on Iraq for example.
You're trying to apply economic theories where they don't apply. Not all actions are motivated by money.
This is true, but it does not mean that it is not rational or even essential to cut losses; you could make the HMO pay those excess costs and you'd still have a point where it makes the most sense to withdraw care.
If the only value you but one a human life is money and you believe that our ridiculously inflated health care costs don't have anything to do with the problem.
No, that's possible. "Average" is not terribly specific, but the mean is a form of average and you can have 95% be below the mean. Consider these data points blah blah blah
Sure it's POSSIBLE, but it's also possible for a 5 pound wieght to weigh two pounds. Does that mean you need to go around pointing out that rare case where the 5 pound weight just happens to be on another planet?
OP was right, this guy needs to get himself to a stats class. Things like intelligence are normally distributed. They teach you that in stats class.
Given that intelligence is going to have a probabilty distribution function that looks most like a normal distribution, it IS just silly to say the 95% of people are below the mean. Just like it would be stupid to say the 95% of people are below the mean height.
OP was obviously talking out his ass and deserves a good ribbing for complaing about the intelligence of others while not displaying much of it himself.
But not as neat as Oakley's new glasses.
Those things are silly.
What if you want to listen to MP3s when it's dark out?
You've got a damn expensive MP3 player attached to another product in such a way the you can't use is 50% of the time.
I'm not even going to debate your comments as your statements are completely ridiculous.
Because you would loose....badly.
It's undisputed that the US has far superior health care than another other country.
I'm disputing it.
We lead the world in health care research, innovation and technology.
It doesn't matter if we have the cure for cancer if no one can afford to buy it.
The quality of a nation's health care system should be measured not just by what treatments they have, but on whether it's population actually has access to them. It's estimated that over 41 million Americans are WITHOUT health insurance. Those who have it, aren't necessarily guaranteed those treatments you're talking about either. If the cost of saving your life is more than the future profits they'll make off your health insurance payments, it's in the HMO's interest to let you die. Even if you're a freak who believes that human beings have no right to live, this is terrible because anyone's contribution to society is MUCH more than they pay in health insurance premiums.
Good health care is not cheap.
In America. There are plenty of other countries who manage to have the same drugs and treatments for a fraction of what they cost here.
Unless you're a communist, capitalism is good for our society.
Holy crap are you ignorant.
You need to do a little research on the concpet of "market failure".
Capitaism SUCKS at TONS of things. To believe otherwise is to be pathetically uninformed.
A great example of this is the current US health care situation. People in other civilized countries are getting better health care cheaper because they have socialized health care.
Why?... For one, because "capitalism" doesn't take into account the cost of my death to society.
For a more academic, widely accepted example of how capitalism can totally suck hairy donkey balls, read up on something called the "prisoner's dilemma".
If you're making furbies, capitalism is great but for a great many of the problems that plague society at large, it just plain sucks.
I guess people just rolled over and died before there were cellphones.
Well, before cellphones they used pagers but otherwise, yes. If you got to the emergency room and they didn't have anyone to work on you, good luck.
If the cellphone isn't working, the 30 seconds to run out of the theater will not make that much of a difference. I promise.
You're totally missing the point. The INCOMING calls are the big deal. Who gives a fuck about outgoing calls? You just go outside.
The problem comes for emergency services personell who are on call, sometimes 24/7.
I wonder if it's possible to relay outgoing calls, but block incomming calls though? That would solve both problems...
The solution is to go back to having a guy in a red jacket with a flashlight. That not only solves the cellphone problem, but as solves the problem or people talking loudly to other people sitting next to them AND doesn't put anyone's life at risk, however slightly.
Do you hear me iRiver/Clarion/Alpine/Anyone!
I ALREADY HAVE AN MP3 PLAYER!
I already have MP3s on it.
It's just that the user interface was not designed for in car use. Read my current MP3 player as a standard mass storage device and give me a better user interface. Once designed for a guy who's driving.
I don't want another MP3 player, I just want a better interface for the one I have.
Just about any of Clarion's models do.
On the cheaper end, I believe the same thing is true for Aiwa.
It's actually a REALLY common feature, on decks in the $200+ range.
Note:
Some decks have a rear panel input (Clarion) and some have a front panel input (Aiwa).
Hopefully this works out for iRiver. Otherwise there probably not going to last long. They're getting creamed (at 5.6%).
It's possible to have a very small fraction of the market and still do quite well.
Do you think your local plumber has even 1% of the US market for plumbing?
iRiver makes some good products that, while not dominating the market do sell. As long as they aren't being totally stupid with their money, I expect they're doing quite fine.
Look at it this way:
What percentage of the car market do you think Ferrari has? Does this automatically mean they're facing bankruptcy?
IRiver's products appeal very much to those of us who care about audio quality, lack of DRM, etc.
Unfortunately we're not the majority.
Fortunately, there are enough of us out there that there are companies which cater to our desires.
How many people own Crown amplifiers?
IMO, iRiver's doing great. They're they only company out there making a DRM-less device, with all the bells and whistles necessary for it to be a total replacement for a portable minidsc recorder. As long as they keep doing this, they'll have a nice niche in the market, and won't have to compete quite so desperately on price as certain other manufacturers.
As for why Linus is always reluctant to accept new code in the kernel? simple: Firstly, if he accepted all (good or less good) ideas into the kernel, the damn thing would make coffee already, and I don't blame him to want to narrow the kernel's focus.
Actually, (and somewhat disturbingly) Linux already DOES make coffee.
Ah, there's the problem. The law defines a copy as being a tangible object (17 USC 101). You cannot send a tangible object over a network connection. Rather, the infringly made copy we're talking about is the RAM, or hard disk, or other memory of the downloader's computer.
Which doesn't make any sense in this case. The electric charge that is used to send the data across the internet is just as "tangible" as the electric charge that is stored in RAM at the end of the chain (or magnetic field in a HDD).
What you're saying amounts to very flawed reasoning. If a change of electric or magnetic state amount to creating a "tangible object" then the signaling of the bits onto the network should count. If a change of electric or magnetic state does not count, then I'm not violating copyright unless I burn the infringing work to CD, print it to a piece of paper, etc since for some reason electric charge doesn't count.
It's important, when discussing legal matters, to use the relevant legal definitions of words, since they override everyday definitions. Many people overlook this, and you seem to have done so.
If you'd like, I can cite some caselaw backing me up on this, but even a cursory glance at the statutes themselves will reveal the truth of my post.
I wouldn't mind a couple links because it seems to fly in the face of common sense. Additionally, I believe that the law treats me borrowing your CD and copying it for myself differently than you copying your CD and giving me the copy .
It's a fairly common sense rule, especially given that the reproduction occurs on the downloader's end.
No, actually it occurs on the upload side of things. Otherwise the person uploading the file wouldn't have a copy anymore.
The uploaded has 1 copy of foobar. In order to send a copy of foobar, they need to either remove that single copy from the disk and send it out the network connection or they are making a copy.
What you are saying is like saying that someone who is RECEIVING pirate radio is the one who's guilty of copyright violation. Of course they aren't. Whether or not they recieve and store the information, it's still out there. It's still been copied.
It doesn't matter what's on the other end of the wire, the bits had to be copied to make it there in the first place.
Don't most movie theatres already have actual humans?
They have customers but they don't actually have somebody there watching those customers, throwing out annoying SOBs.
Customers really can't do much about the situation, they just don't have the legal status.
Sure the law "says" emergency calls will make it through, but writing it down doesn't make it so.
Okay, what asshole moderator modded my comment troll?
The point I made above is 100% valid.
Maybe you don't like it, but it's a real problem.
Do me a favor metamods, look at my comments and look at my history.
The reality of the situation is that they simply cannot guarantee that "emergency" calls do make it through.
There's really no reason to risk interfering with emergency services. Put a frickin human in the theatre, have them throw out people who talk on their cellphone. It's not really a difficult concept people.
Sure the law "says" emergency calls will make it through, but writing it down doesn't make it so.
Emergencies tend to be just that, emergencies. Sometimes that might me a doctor calling up another doctor on their cellphone. Or even a payphone.
They simply CANNOT guarantee that emergency calls will make it through. What if you're on the bomb squad and you decide to go see a movie on your day off? etc, etc.
That's what makes this absolutely stupid. THEY ARE RISKING THE LIVES OF HUMAN BEINGS BECAUSE OF A FEW FRICKIN WHINERS.
It's not worth it.
If you want to have a super-silent theatre then DO WHAT LIVE SHOWS HAVE DONE FOR CENTURIES: HAVE AN ACTUAL HUMAN IN THE CROWD.
The no-copy flag is believed to be largely responsible for the minimal penetration of audio DAT in the US.
And Minidisc...
If I was a hardware vendor, I would be fighting this "broadcast flag" tooth and nail. I think current estimates of how much the average joe wants HDTV are already massively overstated, add in the inability to record monday night football and forget about it.
I was in Walmart today and there was a display trying to explain that images are made of "pixels"....it really made me laugh at the kind of uphill battle these guys are creating for themselves.
people aren't going to want HTDV unless it makes their experience better and the broadcast flag isn't going to do that.
Color TV vs. B&W TV was a no-brainer. It was just better, the only issue was money. These guys are screwiing themselves HARD.
Especially since in my view of they world, these guys only have a limited time in which they're going to be able to sell HDTVs in the first place.
Eventually the segmentation between internet and TV is going to get blown away and so will the difference between a TV and a computer.
(Look at what PCs have already done to blur the line WRT music playback.)
If they don't watch it, many of US may skip HDTV entirely and just wait for TV over IP.