So, if people buy music from Amazon, they'll have the same file (since Amazon doesn't re-rip for every customer). Which ones are valid purchasers, and which ones received a copy from a friend or file sharing site?
He was saying if a Dutch citizen connects to a server in the U.S., the ISP that the server is connected to can throttle your traffic because they are exempt from Dutch laws.
Concerning the pay of the teachers, are the average they are being compared with public school teachers who have been promised pensions that pay nearly as much as a full time teacher?
It's difficult to compare because some of the pay for a pensioned teacher in a union (assuming the UK unions have the clout U.S. public unions have) is in the contributions to the pension, and if the market returns expected to pay the promised level of benefits fail to occur, then the school will be paying in the future for work accomplished today, probably taken out the funds used to pay current teachers. So, the average of a teacher with a promised pension is actually much higher than that in calculated average, unless the teacher is paying for the pension out of their salary.
Kernel version 2.6.0 originally released in December 2003. The second digit was incremented from 4 to 6 (odd numbers are (were?) reserved for development work) due to significant changes in coding. Since then, several stable releases have come out every year, incrementing the third series, indicating that no significant changes, to the overall kernel design, but most releases have had some important features added.
Recently, Linus expressed an interest in changing the numbering from 2.6 to 3.0. Unlike the significant amount of change between 2.4 and 2.6, Linus decided to make this change based not upon a significant change, but personal preference. Having run the first two numbers the same for over 7 years, they have had relatively little meaning for the last several years anyway, and they still won't really. It might be a minor inconvenience for those who run distributions to have to accommodate the change, but for most folks, it doesn't mean much. I wouldn't mind a numbering where like 11.2 (year and release number within the year), or just going with 40 and dropping the 2.6. I would then know that we are in the 40th release since the 2003 rewrite, and it would be shorter to say than the complete numbering system currently being used. I think that Linus is keeping the format the same going forward due to tradition (and maybe it means not having to reprogram the coding repository, or some related code that depends on kernel version number), and I suppose that's fine since it still gives you information if you understand the meanings the number system has.
This is one of the problems we have with spending in this country. Once a program is in place, it almost never gets cut, unless something even worse is put in it's place. To actually cut the TSA, you have to pass an entire bill through the House, Senate, and then get the signature of the President or an override majority from Congress.
I wish we had a provision that a simple no vote by the House of Representatives could cut bad programs. (Laws would have to be written to not only get past the current House, Senate, and President, but the future wishes of the people who have to keep paying for them.) Perhaps we could also have a citizen provision to cut these programs if Washington won't.
I wonder if that would be a problem though. What if most trucks were driven by a computer? Would high value cargo be left unattended, or would unattended trucks become targets of thieves? Would the driving job become a security job? I don't know, but if we can truly automate more work, but make people recognize that the important thing is to distribute ownership of the robots that do the work, we have a chance at improving the quality of life for everyone. Unfortunately, short sightedness by most people in the willingness to take the short term gain by selling capital to fewer individuals will continue to be a problem. I don't know how to counteract this trend.
Knowing Osama bin Laden, he would be releasing a video proving the announcement of his death as a lie (proving the video was new by mentioning the date of said death) in order to destroy the credibility of the U.S. The fact that he hasn't done so should be proof enough that he can't.
I'd long wanted access to it, and was surprised to find it on my basic cable. I then found the only things worth watching were X-Files reruns and the new Galactica. When they stopped running X-Files, I resorted to checking out the X-Files from the library, and didn't feel like I'd lost anything when they were dropped from my basic cable package.
I never got into the Stargate spinoffs because I didn't have access to SciFi when the first ones started. I might go through the effort of checking them out from the library and seeing if they are worth it. After I check out Babylon 5. After I do some other things more important than entertainment.
14 years is too long. 5 years should be long enough. The 14 year limit centuries ago was more fitting than now.
Let's say that you sold a book to a publisher 200+ years ago. They decide to print a small run, and ship it all around the country. What could be done today in a matter of 2 months (maybe less) would have taken almost a year to print, distribute, advertise, get good reviews and word of mouth, sell out and then receive orders for additional copies if a work was unexpectedly popular. Then, you would have to re-setup your press as if you hadn't even done a first printing, and run through the whole process again.
Today, with computers, forecasting, digital storage, real time sales data, etc. the initial wave of sales, with multiple restocks can be done in two years. If you put a buffer of 3 years, that's plenty of time to prevent most customers that might buy from waiting for a cheaper copy from a printer that deals in out of copyright materials. I would advocate a 1 year extension on enhanced work. So if the next storage format after Blu-Ray is released, allow companies that take the time to enhance older works to have 1 year copyright on the enhanced work that has the additional resolution. Let creators of fiction to have a 20-30 year exclusive derivative works limit, during which they can limit derivative works (sequels and movies).
Take Star Wars for instance. With a 30 year limit, in 2007, anybody could produce their own Star Wars canon. You could have a group of Star Wars geeks setup an alternate group for running future Star Wars development. They could say the prequels didn't happen in their own canon, and produce a single or series of movies to tell what Lucas did that was so reviled in the sequels. They could produce movies based on the Thrawn series. They could develop new books, storyline threads, characters, etc, have conventions where Lucas wasn't invited. If something really good came out of it, they could produce movies out of this. Would it suck? Probably, but I don't have a problem with them giving it a go. And if they did a better job than Lucas, then fans would probably become fans of the works produced by the new group, and boycott the Lucas produced materials.
Copyright is the reason we don't have the ability to download for free all of the culture that copyright was created to provide us. Think of what we could have with a 5 year expiration. Every ISP and library would have copies that anybody could have for free whenever they wanted. Theaters could run marathons of old stuff that fans might want to see in a theater with other fans. Want to have a Lord of the Rings Marathon? The theater could sell you additional tickets to watch the 3 movies after the two new movies come out without having to charge high prices at the whim of the studios. If demand is there, theaters could pick old actors (John Wayne, Grace Kelly, etc) and run their movies on a Monday, Tuesday, or Thursday night. Or have Classic Movie nights, where every week they pick 1 or 2 of the top 100 movies, and run them, for fans who've never seen them, or just like old movies. The theater could even let you have the seat free, just to make money on the concessions.
I received a used DVD player from somebody recently. It wouldn't load any of half a dozen disks. Yesterday, I tracked down the correct sized star shaped driver, and unscrewed the case, swiped a microfiber cloth over the lens a few times, and it's ran perfectly afterwards. It's a much nicer looking unit than the Black Friday special we'd been using for the last 8 years.
Interesting comment from the sibling post about humidity and DVDs. I had heard Blu-Ray is supposed to be more scratch proof.
But I'm not acquiring an HD TV for several years at least, since I don't plan on paying extra for HD video, although we've stopped acquiring DVDs except for the stuff we want the kids to watch. Otherwise we just check out from the library, and return it. The library has started stocking Blu-Ray, but I don't see a need.
I like Samsung hardware. When I built my machine 5 years ago, I went with 2 160GB low noise Samsung drives (SATA 1.0 when it was rather rare), and I love them. It's a shame that this is happening. I really think we as customers would be better off if mergers and acquisitions by a competitor or conglomerate were prohibited.
That would ignore the fact that most of the critical code has already been written, and LibreOffice was getting it for free. Add in the fact that all of the distros are tossing out OOo, and it was just a matter of time until OOo would be a dead project.
Maybe Oracle realized that if they keep the community engaged, there may be rewards to be developed. Maybe they could even hold out hope for a Firefox like surge by the open source project, but if it happened while they were at odds with the outside community, they wouldn't reap any real benefits from that. Unfortunately, the non-Microsoft office suites don't seem to be making progress in the market, which is a real shame.
We don't own it really. Maybe you think we should own it (and to that I agree), but we have no rights to the lines that are already in place.
If we want to own the lines, we need to form a coop, get ourselves access rights, buy the fibre, and build our own network. Interconnect all of our local networks, and help pay for it buy charging the businesses the rights to connect to us.
Last month, I was thinking about doing this very thing, but the financial risk to do it myself was too great, what with a family to be concerned about.
As someone in Topeka, it didn't work, since KCK and Topeka are about 45 miles apart, and Topeka won't be benefiting from this.
Maybe it's time to start a coop with the goal of owning the lines that I've been contemplating recently. Doing so will require figuring out what would need to be done to work with the electrical guys to reuse their poles.
Who am I kidding, I don't have the money to start up something like that.
To protect shareholders, who can't all individually know every activity that the businesses engages in, the government has chosen this method to protect the shareholders from litigation, although they can be hit with a loss in value of the stock if the company loses a case. Whether this is the best method for that, the individuals working for the company are not exempt from the law, and should be held accountable when necessary.
The poor people pay a larger percentage of their income in sales tax not because they are unfairly taxed, but because they spend more of what they make. If Mike Millionaire makes a million and spends a million, assuming a 10% sales tax, and Paul Poorman makes 20,000 and spends it all, and pays the same 10% sales tax, then they pay the same percentage of their income. If Paul spends 75% and Mike spends 100%, then Mike pays a higher percentage than Paul.
If you consider tax exempt sales like medical expenses, rent (I've never been told that rent included tax, if it does, exempt this), possibly food (I think my state might refund food sales tax for low income individuals), then Paul might even pay less tax despite both spending equal percentages of income since more of his income would probably be spent on the tax free necessities.
I don't mind increases in spending to do these things. I want the government to legalize these things being done by local governments who can do a much better job of cutting waste and providing us we need without subsidizing large businesses and union leaders in the process.
I never notice anybody point out that the high price is essentially a tax, bid on by the service provider when the FCC auctioned the frequencies, and for which you pay through your phone plan. Maybe it's for the best. If we didn't have higher prices, maybe we'd have more people being jerks in public while using their mobile devices.
Personally, I think it would have been better if local governments (biding together as a coop?) had bid (or been given) the frequencies, then they could have provided access for users from all providers, which would have provided more competition since every provider could be everywhere if they didn't need build their own network.
I think it would be much better to launch the probe prior to the approach of the rock, and let the rock catch up to it from behind. That or figure out a way to use the moon and Earth to slingshot a probe up to the necessary speed (I suppose if this we possible, we'd do it for every launch we currently make).
Slashdot Mirror
So, if people buy music from Amazon, they'll have the same file (since Amazon doesn't re-rip for every customer). Which ones are valid purchasers, and which ones received a copy from a friend or file sharing site?
Government budgets include salaries. Average consumers don't have salaries as a line item in their budget.
Like police carrying a portable dis-abler to prevent being recorded breaking the law so they don't have to come over and break your phone for you?
He was saying if a Dutch citizen connects to a server in the U.S., the ISP that the server is connected to can throttle your traffic because they are exempt from Dutch laws.
Concerning the pay of the teachers, are the average they are being compared with public school teachers who have been promised pensions that pay nearly as much as a full time teacher?
It's difficult to compare because some of the pay for a pensioned teacher in a union (assuming the UK unions have the clout U.S. public unions have) is in the contributions to the pension, and if the market returns expected to pay the promised level of benefits fail to occur, then the school will be paying in the future for work accomplished today, probably taken out the funds used to pay current teachers. So, the average of a teacher with a promised pension is actually much higher than that in calculated average, unless the teacher is paying for the pension out of their salary.
Might take awhile to pay itself off. Discover ran an article that priced a unit at $800 for one small flywheel.
Kernel version 2.6.0 originally released in December 2003. The second digit was incremented from 4 to 6 (odd numbers are (were?) reserved for development work) due to significant changes in coding. Since then, several stable releases have come out every year, incrementing the third series, indicating that no significant changes, to the overall kernel design, but most releases have had some important features added.
Recently, Linus expressed an interest in changing the numbering from 2.6 to 3.0. Unlike the significant amount of change between 2.4 and 2.6, Linus decided to make this change based not upon a significant change, but personal preference. Having run the first two numbers the same for over 7 years, they have had relatively little meaning for the last several years anyway, and they still won't really. It might be a minor inconvenience for those who run distributions to have to accommodate the change, but for most folks, it doesn't mean much. I wouldn't mind a numbering where like 11.2 (year and release number within the year), or just going with 40 and dropping the 2.6. I would then know that we are in the 40th release since the 2003 rewrite, and it would be shorter to say than the complete numbering system currently being used. I think that Linus is keeping the format the same going forward due to tradition (and maybe it means not having to reprogram the coding repository, or some related code that depends on kernel version number), and I suppose that's fine since it still gives you information if you understand the meanings the number system has.
This is one of the problems we have with spending in this country. Once a program is in place, it almost never gets cut, unless something even worse is put in it's place. To actually cut the TSA, you have to pass an entire bill through the House, Senate, and then get the signature of the President or an override majority from Congress.
I wish we had a provision that a simple no vote by the House of Representatives could cut bad programs. (Laws would have to be written to not only get past the current House, Senate, and President, but the future wishes of the people who have to keep paying for them.) Perhaps we could also have a citizen provision to cut these programs if Washington won't.
I wonder if that would be a problem though. What if most trucks were driven by a computer? Would high value cargo be left unattended, or would unattended trucks become targets of thieves? Would the driving job become a security job? I don't know, but if we can truly automate more work, but make people recognize that the important thing is to distribute ownership of the robots that do the work, we have a chance at improving the quality of life for everyone. Unfortunately, short sightedness by most people in the willingness to take the short term gain by selling capital to fewer individuals will continue to be a problem. I don't know how to counteract this trend.
Knowing Osama bin Laden, he would be releasing a video proving the announcement of his death as a lie (proving the video was new by mentioning the date of said death) in order to destroy the credibility of the U.S. The fact that he hasn't done so should be proof enough that he can't.
I'd long wanted access to it, and was surprised to find it on my basic cable. I then found the only things worth watching were X-Files reruns and the new Galactica. When they stopped running X-Files, I resorted to checking out the X-Files from the library, and didn't feel like I'd lost anything when they were dropped from my basic cable package.
I never got into the Stargate spinoffs because I didn't have access to SciFi when the first ones started. I might go through the effort of checking them out from the library and seeing if they are worth it. After I check out Babylon 5. After I do some other things more important than entertainment.
The Ubersoft comic ran a Google Voice comic of similar humor today.
Note: The characters are running from Apple zealots, while working on a special project to prevent Steve Job's ego from destroying everything.
14 years is too long. 5 years should be long enough. The 14 year limit centuries ago was more fitting than now.
Let's say that you sold a book to a publisher 200+ years ago. They decide to print a small run, and ship it all around the country. What could be done today in a matter of 2 months (maybe less) would have taken almost a year to print, distribute, advertise, get good reviews and word of mouth, sell out and then receive orders for additional copies if a work was unexpectedly popular. Then, you would have to re-setup your press as if you hadn't even done a first printing, and run through the whole process again.
Today, with computers, forecasting, digital storage, real time sales data, etc. the initial wave of sales, with multiple restocks can be done in two years. If you put a buffer of 3 years, that's plenty of time to prevent most customers that might buy from waiting for a cheaper copy from a printer that deals in out of copyright materials.
I would advocate a 1 year extension on enhanced work. So if the next storage format after Blu-Ray is released, allow companies that take the time to enhance older works to have 1 year copyright on the enhanced work that has the additional resolution. Let creators of fiction to have a 20-30 year exclusive derivative works limit, during which they can limit derivative works (sequels and movies).
Take Star Wars for instance. With a 30 year limit, in 2007, anybody could produce their own Star Wars canon. You could have a group of Star Wars geeks setup an alternate group for running future Star Wars development. They could say the prequels didn't happen in their own canon, and produce a single or series of movies to tell what Lucas did that was so reviled in the sequels. They could produce movies based on the Thrawn series. They could develop new books, storyline threads, characters, etc, have conventions where Lucas wasn't invited. If something really good came out of it, they could produce movies out of this. Would it suck? Probably, but I don't have a problem with them giving it a go. And if they did a better job than Lucas, then fans would probably become fans of the works produced by the new group, and boycott the Lucas produced materials.
Copyright is the reason we don't have the ability to download for free all of the culture that copyright was created to provide us. Think of what we could have with a 5 year expiration. Every ISP and library would have copies that anybody could have for free whenever they wanted. Theaters could run marathons of old stuff that fans might want to see in a theater with other fans. Want to have a Lord of the Rings Marathon? The theater could sell you additional tickets to watch the 3 movies after the two new movies come out without having to charge high prices at the whim of the studios. If demand is there, theaters could pick old actors (John Wayne, Grace Kelly, etc) and run their movies on a Monday, Tuesday, or Thursday night. Or have Classic Movie nights, where every week they pick 1 or 2 of the top 100 movies, and run them, for fans who've never seen them, or just like old movies. The theater could even let you have the seat free, just to make money on the concessions.
I received a used DVD player from somebody recently. It wouldn't load any of half a dozen disks. Yesterday, I tracked down the correct sized star shaped driver, and unscrewed the case, swiped a microfiber cloth over the lens a few times, and it's ran perfectly afterwards. It's a much nicer looking unit than the Black Friday special we'd been using for the last 8 years.
Interesting comment from the sibling post about humidity and DVDs. I had heard Blu-Ray is supposed to be more scratch proof.
But I'm not acquiring an HD TV for several years at least, since I don't plan on paying extra for HD video, although we've stopped acquiring DVDs except for the stuff we want the kids to watch. Otherwise we just check out from the library, and return it. The library has started stocking Blu-Ray, but I don't see a need.
I like Samsung hardware. When I built my machine 5 years ago, I went with 2 160GB low noise Samsung drives (SATA 1.0 when it was rather rare), and I love them. It's a shame that this is happening. I really think we as customers would be better off if mergers and acquisitions by a competitor or conglomerate were prohibited.
That would ignore the fact that most of the critical code has already been written, and LibreOffice was getting it for free. Add in the fact that all of the distros are tossing out OOo, and it was just a matter of time until OOo would be a dead project.
Maybe Oracle realized that if they keep the community engaged, there may be rewards to be developed. Maybe they could even hold out hope for a Firefox like surge by the open source project, but if it happened while they were at odds with the outside community, they wouldn't reap any real benefits from that. Unfortunately, the non-Microsoft office suites don't seem to be making progress in the market, which is a real shame.
We don't own it really. Maybe you think we should own it (and to that I agree), but we have no rights to the lines that are already in place.
If we want to own the lines, we need to form a coop, get ourselves access rights, buy the fibre, and build our own network. Interconnect all of our local networks, and help pay for it buy charging the businesses the rights to connect to us.
Last month, I was thinking about doing this very thing, but the financial risk to do it myself was too great, what with a family to be concerned about.
Could you elaborate how a James Cameron movie makes Peter Jackson an exception?
As someone in Topeka, it didn't work, since KCK and Topeka are about 45 miles apart, and Topeka won't be benefiting from this.
Maybe it's time to start a coop with the goal of owning the lines that I've been contemplating recently. Doing so will require figuring out what would need to be done to work with the electrical guys to reuse their poles.
Who am I kidding, I don't have the money to start up something like that.
When they take over, we won't be able to mock them without getting zapped for insolence.
To protect shareholders, who can't all individually know every activity that the businesses engages in, the government has chosen this method to protect the shareholders from litigation, although they can be hit with a loss in value of the stock if the company loses a case. Whether this is the best method for that, the individuals working for the company are not exempt from the law, and should be held accountable when necessary.
The poor people pay a larger percentage of their income in sales tax not because they are unfairly taxed, but because they spend more of what they make. If Mike Millionaire makes a million and spends a million, assuming a 10% sales tax, and Paul Poorman makes 20,000 and spends it all, and pays the same 10% sales tax, then they pay the same percentage of their income. If Paul spends 75% and Mike spends 100%, then Mike pays a higher percentage than Paul.
If you consider tax exempt sales like medical expenses, rent (I've never been told that rent included tax, if it does, exempt this), possibly food (I think my state might refund food sales tax for low income individuals), then Paul might even pay less tax despite both spending equal percentages of income since more of his income would probably be spent on the tax free necessities.
I don't mind increases in spending to do these things. I want the government to legalize these things being done by local governments who can do a much better job of cutting waste and providing us we need without subsidizing large businesses and union leaders in the process.
I never notice anybody point out that the high price is essentially a tax, bid on by the service provider when the FCC auctioned the frequencies, and for which you pay through your phone plan. Maybe it's for the best. If we didn't have higher prices, maybe we'd have more people being jerks in public while using their mobile devices.
Personally, I think it would have been better if local governments (biding together as a coop?) had bid (or been given) the frequencies, then they could have provided access for users from all providers, which would have provided more competition since every provider could be everywhere if they didn't need build their own network.
I think it would be much better to launch the probe prior to the approach of the rock, and let the rock catch up to it from behind. That or figure out a way to use the moon and Earth to slingshot a probe up to the necessary speed (I suppose if this we possible, we'd do it for every launch we currently make).