Problem is since most students are poor the school will probably be the one that gets sued for their copyright infringement. And as much as the UC system may like to treat kids as adults, they know very well that some of their students will download copyrighted music and will not be able to reimburse the university for their costs when the record companies sue. So the univesrity would love to let the students be responsible, but the RIAA will still hold the university responsible.
The universities are kind of caught between a rock and a hard place. They have to offer broadband in the dorms in order to offer modern learning opportunities, and expose their students to the internet, but on the other hand they know that exposes them to additional liability.
It seems like the UC schools have come upon an interesting way to solve the problem. I hope it works.
Corn made ethanol is one the biggest lies foisted on the American population.
The lie goes a little like this -- we have to have expensive corn based ethanol additives in our gasoline because those damn environmentalists forced us to do it... its too bad but nothing we can do about it.
Fact is honest environmentalists have always been skeptical (if not outright against) corn based ethanol additivies. Even the conserned scientist article linked by the present slashdot story was actually AGAINST corn made ethanol (it says that the present way of making ethanol from corn is way too energy intensive and not sustainable). Of course the Slashdot story incorrectly made it sound as if it supports corn based ethanol and the editors did not catch the discrepancy (the very idea that the slashdot editors would catch that discrepency makes me laugh).
So of course then we get the usual gangs of halfwits that post endless messages about how the union of concerned scientists is politicaly motivated and they dont know anything about science and they want to force us to use corn based ethanol as part of a large conspiracy blah blah blah.
But the question remains -- if even the environmentalists aren't crazy about corn based ethanol, then why is it in our gas? And the answer is polititians from corn producing states. These guys essentially force the ethanol additives on the rest of the country so their farmers will have a nice captive consumer for their product.
So if you know a CIA agent's real name you can find out more things about them by searching public records, just like you can for any other american.
Wow.
Here is something else I found out -- if you know the address of a buried treasure you can get a nice map from google with directions to that address. So the internet can be used to search for buried treasure. Amazing!
Seriously, Slashdot editors should be smarter than this.
They really pulled a fast one on the American public. Now naturally the switch to digital will not happen (i'd like to see the congressman that will risk pissing off millions of TV viewers) and the result will be that the TV stations will get to keep more or less permenantly all the new digital spectrum as well as the old analog spectrum.
And thus the TV stations double their spectrum. How much are they paying for all this spectrum you ask? Well, they are paying exactly nothing. Because you see TV stations serve the public interest. I know, I am laughing too.
The great thing about Microsoft interviews is they try to test intelligence. Most companies say they want to hire intelligent people but do nothing to directly test that.
Thus essentially most companies hire fast talkers, under the impression that they are intelligent. This is very wrong... fast talkers are usually just fast talkers.
Microsoft are trying to directly test intelligence during interviews. Since I hope that is my most employable trait, I am glad they are at least trying.
Neither Clinton nor Gore would have undertaken the illegal and utterly stupid invasion of Iraq. Of course they were for regime change. Saddam was a ruthless dictator after all. And they would certainly support any Iraqi freedom movement. But that does not mean they were going to fuck over America with the stupidest military decision since Austro-Hungary atacked Serbia.
As far as the recount the investigation by the leading US newspapers showed that Gore had more votes in Florida. "Bush would have won the recount" is a misleading statement that relies on the fact that Gore asked for a recount on only a limited number of districts and those districts had more Bush votes, so essentially Gore asked for the wrong districts. However, the Florida Supreme court was going to recount the whole state not only the districts Gore asked for.
If Roe v. Wade gets overturned, it will screw over many women, but it will also help democrats. In fact it will be a great boon to democrats.
You see, most americans are pro choice and the trend is towards more pro choice americans. So if Bush puts in a justice that will overturn Roe v Wade, most americans will be very unhappy and vote accordingly. And guess what, that justice will probably work for a long time and provide consistent and reliable anti-republican sentiment. So an ultra conservative justice will be a great help to the democrats.
But I dont think the republicans are that dumb. They know very well that OConner saved their asses with her occasional liberal ruling. So it is very likely that they will not nominate anyone that overturns Roe v Wade. They will try to find a justice that is very conservative on economical and civil rights issues, but will keep Roe v Wade.
And what about the cristian coalition? Well they will get fucked over by the republicans. But that is nothing new, it always happens.
I have no idea what Claria's personalization software is, but I have a very hard time believing that whatever it is, it is worth half a billion dollars. Especially to Microsoft.
May I remind you that Microsoft is full of coders and if they really need some piece of software they could develop it themselves. Also, if you look at history Microsoft has been VERY miserly in aquiring software. Often they just copy the software without paying anything (remember that disc compression software?). Or as was the case with Mosaic, they pay a small fraction of what they actually agreed to pay, and then dare the owner to fight MS in court.
Now think about this. Claria/Gator is probably one of the most hated companies out in the computer industry. They are almost unique by being equally hated by the copyright lobby and the free information crowd. If MS fucks over Claria and steals their software it might actually result in an improvement of MS's image.
So then why would Bill pay half a billion for Claria. I think I have a good guess. He does not want the software which can be copied, he wants the data gator has been gathering on everyone for the past 5-7 years.
First of all this is not well researched at all. It is typical NR bullshit, a bunch of anecdotal evidence from "reliable unnamed sources". Oh and add some tricks meant to mislead the reader, such as the one where he tries to make a blogger quote look like the quote of a leading Iranian newspaper. As I said, typical NR bullshit.
Don't get me wrong I know there is no democracy in Iran, mostly because the president (whoever he is) does not have real power -- real power is still held by religous institutions and the ayatolah.
But that is no reason to confuse the NR with good journalists.
As far as "Regime change" goes, we know very well that does not help democracy, it will just replace rule by ayatollah by rule by the Pentagon.
Ok this study is complete bullshit. First of all "the average member of congress" is an inacurate way to determine bias. Congress does not accurately reflect the political leanings of the nation (it favors conservatives as they tend to live in less populous states). More importantly, Congress favors conservatives because money is important in getting elected and most big donors favor conservative issues. Polls show that on most significant issues the US population is much more liberal than Congress.
Second of all, the method they used to compare media sources to congressmen is just plain fucking stupid. Counting think-tank citations in congress and and news stories? Before they set off on this dubious scheme they should have at least considered why there should be any correlation between these numbers to begin with. I see no reason a comparison should be made at all. I mean news and congressional speeches are different. News try to state what happened while congressional speeches try to convince. If anything congressional speeches should be compared to editorials, but the study SPECIFICALLY EXCLUDES editorials (for some bizarre reason).
There are a million possible reasons for the discrepencies. Consider, for example that some of the so called "liberal think-tanks" such as the ACLU, amnesty international, Sierra club are not think tanks at all. They are civil organizations that act in the world outside of Congress (i.e., file lawsuits and stage demonstrations) which can be news worthy themselves. So if the NY times says that the ACLU held a demonstration or filed a lawsuit, it increase their liberal score. But guess what it does not mean the NY times has liberal bias, it means that they just report on what happens in their city and ACLU demonstrations and law suits happen often in New York. And obviously it is not Congress's job to report on what happens in New York city so it is unlikely they will mention the ACLU demonstration unless it is linked to a specific pending piece of legislation.
To top it off, many of the conservative think tanks are specifically geared to writing studies for lobbying Congress and do not do anything very news-worthy. This is especially true of the Rand corporation and various "institutes". If the Rand corporation creates one of its dozens of studies on the possible effect of a decrease of the capital gains tax, that would certainly be repeated in congress numerous times (these studies are made to be repeated in Congress), but would it be put on the news? Of course not; "Rand releases study" is no more newsworthy than "accountant fills out form". Of course the Rand study will likely be mantioned if there is an editorial on the capital gains tax, but as I said above this whole "liberal bias" analysis actually IGNORES editorials.
The fact that the government is almost entirely ruled by conservatives also scews results. That is because conflict is much more news worthy than agreement. Consider if the ACLU files a lawsuit against the Bush government. Well that is usually newsworthy and the NY times will probably print it. But the NY Times will try to be unbiased by getting the opinions of the Justice Dep as well as the ACLU. Well guess what -- the present study will say that the NY Times is extra extra biased becaused they count the ACLU as a "think tank" but they do not count the justice department as such.
Anyways, just after thinking about this for a couple of minutes one can realize the above method of counting "bias" is completely worthless.
Of course that gets confirmed when you actually read the parent cited study. The study found that their own method classifies the ACLU as conservative, and the RAND corporation as liberal! And instead of admitting that this obvious misclassification shows that their method is innaccurate way to predict real political bias, they fudge their data in order to make the ACLU liberal and RAND conservative and proceed as if nothing has happened. Good job.
The patent law requires any applicant to submit to the patent office all material information he/she has that may make the patent invalid. If that requirement is not complied with the patent may be invalidated even if it would have otherwise been valid.
So in order to be safe patent lawyers (especially those with rich clients) submit everything that they can get their hands on which could possibly affect the validity of the patent. And because this particular patent was so often criticized, the attorneys decided to be safe and submit all the criticisms, because one of them may possibly have material information about a piece of prior art.
So there is nothing especially nefarious about the fact that all these materials were submitted.
I am still amazed that the patent was granted though.
"Linux isn't going away because there is always going to be kids and misers in the world. "
I guess it is cool for apple people to repeat 5 year old MS FUD nowadays, but keep this in mind -- you'd better hope Linux and open source continue to live because the "OS that just works" you love so much is mostly copied from open source projects after Apple tried and could not for the life of them create a real multitasking OS.
Apple was damn lucky that the "kids and misers" that created BSD and the Mach microkernel were generous enough to offer their code under the unrestrictive BSD license, so Apple could finally offer their clients a modern OS. That was not very miserly of them was it?
BTW the reason why you canot get one of those HP Linux laptops is that they are not being released in the US.
yeah and what if you want to pop in Mulholland drive just to watch one specific scene. (lets say, for the sake of argument, the lesbian sex scene). With VHS tape you have to rewind the whole movie to find it. But what if you need to see that scene RIGHT NOW, or the moment is ruined. Well then you are screwed.
That is true about every OS out there. The only difference being that Linux will cost less than Windows in actual maintainance fees because it is pretty resistant to viruses/malware.
Well apparently it does matter since according to the grandparent sited article, linux is much faster than OSX (five times in some cases) in basic thread handling functions, which is very important for server performance.
I agree. Every business of a reasonable size needs at least one good admin. Thus, Linux is not more expensive because "you have to hire an admin". You always have to hire an admin.
"So all in all, I think Apple is doing the F/OSS movement a great service by demonstrating exactly why F/OSS is needed."
That's a great point. One of the best advantages of Linux is that there is nobody that can say "we will stop supporting this architecture". If there is enough interest support will always be there.
But this is a moot point for most Mac users. If you tell a Mac user that he/she should use Linux because then they won't be subject to Steve Jobs' whims, they would invariably answer "why wouldn't you want to be a subject to Steve Jobs' every whim?"
Mac OS X works out of the box because you buy it preinstalled on a new computer.
If you want Linux to "work out of the box" then you can also buy it preinstalled on a new computer from one of the multitude of Linux vendors out there. It will work just as easily as a Mac. And you will save money and you will have a choice of more software.
The fact that Linux has the additional advantage to work on older machines should not be construed as a weakness -- preinstalled Linux is just as easy as preinstalled OS X.
Slashdot Mirror
Problem is since most students are poor the school will probably be the one that gets sued for their copyright infringement. And as much as the UC system may like to treat kids as adults, they know very well that some of their students will download copyrighted music and will not be able to reimburse the university for their costs when the record companies sue. So the univesrity would love to let the students be responsible, but the RIAA will still hold the university responsible.
The universities are kind of caught between a rock and a hard place. They have to offer broadband in the dorms in order to offer modern learning opportunities, and expose their students to the internet, but on the other hand they know that exposes them to additional liability.
It seems like the UC schools have come upon an interesting way to solve the problem. I hope it works.
please recycle your spyware.
Corn made ethanol is one the biggest lies foisted on the American population.
... its too bad but nothing we can do about it.
The lie goes a little like this -- we have to have expensive corn based ethanol additives in our gasoline because those damn environmentalists forced us to do it
Fact is honest environmentalists have always been skeptical (if not outright against) corn based ethanol additivies. Even the conserned scientist article linked by the present slashdot story was actually AGAINST corn made ethanol (it says that the present way of making ethanol from corn is way too energy intensive and not sustainable). Of course the Slashdot story incorrectly made it sound as if it supports corn based ethanol and the editors did not catch the discrepancy (the very idea that the slashdot editors would catch that discrepency makes me laugh).
So of course then we get the usual gangs of halfwits that post endless messages about how the union of concerned scientists is politicaly motivated and they dont know anything about science and they want to force us to use corn based ethanol as part of a large conspiracy blah blah blah.
But the question remains -- if even the environmentalists aren't crazy about corn based ethanol, then why is it in our gas? And the answer is polititians from corn producing states. These guys essentially force the ethanol additives on the rest of the country so their farmers will have a nice captive consumer for their product.
So if you know a CIA agent's real name you can find out more things about them by searching public records, just like you can for any other american.
Wow.
Here is something else I found out -- if you know the address of a buried treasure you can get a nice map from google with directions to that address. So the internet can be used to search for buried treasure. Amazing!
Seriously, Slashdot editors should be smarter than this.
They really pulled a fast one on the American public. Now naturally the switch to digital will not happen (i'd like to see the congressman that will risk pissing off millions of TV viewers) and the result will be that the TV stations will get to keep more or less permenantly all the new digital spectrum as well as the old analog spectrum.
And thus the TV stations double their spectrum. How much are they paying for all this spectrum you ask? Well, they are paying exactly nothing. Because you see TV stations serve the public interest. I know, I am laughing too.
The great thing about Microsoft interviews is they try to test intelligence. Most companies say they want to hire intelligent people but do nothing to directly test that.
... fast talkers are usually just fast talkers.
Thus essentially most companies hire fast talkers, under the impression that they are intelligent. This is very wrong
Microsoft are trying to directly test intelligence during interviews. Since I hope that is my most employable trait, I am glad they are at least trying.
Its all marketing. I think they are trying to market this particular prize to people with friends.
Neither Clinton nor Gore would have undertaken the illegal and utterly stupid invasion of Iraq. Of course they were for regime change. Saddam was a ruthless dictator after all. And they would certainly support any Iraqi freedom movement. But that does not mean they were going to fuck over America with the stupidest military decision since Austro-Hungary atacked Serbia.
As far as the recount the investigation by the leading US newspapers showed that Gore had more votes in Florida. "Bush would have won the recount" is a misleading statement that relies on the fact that Gore asked for a recount on only a limited number of districts and those districts had more Bush votes, so essentially Gore asked for the wrong districts. However, the Florida Supreme court was going to recount the whole state not only the districts Gore asked for.
If Roe v. Wade gets overturned, it will screw over many women, but it will also help democrats. In fact it will be a great boon to democrats.
You see, most americans are pro choice and the trend is towards more pro choice americans. So if Bush puts in a justice that will overturn Roe v Wade, most americans will be very unhappy and vote accordingly. And guess what, that justice will probably work for a long time and provide consistent and reliable anti-republican sentiment. So an ultra conservative justice will be a great help to the democrats.
But I dont think the republicans are that dumb. They know very well that OConner saved their asses with her occasional liberal ruling. So it is very likely that they will not nominate anyone that overturns Roe v Wade. They will try to find a justice that is very conservative on economical and civil rights issues, but will keep Roe v Wade.
And what about the cristian coalition? Well they will get fucked over by the republicans. But that is nothing new, it always happens.
I have no idea what Claria's personalization software is, but I have a very hard time believing that whatever it is, it is worth half a billion dollars. Especially to Microsoft.
May I remind you that Microsoft is full of coders and if they really need some piece of software they could develop it themselves. Also, if you look at history Microsoft has been VERY miserly in aquiring software. Often they just copy the software without paying anything (remember that disc compression software?). Or as was the case with Mosaic, they pay a small fraction of what they actually agreed to pay, and then dare the owner to fight MS in court.
Now think about this. Claria/Gator is probably one of the most hated companies out in the computer industry. They are almost unique by being equally hated by the copyright lobby and the free information crowd. If MS fucks over Claria and steals their software it might actually result in an improvement of MS's image.
So then why would Bill pay half a billion for Claria. I think I have a good guess. He does not want the software which can be copied, he wants the data gator has been gathering on everyone for the past 5-7 years.
First of all this is not well researched at all. It is typical NR bullshit, a bunch of anecdotal evidence from "reliable unnamed sources". Oh and add some tricks meant to mislead the reader, such as the one where he tries to make a blogger quote look like the quote of a leading Iranian newspaper. As I said, typical NR bullshit.
Don't get me wrong I know there is no democracy in Iran, mostly because the president (whoever he is) does not have real power -- real power is still held by religous institutions and the ayatolah.
But that is no reason to confuse the NR with good journalists.
As far as "Regime change" goes, we know very well that does not help democracy, it will just replace rule by ayatollah by rule by the Pentagon.
Ok this study is complete bullshit. First of all "the average member of congress" is an inacurate way to determine bias. Congress does not accurately reflect the political leanings of the nation (it favors conservatives as they tend to live in less populous states). More importantly, Congress favors conservatives because money is important in getting elected and most big donors favor conservative issues. Polls show that on most significant issues the US population is much more liberal than Congress.
Second of all, the method they used to compare media sources to congressmen is just plain fucking stupid. Counting think-tank citations in congress and and news stories? Before they set off on this dubious scheme they should have at least considered why there should be any correlation between these numbers to begin with. I see no reason a comparison should be made at all. I mean news and congressional speeches are different. News try to state what happened while congressional speeches try to convince. If anything congressional speeches should be compared to editorials, but the study SPECIFICALLY EXCLUDES editorials (for some bizarre reason).
There are a million possible reasons for the discrepencies. Consider, for example that some of the so called "liberal think-tanks" such as the ACLU, amnesty international, Sierra club are not think tanks at all. They are civil organizations that act in the world outside of Congress (i.e., file lawsuits and stage demonstrations) which can be news worthy themselves. So if the NY times says that the ACLU held a demonstration or filed a lawsuit, it increase their liberal score. But guess what it does not mean the NY times has liberal bias, it means that they just report on what happens in their city and ACLU demonstrations and law suits happen often in New York. And obviously it is not Congress's job to report on what happens in New York city so it is unlikely they will mention the ACLU demonstration unless it is linked to a specific pending piece of legislation.
To top it off, many of the conservative think tanks are specifically geared to writing studies for lobbying Congress and do not do anything very news-worthy. This is especially true of the Rand corporation and various "institutes". If the Rand corporation creates one of its dozens of studies on the possible effect of a decrease of the capital gains tax, that would certainly be repeated in congress numerous times (these studies are made to be repeated in Congress), but would it be put on the news? Of course not; "Rand releases study" is no more newsworthy than "accountant fills out form". Of course the Rand study will likely be mantioned if there is an editorial on the capital gains tax, but as I said above this whole "liberal bias" analysis actually IGNORES editorials.
The fact that the government is almost entirely ruled by conservatives also scews results. That is because conflict is much more news worthy than agreement. Consider if the ACLU files a lawsuit against the Bush government. Well that is usually newsworthy and the NY times will probably print it. But the NY Times will try to be unbiased by getting the opinions of the Justice Dep as well as the ACLU. Well guess what -- the present study will say that the NY Times is extra extra biased becaused they count the ACLU as a "think tank" but they do not count the justice department as such.
Anyways, just after thinking about this for a couple of minutes one can realize the above method of counting "bias" is completely worthless.
Of course that gets confirmed when you actually read the parent cited study. The study found that their own method classifies the ACLU as conservative, and the RAND corporation as liberal! And instead of admitting that this obvious misclassification shows that their method is innaccurate way to predict real political bias, they fudge their data in order to make the ACLU liberal and RAND conservative and proceed as if nothing has happened. Good job.
The patent law requires any applicant to submit to the patent office all material information he/she has that may make the patent invalid. If that requirement is not complied with the patent may be invalidated even if it would have otherwise been valid.
So in order to be safe patent lawyers (especially those with rich clients) submit everything that they can get their hands on which could possibly affect the validity of the patent. And because this particular patent was so often criticized, the attorneys decided to be safe and submit all the criticisms, because one of them may possibly have material information about a piece of prior art.
So there is nothing especially nefarious about the fact that all these materials were submitted.
I am still amazed that the patent was granted though.
They must really appreciate all the free business advice they are getting.
"Linux isn't going away because there is always going to be kids and misers in the world. "
I guess it is cool for apple people to repeat 5 year old MS FUD nowadays, but keep this in mind -- you'd better hope Linux and open source continue to live because the "OS that just works" you love so much is mostly copied from open source projects after Apple tried and could not for the life of them create a real multitasking OS.
Apple was damn lucky that the "kids and misers" that created BSD and the Mach microkernel were generous enough to offer their code under the unrestrictive BSD license, so Apple could finally offer their clients a modern OS. That was not very miserly of them was it?
BTW the reason why you canot get one of those HP Linux laptops is that they are not being released in the US.
yeah and what if you want to pop in Mulholland drive just to watch one specific scene. (lets say, for the sake of argument, the lesbian sex scene). With VHS tape you have to rewind the whole movie to find it. But what if you need to see that scene RIGHT NOW, or the moment is ruined. Well then you are screwed.
That is true about every OS out there. The only difference being that Linux will cost less than Windows in actual maintainance fees because it is pretty resistant to viruses/malware.
Well apparently it does matter since according to the grandparent sited article, linux is much faster than OSX (five times in some cases) in basic thread handling functions, which is very important for server performance.
Ok I will bite. Tell me a day-to-day task that you cannot accomplish in Linux and I will boot into Ubuntu and give it a try.
Yep, its because they do not have an advertising budget.
I agree. Every business of a reasonable size needs at least one good admin. Thus, Linux is not more expensive because "you have to hire an admin". You always have to hire an admin.
"So all in all, I think Apple is doing the F/OSS movement a great service by demonstrating exactly why F/OSS is needed."
That's a great point. One of the best advantages of Linux is that there is nobody that can say "we will stop supporting this architecture". If there is enough interest support will always be there.
But this is a moot point for most Mac users. If you tell a Mac user that he/she should use Linux because then they won't be subject to Steve Jobs' whims, they would invariably answer "why wouldn't you want to be a subject to Steve Jobs' every whim?"
Mac OS X works out of the box because you buy it preinstalled on a new computer.
If you want Linux to "work out of the box" then you can also buy it preinstalled on a new computer from one of the multitude of Linux vendors out there. It will work just as easily as a Mac. And you will save money and you will have a choice of more software.
The fact that Linux has the additional advantage to work on older machines should not be construed as a weakness -- preinstalled Linux is just as easy as preinstalled OS X.
In other news, userfriendly is still depressingly unfunny.
Yep I knew it. You are one of these people that think that if anybody disagrees with you they must be an anti semite.