It's funny to see that a generic query on "tibet" instead of the very specific "free tibet" yields differents results.
Accoona shows a lot of tourist-related information on Tibet and pro-Chinese links on Tibet, that considers Tibet as any another region inside China.
Google, in the other hand, shows a lot of pages related to the movement to free Tibet from Chinese domination. Note the link to the Tibetan Government in Exile's website, which ranked #3 in Google. Also, note that the #3 match in Accoona (under "sponsored links"), shows the Chinese government's page on Tibet.
Isn't this undeniable proof that Accoona's filtering works?
Yeah. I've seen discussions on the ethical issues around ad blocking and how ad blocking lowers bandwidth use, and so on and so forth, but here's yet another thing:
I pay for my bandwidth, too
So I should have the right to block ads, especially when my ISP charges me by the Gb.
Are we, consumers, to blame for a flawed business model? Should you be forced to give money to incompetent marketing types?
Should we fund their vacation to $exotic_places while we have to work overtime just to make ends meet??
And why should we help the industry to propagate the use of innacurate metrics such as clicks or page views, which, in effect, just lures advertisers into making expenditures to a uncertain return?
I do not feel obliged in any way to help them. If they want to make money out of me, they better provide real, interesting products and services to me and me alone.
The general innocence around this supposed "ethics" issue is just appalling.
Well... they're using their right to express ther will to curb what other people can see on TV. I think this right is protected by the first amendment too.
Isn't that the underlying principle of the democratic and political processes? The first amendment protects the right to protest and use political means to get what they want. The problem is, IMHO, that those dissatisfied with this "censorship" are not organized and do not sound off.
Also, there's no doubt that they are censoring stuff on TV based on subjective assessments, but they're not "fringe" from the FCC point of view, since they make up for more than 90% of the complaints. Is there a mechanism to file a complaint on another complaint??
Precisely. I strongly object the change in plot! When did it become more acceptable to kill mutated people instead of hell creatures?
Seems that, in these politically correct days, if someone could choose between killing a petty burglar or a demon, people would choose the former, just to avoid hurting someone's religious susceptibilities while the poor burglar was hurt to death!!!!!
Re:this is from brazil & france, NOT USA pharm
on
HIV Vaccine
·
· Score: 1
Ethics play a major role in the US, but I fail to see it as the major cause of scientific setbacks in the US.
In this particular case, have you considered US' own legal risk?. Perhaps "ethics" is being used as an excuse to justify the aversion of companies and shareholders to be exposed to a abuse-prone legal system. Think of a volunteer in those trials that decides to milk cash from the pharm co. that sponsors the study.
Research is already expensive as it is. Add to it the probability of incurring on unexpected legal costs and the whole thing becomes economically unfeasible -- especially when people and the legal system as a whole do not give a s*** to ethics.
The argument in Method b suggests some kind of appeasement approach towards China: we do not irritate them and they will become fair player in the world scene, because once they attain a significant level of comfort (due to economic improvement), it will be harder for the Chinese not to play nicely given the risk of sanctions.
If I may abuse the parallel, wasn't exactly this what France did to Nazi Germany? I mean, France won WW1 and they pushed the Versailles Treatise down German throats. One of its provisions was to make sure Germany would not develop a military force. After a while, Hilter began to restructure German armed forces. France knew this was happening and could enforce the Versailles Treatise but decided to step back and just warn Hitler. That's appeasement -- trying to use a peaceful and submissive solution for a big problem and is still getting bigger. After a while, abuses were beginning to show up, but France thought if they just pointed the errors, eventually Hilter would stop with it. Nope.
So, lets see what would be a more realistic Method c (given the situation described in Method b): China actually becomes a huge, immense trade partner and begins to realize its own importance and start to push Chinese values into the world.
For example, the US has pushed democracy and freedom (with varying degrees of success) into other countries. China finds this unnecessary or obsolete and starts to preach that such liberties should be restrained.
Another Chinese value: attitude towards press. The US also find important important to have a free press -- a sine qua non condition for a working democracy. Since China determined that democracy actually hurts their commercial interests worldwide (see previous paragraph), China uses its influence to restrain press.
Let's get this straight: Method b is naive. If China gets the opportunity to use its newly found economic - and military - power to interfere in other countries to get away from the risk of being subject to sanctions mentioned in Method b, they will do. The US has been doing this since WW2, the argument to convince American opinion was that something - any perceived threat - from other countries could mess up with the American Way of Life. I also do not remember one single occasion when the US was threatened by an economic sanction.
The UK did it (defend its interests) during Industrial Revolution. France did this with Napoleon and his Continental Blockade. Heck, even Romans did it.
Expect China to protect firecely its Chinese Way of Life and to export it, eventually.
While I agree that embyonic stem cells are undifferentiated, I must point that, being undifferentiated as they are, embryonic stem cells can change into anything, including a nasty teratoma, which seems to occur quite frequently.
In a different subject, I think that the problem with embryonic stem cell research is its potential to undermine human dignity. What would the world look like if we knowingly bred people just to harvest their organs/cells/meat(?) out?
I'll be the first to acknowledge that this seems to be an ab absurdum attack, but can someone (governments, corporations, individuals) make sure that ethical limits are not compromised in the process of collecting such cells? Any system that relies in individual judgment will be subject to fraud and a plethora of other kind of abuses and, given that everything has a price, I have no doubt it will be.
smart is the new package meta-manager written by Gustavo Niemeyer from Conectiva, and it is to APT as APT was to its predecessors. These are the screenshots of the development version, which will be released soon, running in a Fedora Core 3 box.
Take notice that smart can be run textmode (smart install ), through a GUI (smart --gui), or even a mix between of both (smart --gui install ), besides an interactive textmode shell (smart --shell).
Documentation is already available online and it is worthwhile to take a read. It explains, for example, some cases where smart solves broken dependencies that APT cannot solve.
(this is not smart project's official webpage. the text below reflects my opinion)
picture goes here
smart is transparent (highly agnostic ??) with respect to distros and repository formats. It works even if you mix stuff up: accessing Fedora's YUM repository (RPM Metadata) and Livna as APT, for instance. Just works. Also, the "RPM Directory" option points to a directory with packages. There is no need for a special indexing procedure as APT and YUM require. It doesn't get easier than that to create repositories.
another pic
A typical view: you can list packages by group (applications, development, etc.), by repository (Fedora Core, Livna, etc.) or any combination between. Little green squares are the installed packages, little white squares are available packages. With the context menu is possible to "lock" packages so that smart never mess with them.
yet another pic
Translator note: the author makes an insightful statement in the next paragraph. Developers, take note!!!!
Every software should have a "fix all problems" option:) Smart is a lot more smarter and it can recover the system from situation where APT cannot fix.
picture
The mirror system is another cool thing. You define the URLs that can be used as alternates to a main URL. Whenever it is necessary to fetch a file, smart automatically searches through the mirrors, make simultaneous downloads, etc. If a mirror is down, incomplete or outdated, smart automatically lowers the priority of this mirror and tries the next one. On the other hand, quality mirrors, with high bandwidth get to be used more frequently.
another pic. almost there.
Priorities are another interesting feature. Do you have a lot of repositories with identical packages? With smart you can establish which package has preference and avoid having your local packages overwritten by packages from remote repositories or avoid third-party repository taking precedence over "official" repositories.
indeed. if economic theory holds, people should be moving away from Valve until they adjust their price to the fact that people do not own the game, in the traditional sense.
I think that a fair price should be around $0.50-$2.00 per month, in a subscription model. This relatively low price factors in the probability of Valve (or whoever manages the activation scheme) going bankrupt. If that happens, you might get "locked out" the goods you purchased.
while I agree that 1 district != all districts, the whole point is that this lone district has the power to set precedent. in the future, someone might try to do the same and will be told that it is ok to do that because it worked for 1 district back in TX.
Slashdot Mirror
Thanks a lot, AC!!!!
Do someone know where we can get'em???
That should demotivate them enough!
I've never heard of it, until today!
Or, "terrorist" will include those who use strong encryption to send data over the net and is not related to banking or commerce.
You're right, xyeeyx. It looks very, very, very cheap.
Does this have to do with the alleged issue of color fading in plasma sets?
Yeah, right. Nobody is interested in things other people say they cannot have, anyway.
where's the news?
Accoona shows a lot of tourist-related information on Tibet and pro-Chinese links on Tibet, that considers Tibet as any another region inside China.
Google, in the other hand, shows a lot of pages related to the movement to free Tibet from Chinese domination. Note the link to the Tibetan Government in Exile's website, which ranked #3 in Google. Also, note that the #3 match in Accoona (under "sponsored links"), shows the Chinese government's page on Tibet.
Isn't this undeniable proof that Accoona's filtering works?
Are we, consumers, to blame for a flawed business model? Should you be forced to give money to incompetent marketing types?
Should we fund their vacation to $exotic_places while we have to work overtime just to make ends meet??
And why should we help the industry to propagate the use of innacurate metrics such as clicks or page views, which, in effect, just lures advertisers into making expenditures to a uncertain return?
I do not feel obliged in any way to help them. If they want to make money out of me, they better provide real, interesting products and services to me and me alone.
The general innocence around this supposed "ethics" issue is just appalling.
Isn't that the underlying principle of the democratic and political processes? The first amendment protects the right to protest and use political means to get what they want. The problem is, IMHO, that those dissatisfied with this "censorship" are not organized and do not sound off.
Also, there's no doubt that they are censoring stuff on TV based on subjective assessments, but they're not "fringe" from the FCC point of view, since they make up for more than 90% of the complaints. Is there a mechanism to file a complaint on another complaint??
Seems that, in these politically correct days, if someone could choose between killing a petty burglar or a demon, people would choose the former, just to avoid hurting someone's religious susceptibilities while the poor burglar was hurt to death!!!!!
Isn't this the plot of Half Life?
What's the point with the PDF warning?
In this particular case, have you considered US' own legal risk?. Perhaps "ethics" is being used as an excuse to justify the aversion of companies and shareholders to be exposed to a abuse-prone legal system. Think of a volunteer in those trials that decides to milk cash from the pharm co. that sponsors the study.
Research is already expensive as it is. Add to it the probability of incurring on unexpected legal costs and the whole thing becomes economically unfeasible -- especially when people and the legal system as a whole do not give a s*** to ethics.
What about the average Chinese? What other languages do they usually get to learn in China? Russian?
If I may abuse the parallel, wasn't exactly this what France did to Nazi Germany? I mean, France won WW1 and they pushed the Versailles Treatise down German throats. One of its provisions was to make sure Germany would not develop a military force. After a while, Hilter began to restructure German armed forces. France knew this was happening and could enforce the Versailles Treatise but decided to step back and just warn Hitler. That's appeasement -- trying to use a peaceful and submissive solution for a big problem and is still getting bigger. After a while, abuses were beginning to show up, but France thought if they just pointed the errors, eventually Hilter would stop with it. Nope.
So, lets see what would be a more realistic Method c (given the situation described in Method b): China actually becomes a huge, immense trade partner and begins to realize its own importance and start to push Chinese values into the world.
For example, the US has pushed democracy and freedom (with varying degrees of success) into other countries. China finds this unnecessary or obsolete and starts to preach that such liberties should be restrained.
Another Chinese value: attitude towards press. The US also find important important to have a free press -- a sine qua non condition for a working democracy. Since China determined that democracy actually hurts their commercial interests worldwide (see previous paragraph), China uses its influence to restrain press.
Let's get this straight: Method b is naive. If China gets the opportunity to use its newly found economic - and military - power to interfere in other countries to get away from the risk of being subject to sanctions mentioned in Method b, they will do. The US has been doing this since WW2, the argument to convince American opinion was that something - any perceived threat - from other countries could mess up with the American Way of Life. I also do not remember one single occasion when the US was threatened by an economic sanction.
The UK did it (defend its interests) during Industrial Revolution. France did this with Napoleon and his Continental Blockade. Heck, even Romans did it.
Expect China to protect firecely its Chinese Way of Life and to export it, eventually.
In a different subject, I think that the problem with embryonic stem cell research is its potential to undermine human dignity. What would the world look like if we knowingly bred people just to harvest their organs/cells/meat(?) out?
I'll be the first to acknowledge that this seems to be an ab absurdum attack, but can someone (governments, corporations, individuals) make sure that ethical limits are not compromised in the process of collecting such cells? Any system that relies in individual judgment will be subject to fraud and a plethora of other kind of abuses and, given that everything has a price, I have no doubt it will be.
for your convenience
:) Smart is a lot more smarter and it can recover the system from situation where APT cannot fix.
Smart screenshots
smart is the new package meta-manager written by Gustavo Niemeyer from Conectiva, and it is to APT as APT was to its predecessors. These are the screenshots of the development version, which will be released soon, running in a Fedora Core 3 box.
Take notice that smart can be run textmode (smart install ), through a GUI (smart --gui), or even a mix between of both (smart --gui install ), besides an interactive textmode shell (smart --shell).
Documentation is already available online and it is worthwhile to take a read. It explains, for example, some cases where smart solves broken dependencies that APT cannot solve.
(this is not smart project's official webpage. the text below reflects my opinion)
picture goes here
smart is transparent (highly agnostic ??) with respect to distros and repository formats. It works even if you mix stuff up: accessing Fedora's YUM repository (RPM Metadata) and Livna as APT, for instance. Just works. Also, the "RPM Directory" option points to a directory with packages. There is no need for a special indexing procedure as APT and YUM require. It doesn't get easier than that to create repositories.
another pic
A typical view: you can list packages by group (applications, development, etc.), by repository (Fedora Core, Livna, etc.) or any combination between. Little green squares are the installed packages, little white squares are available packages. With the context menu is possible to "lock" packages so that smart never mess with them.
yet another pic
Translator note: the author makes an insightful statement in the next paragraph. Developers, take note!!!!
Every software should have a "fix all problems" option
picture
The mirror system is another cool thing. You define the URLs that can be used as alternates to a main URL. Whenever it is necessary to fetch a file, smart automatically searches through the mirrors, make simultaneous downloads, etc. If a mirror is down, incomplete or outdated, smart automatically lowers the priority of this mirror and tries the next one. On the other hand, quality mirrors, with high bandwidth get to be used more frequently.
another pic. almost there.
Priorities are another interesting feature. Do you have a lot of repositories with identical packages? With smart you can establish which package has preference and avoid having your local packages overwritten by packages from remote repositories or avoid third-party repository taking precedence over "official" repositories.
last pic! it was already time!
downloading packages.
I think that a fair price should be around $0.50-$2.00 per month, in a subscription model. This relatively low price factors in the probability of Valve (or whoever manages the activation scheme) going bankrupt. If that happens, you might get "locked out" the goods you purchased.
while I agree that 1 district != all districts, the whole point is that this lone district has the power to set precedent. in the future, someone might try to do the same and will be told that it is ok to do that because it worked for 1 district back in TX.
so, I understand they'll take the tag out from your arm and stick it into your rectum! try to put poison ivy there!
Long story short, remember to use a laser printer and store it away from plastic containers!