I would say the reason that Kuro5hin, slashdot, and others survived is mainly a function of the fact that they had little to no costs to begin with other than bandwidth and some minor handware costs. Neither produce content;
I believe you are forgetting Roblimo's love advice, and the groundbreaking work of JonKatz.
It's a nice idea, except when they fsck up the chronological order in which these things are supposed to happen. I've heard the story any number of times, once at a place where I was working, of a worker saying "stupid computer says I don't have permissions on these files" a few hours before being summoned to the manager's office.
I've always thought a good solution to the problem you describe would be (at the local level) making school attendance optional. My parents would still have kicked my lazy butt down the street to school every day if they weren't required to by law. If kids with parents like mine were the only kids in schools, it would be a lot easier for teachers to teach and for students to learn. Just my $0.02.
Regulating gun use like we regulate driving, eh? As Eugene Volokh has noted (although it seems to be down right now, so I apologize if the link is wrong), this would entail:
(1) No federal licensing or registration.
(2) Any person may use a car on his own private property without any license or registration. See, e.g., California Vehicle Code 360, 12500 (driver's license required for driving on "highways," defined as places that are "publicly maintained and open to the use of the public for purposes of vehicular travel"); California Vehicle Code 4000 (same as to registration).
(3) Any adult may get a license to use a car in public places by passing a fairly simple test that virtually everyone can pass.
the last one was for Metroid Prime, which caused me to buy a Gamecube. But that is only because I don't pay attention to gaming anymore...
Those are the ads that affect me, too - ads that INFORM. For example, during every Malcolm in the Middle episode this season, there's been a promo, not longer than 5 seconds, that says "The first season of Malcolm in the Middle is now on DVD!"
There is nothing in that ad that is going to make a non-fan want to buy the DVD's. And there's nothing in that ad that will change the mind of a fan who doesn't want to buy the DVD's. But what about fans who WOULD buy the DVD's, but don't know the DVD's exist? Their behavior can definitely be changed by this ad.
Any ad that boasts of a product's price falls into this category, too. Company X might be offering a a great deal, but it's only a great deal if you know about it and can take advantage....
However, parents who truly believe their sweet, angelic little 17 year old baby was molested by that evil, sweaty, stubbly, drunk 18 year old in the black leather jacket will prosecute, even if she initiated the relationship.
IANAL but it's my understanding that most states have a 3- or 4-year window to prevent that from happening, so if two people are sufficiently close in age, their birthdays don't really matter. It doesn't make sense that a relationship which was legal yesterday can be illegal today without a change in laws.
Very well said. Most people agree passenger rail is a good thing, but too many rail advocates fall into unrealistic wishes and the kind of conspiracy theorizing you can read elsewhere on this thread.
One other reason you can't just apply European-style passenger rail to the United States is geography. Europe is small and densely populated, so at any given moment, a lot of people are willing pay to get from City A to City B. The trip from Paris to Brussels is not at all comparable to the trip from Chicago to Los Angeles.
The northeastern United States IS small and densely populated like Europe, and guess what? Amtrak makes its only profits there. I suspect that a properly-run railroad could make even more. There are always people who need to travel fast between Boston, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Philadelphia, Wilmington, Baltimore, and DC.
I suspect that if all the railroads in rural areas like where I am - the Upper Connecticut Valley - were left to the market, freight rail would become more efficient, attracting more customers away from truck shipping. Getting those trucks off the roads would mean less pollution and safer driving for us lowly car operators. (There's nothing like being in the left lane with an 18-wheeler to your right, and seeing his left turn signal come on.)
The admissability of log data is going to be an interesting issue in law in coming years. Yes, there is precedent for it, but the Johnny Cochranes of the world haven't gotten involved yet. At some point, we'll have to decide whether the ease of typing "vi/var/log/syslog" constitutes reasonable doubt in every case.
The corridor from Boston to Washington, via Connecticut, NYC, New Jersey, Philadelphia, and Baltimore, can do what Europe does, because they are densely populated. Up here in northern New England, and over most of the "red states", things are different. It may not be profitable, or as profitable, to roll out the latest wireless technology in areas where the number of customers per square mile is significantly lower. Also, and don't flame me for this because it's just a theory, people in the more rural areas may not be as inclined as those in cities to run out and buy the latest thing.
I used to live in Philadelphia, where I could choose from T-Mobile's GSM, Sprint's PCS, Verizon's CDMA, and TDMA from Cingular or AT&T. Then I moved to Lebanon, New Hampshire, where we have TDMA and.... TDMA.
FWIW, I also see this lack of population density as a major reason we can't automatically take the same approach to passenger railroad service that Europe does....
They don't work in the presence of monopolies, just like they don't work in the presence of central planning, fraud, or insider trading. That's why we have laws and policies against all of them.
Laws against central planning? I guess the 10th Amendment is a law against central planning. But it isn't really enforced anymore.
This decision didn't come from the administration, it came from a judge. True, judges are appointed by the President, but Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly was appointed to the United States District Court in 1997, over three years before the current administration was inaugurated. Only Congress can impeach a judge, so I don't understand how the current administration could possibly have affected the outcome of this case.
How does Comcast's acquisition of their broadband provider affect their DirecTV subscription? Does Comcast send their customer list to DirecTV and tell them they can't show certain programming to these people? That doesn't make sense.
If something is good for Microsoft, it's bad for the people. If something is bad for Microsoft, it's good for the people. This could be very bad for Microsoft, so it could be *very* good for the people.
Government censorship of the Internet would discourage people from using it, and would therefore be bad for Microsoft. A nuclear attack on the state of Washington would be bad for Microsoft, as would any serious disaster killing a large number of potential Microsoft customers. Would these be "good for the people", or would you care to amend that sweeping statement?
Generally, I like to let "the people" decide what is and isn't good for them.
Slashdot Mirror
I would say the reason that Kuro5hin, slashdot, and others survived is mainly a function of the fact that they had little to no costs to begin with other than bandwidth and some minor handware costs. Neither produce content;
I believe you are forgetting Roblimo's love advice, and the groundbreaking work of JonKatz.
every time you vote Libertarian you are voting Republican
Wait, I'm confused. I thought voting for Greens was voting Republican. I thought voting Libertarian was voting Democrat.
That must be the book Ellen Feiss wrote her paper about before the PC crashed.
It's a nice idea, except when they fsck up the chronological order in which these things are supposed to happen. I've heard the story any number of times, once at a place where I was working, of a worker saying "stupid computer says I don't have permissions on these files" a few hours before being summoned to the manager's office.
I've always thought a good solution to the problem you describe would be (at the local level) making school attendance optional. My parents would still have kicked my lazy butt down the street to school every day if they weren't required to by law. If kids with parents like mine were the only kids in schools, it would be a lot easier for teachers to teach and for students to learn. Just my $0.02.
At some point, the story of the CIA Spy Cat was also posted. Maybe as part of Quickies? At any rate, searching this site has become impossible.
ngrep and every program that uses it come to mind.
Regulating gun use like we regulate driving, eh? As Eugene Volokh has noted (although it seems to be down right now, so I apologize if the link is wrong), this would entail:
(1) No federal licensing or registration.
(2) Any person may use a car on his own private property without any license or registration. See, e.g., California Vehicle Code 360, 12500 (driver's license required for driving on "highways," defined as places that are "publicly maintained and open to the use of the public for purposes of vehicular travel"); California Vehicle Code 4000 (same as to registration).
(3) Any adult may get a license to use a car in public places by passing a fairly simple test that virtually everyone can pass.
Apply this to guns, and it sounds good to me.
the last one was for Metroid Prime, which caused me to buy a Gamecube. But that is only because I don't pay attention to gaming anymore...
Those are the ads that affect me, too - ads that INFORM. For example, during every Malcolm in the Middle episode this season, there's been a promo, not longer than 5 seconds, that says "The first season of Malcolm in the Middle is now on DVD!"
There is nothing in that ad that is going to make a non-fan want to buy the DVD's. And there's nothing in that ad that will change the mind of a fan who doesn't want to buy the DVD's. But what about fans who WOULD buy the DVD's, but don't know the DVD's exist? Their behavior can definitely be changed by this ad.
Any ad that boasts of a product's price falls into this category, too. Company X might be offering a a great deal, but it's only a great deal if you know about it and can take advantage....
They might as well have a big red switch on the front of the box saying 'press here for fast cable, but you're not allowed to press this button'.
That's true, and it's idiotic, but if I truly believe that pressing the red button is going to have the FBI on my doorstep, I'll think twice about it.
This is the state of IT in 2002. You don't have to worry about flaws in your design when any exploration of those flaws is illegal.
That's what's known in the business as "not idiotically trusting user machines".
Hey, those Linux guys are more interesting than you might think....
However, parents who truly believe their sweet, angelic little 17 year old baby was molested by that evil, sweaty, stubbly, drunk 18 year old in the black leather jacket will prosecute, even if she initiated the relationship.
IANAL but it's my understanding that most states have a 3- or 4-year window to prevent that from happening, so if two people are sufficiently close in age, their birthdays don't really matter. It doesn't make sense that a relationship which was legal yesterday can be illegal today without a change in laws.
Very well said. Most people agree passenger rail is a good thing, but too many rail advocates fall into unrealistic wishes and the kind of conspiracy theorizing you can read elsewhere on this thread.
One other reason you can't just apply European-style passenger rail to the United States is geography. Europe is small and densely populated, so at any given moment, a lot of people are willing pay to get from City A to City B. The trip from Paris to Brussels is not at all comparable to the trip from Chicago to Los Angeles.
The northeastern United States IS small and densely populated like Europe, and guess what? Amtrak makes its only profits there. I suspect that a properly-run railroad could make even more. There are always people who need to travel fast between Boston, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Philadelphia, Wilmington, Baltimore, and DC.
I suspect that if all the railroads in rural areas like where I am - the Upper Connecticut Valley - were left to the market, freight rail would become more efficient, attracting more customers away from truck shipping. Getting those trucks off the roads would mean less pollution and safer driving for us lowly car operators. (There's nothing like being in the left lane with an 18-wheeler to your right, and seeing his left turn signal come on.)
The admissability of log data is going to be an interesting issue in law in coming years. Yes, there is precedent for it, but the Johnny Cochranes of the world haven't gotten involved yet. At some point, we'll have to decide whether the ease of typing "vi /var/log/syslog" constitutes reasonable doubt in every case.
if he was once worth $60K(actually he was worth alot more)...he should still be worth that...
Did you buy a computer 5-10 years ago? How much did you pay for it? Would you pay that much for the exact same computer today?
If not, why should anyone pay the same amount for your friend's services that they did 5 years ago?
I hope this gets modded up funny. If I came up with anything that funny, I wouldn't post it AC....
No, but you could blame Bill Gates for some of the other virus outbreaks of the last 3 years. Nimda, Code Red, Sircam....
The corridor from Boston to Washington, via Connecticut, NYC, New Jersey, Philadelphia, and Baltimore, can do what Europe does, because they are densely populated. Up here in northern New England, and over most of the "red states", things are different. It may not be profitable, or as profitable, to roll out the latest wireless technology in areas where the number of customers per square mile is significantly lower. Also, and don't flame me for this because it's just a theory, people in the more rural areas may not be as inclined as those in cities to run out and buy the latest thing.
I used to live in Philadelphia, where I could choose from T-Mobile's GSM, Sprint's PCS, Verizon's CDMA, and TDMA from Cingular or AT&T. Then I moved to Lebanon, New Hampshire, where we have TDMA and.... TDMA.
FWIW, I also see this lack of population density as a major reason we can't automatically take the same approach to passenger railroad service that Europe does....
They don't work in the presence of monopolies, just like they don't work in the presence of central planning, fraud, or insider trading. That's why we have laws and policies against all of them.
Laws against central planning? I guess the 10th Amendment is a law against central planning. But it isn't really enforced anymore.
This decision didn't come from the administration, it came from a judge. True, judges are appointed by the President, but Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly was appointed to the United States District Court in 1997, over three years before the current administration was inaugurated. Only Congress can impeach a judge, so I don't understand how the current administration could possibly have affected the outcome of this case.
How does Comcast's acquisition of their broadband provider affect their DirecTV subscription? Does Comcast send their customer list to DirecTV and tell them they can't show certain programming to these people? That doesn't make sense.
right now my g/f has a $300 fine for having 2 videos that are like 6 mos overdue which is completely insane..
$300 / 2 videos = $150 per video
$150 / 180 days = ~83 cents per video per day
Seems perfectly reasonable to me.
If something happens, and one party can be shown to benefit from it, then that party is responsible?
If your parents get killed, there are no witnesses, and you inherit a large sum of money, that line of reasoning will put you in jail.
If something is good for Microsoft, it's bad for the people. If something is bad for Microsoft, it's good for the people. This could be very bad for Microsoft, so it could be *very* good for the people.
Government censorship of the Internet would discourage people from using it, and would therefore be bad for Microsoft. A nuclear attack on the state of Washington would be bad for Microsoft, as would any serious disaster killing a large number of potential Microsoft customers. Would these be "good for the people", or would you care to amend that sweeping statement?
Generally, I like to let "the people" decide what is and isn't good for them.