but I think your conclusion is flawed. I'm not sure what it is you're trying to blame on the Carter administration, but the nuclear reactors that were in use in Carter's administration, were inefficient and sloppily designed reactors with little oversight and regulation.
In short they were an accident waiting to happ... oh wait it did happen. Thankfully President Carter knew how to react and played an important role in preventing the total melt-down of the Three Mile Island plant. The problem with the waste from fission reactors is they aren't terribly useful for power generation in the nuclear reactor designs in any US reactor that I'm aware of. Perhaps you could enlighten us on which reactors might be able to use this byproduct highly toxic waste? With say some citations?
You'd have a hard time building nuclear weapons just from learning the physics of them. I know this because I am a physicist by training with engineering study also, and a life long hacking history. If you're going to outlaw a field it would be engineering you'd want to outlaw.
However, making easily available the technological knowledge to build ICBMs is like posting a list of user ids and passwords in a public place. While security through obscurity is not solution to security, public advertisement is surely even worse. What good would it do to make the specifications necessary to build ICBMs be to you or any average person? What could you possibly do with that information? It is knowledge that is suited only for engineering students, companies trying to build spacecraft or compete for government contracts, or organizations with large sums of money that could actually build such things (like the North Korean government, and some terrorist groups).
I don't try to promote national security. I think we have enough idiots trying to do that, but I also don't promote national idiocy either. Something we also have too much of.
And by the way there is a ban on the export of all kinds of research, including that particular branch called biological and chemical warfare. Along with strong encryption. Moreover, almost every country has bans on the export of certain dangerous knowledge.
And there are many definitions of "Dangerous". I'd like to see you try to take the chemical blueprint for nerve gas out of the country, or the technical drawings for nuclear triggers, or for the US secret propellers. I'll send you a postcard when they lock you up in Leavenworth. Also, in case you're unaware, in the US you can be convicted and imprisoned in a Federal facility for applying for a foreign patent on a device the government deems to be a matter of National Security.
Well if all of NASA's research is freely available, then what is it they are proposing to auction off?
I'm fully aware NASA is helping and encouraging private space flight firms, although I couldn't name any specifics so left it off my comment. But not everything NASA does is freely available. Some of the work they do is classified for national security reasons, and FOIA won't get you those papers. For good reason, although there is an awful lot of dangerous information out there that is easy to get.
Perhaps you should have responded to the parent of my original post.
I would like to add, I think it's equally stupid for NASA to not help commercial ventures like this get a leg up on research, and also to rent all this research to the highest bidder.
You know when I was in school, and kids failed a test or homework, they were often allowed to retake a test, or to redo homework with a reduction in the total possible points but still enough to get a decent passing grade. Mandating no one gets less than 50% is just a dumb idea. Welcome to the dumbing of America. At least now the French will be right when they call us stupid Americans. Here's a novel idea, for those who have grades below the 50% mark and are trying, give them tutors. For those who are below the 50% mark and aren't trying, fail their sorry asses. That's fair. I know that in any job I've ever worked at, those who did less than half their job got fired. I'd like to see how many people would be willing to pay half-price for a half completed car.
"Buy this brand new 2009 Ford Mustang for only $17,995 (engine and wheels not included)."
GPL is probably considered a redistribution license, but if someone runs afoul of it, it revokes the license a\nd thus is also a EULA. I know, sounds like a stretch, but remember you have to consider that we are talking about lawyers and judges here. They live in a different world where words don't necessarily mean what we might think they mean. I sure wish NYCountryLawyer would comment on this. He'd have the right spin.
1. License Grant - This license gives you the right to use the executable provided by Mozilla Corp.
Once one legally acquires software, one is legally allowed to use it as per the terms of copyright laws in most countries. Permission from the vendor is not required.
2. Termination - if you breach this license, S1 is voided.
This is not a right the vendor is legally able to extend under the copyright act. If the vendor seeks this right, they must engage in a legally binding contract with the recipient prior to sale or transmission.
Several court cases testing the GPL have found that both 1 and 2 are enforceable. Still, a shame, now I suppose at my next upgrade, I'll have to install a different browser, as I will not click accept on any EULA. At least not until the courts realize these should not be legally enforceable.
Those science types are big on open source, so what better way than to open up big matter sucking openings and allowing everyone equal access to the ability to destroy all life on Earth? I mean let's be fair haven't you ever wanted to open up a black hole under someone? Don't you ever get the need to just wipe out existence and start over?
Maybe they can add a teleporter to the collider so we can create black holes there and send them elsewhere?
Wrong analogy, you walk down the street, someone shoves a petition in your face and picks your pocket at the same time. Do you lock them up? YES!
Or how about, you go to bed at night and when you wake up you discovered someone picked the lock on your door overnight and left a pile of cow dung on your floor. Do you lock them up? Yes, it called criminal trespass.
Or how about this analogy, you have an automatic withdrawal account with the post office to deliver mail from certain people that has postage due on it. Some enterprising individual finds a way to get put on that list and sends you a bunch of letters. Do you lock them up? Yes!
It's important to get the right analogy that includes more than just a single aspect of the issue. SPAM isn't just about freedom of speech, or anonymous speech, but also about fraud and theft of services, and bad faith, and estoppel and...
However, you're all not actually paying close enough attention to the question.
The question is, "Can you be sued for helping to perform action X?". The answer to that question is an unequivocal "Yes!". In America you can be sued for anything. Whether you can win in court is dependent largely on whether you can afford to stay in for enough rounds to have baseless claims thrown out. Occasionally, really badly executed lawsuits are thrown out in the beginning. But since any copyright infringement lawsuit is likely to come from deep pocket corporations, those lawsuits will be full of rational sounding legal FUD.
So, yes, you can be sued for helping someone rip DVDs, whether there is a legal standing to support that suit is another question.
Carbon dating c13/c12 is ***not**** carbon 14 radioactive dating.
C13 and c12 are stable forms of Carbon. I'm not sure what kind of dating these scientists think they can do with that. The Earth's makeup of C13 to C12 is 1:99.
Radioactive C14 dating is only good for about 40000 years. C14 has a half-life of ~5600 yr, after 6 half-lives you'd be hardpressed to find a single C14 atom in any sample you do.
You have to use other radioactive isotopes after that. Plus there is the problem that C14 dating assumes a particular rate of the natural creation of C14. C14 occurs naturally in the atmosphere when N takes on an extra proton. Once a living being dies they stop breathing. While a living being breathes it accumulates C14. Once it is dead it no longer accumulates C14 and the C14 begins to decay to Nitrogen. C14 dating only works with remains of living beings.
When did the Missouri and Iowa Rivers dry up? [Looks out window, nope Ol' Misery still there] For you're information water runs down hill, that includes the Mississippi, the Missouri, and all the water that melts from the Rocky Mountains, not to mention all the water that comes up from the Gulf as rain. You must be thinking of the area in the Western Continental US between the Rockies and the Sierras. Yon know on the *other* side of the Continental Divide.;)
Of course, you're right that the idea of putting in canals from the polar region to the US won't work. For one thing, how will we be able to separate the melting freshwater polar cap from the underlying saltwater ocean. The canal idea almost sounds like a troll.
So, what you're saying is that copyright infringers should be given the benefit of current technology to speed the illegal distribution of content they do not own, but the actual copyright holders should be forced to use the most ancient form of currently available technology, thus allowing as much time as possible for the illegal distribution of content?
Forcing the content owners to send out snail mail letters. You're not even going to let them fax sigend copies, and you'll allow the site owners to take whatever time they want to remove infringing content? Wow!
So, I guess you think the same way RIAA et al think? Take all you can and leave no survivors. Here, I always thought that two wrongs don't make a right, but you seem to be on the flip side of that coin. It's opinions like this that hurt the OSS movement and also the BitTorrent providers. With friend like this who needs enemies. We can be our own worst enemy.
While I say it is the responsibility of the copyright holder to enforce his rights, I think that they should be given as much help as is reasonable, given the vastness of the internet and illegal downloading ability it has. It's one thing to burn copies of a copyrighted work for a few friends, but it's another thing to allow the world to download them. However, copyright law needs a major overhaul. No one whose support matters is going to listen to those putting forth arguments like yours.
Bit torrent sites should be capable of detecting at least some infringing content, at least after it has been downloaded at least once. If a download passes through a torrent and it matches bit for bit with a known copyrighted work over the same time-slice, then the probability it is infringing has a positive correlation. Such a file could then be monitored on subsequent downloads over different time-slices, and if it is a 100% match it should be removed.
Furthermore, on what content should be proactively removed should be dependent on whether or not it is available for purchase or not, or is pre-distribution. For example, a torrent of an episode of the Daily show should not get the same protection as a copy of an unrelaesed stolen copy of a new Guns & Roses album. But still if the Daily Show people ask for a take down of such an episode, it should be honored, and honored going forward also. There's much more that could be said here, to create a balanced solution.
There are many cases of FDA approved drugs causing health problems. Example, a co-worker of my wife got a prescription for a drug advertised on TV for a medical condition she has. The drug triggered cancer in her; on of the listed "rare" side affects of the drug. So now she still suffers from her original problem, plus the "cure" has probably killed her". She's very sick now. There are lots of other reported cases of things like this.
Not all of the "supplements" are snake-oil. For example BHT which is used as a preservative is known to cure Herpes Simplex (cold sores), but due to a big push by large food companies, it will never be a FDA approved drug. It would make the cost of using BHT prohibitive to food makers. The thing about BHT is it destroys the virus, and you'll never have another cold sore, unless you get re-infected.
Some "supplements" has some proven effect, although often minor. Some are outright dangerous. A number of the male enhancement "supplements" do have some effect, and often some of the shadier ones which are made in China and third world countries, often are polluted with derivatives of prescription ED drugs. So, if you're (un)lucky you might get a package before it is recalled due to the illegal presence of a close relative of an ED drug, which may actually do the job but kill you in the process (or just make you blind). For proof of what I say just go to the Federal recall site, where there are several recent recalls of some ME "supplements".
That site is one I monitor to keep my child safe from bad toys made with lead, small magnets, other negligent hazardous materials by greedy A** mega-corporations. (You don't want to get me started on the recall subject). Not that I would object to having a weekender pill that didn't: kill me, make me blind, or make me bigger than a horse or smaller than Pekinese.;)
Sorry, it was the end of another very long day, and I misread your post.
Yes, SSD =/= SDHC.
You masy be correct on that, depending on your definition of "much less". I doubt you'll see 128 GB SSDs for less than $150 within 2 years. Maybe in 4 they'll go for $80. Size isn't of course the only issue in cost, but demand and available supply also.
Bzzt. The advent of a writing system coincides with the transition from hunter-gatherer societies to more permanent agrarian encampments when it became necessary to...
My very first sentence in my previous reply pointed out your error. Which you don't seem to have picked up on. My point was and is that permanent communities didn't necessitate a need for a writing system as you claim.
I'm not a linguist, nor do I follow all of the latest discoveries in the field. I have however studied linguistics. I was not commenting on the China first writing claim. Counting tokens don't qualify as writing, by the way, any more than cave drawings by Neanderthals do.
Of course hieroglyphs are writing, along with pictographs. I'm not the one who was trying to set the bar for writing at the alphabet level. If it is capable of communicating spoken language in a written form then it is writing, even pictographs. In conmclusion I'll add that writing systems almost certainly existed long before we have found any record of them. We only have them once they made it to more permanent forms such as clay.
I use plenty of bandwidth. I get an average of several hundred emails everyday (not counting spam, which is is mostly filtered out). I run an office from my home and connect to client machines for as much as 6 hours a day over VPN. Manage remote servers, etc.
250GB a month is huge.
Yes, there are some things that are unlimited, but things change. Life is full of change. So they once advertised unlimited usage. Now they aren't. I used to get gas for $0.60/gallon too. Am I happy that it's now six times that? No, but change is a reality of life that mature people realize. If you are unhappy with the number then protest for a higher limit, but it's unrealistic and selfish to expect that what was once unlimited must always be unlimited. I expect that unlimited free long distance won't last forever and a day either. But it's great while it lasts.
Although, several years ago I went on a vacation and some kid thought it was funny to turn on my hose and leave it on. I don't know how many days it was on, but the city threatened to shut my water off if I didn't pay them $300 for the water that ran down the street, and the city workers responding to a call came out and found the faucet running and left it on, Leaving it for me to turn off when I got home. My normal bill is $20 dollars for about 3100/gal a month or $1/150 gallons. So about 45000 gallons ran out of my garden hose in less than a week and it would take 150,000 gallons to run up a $1000 bill. But the city bottles our spring water and sells it for about $4/gallon or $1000 for 250 gallons.
I know, I should have shut the outside water off. But it used to be a nice quite neighborhood.
Writing was not a necessity of civilization. Take for example Catal Hyuck which was continuously occupied for millenia before a writing system. Many American cultures had no writing systems, and they were'nt all hunter gatherer societies. Who says a writing system has to be alphabetic? Are you saying the current Japanese and Chinese languages don't qualify as written language?
The problem is that the documents are so fragile they must remain encased in the protective frames they are in and cannot endure any length of time being exposed to light. Copies have been made of all the scrolls and those are probably the ones that will be used in the digitizing.
Some copies are incredibly dark, and difficult to read even by trained expert archaeological specialists.
I further assume they mean digitizing the collection into searchable text and I know of no expert software that can decipher ancient Jewish text written in a hundred separate handwritings and of mostly terrible condition. This is a hugely difficult undertaking. I think they are overly optimistic in what they think they can accomplish. I would say this task may be more on the order of five to ten years, unless they have lots of volunteers helping with the work. But where they are going to get large numbers of human transcribers with intimate knowledge of ancient Hebrew and Aramaic is beyond me.
Although they already "know" what all the texts say and there are numerous copies of the words in PC readable format and all of the documents have had photographs done and are also in PC readable format. So unless they just mean they want to put pictures of the texts up, I'm not sure what they plan to accomplish, nor why it can't be done tomorrow.
Or I could scan in and put on line my copy of "The Complete Dead Sea Scrolls in English" By Geza Vermes,1997 Penguin Books 648pp. Of course, I'd probably get in trouble for that since you know it's gonna be under copyright protection until it's as old as the Dead Sea Scrolls are now (given the current mindset of the corporate sponsored Congress).
The entire Dead sea scroll collection was published several years ago. I have a complete copy of every dead sea scroll, along with photographs of them. There are several such books by various authors.
Your statement is no longer true. While your history is accurate, your here and now knowledge needs work. There was also a lot of incompetence and inability to plan/manage causing issues. It's a fascinating, if sad story.
Slashdot Mirror
but I think your conclusion is flawed. I'm not sure what it is you're trying to blame on the Carter administration, but the nuclear reactors that were in use in Carter's administration, were inefficient and sloppily designed reactors with little oversight and regulation.
In short they were an accident waiting to happ... oh wait it did happen. Thankfully President Carter knew how to react and played an important role in preventing the total melt-down of the Three Mile Island plant. The problem with the waste from fission reactors is they aren't terribly useful for power generation in the nuclear reactor designs in any US reactor that I'm aware of. Perhaps you could enlighten us on which reactors might be able to use this byproduct highly toxic waste? With say some citations?
You'd have a hard time building nuclear weapons just from learning the physics of them. I know this because I am a physicist by training with engineering study also, and a life long hacking history. If you're going to outlaw a field it would be engineering you'd want to outlaw.
However, making easily available the technological knowledge to build ICBMs is like posting a list of user ids and passwords in a public place. While security through obscurity is not solution to security, public advertisement is surely even worse. What good would it do to make the specifications necessary to build ICBMs be to you or any average person? What could you possibly do with that information? It is knowledge that is suited only for engineering students, companies trying to build spacecraft or compete for government contracts, or organizations with large sums of money that could actually build such things (like the North Korean government, and some terrorist groups).
I don't try to promote national security. I think we have enough idiots trying to do that, but I also don't promote national idiocy either. Something we also have too much of.
And by the way there is a ban on the export of all kinds of research, including that particular branch called biological and chemical warfare. Along with strong encryption. Moreover, almost every country has bans on the export of certain dangerous knowledge.
And there are many definitions of "Dangerous". I'd like to see you try to take the chemical blueprint for nerve gas out of the country, or the technical drawings for nuclear triggers, or for the US secret propellers. I'll send you a postcard when they lock you up in Leavenworth. Also, in case you're unaware, in the US you can be convicted and imprisoned in a Federal facility for applying for a foreign patent on a device the government deems to be a matter of National Security.
Well if all of NASA's research is freely available, then what is it they are proposing to auction off?
I'm fully aware NASA is helping and encouraging private space flight firms, although I couldn't name any specifics so left it off my comment. But not everything NASA does is freely available. Some of the work they do is classified for national security reasons, and FOIA won't get you those papers. For good reason, although there is an awful lot of dangerous information out there that is easy to get.
Perhaps you should have responded to the parent of my original post.
I would like to add, I think it's equally stupid for NASA to not help commercial ventures like this get a leg up on research, and also to rent all this research to the highest bidder.
Yes, let's make all that advanced rocket design public information so anyone can build intercontinental ballistic missiles!
BRILLIANT!
Hey, Bin Laden come on out we've got free rocket designs! Still got any of those oil millions left to build one?
Hey Pyongyang, want to make better rockets? Here you go!
You know when I was in school, and kids failed a test or homework, they were often allowed to retake a test, or to redo homework with a reduction in the total possible points but still enough to get a decent passing grade. Mandating no one gets less than 50% is just a dumb idea. Welcome to the dumbing of America. At least now the French will be right when they call us stupid Americans. Here's a novel idea, for those who have grades below the 50% mark and are trying, give them tutors. For those who are below the 50% mark and aren't trying, fail their sorry asses. That's fair. I know that in any job I've ever worked at, those who did less than half their job got fired. I'd like to see how many people would be willing to pay half-price for a half completed car.
"Buy this brand new 2009 Ford Mustang for only $17,995 (engine and wheels not included)."
GPL is probably considered a redistribution license, but if someone runs afoul of it, it revokes the license a\nd thus is also a EULA. I know, sounds like a stretch, but remember you have to consider that we are talking about lawyers and judges here. They live in a different world where words don't necessarily mean what we might think they mean. I sure wish NYCountryLawyer would comment on this. He'd have the right spin.
1. License Grant - This license gives you the right to use the executable provided by Mozilla Corp.
Once one legally acquires software, one is legally allowed to use it as per the terms of copyright laws in most countries. Permission from the vendor is not required.
2. Termination - if you breach this license, S1 is voided.
This is not a right the vendor is legally able to extend under the copyright act. If the vendor seeks this right, they must engage in a legally binding contract with the recipient prior to sale or transmission.
Several court cases testing the GPL have found that both 1 and 2 are enforceable. Still, a shame, now I suppose at my next upgrade, I'll have to install a different browser, as I will not click accept on any EULA. At least not until the courts realize these should not be legally enforceable.
Those science types are big on open source, so what better way than to open up big matter sucking openings and allowing everyone equal access to the ability to destroy all life on Earth? I mean let's be fair haven't you ever wanted to open up a black hole under someone? Don't you ever get the need to just wipe out existence and start over?
Maybe they can add a teleporter to the collider so we can create black holes there and send them elsewhere?
Wrong analogy, you walk down the street, someone shoves a petition in your face and picks your pocket at the same time. Do you lock them up? YES!
Or how about, you go to bed at night and when you wake up you discovered someone picked the lock on your door overnight and left a pile of cow dung on your floor. Do you lock them up? Yes, it called criminal trespass.
Or how about this analogy, you have an automatic withdrawal account with the post office to deliver mail from certain people that has postage due on it. Some enterprising individual finds a way to get put on that list and sends you a bunch of letters. Do you lock them up? Yes!
It's important to get the right analogy that includes more than just a single aspect of the issue. SPAM isn't just about freedom of speech, or anonymous speech, but also about fraud and theft of services, and bad faith, and estoppel and ...
However, you're all not actually paying close enough attention to the question.
The question is, "Can you be sued for helping to perform action X?". The answer to that question is an unequivocal "Yes!". In America you can be sued for anything. Whether you can win in court is dependent largely on whether you can afford to stay in for enough rounds to have baseless claims thrown out. Occasionally, really badly executed lawsuits are thrown out in the beginning. But since any copyright infringement lawsuit is likely to come from deep pocket corporations, those lawsuits will be full of rational sounding legal FUD.
So, yes, you can be sued for helping someone rip DVDs, whether there is a legal standing to support that suit is another question.
Carbon dating c13/c12 is ***not****
carbon 14 radioactive dating.
C13 and c12 are stable forms of Carbon. I'm not sure what kind of dating these scientists think they can do with that. The Earth's makeup of C13 to C12 is 1:99.
Radioactive C14 dating is only good for about 40000 years. C14 has a half-life of ~5600 yr, after 6 half-lives you'd be hardpressed to find a single C14 atom in any sample you do.
You have to use other radioactive isotopes after that. Plus there is the problem that C14 dating assumes a particular rate of the natural creation of C14.
C14 occurs naturally in the atmosphere when N takes on an extra proton. Once a living being dies they stop breathing. While a living being breathes it accumulates C14. Once it is dead it no longer accumulates C14 and the C14 begins to decay to Nitrogen. C14 dating only works with remains of living beings.
No water in the mid-continental US?
When did the Missouri and Iowa Rivers dry up? ;)
[Looks out window, nope Ol' Misery still there]
For you're information water runs down hill, that includes the Mississippi, the Missouri, and all the water that melts from the Rocky Mountains, not to mention all the water that comes up from the Gulf as rain. You must be thinking of the area in the Western Continental US between the Rockies and the Sierras. Yon know on the *other* side of the Continental Divide.
Of course, you're right that the idea of putting in canals from the polar region to the US won't work.
For one thing, how will we be able to separate the melting freshwater polar cap from the underlying saltwater ocean. The canal idea almost sounds like a troll.
So, what you're saying is that copyright infringers should be given the benefit of current technology to speed the illegal distribution of content they do not own, but the actual copyright holders should be forced to use the most ancient form of currently available technology, thus allowing as much time as possible for the illegal distribution of content?
Forcing the content owners to send out snail mail letters. You're not even going to let them fax sigend copies, and you'll allow the site owners to take whatever time they want to remove infringing content? Wow!
So, I guess you think the same way RIAA et al think? Take all you can and leave no survivors. Here, I always thought that two wrongs don't make a right, but you seem to be on the flip side of that coin. It's opinions like this that hurt the OSS movement and also the BitTorrent providers. With friend like this who needs enemies. We can be our own worst enemy.
While I say it is the responsibility of the copyright holder to enforce his rights, I think that they should be given as much help as is reasonable, given the vastness of the internet and illegal downloading ability it has. It's one thing to burn copies of a copyrighted work for a few friends, but it's another thing to allow the world to download them. However, copyright law needs a major overhaul. No one whose support matters is going to listen to those putting forth arguments like yours.
Bit torrent sites should be capable of detecting at least some infringing content, at least after it has been downloaded at least once. If a download passes through a torrent and it matches bit for bit with a known copyrighted work over the same time-slice, then the probability it is infringing has a positive correlation. Such a file could then be monitored on subsequent downloads over different time-slices, and if it is a 100% match it should be removed.
Furthermore, on what content should be proactively removed should be dependent on whether or not it is available for purchase or not, or is pre-distribution. For example, a torrent of an episode of the Daily show should not get the same protection as a copy of an unrelaesed stolen copy of a new Guns & Roses album. But still if the Daily Show people ask for a take down of such an episode, it should be honored, and honored going forward also. There's much more that could be said here, to create a balanced solution.
Because Nerds are notorious for having a lack of sex appeal to actual women. This was their last best hope for anonymous BDOC drugs.
There are many cases of FDA approved drugs causing health problems. Example, a co-worker of my wife got a prescription for a drug advertised on TV for a medical condition she has. The drug triggered cancer in her; on of the listed "rare" side affects of the drug. So now she still suffers from her original problem, plus the "cure" has probably killed her". She's very sick now. There are lots of other reported cases of things like this.
Not all of the "supplements" are snake-oil. For example BHT which is used as a preservative is known to cure Herpes Simplex (cold sores), but due to a big push by large food companies, it will never be a FDA approved drug. It would make the cost of using BHT prohibitive to food makers. The thing about BHT is it destroys the virus, and you'll never have another cold sore, unless you get re-infected.
Some "supplements" has some proven effect, although often minor. Some are outright dangerous. A number of the male enhancement "supplements" do have some effect, and often some of the shadier ones which are made in China and third world countries, often are polluted with derivatives of prescription ED drugs. So, if you're (un)lucky you might get a package before it is recalled due to the illegal presence of a close relative of an ED drug, which may actually do the job but kill you in the process (or just make you blind). For proof of what I say just go to the Federal recall site, where there are several recent recalls of some ME "supplements".
That site is one I monitor to keep my child safe from bad toys made with lead, small magnets, other negligent hazardous materials by greedy A** mega-corporations. (You don't want to get me started on the recall subject). Not that I would object to having a weekender pill that didn't: kill me, make me blind, or make me bigger than a horse or smaller than Pekinese. ;)
Sorry, it was the end of another very long day, and I misread your post.
Yes, SSD =/= SDHC.
You masy be correct on that, depending on your definition of "much less". I doubt you'll see 128 GB SSDs for less than $150 within 2 years. Maybe in 4 they'll go for $80. Size isn't of course the only issue in cost, but demand and available supply also.
Anyway, sorry for the mix up.
Whoa, I really made some mistakes there. Off by some decimal places.
20GB/s sb 200 MB/s up to 300MB/s
and SSDs in the 100 to 150 MB/s range
and SHDCs are in the 4 - 20 MB/s category.
Not GB/s. Sorry.
Thanks for pointing that out. Still my basic premise that hard drives are way faster than the other two still stands.
Ok, you're going to make me quote you, fine.
Bzzt. The advent of a writing system coincides with the transition from hunter-gatherer societies to more permanent agrarian encampments when it became necessary to ...
My very first sentence in my previous reply pointed out your error. Which you don't seem to have picked up on. My point was and is that permanent communities didn't necessitate a need for a writing system as you claim.
I'm not a linguist, nor do I follow all of the latest discoveries in the field. I have however studied linguistics. I was not commenting on the China first writing claim. Counting tokens don't qualify as writing, by the way, any more than cave drawings by Neanderthals do.
Of course hieroglyphs are writing, along with pictographs. I'm not the one who was trying to set the bar for writing at the alphabet level. If it is capable of communicating spoken language in a written form then it is writing, even pictographs. In conmclusion I'll add that writing systems almost certainly existed long before we have found any record of them. We only have them once they made it to more permanent forms such as clay.
I use plenty of bandwidth. I get an average of several hundred emails everyday (not counting spam, which is is mostly filtered out). I run an office from my home and connect to client machines for as much as 6 hours a day over VPN. Manage remote servers, etc.
250GB a month is huge.
Yes, there are some things that are unlimited, but things change. Life is full of change. So they once advertised unlimited usage. Now they aren't. I used to get gas for $0.60/gallon too. Am I happy that it's now six times that? No, but change is a reality of life that mature people realize. If you are unhappy with the number then protest for a higher limit, but it's unrealistic and selfish to expect that what was once unlimited must always be unlimited. I expect that unlimited free long distance won't last forever and a day either. But it's great while it lasts.
Ok, so I exaggerated a bit.
Although, several years ago I went on a vacation and some kid thought it was funny to turn on my hose and leave it on. I don't know how many days it was on, but the city threatened to shut my water off if I didn't pay them $300 for the water that ran down the street, and the city workers responding to a call came out and found the faucet running and left it on, Leaving it for me to turn off when I got home. My normal bill is $20 dollars for about 3100/gal a month or $1/150 gallons. So about 45000 gallons ran out of my garden hose in less than a week and it would take 150,000 gallons to run up a $1000 bill. But the city bottles our spring water and sells it for about $4/gallon or $1000 for 250 gallons.
I know, I should have shut the outside water off. But it used to be a nice quite neighborhood.
In the Multiverse you keep what you kill.
-Riddick IV:16.11-12
Writing was not a necessity of civilization. Take for example Catal Hyuck which was continuously occupied for millenia before a writing system. Many American cultures had no writing systems, and they were'nt all hunter gatherer societies. Who says a writing system has to be alphabetic? Are you saying the current Japanese and Chinese languages don't qualify as written language?
The problem is that the documents are so fragile they must remain encased in the protective frames they are in and cannot endure any length of time being exposed to light. Copies have been made of all the scrolls and those are probably the ones that will be used in the digitizing.
Some copies are incredibly dark, and difficult to read even by trained expert archaeological specialists.
I further assume they mean digitizing the collection into searchable text and I know of no expert software that can decipher ancient Jewish text written in a hundred separate handwritings and of mostly terrible condition. This is a hugely difficult undertaking. I think they are overly optimistic in what they think they can accomplish. I would say this task may be more on the order of five to ten years, unless they have lots of volunteers helping with the work. But where they are going to get large numbers of human transcribers with intimate knowledge of ancient Hebrew and Aramaic is beyond me.
Although they already "know" what all the texts say and there are numerous copies of the words in PC readable format and all of the documents have had photographs done and are also in PC readable format. So unless they just mean they want to put pictures of the texts up, I'm not sure what they plan to accomplish, nor why it can't be done tomorrow.
Or I could scan in and put on line my copy of
"The Complete Dead Sea Scrolls in English"
By Geza Vermes,1997 Penguin Books 648pp. Of course, I'd probably get in trouble for that since you know it's gonna be under copyright protection until it's as old as the Dead Sea Scrolls are now (given the current mindset of the corporate sponsored Congress).
The entire Dead sea scroll collection was published several years ago. I have a complete copy of every dead sea scroll, along with photographs of them. There are several such books by various authors.
Your statement is no longer true. While your history is accurate, your here and now knowledge needs work. There was also a lot of incompetence and inability to plan/manage causing issues. It's a fascinating, if sad story.