I think that Dubya is living proof that not only are there people who use or discredit science as it suits them, but that people like that are also in positions of power and influence.
It's a sad day when the USA is more comparable to third-world dictatorships than enlightened nations, though. Now, of course, I don't want to belittle the horrors of the Khmer Rouge terror, not at all, but the underlying attitude - that intellectuality, science and so on is something inherently bad - is the same, even if the consequences of that attitude are (still) vastly different.
If 95% of them absolutely hated science, then science classes in school would be abolished and replaced with mandatory daily religious indoctrination. Don't you think that the industry would suffer a bit as a result of that? Even if companies taught their workers about what reality *really* is like, the fact that they were indoctrinated at the most impressionable age would mean that with few exceptions, it would be an uneasy compromise at best, and sooner or later, there'd be torches and pitchforks and mobs demanding that those heathens be burned at the stake.
That's what would happen if 95% of us absolutely hated science. Fortunately, those who do are in the minority (although those who are actually pro-science probably also are; a good part of the population probably has neutral feelings towards it right now), so it's nothing we really have to worry about (well, yet), but saying that 5% left to fight for reason is enough is like saying that you didn't have to worry about the fact that 95% of Germans supported Hitler and nazism. (In reality, BTW, it was considerably less than that, and he still managed to wreak more havoc than we can even fathom).
Oh, and just on a side note, of course America *as a whole* is none of that - but then, America as a whole consists of literally dozens of countries anyway. What you are thinking about and referring to is the USA, which is only one American country among many.
What I find surprising is that nobody has pointed out yet what Dan Gillmore has mentioned: namely, that the article encourages firms to "(f)ind some copyrighted text that a blogger has lifted from your Web site and threaten to sue his Internet service provider under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act".
Geez. Talk about an abuse of the (already abusive) DMCA and the justice system in general. I really lost a lot of respect for Forbes when I read that - going after people who exercise their right to free speech and disagree with you is bad enough, but bringing fraudulent lawsuits against them and their ISPs is, well, criminal. Or if it's not, then it should be.
Assuming that they don't require everyone to get the new, "improved" passports before that date. All in the name of security and making us safer, of course!
Not really. The USA are pushing for RFID-"enhanced" passports in other countries as part of the visa waiver programme, and those governments are actually stupid enough to kiss our ass and do what we tell them to, too...
You moderators may think that's funny, but there's more than a grain of truth in there. The current estimate by the ISC's DShield for how long it takes for a random computer to get infected after it's connected to the Internet is 26 minutes.
Think about that for a moment... and then ask yourself why we actually take this for granted instead of suing Microsoft into oblivion. Would a car company get away with cars breaking down on real-life roads an average 26 minutes after they're purchased? The thought is totally ridiculous, yet we accept the same from Microsoft. Why?
I think it's time that many OSS developers stop trying to play catchup with MS; you're already there.
Ah, but nobody actually *is* trying to play catch-up with MS - at least not as far as most of the high-profile projects I've looked into (such as the Linux kernel itself, KDE, Mozilla etc.) are concerned. I don't think I've ever seen anyone saying "Windows does this and that, we have to, too" on lkml, for example, with the possible exception of noobs who just got Linux yesterday and subscribed to the list today, and even those are few and far between. Generally, the focus is not on being better than anything else; the focus is just on being *good*. Incidentally, this is one of the reasons why Linux is actually successful, but MS still doesn't understand it.
Of course always carrying a camera is an option.:) It might not be if you want to carry around an SLR with a big flash and an even bigger lens, but most non-SLR digicams aren't that much bigger than a mobile phone.
That's just silly. "Buy Nothing Day" is a cute idea, but let's face it - not only our economy, but in fact our whole society is based on consumerism, and it's neither possible to change that really nor would it be desirable (unless you *really* want to go back to a feudal "ora et labora" system where you just work on the field all day for your liege lord and hope that you'll have enough left to not starve during the next winter season).
What would make more sense would be a "Buy Intelligently" day. Camera phones are a good example of stuff that people don't need and that doesn't make sense when you think about it (why not get a normal phone and a decent camera instead? it's not going to be more expensive, and you get better pictures that way), but blindly refusing anything without discrimination is not a good idea, either.
Long answer: it depends. Megapixels aren't everything, as you point out; so if your 2 megapixel camera was otherwise a good model, you'll not be satisfied with a 2 megapixel camera phone.
Well, they *should* get that right. I have both a digital camera and a mobile phone (without a built-in camera), and I really don't think mixing them is a smart idea. Would you like a digital camera that has a built-in mobile phone? No? Then why do people think that doing it the other way around is a good idea?
Yes, I know, it's handy if you want to take snapshots of stuff, but, let's face it, the photos you get this way suck. Megapixels aren't anything (and 2 MP isn't even much when you want good photos), and the idea that you can get good photos with a mobile phone is just seriously outlandish. And why would anyone want bad photos? Those don't have any value really - if you look at them later on, you'll always just think "damn, I wish I had used a real camera back then".
And it's not as if a decent digital camera and a camera-less phone cost more than a phone with an integrated camera, anyway.
It may be a double standard, but if it is, then it's the same double standard that the USA exposes, though. Think about it - the USA does have a problem with Mexicans entering the country illegally, but how much does it do to prevent US-Americans from illegally entering Mexico? Pretty much nothing.
So, yes, Mexico may have double standards, but you're not exactly in a position to look down on them for it.
Still, you can only extradite someone after you arrested them - and you can only arrest them if there is a reason for it. And no, having committed a crime in another country is not automatically a reason (although it may be in the case of Mexico and the USA - I don't know the details here).
Maybe it's just me, but 40% don't make it an "integral part" of the "American lifestyle" IMO. Outside of the fact that "America" is a bit bigger than you might think, anyway (what you probably mean is "US-American lifestyle"), 40%, well, just isn't that much, even if it's considerably more than in 1997. Once you go beyond 90%, we can start to talk about whether it's an "integral part".
What you're missing, though, is the fact that the government (and thus any government agency) is *not* like a private person or a company. People and companies are ultimately responsible only to themselves (or their shareholders, but that boils down to the same thing); the government, on the other hand, is responsible to the people. It's of critical importance to realise that - the government is not an independent entity that is allowed to do pretty much whatever it wants, it's a vehicle intended to carry out the people's will, and if it is not answering to the people anymore, then its existence is not justified.
That being said, there are of course some things that probably shouldn't be made public for a while. But those things are few and far between, and the trend to a) make everything secret by default, b) keep everything secret forever (as opposed to making it public at a later time when there are no factual reasons for keeping it secret anymore) and c) use non-reasons like "national security", without any clarification of what that actually means or why keeping a particular document secret will help national security (or why not keeping it secret would hinder it) are essentially destroying this fundamental pillar of democracy: that the people are able to evualuate and judge the government, which is necessary in order for them to be able to make an informed decision in the next elections.
And that's not even something that can be discussed. In a democracy, the government *has* to be as open as possible, and unless there is a real justification for not doing so, all documents the government produces *have* to be made public. Democracy does not work if everything's secret; in that case, people are reduced to yes-men who simply nod and smile whenever the government says or does something - the people become the servants of the government, as opposed to vice versa, as intended.
Think about that and repeat it: the government is the servant of the people. The government has an obligation to give the people all the information they need to stay informed. And the government has no justification for existing outside of the fact that it was (supposedly) elected by people who voiced their informed opinions, so if you take that away, there is no justification for the government anymore.
Well, they *are* the National Security Agency, and child seats for vehicles clearly are used for security reasons - the physical security of the child, that is.:) So it does make a twisted kind of sense.
On a more serious note, it's more likely that somebody came up with an idea and his superiors said "let's just patent that - we don't have anything to lose, and we might even earn a few royalties".
Or maybe they do have a sense of humour - who knows. The NSA seems to try hard to become one of the "cool" guys in geek circles (what with SELinux and all that, for example). An effort to make people forget about ECHELON, maybe? I don't know, but it certainly seems to have worked - when I read about the NSA nowadays, I certainly don't think "ECHELON" right away anymore, and I actively have to remind myself that they're not the cryptography version of Google...
The step from 274 to 280 (really, how did you get 260 when doubling 138?) is much, much smaller than the step from 560 to 750, though. Sorry, but you're essentially talking out of your ass here.:)
Here's another option: go to http://www.cs.wisc.edu/~ghost/ and get GSview (the Ghostscript file viewer), and associate that with PDF files. Admittedly, you'll get a nagging screen when it starts up telling you to register, but it's fast, it works, and maybe most importantly, it does not contain any "phone home" functionality or Javascript-in-documents handling or the like (well, it's unlikely that it does, at least).
I've ditched Acrobat Reader in favour of this, and it's one of the best decisions I ever made.
Not being able to legally watch DVDs you bought because your OS isn't supported and you're not allowed to do it on your own (essentially) sucks, yes, but I actually think that there are more serious abuses of the DMCA.
Examples? Dmitri Sklyarov (who, if you don't recall, was arrested when he gave a talk at a conference in the USA because the company he worked for had created a product that allegedly violated the DMCA - nevermind that the company was based in Russia and thus not subject to US-American law) comes to mind, as does the 2600 case (you think that not being able to watch DVDs is bad? How about being told that you are not even allowed to link to sites that tell you how? I really don't see how this cannot be a violation of freedom of speech), or countless other things like printer manufacturers suing third-party companies for making compatible ink cartridges, or garage door companies suing for compatible third-party garage door remote controls (Chamberlain vs. Skylink), or Google being censored and not allowed to return certain websites in their search (some stuff relating to Kazaa, IIRC - Google for "Kazaa", and you'll get a link to the request they got) and so on.
Besides, pretty much *any* cease and desist letter sent to BitTorrent trackers etc. seems to reference the DMCA these days (witness the Pirate Bay's "legal threats" page for examples), even when there is no legal reason for it - it's merely included to scare and threaten people. And that certainly is not a good thing, either, because even if people do something that's wrong and/or illegal, you still shouldn't mispresent what they actually are doing, or try to tell them that what they're doing is a violation of this and that law when in reality, it isn't (I think this is implicit in the right to a fair trial).
Just like Sun's machines that are used in the grid.
You can't have it both ways. Sure, computers incur running costs like electricity, maintenance and so on, and sure, you have to take that into account to evaluate how much running your own server(s)/mainframe/grid/cluster costs. But then, the same also goes for Sun - and Sun will certainly not just pay that for you because they're nice; they'll add those costs to the price they charge you. Maybe they'll still be cheaper (or maybe not), but if you point out hidden costs in one option, then you should also point out the same hidden costs in the other option, because in the end, it's *always* you who pays for them.
One case where it would be feasible is when you only need very little computing power. An admin may not cost much per machine when you have a lot of machines; but when you only need one or two, you can't hire 1/10th of an admin to deal with them, you still have to get at least one. So in that case, Sun's offer would make sense.
You mean "he thinks he has Asperger's "(with a p and an apostrophe - the guy was named Asperger). He's never actually had it diagnosed by a doctor, so even though it seems likely that he's indeed suffering from it, it's not actually confirmed.
Oh? I wouldn't be so sure about that. Sure, windows is not unsupported, but don't you think that OO.o is likely to implement some sort of API abstraction layer on top of the OS to facilitate porting to different platforms? That's certainly something that can cause bigger memory and CPU time requirements, and it's also something that MS Office obviously does not need (yes, there is also MS Office for the Mac, but IIRC, they're actually relatively independent products with different codebases that just share the same name for marketing reasons).
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I think that Dubya is living proof that not only are there people who use or discredit science as it suits them, but that people like that are also in positions of power and influence.
It's a sad day when the USA is more comparable to third-world dictatorships than enlightened nations, though. Now, of course, I don't want to belittle the horrors of the Khmer Rouge terror, not at all, but the underlying attitude - that intellectuality, science and so on is something inherently bad - is the same, even if the consequences of that attitude are (still) vastly different.
And that's really quite alarming.
If 95% of them absolutely hated science, then science classes in school would be abolished and replaced with mandatory daily religious indoctrination. Don't you think that the industry would suffer a bit as a result of that? Even if companies taught their workers about what reality *really* is like, the fact that they were indoctrinated at the most impressionable age would mean that with few exceptions, it would be an uneasy compromise at best, and sooner or later, there'd be torches and pitchforks and mobs demanding that those heathens be burned at the stake.
That's what would happen if 95% of us absolutely hated science. Fortunately, those who do are in the minority (although those who are actually pro-science probably also are; a good part of the population probably has neutral feelings towards it right now), so it's nothing we really have to worry about (well, yet), but saying that 5% left to fight for reason is enough is like saying that you didn't have to worry about the fact that 95% of Germans supported Hitler and nazism. (In reality, BTW, it was considerably less than that, and he still managed to wreak more havoc than we can even fathom).
Oh, and just on a side note, of course America *as a whole* is none of that - but then, America as a whole consists of literally dozens of countries anyway. What you are thinking about and referring to is the USA, which is only one American country among many.
What I find surprising is that nobody has pointed out yet what Dan Gillmore has mentioned: namely, that the article encourages firms to "(f)ind some copyrighted text that a blogger has lifted from your Web site and threaten to sue his Internet service provider under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act".
Geez. Talk about an abuse of the (already abusive) DMCA and the justice system in general. I really lost a lot of respect for Forbes when I read that - going after people who exercise their right to free speech and disagree with you is bad enough, but bringing fraudulent lawsuits against them and their ISPs is, well, criminal. Or if it's not, then it should be.
Assuming that they don't require everyone to get the new, "improved" passports before that date. All in the name of security and making us safer, of course!
Not really. The USA are pushing for RFID-"enhanced" passports in other countries as part of the visa waiver programme, and those governments are actually stupid enough to kiss our ass and do what we tell them to, too...
You moderators may think that's funny, but there's more than a grain of truth in there. The current estimate by the ISC's DShield for how long it takes for a random computer to get infected after it's connected to the Internet is 26 minutes.
Think about that for a moment... and then ask yourself why we actually take this for granted instead of suing Microsoft into oblivion. Would a car company get away with cars breaking down on real-life roads an average 26 minutes after they're purchased? The thought is totally ridiculous, yet we accept the same from Microsoft. Why?
Ah, but nobody actually *is* trying to play catch-up with MS - at least not as far as most of the high-profile projects I've looked into (such as the Linux kernel itself, KDE, Mozilla etc.) are concerned. I don't think I've ever seen anyone saying "Windows does this and that, we have to, too" on lkml, for example, with the possible exception of noobs who just got Linux yesterday and subscribed to the list today, and even those are few and far between. Generally, the focus is not on being better than anything else; the focus is just on being *good*. Incidentally, this is one of the reasons why Linux is actually successful, but MS still doesn't understand it.
Of course always carrying a camera is an option. :) It might not be if you want to carry around an SLR with a big flash and an even bigger lens, but most non-SLR digicams aren't that much bigger than a mobile phone.
That's just silly. "Buy Nothing Day" is a cute idea, but let's face it - not only our economy, but in fact our whole society is based on consumerism, and it's neither possible to change that really nor would it be desirable (unless you *really* want to go back to a feudal "ora et labora" system where you just work on the field all day for your liege lord and hope that you'll have enough left to not starve during the next winter season).
What would make more sense would be a "Buy Intelligently" day. Camera phones are a good example of stuff that people don't need and that doesn't make sense when you think about it (why not get a normal phone and a decent camera instead? it's not going to be more expensive, and you get better pictures that way), but blindly refusing anything without discrimination is not a good idea, either.
Short answer: no.
Long answer: it depends. Megapixels aren't everything, as you point out; so if your 2 megapixel camera was otherwise a good model, you'll not be satisfied with a 2 megapixel camera phone.
Well, they *should* get that right. I have both a digital camera and a mobile phone (without a built-in camera), and I really don't think mixing them is a smart idea. Would you like a digital camera that has a built-in mobile phone? No? Then why do people think that doing it the other way around is a good idea?
Yes, I know, it's handy if you want to take snapshots of stuff, but, let's face it, the photos you get this way suck. Megapixels aren't anything (and 2 MP isn't even much when you want good photos), and the idea that you can get good photos with a mobile phone is just seriously outlandish. And why would anyone want bad photos? Those don't have any value really - if you look at them later on, you'll always just think "damn, I wish I had used a real camera back then".
And it's not as if a decent digital camera and a camera-less phone cost more than a phone with an integrated camera, anyway.
It may be a double standard, but if it is, then it's the same double standard that the USA exposes, though. Think about it - the USA does have a problem with Mexicans entering the country illegally, but how much does it do to prevent US-Americans from illegally entering Mexico? Pretty much nothing.
So, yes, Mexico may have double standards, but you're not exactly in a position to look down on them for it.
Still, you can only extradite someone after you arrested them - and you can only arrest them if there is a reason for it. And no, having committed a crime in another country is not automatically a reason (although it may be in the case of Mexico and the USA - I don't know the details here).
Maybe it's just me, but 40% don't make it an "integral part" of the "American lifestyle" IMO. Outside of the fact that "America" is a bit bigger than you might think, anyway (what you probably mean is "US-American lifestyle"), 40%, well, just isn't that much, even if it's considerably more than in 1997. Once you go beyond 90%, we can start to talk about whether it's an "integral part".
What you're missing, though, is the fact that the government (and thus any government agency) is *not* like a private person or a company. People and companies are ultimately responsible only to themselves (or their shareholders, but that boils down to the same thing); the government, on the other hand, is responsible to the people. It's of critical importance to realise that - the government is not an independent entity that is allowed to do pretty much whatever it wants, it's a vehicle intended to carry out the people's will, and if it is not answering to the people anymore, then its existence is not justified.
That being said, there are of course some things that probably shouldn't be made public for a while. But those things are few and far between, and the trend to a) make everything secret by default, b) keep everything secret forever (as opposed to making it public at a later time when there are no factual reasons for keeping it secret anymore) and c) use non-reasons like "national security", without any clarification of what that actually means or why keeping a particular document secret will help national security (or why not keeping it secret would hinder it) are essentially destroying this fundamental pillar of democracy: that the people are able to evualuate and judge the government, which is necessary in order for them to be able to make an informed decision in the next elections.
And that's not even something that can be discussed. In a democracy, the government *has* to be as open as possible, and unless there is a real justification for not doing so, all documents the government produces *have* to be made public. Democracy does not work if everything's secret; in that case, people are reduced to yes-men who simply nod and smile whenever the government says or does something - the people become the servants of the government, as opposed to vice versa, as intended.
Think about that and repeat it: the government is the servant of the people. The government has an obligation to give the people all the information they need to stay informed. And the government has no justification for existing outside of the fact that it was (supposedly) elected by people who voiced their informed opinions, so if you take that away, there is no justification for the government anymore.
Well, they *are* the National Security Agency, and child seats for vehicles clearly are used for security reasons - the physical security of the child, that is. :) So it does make a twisted kind of sense.
On a more serious note, it's more likely that somebody came up with an idea and his superiors said "let's just patent that - we don't have anything to lose, and we might even earn a few royalties".
Or maybe they do have a sense of humour - who knows. The NSA seems to try hard to become one of the "cool" guys in geek circles (what with SELinux and all that, for example). An effort to make people forget about ECHELON, maybe? I don't know, but it certainly seems to have worked - when I read about the NSA nowadays, I certainly don't think "ECHELON" right away anymore, and I actively have to remind myself that they're not the cryptography version of Google...
Smart man, bad politician (in the sense of "morally bad", not "unsuccessful"). Politicians have a moral *obligation* to listen to the people.
The step from 274 to 280 (really, how did you get 260 when doubling 138?) is much, much smaller than the step from 560 to 750, though. Sorry, but you're essentially talking out of your ass here. :)
Here's another option: go to http://www.cs.wisc.edu/~ghost/ and get GSview (the Ghostscript file viewer), and associate that with PDF files. Admittedly, you'll get a nagging screen when it starts up telling you to register, but it's fast, it works, and maybe most importantly, it does not contain any "phone home" functionality or Javascript-in-documents handling or the like (well, it's unlikely that it does, at least).
I've ditched Acrobat Reader in favour of this, and it's one of the best decisions I ever made.
Not being able to legally watch DVDs you bought because your OS isn't supported and you're not allowed to do it on your own (essentially) sucks, yes, but I actually think that there are more serious abuses of the DMCA.
Examples? Dmitri Sklyarov (who, if you don't recall, was arrested when he gave a talk at a conference in the USA because the company he worked for had created a product that allegedly violated the DMCA - nevermind that the company was based in Russia and thus not subject to US-American law) comes to mind, as does the 2600 case (you think that not being able to watch DVDs is bad? How about being told that you are not even allowed to link to sites that tell you how? I really don't see how this cannot be a violation of freedom of speech), or countless other things like printer manufacturers suing third-party companies for making compatible ink cartridges, or garage door companies suing for compatible third-party garage door remote controls (Chamberlain vs. Skylink), or Google being censored and not allowed to return certain websites in their search (some stuff relating to Kazaa, IIRC - Google for "Kazaa", and you'll get a link to the request they got) and so on.
Besides, pretty much *any* cease and desist letter sent to BitTorrent trackers etc. seems to reference the DMCA these days (witness the Pirate Bay's "legal threats" page for examples), even when there is no legal reason for it - it's merely included to scare and threaten people. And that certainly is not a good thing, either, because even if people do something that's wrong and/or illegal, you still shouldn't mispresent what they actually are doing, or try to tell them that what they're doing is a violation of this and that law when in reality, it isn't (I think this is implicit in the right to a fair trial).
Just like Sun's machines that are used in the grid.
You can't have it both ways. Sure, computers incur running costs like electricity, maintenance and so on, and sure, you have to take that into account to evaluate how much running your own server(s)/mainframe/grid/cluster costs. But then, the same also goes for Sun - and Sun will certainly not just pay that for you because they're nice; they'll add those costs to the price they charge you. Maybe they'll still be cheaper (or maybe not), but if you point out hidden costs in one option, then you should also point out the same hidden costs in the other option, because in the end, it's *always* you who pays for them.
One case where it would be feasible is when you only need very little computing power. An admin may not cost much per machine when you have a lot of machines; but when you only need one or two, you can't hire 1/10th of an admin to deal with them, you still have to get at least one. So in that case, Sun's offer would make sense.
You mean "he thinks he has Asperger's "(with a p and an apostrophe - the guy was named Asperger). He's never actually had it diagnosed by a doctor, so even though it seems likely that he's indeed suffering from it, it's not actually confirmed.
Oh? I wouldn't be so sure about that. Sure, windows is not unsupported, but don't you think that OO.o is likely to implement some sort of API abstraction layer on top of the OS to facilitate porting to different platforms? That's certainly something that can cause bigger memory and CPU time requirements, and it's also something that MS Office obviously does not need (yes, there is also MS Office for the Mac, but IIRC, they're actually relatively independent products with different codebases that just share the same name for marketing reasons).