I believe Joe and Mary GeneralPublic will be very angry when straight-A Johnny GeneralPublic II gets ten years in jail for sharing those N'Sync songs.
Yeah, you'd think so. But it hasn't happened yet with the insanely draconian drug laws that give even life sentences to people who did little more than not turn their friends in.
Part of the reason is FUD. Part of the reason is that prison guard unions lobby for longer sentences, and like the RIAA/MPAA, they care enough to employ lobbyists year-round to do so.
Democracy's a great system, but it doesn't really work al that well. It's just better than any thing else that's been proposed.
I suspect it's pretty simple: Slashdot editors, commendably, don't want to post a lot of links to articles that can't be accessed by whomever is reading the Slashdot story.
Registration sites can only be acessed by those registered, and then only by those willing/able to store cookies or whatever otehr authentication mechanism the registration-only site requires.
I'm generally not going to be willing to register at some site to read a single article. Certainly not if it's not free, but realize that the time required to register, and the parting with personal information, are also real costs.
The New York Times is something of an exception, because a) it's a "newspaper of record" b) it has a large and good science section, compared to other newspapers, and c) registration is free and not too onerous. So Slashdot editors expect that some larger proportion of Slashdot readers may already have NYTimes registrations.
The Washington Post's registration policy is more onerous, as it uses third-party cookies, increasing the chance of privacy being undermined, and making it simply harder to access for those of us who manage cookies. (In fact, I've not been able to register with washingtonpost.com, even with cookies down; presumably it tries to do fancy javascript, which I also block.)
Simple analogy: it would also be just impolite to link to articles that required a browser extensiion -- like Flash -- to view, as many Slashdot readers would have to decide beteen foregoing the article or installing some plugin about which they might have performance or privacy concerns.
There is a difference between the NYTimes and Washingtonpost registrations:
The Post uses third-party cookies, potentially sharing your personal information and newspaper reading habits, with data from other sites.
This is, in my opion, a greater threat to privacy, especially as inferences about one's politics can be made from what news stories one is interested in.
My previous employer implemented a policy shortly before I left requiring that all new hires, even down to secretaries and receptionists, had to have a college degree.
Nothing like over-qualified, bored workers spending all day sending out resumes.
Sounds like a genetic algorithm might work well, with a human viewer providing the fitness test.
Given that having a human decide the fitness of each generation will increase generation times, we could speed it up again by enlisting all those hundreds of amateurs who can presumably recognize a good font even if they can't produce one.
The difficulty would not be producing the individual letters, but keeping the "look and feel" consistent across all characters in a font set. The genetic algorithm's "genes" (units of iinheiritance) would have to consist of higher level abstraction, such as "serif" or "bold" or "elongated". These higher abstractions would then be applied to create a character set with a consistent look, perhaps in a way analogous to embryogenesis.
The parent makes the excellent point that law is an abitrary invention of man (natural rights theory, ingrained in the American perspective, to the contrary).
The original poster makes a distinction apprently based on property rights, and were property rights in fact the crux of the matter, I might agree with him. I have no intention of downloading music in violation of copyright -- just as I expect my copyrights to be respected.
But it's not about property rights. Unless you mean my property right to the use of the internet access I pay for.
It's about a prior restraint of my ability to use a service -- internet access - that I've paid for. A prior restrainst based on the incorrect and insulting presumption that I'd steal the music given the opportunity.
Just because RIAA is unable to gain relief from the alleged violater -- whoever is running the server alleged to be providing material in violation of copyright -- does not give them the right to curtail my rights.
The RIAA prefers to harass ISPs and to dictate to every person using those ISPs what they may read or veiw. And the original poster is worried about the RIAA's property rights? Yes, let us all weep for the RIAA.
I was surprised at the lack of public domain materials out there
I'm honestly not trying to troll here. But we must remember that most "stuff" makes it into the public domain because the copyright on it has lapsed. There is some good stuff out there at the college level, more or less, most of which my (cursory) examination reveals to be university or more rarely governmentally sponsered.
But my point is that I, like you, am surprised at the paucity of material. (An unrelated example: try finding simple instructions for constructing a model geodesic dome. It's out there, but not to the extent I'd expected. The best beginner-level instructions are scanned from a book that went out of print in the 1970s.)
Why is this? I think it may be that our expectations are wrong. I expect free, accurate, and complete information to easily found and painlessly obtained on the 'net.
Why do I expect this? Because I can freely, easily and painlessly download just about any sort of software I care to name, for nearly any OS I prefer to run. In the last few years, I've even come to expect a choice of a binary compiled for my system or source code that I can freely modify.
But other than software authors, who else makes their work-product available for free?
Doctors? Generally not. Lawyers? Not too often. Civil engineers? Not that I'm aware of. Authors of (non-software related) reference works? To some small extent. Authors of (saleable) fiction or music? A few.
But I can get nearly any software I care to name easily and at no or nominal cost (and hopefully someone will correct me by noting what categories of software can't be found freely -- GUI-based spellcheckers come to mind).
So who's missing the boat? Free software authors, or everyone else?
(One set of filters blocks pop-ups, but re-enables them for two seconds following a mouse-up; it assumes that the mouse-up followed a mouse-down that clicked for the pop-up.)
If you try to evade a site's revenue stream while still trying to use that site, don't be surprised if the admin justifiably takes action against you.
Ok. And if a site goes to such trouble to shove ads down my throat, don't be suprised when I stop using it.
Let's be honest. Nearly anyone will tolerate a few ads for a quality site. Proxy filters like Proxomitron are popular because sites have gone overboard -- way overboard -- with ads.
(Even mainstream sites, like washingtonpost.com and nytimes.com, although I didn't realize until I browsed from work without a proxy filter.
I have a completely different, and better browsing experience than do most, because I use a proxy filter.)
What get more clicks-throughs? Try more compelling and fewer ads.
It uses regular expressions to allow you to convert anything in HTML (including the HTML headers) to anything you want.
It'll block pop-ups, pop-unders, javascript, cookies, java, or whatever you can write a regex for.
If you're worried that not viewing site X's pop-ups is theft of service, you can not forego using Proxomitron on those sites, either entirely, or on a regex-by-regex basis.
You can bypass filtering just by adding string (like "bypass..") in front of the URL, or automate this with a Bookmark/Favorite set to a simple javascript.
And it makes browsing SO much more enjoyable. It's the difference between night and day, not having annoying, flashing, in-your-face ads.
And it's fast (even with DSL connection speeds) and it's free (as in beer, but hey, they author also licenses it to adsubtract).
First, realize that even for hearing persons, non-aural cues play a not insignificant part in interpreting speech. This is mainly seeing lip movement but also includes facial expression, body language, and context.
Second, I'd not rely on closed captioning for longer than you need too. Nuerological research seems to suggest that one can read, and one can listen to speech, but not both at once (Klawans mentions this as part of personal anecdote (but not as deriving from experimental data) in his collection of nuerology stories Defending the Cavewoman). Also, as you've probably realized by now, subtitles are often not word-by-word or sound-by-sound faithful to the originial speech: "Ah, well... we, um, ap-approached the, the cri-defendant" -> "Well, we approached the defendant."
Perhaps you should try just watching a lot of TV -- and engaging in spoken conversation -- without any closed-captioning or subtitles. Give it time: there's a lot of neural re-wiring to be done, and that requires time and training, just as taking up a sport or a craft does.
and i know what the next governemnt consppiracy is: they will take away our capital letters and newlines, so we will all have to write inpenetrable stream-of-consciousness screeds.
And also the two Integral Trees books -- although the use of corpsicles as part of the crew is relegated to a few paragraphs, and possibly only in the sequel book.
The Known Space stories have the corpsicles used for organ transplants.
the moral community [sees a] difference between cloning that is sanctioned and initiated by God (identical and fraternal twins) and that which is attempted by man (medical cloning.)
God initiated: good. Man initiated: bad.
Famine and pestilence and nersightedness: good. Fertilizer and antibiotics and glasses: bad.
Slashdot Mirror
I believe Joe and Mary GeneralPublic will be very angry when straight-A Johnny GeneralPublic II gets ten years in jail for sharing those N'Sync songs.
Yeah, you'd think so. But it hasn't happened yet with the insanely draconian drug laws that give even life sentences to people who did little more than not turn their friends in.
Part of the reason is FUD. Part of the reason is that prison guard unions lobby for longer sentences, and like the RIAA/MPAA, they care enough to employ lobbyists year-round to do so.
Democracy's a great system, but it doesn't really work al that well. It's just better than any thing else that's been proposed.
I suspect it's pretty simple: Slashdot editors, commendably, don't want to post a lot of links to articles that can't be accessed by whomever is reading the Slashdot story.
Registration sites can only be acessed by those registered, and then only by those willing/able to store cookies or whatever otehr authentication mechanism the registration-only site requires.
I'm generally not going to be willing to register at some site to read a single article. Certainly not if it's not free, but realize that the time required to register, and the parting with personal information, are also real costs.
The New York Times is something of an exception, because a) it's a "newspaper of record" b) it has a large and good science section, compared to other newspapers, and c) registration is free and not too onerous. So Slashdot editors expect that some larger proportion of Slashdot readers may already have NYTimes registrations.
The Washington Post's registration policy is more onerous, as it uses third-party cookies, increasing the chance of privacy being undermined, and making it simply harder to access for those of us who manage cookies. (In fact, I've not been able to register with washingtonpost.com, even with cookies down; presumably it tries to do fancy javascript, which I also block.)
Simple analogy: it would also be just impolite to link to articles that required a browser extensiion -- like Flash -- to view, as many Slashdot readers would have to decide beteen foregoing the article or installing some plugin about which they might have performance or privacy concerns.
There is a difference between the NYTimes and Washingtonpost registrations:
The Post uses third-party cookies, potentially sharing your personal information and newspaper reading habits, with data from other sites.
This is, in my opion, a greater threat to privacy, especially as inferences about one's politics can be made from what news stories one is interested in.
The Jews never create anything. They are the parasites who wedge themselves between the producer and the consumer.
Yes, you're right!
Thank God der Furher understood what a sham that "Jewish Science" is, and got rid of all the Jew scientists and their Communist friends!
I mean, what good would Einstein or Fermi have done for Germany? It's not like they could have built an atomic bomb or anything.
Oh. Whoops.
My previous employer implemented a policy shortly before I left requiring that all new hires, even down to secretaries and receptionists, had to have a college degree.
Nothing like over-qualified, bored workers spending all day sending out resumes.
Man, just imagine a Beowulf cluster of quantum computers! ...used by the NSA to track your library-borrowing habits.
Sounds like a genetic algorithm might work well, with a human viewer providing the fitness test.
Given that having a human decide the fitness of each generation will increase generation times, we could speed it up again by enlisting all those hundreds of amateurs who can presumably recognize a good font even if they can't produce one.
The difficulty would not be producing the individual letters, but keeping the "look and feel" consistent across all characters in a font set. The genetic algorithm's "genes" (units of iinheiritance) would have to consist of higher level abstraction, such as "serif" or "bold" or "elongated". These higher abstractions would then be applied to create a character set with a consistent look, perhaps in a way analogous to embryogenesis.
Mod parent up!
The parent makes the excellent point that law is an abitrary invention of man (natural rights theory, ingrained in the American perspective, to the contrary).
The original poster makes a distinction apprently based on property rights, and were property rights in fact the crux of the matter, I might agree with him. I have no intention of downloading music in violation of copyright -- just as I expect my copyrights to be respected.
But it's not about property rights. Unless you mean my property right to the use of the internet access I pay for.
It's about a prior restraint of my ability to use a service -- internet access - that I've paid for. A prior restrainst based on the incorrect and insulting presumption that I'd steal the music given the opportunity.
Just because RIAA is unable to gain relief from the alleged violater -- whoever is running the server alleged to be providing material in violation of copyright -- does not give them the right to curtail my rights.
The RIAA prefers to harass ISPs and to dictate to every person using those ISPs what they may read or veiw. And the original poster is worried about the RIAA's property rights? Yes, let us all weep for the RIAA.
silently redirecting web sites is kind of like sticking someone in prison incommunicado so no one can hear what they have to say.
That would never happen here in America. American citizens have habeus corpus rights.
Well, unless a government beaurocrat declares them to be "enemy combatants".
Of course, I'm not criticizing the government. After all, John Ashcroft told me that doing so just aids the terrorists.
So help out your country: shred the Constitution to make packing materials for the RIAA's CDs.
I was surprised at the lack of public domain materials out there
I'm honestly not trying to troll here. But we must remember that most "stuff" makes it into the public domain because the copyright on it has lapsed. There is some good stuff out there at the college level, more or less, most of which my (cursory) examination reveals to be university or more rarely governmentally sponsered.
But my point is that I, like you, am surprised at the paucity of material. (An unrelated example: try finding simple instructions for constructing a model geodesic dome. It's out there, but not to the extent I'd expected. The best beginner-level instructions are scanned from a book that went out of print in the 1970s.)
Why is this? I think it may be that our expectations are wrong. I expect free, accurate, and complete information to easily found and painlessly obtained on the 'net.
Why do I expect this? Because I can freely, easily and painlessly download just about any sort of software I care to name, for nearly any OS I prefer to run. In the last few years, I've even come to expect a choice of a binary compiled for my system or source code that I can freely modify.
But other than software authors, who else makes their work-product available for free?
Doctors? Generally not. Lawyers? Not too often. Civil engineers? Not that I'm aware of. Authors of (non-software related) reference works? To some small extent. Authors of (saleable) fiction or music? A few.
But I can get nearly any software I care to name easily and at no or nominal cost (and hopefully someone will correct me by noting what categories of software can't be found freely -- GUI-based spellcheckers come to mind).
So who's missing the boat? Free software authors, or everyone else?
Ok, I have a small USB device that I need to position a distance from my computer, more then the cable, at least 30 feet.
Hot chick moved in next door, huh?
And you've found the perfect perch for your webcam, right outside her bathroom window?
And you don't want to get a wireless X-10 camera, for fear of being spammed and popped-under every day for the rest of your life?
So? Hack your http header that identifies the browser.
Oh, the site uses javascript to identify the browser? Filter and re-write the javascript.
Oh. Proxomitron (yes, I know, I'm being a tiresome shill for Proxomitron) can do both of these things.
Just get Proxomitron. It does this already.
(One set of filters blocks pop-ups, but re-enables them for two seconds following a mouse-up; it assumes that the mouse-up followed a mouse-down that clicked for the pop-up.)
If you try to evade a site's revenue stream while still trying to use that site, don't be surprised if the admin justifiably takes action against you.
Ok. And if a site goes to such trouble to shove ads down my throat, don't be suprised when I stop using it.
Let's be honest. Nearly anyone will tolerate a few ads for a quality site. Proxy filters like Proxomitron are popular because sites have gone overboard -- way overboard -- with ads.
(Even mainstream sites, like washingtonpost.com and nytimes.com, although I didn't realize until I browsed from work without a proxy filter.
I have a completely different, and better browsing experience than do most, because I use a proxy filter.)
What get more clicks-throughs? Try more compelling and fewer ads.
Get Proxomitron.
It uses regular expressions to allow you to convert anything in HTML (including the HTML headers) to anything you want.
It'll block pop-ups, pop-unders, javascript, cookies, java, or whatever you can write a regex for.
If you're worried that not viewing site X's pop-ups is theft of service, you can not forego using Proxomitron on those sites, either entirely, or on a regex-by-regex basis.
You can bypass filtering just by adding string (like "bypass..") in front of the URL, or automate this with a Bookmark/Favorite set to a simple javascript.
And it makes browsing SO much more enjoyable. It's the difference between night and day, not having annoying, flashing, in-your-face ads.
And it's fast (even with DSL connection speeds) and it's free (as in beer, but hey, they author also licenses it to adsubtract).
Get Proxomitron and take back the web.
First, realize that even for hearing persons, non-aural cues play a not insignificant part in interpreting speech. This is mainly seeing lip movement but also includes facial expression, body language, and context.
Second, I'd not rely on closed captioning for longer than you need too. Nuerological research seems to suggest that one can read, and one can listen to speech, but not both at once (Klawans mentions this as part of personal anecdote (but not as deriving from experimental data) in his collection of nuerology stories Defending the Cavewoman). Also, as you've probably realized by now, subtitles are often not word-by-word or sound-by-sound faithful to the originial speech: "Ah, well... we, um, ap-approached the, the cri-defendant" -> "Well, we approached the defendant."
Perhaps you should try just watching a lot of TV -- and engaging in spoken conversation -- without any closed-captioning or subtitles. Give it time: there's a lot of neural re-wiring to be done, and that requires time and training, just as taking up a sport or a craft does.
"Honey, some loveless geek on Slashdot told me not to get you a diamond. So, really, it's not my fault, ok?"
"BTW, I re-partioned your PC, got rid of Windows, and set you up with free BSD and a Tesla coil."
"Honey? Honey?"
"Ah did NOT have sexshul relations with that lifeform, Grzvzzyvbx"
Six months later:
"My definition of 'sex' does not include being pleasured by a tenticle-armed three-eyed green alien, so technically I was not lying."
Holy shit. My wacky socialist friends aren't as paranoid as I thought. Holy shit.
and i know what the next governemnt consppiracy is: they will take away our capital letters and newlines, so we will all have to write inpenetrable stream-of-consciousness screeds.
"Death is happy, death is fun,
Death is good for everyone!"
And also the two Integral Trees books -- although the use of corpsicles as part of the crew is relegated to a few paragraphs, and possibly only in the sequel book.
The Known Space stories have the corpsicles used for organ transplants.
Simply put: the future doesn't want you.
Oh, but they'll want you, all right.
<Triumph, the insult comedian dog>
For me to poop on!
</truimph>
the moral community [sees a] difference between cloning that is sanctioned and initiated by God (identical and fraternal twins) and that which is attempted by man (medical cloning.)
God initiated: good.
Man initiated: bad.
Famine and pestilence and nersightedness: good.
Fertilizer and antibiotics and glasses: bad.
What will stop a crooked couple in the future from stealing some of Ted's frozen Dna
Perhaps the fact that, well, this experiment was already carried out: Ted William's son tried out for the major leagues, and didn't make it.