Ad hominem has no place in debating a point of logic (an argument is true or false no matter who says it), but it does have a place when dealing with human testimony.
Take two of your examples.
"You claim that this man is innocent, but you cannot be trusted since you are a criminal as well."
If the criminal's claim is a testimony of another man's confession in prison for example, and the criminal is a criminal because he committed fraud and perjury... His character very much becomes part of the debate, as he may be lying again, which makes his testimony unreliable.
"Tobacco company representatives are wrong when they say smoking doesn't seriously affect your health, because they're just defending their own multi-million-dollar financial interests."
If the tobacco rep says that smoking doesn't harm people's health, the fact that his role is specifically to defend the tobacco business makes his position questionable, his likelyhood of lying is greater, and his evidence should go through extra scrutiny to see if it is reliable. If he has no independant evidence at all, then his position becomes even more tenuous.
In a more abstract example, man A says argument T is the truth, based solely on his testimony. man B says A is lying because of his vested interest. According to you, that's an ad-hominem. T may or may not be true, but it's only true if A is not lying, so B has a valid reason to attack A's history of lying.
Ad-hominem is best called out when an attack is made on someone's character that bears no relation to the argument they're making - your 2nd example is much better.
In relation to TFA, Bill Gates is arguing that copying software is morally wrong, but he's doing it from a position in which he committed a similar moral wrong to write the software in the first place; i.e. the 'theft' of time from another. It's a case of "do what I say, not do what I do".
He bases his case for renumeration on "The value of the computer time we have used exceeds $40,000."
Man A is claiming he deserves remuneration because of costs C, and that without payment P, he cannot afford to make software (argument T). Man B claims that man A didn't spend anywhere near costs C, because he used the expensive computer time without paying for it, so P is not actually paying for C, but is pure profit for A. P is not needed to cover C, so without sufficient P there's no reason to assume that A will stop making software. Ergo, argument T is false, and Bill Gates needs to find another reason why we should buy his software.
So it comes down to who you believe, A (Bill Gates) or B (Big Jojo), without other evidence. Man B's claim of theft of computer time directly affects man A's argument for remuneration, and is not an ad hominem.
Parents are liable for the behavior of their minor children. In your strawman case, the parents can, in fact, be sued for negligence.
Yes, but that's because the parent has not been performing their duty of care - an offence for which they would probably be found guilty in my hypothetical. My point is that they are not guilty of the offence the child committed.
If the police wanted to prosecute Ms Santangelo for negligance for allowing her child to use the internet unsupervised, that's one thing; but for the RIAA to be able to successfully sue her for Copyright Infringement, an offence she didn't commit, is another thing entirely, and wrong.
There is no way she is going to win when she's already basically admitting that she failed to supervise her kids and their friends when they were using her computer.
Why not? Assuming the case is as portrayed, and it appears to be, the lady being sued DIDN'T commit the offence - the children did. The suit should be against the child responsible - but they're not old enough to be a defendant, because they're assumed by the law not to be capable of understanding that they were breaking one.
If you're arguing that she's guilty because the account and computer are in her name, then try this on for size:
Your underage child borrows your car. They joyride round for a bit, get in an accident, and kill someone. The police turn up, and you should be convicted of vehicular manslaughter because the car is in your name, despite the fact that it's clear you weren't the one driving, or had any knowledge that your child was going to do that.
I'm sorry, but just because someone owns a computer and an internet account, that does not mean they should be legally liable for all that someone does on it without your knowledge, any more than boeing should be sued for causing 9-11.
Speaking as a British geek, I laughed repeatedly, especially at the support calls. I've worked helldesk (still do, to a point) and recognise both Roy's frustration with a cluseless user and Moss going waaay off the deep end on technobabble. The office in the basement looks very familiar too, especially the piles of obsolete equipment cluttering the shelves...
It's overacted and a little forced admittedly, but given it's only the 1st episode, I'm sure the actors will settle down into their characters soon enough. It does remind me of 'black books' somewhat, but that's not surprising given Graham Linehan is responsible for both.
All in all, a thumbs up. "The button on the side - is it glowing?... Yeah, you need to turn it on... Yes, the button turns it on."
Yes, because whoever created that torrent and published it has given you implied licence to download the torrent, and fair use covers the gaps.
Oh, you're talking about using the torrent to download a copy of king kong (2005)? That's still illegal for at least the people doing the uploading, because the copyright holder hasn't published the entire film on a website for free viewing, so there's no implied licence or fair use.
In other news, explain to me again why if this is fair use, why i can't make photocopies of every book in the bookstore (for example, without photos) and offer them for free reading in my coffeeshop? remember, we're not talking about one or two books for the interested reader - we're talking about a basically free borders or barnes and noble. you'd be free to read the entire book at your leisure - for books consisting mostly of text, you'd be basically getting the whole thing free. and, if you buy some coffee, that's great too. look - i know real world analogies to the internet don't often make sense, but in this case i think my giant coffee shop isnt too far off.
Because the books are available in the bookshop for sale, not for reading. How about if the book author donates a copy to a library - he doesn't give up his copyright, but he's specifically placing his book in a place where he expects people to read it for free. Would he have the right to be annoyed if the library used a quote from the book for a poster? Or if people indeed did take the book home and read it?
If you publish an open and non-login-required website, you are defacto giving people a right to read that content. You can put up banner ads, and use a particular font, but the very nature of the web means that people are not obligated to follow your font or colour choices, or to read or click your ads as part of viewing your page. If you wish people to view website content in a particular way, then force them to do so by having to pay to login to some java controlled setup, or have a advert you must view to see the content (ala salon)
I see no difference between choosing which browser I get to view your public webpage in, and its settings, or using google's cache to view it.
Seriously - copyright is supposed to be a way to advance the public good by giving authors first dibs on a sale, not absolute control of how someone uses the content once they legally got their hands on it. That's what fair use IS - ways to use legally obtained copyrighted material that the author doesn't have to give permission for. Caching content that you've specifically made available for free and public viewing (tho not put into the public domain, I realise websites are still copyrighted) strikes me as a fair thing to do. If you don't like the way the web works, and the law works, then either don't publish it publically for free viewing in the first place, or at least take the minor step of telling search engines to stay away. Nobody forced you to put your content on a website. It's no different than if you put your artpiece up in a public park, you shouldn't be surprised if people take photos of it.
But, forget that - the real issue is control. You are basically saying that GOOGLE has the right to display YOUR content as GOOGLE sees fit.
Bingo, that's exactly right. As a theoretically visitor to your website I have EXACTLY that right - no law says I have to keep to your font choices, or use your colours. My browser caches your site for my convenience. You agreed to that when you published your webpage in the medium where that's how the internet works. Google gets to do the same on my behalf, the user. I have no problem with this for my published websites, before you ask - I wouldn't expect the rules to change for me as a publisher, because 'I' didn't bother to find out how things worked before I published my site.
Copyright is not property. It's not control. It's a limited set of rights, under a limited set of circumstances, to advance the public good.
I disagree about the worthwhile nature of patents.
Lets start with enforcing foreign held patents. If you enforce foreign held patents on local companies, then effectively you're taxing local businesses and harming local customers, for no benefit to your nation. If you're a non first world country, then likely your research funding is retarded by all the existing patents coming from first world nations. Take existing AIDS treatments; sub-saharan african countries were unable to afford to buy patented medicines, or to make them themselves due to the high costs. Since they couldn't afford the drugs, people died for lack of treatment. They're not going to be able to work the system the other way, as the patent infrastructure is such that those who got there first effectively have monopolies forever, as they build on existing broad patents and extend them permanently.
Your argument is that without those high patent fees, private businesses have no incentive to create treatments at all. That's partially true. The biggest incentive patents provide is not to provide cures at all, as someone ceases to need their drugs after treatment. Much better for their bottom line to incrementally improve drugs (taking new patents each time) that only treat symptoms, as you'll have a user of your drug for years, if not the rest of their life. Equally, much more effective to create drugs that make the most money, such as viagra-style drugs or other 'lifestyle' drugs. That's not to say these drugs have no value, but they make a lot more money, and so get a lot more reasearch attention by big companies than they deserve on a true scale of medical importance and suffering.
Now - how much money is spent by healthcare companies, medical insurance and nationalised healthcare on expensive patented drugs? In the UK, the biggest cost for the National Health Service (centrally tax funded), in total, is the drugs. Not the hospitals, not the staff, the drugs. Now imagine that drugs couldn't be patented in the UK, and all that money was spent on government research for drugs that was freely published.
No money wasted on legal enforcement, marketing (which private drug companies spend HUGE amounts on), or shareholder profits. You'd end up with more money spent on research, and better, faster treatments than getting private companies to do it, even assuming private business is more efficient. There'd still be oppotunities for private businesses to be hired to do the research directly by the government, rather than them making profit from the results. And meanwhile, you have the government and medical insurance with the whiphand, whose primary goal is to get their patients cured, rather than make a profit on the treatments.
Now, our arguments boil down to 'socialist' government spending rather than private 'free enterprise' - and that argument will be ongoing for a very long time, as frankly both have their plusses. I'm just pointing out that there are alternative ways to bring about innovation, and that patent monopolies can be very inefficient at producing the best solutions for the least cost, over the long term as well as the short term.
Hmm, site was up this afternoon when I posted the link, but it looks like the site is down at the moment for me too. Sorry bout that, try it later, hopefully they'll have it fixed. It's been around for ages, so they must be just having temporary difficulties.
The RIAA is the Recording Industry Association of America - it's basically what it says on the tin. A lobbying and management group that represents its record company members by bribe^H^H^H^H^Hlobbying the US government for new laws, and suing alleged copyright infringers of the RIAA members copyright for obscene damages. They are not a part of the US government, merely a corporate association.
Not all US record labels are members of the RIAA, though it often acts as if they are. Their list of members is rather lengthy, but they are largely sub-labels or labels for a particular favoured artist of the 4 big international companies - Universal Music Group, Sony BMG, EMI group and Warner Music. These are the companies that control 85% of US music and 70% worldwide, and the RIAA is their mouthpiece in the US. They have other industry associations in other nations; the BPI is the equivalent in the UK, for example.
Remember, the RIAA itself is only acting on behalf of the big 4. They are the companies directly responsible for music DRM, retarding new music business methods and any technology that they don't control. If you wish to avoid purchasing music from these dinosaurs' stable of artists, use the RIAA radar to determine if the label on a particular CD is actually a RIAA member or truly an independant.
I haven't stopped buying music, I've just stopped buying it from the big 4. If we want music to survive in its current form, as opposed to windows-only DRM restricted versions backed up by permanent copyright, then only buy from true independent musicians and labels. For example, CDBaby.com is a big site for truly independant musicians, as is magnatune. As a bonus, you know most of the money you spend will go directly to the artists, rather than the tiny percentage they get when selling through the major RIAA member labels.
Well if it makes you feel any better, money made from commercial sales of BBC programs gets ploughed back into the BBC rather than going to the government, so your licence fee doesn't need to go up so much to pay for new programming and the digital channels. Better than a kick in the nuts, anyway.
Try the razer copperhead. It's an equal-shaped mouse for lefties or righties, comes with the same 2000dpi laser sensor as the logitech G5 and a better way of changing sensitivity on the fly (button+scroll wheel to anywhere on a 1-20 scale rather than 3 pre-defined sensitivities).
Another nice feature is it stores up to 5 sets of settings (button mappings) in the mouse itself, so you can plug it into any machine without having to reconfigure the mouse every time.
The 4 side buttons are equally positioned, two buttons per side, so I only tend to use 3 of the side buttons, but the big primary buttons are great.
Overall, it's a very flexible gaming mouse for people using their left hand for mousing.
Hmm, that gives me an idea - it could be changed to "GraphicIMP" as a short project name, something that at least makes it clearer that it's got something to do with images - and still give the nod to people in the know. Plus it sounds kinda cute, which is a definite plus for the non-geeks!
singing happy birthday in a public place (or at a girl scouts campfire!) is considered a public performance, and that right is also reserved solely to copyright holders and those they licence to do so. Same principle as a bar with a jukebox, there's mechanisms in place to buy the licence to play the songs, and that money goes back to the various people with a stake (though not in a particularly fair manner)
There's a bunch of rights covered under copyright law, including rights to the words, the rights to a recorded performance, being allowed to 'cover' or make new performances, moral rights (being known as the author) etc etc.
Equating downloading a file to "it's creating a copy and that's illegal" is bad voodoo, I could argue that I am simply on the receiving end of those bytes and recording them for later use, is that not the same as time-shifting a radio or television program?
Time shifting of broadcasted programs/music has been judged to be a fair use, i.e. recording a broadcasted program is illegal under the law, but taping it for watching it later then deleting it is considered a defence. It remains to be seen as to whether downloading a tv program off the net instead of taping it will also be considered fair use, or downloading a music track instead of taping it off the radio is considered fair use. Of course, radio stations rarely play entire albums, so getting the whole CD is more likely to remain outside fair use, and the quality of the recording also matters. Whether you could have received the program in the first place is also relevent.
This is the interesting thing. Nothing with regards users downloading files has reached court, despite the RIAA claiming success against 'illegal downloaders' - what they've done so far is bully uploaders into paying an arbitrary fine because they fear the huge fines the RIAA threaten a court would impose. Uploading is much more clearly against copyright law, though you still have to prove that the person in question actually did the uploading.
To be blunt, I don't think we'll really know whether downloading alone is contributory copyright infringement, copyright infringement, or covered by fair use until a case comes to court and is judged.
IANAL, and the exact text of copyright law varies between countries, so it does depend upon your country, but the general argument goes something like this.
Copyright is the right to make copies. Only the copyright holder can make and distribute copies. Fair use allows a defence against infringement in certain circumstances, but we'll assume for the sake of argument using a P2P app to grab a complete copy of a copyrighted work isn't one of them.
Now, the person uploading a non-licenced copyrighted work is definitely breaking the law, as they are distributing. The question is, is the person downloading also making a copy? After all, the copy is actually assembled on the downloaders machine. In jurisdictions where you're allowed to make personal copies, it's possible you could argue you're just getting a rip of something you already own, or that you assumed the uploader had permission to distribute.
Instead, they could try to get you with contributory infringement, i.e. you had knowledge of the infringement (making a copy) and materially contributed (i.e. your computer downloading the copy at your request)
Uploaders are definitely at risk, legally, but downloaders are in a much greyer area, depending on wording and interpretation of the law. If you get caught in the act of downloading, or have a large collection of material which is obviously infringing copies, you may well face a lawsuit.
Imagine the police turned up to arrest a street vendor selling what turns out to be dodgy music CDs while you're buying one. It'd be hard to get you for anything. Now imagine they catch you giving the guy a blank CD so he can copy something for you on the spot - it'd be much easier to get you for contributory infringement, especially if you already have a CD wallet full of things you don't have orginial copies of. Downloading is somewhat similar. As far as I've been able to check, all the P2P users lawsuits have been about uploading, though the media tend to use uploaded and downloaded interchangably, incorrectly.
Either way, you're a lot safer being a leech, though you're definitely still taking somewhat of a risk.
However, look at the world afffairs list with the huge spike of searchs at key dates in the news - i.e. the massive spike in london after the olympic bid success and 7/7 bombings the next day, or the big spikes for rove, plame and libby with regards the CIA 'plamegate' scandal.
If you're going to include entertainment news, it's no surprise that lead actors are going to get massive surges of hits when a new film comes out (or gets in the news some other way, like the Jacksons did) - after all, that's news that lots of people globally are going to look for, including many who have no interest at all in regular news. Harry Potter is probably there because of the under-16's for example, I know very few children who care about politics, the same is probably true of xbox 360.
The tsunami and Katrina are right up there, which is because there's an easy single word attached to them. Other news like energy policy or the CIA leak, or israeli policy, or Iraq misadventures etc are more spread out over the year, with a variety of search words. I AM somewhat surprised neither London or Bush made it into the top 10 search results, but there you go.
Fair enough on the rebuttal, I missed that. If it's a non-language based non-culture standardised IQ test, that would be more valid as a view of IQ across nations and cultures. Writing the questions would be a bitch though:)
I don't know if you're studying the area or not, but I thought I remembered a study showing that gaming addicts exhibited many of the same symptoms as physical drug addicts, and that it seemed likely that the gaming addiction eventually became the only coping strategy they had that would raise dopamine levels and bring relief - in common with all other forms of addiction. The evidence is not as strong yet as for other addictions, but it would certainly appear that in the most addicted, gaming is little different in it's phsyiological effects than other forms of addiction.
Tests I've taken in the past have used language skills and abstract mathematical reasoning, along with pattern matching. The language part definitely needs to be standardised to the culture you're testing, as education levels and language use will vary between countries. This is especially true if your 'one true test' is in english, and english is not the first language of the testee; even assuming translation, that will introduce variations to the questions because of the different patterns of languages.
The abstract maths and pattern recognition are more subtle, but again proficiency will vary between cultures and levels of education, and even in different areas in the same country, just as your IQ score will go up if you take a number of IQ tests over time.
The point of IQ testing is not to find your intelligence per se, but your ability to do certain things in relation to your peers; proper IQ tests are statisically adjusted to find your point on the scale from a standard population similar to you. Any test which weights the 'average' UK person at 100, for example, will inevitably have different standard points for the 'average' from other cultures, just as a test weighted for south koreans or africans would do - and the key point is, those variations will not be constant, since the test has to reflect the language and education standards of your culture.
To come back to the orginal point, it would be interesting to study addiction in gamers, and how that compulsion varies across cultures. Is it related to IQ (in that culture) or other factors? Is that culture particularly prone to addiction in other areas, such as gambling or physical drug addiction, and what sort of people get addicted to what things?
Gaming for example, seems to me to be more of an addiction of more wealthy individuals, both down to the cost of entry and the free time needed to sustain it. Some drugs are equally the purview of the wealthier classes, while other cheaper drugs are the choice of the poor.
However, if you're using it to power traffic lights at a junction, or a pedestrian crossing, people will be slowing down even on a flat road. Put it on each of the approach lanes (or those with lots of traffic on major-minor junctions) and you use some of the energy that would have gone to heating the brake-pads. Even on green, people generally slow down as they approach a junction, so speed-bumps only encourage that behaviour (and stops boy racers flooring it though the lights)
Another good spot for them is where speed bumps are currently going in anyway to slow down traffic, such as near schools or on rat-runs (small residental roads that commuters drive quickly down to bypass traffic on major roads) - the power could then be used for additional lighted speed signs. Speaking of which, I live in dorset, and there's recently been a bunch of signs with radar-guns on that light up with the speed-limit if you're going above it. They have much the same effect as speed-cameras, without all the hassle of collecting fines, so I think they're great.
Another effective spot for these would be rural areas (which dorset has a lot of, for england), where you have to run extra grid power lines just to power the traffic lights or lights on the motorway signs. Something which removes the need for that could save a lot more than £25,000 per installation, given the cost of the extra lines and decades that these things need power for, especially if a bunch can be powered off a single speed bump. Admittedly, you'd want to put it on off-roads on the motorway, but again, there's often rumble strips or speed bumps anyway to make sure people slow down sufficiently coming off the motorway.
Do a bit of math here. Newton's third law says for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. So, if a projectile were to deliver enough energy to break a persons neck after hitting an impregnable helmet, the soldier that made that shot would suffer from a broken shoulder.
I was thinking about this the other day. Conservation of momentum only means that the force applied to the target by the bullet as it deccelerates will be equal to the force applied to the bullet, which is why it deforms. The force applied to the gun firer will be different. I think.
The kinetic energy the bullet has will do work on the target, which if the bullet is fully stopped, will be equal. That work, as newton meters, will result in a large force over a short distance (very short if it doesn't penetrate the armour). That force then follows the 3rd law, and is applied to the target and the bullet, which bruises or breaks bones and squashes the bullet.
The gun performed work on the bullet to give it that kinetic energy, but because of the barrel length, means that a smaller force must have been applied over a longer distance; that smaller force is then applied to the firer's hand and/or shoulder, due to the third law. (the 3rd law also dicates recoil; a bullet accelerates fast in the barrel, due to a small mass, while the heavy gun accelerates slower backwards due to a larger mass. If the soldier is tightly gripping the gun, then they both will accelerate backwards even slower; if he's got a solid stance, then the earth will rotate backwards with him a very very tiny bit)
So the energy applied to the bullet at firing will equal the energy applied to the target (or less a bit, if you include air friction); but the two people will experience different forces. That's why you can fire a high power rifle that will blow a hole right through body armour, but won't break your shoulder.
Of course, I've gone about this the wrong way; gun manufacturers work on creating a force on the bullet (amount of gunpowder) that will give a high muzzle veocity, without applying dangerous force to the firer. Air resistance will dictate the effective range of the weapon, and the muzzle velocity and range will determine the energy applied, and thus the eventual force applied to the target.
Anyway, back to the point. Stronger body armour doesn't mean less energy applied to the target, it just means that the force from the bullet is spread out over the surface of the armour, rather than going through it and applying force to the squishy bits in your body cavity directly as it slows down. Our bodies survive larger diffuse impacts at the surface better than small holes in organs, so stronger body armour means better survivability, even if the impact does hurt like hell.
Incidentally, I'm right there with you on necks. The ease with which a villain's neck snaps is right up there with the likelyhood of cars exploding because they rolled over when it comes to suspension of disbelief. Oh, and that getting stabbed once or twice in a random area kills you instantly. Human beings survive trauma a lot longer than films usually give them credit for - unless they're the hero, in which case they always shrug off wounds that would disable a normal person from shock.
I work in computer building (partly), and over the last 10 years or so I've had good and bad drives from all manufacturers. All my recent failures have been western digital, so I'm sticking to samsung, seagate and maxtor for the moment, but no doubt I'll get a dodgy batch from one of them eventually and will drop them for a while.
Seagate are no better or worse generally than other makers in my experience, and they do offer a pretty decent warranty, though I've had a lot more experience of internal drives rather than external drive cages.
You don't get an IDE cable with PATA drives either, when you buy an OEM or brown-box drive (which is what you tend to get from online order sites). In both cases, you get the drive cables with the motherboard. You can buy retail packaged drives which come with instructions and cables, but they cost more.
If you bought a complete PC which you want to upgrade later, it's your manufacturer's fault for not including all the spare cables you should have had. In my case, since I upgrade my own motherboards, I have more SATA leads than I know what to do with (my latest board has 8 SATA sockets, so 8 more SATA leads!)
Either way, SATA drives are far more common now than they were 2 1/2 years ago, so SATA leads are dirt cheap and available plenty of places. What's more annoying is you don't get USB leads with printers, a lead you're unlikely to have shipped with any other component.
This could lead the broadcasters stepping up their rather obnoxious practice of putting advertising around the edges of the screen during programming, as bittorrent downloaded shows can't get around that.
It is possible to cut off a number of pixels around the outside when you transcode using a number of apps. Main use of it so far (or at least when I ad-strip and transcode my own digital tv recordings, anyway) is to clip off black bars around a transmitted signal, such as you get when they force a different aspect ratio, so it wouldn't be that hard to do the same with a persistant ad-bar.
An ad-bar that came and went, especially if it semi-transparently overlayed the show could be harder to get rid of, as it would be if they started replacing the station bug with small picture-in-picture ads - best you can really do then is just blur that section, which reduces the visual distraction, but isn't ideal.
Another thing that might happen is that programming producers may sell their shows directly for download, at hi-res with no-ads, or a free version with ads left intact. Something with minimal DRM would be accepted by most. The handful in low-res on iTunes is a start in that direction, I think we may see a lot more of that, though personally I won't accept any DRM, which I know puts me in a small minority.
Currently, broadcast stations sell the ads to make a profit, and programming is just a method of getting people to hang around between the ad-breaks. Media boxes and tivo are obsoleting that practise. Their option is perhaps to switch to some sort of subscription service, and drop the ads - similar in principle to the BBC. Of course, cable and satellite were often launched on that premise - pay our subscription, and get no ads - but the lure of the adman's money has caused them to put more and more advertising in anyway. About time customers got a chance to tell the broadcast companies how they want their programs (time-shifted and no ads!), and I'm sure someone will be able to connect program makers with customers money in a new big way eventually.
"Otto Z. Stern is a director at The Institute of Technological Values - a think tank dedicated to a more moral digital age. He has closely monitored the IT industry's intersection with America's role as a world leader for thirty years. You can find Stern locked and loaded, corralling wounded iLemmings, nursing an opal-plated prostate, spanking open source fly boys, wearing a smashing suit, dropping a SkyCar on the Googleplex, spitting on Frenchmen, vomiting in fear with a life-sized cutout of Hilary Rosen at his solar-powered compound somewhere in the Great American Southwest."
I think you've missed that The Register is a british publication. This article is sarcastic satire, nothing more. It might raise page views, but it's not meant as a troll to be take seriously.
I laughed when I read the article. I laughed even louder when I saw how many slashdotters have taken it seriously and leapt to linux's defence, and I say that as a user of linux for 7 years. I mean, come on -
"Meanwhile, I'm sitting here typing away on a 128-processor Unix SMP armed with an ultrasonic file system and jet-fueled partitioning system, wondering when the Linux freaks are going to solve their Ubuntu versus Mandriva color scheme debate" - how could anyone NOT see this is a joke?
Hear hear. There's actually another good reason not to download it yet - the whole point of putting it on the public ftp site before the official release announcement is to give the many mirrors a chance to sync it first before the hordes descend.
If we slashdot the official site before the many other mirrors get it, we slow down the process before it gets properly dispersed. This is less of an issue for a few megs of a file, but it does become a big issue when dealing with something large like kde or a new distro iso.
Slashdot Mirror
It's worse. In many retail stores, it's closer to $30, same in the UK. The BEST discount price you can find is around $18.
Ad hominem has no place in debating a point of logic (an argument is true or false no matter who says it), but it does have a place when dealing with human testimony.
Take two of your examples.
"You claim that this man is innocent, but you cannot be trusted since you are a criminal as well."
If the criminal's claim is a testimony of another man's confession in prison for example, and the criminal is a criminal because he committed fraud and perjury... His character very much becomes part of the debate, as he may be lying again, which makes his testimony unreliable.
"Tobacco company representatives are wrong when they say smoking doesn't seriously affect your health, because they're just defending their own multi-million-dollar financial interests."
If the tobacco rep says that smoking doesn't harm people's health, the fact that his role is specifically to defend the tobacco business makes his position questionable, his likelyhood of lying is greater, and his evidence should go through extra scrutiny to see if it is reliable. If he has no independant evidence at all, then his position becomes even more tenuous.
In a more abstract example, man A says argument T is the truth, based solely on his testimony. man B says A is lying because of his vested interest. According to you, that's an ad-hominem. T may or may not be true, but it's only true if A is not lying, so B has a valid reason to attack A's history of lying.
Ad-hominem is best called out when an attack is made on someone's character that bears no relation to the argument they're making - your 2nd example is much better.
In relation to TFA, Bill Gates is arguing that copying software is morally wrong, but he's doing it from a position in which he committed a similar moral wrong to write the software in the first place; i.e. the 'theft' of time from another. It's a case of "do what I say, not do what I do".
He bases his case for renumeration on "The value of the computer time we have used exceeds $40,000."
Man A is claiming he deserves remuneration because of costs C, and that without payment P, he cannot afford to make software (argument T). Man B claims that man A didn't spend anywhere near costs C, because he used the expensive computer time without paying for it, so P is not actually paying for C, but is pure profit for A. P is not needed to cover C, so without sufficient P there's no reason to assume that A will stop making software. Ergo, argument T is false, and Bill Gates needs to find another reason why we should buy his software.
So it comes down to who you believe, A (Bill Gates) or B (Big Jojo), without other evidence. Man B's claim of theft of computer time directly affects man A's argument for remuneration, and is not an ad hominem.
Parents are liable for the behavior of their minor children. In your strawman case, the parents can, in fact, be sued for negligence.
Yes, but that's because the parent has not been performing their duty of care - an offence for which they would probably be found guilty in my hypothetical. My point is that they are not guilty of the offence the child committed.
If the police wanted to prosecute Ms Santangelo for negligance for allowing her child to use the internet unsupervised, that's one thing; but for the RIAA to be able to successfully sue her for Copyright Infringement, an offence she didn't commit, is another thing entirely, and wrong.
There is no way she is going to win when she's already basically admitting that she failed to supervise her kids and their friends when they were using her computer.
Why not? Assuming the case is as portrayed, and it appears to be, the lady being sued DIDN'T commit the offence - the children did. The suit should be against the child responsible - but they're not old enough to be a defendant, because they're assumed by the law not to be capable of understanding that they were breaking one.
If you're arguing that she's guilty because the account and computer are in her name, then try this on for size:
Your underage child borrows your car. They joyride round for a bit, get in an accident, and kill someone. The police turn up, and you should be convicted of vehicular manslaughter because the car is in your name, despite the fact that it's clear you weren't the one driving, or had any knowledge that your child was going to do that.
I'm sorry, but just because someone owns a computer and an internet account, that does not mean they should be legally liable for all that someone does on it without your knowledge, any more than boeing should be sued for causing 9-11.
Speaking as a British geek, I laughed repeatedly, especially at the support calls. I've worked helldesk (still do, to a point) and recognise both Roy's frustration with a cluseless user and Moss going waaay off the deep end on technobabble. The office in the basement looks very familiar too, especially the piles of obsolete equipment cluttering the shelves...
... Yeah, you need to turn it on... Yes, the button turns it on."
It's overacted and a little forced admittedly, but given it's only the 1st episode, I'm sure the actors will settle down into their characters soon enough. It does remind me of 'black books' somewhat, but that's not surprising given Graham Linehan is responsible for both.
All in all, a thumbs up. "The button on the side - is it glowing?
Yes, because whoever created that torrent and published it has given you implied licence to download the torrent, and fair use covers the gaps.
Oh, you're talking about using the torrent to download a copy of king kong (2005)? That's still illegal for at least the people doing the uploading, because the copyright holder hasn't published the entire film on a website for free viewing, so there's no implied licence or fair use.
In other news, explain to me again why if this is fair use, why i can't make photocopies of every book in the bookstore (for example, without photos) and offer them for free reading in my coffeeshop? remember, we're not talking about one or two books for the interested reader - we're talking about a basically free borders or barnes and noble. you'd be free to read the entire book at your leisure - for books consisting mostly of text, you'd be basically getting the whole thing free. and, if you buy some coffee, that's great too. look - i know real world analogies to the internet don't often make sense, but in this case i think my giant coffee shop isnt too far off.
Because the books are available in the bookshop for sale, not for reading. How about if the book author donates a copy to a library - he doesn't give up his copyright, but he's specifically placing his book in a place where he expects people to read it for free. Would he have the right to be annoyed if the library used a quote from the book for a poster? Or if people indeed did take the book home and read it?
If you publish an open and non-login-required website, you are defacto giving people a right to read that content. You can put up banner ads, and use a particular font, but the very nature of the web means that people are not obligated to follow your font or colour choices, or to read or click your ads as part of viewing your page. If you wish people to view website content in a particular way, then force them to do so by having to pay to login to some java controlled setup, or have a advert you must view to see the content (ala salon)
I see no difference between choosing which browser I get to view your public webpage in, and its settings, or using google's cache to view it.
Seriously - copyright is supposed to be a way to advance the public good by giving authors first dibs on a sale, not absolute control of how someone uses the content once they legally got their hands on it. That's what fair use IS - ways to use legally obtained copyrighted material that the author doesn't have to give permission for. Caching content that you've specifically made available for free and public viewing (tho not put into the public domain, I realise websites are still copyrighted) strikes me as a fair thing to do. If you don't like the way the web works, and the law works, then either don't publish it publically for free viewing in the first place, or at least take the minor step of telling search engines to stay away. Nobody forced you to put your content on a website. It's no different than if you put your artpiece up in a public park, you shouldn't be surprised if people take photos of it.
But, forget that - the real issue is control. You are basically saying that GOOGLE has the right to display YOUR content as GOOGLE sees fit.
Bingo, that's exactly right. As a theoretically visitor to your website I have EXACTLY that right - no law says I have to keep to your font choices, or use your colours. My browser caches your site for my convenience. You agreed to that when you published your webpage in the medium where that's how the internet works. Google gets to do the same on my behalf, the user. I have no problem with this for my published websites, before you ask - I wouldn't expect the rules to change for me as a publisher, because 'I' didn't bother to find out how things worked before I published my site.
Copyright is not property. It's not control. It's a limited set of rights, under a limited set of circumstances, to advance the public good.
I disagree about the worthwhile nature of patents.
Lets start with enforcing foreign held patents. If you enforce foreign held patents on local companies, then effectively you're taxing local businesses and harming local customers, for no benefit to your nation. If you're a non first world country, then likely your research funding is retarded by all the existing patents coming from first world nations. Take existing AIDS treatments; sub-saharan african countries were unable to afford to buy patented medicines, or to make them themselves due to the high costs. Since they couldn't afford the drugs, people died for lack of treatment. They're not going to be able to work the system the other way, as the patent infrastructure is such that those who got there first effectively have monopolies forever, as they build on existing broad patents and extend them permanently.
Your argument is that without those high patent fees, private businesses have no incentive to create treatments at all. That's partially true. The biggest incentive patents provide is not to provide cures at all, as someone ceases to need their drugs after treatment. Much better for their bottom line to incrementally improve drugs (taking new patents each time) that only treat symptoms, as you'll have a user of your drug for years, if not the rest of their life. Equally, much more effective to create drugs that make the most money, such as viagra-style drugs or other 'lifestyle' drugs. That's not to say these drugs have no value, but they make a lot more money, and so get a lot more reasearch attention by big companies than they deserve on a true scale of medical importance and suffering.
Now - how much money is spent by healthcare companies, medical insurance and nationalised healthcare on expensive patented drugs? In the UK, the biggest cost for the National Health Service (centrally tax funded), in total, is the drugs. Not the hospitals, not the staff, the drugs. Now imagine that drugs couldn't be patented in the UK, and all that money was spent on government research for drugs that was freely published.
No money wasted on legal enforcement, marketing (which private drug companies spend HUGE amounts on), or shareholder profits. You'd end up with more money spent on research, and better, faster treatments than getting private companies to do it, even assuming private business is more efficient. There'd still be oppotunities for private businesses to be hired to do the research directly by the government, rather than them making profit from the results. And meanwhile, you have the government and medical insurance with the whiphand, whose primary goal is to get their patients cured, rather than make a profit on the treatments.
Now, our arguments boil down to 'socialist' government spending rather than private 'free enterprise' - and that argument will be ongoing for a very long time, as frankly both have their plusses. I'm just pointing out that there are alternative ways to bring about innovation, and that patent monopolies can be very inefficient at producing the best solutions for the least cost, over the long term as well as the short term.
Hmm, site was up this afternoon when I posted the link, but it looks like the site is down at the moment for me too. Sorry bout that, try it later, hopefully they'll have it fixed. It's been around for ages, so they must be just having temporary difficulties.
The RIAA is the Recording Industry Association of America - it's basically what it says on the tin. A lobbying and management group that represents its record company members by bribe^H^H^H^H^Hlobbying the US government for new laws, and suing alleged copyright infringers of the RIAA members copyright for obscene damages. They are not a part of the US government, merely a corporate association.
Not all US record labels are members of the RIAA, though it often acts as if they are. Their list of members is rather lengthy, but they are largely sub-labels or labels for a particular favoured artist of the 4 big international companies - Universal Music Group, Sony BMG, EMI group and Warner Music. These are the companies that control 85% of US music and 70% worldwide, and the RIAA is their mouthpiece in the US. They have other industry associations in other nations; the BPI is the equivalent in the UK, for example.
Remember, the RIAA itself is only acting on behalf of the big 4. They are the companies directly responsible for music DRM, retarding new music business methods and any technology that they don't control. If you wish to avoid purchasing music from these dinosaurs' stable of artists, use the RIAA radar to determine if the label on a particular CD is actually a RIAA member or truly an independant.
I haven't stopped buying music, I've just stopped buying it from the big 4. If we want music to survive in its current form, as opposed to windows-only DRM restricted versions backed up by permanent copyright, then only buy from true independent musicians and labels. For example, CDBaby.com is a big site for truly independant musicians, as is magnatune. As a bonus, you know most of the money you spend will go directly to the artists, rather than the tiny percentage they get when selling through the major RIAA member labels.
Well if it makes you feel any better, money made from commercial sales of BBC programs gets ploughed back into the BBC rather than going to the government, so your licence fee doesn't need to go up so much to pay for new programming and the digital channels. Better than a kick in the nuts, anyway.
Try the razer copperhead. It's an equal-shaped mouse for lefties or righties, comes with the same 2000dpi laser sensor as the logitech G5 and a better way of changing sensitivity on the fly (button+scroll wheel to anywhere on a 1-20 scale rather than 3 pre-defined sensitivities).
Another nice feature is it stores up to 5 sets of settings (button mappings) in the mouse itself, so you can plug it into any machine without having to reconfigure the mouse every time.
The 4 side buttons are equally positioned, two buttons per side, so I only tend to use 3 of the side buttons, but the big primary buttons are great.
Overall, it's a very flexible gaming mouse for people using their left hand for mousing.
Hmm, that gives me an idea - it could be changed to "GraphicIMP" as a short project name, something that at least makes it clearer that it's got something to do with images - and still give the nod to people in the know. Plus it sounds kinda cute, which is a definite plus for the non-geeks!
singing happy birthday in a public place (or at a girl scouts campfire!) is considered a public performance, and that right is also reserved solely to copyright holders and those they licence to do so. Same principle as a bar with a jukebox, there's mechanisms in place to buy the licence to play the songs, and that money goes back to the various people with a stake (though not in a particularly fair manner)
There's a bunch of rights covered under copyright law, including rights to the words, the rights to a recorded performance, being allowed to 'cover' or make new performances, moral rights (being known as the author) etc etc.
Equating downloading a file to "it's creating a copy and that's illegal" is bad voodoo, I could argue that I am simply on the receiving end of those bytes and recording them for later use, is that not the same as time-shifting a radio or television program?
Time shifting of broadcasted programs/music has been judged to be a fair use, i.e. recording a broadcasted program is illegal under the law, but taping it for watching it later then deleting it is considered a defence. It remains to be seen as to whether downloading a tv program off the net instead of taping it will also be considered fair use, or downloading a music track instead of taping it off the radio is considered fair use. Of course, radio stations rarely play entire albums, so getting the whole CD is more likely to remain outside fair use, and the quality of the recording also matters. Whether you could have received the program in the first place is also relevent.
This is the interesting thing. Nothing with regards users downloading files has reached court, despite the RIAA claiming success against 'illegal downloaders' - what they've done so far is bully uploaders into paying an arbitrary fine because they fear the huge fines the RIAA threaten a court would impose. Uploading is much more clearly against copyright law, though you still have to prove that the person in question actually did the uploading.
To be blunt, I don't think we'll really know whether downloading alone is contributory copyright infringement, copyright infringement, or covered by fair use until a case comes to court and is judged.
IANAL, and the exact text of copyright law varies between countries, so it does depend upon your country, but the general argument goes something like this.
Copyright is the right to make copies. Only the copyright holder can make and distribute copies. Fair use allows a defence against infringement in certain circumstances, but we'll assume for the sake of argument using a P2P app to grab a complete copy of a copyrighted work isn't one of them.
Now, the person uploading a non-licenced copyrighted work is definitely breaking the law, as they are distributing. The question is, is the person downloading also making a copy? After all, the copy is actually assembled on the downloaders machine. In jurisdictions where you're allowed to make personal copies, it's possible you could argue you're just getting a rip of something you already own, or that you assumed the uploader had permission to distribute.
Instead, they could try to get you with contributory infringement, i.e. you had knowledge of the infringement (making a copy) and materially contributed (i.e. your computer downloading the copy at your request)
Uploaders are definitely at risk, legally, but downloaders are in a much greyer area, depending on wording and interpretation of the law. If you get caught in the act of downloading, or have a large collection of material which is obviously infringing copies, you may well face a lawsuit.
Imagine the police turned up to arrest a street vendor selling what turns out to be dodgy music CDs while you're buying one. It'd be hard to get you for anything. Now imagine they catch you giving the guy a blank CD so he can copy something for you on the spot - it'd be much easier to get you for contributory infringement, especially if you already have a CD wallet full of things you don't have orginial copies of. Downloading is somewhat similar. As far as I've been able to check, all the P2P users lawsuits have been about uploading, though the media tend to use uploaded and downloaded interchangably, incorrectly.
Either way, you're a lot safer being a leech, though you're definitely still taking somewhat of a risk.
However, look at the world afffairs list with the huge spike of searchs at key dates in the news - i.e. the massive spike in london after the olympic bid success and 7/7 bombings the next day, or the big spikes for rove, plame and libby with regards the CIA 'plamegate' scandal.
If you're going to include entertainment news, it's no surprise that lead actors are going to get massive surges of hits when a new film comes out (or gets in the news some other way, like the Jacksons did) - after all, that's news that lots of people globally are going to look for, including many who have no interest at all in regular news. Harry Potter is probably there because of the under-16's for example, I know very few children who care about politics, the same is probably true of xbox 360.
The tsunami and Katrina are right up there, which is because there's an easy single word attached to them. Other news like energy policy or the CIA leak, or israeli policy, or Iraq misadventures etc are more spread out over the year, with a variety of search words. I AM somewhat surprised neither London or Bush made it into the top 10 search results, but there you go.
Fair enough on the rebuttal, I missed that. If it's a non-language based non-culture standardised IQ test, that would be more valid as a view of IQ across nations and cultures. Writing the questions would be a bitch though :)
I don't know if you're studying the area or not, but I thought I remembered a study showing that gaming addicts exhibited many of the same symptoms as physical drug addicts, and that it seemed likely that the gaming addiction eventually became the only coping strategy they had that would raise dopamine levels and bring relief - in common with all other forms of addiction. The evidence is not as strong yet as for other addictions, but it would certainly appear that in the most addicted, gaming is little different in it's phsyiological effects than other forms of addiction.
(original link)
Tests I've taken in the past have used language skills and abstract mathematical reasoning, along with pattern matching. The language part definitely needs to be standardised to the culture you're testing, as education levels and language use will vary between countries. This is especially true if your 'one true test' is in english, and english is not the first language of the testee; even assuming translation, that will introduce variations to the questions because of the different patterns of languages.
The abstract maths and pattern recognition are more subtle, but again proficiency will vary between cultures and levels of education, and even in different areas in the same country, just as your IQ score will go up if you take a number of IQ tests over time.
The point of IQ testing is not to find your intelligence per se, but your ability to do certain things in relation to your peers; proper IQ tests are statisically adjusted to find your point on the scale from a standard population similar to you. Any test which weights the 'average' UK person at 100, for example, will inevitably have different standard points for the 'average' from other cultures, just as a test weighted for south koreans or africans would do - and the key point is, those variations will not be constant, since the test has to reflect the language and education standards of your culture.
To come back to the orginal point, it would be interesting to study addiction in gamers, and how that compulsion varies across cultures. Is it related to IQ (in that culture) or other factors? Is that culture particularly prone to addiction in other areas, such as gambling or physical drug addiction, and what sort of people get addicted to what things?
Gaming for example, seems to me to be more of an addiction of more wealthy individuals, both down to the cost of entry and the free time needed to sustain it. Some drugs are equally the purview of the wealthier classes, while other cheaper drugs are the choice of the poor.
However, if you're using it to power traffic lights at a junction, or a pedestrian crossing, people will be slowing down even on a flat road. Put it on each of the approach lanes (or those with lots of traffic on major-minor junctions) and you use some of the energy that would have gone to heating the brake-pads. Even on green, people generally slow down as they approach a junction, so speed-bumps only encourage that behaviour (and stops boy racers flooring it though the lights)
Another good spot for them is where speed bumps are currently going in anyway to slow down traffic, such as near schools or on rat-runs (small residental roads that commuters drive quickly down to bypass traffic on major roads) - the power could then be used for additional lighted speed signs. Speaking of which, I live in dorset, and there's recently been a bunch of signs with radar-guns on that light up with the speed-limit if you're going above it. They have much the same effect as speed-cameras, without all the hassle of collecting fines, so I think they're great.
Another effective spot for these would be rural areas (which dorset has a lot of, for england), where you have to run extra grid power lines just to power the traffic lights or lights on the motorway signs. Something which removes the need for that could save a lot more than £25,000 per installation, given the cost of the extra lines and decades that these things need power for, especially if a bunch can be powered off a single speed bump. Admittedly, you'd want to put it on off-roads on the motorway, but again, there's often rumble strips or speed bumps anyway to make sure people slow down sufficiently coming off the motorway.
Do a bit of math here. Newton's third law says for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. So, if a projectile were to deliver enough energy to break a persons neck after hitting an impregnable helmet, the soldier that made that shot would suffer from a broken shoulder.
I was thinking about this the other day. Conservation of momentum only means that the force applied to the target by the bullet as it deccelerates will be equal to the force applied to the bullet, which is why it deforms. The force applied to the gun firer will be different. I think.
The kinetic energy the bullet has will do work on the target, which if the bullet is fully stopped, will be equal. That work, as newton meters, will result in a large force over a short distance (very short if it doesn't penetrate the armour). That force then follows the 3rd law, and is applied to the target and the bullet, which bruises or breaks bones and squashes the bullet.
The gun performed work on the bullet to give it that kinetic energy, but because of the barrel length, means that a smaller force must have been applied over a longer distance; that smaller force is then applied to the firer's hand and/or shoulder, due to the third law. (the 3rd law also dicates recoil; a bullet accelerates fast in the barrel, due to a small mass, while the heavy gun accelerates slower backwards due to a larger mass. If the soldier is tightly gripping the gun, then they both will accelerate backwards even slower; if he's got a solid stance, then the earth will rotate backwards with him a very very tiny bit)
So the energy applied to the bullet at firing will equal the energy applied to the target (or less a bit, if you include air friction); but the two people will experience different forces. That's why you can fire a high power rifle that will blow a hole right through body armour, but won't break your shoulder.
Of course, I've gone about this the wrong way; gun manufacturers work on creating a force on the bullet (amount of gunpowder) that will give a high muzzle veocity, without applying dangerous force to the firer. Air resistance will dictate the effective range of the weapon, and the muzzle velocity and range will determine the energy applied, and thus the eventual force applied to the target.
Anyway, back to the point. Stronger body armour doesn't mean less energy applied to the target, it just means that the force from the bullet is spread out over the surface of the armour, rather than going through it and applying force to the squishy bits in your body cavity directly as it slows down. Our bodies survive larger diffuse impacts at the surface better than small holes in organs, so stronger body armour means better survivability, even if the impact does hurt like hell.
Incidentally, I'm right there with you on necks. The ease with which a villain's neck snaps is right up there with the likelyhood of cars exploding because they rolled over when it comes to suspension of disbelief. Oh, and that getting stabbed once or twice in a random area kills you instantly. Human beings survive trauma a lot longer than films usually give them credit for - unless they're the hero, in which case they always shrug off wounds that would disable a normal person from shock.
I work in computer building (partly), and over the last 10 years or so I've had good and bad drives from all manufacturers. All my recent failures have been western digital, so I'm sticking to samsung, seagate and maxtor for the moment, but no doubt I'll get a dodgy batch from one of them eventually and will drop them for a while.
Seagate are no better or worse generally than other makers in my experience, and they do offer a pretty decent warranty, though I've had a lot more experience of internal drives rather than external drive cages.
You don't get an IDE cable with PATA drives either, when you buy an OEM or brown-box drive (which is what you tend to get from online order sites). In both cases, you get the drive cables with the motherboard. You can buy retail packaged drives which come with instructions and cables, but they cost more.
If you bought a complete PC which you want to upgrade later, it's your manufacturer's fault for not including all the spare cables you should have had. In my case, since I upgrade my own motherboards, I have more SATA leads than I know what to do with (my latest board has 8 SATA sockets, so 8 more SATA leads!)
Either way, SATA drives are far more common now than they were 2 1/2 years ago, so SATA leads are dirt cheap and available plenty of places. What's more annoying is you don't get USB leads with printers, a lead you're unlikely to have shipped with any other component.
This could lead the broadcasters stepping up their rather obnoxious practice of putting advertising around the edges of the screen during programming, as bittorrent downloaded shows can't get around that.
It is possible to cut off a number of pixels around the outside when you transcode using a number of apps. Main use of it so far (or at least when I ad-strip and transcode my own digital tv recordings, anyway) is to clip off black bars around a transmitted signal, such as you get when they force a different aspect ratio, so it wouldn't be that hard to do the same with a persistant ad-bar.
An ad-bar that came and went, especially if it semi-transparently overlayed the show could be harder to get rid of, as it would be if they started replacing the station bug with small picture-in-picture ads - best you can really do then is just blur that section, which reduces the visual distraction, but isn't ideal.
Another thing that might happen is that programming producers may sell their shows directly for download, at hi-res with no-ads, or a free version with ads left intact. Something with minimal DRM would be accepted by most. The handful in low-res on iTunes is a start in that direction, I think we may see a lot more of that, though personally I won't accept any DRM, which I know puts me in a small minority.
Currently, broadcast stations sell the ads to make a profit, and programming is just a method of getting people to hang around between the ad-breaks. Media boxes and tivo are obsoleting that practise. Their option is perhaps to switch to some sort of subscription service, and drop the ads - similar in principle to the BBC. Of course, cable and satellite were often launched on that premise - pay our subscription, and get no ads - but the lure of the adman's money has caused them to put more and more advertising in anyway. About time customers got a chance to tell the broadcast companies how they want their programs (time-shifted and no ads!), and I'm sure someone will be able to connect program makers with customers money in a new big way eventually.
"Otto Z. Stern is a director at The Institute of Technological Values - a think tank dedicated to a more moral digital age. He has closely monitored the IT industry's intersection with America's role as a world leader for thirty years. You can find Stern locked and loaded, corralling wounded iLemmings, nursing an opal-plated prostate, spanking open source fly boys, wearing a smashing suit, dropping a SkyCar on the Googleplex, spitting on Frenchmen, vomiting in fear with a life-sized cutout of Hilary Rosen at his solar-powered compound somewhere in the Great American Southwest."
I think you've missed that The Register is a british publication. This article is sarcastic satire, nothing more. It might raise page views, but it's not meant as a troll to be take seriously.
I laughed when I read the article. I laughed even louder when I saw how many slashdotters have taken it seriously and leapt to linux's defence, and I say that as a user of linux for 7 years. I mean, come on -
"Meanwhile, I'm sitting here typing away on a 128-processor Unix SMP armed with an ultrasonic file system and jet-fueled partitioning system, wondering when the Linux freaks are going to solve their Ubuntu versus Mandriva color scheme debate" - how could anyone NOT see this is a joke?
Hear hear. There's actually another good reason not to download it yet - the whole point of putting it on the public ftp site before the official release announcement is to give the many mirrors a chance to sync it first before the hordes descend.
If we slashdot the official site before the many other mirrors get it, we slow down the process before it gets properly dispersed. This is less of an issue for a few megs of a file, but it does become a big issue when dealing with something large like kde or a new distro iso.