"Won't the weapons come in handy when rebelling? In fact, isn't that the reason the right to bear arms is constitutionally protected, so that the people will be able to overthrow their government?"
Yeah, like they are "coming in handy" in Iraq! The idea is to reduce state sponsered violence not provoke it!
Exactly what day(s) are we talking about here? The days when people bashed "nigger lovers", the day MLK was shot, the days spooks followed John Lennon around or something more recent in the days "Cat Stevens" is considered a terrorist sympathiser. I have picked US events since most will recognise them. From what I can remember and what I read, western governments in general got a whole lot more peacefull when crowds started chanting "the whole world is watching" toward the end of the 60's. But that development and mobile comms is about all that has changed about "protesting" since WW2.
There were "troublemakers" back then, just as there always has been. It is also not unknown for "troublemakers" to be sponsered by governments so as to "discredit groups" they see as a threat, "make cause" for increased powers or even just to "flush out the troublemakers" because they are feeling parinoid. I'm not only talking about third world dictatorships, western governments have a poor records of abstaining from these tatics and I see no reason why they would suddenly stop when global parinoia has gone through the roof.
What also has me baffled is why you have decided MTV are the "troublemakers", 1/4 million people went to the G8 protest with very reasonable demands. Like it or not, 1/4 million people is a large (unarmed and in places drunk) army who were better behaved than any regular unifomed army that decides to "demand" something. Just how long they would stay peacefull when a UAV swoops, (or drops), out of the sky and into the crowd is debateable.
I do agree mobile comms are being used in sophisticated ways to manipulate crowds via disinformation and coordinate the ensuing riots. I have no idea who is responsible or how UAV's could possibly help ease tension in an already angry mob.
That is not what happens either in the UK or Australia, parties offer candiates that follow a uniform policy but individuals have differing views on what the policy should be. Candiates can also be independent, a candidate who stands for a party is not obliged to stay with that party, they can swap sides or declare independence (not a common senario).
The difference seems to be that the in the US, citizens vote on the Sherrif, the school board, the local magistrate,,. The US votes on people and issues that under a UK style parlimentry system "ministers" in conjunction with the public service is expected to manage.
Also I don't know about the US, but with local councils in Australia (and presumably in the UK) only ratepayers can vote, the council is funded by the ratepayers (land owners), the council is responsible for organising it's own election (within the laws), schools are managed by the education department with input from parents through the "PTA", the Sherrif is... a mid-level cop?
From my point of view it could be said that the US system attempts to "micro-manage" government. BTW: What the hell is the "Tuesday" thing all about, no wonder nobody votes!
For those posters such as the AC I am replying to I would like to draw your attention to the troll tag. What is the point of attacking a summary that confesses to being a troll? The summary is honest, the clerk is honest, diebold could even be honset but their machines are not transparent and not auditable, therefore the machines cannot be trusted for election purposes.
Having said that I will make my own trollish statements so that you and the rest of the AC's can continue to distract attention away from the substance of the article...
"Die bold" has taken "lobbying" to the next level, now "lobbyists" cannot only earmak legislation, they can also earmark the next president.
The clerk is a life long public servant who is quiting and making as much noise as he can. It takes strength of character (or insanity) to deliberately scuttle your carrer and pension for the principle of serving the public.
The clerk should be hailed as a modern day Paul Revere, Diebold machines should be destroyed with safe but highly entertaining explosions.
1. Unless, (as Roger Penrose suggests), "mind" is somehow non-deterministic, "Learning through trial and error" could one day be described with mathematics. Even if it is non-deterministic we could still resort to statistics (as demonstrated by QM).
2. The system of axioms that are the foundation of the extrodinary "power of prediction" found in mathematics is somhow deeply related to the data collection and predictive capabilities the mind/body needs to catch a ball. Many philosophers, mathematicians and scientists have asked, why does mathematics "work"? Could it be that mathematics is a crude self describing model of the "raw mathematical calculations" that allow us to percive a common "reality" we call the Universe.
3. Until recently we had only our "God given" five sensory organs to percive "reality", mathematics has played a huge role in developing tools to find hidden parts of the universe that are far stranger than those contained in myths and legend. Leaving aside religion, "mind" can be described as an emergent property of a living brain. The idea that the brain and associated nervous system is both analog and a finite state machine would seem to indicate people such as Friedrich Hayek have only just scratched the surface of that very strange thing we call "mind".
"At the basic level everything is done in terms of shuffling chemicals around. There is no "master planner" who will integrate our new chip capabilities..."
Since when does the "device driver" dictate the API for the O/S? The trick is figuring out the undocumented API that the implanted chip driver needs to implement. If there is such an API for the calcium pump computer that is typing this post then a metaphoric "pearl forming around a piece of grit" is a very real possibility.
"If we just drop in a a chip how can the body know to interact with it?"
You could have a point. My body refuses to interact with beer, I pour it in and it goes to work seperating the beer atoms from the water. This process can be exhasting to the body and will often cause me to stagger, slur my speach and post on slashdot. After a while this "temporary exahustion" wears off, but not before my body uses the water ( mainly to grow lemons ). Now, like I said, my body does not interact with beer, so it stores the extracted beer atoms under my belly button until it can think of a way to use them. After 4-5 decades it has created quite a noticable bulge and some very juicy lemons. I hear jogging can help shake some of the stored beer atoms loose, but it can also cause heart attacks so I'm not convinced.
"If someone else, agrees with my message, and republishes (and had permission from me (copyright holder of the original work)), and prints it anonymously as well, it is protected by the law. How is this any different if the second person payed me in order to save the settup fees and saving the labor of having to re-run the printing?"
But what if they don't give a flying fuck about the message and are simply interested in making a buck. I think the difference you can't see is twofold, money and disclosure. Rupert Murdoch will tell you himself that his publications and broadcasts are biased toward the right wing and makes no appologies for it because they are his own views. However if a cartel of mass media big-wigs were secretly selling glowing editorials and slanted news to the highest bidder it becomes nothing more than a protection racket where everone looses except the Rupert's.
I am not picking on Rupert, all journalists, editors and owners are human and they all have their own bias. Some of them recognise this, others don't, the public is usually in the dark as to what bias is being pushed for what reasons. I for one would like to know if the authour is being paid to make a political/commercial statement, it would certainly make the motives that drive the "news" easier to work out if joe citizen could follow the money.
Mass media can be used to manipulate the stockmarket, "the market" has decided that manipulation thru non-disclosure is undesirable because it produces a skewed market that benifits the publisher. I think a skewed political outcome is far more undesirable. In other words, say whatever you like but I still want to know if someone has their hand up your arse and is making your mouth move.
It is something an "Internet Marketing Manager" looks after, often it's just a kid with a server but in big bussiness it is someone who has project Management skills.
My guess is that the submitter has just realised the words "Internet" and "Management" are part of his title, has put 2 and 2 together, and now thinks he is responsible for managing the internet.
There is no reason given WHY the "respected roadblock" is sitting in his way. There is no reason given WHY a crudely estimated ROI can't be offered based on experiences of other companies, (expected traffic, hit/$$$ ratio, whatever, IANAIMM). There is no explanation as to who is re-building the site, simply the royal "we". Is the "respected roadblock" part of "we" or is he a (competing) "we" running a non-internet department? Why is "everybody" asking about timetables if he is already in the middle of the project?
Some people learn from screwing up, others just screw up.
"So, all they doing is pushing this abstraction layer to the hardware, thus getting rid of an unnecessary layer, if I understand it correctly?"
Nah, nothing that significant. The operating system does/should not "know" anything about how the data is physically stored by a device. The existing O/S storage abstractions will remain. (You may have trouble running a very old O/S but that would be just one of your problems)
Every modern O/S uses disk space as virtual memory by reading and writing chunks of RAM to the HDD when it runs out of physical RAM. The standard HDD sector size is changing to the most commonly used O/S size for memory "pages" (RAM chunks written to disk).
The larger size will (in theory) speed things up a tiny amount. The the HDD will now read/write a "page" to disk in one sector rather than four. Meaning the HDD will perform less administrative functions to swap RAM back and forth to the disk. Hardly anyone will notice this but constant minor tweeking of HDD internals has evolved them very rapidly. eg: In 1990 I paid $200AU for a second-hand 20MB HDD (~0.2 SECOND seek time!).
"Why are people so afraid to dicipline their children these days?"
I don't think they are, I also suspect you don't have kids. Unless you wrap your kids up with gaffa tape for 20yrs, disipline alone will not stop "accidents".:)
I suppose it depends on who the lords belive they are serving, the public, the queen, the government, themselves....???
The Law Lords major decisions over the last decade or so have done more for "the public good" than their elected conterparts in the US or Australian Senate, particularly when it comes to handling extremist leaders such as Pinochet.
Having said that, I see no reason for an either/or choice here. If the parliment and the lords get into a deadlock, (not that common), why not ask the people to decide via a referendum?
"Oh great, another one of the "Shooting to protect your life is AOK, but not property... that's different" morons. So, I guess you think no bank or art museum guard should ever carry a gun, because of course there would be no reason to use it."
Where I live, (a country founded by theives), we don't have armed gaurds in banks or art museum's, amongst the few exceptions are cops and armoured car gaurds who are permitted to have them for defensive and/or deterent purposes. According to the laws of this country of theives, "self-defense" and/or "property-protection" is (by law) not considered a valid reason for owning a gun. I guess that makes pretty much the whole country morons, but we don't really care since the likelyhood of getting shot by a theif over here is very close to zero.
Before I continue to dismantle your inspired political drivel, please note that right-wing politicians were responsible for introducing sensible and strict guns controls into Australia law.Gun politics in Australia.
"Taking property is taking the portion of the victims life needed to obtain it. Taking life is taking the portion of the victim's life that hasn't happened yet. Distinguishing those... well, that takes a liberal."
I'm sure even in the US you have something called property insurance to bring back the missing "portion of the victims life", unfortunately life insurance cannot bring back a life or knit a spinal cord back together. Now, since insurance companies can obviously distinguish between life and property, does this mean insurance companies are a liberal? Do the people who run Loyds of London know this startling fact or is the term "liberal" something you habitually label people with because you cannot mentally cope with anything other than left and right?
Whatever your politics, distinguishing between theft, murder and assult is a moral and legal question, the manner in wich it is answered goes a long way toward distingushing "the rule of law" from anarchy. You do have the right to your opinion, and you can also vote to regress your culture back to the tribal anarchy of the "wild west", but somehow, I think many "conservatives" would rather have you locked up.
"Thieves just want *stuff*, right?"
No, no, no, their prime motivation is to rape and murder your family because that's what theives do.... Occam's razors says it's more likely you are nothing but a scared little man hiding behind his gun. That my friend, is far more dangerous to the general public than a theif.
Note: My original post had a question mark at the end, it was deliberately phrased as a question to signify a lack of pre-judgement. If you would like to drop the "ad-homs" and continue with a civil OT debate, I'm all ears.:)
"...the latter because pre-pay is anonymous and untraceable"
We have had GSM pre-pay in Australia for quite a few years now. I bought a second hand mobile for my daughter and let her pay for the cards with her own cash. This should have all been private and untraceable.
Well it's not, turns out the govt has mandated that to use a mobile you must have a special govt regulated identifier, I think they call it a "phone number", anyway the device won't work without it. This "phone number" can be entered into a special machine that allows the govt to contact a pre-paid user any time they choose.
Oh BTW, mobiles with strong encryption are illegal over here (pretty much everywhere else too) and in some cases I think that is justifyable. Example: Cartoon riots and the youth race riots in France and Australia last year were grossly manipulated towards violence by "groups" using sms "social networks" to disseminate provocative disinformation and organise "the angry mob's" location and timing. A herd of sms enabled humans is like any other heard, a few react to some vague danger signal with a vague alarm call, the heard becomes nervous, a few start moving away from where everyone is looking, one bolts, their nearest neighbour/relative follows... Once the stampede starts no individual in the herd really knows where they are going or what they are trampling underneath them.
Having said that I also concede the "peace is war" argument, it is quite possible one or more of these "groups" are part of the government, stirring the pot a bit to test who runs first on particular race/religion/whatever issues. I mean why fight the neo-nazis and AQ sympathizers head on, get them to stomp on each other a bit and see who are the puppeter's. The public may even give bonus points to the government for quashing a riot quickly and "even-handedly".
If you are lucky you have two options, live in a civilization based on authoriy figures or live in tribal anarchy, there maybe more options if you are prepared to discount the past performance of the human race and most of the findings from the fields of ecology, phycology and game theory.
He may write best-selling sci-fi books but his opinion on climate change is just as fictional as his books and no amount of willfull ignorance by senators and fiction writers will make climate change go away.
I was in full agreement up until: "...much less analyze it in any form"
If I were a spook I would not want to figure out every message coursing through the interwebs, I would be more interested in tracking who is talking to whom. That way when I decide to piss all over peoples privacy I could seize and decrypt the accounts of the evil-doers and all their mates at slashdot. - The eternal problem that is easy to spot, is who decides what constitues evil? Are there non-binary levels of "evil", and if so what are they?
OTOH: This kind of social network monitoring and analysis has dismantled extremly vile networks involving child tourtue and sexual abuse of toddlers. Most notably in the mid 90's in Denmark where some very high profile Danes were implicated in an international child abuse network. The result in Denmark was public revultion with thousands of people attending mass protests.
How many people would peacfully tolerate privacy protection for that kind of activity sent over a global public network for profit? Should we refuse to employ bomb sniffing dogs to monitor snail mail because the dog might pick on an innocent package?
From anarchists all the way across the political spectrum to 1984, the spanish inquisition and the crucifiction of Christ, every one of us looks for nirvana in a personal "book of rules", this "nirvana rule book" only exists within the deluded individual's mind. The fact that "nirvana for all" can not be discovered through a single "book of rules" does not slow humanities enthusiaim for writing "rule books" and forcefully applying varying interpretations on to everyone they encounter. I'm not saying human nature is wrong, it just "is".
BTW: "1984" is a brilliantly insightfull book, "Animal Farm" is equally as brilliant and in my mind closer to the "truth" about ourselves.
Excellent summary, we have GWB's "deputy" running the show down here and Melb.IT ( I once owned shares ) seem unable to organise the proverbial "piss up in a brewery".
In the Aussie vanacular, "I don't give a shit" about this incident. Not because I don't care about my right to poke parody in Johnny face. It's because the bulk of our laws are derived from British common law and AFAIK parody is still protected despite the various promises of "legal harmony" in the US/AU FTA.
"If you're going to argue that the latter is offensive to you, then you must allow others to argue that the former is offensive to them."
Precisely, regardless of religion, if the porno "fundies" at the PTC and the free speech "fundies", (hello guys), attacking them paid more attention to "Do unto others..", they might learn how to "love thy brother" in a more constructive way. Democracy is supposed to find a median ground but democracy is lazy and normaly just "picks winners". Given enough time, it may eventually find an optimum balance, personally I don't see any civilization having much chance of achiving that balance let alone keeping it.
The following rant is not aimed at you.
If "the people" say we must have idecency laws for broadcasters, shouldn't the definition of "offensive" reflect broad contempary attitudes rather than the sensibilities of a rabid lobby group? For example, if enough complaints are recieved, a random jury is asked to view the full context and judge the complaint. That reminds me, don't you guys in the US have content warnings that are in effect a pre-judgement by such a jury. Not only that but don't you also have optional v-chip technology so gaurdians and TV shops can enforce "decent" viewing material? The v-chip might cost extra and the shops might win exemptions, but isn't that just part of the social price paid by those who choose to live in a highly blinkered world or have a manic obsession with other peoples behaviour?
Having said that, I think attempts to codify morality inevitably fail at some point (eg: "looting" after a natural disaster). The "victimless crimes" such as "offensive images" are simply cultural artifacts forced apon us by the often well meaning but invariably self-rightouess. They "believe", and think everyone can be forced to "belive" by simply using a book of rules and a big enough stick. They have a firm belief that once they have subjected their fellow man to "re-Nedification"[simpsons], the rest of us will "see the light".
Nothing could be further from the truth, most individuals don't stop, (or at least slow down), their vigorous bouncing around on points of moral behaviour until they are done with their mid life crisis. These "fundie" lobby groups are not in the minority, combined they are the sole source of political, economic and religious power encoded in "the rule of law". The only limiting mechanisim "the people" have (that I can think off) is a strong, independent and scientificly based public service and judicary who's basic rules are
1. Do no harm.
2. Rule 1 is falible.
BTW: My own bit of "zero tolerance" that I also genuinely "believe" is shared by the majority says "none of this means kiddy porn is ok in my book". Sexually interfearing with a minor is a vile crime with a victim, not reporting evidence for a such an act makes you complicit in the crime. Yes I know, it gets a bit grey after puberty or (say) spousal incest, see rule 2.
Speaking of context, did you see the entire episode? I recently watched most of it over here in Australia, it depicted casual sex as a risky activity that could easily get you murdered by a violent pervert. In my mind the shows message "sex causes violence" is somewhat obscene, but still not worthy of government retribution.
"They "suggested" an orgy. It's not even as if one occurred where no nudity was shown, it was merely "suggested"."
Having seen most of the episode the other week here in Australia, I can also add they strongly "suggested" the "teen orgy" was something to be avoided. The whole show was preaching against casual sex not encouraging it. Regardless of various opinions about the shows "message", these fines are no better than a protection racket.
"Seriously, that is nothing for the big networks."
$3.6M worth of profit not revenue, it is definitely something. As the great pervayor of porn Larry Flint(?) said at his trial, "I'm not guilty of anything except bad taste".
Slashdot Mirror
"Won't the weapons come in handy when rebelling? In fact, isn't that the reason the right to bear arms is constitutionally protected, so that the people will be able to overthrow their government?"
Yeah, like they are "coming in handy" in Iraq! The idea is to reduce state sponsered violence not provoke it!
"Gone are the days of peaceful protests."
Exactly what day(s) are we talking about here? The days when people bashed "nigger lovers", the day MLK was shot, the days spooks followed John Lennon around or something more recent in the days "Cat Stevens" is considered a terrorist sympathiser. I have picked US events since most will recognise them. From what I can remember and what I read, western governments in general got a whole lot more peacefull when crowds started chanting "the whole world is watching" toward the end of the 60's. But that development and mobile comms is about all that has changed about "protesting" since WW2.
There were "troublemakers" back then, just as there always has been. It is also not unknown for "troublemakers" to be sponsered by governments so as to "discredit groups" they see as a threat, "make cause" for increased powers or even just to "flush out the troublemakers" because they are feeling parinoid. I'm not only talking about third world dictatorships, western governments have a poor records of abstaining from these tatics and I see no reason why they would suddenly stop when global parinoia has gone through the roof.
What also has me baffled is why you have decided MTV are the "troublemakers", 1/4 million people went to the G8 protest with very reasonable demands. Like it or not, 1/4 million people is a large (unarmed and in places drunk) army who were better behaved than any regular unifomed army that decides to "demand" something. Just how long they would stay peacefull when a UAV swoops, (or drops), out of the sky and into the crowd is debateable.
I do agree mobile comms are being used in sophisticated ways to manipulate crowds via disinformation and coordinate the ensuing riots. I have no idea who is responsible or how UAV's could possibly help ease tension in an already angry mob.
That is not what happens either in the UK or Australia, parties offer candiates that follow a uniform policy but individuals have differing views on what the policy should be. Candiates can also be independent, a candidate who stands for a party is not obliged to stay with that party, they can swap sides or declare independence (not a common senario).
... a mid-level cop?
The difference seems to be that the in the US, citizens vote on the Sherrif, the school board, the local magistrate,,. The US votes on people and issues that under a UK style parlimentry system "ministers" in conjunction with the public service is expected to manage.
Also I don't know about the US, but with local councils in Australia (and presumably in the UK) only ratepayers can vote, the council is funded by the ratepayers (land owners), the council is responsible for organising it's own election (within the laws), schools are managed by the education department with input from parents through the "PTA", the Sherrif is
From my point of view it could be said that the US system attempts to "micro-manage" government. BTW: What the hell is the "Tuesday" thing all about, no wonder nobody votes!
For those posters such as the AC I am replying to I would like to draw your attention to the troll tag. What is the point of attacking a summary that confesses to being a troll? The summary is honest, the clerk is honest, diebold could even be honset but their machines are not transparent and not auditable, therefore the machines cannot be trusted for election purposes.
Having said that I will make my own trollish statements so that you and the rest of the AC's can continue to distract attention away from the substance of the article...
"Die bold" has taken "lobbying" to the next level, now "lobbyists" cannot only earmak legislation, they can also earmark the next president.
The clerk is a life long public servant who is quiting and making as much noise as he can. It takes strength of character (or insanity) to deliberately scuttle your carrer and pension for the principle of serving the public.
The clerk should be hailed as a modern day Paul Revere, Diebold machines should be destroyed with safe but highly entertaining explosions.
Think about the following points..
1. Unless, (as Roger Penrose suggests), "mind" is somehow non-deterministic, "Learning through trial and error" could one day be described with mathematics. Even if it is non-deterministic we could still resort to statistics (as demonstrated by QM).
2. The system of axioms that are the foundation of the extrodinary "power of prediction" found in mathematics is somhow deeply related to the data collection and predictive capabilities the mind/body needs to catch a ball. Many philosophers, mathematicians and scientists have asked, why does mathematics "work"? Could it be that mathematics is a crude self describing model of the "raw mathematical calculations" that allow us to percive a common "reality" we call the Universe.
3. Until recently we had only our "God given" five sensory organs to percive "reality", mathematics has played a huge role in developing tools to find hidden parts of the universe that are far stranger than those contained in myths and legend. Leaving aside religion, "mind" can be described as an emergent property of a living brain. The idea that the brain and associated nervous system is both analog and a finite state machine would seem to indicate people such as Friedrich Hayek have only just scratched the surface of that very strange thing we call "mind".
"At the basic level everything is done in terms of shuffling chemicals around. There is no "master planner" who will integrate our new chip capabilities..."
Since when does the "device driver" dictate the API for the O/S? The trick is figuring out the undocumented API that the implanted chip driver needs to implement. If there is such an API for the calcium pump computer that is typing this post then a metaphoric "pearl forming around a piece of grit" is a very real possibility.
"If we just drop in a a chip how can the body know to interact with it?"
You could have a point. My body refuses to interact with beer, I pour it in and it goes to work seperating the beer atoms from the water. This process can be exhasting to the body and will often cause me to stagger, slur my speach and post on slashdot. After a while this "temporary exahustion" wears off, but not before my body uses the water ( mainly to grow lemons ). Now, like I said, my body does not interact with beer, so it stores the extracted beer atoms under my belly button until it can think of a way to use them. After 4-5 decades it has created quite a noticable bulge and some very juicy lemons. I hear jogging can help shake some of the stored beer atoms loose, but it can also cause heart attacks so I'm not convinced.
"If someone else, agrees with my message, and republishes (and had permission from me (copyright holder of the original work)), and prints it anonymously as well, it is protected by the law. How is this any different if the second person payed me in order to save the settup fees and saving the labor of having to re-run the printing?"
But what if they don't give a flying fuck about the message and are simply interested in making a buck. I think the difference you can't see is twofold, money and disclosure. Rupert Murdoch will tell you himself that his publications and broadcasts are biased toward the right wing and makes no appologies for it because they are his own views. However if a cartel of mass media big-wigs were secretly selling glowing editorials and slanted news to the highest bidder it becomes nothing more than a protection racket where everone looses except the Rupert's.
I am not picking on Rupert, all journalists, editors and owners are human and they all have their own bias. Some of them recognise this, others don't, the public is usually in the dark as to what bias is being pushed for what reasons. I for one would like to know if the authour is being paid to make a political/commercial statement, it would certainly make the motives that drive the "news" easier to work out if joe citizen could follow the money.
Mass media can be used to manipulate the stockmarket, "the market" has decided that manipulation thru non-disclosure is undesirable because it produces a skewed market that benifits the publisher. I think a skewed political outcome is far more undesirable. In other words, say whatever you like but I still want to know if someone has their hand up your arse and is making your mouth move.
Thirty seconds, and I spilt bong water over the keyboard.
It is something an "Internet Marketing Manager" looks after, often it's just a kid with a server but in big bussiness it is someone who has project Management skills.
My guess is that the submitter has just realised the words "Internet" and "Management" are part of his title, has put 2 and 2 together, and now thinks he is responsible for managing the internet.
There is no reason given WHY the "respected roadblock" is sitting in his way. There is no reason given WHY a crudely estimated ROI can't be offered based on experiences of other companies, (expected traffic, hit/$$$ ratio, whatever, IANAIMM). There is no explanation as to who is re-building the site, simply the royal "we". Is the "respected roadblock" part of "we" or is he a (competing) "we" running a non-internet department? Why is "everybody" asking about timetables if he is already in the middle of the project?
Some people learn from screwing up, others just screw up.
"So, all they doing is pushing this abstraction layer to the hardware, thus getting rid of an unnecessary layer, if I understand it correctly?"
Nah, nothing that significant. The operating system does/should not "know" anything about how the data is physically stored by a device. The existing O/S storage abstractions will remain. (You may have trouble running a very old O/S but that would be just one of your problems)
Every modern O/S uses disk space as virtual memory by reading and writing chunks of RAM to the HDD when it runs out of physical RAM. The standard HDD sector size is changing to the most commonly used O/S size for memory "pages" (RAM chunks written to disk).
The larger size will (in theory) speed things up a tiny amount. The the HDD will now read/write a "page" to disk in one sector rather than four. Meaning the HDD will perform less administrative functions to swap RAM back and forth to the disk. Hardly anyone will notice this but constant minor tweeking of HDD internals has evolved them very rapidly. eg: In 1990 I paid $200AU for a second-hand 20MB HDD (~0.2 SECOND seek time!).
"Why are people so afraid to dicipline their children these days?"
:)
I don't think they are, I also suspect you don't have kids. Unless you wrap your kids up with gaffa tape for 20yrs, disipline alone will not stop "accidents".
"What do wormholes have to do with the Twins Paradox?"
Doh! Got my paradoxes mixed up, I was thinking of the Grandfather Paradox".
The Twins Paradox was inspired by Einstiens work and solved many years ago.
"...as it was solved by general relativity"
Are you sure about that? It was introduced into Physics by GR but I'm not sure wormholes have been completely ruled out.
I suppose it depends on who the lords belive they are serving, the public, the queen, the government, themselves....???
The Law Lords major decisions over the last decade or so have done more for "the public good" than their elected conterparts in the US or Australian Senate, particularly when it comes to handling extremist leaders such as Pinochet.
Having said that, I see no reason for an either/or choice here. If the parliment and the lords get into a deadlock, (not that common), why not ask the people to decide via a referendum?
"Oh great, another one of the "Shooting to protect your life is AOK, but not property... that's different" morons. So, I guess you think no bank or art museum guard should ever carry a gun, because of course there would be no reason to use it."
... well, that takes a liberal."
:)
Where I live, (a country founded by theives), we don't have armed gaurds in banks or art museum's, amongst the few exceptions are cops and armoured car gaurds who are permitted to have them for defensive and/or deterent purposes. According to the laws of this country of theives, "self-defense" and/or "property-protection" is (by law) not considered a valid reason for owning a gun. I guess that makes pretty much the whole country morons, but we don't really care since the likelyhood of getting shot by a theif over here is very close to zero.
Before I continue to dismantle your inspired political drivel, please note that right-wing politicians were responsible for introducing sensible and strict guns controls into Australia law. Gun politics in Australia.
"Taking property is taking the portion of the victims life needed to obtain it. Taking life is taking the portion of the victim's life that hasn't happened yet. Distinguishing those
I'm sure even in the US you have something called property insurance to bring back the missing "portion of the victims life", unfortunately life insurance cannot bring back a life or knit a spinal cord back together. Now, since insurance companies can obviously distinguish between life and property, does this mean insurance companies are a liberal? Do the people who run Loyds of London know this startling fact or is the term "liberal" something you habitually label people with because you cannot mentally cope with anything other than left and right?
Whatever your politics, distinguishing between theft, murder and assult is a moral and legal question, the manner in wich it is answered goes a long way toward distingushing "the rule of law" from anarchy. You do have the right to your opinion, and you can also vote to regress your culture back to the tribal anarchy of the "wild west", but somehow, I think many "conservatives" would rather have you locked up.
"Thieves just want *stuff*, right?"
No, no, no, their prime motivation is to rape and murder your family because that's what theives do.... Occam's razors says it's more likely you are nothing but a scared little man hiding behind his gun. That my friend, is far more dangerous to the general public than a theif.
Some annoying stats to back up the merits of Aussie gun control, Australian Bureau of Statistics figures - gun deaths
Note: My original post had a question mark at the end, it was deliberately phrased as a question to signify a lack of pre-judgement. If you would like to drop the "ad-homs" and continue with a civil OT debate, I'm all ears.
"You tie both my hands behind my back, then you blame me for not shooting at the thief !"
You think it's a charcter flaw not to kill for property?
"...the latter because pre-pay is anonymous and untraceable"
We have had GSM pre-pay in Australia for quite a few years now. I bought a second hand mobile for my daughter and let her pay for the cards with her own cash. This should have all been private and untraceable.
Well it's not, turns out the govt has mandated that to use a mobile you must have a special govt regulated identifier, I think they call it a "phone number", anyway the device won't work without it. This "phone number" can be entered into a special machine that allows the govt to contact a pre-paid user any time they choose.
Oh BTW, mobiles with strong encryption are illegal over here (pretty much everywhere else too) and in some cases I think that is justifyable. Example: Cartoon riots and the youth race riots in France and Australia last year were grossly manipulated towards violence by "groups" using sms "social networks" to disseminate provocative disinformation and organise "the angry mob's" location and timing. A herd of sms enabled humans is like any other heard, a few react to some vague danger signal with a vague alarm call, the heard becomes nervous, a few start moving away from where everyone is looking, one bolts, their nearest neighbour/relative follows... Once the stampede starts no individual in the herd really knows where they are going or what they are trampling underneath them.
Having said that I also concede the "peace is war" argument, it is quite possible one or more of these "groups" are part of the government, stirring the pot a bit to test who runs first on particular race/religion/whatever issues. I mean why fight the neo-nazis and AQ sympathizers head on, get them to stomp on each other a bit and see who are the puppeter's. The public may even give bonus points to the government for quashing a riot quickly and "even-handedly".
If you are lucky you have two options, live in a civilization based on authoriy figures or live in tribal anarchy, there maybe more options if you are prepared to discount the past performance of the human race and most of the findings from the fields of ecology, phycology and game theory.
Just to be "fair and balanced", here is a review of Crichton's state of fear by some qualified and published climatoligists. Also their rebuttal of Crichton's testimony to the senate committee is worth a look.
He may write best-selling sci-fi books but his opinion on climate change is just as fictional as his books and no amount of willfull ignorance by senators and fiction writers will make climate change go away.
I was in full agreement up until: "...much less analyze it in any form"
If I were a spook I would not want to figure out every message coursing through the interwebs, I would be more interested in tracking who is talking to whom. That way when I decide to piss all over peoples privacy I could seize and decrypt the accounts of the evil-doers and all their mates at slashdot. - The eternal problem that is easy to spot, is who decides what constitues evil? Are there non-binary levels of "evil", and if so what are they?
OTOH: This kind of social network monitoring and analysis has dismantled extremly vile networks involving child tourtue and sexual abuse of toddlers. Most notably in the mid 90's in Denmark where some very high profile Danes were implicated in an international child abuse network. The result in Denmark was public revultion with thousands of people attending mass protests.
How many people would peacfully tolerate privacy protection for that kind of activity sent over a global public network for profit? Should we refuse to employ bomb sniffing dogs to monitor snail mail because the dog might pick on an innocent package?
From anarchists all the way across the political spectrum to 1984, the spanish inquisition and the crucifiction of Christ, every one of us looks for nirvana in a personal "book of rules", this "nirvana rule book" only exists within the deluded individual's mind. The fact that "nirvana for all" can not be discovered through a single "book of rules" does not slow humanities enthusiaim for writing "rule books" and forcefully applying varying interpretations on to everyone they encounter. I'm not saying human nature is wrong, it just "is".
BTW: "1984" is a brilliantly insightfull book, "Animal Farm" is equally as brilliant and in my mind closer to the "truth" about ourselves.
Excellent summary, we have GWB's "deputy" running the show down here and Melb.IT ( I once owned shares ) seem unable to organise the proverbial "piss up in a brewery".
In the Aussie vanacular, "I don't give a shit" about this incident. Not because I don't care about my right to poke parody in Johnny face. It's because the bulk of our laws are derived from British common law and AFAIK parody is still protected despite the various promises of "legal harmony" in the US/AU FTA.
Yes, it's more about "competition" for the current and future Iraqi wheat market.
"If you're going to argue that the latter is offensive to you, then you must allow others to argue that the former is offensive to them."
Precisely, regardless of religion, if the porno "fundies" at the PTC and the free speech "fundies", (hello guys), attacking them paid more attention to "Do unto others..", they might learn how to "love thy brother" in a more constructive way. Democracy is supposed to find a median ground but democracy is lazy and normaly just "picks winners". Given enough time, it may eventually find an optimum balance, personally I don't see any civilization having much chance of achiving that balance let alone keeping it.
The following rant is not aimed at you.
If "the people" say we must have idecency laws for broadcasters, shouldn't the definition of "offensive" reflect broad contempary attitudes rather than the sensibilities of a rabid lobby group? For example, if enough complaints are recieved, a random jury is asked to view the full context and judge the complaint. That reminds me, don't you guys in the US have content warnings that are in effect a pre-judgement by such a jury. Not only that but don't you also have optional v-chip technology so gaurdians and TV shops can enforce "decent" viewing material? The v-chip might cost extra and the shops might win exemptions, but isn't that just part of the social price paid by those who choose to live in a highly blinkered world or have a manic obsession with other peoples behaviour?
Having said that, I think attempts to codify morality inevitably fail at some point (eg: "looting" after a natural disaster). The "victimless crimes" such as "offensive images" are simply cultural artifacts forced apon us by the often well meaning but invariably self-rightouess. They "believe", and think everyone can be forced to "belive" by simply using a book of rules and a big enough stick. They have a firm belief that once they have subjected their fellow man to "re-Nedification"[simpsons], the rest of us will "see the light".
Nothing could be further from the truth, most individuals don't stop, (or at least slow down), their vigorous bouncing around on points of moral behaviour until they are done with their mid life crisis. These "fundie" lobby groups are not in the minority, combined they are the sole source of political, economic and religious power encoded in "the rule of law". The only limiting mechanisim "the people" have (that I can think off) is a strong, independent and scientificly based public service and judicary who's basic rules are
1. Do no harm.
2. Rule 1 is falible.
BTW: My own bit of "zero tolerance" that I also genuinely "believe" is shared by the majority says "none of this means kiddy porn is ok in my book". Sexually interfearing with a minor is a vile crime with a victim, not reporting evidence for a such an act makes you complicit in the crime. Yes I know, it gets a bit grey after puberty or (say) spousal incest, see rule 2.
Speaking of context, did you see the entire episode? I recently watched most of it over here in Australia, it depicted casual sex as a risky activity that could easily get you murdered by a violent pervert. In my mind the shows message "sex causes violence" is somewhat obscene, but still not worthy of government retribution.
"They "suggested" an orgy. It's not even as if one occurred where no nudity was shown, it was merely "suggested"."
Having seen most of the episode the other week here in Australia, I can also add they strongly "suggested" the "teen orgy" was something to be avoided. The whole show was preaching against casual sex not encouraging it. Regardless of various opinions about the shows "message", these fines are no better than a protection racket.
"Seriously, that is nothing for the big networks."
$3.6M worth of profit not revenue, it is definitely something. As the great pervayor of porn Larry Flint(?) said at his trial, "I'm not guilty of anything except bad taste".