"It's quite a bit harder to do that than it will be with e-voting."
How so? Any idiot can stuff a ballot box, pay the right officials and it is done. With e-voting you have to not only corrupt the officials, but you need someone with the tech savy and know-how required to rig that particular type of machine.
True. DRM simply stops the purchaser of content from excercising their fair use rights. Like using the content on different devices, making backup copies in case media gets scratched, etc.
Not at all. They drew a couple lines, decided the distance between them was a meter and then proceeded to determine that light travels 299,792,458 times that distance a second. Then they decided to make the new definition of a meter 1/299,792,458 the distance light travels in a second. And how did they determine how far it was relative to lightspeed to begin with? Well they converted from the US system of course.
Now if they had started with lightspeed and then reduced down to smaller unit based upon it; that would be based on something. Actually that would make a hell of alot more sense than metric or US measurements.
That would be nice. Unfortunately, in the United States it is for courts to interpret the meaning of law, not for common sense; literal definitions; or kurttrail on Slashdot. So far, the courts have supported the RIAA's interpretation.
"And the rest of your post is slightly out of topic IMHO;D"
You would be mistaken. Let me summarize. When I said that the US comparable to all of the EU and the member nations were comparable to individual US states. I was speaking in terms of REAL economic and military power. Not in terms of political boundries.
An EU nation, commands roughly the same military, and financial power as one of the US states. Therefore, we can for all practical purposes lump the EU together as being worthy of one voice of roughly the same volume as the United States and China. China is a third world nation that is not yet part of the industrialized world. Therefore, half the industrialized world is using the US system, and the other half metric.
Why should the US take on the financial burden of conversion? Why shouldn't the EU pay the cost to convert to the US system? After all, the US system is based upon real things. The EU system is completely arbitrary.
Yes, the DMCA allows me to excercise fair use rights IF I can do so without circumventing technical measures or cracking encryption. In short, a media critic can still quote media (the entertainment industry wouldn't have supported anything that would prevent this) but backing up my dvd so I don't have to buy another copy if it gets scratched; well, we can't have that. That fair use must be axed by the DMCA since that might mean fewer people buying copies they are already entitled to!
You think these are rights we still have in the US? Apparently you missed the part where the DMCA makes it illegal to excercise fair use rights if there is DRM in place.
"Heck, we don't even have the same currencies in all states of the EU... and certainly every state has its own millitary aparatus, including Air Force, Navy, Army, Special Forces and in 2 cases nuclear forces."
Its called the Euro. You rolled all your currencies up into the Euro so that you would have a currency that could compete economically with the US.
I admit I don't have a link handy because it has been awhile since I looked at the numbers. But as of about 5 years ago the US military budget was greater than that of every nation in Europe combined. I seriously doubt we are spending less on defense under the bush administration. It is really quite simple. You might be able to compete with a 10bil dollar military if you have a 5 bil military, but there is no possible way a 5 bil dollar military could compete with a 250bil military. And that ignores the fact that the UK is practically a US territory and would side with the US in any military conflict. The only credible threat to the United States, in the world, is China.
In Europe you have a bunch of itsy bitsy countries. As a general rule the ultimate strength a nation can control is practically limited by natural resources. Individual EU nations may be recognized as sovereign in the UN but they only control military and national resources that are comparable to that of a single US State.
The UN's own power is over-stated. The US may only get one vote at the table but that doesn't mean a firm gaze from a US rep doesn't command most of the table. If the UN votes contrary to US interest, the US has always and will always simply ignore the UN and do as it wants anyway. It isn't as if the other nations of the UN actually have the power to force the US to recognize their mandates.
Personally I think the distributed power of the EU is a good thing. I don't think it is a good thing that a single nation has amassed the power of the US. Even if it is my own nation. But pretending the doesn't have the power it does out of some sort of homeland pride will only make the problem worse.
My generation was taught both systems and taught in school that the metric system was superior and used by the rest of the world. My generation is between 25-30 now. That means we will start to gain power is about 10 years and will be the driving force running the nation in 20 years. With Gen X taking over the nation, and the baby boomers out, you will see quite a shift in US policy. The metric system will be part of that.
Unfortunately, Gen X is actually rather cold, logical, understands technology and does not share all the romantic notions of previous generations. This means that the romantic notions that most individual rights are based upon will likely be ignored in policy decisions. Our understanding of technology means that law enforcement will probably be much more effective. In short, life is not going to be much fun under gen x. I predict that we will sell out even worse than the baby boomers ever dreamed of. And the baby boomers are fairy serious sell outs. They went from being hippies protesting the man and the war to putting us into an even worse war and moving the nation to the closest it has even been to a dictatorship.
SSL Certs should go hand in hand with domain registration and every domain registration should include a wildcard SSL Cert for that domain. A cert isn't a valid way to prove that John Smith or company x controls the site, it is a valid way to assure that the content you are viewing is coming from bla.com. There is no reason that every domain on the web shouldn't have the ability to give visiters that assurance. It uses what, about a penny worth of electricty to generate a cert? Wildcard certs don't cost anything more to generate then individual certs. This would drastically increase the security of the web and allow independently operated non-commercial domains the ability to secure content.
Right now SSL Certs aren't being used to make the web more secure. Certs are being used to gouge online commerce sites so that a few companies can exist selling them.
Economically speaking, all the US is about the same as all of europe. I know the EU likes to think of themselves as lots of countries all on equal footing with the US. But the reality is that an EU 'nation' is economically, and militarily equal comparable to an individual US state. So you if count the EU as one vote, and the US as one vote and consider that between them they make up the entire industrialized world; there isn't much more reason for the US to bear the expense of moving to the European system then there for the EU to bear the cost to move to the US system.
Technically, there is no such thing as fact in science. The reason is simple, just because a given set of observable effects have occurred under the same set of controls before does not mean they will again. Even observations that have already occurred are subjective.
Apple outed jobs before and it nearly destroyed the company. Jobs may be an ego-manic but so far he has been the most successful in recognizing and exploiting the innovators at Apple.
How can one get started in Electronics on a budget? The parts are cheap enough, but it seems like you would have to keep a stock of thousands of parts to actually be able to throw something together.
In a situation like this the money probably doesn't belong to the account holder yet. It probably belongs to the one who sent the funds. But in either case, the money most definately does not belong to Paypal. Paypal releases the initial funds after 6 months in these cases (a rather extraordinary length of time) but Paypal is not entitled to the interest garnered on frozen funds no matter what the circumstances. Whether the charity is legit or not, I want the interest on my donation for the time period in which paypal held the frozen funds returned.
Whether you group those whose funds have been frozen by paypal, or you group those who donated the funds there is definately a class action to be made here. Paypal freezes accounts when they have accumlated large sums and then pockets the interest; they need to be stopped.
"There is something to be said for limiting the sale of violent games to kids."
I would have to disagree here and this one comment can be used to fill in the blanks for other posts I might have made under this story. I do not believe censorship is a good thing. I believe that restricting, limiting, or altering the view children have of the world only serves to retard their mental development. Just because a parent has been brainwashed into a make believe moral caste (in part) by this method is no reason to allow them to impact the next generation in the same way. And if I don't think parents should be permitted to damage the minds of their children in this manner then I obviously don't support politicians doing it.
Some argue children don't understand the content. True, children don't understand anything without exposure, all the more reason to expose them. Perhaps children aren't mature enough to handle it. True, nobody is mature enough to handle it until they have been exposed to it and there is no justification for hindering or retarding the maturation of a human being so they can enjoy ignorant bliss for a prolonged period of time. Further, if exposing children to the reality of life causes desensitization then maybe, just maybe humans are only sensitive to these issues because they have been brainwashed into a fairy tale sense of morality. Who says it is bad to not feel the need to gasp in shock when one sees death and violence? If that is real life then why should we be afraid of or shocked by it? Perhaps that lack of morality is only shocking to you because you were brainwashed as a child and perhaps that isn't a good thing?
P.S. When I said you, I really mean anyone who feels however I implied, not that all of that actually applies to the parent I am responding to.
"If you *assumed* that local websites would be in a town.state.us hierarchy, that would be the obvious place for that site. I definitely think that's easier to remember than "rockportusa.com" or some shit like "shop-rockport.travel"."
Local websites are only intended for local exposure. The vast bulk of web consists of sites that hope to get more than local traffic. First, I don't want the URL of my site to reveal my address. If I put something on my site that criticizes Muslims, I'd prefer they be limited to the website as a way of responding.
By definition sites on the web are international content, you put things on the international web in hopes that it will be seen by the international audience that is found there. Your scheme would put the focus back on local content. The only ones who benefit from that are local shop keepers who are attempting to use a medium that is not related to geography of content posters to advertise to a geographically specific audience.
If you are addressing the practical need for more domain names then more depth based upon content would be more appropriate. If you run a shoe store, you don't want customers in Michigan you want any customer who wants a pair of shoes. If you didn't you would be advertising in a medium that is appropriate for a specific local. The same is true if one puts up a homepage or a blog. You want as broad a potential audience as possible. If your address is harrysblog.effingham.effingham.illinois.us then you aren't exactly poised to receive the same potential audience as insightblog.com.
Your scheme would also let a large local ISP who isn't a fan of a neighboring communities sports team block all the content from the neighboring community with ease.
Lets keep national pride, local concerns, and geographic entities petty squabbles as far away from the global Internet as possible. It is a sad and unfortunate fact that the hardware that runs the web must be located in the geographic jurisdiction of some draconian government controlling a gullible populace with sticks and lollipops but lets keep their influence to a minimum.
"This probably says more about your (limited) world view than it describes the reality."
okay, lets do a test. Lets use google to produce results that do not mirror my world view. I will search for popular keywords and check the first page to see how many country specific domains come up. keyword - results sex - 0 money - 0 drugs - 0 porn - 1 news - 1 (the bbc) animals - 1 (the bbc) taco - 1 (woot an actual foreign website!) pig - 0 name - 0 computer 0
okay, that is 100 top 10 results by keyword. According to the all mighty google these sites are the most relevant on the internet for these fairly random subjects. 96% of the sites used non-country specific tlds. Of the remaining 4% half were the bbc I had already credited so that takes us to only 2% and those were ranked 8 and 9 at the bottom of their respective search pages.
I am sure the occurance goes up dramatically if you start searching for results in gobbily gook. But English has more or less become a trade language and while you will find many chinese sites in English you probably won't find many US sites in mandarian.
I am also sure there is a great deal of worthwhile content produced all over the globe and doubt these results reflect US versus foreign content. My point is that foreign content providers are using three letter tlds. I have a suspicion that two letter tld use is higher in asia but I can't verify it. Most asian content is meant to be consumed by asians and is non-english so I would never be exposed to it.
I also find three letter tlds valuable precisely because they do not divide the world into seperate segments like a map. A.com website could be asian, european, usian, it doesn't matter. With.com everyone is combined into a single global audience. The more two letter tlds are used the more people will be divided into seperate audiences again. This is to the benefit of those who wish to control and regulate the masses and contrary to the interests of the masses themselves.
"It would be better as.xxx.us since then it can fairly and reasonably be governed by US law."
Why would you want US law governing the internet? That would elminate most of the value of the internet. The xxx tld is to allow PRIVATE sector filtering, not government regulation. Government regulation and censorship is bad. Especially when you are talking about regulation of porn by a puritan government. I mean really, concerned soccor moms with delicate sensibilities certainly shouldn't have the ability to lobby and make some form of dirty and raunchy porn illegal.
That would provide more available id's, domains, whatever tag you like. However it would reduce the practical utility of the names. If I wanted a random string that was difficult to remember I would just use the IP address.
A name like 'google.com' is simple to remember. I am not bound to a bookmarks list to remember it. I can sit down at any browser anywhere and remember that very simple name off the top of my head. The name is easy enough that I had it memorized after a single exposure.
Your own post makes clear that your deep hierarchy would really only be useful for parsing by machine. The true value of domains has been shown to be not merely a fixed location, but by being a HUMAN parsable system.
Slashdot Mirror
Don't be silly, you'd just toss the batteries in the trash like you do now.
"It's quite a bit harder to do that than it will be with e-voting."
How so? Any idiot can stuff a ballot box, pay the right officials and it is done. With e-voting you have to not only corrupt the officials, but you need someone with the tech savy and know-how required to rig that particular type of machine.
True. DRM simply stops the purchaser of content from excercising their fair use rights. Like using the content on different devices, making backup copies in case media gets scratched, etc.
"Sounds kinda real, if not a tiny bit pedantic."
Not at all. They drew a couple lines, decided the distance between them was a meter and then proceeded to determine that light travels 299,792,458 times that distance a second. Then they decided to make the new definition of a meter 1/299,792,458 the distance light travels in a second. And how did they determine how far it was relative to lightspeed to begin with? Well they converted from the US system of course.
Now if they had started with lightspeed and then reduced down to smaller unit based upon it; that would be based on something. Actually that would make a hell of alot more sense than metric or US measurements.
That would be nice. Unfortunately, in the United States it is for courts to interpret the meaning of law, not for common sense; literal definitions; or kurttrail on Slashdot. So far, the courts have supported the RIAA's interpretation.
"And the rest of your post is slightly out of topic IMHO ;D"
You would be mistaken. Let me summarize. When I said that the US comparable to all of the EU and the member nations were comparable to individual US states. I was speaking in terms of REAL economic and military power. Not in terms of political boundries.
An EU nation, commands roughly the same military, and financial power as one of the US states. Therefore, we can for all practical purposes lump the EU together as being worthy of one voice of roughly the same volume as the United States and China. China is a third world nation that is not yet part of the industrialized world. Therefore, half the industrialized world is using the US system, and the other half metric.
Why should the US take on the financial burden of conversion? Why shouldn't the EU pay the cost to convert to the US system? After all, the US system is based upon real things. The EU system is completely arbitrary.
Yes, the DMCA allows me to excercise fair use rights IF I can do so without circumventing technical measures or cracking encryption. In short, a media critic can still quote media (the entertainment industry wouldn't have supported anything that would prevent this) but backing up my dvd so I don't have to buy another copy if it gets scratched; well, we can't have that. That fair use must be axed by the DMCA since that might mean fewer people buying copies they are already entitled to!
I need say no more. Your post made my case clearly.
You think these are rights we still have in the US? Apparently you missed the part where the DMCA makes it illegal to excercise fair use rights if there is DRM in place.
"Heck, we don't even have the same currencies in all states of the EU ... and certainly every state has its own millitary aparatus, including Air Force, Navy, Army, Special Forces and in 2 cases nuclear forces."
Its called the Euro. You rolled all your currencies up into the Euro so that you would have a currency that could compete economically with the US.
I admit I don't have a link handy because it has been awhile since I looked at the numbers. But as of about 5 years ago the US military budget was greater than that of every nation in Europe combined. I seriously doubt we are spending less on defense under the bush administration. It is really quite simple. You might be able to compete with a 10bil dollar military if you have a 5 bil military, but there is no possible way a 5 bil dollar military could compete with a 250bil military. And that ignores the fact that the UK is practically a US territory and would side with the US in any military conflict. The only credible threat to the United States, in the world, is China.
In Europe you have a bunch of itsy bitsy countries. As a general rule the ultimate strength a nation can control is practically limited by natural resources. Individual EU nations may be recognized as sovereign in the UN but they only control military and national resources that are comparable to that of a single US State.
The UN's own power is over-stated. The US may only get one vote at the table but that doesn't mean a firm gaze from a US rep doesn't command most of the table. If the UN votes contrary to US interest, the US has always and will always simply ignore the UN and do as it wants anyway. It isn't as if the other nations of the UN actually have the power to force the US to recognize their mandates.
Personally I think the distributed power of the EU is a good thing. I don't think it is a good thing that a single nation has amassed the power of the US. Even if it is my own nation. But pretending the doesn't have the power it does out of some sort of homeland pride will only make the problem worse.
My generation was taught both systems and taught in school that the metric system was superior and used by the rest of the world. My generation is between 25-30 now. That means we will start to gain power is about 10 years and will be the driving force running the nation in 20 years. With Gen X taking over the nation, and the baby boomers out, you will see quite a shift in US policy. The metric system will be part of that.
Unfortunately, Gen X is actually rather cold, logical, understands technology and does not share all the romantic notions of previous generations. This means that the romantic notions that most individual rights are based upon will likely be ignored in policy decisions. Our understanding of technology means that law enforcement will probably be much more effective. In short, life is not going to be much fun under gen x. I predict that we will sell out even worse than the baby boomers ever dreamed of. And the baby boomers are fairy serious sell outs. They went from being hippies protesting the man and the war to putting us into an even worse war and moving the nation to the closest it has even been to a dictatorship.
SSL Certs should go hand in hand with domain registration and every domain registration should include a wildcard SSL Cert for that domain. A cert isn't a valid way to prove that John Smith or company x controls the site, it is a valid way to assure that the content you are viewing is coming from bla.com. There is no reason that every domain on the web shouldn't have the ability to give visiters that assurance. It uses what, about a penny worth of electricty to generate a cert? Wildcard certs don't cost anything more to generate then individual certs. This would drastically increase the security of the web and allow independently operated non-commercial domains the ability to secure content.
Right now SSL Certs aren't being used to make the web more secure. Certs are being used to gouge online commerce sites so that a few companies can exist selling them.
Economically speaking, all the US is about the same as all of europe. I know the EU likes to think of themselves as lots of countries all on equal footing with the US. But the reality is that an EU 'nation' is economically, and militarily equal comparable to an individual US state. So you if count the EU as one vote, and the US as one vote and consider that between them they make up the entire industrialized world; there isn't much more reason for the US to bear the expense of moving to the European system then there for the EU to bear the cost to move to the US system.
Technically, there is no such thing as fact in science. The reason is simple, just because a given set of observable effects have occurred under the same set of controls before does not mean they will again. Even observations that have already occurred are subjective.
Apple outed jobs before and it nearly destroyed the company. Jobs may be an ego-manic but so far he has been the most successful in recognizing and exploiting the innovators at Apple.
"Godwin's law states ONLY "As the length of a discussion thread increases, the probability of a comparison to Hitler or Nazis approaches 1."
Since the limitless possible points to be made in a discussion actually aren't limitless at all; wouldn't that law be true of any comparison?
How can one get started in Electronics on a budget? The parts are cheap enough, but it seems like you would have to keep a stock of thousands of parts to actually be able to throw something together.
In a situation like this the money probably doesn't belong to the account holder yet. It probably belongs to the one who sent the funds. But in either case, the money most definately does not belong to Paypal. Paypal releases the initial funds after 6 months in these cases (a rather extraordinary length of time) but Paypal is not entitled to the interest garnered on frozen funds no matter what the circumstances. Whether the charity is legit or not, I want the interest on my donation for the time period in which paypal held the frozen funds returned.
Whether you group those whose funds have been frozen by paypal, or you group those who donated the funds there is definately a class action to be made here. Paypal freezes accounts when they have accumlated large sums and then pockets the interest; they need to be stopped.
"There is something to be said for limiting the sale of violent games to kids."
I would have to disagree here and this one comment can be used to fill in the blanks for other posts I might have made under this story. I do not believe censorship is a good thing. I believe that restricting, limiting, or altering the view children have of the world only serves to retard their mental development. Just because a parent has been brainwashed into a make believe moral caste (in part) by this method is no reason to allow them to impact the next generation in the same way. And if I don't think parents should be permitted to damage the minds of their children in this manner then I obviously don't support politicians doing it.
Some argue children don't understand the content. True, children don't understand anything without exposure, all the more reason to expose them. Perhaps children aren't mature enough to handle it. True, nobody is mature enough to handle it until they have been exposed to it and there is no justification for hindering or retarding the maturation of a human being so they can enjoy ignorant bliss for a prolonged period of time. Further, if exposing children to the reality of life causes desensitization then maybe, just maybe humans are only sensitive to these issues because they have been brainwashed into a fairy tale sense of morality. Who says it is bad to not feel the need to gasp in shock when one sees death and violence? If that is real life then why should we be afraid of or shocked by it? Perhaps that lack of morality is only shocking to you because you were brainwashed as a child and perhaps that isn't a good thing?
P.S. When I said you, I really mean anyone who feels however I implied, not that all of that actually applies to the parent I am responding to.
"If you *assumed* that local websites would be in a town.state.us hierarchy, that would be the obvious place for that site. I definitely think that's easier to remember than "rockportusa.com" or some shit like "shop-rockport.travel"."
Local websites are only intended for local exposure. The vast bulk of web consists of sites that hope to get more than local traffic. First, I don't want the URL of my site to reveal my address. If I put something on my site that criticizes Muslims, I'd prefer they be limited to the website as a way of responding.
By definition sites on the web are international content, you put things on the international web in hopes that it will be seen by the international audience that is found there. Your scheme would put the focus back on local content. The only ones who benefit from that are local shop keepers who are attempting to use a medium that is not related to geography of content posters to advertise to a geographically specific audience.
If you are addressing the practical need for more domain names then more depth based upon content would be more appropriate. If you run a shoe store, you don't want customers in Michigan you want any customer who wants a pair of shoes. If you didn't you would be advertising in a medium that is appropriate for a specific local. The same is true if one puts up a homepage or a blog. You want as broad a potential audience as possible. If your address is harrysblog.effingham.effingham.illinois.us then you aren't exactly poised to receive the same potential audience as insightblog.com.
Your scheme would also let a large local ISP who isn't a fan of a neighboring communities sports team block all the content from the neighboring community with ease.
Lets keep national pride, local concerns, and geographic entities petty squabbles as far away from the global Internet as possible. It is a sad and unfortunate fact that the hardware that runs the web must be located in the geographic jurisdiction of some draconian government controlling a gullible populace with sticks and lollipops but lets keep their influence to a minimum.
You mean the possibility I covered extensively in the post you are responding to? Nope, never crossed my mind.
"This probably says more about your (limited) world view than it describes the reality."
.com website could be asian, european, usian, it doesn't matter. With .com everyone is combined into a single global audience. The more two letter tlds are used the more people will be divided into seperate audiences again. This is to the benefit of those who wish to control and regulate the masses and contrary to the interests of the masses themselves.
okay, lets do a test. Lets use google to produce results that do not mirror my world view. I will search for popular keywords and check the first page to see how many country specific domains come up.
keyword - results
sex - 0
money - 0
drugs - 0
porn - 1
news - 1 (the bbc)
animals - 1 (the bbc)
taco - 1 (woot an actual foreign website!)
pig - 0
name - 0
computer 0
okay, that is 100 top 10 results by keyword. According to the all mighty google these sites are the most relevant on the internet for these fairly random subjects. 96% of the sites used non-country specific tlds. Of the remaining 4% half were the bbc I had already credited so that takes us to only 2% and those were ranked 8 and 9 at the bottom of their respective search pages.
I am sure the occurance goes up dramatically if you start searching for results in gobbily gook. But English has more or less become a trade language and while you will find many chinese sites in English you probably won't find many US sites in mandarian.
I am also sure there is a great deal of worthwhile content produced all over the globe and doubt these results reflect US versus foreign content. My point is that foreign content providers are using three letter tlds. I have a suspicion that two letter tld use is higher in asia but I can't verify it. Most asian content is meant to be consumed by asians and is non-english so I would never be exposed to it.
I also find three letter tlds valuable precisely because they do not divide the world into seperate segments like a map. A
"It would be better as .xxx.us since then it can fairly and reasonably be governed by US law."
Why would you want US law governing the internet? That would elminate most of the value of the internet. The xxx tld is to allow PRIVATE sector filtering, not government regulation. Government regulation and censorship is bad. Especially when you are talking about regulation of porn by a puritan government. I mean really, concerned soccor moms with delicate sensibilities certainly shouldn't have the ability to lobby and make some form of dirty and raunchy porn illegal.
okay, so evening charges at locations that only operate during normal business hours. Shouldn't be a problem.
That would provide more available id's, domains, whatever tag you like. However it would reduce the practical utility of the names. If I wanted a random string that was difficult to remember I would just use the IP address.
A name like 'google.com' is simple to remember. I am not bound to a bookmarks list to remember it. I can sit down at any browser anywhere and remember that very simple name off the top of my head. The name is easy enough that I had it memorized after a single exposure.
Your own post makes clear that your deep hierarchy would really only be useful for parsing by machine. The true value of domains has been shown to be not merely a fixed location, but by being a HUMAN parsable system.