Not to mention that, at least in my home state of Louisiana, all elementary school teachers are required to take at least 9 credit hours of science courses. Granted, "Physics for Social Sciences Majors" isn't exactly rocket science (hmm, can it still be called physics then?), but it's certainly a better situation than was mentioned earlier.
Now *MATH* instruction at the elementary school level... but even that has gotten better recently. The NCTM math curriculum reforms may have been roundly blasted by the fundies, but given the abysmal math education of most elementary school teachers, they were at least better than nothing and probably the best that could be done with the current teaching pool.
Microsoft reminds me of some spammer scum I had an encounter with some time ago. They claimed "We don't spam!", just as Microsoft is claiming "We don't astroturf!". No, they didn't spam. They just paid other people to sell their product, and those other people spammed constantly and continuously for months .
Point: Microsoft's proxies are paid PR flacks, and Microsoft is responsible for their actions, no matter how much Microsoft tries to disclaim it.
In other news, The Register reports that Microsoft is making false accusations of selling counterfeit software in order to shut down dealers who dare buy shrink-wrapped copies of OEM product on the open market. This shows exactly how anti-competitive Microsoft really is -- they believe in the open market, as long as it's not their own product being sold in it! It also shows that Microsoft is a company whose management is made up of habitual liars, but we already knew that.
Perl god. Ex-con, for the crime of making Intel's "security" guys look like morons. The paper he was writing detailing the security flaws in their network was one of the main pieces of evidence used against him in the trial.
Granted, you aren't going to write an OS kernel in Java or any other language that depends upon heap-allocated data structures. But there's no reason why you could not write, say, inetd, cron, tar, or any number of other programs in something like Perl that depends upon heap-allocated data structures. (What? You mean someone is actually doing that?!)
I currently make my living writing.jsp's and Java servelets (that's not what I signed up to do, but hey, as long as they pay me, I don't mind).
Conclusions:
1. Java is a nice language. I would prefer Java to C++ any time of the day.
2. Java is a useless language outside of a very controlled environment. Because it is not Open Source, it is highly unportable (just try running Java on OpenBSD sometime!), and because the existing runtimes are so bloated, it's only useful for applications where you don't mind having a spare 40 megabytes of bloat hanging around.
In other words, Java is *not* a panacea, and certainly isn't a replacement for highly dynamic languages such as Python or Ruby, which tackle an entirely different problem set.
My opinion of Ruby: Nice language. Some stupidities though -- the whole notion of making variable types case-sensitive reeks of Fortran. I considered Ruby for the TapiocaStor project, but had to dismiss it from contention because it's not yet mature enough. We're using Java, but only because we can't use Python for legal reasons.
Following the reasoning, it appears that the California appeals court held that California law applies everywhere. By their reasoning, I could be arrested here in Arizona for breaking a law in California, even though I've never been anywhere near California!
I can't see how such a ludicrous proposition would survive appeal. On the other hand, given the current state of this country (which allows jack-booted thugs to steal people's homes and cars with only a mockery of "due process" by merely alleging "someone with that much money must have gotten it by selling drugs"), I'm not so sure. Judges have ruled that civil forfeiture (taking of property from people who have not been found guilty of any crime) is legal, so they may very well "buy" California's argument that they have jurisdiction over the whole wide world.
There is no such thing. The U.S. Constitution does not recognise a such thing as intellectual property, i.e., the notion that ideas can be owned. What it does recognize is that some restrictions on the uses of the intellectual commons are needed in order to, in their words, "To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries;".
This *exclusive right to use the concepts* is indeed property. But the intellectual concepts (ideas) themselves are not property. By using the phrase "intellectual property" we buy in to the myth that ideas can be owned. They can't. All that can be owned, according to the Constitution, is the exclusive right to USE an idea for a limited period of time.
In other words, we should use the phrase "Intellectual use rights" rather than "Intellectual property rights" because the the latter phrase says that ideas can be owned, while the former phrase says the truth -- that only the use of ideas can be owned, and that, only for a limited period of time (though the latest copyright extensions make a mockery of the term 'limited').
"And remember that if they don't enforce their patents, they lose them."
*FALSE*. If you fail to enforce a *PARTICULAR* violation of a patent for 6 years, you lose the right to sue for *THAT PARTICULAR* violation of the patent. However, you do not lose the right to sue for *OTHER* violations of the patent.
This is all quite plainly laid out in patent law and case law. See, e.g, the appropriate section of Title 35.
Oddly, I don't see many Swedes or Finns , good socialists they are, lining up at our borders or dying to get into our country. Perhaps socialism isn't as evil as it's made out to be, or capitalism as good as it's made out to be?
What we must not forget is that limited liability corporations are an invention of government. Before the LLC was invented by government, owners of a business were personally liable for all wrongdoings done by their business. The LLC grants the owners immunity from prosecution, thus allowing the LLC to gather funds from greater numbers of investers, thus allowing companies like Dolby to exist. And that's good. But let's not forget that Dolby is a creation of the government, and is the direct result of government intervention in our economy (i.e., the granting of immunity to the owners of businesses in direct contradiction of a thousand years of common law).
It's amusing the the boosters of capitalism turn a blind eye to this blatant interference of government into our own economy, all the while condemning other nations' governments' control over their own economies. But not surprising. Hypocrits never see the beam in their own eye when they turn to condemn the splinter in another's. The fact of the matter is that we practice "corporate socialism" rather than capitalism here in the United States. We give certain businesses special immunities or priviliges (such as their owners not being sue-able) in exchange for the benefits of that arrangement (being able to better concentrate capital to do things like, e.g, build multi-billion dollar fabs). The benefits have been enormous in terms of the ability of this country to muster resources and apply them to leading-edge technologies. This does not render it any less socialism, though.
The question was how credible it was to criticise LT for having an editor who doesn't believe in a "Linux community" on OSDN, when OSDN has a site that doesn't run Linux. The notion was that OSDN was hiding something. I explained that OSDN was *NOT* hiding something -- it's right there in the HTTP headers -- and that furthermore the site in question was not even run by OSDN.
I would say that discussion of OSDN's ethics (i.e., discussing allegations that they are somehow "hiding" NT usage) is definitely on-topic if we're talking about journalistic ethics. You may want the topic to only discuss LT's ethics and not OSDN's, but that's not how Slashdot works, and not how Slashdot has *ever* worked.
The fan on my Compaq Presario 1800 only runs under the following conditions:
I'm charging the battery, AND
I'm running a CPU/disk intensive job like a compile, OR
I'm using my 801.3b card for wireless networking (it sucks up the juice).
If I rely on the built-in Ethernet and am just editing text/browsing the internet/some other non-intensive task, the fan never comes on. Even if doing CPU-intensive tasks, the fan never comes on unless I'm charging the battery or have the wireless networking card plugged in. (The wireless card is, alas, a power hog, and generates a lot of heat, thus why it triggers the thermostatic control of the fan).
My only complaint is that the 20gb laptop hard drives are *LOUD*. My Presario doesn't have a hard drive activity light but that does not matter -- you can hear the hard drive working:-}.
I get about 5 hours out of my Presario's battery in normal usage, but when I plug in my 802.3b card, my battery life goes down to maybe 3 hours max. And the card gets *HOT*...
Which wireless card do you use, and does it have the same problems?
My only problem with IBM laptops are the "swizzle sticks". I learned on a touchpad, and I just can't navigate with a swizzle stick:-{. I wanted to buy an IBM laptop, I really did, but ended up going with a Compaq laptop that was on sale at my local Fry's Electronics. It's not as good a laptop (rather bare-bones, feature-wise) but has a touch pad rather than a swizzle stick. If I can't navigate my GUI desktop, what good is an extra feature or two?
Well, I think it is interesting that someone mod'ed my post down as 'off topic' when it was directed towards the credibility of a particular set of news sites, but anyhow...
Monster.com runs on IIS. Hotjobs.com runs on Netscape/Enterprise (don't know what OS). dice.com runs on Apache/Unix (don't know what variant of Unix, but probably Solaris). None of them try to hide what web server they run. Netcraft is a survey site, and is not 100% accurate at reporting on any one particular site, though if they sample thousands of sites the errors tend to average out so you can pretty much trust their aggregate numbers.
If OSDN is partnering or contracting out jobs.osdn.com, they have a limited number of people to partner with. None of these people appear to be running Linux.
There you have it. You wouldn't happen to be an employee of Internet.com, would you?:-).
[eric@ehome]$ telnet jobs.osdn.com 80
Trying 216.138.211.59...
Connected to H59.C211.tor.velocet.net (216.138.211.59).
Escape character is '^]'.
HEAD / HTTP/1.0
Yes, does appear to be IIS on Windows, but it also appears that they do not themselves operate jobs.osdn.com, but rather farm it out to a subcontractor.
Like Lucent? (snort). In case you're wondering, for many years AT&T/Lucent were "blue chip" stocks. Lucent only barely avoided bankruptcy a few weeks ago when they managed to get their bankers to forward a little more capital (they were out of cash -- tapped out, broke, nada in da banka), and pretty soon their stock is going to be worth about as much as EBIZ stock (hmm, 3 cents a share last time I looked:-).
There's no such thing as a low-risk stock. You ought to see my 401(k). It's a blood bath. Not a single stock fund offered by my 401(k) has made money this year -- not even the most conservative ones.
The thing about government bonds (which is what the SS fund is invested in) is that while they don't yield a whole lot, at least they don't lose money.
Remember, Watergate started *BEFORE* Nixon was elected for a second term.
The American public has a limited attention span for complicated stuff. It was not until a Democratic congress started impeachment hearings that Nixon's misdeeds came to the average American's attention, despite all the special prosecutors and etc. which had previously been appointed. If it can't be turned into a 5 second sound bite, the American public isn't interested in it.
Blame the media all you like, but they just give the American public what they want, for the most part -- bland, non-threatening, unintellectual "news" that doesn't challenge the status quo and that can be summarized in a 5-second sound bite.
Send your check from President Shrub ("he ain't big enough to be a full-sized Bush) to the EFF. I did.
It'd be better off in the social security fund, but since Shrub sent it to me, I'm using it some other way to secure my future.
Be aware that Lessig is a member of the EFF board, so it's not like the New York Times decided to run an editorial -- Lessig submitted it as a "guest editorial". Probably the NYT editors aren't quite sure what Lessig is talking about but it's got something to do with 1st Amendment so they published it (reporters got this thing for 1st Amendment, y'know!).
President Shrub ("he ain't big enough to be a full-sized bush") is sending money that could be used to pay down the national debt around to people. He sent me $300. I just mailed a check for $300 to the EFF.
Way I figure it, that money could be better used in the social security fund, but since Shrub doesn't want it there, I'm going to use it another way to protect my future.
There is no militant branch. We're all a bunch of lamers who will rant and rave for a few hours on Slashdot, and tomorrow forget about it. *DO* something? Why, that'd require leaving the computer keyboard!
Defcom actually has two sides. The first side is the one you're mentioning. The other side are the "white hat" security experts who attend in order to see what the "black hats" are up to or just to see the latest security technology. For example, Bruce Schneir ("Mr. Crypto") was there this year and actually attended Dmitry's conference (see his note at
Cryptome).
Slashdot Mirror
Now *MATH* instruction at the elementary school level... but even that has gotten better recently. The NCTM math curriculum reforms may have been roundly blasted by the fundies, but given the abysmal math education of most elementary school teachers, they were at least better than nothing and probably the best that could be done with the current teaching pool.
Point: Microsoft's proxies are paid PR flacks, and Microsoft is responsible for their actions, no matter how much Microsoft tries to disclaim it.
In other news, The Register reports that Microsoft is making false accusations of selling counterfeit software in order to shut down dealers who dare buy shrink-wrapped copies of OEM product on the open market. This shows exactly how anti-competitive Microsoft really is -- they believe in the open market, as long as it's not their own product being sold in it! It also shows that Microsoft is a company whose management is made up of habitual liars, but we already knew that.
-E
Mixmaster anonymous remailer network (sigh). It's a shame that you can do right in the United States only by remaining anonymous.
Conclusions:
1. Java is a nice language. I would prefer Java to C++ any time of the day.
2. Java is a useless language outside of a very controlled environment. Because it is not Open Source, it is highly unportable (just try running Java on OpenBSD sometime!), and because the existing runtimes are so bloated, it's only useful for applications where you don't mind having a spare 40 megabytes of bloat hanging around.
In other words, Java is *not* a panacea, and certainly isn't a replacement for highly dynamic languages such as Python or Ruby, which tackle an entirely different problem set.
For a bit of background:
The Problem with Java
My opinion of Ruby: Nice language. Some stupidities though -- the whole notion of making variable types case-sensitive reeks of Fortran. I considered Ruby for the TapiocaStor project, but had to dismiss it from contention because it's not yet mature enough. We're using Java, but only because we can't use Python for legal reasons.
-E
I can't see how such a ludicrous proposition would survive appeal. On the other hand, given the current state of this country (which allows jack-booted thugs to steal people's homes and cars with only a mockery of "due process" by merely alleging "someone with that much money must have gotten it by selling drugs"), I'm not so sure. Judges have ruled that civil forfeiture (taking of property from people who have not been found guilty of any crime) is legal, so they may very well "buy" California's argument that they have jurisdiction over the whole wide world.
-E
This *exclusive right to use the concepts* is indeed property. But the intellectual concepts (ideas) themselves are not property. By using the phrase "intellectual property" we buy in to the myth that ideas can be owned. They can't. All that can be owned, according to the Constitution, is the exclusive right to USE an idea for a limited period of time.
In other words, we should use the phrase "Intellectual use rights" rather than "Intellectual property rights" because the the latter phrase says that ideas can be owned, while the former phrase says the truth -- that only the use of ideas can be owned, and that, only for a limited period of time (though the latest copyright extensions make a mockery of the term 'limited').
-E
*FALSE*. If you fail to enforce a *PARTICULAR* violation of a patent for 6 years, you lose the right to sue for *THAT PARTICULAR* violation of the patent. However, you do not lose the right to sue for *OTHER* violations of the patent.
This is all quite plainly laid out in patent law and case law. See, e.g, the appropriate section of Title 35.
-E
What we must not forget is that limited liability corporations are an invention of government. Before the LLC was invented by government, owners of a business were personally liable for all wrongdoings done by their business. The LLC grants the owners immunity from prosecution, thus allowing the LLC to gather funds from greater numbers of investers, thus allowing companies like Dolby to exist. And that's good. But let's not forget that Dolby is a creation of the government, and is the direct result of government intervention in our economy (i.e., the granting of immunity to the owners of businesses in direct contradiction of a thousand years of common law).
It's amusing the the boosters of capitalism turn a blind eye to this blatant interference of government into our own economy, all the while condemning other nations' governments' control over their own economies. But not surprising. Hypocrits never see the beam in their own eye when they turn to condemn the splinter in another's. The fact of the matter is that we practice "corporate socialism" rather than capitalism here in the United States. We give certain businesses special immunities or priviliges (such as their owners not being sue-able) in exchange for the benefits of that arrangement (being able to better concentrate capital to do things like, e.g, build multi-billion dollar fabs). The benefits have been enormous in terms of the ability of this country to muster resources and apply them to leading-edge technologies. This does not render it any less socialism, though.
-E
I would say that discussion of OSDN's ethics (i.e., discussing allegations that they are somehow "hiding" NT usage) is definitely on-topic if we're talking about journalistic ethics. You may want the topic to only discuss LT's ethics and not OSDN's, but that's not how Slashdot works, and not how Slashdot has *ever* worked.
-E
- I'm charging the battery, AND
- I'm running a CPU/disk intensive job like a compile, OR
- I'm using my 801.3b card for wireless networking (it sucks up the juice).
If I rely on the built-in Ethernet and am just editing text/browsing the internet/some other non-intensive task, the fan never comes on. Even if doing CPU-intensive tasks, the fan never comes on unless I'm charging the battery or have the wireless networking card plugged in. (The wireless card is, alas, a power hog, and generates a lot of heat, thus why it triggers the thermostatic control of the fan).My only complaint is that the 20gb laptop hard drives are *LOUD*. My Presario doesn't have a hard drive activity light but that does not matter -- you can hear the hard drive working :-}.
-E
Which wireless card do you use, and does it have the same problems?
-E
-E
-E
Monster.com runs on IIS. Hotjobs.com runs on Netscape/Enterprise (don't know what OS). dice.com runs on Apache/Unix (don't know what variant of Unix, but probably Solaris). None of them try to hide what web server they run. Netcraft is a survey site, and is not 100% accurate at reporting on any one particular site, though if they sample thousands of sites the errors tend to average out so you can pretty much trust their aggregate numbers.
If OSDN is partnering or contracting out jobs.osdn.com, they have a limited number of people to partner with. None of these people appear to be running Linux.
There you have it. You wouldn't happen to be an employee of Internet.com, would you? :-).
-E
Trying 216.138.211.59...
Connected to H59.C211.tor.velocet.net (216.138.211.59).
Escape character is '^]'.
HEAD / HTTP/1.0
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Server: Microsoft-IIS/5.0
Date: Mon, 06 Aug 2001 16:32:11 GMT
Connection: Keep-Alive
Content-Length: 41966
Content-Type: text/html
Set-Cookie: ASPSESSIONIDGQQGQNMY=CECCFLMBNIDDPJMFPCILNIDB; path=/
Cache-control: private
Connection closed by foreign host.
Yes, does appear to be IIS on Windows, but it also appears that they do not themselves operate jobs.osdn.com, but rather farm it out to a subcontractor.
-E
-E
There's no such thing as a low-risk stock. You ought to see my 401(k). It's a blood bath. Not a single stock fund offered by my 401(k) has made money this year -- not even the most conservative ones.
The thing about government bonds (which is what the SS fund is invested in) is that while they don't yield a whole lot, at least they don't lose money.
-E
The American public has a limited attention span for complicated stuff. It was not until a Democratic congress started impeachment hearings that Nixon's misdeeds came to the average American's attention, despite all the special prosecutors and etc. which had previously been appointed. If it can't be turned into a 5 second sound bite, the American public isn't interested in it.
Blame the media all you like, but they just give the American public what they want, for the most part -- bland, non-threatening, unintellectual "news" that doesn't challenge the status quo and that can be summarized in a 5-second sound bite.
-E
-E
-E
Way I figure it, that money could be better used in the social security fund, but since Shrub doesn't want it there, I'm going to use it another way to protect my future.
-E
-E
-E