You say school should be like a 9-5 job, but how about turning the problem on its face? End the 40-hour standard work week. Stop drilling into peoples' heads that life is about getting a good job and working at it. Stop teaching depth-first and try breadth. Let parents spend more time with their children, and let children spend more time with their parents, and spend time being alive. Of course, this won't happen any time soon, since our societal overlords dictate that we must keep our economy strong in order to maintain (at the root of it) military superiority.
Bertrand Russell provides a much more elegant discourse than I could hope to: In Praise of Idleness.
Actually, the scores, which is to say a particular layout and engraving of the music as notation, are copyrightable works in their own right, distinct from the copyright on a composition itself. Purchasing a print edition of score of some Bach composition, which is now public domain, does not entitle a person to photocopy and distribute that printed version. Technically it may be illegal to even use it as a reference to draft a new score of the composition. Interestingly, though, photocopying of sheet music among musicians is a very widespread and accepted practice, despite the common knowledge of its illegality.
Obviously the idea that they could make a quick buck is their motivation for suing. When was the last time you heard of them releasing a new hit moneymaker? The members of the band have clearly been convinced that they can make more money by suing than by writing new material. Such is the state of this industry. (Note: Since it sounds like I'm being contentious, I have to point out that I agree with you where it counts)
That's the first big question. However, a more important follow-up if they did: is it sustainable? Or would people who paid for it this time, after seeing how many people paid zero, choose not to pay for subsequent albums with this release model?
At least until your organization grows to a size large enough for the BSA to take notice of the fact that somewhere, someone in your particular is almost certainly in violation, and offers you the 'opportunity' to either switch to an organization-level license or face a friendly BSA audit. I guess no one's forcing us, though, since there are no literal guns pointed at literal heads.
By its nature it's hard to ascertain the magnitude of this, but it's fairly well accepted that Intelligence agencies like the CIA tend to be heavily involved in the drug trade. Keeping the drug trade strong but illicit allows them to more effectively exercise their nations' whims, as the black market economics are much more highly prone to covert manipulation. People like drugs enough that they won't quit using them, regardless of any supposed governmental restrictions. Criminalizing them makes ties them in with other more sensibly criminalized activities, such as arms dealing, and makes Intelligence (and subterfuge, installing friendly dictators, etc.) easier for those agencies.
Another bad reason to maintain the War on Drugs from any sensible person's perspective (unless one shares the McNamara-esque belief that global stability mandates and justifies extreme foreign subversion, which certainly has at least some merit). The take home message, though, is that there are much more powerful and vested interests in maintaining the War on Drugs than just civilian economics.
Getting off Earth is a far sight more realistic right now than getting to another solar system. And even that could mean things besides simply abandoning it and relocating. For instance, solar array satellites and lunar mining could be a massive step forward, even if we humans continue to live on the planet's surface for a while, and just ship those resources here for use. If we can harness enough extra-planetary energy, we can (hypothetically) convince the Earth to do whatever we want. I agree with you, but I think your emphasis on the level of the solar system level is slightly warped, considering the time you live in. We have the same basic pattern repeating over and over, right now at the planetary level, then at the solar system level, then the galaxy level, and who knows what else. See The Last Question, by Isaac Asimov.
I'm right with you on wanting higher oil prices sooner, but maybe for more fundamental reasons. Unless you believe the crazy claims that oil is somehow a renewable resource, then you have to accept that peak oil is coming and coming fast. This only means that oil prices, on the whole will continue to rise, forever, until it is just not affordable for anyone.
Now, here we are in the US with extremely artificially low prices. The cost for a gallon of gas at the station down the street is around $3.15USD right now. If this were to be put into man hours, it would be the equivalent of approximately 500 hours of man powered labor. Just imagine trying to pay a person $3.15 to go slave in a field for 500 hours! This gives some sense of how incredibly undervalued oil currently is. So that £3.72 you're currently paying for petrol is pretty damn ridiculous as well.
We are living in a buyer's market right now, folks, but it's not going to be that way too much longer. The question we have to face is how we're going to respond to it. By artificially keeping the oil prices low, we're just prolonging the inevitable decline, meaning it's going to come harder and faster when we do finally feel its effects.
Unfortunately, most people don't seem to realize how ridiculously dependent on oil our current civilization is. It isn't just transportation; all that cheap food you buy from WalMart? Grown to such excess using fertilizers and pesticides, made from petroleum. That cheap electricity that allows you to run three or four computers nonstop in your home? Depends on where you live, but almost certainly all that grid power comes from burning a fossil fuel. Enjoy plastics? Yep, oil there too.
The longer we keep our gas cheap, the quicker we run out of oil. Even though it's only a small portion of overall consumption, it's at least a good indicator. If we use up all our petroleum sources too quickly, before we have a chance to bootstrap our civilization to alternatives (read: solar power) on a broad enough scale to be self-sustaining, we may not have enough energy left to complete the conversion process. That would spell an almost certain return to agrarian society. In the best case, this would be a gradual slide, slowly decreasing our dependence on unsustainable technology over a generation or two; I don't really care to discuss the worst case. But let's just say, until gas prices start going up slowly and stably (and globally), we don't really have any idea what kind of shock we're going to be in for.
I just think it's a mistake to look too hard for "one solution" that we need to put all our money and hopes in.
Unless that solution is solar power. You don't have to look too hard to see that all the other (as long as we're confined to Earth) methods are basically indirect use of solar energy.
The term doesn't directly refer to any person's freedoms with the software. It doesn't mean 'software to which you are free to do anything you choose' and it doesn't mean 'software which you receive for no monetary exchange.' It derives from the fact that the software itself is free (libre), the same way a person in our society should reasonably be free from slavery. The GPL's purpose is to ensure that no one can 'enslave' the software, making sure it remains free.
Evidently the term 'free software' may not be appropriately self-descriptive, so perhaps a better name should've been given, but the software's own freedom is what is meant.
I want to light something on fire and throw myself in it....It's as bad as any (insert ideology) media bias and worse for the hard-working true blue documentarians who want to present both sides of an issue but are shown that doing that isn't sexy enough
I agree with most of what you've said, but one other thing that makes me want to pull my hair out is when people assume that every issue has exactly two sides.
Extensive tracking on a per device basis is probably going to use up energy itself, so I'm really not sure if that bit will achieve too much.
Isn't that a bit like claiming that because a profiler takes up some processor time, profiling code won't achieve much? Running per-device energy monitors perpetually may not be the best idea, but doing it for a week or two could prove very useful.
Is say physical assualt bad? Absolutely. And whilst worse for one person, I'm not convinced the overall suffering is actually worse than say ten guys facing the gnawing fear of layoffs, ten wives dealing with losing their homes they poured their souls in to, ten kids having to deal with daddy suddenly being unemployed and having to move away from friends and ten families living with the risk of no medical insurance.
I'm certain the Druids and Aztecs would agree with you on this. The fact that a few individuals needed to be sacrificied to appease gods was a small price to pay for the peace of mind concerning crop yields, disease, and other issues important to the whole societies.
Shirley Jackson might have a slightly different take on the matter.
(disclaimer: Like you, I'm not convinced one way or the other. Just thought I'd point out that it is indeed a very hard ethical conundrum)
Two-party politics are an emergent property of a plurality voting system. Attack the issue at its root by advocating approval voting or Condorcet voting; if these other systems can be adopted, the party problem may consequently clear up.
Actually, 'Don't Be Evil' is firmly ingrained in as part of Google's business model. It's explicitly stated in their SEC Filing (top of page vi). Of course, this leaves open wide interpretation of how to qualify 'evil', but I'm pretty sure the shareholders can't simply bypass it entirely. That is, it's very slightly more than just an informal motto.
I'm still working on that too, but in the meantime, here's something more affordable for me: monthly donations to the ACLU. Ten or twenty dollars a month is easily affordable for me. It's probably doable for you too, despite not being a billionaire just yet.
(I hope this doesn't come off as arrogant, but there seems to be a lot of misunderstanding in the responses to this story.)
It's pronounced See Plus Plus, just like prior versions of the language. The name of the language is not changing-- this is simply a new version. It's like asking how to pronounce 'Linux 2.6.13' instead of whatever normal older Linux version you're used to.
Re:Dvorak sucks if you're not American.
on
Advocating Dvorak
·
· Score: 1
Yes, you're right-- in fact that's the way the standard Swedish Dvorak variant is laid out. However, I personally type a lot more English than Swedish, and didn't feel that learning the Swedish variant was justified by the amount of typing I do, particularly since it would no doubt slow down my English typing. Unless of course I switched back and forth between English Dvorak and Swedish Dvorak, which may be a logical step, but one I haven't taken yet.
Re:Dvorak sucks if you're not American.
on
Advocating Dvorak
·
· Score: 2, Informative
Several international variants of Dvorak are quite common, such as Swedish variant. However, while these usually ship with X11, these are for some reason not readily available on Windows. So personally, I used Microsoft Keyboard Layout Creator to modify the default Dvorak layout and add the swedish letters äöå using the right alt + aoe keys, respectively (which are positioned asd for you QWERTY diehards). I've found it works very well.
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You say school should be like a 9-5 job, but how about turning the problem on its face? End the 40-hour standard work week. Stop drilling into peoples' heads that life is about getting a good job and working at it. Stop teaching depth-first and try breadth. Let parents spend more time with their children, and let children spend more time with their parents, and spend time being alive. Of course, this won't happen any time soon, since our societal overlords dictate that we must keep our economy strong in order to maintain (at the root of it) military superiority.
Bertrand Russell provides a much more elegant discourse than I could hope to: In Praise of Idleness.
Actually, the scores, which is to say a particular layout and engraving of the music as notation, are copyrightable works in their own right, distinct from the copyright on a composition itself. Purchasing a print edition of score of some Bach composition, which is now public domain, does not entitle a person to photocopy and distribute that printed version. Technically it may be illegal to even use it as a reference to draft a new score of the composition. Interestingly, though, photocopying of sheet music among musicians is a very widespread and accepted practice, despite the common knowledge of its illegality.
Obviously the idea that they could make a quick buck is their motivation for suing. When was the last time you heard of them releasing a new hit moneymaker? The members of the band have clearly been convinced that they can make more money by suing than by writing new material. Such is the state of this industry. (Note: Since it sounds like I'm being contentious, I have to point out that I agree with you where it counts)
That's the first big question. However, a more important follow-up if they did: is it sustainable? Or would people who paid for it this time, after seeing how many people paid zero, choose not to pay for subsequent albums with this release model?
nobody is forcing you to agree with this license.
At least until your organization grows to a size large enough for the BSA to take notice of the fact that somewhere, someone in your particular is almost certainly in violation, and offers you the 'opportunity' to either switch to an organization-level license or face a friendly BSA audit. I guess no one's forcing us, though, since there are no literal guns pointed at literal heads.
By its nature it's hard to ascertain the magnitude of this, but it's fairly well accepted that Intelligence agencies like the CIA tend to be heavily involved in the drug trade. Keeping the drug trade strong but illicit allows them to more effectively exercise their nations' whims, as the black market economics are much more highly prone to covert manipulation. People like drugs enough that they won't quit using them, regardless of any supposed governmental restrictions. Criminalizing them makes ties them in with other more sensibly criminalized activities, such as arms dealing, and makes Intelligence (and subterfuge, installing friendly dictators, etc.) easier for those agencies.
Another bad reason to maintain the War on Drugs from any sensible person's perspective (unless one shares the McNamara-esque belief that global stability mandates and justifies extreme foreign subversion, which certainly has at least some merit). The take home message, though, is that there are much more powerful and vested interests in maintaining the War on Drugs than just civilian economics.
Getting off Earth is a far sight more realistic right now than getting to another solar system. And even that could mean things besides simply abandoning it and relocating. For instance, solar array satellites and lunar mining could be a massive step forward, even if we humans continue to live on the planet's surface for a while, and just ship those resources here for use. If we can harness enough extra-planetary energy, we can (hypothetically) convince the Earth to do whatever we want. I agree with you, but I think your emphasis on the level of the solar system level is slightly warped, considering the time you live in. We have the same basic pattern repeating over and over, right now at the planetary level, then at the solar system level, then the galaxy level, and who knows what else. See The Last Question, by Isaac Asimov.
I'm right with you on wanting higher oil prices sooner, but maybe for more fundamental reasons. Unless you believe the crazy claims that oil is somehow a renewable resource, then you have to accept that peak oil is coming and coming fast. This only means that oil prices, on the whole will continue to rise, forever, until it is just not affordable for anyone.
Now, here we are in the US with extremely artificially low prices. The cost for a gallon of gas at the station down the street is around $3.15USD right now. If this were to be put into man hours, it would be the equivalent of approximately 500 hours of man powered labor. Just imagine trying to pay a person $3.15 to go slave in a field for 500 hours! This gives some sense of how incredibly undervalued oil currently is. So that £3.72 you're currently paying for petrol is pretty damn ridiculous as well.
We are living in a buyer's market right now, folks, but it's not going to be that way too much longer. The question we have to face is how we're going to respond to it. By artificially keeping the oil prices low, we're just prolonging the inevitable decline, meaning it's going to come harder and faster when we do finally feel its effects.
Unfortunately, most people don't seem to realize how ridiculously dependent on oil our current civilization is. It isn't just transportation; all that cheap food you buy from WalMart? Grown to such excess using fertilizers and pesticides, made from petroleum. That cheap electricity that allows you to run three or four computers nonstop in your home? Depends on where you live, but almost certainly all that grid power comes from burning a fossil fuel. Enjoy plastics? Yep, oil there too.
The longer we keep our gas cheap, the quicker we run out of oil. Even though it's only a small portion of overall consumption, it's at least a good indicator. If we use up all our petroleum sources too quickly, before we have a chance to bootstrap our civilization to alternatives (read: solar power) on a broad enough scale to be self-sustaining, we may not have enough energy left to complete the conversion process. That would spell an almost certain return to agrarian society. In the best case, this would be a gradual slide, slowly decreasing our dependence on unsustainable technology over a generation or two; I don't really care to discuss the worst case. But let's just say, until gas prices start going up slowly and stably (and globally), we don't really have any idea what kind of shock we're going to be in for.
Global warming isn't the issue. It's peak oil.
I just think it's a mistake to look too hard for "one solution" that we need to put all our money and hopes in.
Unless that solution is solar power. You don't have to look too hard to see that all the other (as long as we're confined to Earth) methods are basically indirect use of solar energy.
The term doesn't directly refer to any person's freedoms with the software. It doesn't mean 'software to which you are free to do anything you choose' and it doesn't mean 'software which you receive for no monetary exchange.' It derives from the fact that the software itself is free (libre), the same way a person in our society should reasonably be free from slavery. The GPL's purpose is to ensure that no one can 'enslave' the software, making sure it remains free.
Evidently the term 'free software' may not be appropriately self-descriptive, so perhaps a better name should've been given, but the software's own freedom is what is meant.
I want to light something on fire and throw myself in it....It's as bad as any (insert ideology) media bias and worse for the hard-working true blue documentarians who want to present both sides of an issue but are shown that doing that isn't sexy enough
I agree with most of what you've said, but one other thing that makes me want to pull my hair out is when people assume that every issue has exactly two sides.
Daylight savings is usually 'in effect' in July.
Such as an SSID advertisement?
I think Boston's government gave us an ideal example of this 'overuse'.
Extensive tracking on a per device basis is probably going to use up energy itself, so I'm really not sure if that bit will achieve too much.
Isn't that a bit like claiming that because a profiler takes up some processor time, profiling code won't achieve much? Running per-device energy monitors perpetually may not be the best idea, but doing it for a week or two could prove very useful.
Is say physical assualt bad? Absolutely. And whilst worse for one person, I'm not convinced the overall suffering is actually worse than say ten guys facing the gnawing fear of layoffs, ten wives dealing with losing their homes they poured their souls in to, ten kids having to deal with daddy suddenly being unemployed and having to move away from friends and ten families living with the risk of no medical insurance.
I'm certain the Druids and Aztecs would agree with you on this. The fact that a few individuals needed to be sacrificied to appease gods was a small price to pay for the peace of mind concerning crop yields, disease, and other issues important to the whole societies.
Shirley Jackson might have a slightly different take on the matter.
(disclaimer: Like you, I'm not convinced one way or the other. Just thought I'd point out that it is indeed a very hard ethical conundrum)
Two-party politics are an emergent property of a plurality voting system. Attack the issue at its root by advocating approval voting or Condorcet voting; if these other systems can be adopted, the party problem may consequently clear up.
Actually, 'Don't Be Evil' is firmly ingrained in as part of Google's business model. It's explicitly stated in their SEC Filing (top of page vi). Of course, this leaves open wide interpretation of how to qualify 'evil', but I'm pretty sure the shareholders can't simply bypass it entirely. That is, it's very slightly more than just an informal motto.
And if it's copyright infringement, call it copyright infringement.
Quite right, and this applies just as well to grandparent and great-grandparent as it does to parent.
I'm still working on that too, but in the meantime, here's something more affordable for me: monthly donations to the ACLU. Ten or twenty dollars a month is easily affordable for me. It's probably doable for you too, despite not being a billionaire just yet.
...at your local Open Source Liquor Store.
Personally, I prefer FreeBSD Stouts.
(I hope this doesn't come off as arrogant, but there seems to be a lot of misunderstanding in the responses to this story.)
It's pronounced See Plus Plus, just like prior versions of the language. The name of the language is not changing-- this is simply a new version. It's like asking how to pronounce 'Linux 2.6.13' instead of whatever normal older Linux version you're used to.
Yes, you're right-- in fact that's the way the standard Swedish Dvorak variant is laid out. However, I personally type a lot more English than Swedish, and didn't feel that learning the Swedish variant was justified by the amount of typing I do, particularly since it would no doubt slow down my English typing. Unless of course I switched back and forth between English Dvorak and Swedish Dvorak, which may be a logical step, but one I haven't taken yet.
Several international variants of Dvorak are quite common, such as Swedish variant. However, while these usually ship with X11, these are for some reason not readily available on Windows. So personally, I used Microsoft Keyboard Layout Creator to modify the default Dvorak layout and add the swedish letters äöå using the right alt + aoe keys, respectively (which are positioned asd for you QWERTY diehards). I've found it works very well.