Help me understand, which of your rights are violated here?
The one not to be harassed. If you're looking for me to go find a particular place in the books that enumerates that right, try the 9th Amendment: "The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people." It doesn't have to be written somewhere in order for it to be a right.
Well, yes. However none of the scenarios you've listed actually requires a new law. Someone saying "you suck" is a non-invasive issue. A bot posting "you suck" a couple of times a day is even more annoying but it's still non-invasive, IMO (you can filter it out technologically without being interrupted). A bot doing that a couple times a second is already illegal, that's a DOS attack. As to the threat, there are laws against that as well.
I most definitely agree with you that they are separate issues, but it doesn't look to me like we need to extend phone prank law legislation to blogging in order to cover them.
Yes, I would prefer an opt-in list for those masochists out there as opposed to the opt-out list. I don't think one can make a case for outlawing telemarketers because...well, the problem is the 'unsolicited' part. I suppose there are people out there who like to receive 'offers' by phone. Heck, if the businesses involved were smart, they'd start offering special discounts available only to people that get their call, encouraging people to not be on the DNC list. I figure there's nothing that should be illegal about that.
I would prefer if there was some sort of agreement between me and my phone company, but, as you've mentioned, without some sort of regulation, who would force the telemarketers to flag themselves as such to make it easy for the phone company to filter them out?
Finally, I agree with you that a smaller government is good, and that just what it should do is a fine balancing act. Nothing's ever easy, is it?
Thanks for pointing out that this type of stuff isn't a clear-cut issue, though. I may have made my original post come across too much as a "my foot is down, this is the way things should be done" post, when I didn't meant to. I don't claim to have the solution to all problems. Very often my sig is informative as hell in regard to my posts:)
So you don't respect the free speech that is protected in the Constition, but you do respect the ability to tax people who don't want to pay for something that doesn't affect them?
I don't have to withstand harrassment as part of my respect to free speech. In fact, your right to free speech stops when you start interfering with my rights. You can't yell "Fire!" in a crowded theatre, you can't make remarks to your secretary that qualify as sexual harrassment, and you can't call me to make a prank call. That is not an exhaustive list.
I don't agree with extending this law to the internet, because unlike phone calls, postings are non-invasive. I'll agree that internet postings qualify as righteous free speech because it's not actively interrupting someone. If you call me to make a prank call, even if I do subscribe to your Caller ID "solution," I have to actually go check who is calling me. That's all fine and good at normal hours, but not if you're waking me up at 3am. I don't need to answer the phone before you've harassed me. Sure, I could turn off my phone for the night, but then I'd miss potentially important calls. On top of that, inconvenient times aren't universal. I may work nights, so a 3pm call would bother me. I may be doing something else other than sleeping when you've interrupted me. My phone line isn't public, I'm paying for the damn thing, and you don't get to call whenever you feel like it to annoy me. You call if you have my permission to, implicit or explicit (that's why I'm also in favor of the Do-Not-Call list, if it's unsolicited, they don't have my permission to call).
I see your points about the inneficiency of government, and as much as I want to see less governmental interference, there are some things that ARE a government's job. Protecting my rights is the government's job.
Well, that's true, but it doesn't invalidate the points by the parent. Ender agonized about what he did to Bonzo and the first bully after the fact (even without knowing that Bonzo had died, he still disliked what he did to him). However, when cornered, his only goal was survival at any cost.
At the time Ender was in danger, he didn't care if Bonzo was hurt by his actions, which is what the government thought made him such a great leader. He had compassion, but he was definitely capable of doing whatever it took to survive.
Do you work for the RIAA or something? That seems like the same argument for variable pricing they use.
First, I have issues with your "subtract all the filler songs" argument. Do you know why the filler songs are there? Because people wouldn't pay that same price for a cd that only contains the 2 hit songs. Obviously, they have value. Personally, I'd prefer that the band in question wait to release an album until they have enough *good* songs to fill the album. At least with the buy one song at a time model, the fillers start becoming unnecessary again.
Second, I have issues with your candy bag arguments. If the 10 piece bag cost $10, you're not suddenly buying a candy bar for $1...because the candy bar *was* in the mix bag of candy. I mean, the hit song is in the cd, right?
Third, you're not considering the money the industry is saving by not having to press the cd's, print the covers, and ship them to stores everywhere.
Yes, but being more efficient doesn't mean that it uses less fuel. It means it uses less fuel than an equivalent weight car.
Let's say the original engine has an efficiency of 35% (that's really darn efficient for combustion engines). So, of all the energy produced in the engine, only 35% is being used to move the car.
So the new car with the steam engine is 15% more efficient. That means the engine has now an efficiency of 40.25% (you don't just add the percentages, it's 15% more efficient than the previous value, so that's 35/100 + 35/100 *.15). So now, of all the engine produced by the engine, 40.25% is being used to move the car. But it's moving a heavier car, which needs more energy to move it the same distance, so it might not be able to move it as far.
Basically, it's a more efficient engine, but it doesn't mean that it, by definition, gets better mileage. Obviously, BMW would kill the idea if it didn't, but it's probably not a huge increase. Think the hype around hybrids that actually get significantly less miles per gallon than advertised.
Alright. Back before Jack Valenti retired, he pointed out the same thing and it annoyed me. When people who are not part of the MPAA say that, it annoys me even more.
YOU SHOULD NOT HAVE TO PAY A LICENSING FEE TO CREATE A PLAYER THAT CAN PLAY THE MEDIA
Products I pay for shouldn't be my only legal option. Some developer wants to spend his time to give an open source DVD player to the community, he should be able to legally break the freaking encryption and do it. That's not breaking copyright, so why the hell is it illegal?
I'm not even going to mention the fact that it took years for a licenced player to appear for Linux, since I don't think that's the issue. If people don't want to make commercial software for a platform, that's their prerogative, it might not be profitable in that platform. The point is, I should damn well be able to do whatever I want to play the contents of the media I bought in whatever device I own. That includes ripping the dvd and placing the movies in my laptop / file server at home.
Well, if you're interested on hard real-time simulations in general, check these guys out: RTAI. They've been around for a long time too, so you shouldn't be so scheptical of the linux kernel being modified to be hard real-time.
It's free (as in freedom AND beer), and it works pretty well, especially with I/O cards that are supported by comedi drivers, which are designed with real-time use in mind.
We use them for our real-time HIL simulations at my department, and we're happy with the results.
If you're serious about moving out of the US, I recommend you do some extended research other than just finding a job and going there on a weekend for an interview / sightseeing. Since many jobs will help you find a place to live, sometimes it's incredible how little people know the place they're moving to. As someone who has lived both in and outside the US I can tell you that even though you and I may consider some of the social policies 'better,' there are plenty of little things that may be annoying to you, and you may or may not be willing to live with them as they accumulate. Save some money and try to arrange an extended vacation of a month or so at least in your country or choice.
I don't know much about Canada to give you examples of that particular country, but some things I find extremely annoying about places I've been to outside the US (If you're wondering the exact nature of my experience, I've lived in Brazil as a child, been for some time in Italy when I was even younger, and have recently taken a short work trip to the UK where I was reminded of some of these annoyances. The example below are straight from what I remember from my week in the UK, some of which also apply to Brazil and Italy. I'm currently living in South Carolina).
No free refills of sodas at restaurants (keep the fat american jokes to yourselves)
Cities tend to completely close down extremely early (as early as 6-8pm, depending on the place). Even relatively big cities seem to suffer from this.
Gas prices. Gas is *cheap* in the US, I'm sure you've heard this. If you live someplace with a decent mass transportation network, it's not much better (I know it's much better for the environment). Subway and bus tickets add up when you need to use them everyday to get to work, even if you buy the package deals.
There are plenty of other little things like that, but nothing else is immediately coming to mind at the moment. They're all individually pretty benign, and you'll certainly get used to a lot of things that are different, and perhaps even find the american way annoying as opposed to the new place, but like I said, you should do your research and find out exactly what those little things are.
And, of course, the rant doesn't include the big things. A move to another country involves a lot of work, but responsible people remember to check the big things, and I assume you're doing your research and will be well prepared for that. What people forget are the little things, and then they transform into the whining American who keep telling their new friends how much better it was in the US when they didn't have to deal with these annoyances:)
Regardless if Shostack believes they can get here or not, that quote merely says that preparing for their arrival is worthless even if you do believe they'll one day get here. The point is that they're bound to be vastly different from us, and we know nothing about them. If iguanas offered you flies...well...first, you wouldn't recognize it as an offering, second, even if you did, it's worthless to you. Maybe when you offer 'political treaties' to those aliens, they'll take all the noise coming from your mouth as a tremendous insult and kill you on the spot. Maybe they won't recognize us as intelligent, and figure that all that we've built is no different than a beaver building a dam. Maybe they're not interested in meeting other intelligent beings, and just stopped by to get a drink of water while they're on the way to the next star. You don't know what they want, you don't know how they think, how can you possibly prepare?
I don't avoid burning myself because I'm afraid of fire...
Yes, you do. You don't run away at the sight of fire (that's animalistic fear), but you don't put your hand in the middle of a fire because you're afraid of the pain, and depending on severety, you're afraid of living the rest of your life with a deformed hand, or one that has lost some functionality.
Intelligence changes the nature of fear and allows you to do evaluate the danger and be fearful of the right things. So, you know that as long as you don't go putting your hand in the fire, and you are careful, you minimize the chances of getting burned, while animals minimize the chances of getting burned by just running the hell away from it (well, I had a dog once that was fascinated by a candle and decided it just *had* to smell that bright red wavy thing on top of the white stick, but that's besides the point).
I think a complete lack of fear would completely change the way people make "rational" decisions. Save for retirement? I'll be old, I won't be able to enjoy my money. I don't fear death...once I retire and don't have any money, I'll just kill myself. It's not like it'll get any better anyway, I'll just get physically weaker and have all sorts of health problems.
I was confused and under that impression too, so I read the LGPL license. It doesn't require you to submit the source code, but it does require the machine readable object code to be released so that people can link it with the library themselves. It also requires that the fact the library is being used be clearly stated, and the LGPL license text included with the distribution.
And how would this be different if Skype was standards compliant?
The idea is that before something becomes a standard, it has been used for years, and most vulnerabilities have been found. Plus, lots of people have seen how it works, so more people can discover vulnerabilities and patch them. Yeah, if someone finds a new one, it's no different, and they phrased that incorrectly.
Ooh.. closed source is evil!
No, but closed source encryption most definitely is. If your corporation is counting on skype's encryption to secure their calls, but they don't know how that encryption work, and no one has looked at the code to make sure it's well implemented, how do you know it's not fundamentally flawed and it will be hacked tomorrow? How do you know some unscrupulous skype employee hasn't written in a vulnerability on purpose (without skype's knowledge) so that he can decrypt calls he wants to?
Paranoid? Yeah, but when dealing with security and encryption, you're supposed to be paranoid.
Skype is a useful tool. That's all I've got to say about that.
Yeah, banning it is an overreaction. Corporations just need to be aware of the problems and work around them. Have firewall layers. Open up the skype ports for the workstations, but keep the file servers behind a second firewall that blocks those ports so that any vulnerabilities don't affect them. Go ahead and use Skype and its encryption, but don't count on it for anything that you wouldn't wish to get out into the open. As with any tool, you just need to be aware of what the dangers are. Computers connected to the internet can be hacked and infected by viruses. Ban the internet at your corporation!!!
Well, I think you're concentrating on the wrong thing as the cause of the problem. Not recognizing minorities is good, it is a step forward. If we're going to say that we're all equal, then let's stop trying to classify people differently.
From your article, the real problem is right here:
"In the schools, white pupils are typically encouraged to continue studying while black children are often steered toward vocational studies.
and
"He described with a laugh a typical job interview for a black candidate. When the boss realizes the candidate is black, he begins praising the sights and sounds of Africa he discovered on his last vacation there: the broad beaches, beautiful greenery, vast sky. Needless to say, the candidate does not get the job."
Basically, the problem is that even though the government doesn't officially recognize minorities, the population seems to do a pretty good job of recognizing them on their own and then treating them like shit.
Well, thanks for the response, I imagine you're pretty tired of this.
Maybe so, maybe no. Who cares?
I figured people who would want to purchase episodes from the tv show would care. Either way, seasons of the same show are generally priced equally unless there's a difference in the number of episodes in the season, so it's a very good assumption.
That has nothing to do with the fact that I corrected a factual error in your post.
What factual error? My original post doesn't claim a price for the whole season which is already out on dvd at once. It states that if you were to buy each episode the day after they air "instead of waiting for the DVD to come out" (actual quote), you're paying that much for the season. It further implies that if you were to wait until the season is over, you could get better and more for less.
Why do you care what I think?
Because you're not just claiming that people will buy it, you're the one claiming it's a good deal for you. I wanted to know why you think that.
The market will tell them if they're right or not.
Well, there's only game in town right now. The market tends to decide on higher prices than consumers would like when there's a monopoly.
What is the problem here? If you don't think it's a good deal, don't buy it.
I won't. I am disappointed that I'm on the minority and that these episodes are selling so well. It means it's not likely that the price will come down to the point where I will think it's a good deal. I was also annoyed that I couldn't make the connection between the dvd price clear. Perhaps I should have just summed it up in that I expect lower quality = lower price, and I wasn't seeing the lower price. I do admit to not counting the "convenience of putting the video on an iPod," and I have no comparison point to estimate what that would be worth, so I digress. Thanks again for your time, hope I've made myself clear this time.
Look, I don't mean to be offensive to you or anything, but I really have problems understanding your argument. I'd just like to understand why people think the price is good. Let me break down what I said earlier.
Original argument assumes that:
Season 2 will be released on dvd for the same price
You're buying the episodes before they are out on dvd. Thus, the "paying more for getting the episode the day after it airs."
Once the DVD is actually out, as in the case of season 1...what in the hell is the advantage of paying essentially the same price for the downloadable episodes as you would be paying for the DVD's? Click that amazon link, you even get free shipping.
I must say that I've *never* seen this before. Consumers defending high prices. Why do you think $35 is acceptable when you can buy a better product for the same price? At least one person replied that he thought that getting the episode the day after was worth the extra money for the $1.99...but...you can watch it on tv for free the day before. You can program your vcr / tivo to record those so that you don't miss it. In the event you do miss it, you can ask around the water cooler to see if anyone recorded it (yeah, the MPAA is going to try to tell us that lending tapes of last night's show to a friend is illegal). If you really can't find what you missed, I suppose I can see paying the $2, but you should do so kicking and screaming, not saying, "wow, this is a good deal."
$1.99 for tv shows seems to be a good deal as long as they cut the commercials out, or at least most of them.
How is it a good deal? DVD for the complete first season of Lost: at Amazon. According to the details for the DVD, that's 24 episodes. 24 * $1.99 = $47.76. So you're paying more for the privilege of downloading episodes the day after they air, instead of waiting for the DVD to come out.
Not only that, but the episodes you download are 320x200, much less than DVD res. Plus, you don't get all the extras like the commentaries.
I think it's great that they're offering the episodes to download, but no way that's a "good deal." I'd be all over it if it cost me $0.50 or less, but $1.99 is way, waaay too much.
There are levels of faith. As I've been trying to convey, I don't have anything against people who are religious and believe as you do, that the boundary shifts over time. You want to believe in intelligent design, that's fine. Just don't say scientists are obviously wrong because they don't include it in their theory, and understand that they don't include it because if you can't disprove it, so it's working in the other side of your shifting boundary. I fall under that category. I believe things where there's no evidence to contradict my beliefs, but I also don't expect anyone to believe them, nor do I try to make some type of argument that they should. Because there is none.
Then there's the strict interpreters. God created the Earth in 6 days, there's no evolution crowd. That's the level of faith I was speaking of when I said "even in the face of evidence against it." Is it stupid to ignore evidence because of faith? Maybe. But again, I don't care what people believe in within their personal life, as long as it doesn't start affecting me through creation of policies around their personal beliefs.
Ah. Those are all interesting points, and I definitely understand the dangers you point out about my "modern closet religion" style. I also especially liked your comments on US laws not being based on Judao-Christian laws. I don't think I've ever seen such a well-phrased argument for that side, and I completely agree.
If I made it sound like I think no one should share their religion with anyone, and that it should be kept well hidden from everyone else, I apologize. I just don't think one should try to share their religion with people who don't want it shared with them. Go to your church, temple, mosque, and find your community. Share it with them. What I don't approve of is when the religious are so fanatical about their beliefs that they think their religion must be present in every aspect of their life, regardless of who or what it clashes with. It works both ways, I just don't like people trying to force their beliefs on others. No one should tell me that I shouldn't be religious because "it's like having an imaginary friend." It may be, but it's my choice to believe in whatever I want, why do you care?
While you can indeed ignore it most of your life, then suddently find it when you're sick and elderly, this is an affront to the very notion of the sacred.
While I agree in principle, it's funny to point out that's not necessarily true. After all, in Christianity, you can be the most evil person to ever walk to earth, and still be saved if you repent in the end. Sometimes I think some people are really counting on that, do all sorts of things they know are wrong and just plan to "repent" later before they die, but I digress...this isn't really part of this discussion.
I struggle with this from time to time in my life.. Bouncing back and forth between Egnostic, atheistic, harshly-critical of spirituality, and back to submissive spirituality.
I know what you're going through, but I'm convinced my struggle has been over some time ago. I mentioned I was a bit Catholic, but how I was raised is a fair bit more complicated than that. I'm the lucky son of a Catholic mother and an atheist father. Obviously, my mother isn't too fanatical, and obviously my father doesn't have anything against religion. What they did agree on before I was born, was that they wouldn't force either of their beliefs on me, and would let me make my own decision. Thus, my mother wouldn't teach me that what she believed was "fact." Rather she'd tell me that she believed it, many others believed it, and many didn't. Likewise, my father would never tell me that religion was false or wrong. Just that he didn't believe it. Never having gone through this process before, it wasn't as easy as they thought, and I got to witness their discussions trying to find a compromise on what and how to teach me things. Some of their solutions, I didn't like at the time. For example, knowing that if I went to sunday school, the people teaching me about religion wouldn't exactly follow the agreed-upon compromise, it was decided that I would read the entire bible instead. As a nine-year old, I thought that was totally unfair, but now I think it was a great idea. I got to see a very different God than what I expected God to be in the Old Testament, and learned that the Bible can't possibly be true word for word, since it's not even consistent with itself. That, more than anything else, made me a less religious person.
However, I got to see other things. When my mother was run over by a car and hospitalized, my father and I were in a situation where there was nothing we could do. As an atheist, there was also no one my father could turn to. I saw how desperate he was, the prospect that he would have to raise me by himself, and the burden he couldn't share with anyone. When situations are completely outside one's control, a religious person can gain some comfort in knowing it's not outside God's control. That experience made me a more religious person. Not because I saw a miracle, or
And science believed the sun rotated around the earth at one time...your point?
Well...a good point is that when we read papers from long ago claiming that the Sun revolves around the Earth, we're not supposed to take it on faith that "well, even if that's not the case now, during that time it must have been true, since it is written here".
When a Christian reads the Bible, he's supposed to take what's written in it as fact. When a scientist reads a paper, he's supposed to try to find holes in that theory. The simplest theory with no show-stopping holes is the currently accepted theory, but no one claims a better one won't later be found. Completely different method here.
Not that I really have a problem with religion itself, I just have a problem when religious people try to force scientists to include their religion in the theory...that's just not possible in science. I'm a bit Catholic myself (not a very religious person, but I'm Catholic by family and hold one or two beliefs which I don't expect anyone else to hold, nor do I *ever* argue for them, because it's impossible to argue for something which can't be proven true or false). I do, however, recognize where science applies and where religion applies. Religion applies in my own personal life and nowhere else. Since it depends on faith (which by definition means that something must be believed in, even in the face of evidence against it), it's not very useful when I'm looking for physical interpretations of how things work. So, when developing a theory as to how complex life was formed, choosing to include something which I have to take for granted and can in no way later falsify is obviously the wrong approach. That means intelligent design shouldn't be held as a scientific theory and shouldn't be taught in science classrooms. If you want it taught to your kids in Sunday School, I have no problem with that.
Re:never appreciated the NES
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20 Years of NES
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Dude...
Comments like that make you a target for blame. A lot of us blame people like you for the games of today. First person shooters killed video games. We get one after the other with significant graphical enhancements, and nothing else going for them. Where did my adventure games go?
The nintendo didn't have great graphics, but boy, were the games fun. And since everyone is doing it, I'll go ahead and give my top games list:
Super Mario Bros. 3
Contra
Zelda
Mega Man 2
Jackal
Also, a couple of lesser known games that were really great include
Big Nose the Caveman
Ultimate Stuntman
Hook
Give these a serious try. You might change your mind. Every once in a while, I still like to spend some time playing them.
I'm guessing the first few people with mod points didn't get it / had no sense of humor. Everyone who came later probably doesn't browse at -1. Lucky for me, I stumbled by your post (thought it was funny as hell). Unfortunately I didn't have any mod points today, so I figured I'd just reply and let you know I thought it was funny...you don't get the karma, but hey...you'll know someone out there laughed (and funny moderation doesn't give you karma anyway).
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The one not to be harassed. If you're looking for me to go find a particular place in the books that enumerates that right, try the 9th Amendment: "The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people." It doesn't have to be written somewhere in order for it to be a right.
I most definitely agree with you that they are separate issues, but it doesn't look to me like we need to extend phone prank law legislation to blogging in order to cover them.
And as to your other post,
Thanks for pointing out that this type of stuff isn't a clear-cut issue, though. I may have made my original post come across too much as a "my foot is down, this is the way things should be done" post, when I didn't meant to. I don't claim to have the solution to all problems. Very often my sig is informative as hell in regard to my posts :)
So you don't respect the free speech that is protected in the Constition, but you do respect the ability to tax people who don't want to pay for something that doesn't affect them?
I don't have to withstand harrassment as part of my respect to free speech. In fact, your right to free speech stops when you start interfering with my rights. You can't yell "Fire!" in a crowded theatre, you can't make remarks to your secretary that qualify as sexual harrassment, and you can't call me to make a prank call. That is not an exhaustive list.
I don't agree with extending this law to the internet, because unlike phone calls, postings are non-invasive. I'll agree that internet postings qualify as righteous free speech because it's not actively interrupting someone. If you call me to make a prank call, even if I do subscribe to your Caller ID "solution," I have to actually go check who is calling me. That's all fine and good at normal hours, but not if you're waking me up at 3am. I don't need to answer the phone before you've harassed me. Sure, I could turn off my phone for the night, but then I'd miss potentially important calls. On top of that, inconvenient times aren't universal. I may work nights, so a 3pm call would bother me. I may be doing something else other than sleeping when you've interrupted me. My phone line isn't public, I'm paying for the damn thing, and you don't get to call whenever you feel like it to annoy me. You call if you have my permission to, implicit or explicit (that's why I'm also in favor of the Do-Not-Call list, if it's unsolicited, they don't have my permission to call).
I see your points about the inneficiency of government, and as much as I want to see less governmental interference, there are some things that ARE a government's job. Protecting my rights is the government's job.
Could be worse. I could be spending my life caring about how other people spend theirs. Why do you care if people "waste time" on tv?
Well, that's true, but it doesn't invalidate the points by the parent. Ender agonized about what he did to Bonzo and the first bully after the fact (even without knowing that Bonzo had died, he still disliked what he did to him). However, when cornered, his only goal was survival at any cost.
At the time Ender was in danger, he didn't care if Bonzo was hurt by his actions, which is what the government thought made him such a great leader. He had compassion, but he was definitely capable of doing whatever it took to survive.
First, I have issues with your "subtract all the filler songs" argument. Do you know why the filler songs are there? Because people wouldn't pay that same price for a cd that only contains the 2 hit songs. Obviously, they have value. Personally, I'd prefer that the band in question wait to release an album until they have enough *good* songs to fill the album. At least with the buy one song at a time model, the fillers start becoming unnecessary again.
Second, I have issues with your candy bag arguments. If the 10 piece bag cost $10, you're not suddenly buying a candy bar for $1...because the candy bar *was* in the mix bag of candy. I mean, the hit song is in the cd, right?
Third, you're not considering the money the industry is saving by not having to press the cd's, print the covers, and ship them to stores everywhere.
Yes, but being more efficient doesn't mean that it uses less fuel. It means it uses less fuel than an equivalent weight car.
Let's say the original engine has an efficiency of 35% (that's really darn efficient for combustion engines). So, of all the energy produced in the engine, only 35% is being used to move the car.
So the new car with the steam engine is 15% more efficient. That means the engine has now an efficiency of 40.25% (you don't just add the percentages, it's 15% more efficient than the previous value, so that's 35/100 + 35/100 * .15). So now, of all the engine produced by the engine, 40.25% is being used to move the car. But it's moving a heavier car, which needs more energy to move it the same distance, so it might not be able to move it as far.
Basically, it's a more efficient engine, but it doesn't mean that it, by definition, gets better mileage. Obviously, BMW would kill the idea if it didn't, but it's probably not a huge increase. Think the hype around hybrids that actually get significantly less miles per gallon than advertised.
YOU SHOULD NOT HAVE TO PAY A LICENSING FEE TO CREATE A PLAYER THAT CAN PLAY THE MEDIA
Products I pay for shouldn't be my only legal option. Some developer wants to spend his time to give an open source DVD player to the community, he should be able to legally break the freaking encryption and do it. That's not breaking copyright, so why the hell is it illegal?
I'm not even going to mention the fact that it took years for a licenced player to appear for Linux, since I don't think that's the issue. If people don't want to make commercial software for a platform, that's their prerogative, it might not be profitable in that platform. The point is, I should damn well be able to do whatever I want to play the contents of the media I bought in whatever device I own. That includes ripping the dvd and placing the movies in my laptop / file server at home.
It's free (as in freedom AND beer), and it works pretty well, especially with I/O cards that are supported by comedi drivers, which are designed with real-time use in mind.
We use them for our real-time HIL simulations at my department, and we're happy with the results.
I don't know much about Canada to give you examples of that particular country, but some things I find extremely annoying about places I've been to outside the US (If you're wondering the exact nature of my experience, I've lived in Brazil as a child, been for some time in Italy when I was even younger, and have recently taken a short work trip to the UK where I was reminded of some of these annoyances. The example below are straight from what I remember from my week in the UK, some of which also apply to Brazil and Italy. I'm currently living in South Carolina).
There are plenty of other little things like that, but nothing else is immediately coming to mind at the moment. They're all individually pretty benign, and you'll certainly get used to a lot of things that are different, and perhaps even find the american way annoying as opposed to the new place, but like I said, you should do your research and find out exactly what those little things are.
And, of course, the rant doesn't include the big things. A move to another country involves a lot of work, but responsible people remember to check the big things, and I assume you're doing your research and will be well prepared for that. What people forget are the little things, and then they transform into the whining American who keep telling their new friends how much better it was in the US when they didn't have to deal with these annoyances :)
Regardless if Shostack believes they can get here or not, that quote merely says that preparing for their arrival is worthless even if you do believe they'll one day get here. The point is that they're bound to be vastly different from us, and we know nothing about them. If iguanas offered you flies...well...first, you wouldn't recognize it as an offering, second, even if you did, it's worthless to you. Maybe when you offer 'political treaties' to those aliens, they'll take all the noise coming from your mouth as a tremendous insult and kill you on the spot. Maybe they won't recognize us as intelligent, and figure that all that we've built is no different than a beaver building a dam. Maybe they're not interested in meeting other intelligent beings, and just stopped by to get a drink of water while they're on the way to the next star. You don't know what they want, you don't know how they think, how can you possibly prepare?
Yes, you do. You don't run away at the sight of fire (that's animalistic fear), but you don't put your hand in the middle of a fire because you're afraid of the pain, and depending on severety, you're afraid of living the rest of your life with a deformed hand, or one that has lost some functionality.
Intelligence changes the nature of fear and allows you to do evaluate the danger and be fearful of the right things. So, you know that as long as you don't go putting your hand in the fire, and you are careful, you minimize the chances of getting burned, while animals minimize the chances of getting burned by just running the hell away from it (well, I had a dog once that was fascinated by a candle and decided it just *had* to smell that bright red wavy thing on top of the white stick, but that's besides the point).
I think a complete lack of fear would completely change the way people make "rational" decisions. Save for retirement? I'll be old, I won't be able to enjoy my money. I don't fear death...once I retire and don't have any money, I'll just kill myself. It's not like it'll get any better anyway, I'll just get physically weaker and have all sorts of health problems.
I was confused and under that impression too, so I read the LGPL license. It doesn't require you to submit the source code, but it does require the machine readable object code to be released so that people can link it with the library themselves. It also requires that the fact the library is being used be clearly stated, and the LGPL license text included with the distribution.
The idea is that before something becomes a standard, it has been used for years, and most vulnerabilities have been found. Plus, lots of people have seen how it works, so more people can discover vulnerabilities and patch them. Yeah, if someone finds a new one, it's no different, and they phrased that incorrectly.
Ooh.. closed source is evil!No, but closed source encryption most definitely is. If your corporation is counting on skype's encryption to secure their calls, but they don't know how that encryption work, and no one has looked at the code to make sure it's well implemented, how do you know it's not fundamentally flawed and it will be hacked tomorrow? How do you know some unscrupulous skype employee hasn't written in a vulnerability on purpose (without skype's knowledge) so that he can decrypt calls he wants to?
Paranoid? Yeah, but when dealing with security and encryption, you're supposed to be paranoid.
Skype is a useful tool. That's all I've got to say about that.Yeah, banning it is an overreaction. Corporations just need to be aware of the problems and work around them. Have firewall layers. Open up the skype ports for the workstations, but keep the file servers behind a second firewall that blocks those ports so that any vulnerabilities don't affect them. Go ahead and use Skype and its encryption, but don't count on it for anything that you wouldn't wish to get out into the open. As with any tool, you just need to be aware of what the dangers are. Computers connected to the internet can be hacked and infected by viruses. Ban the internet at your corporation!!!
From your article, the real problem is right here:
"In the schools, white pupils are typically encouraged to continue studying while black children are often steered toward vocational studies.
and
"He described with a laugh a typical job interview for a black candidate. When the boss realizes the candidate is black, he begins praising the sights and sounds of Africa he discovered on his last vacation there: the broad beaches, beautiful greenery, vast sky. Needless to say, the candidate does not get the job."
Basically, the problem is that even though the government doesn't officially recognize minorities, the population seems to do a pretty good job of recognizing them on their own and then treating them like shit.
By giving your senator a large campaign contribution.
Well, thanks for the response, I imagine you're pretty tired of this.
Maybe so, maybe no. Who cares?I figured people who would want to purchase episodes from the tv show would care. Either way, seasons of the same show are generally priced equally unless there's a difference in the number of episodes in the season, so it's a very good assumption.
That has nothing to do with the fact that I corrected a factual error in your post.
What factual error? My original post doesn't claim a price for the whole season which is already out on dvd at once. It states that if you were to buy each episode the day after they air "instead of waiting for the DVD to come out" (actual quote), you're paying that much for the season. It further implies that if you were to wait until the season is over, you could get better and more for less.
Why do you care what I think?
Because you're not just claiming that people will buy it, you're the one claiming it's a good deal for you. I wanted to know why you think that.
The market will tell them if they're right or not.
Well, there's only game in town right now. The market tends to decide on higher prices than consumers would like when there's a monopoly.
What is the problem here? If you don't think it's a good deal, don't buy it.
I won't. I am disappointed that I'm on the minority and that these episodes are selling so well. It means it's not likely that the price will come down to the point where I will think it's a good deal. I was also annoyed that I couldn't make the connection between the dvd price clear. Perhaps I should have just summed it up in that I expect lower quality = lower price, and I wasn't seeing the lower price. I do admit to not counting the "convenience of putting the video on an iPod," and I have no comparison point to estimate what that would be worth, so I digress. Thanks again for your time, hope I've made myself clear this time.
Look, I don't mean to be offensive to you or anything, but I really have problems understanding your argument. I'd just like to understand why people think the price is good. Let me break down what I said earlier.
Original argument assumes that:
Once the DVD is actually out, as in the case of season 1...what in the hell is the advantage of paying essentially the same price for the downloadable episodes as you would be paying for the DVD's? Click that amazon link, you even get free shipping.
I must say that I've *never* seen this before. Consumers defending high prices. Why do you think $35 is acceptable when you can buy a better product for the same price? At least one person replied that he thought that getting the episode the day after was worth the extra money for the $1.99...but...you can watch it on tv for free the day before. You can program your vcr / tivo to record those so that you don't miss it. In the event you do miss it, you can ask around the water cooler to see if anyone recorded it (yeah, the MPAA is going to try to tell us that lending tapes of last night's show to a friend is illegal). If you really can't find what you missed, I suppose I can see paying the $2, but you should do so kicking and screaming, not saying, "wow, this is a good deal."
Not that paying the exact same price you pay for the actual dvd's makes it a good deal either, but at least read the post before you bitch.
How is it a good deal? DVD for the complete first season of Lost: at Amazon. According to the details for the DVD, that's 24 episodes. 24 * $1.99 = $47.76. So you're paying more for the privilege of downloading episodes the day after they air, instead of waiting for the DVD to come out.
Not only that, but the episodes you download are 320x200, much less than DVD res. Plus, you don't get all the extras like the commentaries.
I think it's great that they're offering the episodes to download, but no way that's a "good deal." I'd be all over it if it cost me $0.50 or less, but $1.99 is way, waaay too much.
Then there's the strict interpreters. God created the Earth in 6 days, there's no evolution crowd. That's the level of faith I was speaking of when I said "even in the face of evidence against it." Is it stupid to ignore evidence because of faith? Maybe. But again, I don't care what people believe in within their personal life, as long as it doesn't start affecting me through creation of policies around their personal beliefs.
If I made it sound like I think no one should share their religion with anyone, and that it should be kept well hidden from everyone else, I apologize. I just don't think one should try to share their religion with people who don't want it shared with them. Go to your church, temple, mosque, and find your community. Share it with them. What I don't approve of is when the religious are so fanatical about their beliefs that they think their religion must be present in every aspect of their life, regardless of who or what it clashes with. It works both ways, I just don't like people trying to force their beliefs on others. No one should tell me that I shouldn't be religious because "it's like having an imaginary friend." It may be, but it's my choice to believe in whatever I want, why do you care?
While you can indeed ignore it most of your life, then suddently find it when you're sick and elderly, this is an affront to the very notion of the sacred.
While I agree in principle, it's funny to point out that's not necessarily true. After all, in Christianity, you can be the most evil person to ever walk to earth, and still be saved if you repent in the end. Sometimes I think some people are really counting on that, do all sorts of things they know are wrong and just plan to "repent" later before they die, but I digress...this isn't really part of this discussion.
I struggle with this from time to time in my life.. Bouncing back and forth between Egnostic, atheistic, harshly-critical of spirituality, and back to submissive spirituality.
I know what you're going through, but I'm convinced my struggle has been over some time ago. I mentioned I was a bit Catholic, but how I was raised is a fair bit more complicated than that. I'm the lucky son of a Catholic mother and an atheist father. Obviously, my mother isn't too fanatical, and obviously my father doesn't have anything against religion. What they did agree on before I was born, was that they wouldn't force either of their beliefs on me, and would let me make my own decision. Thus, my mother wouldn't teach me that what she believed was "fact." Rather she'd tell me that she believed it, many others believed it, and many didn't. Likewise, my father would never tell me that religion was false or wrong. Just that he didn't believe it. Never having gone through this process before, it wasn't as easy as they thought, and I got to witness their discussions trying to find a compromise on what and how to teach me things. Some of their solutions, I didn't like at the time. For example, knowing that if I went to sunday school, the people teaching me about religion wouldn't exactly follow the agreed-upon compromise, it was decided that I would read the entire bible instead. As a nine-year old, I thought that was totally unfair, but now I think it was a great idea. I got to see a very different God than what I expected God to be in the Old Testament, and learned that the Bible can't possibly be true word for word, since it's not even consistent with itself. That, more than anything else, made me a less religious person.
However, I got to see other things. When my mother was run over by a car and hospitalized, my father and I were in a situation where there was nothing we could do. As an atheist, there was also no one my father could turn to. I saw how desperate he was, the prospect that he would have to raise me by himself, and the burden he couldn't share with anyone. When situations are completely outside one's control, a religious person can gain some comfort in knowing it's not outside God's control. That experience made me a more religious person. Not because I saw a miracle, or
Well...a good point is that when we read papers from long ago claiming that the Sun revolves around the Earth, we're not supposed to take it on faith that "well, even if that's not the case now, during that time it must have been true, since it is written here".
When a Christian reads the Bible, he's supposed to take what's written in it as fact. When a scientist reads a paper, he's supposed to try to find holes in that theory. The simplest theory with no show-stopping holes is the currently accepted theory, but no one claims a better one won't later be found. Completely different method here.
Not that I really have a problem with religion itself, I just have a problem when religious people try to force scientists to include their religion in the theory...that's just not possible in science. I'm a bit Catholic myself (not a very religious person, but I'm Catholic by family and hold one or two beliefs which I don't expect anyone else to hold, nor do I *ever* argue for them, because it's impossible to argue for something which can't be proven true or false). I do, however, recognize where science applies and where religion applies. Religion applies in my own personal life and nowhere else. Since it depends on faith (which by definition means that something must be believed in, even in the face of evidence against it), it's not very useful when I'm looking for physical interpretations of how things work. So, when developing a theory as to how complex life was formed, choosing to include something which I have to take for granted and can in no way later falsify is obviously the wrong approach. That means intelligent design shouldn't be held as a scientific theory and shouldn't be taught in science classrooms. If you want it taught to your kids in Sunday School, I have no problem with that.
Comments like that make you a target for blame. A lot of us blame people like you for the games of today. First person shooters killed video games. We get one after the other with significant graphical enhancements, and nothing else going for them. Where did my adventure games go?
The nintendo didn't have great graphics, but boy, were the games fun. And since everyone is doing it, I'll go ahead and give my top games list:
Also, a couple of lesser known games that were really great include
Give these a serious try. You might change your mind. Every once in a while, I still like to spend some time playing them.
I'm guessing the first few people with mod points didn't get it / had no sense of humor. Everyone who came later probably doesn't browse at -1. Lucky for me, I stumbled by your post (thought it was funny as hell). Unfortunately I didn't have any mod points today, so I figured I'd just reply and let you know I thought it was funny...you don't get the karma, but hey...you'll know someone out there laughed (and funny moderation doesn't give you karma anyway).