Going offtopic a bit, but weren't "The Canterbury Tales" written around 1400? I concede it's not easily readable, but I would suggest Middle English is decipherable by literate and fluent Modern English readers with a little glossary work for words that have fallen from use.
Now, Old English, like Beowulf,
yeah, that mystifies me.
I suppose it depends on your interpretation of the word "catch" in the last sentence, which was the only way I could interpret this article as saying the Swift probe was protecting anyone or anything. I just interpreted "catch" as "catching something on film", versus "catching the evil interstellar death rays and saving the world."
This isn't about spin, so much as many mid-size businesses are in weird places where technology is concerned. Individual department managers sometimes have enough budget to build IT infrastructure of their own, independent of centralized IT departments. Interfactional disputes and politics play heavy in mid-size organizations. A couple IT people build an intranet with Apache/PHP/Linux and put up Samba file servers. Executives simply do not know everything going on with respect to technical implementation in their company. If they do, however, IMHO, they are way too focused on details that should be handled by lower level employees. Some executives still have their secretaries^Wassistants print their email. While the more technical literate may snicker, I kind of like the idea of an executive more focused on running the business than learning every new techno-whizbang thing to come along (and yes, to some people, e-mail is whizbang).
Not to say there aren't technically inclined executives in these companies, but even that technically inclined exec isn't likely to know every nook and cranny of the technical infrastructure.
You are right that these companies are not apt to totally overhaul everything, dumping major systems overnight, as long as what they have gets the job done. But, I've worked too long in this field to believe anyone who tries to tell me that most executives know the ins and outs of their company's entire technical infrastructure. I think this belief comes from an overestimate of our importance to the business at large. Not that IT isn't important, but most people just don't give a damn about the details. They just want their invoices, pick lists and purchase orders to print when they need them, they want their sales and forecasting reports to be right, and they want their internet connection and email to just work. Everything else, well, that's why us geeks have jobs, right?
Put another way, what do you think happens with US dollars that leave the country? Do you think they just get it all in cash, fill a pool with it and dive in a la Scrooge McDuck?
The time to worry is when foreign firms and people don't want any US dollars for their goods and services. If you've been watching the dollar, well... you can draw your own conclusions.
How are these better ideas? Sunrise always at the same time? Where? You are aware that our planet is a sphere (yes, yes, it's really a geoid/oblate ellipsoid, so pedantic/.ers lay off:-)? If we adjust the clock so it's 7 am for you, the people who live one degree west of you (assuming non-polar latitudes) will have sunrise at about 7:04 am and those 1 degree east of you will have sunrise at 6:56 am. At latitude 45 this is about 78 kilometers, or a little under 50 miles for those of us who think in old units.
Before the advent of trains, each community set a town clock to local noon every day and that was good enough. With faster travel commonplace, this became unworkable to handle arrival/departure schedules. That's why we have standard time zones, for better or for worse. You appear to be advocating a return to the old system with your first two suggestions. I agree with you that DST is annoying, but those cures are worse than the disease.
Fortunately for me, I live in Arizona where we don't mess with it (except for the Navajo reservation, which spans AZ and New Mexico, so they use it). It's only annoying when I have to call people out of state. Even better, my parents live in Indiana, and they don't switch either, so I always know they're 2 hours ahead of me.
Even your analogy isn't quite fair to the car dealers. Imagine there were large, organized global gangs roving the streets, constantly sticking nails in your tires, pouring sugar in your gas tank, opening the draincock on your radiators, and supergluing your locks. Other gangs go around stealing cars, committing crimes with them, and then parking them back where the owners left them, except that they're left virtually out of fuel.
If a malicious car vandal could replicate himself and then hide with the same effectiveness a virus/trojan/spyware author can replicate their code, the only way to protect ourselves would be to constantly guard our vehicles, hire professional security people to watch over them, and/or keep them locked in secure garages.
I completely agree with you, however, that software development practises that have ignored security or at best considered it as an afterthought have much to answer for. The vastly different problem domains should demonstrate that vehicle analogies are of limited usefulness.
You are elevating one instance of the law over another, which is a double-standard.
To be fair, it is only a double standard if you believe that the current law, as written, is proper and defensible.
For my part, my big problem with the entertainment industry has nothing to do with them going after copyright violators. My problem with them is them pushing people around who write software that, while could be used to violate copyright, is also equally useful to preserve my fair use rights (the hullaballo over DeCSS, for example).
With that said, their behaviour in this doesn't justify me snagging their stuff, although I have done so in the past. In my defense I will say that whatever I've downloaded was stuff either a) I already bought on CD and just can't find the damn thing the moment I wanted to hear it. b) Was something I wanted to hear before buying and either 1) subsequently bought or 2) deleted because I didn't care for it enough to keep. I don't think this is a problem. Is it illegal? Case a, probably not. Case b, possibly, and perhaps likely. Is it hyprocritical of me to do so? No, unless I think the copyright laws as written are proper (and I don't).
People who produce media have to give me something better than "No trying before you buy" + "No refunds once you buy". With these two rules, I have no way of evaluating whether it is worth my money until the money is gone. With both rules in place, I am very reluctant to part with my money. Put me in the camp of "copyright is tolerable, but with fairly broad definitions of fair use."
The law doesn't magically go away just because you're not physically making money when you violate it.
No, but the law does punish more those who violate copyright for a profit motive versus a non-profit motive. If you're defending the law AS WRITTEN, you have to concede that selling someone else's work as your own is a larger wrong than making copies of someone else's work and sharing it. However, from this point of view, it is still a wrong, and I agree with you.
This is supposed to be a mature community; grow up!
<comment mode="slashdot_tagline">You must be new here.<comment>:-)
As someone who served on a criminal trial as a juror once, I can state unequivocally that I will gleefully waive my "right" to jury trail and let them empanel a set of judges to try me.
The scariest person on the jury, ironically, was a church minister. I don't think he even understood what the phrase "innocent until proven guilty" meant. He and a couple other people on the jury didn't even see a needd to debate it. I said that I'd hang the jury if we didn't give the defandant the benefit of the doubt on every piece of evidence.
We eventually did convict, but at least I'm sure that guy got a really fair trial. It was enough to shake my faith in the jury trials, though.
"10. Best Wok asserts that it has no prior voilations of the Act. However, we can not find that Best Wok has a history of overall compliance because Best Wok is not a Commission licensee, and, therefore, has no history with the Commission upon which a history of overall compliance can be based."
So, in other words," they're not a licensee, so we don't have any information on them, therefore their claim that they have no previous violations is ignored.". I don't know, but I think if one asserts their innocence in a matter, it's up to the government to prove they're not. This is a weak point in the FCC's response in my opinion, and it makes me kind of sympathetic to the operator of Best Wok as a result.
Fuck you very much. Redundant? Who else said that? Overrated? "Your posts sucks just because and I'm too chickenshit to use anything else because I'll get moderated down."
I don't usually comment on moderation because it's really not important at all, but goddamn! That's the stupidest moderation I've seen in a while and I metamoderate frequently.
Hey, mod this down too. Like I care. Karma to burn. Hint: the only decent mod is "Off-topic". Everything else is wrong or stupid.
On the other hand, I don't really give two hoots about audio in the go. I don't even own an old Discman, much less the trendier iPods and other portable media players, so...
He probably won't. My first "computer" job was order entry and keying cigarette tax stamping reports into a terminal (we called it "data processing" then). It paid the bills and helped put me through college until I finally got a real programming job (for the princely sum of $8/hour).
I can still numerically key at about 10000 kph (not kilometers!) as a result of that experience.
Go find someone who has never heard of Star wars and get them to watch all 5(6) films. See how they rate each films.
I would do that, but do you know what its like to convince these people that "No, there's not tiny little people hidden in the big box." or "No, I'm not your messiah", or "No, I don't taste good, please don't eat me?"
That the only time politicians are worried about fairness in taxation is when somebody isn't getting taxed? I could just as easily say, "it's not fair that people get taxed on tangible goods but not on intangible goods. Therefore I propose we get rid of the unfair tax on tangible goods." That is just as fair, right?
He doesn't give a damn about "fair". He just wants the state government to get another slice of pie.
On the other hand, I suppose the states have to pretty weary of unfunded mandates (e.g. No Child Gets Ahead) from Los Federales, so I can (almost) understand.
Slashdot Mirror
Going offtopic a bit, but weren't "The Canterbury Tales" written around 1400? I concede it's not easily readable, but I would suggest Middle English is decipherable by literate and fluent Modern English readers with a little glossary work for words that have fallen from use.
Now, Old English, like Beowulf, yeah, that mystifies me.
Or this one.
That's not a low UID.
Neither is mine.
"Serving Canadians"
It's a cookbook!
I suppose it depends on your interpretation of the word "catch" in the last sentence, which was the only way I could interpret this article as saying the Swift probe was protecting anyone or anything. I just interpreted "catch" as "catching something on film", versus "catching the evil interstellar death rays and saving the world."
Experience?
This isn't about spin, so much as many mid-size businesses are in weird places where technology is concerned. Individual department managers sometimes have enough budget to build IT infrastructure of their own, independent of centralized IT departments. Interfactional disputes and politics play heavy in mid-size organizations. A couple IT people build an intranet with Apache/PHP/Linux and put up Samba file servers. Executives simply do not know everything going on with respect to technical implementation in their company. If they do, however, IMHO, they are way too focused on details that should be handled by lower level employees. Some executives still have their secretaries^Wassistants print their email. While the more technical literate may snicker, I kind of like the idea of an executive more focused on running the business than learning every new techno-whizbang thing to come along (and yes, to some people, e-mail is whizbang).
Not to say there aren't technically inclined executives in these companies, but even that technically inclined exec isn't likely to know every nook and cranny of the technical infrastructure.
You are right that these companies are not apt to totally overhaul everything, dumping major systems overnight, as long as what they have gets the job done. But, I've worked too long in this field to believe anyone who tries to tell me that most executives know the ins and outs of their company's entire technical infrastructure. I think this belief comes from an overestimate of our importance to the business at large. Not that IT isn't important, but most people just don't give a damn about the details. They just want their invoices, pick lists and purchase orders to print when they need them, they want their sales and forecasting reports to be right, and they want their internet connection and email to just work. Everything else, well, that's why us geeks have jobs, right?
Short answer: Yes.
Put another way, what do you think happens with US dollars that leave the country? Do you think they just get it all in cash, fill a pool with it and dive in a la Scrooge McDuck?
The time to worry is when foreign firms and people don't want any US dollars for their goods and services. If you've been watching the dollar, well... you can draw your own conclusions.
Saw this article and immediately thought of the solution here?
I asked it "what is the answer to life, the universe, and everything in attoparsecs per microfortnight?" and it couldn't do it. ;-)
What was scary was I asked Google "Is there a God?" and it replied, "Yes. now there is a God."
How are these better ideas? Sunrise always at the same time? Where? You are aware that our planet is a sphere (yes, yes, it's really a geoid/oblate ellipsoid, so pedantic /.ers lay off :-)? If we adjust the clock so it's 7 am for you, the people who live one degree west of you (assuming non-polar latitudes) will have sunrise at about 7:04 am and those 1 degree east of you will have sunrise at 6:56 am. At latitude 45 this is about 78 kilometers, or a little under 50 miles for those of us who think in old units.
Before the advent of trains, each community set a town clock to local noon every day and that was good enough. With faster travel commonplace, this became unworkable to handle arrival/departure schedules. That's why we have standard time zones, for better or for worse. You appear to be advocating a return to the old system with your first two suggestions. I agree with you that DST is annoying, but those cures are worse than the disease.
Fortunately for me, I live in Arizona where we don't mess with it (except for the Navajo reservation, which spans AZ and New Mexico, so they use it). It's only annoying when I have to call people out of state. Even better, my parents live in Indiana, and they don't switch either, so I always know they're 2 hours ahead of me.
The funny thing is, the top 20 positions could have been taken by US teams, and you know what?
I still didn't place.
If I had managed first post, mine would have been "Cue the nationalist chest beating and excuse making now."
Nationalism sucks.
Even your analogy isn't quite fair to the car dealers. Imagine there were large, organized global gangs roving the streets, constantly sticking nails in your tires, pouring sugar in your gas tank, opening the draincock on your radiators, and supergluing your locks. Other gangs go around stealing cars, committing crimes with them, and then parking them back where the owners left them, except that they're left virtually out of fuel.
If a malicious car vandal could replicate himself and then hide with the same effectiveness a virus/trojan/spyware author can replicate their code, the only way to protect ourselves would be to constantly guard our vehicles, hire professional security people to watch over them, and/or keep them locked in secure garages.
I completely agree with you, however, that software development practises that have ignored security or at best considered it as an afterthought have much to answer for. The vastly different problem domains should demonstrate that vehicle analogies are of limited usefulness.
To be fair, it is only a double standard if you believe that the current law, as written, is proper and defensible.
For my part, my big problem with the entertainment industry has nothing to do with them going after copyright violators. My problem with them is them pushing people around who write software that, while could be used to violate copyright, is also equally useful to preserve my fair use rights (the hullaballo over DeCSS, for example).
With that said, their behaviour in this doesn't justify me snagging their stuff, although I have done so in the past. In my defense I will say that whatever I've downloaded was stuff either a) I already bought on CD and just can't find the damn thing the moment I wanted to hear it. b) Was something I wanted to hear before buying and either 1) subsequently bought or 2) deleted because I didn't care for it enough to keep. I don't think this is a problem. Is it illegal? Case a, probably not. Case b, possibly, and perhaps likely. Is it hyprocritical of me to do so? No, unless I think the copyright laws as written are proper (and I don't).
People who produce media have to give me something better than "No trying before you buy" + "No refunds once you buy". With these two rules, I have no way of evaluating whether it is worth my money until the money is gone. With both rules in place, I am very reluctant to part with my money. Put me in the camp of "copyright is tolerable, but with fairly broad definitions of fair use."
No, but the law does punish more those who violate copyright for a profit motive versus a non-profit motive. If you're defending the law AS WRITTEN, you have to concede that selling someone else's work as your own is a larger wrong than making copies of someone else's work and sharing it. However, from this point of view, it is still a wrong, and I agree with you.
<comment mode="slashdot_tagline">You must be new here.<comment> :-)
"If this goes on, there will be credibility for Debian or Debian-derived distributions in the enterprise setting."
How many times have Windows releases been pushed back? Microsoft has credibility. It seems Debian is working towards the same credibility.
And apologies for the multitude of atrocious spelling errors. I even previewed. I guess I picked a bad week to quit taking amphetamines.
As someone who served on a criminal trial as a juror once, I can state unequivocally that I will gleefully waive my "right" to jury trail and let them empanel a set of judges to try me.
The scariest person on the jury, ironically, was a church minister. I don't think he even understood what the phrase "innocent until proven guilty" meant. He and a couple other people on the jury didn't even see a needd to debate it. I said that I'd hang the jury if we didn't give the defandant the benefit of the doubt on every piece of evidence.
We eventually did convict, but at least I'm sure that guy got a really fair trial. It was enough to shake my faith in the jury trials, though.
Interestingly, that leads us back to here. Avalon Hill was bought by Wizards of the Coast which was bought by.... Ta-da! Hasbro.
"10. Best Wok asserts that it has no prior voilations of the Act. However, we can not find that Best Wok has a history of overall compliance because Best Wok is not a Commission licensee, and, therefore, has no history with the Commission upon which a history of overall compliance can be based."
So, in other words," they're not a licensee, so we don't have any information on them, therefore their claim that they have no previous violations is ignored.". I don't know, but I think if one asserts their innocence in a matter, it's up to the government to prove they're not. This is a weak point in the FCC's response in my opinion, and it makes me kind of sympathetic to the operator of Best Wok as a result.
Fuck you very much. Redundant? Who else said that? Overrated? "Your posts sucks just because and I'm too chickenshit to use anything else because I'll get moderated down."
I don't usually comment on moderation because it's really not important at all, but goddamn! That's the stupidest moderation I've seen in a while and I metamoderate frequently.
Hey, mod this down too. Like I care. Karma to burn. Hint: the only decent mod is "Off-topic". Everything else is wrong or stupid.
Guess I should turn in my nerd card.
On the other hand, I don't really give two hoots about audio in the go. I don't even own an old Discman, much less the trendier iPods and other portable media players, so...
He probably won't. My first "computer" job was order entry and keying cigarette tax stamping reports into a terminal (we called it "data processing" then). It paid the bills and helped put me through college until I finally got a real programming job (for the princely sum of $8/hour).
I can still numerically key at about 10000 kph (not kilometers!) as a result of that experience.
I would do that, but do you know what its like to convince these people that "No, there's not tiny little people hidden in the big box." or "No, I'm not your messiah", or "No, I don't taste good, please don't eat me?"
I've started on it already. This should be a good beta:
Wow, two posts today and both are anti-tax rants. Yep, it must be tax season.
That the only time politicians are worried about fairness in taxation is when somebody isn't getting taxed? I could just as easily say, "it's not fair that people get taxed on tangible goods but not on intangible goods. Therefore I propose we get rid of the unfair tax on tangible goods." That is just as fair, right?
He doesn't give a damn about "fair". He just wants the state government to get another slice of pie.
On the other hand, I suppose the states have to pretty weary of unfunded mandates (e.g. No Child Gets Ahead) from Los Federales, so I can (almost) understand.