The link also makes taunting mentions of movie plans.
Taunting means "Abusing vocally; expressing contempt or ridicule." I really don't think that's what you meant. Unless WB's new business model is to drum up business by ridiculing its own audience in press releases.
USB keys are just too dang handy and hold alot more data
True, but USB drives aren't so good for FedExing data to other people. But I think the general reason is backwards compatibility. A lot of people simply have no intention of replacing their aging PCs until they absolutely positively must.
"The basic problem with any sort of anarchy in practice is that there is no protection against non-state coercion."
Again, anarcho-capitalists disagree.
Very briefly, an old, popular economic idea was that an economy would fall apart without some central power to control it. That turns out to be false; a market not only works, it works much better than a command economy. This has been a surprise to some of the smartest people, and not everyone is convinced; nevertheless, I would argue it's true. Similarly, it is common even among the most serious political thinkers to think that without a state to create and enforce law, the legal system would fall apart. But is that true? If we consider creation and enforcement of law as services, then we can ask, why shouldn't these services be provided on the market?
I don't want to get into a debate, so I'll refer you to the works of David Friedman, specifically his popularizing book The Machinery of Freedom, where he outlines a proposal for non-state creation and enforcement of law (i.e., non-state protection against coercion). Here is one chapter where he describes the idea.
It's important to distinguish ``property'' in the sense of ``my stuff'' from ``property'' in the sense of something that remains mine whether or not it's in my actual possession or use, and which I can have legal recourse to regain if I lose. The latter is what is provided by the state, not the former.
Many right anarchists dispute precisely this. There is a common notion that without the state, there would be no law, that the state provides law, and therefore, in particular, that the state provides legal recourse with respect to property.
But this notion is disputed. You might google "anarcho-capitalism" for alternative views.
Seeing all the people here who are actually defending this patent makes it pretty clear how hard it would be for the examiner to recognize obvious as obvious, even if he were serious about his job.
People are even arguing out of existence their own ability to see the obvious for what it is. Some people are saying, "just because it looks obvious now that you saw it, doesn't mean it was obvious before you saw it". But if a person looking at the patent application doesn't allow himself to judge whether it's obvious because of his supposed bias towards judging it obvious, then how is the "obvious" part of the requirement even supposed to be implemented?
This little event explains much about how it is that so much obvious stuff is getting through, getting patented.
That assertion has been questioned, I think reasonably.
The story told here is a familiar one, resembling many similar stories, giving it the ring of truth.
How much do you really know about power supply? Are you a God of power supply, or are you trusting the assertions of people who you trust know what they're talking about? I can't, myself, claim to know enough about power supply to say definitively whether this or that aspect is a "natural monopoly", but my general experience with assertions that this or that is a natural monopoly has led me to be skeptical of such assertions.
The Mayor of New York City directly blamed Canada in the statement he made the day of the blackout.
He hardly counts as "all the Americans" (see the original claim I was contesting). I admit that I do come very close to totally ignoring what politicians say.
The same kind of problems happen in systems that are unregulated, because private power companies have no financial motiviation
Gotta disagree. People want reliability and they pay for reliability. If there were two power companies, and one of them was known for more frequent blackouts, then I would go with the other one. I chose my website hosting service in part because of their reliability (Pair Networks), and hosting services regularly advertise based on their reliability (up time). That's just an example from a familiar domain; it's generally true that people value reliability.
And therefore companies do have an incentive to provide reliability.
I read a lot about this and not once did I read an American blaming Canada. It was known that the falling dominoes extended to Canada, but it was also thought early on that the origin of the blackout was in Cleveland, Ohio.
It's not argument, it's fact : software manufacturers don't accept liability for their products.
That's another topic. The topic here is liability for security breaches. As I already explained, we do not typically hold manufacturers liable for security breeches, not unless they specifically, willingly took on that liability (as a lock manufacturer might, e.g., we have kryptonite locks that come with guarantees to repay for the loss of a bike).
I'll say it again - eighteen months on from MS's much fanfared security epiphany, what excuse can there be for buffer overflows in software developed since then? I don't think anyone can argue that that is at least incompetence; many argue it is negligent.
An epiphany does not create a legal obligation. I repeat, please explain what is so special about software that it should be treated differently from ordinary objects.
why should software be treated differently than other products? And I have yet to see a lucid argument that it should.
First let's hear your argument that different treatment is what is being proposed. The topic is who's at fault if someone maliciously attacks you because of a vulnerability. You failed to provide specifics to clarify your point, but you seem to be comparing it to cases like, who's at fault if the gas grill you bought blows up (i.e., by itself, not by a malicious human who planted a bomb in it).
If you want to argue that software makers should be responsible if some malicious person takes advantage of a vulnerability in your software, on the face of it that's like arguing that a barbecue grill manufacturer should be held responsible if its grill is vulnerable to someone planting a bomb in it so that next time you use it the thing blows up. Your position, if that's what it is, is absurd on the face of it. Explain, why do you think software should be treated differently than other products? Please present a lucid argument.
Great sources, but one additional site is Onelook. It's a dictionary "marketplace" (it indexes hundreds of dictionaries) and it often succeeds where a single dictionary search like M-W or dictionary.com fails.
One more good site is Google Glossary, which has definitions gleaned from the entire web. I like it when I want a quick listing of some more in-depth, explanatory and semi-encyclopedic explanations of terms where you might want more detail than a dictionary would provide (like "united nations", which we quickly learn was established in 1945, or "internal combustion engine" - the top listed definition describes briefly how they work).
Don't forget about email as a tool for sharing information and for getting in contact with people who can help. With email, I know more than I ever wanted to know about the comings and goings of my extended family.
Or you can do the opposite: you send a regular letter, the letter then gets routed to a local service and scanned locally and zipped around the world via the Internet, and finally the letter is printed out at a service near the destination. This would speed up mail and in some cases reduce the cost. Plus it would have the advantage over pure email of being accessible to anyone, whether or not they have access to a computer. Their mail would go through the Internet, but they would not need their own connection.
We the public grant TV stations the right to use the airwaves for their broadcast
I'll ignore the point that the FTC isn't actually about the airwaves.
What "we" do you mean, and where did "we" get the right? There are many "we"s. There's, for example, the city "we", the state "we", and the national "we". Which "we" is the rightful owner of what part of the airwaves? So there's one question to answer. Another question: Why? If the right was merely asserted and enforced, same as the Southern states merely asserted and enforced the right of white men to own black men as slaves, then that's a pretty poor right.
A third question is, how real is thie "we", and how much is it just a misdirecting cover for a naked power grab by a particular group of people? For example, did "we" as a nation decide to invade Vietnam, or Iraq? Or did Kennedy and his group and Bush and his group decide, and did we go passively along for the ride because that's what a sheeple does? Can a critic in fact charge us with a violation of "truth in advertising" every time we say something like "we the public grant X, Y, and Z", when what actually happened was that some men in a room granted X, Y, and Z, and the rest of us paid no attention? Is saying that "we the public grant" something really any different from saying that a farmer's sheep "grant" him their wool? Rather: the farmer takes their wool, and they do not resist, being sheep. In this particular case, we are talking about an agency, the FTC. They are a regulatory agency and are therefore not directly subject to popular pressure, though in theory they are indirectly subject (the commissioners being chosen by the President and confirmed by the Senate). They are only subject to the people if the people bother to pay attention to what they are doing. But who has time to watch everything the state does? Effectively, then, I suggest that these commissioners, and even more, the agency that they head, are autonomous, can do pretty much what they want, with minimal repercussions. In short, they are not "we".
Backtracking to the first question, the idea that the airwaves are "public" has more to do with long-range broadcasts than with short-range radio transmission. If a guy uses 802.11b on his own property, with minor spillover and no significant interference with his neighbor, then he doesn't need a license from the public, nor does the public have a right to regulate what he does. That isn't even pretended. So clearly this idea that "the public" should be consulted applies to long-range broadcasts. But in that case, the relevant public is surely nothing more or less than the public living in the precise area covered by the broadcast. That is not necessarily a very wide area. So why is the national government involved? TV should be a local matter - at most.
Slashdot Mirror
Magicians and charlatans may take advantage of this illusion.
As it happens, Persi Diaconis, one of the statisticians interviewed in this article and presumably one of the discoverers, was a magician.
For example see this brief bio.
Google it.
Here
Here
Here (scroll down to find a movie)
Here's [etch-a-sketch.com] the only reliable model that I know of...
This was making the email rounds a few years ago:
Frequently Asked Questions for Etch-A-Sketch Technical Support
Q: My Etch-A-Sketch has all of these funny little lines allover the screen
A: Pick it up and shake it.
Q: How do I turn my Etch-A-Sketch off?
A: Pick it up and shake it.
Q: What's the shortcut for Undo?
A: Pick it up and shake it.
Q: How do I create a New Document window?
A: Pick it up and shake it.
Q: How do I set the background and foreground to the same color?
A: Pick it up and shake it.
Q: What is the proper procedure for rebooting my Etch-A-Sketch?
A: Pick it up and shake it.
Q: How do I delete a document on my Etch-A-Sketch?
A: Pick it up and shake it.
Q: How do I save my Etch-A-Sketch document?
A: Don't shake it.
The link also makes taunting mentions of movie plans.
Taunting means "Abusing vocally; expressing contempt or ridicule." I really don't think that's what you meant. Unless WB's new business model is to drum up business by ridiculing its own audience in press releases.
I feel naked without a cell phone
I went in to work today without my cell phone. Nobody seemed to notice. I'm encouraged. Tomorrow I'll leave my clothes at home.
I'd hate to have to sign for work multiple times...
Of course many places have you sign an electronic input device, and the resulting signed document can be printed as many times as you like.
USB keys are just too dang handy and hold alot more data
True, but USB drives aren't so good for FedExing data to other people. But I think the general reason is backwards compatibility. A lot of people simply have no intention of replacing their aging PCs until they absolutely positively must.
"The basic problem with any sort of anarchy in practice is that there is no protection against non-state coercion."
Again, anarcho-capitalists disagree.
Very briefly, an old, popular economic idea was that an economy would fall apart without some central power to control it. That turns out to be false; a market not only works, it works much better than a command economy. This has been a surprise to some of the smartest people, and not everyone is convinced; nevertheless, I would argue it's true. Similarly, it is common even among the most serious political thinkers to think that without a state to create and enforce law, the legal system would fall apart. But is that true? If we consider creation and enforcement of law as services, then we can ask, why shouldn't these services be provided on the market?
I don't want to get into a debate, so I'll refer you to the works of David Friedman, specifically his popularizing book The Machinery of Freedom, where he outlines a proposal for non-state creation and enforcement of law (i.e., non-state protection against coercion). Here is one chapter where he describes the idea.
It's important to distinguish ``property'' in the sense of ``my stuff'' from ``property'' in the sense of something that remains mine whether or not it's in my actual possession or use, and which I can have legal recourse to regain if I lose. The latter is what is provided by the state, not the former.
Many right anarchists dispute precisely this. There is a common notion that without the state, there would be no law, that the state provides law, and therefore, in particular, that the state provides legal recourse with respect to property.
But this notion is disputed. You might google "anarcho-capitalism" for alternative views.
"Do we think anyone but geeks really cares?"
Yes, since it isn't just geeks who are violating copyright on a massive scale.
Discontinuing classic films like Tri-X, Technical Pan or Kodachrome would only earn them a worldwide boycott from professional photographers.
So if Kodak stop making film, then goddammit, photographers will stop buying Kodak film. That'll show them.
Not to troll, but I'm curious why somebody using XP strictly for gaming would shell out the extra $$$ for XP Pro vs. XP standard/home?
Easier to find Pro on Kazaa?
Seeing all the people here who are actually defending this patent makes it pretty clear how hard it would be for the examiner to recognize obvious as obvious, even if he were serious about his job.
People are even arguing out of existence their own ability to see the obvious for what it is. Some people are saying, "just because it looks obvious now that you saw it, doesn't mean it was obvious before you saw it". But if a person looking at the patent application doesn't allow himself to judge whether it's obvious because of his supposed bias towards judging it obvious, then how is the "obvious" part of the requirement even supposed to be implemented?
This little event explains much about how it is that so much obvious stuff is getting through, getting patented.
That assertion has been questioned, I think reasonably.
The story told here is a familiar one, resembling many similar stories, giving it the ring of truth.
How much do you really know about power supply? Are you a God of power supply, or are you trusting the assertions of people who you trust know what they're talking about? I can't, myself, claim to know enough about power supply to say definitively whether this or that aspect is a "natural monopoly", but my general experience with assertions that this or that is a natural monopoly has led me to be skeptical of such assertions.
The Mayor of New York City directly blamed Canada in the statement he made the day of the blackout.
He hardly counts as "all the Americans" (see the original claim I was contesting). I admit that I do come very close to totally ignoring what politicians say.
New York officials blamed Canada as a potential source of the largest blackout in U.S. history
The original claim was "all the americans" are blaming Canada. That claim is false, the end.
The same kind of problems happen in systems that are unregulated, because private power companies have no financial motiviation
Gotta disagree. People want reliability and they pay for reliability. If there were two power companies, and one of them was known for more frequent blackouts, then I would go with the other one. I chose my website hosting service in part because of their reliability (Pair Networks), and hosting services regularly advertise based on their reliability (up time). That's just an example from a familiar domain; it's generally true that people value reliability.
And therefore companies do have an incentive to provide reliability.
Funny how all the americans were blaming canada
I read a lot about this and not once did I read an American blaming Canada. It was known that the falling dominoes extended to Canada, but it was also thought early on that the origin of the blackout was in Cleveland, Ohio.
It's not argument, it's fact : software manufacturers don't accept liability for their products.
That's another topic. The topic here is liability for security breaches. As I already explained, we do not typically hold manufacturers liable for security breeches, not unless they specifically, willingly took on that liability (as a lock manufacturer might, e.g., we have kryptonite locks that come with guarantees to repay for the loss of a bike).
I'll say it again - eighteen months on from MS's much fanfared security epiphany, what excuse can there be for buffer overflows in software developed since then? I don't think anyone can argue that that is at least incompetence; many argue it is negligent.
An epiphany does not create a legal obligation. I repeat, please explain what is so special about software that it should be treated differently from ordinary objects.
why should software be treated differently than other products? And I have yet to see a lucid argument that it should.
First let's hear your argument that different treatment is what is being proposed. The topic is who's at fault if someone maliciously attacks you because of a vulnerability. You failed to provide specifics to clarify your point, but you seem to be comparing it to cases like, who's at fault if the gas grill you bought blows up (i.e., by itself, not by a malicious human who planted a bomb in it).
If you want to argue that software makers should be responsible if some malicious person takes advantage of a vulnerability in your software, on the face of it that's like arguing that a barbecue grill manufacturer should be held responsible if its grill is vulnerable to someone planting a bomb in it so that next time you use it the thing blows up. Your position, if that's what it is, is absurd on the face of it. Explain, why do you think software should be treated differently than other products? Please present a lucid argument.
Americans Annoyed
Great sources, but one additional site is Onelook. It's a dictionary "marketplace" (it indexes hundreds of dictionaries) and it often succeeds where a single dictionary search like M-W or dictionary.com fails.
One more good site is Google Glossary, which has definitions gleaned from the entire web. I like it when I want a quick listing of some more in-depth, explanatory and semi-encyclopedic explanations of terms where you might want more detail than a dictionary would provide (like "united nations", which we quickly learn was established in 1945, or "internal combustion engine" - the top listed definition describes briefly how they work).
Web, Usenet, P2P
Don't forget about email as a tool for sharing information and for getting in contact with people who can help. With email, I know more than I ever wanted to know about the comings and goings of my extended family.
Or you can do the opposite: you send a regular letter, the letter then gets routed to a local service and scanned locally and zipped around the world via the Internet, and finally the letter is printed out at a service near the destination. This would speed up mail and in some cases reduce the cost. Plus it would have the advantage over pure email of being accessible to anyone, whether or not they have access to a computer. Their mail would go through the Internet, but they would not need their own connection.
We the public grant TV stations the right to use the airwaves for their broadcast
I'll ignore the point that the FTC isn't actually about the airwaves.
What "we" do you mean, and where did "we" get the right? There are many "we"s. There's, for example, the city "we", the state "we", and the national "we". Which "we" is the rightful owner of what part of the airwaves? So there's one question to answer. Another question: Why? If the right was merely asserted and enforced, same as the Southern states merely asserted and enforced the right of white men to own black men as slaves, then that's a pretty poor right.
A third question is, how real is thie "we", and how much is it just a misdirecting cover for a naked power grab by a particular group of people? For example, did "we" as a nation decide to invade Vietnam, or Iraq? Or did Kennedy and his group and Bush and his group decide, and did we go passively along for the ride because that's what a sheeple does? Can a critic in fact charge us with a violation of "truth in advertising" every time we say something like "we the public grant X, Y, and Z", when what actually happened was that some men in a room granted X, Y, and Z, and the rest of us paid no attention? Is saying that "we the public grant" something really any different from saying that a farmer's sheep "grant" him their wool? Rather: the farmer takes their wool, and they do not resist, being sheep. In this particular case, we are talking about an agency, the FTC. They are a regulatory agency and are therefore not directly subject to popular pressure, though in theory they are indirectly subject (the commissioners being chosen by the President and confirmed by the Senate). They are only subject to the people if the people bother to pay attention to what they are doing. But who has time to watch everything the state does? Effectively, then, I suggest that these commissioners, and even more, the agency that they head, are autonomous, can do pretty much what they want, with minimal repercussions. In short, they are not "we".
Backtracking to the first question, the idea that the airwaves are "public" has more to do with long-range broadcasts than with short-range radio transmission. If a guy uses 802.11b on his own property, with minor spillover and no significant interference with his neighbor, then he doesn't need a license from the public, nor does the public have a right to regulate what he does. That isn't even pretended. So clearly this idea that "the public" should be consulted applies to long-range broadcasts. But in that case, the relevant public is surely nothing more or less than the public living in the precise area covered by the broadcast. That is not necessarily a very wide area. So why is the national government involved? TV should be a local matter - at most.