From the beginning of his detention, Manning has been held in intensive solitary confinement. For 23 out of 24 hours every day -- for seven straight months and counting -- he sits completely alone in his cell. Even inside his cell, his activities are heavily restricted; he's barred even from exercising and is under constant surveillance to enforce those restrictions. For reasons that appear completely punitive, he's being denied many of the most basic attributes of civilized imprisonment, including even a pillow or sheets for his bed (he is not and never has been on suicide watch). For the one hour per day when he is freed from this isolation, he is barred from accessing any news or current events programs. Lt. Villiard protested that the conditions are not "like jail movies where someone gets thrown into the hole," but confirmed that he is in solitary confinement, entirely alone in his cell except for the one hour per day he is taken out.
I'm so glad the term has been defined so that I know what the hell we're talking about here. Oh wait, no it hasn't.
Okay, then I'll RTFA. Oh wait, two screens worth of text later and it still hasn't.
Okay, well try reading just the second sentence of the summary,
Bufferbloat is affecting the entire Internet, slowly worsening as RAM prices drop and buffers enlarge, and is causing latency and jitter to spike, especially for home broadband users.
What I get from that is that larger buffers are causing higher latency and jitter. The trend towards larger buffers which cause these problems is called bufferbloat. If you want to know the details, then read the article, which does explain it. Basically, due to the over-use of buffers, TCP can't do its job of finding the correct transmission speed. Networking equipment is trying so hard to not drop packets by putting them into buffers, when they should just be dropping them. This would let TCP do what it was designed to do.
The "all packets must be treated equally, no exceptions" version. You know...what Net Neutrality actually means.
I, and I think you'll find, many others, don't actually mean this when they say net neutrality. I think it's okay if an ISP treats streaming archived video, streaming live video, streaming live audio, and downloading a file differently. Just as long as they don't treat streaming video from Netflix differently than they treat streaming video from Youtube. To me, net neutrality means not discriminating based on source or destination.
For example, if I'm downloading a linux DVD image I don't care about lag very much, I just care that my average download speed is what my ISP advertises. But if I'm on a VOIP call, I care much more about low lag than total speed. If an ISP wants to regulate their network such that certain types of traffic are treated differently, that's okay with me. Just as long as they're completely open about it and they treat all packets of a certain type the exact say way, whether they're coming from some small start up or some giant media conglomerate.
I would check out life lines. If I remember correctly it has a slightly steep learning curve, but it's very powerful. It saves the info in an open format called GEDCOM and can generate some really nice output with family trees and family histories. I used it a while ago and have always wanted to go back and really flesh out my family tree.
That being said, you got to look a slide #6: it's one of the best expression of greed I have ever seen.
The entire slideshow makes me want to throw up. But I really think slide 18 takes the cake:
Use Case: Split Billing
First 15 minutes of the movie streamed for free to user as a promotion
If user doesn't purchase movie, content provider is billed for the 15 minutes of network consumption
If user purchases movie, revenue is shared between operator and content provider
Are you kidding me! So someone else actually creates content worth viewing and for some reason Verizon gets a cut no matter whether I buy it or not? I just have to preview it. Verizon already benefits from there being interesting things on the internet, it makes people buy network connections. And it's not like they're hurting if you use your connection for high bandwidth content because a user gets the speed they pay for. If there are more interesting videos on the internet then users will pay for faster network connections.
I really can't express my outrage well enough. I want to scream, cry, and throw up all at once after having read through that presentation. The worst part is that we'll all suffer as a result of this. Even if you can find and ISP who wouldn't pull this shit, all the content providers will still have to pay shakedown money to the big ISPs in order to get their stuff in front of people's eyes. This will create monopolies where only the big boys can afford to pay for play. The smaller guys, or the ones who refuse to pay extortion will suffer and probably not be able to compete. So even if you can find an ISP who won't play these games, and even if there are content providers that don't want to pay up, they'll be few and far between because the youtubes and the hulus and the ABCs of the world will pay for better service and the others will go out of business.
I love slide 5 which shows the ISPs valiantly trying to carry popular services on their backs as money flows out of their pockets and sweat drips off their brow. <ispviewpoint>Yeah, what jerks facebook, youtube, and skype are for creating popular services that our users actually want to use, that actually make the service we provide useful. We'd have it so much easier if only there weren't popular services on the internet. Why can't everyone just buy expensive connections, and then not use them, that would totally be the best.</ispviewpoint>.
They can't give that money to governments like the Democratic Republic of the Congo because government corruption will wick away much of that. And they might buy small arms and attack their neighbors with them. They get treated like children and they stay children.
You kinda had me going along with you at the start of your rant. I thought you were going to go somewhere freakonomics-like on me and was ready for the ride. But your rant against putting money into an endowment and the above quoted rant against paternalism through me right of that track.
First about your equating the practice of not giving corrupt countries a lump sum of cash to paternalism. People have given money to countries which are poor and have a history of corruption, and every time the lion's share of that money goes into the pockets of officials or buys arms. So giving money directly to those governments is simply a no-go, you just can't do that. And, according to wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_aid#Criticism_of_aid "James Shikwati, a Kenyan economist, has argued that foreign aid causes harm to the recipient nations, specifically because aid is distributed by local politicians, finances the creation of corrupt government such as that led by Dr Fredrick Chiluba in Zambia bureaucracies, and hollows out the local economy." So even if aid isn't gobbled up by a corrupt government, it still isn't a good idea. There are organization out there looking for sustainable ways of providing aid, but guess what, it's not coming as a lump sum payment as you suggest.
And that brings me back to your dislike of endowments. I really don't understand that. Have you never heard about interest? Why do you think colleges, museums, and other institutions like endowments so much? Not because they're forced to use them by some paternalistic billionaire.
But Assange didn't choose to go that route. He definitely wanted his name and trademark on this information. Wanting to get the truth out is one thing, but wanting to make sure that the truth gets out *under your brand name* is another. I have more respect for the former than the latter.
Yes, but a central organization acts like a lightning rod for more leaks. Look, if he uploaded the data anonymously somewhere, then he'd adhere to your heroic ideal of getting the information out without receiving any recognition. But then, next time some non-technical whistle blower has some info they want to get out, they won't quite know where to go. With Wikileaks around, they'd know where to send the data. Having a named organization also makes donations possible. I'm perfectly fine with people seeing what Wikileaks is doing and supporting them in any way they can. You can't do that with an anonymous poster.
It's also a lot more powerful when a person or an entire organization is able to raise their hand and say, "Hey, this isn't right, and I'm not going to stand for it." Instead of someone leaving an anonymous note somewhere. It's more powerful when someone puts their name behind something.
Not to mention, unless I'm much mistaken a NAT can support 65536 connections at maximum (number of valid ports for outgoing connections).
I think some solutions have this limit but not all. Let's use some smaller numbers so it's easier to comprehend, let's say say there are only 4 valid port numbers and you've got 4 customers all wanting to connect to a different external host all at once. That's obviously fine, you'll have an internal mapping of:
192.168.1.101:1 -> ISP_IP:1:google.com:1
192.168.1.102:1 -> ISP_IP:2:yahoo.com:1
192.168.1.103:1 -> ISP_IP:3:facebook.com:1
192.168.1.104:1 -> ISP_IP:4:youtube.com:1
Now let's say you add another user on 192.168.1.105 who wants to connect to farmville.com at the same time as our other users. Impossible, right? Nope, there's nothing stopping the ISPs router from overloading any of the ports as long as they're going to different external host:port pairs. You can have this mapping:
192.168.1.101:1 -> ISP_IP:1:google.com:1
192.168.1.102:1 -> ISP_IP:2:yahoo.com:1
192.168.1.103:1 -> ISP_IP:3:facebook.com:1
192.168.1.104:1 -> ISP_IP:4:youtube.com:1
192.168.1.105:1 -> ISP_IP:1:farmville.com:1
Both google.com and farmville.com will be sending packets to port 1 at your ISP, but since they're coming from different host:ip pairs, the router can still send the packets to the right internal host. What you can't have is the following:
192.168.1.101:1 -> ISP_IP:1:google.com:1
192.168.1.102:1 -> ISP_IP:2:yahoo.com:1
192.168.1.103:1 -> ISP_IP:3:facebook.com:1
192.168.1.104:1 -> ISP_IP:4:youtube.com:1
192.168.1.105:1 -> ISP_IP:1:farmville.com:1
192.168.1.106:1 -> ISP_IP:1:farmville.com:1
Because when farmville.com send a packet to ISP_IP:1, the NAT won't know where to send it internally. So I think the theoretical limit is 65536 connections per external host IP:port pair. Of course most traffic these days is just to port 80, so this effectively becomes 65536 simultaneous connections per external host. As an ISP, you'd probably want to look at the max simultaneous connections to a single external host you get, and split up your customers into separate NATed networks whenever it approaches 65536.
Any way you look at this the findings become politically charged
No, there is exactly one way looking at this that is politically charged, and that is apparently how you've decided to look at it. Which is that oil definitely comes from this bacteria, and it's replenishing our oil supplies just as soon as we can empty them.
So yeah, if you believe that the government can create that good of a cover story with that much independent evidence in a 36 hour period, well, you have more faith in government agencies than I do.
That's the bizarre thing - why did it take 36 hours to get an answer and why didn't the definitive answer come from a definitive source?
So it was flight 808. Either the DoD and FAA were unable to figure that out in short order or else they just don't care about giving the public answers to those kind of questions.
Neither one of those possibilities is particularly good.
The comments in the original slashdot story had people saying it was the contrail of an airliner. I believe someone even linked to someones blog who had done a lot of leg work and found that it was flight 808 and even compared it to a similar sighting on 2009-12-31. For some reason the news media didn't want to actually investigate this even though all the facts were out there.
Then, it's fishes and loaves: if you have 2 copies of "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo", and 100 people who want to read it, they can all read from those two copies, 2 at a time. That would call for a queue, but a less popular book might not.
I know it's completely impossible, based on the exact same reasoning you list above, but I wish they could do something like this for movies. You could go online and select from hundreds of movies to add to your queue, and then watch one at a time at your leisure. Anyway, that would be pretty cool, but I guess you'd have to use physical DVDs for distribution since a lot of people can't do streaming yet. That would certainly be silly.
As a side-note, "Flamebait" is the appropriate down-mod for a statement that you feel will draw a largely negative response because of its content. "Troll" is for when someone says something unkind or untrue in order to drum up a disagreement.
I don't see a huge distinction, "Troll is for when someone says something (a statement) unkind or untrue in order to drum up (to draw) a disagreement (a negative response)." Troll seems a lot like flamebait from where I'm sitting.
What are you smoking? He came right out and stated where he worked. Do you know what a shill is? He also presented verifiable technical information on exactly what they're doing.
And from what I have read, there will be more content available now (compared to the disk)
I don't think the selection has anything to do with disk/no-disk. You get the same Watch Instantly selection whether on a computer, a console with a disk, or a console without a disk. The more content simply has to do with Netflix licensing more movies and TV shows on watch instantly.
What is so wrong with it? It's a fact. Americans and the Taliban and fighting. Why hide the truth? Are we supposed to just pretend that Americans and the Taliban are "Super Best Friends"? I know, let's just ignore everything.
I'm not saying I agree with the decision, but I think you're missing something. The issue isn't hiding/acknowledging the fact that Americans are fighting the Taliban, it's allowing users to play as the Taliban that has people upset. If you could just play as the Americans and the enemies were the Taliban, I don't think anyone would be complaining (except those who would decry this type violence in any video game). I know, it's 'us' vs 'them'. And what if 'they' created a video game 'they' would be the good guys, and it would be horrible to play as 'us'. And yes, the whole, "But you can play as Germans and Japanese in WW2 games; and you can play as the South in Civil War games" argument does hold water. I'm not saying I agree with the move. I'm just saying it's not as simple as recognizing the Taliban or not.
What would you think about a game where you could play as the Ku Klux Klan and the missions were to lynch black people? Would that be okay just because "It's a fact. The KKK lynched black people. Why hide the truth?"
Now you're making me wish that I hadn't commented in this discussion just so I could mod you up. Although if I had never commented, then you wouldn't have been able to reply to me and I wouldn't have been able to mod you up anyway. Maybe some smart scientist could help us out with this paradox.
I certainly hate to say it. And I certainly don't think I'm any smarter. But, Hawking is past his prime. It seems like he's been saying stuff recently just to say stuff. Maybe it's for attention, maybe it's because he knows extraordinary claims will sell headlines and his books/documentaries, or maybe it's because he actually believes in them. However, after his comments on active SETI being dangerous and now this... I don't know, it's like watching an amazing baseball player, past his prime, coaching a crappy minor league team. It's hard to criticize because I was never as good as he, and even now I couldn't manage a Denny's, but I don't really want to watch him either.
I think this news is a nice reality check on that annoying but vocal cadre of environmentalists that are always predicting some kind of terrible apocalypse within the next couple of decades. Global cooling, for example.
Come on, did you even read the article you linked?
[Global cooling] gained temporary popular attention due to a combination of press reports that did not accurately reflect the scientific understanding of ice age cycles
Not to mention a nifty "myth busted" moment for that old Hollywood trope of a post-nuclear wasteland.
Again... must I say come on? Are you really comparing a relatively isolated nuclear accident at a single power plant to the use of hundreds of nuclear weapons across the globe?
Perhaps you forgot to read this part of the linked page:
Like a fable, the "boiled frog" anecdote serves its purpose whether or not it's based upon something that is literally true.
I suppose if someone referenced the tortoise and the hare, you would respond that it is ridiculous to believe that a swift hare would actually lose a race to a slow moving tortoise by taking a nap halfway through.
Horseshit... really? Try dedicating some more time to reading what I actually wrote and a little less being an ass.
I know exactly what public domain is, I know exactly what the GPL says, and my response was tailored specifically to the fact that the poster mentioned public domain. What I wrote was this:
IF you put something into the public domain, then you by definition should be expecting that other people will take your work and close it up inside their own products/works. IF you don't want that, then you don't want the public domain.
Highlighting the "ifs" this time so you people can actually see them. His question didn't make any sense so I was clarifying and qualifying my response.
The poster obviously knows what public domain means as he crafted a question specific to it.
The poster obviously does not know what public domain means (no offense original poster, it actually is a good question and we all probably just need a little more clarification on what you meant exactly). Just because one uses a term doesn't mean they actually know what it means. And that's kind of the whole point, he's asking because he's not clear on the subject. If he were an expert, he wouldn't be asking.
A lot of open source licenses specifically allow reuse in a closed system. It doesn't guarantee that a company will show you how they did something. But, it means that as long as people have access to your code, it exists. If it ceases to exist, well, nobody else cared. If it's available for the rest of time, people must have found it useful.
Now it sounds like you're the one who has "intentionally chosen to disregard what the poster asked". He specifically asked, "How exactly do you put something into public domain legally, such that you can legally protect them to be in public domain?" He wasn't asking how you create software that has staying power. Or how do you ensure lots of people have access to your code. Or how do you make people care about your software. He's asking how can you release something in the public domain while retaining the ability to sue people (legally protect) to make sure the thing stays in the public domain. The only way I can see to interpret that question is "I want to publish a piece of work and let other people use it freely, how can I release it such that no one else can legally close it up."
I at least understand that because the original question is unclear as to what is meant by "public domain" (because its use seems inconsistent with the poster's desires) that there very well could have been a different meaning intended. If you actually read my original response without your hate glasses on, I think you'll see that.
So, the alternative is that if by "stays in the public domain," they mean that derived works stay in the domain declared for the original work. OK, now strictly speaking we've reached a contradiction since the public domain does not allow this. However, we may consider a quasi-public domain in which this property holds. It is obvious that there is no way whatsoever to do this for an open release, without something GPL-like
Wow, I think I just bumped into the first person who actually read what I wrote. I don't think anyone else has any reading comprehension anymore.
Slashdot Mirror
Due Process? How, pray tell, has he been deprived of due process? He's in pre-trial confinement, awaiting his GCM.
From: http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/12/14/manning
From the beginning of his detention, Manning has been held in intensive solitary confinement. For 23 out of 24 hours every day -- for seven straight months and counting -- he sits completely alone in his cell. Even inside his cell, his activities are heavily restricted; he's barred even from exercising and is under constant surveillance to enforce those restrictions. For reasons that appear completely punitive, he's being denied many of the most basic attributes of civilized imprisonment, including even a pillow or sheets for his bed (he is not and never has been on suicide watch). For the one hour per day when he is freed from this isolation, he is barred from accessing any news or current events programs. Lt. Villiard protested that the conditions are not "like jail movies where someone gets thrown into the hole," but confirmed that he is in solitary confinement, entirely alone in his cell except for the one hour per day he is taken out.
I'm so glad the term has been defined so that I know what the hell we're talking about here. Oh wait, no it hasn't.
Okay, then I'll RTFA. Oh wait, two screens worth of text later and it still hasn't.
Okay, well try reading just the second sentence of the summary,
Bufferbloat is affecting the entire Internet, slowly worsening as RAM prices drop and buffers enlarge, and is causing latency and jitter to spike, especially for home broadband users.
What I get from that is that larger buffers are causing higher latency and jitter. The trend towards larger buffers which cause these problems is called bufferbloat. If you want to know the details, then read the article, which does explain it. Basically, due to the over-use of buffers, TCP can't do its job of finding the correct transmission speed. Networking equipment is trying so hard to not drop packets by putting them into buffers, when they should just be dropping them. This would let TCP do what it was designed to do.
This is just another shot in the arm against a citizenry whose arms are already falling off from the shots before.
btw, a "shot in the arm" is a good thing: http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/318925.html . It's like what the bailout/TARP was designed to be.
The "all packets must be treated equally, no exceptions" version. You know...what Net Neutrality actually means.
I, and I think you'll find, many others, don't actually mean this when they say net neutrality. I think it's okay if an ISP treats streaming archived video, streaming live video, streaming live audio, and downloading a file differently. Just as long as they don't treat streaming video from Netflix differently than they treat streaming video from Youtube. To me, net neutrality means not discriminating based on source or destination.
For example, if I'm downloading a linux DVD image I don't care about lag very much, I just care that my average download speed is what my ISP advertises. But if I'm on a VOIP call, I care much more about low lag than total speed. If an ISP wants to regulate their network such that certain types of traffic are treated differently, that's okay with me. Just as long as they're completely open about it and they treat all packets of a certain type the exact say way, whether they're coming from some small start up or some giant media conglomerate.
I would check out life lines. If I remember correctly it has a slightly steep learning curve, but it's very powerful. It saves the info in an open format called GEDCOM and can generate some really nice output with family trees and family histories. I used it a while ago and have always wanted to go back and really flesh out my family tree.
The entire slideshow makes me want to throw up. But I really think slide 18 takes the cake:
Are you kidding me! So someone else actually creates content worth viewing and for some reason Verizon gets a cut no matter whether I buy it or not? I just have to preview it. Verizon already benefits from there being interesting things on the internet, it makes people buy network connections. And it's not like they're hurting if you use your connection for high bandwidth content because a user gets the speed they pay for. If there are more interesting videos on the internet then users will pay for faster network connections.
I really can't express my outrage well enough. I want to scream, cry, and throw up all at once after having read through that presentation. The worst part is that we'll all suffer as a result of this. Even if you can find and ISP who wouldn't pull this shit, all the content providers will still have to pay shakedown money to the big ISPs in order to get their stuff in front of people's eyes. This will create monopolies where only the big boys can afford to pay for play. The smaller guys, or the ones who refuse to pay extortion will suffer and probably not be able to compete. So even if you can find an ISP who won't play these games, and even if there are content providers that don't want to pay up, they'll be few and far between because the youtubes and the hulus and the ABCs of the world will pay for better service and the others will go out of business.
I love slide 5 which shows the ISPs valiantly trying to carry popular services on their backs as money flows out of their pockets and sweat drips off their brow. <ispviewpoint>Yeah, what jerks facebook, youtube, and skype are for creating popular services that our users actually want to use, that actually make the service we provide useful. We'd have it so much easier if only there weren't popular services on the internet. Why can't everyone just buy expensive connections, and then not use them, that would totally be the best.</ispviewpoint>.
You kinda had me going along with you at the start of your rant. I thought you were going to go somewhere freakonomics-like on me and was ready for the ride. But your rant against putting money into an endowment and the above quoted rant against paternalism through me right of that track.
First about your equating the practice of not giving corrupt countries a lump sum of cash to paternalism. People have given money to countries which are poor and have a history of corruption, and every time the lion's share of that money goes into the pockets of officials or buys arms. So giving money directly to those governments is simply a no-go, you just can't do that. And, according to wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_aid#Criticism_of_aid "James Shikwati, a Kenyan economist, has argued that foreign aid causes harm to the recipient nations, specifically because aid is distributed by local politicians, finances the creation of corrupt government such as that led by Dr Fredrick Chiluba in Zambia bureaucracies, and hollows out the local economy." So even if aid isn't gobbled up by a corrupt government, it still isn't a good idea. There are organization out there looking for sustainable ways of providing aid, but guess what, it's not coming as a lump sum payment as you suggest.
And that brings me back to your dislike of endowments. I really don't understand that. Have you never heard about interest? Why do you think colleges, museums, and other institutions like endowments so much? Not because they're forced to use them by some paternalistic billionaire.
Yes, but a central organization acts like a lightning rod for more leaks. Look, if he uploaded the data anonymously somewhere, then he'd adhere to your heroic ideal of getting the information out without receiving any recognition. But then, next time some non-technical whistle blower has some info they want to get out, they won't quite know where to go. With Wikileaks around, they'd know where to send the data. Having a named organization also makes donations possible. I'm perfectly fine with people seeing what Wikileaks is doing and supporting them in any way they can. You can't do that with an anonymous poster.
It's also a lot more powerful when a person or an entire organization is able to raise their hand and say, "Hey, this isn't right, and I'm not going to stand for it." Instead of someone leaving an anonymous note somewhere. It's more powerful when someone puts their name behind something.
Not to mention, unless I'm much mistaken a NAT can support 65536 connections at maximum (number of valid ports for outgoing connections).
I think some solutions have this limit but not all. Let's use some smaller numbers so it's easier to comprehend, let's say say there are only 4 valid port numbers and you've got 4 customers all wanting to connect to a different external host all at once. That's obviously fine, you'll have an internal mapping of:
Now let's say you add another user on 192.168.1.105 who wants to connect to farmville.com at the same time as our other users. Impossible, right? Nope, there's nothing stopping the ISPs router from overloading any of the ports as long as they're going to different external host:port pairs. You can have this mapping:
Both google.com and farmville.com will be sending packets to port 1 at your ISP, but since they're coming from different host:ip pairs, the router can still send the packets to the right internal host. What you can't have is the following:
Because when farmville.com send a packet to ISP_IP:1, the NAT won't know where to send it internally. So I think the theoretical limit is 65536 connections per external host IP:port pair. Of course most traffic these days is just to port 80, so this effectively becomes 65536 simultaneous connections per external host. As an ISP, you'd probably want to look at the max simultaneous connections to a single external host you get, and split up your customers into separate NATed networks whenever it approaches 65536.
At least it would have been a first post had the rootkit in my network card not delayed my packets.
Any way you look at this the findings become politically charged
No, there is exactly one way looking at this that is politically charged, and that is apparently how you've decided to look at it. Which is that oil definitely comes from this bacteria, and it's replenishing our oil supplies just as soon as we can empty them.
That's the bizarre thing - why did it take 36 hours to get an answer and why didn't the definitive answer come from a definitive source?
So it was flight 808. Either the DoD and FAA were unable to figure that out in short order or else they just don't care about giving the public answers to those kind of questions.
Neither one of those possibilities is particularly good.
The comments in the original slashdot story had people saying it was the contrail of an airliner. I believe someone even linked to someones blog who had done a lot of leg work and found that it was flight 808 and even compared it to a similar sighting on 2009-12-31. For some reason the news media didn't want to actually investigate this even though all the facts were out there.
I know it's completely impossible, based on the exact same reasoning you list above, but I wish they could do something like this for movies. You could go online and select from hundreds of movies to add to your queue, and then watch one at a time at your leisure. Anyway, that would be pretty cool, but I guess you'd have to use physical DVDs for distribution since a lot of people can't do streaming yet. That would certainly be silly.
I don't see a huge distinction, "Troll is for when someone says something (a statement) unkind or untrue in order to drum up (to draw) a disagreement (a negative response)." Troll seems a lot like flamebait from where I'm sitting.
What are you smoking? He came right out and stated where he worked. Do you know what a shill is? He also presented verifiable technical information on exactly what they're doing.
I don't think the selection has anything to do with disk/no-disk. You get the same Watch Instantly selection whether on a computer, a console with a disk, or a console without a disk. The more content simply has to do with Netflix licensing more movies and TV shows on watch instantly.
If you had read the article, you'd know that the author rides a fixed-gear bike. So this is obviously usable by those lacking souls.
I'm not saying I agree with the decision, but I think you're missing something. The issue isn't hiding/acknowledging the fact that Americans are fighting the Taliban, it's allowing users to play as the Taliban that has people upset. If you could just play as the Americans and the enemies were the Taliban, I don't think anyone would be complaining (except those who would decry this type violence in any video game). I know, it's 'us' vs 'them'. And what if 'they' created a video game 'they' would be the good guys, and it would be horrible to play as 'us'. And yes, the whole, "But you can play as Germans and Japanese in WW2 games; and you can play as the South in Civil War games" argument does hold water. I'm not saying I agree with the move. I'm just saying it's not as simple as recognizing the Taliban or not.
What would you think about a game where you could play as the Ku Klux Klan and the missions were to lynch black people? Would that be okay just because "It's a fact. The KKK lynched black people. Why hide the truth?"
Now you're making me wish that I hadn't commented in this discussion just so I could mod you up. Although if I had never commented, then you wouldn't have been able to reply to me and I wouldn't have been able to mod you up anyway. Maybe some smart scientist could help us out with this paradox.
I certainly hate to say it. And I certainly don't think I'm any smarter. But, Hawking is past his prime. It seems like he's been saying stuff recently just to say stuff. Maybe it's for attention, maybe it's because he knows extraordinary claims will sell headlines and his books/documentaries, or maybe it's because he actually believes in them. However, after his comments on active SETI being dangerous and now this... I don't know, it's like watching an amazing baseball player, past his prime, coaching a crappy minor league team. It's hard to criticize because I was never as good as he, and even now I couldn't manage a Denny's, but I don't really want to watch him either.
Come on, did you even read the article you linked?
Again... must I say come on? Are you really comparing a relatively isolated nuclear accident at a single power plant to the use of hundreds of nuclear weapons across the globe?
Perhaps you forgot to read this part of the linked page:
I suppose if someone referenced the tortoise and the hare, you would respond that it is ridiculous to believe that a swift hare would actually lose a race to a slow moving tortoise by taking a nap halfway through.
Just watch episode 15 of season 1 of seaQuest... I'm pretty sure all your questions will be answered.
Horseshit... really? Try dedicating some more time to reading what I actually wrote and a little less being an ass.
I know exactly what public domain is, I know exactly what the GPL says, and my response was tailored specifically to the fact that the poster mentioned public domain. What I wrote was this:
Highlighting the "ifs" this time so you people can actually see them. His question didn't make any sense so I was clarifying and qualifying my response.
The poster obviously does not know what public domain means (no offense original poster, it actually is a good question and we all probably just need a little more clarification on what you meant exactly). Just because one uses a term doesn't mean they actually know what it means. And that's kind of the whole point, he's asking because he's not clear on the subject. If he were an expert, he wouldn't be asking.
Now it sounds like you're the one who has "intentionally chosen to disregard what the poster asked". He specifically asked, "How exactly do you put something into public domain legally, such that you can legally protect them to be in public domain?" He wasn't asking how you create software that has staying power. Or how do you ensure lots of people have access to your code. Or how do you make people care about your software. He's asking how can you release something in the public domain while retaining the ability to sue people (legally protect) to make sure the thing stays in the public domain. The only way I can see to interpret that question is "I want to publish a piece of work and let other people use it freely, how can I release it such that no one else can legally close it up."
I at least understand that because the original question is unclear as to what is meant by "public domain" (because its use seems inconsistent with the poster's desires) that there very well could have been a different meaning intended. If you actually read my original response without your hate glasses on, I think you'll see that.
Wow, I think I just bumped into the first person who actually read what I wrote. I don't think anyone else has any reading comprehension anymore.