If it's a refugee situation, it might make sense to use a few of these
for storing medicine, food, and the like. The concrete would help keep
out thieves and bugs.
"They priced themselves out of the market. (I come from a long line of
coal miners. Fortunately I wasn't one.)"
Right, but that's not the same as charging inflated prices. They
weren't charging more than they were worth (because of unions). They were
really worth more than people wanted to pay for mining.
They probably stopped being miners for the same reason you never
started. You can look at it as, "Those miners demanded too
much money for their work, so the poor companies couldn't employ them,"
but I think it makes more sense to say "Those companies demanded too
much work (and risk) for their wages, so the poor miners couldn't take
the job." You don't need a name ending in "Inc." to cite economic
reality.
"[C]ausing labor cost to be inflated, etc (look at the mining industry
in this country as an example). . . Most coal miners who 'wouldn't work
for less than $100 a day' are now either retired or went on to seek
other trades.
Not to debate your politics, but are we talking about the same "mining"
here? As in hauling rocks underground, breathing rock dust and weird
fumes with a real danger of being buried alive? $100/day doesn't sound
inflated at all. I think you've misunderstood the reason that so many
people got out of that line of work.
"The industries have every right to demand that P2P networks be held to
the same standards that other transmission methods are held, and to
claim that the very Internet is under attack is a red herring."
They can demand whatever they want, but no one has to give it to them.
There are plenty of transmission methods that are not monitored for
copyright infringement. If they demanded that the post office and the
telephone company screen everything for copyright violations (no
singing "Happy Birthday" over the phone, no copying a recipe out of a
cookbook and mailing it, etc.) everyone would realize the demand was
absurd.
It would also be an attack on the mail and telephone systems because
forcing them to centrally monitor each call and letter would slash the
number they could effectively carry.
"[T]he equivalent of saying that, since libraries are essential to the
transmission of information, the government cannot request that the
book 'Practical Guide to Terrorist Attacks' be taken off library
shelves."
They can't. Or rather, they can request it, but the library doesn't
have to do it. (And why are you assuming that a book with that title
would be a book on how to commit terrorist acts?)
"For example, everyone lives in a house. But that doesn't mean that we
can't be against crackhouses, or that we can't demand that landlords
take precautions to safeguard against their property being used as
crackhouses."
What is this, a Bad Analogy Troll? The whole point of their defense is
that they just make the software and aren't involved in the use. If
you build your own home, should the architect have to check your
house guests for crack?
"Basically, NX is answering the wrong question. The question that needs
to be asked is 'How can we best persuade users not to run arbitrary
code when they don't know what the hell it does?' My own answer would
be for every processor to have its own, unique instruction set; so only
code compiled for that one particular individual processor would ever
run on it."
How would that help? It would make all software harder to use and waste
everyone's time, but it wouldn't make users any more discriminating
about what they run. I'd rather have an NX flag that prevents buffer
overflow attacks than a processor that responds to them by taking random
actions.
I think your second question answers your first. Those senators know
that timing plays a big role in whether a bill even has a chance.
They're calculating, but that's different from not caring.
It's on the table. Are you going to support it or not?
"What I do know is that none of those 13+ organizations you rattled off
has been able to stop genocide in Yugoslavia or Rwanda nor have they
been able to prevent the UN from being a money launderer for Saddam."
"A fairly interesting way to find rootkits but it can be only used in
addition to the existing tools which does eliminate some of the
elegance, doesn't it?"
I think the elegance comes from the fact that it neatly plugs an
existing loophole. It finds previously undetectable rootkits by taking
advantage of the very thing that made them undetectable. There's
probably enough room on that CD for the other tools. In fact, there's
probably enough room to support multiple operating systems.
. . . we let our opinions be influenced by first-hand experience. And there's certainly no need to put extra scrutiny on people who praise deep pockets.
We can tell these guys are bogus even without extra scrutiny because they've used the obviously flawed method of getting all their information from the people who wrote the code.
There's always someone who wants to blame the victim. I guess they
enjoy looking down on people by accusing them of being too stupid to see what's
in their own interest.
Obviously, we'd rather buy the stuff and fight for the right to use it
than make the point moot by doing without. That's not drooling, that's
fighting for what you want and what you believe in. If Anonymous
Coward doesn't want to join us, that's okay.
What's your point? That it's okay to lie about the cost if you think
it's worth it? From the article:
"More than 20% of survey responders reported they had been "directed to
inappropriately exclude or alter technical information." However, 69%
said they had never been given such a directive. And, although more
than half of the respondents said they had been ordered to alter
findings to lessen protection of species, nearly 40% said they had
never been required to do so."
If I'm parsing the phony "on the other hand" journalism correctly,
About 30% were told to alter data
About 60% were told to alter the bottom-line conclusions
That's not acceptable. I don't care how cozy your house is.
Welcome to Slashdot, where you can put words in someone's mouth for the
purpose of calling them a hypocrite.
The statement that CAN-SPAM has caused spam to increase was clearly
attributed to a guy named Linford and the statistic showing correlation
was attributed to the New York Times.
I guess it's easier to accuse all of slashdot of hypocrisy than to
notice that one submitter and one editor are passing along a NYT story
with attribution.
Copyright isn't the legal recognition of natural anything. It's a law
that restricts copying. The exception for brief quotes is, in fact, a
good example of how holding a copyright is different from owning
property.
I wish people would stop flogging this "fundamental natural property
rights" stuff. I'd like to keep my property, but just because
something's good to have doesn't make it the fundamental basis for
everything. If you want to feel like you've distilled everything down
to first principles, choose love, or self-determinations, or something
vaugely uplifting. Otherwise the tortured logic is just irritating.
I'll bet some think-tank has property rights-based explanations for
why lying is considered wrong, why we show respect for the dead, and
why people desire political freedom. I'll file them next to my
deed to the sky
.
According to the specs you linked, they used server-grade
Intel(R) PRO/10GbE LR
NICs which cost more than a whole PC. They point out that
one of the machines "only has a 100 MHz PCI-X bus(!)" but that's a lot
faster than whatever is on your desktop, and it comes on a server-grade
motherboard (see here under "Will new PCI-X cards be compatible in conventional PCI
based systems?").
These guys called the machines PCs, but they obviously spent a big wad
of cash on server-grade I/O busses. The result:
"[T]he PCI-X bus and the memory bandwith in the end hosts are currently
the bottlenecks."
I'd say networkBoy has some idea what he's talking about.
Think about it for a second. When someone says "no PC and
exceptionally few server class machines" can do something, are you going
to disprove them by pointing to the world record holders?
I'm surprised that everyone's talking about language and translation. Of
course the software needs to be in the language you speak, but I would
think that automatic translation would be harder and less useful than
maps, exchange rates, train schedules, and notices like, "Today is a
holiday. The busses are not running."
"Patents are
absolutely necessary to protect small companies from having their
ideas taken
without any credit or compensation to the original source."
When have software patents ever had that effect?
"People do not realize how specific patents are. I
have seen posts on many patent articles here that read the first
one or two
claims and assume that a huge range of existing work is
covered."
As someone else has pointed out, the claims in a patent are separate. A
general claim covers everything it describes whether there's a more
specific one that follows or not. There wouldn't be much point in
having the general claim otherwise.
There are a lot of problems with software patents, but I think the
easiest to explain to ordinary people is this:
Patents are supposed to protect inventors--people who do the
intellectual work to create something new. Mechanical patents are
pretty strongly supported by inventors, but look at who is and who is
not supporting software patents:
Most people who do the intellectual work in creating software are
opposed to software patents. Some support it very vocally, but most do
not. The people who support software patents are usually executives, owners, marketers,
lawyers, or managers who may fancy themselves more involved in the
intellectual work than they really are. These are the people who make
money off software patents without doing the intellectual work
of creating the software.
So software patents are largely opposed by the people they are meant to
help and supported by the people they are meant to limit. Sure, you
could say that the geeks are ignorant, that they don't understand
patents or law or business. But compare the amount of money that
software creators make off these patents to the amount that all those
non-creators are making, and consider that maybe it's you who doesn't
understand.
Of course, there are better reasons, but that's the easiest to explain
non-technically.
"Bottom line? Your 'undoubtable fact' is very much in doubt and would be
difficult to perpetrate under ideal circumstances. Far easier
(though I've gotta think still difficult) would be coopting election
officials themselves and taking that more direct route to fixing an
election."
It's a difficult task, but it's clearly doable:
One of the campaigns in our recent
election was on the record as bussing supporters in for rallies.
Campaigns already buy lists of likely voters. It's not a big step to buy a
list of likely non-voters (or subtract your voter list from a list of
everyone in the area). Sure, a few of them will actually vote, but
the overlap will be small enough to get glossed over as yet another
screw-up.
Campaigns already invest a lot of money to determine which states
could be easily tipped, so they can focus their resources. In fact,
they already know how people are expected to vote down to the
precinct level. It wouldn't be too hard to find precincts in
swing states where a little fraud would tip the state without
creating-strange looking totals.
Campaigns already lie, and they lie in situations where it's supposed to be
illegal (advertisements, direct mailings, and so on).
"Customers should ask. If the clerk tells you that you can return it,
then you can. If they have to do an ID check on you before
they answer,
that's a pretty big waste of time and a signal that you should cancel
the transaction."
That's true, customers should ask. But stores should also warn people
before the purchase instead of waiting for the return and then rejecting
it. (Yes, that means that if a customer buys something without knowing,
both sides have failed to do something they ought.)
When you make a policy and then make an exception that brings you more
money, you really ought to tell people about the exception up front.
"And remember if you don't like it, DON'T shop there."
If that's their attitude, they ought to refuse to sell you things
instead of refusing to let you return them. Or better yet, tell people
before they buy something whether they will be able to return it.
Customers have a right to know what they're getting into. It makes more
sense and is more fair to tell people up front, even if you can make
more money by locking them in after the sale.
"The ones who brought up the first draft bill where Democrats, which was
opposed by the Republicans and rest of the Democrats alike, so how
Bush winning make it more likely?"
He pursues policies that require large numbers of troops.
Politicians won't bring back the draft unless it's
necessary, so forget about who likes it and look at who is making it
necessary. It really is that simple.
It's also a lot like the rest of his presidency. For example: he hates taxes, he
cuts them every chance he gets, and he talks constantly about cutting
them. But he also never vetoes anything, hides the cost of his plans
until they pass Congress, and won't include his wars in the official
budget.
"The second thing is Stewart's hypocrisy. I agree he is a hypocrite - if he
would stop shirking HIS responsibility with the excuse that he's a comedian,
he could do a lot of good in this area that he was just speaking out
against."
It's not hypocrisy to criticize someone for failing to meet the standards of
their profession, if you don't meet those standards because you aren't in
the same profession.
I don't hire a forensic specialist to check documents I receive, but I
can still criticize Dan Rather because I am not a journalist.
Reporters often criticize politicians for not giving enough
interviews, but reporters are rarely interviewed themselves.
That's not hypocrisy because reporters and politicians have different jobs.
A pro wrestler can criticize a pediatrician for being too rough, and a
comedian can criticize journalists for irresponsible reporting.
Slashdot Mirror
If it's a refugee situation, it might make sense to use a few of these for storing medicine, food, and the like. The concrete would help keep out thieves and bugs.
Right, but that's not the same as charging inflated prices. They weren't charging more than they were worth (because of unions). They were really worth more than people wanted to pay for mining.
They probably stopped being miners for the same reason you never started. You can look at it as, "Those miners demanded too much money for their work, so the poor companies couldn't employ them," but I think it makes more sense to say "Those companies demanded too much work (and risk) for their wages, so the poor miners couldn't take the job." You don't need a name ending in "Inc." to cite economic reality.
Not to debate your politics, but are we talking about the same "mining" here? As in hauling rocks underground, breathing rock dust and weird fumes with a real danger of being buried alive? $100/day doesn't sound inflated at all. I think you've misunderstood the reason that so many people got out of that line of work.
Last time I tried it, Oracle 9i worked on XP Pro but not XP Home. I don't know why.
It's rare that you would want to run it on either of them, but there's definitely something missing in XP Home.
They can demand whatever they want, but no one has to give it to them. There are plenty of transmission methods that are not monitored for copyright infringement. If they demanded that the post office and the telephone company screen everything for copyright violations (no singing "Happy Birthday" over the phone, no copying a recipe out of a cookbook and mailing it, etc.) everyone would realize the demand was absurd.
It would also be an attack on the mail and telephone systems because forcing them to centrally monitor each call and letter would slash the number they could effectively carry.
They can't. Or rather, they can request it, but the library doesn't have to do it. (And why are you assuming that a book with that title would be a book on how to commit terrorist acts?)
What is this, a Bad Analogy Troll? The whole point of their defense is that they just make the software and aren't involved in the use. If you build your own home, should the architect have to check your house guests for crack?
How would that help? It would make all software harder to use and waste everyone's time, but it wouldn't make users any more discriminating about what they run. I'd rather have an NX flag that prevents buffer overflow attacks than a processor that responds to them by taking random actions.
I think your second question answers your first. Those senators know that timing plays a big role in whether a bill even has a chance. They're calculating, but that's different from not caring.
It's on the table. Are you going to support it or not?
Not as a prank, but as a way to make sure that people know about this guy. I nominate "federal pop-up man."
Has ICANN?
I think the elegance comes from the fact that it neatly plugs an existing loophole. It finds previously undetectable rootkits by taking advantage of the very thing that made them undetectable. There's probably enough room on that CD for the other tools. In fact, there's probably enough room to support multiple operating systems.
. . . we let our opinions be influenced by first-hand experience. And
there's certainly no need to put extra scrutiny on people who praise
deep pockets.
We can tell these guys are bogus even without extra scrutiny because
they've used the obviously flawed method of getting all their
information from the people who wrote the code.
There's always someone who wants to blame the victim. I guess they enjoy looking down on people by accusing them of being too stupid to see what's in their own interest.
Obviously, we'd rather buy the stuff and fight for the right to use it than make the point moot by doing without. That's not drooling, that's fighting for what you want and what you believe in. If Anonymous Coward doesn't want to join us, that's okay.
What's your point? That it's okay to lie about the cost if you think it's worth it? From the article:
If I'm parsing the phony "on the other hand" journalism correctly,
That's not acceptable. I don't care how cozy your house is.
Well then, what is it? When we try to write software in which vulnerabilities will not be discovered, what are we trying to keep out of the code?
Whatever it is, it can't be good.
Welcome to Slashdot, where you can put words in someone's mouth for the purpose of calling them a hypocrite.
The statement that CAN-SPAM has caused spam to increase was clearly attributed to a guy named Linford and the statistic showing correlation was attributed to the New York Times.
I guess it's easier to accuse all of slashdot of hypocrisy than to notice that one submitter and one editor are passing along a NYT story with attribution.
Or maybe it just gets you more mod points.
Copyright isn't the legal recognition of natural anything. It's a law that restricts copying. The exception for brief quotes is, in fact, a good example of how holding a copyright is different from owning property.
I wish people would stop flogging this "fundamental natural property rights" stuff. I'd like to keep my property, but just because something's good to have doesn't make it the fundamental basis for everything. If you want to feel like you've distilled everything down to first principles, choose love, or self-determinations, or something vaugely uplifting. Otherwise the tortured logic is just irritating.
I'll bet some think-tank has property rights-based explanations for why lying is considered wrong, why we show respect for the dead, and why people desire political freedom. I'll file them next to my deed to the sky .
According to the specs you linked, they used server-grade Intel(R) PRO/10GbE LR NICs which cost more than a whole PC. They point out that one of the machines "only has a 100 MHz PCI-X bus(!)" but that's a lot faster than whatever is on your desktop, and it comes on a server-grade motherboard (see here under "Will new PCI-X cards be compatible in conventional PCI based systems?").
These guys called the machines PCs, but they obviously spent a big wad of cash on server-grade I/O busses. The result:
I'd say networkBoy has some idea what he's talking about.
Think about it for a second. When someone says "no PC and exceptionally few server class machines" can do something, are you going to disprove them by pointing to the world record holders?
I'm surprised that everyone's talking about language and translation. Of course the software needs to be in the language you speak, but I would think that automatic translation would be harder and less useful than maps, exchange rates, train schedules, and notices like, "Today is a holiday. The busses are not running."
When have software patents ever had that effect?
As someone else has pointed out, the claims in a patent are separate. A general claim covers everything it describes whether there's a more specific one that follows or not. There wouldn't be much point in having the general claim otherwise.
There are a lot of problems with software patents, but I think the easiest to explain to ordinary people is this:
Patents are supposed to protect inventors--people who do the intellectual work to create something new. Mechanical patents are pretty strongly supported by inventors, but look at who is and who is not supporting software patents:
Most people who do the intellectual work in creating software are opposed to software patents. Some support it very vocally, but most do not. The people who support software patents are usually executives, owners, marketers, lawyers, or managers who may fancy themselves more involved in the intellectual work than they really are. These are the people who make money off software patents without doing the intellectual work of creating the software.
So software patents are largely opposed by the people they are meant to help and supported by the people they are meant to limit. Sure, you could say that the geeks are ignorant, that they don't understand patents or law or business. But compare the amount of money that software creators make off these patents to the amount that all those non-creators are making, and consider that maybe it's you who doesn't understand.
Of course, there are better reasons, but that's the easiest to explain non-technically.
Maybe they're one of the "top scientific research organizations."
(Or maybe they should be.)
It's a difficult task, but it's clearly doable:
That's true, customers should ask. But stores should also warn people before the purchase instead of waiting for the return and then rejecting it. (Yes, that means that if a customer buys something without knowing, both sides have failed to do something they ought.)
When you make a policy and then make an exception that brings you more money, you really ought to tell people about the exception up front.
If that's their attitude, they ought to refuse to sell you things instead of refusing to let you return them. Or better yet, tell people before they buy something whether they will be able to return it.
Customers have a right to know what they're getting into. It makes more sense and is more fair to tell people up front, even if you can make more money by locking them in after the sale.
He pursues policies that require large numbers of troops. Politicians won't bring back the draft unless it's necessary, so forget about who likes it and look at who is making it necessary. It really is that simple.
It's also a lot like the rest of his presidency. For example: he hates taxes, he cuts them every chance he gets, and he talks constantly about cutting them. But he also never vetoes anything, hides the cost of his plans until they pass Congress, and won't include his wars in the official budget.
It's not hypocrisy to criticize someone for failing to meet the standards of their profession, if you don't meet those standards because you aren't in the same profession.
I don't hire a forensic specialist to check documents I receive, but I can still criticize Dan Rather because I am not a journalist.
Reporters often criticize politicians for not giving enough interviews, but reporters are rarely interviewed themselves. That's not hypocrisy because reporters and politicians have different jobs. A pro wrestler can criticize a pediatrician for being too rough, and a comedian can criticize journalists for irresponsible reporting.