Since the price of Microsoft software has gone down constantly during the last 15 years and competitors usually charge higher
prices they don't have a chance of winning.
You are wrong. While the price of computer systems with MS software has gone down, the fraction of the cost of those systems that is software has gone up. Hardware is cheap.
I think that the IOC is right to prevent websites from
broadcasting the Olympics, and even more right to be worried about people sneaking in with digital cameras and
mobile phones for live broadcasts.
-"I'm sorry sir but you can't bring that handy cam in here."
-"But my son/daughter is competing!"
When you think about carefully, the Olympics rests upon a huge infrastructure, and this, unsuprisingly enough, costs a
lot of money. How else are they going to obtain this money without licensing and sponsership deals with major
corporations? Selling drugs? Running arms?
I wonder how the columbian olympic committee fundraises?
The Olympics is the greatest sporting event in the world, and since it's only once every 4 years anyway I don't think
it's unfair of the IOC to use it finance themselves. After all, its for the good of every country in the world that
competes in the Olympics.
Yeah the IOC and Wan Antonio Samaranch, use it to fund thier jet setting lifestyles. They take bribes from whomever they can get them from, and live like kings. All for the greater glory of amature sport. Denver was just the tip of the iceberg, and you are naive to think that this event does good for every country. This event does good for some (small) number of individuals, who take bribes, get contracts, or get enough fame so that the local banana dictator doesn't decide to shoot them tomorrow. What about all the people who go home as failures to the scourge of thier local despot.
As for how often the olympics are, well they used to be both winter and summer games the same year, then they got moved to two years offset, so that the IOC could make more money. Further, if someone rips you off once every four years, then they're still ripping you off (see below).
Unfortunately what with the attitude of most/.ers that everything should be "free" and online, I'm sure that there'll be
attmepts to get pirate coverage, sneak people in and the like. I wish they wouldn't - it's just selfish to think about
yourself before an event that brings the whole world together.
You'll be watching the synchronized swimming, and the trampolining right?...
I am sick and tired of hearing that every/. is out to steal every piece of content in existance. The fact is that the Olympics in thier current form serve as a vehicle for the IOC and everyone on down to get richer. IOC gets gifts, lifestyle, etc. Companies, get advertising, prestige. Athletes, get fame and contracts. Now, that money has to come form somewhere. In the end that money comes from the consumer/tax payer. This ends up being transfered to me as either increased product cost, to recoup advertising, or as crappy service (a la NBC -will someone please take bob costas out back and put him out of the world's collective misery). So, first off, I'm already paying for all this crap if I like it or not. Second, if you want noone to see the games, and you to control their distibution, hold them at the bottom of the nutrino observatory (bottom of a mine shaft). Practically speaking either the olympics, and the world cup are not held in asia/ociania untill the local markets for sport make the US and europe irrelevant, or the people involved will agree that the scores have to be presented in realtime. How are you going to stop the parent of an athlete from putting up thier home video on a website for thier friends to see? This is the result of the low cost of telecoms, not the greed of/.ers.
Given the large readership of/. (in the general media) and the general opinion of respondents (
a society reject hoping to draw attention
to himself), I suggest that he picked the wrong forum for posting a raw article such as this. Too many people have now seen him judged as an immature trouble maker.
The sad thing is that both the author and emmett figured that they could cash in on the outrage generated by the 2600 nextel arrest story to generate some more righteous indignation I can't believe the same people (/. staff) who keep reminding us to read the advocacy FAQ, everytime a someone says something really bone headed about a certain piece of technology, would post this article.
No he wasn't. He was expecting to go to jail from the start; he was expecting to have his rights trampled on,
and he was going to do everything in his power to facilitate that trampling just so he could prove his point.
Exactly. So were all the people he was with. We recently had an anti-poverty protest (read riot) here in Toronto. Most of the protestors weren't a problem but there was a group of hard core protestor (like those the author appears to have hooked up with) who are there to stir up trouble and nothing else. There were the requisite gas masks and some came armed. They weren't out to prove a point. They were out to stir up trouble. They, and the author of this article included, are doing a diservice to the very laws/rights, who's violation they are trying to illustrate.
In all seriousness, however, how DO you write OO Basic?
Lets say you have three variables that define the properties of some object and you have two operations (methods) on those three variables that are then done to/performed on that object. You then stipulate that no access will be made to those properties, except through your two methods. Now when you write the rest of the code you think of these three properties and two methods as one thing.
This is a not as precise an answer as I would prefer to give. The problem being that it all has to do with what's going on in your head as the programmer.
C++ is "of course" not a good language? Why? You can do everything you can do in C in C++, and then some. If you don't like templates, don't use them. If you don't like operator overloading, don't use it. Unlike certain other languages *cough*Java*cough*, it doesn't force any particular paradigm on you.
You can write object oriented code in any language you like. You can write procedural code in any language you like. Object oriented langauges simply facilitate the use of object orientation by providing you with tools that take advantage of it. You can write oo basic, and you can write procedural java (just make everything static and put it in your main class). The paradigm is not being forced on you. You simply ignore some of the features. But don't take my word for it, look at the tour if C++ in Starstroup's The C++ Programming Language.
Polymorphism, encapsulation, and inheritance are simply properties that fall out of the OO paradigm and are implemented to take advantage of it of its implications. Ultimately the right tool for the job in any given case may or may not implement these.
And why in hell should he be interested in helping you? And what do you care about his agenda?
You care about his agenda, because you're trying to rip him off, as much as you possibly can. And you're also trying to rip off everyone else as much as you can. Now, he's telling everyone, that your product sucks... From your perspective its not usefull information. Under the terms of most EULAs you aren't responsible for an defects in your product. So information just persuades people to buy someone else's crap, or pay less for yours.
How do you plan to track targets such as whales or icebergs from orbit? Do you plan to catch and mark everything that swims so that you can avoid it? Remeber the higher your speed the smaller the thing has to be to put you into a world of hurt. Even if you mark lanes, you still have the problem that some aminals are going to change depth on you regardless of what you do. You also have the problem of fishermen who will go where ever the fsck they want and fish whatever the fsck they want, and damn your super sonic craft.
as there isn't much activity at >30m beneath the surface.
Plankton are the microscopic animals that for the base of the oceanic food chain. I don't think they will survive the shockwave the craft will produce. Some marine biologist correct me here. Which brings to mind the question of what effect the shockwave will have on the hulls of existing (and especially aging) ships?
cost is defined by demand. also, the concorde is too noisy in the air, while this would be more or less quiet.
What is more annoying the sound of the concord or the sound a thousand environmentalists? More to the point what will the craft sound like underwater. Someone has already raised the point of deafening sonar.
There is NO current, practical use for a traditional submarine in commercial travel applications. however, 1 hour to Calais from New York is a monumental increase in travel speeds. I know what I'd choose. have you ever spent 12+hours trying to get to London from the US? I have.
After all the waiting for sea lanes to clear, the travel into warmer waters to avoid other obsticles, and the constant battle with environmentalists who will inist you are killing everything in the water (wait until you see that first picture of a dead dolphin, its what did in the drag-net fisherment), it will still be cheaper and faster to fly. Besides, a goose will get sucked into a jet engine and appear on the menu for the next flight, a whale will get all the passengers killed.
Yeah.. of course it's unsafe, you might lower the barrier enough that a critical mass of "average" voters get into the polls and displace the special interest groups, hence rendering our existing corrupt system invalid. Better write a report about how that's bad in a non-obvious way quick!
One of the panels at CFP2K was about Internet voting. One of the most interesting comments made in that forum about the Arizona Primary was that people were having voting parties. That is, a bunch of people would go over to someone's house and infront of everyone, they would cast thier vote. Your ballot was no longer secret. Voter appathy is a very different problem from that of garaunteeing free and fair elections. After the novelty has worn off, voter appathy would be just as bad. Right now you have to go to a polling station, with Internet voting all you have to do is (my emphasis) hit a web site. This is still something active that the voter must do. The voter can still be just as busy, or forget, or be uninterested. Case in point, I've missed one online ieee election simply because I forgot about the notice I got in the mail (I put it in a safe place, so that I would remeber... doh!). The point is that the uninterested voter will remain uninterested no matter how easy you make it for him or her to vote. Sacrificing the integrity of the system to attempt to interest those who aren't is simply putting the cart before the horse.
We could all care less - I mean, yeah, I have an opinion... but will I go out and vote for it?
<flame> The electoral system is, like any other process, garbage in, garbage out. You apparently are sufficiently pissed off at the garbage going in and out to talk about it, but not sufficiently pissed of about it to do something. This is because, you really aren't interested. Nothing matters enough to you to get involved. Or more precisely, you are comfortable enough in your life that getting involved is not high on your to do list. Public policy is exactly that, public. You (as member of the public) have to make your agenda heard, no one else will do it for you. So you cry, Technology will fix it, I will be heard not knowing what the problem really is. No, technology will break it. It will make it much harder for you to fix the problem (vote at work, under the watchfull eye of your employer, your job may depend on it), if you ever chose to get off your ass to fix it.
Stop belly aching, wahhhh... They're not listening to me, stand up for your self and set the agenda! </flame>
--locust adios karma
Re:Science and the nature of reality
on
Calculating God
·
· Score: 2
Logically speaking, what point is there in a model that one cannot understand. Without that understanding one cannot exploit it safely. Given that that model is then a proxy for reality, in attempting to understand the proxy we are attempting to understand reality. The model is the tool for understanding reality.
This aside, you state that (and I'm paraphrasing) science constructs models that are consistent with reality. You believe that it is possible to construct models that consistently represent reality. You have to throw away old models when logic shows that they no longer support your belief. That science, like religion, is based on belief, was the central point of my argument. What the belief happens to be for you is irrelevant. You must be aware, however that it is a belief.
Finaly you state that: no scientist cares a damn as long as the models yielded predictions that were usefully close to how reality responded to the test probes at each point in time. That's why progress is so rapid in Science: old dogma can be thrown away with impunity.
Scientist care a damn. They care a whole damn load. people have made there reputations on the old model and would have to admit they were wrong to take the new one. The adoption of a new model is, then, inherently a political process. To protect themselves from new models scientist build a power structure that preserves thier model. This is embodied in the peer review. Of course peer review is brought to us under the guise of protecting us from nut cases (heretics). In some case it does, but it also entrenches the part line.
From your initial question it sounds like you're saying: in my experience talking to people about religion, it is irrational. Does the author how does the author get around this?
Science is based on the belief that the world can be understood by humanity.
From this belief come certain axioms about the world. And from these, when apply the laws of logic, one draws certain conclusions about how the world works.
Religion is a set of beliefs. These usually tie in some superior power, but as in science this is just another set of beliefs [ducks]. When logic is applied to these beliefs a set of rational conculsions is reached. So both science and religion can be perfectly rational, and can co-exist in one persons world view as long as the beliefies and thier conclusions don't conflict.
Now all this being said. From a false premise it is possible to conclude anything.
This lack of common definitions eventually boils down even the best discussions to a game of semantics, and is one reason why I am not as inclined as I used to be to talk about religion.
I think your problem is lower level than one of semantics. It ends up on the level of beliefs. The semantics stem from the beliefs. The argument has to be moved to the level of beliefs where its really taking place. The best you can do, I think, is to show somebody who professes to believe something that: a) thier own beliefs is selfcontradictory, or b) contradicts another of thier held beliefs. Then they must chose which set they prefer, or logically infer the next step.
Not the answer you're looking for, but I hope it leaves you less frustrated.
Dude, its all about how you sell your story. Given the number of stories submitted daily (about 400?), you have to have a good line, or else Rob & Co aren't going to look at it twice. You have to start your story off with something like:
Technology foo threatens the Internet or
Company bar threatens the Internet as we know it or
Lawsuit sna could destroy Internet or
Patent fu granted on obvious or impossible (or both) invention/technique and will ravage the Internet
This one got posted because the poster made a big deal out of the Northwestern project. The title Project Dragon Slayer! didn't hurt either. That got attention. I tend to be too longwinded in my submissions, and so they don't get posted. I share your pain, so I suggest that you resubmit your story as: Man jumps 10K feet with 85kg parachute, lives, patents, sues, and threatens Internet!.
It is possible to live well here. There is good Internet service in St. John's. I make the same consulting rates for clients in the valley while sitting in my house here as I would in Santa Cruz.
[snip]
I have met people here who are doing significant software and internet work. While I have an advantage in coming here that I already have contacts in the valley, anyone already here can use the same methods as I do to find clients:
All this may be true, but it is besides the point. You are 4.5 hrs from the valley for phone calls, and flights for face to face meetings (especially to the west coast) take a long time. Further, its going to cost you an arm and a leg to ship things out there. Or to get new and improved services (the market is too small). There are good reasons why companies all tend to glob together. They can get more, better, or specialized services in areas of higher business or population density. All this is going to be troublesome in an area that has maybe two hundred thousand people (most of whom are not that tech savey) is 15 hrs by car (ok, so 6 are by ferry) from civilzation (and even then its just Nova Scotia [ducks for cover] you still have to drive for 2 days to get anywhere) and sticks out like a sore thumb into the North Atlantic. It is however a price you are willing to pay (for now).
Personally, given the things you list above about working for valey firms from anywhere, I would have moved somewhere warmer. But then I don't have a fiance who wants to move back to The Rock(no pun intended).
I'm getting married to a woman from Newfoundland and am staying here for a few months until our wedding. In St. John's we're renting a three bedroom house with a large kitchen, two and a half bathrooms, front and back yard. There's both a large living room and a family room. The rent is US$500 with a US$133 deposit (no last months rent down). In Santa Cruz one of the things contributing to the homelessness that is so common there is that it requires several thousand dollars to move into a place, for first, last, plus a deposit.
Dude, you forget that St. John's is an econmically depressed area. When, they had a job openning for a clerk at Aunti Crays (sp?, a local specialty foods store) thousands of resumes poured in... people with fscking Ph.D.s applied. More Newfs (Newfoundlanders) live outside the province than in it, and the largest single employer, admited or not, is the government (this is split between the civil servants, and the unemployment office).
St. John's had its day when being the closest point to europe in North America meant something. If you look at the buildings downtown (that survived the big fire, like the Basilica of St. John the Baptist which rivals in size and grandure any church built anywhere else in North America at the time) you will see that is was once a big city (by the standards of the day). It was probably really fscking expensive too. The point is that you can't compare a place that is considered to be economically viable (anymore) with a place that definately isn't. The valley will be exactly the same.
You have to make the choice about how much you want to give up to be close to the action. People will keep moving to places where they can make money, gain influence, or what ever is of value to them. As long as they feel they're getting the better part of the deal. In St. John's you're far away from the action, so of course its going to be cheap.
Because the request was to remove software that wasn't even there.
'Apparently the university computer services have talked to their lawyers and reckon it's against British copyright law (despite there being nothing on there except "DeCSS is a ludicrous thing to use to try to pirate DVDs, the code hasn't been here since January, try OpenDVD instead.").'
But when I wrote it, I was talking in the general sense. I was trying to point out, that there was a false assumption that the MPAA sent people in different juresdictions the same letter.
To some poeple/institutions the potential costs of ignoring even an official looking document from an organization that has vastly more resources than they do are greater than any benefit of ignoring it. This is especially true where some extranational (non-us) law applies. Bottom line, most people can not afford to pay lawyers. Did you think that that the MPAA or anyone else would go after somebody who did?
A) it should expend any legal expense other than 3.5 seconds to ignore the request on the grounds that it is baseless.
How do you know the request is baseless under the local law?! Are you an expert in british IP law? I keep reading about what somebody should do or how they should react. But a lot of it is a) the same points made over and over again to a different headline or b) people saying "yeah, I would have really given them hell." without knowing the situation on the ground. More generally, a particular individual may be willing to fight, but the people that depend upon him or her, would not be able to live (use the term loosely) through that fight.
Don't get me wrong I agree, that the guy may want to move DeCSS somewhere else, somewhere more willing and capable of fighting the MPAA, but I disagree completely with the way you said it.
I looked at thier list pretty quickly, but it seems to me that just about every technological advance made in the 20th century made it. I can't think of anything off hand that didn't. The categories are broad enough to encompas just about anything (including the kitchen sink -Household Applinaces & Water Supply and Distribution). Can the NAE (Nation Academy of Engineering) please stop producing web sites that look like the films they used to show us in grade school (I'd love to hear a Troy McLure voice over for the site), and go back to building something.
Under current IP law, they are doing something illegal by distributing copyrighted work that they do not have the rights to distribute. Whether you own a copy or not is irrelevant, they still don't have the right to distribute it.
Ah, so if I asked you to bring my CDs to work for me, then are you doing something illegal?
In my view, what I've bought from the record company in the form of a CD is a copy of some information and one license to use it. As long as I don't use the information twice at the same time, it should be legal (like a number of seats in a SW license). I didn't see a shrinkwrap license that said I couldn't ask MP3.com to bring it to work for me every day. But then I'm not a lawyer.
On a related note... Strictly speaking as I play a CD (especially in a player with anti-skip) I make a copy of the disk. Is this copy illegal? If I am running a program then are the copies made for caching and virtual memory purposes illegal as well?
Free music is always going to be available for those with sufficiently low ethics that they'll want to steal it, but I'm going to really savor the upcoming bankruptcies of MP3.com and Napster.
So this is what a troll looks like, eh?
Ok, I'll bite. I use mp3.com to listen to my cd's@work. Nothing illegal about it. They're just saving me trouble, and space. I own all the disks that have been registered in my name (but then ZicoKnows I have low ethics). Shutting down mp3.com just pisses me off. Now I have to bring disks in, or MP3'em myself. And incidently, as of right now (4:20 EST) they're still streaming audio, 'cause I'm still listening.
The fact of the matter is, Microsoft practically single-handedly turned the PC from the haven of 31337 tech-savvy "gurus" to a domain where anyone could use a computer to browse the internet, write letters and play games
Are you sure about that? I would say that honor goes to applications like Lotus 1 2 3. A killer apps of old. How many of those came out of MS? Those applications as used by business, are what moved the PC from hobby to ubiquity. The consumer market is peanuts compared to the business market. The fact is that companies have been using computers (sometimes with really brutal interfaces) for years before they were common to massmarket consumers. Usually they crunched numbers (think banks/insurance/whatever), but they also wrote letters, printed payroll and so on.
Breaking the company up will harm the average user, since a high level of integration means a greater ease of use.
Greater ease of use means buying a mac:) Actually higher level of integration only means greater ease of use if the system is consistent (orthogonal). As the number of features integrated goes up the ability to maintain consistency goes down. This is because you end up with an attempt to meet contradictory design goals. This is also because as the system gets larger (and more people work on it) the need to comunicate a simple common interface (user and software) strategy goes up, but your ability to communicate it and enforce it goes down.
And for once,/. should stop and think about the average user rather than blindly following some dogmatic principle.
I don't know if everyone here advocates the destruction MS, but I do know this: those that do have good reasons that they are able to articulate , rather than pontificate from on high (and do quite vocally). You must have mistaken them for a bunch of kids going "Ah dude, MS sucks."
I want something I can use in my car on the highway, possibly even directional so I can take out specific callers. It be great, but consider the driver weaving and cursing as he or she tries to figure out why the signal has gone dead. The problem with cell phones in cars isn't the fact that they exist, its that most people don't have hands free sets for them. As it is if you have people in the car you can and do talk to them, and for the most part when you need to concentrate on driving you fall silent. --locust
Slashdot Mirror
--locust
You are wrong. While the price of computer systems with MS software has gone down, the fraction of the cost of those systems that is software has gone up. Hardware is cheap.
--locust
-"I'm sorry sir but you can't bring that handy cam in here."
-"But my son/daughter is competing!"
When you think about carefully, the Olympics rests upon a huge infrastructure, and this, unsuprisingly enough, costs a lot of money. How else are they going to obtain this money without licensing and sponsership deals with major corporations? Selling drugs? Running arms?
I wonder how the columbian olympic committee fundraises?
The Olympics is the greatest sporting event in the world, and since it's only once every 4 years anyway I don't think it's unfair of the IOC to use it finance themselves. After all, its for the good of every country in the world that competes in the Olympics.
Yeah the IOC and Wan Antonio Samaranch, use it to fund thier jet setting lifestyles. They take bribes from whomever they can get them from, and live like kings. All for the greater glory of amature sport. Denver was just the tip of the iceberg, and you are naive to think that this event does good for every country. This event does good for some (small) number of individuals, who take bribes, get contracts, or get enough fame so that the local banana dictator doesn't decide to shoot them tomorrow. What about all the people who go home as failures to the scourge of thier local despot.
As for how often the olympics are, well they used to be both winter and summer games the same year, then they got moved to two years offset, so that the IOC could make more money. Further, if someone rips you off once every four years, then they're still ripping you off (see below).
Unfortunately what with the attitude of most /.ers that everything should be "free" and online, I'm sure that there'll be
attmepts to get pirate coverage, sneak people in and the like. I wish they wouldn't - it's just selfish to think about
yourself before an event that brings the whole world together.
You'll be watching the synchronized swimming, and the trampolining right?... I am sick and tired of hearing that every /. is out to steal every piece of content in existance. The fact is that the Olympics in thier current form serve as a vehicle for the IOC and everyone on down to get richer. IOC gets gifts, lifestyle, etc. Companies, get advertising, prestige. Athletes, get fame and contracts. Now, that money has to come form somewhere. In the end that money comes from the consumer/tax payer. This ends up being transfered to me as either increased product cost, to recoup advertising, or as crappy service (a la NBC -will someone please take bob costas out back and put him out of the world's collective misery). So, first off, I'm already paying for all this crap if I like it or not. Second, if you want noone to see the games, and you to control their distibution, hold them at the bottom of the nutrino observatory (bottom of a mine shaft). Practically speaking either the olympics, and the world cup are not held in asia/ociania untill the local markets for sport make the US and europe irrelevant, or the people involved will agree that the scores have to be presented in realtime. How are you going to stop the parent of an athlete from putting up thier home video on a website for thier friends to see? This is the result of the low cost of telecoms, not the greed of /.ers.
--locust
The sad thing is that both the author and emmett figured that they could cash in on the outrage generated by the 2600 nextel arrest story to generate some more righteous indignation I can't believe the same people (/. staff) who keep reminding us to read the advocacy FAQ, everytime a someone says something really bone headed about a certain piece of technology, would post this article.
--locust
Exactly. So were all the people he was with. We recently had an anti-poverty protest (read riot) here in Toronto. Most of the protestors weren't a problem but there was a group of hard core protestor (like those the author appears to have hooked up with) who are there to stir up trouble and nothing else. There were the requisite gas masks and some came armed. They weren't out to prove a point. They were out to stir up trouble. They, and the author of this article included, are doing a diservice to the very laws/rights, who's violation they are trying to illustrate.
--locust
Lets say you have three variables that define the properties of some object and you have two operations (methods) on those three variables that are then done to/performed on that object. You then stipulate that no access will be made to those properties, except through your two methods. Now when you write the rest of the code you think of these three properties and two methods as one thing.
This is a not as precise an answer as I would prefer to give. The problem being that it all has to do with what's going on in your head as the programmer.
--locust
You can write object oriented code in any language you like. You can write procedural code in any language you like. Object oriented langauges simply facilitate the use of object orientation by providing you with tools that take advantage of it. You can write oo basic, and you can write procedural java (just make everything static and put it in your main class). The paradigm is not being forced on you. You simply ignore some of the features. But don't take my word for it, look at the tour if C++ in Starstroup's The C++ Programming Language.
Polymorphism, encapsulation, and inheritance are simply properties that fall out of the OO paradigm and are implemented to take advantage of it of its implications. Ultimately the right tool for the job in any given case may or may not implement these.
--locust
You care about his agenda, because you're trying to rip him off, as much as you possibly can. And you're also trying to rip off everyone else as much as you can. Now, he's telling everyone, that your product sucks... From your perspective its not usefull information. Under the terms of most EULAs you aren't responsible for an defects in your product. So information just persuades people to buy someone else's crap, or pay less for yours.
--locust
--locust
How do you plan to track targets such as whales or icebergs from orbit? Do you plan to catch and mark everything that swims so that you can avoid it? Remeber the higher your speed the smaller the thing has to be to put you into a world of hurt. Even if you mark lanes, you still have the problem that some aminals are going to change depth on you regardless of what you do. You also have the problem of fishermen who will go where ever the fsck they want and fish whatever the fsck they want, and damn your super sonic craft.
as there isn't much activity at >30m beneath the surface.
Plankton are the microscopic animals that for the base of the oceanic food chain. I don't think they will survive the shockwave the craft will produce. Some marine biologist correct me here. Which brings to mind the question of what effect the shockwave will have on the hulls of existing (and especially aging) ships?
cost is defined by demand. also, the concorde is too noisy in the air, while this would be more or less quiet.
What is more annoying the sound of the concord or the sound a thousand environmentalists? More to the point what will the craft sound like underwater. Someone has already raised the point of deafening sonar.
There is NO current, practical use for a traditional submarine in commercial travel applications. however, 1 hour to Calais from New York is a monumental increase in travel speeds. I know what I'd choose. have you ever spent 12+hours trying to get to London from the US? I have.
After all the waiting for sea lanes to clear, the travel into warmer waters to avoid other obsticles, and the constant battle with environmentalists who will inist you are killing everything in the water (wait until you see that first picture of a dead dolphin, its what did in the drag-net fisherment), it will still be cheaper and faster to fly. Besides, a goose will get sucked into a jet engine and appear on the menu for the next flight, a whale will get all the passengers killed.
--locust
One of the panels at CFP2K was about Internet voting. One of the most interesting comments made in that forum about the Arizona Primary was that people were having voting parties. That is, a bunch of people would go over to someone's house and infront of everyone, they would cast thier vote. Your ballot was no longer secret. Voter appathy is a very different problem from that of garaunteeing free and fair elections. After the novelty has worn off, voter appathy would be just as bad. Right now you have to go to a polling station, with Internet voting all you have to do is (my emphasis) hit a web site. This is still something active that the voter must do. The voter can still be just as busy, or forget, or be uninterested. Case in point, I've missed one online ieee election simply because I forgot about the notice I got in the mail (I put it in a safe place, so that I would remeber... doh!). The point is that the uninterested voter will remain uninterested no matter how easy you make it for him or her to vote. Sacrificing the integrity of the system to attempt to interest those who aren't is simply putting the cart before the horse.
We could all care less - I mean, yeah, I have an opinion... but will I go out and vote for it?
<flame>
The electoral system is, like any other process, garbage in, garbage out. You apparently are sufficiently pissed off at the garbage going in and out to talk about it, but not sufficiently pissed of about it to do something. This is because, you really aren't interested. Nothing matters enough to you to get involved. Or more precisely, you are comfortable enough in your life that getting involved is not high on your to do list. Public policy is exactly that, public. You (as member of the public) have to make your agenda heard, no one else will do it for you. So you cry, Technology will fix it, I will be heard not knowing what the problem really is. No, technology will break it. It will make it much harder for you to fix the problem (vote at work, under the watchfull eye of your employer, your job may depend on it), if you ever chose to get off your ass to fix it.
Stop belly aching, wahhhh... They're not listening to me, stand up for your self and set the agenda!
</flame>
--locust
adios karma
This aside, you state that (and I'm paraphrasing) science constructs models that are consistent with reality. You believe that it is possible to construct models that consistently represent reality. You have to throw away old models when logic shows that they no longer support your belief. That science, like religion, is based on belief, was the central point of my argument. What the belief happens to be for you is irrelevant. You must be aware, however that it is a belief.
Finaly you state that: no scientist cares a damn as long as the models yielded predictions that were usefully close to how reality responded to the test probes at each point in time. That's why progress is so rapid in Science: old dogma can be thrown away with impunity.
Scientist care a damn. They care a whole damn load. people have made there reputations on the old model and would have to admit they were wrong to take the new one. The adoption of a new model is, then, inherently a political process. To protect themselves from new models scientist build a power structure that preserves thier model. This is embodied in the peer review. Of course peer review is brought to us under the guise of protecting us from nut cases (heretics). In some case it does, but it also entrenches the part line.
--locust
From your initial question it sounds like you're saying: in my experience talking to people about religion, it is irrational. Does the author how does the author get around this?
Science is based on the belief that the world can be understood by humanity.
From this belief come certain axioms about the world. And from these, when apply the laws of logic, one draws certain conclusions about how the world works.
Religion is a set of beliefs. These usually tie in some superior power, but as in science this is just another set of beliefs [ducks]. When logic is applied to these beliefs a set of rational conculsions is reached. So both science and religion can be perfectly rational, and can co-exist in one persons world view as long as the beliefies and thier conclusions don't conflict.
Now all this being said. From a false premise it is possible to conclude anything.
This lack of common definitions eventually boils down even the best discussions to a game of semantics, and is one reason why I am not as inclined as I used to be to talk about religion.
I think your problem is lower level than one of semantics. It ends up on the level of beliefs. The semantics stem from the beliefs. The argument has to be moved to the level of beliefs where its really taking place. The best you can do, I think, is to show somebody who professes to believe something that: a) thier own beliefs is selfcontradictory, or b) contradicts another of thier held beliefs. Then they must chose which set they prefer, or logically infer the next step.
Not the answer you're looking for, but I hope it leaves you less frustrated.
--locust
This one got posted because the poster made a big deal out of the Northwestern project. The title Project Dragon Slayer! didn't hurt either. That got attention. I tend to be too longwinded in my submissions, and so they don't get posted. I share your pain, so I suggest that you resubmit your story as: Man jumps 10K feet with 85kg parachute, lives, patents, sues, and threatens Internet!.
--locust
--locust
Blame Canada.
[snip]
I have met people here who are doing significant software and internet work. While I have an advantage in coming here that I already have contacts in the valley, anyone already here can use the same methods as I do to find clients:
All this may be true, but it is besides the point. You are 4.5 hrs from the valley for phone calls, and flights for face to face meetings (especially to the west coast) take a long time. Further, its going to cost you an arm and a leg to ship things out there. Or to get new and improved services (the market is too small). There are good reasons why companies all tend to glob together. They can get more, better, or specialized services in areas of higher business or population density. All this is going to be troublesome in an area that has maybe two hundred thousand people (most of whom are not that tech savey) is 15 hrs by car (ok, so 6 are by ferry) from civilzation (and even then its just Nova Scotia [ducks for cover] you still have to drive for 2 days to get anywhere) and sticks out like a sore thumb into the North Atlantic. It is however a price you are willing to pay (for now).
Personally, given the things you list above about working for valey firms from anywhere, I would have moved somewhere warmer. But then I don't have a fiance who wants to move back to The Rock(no pun intended).
--locust
Dude, you forget that St. John's is an econmically depressed area. When, they had a job openning for a clerk at Aunti Crays (sp?, a local specialty foods store) thousands of resumes poured in... people with fscking Ph.D.s applied. More Newfs (Newfoundlanders) live outside the province than in it, and the largest single employer, admited or not, is the government (this is split between the civil servants, and the unemployment office).
St. John's had its day when being the closest point to europe in North America meant something. If you look at the buildings downtown (that survived the big fire, like the Basilica of St. John the Baptist which rivals in size and grandure any church built anywhere else in North America at the time) you will see that is was once a big city (by the standards of the day). It was probably really fscking expensive too. The point is that you can't compare a place that is considered to be economically viable (anymore) with a place that definately isn't. The valley will be exactly the same.
You have to make the choice about how much you want to give up to be close to the action. People will keep moving to places where they can make money, gain influence, or what ever is of value to them. As long as they feel they're getting the better part of the deal. In St. John's you're far away from the action, so of course its going to be cheap.
Congrats, and good luck.
--locust
'Apparently the university computer services have talked to their lawyers and reckon it's against British copyright law (despite there being nothing on there except "DeCSS is a ludicrous thing to use to try to pirate DVDs, the code hasn't been here since January, try OpenDVD instead.").'
Adrian Baugh in http://cryptome.org/ox-chill.htm
But when I wrote it, I was talking in the general sense. I was trying to point out, that there was a false assumption that the MPAA sent people in different juresdictions the same letter.
--locust
To some poeple/institutions the potential costs of ignoring even an official looking document from an organization that has vastly more resources than they do are greater than any benefit of ignoring it. This is especially true where some extranational (non-us) law applies. Bottom line, most people can not afford to pay lawyers. Did you think that that the MPAA or anyone else would go after somebody who did?
A) it should expend any legal expense other than 3.5 seconds to ignore the request on the grounds that it is baseless.
How do you know the request is baseless under the local law?! Are you an expert in british IP law? I keep reading about what somebody should do or how they should react. But a lot of it is a) the same points made over and over again to a different headline or b) people saying "yeah, I would have really given them hell." without knowing the situation on the ground. More generally, a particular individual may be willing to fight, but the people that depend upon him or her, would not be able to live (use the term loosely) through that fight.
Don't get me wrong I agree, that the guy may want to move DeCSS somewhere else, somewhere more willing and capable of fighting the MPAA, but I disagree completely with the way you said it.
--locust
--locust
Ah, so if I asked you to bring my CDs to work for me, then are you doing something illegal?
In my view, what I've bought from the record company in the form of a CD is a copy of some information and one license to use it. As long as I don't use the information twice at the same time, it should be legal (like a number of seats in a SW license). I didn't see a shrinkwrap license that said I couldn't ask MP3.com to bring it to work for me every day. But then I'm not a lawyer.
On a related note... Strictly speaking as I play a CD (especially in a player with anti-skip) I make a copy of the disk. Is this copy illegal? If I am running a program then are the copies made for caching and virtual memory purposes illegal as well?
--locust
So this is what a troll looks like, eh?
Ok, I'll bite. I use mp3.com to listen to my cd's@work. Nothing illegal about it. They're just saving me trouble, and space. I own all the disks that have been registered in my name (but then ZicoKnows I have low ethics). Shutting down mp3.com just pisses me off. Now I have to bring disks in, or MP3'em myself. And incidently, as of right now (4:20 EST) they're still streaming audio, 'cause I'm still listening.
--locust
Are you sure about that? I would say that honor goes to applications like Lotus 1 2 3. A killer apps of old. How many of those came out of MS? Those applications as used by business, are what moved the PC from hobby to ubiquity. The consumer market is peanuts compared to the business market. The fact is that companies have been using computers (sometimes with really brutal interfaces) for years before they were common to massmarket consumers. Usually they crunched numbers (think banks/insurance/whatever), but they also wrote letters, printed payroll and so on.
Breaking the company up will harm the average user, since a high level of integration means a greater ease of use.
Greater ease of use means buying a mac :) Actually higher level of integration only means greater ease of use if the system is consistent (orthogonal). As the number of features integrated goes up the ability to maintain consistency goes down. This is because you end up with an attempt to meet contradictory design goals. This is also because as the system gets larger (and more people work on it) the need to comunicate a simple common interface (user and software) strategy goes up, but your ability to communicate it and enforce it goes down.
And for once, /. should stop and think about the average user rather than blindly following some dogmatic principle.
I don't know if everyone here advocates the destruction MS, but I do know this: those that do have good reasons that they are able to articulate , rather than pontificate from on high (and do quite vocally). You must have mistaken them for a bunch of kids going "Ah dude, MS sucks."
--locust
I want something I can use in my car on the highway, possibly even directional so I can take out specific callers. It be great, but consider the driver weaving and cursing as he or she tries to figure out why the signal has gone dead. The problem with cell phones in cars isn't the fact that they exist, its that most people don't have hands free sets for them. As it is if you have people in the car you can and do talk to them, and for the most part when you need to concentrate on driving you fall silent. --locust