I understand your claimed advantage. However, I'm inclined to say that your claimed advantage is not a real advantage, at all.
Since bytes and bits are interchangeable measurements of the same thing, the only "advantage" you seem to claim is that by using bits instead of bytes the ISP can fail to meet user's expectations without it being recognized.
Since bytes and bits are interchangeable, if the ISP can state a reliable rate of bits per second, they can express the same reliable rate in terms of of bytes per second. If the user were going to complain about one, they could just as easily complain about the other, so long as they understood both means of expressing the DL rate.
Unless you're really just saying you think the user not knowing what their service actually provides (in MEANINGFUL terms) is a justified end in itself. I don't consider that an end in itself, though, and I doubt you do either.
To carry the analogy, if the gas stations started selling gas by the 1/13th fluid ounce to cause difficulty in determining actual gas mileage (to avoid complaints), I think you might then understand what I'm saying. I'm glad they don't to that at gas stations. I would like it if they didn't do it with connection speeds.:-)
I'm not sure if this makes sense to you, but here goes:
Bytes and bits are interchangeable. They measure the same thing. It makes no sense to say that "one of them is false advertising, and therefore the other should be used." Any measure of download speed that can be expressed in terms of one of the units can be expressed in the other, and with absolutely no loss of accuracy.
For example, if they started selling gasoline by the "kilo-fluid ounce", people might be asking "how much gasoline is in them yar 'kilo fluid ounce?'". Since nobody ever uses a kilo fluid ounce for anything else, there would be no real-world frame of reference to make it meaningful. That doesn't mean there would be "false advertising", as you phrase it, it simply means that the unit of measure would lead people towards ignorance of the actual amount of gasoline being bought/sold.
You could look it up and find out, but it might be a pain in the posterior.
I think they should be measuring line speed terms of meaningful units, so that people would be able to say "in the ideal, a 1GB download should take x minutes, give or take, and I know that due to my line speed being consistent[, and expressed in clear terms]."
Basically it boils down to this: File downloads are "sized up" in terms of the size of the file and the time it takes to download. File size is measured in kilo- mega- and giga- (sometimes even terra-) bytes. Therefore it makes better sense to measure line speed in terms of kilo- mega- and/or giga- (and, eventually, terra-) bytes.
THAT way, people would have a better instinct for how much time downloads would take.
No, I wasn't talking about spammers using PGP. I was talking about people using PGP to help guard (some) against warrantless mail snooping.
I thought the details of the case described the police intercepting not HIS computer, but a third party's computer, and taking his email from there. From a gmail or yahoo or hotmail or who knows... but the mail server was not his own.
From the description: "Federal prosecutors say they don't need a search warrant to read your e-mail messages if those messages happen to be stored in someone else's computer."
The amendment says "you have a right to privacy", and "that right cannot be violated without a warrant." To get that warrant, oath or affirmation is needed. It sounds like the affirmation is easy...they spammed thousands of email accounts... so the police COULD have EASILY gotten a warrant, but they DIDN'T. And NOW they're (allegedly) saying they didn't need one, but they DID. Simple as that, right?
The cops messed up. Too bad, since they basically had "case closed" before they went in without a warrant.
Next time, let's HOPE they remember the good ole U.S. Constitution they swore to uphold (you know... the constitution... that ratty old piece of paper that makes America a place worth living in...the big "technicality" that GW Bush and his cronies seem to have been "forgetting about" for the past 7 years... the thing that supposedly differentiated the U.S.A. from the Soviet Union for the entire duration of the cold war) before going in and searching somebody's constitutionally protected personal effects.
I really don't know why they express download speeds in such an outlandish way. End users do not "gigabits"...gigglebits, maybe, but not gigabits... for anything, they use kB, MB, & GB.
107Gb/s = "107 gigabits per second" 13,696 MB/s = "13,696 megabytes per second" 13.375 GB/s = "13.375 gigabytes per second"
Divide by 8 to get the number that makes sense. The "little b" stands for bits, and there are 8 bits per byte; the "big B" stands for byte.
1B = 8b.
The byte is the amount of data you could store on a single coin if you had a code worked out placing it either heads up or heads down. Ones and zero's.
They do so need a warrant. See: Amendment IV, United States Constitution
"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, AND EFFECTS, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."
In any case, they still DO need a warrant to search that 3rd party server. The warrant would simply have to describe the place to be searched, and specify the things to be seized, in accord with the ammendment.
There are lots of analogies: P.O. Box, Voice Mail, Tapped phone lines, Gym locker, direct ip-ip chat (with no brokering middleman server, except routers). Each one of them has a slightly different feel, but in each case it seems clear that the RIGHT thing to do is respect the person's privacy. That the email sits on a server with a delay does not seem relevant (any more than the latent speed of light transmission time when the sound is IN the phone lines)
However, until the authorities have been duly punished for violating the man's right to privacy, it would behoove those who WANT their rights protected to run their own mail servers (either in foreign, non-extraditing countries or in their own homes.):-)
If electronic communications had existed at the time of the framing of the constitution, I really doubt they would have left gaps for the government to abuse our privacy by means of raiding electronic mailboxes.
PS -- It wouldn't hurt to use pgp encrypted mail...uh... sure.
Jesus said return blessings and kindness in exchange for evil. God Bless You.
He also said that being persecuted, slandered and mocked for faith is rewarded in Heaven.
He said love your enemy, and pray for them. I love you, and I'll remember you in my prayers.
And finally, you're right, I DID misspell witness. Thank you for pointing that out. Who knows how many times I would have kept doing that if you hadn't pointed it out.:-)
If I can't spell "werthth schhitt" I can at least be happy that I never HAVE to spell "waearth schnitt".
It's actually not just constrained to court, it applies to anyone, anywhere.
What's more, the definition [of bearing false witness] you provided is not in line with the way it's taught in church: The definition of BFW is not exhausted on those who say a person did something they KNOW the person didn't do (altough that is definitely part of it), BFW is ALSO saying that a person did something that you DON'T KNOW they did.
The difference is clear.
If your neighbor thinks you're murdering people, but he doesn't know it, and he starts shouting it everywhere he goes, slandering you, he's bearing false witness.
If you think that Bush is running concentration camps, but you don't know it, and then you start saying he is running camps, as if it were fact, then you're bearing false witness.
With the definition you provided, those sins would not be sins at all. But they are sins, and that's very important [to know], since keeping the 10 Commandments starts with knowing the 10 Commandments, and knowing them means knowing what they mean, not just knowing the words.
I still use Windows 2000, and I like it. MS still provides the updates/service packs, etc, for download. Since they're doing that, I'm a naysayer to the accusation.
Personally I suspect that they are still making enough cash on the current releases that they don't have to resort to petty tricks. IF they wanted to pull the plug on the older O.S.'s then they could probably do a much better job than disabling software.
Anyhow, it's better to be unassuming than to assume they would be dishonest. We really don't don't know what their motive was, and, like them or not, we shouldn't just assume their action was dishonest or that it was done for an insidious reason.
The bottom line is: it's a sin to bear false witniss, even if it's against Microsoft.
I didn't know the details of that event. It shows for certain that PEOPLE have learned what to do if their airplane is threatened.
For all they were going to lose in the crash, they might as well have taken a few box cutter hits than "remain seated for the remainder of" the 911 flights. I really can't blame them, though. They had no idea they were going to be used as cruise missile ballast.
Of course, I'm one of those people who thinks the trade centers were probably loaded with explosives AHEAD of time, since the third wtc building collapsed according to the signature of a professionally demolished building. It imploded straight down, and it wasn't even hit by a plane. Demolitionists have to work carefully to get buildings to collapse that way. I don't believe there was enough aftershock to cause that collapse.
Then there's the pentagon, which had a hole the size of a cruise missile.
I've heard some people say that 911 was an inside job. It is a sin to bear false witniss, and I can't say for sure one way or the other. But IF it was, and I mean IF, I have to ask whether that's where the attacks were being coordinated, perhaps "in simulation only" from the perspective of unwitting coordinators. If they were left alive after doing 911 by remote control ("in simulation only" as they had to be fooled into doing it) they would have watched TV and realized what they'd done without knowing. The cruise missile hit on the pentagon erased the very last evidence, the very same team that coordinated the attacks by remote. IF. Who knows, but if I were Kenneth Star I'd be alot more interested in THAT case than in Clinton's sex scandals.
Jesus Christ said that in the same manner that you give, it will be given TO you, and by the very same measure. I wonder if anybody at Google's legal staff has a notion of that.
He also said that if somebody sues you for your shirt, give them your cloak as well. I guess that's his way of saying "have nothing to do with the law" and "give in to all confrontations (to gain rightesness)", "to be righteous while the LORD fights your battles".
Its a strange set of beliefs, actually, and I don't know if I've ever met anybody who actually keeps them in all cases.
That being said, if I were going to throw that all aside and use a legal argument, I'd say this:
The patent system was developed by the public for the benefit of the public. The idea was to compensate inventors for good ideas, thereby encouraging publically beneficial innovation. It was NOT developed to grant petty monopolies and arbitrary legal chokeholds to anyone who could afford to register a shabby patent + "defend" it in court.
There is no INHERENT RIGHT to keep a monopoly on ANY idea. Public law, as an expression of the public interest / preference / goodwill (towards innovators/innovation), is what grants that temporary monopoly. It makes no sense to use the law, PUBLIC law, at the public's expense...there can certainly be exceptions, but this case is probably not one of them, since it sounds like the patent is crooked.
I've actually gone through phases of innovation, and, believe it or not, it was the process of searching existing patents that seemed most daunting. There are TONS of them.
You think that legal patents actually HELP innovation? Stop and imagine, now, if you'd just come up with a new idea, a new type of car, for instance, and some clown patented the "L" bracket, and some other clown patented the straight bracket, and some other clown patented using flat sheets of metal or plastic to form a protective-barrier / aka "wall", etc, etc, etc... Now let's say you get that car made, and each and every one of those clowns decides to have a circus with your new car. Hmm. That doesn't sound like innovation to me. Not at all. It sounds like a bunch of lawyers harrassing an inventor. It sounds like a huge HINDRANCE to innovation, unless you're prepared to buy clown brand "L" brackets, clown brand straight brackets, and clown brand sheet metal/plastic.
Well, fortunately, the hypothetical case IS hypothetical, since brackets and sheet metal are past the protected patent phase, and can be purchased for not too too much. However, there could still be cases where those conditions could apply.
Software patents, in particular, are a good case in point. Most good software engineers would be able to come up with good solutions to the same problem. Eventually, the good solutions could (possibly) all be enumerated.
Stop and consider, then, what if they'd granted a patent for all possible implementations of (1) the array, a patent for the (2) linked list, (3) hashtable, etc. (all the things in your data structures book) Now you want to write a piece of code that does ANYTHING, and YOU KNOW how to write a linked list, but some clown patented it, and he'd SUE you for rewriting it. Now you have to use his patent, or don't innovate at all. And he wants a fortune to use his patent of the linked list.
See? In that hypothetical case, the patent(s) STIFFLE innovation, and BLOCK progress. In that hypothetical case, NOT granting the patent results in GREATER innocation.
Perhaps there are cases, and perhaps there have been times in history, when patent policy should have been something other than what it is today, or visa versa, but it seems to me that the role of patents in blocking innovation should be just as much a consideration (when deciding patent policy) as the role of patents in "incentivising" innovation.
3,030 Americans died on 9-11. 16,000 Americans die to murder each year.
In spite of the impact it made, 9-11 had 1/5th the impact of a single year of murders in the USA. Somehow, for 200 years, we managed to uphold the constitution in spite of murder rates. 9-11 is a sorry excuse to change that now.
Therefore, it seems timely and appropriate to recommend that the administration and members of the department of "homeland security" read the constitution, and that THEY adjust to the CONSTITUTION, rather than the other way around.
9-11 already happened. Unless they intend to invent a time machine to stop 9-11, the DHS should just disband itself, b/c chiselling away at our rights hasn't done a damn bit of good for the country.
I guess it makes me a true nerd when I can say
on
Java SE 6 Released
·
· Score: 1
"I noticed it last night, before it got slashdotted."
Its the first time I've truly scooped slashdot! Woohoo!
Well the online api doc's kept pointing to version 6 while I was looking for version 5.
Which phone manufacturers did NOT sell all of its customers out to the government? Perhaps there are specific model numbers that are not compromised? Or perhaps before a certain year?
Anyhow...if I unplug the phone battery it's off for sure...right?
Well, let's see. There have been over 16,000 murders per year inside the U.S. for the last 5 years. That means Americans have been killing 5x more Americans per year than foreign Muslims allegedly killed in 911. Americans killing other Americans never warranted a war on Americans. We managed to SUSTAIN OUR CONSTITUTION in spite of the fact that the crime rates were taking ~16,000 lives per year, AND that the deaths came from "our own people."
The bottom line of 9-11: 3030 terror deaths. The impact of that attack was distorted, or else they'd never have accomplished the whole "Heil Bush, Protect the Fatherland" thing.
If enough people get that 3,030 vs 16,000 into perspective, we can derail the police state's momentum.
According to the CIA world factbook, 78% of Americans characterize themselves as Christian of some sort or another (catholic, protestant, mormon)... perhaps more, since 10% are categorized as "other".
Jesus taught we should always forgive, love our enemies, and never retaliate for any thing, or any reason. Turn the other cheek. Those who live by the sword die by the sword, etc, etc. Christ's "war" was a spiritual war. Taking up violence or hostility for ANY reason IS LOSING A BATTLE in Christ's war. The battle is WON with prayer and righteousness in all cases. When a dead suicide bomber reaches heaven's gate, he's greeted as a terrorist. Do you think there are any terrorists in heaven? Or any megalomaniacal pseudopresidents with hundreds of thousands fighting in an unjust war for oil, while training to subdue an unwilling native population? Perhaps there are... in radical-militant heaven...perhaps in Bush heaven... but not in the Heaven I plan to go to.
War is against the very bedrock of Christianity.
From the CIA World Factbook: U.S. "Government type: Constitution-based federal republic; strong democratic tradition". Straight from the CIA world factbook. It looks like the administration should read up on the facts. Well, gee... wasn't Bush's own father head of the CIA for a while? Perhaps he could convey to president Bush the importance of maintaining _Traditional_ _American_ _Values_.
I made a spam catcher email address years ago just to register with websites. I thought I might be receiving all kinds of junk email at that email address, but I've received less on that one than from my normal email address.
On the other hand, the 10 minute email address sounds great for asking ransom for kidnap victims and stuff. LOL.
you can still TRY making music. 5 years ago i started making electronic music on a pc, and most of it sucked. i haven't made much lately, but some of the more recent ones weren't all that bad.
until you develop your musical composition talents, just use the "EQ" "reverb" and "chorus" plugins to compensate. LOL.
eventually your skills could blossom into something better.
If everybody prayed and asked the LORD nicely, and thanked Him for what we HAVE, that global warming would just vanish.
It might or might not. But I suggest you instead pray for the souls of your fellow man, instead of praying for the earth. This is a fallen world, and it will all eventually pass away. But people accepting or rejecting Christ will live with their decision for forever.
Well, I suppose a person could say the same thing and use it as a reason to trash anything/everything and run hog wild, but I still do my laundry, make my bed in the morning, and throw trash INTO a trash can...AND I'm still against global warming.
Love your neighbor as yourself...that includes not triggering flooding out everybody who lives on the "floodplain" of "within 3 feet of sea level." Do unto others as you'd have them do unto you, right?
Christ said that what is asked in his name will be granted. Therefore it makes sense to ask that the world in which we live meets the needs of those who (have no choice but to) live within it. I've found that the LORD helps those who give thanks.
I know that there's no controlling the future, but it makes no sense resigning the future to ruin and disaster. Fallen or not, (and, yes, I've SEEN the fallen) this is the world we live in, and I'm not going to adopt "who gives a damn" as my life-motto.
I ask the Lord to help save souls AND pray for an improvement in the state of things. Jesus did take the trouble to feed and heal people. Those were real world actions he took, right? That indicates he was prepared to care for people IN THIS world.
Slashdot Mirror
I understand your claimed advantage. However, I'm inclined to say that your claimed advantage is not a real advantage, at all.
:-)
Since bytes and bits are interchangeable measurements of the same thing, the only "advantage" you seem to claim is that by using bits instead of bytes the ISP can fail to meet user's expectations without it being recognized.
Since bytes and bits are interchangeable, if the ISP can state a reliable rate of bits per second, they can express the same reliable rate in terms of of bytes per second. If the user were going to complain about one, they could just as easily complain about the other, so long as they understood both means of expressing the DL rate.
Unless you're really just saying you think the user not knowing what their service actually provides (in MEANINGFUL terms) is a justified end in itself. I don't consider that an end in itself, though, and I doubt you do either.
To carry the analogy, if the gas stations started selling gas by the 1/13th fluid ounce to cause difficulty in determining actual gas mileage (to avoid complaints), I think you might then understand what I'm saying. I'm glad they don't to that at gas stations. I would like it if they didn't do it with connection speeds.
true true. ty. see above. :-)
I'm not sure if this makes sense to you, but here goes:
:-)
Bytes and bits are interchangeable. They measure the same thing. It makes no sense to say that "one of them is false advertising, and therefore the other should be used." Any measure of download speed that can be expressed in terms of one of the units can be expressed in the other, and with absolutely no loss of accuracy.
For example, if they started selling gasoline by the "kilo-fluid ounce", people might be asking "how much gasoline is in them yar 'kilo fluid ounce?'". Since nobody ever uses a kilo fluid ounce for anything else, there would be no real-world frame of reference to make it meaningful. That doesn't mean there would be "false advertising", as you phrase it, it simply means that the unit of measure would lead people towards ignorance of the actual amount of gasoline being bought/sold.
You could look it up and find out, but it might be a pain in the posterior.
I think they should be measuring line speed terms of meaningful units, so that people would be able to say "in the ideal, a 1GB download should take x minutes, give or take, and I know that due to my line speed being consistent[, and expressed in clear terms]."
Basically it boils down to this: File downloads are "sized up" in terms of the size of the file and the time it takes to download. File size is measured in kilo- mega- and giga- (sometimes even terra-) bytes. Therefore it makes better sense to measure line speed in terms of kilo- mega- and/or giga- (and, eventually, terra-) bytes.
THAT way, people would have a better instinct for how much time downloads would take.
LOL. I guess it's not that important though.
Amazing. I can't believe I mistyped it, but you're right. Thanks for pointing it out. I'd hate to misinform people.
they found in egypt
http://www.theonion.com/content/node/29976
No, I wasn't talking about spammers using PGP. I was talking about people using PGP to help guard (some) against warrantless mail snooping.
I thought the details of the case described the police intercepting not HIS computer, but a third party's computer, and taking his email from there. From a gmail or yahoo or hotmail or who knows... but the mail server was not his own.
From the description:
"Federal prosecutors say they don't need a search warrant to read your e-mail messages if those messages happen to be stored in someone else's computer."
The amendment says "you have a right to privacy", and "that right cannot be violated without a warrant." To get that warrant, oath or affirmation is needed. It sounds like the affirmation is easy...they spammed thousands of email accounts... so the police COULD have EASILY gotten a warrant, but they DIDN'T. And NOW they're (allegedly) saying they didn't need one, but they DID. Simple as that, right?
The cops messed up. Too bad, since they basically had "case closed" before they went in without a warrant.
Next time, let's HOPE they remember the good ole U.S. Constitution they swore to uphold (you know... the constitution... that ratty old piece of paper that makes America a place worth living in...the big "technicality" that GW Bush and his cronies seem to have been "forgetting about" for the past 7 years... the thing that supposedly differentiated the U.S.A. from the Soviet Union for the entire duration of the cold war) before going in and searching somebody's constitutionally protected personal effects.
I really don't know why they express download speeds in such an outlandish way. End users do not "gigabits" ...gigglebits, maybe, but not gigabits... for anything, they use kB, MB, & GB.
i nput_units=gigabits¬ation=legacy
:-)
107Gb/s = "107 gigabits per second"
13,696 MB/s = "13,696 megabytes per second"
13.375 GB/s = "13.375 gigabytes per second"
Source:
http://www.matisse.net/bitcalc/?input_amount=107&
Divide by 8 to get the number that makes sense. The "little b" stands for bits, and there are 8 bits per byte; the "big B" stands for byte.
1B = 8b.
The byte is the amount of data you could store on a single coin if you had a code worked out placing it either heads up or heads down. Ones and zero's.
Source:
http://www.theonion.com/content/node/29130
They do so need a warrant. See: Amendment IV, United States Constitution
:-)
...uh... sure.
n -e" :-D
"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, AND EFFECTS, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."
In any case, they still DO need a warrant to search that 3rd party server. The warrant would simply have to describe the place to be searched, and specify the things to be seized, in accord with the ammendment.
There are lots of analogies: P.O. Box, Voice Mail, Tapped phone lines, Gym locker, direct ip-ip chat (with no brokering middleman server, except routers). Each one of them has a slightly different feel, but in each case it seems clear that the RIGHT thing to do is respect the person's privacy. That the email sits on a server with a delay does not seem relevant (any more than the latent speed of light transmission time when the sound is IN the phone lines)
However, until the authorities have been duly punished for violating the man's right to privacy, it would behoove those who WANT their rights protected to run their own mail servers (either in foreign, non-extraditing countries or in their own homes.)
http://james.apache.org/
If electronic communications had existed at the time of the framing of the constitution, I really doubt they would have left gaps for the government to abuse our privacy by means of raiding electronic mailboxes.
PS -- It wouldn't hurt to use pgp encrypted mail
"a-l-w-a-y-s---d-r-i-n-k---y-o-u-r---o-v-a-l-t-i-
They want a DONATION in order to make a BID?
Making a BID is free. Paying an accepted bid costs money.
What I'm saying is that it seems they should be asking for COMMITMENTS to donate, rather than for donations.
Anyhow, it's still neat...I hope they get their bid together and make it work.
Jesus said return blessings and kindness in exchange for evil. God Bless You.
:-)
He also said that being persecuted, slandered and mocked for faith is rewarded in Heaven.
He said love your enemy, and pray for them. I love you, and I'll remember you in my prayers.
And finally, you're right, I DID misspell witness. Thank you for pointing that out. Who knows how many times I would have kept doing that if you hadn't pointed it out.
If I can't spell "werthth schhitt" I can at least be happy that I never HAVE to spell "waearth schnitt".
It's actually not just constrained to court, it applies to anyone, anywhere.
What's more, the definition [of bearing false witness] you provided is not in line with the way it's taught in church:
The definition of BFW is not exhausted on those who say a person did something they KNOW the person didn't do (altough that is definitely part of it),
BFW is ALSO saying that a person did something that you DON'T KNOW they did.
The difference is clear.
If your neighbor thinks you're murdering people, but he doesn't know it, and he starts shouting it everywhere he goes, slandering you, he's bearing false witness.
If you think that Bush is running concentration camps, but you don't know it, and then you start saying he is running camps, as if it were fact, then you're bearing false witness.
With the definition you provided, those sins would not be sins at all. But they are sins, and that's very important [to know], since keeping the 10 Commandments starts with knowing the 10 Commandments, and knowing them means knowing what they mean, not just knowing the words.
I still use Windows 2000, and I like it. MS still provides the updates/service packs, etc, for download. Since they're doing that, I'm a naysayer to the accusation.
Personally I suspect that they are still making enough cash on the current releases that they don't have to resort to petty tricks. IF they wanted to pull the plug on the older O.S.'s then they could probably do a much better job than disabling software.
Anyhow, it's better to be unassuming than to assume they would be dishonest. We really don't don't know what their motive was, and, like them or not, we shouldn't just assume their action was dishonest or that it was done for an insidious reason.
The bottom line is: it's a sin to bear false witniss, even if it's against Microsoft.
I didn't know the details of that event. It shows for certain that PEOPLE have learned what to do if their airplane is threatened.
y /Missile-Not-Flight-77.html
For all they were going to lose in the crash, they might as well have taken a few box cutter hits than "remain seated for the remainder of" the 911 flights. I really can't blame them, though. They had no idea they were going to be used as cruise missile ballast.
Of course, I'm one of those people who thinks the trade centers were probably loaded with explosives AHEAD of time, since the third wtc building collapsed according to the signature of a professionally demolished building. It imploded straight down, and it wasn't even hit by a plane. Demolitionists have to work carefully to get buildings to collapse that way. I don't believe there was enough aftershock to cause that collapse.
Then there's the pentagon, which had a hole the size of a cruise missile.
I've heard some people say that 911 was an inside job. It is a sin to bear false witniss, and I can't say for sure one way or the other. But IF it was, and I mean IF, I have to ask whether that's where the attacks were being coordinated, perhaps "in simulation only" from the perspective of unwitting coordinators. If they were left alive after doing 911 by remote control ("in simulation only" as they had to be fooled into doing it) they would have watched TV and realized what they'd done without knowing. The cruise missile hit on the pentagon erased the very last evidence, the very same team that coordinated the attacks by remote. IF. Who knows, but if I were Kenneth Star I'd be alot more interested in THAT case than in Clinton's sex scandals.
http://www.the7thfire.com/Politics%20and%20Histor
Speak no evil of anyone.
even IF the love of money is the root of all evil.
OK, a copper penny is worth 2cents... but the cost of sorting pre 1982 pennies and melting them is probably more than a penny per penny, right?
That means the enterprise of melting old pennies probly isn't worth it, yet.
Jesus Christ said that in the same manner that you give, it will be given TO you, and by the very same measure. I wonder if anybody at Google's legal staff has a notion of that.
He also said that if somebody sues you for your shirt, give them your cloak as well. I guess that's his way of saying "have nothing to do with the law" and "give in to all confrontations (to gain rightesness)", "to be righteous while the LORD fights your battles".
Its a strange set of beliefs, actually, and I don't know if I've ever met anybody who actually keeps them in all cases.
That being said, if I were going to throw that all aside and use a legal argument, I'd say this:
The patent system was developed by the public for the benefit of the public. The idea was to compensate inventors for good ideas, thereby encouraging publically beneficial innovation. It was NOT developed to grant petty monopolies and arbitrary legal chokeholds to anyone who could afford to register a shabby patent + "defend" it in court.
There is no INHERENT RIGHT to keep a monopoly on ANY idea. Public law, as an expression of the public interest / preference / goodwill (towards innovators/innovation), is what grants that temporary monopoly. It makes no sense to use the law, PUBLIC law, at the public's expense...there can certainly be exceptions, but this case is probably not one of them, since it sounds like the patent is crooked.
I've actually gone through phases of innovation, and, believe it or not, it was the process of searching existing patents that seemed most daunting. There are TONS of them.
You think that legal patents actually HELP innovation? Stop and imagine, now, if you'd just come up with a new idea, a new type of car, for instance, and some clown patented the "L" bracket, and some other clown patented the straight bracket, and some other clown patented using flat sheets of metal or plastic to form a protective-barrier / aka "wall", etc, etc, etc... Now let's say you get that car made, and each and every one of those clowns decides to have a circus with your new car. Hmm. That doesn't sound like innovation to me. Not at all. It sounds like a bunch of lawyers harrassing an inventor. It sounds like a huge HINDRANCE to innovation, unless you're prepared to buy clown brand "L" brackets, clown brand straight brackets, and clown brand sheet metal/plastic.
Well, fortunately, the hypothetical case IS hypothetical, since brackets and sheet metal are past the protected patent phase, and can be purchased for not too too much. However, there could still be cases where those conditions could apply.
Software patents, in particular, are a good case in point. Most good software engineers would be able to come up with good solutions to the same problem. Eventually, the good solutions could (possibly) all be enumerated.
Stop and consider, then, what if they'd granted a patent for all possible implementations of (1) the array, a patent for the (2) linked list, (3) hashtable, etc. (all the things in your data structures book) Now you want to write a piece of code that does ANYTHING, and YOU KNOW how to write a linked list, but some clown patented it, and he'd SUE you for rewriting it. Now you have to use his patent, or don't innovate at all. And he wants a fortune to use his patent of the linked list.
See? In that hypothetical case, the patent(s) STIFFLE innovation, and BLOCK progress. In that hypothetical case, NOT granting the patent results in GREATER innocation.
Perhaps there are cases, and perhaps there have been times in history, when patent policy should have been something other than what it is today, or visa versa, but it seems to me that the role of patents in blocking innovation should be just as much a consideration (when deciding patent policy) as the role of patents in "incentivising" innovation.
3,030 Americans died on 9-11.
16,000 Americans die to murder each year.
In spite of the impact it made, 9-11 had 1/5th the impact of a single year of murders in the USA. Somehow, for 200 years, we managed to uphold the constitution in spite of murder rates. 9-11 is a sorry excuse to change that now.
Therefore, it seems timely and appropriate to recommend that the administration and members of the department of "homeland security" read the constitution, and that THEY adjust to the CONSTITUTION, rather than the other way around.
9-11 already happened. Unless they intend to invent a time machine to stop 9-11, the DHS should just disband itself, b/c chiselling away at our rights hasn't done a damn bit of good for the country.
"I noticed it last night, before it got slashdotted."
Its the first time I've truly scooped slashdot! Woohoo!
Well the online api doc's kept pointing to version 6 while I was looking for version 5.
=)
It's detecting the ones with lasers. =D
Which phone manufacturers did NOT sell all of its customers out to the government? Perhaps there are specific model numbers that are not compromised? Or perhaps before a certain year?
Anyhow...if I unplug the phone battery it's off for sure...right?
Well, let's see. There have been over 16,000 murders per year inside the U.S. for the last 5 years. That means Americans have been killing 5x more Americans per year than foreign Muslims allegedly killed in 911. Americans killing other Americans never warranted a war on Americans. We managed to SUSTAIN OUR CONSTITUTION in spite of the fact that the crime rates were taking ~16,000 lives per year, AND that the deaths came from "our own people."
n t/us.html
The bottom line of 9-11: 3030 terror deaths. The impact of that attack was distorted, or else they'd never have accomplished the whole "Heil Bush, Protect the Fatherland" thing.
If enough people get that 3,030 vs 16,000 into perspective, we can derail the police state's momentum.
According to the CIA world factbook, 78% of Americans characterize themselves as Christian of some sort or another (catholic, protestant, mormon)... perhaps more, since 10% are categorized as "other".
Jesus taught we should always forgive, love our enemies, and never retaliate for any thing, or any reason. Turn the other cheek. Those who live by the sword die by the sword, etc, etc. Christ's "war" was a spiritual war. Taking up violence or hostility for ANY reason IS LOSING A BATTLE in Christ's war. The battle is WON with prayer and righteousness in all cases. When a dead suicide bomber reaches heaven's gate, he's greeted as a terrorist. Do you think there are any terrorists in heaven? Or any megalomaniacal pseudopresidents with hundreds of thousands fighting in an unjust war for oil, while training to subdue an unwilling native population? Perhaps there are... in radical-militant heaven...perhaps in Bush heaven... but not in the Heaven I plan to go to.
War is against the very bedrock of Christianity.
From the CIA World Factbook: U.S. "Government type: Constitution-based federal republic; strong democratic tradition". Straight from the CIA world factbook. It looks like the administration should read up on the facts. Well, gee... wasn't Bush's own father head of the CIA for a while? Perhaps he could convey to president Bush the importance of maintaining _Traditional_ _American_ _Values_.
https://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/pri
http://www.disastercenter.com/crime/uscrime.htm
I made a spam catcher email address years ago just to register with websites. I thought I might be receiving all kinds of junk email at that email address, but I've received less on that one than from my normal email address.
On the other hand, the 10 minute email address sounds great for asking ransom for kidnap victims and stuff. LOL.
you can still TRY making music. 5 years ago i started making electronic music on a pc, and most of it sucked. i haven't made much lately, but some of the more recent ones weren't all that bad.
until you develop your musical composition talents, just use the "EQ" "reverb" and "chorus" plugins to compensate. LOL.
eventually your skills could blossom into something better.
same with coding. =D
TY, nice links!
Now I'm seriously considering installing linux since the software tools are partly what were holding me back.
But the box of the keyboard (m-audio axiom 49) doesn't say it works with linux.
I wonder about the soundcard, too, SB Audigy 2zs plat. pro.
What hardware are you using with those software tools?
Well, I suppose a person could say the same thing and use it as a reason to trash anything/everything and run hog wild, but I still do my laundry, make my bed in the morning, and throw trash INTO a trash can...AND I'm still against global warming.
Love your neighbor as yourself...that includes not triggering flooding out everybody who lives on the "floodplain" of "within 3 feet of sea level." Do unto others as you'd have them do unto you, right?
Christ said that what is asked in his name will be granted. Therefore it makes sense to ask that the world in which we live meets the needs of those who (have no choice but to) live within it. I've found that the LORD helps those who give thanks.
I know that there's no controlling the future, but it makes no sense resigning the future to ruin and disaster. Fallen or not, (and, yes, I've SEEN the fallen) this is the world we live in, and I'm not going to adopt "who gives a damn" as my life-motto.
I ask the Lord to help save souls AND pray for an improvement in the state of things. Jesus did take the trouble to feed and heal people. Those were real world actions he took, right? That indicates he was prepared to care for people IN THIS world.