It's a great idea, but can it be done? Even if connections over the large number of hops inherent in such a system were acceptable, is existing consumer-grade hardware capable of running BGP with reasonable performance and storing the (extra large!) routing tables necessary?
In fact, given that routing tables grow exponentially, is it even theoretically possible for a full peer-to-peer Internet scale mesh to work?
The GPL is not an EULA (End User License Agreement). The only things governing your right to use GPL software are (1) copyright law itself and (2) whether the person who provided the copy to you had the right to do so. You don't even need to see it or know about it when you're using your copy of GPL'd software, let alone "agree" to it. (In particular, displaying it in an installer and forcing the user to click "I agree" -- as LibreOffice does, to name one -- is wrong and evil.)
By default, copyright law gives the right to use the software, but not to copy and redistribute it. The GPL grants you that right of redistribution, within certain limits that you have to agree to (i.e., the "consideration" necessary in any legitimate contract). But the key thing to remember is that the GPL doesn't start to apply until you try to do something that copyright law doesn't already allow you to do. Therefore, if there's no redistribution, the GPL is irrelevant.
(By the way: EULAs, which try to restrict the rights the user already has under copyright law without giving any consideration in return, should be considered not valid contracts and be held unenforceable except when they're presented and agreed to prior to the user receiving his copy of the software.)
The funny thing is that India had a certain amount of inherent advantage over China due to the partial Westernization from its time as a British colony. I guess that didn't count for much...
I think you missed the GP's larger point: for information to be preserved, somebody has to care about it, and it's easier to find somebody who cares when more people have access.
You can also easily resell IT equipment or part it out and there is a much smaller chance of getting caught. Serial numbers are an issue of course, but if something gets sent overseas the cost of getting caught drops significanly while the value is pretty much retained.
Wouldn't the shipping overseas idea apply equally to cash and jewelry?
First of all, this entire time I've been including things like investments and extra debt repayments as "savings" (they may not be as easy to get to as cash in the bank, but it's still possible to use them as emergency funds). If you make $4000/month, spend $2000 and put the other $2000 in stocks, that's what I call having a 50% savings rate (and living way, way below your means -- if you keep that kind of thing up, you can retire at 30 like the mrmoneymustache.com guy).
Second, I think you've got some overly-optimistic ideas about how the "average American" lives. They not only don't keep cash in the bank, they don't have any investments either. They don't even have any retirement savings (other than Social Security)! In total, the median saved for retirement by all US households is $3,000. The "average American" really is living paycheck-to-paycheck according to my definition, not yours, and gets entirely screwed by his own stupidity when the slightest thing goes wrong.
You know what the sad thing is? Even with the government "shutdown" we're apparently managing to spend money so fast that we'll hit the debt ceiling just as soon. You'd think that the cuts would make enough of a dent to push it back a few days, but no.
WTF! At least a thermostat actually does something worth making it programmable for... this is just a ridiculously overengineered implementation of "if fire, make noise."
But even in C, it should (and does using any reasonable compiler, I think) generate a warning.
Personally, I try to code any comparisons involving literals with the literal on the left (e.g. if(0 == foo)... instead of if(foo == 0)...) so that I get a "lvalue required as left operand of assignment" error if I leave one of the equals signs out. And when I intend an assignment, I do it in a separate statement (e.g. foo = 0; if(0 == foo)...).
On a side note, the compiler folks probably ought to change that error message to "hey idiot, you're doing an assignment when you really mean to do a compare" since that's more likely to be the cause rather than that you intended to assign but just forgot that your identifier wasn't a valid lvalue.
Open prison as described by the Wikipedia article sounds like the opposite of what the great-grandparent AC claimed. In his post, he said that the prisoners were let out for the weekend to do whatever they want, whereas the Wikipedia article says that prisoners are let out to work [most likely, during the week] but spend their free time in the prison. The latter seems much more reasonable to me.
Senators don't get to sentence people in the USA. We have judges for that.
Would these be the same Senators and judges who are failing to do anything about all the other unconstitutional stuff the Federal government is doing? If so, surely you can see why Assange -- and the rest of the non-idiots in the US and the world -- would be skeptical of your argument.
Yes general wear out is covered by some policies. Just like the definition of motor burn-out is very wide and can be applied to a 50 year old fridge if you want. It all depends on your insurance.
Here in the US we call that kind of thing a "maintenance agreement" which is usually separate from "insurance" and typically expensive enough that a substantial fraction of people (especially the smarter ones who have savings) don't bother to get it.
Yes I have car insurance that covers every type of external liability.
When I asked "but what about some other kind of general liability?" I was talking about non-driving-related liability. Like -- I don't know -- if you were walking around somewhere (like a shop or a friend's house) and tripped and broke something expensive. Obviously, your car insurance wouldn't cover that.
The general point I was trying to make is that surely there's some circumstance in the infinite universe of possibilities where something could happen to you that would cost you money to fix, but would not be covered by any of the various insurances you have. And that that's what you'd need an emergency fund for.
You seem to have a disconnect between the entire discussion. If I needed an extra $50 I would likely skip a trip to the movies or something similar. Most families that live paycheck to paycheck to do comfortably and temporal discomfort is something that is quite easily absorbed. That's the kind of average families we're talking about.
No, it's not -- in fact, maybe that's the whole problem here. In the US, "living paycheck to paycheck" means that by the time you get done paying rent, utilities, commuting costs (gas or bus fare, etc.) and the bare minimum groceries you are done and have no money left over. Having $50 to spend on the movies means that you are not "living paycheck to paycheck" but rather that you have $50 left over as discretionary funds, which you choose to spend on the movies.* "Living paycheck to paycheck" means, by definition that you cannot easily absorb any unexpected expense. For the kind of households I'm talking about, getting a flat tire means they have to choose between having the lights on or eating (or paying on credit and starting a downward spiral to bankruptcy and homelessness).
(* Technically, it can also mean you do have $50 to spend on the movies -- or cable TV, or eating out, or whatever -- but consider it a mandatory expense in the same priority as rent because you're an idiot. I mention this because it's way more common than you might think.)
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It's a great idea, but can it be done? Even if connections over the large number of hops inherent in such a system were acceptable, is existing consumer-grade hardware capable of running BGP with reasonable performance and storing the (extra large!) routing tables necessary?
In fact, given that routing tables grow exponentially, is it even theoretically possible for a full peer-to-peer Internet scale mesh to work?
The GPL is not an EULA (End User License Agreement). The only things governing your right to use GPL software are (1) copyright law itself and (2) whether the person who provided the copy to you had the right to do so. You don't even need to see it or know about it when you're using your copy of GPL'd software, let alone "agree" to it. (In particular, displaying it in an installer and forcing the user to click "I agree" -- as LibreOffice does, to name one -- is wrong and evil.)
By default, copyright law gives the right to use the software, but not to copy and redistribute it. The GPL grants you that right of redistribution, within certain limits that you have to agree to (i.e., the "consideration" necessary in any legitimate contract). But the key thing to remember is that the GPL doesn't start to apply until you try to do something that copyright law doesn't already allow you to do. Therefore, if there's no redistribution, the GPL is irrelevant.
(By the way: EULAs, which try to restrict the rights the user already has under copyright law without giving any consideration in return, should be considered not valid contracts and be held unenforceable except when they're presented and agreed to prior to the user receiving his copy of the software.)
The funny thing is that India had a certain amount of inherent advantage over China due to the partial Westernization from its time as a British colony. I guess that didn't count for much...
I linked to LavaRnd in a reply to an earlier post, but at the risk of being redundant, I'll mention it again.
Yep. I think it's about time to hook up the ol' lava lamp.
I hope that one day your fate rests on the weight of such a "technicality."
I think you missed the GP's larger point: for information to be preserved, somebody has to care about it, and it's easier to find somebody who cares when more people have access.
You only work 100 days a year? How'd you manage that?
Well that's just fucked up to begin with... they should be returning the property to its rightful owner!
The FCC might have something to say about the "encrypt it" idea (hint: the broadcaster would lose its license if it tried it).
Wouldn't the shipping overseas idea apply equally to cash and jewelry?
The applications still expect to be interacted with using touch and gestures.
The question should be, "how are you going to get it to earth without either unfathomable fuel costs or an extinction-level impact event?"
Also, shouldn't it be diamond snow?
First of all, this entire time I've been including things like investments and extra debt repayments as "savings" (they may not be as easy to get to as cash in the bank, but it's still possible to use them as emergency funds). If you make $4000/month, spend $2000 and put the other $2000 in stocks, that's what I call having a 50% savings rate (and living way, way below your means -- if you keep that kind of thing up, you can retire at 30 like the mrmoneymustache.com guy).
Second, I think you've got some overly-optimistic ideas about how the "average American" lives. They not only don't keep cash in the bank, they don't have any investments either. They don't even have any retirement savings (other than Social Security)! In total, the median saved for retirement by all US households is $3,000. The "average American" really is living paycheck-to-paycheck according to my definition, not yours, and gets entirely screwed by his own stupidity when the slightest thing goes wrong.
I drive a Diesel, you insensitive clod!
(Sorry, I couldn't resist.)
You know what the sad thing is? Even with the government "shutdown" we're apparently managing to spend money so fast that we'll hit the debt ceiling just as soon. You'd think that the cuts would make enough of a dent to push it back a few days, but no.
WTF! At least a thermostat actually does something worth making it programmable for... this is just a ridiculously overengineered implementation of "if fire, make noise."
We have that; it's called ODB2.
That doesn't apply when you already know they're out to get you.
But even in C, it should (and does using any reasonable compiler, I think) generate a warning.
Personally, I try to code any comparisons involving literals with the literal on the left (e.g. if(0 == foo)... instead of if(foo == 0)...) so that I get a "lvalue required as left operand of assignment" error if I leave one of the equals signs out. And when I intend an assignment, I do it in a separate statement (e.g. foo = 0; if(0 == foo)...).
On a side note, the compiler folks probably ought to change that error message to "hey idiot, you're doing an assignment when you really mean to do a compare" since that's more likely to be the cause rather than that you intended to assign but just forgot that your identifier wasn't a valid lvalue.
Open prison as described by the Wikipedia article sounds like the opposite of what the great-grandparent AC claimed. In his post, he said that the prisoners were let out for the weekend to do whatever they want, whereas the Wikipedia article says that prisoners are let out to work [most likely, during the week] but spend their free time in the prison. The latter seems much more reasonable to me.
Would these be the same Senators and judges who are failing to do anything about all the other unconstitutional stuff the Federal government is doing? If so, surely you can see why Assange -- and the rest of the non-idiots in the US and the world -- would be skeptical of your argument.
Here in the US we call that kind of thing a "maintenance agreement" which is usually separate from "insurance" and typically expensive enough that a substantial fraction of people (especially the smarter ones who have savings) don't bother to get it.
When I asked "but what about some other kind of general liability?" I was talking about non-driving-related liability. Like -- I don't know -- if you were walking around somewhere (like a shop or a friend's house) and tripped and broke something expensive. Obviously, your car insurance wouldn't cover that.
The general point I was trying to make is that surely there's some circumstance in the infinite universe of possibilities where something could happen to you that would cost you money to fix, but would not be covered by any of the various insurances you have. And that that's what you'd need an emergency fund for.
No, it's not -- in fact, maybe that's the whole problem here. In the US, "living paycheck to paycheck" means that by the time you get done paying rent, utilities, commuting costs (gas or bus fare, etc.) and the bare minimum groceries you are done and have no money left over. Having $50 to spend on the movies means that you are not "living paycheck to paycheck" but rather that you have $50 left over as discretionary funds, which you choose to spend on the movies.* "Living paycheck to paycheck" means, by definition that you cannot easily absorb any unexpected expense. For the kind of households I'm talking about, getting a flat tire means they have to choose between having the lights on or eating (or paying on credit and starting a downward spiral to bankruptcy and homelessness).
(* Technically, it can also mean you do have $50 to spend on the movies -- or cable TV, or eating out, or whatever -- but consider it a mandatory expense in the same priority as rent because you're an idiot. I mention this because it's way more common than you might think.)
Joke (noun) -- a thing that someone says to cause amusement or laughter, esp. a story with a funny punchline.