I believe that justice requires the potential for anonymity, the potential to slip out of the system.
I believe it is worse to punish or put to death an innocent man than it is to fail to convict a few who are guilty.
While the following example might seem a bit outlandish, I am certain that numerous other examples, some more plausible than others, can be conceived of:
Suppose that it is well known in the community that things have not been going as well between Jones and his wife as they might. He's been laid off, and has not been able to find work in several months. Jones and his wife aren't on the verge of a divorce, but with the general somber attitude of the times, they've had the occasional heated argument.
Now, suppose that one Sunday at noon meal someone comes into Jones' house -- someone he does not know and has never met -- and murders his wife and children with a knife from Jones' pantry. The man was a vagrant passing through town. No one knew him, and there was no one to note or miss his comings and goings. He moves on, and will never be found.
It seems very likely that Jones vill be convicted; it seems that Jones will be sentenced to death. The glove that the murderer used will never be found, but the jury knows it is quite possible that Jones could have hid or otherwise disposed of it cleverly enough that it would not be found.
In this case Jones can not rely upon our judicial system to set him free. If the judicial system is reliable, given this evidence it will convict Jones.
There is no one Jones can depend upon except himself and the underground world of conspiracies, assassinations, secret information, and shady services he has been so careful to distance himself from all his life.
Jones needs to disappeear. He needs to leave the country and he needs to never be identified again. He needs to live out his life and make what he can of it after this terrible tragedy.
We do not need to make it easy for Jones, but we need to make it possible. We need there to be an underground of information that Jones can tap into and that Jones can exploit to disappear.
Jones needs anonymous access to this information.
Jones needs anonymous and undetected passage.
The horror of putting an innocent man to death (or maybe anyone to death), or of sending him to prison for the rest of his life, should be enough to convince anyone that Jones has a right to the potential to disappear.
Now, the first worry that probably comes to mind is, "What if they assign unique identification numbers to each piece of clothing?"
Most of the devices I have read about have sufficient storage to uniquely identify every single item of clothing ever sold (which really doesn't require many bits at all). Current devices such as those we heard about with Benneton are not visible unless you either know where to look or have special equipment.
The devices seem to have a rane of 1-10m, and probably on the lower end of that for clothing items, but certainly that range will be improved with time.
While I trust that there would be sufficient public backlash to prevent this level of tracking and identification, we shouldn't feel comfortable even once we have stopped this precise level of unique identification.
Consider instead that each item of clothing you wear: shirt, slacks, briefs, and socks do not have an identifier unique across all items of clothing or even acorss all items of clothing of that type, but have only a unique identifier for the brand and 'model' (e.g. "Dockers Fall 2003 tan polo shirt") of the item.
It is still quite trivial to track you even in this case. Where in the past law enforcement agents might issue an alert for a man wearing "blue jeans, white t-shirt, orange cap", now they can issue an alert for a man wearing "slacks brand/model 3000023153, shirt brand/model 2000893912, cap brand/model 42330000251".
How many people do you suppose there are in an average large U.S. city wearing the same brand/model of 4-6 items of clothing? A lot fewer that we might think, I suspect. Probably few enough that it would be trivial to track all such individuals if necessary.
The more unique you dress, the more you stand out in a crowd (and not necessarily to the naked eye), the easier it is to track you.
There is no need to trust our privacy to legislation, although that would be a valuable step.
Simply encourage individuals opposed to these measures first to destroy these tags in their own clothing and to make a market for clothing without such tags.
Why do you suggest (3) is true? I believe you suggest (3) is true becauase (3) seems to involve lessening the demand for or market value of the music in question.
However, (2) potentially lessens the demand for or market value of the music in question. It does so in several cases: a) the music is worth hearing once, but is perhaps forgettable or is primarily a 'curiousity', and won't be played often. b) the hype surrounding the music -- whether from marketing or from the differing tastes of others -- causes your friend to believe that were he to purchase a copy of the music, he would consider the purchase to have been worthwhile, when in fact he would not.
Potentially both (a) and (b) are acceptable uses. This, I believe, indicates that you should add to your list, (4): 4) Some acceptable uses may potentially lessen the demand for or market value of the music in question, and nonetheless are acceptable uses.
I believe that (4) should open the door to consideration of more expansive acceptable uses.
If you do not have a spouse or dependants, and you can get either a loan or credit to pay your bills until you can find a new job, tell the CEO to go to hell. Detail precisely to him or her, their grevious moral shortcomings, and their status as a member of the human community. If you can, find a job as a waiter, cashier, or laborer while looking for your next job. No future employer has to even know about this temporary job if you do not want them to.
You deserve better. No questions. You deserve better.
You might increase your debt, but debt, possibly refinanced, need not be a major burden.
A matter of principle is as justified a reason to incur debt as is the need for a new car, or any emergency.
And sometimes your principles are all that you have to stand on.
Re:Learned Professionals?
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Working Hard?
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· Score: 1
"you can't sit on your ass, play with office toys, read slashdot, or eat twinkies while you work in many of the kind of places I'm talking about"
No, you can't.
You also can't find your work interesting, challenging, satisfying, or fulfulling, if you are have trained all of your life, and pusued as a goal all of your life, of doing something else.
Is it worth fighting to stay alive for 43 years of that hell, for the hope of one day spending the remaining 8-12 years of your life, when you are very probably starting to experience a decline in mental and physical capacity, trying vainly against the inevitable to relive the life you have lost, the life which could have been?
Is death not then the more appealing option? Or is the lesson that you shouldn't set goals, dream dreams, or hope, but should instead do what you are told to, try not to stand out from the crowd, be content to know 'just enough', and be happy doing just what you are supposed to?
You deserve very little of it
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Working Hard?
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· Score: 1, Interesting
I would venture the guess that someone who is working 2 jobs, supporting several children, possibly as a single parent, is trying a great deal harder than you are. Now, maybe you are an exception, and if so, then I apologize, and I applaud your perseverance, but the odds are that my statement is correct.
Do you have a nice college or university degree? The odds are that there is very little sense in which you deserve it. You didn't deserve to be born to the family you were born to. You didn't deserve to have middle class parents with the means to provide for your physical and mental development. You didn't deserve to have parents who cared about you, or who had the time to care about you.
It just happened that way. You didn't do anything to merit or deserve it happening this way; you couldn't have done anything to merit it.
You probably aren't special. Your existence is very probably it seems, the result of the carrying on of blind natural forces which operate without purpose and without interest in or care for what is produced.
A person who has been born into a working lower-class family or to a single mother on welfare, does not deserve to have been born into this situation any more than a child that is seriouslly mentally handicapped deserves to have been born with this condition. (Although that is not to suggest that a child born into the former situation is similar to the child born into the later case; please don't think that).
It just happened that way.
Many of them have probably worked harder in this life and borne more hardships in this life than President Bush, or any of the congressmen and senators who influence how opportunity is distributed.
If anyone is deserving of their present annual income, many of these lower working class individuals and people living in poverty are as deserving or more deserving of the money you have than are you.
Not only this, but these people have just as much a right as do you in virtue of being a person: to have their needs met, to have opportunities to work in fulfilling jobs, to an education that does not spit in the face of their talents, their abilities, and their possibilities, to the fruits of their hard labor, and to health care.
The only reason to allow the rich to keep their wealth is, if you subscribe to particular economic and political theories, that these individuals will reinvest that wealth in the businesses they own and stimulate the economy. It is said that this will create more jobs for the working class, and that the immense wealth of this minority of individuals will over time 'trickle down' to improve the quality of life of the working masses.
There is no shame in taking what is freely given to you if for whatever reason you truly can not get by their programming (although there may be shame in being in such a state).
But please, for all of our sakes, do not support these people financially. Reading statements like the above quote, how could you live with yourself if you did? If you can not get by without it: steal it until you succeed in weaning yourself from it. You ought not to steal, but you do a greater wrong to yourself and all of us by supporting them financially.
What it is that is so terrible about advertising is that advertisers are intentionally trying to mislead and deceive you into purchasing their product.
They make irrational appeals, they try to affect your emotional state to cause a lapse of judgement, they try to make you feel obligated to purchase their product, and many tell outright lies to you, lies which are protected by our government under the guise of 'advertising'.
Why do we allow Chevorlet to tell us that their pickup truck is "like a rock"? In what significant way is their pickup truck "like a rock"? It is not in any significant way "like a rock". There is no requirement that Chevorlet demonstrate that their pickup truck is more "like a rock" than a competing pickup truck. There is no requirement that Chevorlet provide statistics and accompanying documentation of their methodology of gathering statistics, which support their claim that their pickup truck is "like a rock".
No, all Chevorlet cares about is that you see their pickup truck driving through a patch of mud in a 'rugged-looking' environment, and associate their truck with ruggedness and rocks and things that people who buy pickup trucks put have no practical need for them, have been trained to want to associate with a pickup truck.
They tell you very little about what their product does, but instead prefer to show pictures of 'attractive' or 'smart' people who are pretending to be happy and satisfied either as a result of using, or usually just by the very presence of the product being marketed.
In many cases the commercials even have nothing whatsoever to do with the product, but only with the brand name. You probably already know the sort of widget they are trying to sell, in what circumstances you might have a need to purchase it, which other companies make a similarly functioning widget, and where to get one when you do need it.
Why do they do this? Because probably their brand of widget has at best highly dubious advantages over any other brand of the same sort of widget, but they want to impress their brand name upon you.
They want you, when you are in the store aisle and see a shelf full of widgets, to purchase their brand of widget for no other reason than that you have seen the brand advertised on television, and probably to pay more for it too than an alternative which would have functioned just as well.
We are worse off as a society the more irrational and uninformed purchasing decisions we make, and especially purchasing decisions made as the result of deliberate and systematic deception.
It should be considered a serious breach of ones ethical obligations to intentionally deceive and mislead 'consumers' into making irrational purchasing decisions.
It is NOT "just business". How have we been lead to accept this as an excuse? It is NOT an acceptable thing to do to another person. It is flat out lying and deception, and we should not tolerate it.
In many cases these irrational and uninformed purchasing decisions are devastating to the long term physical and mental health of members of our society.
These advertisers are the sort of people we should be locking up. These are the people that have shown by their actions that they have no intention of doing what is best for society, but only for themselves at the expense of society. These are the sort of people that are dangerous to us.
Are there any chess applications available for mobile or pda/mobile combo that allow you to play a game of chess against someone on his or her own mobile? That is, with a visual representation of the current state of the game on an on-screen chess board, rather than just relaying the moves to one another.
Allow no time play to have a game go over the course of the day. The opponent is dialed up and sent the move you've decided to make (e.g. Nc3).
Allow a quick timed game to be played, for example, over break.
Allow an individual to keep several games going at once, that is, the state of several games at once which can be switched between on the on-screen chess board. Have three minutes? Tab through and make a move on each of the five games you have going.
If something like this isn't available, then it should be.
"I hear they tried that in Russia once. I wonder how that worked out."
While you do present quite a number of examples, I think they are due a more careful analysis.
You are associating capitalism with choice and variety, while associating an economy with more government influence with no choice and no variety. This association is generally both unnecessary and unwarranted. Government influence does not equate to government restriction. The government can also serve to promote and enable choice and innovation, if you are willing to allow it to and if you are willing to put in place measures to ensure accountability and responsiveness to those persons it collectively has an obligation to better.
That Pepsi brand cola was permitted to come about when we already had Coca-Cola brand cola does not speak to any advantage of a free market system. The tastes of a significant number of people are better satisfied by Pepsi brand cola than by Coca-Cola brand cola. These differings tastes are, in moderation, tastes which legitimately should be satisfied. That Pepsi brand cola is available is probably, and for this reason, a net benefit.
However, a free market economy is completely unnecessary both for the continued satisfaction of these diverse tastes and for the innovation which lead to the creation of Pepsi brand cola to satisfy these tastes.
Since the satisfaction of these diverse tastes is a net good (as it seems to be), to the extent it is indicated to us by the most scientific of means that the greater satisfaction of our present tastes and of other more diverse tastes in cola beverages will be a net good, we should pool our resources together to fund the research of groups or individuals who we have most reason to believe will be capable of producing new more satisfying beverage varieities, and who will be appropriately open to assimilating the ideas and innovations of private members of the community in this respect.
This might result in slightly less choice for a small minority of cola aficionados, but would provide more innovative, more satisfying beverages to the majority of cola consumers. While you may not have access to OK soda on the shelves of your supermarket if the cost of providing distribution of OK soda to your supermarket outweighs the good produced by the satisfaction of diverse tastes provided by this refreshing and innovative beverage in your area, you also do not in this case have a right or legitimate expectation to have innovative and refreshing OK soda available on your supermarket shelves. In this case, you might still have access to OK soda, but only if specially ordered electronically, as you do today.
There's a newer MMP game out there called Everquest that you might want to try. It's just come out of Verant. I hear they are some really good and commited people..
You become a part of a world of cunning, intrigue, and high fantasy. You embark on epic quests with groups or whole armies of indidviduals who will endear themselves to you with their charm and wit and commitment to pursuing excellence in furthering the unique atmosphere of the world of Norrath. You will advance grand and sweeping plotlines with your every adventure. Oh what strange wonders and twisted evils await you!
Wait, no,...hold everything, CANCEL THAT. I was thinking of something that might possibly have been fun.
Now, has anyone seen a rat or 1000 around here? I have a stick with a shiny new nail in it that is just itching to bore me to death.
1. There is no plotline that you are advancing. Yes, sometimes, just like in your actual life you have the opportunity to participate in interesting things. But, also just like in your actual life you will spend the majority of your time doing tedious and boring tasks which have to be done if you want to be around to and be in a position to do these interesting things should the opportunity arise. 2. The primary, nearly sole predictor of how far your character will advance and how powerful your character will be, is the amount of time you spend doing these tedious and boring tasks. 3. These tasks include: - pressing a button to see your character hit a rat with a stick - pressing a button to see your character hit the advanced 'sewer' rat with a more advanced stick with a nail in it - pressing a button to see your character hit the mighty 'plains' rat with a cluster of sticks, each one of which has a nail in it - pressing a button to see your character hit the elusive 'tundra' rat with a really big frozen stick - using special 'stand in place and press this shiny button' powers to kill multiple rats at once and from a distance - carrying on intelligent conversations about rats and the sorts of sticks you use to kill them - carrying on intelligent conversations like just like the intelligent conversations you participate in on IRC, er.., um, wait. 4. The only other significant factor is luck; most probably bad luck, and despite popular belief to the contrary, there is absolutely nothing short of being the 'significant other' of a Game Master that you can do to affect your 'luck'. 5. That you do well is not an indicator of your intellectual or even social prowess. No skill, intellectual, motor, social, or otherwise is required to 'master' and 'own' the game that is not already possessed, or can not as easily be mastered by the lowest common denominator of potential customers. 6. In other words, it is just like most other games, but even more boring, even more tedious, and with many other people -- the majority of whom are boring, tedious, and childish -- to having boring and tedious experiences and 'relationships' with. Oh, and occasionally you see a new gigantic and speckled rat on your screen. That's good. However, you spent the past 34 hours of your regular weekend tedious and boring task marathon trying to make it appear on your screen.
\hushed-voice{...that's bad}.
Read a technical article for the purpose of learning something new and interesting.
Learn to do something that you couldn't do before to become more effective, more efficient, and happier that you have the opportunity to be alive.
Read an interesting book or work of literature: there are nearly 2500 years worth of them available freely.
Help someone else to be happier that they have the opportunity to be alive.
Help someone else have the opportunity to stay alive past the age of 20.
Lobby your government to fix itself.
Try to help others to find happiness in doing these things, and in not playing a MMORPG.
Do you mean "corporate masters", or do you mean "capitalist masters"? Marx would like to know. Either way I am quite surprised that your post made it past the local delegation of Libertarian party idea moderators. (it's fun to tease anyhow, isn't it?:)
That aside, it seems rather too optimistic to expect a group of people, the majority of whom seem not even to understand the blatant ethical underpinnings of the GNU GPL, to accept the notion that we have ethical obligations to both the well-being and advancement of all members of society, and to defend each of them from private individuals and corporate entities who wish to exploit these people as resources in order to elevate themselves above their peers.
How is it, I wonder, that a user of Free Software (as insignificant and silly as it may seem to many people) has no care for or interest in these ideals?
However, with both IBM and Apple currently (well, very soon in the case of Apple) having products that depend upon gcc support for this processor type, I wonder just how optimized code generation might be.
Then again, at this point I am clearly speculating beyond what my means warrant.
I still believe it would be significant to hear directly from someone who in fact has intimate knowledge of the maturity and optimization of code generation for each chip in gcc. Perhaps we might call it, "expert testimony".
Of course such people probably have more interesting things to do with their time.
Then again, who am I kidding? If I could afford it just now, I'd be running OS X on a dual G5 setup by this Fall.
Is there good reason to believe that the same compiler will produce relatively as well-performing of code for one chip it supports as it does for another? I don't think so.
In this case, performance will in part be a function of how mature and optimized the generation of code for the advantages of that particular chip is.
Because there is no guaruntee at all of fairness by using gcc for both processors, except of course if we had the expert opinion of someone intimately familiar with gcc's code generation for both processors, using gcc for both processors would seem to be little more than a marketing tactic to give the appearance of fairness and credibility.
It seems to me that a better test is to take the best compiler widely available for each chip, and then run your tests with the produced code. Now, this isn't necessarily real world application testing, but that isn't what we are necessarily looking for here.
How well the processor performs with code generated by the best generally available compiler, is, apart from extraordinary measures, the best prediction we have of how generally the processors will compare for any given well-written, production quality code.
"Today I got roughly 4 first posts but then slashdot wouldn't let me post anymore. So thats enough trolling for one day." - rkz
To be honest, that this exact same post template has been moderated highly again and again in recent book reviews is becoming more humorous than anything. Unfortunately, and this is addressed to certain moderators, I believe it would be correct to say the laughing is 'at you' and your misfortune rather than 'with you'.
If you would like to confirm that you are being 'taken in', click on the link represented in the parent post by the user name to be taken to a list of this user's recent posts
There, view the user's posts made in recent book review comment threads to see this exact template used in multiple "Book Review" comment threads.
Well, unless we have reason to believe that Dell and Intel are exaggerating their claims significantly more than is Apple, the Dell still wins out by rather large margins in many important tests.
"Sorry wishful thinkers... linux ain't gonna do nothin' to OS X. In any case, it'll have much less effect on OS X than it could have on Windows."
Maybe not on its installed base, but what we are discussing is market share. If Apple is content with the number of users they presently have, then that's wonderful, but it isn't much to brag about either.
GNU/Linux is inevitable.
Look at the OpenOffice.org suite. While it is not now as feature rich or as polished (no, it isn't) as Office XP, it seems inevitable that it will in the near future come sufficiently close to being so in enough respects that for majority of users it can be considered its equal or better.
Surely there is a point in the near future, if it has not already passed, when the the increase of features in Microsoft Office which are beneficial to to used by more than a small minority of users, will come to be quite insignificant. There are only so many different useful ways one might want to create a document. Visual polish and enchancements to clarity and ease of use, which are already not far behind, will surely come soon.
If this is the case, I can not help but believe it to be inevitable that within the next several years OpenOffice.org will for the majority of users be the equal of MS Office, or its better, and be free of cost (at least to license).
Further, for email, scheduling, and coordination, Ximian Evolution is already there, is it not?
Mozilla Browser already appears to be superior or equal to Microsoft IE in nearly every important feature, except perhaps for certain proprietary plugins, but how much of a concern is that?
While it may be a long time before Linux has as much support from hardware vendors as does Windows, for the corporate client it does not matter whether or not a user can plug in and use brand X digital camera, brand Y scanner, or brand Z printer, as it might for the home desktop user.
"The real free license is BSD based , but there other people can walk away with your work."
Whether you use the term "free" or "real free", when you claim that the BSD license is generally "more free" than the GNU GPL, you exhibit a misunderstanding of the GNU GPL.
In one such argument, a person stated that his use of one of the BSD licenses was an "act of humility": "I ask nothing of those who use my code, except to credit me." It is rather a stretch to describe a legal demand for credit as "humility", but there is a deeper point to be considered here.
Humility is abnegating your own self interest, but you and the one who uses your code are not the only ones affected by your choice of which free software license to use for your code. Someone who uses your code in a non-free program is trying to deny freedom to others, and if you let him do it, you're failing to defend their freedom. When it comes to defending the freedom of others, to lie down and do nothing is an act of weakness, not humility.
When you license a software library or application under the terms of the GNU GPL, you promote and further the availability to every person of every society, quality software libraries and applications with those rights and freedoms essential to the promotion of the greater goods of: education, understanding, progress, and the more widespread recognition of the importance of advancing these goals.
When you create a software library or application to be freely available which a private individual or corporate entity might like to use to increase its profits and earnings, do not think of yourself. Instead, realize that whether the education, understanding, progress, and recognition of essential freedoms by society as a whole will be advanced and benefited is up to you at this moment. Don't sell them or their freedom short.
Take the time to find out whether the GNU GPL can help you help best.
So far as I am aware, I have never given the RIAA any money.
Neither have I given the MPAA any money, except for a single DVD several years back when I was curious what all of the fuss was about.
Have a look at Furthur. It is a p2p (I believe this is technically correct) counterpart to tape trading. Its 'operators' (no, I haven't investigated particularly the network topology or protocol) have gone to great lengths to ensure its legality, including requiring special or otherwise written public permission from all artists and bands whose performances are 'allowed' (I don't know the status of preventing circumvention) to be traded.
One great part about Furthur is that the network makes it much easier (a lower barrier to entry) for everyone to contribute back what they take than it would be, for example, to set up an FTP server listed through etree
If not that, find something to read. If (for whatever reason) you don't think purchasing a book is any better than purchasing from the RIAA or the MPAA, there is nearly 2500 years worth of significant philosophical works available unrestricted by copyrights, and enough of it is online to keep you busy for many years to come.
Slashdot Mirror
I believe that justice requires the potential for anonymity, the potential to slip out of the system.
I believe it is worse to punish or put to death an innocent man than it is to fail to convict a few who are guilty.
While the following example might seem a bit outlandish, I am certain that numerous other examples, some more plausible than others, can be conceived of:
Suppose that it is well known in the community that things have not been going as well between Jones and his wife as they might. He's been laid off, and has not been able to find work in several months. Jones and his wife aren't on the verge of a divorce, but with the general somber attitude of the times, they've had the occasional heated argument.
Now, suppose that one Sunday at noon meal someone comes into Jones' house -- someone he does not know and has never met -- and murders his wife and children with a knife from Jones' pantry. The man was a vagrant passing through town. No one knew him, and there was no one to note or miss his comings and goings. He moves on, and will never be found.
It seems very likely that Jones vill be convicted; it seems that Jones will be sentenced to death. The glove that the murderer used will never be found, but the jury knows it is quite possible that Jones could have hid or otherwise disposed of it cleverly enough that it would not be found.
In this case Jones can not rely upon our judicial system to set him free. If the judicial system is reliable, given this evidence it will convict Jones.
There is no one Jones can depend upon except himself and the underground world of conspiracies, assassinations, secret information, and shady services he has been so careful to distance himself from all his life.
Jones needs to disappeear. He needs to leave the country and he needs to never be identified again. He needs to live out his life and make what he can of it after this terrible tragedy.
We do not need to make it easy for Jones, but we need to make it possible. We need there to be an underground of information that Jones can tap into and that Jones can exploit to disappear.
Jones needs anonymous access to this information.
Jones needs anonymous and undetected passage.
The horror of putting an innocent man to death (or maybe anyone to death), or of sending him to prison for the rest of his life, should be enough to convince anyone that Jones has a right to the potential to disappear.
Now, the first worry that probably comes to mind is, "What if they assign unique identification numbers to each piece of clothing?"
Most of the devices I have read about have sufficient storage to uniquely identify every single item of clothing ever sold (which really doesn't require many bits at all). Current devices such as those we heard about with Benneton are not visible unless you either know where to look or have special equipment.
The devices seem to have a rane of 1-10m, and probably on the lower end of that for clothing items, but certainly that range will be improved with time.
While I trust that there would be sufficient public backlash to prevent this level of tracking and identification, we shouldn't feel comfortable even once we have stopped this precise level of unique identification.
Consider instead that each item of clothing you wear: shirt, slacks, briefs, and socks do not have an identifier unique across all items of clothing or even acorss all items of clothing of that type, but have only a unique identifier for the brand and 'model' (e.g. "Dockers Fall 2003 tan polo shirt") of the item.
It is still quite trivial to track you even in this case. Where in the past law enforcement agents might issue an alert for a man wearing "blue jeans, white t-shirt, orange cap", now they can issue an alert for a man wearing "slacks brand/model 3000023153, shirt brand/model 2000893912, cap brand/model 42330000251".
How many people do you suppose there are in an average large U.S. city wearing the same brand/model of 4-6 items of clothing? A lot fewer that we might think, I suspect. Probably few enough that it would be trivial to track all such individuals if necessary.
The more unique you dress, the more you stand out in a crowd (and not necessarily to the naked eye), the easier it is to track you.
There is no need to trust our privacy to legislation, although that would be a valuable step.
Simply encourage individuals opposed to these measures first to destroy these tags in their own clothing and to make a market for clothing without such tags.
"non-paranoid crackpots" ...and which might those be?
For some cases of (2), (3) contradicts (2).
Why do you suggest (3) is true? I believe you suggest (3) is true becauase (3) seems to involve lessening the demand for or market value of the music in question.
However, (2) potentially lessens the demand for or market value of the music in question. It does so in several cases:
a) the music is worth hearing once, but is perhaps forgettable or is primarily a 'curiousity', and won't be played often.
b) the hype surrounding the music -- whether from marketing or from the differing tastes of others -- causes your friend to believe that were he to purchase a copy of the music, he would consider the purchase to have been worthwhile, when in fact he would not.
Potentially both (a) and (b) are acceptable uses. This, I believe, indicates that you should add to your list, (4):
4) Some acceptable uses may potentially lessen the demand for or market value of the music in question, and nonetheless are acceptable uses.
I believe that (4) should open the door to consideration of more expansive acceptable uses.
If you do not have a spouse or dependants, and you can get either a loan or credit to pay your bills until you can find a new job, tell the CEO to go to hell. Detail precisely to him or her, their grevious moral shortcomings, and their status as a member of the human community. If you can, find a job as a waiter, cashier, or laborer while looking for your next job. No future employer has to even know about this temporary job if you do not want them to.
You deserve better. No questions. You deserve better.
You might increase your debt, but debt, possibly refinanced, need not be a major burden.
A matter of principle is as justified a reason to incur debt as is the need for a new car, or any emergency.
And sometimes your principles are all that you have to stand on.
"you can't sit on your ass, play with office toys, read slashdot, or eat twinkies while you work in many of the kind of places I'm talking about"
No, you can't.
You also can't find your work interesting, challenging, satisfying, or fulfulling, if you are have trained all of your life, and pusued as a goal all of your life, of doing something else.
Is it worth fighting to stay alive for 43 years of that hell, for the hope of one day spending the remaining 8-12 years of your life, when you are very probably starting to experience a decline in mental and physical capacity, trying vainly against the inevitable to relive the life you have lost, the life which could have been?
Is death not then the more appealing option? Or is the lesson that you shouldn't set goals, dream dreams, or hope, but should instead do what you are told to, try not to stand out from the crowd, be content to know 'just enough', and be happy doing just what you are supposed to?
I would venture the guess that someone who is working 2 jobs, supporting several children, possibly as a single parent, is trying a great deal harder than you are. Now, maybe you are an exception, and if so, then I apologize, and I applaud your perseverance, but the odds are that my statement is correct.
Do you have a nice college or university degree? The odds are that there is very little sense in which you deserve it. You didn't deserve to be born to the family you were born to. You didn't deserve to have middle class parents with the means to provide for your physical and mental development. You didn't deserve to have parents who cared about you, or who had the time to care about you.
It just happened that way. You didn't do anything to merit or deserve it happening this way; you couldn't have done anything to merit it.
You probably aren't special. Your existence is very probably it seems, the result of the carrying on of blind natural forces which operate without purpose and without interest in or care for what is produced.
A person who has been born into a working lower-class family or to a single mother on welfare, does not deserve to have been born into this situation any more than a child that is seriouslly mentally handicapped deserves to have been born with this condition. (Although that is not to suggest that a child born into the former situation is similar to the child born into the later case; please don't think that).
It just happened that way.
Many of them have probably worked harder in this life and borne more hardships in this life than President Bush, or any of the congressmen and senators who influence how opportunity is distributed.
If anyone is deserving of their present annual income, many of these lower working class individuals and people living in poverty are as deserving or more deserving of the money you have than are you.
Not only this, but these people have just as much a right as do you in virtue of being a person: to have their needs met, to have opportunities to work in fulfilling jobs, to an education that does not spit in the face of their talents, their abilities, and their possibilities, to the fruits of their hard labor, and to health care.
The only reason to allow the rich to keep their wealth is, if you subscribe to particular economic and political theories, that these individuals will reinvest that wealth in the businesses they own and stimulate the economy. It is said that this will create more jobs for the working class, and that the immense wealth of this minority of individuals will over time 'trickle down' to improve the quality of life of the working masses.
But, I won't comment on that.
"Or any alcohol ad. "You're all losers, so you need to dull your mind even further before you can have fun!"
Remember? You got that one just right.
[enter: obese man wearing a 'wife beater', frying eggs and lard in a grungy kitchen]
[deep voice] That's living: The High Life(tm).
There is no shame in taking what is freely given to you if for whatever reason you truly can not get by their programming (although there may be shame in being in such a state).
But please, for all of our sakes, do not support these people financially. Reading statements like the above quote, how could you live with yourself if you did? If you can not get by without it: steal it until you succeed in weaning yourself from it. You ought not to steal, but you do a greater wrong to yourself and all of us by supporting them financially.
"Will advertising firms start to lose money, stop paying content providers for space, causing them to lose money?"
Let us hope so.
Sure it is.
What it is that is so terrible about advertising is that advertisers are intentionally trying to mislead and deceive you into purchasing their product.
They make irrational appeals, they try to affect your emotional state to cause a lapse of judgement, they try to make you feel obligated to purchase their product, and many tell outright lies to you, lies which are protected by our government under the guise of 'advertising'.
Why do we allow Chevorlet to tell us that their pickup truck is "like a rock"? In what significant way is their pickup truck "like a rock"? It is not in any significant way "like a rock". There is no requirement that Chevorlet demonstrate that their pickup truck is more "like a rock" than a competing pickup truck. There is no requirement that Chevorlet provide statistics and accompanying documentation of their methodology of gathering statistics, which support their claim that their pickup truck is "like a rock".
No, all Chevorlet cares about is that you see their pickup truck driving through a patch of mud in a 'rugged-looking' environment, and associate their truck with ruggedness and rocks and things that people who buy pickup trucks put have no practical need for them, have been trained to want to associate with a pickup truck.
They tell you very little about what their product does, but instead prefer to show pictures of 'attractive' or 'smart' people who are pretending to be happy and satisfied either as a result of using, or usually just by the very presence of the product being marketed.
In many cases the commercials even have nothing whatsoever to do with the product, but only with the brand name. You probably already know the sort of widget they are trying to sell, in what circumstances you might have a need to purchase it, which other companies make a similarly functioning widget, and where to get one when you do need it.
Why do they do this? Because probably their brand of widget has at best highly dubious advantages over any other brand of the same sort of widget, but they want to impress their brand name upon you.
They want you, when you are in the store aisle and see a shelf full of widgets, to purchase their brand of widget for no other reason than that you have seen the brand advertised on television, and probably to pay more for it too than an alternative which would have functioned just as well.
We are worse off as a society the more irrational and uninformed purchasing decisions we make, and especially purchasing decisions made as the result of deliberate and systematic deception.
It should be considered a serious breach of ones ethical obligations to intentionally deceive and mislead 'consumers' into making irrational purchasing decisions.
It is NOT "just business". How have we been lead to accept this as an excuse? It is NOT an acceptable thing to do to another person. It is flat out lying and deception, and we should not tolerate it.
In many cases these irrational and uninformed purchasing decisions are devastating to the long term physical and mental health of members of our society.
These advertisers are the sort of people we should be locking up. These are the people that have shown by their actions that they have no intention of doing what is best for society, but only for themselves at the expense of society. These are the sort of people that are dangerous to us.
It is NOT "just business".
It is NOT "just business".
While Empedocles was close, certainly you must concede that it is Talur who presents the more adequate account!
The four elements are:
- rock
- fire
- sky
- water
[whisper]that was a great episode by the way
Are there any chess applications available for mobile or pda/mobile combo that allow you to play a game of chess against someone on his or her own mobile? That is, with a visual representation of the current state of the game on an on-screen chess board, rather than just relaying the moves to one another.
Allow no time play to have a game go over the course of the day. The opponent is dialed up and sent the move you've decided to make (e.g. Nc3).
Allow a quick timed game to be played, for example, over break.
Allow an individual to keep several games going at once, that is, the state of several games at once which can be switched between on the on-screen chess board. Have three minutes? Tab through and make a move on each of the five games you have going.
If something like this isn't available, then it should be.
"I hear they tried that in Russia once. I wonder how that worked out."
While you do present quite a number of examples, I think they are due a more careful analysis.
You are associating capitalism with choice and variety, while associating an economy with more government influence with no choice and no variety. This association is generally both unnecessary and unwarranted. Government influence does not equate to government restriction. The government can also serve to promote and enable choice and innovation, if you are willing to allow it to and if you are willing to put in place measures to ensure accountability and responsiveness to those persons it collectively has an obligation to better.
That Pepsi brand cola was permitted to come about when we already had Coca-Cola brand cola does not speak to any advantage of a free market system. The tastes of a significant number of people are better satisfied by Pepsi brand cola than by Coca-Cola brand cola. These differings tastes are, in moderation, tastes which legitimately should be satisfied. That Pepsi brand cola is available is probably, and for this reason, a net benefit.
However, a free market economy is completely unnecessary both for the continued satisfaction of these diverse tastes and for the innovation which lead to the creation of Pepsi brand cola to satisfy these tastes.
Since the satisfaction of these diverse tastes is a net good (as it seems to be), to the extent it is indicated to us by the most scientific of means that the greater satisfaction of our present tastes and of other more diverse tastes in cola beverages will be a net good, we should pool our resources together to fund the research of groups or individuals who we have most reason to believe will be capable of producing new more satisfying beverage varieities, and who will be appropriately open to assimilating the ideas and innovations of private members of the community in this respect.
This might result in slightly less choice for a small minority of cola aficionados, but would provide more innovative, more satisfying beverages to the majority of cola consumers. While you may not have access to OK soda on the shelves of your supermarket if the cost of providing distribution of OK soda to your supermarket outweighs the good produced by the satisfaction of diverse tastes provided by this refreshing and innovative beverage in your area, you also do not in this case have a right or legitimate expectation to have innovative and refreshing OK soda available on your supermarket shelves. In this case, you might still have access to OK soda, but only if specially ordered electronically, as you do today.
There's a newer MMP game out there called Everquest that you might want to try. It's just come out of Verant. I hear they are some really good and commited people..
...hold everything, CANCEL THAT. I was thinking of something that might possibly have been fun.
You become a part of a world of cunning, intrigue, and high fantasy. You embark on epic quests with groups or whole armies of indidviduals who will endear themselves to you with their charm and wit and commitment to pursuing excellence in furthering the unique atmosphere of the world of Norrath. You will advance grand and sweeping plotlines with your every adventure. Oh what strange wonders and twisted evils await you!
Wait, no,
Now, has anyone seen a rat or 1000 around here? I have a stick with a shiny new nail in it that is just itching to bore me to death.
Hurrah for tedium!
I think not.
1. There is no plotline that you are advancing. Yes, sometimes, just like in your actual life you have the opportunity to participate in interesting things. But, also just like in your actual life you will spend the majority of your time doing tedious and boring tasks which have to be done if you want to be around to and be in a position to do these interesting things should the opportunity arise.
2. The primary, nearly sole predictor of how far your character will advance and how powerful your character will be, is the amount of time you spend doing these tedious and boring tasks.
3. These tasks include:
- pressing a button to see your character hit a rat with a stick
- pressing a button to see your character hit the advanced 'sewer' rat with a more advanced stick with a nail in it
- pressing a button to see your character hit the mighty 'plains' rat with a cluster of sticks, each one of which has a nail in it
- pressing a button to see your character hit the elusive 'tundra' rat with a really big frozen stick
- using special 'stand in place and press this shiny button' powers to kill multiple rats at once and from a distance
- carrying on intelligent conversations about rats and the sorts of sticks you use to kill them
- carrying on intelligent conversations like just like the intelligent conversations you participate in on IRC, er.., um, wait.
4. The only other significant factor is luck; most probably bad luck, and despite popular belief to the contrary, there is absolutely nothing short of being the 'significant other' of a Game Master that you can do to affect your 'luck'.
5. That you do well is not an indicator of your intellectual or even social prowess. No skill, intellectual, motor, social, or otherwise is required to 'master' and 'own' the game that is not already possessed, or can not as easily be mastered by the lowest common denominator of potential customers.
6. In other words, it is just like most other games, but even more boring, even more tedious, and with many other people -- the majority of whom are boring, tedious, and childish -- to having boring and tedious experiences and 'relationships' with. Oh, and occasionally you see a new gigantic and speckled rat on your screen. That's good. However, you spent the past 34 hours of your regular weekend tedious and boring task marathon trying to make it appear on your screen.
\hushed-voice{...that's bad}.
Read a technical article for the purpose of learning something new and interesting.
Learn to do something that you couldn't do before to become more effective, more efficient, and happier that you have the opportunity to be alive.
Read an interesting book or work of literature: there are nearly 2500 years worth of them available freely.
Help someone else to be happier that they have the opportunity to be alive.
Help someone else have the opportunity to stay alive past the age of 20.
Lobby your government to fix itself.
Try to help others to find happiness in doing these things, and in not playing a MMORPG.
Do you mean "corporate masters", or do you mean "capitalist masters"? Marx would like to know. Either way I am quite surprised that your post made it past the local delegation of Libertarian party idea moderators. (it's fun to tease anyhow, isn't it? :)
That aside, it seems rather too optimistic to expect a group of people, the majority of whom seem not even to understand the blatant ethical underpinnings of the GNU GPL, to accept the notion that we have ethical obligations to both the well-being and advancement of all members of society, and to defend each of them from private individuals and corporate entities who wish to exploit these people as resources in order to elevate themselves above their peers.
How is it, I wonder, that a user of Free Software (as insignificant and silly as it may seem to many people) has no care for or interest in these ideals?
That seems to be a good point.
However, with both IBM and Apple currently (well, very soon in the case of Apple) having products that depend upon gcc support for this processor type, I wonder just how optimized code generation might be.
Then again, at this point I am clearly speculating beyond what my means warrant.
I still believe it would be significant to hear directly from someone who in fact has intimate knowledge of the maturity and optimization of code generation for each chip in gcc. Perhaps we might call it, "expert testimony".
Of course such people probably have more interesting things to do with their time.
Then again, who am I kidding? If I could afford it just now, I'd be running OS X on a dual G5 setup by this Fall.
Is there good reason to believe that the same compiler will produce relatively as well-performing of code for one chip it supports as it does for another? I don't think so.
In this case, performance will in part be a function of how mature and optimized the generation of code for the advantages of that particular chip is.
Because there is no guaruntee at all of fairness by using gcc for both processors, except of course if we had the expert opinion of someone intimately familiar with gcc's code generation for both processors, using gcc for both processors would seem to be little more than a marketing tactic to give the appearance of fairness and credibility.
It seems to me that a better test is to take the best compiler widely available for each chip, and then run your tests with the produced code. Now, this isn't necessarily real world application testing, but that isn't what we are necessarily looking for here.
How well the processor performs with code generated by the best generally available compiler, is, apart from extraordinary measures, the best prediction we have of how generally the processors will compare for any given well-written, production quality code.
Hmm. Your ideas are intriguing to me and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.
"Today I got roughly 4 first posts but then slashdot wouldn't let me post anymore. So thats enough trolling for one day." - rkz
To be honest, that this exact same post template has been moderated highly again and again in recent book reviews is becoming more humorous than anything. Unfortunately, and this is addressed to certain moderators, I believe it would be correct to say the laughing is 'at you' and your misfortune rather than 'with you'.
If you would like to confirm that you are being 'taken in', click on the link represented in the parent post by the user name to be taken to a list of this user's recent posts
There, view the user's posts made in recent book review comment threads to see this exact template used in multiple "Book Review" comment threads.
Here are several past instances of this template being used by this user:
Mac OS X Unleashed (2nd Edition)
Dynamic HTML: The Definitive Reference (2nd Edition)
Linux Network Administrator's Guide, 2nd Edition
In the future, please feel free to cite this post as a reference to inform the opinion of future Book Review comment moderators.
Well, unless we have reason to believe that Dell and Intel are exaggerating their claims significantly more than is Apple, the Dell still wins out by rather large margins in many important tests.
"Sorry wishful thinkers... linux ain't gonna do nothin' to OS X. In any case, it'll have much less effect on OS X than it could have on Windows."
Maybe not on its installed base, but what we are discussing is market share. If Apple is content with the number of users they presently have, then that's wonderful, but it isn't much to brag about either.
GNU/Linux is inevitable.
Look at the OpenOffice.org suite. While it is not now as feature rich or as polished (no, it isn't) as Office XP, it seems inevitable that it will in the near future come sufficiently close to being so in enough respects that for majority of users it can be considered its equal or better.
Surely there is a point in the near future, if it has not already passed, when the the increase of features in Microsoft Office which are beneficial to to used by more than a small minority of users, will come to be quite insignificant. There are only so many different useful ways one might want to create a document. Visual polish and enchancements to clarity and ease of use, which are already not far behind, will surely come soon.
If this is the case, I can not help but believe it to be inevitable that within the next several years OpenOffice.org will for the majority of users be the equal of MS Office, or its better, and be free of cost (at least to license).
Further, for email, scheduling, and coordination, Ximian Evolution is already there, is it not?
Mozilla Browser already appears to be superior or equal to Microsoft IE in nearly every important feature, except perhaps for certain proprietary plugins, but how much of a concern is that?
While it may be a long time before Linux has as much support from hardware vendors as does Windows, for the corporate client it does not matter whether or not a user can plug in and use brand X digital camera, brand Y scanner, or brand Z printer, as it might for the home desktop user.
Whether you use the term "free" or "real free", when you claim that the BSD license is generally "more free" than the GNU GPL, you exhibit a misunderstanding of the GNU GPL.
From "Why Copyleft?":
When you license a software library or application under the terms of the GNU GPL, you promote and further the availability to every person of every society, quality software libraries and applications with those rights and freedoms essential to the promotion of the greater goods of: education, understanding, progress, and the more widespread recognition of the importance of advancing these goals.
When you create a software library or application to be freely available which a private individual or corporate entity might like to use to increase its profits and earnings, do not think of yourself. Instead, realize that whether the education, understanding, progress, and recognition of essential freedoms by society as a whole will be advanced and benefited is up to you at this moment. Don't sell them or their freedom short.
Take the time to find out whether the GNU GPL can help you help best.
So far as I am aware, I have never given the RIAA any money.
Neither have I given the MPAA any money, except for a single DVD several years back when I was curious what all of the fuss was about.
Have a look at Furthur. It is a p2p (I believe this is technically correct) counterpart to tape trading. Its 'operators' (no, I haven't investigated particularly the network topology or protocol) have gone to great lengths to ensure its legality, including requiring special or otherwise written public permission from all artists and bands whose performances are 'allowed' (I don't know the status of preventing circumvention) to be traded.
One great part about Furthur is that the network makes it much easier (a lower barrier to entry) for everyone to contribute back what they take than it would be, for example, to set up an FTP server listed through etree
If not that, find something to read. If (for whatever reason) you don't think purchasing a book is any better than purchasing from the RIAA or the MPAA, there is nearly 2500 years worth of significant philosophical works available unrestricted by copyrights, and enough of it is online to keep you busy for many years to come.