Asking large companies (this law only applies to a company making $50+ million in sales each year, according to TFA) to audit their suppliers is reasonable, and in fact happens.
Walmart for instance, has a regular audit of every single company that provides anything for its shelves. Every supplier has to open its books to scrutiny from Walmart, and asking for a certificate of software license as well would be a trivial additional requirement. I can imagine that some large companies might have a "we don't care as long as it gets shipped" approach, but I'd be surprised if they were more than the minority.
There are many here who say that war has never been a humane activity and so this release is no surprise.
But the doctrine of Just War has existed for centuries and has been practiced more or less successfully at times.
Particularly, to my knowledge, the European powers after Westphalia, where only professional armies took the field, bought their supplies rather than pillaged and treated their captives with dignity.
There were exceptions, probably, but on the whole the wars fought were not bitter struggles where any means necessary was advocated
Airplanes have a system that gives votes to the meat pilots and to the AI piloting systems. The AI pilots outnumber the meats, so if the all agree they can control the plane's actions.
I'm not in Aero, though, so this might only have been a tested system (there was at least one fatality as a result) not one that made it into production, but I believe it did (with modifications).
Seriously, yes, for all the pain and agony that the PC thugs cause, perhaps some reaction is understandable. But its just a warning label. Its not like they're stopping you from buying it - you can still let your kids get some old-fashionad modelling.
Actually *all* kids stuff should have warnings like this. Something like:
"Trainined professionals have designed this product to enhance the learning of your child. But those trained professionals are probably misguided, or following a fad, or just wrong. Decide for yourself what your children watch."
Not only that, I actually went back and played a few of the classics on emulators earlier this year, and man I must have had patience back in the day. My fond memories were turned to dust when faced with what the games were actually like (and after having played newer, faster, smoother games since).
Sure, tonnes of games these days are just sequels aiming to cash in (and I work for one of the major publishers).. but there is also heaps of innovation behind the scenes - not just in tweaking the franchises but in creating a few new ones as well
I'm willing to grant that the patents reviwers are probably too overloaded to be able to thoroughly search, or even to be all that savvy on all matters technical... But there really needs to be a better system for determining prior art - a way for them to put up a website saying: "hey, has anyone ever thought of using a pre-definined character in a url before?"
And then when that server crashed under the deluge they'd know that someone probably had.
It doesn't help that companies actually encourage their staff (this is a mobile phone company I'm referring to) _not_ to check for themselves before submitting a patent application. The reasoning was somethign along the lines of: if you know prior art exists then we can't legally make the submission, but if you don't know then we just might get the patent.
If I can start with an analogy. When a parent raises a child (I haven't yet but enough of my friends have) they don't just lay it all out for the child in their first year. First they get them sleeping through the night, then they see what words they pick up, and they continually set and reset boundaries while doing this.
The sentinence, reasoning and intelligence of humanity is pretty good if we do say so ourselves, but I wouldn't say that we're any where near as smart as any organic creature could _possibly_ be. So maybe we are really more like newborns and we wouldn't even make sense of it if God did tell us plain and simple. Maybe thats why it seems to come to us distorted.
Or perhaps the alternative is for God to force its purpose into our consciousness. It would be trivial for God to do that, sure, but we might lose something (like the essence of free will) in the exchange. So God refrains from doing it.
Btw, I'm not someone who thinks that omnipotent means anything more than 'having all power', meaning that an omnipotent God has as much power as it is possible to have. I think there's a distinction between that and 'can do absolutely anything' that finishes the sentence: "God can ___".
So, for example, if you ask: "can God make the world perfect (ala heaven) yet leave it exactly as it is?", I would say no without feeling that God's omnipotence has been questioned. If the world is made perfect it will be different to how it is now. God can make heaven, and God can make earth, but God cannot make earth into heaven without it ceasing to be the same earth it was.
Similarly, omnibenevolence isn't a matter of God just saying 'everyone be happy now', because even omnipotence doesn't allow that if you've previously declared that humanity's happiness comes from our own actions and not from it being forced upon us.
In the same way, omnibenevolence may not be a matter of saying 'here's your purpose now', if there was something about us or that purpose that negated such an action.
Exactly. Some of my friends were in the exact same boat: went to Radiohead's site first, got bored after waiting 4 seconds and so gave up and just added it to the torrents they were downloading. It saves Radiohead's website some bandwidth and some weren't going to pay anyway (others went back and paid between 1 and 10 quid).
I was listening to Ray Kurzweil talk about thermodynamics, where although the system consists of enormous number of different factors operating in ways too difficult to track, the overall result could be plotted on a 2d graph. ie a bowl of soup will cool at a regular rate. I'm not sure I captured his point very well, but the idea is that even though a country's political climate is enormously complex, it may follow a trend at some level that could be plotted.
> If God is indistinguishable from natural events why even assume it exists?
There are two short-ish (b'cos its/.) responses I can think of that might go a little way toward answering this question.
1. If God is just the creator-sustainer then true, in day-to-day existence it would be indistinguishable to believe that or not believe that. However, if the creation had a purpose, then understanding that purpose might make living in and understanding our world easier.
However, whats to say that any specific religious group has properly understood that purpose? Especially if God is indistinguishable from nature - since there'd be no evidence of that purpose beyond what we could glean ourselves (though we might glean it a bit better by believing there was a purpose).
2. It may be that God sometimes acts. Specifically these acts might take the form of inspiring prophets who can, amidst their ravings (a natural consequence of being touched by God, I would assume) reveal something of the purpose of God.
Unfortunately, if this is indeed the case, it seems a lot of opportunists have noticed that there's no Turing test for prophethood and have taken it upon themselves to declare God's purpose as they see fit.
This is a good reason to be suspicious of any prophet/religion. But the existence of frauds does not per se deny the potential existence of the real thing. And if the real thing does exist, it may reveal more about the nature of the world than we can glean by observing from within (since various thinkers have shown that hard limits exist on what can be known of a system from within that system itself)
Sorry, that wasn't as short as I hoped. I hope it at least made sense
I used to contract to a Fortune 500 company (though I didn't make anywhere near the money you'd expect from that), and we had these great weekly team meetings where our manager basically asked "Are you on target?" and we all just said "Yup, on target" (though we each had to phrase it differently to suit our individual personalities).
I never, ever, asked why... since it was easier to ask: 'ah, why not?'
Sure, but then they also got wise and started putting any number of advertisements on online sites I used to read for free (I don't mind the banners...except when they explode over the text).
Spam is another form of this, but more like an ugly roadside billboard. And despite occasional local government initiatives to remove the billboards, there still seems to be plenty of them.
Admittedly, I jumped the gun on the 20% figure (it will be only 18% once the new network is in place), but the US still has a larger population (290 million versus 20 million) potentially supporting the network.
At 13.7%, the Australian system covers about 1 million sq km, compared to the US land mass of 9.6 million sq km.
(I used CIA figures for US and
Australia
)
So the US system has 1.5 times as many potential users per sq km of coverage. (Interpret the significance of this as you will)
[Sorry I can't compare the two against Canada, but I couldn't find a land-area mobile coverage percent for Canada. Also, I realise I've used total populations, not mobile user populations, but the CIA site had out-of-date figures ('98 and '00), and I didn't find any better elsewhere.]
Good point, but despite the variying density, Australia's network still covers significantly more area per person. It's possible Canada is in the same situation.
(Australia has a population of 20 million, and a size similar to the US (minus Alaska). The Aus mobile network covers 20% of the land.)
BTW, this completely ignores the quality of either network, and the density of the networks in the cities as well.
Australia has a similar size/population ratio to Canada (and something like 99% coverage for mobiles), and yet it seems our prices are somewhere closer to the US than Canadian ones.
(I haven't been able to do a proper comparision, since it seems the model numbers differ, but we do get most phones free with plans).
Besides, the government could easily subsidize the rural towers (rural sector is fairly heavily subsidized anyway)
Presume they want to have Linux running on most boxes, but not all (theres plenty of potential reasons). But the media (and places like slashdot) wrongly perceive that they are trying to run entirely on Linux.
Imagine the damage if word got out that they still had Windows running on a few directors' boxes. It would undermine everything about the switch, and give great ammunition to the pro-Windows argument (eg: "See, even Linux-friendly IBM still needs Windows!")
Slashdot Mirror
Well, the Cloud is a SKY-themed interNET system
Asking large companies (this law only applies to a company making $50+ million in sales each year, according to TFA) to audit their suppliers is reasonable, and in fact happens. Walmart for instance, has a regular audit of every single company that provides anything for its shelves. Every supplier has to open its books to scrutiny from Walmart, and asking for a certificate of software license as well would be a trivial additional requirement. I can imagine that some large companies might have a "we don't care as long as it gets shipped" approach, but I'd be surprised if they were more than the minority.
There are many here who say that war has never been a humane activity and so this release is no surprise.
But the doctrine of Just War has existed for centuries and has been practiced more or less successfully at times.
Particularly, to my knowledge, the European powers after Westphalia, where only professional armies took the field, bought their supplies rather than pillaged and treated their captives with dignity.
There were exceptions, probably, but on the whole the wars fought were not bitter struggles where any means necessary was advocated
Airplanes have a system that gives votes to the meat pilots and to the AI piloting systems. The AI pilots outnumber the meats, so if the all agree they can control the plane's actions. I'm not in Aero, though, so this might only have been a tested system (there was at least one fatality as a result) not one that made it into production, but I believe it did (with modifications).
Seriously, yes, for all the pain and agony that the PC thugs cause, perhaps some reaction is understandable. But its just a warning label. Its not like they're stopping you from buying it - you can still let your kids get some old-fashionad modelling.
Actually *all* kids stuff should have warnings like this. Something like:
"Trainined professionals have designed this product to enhance the learning of your child. But those trained professionals are probably misguided, or following a fad, or just wrong. Decide for yourself what your children watch."
Preferential voting system: one vote one person and its always counted even if you vote for a third party candidate
Not only that, I actually went back and played a few of the classics on emulators earlier this year, and man I must have had patience back in the day. My fond memories were turned to dust when faced with what the games were actually like (and after having played newer, faster, smoother games since).
.. but there is also heaps of innovation behind the scenes - not just in tweaking the franchises but in creating a few new ones as well
Sure, tonnes of games these days are just sequels aiming to cash in (and I work for one of the major publishers)
I'm willing to grant that the patents reviwers are probably too overloaded to be able to thoroughly search, or even to be all that savvy on all matters technical... But there really needs to be a better system for determining prior art - a way for them to put up a website saying: "hey, has anyone ever thought of using a pre-definined character in a url before?"
And then when that server crashed under the deluge they'd know that someone probably had.
It doesn't help that companies actually encourage their staff (this is a mobile phone company I'm referring to) _not_ to check for themselves before submitting a patent application. The reasoning was somethign along the lines of: if you know prior art exists then we can't legally make the submission, but if you don't know then we just might get the patent.
(Not quite as short, this one)
If I can start with an analogy. When a parent raises a child (I haven't yet but enough of my friends have) they don't just lay it all out for the child in their first year. First they get them sleeping through the night, then they see what words they pick up, and they continually set and reset boundaries while doing this.
The sentinence, reasoning and intelligence of humanity is pretty good if we do say so ourselves, but I wouldn't say that we're any where near as smart as any organic creature could _possibly_ be. So maybe we are really more like newborns and we wouldn't even make sense of it if God did tell us plain and simple. Maybe thats why it seems to come to us distorted.
Or perhaps the alternative is for God to force its purpose into our consciousness. It would be trivial for God to do that, sure, but we might lose something (like the essence of free will) in the exchange. So God refrains from doing it.
Btw, I'm not someone who thinks that omnipotent means anything more than 'having all power', meaning that an omnipotent God has as much power as it is possible to have. I think there's a distinction between that and 'can do absolutely anything' that finishes the sentence: "God can ___".
So, for example, if you ask: "can God make the world perfect (ala heaven) yet leave it exactly as it is?", I would say no without feeling that God's omnipotence has been questioned. If the world is made perfect it will be different to how it is now. God can make heaven, and God can make earth, but God cannot make earth into heaven without it ceasing to be the same earth it was.
Similarly, omnibenevolence isn't a matter of God just saying 'everyone be happy now', because even omnipotence doesn't allow that if you've previously declared that humanity's happiness comes from our own actions and not from it being forced upon us.
In the same way, omnibenevolence may not be a matter of saying 'here's your purpose now', if there was something about us or that purpose that negated such an action.
Exactly. Some of my friends were in the exact same boat: went to Radiohead's site first, got bored after waiting 4 seconds and so gave up and just added it to the torrents they were downloading. It saves Radiohead's website some bandwidth and some weren't going to pay anyway (others went back and paid between 1 and 10 quid).
I was listening to Ray Kurzweil talk about thermodynamics, where although the system consists of enormous number of different factors operating in ways too difficult to track, the overall result could be plotted on a 2d graph. ie a bowl of soup will cool at a regular rate. I'm not sure I captured his point very well, but the idea is that even though a country's political climate is enormously complex, it may follow a trend at some level that could be plotted.
> If God is indistinguishable from natural events why even assume it exists?
/.) responses I can think of that might go a little way toward answering this question.
There are two short-ish (b'cos its
1. If God is just the creator-sustainer then true, in day-to-day existence it would be indistinguishable to believe that or not believe that. However, if the creation had a purpose, then understanding that purpose might make living in and understanding our world easier.
However, whats to say that any specific religious group has properly understood that purpose? Especially if God is indistinguishable from nature - since there'd be no evidence of that purpose beyond what we could glean ourselves (though we might glean it a bit better by believing there was a purpose).
2. It may be that God sometimes acts. Specifically these acts might take the form of inspiring prophets who can, amidst their ravings (a natural consequence of being touched by God, I would assume) reveal something of the purpose of God.
Unfortunately, if this is indeed the case, it seems a lot of opportunists have noticed that there's no Turing test for prophethood and have taken it upon themselves to declare God's purpose as they see fit.
This is a good reason to be suspicious of any prophet/religion. But the existence of frauds does not per se deny the potential existence of the real thing. And if the real thing does exist, it may reveal more about the nature of the world than we can glean by observing from within (since various thinkers have shown that hard limits exist on what can be known of a system from within that system itself)
Sorry, that wasn't as short as I hoped. I hope it at least made sense
I used to contract to a Fortune 500 company (though I didn't make anywhere near the money you'd expect from that), and we had these great weekly team meetings where our manager basically asked "Are you on target?" and we all just said "Yup, on target" (though we each had to phrase it differently to suit our individual personalities).
I never, ever, asked why... since it was easier to ask: 'ah, why not?'
In Soviet Russia...
(I couldn't bring myself to say it)
(...ok I could)
Thread decides you!
Maybe the editors could scan and sort for emails with something like 'dupe' in the title .. and act appropriately.
... its sort of like a re-run of an old, dog-eared sitcom
On the plus side, a duplicate article saves me from thinking new thoughts
The story dupes you!
Finally, I understand the cunning purpose of all those guys who install a subwoofer the size of their boot, in their boot
Well, if thats 120 db of any Britney song, its bound to have the hail running for the hills.
Spam is another form of this, but more like an ugly roadside billboard. And despite occasional local government initiatives to remove the billboards, there still seems to be plenty of them.
At 13.7%, the Australian system covers about 1 million sq km, compared to the US land mass of 9.6 million sq km. (I used CIA figures for US and Australia )
So the US system has 1.5 times as many potential users per sq km of coverage. (Interpret the significance of this as you will)
[Sorry I can't compare the two against Canada, but I couldn't find a land-area mobile coverage percent for Canada. Also, I realise I've used total populations, not mobile user populations, but the CIA site had out-of-date figures ('98 and '00), and I didn't find any better elsewhere.]
"Those with a car antenna kit could now access mobile phone coverage across almost one-fifth of the Australian land mass, he said."
Other reports mention a 15-18% coverage, which is about 1.4 million square km.
Good point, but despite the variying density, Australia's network still covers significantly more area per person. It's possible Canada is in the same situation.
(Australia has a population of 20 million, and a size similar to the US (minus Alaska). The Aus mobile network covers 20% of the land.)
BTW, this completely ignores the quality of either network, and the density of the networks in the cities as well.
Australia has a similar size/population ratio to Canada (and something like 99% coverage for mobiles), and yet it seems our prices are somewhere closer to the US than Canadian ones.
(I haven't been able to do a proper comparision, since it seems the model numbers differ, but we do get most phones free with plans).
Besides, the government could easily subsidize the rural towers (rural sector is fairly heavily subsidized anyway)
Seems that SCO did indeed submit (so we wait while IBM reads it).
Now its their turn to put a motion to compel discovery, asking for all modifications ever made by IBM to the System V source code.
It seems that if SCO doesn't give in (and its unlikely they will), they can drag this out for quite some time.
I can think of one excellent reason:
Presume they want to have Linux running on most boxes, but not all (theres plenty of potential reasons). But the media (and places like slashdot) wrongly perceive that they are trying to run entirely on Linux.
Imagine the damage if word got out that they still had Windows running on a few directors' boxes. It would undermine everything about the switch, and give great ammunition to the pro-Windows argument (eg: "See, even Linux-friendly IBM still needs Windows!")