Christopher Langan, the self-proclaimed "smartest man alive", is, I say, arrogant, childish, and with good reason so far as I am aware more or less only "self-proclaimed" (I qualfiy this incase his goons get wind of it and claim slander).
He talks big, mostly in a maze of his own terminology, and seems to refer to his position as tautologous, as if that is supposed to be an asset.
His position being, so far as I can tell, that his great big mind reveals the truth of some sort of spiritualist pantheism; some sort of self-aware universe.
Something about a "theory of everything", of course explaining even logic, which, I presume, logic can not even apply to!
But that's just my take on it; any inaccuracies in my representation or irrationality in my opinions should be taken as genuine misunderstanding and frustration stemming from my inaequate and puny mind, so don't accuse me of just spreading lies; I really did make a good effort trying to figure out what the hype was about.
But don't take my word for it. You're welcome to come to your own conclusions about the man. CTMU should get you started.
Thinking of that time, what I find is perhaps most significant (although perhaps romanticized also) is the climate of scholarly discourse.
It seems there is something missing today in much of communication, and I am guilty of contributing to this, as I'm sure are many of you. Email, telephone, and perhaps worst of all: chat rooms. All of these things contribute to the attitude of raking our discourse in the mud; we treat it as so common and vulgar, as though it is an ugly tool not an art. We must all take an active role in preserving and promoting that grand and noble thing which is rational dialogue between two human persons.
Very few of us have the opportunity to particpate in, for example, discourse through publishing scholarly papers, and even for those who do, the whole processes is necessarily exclusive.
I believe that manual letter writing is perhaps the most rewarding means of communication. Yes, manual letter writing: that thing people do with a real pen and real dead-tree paper, like your mother and aunts and grandmothers did and, if living, probably still do. Our mothers do more to promote an atmosphere affirming the dignity of human dicourse than probably do many of us!
every letter has a greater sense of importance - It could be weeks before you receive a reply, and how the world can change in that time; the letter is an occasion to "put on your best suit and use your finest china", as it were.
it is deliberate - You might take a week to ponder and absorb the thoughts of your interlocutor before evening sitting down to write. Writing your response - what must suffice as the only communication between the two of you for perhaps weeks or more - is a task for more than even a single evening. This is no 30 word email that you bang out in as many seconds.
it necessitates greater attention to quality and clarity - This is a grand occasion. If you do not put forth your best effort, you will regret it immediately. How many of you have thought to yourselves, "I should have said that instead?" Here there is no recourse. You can not call up your acquaintance and offer a clarification or warning before it is read; you can not send off a follow-up email to explain yourself that evening.
it provides for cooler heads - You may be steaming-mad now, but consider how horrible you will feel in many days or even weeks when you receive a reply. Oh, how foolish you will feel when you must read your brash and irrational words quoted to you then!
If I ran a local bar you can sure bet that if you have a past of indecent or violent public drunkenness in my establishment, that I will be keeping an eye out for you, and I will pass the word along to my employees too; they see you, and you're out.
Heck, this could just as well be a local resteraunt, a supermarket, or a mall, rather than a bar, and the policy is going to be the same; if you can't handle yourself in my establishment, if you are disruptive or violent towards other patrons, then you are getting kicked out any time I catch you on the premises; no excuses, no questions asked.
And do you know what? This is the same sort of thing that has been going on for thousands of years, this communication between local business owners. Everyone used to know who the trouble-makers, the drunkkards, the petty thefts, were in town, and if they didn't and someone caught you, you better believe that word is going to get around town quick.
The only problem now is that people are more mobile, populations are larger, establishments have more patrons than they can know on a regular basis, and this has really lead to the break down of that sort of traditional information network between local shop owners having lunch down at the deli or whatnot.
This expectation of total or near-total anonymity is unrealistic. Sure, there will be some bars that will serve you "no questions asked" still, but these might not be the sorts of places you want to hang out in, if you know what I mean.
The only concern here should be things such as slander or libel possibly arising from mismanagement of this informatmion. You might want to get legislation to ensure a certain amount of responsibility with this information, and of course if you are harmed by mismanagement or misuse of this information, of course you also have the recourse of a civil lawsuit or possibly criminal charges.
By going out into public in the first place, you give up a certain amount of legitimate expectation to anonymity.
If you get drunk and start cussing up other patrons, sexually harrassing other patrons, starting fights, or pulling weapons, you damn well better believe that you have no expectation to anonymity.
You people are almost suggesting that you have some sort of right to have your reputation not sullied even when you make an ass of yourself in public. You have no such right or expectation; the suggestion is laughable. The only legitimate expectation you have here is against the slanderous or libelous mismanagement or misuse of your information.
Unless of course you can convince the public to pass legislation mandating that your good reputation not be tarnished; that no one be allowed to talk about the time you got drunk and made an ass of yourself hitting on the female bartender.
Learn to live with the consequences of your behavior. Just because you can spout off on an internet message board and change your name and no one will be the wiser, doesn't mean you have some sort of legitmate expectation to similar behavior in public.
Which is why even as a home user you store nightly backups of all important data to two machines on opposite ends of your home, machines which for all other purposes are essentially "non-executable".
Keep once a week backups going back 3 months, and nightly backups for the past 7 days.
If you can, include an offsite (i.e. a neighbor's house) backup.
"Deprecated"? "left out to dry"? Fuck off, troll
on
Software Fashion
·
· Score: 1, Informative
"Now that Debian has lost around 90% of its market share"
First of all, how did you divine this number, or rather, how far up your ass did you have to reach to find it? I'm not about to believe an Anonymous Coward's unsupported statistics. The web-based poll on your Geocities homepage is hardly a reliable means of determining marketshare, trends or otherwise.
Unless you are going to give us something better than this: fuck off, troll.
"it is being left out to dry with its anceint packages"
In testing/unstable you will find Gnome 2.2, as well as many accompanying apps updated with 2.4. Watching the lists, I suspect that Gnome 2.4 as a whole will start to make it into unstable within the month.
There are unofficial backports of Gnome 2.2 to woody, and unofficial Gnome 2.4 packages for unstable.
For individual applications (rather than the core of desktop environments), Debian is even more up to date. Oftentimes I can apt-get an official Debian package within a day or two of seeing the announcement on gnomedesktop.org or freshmeat.org.
Neither Redhat nor Suse nor Mandrake can top official (as in through the distribution official package repositories) packages faster than that.
Sure, if the Gentoo community is for you, then you can go ahead with that, but on the view of many, stability and professionalism just are not "there yet" in the Gentoo community, and it may or may not be on a reassuring path to that end, depending on who you ask.
I think that many do not spend the time to learn enough about the Debian community and process to truly appreciate the many many years of work by hundreds of persons that has gone into making it as reliable, scalable, and stable as it is.
Further, maintainers do a good job of keeping up with security updates in testing/unstable; very often the update is concurrent with the stable update, or only a few hours behind. And Gento or Slackware are certainly not in a position to be critical on this issue; absolutely they do not fare better, and many would say not nearly as well. If this isnt' good enough for you, either apply to become Debian Developer and do something about it, or put up with a corporate distribution.
"and deprecated.deb format. Rpms and Ebuilds are the new fashion!"
Ah, "deprecated"? Now I am certain you are trolling. Watching the lists, there are no plans to replace the.deb package format.
Does Gentoo have anything even approaching the Debian Policy Manual?
Heck, Redhat maintains less than half the packages as Debian last I recall, and Redhat is fricking corporate and for-profit.
The only non-official software I have on my primary Debian system (desktop/workstation) is Sun's jre. My system is full featured, up to date, and secure.
My servers are stable and secure, facilitated by a tried and proven process that is transparent, accountable, and well worthy of my trust.
I think that the G5 is great; if money started falling off of the trees in my front yard I would buy one without hesitation, but this article is just poor; no question about it.
Cripes man, it's only one page.
The submitter titled the story, "Apple's Dual 2GHz By The Numbers"! Well, I'm just pointing out that this is an awfully poor excuse for a "by the numbers" technical performance review of a processor.
Are you suggesting otherwise?
Yes, I'm having a little fun with the last line, but seeing the blatant agenda this story submission is pushing while failing to deliver on the evidence, I don't have any second thoughts about it.
Startup and reboot Er, yes, great. You do that what, once a day? And so are you telling me that by shaving 20 seconds you will now make the decision to sit and stare at the screen during the remaining 55 seconds of bootup rather than grabbing a beverage, finishing your sandwich, or going across the room to talk to someone?
Application launch times Ok, yes. Again, wonderful. And so with your 512MB to 2GB of RAM you don't suppose you will just leave your email client and productivity app running?
Photoshop manipulation "Rotating the picture took 2 seconds on the G5, 3.5 seconds on the Dual G4 and 5.5 seconds on the Powerbook. Applying the Gaussian blur (which, in essence, turned the photo into a blurry blob), took 4 seconds on the G5, 5 seconds on the Dual G4 and 8 seconds on the Powerbook. And applying the Pointillize filter took 3 seconds on the G5, 4.5 seconds on the Dual G4 and 9 seconds on the Powerbook."
Ah yes. Wonderful. I'm astounded at the practicality of testing operations which, "turned the photo into a blurry blob". And you shaved on average just over 1 second! Great googly-moogly!
Oh, and then we rinse and repeat for iMovie manipulation.
People, this is an absolutely unconvincing, entirely uninsightful article.
The G5 may be great, but all this article leads me to believe is that Apple users are about as detached from reality as a PC gam3r d00d pissing on about how Quake 3 runs at 178 instead of 172 FPS on their $2000 penis extension.
While it seems that the US government, for example, has and is actually doing the right thing with the national do-not-call list, perhaps that is the exception.
We are asking our governments to step up to do the right thing and protect us from this nonsense, but what they seem unable to restrain themselves from doing is to get their hands on all of it and regulate it.
We aren't asking for a whole system of regulation, we are just asking for protection.
The problem though, is that there are a lot of other parties who see this whole mess from other (possibly commercial) perspectives, and they want protection too, or whatever you would call doing services to their private interests and agendas.
For example, if we call in the government to help us, are they also going to decide that it is ok for political and non-profit groups to spam each of my email addresses X number of times per year or per month? Is government going to decide that any business can spam me once a year or until I renew my request with them to not be spammed?
Is the Bush re-election campaign going to be able to spam me once a month asking for donations?
Should we be worried that regulation will bring some relief, but with it the legitimization of unsolicited email conforming to the new regulations as an acceptable component of an advertising model for mainstream products and services, especially with telemarketing being clamped down on perhaps more now than in the past?
While I do believe that it is appropriate for us to act through our government to regulate this mess for the benefit of the majority (there is no right or legitimate expectation of private persons to force a communication with another person against his or her will), and ideally they would, I do not have faith in our elected representatives to do the right thing.
I think that is very sad. It seems that realistically our best hope for just and progressive government right now is to elect those who will screw us over least badly with the representative power we give them.
section {.rant} I don't want to elect agendas or philosophers or idealists. I want to elect, surprisingly representatives, persons who I can in good faith entrust to act as an extension of my person - an extension of my own moral agency, an entity whose actions, good or bad, I am directly responsible for in so far as I am representated by a maximally auditable, responsive, and transparent manner, not used.
Well, if your bank does not cover overdraws, many stores post notices such as "$45 service fee for bad checks", where the fee would go to the store, but you probably mean cases where it rises to criminal levels. I don't know how it works in that case.
That's very interesting though; why should the copyright holder receive anything beyond the compensatory component? You know, I never even thought of that.
It seems that the deterrent component should not go to the copyright holder. The deterrent component exists to benefit all copyright holders collectively by functioning generally to support the legitimacy and respect of the rule of law.
Giving, for example, the RIAA the deterrent component, is merely giving them a free gift. In no sense do they have any legitmate expectation to more than the actual economic loss they have suffered.
In fact, if the RIAA did receice the deterrent component as well, it would actually give them an incentive to be intentionally lax in discouraging infringment, because they would receice greater revenue from infringing copies than from legitimate copies!
If anything, the deterrent component should be available to the government budget (to cut taxes or fund programs).
Thank you for your comment. This seems to be especially important.
These fines have two purposes: 1) recompensate the copyright holder for economic losses, 2) deter future infringment by both the violator and others.
(1) clearly is greatly exaggerated under current policies. A single instance of downloading in violation of copyright all tracks from a particular CD at most constititues an economic loss to the copyright holder in the amount of the payment the copyright holder would have received from a retail sale of this CD.
In a single instance of acquiring an entire CD in violation of copyright, this is the maximum economic loss. However, in the most common cases, such as where only one or two tracks are acquired, or where the violator would not have been willing (in the absence of the availability of the infringing copy) or able to acquire a retail copy of the material, the actual economic loss to the copyright holder is only a small percentage of payment for a retail copy, or even non-existant.
But what about when the violator himself or herself redistributes infringing copies of the copyrighted material? Who here should bear the burden of economic loss to the copyright holder? If the original violator bears the economic burden, then future violators in the same "copy tree" can not also be made to bear the economic burden, because the copyright holder has already been compensated.
To charge that the original violator ought to bear the economic burden incurred by the intentional and willful acts of all future violators in the same copy tree, is to assign responsibility to one person for the uncoerced, intentional, and willfull infringing acts of another, to which the original violator contributed no force or persuassion. To do this is seriously morally troubling; I am not responsible for the uncoerced, willfull acts of other self-determining, copetent agents.
Therefore, the only economic burden that a violator may be made to bear for a single instance of infringment, is the actual economic loss incurred by this single instance of infringment.
This sets the upper bound for the recompensatory component of the fine at the actual economic loss incurred by the copyright holder for this single act of infringment; about $15 for all tracks from a single CD.
The fine may increase in consideration of the deterrent component, but the deterrent must correspond reasonably to the recompensatory component, even if this means that in cases of minor economic loss the deterrent will not be great.
This is as it should be; deterring minor econimic loss is surely much less the concern of law than deterring major or devestating economic loss.
I suspect that reasonable and morally conscious people will conclude that the deterrent component not exceed twice the compensatory component, and should approach this only in cases of the most flagarent infringment indicating a severe opposition to the rule of law.
Therefore, in the case of even the most flagarent infringement, the total fine for the infringing copying of all tracks of a CD will not exceed $15 x 3; $45.
If I distribute all tracks of this CD 100 times, for example, then the maximum fine I may be assigned is $4500.
Is it really reasonable to believe that "major acts" will lower ticket prices if they begin to sell more CDs?
I find that very difficult to believe, unless you mean something quite the opposite of what I suspect by "major acts".
Bands charge what they do because they can, and once they have become convinced that they are worth X amount per ticket, they most certainly will not find any reason to lower tickets; after all, "they're worth more than that".
How many "major acts" are doing it "just for the music"? Only those who are already so damned wealthy that they can afford to project the image that they are doing it "just for the music".
"Composing, recording and producing an album takes time, talent and money."
I'd ammend this to read, "Producing a successful album takes time, money, and possibly talent."
The solution is for bands to give up the dream of the "lifestyle" that so many so covet with big grins when they are trying to "get into the biz".
The opportunity is there now; there is no excuse. Either they are selfish, or it is about more than "just the music".
Yes, you may have to work a part-time job, and no you might not tour the country or even outside a 20 mile radius of your home, but if it is really about the music and not about the dream of the lifestyle, then put yourself to it; the opportunity is there if you are willing to work at it.
If you want to sign yourselves away and pack the pork of big labels and big markets, then by all means, you are free to do so, but I'll be damned if I will support you. When you take that step, when you sell out, you are on your own.
By "arm" I mean functionally a synonym of "agent". It is my position that ideally, the people act collectively through the government. Some complicating considerations arise given a representative form of government, but nonetheless, it is my position that it is through the government that we the people act.
Whether or not this is "The Constitutional Way", I am not concerned; this is my position on the role of government, the position that I put my weight behind.
This role is realized most fully only with the conduct and internal deliberations of this government are maximally transparent - maximally auditablly - by the average man or woman, and maximally responsive to the will of the people.
This, built upon a foundation of basic rights which all men and women in these modern times are due simply in virtue of being human persons, is for me the ideal form of government.
Government (the arm of the people), has a legitimate interest in controlling and regulating useage of the spectrum.
If large media companies want the privilege to use the spectrum for their own private profiting, then they will either satisfy the demands that we the people make upon that privileged position, or they will simply not have this privilege; end of story.
How strong is the accountability of broadcast (non-cable, non-dish) television stations to the community to which it broadcasts?
For example, occasionally on television (if I remember correctly), you see some sort of required announcement about license renewal and how to comment on the stations performance; only at off hours.
That just makes sense, but I somehow doubt it has any teeth.
Looking around, I once came across a "warez site" with a disclaimer saying more or less the same; I got a kick out of it.
Officer1: "Hey, we have 20 links to this website identifying it as a distributor of infringing software and music." Officer2: "You're right. But look at this disclaimer. It says that if we are law enforcement officers that we can't enter it, under penalty of law!". Officer1: "Blast! Foiled again! We are no match for these l33t hax0rz!".
Concealing or failing to disclose one's status as a law enforcement office is different than endorsing a binding agreement to the effect that one is not. While clearly in the case that there is reasonable suspicion or a warrant has been issued it is acceptable for a law enforcement agent to ignore such an agreement, but I am not aware that RIAA investigators have any such status so as to make this behavior acceptable for them.
So far as I am aware, an officer may not search your car "just because he or she feels like it". There must be some reasoanble suspicion that wrongdoing is afoot.
This may well be in the case of Kazaa, but under no circumstances may the copyright holder take the investigation or execution of justice into his or her own hands and expect not to be liable for any infringements he or she commits in the course of doing so.
The linked article does not address this point.
If I have good reason to believe that my neighbor has stolen my bicycle, and that I can even see it through his window, under no circumstances may I force entry into his house to take back my bicycle.
I fail to see why, for the ordinary citizen, the case should be otherwise for copyright infringement.
Slashdot Mirror
Christopher Langan, the self-proclaimed "smartest man alive", is, I say, arrogant, childish, and with good reason so far as I am aware more or less only "self-proclaimed" (I qualfiy this incase his goons get wind of it and claim slander).
He talks big, mostly in a maze of his own terminology, and seems to refer to his position as tautologous, as if that is supposed to be an asset.
His position being, so far as I can tell, that his great big mind reveals the truth of some sort of spiritualist pantheism; some sort of self-aware universe.
Something about a "theory of everything", of course explaining even logic, which, I presume, logic can not even apply to!
But that's just my take on it; any inaccuracies in my representation or irrationality in my opinions should be taken as genuine misunderstanding and frustration stemming from my inaequate and puny mind, so don't accuse me of just spreading lies; I really did make a good effort trying to figure out what the hype was about.
But don't take my word for it. You're welcome to come to your own conclusions about the man. CTMU should get you started.
It seems there is something missing today in much of communication, and I am guilty of contributing to this, as I'm sure are many of you. Email, telephone, and perhaps worst of all: chat rooms. All of these things contribute to the attitude of raking our discourse in the mud; we treat it as so common and vulgar, as though it is an ugly tool not an art. We must all take an active role in preserving and promoting that grand and noble thing which is rational dialogue between two human persons.
Very few of us have the opportunity to particpate in, for example, discourse through publishing scholarly papers, and even for those who do, the whole processes is necessarily exclusive.
I believe that manual letter writing is perhaps the most rewarding means of communication. Yes, manual letter writing: that thing people do with a real pen and real dead-tree paper, like your mother and aunts and grandmothers did and, if living, probably still do. Our mothers do more to promote an atmosphere affirming the dignity of human dicourse than probably do many of us!
every letter has a greater sense of importance - It could be weeks before you receive a reply, and how the world can change in that time; the letter is an occasion to "put on your best suit and use your finest china", as it were.
it is deliberate - You might take a week to ponder and absorb the thoughts of your interlocutor before evening sitting down to write. Writing your response - what must suffice as the only communication between the two of you for perhaps weeks or more - is a task for more than even a single evening. This is no 30 word email that you bang out in as many seconds.
it necessitates greater attention to quality and clarity - This is a grand occasion. If you do not put forth your best effort, you will regret it immediately. How many of you have thought to yourselves, "I should have said that instead?" Here there is no recourse. You can not call up your acquaintance and offer a clarification or warning before it is read; you can not send off a follow-up email to explain yourself that evening.
it provides for cooler heads - You may be steaming-mad now, but consider how horrible you will feel in many days or even weeks when you receive a reply. Oh, how foolish you will feel when you must read your brash and irrational words quoted to you then!
If I ran a local bar you can sure bet that if you have a past of indecent or violent public drunkenness in my establishment, that I will be keeping an eye out for you, and I will pass the word along to my employees too; they see you, and you're out.
Heck, this could just as well be a local resteraunt, a supermarket, or a mall, rather than a bar, and the policy is going to be the same; if you can't handle yourself in my establishment, if you are disruptive or violent towards other patrons, then you are getting kicked out any time I catch you on the premises; no excuses, no questions asked.
And do you know what? This is the same sort of thing that has been going on for thousands of years, this communication between local business owners. Everyone used to know who the trouble-makers, the drunkkards, the petty thefts, were in town, and if they didn't and someone caught you, you better believe that word is going to get around town quick.
The only problem now is that people are more mobile, populations are larger, establishments have more patrons than they can know on a regular basis, and this has really lead to the break down of that sort of traditional information network between local shop owners having lunch down at the deli or whatnot.
This expectation of total or near-total anonymity is unrealistic. Sure, there will be some bars that will serve you "no questions asked" still, but these might not be the sorts of places you want to hang out in, if you know what I mean.
The only concern here should be things such as slander or libel possibly arising from mismanagement of this informatmion. You might want to get legislation to ensure a certain amount of responsibility with this information, and of course if you are harmed by mismanagement or misuse of this information, of course you also have the recourse of a civil lawsuit or possibly criminal charges.
By going out into public in the first place, you give up a certain amount of legitimate expectation to anonymity.
If you get drunk and start cussing up other patrons, sexually harrassing other patrons, starting fights, or pulling weapons, you damn well better believe that you have no expectation to anonymity.
You people are almost suggesting that you have some sort of right to have your reputation not sullied even when you make an ass of yourself in public. You have no such right or expectation; the suggestion is laughable. The only legitimate expectation you have here is against the slanderous or libelous mismanagement or misuse of your information.
Unless of course you can convince the public to pass legislation mandating that your good reputation not be tarnished; that no one be allowed to talk about the time you got drunk and made an ass of yourself hitting on the female bartender.
Learn to live with the consequences of your behavior. Just because you can spout off on an internet message board and change your name and no one will be the wiser, doesn't mean you have some sort of legitmate expectation to similar behavior in public.
Which is why even as a home user you store nightly backups of all important data to two machines on opposite ends of your home, machines which for all other purposes are essentially "non-executable".
Keep once a week backups going back 3 months, and nightly backups for the past 7 days.
If you can, include an offsite (i.e. a neighbor's house) backup.
"Now that Debian has lost around 90% of its market share"
.deb format. Rpms and Ebuilds are the new fashion!"
.deb package format.
First of all, how did you divine this number, or rather, how far up your ass did you have to reach to find it? I'm not about to believe an Anonymous Coward's unsupported statistics. The web-based poll on your Geocities homepage is hardly a reliable means of determining marketshare, trends or otherwise.
Unless you are going to give us something better than this: fuck off, troll.
"it is being left out to dry with its anceint packages"
In testing/unstable you will find Gnome 2.2, as well as many accompanying apps updated with 2.4. Watching the lists, I suspect that Gnome 2.4 as a whole will start to make it into unstable within the month.
There are unofficial backports of Gnome 2.2 to woody, and unofficial Gnome 2.4 packages for unstable.
For individual applications (rather than the core of desktop environments), Debian is even more up to date. Oftentimes I can apt-get an official Debian package within a day or two of seeing the announcement on gnomedesktop.org or freshmeat.org.
Neither Redhat nor Suse nor Mandrake can top official (as in through the distribution official package repositories) packages faster than that.
Sure, if the Gentoo community is for you, then you can go ahead with that, but on the view of many, stability and professionalism just are not "there yet" in the Gentoo community, and it may or may not be on a reassuring path to that end, depending on who you ask.
I think that many do not spend the time to learn enough about the Debian community and process to truly appreciate the many many years of work by hundreds of persons that has gone into making it as reliable, scalable, and stable as it is.
Further, maintainers do a good job of keeping up with security updates in testing/unstable; very often the update is concurrent with the stable update, or only a few hours behind. And Gento or Slackware are certainly not in a position to be critical on this issue; absolutely they do not fare better, and many would say not nearly as well. If this isnt' good enough for you, either apply to become Debian Developer and do something about it, or put up with a corporate distribution.
"and deprecated
Ah, "deprecated"? Now I am certain you are trolling. Watching the lists, there are no plans to replace the
Does Gentoo have anything even approaching the Debian Policy Manual?
Heck, Redhat maintains less than half the packages as Debian last I recall, and Redhat is fricking corporate and for-profit.
The only non-official software I have on my primary Debian system (desktop/workstation) is Sun's jre. My system is full featured, up to date, and secure.
My servers are stable and secure, facilitated by a tried and proven process that is transparent, accountable, and well worthy of my trust.
Debian is alive and well.
I think that the G5 is great; if money started falling off of the trees in my front yard I would buy one without hesitation, but this article is just poor; no question about it.
Cripes man, it's only one page.
The submitter titled the story, "Apple's Dual 2GHz By The Numbers"! Well, I'm just pointing out that this is an awfully poor excuse for a "by the numbers" technical performance review of a processor.
Are you suggesting otherwise?
Yes, I'm having a little fun with the last line, but seeing the blatant agenda this story submission is pushing while failing to deliver on the evidence, I don't have any second thoughts about it.
Startup and reboot
Er, yes, great. You do that what, once a day? And so are you telling me that by shaving 20 seconds you will now make the decision to sit and stare at the screen during the remaining 55 seconds of bootup rather than grabbing a beverage, finishing your sandwich, or going across the room to talk to someone?
Application launch times
Ok, yes. Again, wonderful. And so with your 512MB to 2GB of RAM you don't suppose you will just leave your email client and productivity app running?
Photoshop manipulation
"Rotating the picture took 2 seconds on the G5, 3.5 seconds on the Dual G4 and 5.5 seconds on the Powerbook. Applying the Gaussian blur (which, in essence, turned the photo into a blurry blob), took 4 seconds on the G5, 5 seconds on the Dual G4 and 8 seconds on the Powerbook. And applying the Pointillize filter took 3 seconds on the G5, 4.5 seconds on the Dual G4 and 9 seconds on the Powerbook."
Ah yes. Wonderful. I'm astounded at the practicality of testing operations which, "turned the photo into a blurry blob". And you shaved on average just over 1 second! Great googly-moogly!
Oh, and then we rinse and repeat for iMovie manipulation.
People, this is an absolutely unconvincing, entirely uninsightful article.
The G5 may be great, but all this article leads me to believe is that Apple users are about as detached from reality as a PC gam3r d00d pissing on about how Quake 3 runs at 178 instead of 172 FPS on their $2000 penis extension.
Say it isn't so.
...once people see how I write, they tell me, "please, please just type it up".
I grin and fire up my laptop =)
While it seems that the US government, for example, has and is actually doing the right thing with the national do-not-call list, perhaps that is the exception.
We are asking our governments to step up to do the right thing and protect us from this nonsense, but what they seem unable to restrain themselves from doing is to get their hands on all of it and regulate it.
We aren't asking for a whole system of regulation, we are just asking for protection.
The problem though, is that there are a lot of other parties who see this whole mess from other (possibly commercial) perspectives, and they want protection too, or whatever you would call doing services to their private interests and agendas.
For example, if we call in the government to help us, are they also going to decide that it is ok for political and non-profit groups to spam each of my email addresses X number of times per year or per month? Is government going to decide that any business can spam me once a year or until I renew my request with them to not be spammed?
Is the Bush re-election campaign going to be able to spam me once a month asking for donations?
Should we be worried that regulation will bring some relief, but with it the legitimization of unsolicited email conforming to the new regulations as an acceptable component of an advertising model for mainstream products and services, especially with telemarketing being clamped down on perhaps more now than in the past?
While I do believe that it is appropriate for us to act through our government to regulate this mess for the benefit of the majority (there is no right or legitimate expectation of private persons to force a communication with another person against his or her will), and ideally they would, I do not have faith in our elected representatives to do the right thing.
I think that is very sad. It seems that realistically our best hope for just and progressive government right now is to elect those who will screw us over least badly with the representative power we give them.
section {.rant}
I don't want to elect agendas or philosophers or idealists. I want to elect, surprisingly representatives, persons who I can in good faith entrust to act as an extension of my person - an extension of my own moral agency, an entity whose actions, good or bad, I am directly responsible for in so far as I am representated by a maximally auditable, responsive, and transparent manner, not used.
Just get it done, damnit.
Well, if your bank does not cover overdraws, many stores post notices such as "$45 service fee for bad checks", where the fee would go to the store, but you probably mean cases where it rises to criminal levels. I don't know how it works in that case.
That's very interesting though; why should the copyright holder receive anything beyond the compensatory component? You know, I never even thought of that.
It seems that the deterrent component should not go to the copyright holder. The deterrent component exists to benefit all copyright holders collectively by functioning generally to support the legitimacy and respect of the rule of law.
Giving, for example, the RIAA the deterrent component, is merely giving them a free gift. In no sense do they have any legitmate expectation to more than the actual economic loss they have suffered.
In fact, if the RIAA did receice the deterrent component as well, it would actually give them an incentive to be intentionally lax in discouraging infringment, because they would receice greater revenue from infringing copies than from legitimate copies!
If anything, the deterrent component should be available to the government budget (to cut taxes or fund programs).
Thank you for your comment. This seems to be especially important.
These fines have two purposes: 1) recompensate the copyright holder for economic losses, 2) deter future infringment by both the violator and others.
(1) clearly is greatly exaggerated under current policies. A single instance of downloading in violation of copyright all tracks from a particular CD at most constititues an economic loss to the copyright holder in the amount of the payment the copyright holder would have received from a retail sale of this CD.
In a single instance of acquiring an entire CD in violation of copyright, this is the maximum economic loss. However, in the most common cases, such as where only one or two tracks are acquired, or where the violator would not have been willing (in the absence of the availability of the infringing copy) or able to acquire a retail copy of the material, the actual economic loss to the copyright holder is only a small percentage of payment for a retail copy, or even non-existant.
But what about when the violator himself or herself redistributes infringing copies of the copyrighted material? Who here should bear the burden of economic loss to the copyright holder? If the original violator bears the economic burden, then future violators in the same "copy tree" can not also be made to bear the economic burden, because the copyright holder has already been compensated.
To charge that the original violator ought to bear the economic burden incurred by the intentional and willful acts of all future violators in the same copy tree, is to assign responsibility to one person for the uncoerced, intentional, and willfull infringing acts of another, to which the original violator contributed no force or persuassion. To do this is seriously morally troubling; I am not responsible for the uncoerced, willfull acts of other self-determining, copetent agents.
Therefore, the only economic burden that a violator may be made to bear for a single instance of infringment, is the actual economic loss incurred by this single instance of infringment.
This sets the upper bound for the recompensatory component of the fine at the actual economic loss incurred by the copyright holder for this single act of infringment; about $15 for all tracks from a single CD.
The fine may increase in consideration of the deterrent component, but the deterrent must correspond reasonably to the recompensatory component, even if this means that in cases of minor economic loss the deterrent will not be great.
This is as it should be; deterring minor econimic loss is surely much less the concern of law than deterring major or devestating economic loss.
I suspect that reasonable and morally conscious people will conclude that the deterrent component not exceed twice the compensatory component, and should approach this only in cases of the most flagarent infringment indicating a severe opposition to the rule of law.
Therefore, in the case of even the most flagarent infringement, the total fine for the infringing copying of all tracks of a CD will not exceed $15 x 3; $45.
If I distribute all tracks of this CD 100 times, for example, then the maximum fine I may be assigned is $4500.
...instead I take an incredibly novel and often over-looked approach: I just don't listen.
Is it really reasonable to believe that "major acts" will lower ticket prices if they begin to sell more CDs?
I find that very difficult to believe, unless you mean something quite the opposite of what I suspect by "major acts".
Bands charge what they do because they can, and once they have become convinced that they are worth X amount per ticket, they most certainly will not find any reason to lower tickets; after all, "they're worth more than that".
How many "major acts" are doing it "just for the music"? Only those who are already so damned wealthy that they can afford to project the image that they are doing it "just for the music".
"Composing, recording and producing an album takes time, talent and money."
I'd ammend this to read, "Producing a successful album takes time, money, and possibly talent."
The solution is for bands to give up the dream of the "lifestyle" that so many so covet with big grins when they are trying to "get into the biz".
The opportunity is there now; there is no excuse. Either they are selfish, or it is about more than "just the music".
Yes, you may have to work a part-time job, and no you might not tour the country or even outside a 20 mile radius of your home, but if it is really about the music and not about the dream of the lifestyle, then put yourself to it; the opportunity is there if you are willing to work at it.
If you want to sign yourselves away and pack the pork of big labels and big markets, then by all means, you are free to do so, but I'll be damned if I will support you. When you take that step, when you sell out, you are on your own.
Sheesh, were you abused as a child, or what? Talk about hostility...
"Most dangerous of lies"?
By "arm" I mean functionally a synonym of "agent". It is my position that ideally, the people act collectively through the government. Some complicating considerations arise given a representative form of government, but nonetheless, it is my position that it is through the government that we the people act.
Whether or not this is "The Constitutional Way", I am not concerned; this is my position on the role of government, the position that I put my weight behind.
This role is realized most fully only with the conduct and internal deliberations of this government are maximally transparent - maximally auditablly - by the average man or woman, and maximally responsive to the will of the people.
This, built upon a foundation of basic rights which all men and women in these modern times are due simply in virtue of being human persons, is for me the ideal form of government.
Government (the arm of the people), has a legitimate interest in controlling and regulating useage of the spectrum.
If large media companies want the privilege to use the spectrum for their own private profiting, then they will either satisfy the demands that we the people make upon that privileged position, or they will simply not have this privilege; end of story.
How strong is the accountability of broadcast (non-cable, non-dish) television stations to the community to which it broadcasts?
For example, occasionally on television (if I remember correctly), you see some sort of required announcement about license renewal and how to comment on the stations performance; only at off hours.
That just makes sense, but I somehow doubt it has any teeth.
...for added redundancy?
karma bonus was on =/
GNU is God and RMS is His Prophet.
GNU is God and RMS is His Prophet.
GNU is God and RMS is His Prophet.
There is no God but GNU.
Your project page is just a little box with a blue puzzle piece in it!
Is it symbolic of something?
Best regards though, but my teeth are mostly yellow.
Yes =)
Looking around, I once came across a "warez site" with a disclaimer saying more or less the same; I got a kick out of it.
Officer1: "Hey, we have 20 links to this website identifying it as a distributor of infringing software and music."
Officer2: "You're right. But look at this disclaimer. It says that if we are law enforcement officers that we can't enter it, under penalty of law!".
Officer1: "Blast! Foiled again! We are no match for these l33t hax0rz!".
Concealing or failing to disclose one's status as a law enforcement office is different than endorsing a binding agreement to the effect that one is not. While clearly in the case that there is reasonable suspicion or a warrant has been issued it is acceptable for a law enforcement agent to ignore such an agreement, but I am not aware that RIAA investigators have any such status so as to make this behavior acceptable for them.
So far as I am aware, an officer may not search your car "just because he or she feels like it". There must be some reasoanble suspicion that wrongdoing is afoot.
This may well be in the case of Kazaa, but under no circumstances may the copyright holder take the investigation or execution of justice into his or her own hands and expect not to be liable for any infringements he or she commits in the course of doing so.
The linked article does not address this point.
If I have good reason to believe that my neighbor has stolen my bicycle, and that I can even see it through his window, under no circumstances may I force entry into his house to take back my bicycle.
I fail to see why, for the ordinary citizen, the case should be otherwise for copyright infringement.
...does this actually "work", short of there being a subpoena or warrant?
...is my friend?