It really makes a huge difference if you can fit more RAM into your machine. KDE and friends occupy a lot of it, and when you're running a few apps, then your CPU cycles are consumed paging memory to/from swap
If you can't get more memory, try using Firefox on IceWM, or Xfce (xfce.org). Both these window managers have a smaller footprint, which translates into _really_ noticable performance improvements.
Are you new to Mandrake? Have you found the PLF? If not, trot on over to Easy Urpmi, and update your urpmi sources to include the PLF. You'll find lots of useful things that Mandrake can't include in their official distribution. I use Mandrake 9.2, which doesn't even include mplayer! After updating your sources, you can type:
urpmi mplayer
and it'll be installed (or use the mandrake control centre bizzo).
The Opera crowd repeatedly asked the MSN crowd to fix the style sheet. The style sheet used for IE worked fine with Opera. The correction involved less work than this post. Say what you want about M$'s motives, but if I were Opera I'd sue too.
If we want them to do something else, we need to make provision for that in law
I agree that the rules need to be fixed, however, who do you think makes the rules? We need to start with a division of power between corporations and politicians, similar to what we have between police/courts and politicians. Only then will voters have a chance at reforming the psychopathic entity that we corporations.
I still don't think we have anything to worry about, personally...
I'm not an expert on the North Atlantic Current, but I think it works like this:
There's a world wide system of ocean currents, the most famous of which is called the North Atlantic Current. They're all inter-related, and the said current brings millions of power stations worth of heat to Europe (each day I think).
Now the current is driven by a delicate balance of ocean temperature differentials (I think), and flows straight past Newfoundland - accounting for the warm winters, excessive amounts of wind and general crapy weather.
Now, most of the worlds Icebergs also flow past Newfoundland, since they originate in Greenland. As the iceberg flow increases, there has been measurable decreases in the ocean temperature in a part of the said North Atlantic Current.
Iceberg flow is increasing... perhaps because of global warming. If the iceberg flow increases to a certain amount, at a particular time of year, then the North Atlantic Current will be reset somehow, and Northern Europe will become as cold as parts of Northern Canada.
That means permanent snow down to North Germany. Mmmm... just a theory I saw on the discovery channel.
I think the potential for climate change is only a small reason for reducing car emissions. Environmentalists have done their campaign a disservice by relying on such an easily disputable theory.
We are affecting the atmosphere at an unprecedented rate. If the world was the size of a basketball, then the atmosphere would be about as thin as a layer of plastic shrink wrap... and it is elementary to life on earth.
So here's an anecdote about how we're affecting the weather (remember that the plural of anecdote isn't data). When my parent were growing up they hadn't heard of asthma. Today, in some places of the world almost every child suffers from asthma. I think about 20% of children suffer to various degrees in Toronto.
There was a bad smog day in Toronto, and the emergency rooms at hospitals were filled with children needing treatment. A lot of those children were driven to hospital in SUVs. Screw the environment... do you think that smog might have an impact on human health?
That is why Nietzsche refers to it as a primitive morality. You are absolutely right, the problem is the proponents of Free Trade are using what amounts to a very basic moral justification for their beliefs.
People use self-delusion, pattern matching (ie what they've experienced matching what they can see/hear), and all manor of irrational things to justify their beliefs. A moral justification of any sort is generally spurious. The point is that, in general, people will do what they want (or can), and anything that remotely justifies their actions will spew forth from their mouth.
What I'm saying is that using basic morality to justify your actions and beliefs is only human. You want something (make money)... you do it (get better import/export deals)... you justify it (it's better for everyone this way!). The US is a big proponent of free trade... when it suits them. They are actually quite protectionist.
I think it may be more accurate to say that civilization isn't getting morally worse or better.
You might be right, but clearly a huge number of people don't agree with you.
A small percentage of a 6 billion is a huge number. Also, just because all everybody believes something doesn't mean it's true.
Lets apply some reasoning to the problem. If civilization is declining, then that means in the past it was "better". Okay, when?
Try looking at the morals of ancient civilizations... I mean how did they justified their actions. Most would agree that we are morally better today, than say the Romans? Emperor Caligula knocked up his sister, and then killed her whilst cutting out his baby and eating it. What happened to him? He remained emperor for a time before his officers killed him.
What about the feudal period in Europe? "Kill them all, the Lord will know which are his". What about the Victorian era, the height of the British empire? Well she was known as the Warrior Queen, because her subjects were always at war subjecting the inferior barbarians of fighting the other tribes of Europe... not much different to the Romans.
Complaining about how things used to be better is only human it seems. Since we're still human, then we're still complaining. Seems that Nietzsche just came up with a bunch of flowery language to placate that feeling - that's only human.
Clearly, a major problem in this world is there isn't enough killing, enough war. Billions of people are going to have to die, either through ecological collapse, or warfare.
Really... you should study population growth before making such claims - you'll find the number disagree. Your statement comes straight off the back of a pop-culture magazine, the type that said we'd have to live underwater because there'd be no space on land.
Population growth is a problem (IMHO), did Nietzsche ever talk about it? Did Nietzsche understand population growth at all, or did he just predict the end of the world Nostradamus style? Disease will kill a lot of people... perhaps... food shortages... perhaps... but surely that's better then people killing each other!
In the next 100 years we WILL get to a critical mass where competition for natural resources will result in combat.
Why 100 years? How do you know it WILL happen? Define exactly critical mass? The world may well go to war over fresh water in the future... or perhaps somebody will perfect the water desalination plant. We don't know... we have to see what happens. Perhaps as water become scarer, it will become expensive, and people will be forced to use less. This may reach a point where people won't or can't have families because they can't meet the expense... that's a possible scenario.
This happens with all animals, including the invading organisms in your body right now.
Disease is less of a problem now than ever before. Perhaps microorganisms will become resistant to all our medicines... but that won't spell extintion for humans. That w
"Everything will work out in the end" they say, all the while ignoring how rapidly our civilization is declining
People have been saying that forever. Wrong, wrong wrong wrong wrong. When was civilization better (in the past)? And for what reason was it better? Surely it was just different, some things better, some things worse. People who say civilization is declining are usually the types of people who can't listen to their children's music - at least in my experience. That somehow the kool-aid of their youth was "better".
I think it may be more accurate to say that civilization isn't getting morally worse or better. For example, Newfoundland was run by a corrupt merchant class in the 19th century, and now it's under the corporate thumb - as well as a few rich people. Seems the only thing that's changed is the method of bondage.
But there are things that have gotten better over time... for example, the court systems have largely replaced the older system of vengence, and led to a decline in the murder rate. The murder rate is lower now than in the 970s, and even the 1970s. (source Elliot Leyton, an anthropologist who studies killing in various cultures through time)
IMHO civilization is destroying itself, but for reasons David Suzuki would talk about, not because of the destruction of culture. Even this is debatable, since if you study a populations growth in a closed ecosystem, and that population doesn't have a breeding season, then they approach the carrying capacity of that ecosystem, and then pretty much stay there. I don't drink that particular kool-aid, however, it a valid point.
We live in a cultural ocean... too vast to comprehend. The sub-cultures in my small city of 150,000 are rich and varied. Even little St John's is an ocean in which a fly can bath and an elephant drown, and it's unique.
In any event, if mankind is to keep from destroying itself by such a conscious overall government, we must discover first a knowledge of the conditions of culture
By destroying itself, do you mean Armageddon? Do you mean a hell on earth biblical style? Why is it a requirement to understand everything perfectly to not annihilate oneself? Don't forget that that would require [in part] understanding _your_ culture perfectly, which involves your city, and the street in which you live... etc... and since you're part of your culture, and can change it, then you are talking about the sort of self-description that leads to impossible recursion. If you don't think you're important in the "big-equation", remember what chaos maths has taught us.
The only thing that is certain is that societies and cultures will change. I don't think free trade will make everything okay in the end... it will just make everything different to how it is now... and our concepts of what free trade should be will also continue to change.
We certainly don't need some super theory of culture that will save us from ourselves... perhaps it's enough for world cultures to just evolve spontaneously. This doesn't mean that we'll all have a fairy-tale future... but it certainly doesn't mean that we're going to destroy ourselves, nor does it mean that our culture will regress.
Well, I'm going to define a true patriot as one who loves their country, _and_ will willing make an effort to make it a better place.
If you are a patriot, and you have a brain, then under my definition a patriot would want anti-trust reform. You would want to see M$ wings clipped, so that they play fair, in a fair market economy. That way americans will benefit.
Another patriot is Michael Moore. If you don't realize that, then you don't get patriotism.
Linux enters the business world, people save money, and then every businessman (who can) wants his staff running the cheap product. As long as it's useable, that's good enough. Perhaps the boss will keep an XP box for herself.
Once this has happened, then M$ will have already lost the fight. Many commercial vendors will be writing software for *nix, and it will have wide exposure. Yes exposure. People will have personal, practical knowledge of using Linux, and most likely be aware that it's cheap.
That's when consumers will start using Linux at home en-masse
Will it happen that way? You can be sure that M$ will try to stop wide spread adoption of Linux in the business world. That is the battle, not trying to talk Joe Average into using Linux at home.
I agree that philosophy often seems pointless, however, every now and then somebody has an idea, and that single idea changes the world. Some of these ideas are practical (like the number zero), and the value of others is harder to describe (like existentialism).
IMHO, I think that philosophy is a mostly pointless exercise that occasionally yields extraordinary results.
Give the Vulcan scientists a chance, and they may draw some insight into the description of reality. I play chess, and have found that it can be used a metaphor for almost any type of conflict. Does this mean that it describes all conflict as an abstract idea or is it just pattern matching in the brain?
I think the later, but since human's rely very heavily on pattern matching when they play chess... well, it's easy too get caught up in the idea. Perhaps one day a philosopher will change the world by providing some practical insight into the relationship.
I agree that good UI's are a lot of work, however, an election system only needs to reliably record a users vote. That means the user typically only has to do one thing. Now a good portion of the population can't read ballots anyway (illiterate), and a good deal more have problems with computers. That's why we decided that there had to be a human element to assist people taking votes.
We decided on a splash screen that says "Please insert your voting token". The tokens are special pieces of plastic that voting official give votes after they've registered their name. To prevent abuse of the system, the vote has to place the plastic device into a slot, which unlocks the terminal for one vote. The system then displays the names of the people on screen, and the user is instructed to touch the names of the people they want to vote for, in order (preferential voting). There is a single "correction" button that blanks the screen, and a "submit" button. All in all, that's a lot of widgets to display on screen, particularly with large ballots. Our team decided that we had to turn to scroll bars, and reasoned that most people are familiar with them. Special instructions and warning signs ("Remember there's a scroll bar") could be placed at election sites that had so many candidates that they required scroll bars. Not ideal, but what else?
I don't know enough about network security to know how to secure it. If it weren't possible, you'd have to make it damn hard. I think PGP is okay if you use enough bits in the key. Could do something like use a 5000 bit key to transmit a 256 bit key for a strong encryption like blowfish?
There may always be a work around to all security precautions, which is why I think these things should be open source. That way, everybody can look and see what the workarounds are, and try to fix them. If there was a known way to break the devices, then everybody would know it, and the police/election officials may be able to add human security to plug the wholes.
If I were your professor, I would have failed you.
Some groups couldn't get theirs to compile.
A professor doesn't fail somebody for making a prototype system that doesn't involve transactions. Have you ever marked students work? In my experience, students aren't required to make 100% industrial strength code to pass.
The point is that it was a simple student project. It was student project level. You would need to higher a few experts in security to create an industrial strength system. Either that, or 1 security expert and make that code open source, so challenge people to fix the holes
That includes auditing the compiler, operating system, and hardware?
Okay... I didn't expert that some CIA agent is going to hack into SUN and fix the version of javac that the Australian Government is using to compile the code. Oh, and the other CIA agent who is making sure that the Australian Government is updating to the said compiler. Perhaps they could, but that's a lot more trouble than rigging an election with closed systems. Particularly if it lets the incumbent government fiddle with an election... that's the real concern, not espionage.
I once did a university project that was an election system prototype. We had to write the whole thing in C++ (Qt), and it had to count votes Australian style, both Senate and House of Reps.
It was easy. The hardest part was working out what the election rules actually are (for special cases). One prof at the university was a government appointee to interpret the rules in the case of a dispute at election time. We visited him to clarify certain things, such as
computer programmer: Who wins if two candidates have exactly the same number of votes in the final count? prof: You do a recount computer programmer: And if they still have the same number of votes? prof: That will never happen
Mmmm... not good enough if you're writing a counting algorithm. (We added a new condition into the results, which was "no result")
Our system printed receipts for votes, had internationalization, allowed for various layouts of the ballot on screen, and made no assumptions as to how many candidates and parties there were. The ballot was configurable from a text file, and the computer could be switched off at any point during the voting process, and you could tell if the vote was counted or not... well there was an infinitesimally small chance that the power could go at just the right time... and the vote was counted before it was logged on the local machine. You'd probably have about a 1ms window to hit the power if you were trying to sabotage the system.
The only trick (other than a smooth UI) is to get the user program to send the votes to a central location. The must have been a thousand programmers in Brisbane alone who would have had the skill to do that.
These systems aren't rocket science, they're student projects. If I had to do it again, I'd implement the whole thing in Java with a SQL backend. The java could be compiled on a single system, and then downloaded by the client voting systems on startup. Thus the police only need to audit one machine. With a team of 10 people, the whole thing could be designed, implemented, tested and documented in 6 months. If you add in an engineering team to make beautiful custom boxes (running *NIX), with nothing but a monitor, ethernet port and power switch, it could be shipped as one purpose built product.
Brazil has been using electronic voting for years. Diebold are obviously incompetent, and perhaps worse. The US boasts many technological breakthroughs, and many famous programers live and were educated there. What's going on?
Out of curiosity, what sort of timeframe are you talking about here? 100 CD's.. ever? this year? Month?
That's about 100 in 1 year. The source is Duane Andrews, a St John's musician and producer (key to the Juneish 2005 release of Jenny Gear). For the last two years he has been involved with a documentary project on St John's music.
begin rant
Dermot O'Reilly is a local musician who's been around for decades, and says he got paid more to do a gig in 1971 than he does today. That's because playing CDs in clubs is cheap. Once upon a time (40s), there were more dozen people in bands, and the musicians made a living playing live music. Technology has changed that (Record and CD players in clubs), and musicians are forced into smaller groups.
p2p is also changing the way music is distributed, and the distributers are the ones against it this time. The difference between the distributers and the artists and that the RIAA has political muscle because it represents a small collection of rich people.
We're now in a ridiculous situation where by massive civil disobediance, people are breaching copyright, yet copyright is an essential part of business. Obviously we can't just get rid of copyright, but we can't just tell people to stop downloading music: that's what they want to do, and we live in a democracy, at least in theory.
The RIAA and other industry bodies have brought this upon themselves. In their lust for money they have subverted IP laws so that now it is possible own someone else's music/books even after they're dead!. What's the point of that?
IP laws are there to protect authors, and provide incentive for innovation and research. They are not there for a greedy businessmen to corner a piece of culture and force as many people to pay for it for as long as possible. For example, Star Wars was released in the late 70s... that's over 25 years ago. The author easily made back their investment, and the work has transcended into popular culture.
If you're response is "So...", to the Star Wars example, then your agreeing to the statement that IP laws should enable businessmen to profiteer from legally enforced monopolies on culture. Well, at least in part. The RIAA and friends are a cartel that has cornered our music industry and profits with legal monopolies on other artists work. This isn't helping the advancement of music because the artists are getting screwed.
About 100 new CDs were released in St John's (pop 150,000) in 2003. Almost none of them were supported by major record labels...
ergo
Diversity in record stores will flourish without major record labels.
100 CDs were produced because you can now record a CD on a government grant, and then pay a 3rd party to print it. For about $4000 you can set up your own studio (providing you already have the space). Some local stores happily retail the CDs, with the exception of Walmart and Zellers and similar. The big boyz only deal with other big boyz, and try to keep the independent artist out of the loop.
Try asking Walmart to carry your CD... on the one hand they'll tell you they try to support local industries, but when it comes down to it, they only buy from Handlemans, a major distributor. Handlemans will take their cut, and sell your CD if you meet their requirements, which independent artists invariably can't.
The major players want all the profits for themselves, and are manipulating the media and the rules. Unless you've already made it, a major record label won't do a thing for you unless you sign over all your IP. They then get you in a debt trap, that even TLC couldn't get out of with 10million CD sales world wide. When they learn the truth, most people are horrified by the raw deal that artists get.
Think about exactly why Canadians need record labels. What's the point? All they do is advertise and push products, and screw musicians out of a fair share of the profits.
p2p hurts record labels, well, that's what they say. Personally, I think that the real damage p2p does to record labels is far less than they say, but quantifiable none the less. p2p is good for many artists... most artists make money by having people pay $10 to see them. If 100 people come, then you've made $750 after you pay the sound guy.
For about $4k you can buy an iMac, MOTU and a couple of microphones, and produce your very own album. Sure it won't be of the same quality as the latest from ploygram, since you don't have their $500k studio, but the sound quality will be good enough for everyone in your house except maybe your dog (super hearing)
What this means is that _more_ independent music is being created then every before. A lot of it is amazing, and creative and not at all like "off the shelf Brittany". If you can't find music that's worth buying, then you're not looking in the right place. Perhaps music doesn't mean much to you anymore.
If you do want to find some new music that you'll enjoy as much as those old 80s hits you mention, I'd look into the local scene in your city. If you live in Cloncurry, then you may need to look further.
400 years ago, music was a little stream. As technology and communication has gotten better, it has turned into something for everybody. Consider the variety and speed of change in the music scene in Bach's era to Beethoven's. Then, the 20th century introduced recorded music, and the variety became immense. Even in the 1920's there were many different music scenes.
For the first time in history, a single person, with meager resources can record their music. This has lead to a new renaissance in the music industry. The variety of new music coming out is unlike any period in history, including the 1980s.
they are not doing their job and are guilty of dereliction of duty
In theory is it possible to go after the DOJ for not doing their job? Are the courts of the US (or anywhere) answerable to anyone?
Another thing I don't understand is, how was the Bush government able to force a settlement between the DOJ and M$? Isn't there a division of powers? I'm not sure that the Australian government would be able to force the courts to do anything.
We need more details to know what went wrong in the negotiations. It's quite possible that the sheriff said "we're never paying you a cent, go jump", and it's equally possible that Richard said "I'm not giving you ftp access to the site, you must pay my fee"
If either of these were true then this situation would develop naturally
Oh... Richard may have owned the domain name, but that wouldn't have stopped the Sheriff's dept from transferring the site to a new domain name, providing they had ftp access. They could sue Richard for the original domain name later - in a civil court. Yes it's an inconvenience, but not one worth 4 criminal charges!
Kaiser responded to Simmon's claim that the case is a civil matter.
"The O.J. (O.J. Simpson) case showed us that a criminal case can be a civil case," he said.
Using that reasoning, there's no need for civil cases, becuase OJ's case was a civil case! This strikes me as plain vendictive from the Sherrif's dept. Surely they could have transfered the site to another provider if they didn't like the fee.
I agree with your sentiment, but consider this situation...
You run a small business with 5 employees, and you've got a customer database. Since you've chosen OSS, you know that you can pay some programmer to come and write an extension to it. That it the 'under-the-hood' benefit. Next to nobody will do it themselves, it's the business that get the flexibility of in-house development (the normal until the 80s), with all the costs and problems. In fact, the costs are rapidly approaching the costs of running proprietry software, which means that overall your small business is much better off.
Weld the hood shut, and you're at the mercy of your vendors. This can easily be enough to close a business. M$ is not the only vendor locker out there... most software companies have tried it at some stage, and some actively pursue these types of strategies.
I guess the misunderstanding lies in what we consider 'everyday' maintenance, because it means different things to different people. If you're using an OSS product, and you find it a pain to configure, then there is a chance that someone else has the same problem. In the future I think it will be simple enough to get a job writing configuration interfaces and the like. The person who'll pay you will be a small business owner in your local town who needs to use the product _and_ maintain all the other advantages of OSS.
I think we (men) should be careful with statements like this. I know lots of mechanically able women, and not a small number of mechanically spastic men. We all know this is just a stereotype, but throwing stereotypes around is bad form
The whole front of the car is moulded in one piece which can be removed only by a Volvo mechanic.
and this...
The car should be programmed to discover any problems under the bonnet, then send a message to the garage to let them know.
Sound great for people who are too rich to have to learn something about their car, like where the brake fluid goes. I give this one 2 thumbs down, and if my neighbour got one, well... it would be a laugh
All legal systems are far from perfect, and most everybody agrees, so that's a good point to start an argument from but...
I'm not an expert in international law, so I just want to draw your attention to the this: saying the US system is not perfect, and is meant to treat everybody fairly, and isn't so bad is kind of meaningless. That's only because you can say that about the legal system in any developed country.
That's like saying a turtle can move... most animals can.
My friends and I came up with the ultimate useless statement, for all occations "That's clearer than a Guiness"
So do US citizens compare their legal system to the bottom of the rung, or the top of the rung. For example, the German system have taken steps to protect all parties in this dispute, and it's done it fairly. I think if you compared the success of the US system to other systems in developed countries, you'll have something more interesting to say.
I agree with you completely, however, I also subscribe to the idea that we might not be 'smart-enough' to work it all out. Maybe we are, but it seems unnatural to us to admit the possibility that our intellect is too limited - a kindof species wide know-it-all syndrome.
For example, you can't teach algebra to zebra, and the reason seems obvious... they eat grass and run around in herds! Okay, a zebra is a complex creature with complex social systems, but you know what I mean
Consider the existence of our attention spans. Now most humans have an attention span that lasts a good long time, but we can't solve a problem that exceeds our natural limits in this regard without stopping, resting and starting again.
Many creature don't have much of an attention span, and I think that's really interesting.
Why do we have attention spans? What evolutionary pressure caused this? The answer to that question will give you what the (original) primary purpose for our attention span... and indicate it's threshold for usefulness.
Most all hunters have exceptionally good attention spans when compared to herbivores. Not having been any creature other than a human, I can only suggest that the act of stalking a prey requires it!
So lets take this further. My attention span is long enough to stalk an animal and hopefully kill it. If there's a gram of truth in that, you might agree that that same attention span is not sufficient to understand _all_ the workings of the universe! Oh the arrogance of mankind! Well, there's most likely an evolutionary reason for arrogance as well, and it's helped us understand a lot about the world =)
Please don't assume that I think this is gospel. I only want to draw your attention to what we are - you and me.
Slashdot Mirror
It really makes a huge difference if you can fit more RAM into your machine. KDE and friends occupy a lot of it, and when you're running a few apps, then your CPU cycles are consumed paging memory to/from swap
If you can't get more memory, try using Firefox on IceWM, or Xfce (xfce.org). Both these window managers have a smaller footprint, which translates into _really_ noticable performance improvements.
Are you new to Mandrake? Have you found the PLF? If not, trot on over to Easy Urpmi, and update your urpmi sources to include the PLF. You'll find lots of useful things that Mandrake can't include in their official distribution. I use Mandrake 9.2, which doesn't even include mplayer! After updating your sources, you can type:
urpmi mplayer
and it'll be installed (or use the mandrake control centre bizzo).
The Opera crowd repeatedly asked the MSN crowd to fix the style sheet. The style sheet used for IE worked fine with Opera. The correction involved less work than this post. Say what you want about M$'s motives, but if I were Opera I'd sue too.
We all no the M$ isn't going to do Linux any favours, but which other company is releasing a complete gaming platform for Linux?
If we want them to do something else, we need to make provision for that in law
I agree that the rules need to be fixed, however, who do you think makes the rules? We need to start with a division of power between corporations and politicians, similar to what we have between police/courts and politicians. Only then will voters have a chance at reforming the psychopathic entity that we corporations.
I still don't think we have anything to worry about, personally...
I'm not an expert on the North Atlantic Current, but I think it works like this:
There's a world wide system of ocean currents, the most famous of which is called the North Atlantic Current. They're all inter-related, and the said current brings millions of power stations worth of heat to Europe (each day I think).
Now the current is driven by a delicate balance of ocean temperature differentials (I think), and flows straight past Newfoundland - accounting for the warm winters, excessive amounts of wind and general crapy weather.
Now, most of the worlds Icebergs also flow past Newfoundland, since they originate in Greenland. As the iceberg flow increases, there has been measurable decreases in the ocean temperature in a part of the said North Atlantic Current.
Iceberg flow is increasing... perhaps because of global warming. If the iceberg flow increases to a certain amount, at a particular time of year, then the North Atlantic Current will be reset somehow, and Northern Europe will become as cold as parts of Northern Canada.
That means permanent snow down to North Germany. Mmmm... just a theory I saw on the discovery channel.
I think the potential for climate change is only a small reason for reducing car emissions. Environmentalists have done their campaign a disservice by relying on such an easily disputable theory.
We are affecting the atmosphere at an unprecedented rate. If the world was the size of a basketball, then the atmosphere would be about as thin as a layer of plastic shrink wrap... and it is elementary to life on earth.
So here's an anecdote about how we're affecting the weather (remember that the plural of anecdote isn't data). When my parent were growing up they hadn't heard of asthma. Today, in some places of the world almost every child suffers from asthma. I think about 20% of children suffer to various degrees in Toronto.
There was a bad smog day in Toronto, and the emergency rooms at hospitals were filled with children needing treatment. A lot of those children were driven to hospital in SUVs. Screw the environment... do you think that smog might have an impact on human health?
That is why Nietzsche refers to it as a primitive morality. You are absolutely right, the problem is the proponents of Free Trade are using what amounts to a very basic moral justification for their beliefs.
People use self-delusion, pattern matching (ie what they've experienced matching what they can see/hear), and all manor of irrational things to justify their beliefs. A moral justification of any sort is generally spurious. The point is that, in general, people will do what they want (or can), and anything that remotely justifies their actions will spew forth from their mouth.
What I'm saying is that using basic morality to justify your actions and beliefs is only human. You want something (make money)... you do it (get better import/export deals)... you justify it (it's better for everyone this way!). The US is a big proponent of free trade... when it suits them. They are actually quite protectionist.
I think it may be more accurate to say that civilization isn't getting morally worse or better.
You might be right, but clearly a huge number of people don't agree with you.
A small percentage of a 6 billion is a huge number. Also, just because all everybody believes something doesn't mean it's true.
Lets apply some reasoning to the problem. If civilization is declining, then that means in the past it was "better". Okay, when?
Try looking at the morals of ancient civilizations... I mean how did they justified their actions. Most would agree that we are morally better today, than say the Romans? Emperor Caligula knocked up his sister, and then killed her whilst cutting out his baby and eating it. What happened to him? He remained emperor for a time before his officers killed him.
What about the feudal period in Europe? "Kill them all, the Lord will know which are his". What about the Victorian era, the height of the British empire? Well she was known as the Warrior Queen, because her subjects were always at war subjecting the inferior barbarians of fighting the other tribes of Europe... not much different to the Romans.
Complaining about how things used to be better is only human it seems. Since we're still human, then we're still complaining. Seems that Nietzsche just came up with a bunch of flowery language to placate that feeling - that's only human.
Clearly, a major problem in this world is there isn't enough killing, enough war. Billions of people are going to have to die, either through ecological collapse, or warfare.
Really... you should study population growth before making such claims - you'll find the number disagree. Your statement comes straight off the back of a pop-culture magazine, the type that said we'd have to live underwater because there'd be no space on land.
Population growth is a problem (IMHO), did Nietzsche ever talk about it? Did Nietzsche understand population growth at all, or did he just predict the end of the world Nostradamus style? Disease will kill a lot of people... perhaps... food shortages... perhaps... but surely that's better then people killing each other!
In the next 100 years we WILL get to a critical mass where competition for natural resources will result in combat.
Why 100 years? How do you know it WILL happen? Define exactly critical mass? The world may well go to war over fresh water in the future... or perhaps somebody will perfect the water desalination plant. We don't know... we have to see what happens. Perhaps as water become scarer, it will become expensive, and people will be forced to use less. This may reach a point where people won't or can't have families because they can't meet the expense... that's a possible scenario.
This happens with all animals, including the invading organisms in your body right now.
Disease is less of a problem now than ever before. Perhaps microorganisms will become resistant to all our medicines... but that won't spell extintion for humans. That w
"Everything will work out in the end" they say, all the while ignoring how rapidly our civilization is declining
People have been saying that forever. Wrong, wrong wrong wrong wrong. When was civilization better (in the past)? And for what reason was it better? Surely it was just different, some things better, some things worse. People who say civilization is declining are usually the types of people who can't listen to their children's music - at least in my experience. That somehow the kool-aid of their youth was "better".
I think it may be more accurate to say that civilization isn't getting morally worse or better. For example, Newfoundland was run by a corrupt merchant class in the 19th century, and now it's under the corporate thumb - as well as a few rich people. Seems the only thing that's changed is the method of bondage.
But there are things that have gotten better over time... for example, the court systems have largely replaced the older system of vengence, and led to a decline in the murder rate. The murder rate is lower now than in the 970s, and even the 1970s. (source Elliot Leyton, an anthropologist who studies killing in various cultures through time)
IMHO civilization is destroying itself, but for reasons David Suzuki would talk about, not because of the destruction of culture. Even this is debatable, since if you study a populations growth in a closed ecosystem, and that population doesn't have a breeding season, then they approach the carrying capacity of that ecosystem, and then pretty much stay there. I don't drink that particular kool-aid, however, it a valid point.
We live in a cultural ocean... too vast to comprehend. The sub-cultures in my small city of 150,000 are rich and varied. Even little St John's is an ocean in which a fly can bath and an elephant drown, and it's unique.
In any event, if mankind is to keep from destroying itself by such a conscious overall government, we must discover first a knowledge of the conditions of culture
By destroying itself, do you mean Armageddon? Do you mean a hell on earth biblical style? Why is it a requirement to understand everything perfectly to not annihilate oneself? Don't forget that that would require [in part] understanding _your_ culture perfectly, which involves your city, and the street in which you live... etc... and since you're part of your culture, and can change it, then you are talking about the sort of self-description that leads to impossible recursion. If you don't think you're important in the "big-equation", remember what chaos maths has taught us.
The only thing that is certain is that societies and cultures will change. I don't think free trade will make everything okay in the end... it will just make everything different to how it is now... and our concepts of what free trade should be will also continue to change.
We certainly don't need some super theory of culture that will save us from ourselves... perhaps it's enough for world cultures to just evolve spontaneously. This doesn't mean that we'll all have a fairy-tale future... but it certainly doesn't mean that we're going to destroy ourselves, nor does it mean that our culture will regress.
American hating pussies
Well, I'm going to define a true patriot as one who loves their country, _and_ will willing make an effort to make it a better place.
If you are a patriot, and you have a brain, then under my definition a patriot would want anti-trust reform. You would want to see M$ wings clipped, so that they play fair, in a fair market economy. That way americans will benefit.
Another patriot is Michael Moore. If you don't realize that, then you don't get patriotism.
Linux enters the business world, people save money, and then every businessman (who can) wants his staff running the cheap product. As long as it's useable, that's good enough. Perhaps the boss will keep an XP box for herself.
Once this has happened, then M$ will have already lost the fight. Many commercial vendors will be writing software for *nix, and it will have wide exposure. Yes exposure. People will have personal, practical knowledge of using Linux, and most likely be aware that it's cheap.
That's when consumers will start using Linux at home en-masse
Will it happen that way? You can be sure that M$ will try to stop wide spread adoption of Linux in the business world. That is the battle, not trying to talk Joe Average into using Linux at home.
I agree that philosophy often seems pointless, however, every now and then somebody has an idea, and that single idea changes the world. Some of these ideas are practical (like the number zero), and the value of others is harder to describe (like existentialism).
IMHO, I think that philosophy is a mostly pointless exercise that occasionally yields extraordinary results.
Give the Vulcan scientists a chance, and they may draw some insight into the description of reality. I play chess, and have found that it can be used a metaphor for almost any type of conflict. Does this mean that it describes all conflict as an abstract idea or is it just pattern matching in the brain?
I think the later, but since human's rely very heavily on pattern matching when they play chess... well, it's easy too get caught up in the idea. Perhaps one day a philosopher will change the world by providing some practical insight into the relationship.
I agree that good UI's are a lot of work, however, an election system only needs to reliably record a users vote. That means the user typically only has to do one thing. Now a good portion of the population can't read ballots anyway (illiterate), and a good deal more have problems with computers. That's why we decided that there had to be a human element to assist people taking votes.
We decided on a splash screen that says "Please insert your voting token". The tokens are special pieces of plastic that voting official give votes after they've registered their name. To prevent abuse of the system, the vote has to place the plastic device into a slot, which unlocks the terminal for one vote. The system then displays the names of the people on screen, and the user is instructed to touch the names of the people they want to vote for, in order (preferential voting). There is a single "correction" button that blanks the screen, and a "submit" button. All in all, that's a lot of widgets to display on screen, particularly with large ballots. Our team decided that we had to turn to scroll bars, and reasoned that most people are familiar with them. Special instructions and warning signs ("Remember there's a scroll bar") could be placed at election sites that had so many candidates that they required scroll bars. Not ideal, but what else?
I don't know enough about network security to know how to secure it. If it weren't possible, you'd have to make it damn hard. I think PGP is okay if you use enough bits in the key. Could do something like use a 5000 bit key to transmit a 256 bit key for a strong encryption like blowfish?
There may always be a work around to all security precautions, which is why I think these things should be open source. That way, everybody can look and see what the workarounds are, and try to fix them. If there was a known way to break the devices, then everybody would know it, and the police/election officials may be able to add human security to plug the wholes.
If I were your professor, I would have failed you.
Some groups couldn't get theirs to compile.
A professor doesn't fail somebody for making a prototype system that doesn't involve transactions. Have you ever marked students work? In my experience, students aren't required to make 100% industrial strength code to pass.
The point is that it was a simple student project. It was student project level. You would need to higher a few experts in security to create an industrial strength system. Either that, or 1 security expert and make that code open source, so challenge people to fix the holes
That includes auditing the compiler, operating system, and hardware?
Okay... I didn't expert that some CIA agent is going to hack into SUN and fix the version of javac that the Australian Government is using to compile the code. Oh, and the other CIA agent who is making sure that the Australian Government is updating to the said compiler. Perhaps they could, but that's a lot more trouble than rigging an election with closed systems. Particularly if it lets the incumbent government fiddle with an election... that's the real concern, not espionage.
How hard is it REALLY to count and store votes
I once did a university project that was an election system prototype. We had to write the whole thing in C++ (Qt), and it had to count votes Australian style, both Senate and House of Reps.
It was easy. The hardest part was working out what the election rules actually are (for special cases). One prof at the university was a government appointee to interpret the rules in the case of a dispute at election time. We visited him to clarify certain things, such as
computer programmer: Who wins if two candidates have exactly the same number of votes in the final count?
prof: You do a recount
computer programmer: And if they still have the same number of votes?
prof: That will never happen
Mmmm... not good enough if you're writing a counting algorithm. (We added a new condition into the results, which was "no result")
Our system printed receipts for votes, had internationalization, allowed for various layouts of the ballot on screen, and made no assumptions as to how many candidates and parties there were. The ballot was configurable from a text file, and the computer could be switched off at any point during the voting process, and you could tell if the vote was counted or not... well there was an infinitesimally small chance that the power could go at just the right time... and the vote was counted before it was logged on the local machine. You'd probably have about a 1ms window to hit the power if you were trying to sabotage the system.
The only trick (other than a smooth UI) is to get the user program to send the votes to a central location. The must have been a thousand programmers in Brisbane alone who would have had the skill to do that.
These systems aren't rocket science, they're student projects. If I had to do it again, I'd implement the whole thing in Java with a SQL backend. The java could be compiled on a single system, and then downloaded by the client voting systems on startup. Thus the police only need to audit one machine. With a team of 10 people, the whole thing could be designed, implemented, tested and documented in 6 months. If you add in an engineering team to make beautiful custom boxes (running *NIX), with nothing but a monitor, ethernet port and power switch, it could be shipped as one purpose built product.
Brazil has been using electronic voting for years. Diebold are obviously incompetent, and perhaps worse. The US boasts many technological breakthroughs, and many famous programers live and were educated there. What's going on?
Out of curiosity, what sort of timeframe are you talking about here? 100 CD's.. ever? this year? Month?
That's about 100 in 1 year. The source is Duane Andrews, a St John's musician and producer (key to the Juneish 2005 release of Jenny Gear). For the last two years he has been involved with a documentary project on St John's music.
begin rant
Dermot O'Reilly is a local musician who's been around for decades, and says he got paid more to do a gig in 1971 than he does today. That's because playing CDs in clubs is cheap. Once upon a time (40s), there were more dozen people in bands, and the musicians made a living playing live music. Technology has changed that (Record and CD players in clubs), and musicians are forced into smaller groups.
p2p is also changing the way music is distributed, and the distributers are the ones against it this time. The difference between the distributers and the artists and that the RIAA has political muscle because it represents a small collection of rich people.
We're now in a ridiculous situation where by massive civil disobediance, people are breaching copyright, yet copyright is an essential part of business. Obviously we can't just get rid of copyright, but we can't just tell people to stop downloading music: that's what they want to do, and we live in a democracy, at least in theory.
The RIAA and other industry bodies have brought this upon themselves. In their lust for money they have subverted IP laws so that now it is possible own someone else's music/books even after they're dead!. What's the point of that?
IP laws are there to protect authors, and provide incentive for innovation and research. They are not there for a greedy businessmen to corner a piece of culture and force as many people to pay for it for as long as possible. For example, Star Wars was released in the late 70s... that's over 25 years ago. The author easily made back their investment, and the work has transcended into popular culture.
If you're response is "So...", to the Star Wars example, then your agreeing to the statement that IP laws should enable businessmen to profiteer from legally enforced monopolies on culture. Well, at least in part. The RIAA and friends are a cartel that has cornered our music industry and profits with legal monopolies on other artists work. This isn't helping the advancement of music because the artists are getting screwed.
end rant
About 100 new CDs were released in St John's (pop 150,000) in 2003. Almost none of them were supported by major record labels...
ergo
Diversity in record stores will flourish without major record labels.
100 CDs were produced because you can now record a CD on a government grant, and then pay a 3rd party to print it. For about $4000 you can set up your own studio (providing you already have the space). Some local stores happily retail the CDs, with the exception of Walmart and Zellers and similar. The big boyz only deal with other big boyz, and try to keep the independent artist out of the loop.
Try asking Walmart to carry your CD... on the one hand they'll tell you they try to support local industries, but when it comes down to it, they only buy from Handlemans, a major distributor. Handlemans will take their cut, and sell your CD if you meet their requirements, which independent artists invariably can't.
The major players want all the profits for themselves, and are manipulating the media and the rules. Unless you've already made it, a major record label won't do a thing for you unless you sign over all your IP. They then get you in a debt trap, that even TLC couldn't get out of with 10million CD sales world wide. When they learn the truth, most people are horrified by the raw deal that artists get.
Think about exactly why Canadians need record labels. What's the point? All they do is advertise and push products, and screw musicians out of a fair share of the profits.
p2p hurts record labels, well, that's what they say. Personally, I think that the real damage p2p does to record labels is far less than they say, but quantifiable none the less. p2p is good for many artists... most artists make money by having people pay $10 to see them. If 100 people come, then you've made $750 after you pay the sound guy.
For about $4k you can buy an iMac, MOTU and a couple of microphones, and produce your very own album. Sure it won't be of the same quality as the latest from ploygram, since you don't have their $500k studio, but the sound quality will be good enough for everyone in your house except maybe your dog (super hearing)
What this means is that _more_ independent music is being created then every before. A lot of it is amazing, and creative and not at all like "off the shelf Brittany". If you can't find music that's worth buying, then you're not looking in the right place. Perhaps music doesn't mean much to you anymore.
If you do want to find some new music that you'll enjoy as much as those old 80s hits you mention, I'd look into the local scene in your city. If you live in Cloncurry, then you may need to look further.
400 years ago, music was a little stream. As technology and communication has gotten better, it has turned into something for everybody. Consider the variety and speed of change in the music scene in Bach's era to Beethoven's. Then, the 20th century introduced recorded music, and the variety became immense. Even in the 1920's there were many different music scenes.
For the first time in history, a single person, with meager resources can record their music. This has lead to a new renaissance in the music industry. The variety of new music coming out is unlike any period in history, including the 1980s.
Married to a musician.
they are not doing their job and are guilty of dereliction of duty
In theory is it possible to go after the DOJ for not doing their job? Are the courts of the US (or anywhere) answerable to anyone?
Another thing I don't understand is, how was the Bush government able to force a settlement between the DOJ and M$? Isn't there a division of powers? I'm not sure that the Australian government would be able to force the courts to do anything.
We need more details to know what went wrong in the negotiations. It's quite possible that the sheriff said "we're never paying you a cent, go jump", and it's equally possible that Richard said "I'm not giving you ftp access to the site, you must pay my fee"
If either of these were true then this situation would develop naturally
Oh... Richard may have owned the domain name, but that wouldn't have stopped the Sheriff's dept from transferring the site to a new domain name, providing they had ftp access. They could sue Richard for the original domain name later - in a civil court. Yes it's an inconvenience, but not one worth 4 criminal charges!
From the article
Kaiser responded to Simmon's claim that the case is a civil matter.
"The O.J. (O.J. Simpson) case showed us that a criminal case can be a civil case," he said.
Using that reasoning, there's no need for civil cases, becuase OJ's case was a civil case! This strikes me as plain vendictive from the Sherrif's dept. Surely they could have transfered the site to another provider if they didn't like the fee.
I agree with your sentiment, but consider this situation...
You run a small business with 5 employees, and you've got a customer database. Since you've chosen OSS, you know that you can pay some programmer to come and write an extension to it. That it the 'under-the-hood' benefit. Next to nobody will do it themselves, it's the business that get the flexibility of in-house development (the normal until the 80s), with all the costs and problems. In fact, the costs are rapidly approaching the costs of running proprietry software, which means that overall your small business is much better off.
Weld the hood shut, and you're at the mercy of your vendors. This can easily be enough to close a business. M$ is not the only vendor locker out there... most software companies have tried it at some stage, and some actively pursue these types of strategies.
I guess the misunderstanding lies in what we consider 'everyday' maintenance, because it means different things to different people. If you're using an OSS product, and you find it a pain to configure, then there is a chance that someone else has the same problem. In the future I think it will be simple enough to get a job writing configuration interfaces and the like. The person who'll pay you will be a small business owner in your local town who needs to use the product _and_ maintain all the other advantages of OSS.
Word just quit on me... some sort of internal error, okay, how to I troubleshoot it =)
Source code isn't everything
Why yes... there's configuration files, so if your programme crashes in 640x480 resolution then...
I perform basic maintenance on closed source programs everyday
What exactly to you mean my maintenance, and if it's so easy why do you do it every day?
A car with a welded hood would be like having a harddrive that couldn't be defragged
Defragging a HD is one operation. Having the hood open lets you change many things. Do you see the distinction?
The analogy is flawed
Smiles politely. Oh all right, I fell down laughing =) =) =) =)
we know they can't do their own maintence
I think we (men) should be careful with statements like this. I know lots of mechanically able women, and not a small number of mechanically spastic men. We all know this is just a stereotype, but throwing stereotypes around is bad form
The whole front of the car is moulded in one piece which can be removed only by a Volvo mechanic.
and this...
The car should be programmed to discover any problems under the bonnet, then send a message to the garage to let them know.
Sound great for people who are too rich to have to learn something about their car, like where the brake fluid goes. I give this one 2 thumbs down, and if my neighbour got one, well... it would be a laugh
All legal systems are far from perfect, and most everybody agrees, so that's a good point to start an argument from but...
I'm not an expert in international law, so I just want to draw your attention to the this: saying the US system is not perfect, and is meant to treat everybody fairly, and isn't so bad is kind of meaningless. That's only because you can say that about the legal system in any developed country.
That's like saying a turtle can move... most animals can.
My friends and I came up with the ultimate useless statement, for all occations "That's clearer than a Guiness"
So do US citizens compare their legal system to the bottom of the rung, or the top of the rung. For example, the German system have taken steps to protect all parties in this dispute, and it's done it fairly. I think if you compared the success of the US system to other systems in developed countries, you'll have something more interesting to say.
I agree with you completely, however, I also subscribe to the idea that we might not be 'smart-enough' to work it all out. Maybe we are, but it seems unnatural to us to admit the possibility that our intellect is too limited - a kindof species wide know-it-all syndrome.
For example, you can't teach algebra to zebra, and the reason seems obvious... they eat grass and run around in herds! Okay, a zebra is a complex creature with complex social systems, but you know what I mean
Consider the existence of our attention spans. Now most humans have an attention span that lasts a good long time, but we can't solve a problem that exceeds our natural limits in this regard without stopping, resting and starting again.
Many creature don't have much of an attention span, and I think that's really interesting.
Why do we have attention spans? What evolutionary pressure caused this? The answer to that question will give you what the (original) primary purpose for our attention span... and indicate it's threshold for usefulness.
Most all hunters have exceptionally good attention spans when compared to herbivores. Not having been any creature other than a human, I can only suggest that the act of stalking a prey requires it!
So lets take this further. My attention span is long enough to stalk an animal and hopefully kill it. If there's a gram of truth in that, you might agree that that same attention span is not sufficient to understand _all_ the workings of the universe! Oh the arrogance of mankind! Well, there's most likely an evolutionary reason for arrogance as well, and it's helped us understand a lot about the world =)
Please don't assume that I think this is gospel. I only want to draw your attention to what we are - you and me.