I think your missing some points.
First, companies still aren't held responsible for "[...]an irresponsible owner's disposal of his machine."
Their held responsible for the legal disposal of your machine.
"Making manufacturers responsible would just result in higher consumer prices."
Which you had to pay otherwise, too. (Legal disposal assumed.)
But now you can consider the costs of buying and disposal before you bought it. Forcing the companies to reduce the costs of disposal as it becomes the costs you pay.
But why aren't then the producing companies taking the stuff back and outsourcing the recycling?
I think producer responsibility is an advantage to the consumer as he pays for the whole product when he's buying it, including the disposal.
(Which he otherwise had to do afterwards.)
"Hmm, am I buying this TV for $1000 (recycable)
or $975 (n.r.) for an equal one?
I'll go for the cheaper one."
"Heck, the TV is broken beyond repair."
"O.K. this is $50 for the disposal. Thank you, Sir."
Furthermore a producer who is responsible for the disposal of its products is also constructing its products to ease recycling. Which will lower the TCO:).
Usually, one could say yes, although all law-giving decisions have to happen unanimously.
(In some rare cases with the approval of the European Parliament.)
But as stated before it's only a bunch of directors of the European Patent Office. Which happens to earn money on every issued patent.
AFAIK, according to the US patent system:
Alfred patented a Bug then is Charly not allowed to use Bugs in any way without the explicit permit by Alfred.
Contrary to the German patent system where patents don't apply to the research.
(But it's surely common that the research is granted as it's completely in the interest of Alfred that Charly discovers something interesting which relies on Bugs)
Imagine your using the KMP-algorithm in your programm as it's the fastest known (not true, of course) and free algorithm to search a substring in a string.
Now in progress of your programming, you have the idea to modificate the algorithm, (e.g. like Boyer-Moore).
Now you have to search wether this modificated-algorithm is patented or not. Which costs money or at least time.
If it's not patented, you'll have to patent it in order to protect your idea. This does surely costs money (a four decimal number AFAIK).
For a company like, say Big Blue or Microsoft, which have a legal departement as large as most small companies it's no problem.
But for a small software company or even a single programmer this are major obstacles.
Of course, if someone has a revolutionary idea, like solving the Travelling-salesman-problem in O(n^2), one surely deserves the money.
But wouldn't you think, that the same programmer would get a fairly decent job for his further work.
To defend mp3:
First of all, I do not consider myself as audiophile as my sound system costs definitly less than an average car:).
Secondly, those of the mpeg developers do,
and they employ professional (and trained) listener.
Thirdly, you must consider the codec used to
create the mp3-file. (You must consider the recording of the cd-a, too. Right?).
But, AFAIK this "128kb" = "CD Audio Quality" rating is for the average user.
Furthermore, Audio is highly subjectiv. Some people prefer vinyl to CD. As it's not digitized (and therefore also "compressed").
To disperse your pessimism:
Remember all those other CD-like sound-compressing medias (DDC, to name one), which didn't make it?
No one would buy it because it was worse than what one had (CD).
Speaking of TV. AFAIK all TV stations are already using compression (MPEG-2) to transmit their data.
Not to the end-user of course, but between their
different studios in different locations.
Bandwitdh is expensive, assured real-time bandwidth is even more so.
Furthermore, digital artifact can be avoided through QA whereas noise on analog data can't.
Guess what's coming next?
MP3-CDs whith all hits of one artist or
DVD-Audio with 96kHz sampling-rate and four discrete channels.
Re:hardware time is cheaper than programmer time
on
Java Rocks On Linux
·
· Score: 1
I agree with you mostly.
Good coding outweights language.
A faster machine can take care of the factor before O(x).
But...
simple-sorting algorithms work O(n^2)
quick-sort, merge-sort (name your favourite) sort
in O(n log n), IRC.
So don't use the first ones, the factor is
irrelevant.
Ummhh...
The O-notation is only asymptomatical.
For an end-user application which deals with
say 200 entries (e.g. in his email client), it's asympomatical sorting behaviour is totally irrelevant.
So the factor can be quite critical, especially in an end-user-enviroment, where the application has to respond fast or the user dislikes the application.
Maybe take a look at the Plankalkuel
http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/retro/plankalkuel/
at The Retrocomputing Museum.
It's a programming language developed in 1945 by a german. I assume there is as nearly as no english-american influence. (War, Axis/Allies)
Well, I can't point out what the german influence is.
I think the greatest influence in programming is
math. (Structured Query Language aside)
A professor of mine (in cs) told me
something about a japanese cs who built the first japanese computer (a clone of a british or american computer:) ) sometime in 70s, IRC.
There was something remarkable on the machine-code
of this clone. It should be somehow related with how DNA can be read (two complementary strings, bidirectional readable).
But don't rely on this. It was only a passing comment in a short lecture about the history of computing.
First of all: EU law overrules federal German law as German federal Law overrules state Law. Each country has five years to adopt the EU ruling to their laws.
Speaking of Germany is the EU. It's only insofar correct, that most rulings aren't ratified, if Germany doesn't approve. Did you notice the word "most"?
Furthermore, not a single EU law gets ratified, without every single of the fifteen nations approving. May it be Germany, Great Britain, or Luxembourgh.As it has been ratified at Maastricht.
The German goverment has to report to European Court like any other member of the European Union.
"this amounts to state censorship, and should not be tolerated""
RTFM (Read the fucking manual)// Will this be censored?
Taken from http://www.lib.byu.edu/~rdh/eurodocs/germ/ggeng.ht ml
1. BASIC RIGHTS (A little bit abridged by me)
Article 1 (Protection of human dignity). (1) The dignity of man is inviolable. To respect and protect it is the duty of all state authority. (2)... (3)...
Article 2 (Rights of liberty). (1) Everyone has the right to the free development of his personality insofar as he does not violate the rights of others or offend against the constitutional order or the moral code. // Plain text: Do what you want as long you don't care to destroy democracy (2) Everyone has the right to life and to inviolability of his person. The freedom of the individual is inviolable. These rights may only be encroached upon pursuant to a law.// You may only sentenced to prison by law
Article 3 (Equality before the law). (1)... (2)... (3) No one may be prejudiced or favored because of his sex, his parentage, his race, his language, his homeland and origin, his faith or his religious or political opinions.// Just to emphasize
Article 4 (Freedom of faith, of conscience and of creed). (1) Freedom of faith and of conscience, and freedom of creed religious or ideological, are inviolable. (2) The undisturbed practice of religion is guaranteed. (3)...
Article 5 (Freedom of expression). (1) Everyone has the right to freely express and to disseminate his opinion by speech, writing and pictures and freely to inform himself from generally accessible sources. Freedom of the press and freedom of reporting by radio and motion pictures are guaranteed. There shall be no censorship. (2) These rights are limited by the provisions of the general laws, the provisions of law for the protection of youth and by the right to inviolability of personal honor. (3)....
Article 18 (Forfeiture of basic rights). Whoever abuses freedom of opinion, in particular freedom of the press (Article 5, paragraph 1).. in order to attack the free democratic basic order, forfeits these basic rights. The forfeiture and its extent are pronounced by the Federal Constitutional Court.// Not by the State// And not the "dignity of man" or "the right to life and the inviolability of his person"
"(it's legal but you won't live long)" I hope I misunderstood that passage, may it be my inability of english or yours
"But weather or not it's a religion is up to the government to decide." No, the Court as in any democratic society
Makes me think of the Palmer Raids and Red Scare. Article 1 might have come handy in this situation. btw. amnesty international lists the US as one of the nations in which the human rights are frequently violated by official action (death penalty, overcrowded prisons)
"The church and state are not seperate here" Article 140 refers to Article 137 of the Weimar Constitution: There is no state church....
"There are 3 religion classes... "
What happens in schools lies not in the jurisdication of the government. The states ("Laender") make the school laws. In fact, I didn't have to go to religion classes, most people didn't go, (I did although I'm an atheist)
AFAIK, in Berlin, nowadays, there is the possibility to go to muslim classes
"hmm. what else should we nice americans learn today? oh yeah. porn is legal. so is alcohol. A 16 year old can go to a grocery store and legally buy a condom, porn mag, beer and a pack of camels...."
porn is illegal in germany. porn in the sense that the "sexual act is depicted in a noncensual way, brutal, egoistical way,..."
Following the article 5 in consideration of Article 2 and 1
If you consider magazines like Playboy as porn, yes you can buy such magazines being sixteen years of age.
"..buy a condom..." You even get them for free as presents by parties and others, on the one hand as a reminder on the other hand as a joke.
There is a four times higher teenage pregnancy rate in the US than in Germany. That makes me think.
Don't tell me, just because it's illegal teenager, don't drink in the states.
"Know a little about another society before you start saying what they can and can't do, would ya please?"
Isn't that ironic? What is more dangerous incomplete/incorrect knowledge or no knowledge at all?
As I've said, it's a very simplyfied example... Sending you binary data of about 128kb, I won't label them or you won't check them. Any way you look at it, it's another source of faults. 1m is the standard unit, any other abbreviation like 1km for 1000m is just for the human eye and easier to write. Furthermore: Hmm, should the sattelite pass mars at a distance of 30,000m, 30,000cm or 30,000km? BTW, the use of the asterices was an assumption of knowledge on your side.
>The metric system simply is not the darling of >real engineers the way it is of the academicians.
In your sourroundings, I dare to say.
I would even dare to say that to the rest of the world (including most of non-US engineers, if not all) it's a unpleasantness at best.
"Hey, (foreign name here), what was a (imperial unit here) in (metric unit here)."
>What possible justification could there have been >for neglecting to teach you about the system of measurement commonly used where your own country? >That's "truly unthinkable idiocy" if I've ever heard it.
Guess what has happened centuries ago in other countries? In Germany, it's common to use "PS" instead of KiloWatts speaking of cars, but thats just a kind of atavism. It's not taught by school, you just happen to get used to it. There is no rational cause why to use it. Like the Imperial System, it's not superior because of the base or the scale, it's just common used and thats why you have a more intuitive grasp about it. Not teaching it, means the next generation will get more and more used to the metric-system and will get a more intuitive grasp too.
Especially, if your using computer and your working globally, a specified standard must exist.
That is the "SI" (systeme internationale).
Simplified example for Computer: I type
Location: Object x y z A 10 9 0.8 B 10 8 1.0
assuming that you'll know that x, y, z are in meters, because everyone in my souroundings will asume it too. You will see it as feet, for the same reasons.
Normally, such asumptions aren't a fault their making communication effective, because I don't have to explain everything.
We're all writing english, that's another standard, we've agreed upon.
Slashdot Mirror
And how do you suppose to compare the perfomance of one police with another?
How many people they arrest?
How many people are convicted?
How do you think a profit orientated police with emphasis on the above goals would act?
IRC, Belgium has several concurrent police agencies.
The concurrency between them lead(s?) to serious problems.
Following the motto:
"All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence; then success is sure."
Mark Twain
I'd rather say:
"If you think education is expensive, Try Ignorance!!!"
Andy McIntyre
So go for it.
"There is nothing more frightful than ignorance in action."
Goethe
I think your missing some points.
First, companies still aren't held responsible for "[...]an irresponsible owner's disposal of his machine."
Their held responsible for the legal disposal of your machine.
"Making manufacturers responsible would just result in higher consumer prices."
Which you had to pay otherwise, too. (Legal disposal assumed.)
But now you can consider the costs of buying and disposal before you bought it. Forcing the companies to reduce the costs of disposal as it becomes the costs you pay.
Sure... something like dumping it in the wilderness, because it's cheaper or easier.
Holding the company who created it responsible really makes no sense since it is no longer their property.
So you can't sue them, because you used the microwave to dry your cat?
But why aren't then the producing companies taking the stuff back and outsourcing the recycling?
:).
I think producer responsibility is an advantage to the consumer as he pays for the whole product when he's buying it, including the disposal.
(Which he otherwise had to do afterwards.)
"Hmm, am I buying this TV for $1000 (recycable)
or $975 (n.r.) for an equal one?
I'll go for the cheaper one."
"Heck, the TV is broken beyond repair."
"O.K. this is $50 for the disposal. Thank you, Sir."
Furthermore a producer who is responsible for the disposal of its products is also constructing its products to ease recycling. Which will lower the TCO
Usually, one could say yes, although all law-giving decisions have to happen unanimously.
(In some rare cases with the approval of the European Parliament.)
But as stated before it's only a bunch of directors of the European Patent Office. Which happens to earn money on every issued patent.
AFAIK, according to the US patent system:
Alfred patented a Bug then is Charly not allowed to use Bugs in any way without the explicit permit by Alfred.
Contrary to the German patent system where patents don't apply to the research.
(But it's surely common that the research is granted as it's completely in the interest of Alfred that Charly discovers something interesting which relies on Bugs)
Imagine your using the KMP-algorithm in your programm as it's the fastest known (not true, of course) and free algorithm to search a substring in a string.
Now in progress of your programming, you have the idea to modificate the algorithm, (e.g. like Boyer-Moore).
Now you have to search wether this modificated-algorithm is patented or not. Which costs money or at least time.
If it's not patented, you'll have to patent it in order to protect your idea. This does surely costs money (a four decimal number AFAIK).
For a company like, say Big Blue or Microsoft, which have a legal departement as large as most small companies it's no problem.
But for a small software company or even a single programmer this are major obstacles.
Of course, if someone has a revolutionary idea, like solving the Travelling-salesman-problem in O(n^2), one surely deserves the money.
But wouldn't you think, that the same programmer would get a fairly decent job for his further work.
How does the lack of patented algorithms make it superiour to PGP (technically not morally)?
To defend mp3: :).
First of all, I do not consider myself as audiophile as my sound system costs definitly less than an average car
Secondly, those of the mpeg developers do,
and they employ professional (and trained) listener.
Thirdly, you must consider the codec used to
create the mp3-file. (You must consider the recording of the cd-a, too. Right?).
But, AFAIK this "128kb" = "CD Audio Quality" rating is for the average user.
Furthermore, Audio is highly subjectiv. Some people prefer vinyl to CD. As it's not digitized (and therefore also "compressed").
To disperse your pessimism:
Remember all those other CD-like sound-compressing medias (DDC, to name one), which didn't make it?
No one would buy it because it was worse than what one had (CD).
Speaking of TV. AFAIK all TV stations are already using compression (MPEG-2) to transmit their data.
Not to the end-user of course, but between their
different studios in different locations.
Bandwitdh is expensive, assured real-time bandwidth is even more so.
Furthermore, digital artifact can be avoided through QA whereas noise on analog data can't.
Guess what's coming next?
MP3-CDs whith all hits of one artist or
DVD-Audio with 96kHz sampling-rate and four discrete channels.
I agree with you mostly.
Good coding outweights language.
A faster machine can take care of the factor before O(x).
But...
simple-sorting algorithms work O(n^2)
quick-sort, merge-sort (name your favourite) sort
in O(n log n), IRC.
So don't use the first ones, the factor is
irrelevant.
Ummhh...
The O-notation is only asymptomatical.
For an end-user application which deals with
say 200 entries (e.g. in his email client), it's asympomatical sorting behaviour is totally irrelevant.
So the factor can be quite critical, especially in an end-user-enviroment, where the application has to respond fast or the user dislikes the application.
IRC, it has more something to do with *BSD.
The "/etc/init.d" way is the "linux-way" whereas
"/sbin/init.d" is the BSD-way.
Please correct me if I'm wrong.
Maybe take a look at the Plankalkuel
:) ) sometime in 70s, IRC.
http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/retro/plankalkuel/
at The Retrocomputing Museum.
It's a programming language developed in 1945 by a german. I assume there is as nearly as no english-american influence. (War, Axis/Allies)
Well, I can't point out what the german influence is.
I think the greatest influence in programming is
math. (Structured Query Language aside)
A professor of mine (in cs) told me
something about a japanese cs who built the first japanese computer (a clone of a british or american computer
There was something remarkable on the machine-code
of this clone. It should be somehow related with how DNA can be read (two complementary strings, bidirectional readable).
But don't rely on this. It was only a passing comment in a short lecture about the history of computing.
Maybe someone can help me here?
First of all: EU law overrules federal German law as German federal Law overrules state Law. Each country has five years to adopt the EU ruling to their laws.
Speaking of Germany is the EU. It's only insofar correct, that most rulings aren't ratified, if Germany doesn't approve. Did you notice the word "most"?
Furthermore, not a single EU law gets ratified, without every single of the fifteen nations approving. May it be Germany, Great Britain, or Luxembourgh.As it has been ratified at Maastricht.
The German goverment has to report to European Court like any other member of the European Union.
"this amounts to state censorship, and should not be tolerated""
RTFM (Read the fucking manual) // Will this be censored?
Taken from http://www.lib.byu.edu/~rdh/eurodocs/germ/ggeng.h1. BASIC RIGHTS (A little bit abridged by me)
Article 1 (Protection of human dignity). (1) The dignity of man is inviolable. To respect and protect it is the duty of all state authority. (2) ... (3) ...
Article 2 (Rights of liberty). (1) Everyone has the right to the free development of his personality insofar as he does not violate the rights of others or offend against the constitutional order or the moral code. // Plain text: Do what you want as long you don't care to destroy democracy (2) Everyone has the right to life and to inviolability of his person. The freedom of the individual is inviolable. These rights may only be encroached upon pursuant to a law. // You may only sentenced to prison by law
Article 3 (Equality before the law). (1) ... (2) ... (3) No one may be prejudiced or favored because of his sex, his parentage, his race, his language, his homeland and origin, his faith or his religious or political opinions. // Just to emphasize
Article 4 (Freedom of faith, of conscience and of creed). (1) Freedom of faith and of conscience, and freedom of creed religious or ideological, are inviolable. (2) The undisturbed practice of religion is guaranteed. (3)Article 5 (Freedom of expression). (1) Everyone has the right to freely express and to disseminate his opinion by speech, writing and pictures and freely to inform himself from generally accessible sources. Freedom of the press and freedom of reporting by radio and motion pictures are guaranteed. There shall be no censorship. (2) These rights are limited by the provisions of the general laws, the provisions of law for the protection of youth and by the right to inviolability of personal honor. (3) ....
Article 18 (Forfeiture of basic rights). Whoever abuses freedom of opinion, in particular freedom of the press (Article 5, paragraph 1) .. in order to attack the free democratic basic order, forfeits these basic rights. The forfeiture and its extent are pronounced by the Federal Constitutional Court. // Not by the State // And not the "dignity of man" or "the right to life and the inviolability of his person"
"(it's legal but you won't live long)" I hope I misunderstood that passage, may it be my inability of english or yours
"But weather or not it's a religion is up to the government to decide." No, the Court as in any democratic society
Makes me think of the Palmer Raids and Red Scare. Article 1 might have come handy in this situation. btw. amnesty international lists the US as one of the nations in which the human rights are frequently violated by official action (death penalty, overcrowded prisons)
"The church and state are not seperate here" Article 140 refers to Article 137 of the Weimar Constitution: There is no state church. ...
"There are 3 religion classes... "
What happens in schools lies not in the jurisdication of the government. The states ("Laender") make the school laws. In fact, I didn't have to go to religion classes, most people didn't go, (I did although I'm an atheist)
AFAIK, in Berlin, nowadays, there is the possibility to go to muslim classes
"hmm. what else should we nice americans learn today? oh yeah. porn is legal. so is alcohol. A 16 year old can go to a grocery store and legally buy a condom, porn mag, beer and a pack of camels. ..."
porn is illegal in germany. porn in the sense that the "sexual act is depicted in a noncensual way, brutal, egoistical way, ..."
Following the article 5 in consideration of Article 2 and 1
If you consider magazines like Playboy as porn, yes you can buy such magazines being sixteen years of age.
"..buy a condom..." You even get them for free as presents by parties and others, on the one hand as a reminder on the other hand as a joke.
There is a four times higher teenage pregnancy rate in the US than in Germany. That makes me think.
Don't tell me, just because it's illegal teenager, don't drink in the states.
"Know a little about another society before you start saying what they can and can't do, would ya please?"
Isn't that ironic? What is more dangerous incomplete/incorrect knowledge or no knowledge at all?
As I've said, it's a very simplyfied example... Sending you binary data of about 128kb, I won't label them or you won't check them. Any way you look at it, it's another source of faults. 1m is the standard unit, any other abbreviation like 1km for 1000m is just for the human eye and easier to write. Furthermore: Hmm, should the sattelite pass mars at a distance of 30,000m, 30,000cm or 30,000km? BTW, the use of the asterices was an assumption of knowledge on your side.
>The metric system simply is not the darling of >real engineers the way it is of the academicians.
In your sourroundings, I dare to say.
I would even dare to say that to the rest of the world (including most of non-US engineers, if not all) it's a unpleasantness at best.
"Hey, (foreign name here), what was a (imperial unit here) in (metric unit here)."
>What possible justification could there have been >for neglecting to teach you about the system of measurement commonly used where your own country?
>That's "truly unthinkable idiocy" if I've ever heard it.
Guess what has happened centuries ago in other countries? In Germany, it's common to use "PS" instead of KiloWatts speaking of cars, but thats just a kind of atavism. It's not taught by school,
you just happen to get used to it. There is no rational cause why to use it.
Like the Imperial System, it's not superior because of the base or the scale, it's just common used and thats why you have a more intuitive grasp about it.
Not teaching it, means the next generation will get more and more used to the metric-system and will get a more intuitive grasp too.
Especially, if your using computer and your working globally, a specified standard must exist.
That is the "SI" (systeme internationale).
Simplified example for Computer:
I type
Location:
Object x y z
A 10 9 0.8
B 10 8 1.0
assuming that you'll know that x, y, z are in meters, because everyone in my souroundings will asume it too.
You will see it as feet, for the same reasons.
Normally, such asumptions aren't a fault their making communication effective, because I don't have to explain everything.
We're all writing english, that's another standard,
we've agreed upon.