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  1. Re:LP's ??? You must be kidding.. on 10 Technologies MIA · · Score: 2, Insightful

    An LP held 45 minutes of music for most of its life and about 60 minutes at its most advanced. It cost about $20 (in today's US dollars). Now a blank DVD ROM holds about 4000 minutes in high-quality MP3 or OGG files and sells for $0.39 (in today's US dollars). An exact copy of this set of 4500 minutes can be made on another 39 cent blank disk in about 15 minutes. And you can control which selections will be copied and the order.

    And yet, none of the reduction in the price of production of a record shows up in the price to customer.

  2. Zero Emission Vehicle on 10 Technologies MIA · · Score: 1

    5. GM's EV1

    Zero Emission Vehicle. ROFLMAO. Zero-emission as long as you don't count the power plant that burned (coal|oil|gas|atomic nuclei) and polluted somone else's back yard. Sure, I suppose the power could have been photoelectric or wind produced, but if you believe no harm to the earth was done in the process of manufacturing those systems, you're clueless. (Hint: Strip mining for metals, processing ore, smelting, doping chemicals for solar, etc). Not that I have a problem with any of the above, but let's be realistic here. There's no such thing as a "Zero Emission Vehicle".


    Moving emission from the vehicle to a power plant has a huge bonus: point sources of pollution are much easier to address (filter, upgrade to cleaner to technology, whatever) than diffuse sources.

    To put it bluntly: Even if you believe nuclear power is The Way(TM), you probably shouldn't put it in cars. Not yet.

  3. Software houses that care about your life on Hiring Good Programmers Matters · · Score: 2, Insightful

    The reason is as someone who has friends in both worlds rarely does the "software house" ever care about your outside life.

    We live in different worlds. I have no experience of software product companies that try to consume you. On the contrary, in my experience, software product companies that hire "good programmers" are conscious that they "good programmers" are often "high performers" in several areas that don't include work, and need to be to keep happy, and thus productive. I guess that is because the people who consequently hire "good programmers" are similar themselves (not necessarily programmers, but of the same general disposition).

  4. at ease! Greenland is not EU on Canada and Denmark using Google as Battleground · · Score: 1

    The territory was unclaimed prior to 1985,
    Allowing a European nation (denmark) to effectively claim new territory in waters of North America violates the Monroe Doctrine. While Canada is not a very good claimant its the only claimant that is compatible with US interests. If Greenland were independent it wouldnt be an issue, but I dont like the idea of Canada being forced to cede territory in North America to the EU(denmark).


    Greenland is not a part of the Union:
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_member_state_ territories_and_their_relations_with_the_EU#Greenl and

    If Greenland claiming Hans Island would be a problem with the Monroe doctrine, then Canada claiming it would be too, considering who's queen.

  5. Re:Do you know what a Semite is? on Intel On A Building Spree · · Score: 1

    No, there is no such thing as a "semite". As you may look up elsewhere, the word antisemitism was invented by Wilhelm Marr in 1879 as a euphemism for the age-old Judenhass (jew-hatred in German), to lend it a more scientific air. Of course, the science of the day, racial biology has long been tossed on the scrap heap of history, and noone would any longer seriously suggest that there exists such things a "semite" race. At the superficial level, jews come in all colors, and on a DNA level, you can see traces of the migration over the millenia.

    Not even in the connotation "speaker of semitic languages" semite is meaningful. It would not include the larger part of the worlds jews (who speak English, Russian, French and other non-semitic languages), on the other hand it would include the people of Ethiopia and Eritrea.

    Hence, antisemite means hatred of jews, not of arabs, or any other people. Suggesting otherwise is suggestive of a quite sinister agenda.

    Thus, since Zionism is a belief that advocates the oppression of other semitic people in "Israel" based on racial and religious grounds

    Your premise is wrong. Zionism is advocates the establishment and, now that it exists, the continued existence of a sovereign jewish state. In that it is not different from other national liberation movements of its generation.

    I think a good model for this for non-Jews is set by Darius who gave Ezra permission to repopulate Jerusalem and Artaxerxes who gave Nehemiah permission to rebuild it while never getting involved themselves or renouncing sovereignty over the land (and thus causing trouble with bordering countries, many being anti-jewish for real). Both of these kings avoided the politic quagmire that exists today because they both knew that returning a nation to their homeland is a very nice thing to do, giving control of your territory and giving full support to ultra-nationalists is just downright bad for business.

    So, pray tell us, why do you want to deny the Jewish people sovereignty, when your main complaint with Israel is that they are denying the palestinian people theirs?

  6. Re:CRTs damage your eyes too (supposedly) on Can Cell Phones Damage Our Eyes? · · Score: 1

    The trick is to take regular breaks, e.g. once an hour to spend a few minutes focusing on something in the distance.

    I don't know about you guys, but I don't have that problem. I take a few minutes per hour focusing on my work. The rest of the time my eyes wander aimlessly around (staying in their sockets, thank you).

    No, but seriously. Do anyone read books, watch CRTs etc for hours at a time without interruption? Literally. I believe most people look up from their books from time to time, to look out the window or at Miss Gorgeous in the next row at the library, or something like that.

  7. "You do not need to be a member to donate." on Help Solve the Mystery of the Pioneer Anomaly · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    No shit!

  8. Interrupts better than polling on Driven to Distraction by Technology · · Score: 2, Insightful

    YMMV, but I find that if I, for any longer period of time, turn off notifications for e-mail etc (or if I am forced to use my webmail instead of a fat IMAP client or so) I will spend a lot more time polling my webmail than I would have lost due to "push" interruptions. The same goes for slashdot and the like.

    I suppose there are parameters that I could vary (get a more interesting job, for one;).

  9. Re:Quantum Consciousness, Not Size, Counts on Humanoid Robot HR-2 · · Score: 1

    Such an achievement would qualify for a Nobel Prize in physics.

    Or medicine...

  10. Re:No fun on Nigerian Scammers Brought to Justice · · Score: 2, Interesting

    In June of 1995, an American was murdered in Lagos, Nigeria, while pursuing a 4-1-9 scam, and numerous other foreign nationals have been reported as missing."

    Of course, Nigeria might not be the country to tourist in at all. As Lonely Planet so eloquently puts it, the highlights of Nigeria include "Live to tell about it".

  11. Re:Let's not and say we did. on U.N. To Govern Internet? · · Score: 1

    The UN is very good for diplmacy for example. All nations can go there and resolve conflicts instead of starting wars. Granted, it hasn't work very good and could be made better, but I don't see any alternative.

    How do you mean that? It doesn't work, but it is an excuse for not trying something else, so it is actually causing harm. It is a bit like dowsing for finding avalanche victims. It doesn't work, and if you do that, and not send out the dogs, people die.

    (This is about the political branch of the UN, the agencies do a whole lot of useful work. Not all of them all of the time, but in general one could claim it is working.)

  12. Re:When the UN adopts the first amendment... on U.N. To Govern Internet? · · Score: 1

    That's why the US founding documents speak of inalienable rights, endowed by the creator. In other words, rights that transcend the power of government.

    Big mistake to involve the creator in your constitution. In case there is none, you are in deep shit.

  13. Re:An eye for an eye and all that on Death Penalty For Hackers? · · Score: 1

    Gandhi's saying was just a well found formula to reject the world's massive use of the violent justice, as seen in death penalty, zero tolerance, fascism, and of course in his case, expressed that Indian should not take on British with violence, looking for vengeance, but pacifically (and it did work). I think it's a great analogy.

    Gandhi was wrong and so are you. Many seem to have some misconceptions about Jewish laws in spite of having lived in the Western world. Jewish scholars, from mishnaic times on, repeat what I have said above: It is about reparations. It is about breaking the cycle of violence. Interestingly enough they have been vindicated by "EVERYBODY ON CIVILIZED EARTH" as you so eloquently put it, since this is the way legislation works now. Remember, the "turn the other cheek" thing hasn't been enacted in law in most countries.

    Note: I am not saying that Gandhi's ahimsa ideology was wrong or bad (on the contrary), but that the aforementioned stupid quote doesn't do it justice. Being a mere mortal, he too said some utterly stupid things, this being one.

  14. Re:Could someone please cite a published study? on Death Penalty For Hackers? · · Score: 1

    Who cares if it isn't always a deterrent? Kill em and get them off the street without taking up space and taxpayer money. One less schmuck on the planet.

    If you are willing to do away with any proper justice, then it will probably be cheaper, otherwise, locking people up for life is always cheaper.

  15. An eye for an eye and all that on Death Penalty For Hackers? · · Score: 1

    As Ghandi said - an eye for an eye and soon the whole world would be blind.

    As wise as Mr Gandhi ever were, he didn't know his mosaic laws well enough to use it for analogies.

    "An eye for an eye" is not about the right to poke out the other bloke's eye because he poked out yours. It is about reconciliation by trying repair whatever damage you caused the other guy. So, if you kill his sheep, by will or accident, you should compensate him with a sheep, so that you can both get on with your lives. When it comes to bodily harm, there is no way you can restore the other guy's eyesight, but you can try to compensate him for the *worth* of the eyesight. We're talking ancient damages legislation, to replace the older system of blood vengeance which was not uncommon. There were even guidelines established how much different bodily harms were worth.

  16. Re:Could someone please cite a published study? on Death Penalty For Hackers? · · Score: 1

    From the little I know about the workings of the human mind, most sociopaths don't react to things the same way the rest of us do, and people who cause massive damage on an any scale - economic, physical, emotional - are sociopaths.

    That would of course include a large number of large corporate executives, and it doesn't surprise me, a personality disorder can be a tremendous motivator.

  17. Re:expression of ideas is key on The Great Firewall of China, Continued · · Score: 1

    Ok so which country isn't violating human rights? 2, 1, none? It's a nice piece of paper but few leaders seem to obey it when going gets tough.

    Giving you the benefit of the doubt, I guess you are not trying to excuse China from blame because there are western democracies with flaws, or because the concept of human right inherently contains goal conflicts. To take a simple example is that to guarantee civil liberties a state has to impose taxes on its citizens effectively infringing on their property rights. To combat crime, it has to empower the police with powers that intrude on yours. The worse the crime situation in your country, the more powers, the less civil liberties. Of course, rampant crime limits your civil liberties, so it is all a game of trying to make it balance. Just the right amount of laws to maximize the rights of the citizens (or so the theory runs, governments, just like programming frameworks, can get its own life). Replace crime with terrorism, or war, as necessary. It is interesting to see how well these systems handle stress.

    Anyway, Freedom House has the list: http://www.freedomhouse.org/research/survey2005.ht m

  18. expression of ideas is key on The Great Firewall of China, Continued · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Once again, I don't think Internet access is a Basic Human Right, so I don't see any ethical issues here.

    No, neither is access to paper to print on, or printing presses, but we still take for granted that the government should not seize printing presses based on what ideas they were used to disseminate, and that that is a natural continuation of a basic human right, the freedom of expression (UN Declaration of the Human Rights, article 19, http://www.un.org/Overview/rights.html).

    So, if you regulate the Internet to weed out uncomfortable ideas, you are indeed violating the UN declaration of the Human Rights, to which I believe China is a party.

    Also:
    Every country has the sovereign right to make its own laws.

    Indeed, but by signing said convention, you are giving up a part of the sovereignity of the country (article 2).

    An objection could be made, I suppose, that blocking Child Porn is completely different from blocking information about Democracy, but I propose that it is merely a difference of degree.

    Do that. However, not that the freedom of expression protects the exchange of ideas and information. It can be argued that child porn is not an opinion. In all western democracies that prohibit child porn, it is still legal to have opinions about child porn (that it should be legal, for instance).

    The comparison had been more accurate if you had compared with how some companies cooperate with the French government to stop foreign nazi sites and goods to be served to the French public. The quite common European prohibition against racist incitement and other hate crimes are indeed an limitation of the freedom of expression (well-founded as it may be).

  19. In Soviet Russia... on The Great Firewall of China, Continued · · Score: 3, Funny

    Well there's this joke about someone sending a letter to his friend in Soviet, in the bad old days. He ended the letter with a note "I hope this letter gets through, in spite of the censorship". The letter was returned a few weeks later with a note attached: "This letter is returned as it contains false accusations against our country."

  20. Davenport on OSS Web-based File Management? · · Score: 1

    You could look at Davenport. It is a webdav to smb gateway. The nice thing with it compared to mod_webdav is that if you run Samba + Davenport the file ownership on the server is not that of the web server, but that of the actual user, meaning that NFS will serve the files with the same ownership as well.

    Maybe this is possible with mod_webdav too, but it wasn't obvious to me. With Davenport it was.

    http://davenport.sourceforge.net/

  21. Re:Victory! on EU Says No To Software Patents · · Score: 1

    Not just that, but it was a great day for European democracy, with the EU's elected body asserting itself totally over the unelected, untransparent Council.

    Untransparent maybe yes, but unelected no. The Council is composed of members of the member states cabinets and, while the exact procedure for appointing those varies from member state to member state, they get their jobs through a process that usually goes by the name of "western democracy". Typically it involves the respective parliaments of the member states.

  22. Apple wood on Real Wood iPod · · Score: 4, Funny

    I guess apple wood isn't hard enough, but it seems like a natural choice for this particular application.

  23. Separation of concerns (another approach) on Linux Finds Its Way to More Handheld Devices · · Score: 1

    One way to pack more power into a handheld device without making it unwieldy is to separate the computing/storage part from the UI part. That is pack the CPU and disk part (with it's batteries) in a "brick" and make a separate screen that essentially just runs remote desktop over some appropriate wireless connection. Depending on your needs, you can mix and match bricks and screens of different sizes. A one kilo brick could go in your back pack while you walk around with a screen. Or, if you are indoors, the brick stays on your desk, and you walk around the office. Or, you could bring the brick home from the office and dock it with your home office 24" screen and keyboard, much like you would with a laptop. Then of course, you wouldn't need a wireless screen.

    There is a difference between this and a laptop is the mix and match part. If you need a truly handheld device that you can use while walking around or standing up away from a desk, a laptop is not a good solution. Typing with one hand, holding the laptop in the other is strenous. Especially if we are talking top-of-the-line laptops. Tablets are limited in computing power, and are heavier than a same-size screen would have to be with this model.

  24. Re:Come to think of it... on Eclipse 3.1 Released · · Score: 1

    I never could use either of them because I did not have a good enough system (PIII 1ghz with 512 megs).

    You have some other problem. I have a slightly weaker notebook (0,85 GHz, 0,5 Gb), and Eclipse runs nicely.

  25. A much simpler explanation on Study Links Genetic Diseases to Intelligence · · Score: 1

    In judaism the geek is the norm. The study and debate of jewish law is the finest you can do, and it is not something restricted to the elite. It is encouraged for all (men, at least). So, being a scholar, a rabbi, earns you social points, and gets you the girls so you can procreate (the first commandment in the bible!).

    The finest thing a Christian boy could become was a priest. Probably took some intelligence too. Except priests didn't marry (until reformation that is, so the protestants might be catching up on the jews, but they are like 1500 years behind, so it could take a while).

    Now, that is, if there was any truth at all to the idea that there is a genetical difference in intelligence between ashkenazim and the rest of the world. I doubt it. Either way, cultural factors must play an overshadowing role.