That's not the only problem, or even the biggest one. Third parties tend to "steal" votes from one of the major parties, so by voting third party you're essentially supporting the one guy out of the three that you'd be least likely to vote for.
That's the "spoiler" effect that put Bill Clinton into office in 1992 and George Bush into office in 2000. I find it hard to believe many people who voted for Nader in 2000 would have chosen Bush over Gore. Given the election was so close it's hard to argue against the stipulation "Ralph Nader elected George Bush".
So it's not hard to understand why lots of people refuse to support third parties. Personally I'd rather the US had some kind of parliamentary system, where I could vote for the party that most represents my views. But that just isn't going to happen, barring some extraordinary event.
That's not fair to him. The Burning Tower stuff he's done with Niven is decent, at least. Is it as good as the Mote trilogy? Well, no, but how does your work this week compare to your best output in the last fifty years?
I don't think I've ever seen him rail about people who bought used books. You want to buy books used? Go ahead. This discussion is about a company that's making other people's work available without compensation so they can drive traffic to a site and cash in on advertising.
The other thing he's noted on more than one occasion is many of those reprints are produced without his authorization. At one point he recounted running across an edition of his work in a big box store that had never been authorized and for which he had never been paid. And that wasn't a one-time incident. So it's entirely possible he never made a dime from, and did even authorize the production of the book that fell apart on you.
I guess I shouldn't be, but I'm surprised at the attitude of slashdotters on this issue. Yes, the takedown notice included a few mistakes. But the reality is the people running the site were using thousands of works owned by other people to sell advertising on their site. All without compensating or even notifying the authors. That's pretty damn shady.
The vast majority of authors don't make a hell of a lot of money. Pournelle has been one of the top-tier SF writers over the last couple decades and he certainly can't retire on his residuals. Authors aren't like some sixteen-year-old made-up pop icon that's gonna make millions and blow it all on coke whether or not you copy her songs. When they lose residuals it hurts.
There's a big difference between companies having access to broadband and individuals having access to broadband. Companies can rent a T1 if they need it - it's not that much money for a company. What we're talking about here is broadband access by individuals in their homes. I don't believe that's an economic must-have.
What, exactly, is so important about broadband (as opposed to satellite or dialup) that my taxes need to be made available so other people have access to it in their homes?
Life must be good in the boonies if this is a "crisis".
I'm sick of subsidizing other people's lifestyles. Where I live (dense suburban) you couldn't buy a damn doghouse for what a rural mansion would cost. We have smog, traffic, noise, crime, etc. But I'm here. Why? Because of sushi bars and broadband.
I already subsidize rural electricity, postal service, and highway infrastructure. People who live in the country can get satellite internet or live with dialup. Don't expect me to pay for your choice of scenery.
Well, that's a different issue. The fact of the matter is for the most part they don't read the bills at any time - before or after the conference committee. They rely on the staff to figure out whether to vote on it. But presumably the staff goes over the conference reconciled bill. And no, they're not perfect.
There was a case, either earlier this year or last year, where the final version of one of the bills had some insignificant difference due to a typographical error. In other words, the House and Senate passed different versions of the final bill. Nobody noticed until after the President signed it. Technically, I think, that bill didn't become law at that time.
Actually that is incorrect. It's true bills that are different go into conference committees. But when they come out of the conference committee the new version has to pass both houses before it's sent to the president. It's true things get slipped in when the bills are being reconciled, but the full House and Senate get another chance to turn them down.
What a load of crap. "Anti-intellectualism" isn't the same as anti-intelligence. The reason Americans are suspicious of "intellectuals" is we don't think there's much correlation between self-professed intellectualism and actual intelligence.
Only supporters of those two leading losers thought they were more intelligent, by the way. Bush had better grades and better test scores than both Gore and Kerry. Neither of them have a Harvard MBA. If your complete definition of intelligence revolves around one's public speaking ability, well, that's pathetic.
And it doesn't have anything to do with Christianity. The fact that the enlightenment (the Scottish one, not the French) began in Europe among Christians is no accident. No, the suspicion started with the great "isms" of the twentieth century - Fascism and Marxism. Both should be obvious failures as a way to organize society, but were foisted on the masses by "intellectuals".
The thing is, if you don't get run over by a bus and killed instantly, you will be in the other camp someday. Not only that, when you're not feeling well your ability to cover the additional cost will be impaired, since you'll be paying for things insurance doesn't cover as well as taking extra time off. Is it so bad to pay for other people in that boat now and be the beneficiary later?
One thing I really like about IT is the refusal of most geeks to put up with this kind of navel gazing bullshit. People who're always on about "power struggles" and "ignorant of diversity" never make good programmers, because computers aren't likely to be bullied into behaving like the whipped men in their lives.
When I read "I've struggled with gender politics" what I see is "I'm a lousy programmer and people keep treating me like a lousy programmer because I'm a woman."
What does that have to do with the price of tea in China? The fact remains you have no evidence - none, zip - that there's any blackmail of public officials going on. Of course it's possible, in the same sense it possible the illuminati control our government, or the Bilderbergers, or some shadowy European association of ex-pat Greeks. But it's gonna take more than your own fevered dreams to convince normal people the fix is in.
By the way, I don't think it's any great feat for the Anthrax "bomber" to remain undetected. Ted Kaczynski managed to stay on the loose while sending sixteen bombs over eighteen years. He'd still be out there if he own brother hadn't turned him in. The fact that we haven't caught the Anthrax guy isn't proof of anything. It doesn't even suggest anything.
Have you ever held a job? In my company the hiring department is running scared, and will pretty much hire any woman that can spell "IT". This is working out about as well as you might expect.
I don't see any evidence that's actually happening. If anything, it's the left, which is trying to silence critics of global warming that's conducting an assault on science. Toe the line or lose your grants. Is that how we search for truth?
I recall the left's assault on The Bell Curve. Who is assaulting science?
In any event, those two magazines have changed. They're much less concerned with science than presenting pseudo-science as fact to score political points. When I subscribed to Sciam twenty years ago that wasn't the case. In fact there's quite a bit less science in every issue than there used to be, and they've thrown out many of the details in an effort to be accessable to more readers. Of course, I understand the Popular Science crowd is bigger, but it's sad to see the destruction of a once-great magazine.
Pretty much. NS has been dumbed down and politically slanted compared to earlier years. I don't know why, but it seems to be a trend, since Scientific American is a hollow shell of its former self for the same reasons. They should go into the politics section of the magazine racks, not science.
People aren't takeing math and science in the US because the perception is all the tech jobs are going to China. Why would you sign up for "hard" classes and then hit the unemployment line after school?
Incidentally, I don't think the perception is necessarily true, but after the tech bubble burst a lot of people hit the streets.
This is a story about the FBI calling up and making a request that doesn't have the force of law. If you want to do something about this call up your phone company and ask what the policy is regarding oral requests from the FBI. If you don't like it, use a different one.
And we're not talking about wiretaps, here. We're talking about records of who you call. The courts have ruled, over the years, that this data is not yours. It belongs to the phone company. In fact, those court rulings are probably what prompted the change in policy.
Sure, but if they sniff your traffic what they'll see is you going to the anonymous server over and over. It doesn't really tell them anything beyond the fact that you're browsing, since the proxy server buffers the http requests.
The idea this congress is going to make changes in the patent system that actually benefit society as opposed to patent-holders is daft. Congress has been bought and paid for - look at what they did for Disney when they "reformed" the copyright laws. Nope, if Congress changes anything it will be to extend the length of patents and make them more difficult to challenge, which is the exact opposite of what needs to be done.
Slashdot Mirror
That's not the only problem, or even the biggest one. Third parties tend to "steal" votes from one of the major parties, so by voting third party you're essentially supporting the one guy out of the three that you'd be least likely to vote for.
That's the "spoiler" effect that put Bill Clinton into office in 1992 and George Bush into office in 2000. I find it hard to believe many people who voted for Nader in 2000 would have chosen Bush over Gore. Given the election was so close it's hard to argue against the stipulation "Ralph Nader elected George Bush".
So it's not hard to understand why lots of people refuse to support third parties. Personally I'd rather the US had some kind of parliamentary system, where I could vote for the party that most represents my views. But that just isn't going to happen, barring some extraordinary event.
That's not fair to him. The Burning Tower stuff he's done with Niven is decent, at least. Is it as good as the Mote trilogy? Well, no, but how does your work this week compare to your best output in the last fifty years?
I don't think I've ever seen him rail about people who bought used books. You want to buy books used? Go ahead. This discussion is about a company that's making other people's work available without compensation so they can drive traffic to a site and cash in on advertising.
The other thing he's noted on more than one occasion is many of those reprints are produced without his authorization. At one point he recounted running across an edition of his work in a big box store that had never been authorized and for which he had never been paid. And that wasn't a one-time incident. So it's entirely possible he never made a dime from, and did even authorize the production of the book that fell apart on you.
I guess I shouldn't be, but I'm surprised at the attitude of slashdotters on this issue. Yes, the takedown notice included a few mistakes. But the reality is the people running the site were using thousands of works owned by other people to sell advertising on their site. All without compensating or even notifying the authors. That's pretty damn shady.
The vast majority of authors don't make a hell of a lot of money. Pournelle has been one of the top-tier SF writers over the last couple decades and he certainly can't retire on his residuals. Authors aren't like some sixteen-year-old made-up pop icon that's gonna make millions and blow it all on coke whether or not you copy her songs. When they lose residuals it hurts.
There's a big difference between companies having access to broadband and individuals having access to broadband. Companies can rent a T1 if they need it - it's not that much money for a company. What we're talking about here is broadband access by individuals in their homes. I don't believe that's an economic must-have. What, exactly, is so important about broadband (as opposed to satellite or dialup) that my taxes need to be made available so other people have access to it in their homes?
Life must be good in the boonies if this is a "crisis".
I'm sick of subsidizing other people's lifestyles. Where I live (dense suburban) you couldn't buy a damn doghouse for what a rural mansion would cost. We have smog, traffic, noise, crime, etc. But I'm here. Why? Because of sushi bars and broadband.
I already subsidize rural electricity, postal service, and highway infrastructure. People who live in the country can get satellite internet or live with dialup. Don't expect me to pay for your choice of scenery.
I don't think those are constant dollars. So if the price is flat it's going down at least 3% a year. More, actually.
Well, that's a different issue. The fact of the matter is for the most part they don't read the bills at any time - before or after the conference committee. They rely on the staff to figure out whether to vote on it. But presumably the staff goes over the conference reconciled bill. And no, they're not perfect.
There was a case, either earlier this year or last year, where the final version of one of the bills had some insignificant difference due to a typographical error. In other words, the House and Senate passed different versions of the final bill. Nobody noticed until after the President signed it. Technically, I think, that bill didn't become law at that time.
Actually that is incorrect. It's true bills that are different go into conference committees. But when they come out of the conference committee the new version has to pass both houses before it's sent to the president. It's true things get slipped in when the bills are being reconciled, but the full House and Senate get another chance to turn them down.
It always glows like this. At least, after my trip to Amsterdam.
What a load of crap. "Anti-intellectualism" isn't the same as anti-intelligence. The reason Americans are suspicious of "intellectuals" is we don't think there's much correlation between self-professed intellectualism and actual intelligence. Only supporters of those two leading losers thought they were more intelligent, by the way. Bush had better grades and better test scores than both Gore and Kerry. Neither of them have a Harvard MBA. If your complete definition of intelligence revolves around one's public speaking ability, well, that's pathetic. And it doesn't have anything to do with Christianity. The fact that the enlightenment (the Scottish one, not the French) began in Europe among Christians is no accident. No, the suspicion started with the great "isms" of the twentieth century - Fascism and Marxism. Both should be obvious failures as a way to organize society, but were foisted on the masses by "intellectuals".
Great. Then how dow they know the model is correct?
The thing is, if you don't get run over by a bus and killed instantly, you will be in the other camp someday. Not only that, when you're not feeling well your ability to cover the additional cost will be impaired, since you'll be paying for things insurance doesn't cover as well as taking extra time off. Is it so bad to pay for other people in that boat now and be the beneficiary later?
One thing I really like about IT is the refusal of most geeks to put up with this kind of navel gazing bullshit. People who're always on about "power struggles" and "ignorant of diversity" never make good programmers, because computers aren't likely to be bullied into behaving like the whipped men in their lives.
When I read "I've struggled with gender politics" what I see is "I'm a lousy programmer and people keep treating me like a lousy programmer because I'm a woman."
What does that have to do with the price of tea in China? The fact remains you have no evidence - none, zip - that there's any blackmail of public officials going on. Of course it's possible, in the same sense it possible the illuminati control our government, or the Bilderbergers, or some shadowy European association of ex-pat Greeks. But it's gonna take more than your own fevered dreams to convince normal people the fix is in.
By the way, I don't think it's any great feat for the Anthrax "bomber" to remain undetected. Ted Kaczynski managed to stay on the loose while sending sixteen bombs over eighteen years. He'd still be out there if he own brother hadn't turned him in. The fact that we haven't caught the Anthrax guy isn't proof of anything. It doesn't even suggest anything.
Yeah, sure. And your evidence for this is... what, again?
Uh huh. And what are the Chinese gonna do at the moon? That's right, nothing. Same as us. Haven't we had enough of expensive vanity projects?
You, sir, are a troll.
If that's not what he meant, who is the racist?
Have you ever held a job? In my company the hiring department is running scared, and will pretty much hire any woman that can spell "IT". This is working out about as well as you might expect.
I don't see any evidence that's actually happening. If anything, it's the left, which is trying to silence critics of global warming that's conducting an assault on science. Toe the line or lose your grants. Is that how we search for truth?
I recall the left's assault on The Bell Curve. Who is assaulting science?
In any event, those two magazines have changed. They're much less concerned with science than presenting pseudo-science as fact to score political points. When I subscribed to Sciam twenty years ago that wasn't the case. In fact there's quite a bit less science in every issue than there used to be, and they've thrown out many of the details in an effort to be accessable to more readers. Of course, I understand the Popular Science crowd is bigger, but it's sad to see the destruction of a once-great magazine.
Pretty much. NS has been dumbed down and politically slanted compared to earlier years. I don't know why, but it seems to be a trend, since Scientific American is a hollow shell of its former self for the same reasons. They should go into the politics section of the magazine racks, not science.
Actually, it's not uncommon for a fairly wide range of crimes, although obviously for this type of pseudocrime it's ridiculous.
People aren't takeing math and science in the US because the perception is all the tech jobs are going to China. Why would you sign up for "hard" classes and then hit the unemployment line after school? Incidentally, I don't think the perception is necessarily true, but after the tech bubble burst a lot of people hit the streets.
Maybe Microsoft is expecting the same kind of treatment Iran is getting over its nuclear program. Lots of diplomatic gas, no action.
This is a story about the FBI calling up and making a request that doesn't have the force of law. If you want to do something about this call up your phone company and ask what the policy is regarding oral requests from the FBI. If you don't like it, use a different one.
And we're not talking about wiretaps, here. We're talking about records of who you call. The courts have ruled, over the years, that this data is not yours. It belongs to the phone company. In fact, those court rulings are probably what prompted the change in policy.
Sure, but if they sniff your traffic what they'll see is you going to the anonymous server over and over. It doesn't really tell them anything beyond the fact that you're browsing, since the proxy server buffers the http requests.
The idea this congress is going to make changes in the patent system that actually benefit society as opposed to patent-holders is daft. Congress has been bought and paid for - look at what they did for Disney when they "reformed" the copyright laws. Nope, if Congress changes anything it will be to extend the length of patents and make them more difficult to challenge, which is the exact opposite of what needs to be done.