TFA claims they are thinking of using small tethers to float mobile cells in rural areas. These would need a robot climber to carry helium tanks up to the baloons, so robot design is a problem that needs to be adressed now.
That does make sense, thanks for the informative reply. I still don't think that you can properly use the word viral when you are using a modified Linux kernal, as I think is the case with D-Link, but I see where the analogy comes from now.
I really don't understand the viral analogy. Code doesn't "catch" the GPL, only code that was placed under it, or derivitive works of that code, is covered by it. It's not like you have to be careful keeping your propriatry code on the same hard drive or anything. The GPL is strictly an inherited "disease" as far as I can see.
The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that
English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don't just borrow words;
on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat
them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary
modern china has yet to be anything but a cheap source of labor for the western world. it's "innovations" are nothing more than chinese versions of something that has existed elsewhere for decades. China has a "me too" mentality of an annoying little brother. Everything the US has done, they want to do it too, that is not innovation.....
Sounds like a description of Japan from a few decades ago.
I'm not American bashing, and personally I don't think China's growth will be a bad thing for the US or anywhere else, but the numbers clearly indicate China will become an economic power greater than the US. It's decades away, but you simply don't have a large enough population to stay ahead indefinately.
Is this a bad thing? It might dent American pride a little, but it will also give American companies a massive market to sell into. Everyone's a winner.
No, really. A CD is a plastic disc with groves and dents, which are interperated to create sound. A vinyl player with a laser is the same thing.. so why would you buy a laser linyl player over a CD player? You have a bulkier, more fragile item with the exact same sound quality.
A CD is digital and vinyl is analogue. I imagine a laser record player (new one to me I admit) would sound exactly the same as one with a physical needle - which most of us would call worse than a CD, but whatever floats your boat I guess.
TFA isn't talking about an all or nothing situation though - it's talking about banks trying to refuse to cover losses where the customer has definately been negligent.
Take an extreme example. If I posted my online banking details here, and someone used them to drain my account, should I really be able to turn round to the bank and tell them they should refund me since it's a cost of doing business?
Obvioulsy real cases are much more of a grey area, and to be honest I'm not to sure where I stand or where I'd draw the line, but I do think there is at least a hypothetical level of idiocy which the banks shouldn't be obliged to compensate.
Err, and how is the magic free market going to save you your neighbor or a company down the street decides to destroy your TV/radio reception, or screw up every CRT in your house, while they are playing with high power broadcasts for fun or profit?
As the parent said, leave it to the courts. If there aren't any laws to deal with that situation; that's why you have a legislature.
How will the free market save you when a business decides it is more profitable to buy up the entire internet backbone and sublicense access to only the wealthiest sources of information?
It won't, again the courts will do that under anti trust law.
I believe in the free market system, but this doesn't mean I'm anti regulation. A free market will never exist without regulation since it will degenerate into monopolies, cartels, and maybe ultimately feudalism. But this emphatically doesn't mean that all regulation is good regulation.
And as soon as the Apple resellers wake up and stop trying to flog the old Minis for a paltry $10 less than a new one from Apple, I'll be buying one to do just that.
At a guess they're probably ex-demo or authorised refurbished stock (ie stuff that has been returned to Apple) rather than true refurbs - Apple controls the price on these, and there just isn't enough margin on a mini to cut the price to a level where it's more attractive than buying new - remember your probably selling it as an individual unit (more hassle) without any Apple phone support (have to support it yourself), so you need to make more on a refurb than you do on a new machine.
I don't really see very small companies changing their current habits to be honest. I think they'll continue using pirated copies of major apps in the way they always have.
Where now is Osiris, who came down upon earth out of love for man, who was killed by the malice of the evil one, who rose again from the grave and became the judge of the dead? Where now is Isis the mother, with the child Horus in her lap? They are dead; they are gone to the land of the shades. To-morrow, Jehovah, you and your son shall be with them.
I'd say that depends on how you define faith. In broad strokes, I'd say faith is a strong conviction that what you believe is correct.
I'd disagree, although maybe this is a purely semantic debate, faith to me implies more than believing that you are right. To me it implies at the very least taking a leap beyond what we can justify based upon observable evidence. To some it goes way beyond this, to the point where empirical inductive results are discounted if they confict with revealed truth.
That's my understanding of the concept of faith - possibly influenced by studying Luther and Calvin as an undergraduate I guess - but to me religious faith seems a little more than being stuck in your ways.
I think, though, until someone can come up with a definitive answer of HOW everything came into existance...the Big Bang and God Creation each are as about as reliable an explanation..both are at the least, hypothisized, with no hard facts to back up either one.
ok, a convinced atheist here, but what is it that religious people have against the Big Bang theory? Our current state of knowledge supports the idea that everything started from a single point, surely this is completely compatible with the God hypothesis; especially as the theory seems to suggest that what came before is not only unknown but unknowable. If I was looking for scientific justification for a creator, I'd make a big deal of the big bang.
Many scientists have become old and comfortable in their theories, have their reputations based upon them, and lose the ability and the will to rationally evaluate chalanges to them. This is a widely acknoledged human failing in scientists. I'd argue that's very different to faith, which makes a virtue of refusing to rationally consider alternative hypotheses.
Maybe it's the history of the British fight against the IRA, but it seems to me that the British people have been a little more tolerant of state intrusion than Americans.
This is true IMO, but I think it's coupled with a more rigid definition of terrorism; while scope creep certainly happens to UK anti-terrorism law, it doesn't seem to reach the heights that it does in the US. Terrorism has been a fact of life here for decades, and the dividing line between that and serious crime is probably better understood than it is in the US.
I don't disagree with you in principle, I was just giving my opinion of the reasons why people have an instinctive distrust of anything which hints at holocaust denial - people have heard it many times before from who's motives are "political" (meant in a broad sense - wanting to commit genocide and rehabilitate Hitler and his policies is fundamentally a political ambition).
An analogy (purely about peoples reactions, absolutely no comparison intended about motives):
How much time does your average slashdot reader spend seriously looking into to some "scientific" theory of Inteligent Design? Very little in my experience since we know it's going to be pseudoscience.
I think it's the fact that the overwhealming majority of those who question the number of deaths are not doing so as unbiased historians, even if they try to pretend that they are. I'd call it a learned reaction: denial of the holocaust == politicaly motivated cant which cannot be justified by the sources.
Slashdot Mirror
TFA claims they are thinking of using small tethers to float mobile cells in rural areas. These would need a robot climber to carry helium tanks up to the baloons, so robot design is a problem that needs to be adressed now.
That does make sense, thanks for the informative reply. I still don't think that you can properly use the word viral when you are using a modified Linux kernal, as I think is the case with D-Link, but I see where the analogy comes from now.
I really don't understand the viral analogy. Code doesn't "catch" the GPL, only code that was placed under it, or derivitive works of that code, is covered by it. It's not like you have to be careful keeping your propriatry code on the same hard drive or anything. The GPL is strictly an inherited "disease" as far as I can see.
I'm not American bashing, and personally I don't think China's growth will be a bad thing for the US or anywhere else, but the numbers clearly indicate China will become an economic power greater than the US. It's decades away, but you simply don't have a large enough population to stay ahead indefinately.
Is this a bad thing? It might dent American pride a little, but it will also give American companies a massive market to sell into. Everyone's a winner.
TFA isn't talking about an all or nothing situation though - it's talking about banks trying to refuse to cover losses where the customer has definately been negligent.
Take an extreme example. If I posted my online banking details here, and someone used them to drain my account, should I really be able to turn round to the bank and tell them they should refund me since it's a cost of doing business?
Obvioulsy real cases are much more of a grey area, and to be honest I'm not to sure where I stand or where I'd draw the line, but I do think there is at least a hypothetical level of idiocy which the banks shouldn't be obliged to compensate.
Err, and how is the magic free market going to save you your neighbor or a company down the street decides to destroy your TV/radio reception, or screw up every CRT in your house, while they are playing with high power broadcasts for fun or profit?
As the parent said, leave it to the courts. If there aren't any laws to deal with that situation; that's why you have a legislature.
How will the free market save you when a business decides it is more profitable to buy up the entire internet backbone and sublicense access to only the wealthiest sources of information?
It won't, again the courts will do that under anti trust law.
I believe in the free market system, but this doesn't mean I'm anti regulation. A free market will never exist without regulation since it will degenerate into monopolies, cartels, and maybe ultimately feudalism. But this emphatically doesn't mean that all regulation is good regulation.
Or if I go round chucking stones through people's (house) windows, I benefit the economy by providing employment to glaziers.
Funny to see Vista pumped with the broken Windows fallacy..
I don't really see very small companies changing their current habits to be honest. I think they'll continue using pirated copies of major apps in the way they always have.
Your right, thanks. Doesn't exactly improve my opinion of software patents..
Thanks for the explanation AC
Which is what I meant by read. Licences are only needed to write the patented format AFAIK.
Maybe I'm wrong about this, but this is how I've aways thought it worked.
Most file formats/codecs/protocols have patents on them. MP3 is another example.
On encoding maybe, but I don't think you can use patent law to prevent someone simply reading a file.
Lets hope..
I think you need to go back to the parent's comment and read it again..
That's my understanding of the concept of faith - possibly influenced by studying Luther and Calvin as an undergraduate I guess - but to me religious faith seems a little more than being stuck in your ways.
I think, though, until someone can come up with a definitive answer of HOW everything came into existance...the Big Bang and God Creation each are as about as reliable an explanation..both are at the least, hypothisized, with no hard facts to back up either one.
ok, a convinced atheist here, but what is it that religious people have against the Big Bang theory? Our current state of knowledge supports the idea that everything started from a single point, surely this is completely compatible with the God hypothesis; especially as the theory seems to suggest that what came before is not only unknown but unknowable. If I was looking for scientific justification for a creator, I'd make a big deal of the big bang.
Many scientists have become old and comfortable in their theories, have their reputations based upon them, and lose the ability and the will to rationally evaluate chalanges to them. This is a widely acknoledged human failing in scientists. I'd argue that's very different to faith, which makes a virtue of refusing to rationally consider alternative hypotheses.
I don't disagree with you in principle, I was just giving my opinion of the reasons why people have an instinctive distrust of anything which hints at holocaust denial - people have heard it many times before from who's motives are "political" (meant in a broad sense - wanting to commit genocide and rehabilitate Hitler and his policies is fundamentally a political ambition).
An analogy (purely about peoples reactions, absolutely no comparison intended about motives):
How much time does your average slashdot reader spend seriously looking into to some "scientific" theory of Inteligent Design? Very little in my experience since we know it's going to be pseudoscience.
I think it's the fact that the overwhealming majority of those who question the number of deaths are not doing so as unbiased historians, even if they try to pretend that they are. I'd call it a learned reaction: denial of the holocaust == politicaly motivated cant which cannot be justified by the sources.