One wrong move and this creepy cameraman may end up with harassment charges.
That's right. Best not stick up or you might be hammered by the law. It's not enough to just say what he is doing is or isn't harassment and he is or isn't being a dick. Because then you might have to acknowledge a lot of pubic surveillance cameras are harassing and the owners are dicks. It just happens that what they do is legal.
A prosecutor and possibly a judge may argue that his actions differ from security cameras in the sense that a security camera is fixed in place and watches a predefined area to spot crimes and identify perpetrators. In this case, he is very mobile and instead of filming a predefined area, he films individual people.
And? If he was going around trying to spot crimes and identify perpetrators, it'd suddenly be okay for him to be a dick?
He walks up to a single person and videotapes them with the intent of aggravating them about being videotaped.
And 99% of the purpose of most "security cameras" are just like the TSA. They're security theater, with the intent to aggravate thieves into not even trying to steal. Except for when they record employees, security cameras seem very useless a lot of the time because they're generally (a) grainy quality (either due to being cheap equipment, rerecording on old tapes, or having overly high compression), (b) of a bad viewing angle (because people don't like a camera shoved in their face even though they know the camera is there), and (c) are potentially very avoidable if one is so determined (in large part because of (b)). Of course, if the guy had put the camera on his head filming down or wore a hidden camera... Even then, though, "the wrong person" might still be ticked off.
That could easily be spun as harassment if he ticks off the wrong person.
Given that a case can only go forward if the prosecutor engages it, what you meant to say is "a person with political connections". Companies can film us peons all they like because we're not "[people] with political connections". Fuck, as much as I never had a problem with Google's Streetview project, the fact is that their efforts could be easily viewed as majorly dickish if it were a crowd-sourced project.
But even US Congressmen can't do shit about it even though they're "[people] with political connections". Why? Because they're beholden to companies and the idea that companies create jobs. And that, is the root problem, really. If the intent is to "stop thieves" to help business, it's okay. The second it's a single person who wants to do the same thing, they're possibly SOL--and I'm not saying Creepy Cameraman is such a guy. The Almighty Dollar. Is it any wonder they don't want to take "God" off the currency.
For instance, the bible does not exactly go into gory details about how god created adam or the earth for that matter. It only asserts that god created both of them. The mechanism for how is left as an exercise for the reader.
Good point. Except that in Genesis 1:11, God created trees on the third day and then in Genesis 1:26 he made man on the sixth day. Of course, in Genesis 2:5, God notes that not even shrubs existed yet on all of the earth, but in Genesis 2:7 man was created and then in Genesis instead 2:9 God put trees in Eden (and presumably the rest of the earth then or later). See, that's the general problem with the argument that you lay out. You're quite right that atheists are wrong to claim that *no* god exists, but you sure as fuck can point out that the Jewish/Christian God as laid out in the Torah/Bible doesn't exist...or at least the Torah/Bible are such clusterfuck wrong that they're rather useless figuring out if *that* god exists. And I'd extrapolate that the Muslim God doesn't exist as well since it is an extrapolation of the Jewish/Christian God and the Torah/Bible--as a sort of fruit of the poison tree.
Of course, those sorts of clear logical inconsistencies are scattered about through plenty of sacred texts and a lot of hand waving gets involved to explain it away, be it the way in which a minor god is promoted to being *the* God of the religion to simply inconsistencies in behavior--I mean, how infinitely merciful is God anyways if he's "quick to anger"? That obviously doesn't dismiss all religions de facto. But it does mean that it's not as simple as all atheists that are simply doing a bit of hand waving of their own. As for me? At one level I'm an agnostic and yet another an atheist. Ie, I can't really decide for sure as while I don't want to be pointless presumptive about such things, to simply hold onto the belief "there is a god or reasonably could be one" just because it's technically possible seems at best a stretch used more to settle some inner qualms about offending people who do have such radical beliefs to the contrary. After all, no matter how much Richard Dawkins lies to say to disagree is not insulting, the simple fact that you question, figuratively or literally, another person's deeply held beliefs or truths is insulting, for it calls in to question their sanity and their simply ability to think as a person.
So, I'd argue that's more a point of trying to have a "live and let live" philosophy than trying to paper over the specifics of your own beliefs to make others feel better or to question them in some vain attempt to enlighten them--as I don't think anyone appreciates that. And that really tends to mean, unless specifically asked about what you believe, it's best to just keep quiet. Of course, this whole comment really ignores that point to a degree, but then that's what/. is presumably all about. I'd presume that'd be Mark Twain's response for how he could write so many books and yet say, "It's better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and remove all doubt". Then again, that might not have been Twain who said (or repeated) such a line.:)
Compared to "a mainstream OS pushed by weirdos dressed in business suits" or "a mainstream OS pushed by weirdos dressed in sweaters". Of course, IBM pushing Linux in business suits didn't really produce mainstream support any more than Google's efforts really have--exclude Android, but it's hard to count that when people don't even realize Android is Linux based. Getting to the point of supporting GNU or FSF in any way? I'd say that mainstream support of that is really a lost cause given how if anything people are becoming more computer illiterate over time--or it could just be the ever growing adoption of computers. But, then, if the real point is to attract other weirdos to the cause through the use of a mainstream source by putting on a public spectacle, then a wildebeest is probably the best way to go--and since it's the support of weirdos that is needed to keep the GNU/FSF alive just as much as weirdos are needed for MS, Apple, etc...
Explain to me, again, why Facebook isn't dumping tons of money into a one-time investment into making Linux power management not suck? Or other companies, for that matter? Right, because it's an "accepted fact" that data centers must run at very high capacity all the time and power management efforts would hinder availability. And I presume this is *after* they dumped the money into Linux power management and saw it work out to be a colossal failure? Well, that's possible--they might have never bothered releasing their work. On the other hand, it could just be they haven't bothered because their IT folk know the gospel well enough and aren't given the leeway to experiment on mission critical systems and they don't really have a whole spare data center to play around with.
Of course, there's always Google and a question why they haven't bothered, but then they may just not care--there's the story of their early development going as far as basically not bothering to find, disconnect, and repair broken servers since the rerouting software was good enough and the effort to fix servers was more than the worth (ie, it was easier to just add another server to the growth list).
In short, the idea that companies in general are always aware let alone capable of choosing the best choices is silly, given the clear counter-examples. Penny-pencher management will likely eventually push data centers to the breaking point and then you'll likely only learn how well the hardware handles graceful degradation of performance as it gets hotter, not so much just what's viable and economical.
The billboards in question claim voter fraud is illegal. Are you claiming they aren't intelligent enough to understand what that means...
Does it mean "if you look hispanic or arabic, we'll harass you at the polling station and possibly attempt to intimidate you in other ways"?
... and somehow mistakes it for they will be arrested? That is the only way you can make sense here.
Yep. Good thing there isn't a history of vigilante justice against minorities in the US. Nope. And God knows that local sheriff have never been involved in suppressing minorities.
I happen to think they are NOT that freaking stupid. And if they are, I'm not sure I would be happy with them voting anyways as I doubt they would carry any understanding of anything they are voting for.
You might want to recheck what "democracy" means. If the "unwashed masses" vote something stupid, well, that's democracy in action. But, then, I guess you're just against democracy.
I'm not sure what that has to do with what I said. Perhaps you are just covering your basis or something. Your links mean nothing because it only counts what was caught not what wasn't. We know that people attempt this from monitoring chat rooms, message boards, and even the campaign workers themselves.
Well, by definition you can't count what wasn't caught. As for finding people who attempt voter fraud, well that's just more examples of those who are caught which is really a counterexample to the idea that people aren't being caught. Sure, voter fraud is attempted. The issue is how often it actually succeeds. That's much closer to an unknowable and it's really unclear how ID cards fix that in any way any more than magic rocks would, as invariably voter fraud tends to attack the ballot box, not the voter registry check list. After all, the former allows you to grossly manipulate the results; the latter tends to have much more minimal results for all the effort, which only tends to be most useful in closer races of which more scrutiny should at least hypothetically make voter fraud of all sorts more generally difficult.
That isn't to say I don't appreciate the presumed logic of Voter ID laws. I just question their real effectiveness, their basis for necessity--purple fingers work just as well--, and in the end just how much fear or paranoia is driving a request for change--the last point really making me against the whole idea, as fear or paranoia are very bad bases for law. But, *shrug*, that's life.
If you can solve the issue in a way that the child doesn't any longer feel the need to lie to you you're BOTH better off than before, plus you've just taught the kid a valuable lesson.
How? It sounds like the GP's daughter wants a certain amount of privacy and freedom to conduct her own affairs. Some of that privacy comes in the context of simply telling mom/dad, "It's none of your business", but that's almost certainly not going to produce desirable results for anyone--it turns the parent into a dictator and the child into a rebel. And as for the freedom thing, well that's the sort of thing that can only really be dealt with by parents that trust and verify, like the GP does, and as they said step in on the big mistakes. In the old days, it meant calling BFF's dad every so often to have a casual chat and verify the two weren't getting into too much trouble.
Like the GP said, lying is a rather normal thing. It's a byproduct of the fact that a parent isn't a child's best friend and can't act like one nor really sanction things like skipping class occasionally. That leads to an inherent discord that being resolved with no lies just makes the child's life miserable and leaves them unprepared for a life outside of their parent's protection.
But, take all the above with a grain of salt. IANAP.:)
Over all, I'm voting for Romney. Not just because I want Obama out of office, but rather I want to flush as much corruption out of Washington DC as possible.
This I don't understand. Obama, if part of the Washington corruption problem, became corrupt primarily through the election process and the presidency. Meanwhile, Romeny, if elected, would presumably add to the corruption problem from whatever corruption he picked up from being governor and then whatever is furthered added to by the election process. I mean, this is more or less the same song and dance that came with GWB as well, including how GWB was considered by many to be more of a puppet which deflects the blame of corruption from him while making him a useful idiot.:/
My point? The corruption problem is Washington, DC not in the politicians but in the apparatus that elects and sustains those politicians. To merely vote within the system is to merely choose who is corrupted with a heavy dash of wishful thinking that enough good will come out of it before they're sufficiently corrupted. But, then, I don't see any politicians running on a platform of gestapo cleaning Washington of lobbyists and forcing Congressmen to actually do their job, so.:/
And yet, Network Transparency is one of X's biggest weaknesses as well. The truth is, X's chief purpose in providing Network Transparency was in providing thin client/mainframe/whatever support over a LAN/WAN. This is incredibly transparent in a few ways: (1) there isn't a lot of heavy effort put into minimizing the data stream, (2) nearly any sort of network hiccup will kill a connection and hence the client--something almost assured on the internet for programs running long enough--, and (3) you can't move a client from one server to another. To speak of your VM example, in a more idealized version of Network Transparency, the VM(s) hosting MS Office could be moved from one machine to another and users would at most notice a pause during the checkpoint/transfer/client address update. That's something entirely out of the reach of X. Meanwhile, I think people are more interested in things like (a) starting a program at home on their desktop, (b) continuing to use it on their smartphone, and (c) finally moving to a desktop at their destination. Conceivably, the desktop itself would not be running most the programs but simply be a nexus of links to clients on the phone, on the desktop, and online; ie, the point of the desktop would be more to coordinate what is being run as it has more capacity to checkpoint/maintain/log.
In short, I don't think X really lived much up to the network transparency ideal. Sure, it can fool you for a while, but the times it fails it fails pretty catastrophically. X was really conceived of in another time which ironically presumed higher reliability. I certainly agree that Wayland stepping further away from network transparency is the wrong path. It just seems clear that pointing at X isn't really that useful considering how many things it gets wrong for today's environment.
The pre-conditions that made Mars what it is (low insolation, no magnetic field due to a massive impactor, low gravity, etc...) aren't anything humans can either cause or survive if (by magic in a couple of cases) they happened here.
Uh huh. And I never said anything about humans being a potential cause in the future. And the lessons of survival would be most useful in the generic sense, to understand how life evolved on a planet that--in geological terms--quickly lost its atmosphere and water and how life adapted to those conditions until the environment became, presumably, uninhabitable. As the saying goes, necessity is the mother of invention. It's quite possible we'd learn a lot of very interesting and useful biology and genetics from life on a very different planet that would be very pertinent to life on Earth.
Yea, that really presumes that humanity might actually be around in one form or another--along with enough cultural knowledge--in a few million years and no, it speaks nothing of Earth being remotely in the same state as Mars in that time. Off hand, though, I could imagine learning more about life adapting to adverse water shortages on a larger scale or to a radical change in atmospheric component concentrations or quantity would be rather useful for considerations of long-term space travel. Even if nothing of the sort is gained, just finding out the actual biology of life on another world would be potentially amazingly useful to better understanding life.
Though I guess it's handwaving feelgood to actually try to keep humanity around in the cosmos, in general. Perhaps it's not really meant to be in any real sense. But, we are so dwarfing in our knowledge to really know at all what can and should be, that it seems more handwaving cynicism to presume from out limited knowledge of today that we have some real idea on the possible when we're unwilling to even remotely seriously invest into the very tangibly doable of today.
So by "Unfortunately" do you mean that the only reason we should go to the incredible expense and risk of visiting other planets is for purely academic or intellectual purposes?
Nice strawman, there. I mean, it's good to know that to scoff at greed is equivalent to be interested in something "for purely academic or intellectual purposes". Perhaps the scoffing has something to do with the fact that greed as a motivator to do things has all sorts of very negative side-effects--economic bubbles are a big one. Or perhaps it has to do with the point that a view that moderation is a good thing and liable to produce much more desirable long-term results while greed tends to, in focusing on being an end unto itself, be an almost pointless exercise a lot of the time.
Is there anything of actual value to our planet Earth that we can glean from pure knowledge (and knowledge alone) of Mars?
That's a pretty good begging the question. If you don't view "knowledge alone" as something "of actual value to our planet Earth", then there's little point in asking the question because no response that could be given would be acceptable to you. It entirely ignores that there are people who do, obviously, see value in knowledge alone and that a trip to Mars focused on expansion of humanity into the cosmos would be more than a pure knowledge expedition and not a greed motivated one.
Say we learn more about the history of Mars. Humanity applies that information in exactly what way to better our species or improve our planet in some way?
Are you serious? The very fact that Mars once had an atmosphere, once had [possibly flowing] water, was once possibly habitable, etc and yet now lacks those things means its precisely a very good potential model of what Earth may become in the distant future. Knowing this and specifically examining what is left on Mars may do very much to help us figure out either to cope with those risks or to even entirely avoid them realizing that Mars is a cautionary tale of what may happen if humanity does nothing--although odds are good, humanity won't be around by then. In short, we'd be able to learn from the history of Mars just like how we learn from our own history, to use as a guide of what has and could happen to decide on what to do to avoid bad things from happening again.
At the end of the day, for it to be worthwhile beyond the science that we are doing right this minute with rovers, there has to be something of value on Mars. Real, tangible value.
At the end of the day, the real question is what one places value on. Is it shiny trinkets and beads? Or is it one's life to enjoy those shiny trinkets and beads? And if one is forward thinking enough to recognize this, maybe one may be forward thinking enough to consider one's grand children or great grand children and just exactly what steps are necessary, in general, for the survival of humanity. But, you know, that all depends on if you see any value in humanity.
Materials that are rare on earth, a stopover for energy to reach other parts of the Solar System and beyond, a low gravity place to make materials that we can't produce on Earth, or even a "lifeboat" for humanity - at the end of the day there has to be something a step beyond just knowledge for the sake of knowledge.
Rare on Earth materials? Quite pointless except for a Mars colony itself. Stopover for energy for other pats of the Solar System and beyond? Not really sensical in any way since a free-floating platform would be actually maneuverable and would avoid almost all the escape velocity concerns. Low gravity for making materials? Uh...why not LEO and whatever gravity as needed through rotation instead of flying all the way to Mars and back? "Lifeboat" for humanity? Pretty well outside the scope of reasonable given the shear scope of reach to make Mar
Talk about this and generally about China's lack of involvement in CO2 emission standards--and the US using such as an excuse not to act--makes me realize something rather non-profound but possibly relevant. It would seem clear to me that the US has a rather serious management problem. You see, China is a lot like Google and the US is a lot like Microsoft.
By that I mean, China is a developing country which is still working out just what sort of economic form it will have in the future. As a result, it is not only experience a lot of growth as it learns what it does well but it also wastes a lot of resources on a lot of projects that end up as dead-ends.
Meanwhile, the US is a developed country with a rather stable--overall--economic form. Growth ends up being rather incremental and spurts are usually rather limited in scope to the few success stories where the "US ingenuity"--ie, the perceived actions of a startup company/country--sees a wasteful project that actually goes somewhere. In the end, though, a lot of the economic form is controlled through a network of treaties and implied if not outright acted acts of force against not only enemies but also allies. The focus is, of course, to solidify power but it comes at the cost of exerting a lot more resources per capita as so many resources go towards just maintaining the power base.
Now, the real problem in all this is way too many Republicans and Democrats think the US is still a startup. They function just like a manager or a CEO who wants to do slash and burn policies--like cutting wages, benefits, etc to be more competitive against other countries--because they see those very things that make the US a developed country as also the main impediment to growth. The truth is, of course, that those sorts of actions --just like massive loans/stimulus packages--do have a short term benefit but obvious long-term harm. And if next quarter thinking and CEO golden parachutes make one's blood boil, then the very nature of the electoral process and the absurd compensation package offered to federal politicians would seem to be the very framework of which corporate executives must have cribbed their playbook.
So, yea, way off-topic to the point at hand. But, then, given the UN is all about trying to provide a forum for countries to talk to avoid war, I really don't see how the geoengineering project really falls under their purview any more than the CO2 issue, especially given how little teeth the UN has to enforce anything and certain how unwilling any country, even those who have made pledges, are inclined to explicitly force their citizens to comply.
Why is it that people assume that just because you are libertarian, that there should be no rules at all enforced by the government? Or is this typical group think?
Well, given that's not what was said... No, people assume that libertarians don't want government forcing the presses to be an open forum to everyone or to be able to set arbitrary standards. After all, the whole point is that the ABC affiliate has set a standard of $50,000 campaign contributions. What if this were a government mandated standard? It'd seem leaving it up to ABC affiliate to decide is closer to the libertarian ideal. It just happens to be that said candidate is unable to meet the standard and is complaining about how that standard is unfair. Well, its certain his right to complain, but I don't see how it's particularly unfair--nor the complaint of their standard of 10% in the polls when he only got as high as 7% in the one poll that had him. As much as it points out he doesn't take corporate contributions, he could just as well get 1,000 people to give $50 contribution to reach ABC's requirements, so even that line argument of fairness doesn't hold.
In short, his major complaint seems to be focused on the obvious truth that there's great deal of inertia in the Democrat and Republican parties. Hence, to reach even reasonable standards is incredibly difficult because its difficult for his party and he himself to appear as credible. That's just a simple fact. Government stepping in would seem entirely against the process of a free and fair system as it would allow government to, intentionally or not, choose the winners and losers of an election. The only way it makes sense to interfere is to state that the inertia they possess is not unlikely the rich with old money or large corporations with inherently powerful economy of scale and influence and there should be clear and extant regulation of a heavily focused, open, multipartisan, etc scope. Well, that right there is a very massive government influence, very much counter to just about every claim I've heard about libertarian ideology that it is in fact government that is the chief cause and retention of such massive inertia and monopolies.
I mean, Democrats tend to buddy up to corporate interests as much as Republicans. Just look at all the corporate welfare in this country from both parties. At least libertarians aren't going to afford special protections to corporations... for that matter, it's more likely that corporate protections would be limited in favor of increased competition.
Sad but true, a large reason for all the buddying up to corporate interests and afford[ing] special protections to corporations is because it is short-term advantageous to voters. I mean, in the long-term, the best interests of the world is to massive global trade. But, that means a worsening of living conditions for a lot of people in the US for decades--as they lose the ability to work. Meanwhile, the very corporations that will have that increased competition will also see exploding profit margins as those who can still work will continue to buy products at the same or greater prices while manufacturing costs drop. The only way to resolve this "problem", as most people are likely to see a further entrenching of large corporations, is some sort of wealth redistribution program.
Specifically not posting as anon, and dumping my mods on this topic because I'm not afraid of people knowing my opinion here. More government subsidies, spending, and gross overreaching policies haven't made things better... perhaps those that founded our country on the premise of a limited federal government were right, and we should move towards that goal once again.
The founders of our country focused on a limited federal government for two main reasons: they had extant, large state governments and at a time with such slow communication it was felt that only "local" control w
Well, the Microsoft EFI FAT32 File System Specification (which admittedly isn't the patent itself and may not extend to UEFI) and the language covering its use seems to be specifically of the "you can only use this for EFI itself" type. Ie, even if Linux was used as the boot loader and running kernel--which it rarely is, as usually lilo/grub/whatever is used for boot and when Linux is used as the boot loader it tends to hand over control to a second, newer kernel version--, it'd seem to only allow LFN patent protection for the actual booting process itself. It specifically says "[for] example, you must obtain an additional license in order to create a file system for reading or reading and writing FAT32 in digital cameras recording to flash media, in computer operating systems reading and writing internal/external hard disks or flash media, or in set-top boxes reading FAT-formatted media."
That isn't to say you're wrong. It's just that I can't readily find any other information to collaborate your claim. More to the point, LFN was just a very well known example. During the whole SCO trial thing, it was made pretty clear that Linux almost certainly violates at least *some* patents--and possibly a lot, over 250. Yea, the issue was majorly downplayed by those in the OSS/FSS community and the real risks of patent infringement is often rather small in itself--as a lot of companies aren't interested in generating a lot of bad PR while potentially opening them up to counter-suits which contain just as legitimate complaints. The whole TomTom affair did really virtually nothing to further MS's interests--it did little to slow the adoption of Linux and since MS wasn't competing directly in GPS devices... Of course, patent trolls are a whole other beast since they're just looking for money, but then that may well be blood from a stone.
So, the over reaching point would be that patent trolls who could already be suing Linux developers aren't likely to suddenly start just because nVidia released a driver. And the other interests--Intel and AMD--are generally just as much a target for counter-suits by IBM or Google--huge supporters of Linux. That isn't to say there shouldn't be effort to step lively upon known patent issues that resulted in court settlements--as the risk there is the court not taking too kindly to ignoring court orders. But, it is hard for me to believe that those settlements are sufficient blockades to releasing an open driver. Yea, I can them being performance stumbling blocks--not unlike how arithmetic coding for compression being patented is (was?) a stumbling block. But, even that would likely be a matter of a small performance degradation, not a large one. Ie, it'd be far from the most optimal situation for the end user in many ways, but it'd be a huge step forward compared to the current state of affairs for a lot of users who won't or can't use the proprietary drivers nVidia provides.
They have many licensed components in their code. So they have to remove all that and rework it, and do it in such a fashion as to not get sued by those companies (who might claim that the nVidia programmers couldn't work on the new code since they'd seen the licensed code). This isn't just some more minor features such as S3 texture compression, but OpenGL itself. Go look it up, OpenGL isn't a free "do whatever you like" setup. There is licensing for it for companies like nVidia.
So, nVidia shouldn't do all that rewriting because there's all that patent risk? Funny. Last I checked, the Linux kernel was full of code that was quite clearly patented*, yet it continued to be redistributed rather broadly. Really, foisting a "clean"--maybe really, maybe not but only because of patent trolls-driver on Linux developers (or Xorg developers)** to maintain would relieve a lot of the potential risks. I mean, hell, for years Mesa wasn't OpenGL compliant precisely because of the rather obtuse licensing requirements. That didn't stop people from treating Mesa as de factor OpenGL on Linux.
Even worse is that because the issue isn't just opening the source, but actually GPLing it, that makes it so much harder. Some of their licensed components are things the companies might be ok with source distribution. However nVidia doesn't have the right to relicense that code under the GPL. So even if they opened it, it wouldn't do any good as the GPL is what is required here.
So, nVidia is beholden to various others who at a whim can really do whatever they please to manipulate nVidia to their own designs. Sure, most the time that's just a matter of trying to maximize money from them. But, really, nVidia should be striving to decouple itself from such entities on the face of it, even if it were guaranteed to be nothing more than a really cheap recurring licensing fee.
So the argument of "just open the driver" is somewhat unrealistic. It isn't just that nVidia likes to have a competitive edge, though they surely do, but that it would be a major issue and a lot more work to try and do so, if it were even possible.
Look at OpenSolaris for an example of how it is quite possible to open source a much larger project. Look at Java for the same. Now, it could be argued that these things killed Sun's competitive edge. I'd argue that Java did in part, as it focused on write-once-run-everywhere and Sun's main focus is/was hardware. The same could be said for Solaris, for which the whole OpenSolaris project started precisely because Linux was seen to have a competitive edge being (a) run on many platforms that (b) when it was used on Sun hardware rather made Solaris redundant. I think there was some perverse hope that Sun could unburden itself of Solaris development by making it open source. But Linux already served that role and the current Solaris users didn't want to be burdened with maintaining the whole OS as well just to keep using the hardware.
And that's the fundamental point. Sun's competitive edge for a long time was their hardware, not their software. Yes, their software helped facilitate that hardware's potential and for a long time there wasn't any real competitors in that field as well. But, in the end, people were buying Sun hardware--with some lock-in because of Solaris-only software. But Sun made server hardware--their desktop/workstation share were eaten by Windows--and PCs/Intel simply killed them in that field. Now, if Sun had managed to actually keep progressing on the hardware, the story would be very different I'm sure.
Well, that's it. Just replace "Sun" with "nVidia" and "Intel" with "AMD" and you've got your current situation. nVidia's competitive edge, when it has one, is its hardware. Drivers facilitate that. People don't buy nVidia for their drivers any more than people buy AMD for their drivers--especially true given the poor reputation of AMD drivers yet t
That's because Slashdot is a write only medium. Well, okay, it's not *strictly* a write only medium. Some people actually read the comments they're replying to, even fewer read the summary, and virtually no one reads the article. Of course to really seal the deal, everything added to Slashdot should be encrypted with a OTP from/dev/random. But, then, that might make Slashdot *more* interesting.
So, what you're saying is, due to a rule about "minimum sale price should be kept secret", there's a market failure. And HFT is all about making the minimum sale price only secret to most, but not all people, where the few that do only know it through massive spamming of the exchanges. It sounds to me that the problem, fundamentally, is that there is such a thing as a "minimum sale price" or a "maximum buy price". I presume such things were invented precisely to avoid HFT being the norm for all sellers/buyers. Yet, if HFT were the norm for all sellers/buyers and secret minimum/maximum prices were removed, the odds are good that (1) the buy/sale price would end up closer to the center of the two parties effective minimum/maximum prices involved, (2) there'd be a lot fewer middlemen, and (3) a lot of the ridiculous geographical considerations for trading would go out the window because "HFT" wouldn't be nearly as lightning-quick as sell/buy prices would likely move over the course of seconds or hours, not microseconds, as the pool of buys/sellers is too geographically disparate and current HFT wouldn't be in a position to soak up buys/sells upfront to do HFT with other HFT outfits that were geographically close to the market--as the minimum price to the market is likely to be different than the minimum price to a broker to the market.
But, yea, I probably don't really understand any of this and the above is just bullshit.:/
"God’s word is true," Broun said, according to a video posted on the church’s website. "I’ve come to understand that. All that stuff I was taught about evolution and embryology and Big Bang theory, all that is lies straight from the pit of hell. And it’s lies to try to keep me and all the folks who are taught that from understanding that they need a savior."
So, God's word is true. But, all that evolution, embryology, and Big Bang theory that results from a careful study of God's world? Oh, that's all lies. Oh, and why did God create this amazing world? Oh, to create lies that teach the understanding that one not need a savior. Sounds like an enactment of Job all over again. You know the funny thing about the story of Job? It's not that Job personally suffers or how its done all on the behest of Satan to "prove" Job's inherent faithfulness or how it all boils down to a "test" and "don't question the acts of God because you didn't make the universe". It's how God kills Job's kids then in the end proceeds to produce new kids for him as if they're magically some sort of replacement. In other words, not only is God a dick to the most pious for the most dubious of reasons, but "God's word" makes it very clear that as a rule you *are* a number and trivially replaceable. Is it any wonder people in power, who view themselves as special, would be so willing to embrace "God's word"? It must make it easier for them to sleep at night. But, then, that sort of presumes they had any sort of empathy in the first place that needed to be quieted somehow.
I'd just like to add that all of you going "yay!" about this? remember the nanny state NEVER stops, and the smokers are the canaries in the coal mine.
Yet let us not forget that "Throughout the states, both government and businesses are moving to ban tobacco-use beyond working hours." (emphasis mine) Considering the relatively negative picture of cigarrettes, thanks more in part to private advocacy groups--including a lot of ex-smokers and spouses--than the Clinton-era lawsuits, the normal method of private and business counter-advocacy seems pretty well doomed.
Don't forget there have already been states talking about "fat taxes" and "sweet taxes" to try to decide what YOU are allowed to eat and drink. Think it will stop there? How about a fine for every pound you are overweight, or a fine for every percent you are over ideal BMI? A fine if you have high blood pressure? After all you might be costing the dear insurance companies which we ALL will have to pay for!
Well, that's the major thing, isn't it. On the one hand, a large part of the population is so greed/money focused, they'll rabidly speak against the government at every turn, speaking of inefficiency and higher taxes--regardless of whether there's specific inefficiencies to be noted or if any higher taxes are specifically being aimed for--yet at the same time demand that government step in to enforce things like a fat tax or a BMI fine so their insurance rates don't go up. The real problem is the myopic view of money first and not the process itself and what, if anything, should be done. I mean, the same people who complain about a "BMI fine" from government would complain just as much about a "BMI fine" from their insurance company--for which most would follow suit, given the obesity stats--because both would personally effect them. Or, in essence, they're complaining about the problem they're creating and trying to advocate against having to take responsibility.
Remember folks the nanny state NEVER stops, they think you don't deserve to have ANY say, Big Brother is wise, Big Brother knows what is best.
Not quite. The problem with "the nanny state" is how laws are unlikely to be repealed. Politicians *say* they're for fighting terrorists. The truth is, most know that to work towards any sort of repeal of such laws, no matter how wasteful they are, is only likely to incur the wrath of voters who see the politician as weak and the wrath of constituents (possibly not theirs directly*) who will lose all that government money for all that wasteful tax money spent. Big business can at least be more nimble and junk food companies can at least fight, in the court of public opinion, the health-insurance-focused companies. In the end, it's likely a loosing battle, but the slide into enforced company standards will likely be at least loose enough to let some companies to keep hiring the obese and otherwise health risked. Of course, more than likely some middle ground will be reached and "doctors" will redefine obese to allow more accepted company/medical coverage.
The overall point is that whether it's government or business, the odds are good that the obesity epidemic is likely to come to an end in the future. The only real question is how much of it will go away because of government interference to directly alter the ability of people to become obese, how much of it will be forced upon employees by businesses focused on the bottom line, and how much of it will simply be whitewashed with new government enforced and business sponsored standards--with all the legal force to quell insurance companies--on what is medically qualified as obese.
Oh, and if we didn't have any of this "nanny state" business, people would be regularly turned away from hospitals who had at heart attack and would simply die because insurance company rates would be too hire for most people to afford. And while certainly people
It always causes a twinge of [,,,] sadness in my heart at how [...] pride [in one's work] [...] seem to be the foundation of the "Christian" nation of the US.
What's wrong with that?....
A bicycle should be made well. Its joints should be welded properly, its tubes well-formed and of proper strength, its geometry correct for its purpose, its wheels spoked and trued well, brakes secure and tuned and brake and shifter cables routed and run properly. To do any less is to have no pride in your work, and to produce a product not fit for its purpose.
And that, right there, would be the problem. You entirely miss the point that one is inherently supposed to produce a well made bicycle if one is to make one at all. There is no need for pride to do so. To do less is to commit a sort of fraud and to lie. Instead, you nee demand people be prideful that they produce quality work. This is the same fallacy that demand people be greedy that capitalism should work at all. Pride is the extreme of self-importance. One should be well considerate of one's work and mindful of it. But to take pride in it misses that one's work is but a cosmically infinitesimal aspect of the grand scheme of the universe.
Put another way, do you believe the all Amish work is inferior quality or of a prideful nature? I would say no to both, generally.
The world and the internet itself needs more selfless types like yourself. It shouldn't always be about the money.
I wouldn't call the GP selfless. I don't say this because selfless is a dirty word or anything. However, it does seem to be considered a dirty word to point out the GP was pointing out, that not everything should be done for greed. It always causes a twinge of humor and sadness in my heart at how both pride [in one's work] and greed [in money] seem to be the foundation of the "Christian" nation of the US. Yet the obvious truth is it's not so black and while. It's not the choice of being selfish or selfless. There is a difference between putting a few, less obnoxious ads on a website that's heavily used to help fund it and layering on twenty ads on the 5 hits/month blog The only sad part, to me, is that the latter basically mandates ad blocking which hurts the former. That ITIF should basically flip the bird at DNT really misses a major point, I guess; it's not out of the question that in the future ad block software might give the option to only allow ads from those that *do* honor DNT. And if anything, that might well do more to "[support] most of the free content, services, and apps available on the Internet" than anything else.
the CPU being used has a rather unique design: the GPU boots up the CPU. the fact that the boot-up sequence is critically dependent on a proprietary blob to which no-one is given access REALLY pisses people off. privacy concerns, education hypocrisy: the works.
Sounds like a great education opportunity: Clean Room Reverse Engineering 101.
I can fully support a system where you have to earn votes by passing classes and tests, and this would likely be a democracy more in line with what Cleisthenes, Aristotle and Plato wanted.
So, the great thinkers of the past wanted a system of government run by great thinkers. Golly, that sounds familiar. But in any case, if one were to use high school or college graduations--a system of passed classes and tests--as some sort of proxy, today we're much more educated than nearly any time in history.
Uneducated and ignorant voters is the downfall of democracy.
No, politics is the downfall of most governments, democracy or otherwise. What else turns every little event into gigantic proportions and turn otherwise sensible people into emotionally driven "he'll start a war" rhetoric to justify having such reactions? No, being manipuled is the general problem and very few people are free from that; most people just don't see it in themselves because it goes to their ongoing biases and presumptions about life. I mean, after all, what basis do you have that education or ignorance has anything to do with downfalls? No, I'm pretty sure that's just a gut reaction from an intellectual crowd with an air of truthiness.
You don't let a child climb a branch hanging over a cliff just because that's what he wants.
What if that "child" is a vast majority of the population? You see, you want to cast free thinking adults as children to justify tyrannical action--benevolent, of course. Yet you ignore the obvious truth to your story, that you should *try to teach the child not to climb a brand hanging over a cliff*. That's what "the soap box" is for--freedom of expression is an obvious key to successful, long-term democracy. And if the soap box fails, well, people get what they deserve as a whole. Now, if you were to extend that analogy and be it one child putting another, unwilling child on a branch over a cliff, you'd have much more justification on what one would "let" that child do--at that point, the liberty of others is at stake and there may be reason to act. Voting is really so far down the list, really, as far as real-world consequences in most democracies in large part to, ironically enough, politics--as the smallest thing can be used to paint an opponent horrible and secure victory which makes most politicians incredibly bland in action.
No, the reason most people like the idea of "fixing" voting is because it looks like a quick fix to make "bad"--by whatever definition of "bad" one wants to use--not a part of the system to magically fix it. The problem is not recognizing that part of the system is precisely letting "bad" people govern if "bad" people are the majority. As much as you can try to turn them "good" before they vote--through legal means, of course--, democracy is very much a social reflection of self-determination applied at a national scale. That means accepting the good and the bad of that determination, not acting like the results are always optimal or perfect. Of course, that sort of speech also invokes the failings of free markets--and we can't have that sacred cow brought up, either--and the idea of dictatorship/regulation/whatever. Then again, some people acknowledge the idea of a constitutional republic and how it curtails at least 51%-based insanities, by generally moving it to 66% or 75% insanites, but that's a whole other subject really.
The Old Testament is included as part of the Bible because it provides insights into God's character and the history of his interaction with people, not to enforce the rules from it on believers in Christ.
Funny, but I always saw it as sort of an evidence used by Christians, especially the early ones, that the whole Jesus Christ/God thing wasn't simply a cult thing. After all, without the Old Testament backstory, Christianity's belief in Jesus Christ as a savior has about as much basis of belief as the Flying Spaghetti Monster as some sort of religious icon. After all, there's a pretty massive split in the ideals presented by Jesus and how God is and how the Judaic God is presented. Of course, current Judaic God in most western societies seems to have mellowed a lot, with the same sort of "it was all figurative" which is used by Catholics and other denominations on exactly how God can be "merciful" and be such an asshole in the Old Testament/Torah--and the excuse "the kids/my people had it coming" just doesn't fly.
Ie, I'd say the Old Testament has repeatedly been in direct conflict with the idea of the Christian God and as such very much is useless to Christians to somehow gauge God's character* But, the very fact that it's part and parcel of Christianity effectively nullifies a sensible ability to believe in the New Testament as a consequence.
*Btw, this is why your whole "cherry picking texts... to misinterpret and incite blind fear without misunderstanding" doesn't really hold water. The God of the Old Testament had the character to damn homosexuals and demand they be stoned to death. Any sort of "live and let live" has come about through social change--that includes newly spawned religions--and selective misinterpretation that such text. After all, the text that was being quoted says: Romans 1:26-27, "26 Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural sexual relations for unnatural ones. 27 In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed shameful acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their error." Ie, the text is clearly judgmental on the aspects of the sin of homosexuality and all Romans 2:1 did was merely transmuted it from "God commands you to stone this homosexual" to "God will make sure homosexuals get their just punishment, so don't do the stoning yourself"**--which leaves all sorts of room for people to act like God is a don boss and to carry out his work.... Live and let live would be to take the farther step and really not even think about the person's homosexuality at all in any real context except the prospects of a sexual relationship, if desired; of course, that can just be a byproduct of living in a city of a million people and simply not having the time to be involved in that many people's lives.
**Judge not lest thee be judge making only sense in this context if one considers judges of the era being judge *and* executioner. Otherwise, the moral judgments are still happening.
Stop accepting cookies from anyone except the first origin website for a start - advertisers use their own cookies to track you across sites, using site specific cookies makes tracking you across sites extremely hard.
Um, not really. As you later note, advertisers can use custom named images (based upon the requesting ip address). Hell, just the ip address is often enough a lot of the time, especially if you're using ipv6.
Session cookies aren't an issue - if you are using my website, you don't have any leg to stand on when asking me to not track your usage of my website.
Except "session" cookies merely means "not written to disk cache" cookies, which still allows for lots of tracking if you rarely close your browser--a real possibility if you have a laptop and simply sleep/wake it a lot. To say it's not a issue misses the obvious: if an advertiser figures out who you are very early in each session, then effectively they can track you pretty nearly as much as if they were permanent cookies. Ie, session cookies are only useful so long as browsers leak so little information that you can't be uniquely identified through other means, like say, an ip address.
Remove a lot of information from the user agent string. Take it back to browser name, major number, minor number.
Great idea, except considering the rapid pace of browser versioning and the not so rapid pace of browser adoption, even the version number is a good way to narrow down the requester.
Stop allowing plug ins etc to add user agent detail or request header lines.
Great in theory. In practice, plugins expose support for different file types that the server probably should know about to return sensible results. I mean, yea, it'd be great if everything was writtable in the context of "it'll all fallback gracefully whatever I do", but it doesn't work that way in the real world, which basically mandates some sort of javascript wrapper if you choose to use any sort of plugin.
Treat third party images the same way as cookies.
Well, that'll break a significant part of the web, especially since there's no sensible basis to limit it to just images. It really should sensible extent to any object that can be used to track someone, which translates into anything that can be named. Other than that, great idea.
Rigidly enforce plugin security, so things like Flash cannot maintain cookies etc outside of the browsers control.
And what sort of magic do you propose to give the browser the omniscience to know that a bit of information is a cookie or not? Or should it simply bar all information transferal of any kind to-from a plugin? Or perhaps just bar all sorts of writes to the filesystem, turning all plugin data into session data? The latter only mitigates the issues, really.
There are plenty of things that the browsers need to fess up and fix before DNT can be considered to not be a joke - *asking* third parties not to do "X" when you are leaking that data voluntarily to them each time you request an object is just stupid.
As much as I agree with the former, DNT will always be a joke precisely because no matter how much browser developers try to not leak unique information, there's plenty of third party advertisers who are plain assholes who, if anything, will actively try to track harder DNT people precisely because they're a niche market who otherwise might not get many ads.
If this was anything else, the onus would be on the one leaking the information - if your medical records were being leaked through system insecurity then the one being decried here on Slashdot would be the source of the leak, not the recipient! Why is this any different?
How about "I don't see the point in fixing what's not broken" and "I don't see the point in the wasteful quest to follow the latest and greatest trends"? Or are those equivalent to "just being cheap"? The problem, as I see it, is that neither IE9 nor IE10 are "killer apps" and a lot of people on older machines aren't playing DX10 games so those "killer apps" aren't there either. So what motivation would people really have to buy W7, exactly? It'd seem, at least in the future, the answer would be security updates, and that's it.
Slashdot Mirror
That's right. Best not stick up or you might be hammered by the law. It's not enough to just say what he is doing is or isn't harassment and he is or isn't being a dick. Because then you might have to acknowledge a lot of pubic surveillance cameras are harassing and the owners are dicks. It just happens that what they do is legal.
And? If he was going around trying to spot crimes and identify perpetrators, it'd suddenly be okay for him to be a dick?
And 99% of the purpose of most "security cameras" are just like the TSA. They're security theater, with the intent to aggravate thieves into not even trying to steal. Except for when they record employees, security cameras seem very useless a lot of the time because they're generally (a) grainy quality (either due to being cheap equipment, rerecording on old tapes, or having overly high compression), (b) of a bad viewing angle (because people don't like a camera shoved in their face even though they know the camera is there), and (c) are potentially very avoidable if one is so determined (in large part because of (b)). Of course, if the guy had put the camera on his head filming down or wore a hidden camera... Even then, though, "the wrong person" might still be ticked off.
Given that a case can only go forward if the prosecutor engages it, what you meant to say is "a person with political connections". Companies can film us peons all they like because we're not "[people] with political connections". Fuck, as much as I never had a problem with Google's Streetview project, the fact is that their efforts could be easily viewed as majorly dickish if it were a crowd-sourced project.
But even US Congressmen can't do shit about it even though they're "[people] with political connections". Why? Because they're beholden to companies and the idea that companies create jobs. And that, is the root problem, really. If the intent is to "stop thieves" to help business, it's okay. The second it's a single person who wants to do the same thing, they're possibly SOL--and I'm not saying Creepy Cameraman is such a guy. The Almighty Dollar. Is it any wonder they don't want to take "God" off the currency.
Good point. Except that in Genesis 1:11, God created trees on the third day and then in Genesis 1:26 he made man on the sixth day. Of course, in Genesis 2:5, God notes that not even shrubs existed yet on all of the earth, but in Genesis 2:7 man was created and then in Genesis instead 2:9 God put trees in Eden (and presumably the rest of the earth then or later). See, that's the general problem with the argument that you lay out. You're quite right that atheists are wrong to claim that *no* god exists, but you sure as fuck can point out that the Jewish/Christian God as laid out in the Torah/Bible doesn't exist...or at least the Torah/Bible are such clusterfuck wrong that they're rather useless figuring out if *that* god exists. And I'd extrapolate that the Muslim God doesn't exist as well since it is an extrapolation of the Jewish/Christian God and the Torah/Bible--as a sort of fruit of the poison tree.
Of course, those sorts of clear logical inconsistencies are scattered about through plenty of sacred texts and a lot of hand waving gets involved to explain it away, be it the way in which a minor god is promoted to being *the* God of the religion to simply inconsistencies in behavior--I mean, how infinitely merciful is God anyways if he's "quick to anger"? That obviously doesn't dismiss all religions de facto. But it does mean that it's not as simple as all atheists that are simply doing a bit of hand waving of their own. As for me? At one level I'm an agnostic and yet another an atheist. Ie, I can't really decide for sure as while I don't want to be pointless presumptive about such things, to simply hold onto the belief "there is a god or reasonably could be one" just because it's technically possible seems at best a stretch used more to settle some inner qualms about offending people who do have such radical beliefs to the contrary. After all, no matter how much Richard Dawkins lies to say to disagree is not insulting, the simple fact that you question, figuratively or literally, another person's deeply held beliefs or truths is insulting, for it calls in to question their sanity and their simply ability to think as a person.
So, I'd argue that's more a point of trying to have a "live and let live" philosophy than trying to paper over the specifics of your own beliefs to make others feel better or to question them in some vain attempt to enlighten them--as I don't think anyone appreciates that. And that really tends to mean, unless specifically asked about what you believe, it's best to just keep quiet. Of course, this whole comment really ignores that point to a degree, but then that's what /. is presumably all about. I'd presume that'd be Mark Twain's response for how he could write so many books and yet say, "It's better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and remove all doubt". Then again, that might not have been Twain who said (or repeated) such a line. :)
Compared to "a mainstream OS pushed by weirdos dressed in business suits" or "a mainstream OS pushed by weirdos dressed in sweaters". Of course, IBM pushing Linux in business suits didn't really produce mainstream support any more than Google's efforts really have--exclude Android, but it's hard to count that when people don't even realize Android is Linux based. Getting to the point of supporting GNU or FSF in any way? I'd say that mainstream support of that is really a lost cause given how if anything people are becoming more computer illiterate over time--or it could just be the ever growing adoption of computers. But, then, if the real point is to attract other weirdos to the cause through the use of a mainstream source by putting on a public spectacle, then a wildebeest is probably the best way to go--and since it's the support of weirdos that is needed to keep the GNU/FSF alive just as much as weirdos are needed for MS, Apple, etc...
Explain to me, again, why Facebook isn't dumping tons of money into a one-time investment into making Linux power management not suck? Or other companies, for that matter? Right, because it's an "accepted fact" that data centers must run at very high capacity all the time and power management efforts would hinder availability. And I presume this is *after* they dumped the money into Linux power management and saw it work out to be a colossal failure? Well, that's possible--they might have never bothered releasing their work. On the other hand, it could just be they haven't bothered because their IT folk know the gospel well enough and aren't given the leeway to experiment on mission critical systems and they don't really have a whole spare data center to play around with.
Of course, there's always Google and a question why they haven't bothered, but then they may just not care--there's the story of their early development going as far as basically not bothering to find, disconnect, and repair broken servers since the rerouting software was good enough and the effort to fix servers was more than the worth (ie, it was easier to just add another server to the growth list).
In short, the idea that companies in general are always aware let alone capable of choosing the best choices is silly, given the clear counter-examples. Penny-pencher management will likely eventually push data centers to the breaking point and then you'll likely only learn how well the hardware handles graceful degradation of performance as it gets hotter, not so much just what's viable and economical.
Does it mean "if you look hispanic or arabic, we'll harass you at the polling station and possibly attempt to intimidate you in other ways"?
Yep. Good thing there isn't a history of vigilante justice against minorities in the US. Nope. And God knows that local sheriff have never been involved in suppressing minorities.
You might want to recheck what "democracy" means. If the "unwashed masses" vote something stupid, well, that's democracy in action. But, then, I guess you're just against democracy.
Well, by definition you can't count what wasn't caught. As for finding people who attempt voter fraud, well that's just more examples of those who are caught which is really a counterexample to the idea that people aren't being caught. Sure, voter fraud is attempted. The issue is how often it actually succeeds. That's much closer to an unknowable and it's really unclear how ID cards fix that in any way any more than magic rocks would, as invariably voter fraud tends to attack the ballot box, not the voter registry check list. After all, the former allows you to grossly manipulate the results; the latter tends to have much more minimal results for all the effort, which only tends to be most useful in closer races of which more scrutiny should at least hypothetically make voter fraud of all sorts more generally difficult.
That isn't to say I don't appreciate the presumed logic of Voter ID laws. I just question their real effectiveness, their basis for necessity--purple fingers work just as well--, and in the end just how much fear or paranoia is driving a request for change--the last point really making me against the whole idea, as fear or paranoia are very bad bases for law. But, *shrug*, that's life.
How? It sounds like the GP's daughter wants a certain amount of privacy and freedom to conduct her own affairs. Some of that privacy comes in the context of simply telling mom/dad, "It's none of your business", but that's almost certainly not going to produce desirable results for anyone--it turns the parent into a dictator and the child into a rebel. And as for the freedom thing, well that's the sort of thing that can only really be dealt with by parents that trust and verify, like the GP does, and as they said step in on the big mistakes. In the old days, it meant calling BFF's dad every so often to have a casual chat and verify the two weren't getting into too much trouble.
Like the GP said, lying is a rather normal thing. It's a byproduct of the fact that a parent isn't a child's best friend and can't act like one nor really sanction things like skipping class occasionally. That leads to an inherent discord that being resolved with no lies just makes the child's life miserable and leaves them unprepared for a life outside of their parent's protection.
But, take all the above with a grain of salt. IANAP. :)
This I don't understand. Obama, if part of the Washington corruption problem, became corrupt primarily through the election process and the presidency. Meanwhile, Romeny, if elected, would presumably add to the corruption problem from whatever corruption he picked up from being governor and then whatever is furthered added to by the election process. I mean, this is more or less the same song and dance that came with GWB as well, including how GWB was considered by many to be more of a puppet which deflects the blame of corruption from him while making him a useful idiot. :/
My point? The corruption problem is Washington, DC not in the politicians but in the apparatus that elects and sustains those politicians. To merely vote within the system is to merely choose who is corrupted with a heavy dash of wishful thinking that enough good will come out of it before they're sufficiently corrupted. But, then, I don't see any politicians running on a platform of gestapo cleaning Washington of lobbyists and forcing Congressmen to actually do their job, so. :/
And yet, Network Transparency is one of X's biggest weaknesses as well. The truth is, X's chief purpose in providing Network Transparency was in providing thin client/mainframe/whatever support over a LAN/WAN. This is incredibly transparent in a few ways: (1) there isn't a lot of heavy effort put into minimizing the data stream, (2) nearly any sort of network hiccup will kill a connection and hence the client--something almost assured on the internet for programs running long enough--, and (3) you can't move a client from one server to another. To speak of your VM example, in a more idealized version of Network Transparency, the VM(s) hosting MS Office could be moved from one machine to another and users would at most notice a pause during the checkpoint/transfer/client address update. That's something entirely out of the reach of X. Meanwhile, I think people are more interested in things like (a) starting a program at home on their desktop, (b) continuing to use it on their smartphone, and (c) finally moving to a desktop at their destination. Conceivably, the desktop itself would not be running most the programs but simply be a nexus of links to clients on the phone, on the desktop, and online; ie, the point of the desktop would be more to coordinate what is being run as it has more capacity to checkpoint/maintain/log.
In short, I don't think X really lived much up to the network transparency ideal. Sure, it can fool you for a while, but the times it fails it fails pretty catastrophically. X was really conceived of in another time which ironically presumed higher reliability. I certainly agree that Wayland stepping further away from network transparency is the wrong path. It just seems clear that pointing at X isn't really that useful considering how many things it gets wrong for today's environment.
Uh huh. And I never said anything about humans being a potential cause in the future. And the lessons of survival would be most useful in the generic sense, to understand how life evolved on a planet that--in geological terms--quickly lost its atmosphere and water and how life adapted to those conditions until the environment became, presumably, uninhabitable. As the saying goes, necessity is the mother of invention. It's quite possible we'd learn a lot of very interesting and useful biology and genetics from life on a very different planet that would be very pertinent to life on Earth.
Yea, that really presumes that humanity might actually be around in one form or another--along with enough cultural knowledge--in a few million years and no, it speaks nothing of Earth being remotely in the same state as Mars in that time. Off hand, though, I could imagine learning more about life adapting to adverse water shortages on a larger scale or to a radical change in atmospheric component concentrations or quantity would be rather useful for considerations of long-term space travel. Even if nothing of the sort is gained, just finding out the actual biology of life on another world would be potentially amazingly useful to better understanding life.
Though I guess it's handwaving feelgood to actually try to keep humanity around in the cosmos, in general. Perhaps it's not really meant to be in any real sense. But, we are so dwarfing in our knowledge to really know at all what can and should be, that it seems more handwaving cynicism to presume from out limited knowledge of today that we have some real idea on the possible when we're unwilling to even remotely seriously invest into the very tangibly doable of today.
Nice strawman, there. I mean, it's good to know that to scoff at greed is equivalent to be interested in something "for purely academic or intellectual purposes". Perhaps the scoffing has something to do with the fact that greed as a motivator to do things has all sorts of very negative side-effects--economic bubbles are a big one. Or perhaps it has to do with the point that a view that moderation is a good thing and liable to produce much more desirable long-term results while greed tends to, in focusing on being an end unto itself, be an almost pointless exercise a lot of the time.
That's a pretty good begging the question. If you don't view "knowledge alone" as something "of actual value to our planet Earth", then there's little point in asking the question because no response that could be given would be acceptable to you. It entirely ignores that there are people who do, obviously, see value in knowledge alone and that a trip to Mars focused on expansion of humanity into the cosmos would be more than a pure knowledge expedition and not a greed motivated one.
Are you serious? The very fact that Mars once had an atmosphere, once had [possibly flowing] water, was once possibly habitable, etc and yet now lacks those things means its precisely a very good potential model of what Earth may become in the distant future. Knowing this and specifically examining what is left on Mars may do very much to help us figure out either to cope with those risks or to even entirely avoid them realizing that Mars is a cautionary tale of what may happen if humanity does nothing--although odds are good, humanity won't be around by then. In short, we'd be able to learn from the history of Mars just like how we learn from our own history, to use as a guide of what has and could happen to decide on what to do to avoid bad things from happening again.
At the end of the day, the real question is what one places value on. Is it shiny trinkets and beads? Or is it one's life to enjoy those shiny trinkets and beads? And if one is forward thinking enough to recognize this, maybe one may be forward thinking enough to consider one's grand children or great grand children and just exactly what steps are necessary, in general, for the survival of humanity. But, you know, that all depends on if you see any value in humanity.
Rare on Earth materials? Quite pointless except for a Mars colony itself. Stopover for energy for other pats of the Solar System and beyond? Not really sensical in any way since a free-floating platform would be actually maneuverable and would avoid almost all the escape velocity concerns. Low gravity for making materials? Uh...why not LEO and whatever gravity as needed through rotation instead of flying all the way to Mars and back? "Lifeboat" for humanity? Pretty well outside the scope of reasonable given the shear scope of reach to make Mar
Talk about this and generally about China's lack of involvement in CO2 emission standards--and the US using such as an excuse not to act--makes me realize something rather non-profound but possibly relevant. It would seem clear to me that the US has a rather serious management problem. You see, China is a lot like Google and the US is a lot like Microsoft.
By that I mean, China is a developing country which is still working out just what sort of economic form it will have in the future. As a result, it is not only experience a lot of growth as it learns what it does well but it also wastes a lot of resources on a lot of projects that end up as dead-ends.
Meanwhile, the US is a developed country with a rather stable--overall--economic form. Growth ends up being rather incremental and spurts are usually rather limited in scope to the few success stories where the "US ingenuity"--ie, the perceived actions of a startup company/country--sees a wasteful project that actually goes somewhere. In the end, though, a lot of the economic form is controlled through a network of treaties and implied if not outright acted acts of force against not only enemies but also allies. The focus is, of course, to solidify power but it comes at the cost of exerting a lot more resources per capita as so many resources go towards just maintaining the power base.
Now, the real problem in all this is way too many Republicans and Democrats think the US is still a startup. They function just like a manager or a CEO who wants to do slash and burn policies--like cutting wages, benefits, etc to be more competitive against other countries--because they see those very things that make the US a developed country as also the main impediment to growth. The truth is, of course, that those sorts of actions --just like massive loans/stimulus packages--do have a short term benefit but obvious long-term harm. And if next quarter thinking and CEO golden parachutes make one's blood boil, then the very nature of the electoral process and the absurd compensation package offered to federal politicians would seem to be the very framework of which corporate executives must have cribbed their playbook.
So, yea, way off-topic to the point at hand. But, then, given the UN is all about trying to provide a forum for countries to talk to avoid war, I really don't see how the geoengineering project really falls under their purview any more than the CO2 issue, especially given how little teeth the UN has to enforce anything and certain how unwilling any country, even those who have made pledges, are inclined to explicitly force their citizens to comply.
Well, given that's not what was said... No, people assume that libertarians don't want government forcing the presses to be an open forum to everyone or to be able to set arbitrary standards. After all, the whole point is that the ABC affiliate has set a standard of $50,000 campaign contributions. What if this were a government mandated standard? It'd seem leaving it up to ABC affiliate to decide is closer to the libertarian ideal. It just happens to be that said candidate is unable to meet the standard and is complaining about how that standard is unfair. Well, its certain his right to complain, but I don't see how it's particularly unfair--nor the complaint of their standard of 10% in the polls when he only got as high as 7% in the one poll that had him. As much as it points out he doesn't take corporate contributions, he could just as well get 1,000 people to give $50 contribution to reach ABC's requirements, so even that line argument of fairness doesn't hold.
In short, his major complaint seems to be focused on the obvious truth that there's great deal of inertia in the Democrat and Republican parties. Hence, to reach even reasonable standards is incredibly difficult because its difficult for his party and he himself to appear as credible. That's just a simple fact. Government stepping in would seem entirely against the process of a free and fair system as it would allow government to, intentionally or not, choose the winners and losers of an election. The only way it makes sense to interfere is to state that the inertia they possess is not unlikely the rich with old money or large corporations with inherently powerful economy of scale and influence and there should be clear and extant regulation of a heavily focused, open, multipartisan, etc scope. Well, that right there is a very massive government influence, very much counter to just about every claim I've heard about libertarian ideology that it is in fact government that is the chief cause and retention of such massive inertia and monopolies.
Sad but true, a large reason for all the buddying up to corporate interests and afford[ing] special protections to corporations is because it is short-term advantageous to voters. I mean, in the long-term, the best interests of the world is to massive global trade. But, that means a worsening of living conditions for a lot of people in the US for decades--as they lose the ability to work. Meanwhile, the very corporations that will have that increased competition will also see exploding profit margins as those who can still work will continue to buy products at the same or greater prices while manufacturing costs drop. The only way to resolve this "problem", as most people are likely to see a further entrenching of large corporations, is some sort of wealth redistribution program.
The founders of our country focused on a limited federal government for two main reasons: they had extant, large state governments and at a time with such slow communication it was felt that only "local" control w
Well, the Microsoft EFI FAT32 File System Specification (which admittedly isn't the patent itself and may not extend to UEFI) and the language covering its use seems to be specifically of the "you can only use this for EFI itself" type. Ie, even if Linux was used as the boot loader and running kernel--which it rarely is, as usually lilo/grub/whatever is used for boot and when Linux is used as the boot loader it tends to hand over control to a second, newer kernel version--, it'd seem to only allow LFN patent protection for the actual booting process itself. It specifically says "[for] example, you must obtain an additional license in order to create a file system for reading or reading and writing FAT32 in digital cameras recording to flash media, in computer operating systems reading and writing internal/external hard disks or flash media, or in set-top boxes reading FAT-formatted media."
That isn't to say you're wrong. It's just that I can't readily find any other information to collaborate your claim. More to the point, LFN was just a very well known example. During the whole SCO trial thing, it was made pretty clear that Linux almost certainly violates at least *some* patents--and possibly a lot, over 250. Yea, the issue was majorly downplayed by those in the OSS/FSS community and the real risks of patent infringement is often rather small in itself--as a lot of companies aren't interested in generating a lot of bad PR while potentially opening them up to counter-suits which contain just as legitimate complaints. The whole TomTom affair did really virtually nothing to further MS's interests--it did little to slow the adoption of Linux and since MS wasn't competing directly in GPS devices... Of course, patent trolls are a whole other beast since they're just looking for money, but then that may well be blood from a stone.
So, the over reaching point would be that patent trolls who could already be suing Linux developers aren't likely to suddenly start just because nVidia released a driver. And the other interests--Intel and AMD--are generally just as much a target for counter-suits by IBM or Google--huge supporters of Linux. That isn't to say there shouldn't be effort to step lively upon known patent issues that resulted in court settlements--as the risk there is the court not taking too kindly to ignoring court orders. But, it is hard for me to believe that those settlements are sufficient blockades to releasing an open driver. Yea, I can them being performance stumbling blocks--not unlike how arithmetic coding for compression being patented is (was?) a stumbling block. But, even that would likely be a matter of a small performance degradation, not a large one. Ie, it'd be far from the most optimal situation for the end user in many ways, but it'd be a huge step forward compared to the current state of affairs for a lot of users who won't or can't use the proprietary drivers nVidia provides.
So, nVidia shouldn't do all that rewriting because there's all that patent risk? Funny. Last I checked, the Linux kernel was full of code that was quite clearly patented*, yet it continued to be redistributed rather broadly. Really, foisting a "clean"--maybe really, maybe not but only because of patent trolls-driver on Linux developers (or Xorg developers)** to maintain would relieve a lot of the potential risks. I mean, hell, for years Mesa wasn't OpenGL compliant precisely because of the rather obtuse licensing requirements. That didn't stop people from treating Mesa as de factor OpenGL on Linux.
So, nVidia is beholden to various others who at a whim can really do whatever they please to manipulate nVidia to their own designs. Sure, most the time that's just a matter of trying to maximize money from them. But, really, nVidia should be striving to decouple itself from such entities on the face of it, even if it were guaranteed to be nothing more than a really cheap recurring licensing fee.
Look at OpenSolaris for an example of how it is quite possible to open source a much larger project. Look at Java for the same. Now, it could be argued that these things killed Sun's competitive edge. I'd argue that Java did in part, as it focused on write-once-run-everywhere and Sun's main focus is/was hardware. The same could be said for Solaris, for which the whole OpenSolaris project started precisely because Linux was seen to have a competitive edge being (a) run on many platforms that (b) when it was used on Sun hardware rather made Solaris redundant. I think there was some perverse hope that Sun could unburden itself of Solaris development by making it open source. But Linux already served that role and the current Solaris users didn't want to be burdened with maintaining the whole OS as well just to keep using the hardware.
And that's the fundamental point. Sun's competitive edge for a long time was their hardware, not their software. Yes, their software helped facilitate that hardware's potential and for a long time there wasn't any real competitors in that field as well. But, in the end, people were buying Sun hardware--with some lock-in because of Solaris-only software. But Sun made server hardware--their desktop/workstation share were eaten by Windows--and PCs/Intel simply killed them in that field. Now, if Sun had managed to actually keep progressing on the hardware, the story would be very different I'm sure.
Well, that's it. Just replace "Sun" with "nVidia" and "Intel" with "AMD" and you've got your current situation. nVidia's competitive edge, when it has one, is its hardware. Drivers facilitate that. People don't buy nVidia for their drivers any more than people buy AMD for their drivers--especially true given the poor reputation of AMD drivers yet t
That's because Slashdot is a write only medium. Well, okay, it's not *strictly* a write only medium. Some people actually read the comments they're replying to, even fewer read the summary, and virtually no one reads the article. Of course to really seal the deal, everything added to Slashdot should be encrypted with a OTP from /dev/random. But, then, that might make Slashdot *more* interesting.
So, what you're saying is, due to a rule about "minimum sale price should be kept secret", there's a market failure. And HFT is all about making the minimum sale price only secret to most, but not all people, where the few that do only know it through massive spamming of the exchanges. It sounds to me that the problem, fundamentally, is that there is such a thing as a "minimum sale price" or a "maximum buy price". I presume such things were invented precisely to avoid HFT being the norm for all sellers/buyers. Yet, if HFT were the norm for all sellers/buyers and secret minimum/maximum prices were removed, the odds are good that (1) the buy/sale price would end up closer to the center of the two parties effective minimum/maximum prices involved, (2) there'd be a lot fewer middlemen, and (3) a lot of the ridiculous geographical considerations for trading would go out the window because "HFT" wouldn't be nearly as lightning-quick as sell/buy prices would likely move over the course of seconds or hours, not microseconds, as the pool of buys/sellers is too geographically disparate and current HFT wouldn't be in a position to soak up buys/sells upfront to do HFT with other HFT outfits that were geographically close to the market--as the minimum price to the market is likely to be different than the minimum price to a broker to the market.
But, yea, I probably don't really understand any of this and the above is just bullshit. :/
So, God's word is true. But, all that evolution, embryology, and Big Bang theory that results from a careful study of God's world? Oh, that's all lies. Oh, and why did God create this amazing world? Oh, to create lies that teach the understanding that one not need a savior. Sounds like an enactment of Job all over again. You know the funny thing about the story of Job? It's not that Job personally suffers or how its done all on the behest of Satan to "prove" Job's inherent faithfulness or how it all boils down to a "test" and "don't question the acts of God because you didn't make the universe". It's how God kills Job's kids then in the end proceeds to produce new kids for him as if they're magically some sort of replacement. In other words, not only is God a dick to the most pious for the most dubious of reasons, but "God's word" makes it very clear that as a rule you *are* a number and trivially replaceable. Is it any wonder people in power, who view themselves as special, would be so willing to embrace "God's word"? It must make it easier for them to sleep at night. But, then, that sort of presumes they had any sort of empathy in the first place that needed to be quieted somehow.
Yet let us not forget that "Throughout the states, both government and businesses are moving to ban tobacco-use beyond working hours." (emphasis mine) Considering the relatively negative picture of cigarrettes, thanks more in part to private advocacy groups--including a lot of ex-smokers and spouses--than the Clinton-era lawsuits, the normal method of private and business counter-advocacy seems pretty well doomed.
Well, that's the major thing, isn't it. On the one hand, a large part of the population is so greed/money focused, they'll rabidly speak against the government at every turn, speaking of inefficiency and higher taxes--regardless of whether there's specific inefficiencies to be noted or if any higher taxes are specifically being aimed for--yet at the same time demand that government step in to enforce things like a fat tax or a BMI fine so their insurance rates don't go up. The real problem is the myopic view of money first and not the process itself and what, if anything, should be done. I mean, the same people who complain about a "BMI fine" from government would complain just as much about a "BMI fine" from their insurance company--for which most would follow suit, given the obesity stats--because both would personally effect them. Or, in essence, they're complaining about the problem they're creating and trying to advocate against having to take responsibility.
Not quite. The problem with "the nanny state" is how laws are unlikely to be repealed. Politicians *say* they're for fighting terrorists. The truth is, most know that to work towards any sort of repeal of such laws, no matter how wasteful they are, is only likely to incur the wrath of voters who see the politician as weak and the wrath of constituents (possibly not theirs directly*) who will lose all that government money for all that wasteful tax money spent. Big business can at least be more nimble and junk food companies can at least fight, in the court of public opinion, the health-insurance-focused companies. In the end, it's likely a loosing battle, but the slide into enforced company standards will likely be at least loose enough to let some companies to keep hiring the obese and otherwise health risked. Of course, more than likely some middle ground will be reached and "doctors" will redefine obese to allow more accepted company/medical coverage.
The overall point is that whether it's government or business, the odds are good that the obesity epidemic is likely to come to an end in the future. The only real question is how much of it will go away because of government interference to directly alter the ability of people to become obese, how much of it will be forced upon employees by businesses focused on the bottom line, and how much of it will simply be whitewashed with new government enforced and business sponsored standards--with all the legal force to quell insurance companies--on what is medically qualified as obese.
Oh, and if we didn't have any of this "nanny state" business, people would be regularly turned away from hospitals who had at heart attack and would simply die because insurance company rates would be too hire for most people to afford. And while certainly people
And that, right there, would be the problem. You entirely miss the point that one is inherently supposed to produce a well made bicycle if one is to make one at all. There is no need for pride to do so. To do less is to commit a sort of fraud and to lie. Instead, you nee demand people be prideful that they produce quality work. This is the same fallacy that demand people be greedy that capitalism should work at all. Pride is the extreme of self-importance. One should be well considerate of one's work and mindful of it. But to take pride in it misses that one's work is but a cosmically infinitesimal aspect of the grand scheme of the universe.
Put another way, do you believe the all Amish work is inferior quality or of a prideful nature? I would say no to both, generally.
I wouldn't call the GP selfless. I don't say this because selfless is a dirty word or anything. However, it does seem to be considered a dirty word to point out the GP was pointing out, that not everything should be done for greed. It always causes a twinge of humor and sadness in my heart at how both pride [in one's work] and greed [in money] seem to be the foundation of the "Christian" nation of the US. Yet the obvious truth is it's not so black and while. It's not the choice of being selfish or selfless. There is a difference between putting a few, less obnoxious ads on a website that's heavily used to help fund it and layering on twenty ads on the 5 hits/month blog The only sad part, to me, is that the latter basically mandates ad blocking which hurts the former. That ITIF should basically flip the bird at DNT really misses a major point, I guess; it's not out of the question that in the future ad block software might give the option to only allow ads from those that *do* honor DNT. And if anything, that might well do more to "[support] most of the free content, services, and apps available on the Internet" than anything else.
Sounds like a great education opportunity: Clean Room Reverse Engineering 101.
So, the great thinkers of the past wanted a system of government run by great thinkers. Golly, that sounds familiar. But in any case, if one were to use high school or college graduations--a system of passed classes and tests--as some sort of proxy, today we're much more educated than nearly any time in history.
No, politics is the downfall of most governments, democracy or otherwise. What else turns every little event into gigantic proportions and turn otherwise sensible people into emotionally driven "he'll start a war" rhetoric to justify having such reactions? No, being manipuled is the general problem and very few people are free from that; most people just don't see it in themselves because it goes to their ongoing biases and presumptions about life. I mean, after all, what basis do you have that education or ignorance has anything to do with downfalls? No, I'm pretty sure that's just a gut reaction from an intellectual crowd with an air of truthiness.
What if that "child" is a vast majority of the population? You see, you want to cast free thinking adults as children to justify tyrannical action--benevolent, of course. Yet you ignore the obvious truth to your story, that you should *try to teach the child not to climb a brand hanging over a cliff*. That's what "the soap box" is for--freedom of expression is an obvious key to successful, long-term democracy. And if the soap box fails, well, people get what they deserve as a whole. Now, if you were to extend that analogy and be it one child putting another, unwilling child on a branch over a cliff, you'd have much more justification on what one would "let" that child do--at that point, the liberty of others is at stake and there may be reason to act. Voting is really so far down the list, really, as far as real-world consequences in most democracies in large part to, ironically enough, politics--as the smallest thing can be used to paint an opponent horrible and secure victory which makes most politicians incredibly bland in action.
No, the reason most people like the idea of "fixing" voting is because it looks like a quick fix to make "bad"--by whatever definition of "bad" one wants to use--not a part of the system to magically fix it. The problem is not recognizing that part of the system is precisely letting "bad" people govern if "bad" people are the majority. As much as you can try to turn them "good" before they vote--through legal means, of course--, democracy is very much a social reflection of self-determination applied at a national scale. That means accepting the good and the bad of that determination, not acting like the results are always optimal or perfect. Of course, that sort of speech also invokes the failings of free markets--and we can't have that sacred cow brought up, either--and the idea of dictatorship/regulation/whatever. Then again, some people acknowledge the idea of a constitutional republic and how it curtails at least 51%-based insanities, by generally moving it to 66% or 75% insanites, but that's a whole other subject really.
Funny, but I always saw it as sort of an evidence used by Christians, especially the early ones, that the whole Jesus Christ/God thing wasn't simply a cult thing. After all, without the Old Testament backstory, Christianity's belief in Jesus Christ as a savior has about as much basis of belief as the Flying Spaghetti Monster as some sort of religious icon. After all, there's a pretty massive split in the ideals presented by Jesus and how God is and how the Judaic God is presented. Of course, current Judaic God in most western societies seems to have mellowed a lot, with the same sort of "it was all figurative" which is used by Catholics and other denominations on exactly how God can be "merciful" and be such an asshole in the Old Testament/Torah--and the excuse "the kids/my people had it coming" just doesn't fly.
Ie, I'd say the Old Testament has repeatedly been in direct conflict with the idea of the Christian God and as such very much is useless to Christians to somehow gauge God's character* But, the very fact that it's part and parcel of Christianity effectively nullifies a sensible ability to believe in the New Testament as a consequence.
*Btw, this is why your whole "cherry picking texts ... to misinterpret and incite blind fear without misunderstanding" doesn't really hold water. The God of the Old Testament had the character to damn homosexuals and demand they be stoned to death. Any sort of "live and let live" has come about through social change--that includes newly spawned religions--and selective misinterpretation that such text. After all, the text that was being quoted says: Romans 1:26-27, "26 Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural sexual relations for unnatural ones. 27 In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed shameful acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their error." Ie, the text is clearly judgmental on the aspects of the sin of homosexuality and all Romans 2:1 did was merely transmuted it from "God commands you to stone this homosexual" to "God will make sure homosexuals get their just punishment, so don't do the stoning yourself"**--which leaves all sorts of room for people to act like God is a don boss and to carry out his work.... Live and let live would be to take the farther step and really not even think about the person's homosexuality at all in any real context except the prospects of a sexual relationship, if desired; of course, that can just be a byproduct of living in a city of a million people and simply not having the time to be involved in that many people's lives.
**Judge not lest thee be judge making only sense in this context if one considers judges of the era being judge *and* executioner. Otherwise, the moral judgments are still happening.
Um, not really. As you later note, advertisers can use custom named images (based upon the requesting ip address). Hell, just the ip address is often enough a lot of the time, especially if you're using ipv6.
Except "session" cookies merely means "not written to disk cache" cookies, which still allows for lots of tracking if you rarely close your browser--a real possibility if you have a laptop and simply sleep/wake it a lot. To say it's not a issue misses the obvious: if an advertiser figures out who you are very early in each session, then effectively they can track you pretty nearly as much as if they were permanent cookies. Ie, session cookies are only useful so long as browsers leak so little information that you can't be uniquely identified through other means, like say, an ip address.
Great idea, except considering the rapid pace of browser versioning and the not so rapid pace of browser adoption, even the version number is a good way to narrow down the requester.
Great in theory. In practice, plugins expose support for different file types that the server probably should know about to return sensible results. I mean, yea, it'd be great if everything was writtable in the context of "it'll all fallback gracefully whatever I do", but it doesn't work that way in the real world, which basically mandates some sort of javascript wrapper if you choose to use any sort of plugin.
Well, that'll break a significant part of the web, especially since there's no sensible basis to limit it to just images. It really should sensible extent to any object that can be used to track someone, which translates into anything that can be named. Other than that, great idea.
And what sort of magic do you propose to give the browser the omniscience to know that a bit of information is a cookie or not? Or should it simply bar all information transferal of any kind to-from a plugin? Or perhaps just bar all sorts of writes to the filesystem, turning all plugin data into session data? The latter only mitigates the issues, really.
As much as I agree with the former, DNT will always be a joke precisely because no matter how much browser developers try to not leak unique information, there's plenty of third party advertisers who are plain assholes who, if anything, will actively try to track harder DNT people precisely because they're a niche market who otherwise might not get many ads.
Perhaps because it's close to impossible to *not
How about "I don't see the point in fixing what's not broken" and "I don't see the point in the wasteful quest to follow the latest and greatest trends"? Or are those equivalent to "just being cheap"? The problem, as I see it, is that neither IE9 nor IE10 are "killer apps" and a lot of people on older machines aren't playing DX10 games so those "killer apps" aren't there either. So what motivation would people really have to buy W7, exactly? It'd seem, at least in the future, the answer would be security updates, and that's it.