'Because as we all know, executing the retarded is "fair".'
And from the linked article:
"The American Bar Association urged Texas Gov. George W. Bush to block Cruz's execution because he has been diagnosed as being mentally retarded with an IQ of 63."
Bush probalbly thought "gee, compared to me this guy's a genius - he should have known better"
You missed the part about musos being in massive debt after recording a CD. They can play gigs every night until they die, if the CD doesn't sell, they won't be able to repay it.
My original post was based on what many people already said in this discussion. Something along the lines of:
"I used to buy CDs, but now that I can download
them for free I don't buy CDs any more at all"
The recording industry is guilty as charged and for a lot more, I will never discredit them for that:-)
But the problem is worsening because now people are stopping to buy CDs altogether.
I have nothing agains downloading songs of the internet - it's an excellent advertising mechanism, after all - as long people at least buy a couple of CDs of the stuff they really like, once in a while.
Well, alright, in my country DVD movies are quite a bit more expensive though. More like $40.
My gripe is not so much how much CDs cost, but how much of it, or rather, how little of the money gets paid to the artist in the end. Let me give you a little inside info (I'm a musician, this is from first hand experience).
A record company will sign an artist, pay them a smallish amount to live off while they record a CD. Usually the deal will be for a couple of CDs, with a time limit. Then they will, ideally, promote the band, pay for the studio time, basicall cover all their expenses. This money is not for free or even in exchange for the band's work. It is a loan to the band, charged at interest rates that would make any loanshark worth his salt's eys water.
Now, lets say the band gets 50c for each CD sold. (For a yet unknown band, this is daydreaming. Some of the top guys, I'm thinking Sting, Celine Dion, Enrique, ect. - artists who often sell millions of CDs per album, might be able to negotiate a slightly better deal, but not much)
The band has to sell CDs until the money they owe the record label is paid in full out of their cut from the CDs. Many artists never manage this, so they remain in debt to the record company, who can (and do) use this to make each consecutive contract worse for the artist. Many artists never manage to repay everything. Sometimes, at the end of the artist's sell-by date, the record company might scrap the debt. Which would mean the artist never made much more than he/she needed to survive and cover their gear, while the record company made a small fortune out of them - remember the other $9.50 did not go towards paying off the artist debt, the record company made that clean.
So, yeah, the Record labels "lose" loads more out of music piracy than the artists, but the artist lose too, and compared to what most of them get paid, they lose a lot more. Most muso are certainly not overpaid, and it's a little unfair to penalise the musicians for the recording industry's greed.
Yeah, I don't like the Metallica mentality either. But downloading ALL your music for free is wrong (from a logical point of view - I couldn't care less about your morals). If everybody downloads all their music for free, your favourite bands/artists will go out of business.
"People who make music were always grossly overpaid and I don't think most of them deserve it."
Bullshit. You don't know what you're talking about. Do you know why there are so many one hit wonders? So many excellent bands that never take off?
Because the record companies screw them over, and only the ones that manage to sell millions of one CD actually manage to go on. Most record contracts require you to sell a given number of CDs (depends on the size of your contract) just to break even with them, and most bands don't make this. With any of the big record companies, if a CD costs $10, the artist can consider himself fortunate if he gets 50c per CD. And then he gets taxed for that too.
It's people like you who cause the RIAA and MPAA to sue ordinary citizens. Freeloaders who show no appreciation or respect for musicians hard work (excpet maybe if you listen to Britney Spears - the sooner she goes out of business, the better).
Most - as in 99.999% of musicians are overworked and underpaid. Most can't afford the instruments they play on. It's only the handful at the top who gets pushed by the record companies, and all the sex_sells/idol/whatever other commercial crap, who make it really big financially, and that's only because they sell millions of copies.
Well, I don't think you'll find any 3ghz CPUs that will fit in that board:-)
"Speed" depends on what you want to do. For gaming a cpu of twice the speed will be faster, probably same for audio/video encoding or other single threaded apps.
The ideal of course, if you use a notebook with a slow onboard NIC, would be two PCMCIA cards (if it can take that) or a dual card, again assuming such a beast exist.
"I'm curious why you recommended using the pcmcia card for the internal interface, and the on-board ethernet for the WAN interface."
Simply because on a Pentium or Pentium II class notebook, a built int controller is likely to be 10-base, while you can stick anything you like into the PCMCIA slot, gigabit if you like (assuming such a beast exist).
The reason I recommended it that way around is because OP mentioned using it for a file server too, in which case, if you're dealing with two network cards of different speeds, you would want the faster one to be internal. Unless your WAN interface is more than 10mbit, of course:-)
Your points about lightning is valid though. I didn't consider that. ADSL users absolutely have to have a lightning protector on their ADSL.
Strangely, though. Our office got hit by lightning - as in the building itself. The strike hit the incoming line directly and burned it off. It blew just about every network card in the office, all the switches, and damaged the firewall's motherboard (ASUS P-II board). Amazingly the ADSL modem survived! We're still using it!
"PS: Last I heard they were still arguing about whether there is any connection between a death penalty and crime. The only correlation that is proven is that crime goes up when the economy goes down."
Well, in my country, in the last ten years the economy has improved substantially, and crime has increased tenfold. The only thing that seems to relate is the way the law deals with criminals has deteriorated to the point where murderers and rapists spend three or years in jail and then walk free again.
I have a simple argument for the death penalty. You and I agree that everyone has the right to live, right? So what happens when I kill someone. Obviously, I decided that life isn't a right and that people can decide. If the victim doesn't have the right to live, then I don't either. If I can decided over the victim's life, then obviously someone else have the power to decide over mine. The punishment should fit the crime.
Either way, innocent people are going to die. People will get killed. The problem with statistics on capital punishment in the US, is that the prisoners spend such a long time on death row. The same people sit there through numerous law changes, so how do you really determine what works and what doesn't? If DNA testing is involved, proving without a doubt if someone did or didn't commit the crime, should be a lot more accurate than before.
I have another gripe. States where they have death penalty, but want to make it as "humane" as possible. What's the point? If the victim died in the most "humane" way possible, then it obviously wasn't murder (except maybe in a few very rare cases).
In anyway, how many innocent people get murdered every year? As opposed to innocent people on death row? Which way are you losing more innocent lives?
You have to look beyond the human rights issues to deal with this properly. You cannot let real criminals off the hook just because one or two of them might be innocent. If you do, you're protecting criminals, instead of the general public.
Have you updated your gaim recently. What you describe sound very much like what usually happens every time Yahoo changes something to shut out third party software.
Usually you just have to wait for the next release for gaim and you're good to go again. They release every two or three weeks.
I would like that too, but there are a few practical problems. For one, they'd have to deal with all the junk PC hardware out there. That would be a nightmare. Right now Apple only has to deal with a very small pool of hardware, and as far as the main parts go, they get to choos what they put in their computers, and they're able to use decent hardware. No winmodems or other crap.
They would also have to find some way to break into the Windows market. I mean, have a look at Dell's website and tell me they'll jump to get OS X. They won't. Microsoft will have their ass if they even thought about it. Geeks like me would buy it at the drop of a hat, of course, and I think a couple of artistic minded folk might just too. But a lot of miracles is going to have to happen before conditions are right for them to enter the PC market.
But yeah, I agree. Once Joe Everyman gets to play with OSX, MS market share will definitely take a knock.
Why don't you just use an old notebook. Pentium II vintage with built in network should be ideal. Replace the hard drive with the sort of size you want. Use the built in network for your external interface (pppoe adsl or leased line or whatever) and add a 100mbit pcmcia card for your internal interface.
Not only will it be super light on juice, but it should be relatively quiet, take little space (you can close the lid) and it has a built in UPS!
You have to remember that the death penalty serves a dual purpose. Firstly, it punishes someone for something they did.
Secondly, and I think this is more important, it serves as an example for people who might commit a crime that qualifies you for capital punishment. This is usually murder, but in some countries it could be petty theft.
I don't think death is an effective punishment. The punished will never learn anything from it, for obvious reasons (although he won't commit the crime again, either ways).
I do however know for a fact that capital punishment is an excellent deterrant. In my country the death sentance was abolished about a decade ago (iirc). Twenty years ago, if you were at home and your house got burgled, you would probably have gotten a warning/temprarily disabling hit over the head if you tried to interfere. Today, you had better hope your not at home for the break in, because you will most definitely not survive it. Yes, since getting rid of the death sentance, crime is up, and the number of murders committed every year increases at an alarming rate. Convicted murderers get a couple of years in prison, and is sent out on parole after less than half of it, simply because the jails can't cope with the number of people sent there.
Sending innocent people to death row is no worse than sending innocent kids into a war. At least the guys at death row have time to appeal their cases.
"The Christians have to right to have a different value system."
Just like the rest should have the right not to have the Christian value system enforced on them by law.
There's a reason why abortions should be legal. It's so that it can be done properly in a controlled and appropriate environment. People are not going to stop having abortions if it's made illegal. They'll have it done in in a dark alley somewhere or by an illegal immigrant doctor who, for all you know, isn't really a doctor. And then die of aids or some infection or bleeding.
Like the girl who died of brain damage after a illegal cuban "doctor" treated her for an inner ear infection...
He's commonley known as "DVD Jon" and seems to have made it his (so far very successful) mission to reverse engineer every media "protection" gimmick he can get his hands on.
No they won't. They already think it's normal that their brand new super fast computer running WindowsXP won't play some their new CDs. They think that's the way it has to be. They think the CD/DVD drive is not capable of playing audio CDs. Meanwhile that same drive will play the living shit out of that CD under just about any other OS.
They think it's normal that they can watch DVDs on their computer from only one region, or from a few but that it then locks on one region. They think that's right and it's they way it has to be.
They believe it's normal, and that's why companies are getting away with selling absolute bullshit like that to the public.
Do you think the commercial encyclopedias are not biased? Ignorance is bliss....
The thing that wikkipedia lacks is proper content control. Someone recently pointed out (can't remember where, it might have been here on/.) that they entered some bogus information, and it remained there until they removed it themselves a week or so later.
But then, bias and accuracy play off against each other - you can't have both perfectly. Wikkipedia's "bias" is probably more balanced than with the commercial publications - because you get a wide variety of bias all mixed together.
Slashdot Mirror
'Because as we all know, executing the retarded is "fair".'
And from the linked article:
"The American Bar Association urged Texas Gov. George W. Bush to block Cruz's execution because he has been diagnosed as being mentally retarded with an IQ of 63."
Bush probalbly thought "gee, compared to me this guy's a genius - he should have known better"
No man, if you're using a later kernel/distro you ARE using ALSA. ALSA is emulating OSS.
They're just using the OSS API which means all you're missing is surround sound but it is actually alsa doing the work.
You missed the part about musos being in massive debt after recording a CD. They can play gigs every night until they die, if the CD doesn't sell, they won't be able to repay it.
Making for music for the love of it is very nice and all, but you've still got to eat and your equipment for the most part is very expensive.
My original post was based on what many people already said in this discussion. Something along the lines of:
:-)
"I used to buy CDs, but now that I can download
them for free I don't buy CDs any more at all"
The recording industry is guilty as charged and for a lot more, I will never discredit them for that
But the problem is worsening because now people are stopping to buy CDs altogether.
I have nothing agains downloading songs of the internet - it's an excellent advertising mechanism, after all - as long people at least buy a couple of CDs of the stuff they really like, once in a while.
Well, alright, in my country DVD movies are quite a bit more expensive though. More like $40.
My gripe is not so much how much CDs cost, but how much of it, or rather, how little of the money gets paid to the artist in the end. Let me give you a little inside info (I'm a musician, this is from first hand experience).
A record company will sign an artist, pay them a smallish amount to live off while they record a CD. Usually the deal will be for a couple of CDs, with a time limit. Then they will, ideally, promote the band, pay for the studio time, basicall cover all their expenses. This money is not for free or even in exchange for the band's work. It is a loan to the band, charged at interest rates that would make any loanshark worth his salt's eys water.
Now, lets say the band gets 50c for each CD sold. (For a yet unknown band, this is daydreaming. Some of the top guys, I'm thinking Sting, Celine Dion, Enrique, ect. - artists who often sell millions of CDs per album, might be able to negotiate a slightly better deal, but not much)
The band has to sell CDs until the money they owe the record label is paid in full out of their cut from the CDs. Many artists never manage this, so they remain in debt to the record company, who can (and do) use this to make each consecutive contract worse for the artist. Many artists never manage to repay everything. Sometimes, at the end of the artist's sell-by date, the record company might scrap the debt. Which would mean the artist never made much more than he/she needed to survive and cover their gear, while the record company made a small fortune out of them - remember the other $9.50 did not go towards paying off the artist debt, the record company made that clean.
So, yeah, the Record labels "lose" loads more out of music piracy than the artists, but the artist lose too, and compared to what most of them get paid, they lose a lot more. Most muso are certainly not overpaid, and it's a little unfair to penalise the musicians for the recording industry's greed.
Yeah, I don't like the Metallica mentality either. But downloading ALL your music for free is wrong (from a logical point of view - I couldn't care less about your morals). If everybody downloads all their music for free, your favourite bands/artists will go out of business.
"People who make music were always grossly overpaid and I don't think most of them deserve it."
Bullshit. You don't know what you're talking about. Do you know why there are so many one hit wonders? So many excellent bands that never take off?
Because the record companies screw them over, and only the ones that manage to sell millions of one CD actually manage to go on. Most record contracts require you to sell a given number of CDs (depends on the size of your contract) just to break even with them, and most bands don't make this. With any of the big record companies, if a CD costs $10, the artist can consider himself fortunate if he gets 50c per CD. And then he gets taxed for that too.
It's people like you who cause the RIAA and MPAA to sue ordinary citizens. Freeloaders who show no appreciation or respect for musicians hard work (excpet maybe if you listen to Britney Spears - the sooner she goes out of business, the better).
Most - as in 99.999% of musicians are overworked and underpaid. Most can't afford the instruments they play on. It's only the handful at the top who gets pushed by the record companies, and all the sex_sells/idol/whatever other commercial crap, who make it really big financially, and that's only because they sell millions of copies.
Well, I don't think you'll find any 3ghz CPUs that will fit in that board :-)
"Speed" depends on what you want to do. For gaming a cpu of twice the speed will be faster, probably same for audio/video encoding or other single threaded apps.
If you run a low end VIA CPU, maybe. Not with today's powerful CPUs though.
Please look up the difference between "affect" and "effect."
Yeah, I know, Bush probaby doesn't know the difference either, but it makes slashdot look bad.
Damn, hit submit instead of preview...
The ideal of course, if you use a notebook with a slow onboard NIC, would be two PCMCIA cards (if it can take that) or a dual card, again assuming such a beast exist.
"I'm curious why you recommended using the pcmcia card for the internal interface, and the on-board ethernet for the WAN interface."
Simply because on a Pentium or Pentium II class notebook, a built int controller is likely to be 10-base, while you can stick anything you like into the PCMCIA slot, gigabit if you like (assuming such a beast exist).
The reason I recommended it that way around is because OP mentioned using it for a file server too, in which case, if you're dealing with two network cards of different speeds, you would want the faster one to be internal. Unless your WAN interface is more than 10mbit, of course:-)
Your points about lightning is valid though. I didn't consider that. ADSL users absolutely have to have a lightning protector on their ADSL.
Strangely, though. Our office got hit by lightning - as in the building itself. The strike hit the incoming line directly and burned it off. It blew just about every network card in the office, all the switches, and damaged the firewall's motherboard (ASUS P-II board). Amazingly the ADSL modem survived! We're still using it!
"PS: Last I heard they were still arguing about whether there is any connection between a death penalty and crime. The only correlation that is proven is that crime goes up when the economy goes down."
:-)
Well, in my country, in the last ten years the economy has improved substantially, and crime has increased tenfold. The only thing that seems to relate is the way the law deals with criminals has deteriorated to the point where murderers and rapists spend three or years in jail and then walk free again.
I have a simple argument for the death penalty. You and I agree that everyone has the right to live, right? So what happens when I kill someone. Obviously, I decided that life isn't a right and that people can decide. If the victim doesn't have the right to live, then I don't either. If I can decided over the victim's life, then obviously someone else have the power to decide over mine. The punishment should fit the crime.
Either way, innocent people are going to die. People will get killed. The problem with statistics on capital punishment in the US, is that the prisoners spend such a long time on death row. The same people sit there through numerous law changes, so how do you really determine what works and what doesn't? If DNA testing is involved, proving without a doubt if someone did or didn't commit the crime, should be a lot more accurate than before.
I have another gripe. States where they have death penalty, but want to make it as "humane" as possible. What's the point? If the victim died in the most "humane" way possible, then it obviously wasn't murder (except maybe in a few very rare cases).
In anyway, how many innocent people get murdered every year? As opposed to innocent people on death row? Which way are you losing more innocent lives?
You have to look beyond the human rights issues to deal with this properly. You cannot let real criminals off the hook just because one or two of them might be innocent. If you do, you're protecting criminals, instead of the general public.
Gosh, how did we get so far off topic?
Have you updated your gaim recently. What you describe sound very much like what usually happens every time Yahoo changes something to shut out third party software.
Usually you just have to wait for the next release for gaim and you're good to go again. They release every two or three weeks.
I would like that too, but there are a few practical problems. For one, they'd have to deal with all the junk PC hardware out there. That would be a nightmare. Right now Apple only has to deal with a very small pool of hardware, and as far as the main parts go, they get to choos what they put in their computers, and they're able to use decent hardware. No winmodems or other crap.
They would also have to find some way to break into the Windows market. I mean, have a look at Dell's website and tell me they'll jump to get OS X. They won't. Microsoft will have their ass if they even thought about it. Geeks like me would buy it at the drop of a hat, of course, and I think a couple of artistic minded folk might just too. But a lot of miracles is going to have to happen before conditions are right for them to enter the PC market.
But yeah, I agree. Once Joe Everyman gets to play with OSX, MS market share will definitely take a knock.
And once everything is installed and configured you can take the display card out and run it headless.
Why don't you just use an old notebook. Pentium II vintage with built in network should be ideal. Replace the hard drive with the sort of size you want. Use the built in network for your external interface (pppoe adsl or leased line or whatever) and add a 100mbit pcmcia card for your internal interface.
Not only will it be super light on juice, but it should be relatively quiet, take little space (you can close the lid) and it has a built in UPS!
You have to remember that the death penalty serves a dual purpose. Firstly, it punishes someone for something they did.
Secondly, and I think this is more important, it serves as an example for people who might commit a crime that qualifies you for capital punishment. This is usually murder, but in some countries it could be petty theft.
I don't think death is an effective punishment. The punished will never learn anything from it, for obvious reasons (although he won't commit the crime again, either ways).
I do however know for a fact that capital punishment is an excellent deterrant. In my country the death sentance was abolished about a decade ago (iirc). Twenty years ago, if you were at home and your house got burgled, you would probably have gotten a warning/temprarily disabling hit over the head if you tried to interfere. Today, you had better hope your not at home for the break in, because you will most definitely not survive it. Yes, since getting rid of the death sentance, crime is up, and the number of murders committed every year increases at an alarming rate. Convicted murderers get a couple of years in prison, and is sent out on parole after less than half of it, simply because the jails can't cope with the number of people sent there.
Sending innocent people to death row is no worse than sending innocent kids into a war. At least the guys at death row have time to appeal their cases.
"The Christians have to right to have a different value system." Just like the rest should have the right not to have the Christian value system enforced on them by law. There's a reason why abortions should be legal. It's so that it can be done properly in a controlled and appropriate environment. People are not going to stop having abortions if it's made illegal. They'll have it done in in a dark alley somewhere or by an illegal immigrant doctor who, for all you know, isn't really a doctor. And then die of aids or some infection or bleeding. Like the girl who died of brain damage after a illegal cuban "doctor" treated her for an inner ear infection...
He's commonley known as "DVD Jon" and seems to have made it his (so far very successful) mission to reverse engineer every media "protection" gimmick he can get his hands on.
Go DVD Jon!!!
"They would KNOW that DRM isn't normal."
No they won't. They already think it's normal that their brand new super fast computer running WindowsXP won't play some their new CDs. They think that's the way it has to be. They think the CD/DVD drive is not capable of playing audio CDs. Meanwhile that same drive will play the living shit out of that CD under just about any other OS.
They think it's normal that they can watch DVDs on their computer from only one region, or from a few but that it then locks on one region. They think that's right and it's they way it has to be.
They believe it's normal, and that's why companies are getting away with selling absolute bullshit like that to the public.
My reply (and the post I was replying to, it seemed to me) were about bias in wikipedia in general, not specifically browser stats.
I agree, figures (like browser stats) does not involve bias
"If you're relying on Wikipedia for your knowledge of Norse mythology, you're in the wrong profession."
So content control (I meant that is checking that the content is accurate) is imporant after all, bias doesn't really come into play in your examples.
Do you think the commercial encyclopedias are not biased? Ignorance is bliss....
/.) that they entered some bogus information, and it remained there until they removed it themselves a week or so later.
The thing that wikkipedia lacks is proper content control. Someone recently pointed out (can't remember where, it might have been here on
But then, bias and accuracy play off against each other - you can't have both perfectly. Wikkipedia's "bias" is probably more balanced than with the commercial publications - because you get a wide variety of bias all mixed together.