Sheesh. It seems to my little mind that linking to something on the Internet is essentially a form of speech, and should be protected under The U.S. Constitution. A hyperlink, after all, is really just a form of "see also". Is it illegal for me to write instructions telling people where to find brothels in Nevada, even though prostitution remains illegal in my state? I sure hope not. And if not, then what's the difference between that and linking to a Nevada brothel's web site? I hope that the Supreme Court will wake up and rule that all hyperlinks are speech protected by the First Amendment.
So if a company follows the law of a country they operate in, they are free of any ethical considerations? How bad must they get before it's enough?
From an ethical perspective, companies, like governments and individuals, must consider which actions result in the greatest good for the greatest number of people. In the case of China, most governments and companies have decided that engaging the Chinese government and its people helps more Chinese people than leaving China "to its own devices" would. Many people believe they are acting ethically when engaging in commerce with repressive regimes because they believe the exchange of goods and ideas will lead to more openness and less repression over time. Sure, you can question these beliefs -- and you may choose to believe that disengagement and isolation helps more people than engagement does. The point is, if you can on your beliefs as to what will cause the greatest good, and Google acts on their beliefs (though different from your own,) you are both acting ethically.
From TFA: Even if you leave aside all the copyright issues, the outcome of the scenario that's really bad is that it breaks the most important communication tool we've ever devised in order to protect the tiny, unimportant, cushy racketeering business model of the content industry. You know, screw them, if it's a choice between putting everyone in Hollywood out of work - not that this would do that, but if that was in fact the outcome, which the industry says it would be - and if it's a choice between that and eliminating all freedom of information, due process and privacy rights in electronic communication, then 'Goodbye Hollywood', it's a no-brainer.
Hear, hear! And I think the last movie out of Hollywood should be called 'Goodbye, Hollywood' (tagline: 'Freedom, it's a no-brainer.') out of respect for Mr. Doctorow's prescient vision.
You forgot about people who got censured and supressed for complaining about Bush's foray into Iraq "It's unamerican to criticize the president in a time of war".
Speech offered to shame or belittle the President's critics is neither censorship nor suppression. It is simply more free speech. True censorship would manifest itself either as laws making it illegal to criticize the President, or as overt arrests of the President's critics. In fact, the example you give above proves that we have free speech, because both the President's critics and defenders have the right to express their opinions.
News organizations and reporters that portray Bush in a negative light are quietly frozen out of briefings, so they learn to be silent unless 'everybody else' is also criticizing him. The result is that public debate is quietly squashed.
Again, in this example, neither Bush nor the Bush Administration are squashing debate. The President has no Constitutional duty even to hold press briefings, let alone to admit any or all news organizations to those briefings. If news organizations "learn to be silent" then they are practicing self-censorship. They are choosing to put access to the President above exercising their right to free speech. This decision on their part does not mean that the President, or any other external party, has infringed or removed that right.
From TFA: A satellite picture of the earth at night shows swaths of darkness across Southeast Asia, the Middle East, and Africa. For the people living there, a simple light bulb would mean an extension of both their productivity and their leisure times. -- Yes, and then it's all downhill from there: first light bulbs, then telephones for telemarketers to call, televisions for advertisers to stuff with their ads all aglow, microwave ovens to provide late-night high-fat carbohydrate-laden heart sludge, personal computers from which to have one's identity stolen, not to mention thirty-five clocks to set forward every Spring, etc. I hope these people who have lived in the beautiful nighttime darkness for so long know what they're getting themselves into.
That kind of weather is not normal in that part of India
...based on the records we have, which only go back about a hundred years. You might find that "normal" weather periodically includes the conditions this part of India experienced, but you could only determine that if you could look at more than 1% of the weather data from the past 12,000 years.
And now that you mention it, where did that glacier go that used to cover Illinois? Oh my gosh! Our emissions are even causing retroactive global warming!
In the interest of balanced reporting... if you're going to read the opinions of the "Killer Coke" people, you should, in fairness, read the other side of the story before you form any opinions of your own.
Note that two other versions of this page also exist, with slightly different stylings... one at/1/ and another at/2/. You can see them by clicking here and here.
Read the article carefully... The subcommittee recommended a budget for NASA of $15.1B, which is $229M below last year's budget of $15.329B. That means the subcommittee cut last year's budget by 1.49 percent. They did, however, cut NASA's requested budget, including a requested increase over last year, by 7 percent.
In a Powerpoint Presentation entitled Use of Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) in the U.S. Department of Defense, sponsored by the Defense Information Systems Agency, the MITRE corporation found these "(Unexpected) Security benefits of FOSS":
FOSS includes applications such as the OpenBSD operating system that have been intensively reviewed from a security and reliability perspective. Such applications present far fewer openings for cyberattacks. BSD licensing lets benefits flow into the entire software industry.
FOSS includes much of the most advanced work and tools for analyzing network/system weaknesses. These tools are a vital & dynamic part of security self-assessment
FOSS concept of user autonomy enables rapid responses to novel types of infrastructure attacks. e.g.: GPL license grants user rights that allow security groups to change code without invoking slow, confusion-prone "owner loops."
The GPL has a number of features that benefit security groups and applications:
GPL user rights make it possible for groups to develop rapid autonomous response capabilities for handling novel cyber attacks.
Contrary to a widespread misconception, the GPL grants users the right not to release source code changes unless and until they release the corresponding binary software. This right allows rapid-response teams to keep critical changes "under wraps" until new attack modes have been fully analyzed and defeated.
Using GPL to encourage sharing of basic bug fixes provides a powerful tool for reducing network-wide cyber attack opportunities.
The GPL provides an effective pathway for rapid dispersion of critical defensive changes to users of shared GPL infrastructure.
Nevertheless, prior art for such an indicator DOES exist. I have used Lotus Sametime for at least two years. Sametime's chat window has a status bar that says "so-and-so is responding" as soon as that person begins typing. The chat window does NOT show WHAT they are typing until the person at the other end presses ENTER. This type of function (Sametime's "so-and-so is responding" status message) sounds exactly like the functionality for which MS just received its patent.
But just imagine the fun you can have! With clever editing, it should be possible to turn this show into a comedy, or even a satire of itself. Depending on the available content, you could probably edit the interviews to mismatch the questions and answers -- choosing answers for their humorous effects. You could even insert footage of yourself answering or asking the questions (I assume you could insert any other, non-copyrighted footage for that matter.)
I'll bet a two dollars that someone will begin distributing a funny/satirical version of NerdTV shortly after it becomes available. I'd do it , but I'm too busy running PowerPopRadio.com.
Re:I think it's finally just time to stop...
on
Napster Not To Blame
·
· Score: 1
Actually, I'm well aware that new bands keep releasing great new music. My original comment was mostly intended tongue-in-cheek. I love new bands and recent releases from folks like The Mockers, The Shazam, Guided by Voices, The Flashing Lights, The Apples in Stereo, etc. My point was just that a LOT of great pop, rock, rap, trance, dance, techno, punk, and heavy metal music has been made over the past 45 years, and most fans, myself included, have yet to explore and listen to the MAJORITY of that catalog.
(For more great old and new music, check out my streaming webcast.)
I think it's finally just time to stop...
on
Napster Not To Blame
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
...making new pop and rock music. If we arbitrarily assign 1957 as the first year of Rock and Roll, then we've got 45 years' worth of music we can all go back through and mine for gems (as long as it all stays in print, of course.) I mean, until everyone owns "Marquee Moon" by Television, and at least one album by Nick Lowe, The Clash, Argent, 10cc, Pilot, The Soft Boys, The Undertones, The Velvet Underground, The Sex Pistols, Eddie Cochran, Elvis Costello, XTC, Radiohead, Badfinger, The Who, The Flaming Lips, and Love, why do we need anything new?
So now it sounds like we need a network of anonymous redialers that make phone calls over (or at least involving) the Internet, so I can dial into the redialer network, enter the actual phone number I want to call, and get connected in a manner which is impossible or difficult to trace. Phone company records sold to third parties would simply show that I called the redialer network a number of times. Independent records not associated with me would show that the redialer network called my mother or my friends several times.
It is widely reported that more than 3 billion people in the world have no access to a telephone at all. In fact, according to the Center for Media Education, 18% of Americans lack telephone service.
This makes the number of people online something like 15 to 16 percent of the population with telephone access.
You can find some more interesting information about telephone and Internet access around the world here and here.
I'm surprised no one has yet mentioned Quincy, M.E. as one of the precursors to CSI. As far as I can recall, Quincy represented the first "detective" on television to use medical and forensic techniques to solve crimes.
By the way -- No mention of Quincy would be complete without a reference to his sidekick, Sam Fujiyama, played by Robert Ito.
The service offers two Mbit/sec access, a plug and play USB / Ethernet modem, Internet access via every electrical outlet in the house, etc.
You can read about it (in German) here, or you can use the BabelFish version to see it in (mostly) English. You can also get a brochure in PDF format that gives the sales pitch.
Slashdot Mirror
If someone's watching your TV through a window, they're probably standing on your property and thus trespassing
In which case, you can accuse me of trespassing. Watching the television image, however, is not a crime.
Sheesh.
It seems to my little mind that linking to something on the Internet is essentially a form of speech, and should be protected under The U.S. Constitution. A hyperlink, after all, is really just a form of "see also". Is it illegal for me to write instructions telling people where to find brothels in Nevada, even though prostitution remains illegal in my state? I sure hope not. And if not, then what's the difference between that and linking to a Nevada brothel's web site? I hope that the Supreme Court will wake up and rule that all hyperlinks are speech protected by the First Amendment.
So if a company follows the law of a country they operate in, they are free of any ethical considerations? How bad must they get before it's enough?
From an ethical perspective, companies, like governments and individuals, must consider which actions result in the greatest good for the greatest number of people. In the case of China, most governments and companies have decided that engaging the Chinese government and its people helps more Chinese people than leaving China "to its own devices" would. Many people believe they are acting ethically when engaging in commerce with repressive regimes because they believe the exchange of goods and ideas will lead to more openness and less repression over time. Sure, you can question these beliefs -- and you may choose to believe that disengagement and isolation helps more people than engagement does. The point is, if you can on your beliefs as to what will cause the greatest good, and Google acts on their beliefs (though different from your own,) you are both acting ethically.
From TFA: Even if you leave aside all the copyright issues, the outcome of the scenario that's really bad is that it breaks the most important communication tool we've ever devised in order to protect the tiny, unimportant, cushy racketeering business model of the content industry. You know, screw them, if it's a choice between putting everyone in Hollywood out of work - not that this would do that, but if that was in fact the outcome, which the industry says it would be - and if it's a choice between that and eliminating all freedom of information, due process and privacy rights in electronic communication, then 'Goodbye Hollywood', it's a no-brainer.
Hear, hear! And I think the last movie out of Hollywood should be called 'Goodbye, Hollywood' (tagline: 'Freedom, it's a no-brainer.') out of respect for Mr. Doctorow's prescient vision.
You forgot about people who got censured and supressed for complaining about Bush's foray into Iraq "It's unamerican to criticize the president in a time of war".
Speech offered to shame or belittle the President's critics is neither censorship nor suppression. It is simply more free speech. True censorship would manifest itself either as laws making it illegal to criticize the President, or as overt arrests of the President's critics. In fact, the example you give above proves that we have free speech, because both the President's critics and defenders have the right to express their opinions.
News organizations and reporters that portray Bush in a negative light are quietly frozen out of briefings, so they learn to be silent unless 'everybody else' is also criticizing him. The result is that public debate is quietly squashed.
Again, in this example, neither Bush nor the Bush Administration are squashing debate. The President has no Constitutional duty even to hold press briefings, let alone to admit any or all news organizations to those briefings. If news organizations "learn to be silent" then they are practicing self-censorship. They are choosing to put access to the President above exercising their right to free speech. This decision on their part does not mean that the President, or any other external party, has infringed or removed that right.
It was all tongue-in-cheek, my friend. I meant none of it.
From TFA: A satellite picture of the earth at night shows swaths of darkness across Southeast Asia, the Middle East, and Africa. For the people living there, a simple light bulb would mean an extension of both their productivity and their leisure times. -- Yes, and then it's all downhill from there: first light bulbs, then telephones for telemarketers to call, televisions for advertisers to stuff with their ads all aglow, microwave ovens to provide late-night high-fat carbohydrate-laden heart sludge, personal computers from which to have one's identity stolen, not to mention thirty-five clocks to set forward every Spring, etc. I hope these people who have lived in the beautiful nighttime darkness for so long know what they're getting themselves into.
That kind of weather is not normal in that part of India
...based on the records we have, which only go back about a hundred years. You might find that "normal" weather periodically includes the conditions this part of India experienced, but you could only determine that if you could look at more than 1% of the weather data from the past 12,000 years.
And now that you mention it, where did that glacier go that used to cover Illinois? Oh my gosh! Our emissions are even causing retroactive global warming!
In the interest of balanced reporting... if you're going to read the opinions of the "Killer Coke" people, you should, in fairness, read the other side of the story before you form any opinions of your own.
See: www.cokefacts.org and, in particular, this page about Coke in Colombia.
MySQL is the ONLY available 'shared nothing' (tm) solution available
Not quite. Check out the shared nothing architecture of DB2 Universal DB. You can get DB2 for AIX, Windows, Linux, and other platforms. UDB offers a High Availability Disaster Recovery solution.
Note that two other versions of this page also exist, with slightly different stylings... one at /1/ and another at /2/. You can see them by clicking here and here.
Read the article carefully... The subcommittee recommended a budget for NASA of $15.1B, which is $229M below last year's budget of $15.329B. That means the subcommittee cut last year's budget by 1.49 percent. They did, however, cut NASA's requested budget, including a requested increase over last year, by 7 percent.
The creators of this idea should have read this opinion piece before proceeding with their DDos counterattack initiative.
You can read a sample chapter from the Debugging Rules book in PDF format by going here. (Requires the free Adobe reader.)
Nevertheless, prior art for such an indicator DOES exist. I have used Lotus Sametime for at least two years. Sametime's chat window has a status bar that says "so-and-so is responding" as soon as that person begins typing. The chat window does NOT show WHAT they are typing until the person at the other end presses ENTER. This type of function (Sametime's "so-and-so is responding" status message) sounds exactly like the functionality for which MS just received its patent.
But just imagine the fun you can have! With clever editing, it should be possible to turn this show into a comedy, or even a satire of itself. Depending on the available content, you could probably edit the interviews to mismatch the questions and answers -- choosing answers for their humorous effects. You could even insert footage of yourself answering or asking the questions (I assume you could insert any other, non-copyrighted footage for that matter.)
I'll bet a two dollars that someone will begin distributing a funny/satirical version of NerdTV shortly after it becomes available. I'd do it , but I'm too busy running PowerPopRadio.com .
Actually, I'm well aware that new bands keep releasing great new music. My original comment was mostly intended tongue-in-cheek. I love new bands and recent releases from folks like The Mockers, The Shazam, Guided by Voices, The Flashing Lights, The Apples in Stereo, etc. My point was just that a LOT of great pop, rock, rap, trance, dance, techno, punk, and heavy metal music has been made over the past 45 years, and most fans, myself included, have yet to explore and listen to the MAJORITY of that catalog. (For more great old and new music, check out my streaming webcast .)
...making new pop and rock music. If we arbitrarily assign 1957 as the first year of Rock and Roll, then we've got 45 years' worth of music we can all go back through and mine for gems (as long as it all stays in print, of course.) I mean, until everyone owns "Marquee Moon" by Television, and at least one album by Nick Lowe, The Clash, Argent, 10cc, Pilot, The Soft Boys, The Undertones, The Velvet Underground, The Sex Pistols, Eddie Cochran, Elvis Costello, XTC, Radiohead, Badfinger, The Who, The Flaming Lips, and Love, why do we need anything new?
So now it sounds like we need a network of anonymous redialers that make phone calls over (or at least involving) the Internet, so I can dial into the redialer network, enter the actual phone number I want to call, and get connected in a manner which is impossible or difficult to trace. Phone company records sold to third parties would simply show that I called the redialer network a number of times. Independent records not associated with me would show that the redialer network called my mother or my friends several times.
It is widely reported that more than 3 billion people in the world have no access to a telephone at all. In fact, according to the Center for Media Education, 18% of Americans lack telephone service.
This makes the number of people online something like 15 to 16 percent of the population with telephone access.
You can find some more interesting information about telephone and Internet access around the world here and here.
I'm surprised no one has yet mentioned Quincy, M.E. as one of the precursors to CSI. As far as I can recall, Quincy represented the first "detective" on television to use medical and forensic techniques to solve crimes.
By the way -- No mention of Quincy would be complete without a reference to his sidekick, Sam Fujiyama, played by Robert Ito.
In Germany, it's called RWE PowerNet.
The service offers two Mbit/sec access, a plug and play USB / Ethernet modem, Internet access via every electrical outlet in the house, etc.
You can read about it (in German) here, or you can use the BabelFish version to see it in (mostly) English. You can also get a brochure in PDF format that gives the sales pitch.
...appears here:
u are/art/testpattern.jpg
http://www.vpl.vancouver.bc.ca/branches/LibrarySq
---