Disturbing stats? The stats themselves are only disturbing if you establish a correlation
between cause and effect.
willingness to kill another person is not a natural behavior....
We've been killing each other since the beginning of time even before video games
were ever invented. Whether or not it's natural is debatable and doesn't tell us much anyway
A 1998 study showed that while playing video games children experience a high release of the brain neurotransmitter dopamine, w
hich could be called the hype hormone.
High levels of dopamine are common in people with obsessive comulsive disorder
so it should be easy to show a correlation between OCD and violence which the author
has not done so we might assume there is none.
If there's a correlation between violent crimes and video games
then how come while video games are on the increase
violent crime is on the decrease?
That she's a mother of five is inadmissible as evidence and will never be heard by the jury.
It's usual for the judge to instruct the jury "if you believe beyond a reasonable doubt the defendent downloaded these songs.... you must find her guilty otherwise you must find her innocent."
This might sound a bit far out but I have a remote suspicion the reason none of these cases has ever gone to court is because an anonymous person steps in to pay the usual $3000 fine and the defendant, having been threatened with penalties of up to $500,000, willingly signs the non disclosure agreement not to discuss the settlement and the case is thus settled out of court and the RIAA is seen to have won
The anonymous philanthropist is, of course, an unidentified RIAA rep. Let's face it, it's cheaper for the RIAA to fork over the $3000 themselves and pretend they won than face the negative global publicity they'd receive if this actually went to trial.
I agree this might be stretching it a bit but it's the only reason I can think of that after thousands of cases over several years none has ever gone to court and the ones that contest always settle in the end.
Docs Searls of Linux Journal wrote an interesting piece a few weeks called
Flushing the Net Down the Tube where he talks about this happening.
The providers don't want to be just the guys that rent the pipes because there's not enough money in it. They'd like to be able to control content and charge for extra services. Sprint's
music downloads is an example where this is already happening. (You can get highspeed music downlads but only through their vendor lock-in service.)
According to Searls' article the providers have watched companies like ebay and google make fortunes on the Internet using their pipes. They feel left out and want to get in on the action. Expect more of this.
IMHO games should be just honestly released in "adults-only" versions whenever applicable, and possibly with "violence-free" editions optionally, whenever the developer feels like it. It's a responsible thing to do.
But for what purpose?
Take nudity for example. When I was last in Eurpoean I saw full frontal nudity (male and female) on television. The Europeans are a lot more tolerant of this kind of thing. Yet by many indices they have a much lower rate of social deviance.
Americans are legislating morality. They don't have any scientific evidence that nudity or profanity is bad they just know it is. They also believe in creationism.
Surface ice in the northern/southern reaches melt... icebergs melting... Ocean rises...
>br>
Except it would hardly rise at all. When an ice cube melts in a glass of water the water level doesn't rise at all.
With ocean levels higher, the ocean is able to absorb more energy...
The volume of water+ice is constant, it's absorbs it's energy from the sun in terms of watts/meter^2. The ice is able to reflect some of the energy but because the ice is a small portion of the total, the increase in energy absorption from its melting is negligable.
Usually when someone wants to pass a law for something, like seat belts, speed limits,
drunk driving, etc., they have some scientific data pointing to a problem that
can be rectified by a law.
But when it comes to nudity, profanity, violence -- you need no scientific evidence
to support you claims. Afterall we all just know it's bad, right?
It's also interesting to note that, despite reasonable evidence to the contrary people
still believe in horoscopes, ghosts, and angels. A recent CBS news poll found that 51% of Americans
don't believe in evolution.
I'd hazard to guess these kinds of bills are more about justifying our own irrational
superstitions than they are about protecting children. What exactly are we protecting them from anyway?
Just playing around I set up a 10 extension inter office VoIP system using this system in about 20 minutes on an old laptop. It's open source, free, and has a great a community behind it.
rsync is a much overlooked utility that allows secure file transfers/backups over a network (no mention of it at Linux-Backup.net). You can use it to backup whole file sets or just changes in file sets.
I've used it to backup 3T/night over 4 subnets (NY, Chicago, Atlanta, San Francisco).
I can't say enough about this utility. It's command line driven, very scriptable, has a slew of great options, and has made my job really easy.
Microsoft has been on top for a while, but it isn't anything unnatural -- they've created a product that billions of people LIKE using.
You make a good case for Microsoft but your arguments are mostly personal (experiences) and are unreferenced. It's debatable whether Microsoft got to "be on top" because people like there system or because they had no choice.
I'd suggest reading the Findings of Fact from the Microsoft antitrust case. It's quite revealing. It details, for example, exactly how Microsoft threatened vendors with severe consquences if they even considered selling computers with competing software.
If you've ever been to a tech conference you know that the list of sponsors is immense, it would not make sense to list a single company on that list...
I think this is more about who paid for the travel.
On most of the trips, Quinn said, his travel and other expenses were paid for by the sponsors of the conferences...
This guy is supposed to list the companies that financed his travel. He apparently didn't. He fscked up and gave Microsoft amunition. Quinn unecessarily caused the general public to question the motivations behind the opendoc initiative. And all over some simple paperwork.
Windows Server software outsold Linux in the server market. Gartner, Inc.
Well that's probably true because most of us don't buy Linux -- we simply download it. But the fact that corporate types are buying preinstalled Linux servers at a rate to nearly equal Microsoft says something about Linux in general.
You don't suddenly become free of the responsibility for things you say just because you say them on the internet.
True you don't. But this is about slander.
If some fool gets drunk, gets on line, and says "you are a fucking fag and a criminal and a baby killer" because he's having a bad day,
should he be prosecuted? I mean, he defamed someone's character, right?
Traditionally in the US idiots like this are covered by the first amendment and people
are expected to be able to see such remarks, and the people that make them, for what they are -- trolls.
Be very interesting to find out what this guy actually said.
I've often heard the argument that DNS should lose its heirarchy and just be a one-to-one mapping. Like telephone numbers to names.
However, the good thing about the hierarchy is you only have to register one domain, then you can have as many sub domains as you want without going through your registrar.
With this new system you'd have to register each of your domains seperately, right?
Thanks for the link. I concede bribe is perhaps too strong a word.
But there does seem to be a correlation between money contributed to politicains and laws that those politicians vote for that specifically benefit the contributors.
For example, between 1997 and 1998 Howard Coble accepted over $50,000
from the entertainment industry. He also introduced the DMCA to Congress. Conicidence?
If you follow the money you'll find similar patterns. I understand the free speech issues regarding restrictions on campaign financing. But one has to ask: Why are corpoarations giving money if not with the expectation that the politicians they contribute to will pass laws in their favor?
According to Transparency International Singapore ranks 7th in the list of the world's least corrupt governments. They use a set of 16 indices and international surveys to determine corruptability.
Number 1 least corrupt is Iceland. Last on the list is Chad. The US is 17th. Interesting thing about the US that bribing the government is not illegal.
Today, an estimated 5.6 gigatons of carbon are released into the atmosphere each year due to fossil fuel burning. Burning of tropical forests contributes another 2.4 gigatons of carbon per year; or, about 30 percent of the total.
carbon dioxide (CO2) released was "equivalent to 13 to 40 percent of the mean annual global carbon emissions from fossil fuels, and contributed greatly to the largest annual increase in atmospheric CO2 concentration detected since records began in 1957."
"The one thing we've learned is that fires are more important... than we thought to the amount of greenhouse gases," staff scientist G. James Collatz of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., told United Press International. If so, this factor raises important questions about future trends in climate change and in the role of the tropics, either as a sink or a source of atmospheric carbon dioxide, he said.
I am a proponent of HUGE tax increases on gasoline.
According to Hubbert peak theory oil production is on the decline and will be down to near zero by the end of the century.
A bigger source of CO2 will be naturally occuring forest fires which according to some estimates already make up for nearly 50% of the world's C02 production. Forest fires are a much overlooked source of pollution.
There are some new modern-day sort of communists who want to get rid of the incentive for musicians and moviemakers and software makers under various guises. They don't think that those incentives should exist.
That's what happens when you down on when you're down on Rue Morgue Avenue.
When fsck is Dylan when you need him?
I started out on limewire but soon hit the harder stuff
Everybody said send they'd stand behind me when the FBI got rough
But the joke was on me there was nobody even there to bluff
I'm going back to itunes now I do believe I've had eeee----nuff:)
Comcast's conflict that google doesn't have
on
Who's Afraid of Google?
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Who's threatened: Comcast and other cable providers, Yahoo!, TV networks that still shun the Net...
Seems to me it should make sense to distribute TV content via the Internet. 1) It would give consumers more choice. 2) The current "one-way pipe to dumb terminal" system doesn't make sense in the presence of the Internet.
The problem with Comcast is they have a conflict of interest. A company that's an ISP and a cable provider is hardly likely to give you gigabyte Internet access so you can cancel your cable bill and get your content via the Internet.
Google is starting to compete with an ancient TV distribution business model whose time has come. This is a good thing.
Through privately owned and developed IP, American and European IP companies have given back untold public benefit.
That may be true but it's also possible we may have had the same results without them. Look at the big picture. Take any major technology breakthrough in history: Europeans crossing the Atlantic, the vacuum tub, transistor, integrated circuit, atomic bomb, computer, space travel; you'll find massive government funding.
The idea that competition creates new technology seems to be a Wall Street myth, not least because they're the ones who stand to gain the most.
Competition is important for production but when it comes to milestones in technology, the emphasis is nearly always on cooperation not competition. That's why the truly significant and most important discoveries come from universities, not private companies.
Slashdot Mirror
Disturbing stats? The stats themselves are only disturbing if you establish a correlation between cause and effect.
....
willingness to kill another person is not a natural behavior
We've been killing each other since the beginning of time even before video games were ever invented. Whether or not it's natural is debatable and doesn't tell us much anyway
A 1998 study showed that while playing video games children experience a high release of the brain neurotransmitter dopamine, w hich could be called the hype hormone.
High levels of dopamine are common in people with obsessive comulsive disorder so it should be easy to show a correlation between OCD and violence which the author has not done so we might assume there is none.
If there's a correlation between violent crimes and video games then how come while video games are on the increase violent crime is on the decrease?
That she's a mother of five is inadmissible as evidence and will never be heard by the jury.
.... you must find her guilty otherwise you must find her innocent."
It's usual for the judge to instruct the jury "if you believe beyond a reasonable doubt the defendent downloaded these songs
This might sound a bit far out but I have a remote suspicion the reason none of these cases has ever gone to court is because an anonymous person steps in to pay the usual $3000 fine and the defendant, having been threatened with penalties of up to $500,000, willingly signs the non disclosure agreement not to discuss the settlement and the case is thus settled out of court and the RIAA is seen to have won
The anonymous philanthropist is, of course, an unidentified RIAA rep. Let's face it, it's cheaper for the RIAA to fork over the $3000 themselves and pretend they won than face the negative global publicity they'd receive if this actually went to trial.
I agree this might be stretching it a bit but it's the only reason I can think of that after thousands of cases over several years none has ever gone to court and the ones that contest always settle in the end.
I could be completely wrong.
Docs Searls of Linux Journal wrote an interesting piece a few weeks called Flushing the Net Down the Tube where he talks about this happening.
The providers don't want to be just the guys that rent the pipes because there's not enough money in it. They'd like to be able to control content and charge for extra services. Sprint's music downloads is an example where this is already happening. (You can get highspeed music downlads but only through their vendor lock-in service.)
According to Searls' article the providers have watched companies like ebay and google make fortunes on the Internet using their pipes. They feel left out and want to get in on the action. Expect more of this.
IMHO games should be just honestly released in "adults-only" versions whenever applicable, and possibly with "violence-free" editions optionally, whenever the developer feels like it. It's a responsible thing to do.
But for what purpose?
Take nudity for example. When I was last in Eurpoean I saw full frontal nudity (male and female) on television. The Europeans are a lot more tolerant of this kind of thing. Yet by many indices they have a much lower rate of social deviance.
Americans are legislating morality. They don't have any scientific evidence that nudity or profanity is bad they just know it is. They also believe in creationism.
Agreed.
I use mutt and vim for email. Other than emacs, it doesn't get more powerful than that.
I think they probably meant easy-to-use.
sed s/Internet/Television/g
Surface ice in the northern/southern reaches melt ... icebergs melting ... Ocean rises...
>br>
...
Except it would hardly rise at all. When an ice cube melts in a glass of water the water level doesn't rise at all.
With ocean levels higher, the ocean is able to absorb more energy
The volume of water+ice is constant, it's absorbs it's energy from the sun in terms of watts/meter^2. The ice is able to reflect some of the energy but because the ice is a small portion of the total, the increase in energy absorption from its melting is negligable.
Usually when someone wants to pass a law for something, like seat belts, speed limits, drunk driving, etc., they have some scientific data pointing to a problem that can be rectified by a law.
But when it comes to nudity, profanity, violence -- you need no scientific evidence to support you claims. Afterall we all just know it's bad, right?
It's also interesting to note that, despite reasonable evidence to the contrary people still believe in horoscopes, ghosts, and angels. A recent CBS news poll found that 51% of Americans don't believe in evolution.
I'd hazard to guess these kinds of bills are more about justifying our own irrational superstitions than they are about protecting children. What exactly are we protecting them from anyway?
Try asterisk.
Just playing around I set up a 10 extension inter office VoIP system using this system in about 20 minutes on an old laptop. It's open source, free, and has a great a community behind it.
rsync is a much overlooked utility that allows secure file transfers/backups over a network (no mention of it at Linux-Backup.net). You can use it to backup whole file sets or just changes in file sets. I've used it to backup 3T/night over 4 subnets (NY, Chicago, Atlanta, San Francisco).
I can't say enough about this utility. It's command line driven, very scriptable, has a slew of great options, and has made my job really easy.
Microsoft has been on top for a while, but it isn't anything unnatural -- they've created a product that billions of people LIKE using.
You make a good case for Microsoft but your arguments are mostly personal (experiences) and are unreferenced. It's debatable whether Microsoft got to "be on top" because people like there system or because they had no choice.
I'd suggest reading the Findings of Fact from the Microsoft antitrust case. It's quite revealing. It details, for example, exactly how Microsoft threatened vendors with severe consquences if they even considered selling computers with competing software.
Nobody lists all the fsckin' companies that sponsor a conference when they are being paid by the conference.
Look. I'm on your side too. But rules are rules. If the MA state law says you must declare XYZ then you must. That was my point only.
If you've ever been to a tech conference you know that the list of sponsors is immense, it would not make sense to list a single company on that list ...
...
I think this is more about who paid for the travel.
On most of the trips, Quinn said, his travel and other expenses were paid for by the sponsors of the conferences
This guy is supposed to list the companies that financed his travel. He apparently didn't. He fscked up and gave Microsoft amunition. Quinn unecessarily caused the general public to question the motivations behind the opendoc initiative. And all over some simple paperwork.
Politicians -- too bad you can't reboot 'em.
Windows Server software outsold Linux in the server market. Gartner, Inc.
Well that's probably true because most of us don't buy Linux -- we simply download it. But the fact that corporate types are buying preinstalled Linux servers at a rate to nearly equal Microsoft says something about Linux in general.
You don't suddenly become free of the responsibility for things you say just because you say them on the internet.
True you don't. But this is about slander.
If some fool gets drunk, gets on line, and says "you are a fucking fag and a criminal and a baby killer" because he's having a bad day, should he be prosecuted? I mean, he defamed someone's character, right?
Traditionally in the US idiots like this are covered by the first amendment and people are expected to be able to see such remarks, and the people that make them, for what they are -- trolls.
Be very interesting to find out what this guy actually said.
I've often heard the argument that DNS should lose its heirarchy and just be a one-to-one mapping. Like telephone numbers to names.
However, the good thing about the hierarchy is you only have to register one domain, then you can have as many sub domains as you want without going through your registrar.
With this new system you'd have to register each of your domains seperately, right?
Thanks for the link. I concede bribe is perhaps too strong a word.
But there does seem to be a correlation between money contributed to politicains and laws that those politicians vote for that specifically benefit the contributors.
For example, between 1997 and 1998 Howard Coble accepted over $50,000 from the entertainment industry. He also introduced the DMCA to Congress. Conicidence?
If you follow the money you'll find similar patterns. I understand the free speech issues regarding restrictions on campaign financing. But one has to ask: Why are corpoarations giving money if not with the expectation that the politicians they contribute to will pass laws in their favor?
According to Transparency International Singapore ranks 7th in the list of the world's least corrupt governments. They use a set of 16 indices and international surveys to determine corruptability.
Number 1 least corrupt is Iceland. Last on the list is Chad. The US is 17th. Interesting thing about the US that bribing the government is not illegal.
You might be right. But there's some evidence that humanity is not completely responsible.
Today, an estimated 5.6 gigatons of carbon are released into the atmosphere each year due to fossil fuel burning. Burning of tropical forests contributes another 2.4 gigatons of carbon per year; or, about 30 percent of the total.
One large, overlooked factor in global warming: tropical forest fires
... than we thought to the amount of greenhouse gases," staff scientist G. James Collatz of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., told United Press International. If so, this factor raises important questions about future trends in climate change and in the role of the tropics, either as a sink or a source of atmospheric carbon dioxide, he said.
carbon dioxide (CO2) released was "equivalent to 13 to 40 percent of the mean annual global carbon emissions from fossil fuels, and contributed greatly to the largest annual increase in atmospheric CO2 concentration detected since records began in 1957."
Tropical forest fires worrisome
"The one thing we've learned is that fires are more important
Are Wildland Fires Fueling the Greenhouse?
Wildland fires are taking tons of carbon out of storage and feeding it into the atmosphere as carbon dioxide, a primary greenhouse gas.
I am a proponent of HUGE tax increases on gasoline.
According to Hubbert peak theory oil production is on the decline and will be down to near zero by the end of the century.
A bigger source of CO2 will be naturally occuring forest fires which according to some estimates already make up for nearly 50% of the world's C02 production. Forest fires are a much overlooked source of pollution.
Time to get that fusion reactor working.
And communists always do things in secret.
There was a CNET interview with Bill Gates earlier this year in which he suggests:
There are some new modern-day sort of communists who want to get rid of the incentive for musicians and moviemakers and software makers under various guises. They don't think that those incentives should exist.
Are your fingers in a knot?
That's what happens when you down on when you're down on Rue Morgue Avenue.
When fsck is Dylan when you need him?
I started out on limewire but soon hit the harder stuff
Everybody said send they'd stand behind me when the FBI got rough
But the joke was on me there was nobody even there to bluff
I'm going back to itunes now I do believe I've had eeee----nuff:)
Who's threatened: Comcast and other cable providers, Yahoo!, TV networks that still shun the Net ...
Seems to me it should make sense to distribute TV content via the Internet. 1) It would give consumers more choice. 2) The current "one-way pipe to dumb terminal" system doesn't make sense in the presence of the Internet.
The problem with Comcast is they have a conflict of interest. A company that's an ISP and a cable provider is hardly likely to give you gigabyte Internet access so you can cancel your cable bill and get your content via the Internet.
Google is starting to compete with an ancient TV distribution business model whose time has come. This is a good thing.
Through privately owned and developed IP, American and European IP companies have given back untold public benefit.
That may be true but it's also possible we may have had the same results without them. Look at the big picture. Take any major technology breakthrough in history: Europeans crossing the Atlantic, the vacuum tub, transistor, integrated circuit, atomic bomb, computer, space travel; you'll find massive government funding.
The idea that competition creates new technology seems to be a Wall Street myth, not least because they're the ones who stand to gain the most.
Competition is important for production but when it comes to milestones in technology, the emphasis is nearly always on cooperation not competition. That's why the truly significant and most important discoveries come from universities, not private companies.