OS X has changed very little since 10.0, at the most basic level.
Yeah... no. They broke cron, they inflicted that insane "app nap" nonsense on us (broke damned near every real-time application out there... I spend a *lot* of time explaining to OS X users that it needs to be turned off or OS X will summarily stop giving the required amount of CPU time to the app) there's sand-boxing, the changes in spaces functionality, they utterly broke UTF-8 console printing (and didn't fix it... just left it broken unless you upgraded -- and yes, they knew about it in time, I talked to "Mr. CUPS himself about it), dropped PPC emulation, moved image support from apps to OS (which broke the dickens out of Aperture upgrades, among other things), they broke getting to local websites on your LAN, and they quit giving us actual media, which I simply find annoying and short-sighted. And they still haven't fixed many of the OS bugs, for instance, you still can't have more than one app listening to a UDP broadcast reception port as far as I know. I don't have any idea whose brilliant think it was to decide that "broadcast" meant only one app can listen, but there you go.
Definitely quite a few reasons to be reticent about moving to a new version of OSX. These things matter.
Anyone familiar with OS X 10.5 would be right at home with 10.10 Yosemite.
Sure -- if you don't mind a good deal of your stuff breaking. Inconveniently enough, I do mind. Hence, 10.6.8, and staying there as long as possible, too.
Some things interest some people; other things interest other people. Sometimes there is overlap. Here on slashdot, considering the age, stability, and desirability of one OS version as related to another is quite topical in terms of the issues the site generally is understood to cover.
Perhaps you should wander off and find a story you are interested in. No need to read the ones that don't provoke an interest, you know. You do know that, right?
Still running OSX 10.6.8 -- an OS version ca. July 2011
Isn't broken in the sense that anything about it significantly impedes what I use the computer for; anything that was really crappy -- like Safari -- has been replaced with something that worked better.
Ergo, no need to "fix" it.
I have more interesting things to do with my time than adopt change for the sake of change.
There's a great deal positive that can be said for a stable OS environment, not the least of which is that software which I develop for it will work for more people than software that utilizes functionality only available from a later version of the OS. Speaking for myself, I view a statement about any application of the general form "requires late version of/latest OS" as an abject failure of the developer to think of the users.
That's not to say that others aren't, or shouldn't be interested in the latest OS version-- it's just that I am not, and that addresses the question that was asked.
You need to actually read the messages you reply to, and then think about what was actually said so you can respond intelligently, instead of erecting a series of straw men and then setting them on fire.
Modern marketing techniques are designed for people like you. They're specifically made for people who don't pay attention to ads.
So? Doesn't matter who they are designed for. What matters is if they work on me. They don't.
Nobody who lives in any community more dense than the human population of Kobuk Valley National Park is immune from the impact of modern marketing techniques.
Yes, I live in a very rural area, and further, I keep to my own property as much as possible and have done so for just a little short of thirty years now.
And I find it's the people who believe they are immune from advertising who are least prepared to defend themselves from its effects.
What you have "found" about W, X and Y doesn't mean that you will find the same about Z. You're falling into the trap of assuming everyone is gullible to the degree you are arguing, based on the evidence that that a lot of people are.
Consider for a moment why we have atheists and skeptics as well as the religious. The social pressure to "be" religious, at least here in the US, is considerable. Yet atheists don't buy in. If everyone is equally affected by propaganda and the various levels of social influence, how then can atheism and skepticism exist? It is quite clear that some people tend to follow the narratives they are presented with, while others tend to not do so. Denying that -- which is essentially what you are doing -- is a bankrupt POV, and appropriately enough, I find it insufficient to your argument, which is to say I am quite skeptical that you understand the issue you're so passionately trying to describe.
Wow, is that really what you think?
I looked at your search, and it made me laugh. Yes, that's precisely what I think. That stuff is almost entirely G-rated pap; not sexy at all. with the exception of one image that came up showing a very good-looking woman in stockings and garters, the rest left me cold. And that image, or anything like it, isn't going to appear in product advertisements for those things which I am interested in buying. So yes, sex is not being used in by far the majority of all advertising -- even if it would then work on me, which I assure you, it would not. I am well aware that I am not the actor (and they are actors) in the fictional situation presented by ads. Not only does the fictional depiction not represent my life or lifestyle, the actual ad itself is constructed of illusion -- actors, scripts, etc. To me, this is wholly obvious. To you, apparently not. The error you're making here is assuming others are like you. As per the bard, "There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy. "
Also: When I say sex, I mean sex. I don't mean bikinis or pretty faces. When I say "sexy", I mean, sex is used to sell the product. The amount of advertising for which that is the case is miniscule. Even when it occurs, and I am exposed, and the sex gets me to look, it won't get me to buy. I am not them; they are not me; the depiction is fiction, or in the even rarer case where it might not be, I am still not them, nor do I have any urge to be them.
Then how the fuck would you know about the "industry's kowtowing to political correctness" causing them to divest themselves of sexy women in ads? Were you lying then or are you lying now?
Primarily, I am aware of the current state of affairs because relevant material is discussed quite often in the communities that I frequent, including this one. How many articles and associated commentary have you seen here that delve into issues like "booth babes" and "objectifying women" and the argument that physical beauty is a justifiably monetized resource just as athleticism and intelligence are -- and so on -- just
If advertising didn't work, then who is paying for it?
Oh, it works -- it just doesn't work on those of us who are aware of it, block it, ignore it, lack respect for it, and consider it pablum for the masses. There are plenty of people out there who approach the world in a "consumer" mode, essentially a non-critical approach that is largely guided by suggestion rather than critical thinking. That's fine. But assuming everyone is like that is incorrect.
I suggest you study the IQ Gaussian and think through the implications. It doesn't tell you everything about a person by any means, but it does tell you a lot about distribution of analytic characteristics among the population. You should also consider the distinction between people for whom superstition is convincing -- belief in a god or gods, crystallomancy, dowsing, Ouija boards, etc. -- as juxtaposed against those for whom it is not: atheists and skeptics.
Many people are gullible for one reason or another; they don't think about a proposition, they simply react on an emotional level as to whether they find a narrative to be emotionally compelling. Or if they do think about it, they do so without the data they need to come to the most correct conclusion(s) and yet draw conclusions anyway, and/or they get on board because so-and-so said so, because "popular", because peer pressure, because fear or an idea is "nice" (again, see religion) and so forth.
Perhaps you find yourself influenced significantly by advertising, and through a failure on your part to realize that everyone is not like you, think your failure is then echoed by everyone else. It's just not so.
You may rest assured that advertising that makes it past my hosts list or which I otherwise encounter in daily life does not have its intended effect upon me. Nor does government propaganda, political correctness, religious mythology, "product placement", "style", and so on for quite a long list.
And yes, just as someone mentioned above, I do live in a very low population area, and I do generally keep to my own property. I also have lots of at-home undertakings that keep me fully engaged, from playing guitar to woodworking (my SO and I are building a home-class interior into an old church), from writing political and social commentary to programming.
When it comes to purchasing a product, there is another approach than "the ad looked good." Analyze your requirements, match these to the known characteristics of the product, see if the costs - both immediate and the relevant TCO factors - fit into your plans for yourself, and so on.
The bottom line is that the world is full of nonsensical messages. Some people get past that. Others are immersed and have no idea what is real, what is factual, what is rational. The existence of people of one type does not preclude the existence of others quite unlike them. Likewise, some people "go with the flow" and let the world happen to them. Others, considerably more proactive, are better described as "happening to the world." Assuming the characteristics of the one set largely apply to the other is naive.
Radio and TV are artificially expensive. The only reason they require ads or donor support is because the government has set up a completely unnecessary series of extremely high financial walls that must be leapt.
I could set you up a perfectly good AM or FM or television broadcast station for about $100, including a pretty good antenna sufficient for very broad local reach, say 30 miles or so. For a bit more, we can up the power and antenna significantly, and that's the end of your expenses. You can put up a pretty good tower for not much money too, if that's your inclination, and that will increase your range. I have a couple very nice towers myself, as well as one made out of 6X6 lumber that cost me all of about $100 to build (and really, since it's part of the support structure of my home's deck, half that cost would have been spent anyway. Huge antenna on top.:) No ads required to support all this, you can do it out of a cookie jar. 100 watts will get you an amazing amount of coverage, particularly if you're on a frequency no one else nearby is on (we have two stations here. The rest of the bands are completely dead during the day, AM comes alive at night, but you'd still reach the local listeners over those signals if you could set up a 100 watt station.)
But figure in the cost of FCC approved (laughable) equipment and FCC-approved towers and radiation patterns and location limitations and lawyers and licenses and so forth... ok, now you need funding. And a lot of it, too.
Or, create expensive content, again, now you need funding. But that would be a choice.
But radio and TV would be just fine without advertisers. Content would almost certainly change. Likely much for the better, IMHO. Competition would flourish: For instance, instead of the locals only having the option to listen to religious programming, there would be atheist stations (just as there are atheist websites... low cost of entry is required when there isn't a big organization pushing from behind the scenes.) Kids would have other influences other than those pushing mythology. There would be left-wing and right-wing and wingless stations. Sports stations and drama stations. Those who create their own content would flourish.
But you're not going to get that. No, you're going to get clear channel and Fox and etc. churning your ears and/or eyes with a very, very limited selection of programming that they want you to be exposed to, and very little else.
And the people who buy the argument that stations might interfere with each other, therefore we need all of the above impositions... they'll see to it that this will not change. It's a perfect situation under which to create and maintain a robust propaganda machine. And no surprise, that's precisely what we ended up with.
Exactly. The "we" discussed in TFS, and presumably in whatever it is summarizing, is not me, and therefore as far as I am concerned, resolve to a "them", as in, the person(s) who wrote it.
I don't pay any attention to advertising at all unless I am proactively seeking a product in a store, virtual or otherwise, and then only to specific instances that are relevant.
I don't watch broadcast television, I don't read billboards, I completely ignore banners and side-column ads, I don't open mail that isn't from a lawyer, a utility or some faction of the government, and I neither care what people want to put in ads nor am I affected by said content.
The only effect web ads have on me, at least until the IP shows up in my hosts list, is to slow pages down. Once it gets into the hosts list, it turns into an error message instead of an ad, and I ignore those too, while my browsing speeds back up (if you're not using your hosts file to nuke advertisers and their cookie-mining minions, you're foregoing a great tool, presuming you don't actually want to see ads, which I suppose is not a given.)
The only way they'll actually get my attention is with a sexy lady, and as the industry's kowtowing to political correctness has caused them to divest themselves of that particular tool, the advertisers, "they get nothing."
Your 9th amendment thesis is wrong. The 9th, in its entirety:
"The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people."
There's absolutely nothing in the 9th that says states can override federal law authorized by the constitution. Not a word, not a syllable.
As for your idea of modifying copyright, bravo. Sounds fabulous to me. Now make it happen. That is where the rubber meets the road (this is slashdot, cars must be brought to bear on the matter at some point or geek cred decays.)
It is only our current customs that push the idea that copying is harmful, and attempt to regulate it and restrict it by fiat.
I don't know where you are, but in the US, the constitution, the very document that authorizes the government, specifically opens the door to copyright or something with its essential functionality:
Article I, section 8, "Powers of Congress":To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;
Exclusive rights. That's clear, right? "limited Times" is also clear, but note that it is completely open-ended, so they can do (and have done) whatever they want with the terms of exclusivity. I would completely agree that the present terms are too long, but I would not agree that congress was out of line to try these longer terms out.
So the "fiat" you refer to here is not very arbitrary, if that's how you meant it. If you just meant "by decree", yes, that's what laws are. This is, however, explicitly an authorized act (and I have to say, given the other things congress and the courts get up to, it's sort of a relief to actually be able to say that.)
You can offer public civil disobedience if you feel the approach congress took is wrong; that is a very hard path, however. Jail sucks. Fines suck (and huge fines suck more.) Court sucks. Lawyers suck like a 120 VAC vacuum cleaner powered with 220 vac. Having everyone with a stake in the current mindset turn against you sucks. But... there is great honor in it, IMHO.
You can publicly advocate for your views, explaining your position and trying to win a sufficient number of people and organizations over such that you can pressure congress directly (good luck... not personally tough, but task-wise, still tough.) I should mention just as an aside that your short exposition above has not convinced me at all, and I *really* don't like our current system, so seems like it needs work. Arguing "used to be this way" is bankrupt. You need to argue "should be this way, this is how we'd make it work, and this is why we should do it this way" and then make it happen. Also very tough. Lots of people with a finger in this pie, and they're all going to hate you with a passion -- won't be fun at all.
Sub-rosa violation of the terms under which our creatives operate simply damages the creatives and serves as a challenge to the legislators, and usually gets just the response we see here: such acts are treated even more harshly. That's not how to get things done, IMHO.
You have to change public opinion, and then you have to get it through the heads of the legislators that it has actually happened.
In the interim, I am convinced that we shouldn't be waging a war upon the incomes of the very creatives whose work product we would like to have access to.
As to the other ways to compensate artists, there is patronage. Patronage has worked for centuries, and now, with modern technology we can do it so much better. We can crowdfund, which was impractical until very recently.
Yes, well, get on that. I've written quite a bit of software -- some of it major -- and made it available for free. One large and featureful app is nearing 30,000 currently active users. Where's my check? I have Paypal "contribute" buttons, but the idea that I could actually make a living -- even a very low-profile living -- off the voluntary patronage of my users strikes me as more than a little hilarious. The fact is, people use; but they don't give back except in extremely rare cases. Of those active 30k users, 14 -- that's *fourteen* -- people have hit that paypal button. Of those, I have to say they were quite generous; the total of the donations to date is $475.00. I have spent thousands of hours on this application, and it is broadly acknowled
Here's the thing: If you find the work they did valuable enough that you actually want to use it, and they only offer that work exchange it for a consideration, then either you pay them the consideration or decide not to use it after all, or everyone will know you are unable to navigate this most trivial of ethical mazes.
In addition, the way it's going now, you may end up with your life ruined. It just isn't worth it. They seem to be working very hard to make it ridiculously not worth it, and while I generally don't approve, every time someone tries to justify what they think they (don't) owe a creator by what they think of the creator's work or domain, I admit, the thought "I wish they'd drag that person into court" does run through my mind before I actually manage to work around to "no, even a dimwit doesn't deserve that."
As for "the universe creates itself", objective reality is right there, no need to toss glib, self-swallowing Igli-like* concepts around. Things work in a predictable, even somewhat reasonable, manner. Get with the program, or expect the program to pull an exception on your behalf and pre-emptively dump your registers due to abject computational failure.
One of the things that strikes me about this whole thing is that it almost certainly makes very little difference what the penalty for copyright infringement is, if you and yours simply don't do it. Radical idea, I know. But I've always been a rebel.
*** Igli: See "Glory Road," by Robert A. Heinlein. Well worth the time.
Lithium batteries are one way to store energy. They are not the only way at this time, nor is it reasonable to presume that there will not be new ways available in the future. Don't mistake media and/or manufacturer hype for a technology as an indication that it is your only option. That's often not the case, and it certainly isn't with energy storage.
The sun is always shining. What you mean to say is that the sun is not always visible due to clouds or fog, or on the side of the planet that would be optimum for power generation when the sky is clear. I'm not just being pedantic. Because:
Although that is all factual, the idea that solar does not generate power when when not in direct sunlight (cloudy, foggy, shaded, etc.) is wholly incorrect.
Solar works all day, every day, no exceptions. Rather than "not work", it varies in efficiency, and not so much that it doesn't remain useful when it is cloudy; efficiency of a well aimed system on cloudy days varies from about 20% to 50%, depending on the tech in the panel and just how dense the occlusion is. Here's a back-yard demonstration of exactly that. (TL;DW -- he gets about.6 amps out of his 4-amp panel on a cloudy day, without aiming: about 15 % efficiency.)
The more exposure and better angle you have, of course, the better it all works. But clouds and fog... facts of life. Yet you can still get all the energy you need from a solar system on days that aren't perfectly clear. You can even plan for it, and build in enough overcapacity (with full sunlight in mind) so that you always have enough power.
Concrete example: I have a small trailer that I have some 12 vdc ham gear in. It has lights, a refrigerator, and a 100-watt HF transmitter that pulls about 200 watts, worst-case. On the 10x6 roof, I have 6, (nominally) 100 watt solar panels. Minimum I've *ever* seen out of them at midday, on a cloudy winter day, is about 6 amperes. That's about 90 watts of continuous charge. I never, ever run out of power. Sunny days I have ridiculous amounts of excess power available, and I run an air conditioner or a heater with it.
I have an (unfortunately large, this tech isn't really where it needs to be yet) bank of ultracaps in the trailer. No batteries. I also run LED lighting and a very efficient small refrigerator. Surge power to start the compressor is no problem - the ultracaps can deliver far more than is required. Once running, the fridge's power draw is negligible. The charge and supply electronics are of my own design (ultracap discharge slopes aren't like batteries, so you need something significantly more complex than a wire and a fuse) and no doubt they could be improved, but I have never run out of power and I transmit quite a bit at times.
I've also gone out at night and done many hours of shortwave dx'ing (in the country, away from the town's copious RFI), lights on, opening the frig once about every half hour, and not run out of power.
My home's main roof area is 60x45. That's room for about 360, 100-watt panels, or about 36,000 watts of peak capacity. At 80% derating -- what we can anticipate on a really, really overcast day -- peak output is still about 7,000 watts. Quite usable for lighting and light duty loads. the pacemaker will get charged.:)
My house is very well insulated, too, so that's a bonus, heating- and cooling-wise.
Solar is the way to go. Period. All those rooftops, all those square miles of empty space, just waiting for us to get in gear.
Currently, individual ready-to-mount 100-watt solar panels are about $135 on Ebay, with a 25-year warranty. less in quantity. The math is quite compelling, even with the major shortcomings of battery lifetime. Set up a small system to run something. Learn the basics and work through it so you understand it. Batteries, charge controllers, panels, aiming and auto-aiming and either low voltage client devices like my trailer system, or an inverter and the usual type of 120 vac power clients. If you do, I suspect your enthusiasm level will change dramatically for the positive. There's something ultimately satisfying about spending money on YOUR infrastructure and giving the bird, even if it's a very small bird, to the power company.
lol... this study is squarely in the class of "we've determined that most water is wet" or for a more complex example, "statistics clearly indicate that the majority component of the contents of a glass packed full of water ice, is water ice,. *(But this is only true until or unless it melts)"
FFS, yes, there are environmental costs to making vehicles and renewable power systems, and those are further impacted by lifetime and reliability factors, and there are huge environmental costs to burning fossil fuels, and the less we do of that, the better.
Thanks, I'll take my million dollar NSF grant as a cashier's check. I hope to have another study ready tomorrow; I plan to definitively, once and for all, determine if most humans are air breathers. Stay tuned. But don't hold your breath. I'm going to be out spending today's million tonight on strippers and fine whiskey. I may take a... breather... tomorrow. As the Italians say, "Alveoli, amici miei!"
I always thought that system startup should be controllable by the user, but that dependencies ought to be mapped graphically so that you have some idea of what ELSE you're going to be knocking out by stopping, for instance, system interrupts or the RTC.
Perhaps the government -- ours, the UK, whomever -- ought not to consider over-punishing someone for a minor infraction in order to deter others.
It seems to me that this is the real flaw in the entire mindset at work here.
Does society want to deter people from breaking a law? Sure. And yes, I agree, individuals violating copyright on a "I copied this work to use for myself" level is antisocial (but less so than spitting on the sidewalk is -- IOW, "meh.")
But do we want impose draconian and absurd punishments on peaceful and almost entirely harmless people?
Fuck. No. Because that's obviously unfair and unreasonable -- and stupid.
I'll go even further: A reasonable punishment is making the infringer pay twice what it would have cost them to pursue the legitimate path. For instance, you copy a CD that retails for $19.95, you get fined $39.40 which goes to the injured party, plus court and enforcement costs. Etc. And then you get after enforcing it, so that copyright violation becomes a no-win situation. So it would hurt, but it wouldn't generally wreck your life, your family's life, and screw up anything else that depends on your input, presence, or support.
People do this not because they are evil, but because (a) they are cheap, (b) the abstraction that someone actually put some valuable time into the work is too abstract for them to grasp, and (c) it is actually easier than purchasing the work.
We can't fix (c) because technology. It's only getting easier. I suspect it's likely to continue doing so, too.
We can't fix (b) because people grasp their rationalizations like a life ring in a storm-tossed ocean regardless of how close the shore is. Even really smart people. I refer, of course, to the idiotic but seductive "information wants to be free" meme. Information is held in people's heads unless they want to take it out of their heads, and a tangible reward is an excellent motivator to encourage them to do so. Doesn't mean you can't make free stuff; it just means that we'd like to tangibly reward those who want to do these kinds of things as a life pursuit -- or even you, doing it as a hobby, if you'd like to exchange your work for some reward of a more factual nature than "makes me feel good" and/or the cliched and mostly worthless "5 minutes of fame", if that's how you'd like to roll.
But we can sure as hell leverage (a) reasonably -- which is a damn sight better than trying to scare people by the equivalent of beating the shite out of someone for simply looking at you wrong.
Fucking lawyers and bureaucrats. There are days when I think they all need to be made to go home. System needs a reset.
In re the Perl article the day of the outage... Slashdot is written in Perl. It went down, they probably spent the majority of that time looking up what $ and _ and so forth actually mean and do. Meantime, Rob's off somewhere chugging a beer and laughing his posterior off.
Of course there is a mechanism: a vibrant and well-informed democracy with high participation.
Wow. That sounds so cool! Where do you live? Me, I'm an American, and we can only dream about such things. Our last election brought out 36.3% of the electorate, while the quality of the participation resulted in a 94% re-election rate of those congress members up for re-eelection that were "enjoying" a 14% approval rate. Those aren't typos. 94% and 14%. Two thirds of the electorate couldn't be bothered to engage.
Democratically speaking (or more accurately, as a constitutional republic with a nominally democratic process that has been utterly infiltrated and over-ridden by moneyed and otherwise powerful interests), and with engagement in mind, this place is a textbook example of "highly dysfunctional."
Or were you only saying you can imagine a "vibrant and well-informed democracy with high participation"?
Hundreds of millions of years of evolution, and we think we can do better in a matter of decades of computer technology. Yea right.
Animals make evolutionary changes on a per-generation basis at best, and usually a lot slower than that, as often the changes don't breed true, take more than one generation to fully develop, or aren't bred at all.
A computer can do it many times a second, and be 100% sure to pass along worthy results. Computers aren't likely to be looking at each other going "nope, not enough money", "not handsome enough", "looks sickly", "dresses funny", "unacceptably low class" and so on. We can't pass our minds and our knowledge on (yet) but computers can. So when a human child learns it's not ok to beat their sibling, that doesn't advance the next generation. The vast majority of what we do, we are simply doing over, without any improvement at all. Consider the difference in the resulting human being if a child were born with the knowledge the parents had at the time of conception. Because that's a lot closer to how computers are likely to be doing it.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah... no. They broke cron, they inflicted that insane "app nap" nonsense on us (broke damned near every real-time application out there... I spend a *lot* of time explaining to OS X users that it needs to be turned off or OS X will summarily stop giving the required amount of CPU time to the app) there's sand-boxing, the changes in spaces functionality, they utterly broke UTF-8 console printing (and didn't fix it... just left it broken unless you upgraded -- and yes, they knew about it in time, I talked to "Mr. CUPS himself about it), dropped PPC emulation, moved image support from apps to OS (which broke the dickens out of Aperture upgrades, among other things), they broke getting to local websites on your LAN, and they quit giving us actual media, which I simply find annoying and short-sighted. And they still haven't fixed many of the OS bugs, for instance, you still can't have more than one app listening to a UDP broadcast reception port as far as I know. I don't have any idea whose brilliant think it was to decide that "broadcast" meant only one app can listen, but there you go.
Definitely quite a few reasons to be reticent about moving to a new version of OSX. These things matter.
Sure -- if you don't mind a good deal of your stuff breaking. Inconveniently enough, I do mind. Hence, 10.6.8, and staying there as long as possible, too.
Did you even read what I wrote? Or was that just a convenient place to hang your remark? If that's the case, never mind, carry on. :)
I welcome change and advance, I think it does us all good in the long run. That doesn't mean I will choose to partake in same.
Some things interest some people; other things interest other people. Sometimes there is overlap. Here on slashdot, considering the age, stability, and desirability of one OS version as related to another is quite topical in terms of the issues the site generally is understood to cover.
Perhaps you should wander off and find a story you are interested in. No need to read the ones that don't provoke an interest, you know. You do know that, right?
Still running OSX 10.6.8 -- an OS version ca. July 2011
Isn't broken in the sense that anything about it significantly impedes what I use the computer for; anything that was really crappy -- like Safari -- has been replaced with something that worked better.
Ergo, no need to "fix" it.
I have more interesting things to do with my time than adopt change for the sake of change.
There's a great deal positive that can be said for a stable OS environment, not the least of which is that software which I develop for it will work for more people than software that utilizes functionality only available from a later version of the OS. Speaking for myself, I view a statement about any application of the general form "requires late version of/latest OS" as an abject failure of the developer to think of the users.
That's not to say that others aren't, or shouldn't be interested in the latest OS version-- it's just that I am not, and that addresses the question that was asked.
You need to actually read the messages you reply to, and then think about what was actually said so you can respond intelligently, instead of erecting a series of straw men and then setting them on fire.
Cheers. :)
Yes, that's why we all use megaphones in public so only our own voice can be distinguished.
Oh, wait.
Turns out, we don't do that.
Who woulda thunk it?
Not you, apparently...
So? Doesn't matter who they are designed for. What matters is if they work on me. They don't.
Yes, I live in a very rural area, and further, I keep to my own property as much as possible and have done so for just a little short of thirty years now.
What you have "found" about W, X and Y doesn't mean that you will find the same about Z. You're falling into the trap of assuming everyone is gullible to the degree you are arguing, based on the evidence that that a lot of people are.
Consider for a moment why we have atheists and skeptics as well as the religious. The social pressure to "be" religious, at least here in the US, is considerable. Yet atheists don't buy in. If everyone is equally affected by propaganda and the various levels of social influence, how then can atheism and skepticism exist? It is quite clear that some people tend to follow the narratives they are presented with, while others tend to not do so. Denying that -- which is essentially what you are doing -- is a bankrupt POV, and appropriately enough, I find it insufficient to your argument, which is to say I am quite skeptical that you understand the issue you're so passionately trying to describe.
I looked at your search, and it made me laugh. Yes, that's precisely what I think. That stuff is almost entirely G-rated pap; not sexy at all. with the exception of one image that came up showing a very good-looking woman in stockings and garters, the rest left me cold. And that image, or anything like it, isn't going to appear in product advertisements for those things which I am interested in buying. So yes, sex is not being used in by far the majority of all advertising -- even if it would then work on me, which I assure you, it would not. I am well aware that I am not the actor (and they are actors) in the fictional situation presented by ads. Not only does the fictional depiction not represent my life or lifestyle, the actual ad itself is constructed of illusion -- actors, scripts, etc. To me, this is wholly obvious. To you, apparently not. The error you're making here is assuming others are like you. As per the bard, "There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy. "
Also: When I say sex, I mean sex. I don't mean bikinis or pretty faces. When I say "sexy", I mean, sex is used to sell the product. The amount of advertising for which that is the case is miniscule. Even when it occurs, and I am exposed, and the sex gets me to look, it won't get me to buy. I am not them; they are not me; the depiction is fiction, or in the even rarer case where it might not be, I am still not them, nor do I have any urge to be them.
Primarily, I am aware of the current state of affairs because relevant material is discussed quite often in the communities that I frequent, including this one. How many articles and associated commentary have you seen here that delve into issues like "booth babes" and "objectifying women" and the argument that physical beauty is a justifiably monetized resource just as athleticism and intelligence are -- and so on -- just
Oh, it works -- it just doesn't work on those of us who are aware of it, block it, ignore it, lack respect for it, and consider it pablum for the masses. There are plenty of people out there who approach the world in a "consumer" mode, essentially a non-critical approach that is largely guided by suggestion rather than critical thinking. That's fine. But assuming everyone is like that is incorrect.
I suggest you study the IQ Gaussian and think through the implications. It doesn't tell you everything about a person by any means, but it does tell you a lot about distribution of analytic characteristics among the population. You should also consider the distinction between people for whom superstition is convincing -- belief in a god or gods, crystallomancy, dowsing, Ouija boards, etc. -- as juxtaposed against those for whom it is not: atheists and skeptics.
Many people are gullible for one reason or another; they don't think about a proposition, they simply react on an emotional level as to whether they find a narrative to be emotionally compelling. Or if they do think about it, they do so without the data they need to come to the most correct conclusion(s) and yet draw conclusions anyway, and/or they get on board because so-and-so said so, because "popular", because peer pressure, because fear or an idea is "nice" (again, see religion) and so forth.
Perhaps you find yourself influenced significantly by advertising, and through a failure on your part to realize that everyone is not like you, think your failure is then echoed by everyone else. It's just not so.
You may rest assured that advertising that makes it past my hosts list or which I otherwise encounter in daily life does not have its intended effect upon me. Nor does government propaganda, political correctness, religious mythology, "product placement", "style", and so on for quite a long list.
And yes, just as someone mentioned above, I do live in a very low population area, and I do generally keep to my own property. I also have lots of at-home undertakings that keep me fully engaged, from playing guitar to woodworking (my SO and I are building a home-class interior into an old church), from writing political and social commentary to programming.
When it comes to purchasing a product, there is another approach than "the ad looked good." Analyze your requirements, match these to the known characteristics of the product, see if the costs - both immediate and the relevant TCO factors - fit into your plans for yourself, and so on.
The bottom line is that the world is full of nonsensical messages. Some people get past that. Others are immersed and have no idea what is real, what is factual, what is rational. The existence of people of one type does not preclude the existence of others quite unlike them. Likewise, some people "go with the flow" and let the world happen to them. Others, considerably more proactive, are better described as "happening to the world." Assuming the characteristics of the one set largely apply to the other is naive.
Cheers. :)
AFAIAC, the worst part is that these people vote.
Radio and TV are artificially expensive. The only reason they require ads or donor support is because the government has set up a completely unnecessary series of extremely high financial walls that must be leapt.
I could set you up a perfectly good AM or FM or television broadcast station for about $100, including a pretty good antenna sufficient for very broad local reach, say 30 miles or so. For a bit more, we can up the power and antenna significantly, and that's the end of your expenses. You can put up a pretty good tower for not much money too, if that's your inclination, and that will increase your range. I have a couple very nice towers myself, as well as one made out of 6X6 lumber that cost me all of about $100 to build (and really, since it's part of the support structure of my home's deck, half that cost would have been spent anyway. Huge antenna on top. :) No ads required to support all this, you can do it out of a cookie jar. 100 watts will get you an amazing amount of coverage, particularly if you're on a frequency no one else nearby is on (we have two stations here. The rest of the bands are completely dead during the day, AM comes alive at night, but you'd still reach the local listeners over those signals if you could set up a 100 watt station.)
But figure in the cost of FCC approved (laughable) equipment and FCC-approved towers and radiation patterns and location limitations and lawyers and licenses and so forth... ok, now you need funding. And a lot of it, too.
Or, create expensive content, again, now you need funding. But that would be a choice.
But radio and TV would be just fine without advertisers. Content would almost certainly change. Likely much for the better, IMHO. Competition would flourish: For instance, instead of the locals only having the option to listen to religious programming, there would be atheist stations (just as there are atheist websites... low cost of entry is required when there isn't a big organization pushing from behind the scenes.) Kids would have other influences other than those pushing mythology. There would be left-wing and right-wing and wingless stations. Sports stations and drama stations. Those who create their own content would flourish.
But you're not going to get that. No, you're going to get clear channel and Fox and etc. churning your ears and/or eyes with a very, very limited selection of programming that they want you to be exposed to, and very little else.
And the people who buy the argument that stations might interfere with each other, therefore we need all of the above impositions... they'll see to it that this will not change. It's a perfect situation under which to create and maintain a robust propaganda machine. And no surprise, that's precisely what we ended up with.
Exactly. The "we" discussed in TFS, and presumably in whatever it is summarizing, is not me, and therefore as far as I am concerned, resolve to a "them", as in, the person(s) who wrote it.
I don't pay any attention to advertising at all unless I am proactively seeking a product in a store, virtual or otherwise, and then only to specific instances that are relevant.
I don't watch broadcast television, I don't read billboards, I completely ignore banners and side-column ads, I don't open mail that isn't from a lawyer, a utility or some faction of the government, and I neither care what people want to put in ads nor am I affected by said content.
The only effect web ads have on me, at least until the IP shows up in my hosts list, is to slow pages down. Once it gets into the hosts list, it turns into an error message instead of an ad, and I ignore those too, while my browsing speeds back up (if you're not using your hosts file to nuke advertisers and their cookie-mining minions, you're foregoing a great tool, presuming you don't actually want to see ads, which I suppose is not a given.)
The only way they'll actually get my attention is with a sexy lady, and as the industry's kowtowing to political correctness has caused them to divest themselves of that particular tool, the advertisers, "they get nothing."
Your 9th amendment thesis is wrong. The 9th, in its entirety:
"The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people."
There's absolutely nothing in the 9th that says states can override federal law authorized by the constitution. Not a word, not a syllable.
As for your idea of modifying copyright, bravo. Sounds fabulous to me. Now make it happen. That is where the rubber meets the road (this is slashdot, cars must be brought to bear on the matter at some point or geek cred decays.)
I don't know where you are, but in the US, the constitution, the very document that authorizes the government, specifically opens the door to copyright or something with its essential functionality:
Exclusive rights. That's clear, right? "limited Times" is also clear, but note that it is completely open-ended, so they can do (and have done) whatever they want with the terms of exclusivity. I would completely agree that the present terms are too long, but I would not agree that congress was out of line to try these longer terms out.
So the "fiat" you refer to here is not very arbitrary, if that's how you meant it. If you just meant "by decree", yes, that's what laws are. This is, however, explicitly an authorized act (and I have to say, given the other things congress and the courts get up to, it's sort of a relief to actually be able to say that.)
You can offer public civil disobedience if you feel the approach congress took is wrong; that is a very hard path, however. Jail sucks. Fines suck (and huge fines suck more.) Court sucks. Lawyers suck like a 120 VAC vacuum cleaner powered with 220 vac. Having everyone with a stake in the current mindset turn against you sucks. But... there is great honor in it, IMHO.
You can publicly advocate for your views, explaining your position and trying to win a sufficient number of people and organizations over such that you can pressure congress directly (good luck... not personally tough, but task-wise, still tough.) I should mention just as an aside that your short exposition above has not convinced me at all, and I *really* don't like our current system, so seems like it needs work. Arguing "used to be this way" is bankrupt. You need to argue "should be this way, this is how we'd make it work, and this is why we should do it this way" and then make it happen. Also very tough. Lots of people with a finger in this pie, and they're all going to hate you with a passion -- won't be fun at all.
Sub-rosa violation of the terms under which our creatives operate simply damages the creatives and serves as a challenge to the legislators, and usually gets just the response we see here: such acts are treated even more harshly. That's not how to get things done, IMHO.
You have to change public opinion, and then you have to get it through the heads of the legislators that it has actually happened.
In the interim, I am convinced that we shouldn't be waging a war upon the incomes of the very creatives whose work product we would like to have access to.
Yes, well, get on that. I've written quite a bit of software -- some of it major -- and made it available for free. One large and featureful app is nearing 30,000 currently active users. Where's my check? I have Paypal "contribute" buttons, but the idea that I could actually make a living -- even a very low-profile living -- off the voluntary patronage of my users strikes me as more than a little hilarious. The fact is, people use; but they don't give back except in extremely rare cases. Of those active 30k users, 14 -- that's *fourteen* -- people have hit that paypal button. Of those, I have to say they were quite generous; the total of the donations to date is $475.00. I have spent thousands of hours on this application, and it is broadly acknowled
I tell it, or some version of it, to everyone. Feel free to pass it along though obviously consider your situation very carefully first.
Sorry about your situation. It's abusive.
Here's the thing: If you find the work they did valuable enough that you actually want to use it, and they only offer that work exchange it for a consideration, then either you pay them the consideration or decide not to use it after all, or everyone will know you are unable to navigate this most trivial of ethical mazes.
In addition, the way it's going now, you may end up with your life ruined. It just isn't worth it. They seem to be working very hard to make it ridiculously not worth it, and while I generally don't approve, every time someone tries to justify what they think they (don't) owe a creator by what they think of the creator's work or domain, I admit, the thought "I wish they'd drag that person into court" does run through my mind before I actually manage to work around to "no, even a dimwit doesn't deserve that."
As for "the universe creates itself", objective reality is right there, no need to toss glib, self-swallowing Igli-like* concepts around. Things work in a predictable, even somewhat reasonable, manner. Get with the program, or expect the program to pull an exception on your behalf and pre-emptively dump your registers due to abject computational failure.
One of the things that strikes me about this whole thing is that it almost certainly makes very little difference what the penalty for copyright infringement is, if you and yours simply don't do it. Radical idea, I know. But I've always been a rebel.
*** Igli: See "Glory Road," by Robert A. Heinlein. Well worth the time.
Lithium batteries are one way to store energy. They are not the only way at this time, nor is it reasonable to presume that there will not be new ways available in the future. Don't mistake media and/or manufacturer hype for a technology as an indication that it is your only option. That's often not the case, and it certainly isn't with energy storage.
The sun is always shining. What you mean to say is that the sun is not always visible due to clouds or fog, or on the side of the planet that would be optimum for power generation when the sky is clear. I'm not just being pedantic. Because:
Although that is all factual, the idea that solar does not generate power when when not in direct sunlight (cloudy, foggy, shaded, etc.) is wholly incorrect.
Solar works all day, every day, no exceptions. Rather than "not work", it varies in efficiency, and not so much that it doesn't remain useful when it is cloudy; efficiency of a well aimed system on cloudy days varies from about 20% to 50%, depending on the tech in the panel and just how dense the occlusion is. Here's a back-yard demonstration of exactly that. (TL;DW -- he gets about .6 amps out of his 4-amp panel on a cloudy day, without aiming: about 15 % efficiency.)
The more exposure and better angle you have, of course, the better it all works. But clouds and fog... facts of life. Yet you can still get all the energy you need from a solar system on days that aren't perfectly clear. You can even plan for it, and build in enough overcapacity (with full sunlight in mind) so that you always have enough power.
Concrete example: I have a small trailer that I have some 12 vdc ham gear in. It has lights, a refrigerator, and a 100-watt HF transmitter that pulls about 200 watts, worst-case. On the 10x6 roof, I have 6, (nominally) 100 watt solar panels. Minimum I've *ever* seen out of them at midday, on a cloudy winter day, is about 6 amperes. That's about 90 watts of continuous charge. I never, ever run out of power. Sunny days I have ridiculous amounts of excess power available, and I run an air conditioner or a heater with it.
I have an (unfortunately large, this tech isn't really where it needs to be yet) bank of ultracaps in the trailer. No batteries. I also run LED lighting and a very efficient small refrigerator. Surge power to start the compressor is no problem - the ultracaps can deliver far more than is required. Once running, the fridge's power draw is negligible. The charge and supply electronics are of my own design (ultracap discharge slopes aren't like batteries, so you need something significantly more complex than a wire and a fuse) and no doubt they could be improved, but I have never run out of power and I transmit quite a bit at times.
I've also gone out at night and done many hours of shortwave dx'ing (in the country, away from the town's copious RFI), lights on, opening the frig once about every half hour, and not run out of power.
My home's main roof area is 60x45. That's room for about 360, 100-watt panels, or about 36,000 watts of peak capacity. At 80% derating -- what we can anticipate on a really, really overcast day -- peak output is still about 7,000 watts. Quite usable for lighting and light duty loads. the pacemaker will get charged. :)
My house is very well insulated, too, so that's a bonus, heating- and cooling-wise.
Solar is the way to go. Period. All those rooftops, all those square miles of empty space, just waiting for us to get in gear.
Currently, individual ready-to-mount 100-watt solar panels are about $135 on Ebay, with a 25-year warranty. less in quantity. The math is quite compelling, even with the major shortcomings of battery lifetime. Set up a small system to run something. Learn the basics and work through it so you understand it. Batteries, charge controllers, panels, aiming and auto-aiming and either low voltage client devices like my trailer system, or an inverter and the usual type of 120 vac power clients. If you do, I suspect your enthusiasm level will change dramatically for the positive. There's something ultimately satisfying about spending money on YOUR infrastructure and giving the bird, even if it's a very small bird, to the power company.
lol... this study is squarely in the class of "we've determined that most water is wet" or for a more complex example, "statistics clearly indicate that the majority component of the contents of a glass packed full of water ice, is water ice,. *(But this is only true until or unless it melts)"
FFS, yes, there are environmental costs to making vehicles and renewable power systems, and those are further impacted by lifetime and reliability factors, and there are huge environmental costs to burning fossil fuels, and the less we do of that, the better.
Thanks, I'll take my million dollar NSF grant as a cashier's check. I hope to have another study ready tomorrow; I plan to definitively, once and for all, determine if most humans are air breathers. Stay tuned. But don't hold your breath. I'm going to be out spending today's million tonight on strippers and fine whiskey. I may take a... breather... tomorrow. As the Italians say, "Alveoli, amici miei!"
I always thought that system startup should be controllable by the user, but that dependencies ought to be mapped graphically so that you have some idea of what ELSE you're going to be knocking out by stopping, for instance, system interrupts or the RTC.
That said, I'm pretty fond of init.d and crew. :/
Perhaps the government -- ours, the UK, whomever -- ought not to consider over-punishing someone for a minor infraction in order to deter others.
It seems to me that this is the real flaw in the entire mindset at work here.
Does society want to deter people from breaking a law? Sure. And yes, I agree, individuals violating copyright on a "I copied this work to use for myself" level is antisocial (but less so than spitting on the sidewalk is -- IOW, "meh.")
But do we want impose draconian and absurd punishments on peaceful and almost entirely harmless people?
Fuck. No. Because that's obviously unfair and unreasonable -- and stupid.
I'll go even further: A reasonable punishment is making the infringer pay twice what it would have cost them to pursue the legitimate path. For instance, you copy a CD that retails for $19.95, you get fined $39.40 which goes to the injured party, plus court and enforcement costs. Etc. And then you get after enforcing it, so that copyright violation becomes a no-win situation. So it would hurt, but it wouldn't generally wreck your life, your family's life, and screw up anything else that depends on your input, presence, or support.
People do this not because they are evil, but because (a) they are cheap, (b) the abstraction that someone actually put some valuable time into the work is too abstract for them to grasp, and (c) it is actually easier than purchasing the work.
We can't fix (c) because technology. It's only getting easier. I suspect it's likely to continue doing so, too.
We can't fix (b) because people grasp their rationalizations like a life ring in a storm-tossed ocean regardless of how close the shore is. Even really smart people. I refer, of course, to the idiotic but seductive "information wants to be free" meme. Information is held in people's heads unless they want to take it out of their heads, and a tangible reward is an excellent motivator to encourage them to do so. Doesn't mean you can't make free stuff; it just means that we'd like to tangibly reward those who want to do these kinds of things as a life pursuit -- or even you, doing it as a hobby, if you'd like to exchange your work for some reward of a more factual nature than "makes me feel good" and/or the cliched and mostly worthless "5 minutes of fame", if that's how you'd like to roll.
But we can sure as hell leverage (a) reasonably -- which is a damn sight better than trying to scare people by the equivalent of beating the shite out of someone for simply looking at you wrong.
Fucking lawyers and bureaucrats. There are days when I think they all need to be made to go home. System needs a reset.
Oh, look. A "-1, MURICA!11!1!" mod. How cute. :)
In re the Perl article the day of the outage... Slashdot is written in Perl. It went down, they probably spent the majority of that time looking up what $ and _ and so forth actually mean and do. Meantime, Rob's off somewhere chugging a beer and laughing his posterior off.
It's just a theory, mind you. :)
Wow. That sounds so cool! Where do you live? Me, I'm an American, and we can only dream about such things. Our last election brought out 36.3% of the electorate, while the quality of the participation resulted in a 94% re-election rate of those congress members up for re-eelection that were "enjoying" a 14% approval rate. Those aren't typos. 94% and 14%. Two thirds of the electorate couldn't be bothered to engage.
Democratically speaking (or more accurately, as a constitutional republic with a nominally democratic process that has been utterly infiltrated and over-ridden by moneyed and otherwise powerful interests), and with engagement in mind, this place is a textbook example of "highly dysfunctional."
Or were you only saying you can imagine a "vibrant and well-informed democracy with high participation"?
Animals make evolutionary changes on a per-generation basis at best, and usually a lot slower than that, as often the changes don't breed true, take more than one generation to fully develop, or aren't bred at all.
A computer can do it many times a second, and be 100% sure to pass along worthy results. Computers aren't likely to be looking at each other going "nope, not enough money", "not handsome enough", "looks sickly", "dresses funny", "unacceptably low class" and so on. We can't pass our minds and our knowledge on (yet) but computers can. So when a human child learns it's not ok to beat their sibling, that doesn't advance the next generation. The vast majority of what we do, we are simply doing over, without any improvement at all. Consider the difference in the resulting human being if a child were born with the knowledge the parents had at the time of conception. Because that's a lot closer to how computers are likely to be doing it.