You people work for us, We the People. Any analyses you perform should be a matter of public record. Get over yourselves.
Why should they? If all you do is mutter on slashdot they've got nothing to worry about. Outside of the techie world how many people even know what a news discussion site is?
The problem about just saying you should have your rights under the constitution is that the people who got the opportunity to create it and then wrote it actually did fight, and many suffered and came over all dead. You don't compare well to them, except in the 'gathering to discuss their grievances' bit.
You need to do something about it aside from talk is the point I'm making.
I can't, I'm not American, but I would if I had to in my own country.
I'm not an MS fan, but this sort of thing does irritate me. They are *not* strongarming startups. What they are doing is trying to find ways of monetizing their services. These services are free to end users, but why should they be free for other businesses to use? I can't see why. How is it reasonable to use another companies product to make money without paying for that usage? Only if the company wants it to be used for free, and Microsoft doesn't. That's their right.
Can these startups just avoid using the MS IM protocol? Sure, if they want to drastically reduce their customer bases. That would be unbeleivably stupid in the US.
And besides, 25 cents per user per year? If the startup is worthy of existence, they should be able to make more than that per user per year, its a piddly amount.
It seems to me to be the height of hypocrisy that business leaders (Gates and company) complain about a lack of scientifically/technologically trained Americans, and thus we need to increase H1-B visas. These same leaders then turn around and support republican candidates who don't believe in evolution and want to water down the science curriculum by introducing Intelligent Design.
True, but those very same republicans are big business friendly, and few systems that fail are able to detect or admit that failure themselves, it usually takes an outside observer to say something first, which they either deny and fail, or accept and change.
As for not believing in evolution, well thats a political stance designed to keep them in with the religious bods who provide a lot of funding. I seriously doubt an Atheist would get selected for high office. For a country where religion and state are seperate, there sure is a lot of religious posturing among your leaders.
Has any fellow European of mine ever come across any serious creationists? Is this solely an American phenomenon?
Nope, Many years ago I worked with one, and he was so bizarre he wouldn't even accept that fossils were real. They were just funny shaped rocks. I had this discussion with him while we were on a gravel path round our workplace that was packed with fossil shellfish. He all but shut his eyes when I picked one up. I'm afraid to say I laughed at him, which was probably a bit mean.
Another guy I met while doing my CS degree. He even got upset that evolutionary algorithms were to be taught, and flat out refused to hear any talk of science, it was all lumped into a confusion of weird ideas that I could make no sense of, and I did try, he was an otherwise ok bloke. I have no idea how he'd thought he'd complete a CS degree, I rather think he hadn't thought at all. As it is he quit in the first year and did history.
I note that this new database once again includes reference to crime by the normal citizen. What about a publicly searchable database of politicians and all donation sources plus business world affiliations and bills proposed by that politician?
The information exists already I imagine, but not in a single database available to anyone.
This new thing does seem a tad Orwellian to me. Just another vector to find fault with a citizen, which of course means greater control. I wonder how long you would stay on it once added? What happened to serving a sentence and getting a clean slate?
and I wonder what a library will become in the future, anyway
Probably they will change into (back into) the original model provided by the great library of Alexandria. That institution held books (ok, scrolls), but was primarily a place of teaching, effectively its role was what we now see as the role of a university.
Libraries only became dull(yes, dull) with the advent of the new breed of privately funded library in the eighteenth century (I omit centuries of Islamic libraries, I know little of them, other then they were active and very full). Certainly this was the case in England, and I'm pretty sure the US has its share of privately initiated libraries. Those libraries were focused heavily on the collection of knowledge, and did indeed help many people learn new things, but the visitor was expected to remain solemnly quiet, to absorb the information and depart, not disturbing others engaged in the ritual of learning.
Pretty boring stuff for a great proportion of the population (not me, I like libraries, but I'm not talking about myself). Information does not do well sat in books, it needs to be experienced, talked about, it should 'live'. That was Micheal Faraday's idea, and he gave weekly science lectures as well as doing science, inspiring many to seek further knowledge. The Internet brings us some measure of liveness for our information as well, which stimulates interest, but for the most part its short term. You find what you want, or don't, and move on fast.
A library should include the Internet, and books, but also staff who teach, providing some means of focusing people on the knowledge that they have become however fleetingly interested in. Without that you're unlikely to have a library that does anything but collect dust and books.
I suppose if they really want to make it fair, they should have a separate race class and let all the other runners strap springs onto their shoes also. Then we'll find out how much of an athlete this guy is compared to other world-class runners.
He'd lose most likely, if everyone had the same advantage, after all, world clas runners tend to have more experience as regards the requirements of a long term race.
Assuming of course we are talking of long distance running
I've fancied trying some of those spring legs for a while. They aren't just for amputees. The US military are, if I recall correctly, investigating this technology (in computer assisted form) for groundpounders (oh dear, the B5 fandom is showing).
I can see why he'd be disqualified, although it must be sad for him. Surely he must have realised the chances were slim though, those things are far too good.
This isn't the first project that Microsoft has released on Sourceforge. They also released WiX, which is a program to build windows installation executables
It relies on Visual studio being present though, Nullsofts nSis (which I use) cares not for such restrictions.
Yes, but only well for small devices. My iPod is supposed to be USB charged, but the trickle feed is useless for it. Apart from a joystick and keyboard I have, I avoid usb powered devices nowadays.
Or the TV show which has its own charm too.. such as the best Marvin you're likely to ever see..
I don't know about that. I'm something of a serious DNA fan, and when the radio show was on I always pictured Marvin as short with a big head, just like the one that was in the H2G2 movie.
When the TV show came out I was puzzled as to why a supposedly advanced and brainy robot would have a range of motion of only about four inches on each limb, it was only Stephen Moore's delivery of his lines that saved it for me. From what I understand Douglas himself wasn't happy with the TV Marvin either.
Stephen Moore was a better Marvin than Alan Rickman, but I guess they wanted someone better known to play him in the film.
Um, my zx spectrum booted up quite fast, as did my BBC model B.
OK, less capable systems perhaps, but lets not get confused here, PCs take waaay longer to boot up then any of that old technology.
Plus I don't recall being any less productive on the BBC model B, the things I can do have changed is all. I have documents that I began on the BBC which I am still using now.
The first time I booted a 'proper' pc up (I used my old BBC right up until 1995) I was shocked by the long boot up time. Ok I was also totally perplexed by the mouse, but then I am old....
From what I recall, the whole thing of GM crops was never to provide the well fed western world with extra food. We've already got more than we need.
The original idea was robust crops that would work in the third world, where death from lack of food is an everyday occurrence.
Alas for them the corporations discovered that it made cheap food that they could make good profits on, and the biotech companies realised this was an idea way to control farmers worldwide by forcing them to purchase a constant supply of (patented) seeds, not replanting with saved seeds as has been the practice since farming was first developed.
Basically it went from a wonderful idea to just another way for money to be made.
Someone else will have to find the cites for this if you want them.
You've made the same mistake that almost everyone who replied to my original post made, and that's thinking I expect that my son is behaving himself perfectly on the web while I'm not looking. Its quite obvious most people replying aren't parents themselves.
Honestly, if he isn't browsing for porn at his age I'd be concerned. I was adept at keeping my parents out of my business too when I was his age, although in my case it was books that were probably too old for me (Heinlein's Friday at 12 years old, Peter Finch's 'The Tank Driver' at 11), and films that I most certainly shouldn't have seen. I started with this younger then he has.
What I *am* concerned about is that he use the web responsibly and safely, avoid stupid stuff like filesharing apps (my ISP disconnects people for it), along with the malware packages they also tend to install, and that he avoids the hoards of paedophiles that are apparently scouring the net. To this end he is careful about where he chats on the web (usually in game, and never to people he doesn't know in the real world).
You can bet if I started banning him and setting blocks up, he's get round them in a second. I know he has at school, although there its for access to games mostly. We have no such blocks at home, false crutch that they are, it's up to him. You'd be amazed what a little trust can achieve.
I have achieved this (and I know I have), by educating him. he is entirely aware of the places to go for such dangers, so there's no forbidden fruit there. Given that he spends most of his time in TF2 and Counterstrike, its not that big a deal.
Seriously, the UK doesn't exactly have the best record on keeping databases safe.
Not that I care. I'd be willing to bet that 99.9 percent of the contents of any anti terror database is crap kept in there to make it seem important. Or stuff they think is important, but when it comes down to it is worthless.
Really, if sending huge armies to stampede across the middle east didn't work, how is a database going to help? Are we going to send sql queries at them or something?
How sad for you that that's the only conclusion you can come to.
My son knows all about the nasties on the Internet, I've explained as many as I can. Now he steers clear of anything I've said to leave well alone.
I could check up on him easily, he leaves his pc on often enough with the browser open, but I don't. We often talk about the latest stuff we've respectively found on the net. The closest he's got to being told to stop was when he found zeropunctuation. I watched it as well though, and concluded that what is said in that is no worse than he hears at school.
well I don't know about you, but in my house, everyones email login and password is saved locally on every machine in the house.
My son could bypass any system to verify parental consent easily. However, in my house we practice this apparently rare thing called, 'mutual respect' whereby he doesn't do such things, and I don't invade his privacy. It's all about trust really, and that has to be taught, it can't be either assumed or enforced by stupid schemes like this one.
why thankyou sir. I do like to produce a decent -1 flamebait from time to time, since my karma seems never to change. That you got a funny rating for responding warms the cockles.
Slashdot Mirror
You people work for us, We the People. Any analyses you perform should be a matter of public record. Get over yourselves.
Why should they? If all you do is mutter on slashdot they've got nothing to worry about. Outside of the techie world how many people even know what a news discussion site is?
The problem about just saying you should have your rights under the constitution is that the people who got the opportunity to create it and then wrote it actually did fight, and many suffered and came over all dead. You don't compare well to them, except in the 'gathering to discuss their grievances' bit.
You need to do something about it aside from talk is the point I'm making.
I can't, I'm not American, but I would if I had to in my own country.
Like it or not, they are a major IM provider.
I'm not an MS fan, but this sort of thing does irritate me. They are *not* strongarming startups. What they are doing is trying to find ways of monetizing their services. These services are free to end users, but why should they be free for other businesses to use? I can't see why. How is it reasonable to use another companies product to make money without paying for that usage? Only if the company wants it to be used for free, and Microsoft doesn't. That's their right.
Can these startups just avoid using the MS IM protocol? Sure, if they want to drastically reduce their customer bases. That would be unbeleivably stupid in the US.
And besides, 25 cents per user per year? If the startup is worthy of existence, they should be able to make more than that per user per year, its a piddly amount.
Strictly speaking they are learning that the non co-operative strategy benefits them.
ah yes, but will the sun be lit up on the side we can't see?
It seems to me to be the height of hypocrisy that business leaders (Gates and company) complain about a lack of scientifically/technologically trained Americans, and thus we need to increase H1-B visas. These same leaders then turn around and support republican candidates who don't believe in evolution and want to water down the science curriculum by introducing Intelligent Design.
True, but those very same republicans are big business friendly, and few systems that fail are able to detect or admit that failure themselves, it usually takes an outside observer to say something first, which they either deny and fail, or accept and change.
As for not believing in evolution, well thats a political stance designed to keep them in with the religious bods who provide a lot of funding. I seriously doubt an Atheist would get selected for high office. For a country where religion and state are seperate, there sure is a lot of religious posturing among your leaders.
Has any fellow European of mine ever come across any serious creationists? Is this solely an American phenomenon?
Nope, Many years ago I worked with one, and he was so bizarre he wouldn't even accept that fossils were real. They were just funny shaped rocks. I had this discussion with him while we were on a gravel path round our workplace that was packed with fossil shellfish. He all but shut his eyes when I picked one up. I'm afraid to say I laughed at him, which was probably a bit mean.
Another guy I met while doing my CS degree. He even got upset that evolutionary algorithms were to be taught, and flat out refused to hear any talk of science, it was all lumped into a confusion of weird ideas that I could make no sense of, and I did try, he was an otherwise ok bloke. I have no idea how he'd thought he'd complete a CS degree, I rather think he hadn't thought at all. As it is he quit in the first year and did history.
I note that this new database once again includes reference to crime by the normal citizen. What about a publicly searchable database of politicians and all donation sources plus business world affiliations and bills proposed by that politician?
The information exists already I imagine, but not in a single database available to anyone.
This new thing does seem a tad Orwellian to me. Just another vector to find fault with a citizen, which of course means greater control. I wonder how long you would stay on it once added? What happened to serving a sentence and getting a clean slate?
In particular google scholar rocks.
Amen to that, almost all of the bibliography in my thesis was found via Google scholar.
and I wonder what a library will become in the future, anyway
Probably they will change into (back into) the original model provided by the great library of Alexandria. That institution held books (ok, scrolls), but was primarily a place of teaching, effectively its role was what we now see as the role of a university.
Libraries only became dull(yes, dull) with the advent of the new breed of privately funded library in the eighteenth century (I omit centuries of Islamic libraries, I know little of them, other then they were active and very full). Certainly this was the case in England, and I'm pretty sure the US has its share of privately initiated libraries. Those libraries were focused heavily on the collection of knowledge, and did indeed help many people learn new things, but the visitor was expected to remain solemnly quiet, to absorb the information and depart, not disturbing others engaged in the ritual of learning.
Pretty boring stuff for a great proportion of the population (not me, I like libraries, but I'm not talking about myself). Information does not do well sat in books, it needs to be experienced, talked about, it should 'live'. That was Micheal Faraday's idea, and he gave weekly science lectures as well as doing science, inspiring many to seek further knowledge. The Internet brings us some measure of liveness for our information as well, which stimulates interest, but for the most part its short term. You find what you want, or don't, and move on fast.
A library should include the Internet, and books, but also staff who teach, providing some means of focusing people on the knowledge that they have become however fleetingly interested in. Without that you're unlikely to have a library that does anything but collect dust and books.
I suppose if they really want to make it fair, they should have a separate race class and let all the other runners strap springs onto their shoes also. Then we'll find out how much of an athlete this guy is compared to other world-class runners.
He'd lose most likely, if everyone had the same advantage, after all, world clas runners tend to have more experience as regards the requirements of a long term race.
Assuming of course we are talking of long distance running
I've fancied trying some of those spring legs for a while. They aren't just for amputees. The US military are, if I recall correctly, investigating this technology (in computer assisted form) for groundpounders (oh dear, the B5 fandom is showing).
I can see why he'd be disqualified, although it must be sad for him. Surely he must have realised the chances were slim though, those things are far too good.
This isn't the first project that Microsoft has released on Sourceforge. They also released WiX, which is a program to build windows installation executables
It relies on Visual studio being present though, Nullsofts nSis (which I use) cares not for such restrictions.
USB has supported bus power forever.
Yes, but only well for small devices. My iPod is supposed to be USB charged, but the trickle feed is useless for it. Apart from a joystick and keyboard I have, I avoid usb powered devices nowadays.
Or the TV show which has its own charm too .. such as the best Marvin you're likely to ever see ..
I don't know about that. I'm something of a serious DNA fan, and when the radio show was on I always pictured Marvin as short with a big head, just like the one that was in the H2G2 movie.
When the TV show came out I was puzzled as to why a supposedly advanced and brainy robot would have a range of motion of only about four inches on each limb, it was only Stephen Moore's delivery of his lines that saved it for me. From what I understand Douglas himself wasn't happy with the TV Marvin either.
Stephen Moore was a better Marvin than Alan Rickman, but I guess they wanted someone better known to play him in the film.
Such a pity more young people havent read it.
There are so many references to the books everywhere.
Such a pity that so many people think Hitch-Hikers guide is just a book, and don't know about the Radio show from which it came.
This isn't your father's bootup, man!
Um, my zx spectrum booted up quite fast, as did my BBC model B.
OK, less capable systems perhaps, but lets not get confused here, PCs take waaay longer to boot up then any of that old technology.
Plus I don't recall being any less productive on the BBC model B, the things I can do have changed is all. I have documents that I began on the BBC which I am still using now.
The first time I booted a 'proper' pc up (I used my old BBC right up until 1995) I was shocked by the long boot up time. Ok I was also totally perplexed by the mouse, but then I am old....
From what I recall, the whole thing of GM crops was never to provide the well fed western world with extra food. We've already got more than we need.
The original idea was robust crops that would work in the third world, where death from lack of food is an everyday occurrence.
Alas for them the corporations discovered that it made cheap food that they could make good profits on, and the biotech companies realised this was an idea way to control farmers worldwide by forcing them to purchase a constant supply of (patented) seeds, not replanting with saved seeds as has been the practice since farming was first developed.
Basically it went from a wonderful idea to just another way for money to be made.
Someone else will have to find the cites for this if you want them.
I tried it a few years back. I stopped when my youngest, who was still learning to talk started going round the house saying 'mousegrid' all the time.
Good job he didn't get the whole thing though, which was typically.
"Mousegrid...."
"Mousegrid...."
"MOUSEGRID!!...."
"FUCKING MOUSEGRID YOU PIECE OF SHIT PROGRAM!!!"
You've made the same mistake that almost everyone who replied to my original post made, and that's thinking I expect that my son is behaving himself perfectly on the web while I'm not looking. Its quite obvious most people replying aren't parents themselves.
Honestly, if he isn't browsing for porn at his age I'd be concerned. I was adept at keeping my parents out of my business too when I was his age, although in my case it was books that were probably too old for me (Heinlein's Friday at 12 years old, Peter Finch's 'The Tank Driver' at 11), and films that I most certainly shouldn't have seen. I started with this younger then he has.
What I *am* concerned about is that he use the web responsibly and safely, avoid stupid stuff like filesharing apps (my ISP disconnects people for it), along with the malware packages they also tend to install, and that he avoids the hoards of paedophiles that are apparently scouring the net. To this end he is careful about where he chats on the web (usually in game, and never to people he doesn't know in the real world).
You can bet if I started banning him and setting blocks up, he's get round them in a second. I know he has at school, although there its for access to games mostly. We have no such blocks at home, false crutch that they are, it's up to him. You'd be amazed what a little trust can achieve.
I have achieved this (and I know I have), by educating him. he is entirely aware of the places to go for such dangers, so there's no forbidden fruit there. Given that he spends most of his time in TF2 and Counterstrike, its not that big a deal.
Seriously, the UK doesn't exactly have the best record on keeping databases safe.
Not that I care. I'd be willing to bet that 99.9 percent of the contents of any anti terror database is crap kept in there to make it seem important. Or stuff they think is important, but when it comes down to it is worthless.
Really, if sending huge armies to stampede across the middle east didn't work, how is a database going to help? Are we going to send sql queries at them or something?
Sucker am I?
How sad for you that that's the only conclusion you can come to.
My son knows all about the nasties on the Internet, I've explained as many as I can. Now he steers clear of anything I've said to leave well alone.
I could check up on him easily, he leaves his pc on often enough with the browser open, but I don't. We often talk about the latest stuff we've respectively found on the net. The closest he's got to being told to stop was when he found zeropunctuation. I watched it as well though, and concluded that what is said in that is no worse than he hears at school.
well I don't know about you, but in my house, everyones email login and password is saved locally on every machine in the house.
My son could bypass any system to verify parental consent easily. However, in my house we practice this apparently rare thing called, 'mutual respect' whereby he doesn't do such things, and I don't invade his privacy. It's all about trust really, and that has to be taught, it can't be either assumed or enforced by stupid schemes like this one.
All you have to do is knock out the west coast's WoW access on a saturday and wait.
Could digital watermarking survive conversion to *.wav format and back to mp3?
I suspect not. You can bet someone will come up with a way of doing it, if DbPoweramp can't already.
why thankyou sir. I do like to produce a decent -1 flamebait from time to time, since my karma seems never to change. That you got a funny rating for responding warms the cockles.