The DMCA is unconstitutional here in the USA, too, but that hasn't stood in its way.
In my country, when somebody is wronged by a law he deems to be unconstitutional, he can try to overthrow the law in the Constitutional Tribunal. Is there such possibility in the USA?
The OSS vendor can simply say, "Hey! Run our software at our own risk, its free after all" while the commercial developers will get lynched by their customers if they dont make DAMN sure their patch does not cause N applications/sercvices that rely on their product to crash.
Dunno. All EULA'a I came across in proprietary software state that the vendor bears no responsibility for the usefullness, stability and security of the software. The attitude follows.
I'm not a democrat, I'm not a US citizen and don't live in the US. I support Kerry because I think his presidency will be better, for the USA and rest of the world.
I see people mock Bush for grammar and diction
As I pointed out, this is stupid. But when I hear that Bush meant in one of his speaches, that World War II started in 1941 with the attack on Pearl Harbour, this is insulting for me, as an European and a Pole. He shows his mental limitations in such slips, not when he says 'Grecians' instead of 'Greeks'. Were he a great leader, he'd get even more respect for being fallible in some areas.
BTW, I heard that he does such mistakes on purpose, to make people feel he's one of them.
Soccer is as boring as baseball. But at least baseball has some strategy to it
There's a lot of strategy in football (not soccer: football; the thing you Americans keep referring to as 'football' isn't). Not that the American football team can offer much of it (they lost the game in Korea with Poland).
In some ways our 2 party system works well, because picture that we had 10 (viable) parties, and let's say one of the parties was called the "Party of God" you could have people like Falwell controlling the all branches of government, because you only need 10% to win. It would give rise to extreme opinions because you have to find your niche. Even with our system, we still haven't had the winner of the last few elections grab more than 50% of the votes (I doubt this will be different).
In ">2" party systems you have two rounds of the elections, in the second people choose between two most successful candidates from the first round. If an extremist candidate got to the second round, people would vote against him, rather then for his opponent, and elect the opponent. This is how Chirac became president in France (his opponent was right-wing extremist Le Pen).
This has precisely nothing to do with Bush's qualities as a leader. One of the greatest European political leaders of XXth century, Lech Walesa, finished vocational school only (Bush at least graduated from the university), had troubles with pronounciation for which he was constantly ridiculed. It didn't prevent him from being a great opposition leader in the eighties and a dynamic, albeit controversial, president in the nineties.
You shouldn't put down Bush for this. He's responsible for his decisions, not for his spelling. There's enough material for criticism (I support Kerry) in the decisions.
All right. In Poland you won't go to jail for not having your wallet with you (or not having your ID card in it). But you're asked to have it available.
I didn't mean the Supreme Court. I remember that the US government promised German companies 'security from being sued' when they agreed to pay compensations for fored labour workers of WW II. It was achieved by telling NY courts to drop such suits.
You would think that being in Poland you would understand why. And this is America, where (ostensibly) the people rule, not kings or princes. Europe is naturally more preconditioned to authoritarian government, having lived under it and relied on others to throw it off when it got out of control.
Utter bullshit. Poland limited the power of its kings since XIVth century, to the extent of making them electable and unable to levy taxes without parliament's consent, and making them sign "pacta conventa" which made them keep the rights of the nobility (which made up a whopping 10% of the population, more than the eligible voters in XIXth century England) intact. One of these rights was that no man could be arrested without a court warrant, something the USA got rid of quite recently.
England executed its king in the XVIIth century when he wanted to grab too much power for himself, and made the parliament an important player in domestic politics ever since. French had French Revolution... Germans went the authoritarian way, but other nations (like Belgians or Greeks) fought dearly for freedom. We were quite effective in Europe when it came to fight with authoritarian regimes, in fact. Sure, we had inspiration from the USA in the XIXth century. But would the USA make it in 1776 without help from France?
And I pine for the day when we can...then the discussions in politics will be all strong opinion and none of this "politics doesn't matter to nerds" nonsense from the few who haven't lost a job to a younger guy from India lately.
Loosing your job to a younger guy from India is not something you can just do away with a change of a few policies in America. Wake up and face the reality. The USA has competitors, in India and China. They're as smart as your are, as dedicated as you are, and happen to have lower living costs. You can tax outsourcing to the extremes, and it will only make matters worse, as whole companies will move to India or new companies will start there. Nothing Bush and Kerry will promise you can make anything about it, excluding sending over a few nukes to India --- and they have some of their own, too.
I find it amazing how some people think that somebody's sexual conduct affects his/her abilities and achievements as a statesman. And Churchill was constantly on the booze during WW II. So what? He managed just fine.
we are now required to produce "your papers" on demand from armed agents of the state
And? Similar law is in Poland, since I've been born. Never had to show the ID, though. What possible objection would I have against police knowing who I am? If the government wanted to shadow me and follow everything I do, they could do it without having this right. If the police constantly asked me for my ID without sound reason, I'd complain about harassment.
knowing a command that he copied verbatim from a document discovered on the internet
Like rm -rf *?
I made the plunge into Linux at the start of 1993 under the assumption that things had improved enough that I could get around Linux without the command prompt at all, or at least with minimal exposure to it.
He was very naive, then. I wouldn't say that one can get around without the command prompt at all or with minimal exposure to it even now (except if you have , say nothing about 1993.
I have had very little difficulty with any of my installs: keyboard
I always bitch at X11 for forcing me to count keys on my keyboard: do I 104, 105 or 106 keys? Isn't there a way for the X server to figure it out for himself?
To be fair, however, most people never have to install Windows, so they never have to deal with the issue of hardware compatibility and settings.
Sure. I remember installing sound card drivers for CMI 8380 in Windows 95. It seemed that the order in which I installed them and other drivers mattered, whether the damn thing worked or not.
power management. Apparently this is not compiled into the Linux kernel by default, which means you have to recompile it yourself
Don't know what distributions he used, but mine has it compiled in default kernel.
By default, Linux usually opens programs with a single click
The usual confusion: KDE does it (as a default), not Linux. GNOME uses double click by default (in nautilus).
You see, when I right-click on a package in KDE, I get three different options for how to compress it, but nothing for how to un-compress it.
Some strange case of "ark" misconfiguration. I can uncompress files with a mouse click. But still prefer to do it in the console... I guess it just depends on the personal habits.
Re:One, two, three, four, I declare a flame-war!
on
Assault Weapons Ban
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
I personally feel as though murder should be decriminalized. Think about how much crime would be reduced and law enforcement's job would be made so much easier.
I have never seen before as naive statement as this. After the Roman Empire collapsed, Europe was ruled by barbarian tribes' laws, which had the same opinion on murder as you do: that it was up to victims' family to deliver justice to the murderer. Firstly, they had vendetta. This was bad, because one murder resulted in a lot of further deaths (murderer, his relatives, some people from victims side, etc.) So the custom allowed to close the deal with a money transfer. Opportunity of earning lot of money made victims' families feel even more vindictive. Somehow, the chiefs and kings decided that it was not The Best Thing To Do (tm) and decided to take away the right to punish the murderers from the people and institute a "monopoly on punishment" as we have it today. You may say "just another example of Europen despotism", but this was a wise thing to do. When murder is not punished by the state, people will only feel safe when they have enough strong family to defend them. People with enough money would fell free to kill, and later bribe the victims' relatives to forgo vendetta. The society would reduce to small isolated outposts, distrustful of outsiders, because of the possibility of "hit and run" kill (if the guy flees, nobody else apart from the victims' family will risk his head to help to catch him).
If that does not convince you, go check examples of countries which today have no rule of law, where murder is not punished by the state. They are: Iraq, Chechenya, Afghanistan. Not the best places to live under the sun, eh?
Another clarification: Abel (before him, Paolo Ruffini had almost proved it in 1799) proved that there is no general algebraic (using +,-,/,* and roots) formula for a general polynomial of the order higher than four. He did not prove that there are no such solutions. In fact, the Fundamental Theorem of Algebra states that every N-th degree polynomial has N complex roots. There are classes of higher-than-four polynomials which do have algebraic solutions. The exact criterion for this was given by Galois.
Free riding considered harmful?
on
Is IP Property?
·
· Score: 1
while 'free riding' off of someone else's land or other physical property rights is always undesirable,
Sometimes it is. When I the only means to deliver a dying man to the hospital would be by stealing somebody's car, I wouldn't hesitate.
Slashdot Mirror
The DMCA is unconstitutional here in the USA, too, but that hasn't stood in its way.
In my country, when somebody is wronged by a law he deems to be unconstitutional, he can try to overthrow the law in the Constitutional Tribunal. Is there such possibility in the USA?
The OSS vendor can simply say, "Hey! Run our software at our own risk, its free after all" while the commercial developers will get lynched by their customers if they dont make DAMN sure their patch does not cause N applications/sercvices that rely on their product to crash.
Dunno. All EULA'a I came across in proprietary software state that the vendor bears no responsibility for the usefullness, stability and security of the software. The attitude follows.
If it were a direct election, a candidate could, in a 3 way race, come in 2nd in every state but still win by having just more than a 3rd of the vote.
You need a second round, when two best candidates fight each other.
From a democrat, no less.
I'm not a democrat, I'm not a US citizen and don't live in the US. I support Kerry because I think his presidency will be better, for the USA and rest of the world.
I see people mock Bush for grammar and diction
As I pointed out, this is stupid. But when I hear that Bush meant in one of his speaches, that World War II started in 1941 with the attack on Pearl Harbour, this is insulting for me, as an European and a Pole. He shows his mental limitations in such slips, not when he says 'Grecians' instead of 'Greeks'. Were he a great leader, he'd get even more respect for being fallible in some areas.
BTW, I heard that he does such mistakes on purpose, to make people feel he's one of them.
Soccer is as boring as baseball. But at least baseball has some strategy to it
There's a lot of strategy in football (not soccer: football; the thing you Americans keep referring to as 'football' isn't). Not that the American football team can offer much of it (they lost the game in Korea with Poland).
In some ways our 2 party system works well, because picture that we had 10 (viable) parties, and let's say one of the parties was called the "Party of God" you could have people like Falwell controlling the all branches of government, because you only need 10% to win. It would give rise to extreme opinions because you have to find your niche. Even with our system, we still haven't had the winner of the last few elections grab more than 50% of the votes (I doubt this will be different).
In ">2" party systems you have two rounds of the elections, in the second people choose between two most successful candidates from the first round. If an extremist candidate got to the second round, people would vote against him, rather then for his opponent, and elect the opponent. This is how Chirac became president in France (his opponent was right-wing extremist Le Pen).
This has precisely nothing to do with Bush's qualities as a leader. One of the greatest European political leaders of XXth century, Lech Walesa, finished vocational school only (Bush at least graduated from the university), had troubles with pronounciation for which he was constantly ridiculed. It didn't prevent him from being a great opposition leader in the eighties and a dynamic, albeit controversial, president in the nineties.
You shouldn't put down Bush for this. He's responsible for his decisions, not for his spelling. There's enough material for criticism (I support Kerry) in the decisions.
Mod the parent up. Landau-Lifshitz are creme-de-la-creme of physics textbooks. Putting it less subtly:
Landau-Lifshitz rulez!
Or spray liquid nitrogen (available at animal inseminator stations or any decent physics lab) on it.
All right. In Poland you won't go to jail for not having your wallet with you (or not having your ID card in it). But you're asked to have it available.
I didn't mean the Supreme Court. I remember that the US government promised German companies 'security from being sued' when they agreed to pay compensations for fored labour workers of WW II. It was achieved by telling NY courts to drop such suits.
They only made us distrustful of governments. We only don't bother with such trifles like having an ID card.
But love is still blind and it could affect decision making.
Mod the parent up! Love affects decision making when choosing a partner... how insightful.
You would think that being in Poland you would understand why. And this is America, where (ostensibly) the people rule, not kings or princes. Europe is naturally more preconditioned to authoritarian government, having lived under it and relied on others to throw it off when it got out of control.
Utter bullshit. Poland limited the power of its kings since XIVth century, to the extent of making them electable and unable to levy taxes without parliament's consent, and making them sign "pacta conventa" which made them keep the rights of the nobility (which made up a whopping 10% of the population, more than the eligible voters in XIXth century England) intact. One of these rights was that no man could be arrested without a court warrant, something the USA got rid of quite recently.
England executed its king in the XVIIth century when he wanted to grab too much power for himself, and made the parliament an important player in domestic politics ever since. French had French Revolution... Germans went the authoritarian way, but other nations (like Belgians or Greeks) fought dearly for freedom. We were quite effective in Europe when it came to fight with authoritarian regimes, in fact. Sure, we had inspiration from the USA in the XIXth century. But would the USA make it in 1776 without help from France?
True. I could never understand how it is possible that the government in America tells the court that it should reject some particular case.
And I pine for the day when we can...then the discussions in politics will be all strong opinion and none of this "politics doesn't matter to nerds" nonsense from the few who haven't lost a job to a younger guy from India lately.
Loosing your job to a younger guy from India is not something you can just do away with a change of a few policies in America. Wake up and face the reality. The USA has competitors, in India and China. They're as smart as your are, as dedicated as you are, and happen to have lower living costs. You can tax outsourcing to the extremes, and it will only make matters worse, as whole companies will move to India or new companies will start there. Nothing Bush and Kerry will promise you can make anything about it, excluding sending over a few nukes to India --- and they have some of their own, too.
I find it amazing how some people think that somebody's sexual conduct affects his/her abilities and achievements as a statesman. And Churchill was constantly on the booze during WW II. So what? He managed just fine.
we are now required to produce "your papers" on demand from armed agents of the state
And? Similar law is in Poland, since I've been born. Never had to show the ID, though. What possible objection would I have against police knowing who I am? If the government wanted to shadow me and follow everything I do, they could do it without having this right. If the police constantly asked me for my ID without sound reason, I'd complain about harassment.
Now, aren't the guys in Pentagon wishing they hadn't dissolved the Iraq Army?
Stalin and Hitler weren't Stalin and Hitler before they were elected and their parties got a lock on all three branches of government either.
Hitler was elected, but Stalin was not (neither was Lenin; ever heard of October Revolution in 1917?).
knowing a command that he copied verbatim from a document discovered on the internet
Like rm -rf *?
I made the plunge into Linux at the start of 1993 under the assumption that things had improved enough that I could get around Linux without the command prompt at all, or at least with minimal exposure to it.
He was very naive, then. I wouldn't say that one can get around without the command prompt at all or with minimal exposure to it even now (except if you have , say nothing about 1993.
I have had very little difficulty with any of my installs: keyboard
I always bitch at X11 for forcing me to count keys on my keyboard: do I 104, 105 or 106 keys? Isn't there a way for the X server to figure it out for himself?
To be fair, however, most people never have to install Windows, so they never have to deal with the issue of hardware compatibility and settings.
Sure. I remember installing sound card drivers for CMI 8380 in Windows 95. It seemed that the order in which I installed them and other drivers mattered, whether the damn thing worked or not.
power management. Apparently this is not compiled into the Linux kernel by default, which means you have to recompile it yourself
Don't know what distributions he used, but mine has it compiled in default kernel.
By default, Linux usually opens programs with a single click
The usual confusion: KDE does it (as a default), not Linux. GNOME uses double click by default (in nautilus).
You see, when I right-click on a package in KDE, I get three different options for how to compress it, but nothing for how to un-compress it.
Some strange case of "ark" misconfiguration. I can uncompress files with a mouse click. But still prefer to do it in the console... I guess it just depends on the personal habits.
I personally feel as though murder should be decriminalized. Think about how much crime would be reduced and law enforcement's job would be made so much easier.
I have never seen before as naive statement as this. After the Roman Empire collapsed, Europe was ruled by barbarian tribes' laws, which had the same opinion on murder as you do: that it was up to victims' family to deliver justice to the murderer. Firstly, they had vendetta. This was bad, because one murder resulted in a lot of further deaths (murderer, his relatives, some people from victims side, etc.) So the custom allowed to close the deal with a money transfer. Opportunity of earning lot of money made victims' families feel even more vindictive. Somehow, the chiefs and kings decided that it was not The Best Thing To Do (tm) and decided to take away the right to punish the murderers from the people and institute a "monopoly on punishment" as we have it today. You may say "just another example of Europen despotism", but this was a wise thing to do. When murder is not punished by the state, people will only feel safe when they have enough strong family to defend them. People with enough money would fell free to kill, and later bribe the victims' relatives to forgo vendetta. The society would reduce to small isolated outposts, distrustful of outsiders, because of the possibility of "hit and run" kill (if the guy flees, nobody else apart from the victims' family will risk his head to help to catch him).
If that does not convince you, go check examples of countries which today have no rule of law, where murder is not punished by the state. They are: Iraq, Chechenya, Afghanistan. Not the best places to live under the sun, eh?
Another clarification: Abel (before him, Paolo Ruffini had almost proved it in 1799) proved that there is no general algebraic (using +,-,/,* and roots) formula for a general polynomial of the order higher than four. He did not prove that there are no such solutions. In fact, the Fundamental Theorem of Algebra states that every N-th degree polynomial has N complex roots. There are classes of higher-than-four polynomials which do have algebraic solutions. The exact criterion for this was given by Galois.
while 'free riding' off of someone else's land or other physical property rights is always undesirable,
Sometimes it is. When I the only means to deliver a dying man to the hospital would be by stealing somebody's car, I wouldn't hesitate.
Bush did a great job of scaring terrorists away from America... and inviting them to Iraq. Good for Americans, less good for the Iraqis.