What history books have you been reading that led you to conclude that such a law would be enforceable? All you'd accomplish is to drive tobacco production and consumption underground and to give criminals another revenue source.
Don't be so dense. Using this same logic, since we still have murder even though it's against the law, let's just repeal the law against murder. Then all of those hitmen and muggers won't have to hide in seedy back alleys, yay! Plus, we can even tax the revenue on contracts!
Wait, what's that, you say? We can't because then a lot more people would be killed? It would have a dramatically negative impact on our society? Do I really need to tell you about what cancer does to you, how most people that smoke start when they're too young to make informed decisions, how physical addiction works, how much money we are spending on smoking-related illnesses that are damn close to 100% preventable?
To be honest, it's entirely possible that making murder legal while making cigarettes illegal would actually have the net affect of saving lives.
Like Alcohol?
If you feel like it, sure, go for it. And stop trying to deflect the issue at hand. ("Like crystal meth? Like Diprivan? Like Codeine? Like cocaine?" See, I can pull that card too, and a lot more effectively.)
When is some sanity going to break out over this issue?
Cigarettes are far and away the most addictive and deadly products out there for human ingestion when used as intended that can be obtained without any kind of a license or without a doctor's supervision.
Just for some background, I grew up in a two-smoker household. Neither of my parents ever gave me the courtesy of even so much as stepping outside to smoke. My earliest memories are of gagging in the car as both of them were spewing poison into the air with the windows rolled up. "It's not THAT bad," they would tell me. I wish they had told my lungs, since I suffered from chronic bronchitis and several lung infections including pneumonia growing up. My mom died in 2001 of cancer. My dad died in 2005 of cancer. Neither has a family history of the disease, except for my mom's first cousin who died in 2006--who was, incidentally, the only other smoker in my family.
So you want some sanity to break out over this issue?
I'll be right there in that line with you, brother. Let's outlaw tobacco production and usage outright, because allowing such a deadly addictive product on the market with virtually no controls, that's insanity. At the very least, petition our government to classify tobacco as a controlled substance and let the FDA regulate it just like they do every other addictive dangerous drug.
Let me reiterate that. Nicotine is a drug, and cigarettes are a delivery device for that drug. If you really want sanity, then 1) If you smoke, stop now. Not stopping makes you pretty damn stupid. 2) Stop letting the tobacco lobby have their way in Congress. Insist that it be regulated just like any other drug, based on an honest assessment of its risks and dangers, not on what makes misguided twits think they're cool.
Microsoft's current position, which insults my intelligence and yours, is that there was indeed a bug of some kind and that that is fixed--but that searches in simplified characters continue to produce pro-Communist results because of the algorithms used.
Think about this. Most web sites that are in simplified Chinese are probably in... Wait for it... China!
So I'm guessing that since discussion of topics contrary to the state agenda will get you thrown in jail, that most sites written in simplified Chinese about things such as Tienanmen Square really are about how it's a nice place to visit. If that's the case, then it's entirely believable to me that top search results in simplified Chinese for topics like that would return state-sanctioned sites.
It's not insulting to my intelligence to think that there's probably nothing to see here, except a reporter who is probably justifiably skeptical of Microsoft's claims, but in this particular case, is probably being a bit overzealous in his accusations.
I wonder, if the reporter tried an Arabic language search for something like "American aggression" and most results returned (surprise!) web sites expressing anti-American sentiment, that must mean that Microsoft is also appeasing terrorists, right? EVIL!!!
*Whoosh!* There goes the point right over your head. Big content is stealing from you.
They're taking your history and your heritage. Imagine a ludicrous extreme, such as the hospital you were born in saying that you can no longer use the name that you were given at birth unless you pay for it because it happened on their premises, therefore they own the rights to it. Or if you are in immigrant, imagine someone telling you that you can no longer describe where you're from, because that information is "owned" by the country from which you came. (God forbid you draw a map!)
Similarly, the music that was on the radio when I was a child? I'm prohibited by law from sharing that with my friends. Movies that have become so deeply ingrained in our culture that we constantly refer to them... "May the force be with you." "I've a feeling we're not in Kansas any more." "Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn." "Take your stinking paws off me, you damned dirty ape!" Yeah, in spite of them being part of the very fabric of our culture, you're legally prohibited from sharing them with your kids without paying your pound of flesh to people who did something great decades ago (or in some cases, to estates of long dead people).
Look, I'm all for compensating artists justly for what they do. In 1962, Paul McCartney, John Lennon, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr released a clever little song called Love Me Do. It was a bona fide hit, and they made a lot of money off of it. So be it, they deserve it. But now it's 47 years later. Do you really contend that the song was so unbelievably great, so untouchably amazing, that Paul, Ringo, and the estates of George and John should STILL be making money when a radio plays it?
Or let's look at it another way. Don't you think that's being way too overgenerous to artists? I mean, these past few years, I've been doing some of the greatest work in my professional life in a computer datacenter. I've gotten consistently great reviews, and I feel like I've made a real positive difference for the company where I'm employed. They've paid me well, I'm not complaining. But if I walked out tomorrow, wouldn't you agree that it's kind of silly to expect them to STILL keep paying me because they're enjoying the fruits of my labor while I worked there? 50 years after I'm dead, should they STILL be paying my estate because my contributions in the first decade of the 2000's contributed to the history of the company being great?
When I retire, I'm going to be living off of money I've saved up during my lifetime specifically because I don't expect my former employers to still be paying for my work 70 years after I die. Why is it that an artist who writes a hit song, a writer who writes a best-seller, an actor who turns in an Oscar-winning performance, gets that luxury? My opinion is that if you want to continue making money off of your work, get out there and work like the rest of us do. No one should get a lifetime + 70 years of resting on their laurels because they did something great. Like the rest of us, if they want to retire in comfort, they should set aside some of the money they make during the height of their popularity so they'll have it after the limited time that copyright is supposed to be valid.
First of all, did I say that GIMP is going to die? *looks at OP...* No, I don't think so. What I said was:
I liked that it was easily accessible without having to do anything extra.
(Emphasis mine-- er, not present in original quote.) I know how easy it is to install GIMP. Being a Windows user of GIMP as well as a Linux user, it's not like I've never had to jump through even more hoops to install it. I'm not lamenting the fact that GIMP is going away, because it's not. What I'm lamenting is that one of the things I do to convince people that Linux is cool is that I fire up a plain, base installation. I pull up OpenOffice.org and show them what they get out of the box versus what they get with Windows (i.e. Wordpad). I fire up GIMP and show them what they get out of the box versus what they get with Windows (i.e. Paint).
It's a lot less sexy to say, "Go to Applications, now to Ubuntu Software Center, now click on Graphics, scroll down to GIMP Image Editor--oh wait, you passed it. Yeah, ignore all that other stuff for now. Okay, click on it. Yeah, click the arrow over there. Now scroll down and click 'Install.' Now click in that box and type your password..."
Ubuntu has always been user-friendly, but let's not mistake that for being targeted at grandmas who want to send an e-mail and browse the web occasionally. It's always been targeted at power users. Do you think that more people use Terminal Server Client than GIMP? Or Evolution? (Personally, I use Gmail's web client, and these days, I'd be willing to be that more people use web clients than local mail software.) Or for that matter, Tali, Robots, Tetravex, and SameGnome? How often do you think Grandma fires up her Remote Desktop Viewer, or creates a Presentation slideshow for the family budget meeting?
I'm not saying throw every package into the default install. But where do you draw the line? Average users aren't going to use 90% of the features built into OpenOffice.org. Why not put in a scaled-down easier-to-use word processor and maybe a basic spreadsheet instead, one that would take up a lot less space and be geared towards the features that average users do use? It seems disingenuous to me to remove GIMP because it's a power user app, but leave all the other stuff that people use even way less.
As you can tell, I personally consider a decent image editor to be a basic "power user" kind of application. Personally, I wish they also included Audacity, OpenOffice.org Database, and maybe a decent video editing software package. After all, it's just as trivial a task to remove the software as it is to install it if you don't want it, and I imaging that your typical Ubuntu user installs and uses those applications way more than something like Remote Desktop Viewer.
One question I don't see addressed is what--if anything--they intend to replace it with. I mean, even Windows has Paint in case you're desperate to edit a few pixels here and there. Will there not even be a scaled-down more user-friendly image editor? Are F-Spot and Eye of Gnome really intended to be the Linux equivalent of Paint, or have they decided that imaging editing is too complicated, period?
Sweet! I can't wait to replace Firefox on my MacBook Pro and my desktop Ubuntu box with this, it will run awesome on those! I wonder when I'll be able to get AdBlock for it?
It's too bad, really. I like GIMP because it shows users that unlike Windows, which comes with a bunch of widget apps at best, that Ubuntu comes with serious productivity software, equivalents of which on Windows can cost hundreds or thousands of dollars.
I guess I can see where they're coming from. I do agree that double-clicking on a picture shouldn't launch a full-fledged photo editor like GIMP, but I liked that it was easily accessible without having to do anything extra. Couldn't the same argument be made of OpenOffice.org? Are they going to replace it anytime soon with a scaled-down Wordpad equivalent? What about Compiz? Those also take up space, aren't needed for basic computer use, and could be installed with trivial effort.
Image editing is still way behind Windows and Mac OSX, where you have Photoshop for power users and also Paint Shop Pro for less power users, but who still like a full image editing suite.
Actually, for most users, I'd suggest GIMP on Windows, or for lighter-duty work, Paint.NET. I gave up on Paint Shop Pro after Jasc sold out to Corel. It's gotten more expensive and now they're playing games I hate that other mainstream commercial software is. (There's now a more expensive "Paint Shop Pro Ultimate" edition...). Too bad, too. Years ago, Paint Shop Pro was one of the first shareware programs I ever bought.
If I'm not doing anything illegal, then I don't have to worry about being arrested. Why would someone be AGAINST security cameras being pointed at their property, when other people pay hefty sums to set them up for security?
Man, I could write a book about that. Seriously. It would take me at least an hour to explain if you really can't see what's wrong with what you're saying. Out of personal convenience, I'm going to let someone else hopefully field this one.
In that case, let me mount a camera pointed at your house. I'll be able to watch you come and go, I'll know when you're at home and when you're away, I'll sometimes catch glimpses of what you're doing through the windows, I can watch you in your sweaty glory while you're mowing your lawn, I can watch your friends and family when they come over (yay, Uncle Bob is there!), I'll know whenever you get a package from Amazon, with good enough resolution, I can probably even see who some of your mail is from. For good measure, I'll even record it all in case I want to go back later and watch something interesting.
Wouldn't that be great? You'd be able to rest easy while I'm always watching, knowing that you don't have to worry about being robbed.
I don't care that the post is already at +5. Petition CowboyNeal to make it +6, because that is precisely how to get average schmoes to understand how digital restrictions are hurting them.
First of all, I don't acknowledge the term "DRM" or "Digital Rights Management," because that does not describe what it's used for. I call it a more layman-friendly "digital restrictions." The whole concept need to be reframed. When people hear "DRM," they think it's some kind of techno-jargon that they don't understand. Even if they find out what it stands for, they think, "Hey, it's to help me manage something, that's a good thing, right?" They need to understand that its sole purpose is restricting them from doing things with their digital stuff. Even if they choose not to do those things, they need to understand that DRM gives them nothing; its only function is to take away.
I tell people all the time about how unbelievably behind we are because of digital restrictions. "Hey, wouldn't it be cool if we could watch television on our iPhones? Well, there's no technical reason we can't; it's just that digital restrictions are stopping us." "Did you know that it would be trivially simple to write some slick software so that you could store every CD and DVD you own on a hard drive that costs less than $200 so that you could watch or listen to anything you want, anytime you want, without having to fool with the physical media? Well, we could, if it weren't for digital restrictions."
Now and then, I actually show people some of the stuff that I have and that I can do, given my technical know-how to rip DVDs and stream them to my television, load them on my iPhone, etc. When people "ooh" and "ahh" over it and ask me how they can do such things, I tell them, "Well, it's pretty hard right now, you have to really dig around to find the software and jump through a bunch of hoops to do it. Unfortunately, whenever anyone tries to write software to make it easier or publish such software in a legitimate way, they get sued out of existence by the people who don't want you to be able to do this without paying big bucks. (Or in many of cases, who simply don't want you to be able to do this at all.)
education does NOT ensure someone is smarter or more skilled
People who have a university degree are generally more likely to be smarter and more skilled. No, it's not a guarantee; there are plenty of stupid people with degrees out there and there are plenty of really smart people out there without degrees. But what is a guarantee is that if you get a roomful of people with degrees and compare their skill and ability to a roomful of people without degrees, all other things being equal, the people with degress will do a better job.
Also, keep in mind that rare is the job that is only about coding. When I was a developer, my job also entailed things such as writing documentation, holding training sessions for other developers and users, basic accounting and budgeting, and so on. Non-coding things I learned in college while earning my degree are useful skills that I do use today, not just how to write some subroutine. Yes, even social skills you seem to have disdain for come in useful, because I actually work with other people, not just holed up with a computer.
Persistance and skill are often confused...
Persistence is a skill. By completing your degree, you have demonstrated that you are willing and able to achieve success with long-term projects, including handling things that, at the time, you might not be overjoyed in having to do. You've also demonstrated the ability to learn new things to at least some minimal degree (no pun intended) of competence that might be outside of your familiar bubble of knowledge.
A college degree doesn't just demonstrate what you've learned, it demonstrates the ability to learn. If I'm hiring someone, I certainly want them to be able to do the job I hire them for, but I also want them to be able to quickly and effectively pick up new things that I might have to throw at them someday.
I'm not saying that a college degree is the most important factor in hiring. Personally, I'll value experience any day. Given a choice between hiring a 10-year veteran of something versus someone who has only been doing it a year or two, I'll take the veteran any day no matter who has a college degree. But a college degree is important. If experience is more-or-less equal, I'd take the college graduate over the non-graduate every time.
Out imperfections notwithstanding, the United States is one of the only countries that can be trusted to understand what Freedom of Speech means.
Do you really believe that? It's easy for the United States to be all indignant when it comes to German killers. But what do you think will happen when, say, the RIAA/MPAA lobbies to have domain names such as thepiratebay.org preemptively revoked?
Germany need to have a say in how DNS is run, as does the United States, England, France, Russia, China, and all the other nations of the world. Does Germany want x blocked or removed? Too damn bad, Swaziland vetoed them. Does the U.S. want that pesky torrent tracker site blown away? Too damn bad, Antigua says it stays. Everybody wins.
Having one nation in control of who gets to have a voice sucks, no matter which nation it is or how much they profess to love freedom of speech (while simultaneously making it harder and harder to enjoy that "freedom").
This is one of the fundamental problems with modern religions.
When religion and scientific evidence are in direct conflict with each other, enlightened people accept the scientific evidence. Enlightened religious people accept the scientific evidence and try to find ways to resolve it so that their religion remains logically consistent. (Yes, sometimes jumping through hoops to do so, but at least they don't look at scientists as some kind of evil tricksters or conspirators.)
The dumb ones, though, continue to argue against the scientific evidence not because of any particular keen insight, but because of what they think they know about an invisible guy who reigns supreme and, for the most part, what a two-thousand-year-old book that was written in an ancient language by ancient people and interpreted through various political and theological lenses says.
And, of course, most modern religions (and in particular, most modern people pushing it) are out there trying to convince people that if you question their interpretation of the "facts," that you'll burn in hell for eternity.
The church shouldn't even be having this argument. Science points towards an almost certainty of intelligent alien life out there, even if we never meet it face-to-face. They need to resign themselves to the fact that it exists, and adjust their thought accordingly. A biblical reference to the "four corners of the earth" doesn't mean that the earth literally has four corners (i.e. it's flat). A biblical reference to God making man in his own image doesn't mean that the god they worship literally looks like we do.
Duh.
As for the whole Christ thing, well, I'm guessing that alien cultures probably have their own religions, and some of them are probably even more interesting than ours. If we ever do have the pleasure of meeting some of them, we'll probably do what we've done throughout our entire history of existence. Figure out some way to meld them together to make ourselves feel better about ourselves and go on with life.
Then you outline a plan to audit the computers on your network and a plan for remediation...
In 1997, the company I worked for was using copies of software illegally. I pointed this out to my manager and presented a plan to implement a policy of "budget for it or lose it" across the company. He told me no, that a business decision had been made to use the software in spite of it being illegally.
I told him that as systems administrator, I was genuinely concerned that if we got audited, I would be on the hook for the violations that were taking place, and that I wanted an e-mail or written letter stating the business decision to continue using unlicensed software. I explained that we were one disgruntled employee away from losing everything, and that our churn rate was very high.
To be honest, my boss was a twit, and I honestly thought that once his boss and upper-level management found out what was going on, that he was putting the company at risk, I would be complimented for a job well done, and he might even be replaced. Of course, that was when I was a bit more naive than I am today, and after following up our meeting with an e-mail about the company's non-compliance and my plan to get everyone legal, I was terminated. In my termination letter, it never mentioned the software explicitly, but it did mention something about a "disregard for business policies." (They were actually really grasping. My termination letter also said that I had taken "unauthorized vacation" when I missed a day of work after an automobile accident to deal with injuries, insurance, and acquiring another means of transportation.)
In a job interview a year ago, I was asked if I had ever been fired from a job. I honestly answered that yes, I have. I could tell that the interviewer got a little uncomfortable, and I explained the story. I told him that during the whole ordeal, my focus was on looking out for the best interests of the company even above my own short-term interests. I told him that even though they screwed me over and I probably had them dead-to-rights on flagrant licensing violations if I had turned them in, I chose professionalism over revenge and didn't do it. I told him that if I'm hired, I'll look out for his company's interests the same way. I might not always tell him what he wants to hear, but I'll always tell him the truth.
I guess it was convincing enough because I was hired and I'm still working for that company today. Needless to say, life is much better for me these days, and I've prospered over the years much more than the company that fired me.
To the submitter, stand firm. DO NOT do anything illegal, or you'll be just as culpable as they will. I know it sounds trite and in this moment and in this economy, it seems like the end of the world to think about getting fired, but in five or ten years from now, if you stand up to your boss today on something that is so clearly immoral that he is asking you to do, I guarantee that you will be better off. Trust me, "Future You" will thank you for it.
I still remember my dad getting pulled over for going the speed limit because he was 15 mph UNDER the general traffic flow.
That happened to me once in Mobile, Alabama. I pulled into the far left lane on I-10 to pass a car in the next-to-left lane. I got about halfway done passing them when a cop whizzed up behind me. Not wanting to get a speeding ticket, I slowed down to 55 MPH. Of course, the car to my right did the same thing, and we ended up side-by-side.
Not really wanting to be stuck in the left lane, and not wanting to get a ticket, and since the guy next to me wasn't slowing down, I slowed down to drop in behind him and let the cop past. When I did, he turned on his lights and pulled me over. He proceeded to lecture me about how the far left lane was a passing lane, that when a car comes up behind me like he did, I needed to speed up and get out of the way, blah, blah, blah.
Of course, I totally agree with him. That's precisely what I do under normal circumstances--avoid cruising in the left lane. People who do that drive me nuts. Of course, I guess the significance of the fact that he was a cop was completely lost on him, that the reason why I was engaging in this behavior was because I was afraid that he'd give me a speeding ticket.
Truth is, I have very little respect for traffic cops for that kind of crap. Just last night, I was in gridlock at an interstate entrance in Atlanta, Georgia. No one could move anywhere because of how stupidly they have the entrance ramps and the lanes configured on the interstate. At the particular entrance ramp I was trying to get onto, people habitually engage in extremely frustrating and dangerous behavior, such as blocking intersections, pulling left into an intersection from the right lane to get around someone waiting for a light, etc.
Meanwhile, there's an HOV entrance that dumps you right in the right place if you're trying to get on I-85 that is virtually unused. As a result, people trying to get on either of the two main arteries out of town, I-75 and I-85, have to cram onto a one-lane entrance ramp that is completely blocked because just after getting on, people are having to muscle their way to get in the right place since the interstates split about a mile after the ramp.
So after sitting there for around 15 minutes and not moving, I took the HOV entrance ramp. There were two cops at the bottom giving people tickets. Fortunately, they either didn't see that I was alone, or they were busy with the people they were ticketing, because I got away with it. And you know what? In the same situation, I'd pick safety over the law any day. The fact is that in my opinion, those police officers should have been at the top of the entrance ramp directing traffic, not at the bottom creating more problems.
Of course, directing traffic at the top of the entrance ramp would have only resulted in more safety, not the revenue generation of $150 HOV violation tickets. So guess which one they decided to do.
The worst was one night when I saw a cop in the right lane watch a guy swerve across three lanes and onto an exit ramp because I guess he just noticed he was supposed to get off. I damn near slammed into him. The cop just kept going like nothing happened. I guess he had met his quota for the day.
Anyway, yeah, to hell with 'em. It's too bad, because I normally have a lot of respect and admiration for people who put their lives on the line for us every day. But these guys are just a bunch of tax collectors with guns.
And this isn't even worth a.1 version increment. It's a.01
If they're recording their version numbers like most software does, the move from 0.21 to 0.22 is what you're calling a ".1" release.
Version numbers aren't meant to be like normal decimal numbers. The stuff the the right of the decimal point is the integral minor release number. Going from 0.21 to 0.22 means an increment of one minor version, not a "hundredth" of a major version release.* There's no such thing as a ".01 release."
In other words, the jump from 0.21 to 0.22 is the same "amount" of version increase as the jump from 0.1 to 0.2. if you're at version 4.9 of something and you push out a minor release, its version will be 4.10, not 5.0, which would indicate a major release. Likewise, version 4.1 of software is most emphatically not the same thing as version 4.10.
It's also why a lot of version numbers have multiple decimal points, such as 4.9.1326. (The 1326 in this case is likely a build or other sub-minor revision number.) Obviously, if you're trying to interpret that as some kind of fraction between 4 and 5, it's meaningless.
* Just to satisfy the pedants, there are some exceptions. Some software with lots of minor revision milestones number early minor revisions x.01, x.02, etc. Also, some software uses a version numbering scheme in which odd numbers are development versions and even numbers are stable versions, so for example, x.14 would be a stable release and x.15 would be the next development release. And some developers give their software stupid-ass meaningless version names instead, such as "Millennium Edition," "XP," and "Vista," so that you really have no idea what the hell you're running outside of a general four-year or so time window.
To my knowledge, none of these schemes apply to MythTV, thank god.
I never said that other programs don't need to be cut. I hope that the insane amount of money that we spend on the military is, in fact, cut quite a bit and repurposed. I also never implied that we must only engage in one scientific endeavor at a time, either.
I only said that given that there are a finite number of dollars budgeted for scientific research, which will always be true, that most space "stuff" is pretty low on the list of priorities.
I'll happily stand with you in trying to get that finite number of dollars increased, especially by reprioritizing science in general relative to other things such as insane military budgets. If it happens, then maybe we can talk again about how those dollars should be spent, and yeah, maybe the space program will once again be worth it, in its proper place given the new budget.
Until then, I stand by my post. There are far more useful ways that we could be spending the dollars that we have, and it doesn't upset me very much that, given the budgets we have to work with, the space program is suffering from a lack of funding. If it means allocating those funds to more productive scientific endeavors, I'm not against cutting it even further.
What better than a daring scientific project of national proportions to catalyze the United States, to unite the minds and the hearts of all the people, to inspire them, to give them hope and a vision?
How about a project of national proportions to get us off of fossil fuels, or at least completely energy-independent, today, and for a fraction of the cost of whatever you have in mind?
How about a project of national proportions to beef up our computing and telecommunications infrastructure so that every American has pretty much instant, real-time access to, well, pretty much everything?
Or for that matter, how about a massive funding effort of national in medical research, with the end goal of something like a cancer vaccine, maybe even a cure, or other goals such as extending the quality and quantity of life in general? That would certainly captivate me.
I love sci-fi, I love sci-reality, I've been a space junkie since I was a kid, and if I had the chance to go to Mars, I'd sign up tomorrow. But I'm also practical, and I realize that there are a lot better things that we could spend a lot of money on than the space program.
Maybe "change I can believe in" means "we're going to stop spending billions of dollars on white elephants and put that money to more practical use." If so, consider me on board. I don't want the space program to die any more than anyone else, but I do think that as a country, we have much higher priorities that we should concentrate on.
I'm going to break Slashdot etiquette by replying to my own reply, but this is the kind of thing I'm talking about.
If you were president, and you had the choice to, say, send a manned mission to Mars to collect some dirt and maybe begin the steps it would take to, if we're lucky and very, very good, colonize the planet a century or two from now, or roll out a national energy infrastructure that will get us off of fossil fuels today, thus keeping our own planet from boiling away (and most likely discovering a lot of very useful stuff that would make such a manned Mars mission much cheaper, safer, and more practical when we DO do it), which would you choose?
Some people are still under the misguided notion that we don't have to make such choices, that we can just do both. That's one of our problems with science initiatives today. We're trying to do everything, and we end up half-assing it all and nothing gets done.
Personally, I'd rather just not have a space program (well, nothing much more than putting satellites in orbit now and then) than spending billions on the white elephant of one that we have today.
I really wish we would someday get a leader who is interested in science and the future of our species.
Have you seen his energy initiatives? You can pursue science and "the future of our species" without spending billions on pie-in-the-sky space projects.
Don't get me wrong, I'm a space junkie. I like Battlestar Galactica just like any other red-blooded American geek. And if we were overflowing in riches right now, I'd say let's go for it.
But the practical fact of the situation is that space exploration is only one miniscule part of science, and it is very, very expensive. Yes, you make engineering discoveries, and some of it is really glamorous on the 6:00 news. But if you're looking for bang for your buck, let's be honest. You can pursue science that is much cheaper and which has much more immediate gains by investing in stuff like developing alternative energy, beefing up our computing infrastructure, etc.
Just because money isn't spent on the stuff that you personally think is neat doesn't mean that it's not being well-spent or being put to productive use.
I had AT&T's craptastic service. After around ten years, I still couldn't get more than 1.5 Mbps downlink speed maximum. Apparently, my neighborhood is on some kind of special loop that's not like everyone else in Atlanta, and there are no plans to upgrade it anytime soon. So yeah, 1.5 Mbps maximum, no matter how much you're willing to pay.
So I switched to Comcast's plan where I get 12 Mbps downlink. Do I actually get 12 Mbps downlink? Nah, I don't. Still, it's a hell of a lot faster than what I was getting from AT&T, so relative to how I was feeling before, I'm happy. Besides, it's not like I was really getting 1.5 Mbps from AT&T.
If I decided that I hated Comcast, you know who I'd go with? No one. That's it, those are my choices. 1.5 Mbps from AT&T, or however close Comcast can get me to 12 Mbps.
I'd kill to get FiOS where I live. Everyone I've talked to about it says they have no short- or long-term plans to roll out FiOS here. That makes me sad. So very, very sad. I have said for years that if I ever move, that is going to be a very important deciding factor in where I move to. Can I get FiOS there? If not, I'll pick somewhere else.
It seems to me that there's a pretty easy way to defeat this. Use the technology against itself.
If you ever want to distribute something, make your own minor spelling variations and substitute your own synonyms into the original, thus further altering the altered work. If someone sues you, just point out the fact that their copy "proving" you're guilty doesn't even match the copy of the work that was distributed.
You could use this idea for just about anything that is digitally watermarked. Don't want that MP3 traced? Introduce your own small, imperceptible variations into the waveform. Don't want your printer tracing you through microdots on your hardcopies? Write a driver that adds its own microdots, and lots of 'em. And so on...
First of all, I don't remember ever "no ads" being the selling point of cable. When I first saw cable back around 1979, it was because the transmission towers were so far away from our rural neighborhood in a valley that we couldn't get a signal with an antenna. Literally nothing. "Cable" to us meant that we got to pay for what everyone else was watching: broadcast television.
Second of all, when they did start adding a few paltry non-broadcast stations to cable television, I remember ads from the outset. Oh, sure, you had the "premium" stations like HBO that had no ads, but guess what--they were really expensive, and we didn't get those channels, and we watched ads. Fewer than today, granted, but that was true even of broadcast television and is a trend across the board.
Third of all, I don't see us ever going back to the way things were, with big content providers having an absolute lock on when, where, and how you watch big content. Too many genies are out of too many bottles for that to happen. The providers now have two excruciatingly difficult competitors to face: media pirates and entertainment alternatives.
Yes, as much as we like to pretend that media pirates don't have that big an impact on the industry, they really, really do. Fortunately, in many ways, it's positive. I mean, think about it, do you really think that a service like Hulu would exist today if big media didn't have to contend with people downloading their stuff for free? Their value added is no longer the fact that they have complete control over the pipeline. It's all about ease of use and legitimacy. If they stop providing that value added service, then people will still simply stop using their service.
Added to this pressure is the fact that the times they are a-changin'. Back when I was little, we didn't have the Internet. We really didn't have many good video games. (I grew up in the Atari 2600 age.) The television was THE home entertainment medium. At night, it was either watch television or sit around talking to your parents. (Fun.)
But now with all of our instant communication technology, the Internet as our kids' playground, and gaming systems that are more hi-tech than the most expensive supercomputers I grew up on, television has a fraction of the relevance that it once did. Look around, man. Between cell phones, the Internet, their World of Warcraft accounts, and their Xboxes, a lot of kids don't even watch television!
Do you really think that people will be paying for access to shows riddled with ads on top of ads? I don't. I think that they'll just find something more interesting to do, some alternative that we didn't grow up with, thus the reason we were so willing to put up with that crap. Big media will either adjust, with services like Hulu, or die. And they know that, so please, finger off the panic button.
As the other poster noted, it's not always easy to just add more bandwidth. Where I live, the absolute fastest DSL line I can get is 1.5 Mbps. Fortunately, my cable company offers faster options, up to 22 Mbps. If they didn't, I'd be screwed if I actually wanted a decent connection relatively cheaply.
Also, one nice thing about having multiple links over multiple ISPs multiplexed together is that you have redundant links. If one ISP is having problems, you still have some bandwidth, which is generally better than no bandwidth at all. I'm assuming that the submitter would like features like automatic failover, so that if one link goes down, all of the traffic will defer to the other link until it comes back up.
Where I work, we have this type of setup with most of our big plant sites, although with the bandwidth we're talking about, it's definitely high-end business-class (read: expensive as hell) service, and because we don't want sites to become dependent on the higher bandwidth, we leave our secondary circuits idle unless needed. It would be nice for there to be a solution that offers the higher bandwidth and redundancy of a multiplexed connection cheaper than it would cost to only be available to huge MNCs.
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Don't be so dense. Using this same logic, since we still have murder even though it's against the law, let's just repeal the law against murder. Then all of those hitmen and muggers won't have to hide in seedy back alleys, yay! Plus, we can even tax the revenue on contracts!
Wait, what's that, you say? We can't because then a lot more people would be killed? It would have a dramatically negative impact on our society? Do I really need to tell you about what cancer does to you, how most people that smoke start when they're too young to make informed decisions, how physical addiction works, how much money we are spending on smoking-related illnesses that are damn close to 100% preventable?
To be honest, it's entirely possible that making murder legal while making cigarettes illegal would actually have the net affect of saving lives.
If you feel like it, sure, go for it. And stop trying to deflect the issue at hand. ("Like crystal meth? Like Diprivan? Like Codeine? Like cocaine?" See, I can pull that card too, and a lot more effectively.)
Cigarettes are far and away the most addictive and deadly products out there for human ingestion when used as intended that can be obtained without any kind of a license or without a doctor's supervision.
Just for some background, I grew up in a two-smoker household. Neither of my parents ever gave me the courtesy of even so much as stepping outside to smoke. My earliest memories are of gagging in the car as both of them were spewing poison into the air with the windows rolled up. "It's not THAT bad," they would tell me. I wish they had told my lungs, since I suffered from chronic bronchitis and several lung infections including pneumonia growing up. My mom died in 2001 of cancer. My dad died in 2005 of cancer. Neither has a family history of the disease, except for my mom's first cousin who died in 2006--who was, incidentally, the only other smoker in my family.
So you want some sanity to break out over this issue?
I'll be right there in that line with you, brother. Let's outlaw tobacco production and usage outright, because allowing such a deadly addictive product on the market with virtually no controls, that's insanity. At the very least, petition our government to classify tobacco as a controlled substance and let the FDA regulate it just like they do every other addictive dangerous drug.
Let me reiterate that. Nicotine is a drug, and cigarettes are a delivery device for that drug. If you really want sanity, then 1) If you smoke, stop now. Not stopping makes you pretty damn stupid. 2) Stop letting the tobacco lobby have their way in Congress. Insist that it be regulated just like any other drug, based on an honest assessment of its risks and dangers, not on what makes misguided twits think they're cool.
From TFA:
Think about this. Most web sites that are in simplified Chinese are probably in... Wait for it... China!
So I'm guessing that since discussion of topics contrary to the state agenda will get you thrown in jail, that most sites written in simplified Chinese about things such as Tienanmen Square really are about how it's a nice place to visit. If that's the case, then it's entirely believable to me that top search results in simplified Chinese for topics like that would return state-sanctioned sites.
It's not insulting to my intelligence to think that there's probably nothing to see here, except a reporter who is probably justifiably skeptical of Microsoft's claims, but in this particular case, is probably being a bit overzealous in his accusations.
I wonder, if the reporter tried an Arabic language search for something like "American aggression" and most results returned (surprise!) web sites expressing anti-American sentiment, that must mean that Microsoft is also appeasing terrorists, right? EVIL!!!
*Whoosh!* There goes the point right over your head. Big content is stealing from you.
They're taking your history and your heritage. Imagine a ludicrous extreme, such as the hospital you were born in saying that you can no longer use the name that you were given at birth unless you pay for it because it happened on their premises, therefore they own the rights to it. Or if you are in immigrant, imagine someone telling you that you can no longer describe where you're from, because that information is "owned" by the country from which you came. (God forbid you draw a map!)
Similarly, the music that was on the radio when I was a child? I'm prohibited by law from sharing that with my friends. Movies that have become so deeply ingrained in our culture that we constantly refer to them... "May the force be with you." "I've a feeling we're not in Kansas any more." "Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn." "Take your stinking paws off me, you damned dirty ape!" Yeah, in spite of them being part of the very fabric of our culture, you're legally prohibited from sharing them with your kids without paying your pound of flesh to people who did something great decades ago (or in some cases, to estates of long dead people).
Look, I'm all for compensating artists justly for what they do. In 1962, Paul McCartney, John Lennon, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr released a clever little song called Love Me Do. It was a bona fide hit, and they made a lot of money off of it. So be it, they deserve it. But now it's 47 years later. Do you really contend that the song was so unbelievably great, so untouchably amazing, that Paul, Ringo, and the estates of George and John should STILL be making money when a radio plays it?
Or let's look at it another way. Don't you think that's being way too overgenerous to artists? I mean, these past few years, I've been doing some of the greatest work in my professional life in a computer datacenter. I've gotten consistently great reviews, and I feel like I've made a real positive difference for the company where I'm employed. They've paid me well, I'm not complaining. But if I walked out tomorrow, wouldn't you agree that it's kind of silly to expect them to STILL keep paying me because they're enjoying the fruits of my labor while I worked there? 50 years after I'm dead, should they STILL be paying my estate because my contributions in the first decade of the 2000's contributed to the history of the company being great?
When I retire, I'm going to be living off of money I've saved up during my lifetime specifically because I don't expect my former employers to still be paying for my work 70 years after I die. Why is it that an artist who writes a hit song, a writer who writes a best-seller, an actor who turns in an Oscar-winning performance, gets that luxury? My opinion is that if you want to continue making money off of your work, get out there and work like the rest of us do. No one should get a lifetime + 70 years of resting on their laurels because they did something great. Like the rest of us, if they want to retire in comfort, they should set aside some of the money they make during the height of their popularity so they'll have it after the limited time that copyright is supposed to be valid.
First of all, did I say that GIMP is going to die? *looks at OP...* No, I don't think so. What I said was:
(Emphasis mine-- er, not present in original quote.) I know how easy it is to install GIMP. Being a Windows user of GIMP as well as a Linux user, it's not like I've never had to jump through even more hoops to install it. I'm not lamenting the fact that GIMP is going away, because it's not. What I'm lamenting is that one of the things I do to convince people that Linux is cool is that I fire up a plain, base installation. I pull up OpenOffice.org and show them what they get out of the box versus what they get with Windows (i.e. Wordpad). I fire up GIMP and show them what they get out of the box versus what they get with Windows (i.e. Paint).
It's a lot less sexy to say, "Go to Applications, now to Ubuntu Software Center, now click on Graphics, scroll down to GIMP Image Editor--oh wait, you passed it. Yeah, ignore all that other stuff for now. Okay, click on it. Yeah, click the arrow over there. Now scroll down and click 'Install.' Now click in that box and type your password..."
Ubuntu has always been user-friendly, but let's not mistake that for being targeted at grandmas who want to send an e-mail and browse the web occasionally. It's always been targeted at power users. Do you think that more people use Terminal Server Client than GIMP? Or Evolution? (Personally, I use Gmail's web client, and these days, I'd be willing to be that more people use web clients than local mail software.) Or for that matter, Tali, Robots, Tetravex, and SameGnome? How often do you think Grandma fires up her Remote Desktop Viewer, or creates a Presentation slideshow for the family budget meeting?
I'm not saying throw every package into the default install. But where do you draw the line? Average users aren't going to use 90% of the features built into OpenOffice.org. Why not put in a scaled-down easier-to-use word processor and maybe a basic spreadsheet instead, one that would take up a lot less space and be geared towards the features that average users do use? It seems disingenuous to me to remove GIMP because it's a power user app, but leave all the other stuff that people use even way less.
As you can tell, I personally consider a decent image editor to be a basic "power user" kind of application. Personally, I wish they also included Audacity, OpenOffice.org Database, and maybe a decent video editing software package. After all, it's just as trivial a task to remove the software as it is to install it if you don't want it, and I imaging that your typical Ubuntu user installs and uses those applications way more than something like Remote Desktop Viewer.
One question I don't see addressed is what--if anything--they intend to replace it with. I mean, even Windows has Paint in case you're desperate to edit a few pixels here and there. Will there not even be a scaled-down more user-friendly image editor? Are F-Spot and Eye of Gnome really intended to be the Linux equivalent of Paint, or have they decided that imaging editing is too complicated, period?
Sweet! I can't wait to replace Firefox on my MacBook Pro and my desktop Ubuntu box with this, it will run awesome on those! I wonder when I'll be able to get AdBlock for it?
It's too bad, really. I like GIMP because it shows users that unlike Windows, which comes with a bunch of widget apps at best, that Ubuntu comes with serious productivity software, equivalents of which on Windows can cost hundreds or thousands of dollars.
I guess I can see where they're coming from. I do agree that double-clicking on a picture shouldn't launch a full-fledged photo editor like GIMP, but I liked that it was easily accessible without having to do anything extra. Couldn't the same argument be made of OpenOffice.org? Are they going to replace it anytime soon with a scaled-down Wordpad equivalent? What about Compiz? Those also take up space, aren't needed for basic computer use, and could be installed with trivial effort.
Actually, for most users, I'd suggest GIMP on Windows, or for lighter-duty work, Paint.NET. I gave up on Paint Shop Pro after Jasc sold out to Corel. It's gotten more expensive and now they're playing games I hate that other mainstream commercial software is. (There's now a more expensive "Paint Shop Pro Ultimate" edition...). Too bad, too. Years ago, Paint Shop Pro was one of the first shareware programs I ever bought.
Man, I could write a book about that. Seriously. It would take me at least an hour to explain if you really can't see what's wrong with what you're saying. Out of personal convenience, I'm going to let someone else hopefully field this one.
...says the Anonymous Coward.
In that case, let me mount a camera pointed at your house. I'll be able to watch you come and go, I'll know when you're at home and when you're away, I'll sometimes catch glimpses of what you're doing through the windows, I can watch you in your sweaty glory while you're mowing your lawn, I can watch your friends and family when they come over (yay, Uncle Bob is there!), I'll know whenever you get a package from Amazon, with good enough resolution, I can probably even see who some of your mail is from. For good measure, I'll even record it all in case I want to go back later and watch something interesting.
Wouldn't that be great? You'd be able to rest easy while I'm always watching, knowing that you don't have to worry about being robbed.
I don't care that the post is already at +5. Petition CowboyNeal to make it +6, because that is precisely how to get average schmoes to understand how digital restrictions are hurting them.
First of all, I don't acknowledge the term "DRM" or "Digital Rights Management," because that does not describe what it's used for. I call it a more layman-friendly "digital restrictions." The whole concept need to be reframed. When people hear "DRM," they think it's some kind of techno-jargon that they don't understand. Even if they find out what it stands for, they think, "Hey, it's to help me manage something, that's a good thing, right?" They need to understand that its sole purpose is restricting them from doing things with their digital stuff. Even if they choose not to do those things, they need to understand that DRM gives them nothing; its only function is to take away.
I tell people all the time about how unbelievably behind we are because of digital restrictions. "Hey, wouldn't it be cool if we could watch television on our iPhones? Well, there's no technical reason we can't; it's just that digital restrictions are stopping us." "Did you know that it would be trivially simple to write some slick software so that you could store every CD and DVD you own on a hard drive that costs less than $200 so that you could watch or listen to anything you want, anytime you want, without having to fool with the physical media? Well, we could, if it weren't for digital restrictions."
Now and then, I actually show people some of the stuff that I have and that I can do, given my technical know-how to rip DVDs and stream them to my television, load them on my iPhone, etc. When people "ooh" and "ahh" over it and ask me how they can do such things, I tell them, "Well, it's pretty hard right now, you have to really dig around to find the software and jump through a bunch of hoops to do it. Unfortunately, whenever anyone tries to write software to make it easier or publish such software in a legitimate way, they get sued out of existence by the people who don't want you to be able to do this without paying big bucks. (Or in many of cases, who simply don't want you to be able to do this at all.)
People who have a university degree are generally more likely to be smarter and more skilled. No, it's not a guarantee; there are plenty of stupid people with degrees out there and there are plenty of really smart people out there without degrees. But what is a guarantee is that if you get a roomful of people with degrees and compare their skill and ability to a roomful of people without degrees, all other things being equal, the people with degress will do a better job.
Also, keep in mind that rare is the job that is only about coding. When I was a developer, my job also entailed things such as writing documentation, holding training sessions for other developers and users, basic accounting and budgeting, and so on. Non-coding things I learned in college while earning my degree are useful skills that I do use today, not just how to write some subroutine. Yes, even social skills you seem to have disdain for come in useful, because I actually work with other people, not just holed up with a computer.
Persistence is a skill. By completing your degree, you have demonstrated that you are willing and able to achieve success with long-term projects, including handling things that, at the time, you might not be overjoyed in having to do. You've also demonstrated the ability to learn new things to at least some minimal degree (no pun intended) of competence that might be outside of your familiar bubble of knowledge.
A college degree doesn't just demonstrate what you've learned, it demonstrates the ability to learn. If I'm hiring someone, I certainly want them to be able to do the job I hire them for, but I also want them to be able to quickly and effectively pick up new things that I might have to throw at them someday.
I'm not saying that a college degree is the most important factor in hiring. Personally, I'll value experience any day. Given a choice between hiring a 10-year veteran of something versus someone who has only been doing it a year or two, I'll take the veteran any day no matter who has a college degree. But a college degree is important. If experience is more-or-less equal, I'd take the college graduate over the non-graduate every time.
Do you really believe that? It's easy for the United States to be all indignant when it comes to German killers. But what do you think will happen when, say, the RIAA/MPAA lobbies to have domain names such as thepiratebay.org preemptively revoked?
Germany need to have a say in how DNS is run, as does the United States, England, France, Russia, China, and all the other nations of the world. Does Germany want x blocked or removed? Too damn bad, Swaziland vetoed them. Does the U.S. want that pesky torrent tracker site blown away? Too damn bad, Antigua says it stays. Everybody wins.
Having one nation in control of who gets to have a voice sucks, no matter which nation it is or how much they profess to love freedom of speech (while simultaneously making it harder and harder to enjoy that "freedom").
This is one of the fundamental problems with modern religions.
When religion and scientific evidence are in direct conflict with each other, enlightened people accept the scientific evidence. Enlightened religious people accept the scientific evidence and try to find ways to resolve it so that their religion remains logically consistent. (Yes, sometimes jumping through hoops to do so, but at least they don't look at scientists as some kind of evil tricksters or conspirators.)
The dumb ones, though, continue to argue against the scientific evidence not because of any particular keen insight, but because of what they think they know about an invisible guy who reigns supreme and, for the most part, what a two-thousand-year-old book that was written in an ancient language by ancient people and interpreted through various political and theological lenses says.
And, of course, most modern religions (and in particular, most modern people pushing it) are out there trying to convince people that if you question their interpretation of the "facts," that you'll burn in hell for eternity.
The church shouldn't even be having this argument. Science points towards an almost certainty of intelligent alien life out there, even if we never meet it face-to-face. They need to resign themselves to the fact that it exists, and adjust their thought accordingly. A biblical reference to the "four corners of the earth" doesn't mean that the earth literally has four corners (i.e. it's flat). A biblical reference to God making man in his own image doesn't mean that the god they worship literally looks like we do.
Duh.
As for the whole Christ thing, well, I'm guessing that alien cultures probably have their own religions, and some of them are probably even more interesting than ours. If we ever do have the pleasure of meeting some of them, we'll probably do what we've done throughout our entire history of existence. Figure out some way to meld them together to make ourselves feel better about ourselves and go on with life.
In 1997, the company I worked for was using copies of software illegally. I pointed this out to my manager and presented a plan to implement a policy of "budget for it or lose it" across the company. He told me no, that a business decision had been made to use the software in spite of it being illegally.
I told him that as systems administrator, I was genuinely concerned that if we got audited, I would be on the hook for the violations that were taking place, and that I wanted an e-mail or written letter stating the business decision to continue using unlicensed software. I explained that we were one disgruntled employee away from losing everything, and that our churn rate was very high.
To be honest, my boss was a twit, and I honestly thought that once his boss and upper-level management found out what was going on, that he was putting the company at risk, I would be complimented for a job well done, and he might even be replaced. Of course, that was when I was a bit more naive than I am today, and after following up our meeting with an e-mail about the company's non-compliance and my plan to get everyone legal, I was terminated. In my termination letter, it never mentioned the software explicitly, but it did mention something about a "disregard for business policies." (They were actually really grasping. My termination letter also said that I had taken "unauthorized vacation" when I missed a day of work after an automobile accident to deal with injuries, insurance, and acquiring another means of transportation.)
In a job interview a year ago, I was asked if I had ever been fired from a job. I honestly answered that yes, I have. I could tell that the interviewer got a little uncomfortable, and I explained the story. I told him that during the whole ordeal, my focus was on looking out for the best interests of the company even above my own short-term interests. I told him that even though they screwed me over and I probably had them dead-to-rights on flagrant licensing violations if I had turned them in, I chose professionalism over revenge and didn't do it. I told him that if I'm hired, I'll look out for his company's interests the same way. I might not always tell him what he wants to hear, but I'll always tell him the truth.
I guess it was convincing enough because I was hired and I'm still working for that company today. Needless to say, life is much better for me these days, and I've prospered over the years much more than the company that fired me.
To the submitter, stand firm. DO NOT do anything illegal, or you'll be just as culpable as they will. I know it sounds trite and in this moment and in this economy, it seems like the end of the world to think about getting fired, but in five or ten years from now, if you stand up to your boss today on something that is so clearly immoral that he is asking you to do, I guarantee that you will be better off. Trust me, "Future You" will thank you for it.
That happened to me once in Mobile, Alabama. I pulled into the far left lane on I-10 to pass a car in the next-to-left lane. I got about halfway done passing them when a cop whizzed up behind me. Not wanting to get a speeding ticket, I slowed down to 55 MPH. Of course, the car to my right did the same thing, and we ended up side-by-side.
Not really wanting to be stuck in the left lane, and not wanting to get a ticket, and since the guy next to me wasn't slowing down, I slowed down to drop in behind him and let the cop past. When I did, he turned on his lights and pulled me over. He proceeded to lecture me about how the far left lane was a passing lane, that when a car comes up behind me like he did, I needed to speed up and get out of the way, blah, blah, blah.
Of course, I totally agree with him. That's precisely what I do under normal circumstances--avoid cruising in the left lane. People who do that drive me nuts. Of course, I guess the significance of the fact that he was a cop was completely lost on him, that the reason why I was engaging in this behavior was because I was afraid that he'd give me a speeding ticket.
Truth is, I have very little respect for traffic cops for that kind of crap. Just last night, I was in gridlock at an interstate entrance in Atlanta, Georgia. No one could move anywhere because of how stupidly they have the entrance ramps and the lanes configured on the interstate. At the particular entrance ramp I was trying to get onto, people habitually engage in extremely frustrating and dangerous behavior, such as blocking intersections, pulling left into an intersection from the right lane to get around someone waiting for a light, etc.
Meanwhile, there's an HOV entrance that dumps you right in the right place if you're trying to get on I-85 that is virtually unused. As a result, people trying to get on either of the two main arteries out of town, I-75 and I-85, have to cram onto a one-lane entrance ramp that is completely blocked because just after getting on, people are having to muscle their way to get in the right place since the interstates split about a mile after the ramp.
So after sitting there for around 15 minutes and not moving, I took the HOV entrance ramp. There were two cops at the bottom giving people tickets. Fortunately, they either didn't see that I was alone, or they were busy with the people they were ticketing, because I got away with it. And you know what? In the same situation, I'd pick safety over the law any day. The fact is that in my opinion, those police officers should have been at the top of the entrance ramp directing traffic, not at the bottom creating more problems.
Of course, directing traffic at the top of the entrance ramp would have only resulted in more safety, not the revenue generation of $150 HOV violation tickets. So guess which one they decided to do.
The worst was one night when I saw a cop in the right lane watch a guy swerve across three lanes and onto an exit ramp because I guess he just noticed he was supposed to get off. I damn near slammed into him. The cop just kept going like nothing happened. I guess he had met his quota for the day.
Anyway, yeah, to hell with 'em. It's too bad, because I normally have a lot of respect and admiration for people who put their lives on the line for us every day. But these guys are just a bunch of tax collectors with guns.
If they're recording their version numbers like most software does, the move from 0.21 to 0.22 is what you're calling a ".1" release.
Version numbers aren't meant to be like normal decimal numbers. The stuff the the right of the decimal point is the integral minor release number. Going from 0.21 to 0.22 means an increment of one minor version, not a "hundredth" of a major version release.* There's no such thing as a ".01 release."
In other words, the jump from 0.21 to 0.22 is the same "amount" of version increase as the jump from 0.1 to 0.2. if you're at version 4.9 of something and you push out a minor release, its version will be 4.10, not 5.0, which would indicate a major release. Likewise, version 4.1 of software is most emphatically not the same thing as version 4.10.
It's also why a lot of version numbers have multiple decimal points, such as 4.9.1326. (The 1326 in this case is likely a build or other sub-minor revision number.) Obviously, if you're trying to interpret that as some kind of fraction between 4 and 5, it's meaningless.
* Just to satisfy the pedants, there are some exceptions. Some software with lots of minor revision milestones number early minor revisions x.01, x.02, etc. Also, some software uses a version numbering scheme in which odd numbers are development versions and even numbers are stable versions, so for example, x.14 would be a stable release and x.15 would be the next development release. And some developers give their software stupid-ass meaningless version names instead, such as "Millennium Edition," "XP," and "Vista," so that you really have no idea what the hell you're running outside of a general four-year or so time window.
To my knowledge, none of these schemes apply to MythTV, thank god.
I never said that other programs don't need to be cut. I hope that the insane amount of money that we spend on the military is, in fact, cut quite a bit and repurposed. I also never implied that we must only engage in one scientific endeavor at a time, either.
I only said that given that there are a finite number of dollars budgeted for scientific research, which will always be true, that most space "stuff" is pretty low on the list of priorities.
I'll happily stand with you in trying to get that finite number of dollars increased, especially by reprioritizing science in general relative to other things such as insane military budgets. If it happens, then maybe we can talk again about how those dollars should be spent, and yeah, maybe the space program will once again be worth it, in its proper place given the new budget.
Until then, I stand by my post. There are far more useful ways that we could be spending the dollars that we have, and it doesn't upset me very much that, given the budgets we have to work with, the space program is suffering from a lack of funding. If it means allocating those funds to more productive scientific endeavors, I'm not against cutting it even further.
How about a project of national proportions to get us off of fossil fuels, or at least completely energy-independent, today, and for a fraction of the cost of whatever you have in mind?
How about a project of national proportions to beef up our computing and telecommunications infrastructure so that every American has pretty much instant, real-time access to, well, pretty much everything?
Or for that matter, how about a massive funding effort of national in medical research, with the end goal of something like a cancer vaccine, maybe even a cure, or other goals such as extending the quality and quantity of life in general? That would certainly captivate me.
I love sci-fi, I love sci-reality, I've been a space junkie since I was a kid, and if I had the chance to go to Mars, I'd sign up tomorrow. But I'm also practical, and I realize that there are a lot better things that we could spend a lot of money on than the space program.
Maybe "change I can believe in" means "we're going to stop spending billions of dollars on white elephants and put that money to more practical use." If so, consider me on board. I don't want the space program to die any more than anyone else, but I do think that as a country, we have much higher priorities that we should concentrate on.
I'm going to break Slashdot etiquette by replying to my own reply, but this is the kind of thing I'm talking about.
If you were president, and you had the choice to, say, send a manned mission to Mars to collect some dirt and maybe begin the steps it would take to, if we're lucky and very, very good, colonize the planet a century or two from now, or roll out a national energy infrastructure that will get us off of fossil fuels today, thus keeping our own planet from boiling away (and most likely discovering a lot of very useful stuff that would make such a manned Mars mission much cheaper, safer, and more practical when we DO do it), which would you choose?
Some people are still under the misguided notion that we don't have to make such choices, that we can just do both. That's one of our problems with science initiatives today. We're trying to do everything, and we end up half-assing it all and nothing gets done.
Personally, I'd rather just not have a space program (well, nothing much more than putting satellites in orbit now and then) than spending billions on the white elephant of one that we have today.
Have you seen his energy initiatives? You can pursue science and "the future of our species" without spending billions on pie-in-the-sky space projects.
Don't get me wrong, I'm a space junkie. I like Battlestar Galactica just like any other red-blooded American geek. And if we were overflowing in riches right now, I'd say let's go for it.
But the practical fact of the situation is that space exploration is only one miniscule part of science, and it is very, very expensive. Yes, you make engineering discoveries, and some of it is really glamorous on the 6:00 news. But if you're looking for bang for your buck, let's be honest. You can pursue science that is much cheaper and which has much more immediate gains by investing in stuff like developing alternative energy, beefing up our computing infrastructure, etc.
Just because money isn't spent on the stuff that you personally think is neat doesn't mean that it's not being well-spent or being put to productive use.
Here's my story.
I had AT&T's craptastic service. After around ten years, I still couldn't get more than 1.5 Mbps downlink speed maximum. Apparently, my neighborhood is on some kind of special loop that's not like everyone else in Atlanta, and there are no plans to upgrade it anytime soon. So yeah, 1.5 Mbps maximum, no matter how much you're willing to pay.
So I switched to Comcast's plan where I get 12 Mbps downlink. Do I actually get 12 Mbps downlink? Nah, I don't. Still, it's a hell of a lot faster than what I was getting from AT&T, so relative to how I was feeling before, I'm happy. Besides, it's not like I was really getting 1.5 Mbps from AT&T.
If I decided that I hated Comcast, you know who I'd go with? No one. That's it, those are my choices. 1.5 Mbps from AT&T, or however close Comcast can get me to 12 Mbps.
I'd kill to get FiOS where I live. Everyone I've talked to about it says they have no short- or long-term plans to roll out FiOS here. That makes me sad. So very, very sad. I have said for years that if I ever move, that is going to be a very important deciding factor in where I move to. Can I get FiOS there? If not, I'll pick somewhere else.
It seems to me that there's a pretty easy way to defeat this. Use the technology against itself.
If you ever want to distribute something, make your own minor spelling variations and substitute your own synonyms into the original, thus further altering the altered work. If someone sues you, just point out the fact that their copy "proving" you're guilty doesn't even match the copy of the work that was distributed.
You could use this idea for just about anything that is digitally watermarked. Don't want that MP3 traced? Introduce your own small, imperceptible variations into the waveform. Don't want your printer tracing you through microdots on your hardcopies? Write a driver that adds its own microdots, and lots of 'em. And so on...
Not true, almost all around
First of all, I don't remember ever "no ads" being the selling point of cable. When I first saw cable back around 1979, it was because the transmission towers were so far away from our rural neighborhood in a valley that we couldn't get a signal with an antenna. Literally nothing. "Cable" to us meant that we got to pay for what everyone else was watching: broadcast television.
Second of all, when they did start adding a few paltry non-broadcast stations to cable television, I remember ads from the outset. Oh, sure, you had the "premium" stations like HBO that had no ads, but guess what--they were really expensive, and we didn't get those channels, and we watched ads. Fewer than today, granted, but that was true even of broadcast television and is a trend across the board.
Third of all, I don't see us ever going back to the way things were, with big content providers having an absolute lock on when, where, and how you watch big content. Too many genies are out of too many bottles for that to happen. The providers now have two excruciatingly difficult competitors to face: media pirates and entertainment alternatives.
Yes, as much as we like to pretend that media pirates don't have that big an impact on the industry, they really, really do. Fortunately, in many ways, it's positive. I mean, think about it, do you really think that a service like Hulu would exist today if big media didn't have to contend with people downloading their stuff for free? Their value added is no longer the fact that they have complete control over the pipeline. It's all about ease of use and legitimacy. If they stop providing that value added service, then people will still simply stop using their service.
Added to this pressure is the fact that the times they are a-changin'. Back when I was little, we didn't have the Internet. We really didn't have many good video games. (I grew up in the Atari 2600 age.) The television was THE home entertainment medium. At night, it was either watch television or sit around talking to your parents. (Fun.)
But now with all of our instant communication technology, the Internet as our kids' playground, and gaming systems that are more hi-tech than the most expensive supercomputers I grew up on, television has a fraction of the relevance that it once did. Look around, man. Between cell phones, the Internet, their World of Warcraft accounts, and their Xboxes, a lot of kids don't even watch television!
Do you really think that people will be paying for access to shows riddled with ads on top of ads? I don't. I think that they'll just find something more interesting to do, some alternative that we didn't grow up with, thus the reason we were so willing to put up with that crap. Big media will either adjust, with services like Hulu, or die. And they know that, so please, finger off the panic button.
As the other poster noted, it's not always easy to just add more bandwidth. Where I live, the absolute fastest DSL line I can get is 1.5 Mbps. Fortunately, my cable company offers faster options, up to 22 Mbps. If they didn't, I'd be screwed if I actually wanted a decent connection relatively cheaply.
Also, one nice thing about having multiple links over multiple ISPs multiplexed together is that you have redundant links. If one ISP is having problems, you still have some bandwidth, which is generally better than no bandwidth at all. I'm assuming that the submitter would like features like automatic failover, so that if one link goes down, all of the traffic will defer to the other link until it comes back up.
Where I work, we have this type of setup with most of our big plant sites, although with the bandwidth we're talking about, it's definitely high-end business-class (read: expensive as hell) service, and because we don't want sites to become dependent on the higher bandwidth, we leave our secondary circuits idle unless needed. It would be nice for there to be a solution that offers the higher bandwidth and redundancy of a multiplexed connection cheaper than it would cost to only be available to huge MNCs.