If he spent more than $5000 on campaign expenses, he would have been subject to federal campaign finance regulations. The registration fee for the Democratic primary was $2500. IIRC, the registration fee for the Republican primary was $25,000.
But I think the general idea is that too much is at stake this time around, and we need to have definitive votes for real candidates so the Democratic Party can circle the wagons and put a well-supported candidate out there. Again, I happen to really enjoy Stephen Colbert. But what if he skims significant votes from Clinton, Obama, or Edwards in the primary?
Whether or not he "skims" votes from any of the other Democrats is not an issue. It is a Democratic primary between Democrats, not the general election against Republicans.
All that is at stake is delegates to the Democratic national convention.
A big part of the problem is that there is this perception that there has to be a clear winner -before- the convention. It's winner take all, and no room for any minority voice or consensus building. That defeats the supposed purpose of having a convention. Sort of like two wolves and a sheep deciding what to have for dinner.
That was Colbert's stated goal, he wanted to win a delegate to the convention so that he would have a voice at the convention; that the candidate would not just be acclaimed, but would have to negotiate to win the nomination.
Using telescopes, we "see" stars and galaxies. Using x-ray telescopes, we "see" areas that are bright in x-rays and deduce that they are caused by matter falling into very massive objects.
Almost Everyone just accepts that these massive objects are "black holes" because it is a popular theory. Take the article for instance, it says we are "seeing" black holes.
But we're not, we're "seeing" very massive objects, and from what we can see they could be modeled as black holes (model requires singularities), but they could just as consistanty be modeled as ECOs (model doesn't require singularities).
Personally, I prefer a model that doesn't invoke singularities because I doubt that singularities truly exist in the physical universe.
...and black holes are interesting because they do involve a singularity.
My point is that ECOs are a way of explaining these objects without invoking a singularity. Personally I think that the need to invoke singularities is a symptom that a physical model is broken.
"Suddenly, everything goes to infinity!" Yeah, right....
Not to be pedantic, but couldn't there be another source for the x-rays? What would've happened if this was someones pet theory?
If there were competing theories that predicted the same thing, the race would be on to see whether there was something else they made different predictions about, and to see which could stand up to the additional scrutiny.
Does anyone have any idea why this comet has suddenly got so much brighter? Presumably it is flying past a star but surely it would do this on a fairly regular basis.
Comets appear bright because they start to evaporate as they approach the sun, and the sun illuminates the evaporating gas and dust.
The best guess as to why this one has suddenly brightened so much is that it has either broken apart or experienced a sudden outgassing for some other reason.
BTW, the comets we see are gravitationally bound to our solar system, so the only star they ever come close to is Sol.
What about in the UK? Where would I need to look to see this thing?
I know/. is American centered but the world is a pretty big place and those of us not in that continent might like to know where we can/can't see things.
It doesn't matter, it will be in the same place in the sky no matter where on Earth you are.
ISTR that the distribution that they offered previously was RedHat, probably because it was the "corporate standard". Now that they are offering a friendlier distro, the interest is moving out of the data center and onto the desktop.
I agree with what you say, if the Russians have been accused of glossing over problems, the Americans have certainly engaged in more than their share of over-engineering and navel-gazing, often to the point of paralysis.
My point is that there is a real cultural difference, and the original poster's point that the Russians are being "blamed" just because they are Russians is overly simplistic. What the Russians perceive as placing blame, the Americans perceive as responsible safety engineering.
My feeling is that the truth is somewhere in between. Olberg's book is a good read -if- you take into account that it is the American POV that is being presented.
I find it more dismaying that an otherwise seemingly adult and mature article writer feels such an urge to childishly emphasize blame. What is it with this childish American and Russian jingoism? If blame is so important, can't you people at least blame the engineers and not the nationality?
There is a lot of history behind this.
The Americans and the Russians have always taken very different approaches to dealing with safety engineering in space. The Russians have typically taken an empirical, "what me worry?" approach. They have taken a band-aid approach to problems, and their management has mostly about burying and denying issues.
The Americans tend toward a very analytical approach, which requires an attitude of being open about issues and figuring out how they happened in the first place.
In the end, it is two very different management cultures, and for someone brought up in either culture, it is dismaying to see the other's approach.
Olberg wrote an interesting book about it. If you keep in mind that the book was written from the American POV, it gives some pretty good insights into the clash of management cultures that has shaped US/Russian "cooperation" in space.
Script kiddies and spammers are easy to deal with, they are the least of your problems. Your biggest problems are the pros, the insiders, your users, God, and Murphy.
Do these firms spend these security dollars properly or do they just do as recommended by whichever software/analyst group wants to sell them more software/and or information on holes? How much of the $$$ designated forward security is worth it?
Insightful question.
Managers and the clueless (obviously not mutually exclusive sets!) are always looking for a "security product", the silver bullet.
The reality is that security is a process, not a product. You have to incorporate it into your policies, plans and products from the ground up.
Security "products" (firewalls, IDS, NMS, etc.) are the icing on the cake, but are pretty much meaningless on their own. This is clearly not what most managers want to hear, they want to spend some money and be done. That's why there is so much money to be made in security snake oil, because the reality of information security is that it is expensive, not in terms of buying stuff, but in terms of an ongoing commitment to incorporating the principles into everything you do.
Many times this translates into the fact that the easiest path to getting something done is not the best path. That is a difficult reality for management to relate to.
A clueless Admin hosting something maybe. But by default install of Desktop Linux those services that can be cracked if not correctly setup are not running.
You are taking a very shallow view of security here. Sure, controlling what services are listening is a good first step. But your biggest threat isn't the outside hacker. It's the inside guy. It's being able to -prove- who did what, when.
A defualt install of Desktop Linux is far more secure and safe then the default install of Windows.
But once you move beyond that default install, and beyond shutting down unnecessary services, Linux isn't necessarily that "secure". The default install of Linux still has many problems that have to be addressed in order to have a secure system. Of course, so does Windows, but my point is that you cannot just load Linux, turn off services, and think you have anything like a secure system. In fact there are some advisable security requirements that are harder to implement on Linux than on Windows.
I have secured both to NSA recommended standards, and yes, in general I prefer Linux, but don't fool yourself that any like a default Linux install is inherently secure, especially when it comes to auditing and attribution.
Emusic was not the first to 'give... the damn MP3s at a reasonable price'.
Uh, they were the first biggie that was legit. They offered their entire catalog for pretty much unlimited downloading at first.
What legal, DRM-free service did that?
Emusic has absolutely nothing on other DRM-free music download services, except perhaps for selection.
Selection is a -huge- differentiating factor.
Please, if there is anything comparable out there, say >1 million tracks, point me at it.
you are essentially claiming my point-of-view is petty because you have no counter arguments.
I'm saying that your objection to the credit card requirement is petty because they have a valid reason (to ensure only one free trial per person).
But my main point (partly directed at the GP) is that to just say, "fuck it, I'm not buying any music", or, "I'm just going to pirate because DRM sucks and there are no options", or especially, "there are options, but I'm not going to use them because their model isn't my ideal of how it should work" is bullshit.
I hope you are doing -something- to support at least one DRM-free music service.
You are right that as the number of options increases, emusic will face competition, but I just don't see anything that comes close to competing on selection and price (my two top criteria after DRM-free) at the moment.
Active non-participation? WTF is that? Self-disenfranchisement.
You have to participate to get a say.
See my other comment about emusic. There are things about them that some don't like, but they have non-DRM tracks for a reasonable price (two of my big problems with iTunes), so they get my vote.
I used to buy tons of CDs (5-10 per week). Then the shit really started with the labels and I stopped, took a look around and supported someone else. Just abstaining doesn't do the job, the drop in sales is just attributed to piracy.
If you want to make a change, you have to actively participate in the market. Silence==status quo.
It could be useful (the stress-reading portion, anyway) for UI testing. People can't always clearly remember/articulate problems with an interface, this could give you pretty accurate feedback.
It could also have applications in learning management systems.
But at this point it sounds like a solution in search of a problem.
Emusic has been brought up so many times, is there anyone who visits/. who hasn't heard of it? I would be very surprised to learn that every single post is from a genuine fan and a not from some paid shill.
Signing up for emusic is selling yourself short as a consumer. You can't so much as browse their catalog without giving up your name, address, and credit card information. They use the anti-consumer "AOL method" of signing people up, by forcing people to cancel a free trial. Sorry, but I have no idea how difficult they'll make it for me to cancel, even if I were stupid enough to give them my credit card information without having any idea what they're selling. And since I can't browse their catalog, I'm betting most people won't be interested in most of their catalog.
To make matters worse, their subscription method makes absolutely no sense from the consumer point of view. What if I newly discover an established band and want to buy all their albums right now? What if I don't want to buy anything for a couple of months? Their subscription method only makes sense from their point of view. They can manage their books a bit easier and get free money for consumers who don't use all their downloads.
I am not a shill, I am a satisfied customer.
Here's my take:
For a long time, people here complained about iTunes, and essentially said, "Just give me the damn MP3s at a reasonable price". I agreed with them. Along came emusic, and that's what they did. I chose to support that decision with my wallet, which is the only real vote we have in the marketplace.
So I took a chance with the "free" trial. Yes I had to give up my CC, but I figured that if these guys are ripoffs, they aren't going to last long.
What I saw when I got into their site was a breath of fresh air. I have very eclectic musical tastes, and the breadth of their selection was simply astounding. I realized right away that I was not going to have any problem choosing 90 tracks every month for the forseeable future.
Sure, if you are looking for "mainstream" mega-label stuff, it's mostly not there. But if you're fucking tired of the crap you hear on radio, and like to hear other genres than just 70's rock, wow.
You are entitled to your petty objections about emusic, but I will not stop "shilling" for them. For me and many here, emusic kicks ass. It's time to stop whining on slashdot, get out on the market, and vote with your wallet.
Doing anything less is "selling yourself short as a consumer."
If the talented artist doesn't invest for their heirs' futures while they are alive, then what gives their heirs a special right to automatically benefit beyond the artist's lifetime?
Look, I understand talent and the market, but once you're dead, you're dead. It happens to everyone. There is no inherent right to an automatic inheritance that lives beyond you, artist or not.
Slashdot Mirror
Nader has more demonstrated moral courage in his fingernail than "your boy" has in his entire soul.
If he spent more than $5000 on campaign expenses, he would have been subject to federal campaign finance regulations. The registration fee for the Democratic primary was $2500. IIRC, the registration fee for the Republican primary was $25,000.
Whether or not he "skims" votes from any of the other Democrats is not an issue. It is a Democratic primary between Democrats, not the general election against Republicans.
All that is at stake is delegates to the Democratic national convention.
A big part of the problem is that there is this perception that there has to be a clear winner -before- the convention. It's winner take all, and no room for any minority voice or consensus building. That defeats the supposed purpose of having a convention. Sort of like two wolves and a sheep deciding what to have for dinner.
That was Colbert's stated goal, he wanted to win a delegate to the convention so that he would have a voice at the convention; that the candidate would not just be acclaimed, but would have to negotiate to win the nomination.
Um, you're going a little too metaphysical here.
Using telescopes, we "see" stars and galaxies. Using x-ray telescopes, we "see" areas that are bright in x-rays and deduce that they are caused by matter falling into very massive objects.
Almost Everyone just accepts that these massive objects are "black holes" because it is a popular theory. Take the article for instance, it says we are "seeing" black holes.
But we're not, we're "seeing" very massive objects, and from what we can see they could be modeled as black holes (model requires singularities), but they could just as consistanty be modeled as ECOs (model doesn't require singularities).
Personally, I prefer a model that doesn't invoke singularities because I doubt that singularities truly exist in the physical universe.
My point is that ECOs are a way of explaining these objects without invoking a singularity. Personally I think that the need to invoke singularities is a symptom that a physical model is broken.
"Suddenly, everything goes to infinity!" Yeah, right....
Like these?
No one has ever "seen" a black hole, they are seeing effects that can be explained by black hole theory. A subtle but perhaps important difference.
IANAAP, but on the surface of it, ECOs are interesting because they do not involve a singularity.
Comets appear bright because they start to evaporate as they approach the sun, and the sun illuminates the evaporating gas and dust.
The best guess as to why this one has suddenly brightened so much is that it has either broken apart or experienced a sudden outgassing for some other reason.
BTW, the comets we see are gravitationally bound to our solar system, so the only star they ever come close to is Sol.
ISTR that the distribution that they offered previously was RedHat, probably because it was the "corporate standard". Now that they are offering a friendlier distro, the interest is moving out of the data center and onto the desktop.
I agree with what you say, if the Russians have been accused of glossing over problems, the Americans have certainly engaged in more than their share of over-engineering and navel-gazing, often to the point of paralysis.
My point is that there is a real cultural difference, and the original poster's point that the Russians are being "blamed" just because they are Russians is overly simplistic. What the Russians perceive as placing blame, the Americans perceive as responsible safety engineering.
My feeling is that the truth is somewhere in between. Olberg's book is a good read -if- you take into account that it is the American POV that is being presented.
There is a lot of history behind this.
The Americans and the Russians have always taken very different approaches to dealing with safety engineering in space. The Russians have typically taken an empirical, "what me worry?" approach. They have taken a band-aid approach to problems, and their management has mostly about burying and denying issues.
The Americans tend toward a very analytical approach, which requires an attitude of being open about issues and figuring out how they happened in the first place.
In the end, it is two very different management cultures, and for someone brought up in either culture, it is dismaying to see the other's approach.
Olberg wrote an interesting book about it. If you keep in mind that the book was written from the American POV, it gives some pretty good insights into the clash of management cultures that has shaped US/Russian "cooperation" in space.
Script kiddies and spammers are easy to deal with, they are the least of your problems. Your biggest problems are the pros, the insiders, your users, God, and Murphy.
Insightful question.
Managers and the clueless (obviously not mutually exclusive sets!) are always looking for a "security product", the silver bullet.
The reality is that security is a process, not a product. You have to incorporate it into your policies, plans and products from the ground up.
Security "products" (firewalls, IDS, NMS, etc.) are the icing on the cake, but are pretty much meaningless on their own. This is clearly not what most managers want to hear, they want to spend some money and be done. That's why there is so much money to be made in security snake oil, because the reality of information security is that it is expensive, not in terms of buying stuff, but in terms of an ongoing commitment to incorporating the principles into everything you do.
Many times this translates into the fact that the easiest path to getting something done is not the best path. That is a difficult reality for management to relate to.
You are taking a very shallow view of security here. Sure, controlling what services are listening is a good first step. But your biggest threat isn't the outside hacker. It's the inside guy. It's being able to -prove- who did what, when.
But once you move beyond that default install, and beyond shutting down unnecessary services, Linux isn't necessarily that "secure". The default install of Linux still has many problems that have to be addressed in order to have a secure system. Of course, so does Windows, but my point is that you cannot just load Linux, turn off services, and think you have anything like a secure system. In fact there are some advisable security requirements that are harder to implement on Linux than on Windows.
I have secured both to NSA recommended standards, and yes, in general I prefer Linux, but don't fool yourself that any like a default Linux install is inherently secure, especially when it comes to auditing and attribution.
Uh, they were the first biggie that was legit. They offered their entire catalog for pretty much unlimited downloading at first.
What legal, DRM-free service did that?
Selection is a -huge- differentiating factor.
Please, if there is anything comparable out there, say >1 million tracks, point me at it.
I'm saying that your objection to the credit card requirement is petty because they have a valid reason (to ensure only one free trial per person).
But my main point (partly directed at the GP) is that to just say, "fuck it, I'm not buying any music", or, "I'm just going to pirate because DRM sucks and there are no options", or especially, "there are options, but I'm not going to use them because their model isn't my ideal of how it should work" is bullshit.
I hope you are doing -something- to support at least one DRM-free music service.
You are right that as the number of options increases, emusic will face competition, but I just don't see anything that comes close to competing on selection and price (my two top criteria after DRM-free) at the moment.
Active non-participation? WTF is that? Self-disenfranchisement.
You have to participate to get a say.
See my other comment about emusic. There are things about them that some don't like, but they have non-DRM tracks for a reasonable price (two of my big problems with iTunes), so they get my vote.
I used to buy tons of CDs (5-10 per week). Then the shit really started with the labels and I stopped, took a look around and supported someone else. Just abstaining doesn't do the job, the drop in sales is just attributed to piracy.
If you want to make a change, you have to actively participate in the market. Silence==status quo.
Sounds like you should be using a CLI!
It could be useful (the stress-reading portion, anyway) for UI testing. People can't always clearly remember/articulate problems with an interface, this could give you pretty accurate feedback.
It could also have applications in learning management systems.
But at this point it sounds like a solution in search of a problem.
I haven't purchased music for years because of the behavior of the labels
Which makes me wonder. If you don't participate in the market, how do you cast your economic vote?
Choosing not to vote doesn't even come close to being as powerful as supporting the entities that you agree with.
I am not a shill, I am a satisfied customer.
Here's my take:
For a long time, people here complained about iTunes, and essentially said, "Just give me the damn MP3s at a reasonable price". I agreed with them. Along came emusic, and that's what they did. I chose to support that decision with my wallet, which is the only real vote we have in the marketplace.
So I took a chance with the "free" trial. Yes I had to give up my CC, but I figured that if these guys are ripoffs, they aren't going to last long.
What I saw when I got into their site was a breath of fresh air. I have very eclectic musical tastes, and the breadth of their selection was simply astounding. I realized right away that I was not going to have any problem choosing 90 tracks every month for the forseeable future.
Sure, if you are looking for "mainstream" mega-label stuff, it's mostly not there. But if you're fucking tired of the crap you hear on radio, and like to hear other genres than just 70's rock, wow.
You are entitled to your petty objections about emusic, but I will not stop "shilling" for them. For me and many here, emusic kicks ass. It's time to stop whining on slashdot, get out on the market, and vote with your wallet.
Doing anything less is "selling yourself short as a consumer."
Geez, you've really been depriving yourself unnecessarily. One word: emusic.
Some big names are willing to comment on the emperor's sartorial choices...
Car analogy FTW!!!!
People only continue to pay beyond the artist's death because of this little artificial construct called copyright.
It's not an inherent right.
It is a grant from society.
But that is during their lifetimes.
If the talented artist doesn't invest for their heirs' futures while they are alive, then what gives their heirs a special right to automatically benefit beyond the artist's lifetime?
Look, I understand talent and the market, but once you're dead, you're dead. It happens to everyone. There is no inherent right to an automatic inheritance that lives beyond you, artist or not.
Consider the life gambles you or I or anyone else has made.
The only guarantee anyone has a right to for their heirs is what they can earn and save during their lifetime.
You seriously think Heinlein was thinking about unearned income for his heirs when he wrote?
Explain to me why an artist deserves any more consideration for their life's work than any artisan, tradesman, or professional.