It's a battle between society and special interests
Are special interests somehow out of society? Maybe the society is nothing more than a chaotic micture of special interests warring with each other. So perhaps it is nonsense to talk about society, and perhaps one should be talking about individuals and their special interests (everyone has one). Rather than thinking about special interests as something undesirable, maybe we should just accept the sad fact that everyone has a special interest and then just try to find a way to manage and combine our interests in a way that could allow us to live in peace and relative harmony. It's just part of human nature to have interests, and it is the responsibility of civilised people to find a way to live peacefully without damaging one another's interests.
Yes, teaching creationism to biologists and alchemy to chemists can be very useful for helping them understand the society and the role of evidence in science, but teachers and students have limited time and this time has to be invested in the most rewarding activity, and I wonder whether teaching creationism or alchemy is more rewarding than teaching more advanced biology or chemistry. Perhaps a short introduction is ok, but too much time spent on it would be counterproductive?
failed banks that gave loans to people who deserved none
Some people say that past administrations introduced some laws that made the banks give out these loans in the first place, which implies that it's not all the banks's fault, albeit this may not automatically mean that the laws were necessarily wrong.
What good is an education if no one will pay you to use it?
You use the word education while trying to say training. Training is about professions and work. Education is about learning and opening one's mind. People get training to make other people pay them to use it, but they get education just for the sake of it.
So, training is in fact not very useful if nobody is going to pay you to use it, but education is always useful no matter the circumstances.
The worst thing that can happen to slow the solution to a human problem is its politicisation.
Politicised issues never get solved, because it is in no one's best interest to solve them: politicians earn their living by promising solutions to problems, and if they actually solve the problems that made the populace vote for them they will be out of work (unless they find another problem to solve). Therefore, a self-serving politician would never want to actually solve a problem that shifts the demographics in their favour. Of course there may be a few politicians who are enlightened and not only self-serving and may seek to really solve a problem, but the majority of them aren't so enlightened.
Unfortunately nowadays environmental issues such as global warming have been linked with politics, and this means that these issues will never be solved. One political group chooses a specific position over global warming ("it happens") and another group chooses the opposite position ("it doesn't happen"), and they just argue ad nauseum to make stupid people vote for them and keep them in their jobs so that they can continue receiving their income (official and unofficial).
Because the issue became political, it is very difficult to distinguish between science and politics now: a study saying "it happens" will be viewed as written by people supporting the political group that has chosen this position over the issue, while a study saying "it doesn't happen" will be suspected as being written by supporters of another political group. So, it became impossible to even contemplate about talking about this issue without being subjected to suspicions of people thinking in political terms. The end result is that scientists who seek not to be exposed to social stupidity shut up and the only people who talk about the issue are those who have no other interest in the issue than using it for political gain.
Environmental issues are scientific issues that should be solved by the experts in the field, the environmental scientists. It is in the university and the laboratory, not in the parliament or the senate, that we must solve our environmental issues. It is a scientific and technological issue that can be solved by developing new green technologies, and these can be developed by scientists in universities, not by old people arguing all day on television.
An issue becomes political when it involves different groups of people bearing different costs related to the management (or solution, if it's ever solved at all) of the issue. With the current technology it is difficult to solve the environmental issues without a change to a more frugal lifestyle (which is seen as a cost by most people) or slower economic growth (which is totally unacceptable to everyone on this planet, except for very few heterodox economists such as those who believe in technocracy). But I see no reason to solve environmental issues with the current, limited technology when we can develop new green technologies that would enable us to solve the environmental issues while in fact allowing us to keep our current lifestyles and most importantly creating new economic growth and new entrepreneurial opportunities as well (even for the current big players in the energy markets, so nobody would have anything to lose, it would be a win-win-win-win-win-win scenario). With new green technologies it would become possible to solve environmental issues without having to involve politicians who debate on television all day and have neither the knowledge, not the will to actually do anything.
Politicisation of science is harmful because it tends to make people suspicious of scientific studies ("is this report genuine or driven by politics?"), tends to attract non-scientists to talk about scientific issues thus fscking up everything, and in the long term is bad for a country and the world because it drives real scientists out of politicised issues, so the issue is left unsolved because of brain drain.
If a CPU computes at 100 bogomips and another one at 50, their average is 75 bogomips. Now if you add another CPU at 150 bogomips, the average becomes 100. This doesn't mean you can choose any CPU at random and hope that your application which requires 100 bogomips would run ok, because there is an one in three chance that you get the 50-bogomips CPU.
If the temperature in July in Greece is 40C and in the UK is 20C, the average is 30C. And if you take into account Arabia with a temperature of 50C, the average becomes 36C. This doesn't mean you can choose any place at random for your vacations and hope that your skin, which would burn at 38C, won't burn, because there is a two to three chance that you will find yourself in a place with a temperature over 38C.
Now if you average all temperatures across all geographical places for all months of a year and you compare two years you may find that the average has increased "only" by 1C. But if a frog wishes to choose a place in random to be teleported and live there, this doesn't mean that the frog can expect only an 1C increase: there is a significant chance that it may find itself in a geographical region or time of year in which the temperature is increased by 50C (or even decreased by 20C, it is possible to have global warming while one region is becoming colder). Therefore the poor frog dies, and people wonder how it died because of a 1C average increase in the temperature, while the truth is that the frog doesn't give a fsck about what the avergae temperature is because the only thing it cares of is the local temperature in the region it lives, which although took part in the calculation of the average could have a temperature change from -infinity to +infinity.
Never apply an average to every individual into a category. An average is a property which is valid only for a category (population), not for individuals. Individuals (members of categories or populations) have their own specific properties. For example, let's assume that by average every human on this planet has 1.8 eyes. This doesn't mean that Bob has 1.8 eyes. It means that Bob has lost one eye in the war, but many other individuals have 2 eyes, and if you count the eyes of every human on the planet you end up with a big number having 2 eyes and a small number having 1 eye while a few will have none, so the average is 1.8, something which is less than 2 but close to 2, which is the mathematical expression of the fact that most people have 2 eyes but some have 1 or none.
for me 10" is useless because it's too big for a netbook. No matter how good CPU or other components a netbook has, if it is bigger than 9" it's too big for me and therefore out of my purchasing considerations for the netbook category.
There is a problem here, in that the mobile phone network operators have a very different philosophy than computer manufacturers.
Network operators are used to sell a service, and they see the device just as a necesary evil in order to sell the service. The effect of this is that most devices they sell tend to be locked-down, not transparent to the user, and stripped off of unwanted functionality (my PDA clamshell came with lots of software, for web browsing, for email, for many things, even many things I didn't really need, except the one thing I really needed most which I had to install myself and was one of the reasons for wanting a PDA in the first place: a python interpreter that I could use to hack around while waiting in the queue in the bank).
Yet computers in the epic 1980s era always included at least a programming language as a standard offering. Literally, even users who didn't know how to program had a programming language sitting in their ROM, floppies, or hard disk, because computer manufacturers (in that era, at least) were used to sell a kind of machine which is not very useful without a programming language built-in: the general programmable computer. Many machines from that era even booted up directly into a programming environment which was inseparable from the operating system.
After the heroic epoch of 1980s, PC clones dominated the market and Microsoft (but Apple also
has to bear responsibility here) popularised a different philosophy: that the user is not supposed to know how to program and that they should be made to learn how to program in order to use a computer. Computer manufacturers started packaging computers with the idea that what they sell is not a computer per se but rather just a platform to run applications.
But even in the applications era it was easy to get into programming because, after all, the programming language could be installed as an application and used like any ordinary program. Therefore, the amateur tinkering (hacking, and I mean nothing bad by this word, it is the crackers who do bad things) spirit did not die, because those who felt the urge were able to find and set up a programming environment quickly.
At some point a great threat to the applications era appeared while the media and entertainment industry started moving into computing with technologies like the DVD: it was the combination of digital restrictions management (DRM) and treacherous computing (some people say "trusted", but one has to wonder how you can trust a computer that refuses to obey you). The philosophy of selling computers was threatened to turn from "selling application platforms" (after it was already shifted from the 1980s "selling general programmable computers") to the evil "selling platforms for specific/allowed applications only". This threat is still alive, but unfortunately now a second threat is appearing.
The second threat to the "selling platforms for applications" is, again, twofold: part of the threat comes from the rise of cloud computing, and another part from the entry of mobile telephony network operators into computing with such arrangements as bundling a netbook with a service plan. These developments threaten to change the philosophy of selling computers to "selling platforms for services". Computers will not be seen as application platforms anymore, not even as platforms for "trusted" applications. If this threat materialises, computers will be seen simply as devices needed to access a service, whether this service is mobile telephony, weather reports, stock market news, cloud-based word processing, video delivery, or email. Users in the future will forget the notion of application, just as most of them have forgot the notion of general programmable computer now. They will only know computers as windows (pun intented) that give them access to a service.
There is really no reason to believe that netbooks sold bundled with service plans by mobile phone network companies will resemble the netbooks we now know. Now they
It really surprises me that most people are so willing to pay for having the benefit to use something that is designed to keep them unaware of its inner workings. It also surprises me that most people do not feel any urge to understand the technology in their hands or hack it (I use the word "hacking" to mean something not very different than "computer programming", "amateur tinkering", or "creative customisation" always within the legal and social customs boundaries. I don't use this word to mean "illegal activities" which is the meaning of the word "cracking").
People say "I bought this", "I own this", or "this is mine". Some people seem to believe that they can own something just by buying it or being given it as a gift. That's wrong: to claim true ownership of something you need to do more than be its owner from a legal or social viewpoint.
For technological widgets like computers and mobile phones, owning a device means having full control over it and having full knowledge of its inner workings. To have full control over a device means that it must necessarily run either only free open-source software or only software written by you, and additionally all of its electronic design must be either free/open hardware designed by others or hardware designed only by you. Having full knowledge of the inner workings of a device means being possessing the full knowledge of how and why it works and all the necessary skills that are required to modify or even re-build the device. Unless all these conditions are met, when you say "I own this" you mean it in a legal or social sense and not in the hacker's sense.
I think all intelligent people should strive to attain a "hacking singularity", ie the condition that they are fully in control of and having full knowledge of the most inner workings of all the technology they use. This practically is about being able to program any device you want to be rightfully considered its owner in its machine language, and not use software instructions or electronic designs that you cannot see (open source) or modify and share (free software).
This is one of the reasons intelligent people should be in support of GPL and similar licences: right now it is impossible to attain a hacking singularity because most devices have electronic designs and software which was not meant to be modifiable by the user so it is not possible to understand, for example, how your BIOS works because it is covered by restrictive copyrights and patents, but if GPL and similar licences become the mainstream then you will be able to fully control and understand every technological widget you use. The hacker's (amateur tinkerer's) dream is a world where you can go in a shop and buy a laptop or a mobile phone and then unpack it at home and find copies of the device's electronic design blueprints and software, all licensed under the GPL or similar licence.
According to their terms of use about the "Create your own PC" activity:
[we] may freely use the User Content you submit in the design of a personal computer or netbook with no obligation to provide compensation or reimbursement to you [...] you assign to the [us] all rights, interests and titles you now possess or will possess in the future (especially the right to register patent rights)
Personally I would prefer to put my designs on my website under the GPL. Manufacturers could still get my design and build it, but I would be able to get their modifications back and further improve my design.
I'm also a Debian user, both for laptops/desktops and servers, and I love it, and I see absolutely no reason to use Ubuntu, even on the laptops and desktops. Debian works perfectly on all of my machines. Plus, I prefer to administer all of my machines via the shell rather than a GUI, especially the servers. When I want to change something I just emacs its config textfile, and for a few things I have written some bash scripts to help me. To me this is much easier than trying to decide where to click my trackball on a bloated fscking graphical menu (yeah even GNOME is bloated in some places). By the way I also prefer textfiles over interactive textmode administrative "helpers" that in the end they only make your life difficult rather than helping you.
break my ssh connections, which bittorrent always does.
Perhaps you need to check how many connections you BT client makes and whether your router can support all these connections. Just lower the number of BT connections and I believe your SSH will stay alive.
I believe that the company would make some good money if they marketed the device to hackers and encouraged them to tinker and play with it by making it customisable and the software free.
Perhaps we could invent a way to power down servers in a manner that would not cause sudden temperature changes? What about cooling the server while it's on, then warm it while it shuts down, then let it cool gradually again, and then start warming it before we go to switch it on again, and only switch on when it is already warmed? Maybe we could think of a way to keep every chip and every component in a stable temperature and only allow very gradual temp changes. Then temperature change stress would be eliminated.
Better cut all net access before thinking about encryption. Am I the only one who thinks that a lab working with stone age technologies like paper and pencils is more secure than a lab using computers?
If Microsoft were smart they would rebuild Windows as a Unix system. Unix was on its way to become the standard OS back then, but the Unix vendors engaged in the self-destroying Unix wars and Microsoft managed to make DOS the IBM PC OS. When RMS came with his free implementation and got the idea of free software in the minds of guys and gals who had never heard of that era, the Unix-like systems started conquering the world again. Guess what, Unix-like systems are again on their track to become the standard OS, everywhere, from mobile phones to supercomputers. Microsoft will soon find itself being forced to become compatible with Unix-like systems or die. If I were the Microsoft CEO now I would focus on either acquiring MacOS X or rewriting Windows as a complete and certified Unix system.
I agree 100%, it is not the landlord's job to police, and landlords are not capable to do that anyway. It's the police's job to do that. After all, how could the landlord police the tenant? they have privacy rights by law after all, so it would be impossible to know what they are doing.
A huge document, an army of highly-paid professionals, and lots of time devoted to arguing about whether hyperlinks are republications or footnotes. It's no wonder why the economy goes like this and nobody produces anything. Geez. I'd prefer to live on a planet where the humans prefer investing their time and energy in growing potatoes and assembling widgets in factories, rather than arguing about whether hyperlinks amount to republication or footnotes. I am not saying that legal professionals are not useful people, they are, but what I am saying is that we, the humanity as a whole, seem to have lost our focus on what is really important: in a sane society a case like this wouldn't even be subject to argumentation and analysis, because there are a myriad other more productive activities to spend one's time (yea like posting on slashdot!).
Slashdot Mirror
It's a battle between society and special interests
Are special interests somehow out of society? Maybe the society is nothing more than a chaotic micture of special interests warring with each other. So perhaps it is nonsense to talk about society, and perhaps one should be talking about individuals and their special interests (everyone has one). Rather than thinking about special interests as something undesirable, maybe we should just accept the sad fact that everyone has a special interest and then just try to find a way to manage and combine our interests in a way that could allow us to live in peace and relative harmony. It's just part of human nature to have interests, and it is the responsibility of civilised people to find a way to live peacefully without damaging one another's interests.
Dupe. Wake me up when someone renders a coin in emacs, that would have infinite hack value.
Yes, teaching creationism to biologists and alchemy to chemists can be very useful for helping them understand the society and the role of evidence in science, but teachers and students have limited time and this time has to be invested in the most rewarding activity, and I wonder whether teaching creationism or alchemy is more rewarding than teaching more advanced biology or chemistry. Perhaps a short introduction is ok, but too much time spent on it would be counterproductive?
failed banks that gave loans to people who deserved none
Some people say that past administrations introduced some laws that made the banks give out these loans in the first place, which implies that it's not all the banks's fault, albeit this may not automatically mean that the laws were necessarily wrong.
What good is an education if no one will pay you to use it?
You use the word education while trying to say training. Training is about professions and work. Education is about learning and opening one's mind. People get training to make other people pay them to use it, but they get education just for the sake of it.
So, training is in fact not very useful if nobody is going to pay you to use it, but education is always useful no matter the circumstances.
The worst thing that can happen to slow the solution to a human problem is its politicisation.
Politicised issues never get solved, because it is in no one's best interest to solve them: politicians earn their living by promising solutions to problems, and if they actually solve the problems that made the populace vote for them they will be out of work (unless they find another problem to solve). Therefore, a self-serving politician would never want to actually solve a problem that shifts the demographics in their favour. Of course there may be a few politicians who are enlightened and not only self-serving and may seek to really solve a problem, but the majority of them aren't so enlightened.
Unfortunately nowadays environmental issues such as global warming have been linked with politics, and this means that these issues will never be solved. One political group chooses a specific position over global warming ("it happens") and another group chooses the opposite position ("it doesn't happen"), and they just argue ad nauseum to make stupid people vote for them and keep them in their jobs so that they can continue receiving their income (official and unofficial).
Because the issue became political, it is very difficult to distinguish between science and politics now: a study saying "it happens" will be viewed as written by people supporting the political group that has chosen this position over the issue, while a study saying "it doesn't happen" will be suspected as being written by supporters of another political group. So, it became impossible to even contemplate about talking about this issue without being subjected to suspicions of people thinking in political terms. The end result is that scientists who seek not to be exposed to social stupidity shut up and the only people who talk about the issue are those who have no other interest in the issue than using it for political gain.
Environmental issues are scientific issues that should be solved by the experts in the field, the environmental scientists. It is in the university and the laboratory, not in the parliament or the senate, that we must solve our environmental issues. It is a scientific and technological issue that can be solved by developing new green technologies, and these can be developed by scientists in universities, not by old people arguing all day on television.
An issue becomes political when it involves different groups of people bearing different costs related to the management (or solution, if it's ever solved at all) of the issue. With the current technology it is difficult to solve the environmental issues without a change to a more frugal lifestyle (which is seen as a cost by most people) or slower economic growth (which is totally unacceptable to everyone on this planet, except for very few heterodox economists such as those who believe in technocracy). But I see no reason to solve environmental issues with the current, limited technology when we can develop new green technologies that would enable us to solve the environmental issues while in fact allowing us to keep our current lifestyles and most importantly creating new economic growth and new entrepreneurial opportunities as well (even for the current big players in the energy markets, so nobody would have anything to lose, it would be a win-win-win-win-win-win scenario). With new green technologies it would become possible to solve environmental issues without having to involve politicians who debate on television all day and have neither the knowledge, not the will to actually do anything.
Politicisation of science is harmful because it tends to make people suspicious of scientific studies ("is this report genuine or driven by politics?"), tends to attract non-scientists to talk about scientific issues thus fscking up everything, and in the long term is bad for a country and the world because it drives real scientists out of politicised issues, so the issue is left unsolved because of brain drain.
Maybe humans change the environment very quickly and amphibians have no time to adapt and mutate.
If a CPU computes at 100 bogomips and another one at 50, their average is 75 bogomips. Now if you add another CPU at 150 bogomips, the average becomes 100. This doesn't mean you can choose any CPU at random and hope that your application which requires 100 bogomips would run ok, because there is an one in three chance that you get the 50-bogomips CPU.
If the temperature in July in Greece is 40C and in the UK is 20C, the average is 30C. And if you take into account Arabia with a temperature of 50C, the average becomes 36C. This doesn't mean you can choose any place at random for your vacations and hope that your skin, which would burn at 38C, won't burn, because there is a two to three chance that you will find yourself in a place with a temperature over 38C.
Now if you average all temperatures across all geographical places for all months of a year and you compare two years you may find that the average has increased "only" by 1C. But if a frog wishes to choose a place in random to be teleported and live there, this doesn't mean that the frog can expect only an 1C increase: there is a significant chance that it may find itself in a geographical region or time of year in which the temperature is increased by 50C (or even decreased by 20C, it is possible to have global warming while one region is becoming colder). Therefore the poor frog dies, and people wonder how it died because of a 1C average increase in the temperature, while the truth is that the frog doesn't give a fsck about what the avergae temperature is because the only thing it cares of is the local temperature in the region it lives, which although took part in the calculation of the average could have a temperature change from -infinity to +infinity.
Never apply an average to every individual into a category. An average is a property which is valid only for a category (population), not for individuals. Individuals (members of categories or populations) have their own specific properties. For example, let's assume that by average every human on this planet has 1.8 eyes. This doesn't mean that Bob has 1.8 eyes. It means that Bob has lost one eye in the war, but many other individuals have 2 eyes, and if you count the eyes of every human on the planet you end up with a big number having 2 eyes and a small number having 1 eye while a few will have none, so the average is 1.8, something which is less than 2 but close to 2, which is the mathematical expression of the fact that most people have 2 eyes but some have 1 or none.
How do you think you would type on such a tiny PC?
Much easier than I currently type on my HTC Universal 4" clamshell PDA, and I actually do type easily on it, including hacking out Python code.
for me 10" is useless because it's too big for a netbook. No matter how good CPU or other components a netbook has, if it is bigger than 9" it's too big for me and therefore out of my purchasing considerations for the netbook category.
There is a problem here, in that the mobile phone network operators have a very different philosophy than computer manufacturers.
Network operators are used to sell a service, and they see the device just as a necesary evil in order to sell the service. The effect of this is that most devices they sell tend to be locked-down, not transparent to the user, and stripped off of unwanted functionality (my PDA clamshell came with lots of software, for web browsing, for email, for many things, even many things I didn't really need, except the one thing I really needed most which I had to install myself and was one of the reasons for wanting a PDA in the first place: a python interpreter that I could use to hack around while waiting in the queue in the bank).
Yet computers in the epic 1980s era always included at least a programming language as a standard offering. Literally, even users who didn't know how to program had a programming language sitting in their ROM, floppies, or hard disk, because computer manufacturers (in that era, at least) were used to sell a kind of machine which is not very useful without a programming language built-in: the general programmable computer. Many machines from that era even booted up directly into a programming environment which was inseparable from the operating system.
After the heroic epoch of 1980s, PC clones dominated the market and Microsoft (but Apple also has to bear responsibility here) popularised a different philosophy: that the user is not supposed to know how to program and that they should be made to learn how to program in order to use a computer. Computer manufacturers started packaging computers with the idea that what they sell is not a computer per se but rather just a platform to run applications.
But even in the applications era it was easy to get into programming because, after all, the programming language could be installed as an application and used like any ordinary program. Therefore, the amateur tinkering (hacking, and I mean nothing bad by this word, it is the crackers who do bad things) spirit did not die, because those who felt the urge were able to find and set up a programming environment quickly.
At some point a great threat to the applications era appeared while the media and entertainment industry started moving into computing with technologies like the DVD: it was the combination of digital restrictions management (DRM) and treacherous computing (some people say "trusted", but one has to wonder how you can trust a computer that refuses to obey you). The philosophy of selling computers was threatened to turn from "selling application platforms" (after it was already shifted from the 1980s "selling general programmable computers") to the evil "selling platforms for specific/allowed applications only". This threat is still alive, but unfortunately now a second threat is appearing.
The second threat to the "selling platforms for applications" is, again, twofold: part of the threat comes from the rise of cloud computing, and another part from the entry of mobile telephony network operators into computing with such arrangements as bundling a netbook with a service plan. These developments threaten to change the philosophy of selling computers to "selling platforms for services". Computers will not be seen as application platforms anymore, not even as platforms for "trusted" applications. If this threat materialises, computers will be seen simply as devices needed to access a service, whether this service is mobile telephony, weather reports, stock market news, cloud-based word processing, video delivery, or email. Users in the future will forget the notion of application, just as most of them have forgot the notion of general programmable computer now. They will only know computers as windows (pun intented) that give them access to a service.
There is really no reason to believe that netbooks sold bundled with service plans by mobile phone network companies will resemble the netbooks we now know. Now they
It really surprises me that most people are so willing to pay for having the benefit to use something that is designed to keep them unaware of its inner workings. It also surprises me that most people do not feel any urge to understand the technology in their hands or hack it (I use the word "hacking" to mean something not very different than "computer programming", "amateur tinkering", or "creative customisation" always within the legal and social customs boundaries. I don't use this word to mean "illegal activities" which is the meaning of the word "cracking").
People say "I bought this", "I own this", or "this is mine". Some people seem to believe that they can own something just by buying it or being given it as a gift. That's wrong: to claim true ownership of something you need to do more than be its owner from a legal or social viewpoint.
For technological widgets like computers and mobile phones, owning a device means having full control over it and having full knowledge of its inner workings. To have full control over a device means that it must necessarily run either only free open-source software or only software written by you, and additionally all of its electronic design must be either free/open hardware designed by others or hardware designed only by you. Having full knowledge of the inner workings of a device means being possessing the full knowledge of how and why it works and all the necessary skills that are required to modify or even re-build the device. Unless all these conditions are met, when you say "I own this" you mean it in a legal or social sense and not in the hacker's sense.
I think all intelligent people should strive to attain a "hacking singularity", ie the condition that they are fully in control of and having full knowledge of the most inner workings of all the technology they use. This practically is about being able to program any device you want to be rightfully considered its owner in its machine language, and not use software instructions or electronic designs that you cannot see (open source) or modify and share (free software).
This is one of the reasons intelligent people should be in support of GPL and similar licences: right now it is impossible to attain a hacking singularity because most devices have electronic designs and software which was not meant to be modifiable by the user so it is not possible to understand, for example, how your BIOS works because it is covered by restrictive copyrights and patents, but if GPL and similar licences become the mainstream then you will be able to fully control and understand every technological widget you use. The hacker's (amateur tinkerer's) dream is a world where you can go in a shop and buy a laptop or a mobile phone and then unpack it at home and find copies of the device's electronic design blueprints and software, all licensed under the GPL or similar licence.
According to their terms of use about the "Create your own PC" activity:
[we] may freely use the User Content you submit in the design of a personal computer or netbook with no obligation to provide compensation or reimbursement to you [...] you assign to the [us] all rights, interests and titles you now possess or will possess in the future (especially the right to register patent rights)
Personally I would prefer to put my designs on my website under the GPL. Manufacturers could still get my design and build it, but I would be able to get their modifications back and further improve my design.
Nice feature, but I think it only works with PDF? I would love to see the same with DjVu as well.
My Debian GNU/Linux also outperforms it. Every GNU/Linux and BSD system does. Nothing special about Ubuntu.
I'm also a Debian user, both for laptops/desktops and servers, and I love it, and I see absolutely no reason to use Ubuntu, even on the laptops and desktops. Debian works perfectly on all of my machines. Plus, I prefer to administer all of my machines via the shell rather than a GUI, especially the servers. When I want to change something I just emacs its config textfile, and for a few things I have written some bash scripts to help me. To me this is much easier than trying to decide where to click my trackball on a bloated fscking graphical menu (yeah even GNOME is bloated in some places). By the way I also prefer textfiles over interactive textmode administrative "helpers" that in the end they only make your life difficult rather than helping you.
Just lower the number of BT connections and I believe your SSH will stay alive.
or, to reply to my post, you could just buy a better router
break my ssh connections, which bittorrent always does.
Perhaps you need to check how many connections you BT client makes and whether your router can support all these connections. Just lower the number of BT connections and I believe your SSH will stay alive.
I believe that the company would make some good money if they marketed the device to hackers and encouraged them to tinker and play with it by making it customisable and the software free.
Perhaps we could invent a way to power down servers in a manner that would not cause sudden temperature changes? What about cooling the server while it's on, then warm it while it shuts down, then let it cool gradually again, and then start warming it before we go to switch it on again, and only switch on when it is already warmed? Maybe we could think of a way to keep every chip and every component in a stable temperature and only allow very gradual temp changes. Then temperature change stress would be eliminated.
Better cut all net access before thinking about encryption. Am I the only one who thinks that a lab working with stone age technologies like paper and pencils is more secure than a lab using computers?
If Microsoft were smart they would rebuild Windows as a Unix system. Unix was on its way to become the standard OS back then, but the Unix vendors engaged in the self-destroying Unix wars and Microsoft managed to make DOS the IBM PC OS. When RMS came with his free implementation and got the idea of free software in the minds of guys and gals who had never heard of that era, the Unix-like systems started conquering the world again. Guess what, Unix-like systems are again on their track to become the standard OS, everywhere, from mobile phones to supercomputers. Microsoft will soon find itself being forced to become compatible with Unix-like systems or die. If I were the Microsoft CEO now I would focus on either acquiring MacOS X or rewriting Windows as a complete and certified Unix system.
This thing in EU is everyday reality. Welcome to GSM, America!
I agree 100%, it is not the landlord's job to police, and landlords are not capable to do that anyway. It's the police's job to do that. After all, how could the landlord police the tenant? they have privacy rights by law after all, so it would be impossible to know what they are doing.
A huge document, an army of highly-paid professionals, and lots of time devoted to arguing about whether hyperlinks are republications or footnotes. It's no wonder why the economy goes like this and nobody produces anything. Geez. I'd prefer to live on a planet where the humans prefer investing their time and energy in growing potatoes and assembling widgets in factories, rather than arguing about whether hyperlinks amount to republication or footnotes. I am not saying that legal professionals are not useful people, they are, but what I am saying is that we, the humanity as a whole, seem to have lost our focus on what is really important: in a sane society a case like this wouldn't even be subject to argumentation and analysis, because there are a myriad other more productive activities to spend one's time (yea like posting on slashdot!).