First of all, amazon.com would be stupid to have another company take care of their counting.
Second of all, eviladagency.com can't get a cooke for amazon.
Thirdly, why would EVILADAGENCY.com relase said information to the president? If they do, this is an entirely different problem.
I'm all for paranoia about the government, but if we don't look so paranoid about everything, people will take us more seriously about the things that really matter.
-nosilA
So if I am a particularly productive employee, it shouldn't matter if I spend 45 minutes in the morning viewing porn or taking drugs. I'm still a net benefit to the company.
Somewhat true, and I certainly am more productive if I take short breaks during the day and do completely non-work-related things, but there is still the issues of sexual harassment. Unless you have an office with a door that closes, you run the risk of another employee seeing you with a naked chick on your screen and filing charges. And the comany is "negligent" if they do nothing to prevent this.
So my company, where the President is the only one of 2000 employees who has a door on his office pretty much needs to have censorware. Although they have one computer that has a direct connection in the company library. But it still holds that if the company can somehow keep me from viewing pr0n without keeping me from translating press releases into English, I would be much happier.
A little story (from my old job):
I (the only female out of 7 students sharing this office) had a picture of a scantily clad woman as the background on my machine at work. My boss could care less, but he got yelled at by his boss when he walked into the office and saw this up there. She wasn't naked mind you, just wearing a bikini. My boss's response was pretty much "I don't care, but it might be a good idea if you took it down" it was stealing too much of my color map anyway, so I complied...
So it's bad reagrdless in a libaray or ISP to you - what about an office? I mean, on one hand you have no business viewing porn on company time, but on the other hand, this censorware blocks good sites too. The point that slashdot is trying to make is that if censorware is inevitable, it should at least be accurate. For example, cyberpatrol blocks babelfish.altavista.com. The company I work for is based in Germany (although English is the "official" company language) and I can't even translate german to english! I believe the reason for this is that babelfish allows you to view any site without having a chance to be blocked by a proxy, but that's still wrong.
Making better censorware ensures that companies have better options, so they don't sensor the Sussex Summer Camp or babelfish.
I cannot run cgi's from any reasonably stable/fast server, so I use digits.com to perform counting on a particular part of my personal web page. It's really neat to know how many people visit your page. However, because I think those counters are really ugly, I make it 1x1.
Sure, Digits might be gathering more stats about you than I know, but what are they going to do with it? We're not talking about the FBI who is going to track you. We're not talking about someone who has access to your credit card information or home address - it's just your IP address, and browser info. So they link it between multiple sites. They know you look at my web page and the Sarah Michelle Gellar fan page (their #7 most active site) or the Irritable Bowel Syndrome Help Group (#1 site). IT DOESN'T MATTER!
The point is there are lots of things for us to be paranoid about, but whether someone is tracking your usage habits to send you more directed spam is pretty irrelavant in the scheme of things. Besides, use a proxy server hosted by someone you know/trust. Then they get less info on your page. problem solved.
I have read over many of the posts here, and I have several comments. I have studided internet democracy, and have even written a paper about it, available here, although that paper introduces something far beyond just casting a vote thorugh the web.
A large portion of the posts are about how people who want to vote online are too lazy to actually get up and walk to the polling place. It's not about being lazy, it's about accessibility. Not all employers allow people to leave work to vote, or I was extremely sick at the time of the last election. For the events you can forsee in advance, we have mail-in absentee ballots in every state, but mailing is even *more* prone to fraud than internet voting.
The next category of posts are about how it is fraud, and as I address above, it is very easy to fake your identity at the polling place, and extremely easy to fake it through mail. The internet has the ability to make this much more secure, by using OTP or such. People trust thier banking to the internet, and most people value thier own money a lot more than the governments. (i'm not trying to start an economic argument, i'm just stating a fact)
The next category of posts say that less informed voters will vote. This is not true. Currently, many people vote who get their political news spoon-fed through MSNBC or their local nightly news. They get little information on local politicians and as such vote purely on party lines, or because their friend told them to. Access to the internet affords much greater access to information, and people would be prone to read about the candidates before clicking submit on their vote.
The final category of posts that I have witnessed is fear for anonymity. Again, the internet has much more ability to be anonymous. A system where you authenticate to one system, then vote to another, or where your id is converted into a hash value, then input into a hash table, which is then tallied at the end, or any number of other solutions can guarantee anonymnity a lot more than the guy sitting at the polling place.
Internet voting (and as i say in my paper, coupled with internet deliberation) has the ability to make societies more democratic and alleviate many of the problems with traditional voting. Of all places, I expect slashdot least to fear this technology, but to embrace it and brainstorm ways to make it work. I don't think the time has quite come, but within a few years, this is a very viable and beneficial system.
Perhaps a better analogy, that the largely republican congress would see is that of guns. One could argue that guns are used primarily to kill people, and therefore should be illegal, however there are legitimate legal uses for them, and hence they are not illegal. (That, and the whole 2nd amendment thing).
Honestly, the argument that a compiler could compile a virus or telnet could be used for hacking into a system is a pretty weak argument, as these programs are far more often used for legal purposes, but Napster is rarely used for anything but sharing copywrighed music. Saying that a compiler is wrong because it could be used to create viruses is like saying that a car is wrong because it can be used for killing people. That's neither the purpose nor the common use.
Frankly, I'd like to see napster win, but not because it's an innocent system that was used once to transfer a few illegal mp3's, but that's not the point, honest (wink, wink). I want napster to win because it has legitimate uses, and claiming the whole system is wrong because 90% of its use is illegal is like assuming that the other 10% of people are guitly, without proof. It is the responsibility of the United States to go after those who are breaking the law, not to profile lawbreakers and make the whole thing illegal. We've tried that with the Japanese during WWII, we've done that in the cities with blacks and hispanics, but it's not right.
Illegal trading of mp3's is wrong, but not *all* trading is mp3's is wrong. Go ahead and imprison the 19 year old college sophomore who has an illegal mp3 collection shared over his dorm, but don't destroy a system that allows for free distribution of great unheard of artists like Kate Rears or the other thousands of artists wanting exposure.
You are correct, this will have little baring on the US, but only because the US does not derive legal precedents from other countries. Were this a case in England, it may be different and a judge may be willing to consider this as an advisory ruling (not binding, mind you), however the US has no history in following Germany in laws, and a judge would laugh an attempt to present this out of court.
On the other hand, making copies of a book and selling those copies is very different than selling the original book. In the case of selling IP, you have purchased 1 license of the product, and can thereby sell that one licesnse. Copyright protects a book or software the exact same way, "fair use" applies to personal backup copies, but in the event that you sell the original, you must either destroy all backup copies or give them to the person you sold the original to.
There is no reason the doctrine of first sale is different here. Just as you cannot take apart a patented car and sell an exact replica, you cannot take a copywrighted software product and produce an exact replica. But you can take your used (or unused) software, book, or cd and sell it all you want.
I am not sure whether or not a copycat suit would fly in the US, but it would not fail for the same reasons you specified.
Tramont said the practice amounts to charging twice for the same product. "AOL gets money from advertisers, then money from subscribers, so they're making double on the same time," he said.
I hate to bust this wonderful anti-AOL bubble, but newspapers have been doing this for years. Same with Cable TV, if I have to watch commercials while watching that CNN i pay $50/month to watch, they are wasting my time. If you say pop-ups are worse because you have to actually do something proactive to make them go away, well it's the same as a whole page ad, where you have to turn the page.
I'm not saying this class action lawsuit will not result in victory for the class, but if it does, someone in Florida really ought to try suing a newspaper on this same precedent.
I've never heard that particular recording, but is it possible that it really is the high frequencies that are lost, anyway? The clarity of voice is extremely dependent on the high frequency components.
There are several other possibilities. Firstly, the particular encoder you use may be more even in its destruction, but most of the "better" encoders do the most damage at the high end. Secondly, the distortion may be due to a bad original recording (although it sounds like you've heard the original, and would know if that were the case), but since the voice is no doubt picked up through one of the mics intended for the piano, it would not be surprising if this was distorted through the clicks of the keys and the frequency response of that particular mic.
That said, there are lots of things lost on an MP3, it is just most obvious if you listen for high frequency components (percussion instruments are great for this) to determine if it is an MP3 or an original recording. The brightness of a high-hat is the first thing to go, and the only thing that many can hear.
This country was founded on the principle that people are stupid and need to be protected. True, back when Madison, Jefferson and Washington were framing our government, average people were less likely to be educated than today, and were more likely to be out of touch with what is going on in the rest of the world than we are. Because of things like CNN, we are better informed, but the fact still remains that most people don't really know what's going on.
Surely you went to high school. Perhaps you were in "advanced" or "gifted" classes, but remember those people who were in your gym class, and gave birth to 2 kids before graduating, and dropped out to boot. The majority of people in this country are like that!
I consider myself highly intelligent and well versed in many subjects, but I wouldn't dream of trying to mess with many of the issues that the government has to deal with every day. They have staffs to research issues for them, because noone is an expert on everything. PAC's and Interest Groups have great control because presumably they know more than the representative. But in the end, it is up to the representative to determine what is best for us.
Also, someone has to have a bigger picture in mind. One day a tax reform with the goal of aiding businesses may occur, and then the next the vote swings differently and huge pentalties are given to these same businesses in another way. Whereas the likelihood of such gridlock happening with the current system is much less. Each of us has our own issues that are important, but there are means for our voices to be heard. I've written my congressmen on multiple occasions and always have gotten a polite response, and often an explanation for his actions. I don't agree with him on many issues, but I don't expect to.
Take for instance encryption, something very near and dear to most of us. Suppose for a moment that the US really is the only country to have a certain type of encryption. Suppose again that there is a foreign government that has very weak encryption only and they are keeping secrets from us that may be extrememly hazardous (Khazikstan for example, with nuclear capabilities and weak government). Is it more important for you to be able to communicate with your friend in sweeden using the most secure method available, or for you and your family to be able to sleep in peace knowing that the US can keep a close eye on Khazikstan?
Nothing is clear cut. I put faith in my representatives to do the best job they can of keeping my best interests in mind, and if they vote "the wrong way" on some issue, it is not the end of the world. So I pay more in taxes than is fair. As long as I can vote them out of office, and know how they vote on issues, I am content.
Actually, phone companies who act as ISP's must keep separate books and encourage competition. BellAtlantic.net (or whatever phone company isp it is) has to pay fees to Bell Atlantic for providing DSL over BA's lines.
This may sound like cheating, since the money is never really changing hands, but as a (common carrier) phone company, I beleieve BA must disclose their earnings to the US government, so they can be watched for cheating like this.
I suspect that BellAtlantic.net would have to pay any taxes that any other ISP would have to pay for use of the lines.
That said, DSL isn't really a modem line, it's very different and wouldn't be effected by the same laws. Typically, DSL lines are run to the phone company, then go through some nifty equiptment at the CO, then get routed to the ISP as ISDN/T1 or some sort of PRI. So the ISP is already paying tarriffs on the lines from the ISP to the CO, hence these will not be charged as modem lines.
-Alison
Re:I'm goin' to Israel where Y6K is still 250 yrs
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9/9/99: News? Nein!
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· Score: 1
No, tomorrow night will mark the change between 5759 and 5760.
Easy way to remember this - the last digit of the gregorian year is the same as the jewish year for most of the year (9-10 months out of 12)
240 years + about 28 hours Eastern time as the time of this post.
Re:Poor excuse for a libretto clone
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New Psion Palmtop
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· Score: 1
I'm sorry, I was hasty to criticize; there was very little in the way of specs on the press release and I was going by other/.'ers comments. The libretto (and any other notebook) has a "suspend" feature which generally takes well under 30 seconds to resume. This works fine under linux as well as windows. It also seems that if you want access to "corporate data" then Windows 95/98/NT would be the ideal solution.
If you can point me to more detailed specs on the Psion, I may find myself eating my words, but it seems that right now it's too big and too expensive to be a PDA and too wimpy to compete with the libretto.
I'm assuming that you've installed linux before, on your desktop or something, so the basics aren't new to you.
Dual Boot: no problem there, Install NT first (already done I guess), use fips or Partition Magic to shrink the NT partition and create some empty space for linux, don't let linux install lilo on the mbr, instead to the beginning of the partition linux is on, then dd the bootsector to a file (dd if=/dev/hdxn of="bootsect.lin" bs=521 n=1) where x is the drive letter, n is the partition number, probably/dev/hda5)
3Com 10/100+56K I've had great luck with this card, although the modem and the ethernet won't work at the same time all that well.
Video is going to be your biggest problem, and I suggest just going out and doing a web search on altavista or something for your notebook name and linux and X or something like that. Someone probably already has a working XF86Config file for you.
Installing linux is tricky on machines with PCMCIA floppy drives, but I'm assuming this computer has a built in floppy drive, so it should be okay.
Toshiba came out with a computer as powerful as this one, the same size, but with an 850MB hard drive and it runs linux beautifully!
The size is really nice for fitting into a backpack or if space is tight, and getting used to the keyboard doesn't take much time, but it's no replacement for a real PDA (battery life, suspend time) nor for a desktop (too small to type comfortably) and the psion doesn't even have PCMCIA or anything...
They were a bit more than $1k, but you can get the 75MHz (OCable to 120) on ebay for $500... and I'm selling mine if anyone is interested (I managed to get ahold of a Sparcbook)... They have new one, the Libretto 110 for $1600 with a 233MHz processor in them.
Sure the touch screen in this Psion is cute, but if they want to compete, they are going to have to bring down the price.
Mae Ling Mak is a reasonably cute and very intelligent linux-type female. She spoke at Linux World Expo or something... if you want, some pictures are on http://www.spinster.org/my_photos.html
Honestly, I don't really get it... I mean, even if you are attracted to her, why would you want her naked and petrified if she's a smart linux hacker. Call me idealist, but I want guys to like me for my brain as much as my cute face:).
And on the topic of X-files, I like the show, but Duchovny has been putting no energy into his acting for the past few years, and he'd do well to be replaced.
I am a woman, and I'd certainly like to consider myself both beautiful and intelligent. I said in my post that I am an exception, but referred to my friend as an "english major type" to distinguish her as "not a geek" she is, in fact, a photographer.
All I was saying is that I know geek guys who date (marry) non-geek and attractive females. I'm sorry if that did not come across correctly.
It most certainly does. At least, it can help. The problem is most geeks are shy. I'm certainly more attracted to someone who knows UNIX than otherwise, but I'm not normal. I'm a geek too. Lets take a friend of mine from high school:
Blonde, Thin, Really great personality if not a tad bubbly, Pretty Intelligent, but an english major type. They met over the internet, but she's an AOL IM type... the typical woman.
She is now married to a linux devloper who is pretty cute, but not the most attractive guy in the world.
Why? He has a great future ahead of him. He wasn't too shy to pursue her, at least over the internet, and he could demonstrate a gentle intelligence. Not this "I'm better than you are" attitude that gets portrayed on/. a lot, but a willing-to-help type of intelligence. And he has an english accent, but that's just icing.
Moral of the story: captialize on the mysticism that the women on AOL have about computers. Stun them with your 'leet skillz, and you too can marry a beautiful woman.
nosilA (who does have a geek boyfriend and is quite happy)
Theaters are not bound by any law to honor the guidelines produced by the MPAA. The MPAA is a group of parents (not necessarily of children who are in the age group they are "protecting" but have had some parenting experience in the past). They produce guidelines which theaters are strongly encouraged to follow and all major theater chains enforce. They make judgement calls, not at all based in strict scientific evaluation of a movie, but in how they feel about the movie that day.
Recently the House passed a resolution to request theaters take guidelines more seriously, but this is not in any way legally enforcable. Besides, MPAA is much more concerned with sex than violence currently, and last time I checked Columbine wasn't caused by too much exposure to breasts.
The only reason theaters abide by the guidelines is that yheaters would be boycotted by conservative parent groups and Christians if they did not follow the MPAA guidelines. They would lose more money in lost revenue from them than from teenagers. But they will not be fined or sanctioned by the government in any way.
The debate over whether or not a 15 year old should be able to see South Park or American Pie is not something I want to get in to. By that age, morals have or have not been instilled in that kid, and it should be the parents' discression alone what is best for the child.
-nosilA who laughed uncontrollably during South Park and loved Eyes Wide Shut, but was quite annoyed by the end of American Pie.
The biggest difference now is that the number *and* fingerprints must be readable by LEA's and by airports, possibly some retail stores, border patrols, employers, schoosl, landlords, anyone who needs to prove you're a legal US resident for whatever reason.
Very few states require SSN's visibly anymore, although not all states inform you of the right to chooses.
Legally a state (or any other entity) can not require you to divulge your SSN.
Imagine a world where you can go to a computer store and they have the capability to check if you stole 15 cents worth of candy when you were 6.
Or more importantly, a world where just about everyone has access to everyone else's SSN's, so Tax Fraud and Credit Theft become trivial.
We already have precious little privacy and every little bit we give away takes us one step closer to 1984. We cannot simply give up just because we've already lost so much.
And we haven't lost much. It's incredibly easy in this country to invent a person. The US army thinks that a name invented to funnel junk mail by a friend of mine was a high school senior who might be interested in enlisting a few years ago.
Computing and data resources are getting to where that sort of mistake won't be possible anymore soon. That is precisely why it's becoming Orwellian.
The law does not take effect until this October, and even then the SSN does not have to be visible, it can be electronically encoded. Currently VA licenses (at least mine which expires this october) don't have any bar code or magnetic stripe on it, but that will obviously change.
(from the original law) (ii) Social security number.--Except as provided in subparagraph (B), the license or document shall contain a social security account number that can be read visually or by electronic means.
The DOT does not want SSN's to be required, the ACLU doesn't want SSN's to be required, and Congress 30 years ago didn't want SSN's to be required. Unfortunately all we need is 274 + 51 + 1 people to want it and there's nothing we can do until next November.
It is illegal for *you* to use your SSN as ID, so just refuse on the basis that the laws are contradictory.
-yeah, I'm tired too DeathB... I woke up earlier than you!
This is a comparison of unix workstations. A PC running Linux is not the same as an SGI running IRIX. Even an SGI running Linux isn't the same as an SGI running IRIX because if you can't run ProEngineer on it, what's the point?
While Linux and *BSD will run some workstation hardware, it is not the native OS on any true UNIX workstation. Besides, just because the operating system is free does not necessarily make the system cheaper. The operating system is a fairly small part of the cost of a workstation, and if it makes the system more reliable, easier to configure, or easier to get vendor support, then it more than makes up for its own price.
Don't get me wrong, I love linux and use it on most of my computers, but the Compaq Alpha with Tru64 UNIX (why'd they have to change the name anyway) on my desk is a much better CAD station than anything running Linux.
I'm an engineer, not a physicist, so I don't completely understand quantum mechanics, but from an engineering standpoint it makes sense.
In a combinatorial set of data, operations are order independent. Because of this, you can configure the quantum hardware in such a way that all of the appropriate electron jumps can happen in one clock cycle, since thousands of electron jumps can happen in less time than we can clock (we're talking femtoseconds here).
Only when operations are order dependent (1 + 2 * 3) must we be sure one thing has completed before we begin another, and this is the reason we use clock cycles. For (1 * 2 * 3 / 4) order doesn't matter.
Each operation takes a certain amount of time to complete (due to propagation delays, gate time, etc). You can't hit the next clock cycle until results have stabalized. Right now we are working to make conventional gates faster so that we can drive clocks at a higer rate. Imagine a single gate system that could do thousands of order independent operations at the "same time" (one clock cycle). So this "single operation" is really many many multiplications and divisions, but it can happen in one clock cycle.
Reviews are written by a person. People have biases. Stats lie.
As with any review, you have to read the whole thing, not just the bottom line numbers. It looks like they had it in for the Compaq and fudged the numbers to make sure it came out lowest. If you read all of text in the pdf chart and draw your own conclusions, you will be making a much more informed decision. If you read different reviews, you will make an even better decision.
You can come up with a set of benchmarks to make a Mazda Miata look better than a Ferrari F355. IT Managers are not stupid (most of the time, anyway). They look at more than one review, they look up *all* the info. It makes no sense to get your feathers all ruffled over one obviously incorrect review.
This may be a lot better than the MindCraft benchmark (please don't start a flame war over this), but it's the same kind of useless complaining. What it really comes down to when comparing UNIX workstations/OS's is what do *you* want to use it for.
Those pictures don't even begin to do the thing justice! I was there when the perpetrator (unfortunately my boyfriend) needed a band-aid. The motherboard and case are completely bent yet not cracked at all. Noone can ever say DEC didn't make solid hardware.
The highlight of it all, though, was when the police were called, because of a noise violation. Apparently (I was back in bed during this exchange) the police comiserated with my boyfriend about wanting to do the same to a computer. Gotta love those campus cops.
Slashdot Mirror
First of all, amazon.com would be stupid to have another company take care of their counting.
Second of all, eviladagency.com can't get a cooke for amazon.
Thirdly, why would EVILADAGENCY.com relase said information to the president? If they do, this is an entirely different problem.
I'm all for paranoia about the government, but if we don't look so paranoid about everything, people will take us more seriously about the things that really matter.
-nosilA
So if I am a particularly productive employee, it shouldn't matter if I spend 45 minutes in the morning viewing porn or taking drugs. I'm still a net benefit to the company.
Somewhat true, and I certainly am more productive if I take short breaks during the day and do completely non-work-related things, but there is still the issues of sexual harassment. Unless you have an office with a door that closes, you run the risk of another employee seeing you with a naked chick on your screen and filing charges. And the comany is "negligent" if they do nothing to prevent this.
So my company, where the President is the only one of 2000 employees who has a door on his office pretty much needs to have censorware. Although they have one computer that has a direct connection in the company library. But it still holds that if the company can somehow keep me from viewing pr0n without keeping me from translating press releases into English, I would be much happier.
A little story (from my old job):
I (the only female out of 7 students sharing this office) had a picture of a scantily clad woman as the background on my machine at work. My boss could care less, but he got yelled at by his boss when he walked into the office and saw this up there. She wasn't naked mind you, just wearing a bikini. My boss's response was pretty much "I don't care, but it might be a good idea if you took it down" it was stealing too much of my color map anyway, so I complied...
-nosilA
So it's bad reagrdless in a libaray or ISP to you - what about an office? I mean, on one hand you have no business viewing porn on company time, but on the other hand, this censorware blocks good sites too. The point that slashdot is trying to make is that if censorware is inevitable, it should at least be accurate. For example, cyberpatrol blocks babelfish.altavista.com. The company I work for is based in Germany (although English is the "official" company language) and I can't even translate german to english! I believe the reason for this is that babelfish allows you to view any site without having a chance to be blocked by a proxy, but that's still wrong.
Making better censorware ensures that companies have better options, so they don't sensor the Sussex Summer Camp or babelfish.
-Alison
Sure, Digits might be gathering more stats about you than I know, but what are they going to do with it? We're not talking about the FBI who is going to track you. We're not talking about someone who has access to your credit card information or home address - it's just your IP address, and browser info. So they link it between multiple sites. They know you look at my web page and the Sarah Michelle Gellar fan page (their #7 most active site) or the Irritable Bowel Syndrome Help Group (#1 site). IT DOESN'T MATTER!
The point is there are lots of things for us to be paranoid about, but whether someone is tracking your usage habits to send you more directed spam is pretty irrelavant in the scheme of things. Besides, use a proxy server hosted by someone you know/trust. Then they get less info on your page. problem solved.
-Alison
I have read over many of the posts here, and I have several comments. I have studided internet democracy, and have even written a paper about it, available here, although that paper introduces something far beyond just casting a vote thorugh the web.
A large portion of the posts are about how people who want to vote online are too lazy to actually get up and walk to the polling place. It's not about being lazy, it's about accessibility. Not all employers allow people to leave work to vote, or I was extremely sick at the time of the last election. For the events you can forsee in advance, we have mail-in absentee ballots in every state, but mailing is even *more* prone to fraud than internet voting.
The next category of posts are about how it is fraud, and as I address above, it is very easy to fake your identity at the polling place, and extremely easy to fake it through mail. The internet has the ability to make this much more secure, by using OTP or such. People trust thier banking to the internet, and most people value thier own money a lot more than the governments. (i'm not trying to start an economic argument, i'm just stating a fact)
The next category of posts say that less informed voters will vote. This is not true. Currently, many people vote who get their political news spoon-fed through MSNBC or their local nightly news. They get little information on local politicians and as such vote purely on party lines, or because their friend told them to. Access to the internet affords much greater access to information, and people would be prone to read about the candidates before clicking submit on their vote.
The final category of posts that I have witnessed is fear for anonymity. Again, the internet has much more ability to be anonymous. A system where you authenticate to one system, then vote to another, or where your id is converted into a hash value, then input into a hash table, which is then tallied at the end, or any number of other solutions can guarantee anonymnity a lot more than the guy sitting at the polling place.
Internet voting (and as i say in my paper, coupled with internet deliberation) has the ability to make societies more democratic and alleviate many of the problems with traditional voting. Of all places, I expect slashdot least to fear this technology, but to embrace it and brainstorm ways to make it work. I don't think the time has quite come, but within a few years, this is a very viable and beneficial system.
-Alison
Perhaps a better analogy, that the largely republican congress would see is that of guns. One could argue that guns are used primarily to kill people, and therefore should be illegal, however there are legitimate legal uses for them, and hence they are not illegal. (That, and the whole 2nd amendment thing).
Honestly, the argument that a compiler could compile a virus or telnet could be used for hacking into a system is a pretty weak argument, as these programs are far more often used for legal purposes, but Napster is rarely used for anything but sharing copywrighed music. Saying that a compiler is wrong because it could be used to create viruses is like saying that a car is wrong because it can be used for killing people. That's neither the purpose nor the common use.
Frankly, I'd like to see napster win, but not because it's an innocent system that was used once to transfer a few illegal mp3's, but that's not the point, honest (wink, wink). I want napster to win because it has legitimate uses, and claiming the whole system is wrong because 90% of its use is illegal is like assuming that the other 10% of people are guitly, without proof. It is the responsibility of the United States to go after those who are breaking the law, not to profile lawbreakers and make the whole thing illegal. We've tried that with the Japanese during WWII, we've done that in the cities with blacks and hispanics, but it's not right.
Illegal trading of mp3's is wrong, but not *all* trading is mp3's is wrong. Go ahead and imprison the 19 year old college sophomore who has an illegal mp3 collection shared over his dorm, but don't destroy a system that allows for free distribution of great unheard of artists like Kate Rears or the other thousands of artists wanting exposure.
-Alison
You are correct, this will have little baring on the US, but only because the US does not derive legal precedents from other countries. Were this a case in England, it may be different and a judge may be willing to consider this as an advisory ruling (not binding, mind you), however the US has no history in following Germany in laws, and a judge would laugh an attempt to present this out of court.
On the other hand, making copies of a book and selling those copies is very different than selling the original book. In the case of selling IP, you have purchased 1 license of the product, and can thereby sell that one licesnse. Copyright protects a book or software the exact same way, "fair use" applies to personal backup copies, but in the event that you sell the original, you must either destroy all backup copies or give them to the person you sold the original to.
There is no reason the doctrine of first sale is different here. Just as you cannot take apart a patented car and sell an exact replica, you cannot take a copywrighted software product and produce an exact replica. But you can take your used (or unused) software, book, or cd and sell it all you want.
I am not sure whether or not a copycat suit would fly in the US, but it would not fail for the same reasons you specified.
-Alison (not a lawyer)
Tramont said the practice amounts to charging twice for the same product. "AOL gets money from advertisers, then money from subscribers, so they're making double on the same time," he said.
I hate to bust this wonderful anti-AOL bubble, but newspapers have been doing this for years. Same with Cable TV, if I have to watch commercials while watching that CNN i pay $50/month to watch, they are wasting my time. If you say pop-ups are worse because you have to actually do something proactive to make them go away, well it's the same as a whole page ad, where you have to turn the page.
I'm not saying this class action lawsuit will not result in victory for the class, but if it does, someone in Florida really ought to try suing a newspaper on this same precedent.
-Alison
I've never heard that particular recording, but is it possible that it really is the high frequencies that are lost, anyway? The clarity of voice is extremely dependent on the high frequency components.
There are several other possibilities. Firstly, the particular encoder you use may be more even in its destruction, but most of the "better" encoders do the most damage at the high end. Secondly, the distortion may be due to a bad original recording (although it sounds like you've heard the original, and would know if that were the case), but since the voice is no doubt picked up through one of the mics intended for the piano, it would not be surprising if this was distorted through the clicks of the keys and the frequency response of that particular mic.
That said, there are lots of things lost on an MP3, it is just most obvious if you listen for high frequency components (percussion instruments are great for this) to determine if it is an MP3 or an original recording. The brightness of a high-hat is the first thing to go, and the only thing that many can hear.
-Alison
This country was founded on the principle that people are stupid and need to be protected. True, back when Madison, Jefferson and Washington were framing our government, average people were less likely to be educated than today, and were more likely to be out of touch with what is going on in the rest of the world than we are. Because of things like CNN, we are better informed, but the fact still remains that most people don't really know what's going on.
Surely you went to high school. Perhaps you were in "advanced" or "gifted" classes, but remember those people who were in your gym class, and gave birth to 2 kids before graduating, and dropped out to boot. The majority of people in this country are like that!
I consider myself highly intelligent and well versed in many subjects, but I wouldn't dream of trying to mess with many of the issues that the government has to deal with every day. They have staffs to research issues for them, because noone is an expert on everything. PAC's and Interest Groups have great control because presumably they know more than the representative. But in the end, it is up to the representative to determine what is best for us.
Also, someone has to have a bigger picture in mind. One day a tax reform with the goal of aiding businesses may occur, and then the next the vote swings differently and huge pentalties are given to these same businesses in another way. Whereas the likelihood of such gridlock happening with the current system is much less. Each of us has our own issues that are important, but there are means for our voices to be heard. I've written my congressmen on multiple occasions and always have gotten a polite response, and often an explanation for his actions. I don't agree with him on many issues, but I don't expect to.
Take for instance encryption, something very near and dear to most of us. Suppose for a moment that the US really is the only country to have a certain type of encryption. Suppose again that there is a foreign government that has very weak encryption only and they are keeping secrets from us that may be extrememly hazardous (Khazikstan for example, with nuclear capabilities and weak government). Is it more important for you to be able to communicate with your friend in sweeden using the most secure method available, or for you and your family to be able to sleep in peace knowing that the US can keep a close eye on Khazikstan?
Nothing is clear cut. I put faith in my representatives to do the best job they can of keeping my best interests in mind, and if they vote "the wrong way" on some issue, it is not the end of the world. So I pay more in taxes than is fair. As long as I can vote them out of office, and know how they vote on issues, I am content.
-nosilA
Actually, phone companies who act as ISP's must keep separate books and encourage competition. BellAtlantic.net (or whatever phone company isp it is) has to pay fees to Bell Atlantic for providing DSL over BA's lines.
This may sound like cheating, since the money is never really changing hands, but as a (common carrier) phone company, I beleieve BA must disclose their earnings to the US government, so they can be watched for cheating like this.
I suspect that BellAtlantic.net would have to pay any taxes that any other ISP would have to pay for use of the lines.
That said, DSL isn't really a modem line, it's very different and wouldn't be effected by the same laws. Typically, DSL lines are run to the phone company, then go through some nifty equiptment at the CO, then get routed to the ISP as ISDN/T1 or some sort of PRI. So the ISP is already paying tarriffs on the lines from the ISP to the CO, hence these will not be charged as modem lines.
-Alison
No, tomorrow night will mark the change between 5759 and 5760.
Easy way to remember this - the last digit of the gregorian year is the same as the jewish year for most of the year (9-10 months out of 12)
240 years + about 28 hours Eastern time as the time of this post.
I'm sorry, I was hasty to criticize; there was very little in the way of specs on the press release and I was going by other /.'ers comments.
The libretto (and any other notebook) has a "suspend" feature which generally takes well under 30 seconds to resume. This works fine under linux as well as windows. It also seems that if you want access to "corporate data" then Windows 95/98/NT would be the ideal solution.
If you can point me to more detailed specs on the Psion, I may find myself eating my words, but it seems that right now it's too big and too expensive to be a PDA and too wimpy to compete with the libretto.
-nosilA
I'm assuming that you've installed linux before, on your desktop or something, so the basics aren't new to you.
/dev/hda5)
Dual Boot: no problem there, Install NT first (already done I guess), use fips or Partition Magic to shrink the NT partition and create some empty space for linux, don't let linux install lilo on the mbr, instead to the beginning of the partition linux is on, then dd the bootsector to a file (dd if=/dev/hdxn of="bootsect.lin" bs=521 n=1) where x is the drive letter, n is the partition number, probably
3Com 10/100+56K I've had great luck with this card, although the modem and the ethernet won't work at the same time all that well.
Video is going to be your biggest problem, and I suggest just going out and doing a web search on altavista or something for your notebook name and linux and X or something like that. Someone probably already has a working XF86Config file for you.
Installing linux is tricky on machines with PCMCIA floppy drives, but I'm assuming this computer has a built in floppy drive, so it should be okay.
-nosilA
Toshiba came out with a computer as powerful as this one, the same size, but with an 850MB hard drive and it runs linux beautifully!
The size is really nice for fitting into a backpack or if space is tight, and getting used to the keyboard doesn't take much time, but it's no replacement for a real PDA (battery life, suspend time) nor for a desktop (too small to type comfortably) and the psion doesn't even have PCMCIA or anything...
They were a bit more than $1k, but you can get the 75MHz (OCable to 120) on ebay for $500... and I'm selling mine if anyone is interested (I managed to get ahold of a Sparcbook)... They have new one, the Libretto 110 for $1600 with a 233MHz processor in them.
Sure the touch screen in this Psion is cute, but if they want to compete, they are going to have to bring down the price.
Mae Ling Mak is a reasonably cute and very intelligent linux-type female. She spoke at Linux World Expo or something... if you want, some pictures are on http://www.spinster.org/my_photos.html
:).
Honestly, I don't really get it... I mean, even if you are attracted to her, why would you want her naked and petrified if she's a smart linux hacker. Call me idealist, but I want guys to like me for my brain as much as my cute face
And on the topic of X-files, I like the show, but Duchovny has been putting no energy into his acting for the past few years, and he'd do well to be replaced.
-Alison
I am a woman, and I'd certainly like to consider myself both beautiful and intelligent. I said in my post that I am an exception, but referred to my friend as an "english major type" to distinguish her as "not a geek" she is, in fact, a photographer.
All I was saying is that I know geek guys who date (marry) non-geek and attractive females. I'm sorry if that did not come across correctly.
-Alison
It most certainly does. At least, it can help. The problem is most geeks are shy. I'm certainly more attracted to someone who knows UNIX than otherwise, but I'm not normal. I'm a geek too. Lets take a friend of mine from high school:
/. a lot, but a willing-to-help type of intelligence. And he has an english accent, but that's just icing.
Blonde, Thin, Really great personality if not a tad bubbly, Pretty Intelligent, but an english major type. They met over the internet, but she's an AOL IM type... the typical woman.
She is now married to a linux devloper who is pretty cute, but not the most attractive guy in the world.
Why? He has a great future ahead of him. He wasn't too shy to pursue her, at least over the internet, and he could demonstrate a gentle intelligence. Not this "I'm better than you are" attitude that gets portrayed on
Moral of the story: captialize on the mysticism that the women on AOL have about computers. Stun them with your 'leet skillz, and you too can marry a beautiful woman.
nosilA (who does have a geek boyfriend and is quite happy)
Theaters are not bound by any law to honor the guidelines produced by the MPAA. The MPAA is a group of parents (not necessarily of children who are in the age group they are "protecting" but have had some parenting experience in the past). They produce guidelines which theaters are strongly encouraged to follow and all major theater chains enforce. They make judgement calls, not at all based in strict scientific evaluation of a movie, but in how they feel about the movie that day.
Recently the House passed a resolution to request theaters take guidelines more seriously, but this is not in any way legally enforcable. Besides, MPAA is much more concerned with sex than violence currently, and last time I checked Columbine wasn't caused by too much exposure to breasts.
The only reason theaters abide by the guidelines is that yheaters would be boycotted by conservative parent groups and Christians if they did not follow the MPAA guidelines. They would lose more money in lost revenue from them than from teenagers. But they will not be fined or sanctioned by the government in any way.
The debate over whether or not a 15 year old should be able to see South Park or American Pie is not something I want to get in to. By that age, morals have or have not been instilled in that kid, and it should be the parents' discression alone what is best for the child.
-nosilA who laughed uncontrollably during South Park and loved Eyes Wide Shut, but was quite annoyed by the end of American Pie.
The biggest difference now is that the number *and* fingerprints must be readable by LEA's and by airports, possibly some retail stores, border patrols, employers, schoosl, landlords, anyone who needs to prove you're a legal US resident for whatever reason.
Very few states require SSN's visibly anymore, although not all states inform you of the right to chooses.
Legally a state (or any other entity) can not require you to divulge your SSN.
Imagine a world where you can go to a computer store and they have the capability to check if you stole 15 cents worth of candy when you were 6.
Or more importantly, a world where just about everyone has access to everyone else's SSN's, so Tax Fraud and Credit Theft become trivial.
We already have precious little privacy and every little bit we give away takes us one step closer to 1984. We cannot simply give up just because we've already lost so much.
And we haven't lost much. It's incredibly easy in this country to invent a person. The US army thinks that a name invented to funnel junk mail by a friend of mine was a high school senior who might be interested in enlisting a few years ago.
Computing and data resources are getting to where that sort of mistake won't be possible anymore soon. That is precisely why it's becoming Orwellian.
-Alison (I'm in a paranoid mood this week anyway)
The law does not take effect until this October, and even then the SSN does not have to be visible, it can be electronically encoded. Currently VA licenses (at least mine which expires this october) don't have any bar code or magnetic stripe on it, but that will obviously change.
(from the original law)
(ii) Social security number.--Except as provided in
subparagraph (B), the license or document shall contain a
social security account number that can be read visually or
by electronic means.
The DOT does not want SSN's to be required, the ACLU doesn't want SSN's to be required, and Congress 30 years ago didn't want SSN's to be required. Unfortunately all we need is 274 + 51 + 1 people to want it and there's nothing we can do until next November.
It is illegal for *you* to use your SSN as ID, so just refuse on the basis that the laws are contradictory.
-yeah, I'm tired too DeathB... I woke up earlier than you!
This is a comparison of unix workstations. A PC running Linux is not the same as an SGI running IRIX. Even an SGI running Linux isn't the same as an SGI running IRIX because if you can't run ProEngineer on it, what's the point?
While Linux and *BSD will run some workstation hardware, it is not the native OS on any true UNIX workstation. Besides, just because the operating system is free does not necessarily make the system cheaper. The operating system is a fairly small part of the cost of a workstation, and if it makes the system more reliable, easier to configure, or easier to get vendor support, then it more than makes up for its own price.
Don't get me wrong, I love linux and use it on most of my computers, but the Compaq Alpha with Tru64 UNIX (why'd they have to change the name anyway) on my desk is a much better CAD station than anything running Linux.
-Alison
I'm an engineer, not a physicist, so I don't completely understand quantum mechanics, but from an engineering standpoint it makes sense.
:)
In a combinatorial set of data, operations are order independent. Because of this, you can configure the quantum hardware in such a way that all of the appropriate electron jumps can happen in one clock cycle, since thousands of electron jumps can happen in less time than we can clock (we're talking femtoseconds here).
Only when operations are order dependent (1 + 2 * 3) must we be sure one thing has completed before we begin another, and this is the reason we use clock cycles. For (1 * 2 * 3 / 4) order doesn't matter.
Each operation takes a certain amount of time to complete (due to propagation delays, gate time, etc). You can't hit the next clock cycle until results have stabalized. Right now we are working to make conventional gates faster so that we can drive clocks at a higer rate. Imagine a single gate system that could do thousands of order independent operations at the "same time" (one clock cycle). So this "single operation" is really many many multiplications and divisions, but it can happen in one clock cycle.
Make sense?
It doesn't to me
-Alison
Reviews are written by a person.
People have biases.
Stats lie.
As with any review, you have to read the whole thing, not just the bottom line numbers. It looks like they had it in for the Compaq and fudged the numbers to make sure it came out lowest. If you read all of text in the pdf chart and draw your own conclusions, you will be making a much more informed decision. If you read different reviews, you will make an even better decision.
You can come up with a set of benchmarks to make a Mazda Miata look better than a Ferrari F355. IT Managers are not stupid (most of the time, anyway). They look at more than one review, they look up *all* the info. It makes no sense to get your feathers all ruffled over one obviously incorrect review.
This may be a lot better than the MindCraft benchmark (please don't start a flame war over this), but it's the same kind of useless complaining. What it really comes down to when comparing UNIX workstations/OS's is what do *you* want to use it for.
-Alison (sorta bored at work if you can't tell)
Those pictures don't even begin to do the thing justice! I was there when the perpetrator (unfortunately my boyfriend) needed a band-aid. The motherboard and case are completely bent yet not cracked at all. Noone can ever say DEC didn't make solid hardware.
The highlight of it all, though, was when the police were called, because of a noise violation. Apparently (I was back in bed during this exchange) the police comiserated with my boyfriend about wanting to do the same to a computer. Gotta love those campus cops.