Moreover, those incidents of using a weapon for self defense only include the act of firing on when commonly the mere sight of it will deter most criminals from continuing a burglary or assault in the home.
There is nothing quite like the sound of a pump shotgun in the dark to make anyone run like hell in the other direction. It is time tested and I keep one in the bedroom.
Numbers on gun use are very hard to determine, and studies are very contradictory. I've read studies funded by both sides of the gun lobby, and by academics and my conclusion is that both sides can skew numbers equally well. There is no national gun registry (that the gov will talk about) so numbers are hard to come by. Some generally well accepted figures include approximately 215 million people own guns. Approximately 2 million people have reported using a gun to defend themselves from a crime. Approximately 500,000 people used guns in crimes that are reported (may over count based upon one person being a repeat offender). about 20 million people buy hunting licenses every year. So given these numbers, 10% used them for hunting, 1% used them to defend themselves,.25% used them in crimes, and (assuming no overlap to make my math easy) 88.75% used them for target practice or not at all. We can assume a large number of these people keep them to use in self-defense, in case they need to overthrow the government:), to threaten their spouses, to feel like a "Big Man", to be more like their favorite rap star, to pose in front of a mirror with while saying "Are you lookin at me?", as memorabilia, or to use in the filming of a violent, american movie.
These numbers are quick and sloppy, and are only intended to give you a general idea. Different groups report vastly different numbers in both directions from the ones I have listed. I tried to use the most reliable figures I could, although some of these are just the median of all the different reports. My own personal survey indicates to me that about 90% of the people I know target practice with their guns, 75% hunt, 10% use them in self defense, 75% keep them ready to defend themselves or their home, 50% keep them in case they need to overthrow the government, 25% keep guns as memorabilia, and 0% use them to commit violent crimes or to make movies (with a great deal of overlap).
Interesting, but if you had a gun store that only sold assualt rifles and it became known to you that 90% of the rifles you sold were being used in crimes, would you still be justified in selling assault rifles?
That is a very good question. Partly it depends upon the reason why your guns are being used in crimes. If you are selling guns, in what happens to be a crime-ridden area, and you have the best prices, then no, it is not your responsibility to stop selling guns. If, on the other hand, you give out t-shirts that say, "I iced a pig with a gat from Bob's gun emporium!" you can be seen as marketing specifically to the criminal element, and trying to cater to people who will be using guns for crimes. In this case, you are knowingly trying to encourage people to commit crimes using your guns and you are probably ethically (and perhaps legally) sharing in the responsibility for those crimes.
In a perfect world, everyone would use both guns and P2P networks in an ethical and safe manner. In reality, both can be misused. Blaming the tools is foolish, but ignoring those who provide the tools with a specific goal in mind is just lying to yourself. Another important thing to note is if several gun stores existed in an area, and the majority of guns sold from all of the stores were used to commit crimes, you have a bigger problem than irresponsible gun sellers. If most people are using something in an illegal manner it is probably because there is a serious problem with either the law, or society. With guns, people should look to the causes of violence (lack of education, crippling poverty, societal glorification of violence and revenge, economic inequality, brutality from authority figures, criminalization of drug-use, etc.). With P2P one should also look at the causes (unfair copyright, price fixing, barriers to entry in the market, laws that make nonprofit sharing illegal even when the majority of people do not think it should be, technical ability to use P2P concentrated amongst young people with little money, etc.).
How would we see it? Asuming it is moving as fast as possible, would it not get here about the same time the light arrived?
Well, that is a very good point. But being as it is made up of matter, it cannot be traveling as fast as the light it is emitting. Given what we know about the movement of starts, and the amount of energy required to move at given speeds, what are the chances that it could reach us in 100 years and that we have not seen it (given decent observation of the heavens for the last 50 years).
First, for a reality check, lets be incredibly generous and say that the star is moving at 750 km/sec + directly into the orbital path of the Sun which is only going 250 km/sec for a combined speed of 1000 km/sec (ignoring relativity). The speed of light is about 300,000 km/sec. Well that is not very interesting, obviously it will have to be going much much faster to get to us with less than a 50 year lag between it and it's light.
The smallest possible star is 1.19x10^29 kg in mass. (all hydrogen without flying apart) Well, this is slashdot and I am trashed, so I'll leave the calculations of speeds and required energy to someone more sober. I'd just screw them up. If nobody comes up with something, maybe I'll tackle it in the morning:)
If you don't follow basic computer security procedures, yes.
Well lets see, we can take 4 boxes, connect them to the internet and start them up. Lets take a Windows XP SP1 box (as described, a Linux-Redhat box, a Mac OS X box, and a Mac OS 9 box. Lets assume we are an average clueless user. what happens? Well, the windows box is probably compromised and all the others are fine. Did we follow basic security procedure? Sure, we plugged them in to a network and turned them on. If your system does not start in a basically secure state, obviously it is broken. Now I know some idiot is reading this post and thinking "but but but windows is the biggest target, if other computers were as popular they would be in the same situation. " To which I say, "bullcrap." Windows XP SP1 starts out with no firewall, and with lots of random services turned on. Windows XP SP2 starts with the firewall turned on, and lots of services turned on. This is a big part of the problem. There was a pile of PHP exploits announced earlier today. Fair enough, it is a big target, just like Apache. So I'm sure everyone running Redhat and OS X is completely screwed right? Nope, because they don't run either PHP or Apache until the user decides they actually need them. So sure, some people have a possible vulnerability, but those people are the people who are actually running web servers utilizing PHP (a small subset of users). Those people also, should know to pay attention for vulnerabilities since they are running extra services.
I think other users have covered the problems with SP1's firewall pretty thoroughly by now. As far as running a firewall, that is fine as an extra layer of protection, but it should not be needed on the average desktop, because the average desktop should not have any exposed services. Other OS's do not basically require you to run as an administrator to get your software to run (as Windows does). Windows is a security disaster and I don't think adding another conflict of interest to the mix is going to help.
Your comments are well and good (mostly) from a macro perspective. Investing in and researching alternate energy is an important goal for the U.S. From the standpoint of an individual, however, economies of scale do not help me (or most Americans) to be able to afford them. Nor does it make them practically applicable for me to install. If the government decided, today, to spend 100 billion to conserve energy and reduce the environmental impact of fossil fuels, I still would not want that money going to buy solar panels around here. It could be more effectively spent in my part of the country on geothermal heat pumps or fuel cells (both of which are proven and effective). For that matter it could be better spent on replacing refrigerators. Your idea of practical is all well and good for long-term strategy, but it is not applicable now, for individuals. That is where we should be starting with this problem.
However, if the beief is so deeply rooted that it becomes part of the individual's sense of "self" or ego (i.e. the belief defines who they are), then it takes on the mantle of religion. Contextually, someone might say "I am an environmentalist" or "I am a druid," but rare, indeed is the individual who says, "I am a spinach eater."
I see your argument. I think more people in the U.S. define themselves in terms of their jobs, than in terms of their religion or politics. You hear people say "I am a republican" or "I am an accountant" as or more often than "I am a christian." That might be because they consider religion to be more personal, or more likely to provoke an unpleasant response, but I'm not at all certain that most people identify more strongly with their religion than with their political affiliation or occupation.
It may be just that most of the environmentalist with whom I interact do not use the same language as the ones you encounter. My opinion is that people can associate with, or be fanatical about, anything, but it is only a religion if there is a belief in the supernatural.
Something that could be useful in a situation like this is looking at OS X. OS X does run Framemaker (although it is getting a little long in the tooth) and is probably a better solution than trying to use Citrix. A look at when it is and is not a good idea to use a Mac OS X or other Unix compatible workstations would be very useful.
Note: I have only glanced at the book in question. If there is already such a section, well then this can be ignored.
Thermal solar heating is used effectively in Alaska above the artic circle except for the time the sun is below the horizon for months at a time, so I know the northern continental US is feasible
Thermal solar heating in Alaska requires a large surface area, and works in areas without nearly as much average cloud cover. It is really only used because of the difficulty of getting electricity and fuel a long distance across rough country. It has real problems at night though, which are mitigated by Alaska's long summer days. They use alternate methods during the winter.
Wood heat is less convenient and a bit messier, but there are high tech wood solutions.
It is commonly used, but it has it's own pollution problem, almost as bad as fuel oil. It also tends to release a lot of irritating particles into a house unless you have some pretty well made (expensive) heat exchangers.
Talk of batteries and expensive solar panels is not relevant to thermal solar heating.
...unless you want to stay warm at night too, or have the heat last through a five day blizzard.
For the same $20K, you can build a straw bale house.
I'm not familiar with straw bale construction, but I'm not at all sure it would be suitable in a wet, subarctic environment. There are a great many alternative building techniques that can be employed, if you have the time and money to build your own home. Not too many people have that much leisure time though.
When I hear rants about alternative energy, switching to solar power, or cold fusion, or microwave beams or whatever, I get very depressed. There are so many people putting so much time and effort into promoting things that are not practical right now. I'm not saying that research into them is not a good idea. Alternative energy sources should get some high priority funding, but there are so many ways energy can be conserved, right now, with a little financing. So many practical, easy to implement technologies are ignored. Take, for example, the Canadian beer fridge initiative. For chump change Canada reduced it's power consumption by instituting a program to replace old appliances. It cost less that 1% of building a new power plant and citizens get a nicer fridge out of it. That is practical. Building 50 meter by 50 meter energy solar concentrators hooked up to banks of batteries to power them at night is not practical.
I actually know someone who built such a system (only 10X10 meters), it powered all of their appliances and gave them a small profit back from the power company (a few dollars a month). The initial cost was almost 30K. They will make that back in about a thousand years. They still used wood for heating.
Why is it 80% of the people I talk to, who are interested in alternative power, seem to live on another planet, where they don't have to worry about money, or being practical?
you think they must both be basically the same thing?"
Not at all, and that is not what I wrote.
You wrote "Environmentalism (as opposed to conservation) has deteriorated into a religion." I'd say that is calling environmentalism basically the same thing as a religion.
Although environmentalism and religion are clearly not the same thing, the behavior of many "believers" inside both institutions are the same.
That is human nature. People act radically whenever dealing with a highly emotional topic. That does not make it a religion. The people of what is now the U.S. were so upset about being taxed by a king overseas, that did not care about them, or listen to their concerns that they formed an army and fought what was arguably the most powerful military in the world in order to be free from his tyranny. That does not make libertarianism a religion.
You propose that the reliance upon faith in something makes environmentalism and religion incredibly similar, but we all act on faith every day. No one has the time the experimentally determine every aspect of their environment for themselves. We all trust in the knowledge taught to us to some degree or another. I've never personally tested the theory of spatial relativity, let alone all of the physics upon which it is based. Nor have I built such equipment myself to use in such an experiment. Nonetheless I believe that the theory works, because I trust the thousands of scientists who have tested it with everything from lasers to incredibly sensitive gravity meters.
Just because people feel strongly about environmentalism, and take aspects of it on faith, I do not think it qualifies as a religion. It has no inherent belief system that relies upon the supernatural, which in my mind is the defining characteristic of a religion. I think I understand where you are coming from, but I can't say that I agree with your labels.
We need to replace our road systems with effecient electric train systems and more people need to go back to walking and biking.
That is fine and dandy for people in the city, but is not an option for the rest of the people. Where I currently live, there could be a system of trains, and there might be enough people to support it, but in many places I have lived there is no one else around for many miles and work is a forty minute drive because it is sixty miles away. There are a lot of people living in the country, many of whom make 1/3 what you do. Think of them when legislation appears that will make the cost of driving go up.
Even in northern climates, solar thermal power is more than capable of most residential space heating and water heating.
OK, I agree with much of your post but this bit is just crazy talk. In the far northern, non-coastal states we get 1/6 of a solar day's worth of energy each day, as compared to 9/10 in Arizona. We also have -20 degree nights in the winter. Solar is just not a real option here. The cost of battery banks, or other storage methods to save that much energy is ridiculous. If the government really wanted to help conserve energy they could be proactive with programs like Canada's subsidized beer fridges. Providing funds to help replace old, power hungry appliances would be a huge step forward in energy savings. Tax incentives and lending funds for installing geothermal heat pumps or fuel cells in new buildings, and near old ones could yield enormous energy savings. I can't think of many people up here in the north that would not like to have power, independent from the power grid for emergencies, but who has an extra 20-30 thousand dollars when building a house. (This isn't CA, people are poor and you can buy an old 5 bedroom house in some places for 20K.) It only makes sense as a very long term investment, and most individuals can't afford it. There is a great deal that could be done to help conserve energy, but solar power is not the low hanging fruit here.
I also notice you leave out all mention of nuclear power. Done correctly it could solve many of our problems. Done incorrectly and we will be poisoning ourselves and our groundwater. Don't rule it out.
Aside from those two points, I think you made quite a few very valid observations. Why isn't something being done? Probably because it is not affordable for most people and nothing is being done by the U.S. govt. to help the situation.
Environmentalism (as opposed to conservation) has deteriorated into a religion...Post something questioning religion (mainstream), global warming, or man's impact on the environment, then sit back and watch the zealot fireworks show.
Hmm, sounds like a huge logical fallacy to me. Because two topics incite lots of commentary and discussion you think they must both be basically the same thing? That is just weak...really weak.
Maybe both topics result in lots of posts because both are subjects that threaten people. People feel their identity is threatened by attempts to convert them to or from a religion. People feel threatened by the cataclysmic disaster they fear is looming over our heads, or they feel threatened by the financial disaster they feel is looming over our heads if we act to mitigate the first possibility. Or maybe, They are both subjects that are so often, yet so badly covered by the media that everyone has an opinion and feels compelled to voice it. Maybe because they hear so much inaccurate information in the media every day the logical part of them is bursting with a repressed desire to scream out, "SHUT UP YOU STUPID IDIOTS!!! YOU'RE IGNORANT, LYING, UNETHICAL SCUM! NOW DIE!" But, yelling that at the TV only makes the roomates exchange nervous glances and edge towards the door; so they post on/. hoping to express their ideas without scaring anyone. Or maybe it is something else completely.
I think it will stay plenty warm enough where Dick Cheney's going.
I read a lovely proof years back that used biblical references to prove that heaven is hotter than hell. Something about the vaporization point of sulfur and ether or some such. Now the translation of the bible was a bit questionable, but then it always has been.
So to summarize, in reality we don't give a shit about civilization ending events because they are about as likely as a universe or solar system ending event.
Well, their goes you credibility. Over the course of the next hundred years, I think a civilization ending event is much, much, much more likely than a solar or universe ending event. Here is a list of likely civilization ending events: meteor/comet impact, super-volcano, massive nuclear event, nano-tech runs amuck, massive oxygen or carbon dioxide reaction in the atmosphere, and massive climate disruption. Here is a list of events that could destroy our sun: hit by another star. Here is list of events that can destroy the universe:...
Do you see where I am going with this? There are lots of things that could conceivably take out all the people on the earth, but I can only think of one that would destroy the sun, and I'm pretty sure we'd notice another star coming this way from a long ways away. What are the chances that one is moving fast enough to hit us in 100 years time? Well at 100 light years range there are only a couple hundred stars so even if something was moving as fast as possible, we would see it coming from a long ways off. So maybe there is some sort of dark matter object that we can't detect, or something else completely unknown to us, but we can't really plan for something we know nothing about.
Basically, I think you are completely wrong in your estimates and given the accuracy of the numbers provided, the average person is much more likely to die of a cataclysmic event than in an airplane crash.
I have no idea, on the other hand, where the chances of a cataclysmic even come from, and his numbers for dying in an airplane crash are a little wonky. They apply only to Americans and include incidents with spacecraft and military aircraft. I have a number of questions about the numbers, but the evaluation of those numbers is sound statistics.
he poster of this parent comment is simply frustrated that Mac OS X is affected by this vuln (which I didn't know was affected until I read his comment).
I'm not sure if you mean that you did not know Mac OS X was affected, or you did not know that the parent was frustrated by this.
If you read this article, and didn't know Mac OS X is affected, well you probably haven't enabled PHP on Mac OS X.
As a previous poster pointed out, the average person's odds of dying in a plane crash are actually worse than that. According to this fact sheet from the National Safety Council, the average odds for you to die in an air or space transport accident is 1 in 4,023 over the course of your life. Of course some people are much higher or lower than this depending upon how often they fly.
It's the same sort of reason Howard Stern is moving to Sirius satellite radio. The current medium has been taken to its limit and is starting to backslide
I think you might be right about the first part, but wrong about the second. I think he is switching for the same reason as Howard Stern, but that is not because the medium has reached it's limit. It's because a bunch of powerful religious wacko idiots are trying to censor them and/or control the output for propaganda and commercial purposes. The solution, move to a medium religious wacko idiots are not concerned about, or are ignorant of.
You are talking out of your ass in order to sound authoritive.
I never claimed to be authoritative, but I am speaking from experience. I looked into publishing options for a for a work of fiction about 3 years ago. I write non-fiction for a small audience on a regular basis and am published several times a year.
all the script does is to cause cascading script errors.
You have just described the most powerful security feature of the Windows platform. There are so many incompatible versions of everything that nothing works consistently, even exploits.
Nobody is forcefully divested of their copyrights.
Nope, they are just de-facto censored. Maybe you are one of those ultra-capitalist people, but in my history/law books it says that copyright is to be legislated for the benefit of the people. Intellectual property is not the same a physical property, it is art and ideas and belongs to society. The restriction of our rights to spread that idea and art is supposed to be balanced by a benefit to society where that art/idea is preserved and eventually is given to everyone. Do you think publishers are upholding their end of the bargain? Do you think authors would do a better job of it?
Now, if this is the result of some contract that was signed in 1965, she still had 40 years to buy back the paper.
Well it turn out that was not the case. She made the deal only recently, but was deceived by the people making it. They signed her on as a consultant and asked for her input, but right after she signed, they revealed they already had a script, and then changed producers from one she thought would do a good job, to the one who actually did it. She does not seem to hold a grudge about that though, she just apologizes to her fans that it sucks so badly. Oh yeah and buy back the rights?!? Let me guess you are independently wealthy and have no idea that only obscenely rich people can afford to buy the rights to a popular work, even if they are for sale?
A statement can not be both right and wrong at the same time.
Or maybe everything is both right and wrong at the same time. You're using some pretty subjective terms here. If a cat can be both alive and dead*, then Marx can be both right and wrong.
*That a cat can be both alive and dead is only a theory based upon multiple quantum states being indicative of a finite dimension, it has not been proved....Or maybe it both has been proved and hasn't.:)
Sorry, where does Seigo's blog propose this? What does "devoting resources to other areas" mean, exactly?
In his conclusion he writes, "It's now up to us to pick our directions and to pick them carefully." Do you think he is proposing a licensing change? That is not even legal for GPL software. What would be the point? My interpretation of his blog was merely to discuss whether or not open source benefits from developing on Windows and perhaps to persuade developers not to spend their time doing so.
when there is a demand for something, either it will be ported or be written.
That is possible, but not necessarily the case. Not everyone will have the resources or ability to create a port. In some cases, I imagine the only way a port will be completed is with the help of the original author, who knows how the bloody thing works.
just because you withhold Firefox
Nor was I claiming that it would make a significant effect. I was claiming that if the community as a whole decided to avoid development on Windows, open source OS's would probably gain market share. Even just looking at Firefox, how many day-job Window's users would push for a different OS if they had to use IE? How many would push for Opera and thus increase the visible cost of operations for Windows as a whole?
Windows-based web developers would be even less likely to test their work on Firefox.
That is true in the short term. I'm by no means convinced that a significant number do so anyway. In the long term an increase in alternative OS use, would mean a decrease in IE users and more incentive for testing HTML for compliance with standards.
if the only thing you can offer is lower cost.
Are you claiming that is the only benefit of open source? Not being made and controlled by an American corporation is pretty significant one in much of the world right now, as is the free cost you mentioned. Stability and security is important to many. Ease of customization is important for both large enterprises and foreign markets. Not being tied to a single vendor, is very important to anyone who wants to be a consumer, large or small. I'm sure you can come up with a few other benefits.
...most non-technical people I know would not repartition their hard disk to try Linux.
Will they reboot with a CD in the drive? Will they buy a new system with something different pre-loaded?
LeGuin sold her TV rights instead of putting them in her will for her grandchildren. That's a pretty shiddy thing for a 72 year old woman to do if you ask me.
When did she sell her rights to the TV show? Was it two years ago, or back in the 60's when she signed away the rights to the book? The latter is implied by the fact that they wrote the script and started production before she found out they were doing it.
We have the exact same situation as revolutionary England. Publishing houses own all the copyrights, authors don't have any. You seem to assume this is because all the author's are greedy, and willing to sign anything for more money. I suspect it is because anyone who does not sign away their rights, is never heard of because they cannot get their work distributed.
If we had a fair legal system it would mandate that book copyrights cannot be transferred to organizations, only individuals and any distribution contracts would have to include royalties on all uses of the copyright. Otherwise, like most of American culture, the big companies shit on the individuals. Of course this will never happen because the laws are created by corrupt sleazebags who write laws according to the whims of those that bribe them.
It's all about using borrowed money. If you dind't[sic] have to do that, you could retain absolute control.
Well, it is partially about using borrowed money. It is also about a legal system weighted towards the wealthy and without protections for the poor. I don't know anything about Miss LeGuin's financial status when she signed away the rights to her book (and probably simultaneously any future movie or TV series rights) but I seriously doubt even with twice the money a normal publishing house spends on the procedure she could have had her books in stores and available for purchase. You see book stores order from publishers, and are largely uninterested in self-published books or independent authors. If you want to be sold in stores, you have to sign your rights away unless you are absolutely a sure thing to make a whole lot of money (See Stephen King). Even he signed with a major publisher, but since he was a sure thing and a celebrity he could get the publishers to compete for his books.
I understand your point, but I think you are wrong to think it is all about money. If you are wealthy I'm sure you could pay to get your book in stores (very very wealthy). But I doubt you can do so for anywhere near what it costs a mainstream publisher, and I doubt that you will be able to make deals with as many smaller book stores and chains.
In order to address this very imbalance, laws were written to protect the rights of some artists, notably graphic artists, unfortunately the industry works around it by requiring all art to be created as "contract work" where the idea is "legally" the publishers and you are just a contractor doing the grunt work. The system is very, very broken.
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Moreover, those incidents of using a weapon for self defense only include the act of firing on when commonly the mere sight of it will deter most criminals from continuing a burglary or assault in the home.
There is nothing quite like the sound of a pump shotgun in the dark to make anyone run like hell in the other direction. It is time tested and I keep one in the bedroom.
Numbers on gun use are very hard to determine, and studies are very contradictory. I've read studies funded by both sides of the gun lobby, and by academics and my conclusion is that both sides can skew numbers equally well. There is no national gun registry (that the gov will talk about) so numbers are hard to come by. Some generally well accepted figures include approximately 215 million people own guns. Approximately 2 million people have reported using a gun to defend themselves from a crime. Approximately 500,000 people used guns in crimes that are reported (may over count based upon one person being a repeat offender). about 20 million people buy hunting licenses every year. So given these numbers, 10% used them for hunting, 1% used them to defend themselves, .25% used them in crimes, and (assuming no overlap to make my math easy) 88.75% used them for target practice or not at all. We can assume a large number of these people keep them to use in self-defense, in case they need to overthrow the government :), to threaten their spouses, to feel like a "Big Man", to be more like their favorite rap star, to pose in front of a mirror with while saying "Are you lookin at me?", as memorabilia, or to use in the filming of a violent, american movie.
These numbers are quick and sloppy, and are only intended to give you a general idea. Different groups report vastly different numbers in both directions from the ones I have listed. I tried to use the most reliable figures I could, although some of these are just the median of all the different reports. My own personal survey indicates to me that about 90% of the people I know target practice with their guns, 75% hunt, 10% use them in self defense, 75% keep them ready to defend themselves or their home, 50% keep them in case they need to overthrow the government, 25% keep guns as memorabilia, and 0% use them to commit violent crimes or to make movies (with a great deal of overlap).
Interesting, but if you had a gun store that only sold assualt rifles and it became known to you that 90% of the rifles you sold were being used in crimes, would you still be justified in selling assault rifles?
That is a very good question. Partly it depends upon the reason why your guns are being used in crimes. If you are selling guns, in what happens to be a crime-ridden area, and you have the best prices, then no, it is not your responsibility to stop selling guns. If, on the other hand, you give out t-shirts that say, "I iced a pig with a gat from Bob's gun emporium!" you can be seen as marketing specifically to the criminal element, and trying to cater to people who will be using guns for crimes. In this case, you are knowingly trying to encourage people to commit crimes using your guns and you are probably ethically (and perhaps legally) sharing in the responsibility for those crimes.
In a perfect world, everyone would use both guns and P2P networks in an ethical and safe manner. In reality, both can be misused. Blaming the tools is foolish, but ignoring those who provide the tools with a specific goal in mind is just lying to yourself. Another important thing to note is if several gun stores existed in an area, and the majority of guns sold from all of the stores were used to commit crimes, you have a bigger problem than irresponsible gun sellers. If most people are using something in an illegal manner it is probably because there is a serious problem with either the law, or society. With guns, people should look to the causes of violence (lack of education, crippling poverty, societal glorification of violence and revenge, economic inequality, brutality from authority figures, criminalization of drug-use, etc.). With P2P one should also look at the causes (unfair copyright, price fixing, barriers to entry in the market, laws that make nonprofit sharing illegal even when the majority of people do not think it should be, technical ability to use P2P concentrated amongst young people with little money, etc.).
How would we see it? Asuming it is moving as fast as possible, would it not get here about the same time the light arrived?
Well, that is a very good point. But being as it is made up of matter, it cannot be traveling as fast as the light it is emitting. Given what we know about the movement of starts, and the amount of energy required to move at given speeds, what are the chances that it could reach us in 100 years and that we have not seen it (given decent observation of the heavens for the last 50 years).
First, for a reality check, lets be incredibly generous and say that the star is moving at 750 km/sec + directly into the orbital path of the Sun which is only going 250 km/sec for a combined speed of 1000 km/sec (ignoring relativity). The speed of light is about 300,000 km/sec. Well that is not very interesting, obviously it will have to be going much much faster to get to us with less than a 50 year lag between it and it's light.
The smallest possible star is 1.19x10^29 kg in mass. (all hydrogen without flying apart) Well, this is slashdot and I am trashed, so I'll leave the calculations of speeds and required energy to someone more sober. I'd just screw them up. If nobody comes up with something, maybe I'll tackle it in the morning :)
If you don't follow basic computer security procedures, yes.
Well lets see, we can take 4 boxes, connect them to the internet and start them up. Lets take a Windows XP SP1 box (as described, a Linux-Redhat box, a Mac OS X box, and a Mac OS 9 box. Lets assume we are an average clueless user. what happens? Well, the windows box is probably compromised and all the others are fine. Did we follow basic security procedure? Sure, we plugged them in to a network and turned them on. If your system does not start in a basically secure state, obviously it is broken. Now I know some idiot is reading this post and thinking "but but but windows is the biggest target, if other computers were as popular they would be in the same situation. " To which I say, "bullcrap." Windows XP SP1 starts out with no firewall, and with lots of random services turned on. Windows XP SP2 starts with the firewall turned on, and lots of services turned on. This is a big part of the problem. There was a pile of PHP exploits announced earlier today. Fair enough, it is a big target, just like Apache. So I'm sure everyone running Redhat and OS X is completely screwed right? Nope, because they don't run either PHP or Apache until the user decides they actually need them. So sure, some people have a possible vulnerability, but those people are the people who are actually running web servers utilizing PHP (a small subset of users). Those people also, should know to pay attention for vulnerabilities since they are running extra services.
I think other users have covered the problems with SP1's firewall pretty thoroughly by now. As far as running a firewall, that is fine as an extra layer of protection, but it should not be needed on the average desktop, because the average desktop should not have any exposed services. Other OS's do not basically require you to run as an administrator to get your software to run (as Windows does). Windows is a security disaster and I don't think adding another conflict of interest to the mix is going to help.
Your comments are well and good (mostly) from a macro perspective. Investing in and researching alternate energy is an important goal for the U.S. From the standpoint of an individual, however, economies of scale do not help me (or most Americans) to be able to afford them. Nor does it make them practically applicable for me to install. If the government decided, today, to spend 100 billion to conserve energy and reduce the environmental impact of fossil fuels, I still would not want that money going to buy solar panels around here. It could be more effectively spent in my part of the country on geothermal heat pumps or fuel cells (both of which are proven and effective). For that matter it could be better spent on replacing refrigerators. Your idea of practical is all well and good for long-term strategy, but it is not applicable now, for individuals. That is where we should be starting with this problem.
However, if the beief is so deeply rooted that it becomes part of the individual's sense of "self" or ego (i.e. the belief defines who they are), then it takes on the mantle of religion. Contextually, someone might say "I am an environmentalist" or "I am a druid," but rare, indeed is the individual who says, "I am a spinach eater."
I see your argument. I think more people in the U.S. define themselves in terms of their jobs, than in terms of their religion or politics. You hear people say "I am a republican" or "I am an accountant" as or more often than "I am a christian." That might be because they consider religion to be more personal, or more likely to provoke an unpleasant response, but I'm not at all certain that most people identify more strongly with their religion than with their political affiliation or occupation.
It may be just that most of the environmentalist with whom I interact do not use the same language as the ones you encounter. My opinion is that people can associate with, or be fanatical about, anything, but it is only a religion if there is a belief in the supernatural.
Something that could be useful in a situation like this is looking at OS X. OS X does run Framemaker (although it is getting a little long in the tooth) and is probably a better solution than trying to use Citrix. A look at when it is and is not a good idea to use a Mac OS X or other Unix compatible workstations would be very useful.
Note: I have only glanced at the book in question. If there is already such a section, well then this can be ignored.
Thermal solar heating is used effectively in Alaska above the artic circle except for the time the sun is below the horizon for months at a time, so I know the northern continental US is feasible
Thermal solar heating in Alaska requires a large surface area, and works in areas without nearly as much average cloud cover. It is really only used because of the difficulty of getting electricity and fuel a long distance across rough country. It has real problems at night though, which are mitigated by Alaska's long summer days. They use alternate methods during the winter.
Wood heat is less convenient and a bit messier, but there are high tech wood solutions.
It is commonly used, but it has it's own pollution problem, almost as bad as fuel oil. It also tends to release a lot of irritating particles into a house unless you have some pretty well made (expensive) heat exchangers.
Talk of batteries and expensive solar panels is not relevant to thermal solar heating.
...unless you want to stay warm at night too, or have the heat last through a five day blizzard.
For the same $20K, you can build a straw bale house.
I'm not familiar with straw bale construction, but I'm not at all sure it would be suitable in a wet, subarctic environment. There are a great many alternative building techniques that can be employed, if you have the time and money to build your own home. Not too many people have that much leisure time though.
When I hear rants about alternative energy, switching to solar power, or cold fusion, or microwave beams or whatever, I get very depressed. There are so many people putting so much time and effort into promoting things that are not practical right now. I'm not saying that research into them is not a good idea. Alternative energy sources should get some high priority funding, but there are so many ways energy can be conserved, right now, with a little financing. So many practical, easy to implement technologies are ignored. Take, for example, the Canadian beer fridge initiative. For chump change Canada reduced it's power consumption by instituting a program to replace old appliances. It cost less that 1% of building a new power plant and citizens get a nicer fridge out of it. That is practical. Building 50 meter by 50 meter energy solar concentrators hooked up to banks of batteries to power them at night is not practical.
I actually know someone who built such a system (only 10X10 meters), it powered all of their appliances and gave them a small profit back from the power company (a few dollars a month). The initial cost was almost 30K. They will make that back in about a thousand years. They still used wood for heating.
Why is it 80% of the people I talk to, who are interested in alternative power, seem to live on another planet, where they don't have to worry about money, or being practical?
you think they must both be basically the same thing?"
Not at all, and that is not what I wrote.
You wrote "Environmentalism (as opposed to conservation) has deteriorated into a religion." I'd say that is calling environmentalism basically the same thing as a religion.
Although environmentalism and religion are clearly not the same thing, the behavior of many "believers" inside both institutions are the same.
That is human nature. People act radically whenever dealing with a highly emotional topic. That does not make it a religion. The people of what is now the U.S. were so upset about being taxed by a king overseas, that did not care about them, or listen to their concerns that they formed an army and fought what was arguably the most powerful military in the world in order to be free from his tyranny. That does not make libertarianism a religion.
You propose that the reliance upon faith in something makes environmentalism and religion incredibly similar, but we all act on faith every day. No one has the time the experimentally determine every aspect of their environment for themselves. We all trust in the knowledge taught to us to some degree or another. I've never personally tested the theory of spatial relativity, let alone all of the physics upon which it is based. Nor have I built such equipment myself to use in such an experiment. Nonetheless I believe that the theory works, because I trust the thousands of scientists who have tested it with everything from lasers to incredibly sensitive gravity meters.
Just because people feel strongly about environmentalism, and take aspects of it on faith, I do not think it qualifies as a religion. It has no inherent belief system that relies upon the supernatural, which in my mind is the defining characteristic of a religion. I think I understand where you are coming from, but I can't say that I agree with your labels.
We need to replace our road systems with effecient electric train systems and more people need to go back to walking and biking.
That is fine and dandy for people in the city, but is not an option for the rest of the people. Where I currently live, there could be a system of trains, and there might be enough people to support it, but in many places I have lived there is no one else around for many miles and work is a forty minute drive because it is sixty miles away. There are a lot of people living in the country, many of whom make 1/3 what you do. Think of them when legislation appears that will make the cost of driving go up.
Even in northern climates, solar thermal power is more than capable of most residential space heating and water heating.
OK, I agree with much of your post but this bit is just crazy talk. In the far northern, non-coastal states we get 1/6 of a solar day's worth of energy each day, as compared to 9/10 in Arizona. We also have -20 degree nights in the winter. Solar is just not a real option here. The cost of battery banks, or other storage methods to save that much energy is ridiculous. If the government really wanted to help conserve energy they could be proactive with programs like Canada's subsidized beer fridges. Providing funds to help replace old, power hungry appliances would be a huge step forward in energy savings. Tax incentives and lending funds for installing geothermal heat pumps or fuel cells in new buildings, and near old ones could yield enormous energy savings. I can't think of many people up here in the north that would not like to have power, independent from the power grid for emergencies, but who has an extra 20-30 thousand dollars when building a house. (This isn't CA, people are poor and you can buy an old 5 bedroom house in some places for 20K.) It only makes sense as a very long term investment, and most individuals can't afford it. There is a great deal that could be done to help conserve energy, but solar power is not the low hanging fruit here.
I also notice you leave out all mention of nuclear power. Done correctly it could solve many of our problems. Done incorrectly and we will be poisoning ourselves and our groundwater. Don't rule it out.
Aside from those two points, I think you made quite a few very valid observations. Why isn't something being done? Probably because it is not affordable for most people and nothing is being done by the U.S. govt. to help the situation.
Environmentalism (as opposed to conservation) has deteriorated into a religion...Post something questioning religion (mainstream), global warming, or man's impact on the environment, then sit back and watch the zealot fireworks show.
Hmm, sounds like a huge logical fallacy to me. Because two topics incite lots of commentary and discussion you think they must both be basically the same thing? That is just weak...really weak.
Maybe both topics result in lots of posts because both are subjects that threaten people. People feel their identity is threatened by attempts to convert them to or from a religion. People feel threatened by the cataclysmic disaster they fear is looming over our heads, or they feel threatened by the financial disaster they feel is looming over our heads if we act to mitigate the first possibility. Or maybe, They are both subjects that are so often, yet so badly covered by the media that everyone has an opinion and feels compelled to voice it. Maybe because they hear so much inaccurate information in the media every day the logical part of them is bursting with a repressed desire to scream out, "SHUT UP YOU STUPID IDIOTS!!! YOU'RE IGNORANT, LYING, UNETHICAL SCUM! NOW DIE!" But, yelling that at the TV only makes the roomates exchange nervous glances and edge towards the door; so they post on /. hoping to express their ideas without scaring anyone. Or maybe it is something else completely.
I think it will stay plenty warm enough where Dick Cheney's going.
I read a lovely proof years back that used biblical references to prove that heaven is hotter than hell. Something about the vaporization point of sulfur and ether or some such. Now the translation of the bible was a bit questionable, but then it always has been.
So to summarize, in reality we don't give a shit about civilization ending events because they are about as likely as a universe or solar system ending event.
Well, their goes you credibility. Over the course of the next hundred years, I think a civilization ending event is much, much, much more likely than a solar or universe ending event. Here is a list of likely civilization ending events: meteor/comet impact, super-volcano, massive nuclear event, nano-tech runs amuck, massive oxygen or carbon dioxide reaction in the atmosphere, and massive climate disruption. Here is a list of events that could destroy our sun: hit by another star. Here is list of events that can destroy the universe:...
Do you see where I am going with this? There are lots of things that could conceivably take out all the people on the earth, but I can only think of one that would destroy the sun, and I'm pretty sure we'd notice another star coming this way from a long ways away. What are the chances that one is moving fast enough to hit us in 100 years time? Well at 100 light years range there are only a couple hundred stars so even if something was moving as fast as possible, we would see it coming from a long ways off. So maybe there is some sort of dark matter object that we can't detect, or something else completely unknown to us, but we can't really plan for something we know nothing about.
Basically, I think you are completely wrong in your estimates and given the accuracy of the numbers provided, the average person is much more likely to die of a cataclysmic event than in an airplane crash.
I have no idea, on the other hand, where the chances of a cataclysmic even come from, and his numbers for dying in an airplane crash are a little wonky. They apply only to Americans and include incidents with spacecraft and military aircraft. I have a number of questions about the numbers, but the evaluation of those numbers is sound statistics.
he poster of this parent comment is simply frustrated that Mac OS X is affected by this vuln (which I didn't know was affected until I read his comment).
I'm not sure if you mean that you did not know Mac OS X was affected, or you did not know that the parent was frustrated by this.
If you read this article, and didn't know Mac OS X is affected, well you probably haven't enabled PHP on Mac OS X.
As a previous poster pointed out, the average person's odds of dying in a plane crash are actually worse than that. According to this fact sheet from the National Safety Council, the average odds for you to die in an air or space transport accident is 1 in 4,023 over the course of your life. Of course some people are much higher or lower than this depending upon how often they fly.
It's the same sort of reason Howard Stern is moving to Sirius satellite radio. The current medium has been taken to its limit and is starting to backslide
I think you might be right about the first part, but wrong about the second. I think he is switching for the same reason as Howard Stern, but that is not because the medium has reached it's limit. It's because a bunch of powerful religious wacko idiots are trying to censor them and/or control the output for propaganda and commercial purposes. The solution, move to a medium religious wacko idiots are not concerned about, or are ignorant of.
You are talking out of your ass in order to sound authoritive.
I never claimed to be authoritative, but I am speaking from experience. I looked into publishing options for a for a work of fiction about 3 years ago. I write non-fiction for a small audience on a regular basis and am published several times a year.
all the script does is to cause cascading script errors.
You have just described the most powerful security feature of the Windows platform. There are so many incompatible versions of everything that nothing works consistently, even exploits.
Nobody is forcefully divested of their copyrights.
Nope, they are just de-facto censored. Maybe you are one of those ultra-capitalist people, but in my history/law books it says that copyright is to be legislated for the benefit of the people. Intellectual property is not the same a physical property, it is art and ideas and belongs to society. The restriction of our rights to spread that idea and art is supposed to be balanced by a benefit to society where that art/idea is preserved and eventually is given to everyone. Do you think publishers are upholding their end of the bargain? Do you think authors would do a better job of it?
Now, if this is the result of some contract that was signed in 1965, she still had 40 years to buy back the paper.
Well it turn out that was not the case. She made the deal only recently, but was deceived by the people making it. They signed her on as a consultant and asked for her input, but right after she signed, they revealed they already had a script, and then changed producers from one she thought would do a good job, to the one who actually did it. She does not seem to hold a grudge about that though, she just apologizes to her fans that it sucks so badly. Oh yeah and buy back the rights?!? Let me guess you are independently wealthy and have no idea that only obscenely rich people can afford to buy the rights to a popular work, even if they are for sale?
A statement can not be both right and wrong at the same time.
Or maybe everything is both right and wrong at the same time. You're using some pretty subjective terms here. If a cat can be both alive and dead*, then Marx can be both right and wrong.
*That a cat can be both alive and dead is only a theory based upon multiple quantum states being indicative of a finite dimension, it has not been proved. ...Or maybe it both has been proved and hasn't. :)
Sorry, where does Seigo's blog propose this? What does "devoting resources to other areas" mean, exactly?
In his conclusion he writes, "It's now up to us to pick our directions and to pick them carefully." Do you think he is proposing a licensing change? That is not even legal for GPL software. What would be the point? My interpretation of his blog was merely to discuss whether or not open source benefits from developing on Windows and perhaps to persuade developers not to spend their time doing so.
when there is a demand for something, either it will be ported or be written.
That is possible, but not necessarily the case. Not everyone will have the resources or ability to create a port. In some cases, I imagine the only way a port will be completed is with the help of the original author, who knows how the bloody thing works.
just because you withhold Firefox
Nor was I claiming that it would make a significant effect. I was claiming that if the community as a whole decided to avoid development on Windows, open source OS's would probably gain market share. Even just looking at Firefox, how many day-job Window's users would push for a different OS if they had to use IE? How many would push for Opera and thus increase the visible cost of operations for Windows as a whole?
Windows-based web developers would be even less likely to test their work on Firefox.
That is true in the short term. I'm by no means convinced that a significant number do so anyway. In the long term an increase in alternative OS use, would mean a decrease in IE users and more incentive for testing HTML for compliance with standards.
if the only thing you can offer is lower cost.
Are you claiming that is the only benefit of open source? Not being made and controlled by an American corporation is pretty significant one in much of the world right now, as is the free cost you mentioned. Stability and security is important to many. Ease of customization is important for both large enterprises and foreign markets. Not being tied to a single vendor, is very important to anyone who wants to be a consumer, large or small. I'm sure you can come up with a few other benefits.
Will they reboot with a CD in the drive? Will they buy a new system with something different pre-loaded?
LeGuin sold her TV rights instead of putting them in her will for her grandchildren. That's a pretty shiddy thing for a 72 year old woman to do if you ask me.
When did she sell her rights to the TV show? Was it two years ago, or back in the 60's when she signed away the rights to the book? The latter is implied by the fact that they wrote the script and started production before she found out they were doing it.
We have the exact same situation as revolutionary England. Publishing houses own all the copyrights, authors don't have any. You seem to assume this is because all the author's are greedy, and willing to sign anything for more money. I suspect it is because anyone who does not sign away their rights, is never heard of because they cannot get their work distributed.
If we had a fair legal system it would mandate that book copyrights cannot be transferred to organizations, only individuals and any distribution contracts would have to include royalties on all uses of the copyright. Otherwise, like most of American culture, the big companies shit on the individuals. Of course this will never happen because the laws are created by corrupt sleazebags who write laws according to the whims of those that bribe them.
It's all about using borrowed money. If you dind't[sic] have to do that, you could retain absolute control.
Well, it is partially about using borrowed money. It is also about a legal system weighted towards the wealthy and without protections for the poor. I don't know anything about Miss LeGuin's financial status when she signed away the rights to her book (and probably simultaneously any future movie or TV series rights) but I seriously doubt even with twice the money a normal publishing house spends on the procedure she could have had her books in stores and available for purchase. You see book stores order from publishers, and are largely uninterested in self-published books or independent authors. If you want to be sold in stores, you have to sign your rights away unless you are absolutely a sure thing to make a whole lot of money (See Stephen King). Even he signed with a major publisher, but since he was a sure thing and a celebrity he could get the publishers to compete for his books.
I understand your point, but I think you are wrong to think it is all about money. If you are wealthy I'm sure you could pay to get your book in stores (very very wealthy). But I doubt you can do so for anywhere near what it costs a mainstream publisher, and I doubt that you will be able to make deals with as many smaller book stores and chains.
In order to address this very imbalance, laws were written to protect the rights of some artists, notably graphic artists, unfortunately the industry works around it by requiring all art to be created as "contract work" where the idea is "legally" the publishers and you are just a contractor doing the grunt work. The system is very, very broken.