Yeah, I know this is a second reply to yours and probably no one will read it, but I just found something that stopped me in my tracks. Having multiple parties in a democratic society has a point of diminishing returns. My initial thinking on this is that the returns begin to diminish once you have more than three sides or parties. If each is capable of taking roughly 30% of the vote, you have a reasonable chance at finding reason and logic in society. Beyond that, the returns begin to get 'squirrely' and unpredictable. In recent months, Ron Paul has shown he has a strong message but is only getting upwards of 15% of the votes. This can be blamed on a number of reasons, but that demonstrates that in the popularity contest that elections become, there is not room for more than about 3 campaigns. The reason can be gleaned from this poll http://www.gallup.com/poll/3742/New-Poll-Gauges-Americans-General-Knowledge-Levels.aspx which shows that more people don't know that the Earth revolves around the Sun than voted for Ron Paul. When you pull the votes in 4 or 5 directions, it is simply becoming a popularity contest where someone with 30% of the vote becomes the ruling party. With even more divide in the votes, you get a ruling party built on the votes of even less people.
I don't care how you feel about that analysis, it's a scary situation. Just as alarming as a ruling elite, because the 25% that voted for the ruling party might just be the same 25% that don't know the earth is not flat!!!
Are their any sociological statisticians in the house?
Good news: This could herald a lot of good stuff, increased unemployment, greater reliance on computers, newer divides in the class strata of society, further confusion on what authority is and who controls it, as well as greater largess in the well meaning 'we are here to help' phrase department.
Bad news: After reviewing the latest in the US political scene, getting machines smarter than humans isn't going to take so much as we thought. My toaster almost qualifies now. 'You have to be smarter than the door' insults are no longer funny. Geeks will no longer be lonely. Women will have an entire new group of things to compete with. If you think math is hard now, wait till your microwave tells you that you paid too much for groceries or that you really aren't saving money in a 2 for 1 sale of things you don't need. Married men will now be third smartest things in their own homes, but will never need a doctor (bad news for doctors) since when a man opens his mouth at home to say anything there will now be a wife AND a toaster to tell him what is wrong with him.
I think that is exactly what we need in the US... more than two parties. Sure, there are more than two, but everything is fixed so that only one of the two parties can prevail without something that approaches the scale of blow back that marie antionette experienced.
There are those of us who hold out hope that the Intarwebtubetrucks will help bring on that scale of blow back, but history is a stern teacher, and bribery is addictive.
Perhaps the founding fathers had more foresight than anyone gives them credit for. That second amendment is looking more and more necessary every day.
or I wish it was that simple, then we could all chip in $10 and get D.C. flooded with the stuff. Something in Canada seems to be affecting their politics. If we could bottle it I'm certain that an American entrepreneur could make money off of it. Whatever it is, the US desperately needs some of it... well, lots of it.
I've been pleasantly surprised how the Internet has been affecting politics in the US lately, and I hope that it's a long term ongoing effect. I hope that WHATEVER it is in Canada is something that spreads southward like those geese they have, or something.
I woke up in China this morning. The place smells funny. The group went to a sporting event today, kind of exciting. Hopefully tomorrow I'll hear some music I like Goodnight
Yes, far too radical for one reason... it takes politics and money out of the equation basically.
The idea that students should be given a well rounded education has long ago been abandoned in the US. Special interest groups of EVERY kind have wheedled their way into the education system for various reasons, none of which are more than superficially sane.
The idea that schooling should prepare you for life died when an 8th grade education stopped being something to be proud of.
Now, you need a college degree and 3-5 years experience in any topic (without regard to whether it has been in existence that long or not) to even get an interview. No, America has given up on doing things a sensible way when it comes to education. I'm pretty certain that home schooling supporters have a very valid argument.
It's better to make sure they pass the tests rather than test to ensure they are prepared for life. How many school systems mandate teaching of how to balance your bank book? How many teach students about buying houses? How many students know something about Insurance? How many college graduates know how to budget their money?
Mandating anything for the school system curriculum on a political basis is like mandating how businesses should operate based on religious issues. There is a little overlap to each party, but neither should make mandate on the other really. When they do, the law of unintended consequences is bound to bite someone in the ass, and more often than not, the bitten are the students, and later the communities that they live in.
Global warming is a SCIENCE issue, not a political one. The politics of it is whether your politicians listen to scientists or not. Evolution is a SCIENCE issue, not a political one. The politics of it is whether your politicians base their decisions on religion or cold hard reason.
The US Government of the people, for the people, by the people should only mandate that politics, religion, and science be separate things where education is concerned EXCEPT for explain how the first two totally fuck up the third.
anything like fair? Sure, all MS has to do is either make their products better than anyone else's or scare everyone from investing in a competitor's business and products. Either one will result in Microsoft's favor.
Business-wise, since Google isn't going to suddenly lose market-share it is necessary to gain market share, either by purchasing it, or causing your own product to gain market share.
Some very large corporations in North America have been found guilty of this same type of practice. With all the MS bashing on/. this should come as no surprise AT ALL.
Whether they actually buy Yahoo or not, MS wins in the business side.
Sure, to the average joe it is hard to see the win, but if Yahoo loses revenues MS will begin to take them (what Google doesn't get anyway). In the business of becoming the largest in your field of endeavor having better products/services than your competition is only marginally more important (if at all) than your competitor being worse than you at the game of business. We all know that MS is very successful at business, not so much so at creating innovative products and services.
If you outlaw guns, only outlaws will have guns. If you block or filter the internet, only outlaws will have porn. If you... wait, that means I'll have to become an outlaw... kewl!!
Talking to a person that is not present requires more concentration as you lose out on all the visual clues that are absorbed during a discussion.
On top of that, many people CANNOT talk without using their hands. This is a direct conflict with driving, which requires use of at least one hand (for normal people). Yes, I have seen people driving down the road, with a headset on, AND talking with both hands... at this rate I believe that it is an activity which should get its own subcategory rank in the Darwin Awards runner's up list.
Indeed, and the MSM are 'supposedly' the trustworthy media... but the only people that trust them are the ones that are feeding them the propaganda that they, the MSM, 'produce'.
My point was vaguely to say that perhaps if MSM became trustworthy enough to garner actual readership value maybe their ad business wouldn't need to compete with Google et al.
One one hand, the last thing that my life needs is more sources of advertising to clutter life up.
On the other hand is a glove... wait.. No, on the other hand is the fact that this creates competition in the online advertising arena. I had not thought that to be a problem before, but so it goes. Let them at it. It will either help keep print media afloat a bit longer or send them down the toilet that much faster.
Personally, I'm all for having a bit more competition in the op-ed and fact-checking areas of mainstream media... MAYBE... and I'm only saying MAYBE one of the MSM outlets will attempt to keep themselves alive and relevant by becoming a TRUSTWORTHY source of news...
I'm sure I'll wake up soon and wonder what this dream was all about, so go back to your regularly scheduled programming. Have you ever wondered why they didn't just say program? or show? or entertainment?
This new material will help make some shocking fashion statements, with the magnetic-like catwalk attracting Wired magazine to cover the gadget couture.
Sure to be a winner in Paris is the Jarvik pacemaker clothing line, followed with a grammy for the iJacket from Apple.
It's predicted that by the 2010 games, an additional $200 Billion will be spent on security scanners due to increased requirements from nano-clothing.
The **AA have jointly endorsed scanners at concerts and other creative media events to prevent clothing recorders from illegally observing the events.
In related news, Symantec has issued a code red bulletin for _myNAN-oh.A worm. This virus is spreading by contact with USB thumb drives and infected nano-clothing.
For more on this story and others, turn your tv-jacket inside out and press play, after this word from our sponsor: NanoSoft
I have to agree... The universities should be acting as common carriers, no matter how involved they are in the lives of the students. The school's infrastructure should be seen as no different under the law than and ISP's infrastructure. With judicial review of the legal actions, it is as fair as it will ever get under the current system. I feel confident that there is a way to structure their Internet services so as to qualify as common carrier-ish.
I hope that the student's lawyer is better than good.
That said, there is little outside the Terms of Service an ISP can do to stop each individual from acting as a common carrier. If you open your WiFi for all to use, current trends are to hold you responsible for how the Internet is used. Emphasis is put on filtering/regulation rather than individual's use of the services.
I was going to think of a car analogy, but water is a better likeness here. If you get your water from the city, and let your neighbors use it, are you responsible for them watering their lawns outside of prescribed watering hours? The basic legal interpretation of what Internet access is, is being treated the wrong way, or thought of in the wrong way.
Access to weapons does not make you a killer. Access to P2P sites does not make you a copyright thief. Selling guns that get used in bank robberies or murders don't make the manufacturer guilty of said crimes.
If all students were on WiFi connections, each infringement issue would involve possibly hundreds of students. While that sounds like I'm supporting wild flouting of the law, it's not. I simply do not support the way the law has been used to harass and bludgeon citizens for nothing more substantial than supporting the failed and woefully unrepentant business model of greedy bastards who mistreat customers and clients alike.
Actually, yes, sort of. One that has installed 5.10 with a full SAMP stack without building everything locally on the machine. I'm near to the point of just building one set for the 250s and one set for the 450s by hand and using that. I had hoped that it was easier than doing things the gentoo method.
I'm not dissing Solaris by the way, it's rock solid. I've got 5.8 boxes with years of uptime and zero complaints. It's the upgrade that is killing me. I have a need to move away from 32-bit hardware, into 64-bit software, and away from proprietary. The coming recession makes it necessary to eliminate some $1 million in licenses. Even paying $100/year in donations per box/app is pittance compared to Oracle licences, never mind OS and new hardware costs.
In the beginning I saw Linux as a kind of 'hey, this will work too' kind of thing. Then it was "hey, look... it's like a baby Unix" Then "wow, it's actually usable if you don't need tight compatibility with MS. Now... there are 5 different ways that I personally can use MY computers as I see fit. I'm only talking about flavors of GNU/Linux here. Each of them has free apps that are all compatible, more or less. Each of them is comparable to Windows. Each of them will work for many users, all save those few who use apps that will ONLY work on Windows or Mac. Each of them is fairly user friendly, and I mean that in the same way that managing an XP install is user friendly for your average user. (I don't care whose coolaid you drink, Windows set a fairly low standard for user friendliness in terms of how many people can actually manage a windows system out of the box... Think I'm wrong? then explain Geek Squad and other businesses like it)
Right now, it is EASIER to get and install GNU/Linux than MS Windows. The applications work as good or better 90% of the time on a strict is-it-as-good-as-windows scale, which I think is a bogus way to compare them anyway. If you have ever had to teach your parent/uncle/friend how to use e-mail then you KNOW it would not matter what OS they used.
Being able to say, hey, I want to throw a new motherboard in that case, move it to the upstairs family room, add a video tuner, blah blah blah... you are only dreaming unless you have a licensed but unused copy of Windows hanging around.. UNLESS you are using one of the other choices for OS.
Personally, based on inconvenience alone, I will never use windows again by choice.
The *REAL* reason for space exploration. Never mind the bragging rights for planting silly flags on the moon, or trying to figure out how the planets were formed, or searching for extraterrestrial signs of life... NO, goddamnit, we need to go to space to save the big auto industry.
On a lighter note, DeBeers has already filed mineral rights claims on all non-gaseous planets. Exxon's space programs is getting ready to launch the 'FuckChavez' space probe, and Saturn is gearing up the ad machine while Nissan's marketing department is trying to get a new space-age logo for their truck line. Russia is preparing to launch a pre-emptive nuclear strike on the USA's Titan oil fields to protect earth based business interests and CNN is quoting Rudy G as saying "If we had had that on 9/11, the terrorists would never have attacked MY New York."
Seriously, what we need is not more hydrocarbons. We need clean fuel, and renewable clean fuel at that.
There are 500 or more better reasons to be in space and exploring it... feeding your SUV isn't one of them.
g1zmo, I'm more than happy to accommodate in the hopes someone has a really fine website to show me where I'm wrong. I'm just really getting started on a process of upgrading a truckload of Sun E-250s and E-450s from Solaris 5.8. I'm starting out by building Solaris 10 on several boxes in hopes of creating a repeatable and stable SAMP build for the Ultrasparc architecture. Most of the code I handle at work is shell scripts and PERL. We use some Oracle but are switching to MySQL at the same time here. Yeah, I know that is no good, but it has been decreed. What I want to end up with is a fully patched 5.10 system with Apache2, MySQL-64bit, Perl 5.8.8 with threads, and NOT have to build everything locally. I'm almost to the point of giving up on that.
Right now, efforts are concentrated on the CSKcooltools off the Sun site. I've tried minimal OS installs to full OEM and the CSK stack. In all cases I end up with a number of dependency issues, library path issues or a combination that leads to what seems worse. Trying to fill in the holes with pkg-get (sunfreeware.com) and CPAN leads to more stress. The gcc-3.4.3 ships with one release and 3.4.5 ships with another release. Pkg-get upgrades to 3.4.6 and so far this is a don't-do-it upgrade. I've about given up on the Solaris shipped gcc and perl setups.
I KNOW that someone somewhere has a list of packages built or list of installed binary versions to use as a guide... I just have not found it yet. I'm running low on aspirin. I just need that golden map.
On RHEL? Not built with RHEL, but have on Fedora. The binary installs are all built with compatible development kits it seems, so binary package installs don't argue with one another. Just seems easy. If pkg-get worked out as well as yum in this process, I'd be VERY happy.
Truly, I just want a command line to type in and be done, even if I know that is probably not going to be the final method. Trying to get to a 'here is the shell script' for an install point is really eating into my preventive medicine budget.
You might have understated that. MySQL, Innotek, OpenSparc, OpenSolaris and other efforts, they may soon play a dominating role in the computing world that MS can only look at with envy.
Even if it is mostly open or F/OSS, it still leaves MS with nothing to offer. Business, small and large will look at F/OSS software that is not only backed by a large OS maker, but also a large hardware maker with just as much desire as they do to MS now. Sun has been stacking the deck in their favor for quite some time and it's starting to look like a royal flush in there.
Sure, you can quibble over the value of various items in Sun's stable, but it's nearly a complete stable. Not much of it, if any, is anywhere near as repulsive as Vista.
Sun has opened their hardware (ish), opened the OS to enable use on different (reasonably priced) hardware, and are now picking up the applications that most businesses want to use, can use, or are already using.
If IBM scared MS, they should now be afraid of Sun too.
My point: MS is not the only 'we do it all' software house in the game. Sun is going from losing ground like a sieve to becoming a player that will upset MS's applecart.
Yes, I wish the Solaris 10 SAMP stack was easier to work with, but it does work, and is getting better. It will be an alternative to RedHat and roll-your-own F/OSS, and will be another place to get support for your entire data center buildout. That means IBM **AND** Sun will both be in a position to outsell MS in the data center. Soon after that... well, lets just say I look forward to the MS good-bye party.
As noted, this has been covered before. If you are not doing your best to segment your network for security reasons, then you probably deserve to learn about this one the hard way. EVERYTHING now has the smarts/hardware to launch/spread/spawn a virus attack on your network. Every day I get one or two messages about this and mobile computing being the 'number one' threat to our networks.
FerCrissakes, every USB stick has that ability if you have not done your work/research etc.
But still, by far, the most dangerous thing on your network is the end user(s)...
That's life, it's the way the cookie crumbles, and it's how you're going to lose brownie points with the PHB at work.
Treaties be damned. The question is why should any country outside the US care about a US based business, and it's legal needs?
Clearly there is a solution to this copyright problem for the **AA. STOP selling music to Canadians. If they do that then any of their music in the country is obviously copyrighted and we can all then see just how big a problem it is.
Now, while you are laughing at the suggestion, ask yourself why they won't do that. And then ask again because that is the real problem. They are using the law to try to force people to buy their product without producing any realistic evidence of need for the law in the first place.
Drawn and quartered used to be a good plan for such people, although the French did fairly well on Bastille Day with a little thing with a razor blade in it.
I'm not suggesting anarchy in the streets, but as the English would say I do suggest anarchy in the High Street. In the words of some of the first Americans, and perhaps soon the words of Anonymous; "Don't Tread On Me."
Clearly the ONLY thing that will stop the **AA is if they are starved out of business. Mr Boycott had no clue what he was starting and I think it is time that we start him spinning in his grave with regard to the **AA.
All the usual links apply for where and how to avoid giving the **AA money.
So, yeah I'm not holding my breath, but this is a small sign of progress. I'm reasonably certain that is what some of the Jews in Germany said about the new Jewish ID badge they were given.
Yeah, yeah, I know it's a real stretch to compare the two, but I'm still waiting to see what the penalties are that come with use of the device/service. A gilded cage is still a cage.
Apparently nobody with power has been listening at the **AA, not even a little bit. I couldn't even work up a yawn for this new service, never mind enough excitement to contemplate what missing features will be on the phone and what 'extra' goodies will be there to track my every move or some attempt at that.
the results of such technology. It's called Science Fiction. Remember 'Minority Report'? It and stories like it are proof that any 'infallible or ingeniously indispensable technology can be both wrong or misused.
Moral of the story here is that any theft-proof or idiot-proof identification method remains so only as long has it has never been tested against either.
The second thing to go wrong with this type of technology is that someone will copyright their retina pattern and there will be copyright disputes as to who owns what all over again.
Slashdot Mirror
You insensitive clod - quote from my wife's tampon dispenser
Yeah, I know this is a second reply to yours and probably no one will read it, but I just found something that stopped me in my tracks. Having multiple parties in a democratic society has a point of diminishing returns. My initial thinking on this is that the returns begin to diminish once you have more than three sides or parties. If each is capable of taking roughly 30% of the vote, you have a reasonable chance at finding reason and logic in society. Beyond that, the returns begin to get 'squirrely' and unpredictable. In recent months, Ron Paul has shown he has a strong message but is only getting upwards of 15% of the votes. This can be blamed on a number of reasons, but that demonstrates that in the popularity contest that elections become, there is not room for more than about 3 campaigns. The reason can be gleaned from this poll http://www.gallup.com/poll/3742/New-Poll-Gauges-Americans-General-Knowledge-Levels.aspx which shows that more people don't know that the Earth revolves around the Sun than voted for Ron Paul. When you pull the votes in 4 or 5 directions, it is simply becoming a popularity contest where someone with 30% of the vote becomes the ruling party. With even more divide in the votes, you get a ruling party built on the votes of even less people.
I don't care how you feel about that analysis, it's a scary situation. Just as alarming as a ruling elite, because the 25% that voted for the ruling party might just be the same 25% that don't know the earth is not flat!!!
Are their any sociological statisticians in the house?
Does anyone have another take on this?
Good news: This could herald a lot of good stuff, increased unemployment, greater reliance on computers, newer divides in the class strata of society, further confusion on what authority is and who controls it, as well as greater largess in the well meaning 'we are here to help' phrase department.
Bad news: After reviewing the latest in the US political scene, getting machines smarter than humans isn't going to take so much as we thought. My toaster almost qualifies now. 'You have to be smarter than the door' insults are no longer funny. Geeks will no longer be lonely. Women will have an entire new group of things to compete with. If you think math is hard now, wait till your microwave tells you that you paid too much for groceries or that you really aren't saving money in a 2 for 1 sale of things you don't need. Married men will now be third smartest things in their own homes, but will never need a doctor (bad news for doctors) since when a man opens his mouth at home to say anything there will now be a wife AND a toaster to tell him what is wrong with him.
oh god, this list goes on and on.
I think that is exactly what we need in the US... more than two parties. Sure, there are more than two, but everything is fixed so that only one of the two parties can prevail without something that approaches the scale of blow back that marie antionette experienced.
There are those of us who hold out hope that the Intarwebtubetrucks will help bring on that scale of blow back, but history is a stern teacher, and bribery is addictive.
Perhaps the founding fathers had more foresight than anyone gives them credit for. That second amendment is looking more and more necessary every day.
or I wish it was that simple, then we could all chip in $10 and get D.C. flooded with the stuff. Something in Canada seems to be affecting their politics. If we could bottle it I'm certain that an American entrepreneur could make money off of it. Whatever it is, the US desperately needs some of it... well, lots of it.
I've been pleasantly surprised how the Internet has been affecting politics in the US lately, and I hope that it's a long term ongoing effect. I hope that WHATEVER it is in Canada is something that spreads southward like those geese they have, or something.
I woke up in China this morning. The place smells funny.
The group went to a sporting event today, kind of exciting.
Hopefully tomorrow I'll hear some music I like
Goodnight
Yes, far too radical for one reason... it takes politics and money out of the equation basically.
The idea that students should be given a well rounded education has long ago been abandoned in the US. Special interest groups of EVERY kind have wheedled their way into the education system for various reasons, none of which are more than superficially sane.
The idea that schooling should prepare you for life died when an 8th grade education stopped being something to be proud of.
Now, you need a college degree and 3-5 years experience in any topic (without regard to whether it has been in existence that long or not) to even get an interview. No, America has given up on doing things a sensible way when it comes to education. I'm pretty certain that home schooling supporters have a very valid argument.
It's better to make sure they pass the tests rather than test to ensure they are prepared for life. How many school systems mandate teaching of how to balance your bank book? How many teach students about buying houses? How many students know something about Insurance? How many college graduates know how to budget their money?
Mandating anything for the school system curriculum on a political basis is like mandating how businesses should operate based on religious issues. There is a little overlap to each party, but neither should make mandate on the other really. When they do, the law of unintended consequences is bound to bite someone in the ass, and more often than not, the bitten are the students, and later the communities that they live in.
Global warming is a SCIENCE issue, not a political one. The politics of it is whether your politicians listen to scientists or not.
Evolution is a SCIENCE issue, not a political one. The politics of it is whether your politicians base their decisions on religion or cold hard reason.
The US Government of the people, for the people, by the people should only mandate that politics, religion, and science be separate things where education is concerned EXCEPT for explain how the first two totally fuck up the third.
anything like fair?
/. this should come as no surprise AT ALL.
Sure, all MS has to do is either make their products better than anyone else's or scare everyone from investing in a competitor's business and products. Either one will result in Microsoft's favor.
Business-wise, since Google isn't going to suddenly lose market-share it is necessary to gain market share, either by purchasing it, or causing your own product to gain market share.
Some very large corporations in North America have been found guilty of this same type of practice. With all the MS bashing on
Whether they actually buy Yahoo or not, MS wins in the business side.
Sure, to the average joe it is hard to see the win, but if Yahoo loses revenues MS will begin to take them (what Google doesn't get anyway). In the business of becoming the largest in your field of endeavor having better products/services than your competition is only marginally more important (if at all) than your competitor being worse than you at the game of business. We all know that MS is very successful at business, not so much so at creating innovative products and services.
EXACTLY!
... wait, that means I'll have to become an outlaw... kewl!!
If you outlaw guns, only outlaws will have guns.
If you block or filter the internet, only outlaws will have porn.
If you
Talking to a person that is not present requires more concentration as you lose out on all the visual clues that are absorbed during a discussion.
On top of that, many people CANNOT talk without using their hands. This is a direct conflict with driving, which requires use of at least one hand (for normal people). Yes, I have seen people driving down the road, with a headset on, AND talking with both hands... at this rate I believe that it is an activity which should get its own subcategory rank in the Darwin Awards runner's up list.
Indeed, and the MSM are 'supposedly' the trustworthy media... but the only people that trust them are the ones that are feeding them the propaganda that they, the MSM, 'produce'.
My point was vaguely to say that perhaps if MSM became trustworthy enough to garner actual readership value maybe their ad business wouldn't need to compete with Google et al.
One one hand, the last thing that my life needs is more sources of advertising to clutter life up.
On the other hand is a glove... wait..
No, on the other hand is the fact that this creates competition in the online advertising arena. I had not thought that to be a problem before, but so it goes. Let them at it. It will either help keep print media afloat a bit longer or send them down the toilet that much faster.
Personally, I'm all for having a bit more competition in the op-ed and fact-checking areas of mainstream media... MAYBE... and I'm only saying MAYBE one of the MSM outlets will attempt to keep themselves alive and relevant by becoming a TRUSTWORTHY source of news...
I'm sure I'll wake up soon and wonder what this dream was all about, so go back to your regularly scheduled programming. Have you ever wondered why they didn't just say program? or show? or entertainment?
Freudian slip perhaps?
This new material will help make some shocking fashion statements, with the magnetic-like catwalk attracting Wired magazine to cover the gadget couture.
Sure to be a winner in Paris is the Jarvik pacemaker clothing line, followed with a grammy for the iJacket from Apple.
It's predicted that by the 2010 games, an additional $200 Billion will be spent on security scanners due to increased requirements from nano-clothing.
The **AA have jointly endorsed scanners at concerts and other creative media events to prevent clothing recorders from illegally observing the events.
In related news, Symantec has issued a code red bulletin for _myNAN-oh.A worm. This virus is spreading by contact with USB thumb drives and infected nano-clothing.
For more on this story and others, turn your tv-jacket inside out and press play, after this word from our sponsor: NanoSoft
I have to agree... The universities should be acting as common carriers, no matter how involved they are in the lives of the students. The school's infrastructure should be seen as no different under the law than and ISP's infrastructure. With judicial review of the legal actions, it is as fair as it will ever get under the current system. I feel confident that there is a way to structure their Internet services so as to qualify as common carrier-ish.
I hope that the student's lawyer is better than good.
That said, there is little outside the Terms of Service an ISP can do to stop each individual from acting as a common carrier. If you open your WiFi for all to use, current trends are to hold you responsible for how the Internet is used. Emphasis is put on filtering/regulation rather than individual's use of the services.
I was going to think of a car analogy, but water is a better likeness here. If you get your water from the city, and let your neighbors use it, are you responsible for them watering their lawns outside of prescribed watering hours? The basic legal interpretation of what Internet access is, is being treated the wrong way, or thought of in the wrong way.
Access to weapons does not make you a killer. Access to P2P sites does not make you a copyright thief. Selling guns that get used in bank robberies or murders don't make the manufacturer guilty of said crimes.
If all students were on WiFi connections, each infringement issue would involve possibly hundreds of students. While that sounds like I'm supporting wild flouting of the law, it's not. I simply do not support the way the law has been used to harass and bludgeon citizens for nothing more substantial than supporting the failed and woefully unrepentant business model of greedy bastards who mistreat customers and clients alike.
Actually, yes, sort of. One that has installed 5.10 with a full SAMP stack without building everything locally on the machine. I'm near to the point of just building one set for the 250s and one set for the 450s by hand and using that. I had hoped that it was easier than doing things the gentoo method.
I'm not dissing Solaris by the way, it's rock solid. I've got 5.8 boxes with years of uptime and zero complaints. It's the upgrade that is killing me. I have a need to move away from 32-bit hardware, into 64-bit software, and away from proprietary. The coming recession makes it necessary to eliminate some $1 million in licenses. Even paying $100/year in donations per box/app is pittance compared to Oracle licences, never mind OS and new hardware costs.
In the beginning I saw Linux as a kind of 'hey, this will work too' kind of thing.
Then it was "hey, look... it's like a baby Unix"
Then "wow, it's actually usable if you don't need tight compatibility with MS.
Now... there are 5 different ways that I personally can use MY computers as I see fit. I'm only talking about flavors of GNU/Linux here. Each of them has free apps that are all compatible, more or less. Each of them is comparable to Windows. Each of them will work for many users, all save those few who use apps that will ONLY work on Windows or Mac. Each of them is fairly user friendly, and I mean that in the same way that managing an XP install is user friendly for your average user. (I don't care whose coolaid you drink, Windows set a fairly low standard for user friendliness in terms of how many people can actually manage a windows system out of the box... Think I'm wrong? then explain Geek Squad and other businesses like it)
Right now, it is EASIER to get and install GNU/Linux than MS Windows. The applications work as good or better 90% of the time on a strict is-it-as-good-as-windows scale, which I think is a bogus way to compare them anyway. If you have ever had to teach your parent/uncle/friend how to use e-mail then you KNOW it would not matter what OS they used.
Being able to say, hey, I want to throw a new motherboard in that case, move it to the upstairs family room, add a video tuner, blah blah blah... you are only dreaming unless you have a licensed but unused copy of Windows hanging around.. UNLESS you are using one of the other choices for OS.
Personally, based on inconvenience alone, I will never use windows again by choice.
The *REAL* reason for space exploration. Never mind the bragging rights for planting silly flags on the moon, or trying to figure out how the planets were formed, or searching for extraterrestrial signs of life... NO, goddamnit, we need to go to space to save the big auto industry.
On a lighter note, DeBeers has already filed mineral rights claims on all non-gaseous planets. Exxon's space programs is getting ready to launch the 'FuckChavez' space probe, and Saturn is gearing up the ad machine while Nissan's marketing department is trying to get a new space-age logo for their truck line. Russia is preparing to launch a pre-emptive nuclear strike on the USA's Titan oil fields to protect earth based business interests and CNN is quoting Rudy G as saying "If we had had that on 9/11, the terrorists would never have attacked MY New York."
Seriously, what we need is not more hydrocarbons. We need clean fuel, and renewable clean fuel at that.
There are 500 or more better reasons to be in space and exploring it... feeding your SUV isn't one of them.
g1zmo,
I'm more than happy to accommodate in the hopes someone has a really fine website to show me where I'm wrong. I'm just really getting started on a process of upgrading a truckload of Sun E-250s and E-450s from Solaris 5.8. I'm starting out by building Solaris 10 on several boxes in hopes of creating a repeatable and stable SAMP build for the Ultrasparc architecture. Most of the code I handle at work is shell scripts and PERL. We use some Oracle but are switching to MySQL at the same time here. Yeah, I know that is no good, but it has been decreed. What I want to end up with is a fully patched 5.10 system with Apache2, MySQL-64bit, Perl 5.8.8 with threads, and NOT have to build everything locally. I'm almost to the point of giving up on that.
Right now, efforts are concentrated on the CSKcooltools off the Sun site. I've tried minimal OS installs to full OEM and the CSK stack. In all cases I end up with a number of dependency issues, library path issues or a combination that leads to what seems worse. Trying to fill in the holes with pkg-get (sunfreeware.com) and CPAN leads to more stress. The gcc-3.4.3 ships with one release and 3.4.5 ships with another release. Pkg-get upgrades to 3.4.6 and so far this is a don't-do-it upgrade. I've about given up on the Solaris shipped gcc and perl setups.
I KNOW that someone somewhere has a list of packages built or list of installed binary versions to use as a guide... I just have not found it yet. I'm running low on aspirin. I just need that golden map.
On RHEL? Not built with RHEL, but have on Fedora. The binary installs are all built with compatible development kits it seems, so binary package installs don't argue with one another. Just seems easy. If pkg-get worked out as well as yum in this process, I'd be VERY happy.
Truly, I just want a command line to type in and be done, even if I know that is probably not going to be the final method. Trying to get to a 'here is the shell script' for an install point is really eating into my preventive medicine budget.
You might have understated that. MySQL, Innotek, OpenSparc, OpenSolaris and other efforts, they may soon play a dominating role in the computing world that MS can only look at with envy.
Even if it is mostly open or F/OSS, it still leaves MS with nothing to offer. Business, small and large will look at F/OSS software that is not only backed by a large OS maker, but also a large hardware maker with just as much desire as they do to MS now. Sun has been stacking the deck in their favor for quite some time and it's starting to look like a royal flush in there.
Sure, you can quibble over the value of various items in Sun's stable, but it's nearly a complete stable. Not much of it, if any, is anywhere near as repulsive as Vista.
Sun has opened their hardware (ish), opened the OS to enable use on different (reasonably priced) hardware, and are now picking up the applications that most businesses want to use, can use, or are already using.
If IBM scared MS, they should now be afraid of Sun too.
My point: MS is not the only 'we do it all' software house in the game. Sun is going from losing ground like a sieve to becoming a player that will upset MS's applecart.
Yes, I wish the Solaris 10 SAMP stack was easier to work with, but it does work, and is getting better. It will be an alternative to RedHat and roll-your-own F/OSS, and will be another place to get support for your entire data center buildout. That means IBM **AND** Sun will both be in a position to outsell MS in the data center. Soon after that... well, lets just say I look forward to the MS good-bye party.
As noted, this has been covered before. If you are not doing your best to segment your network for security reasons, then you probably deserve to learn about this one the hard way. EVERYTHING now has the smarts/hardware to launch/spread/spawn a virus attack on your network. Every day I get one or two messages about this and mobile computing being the 'number one' threat to our networks.
FerCrissakes, every USB stick has that ability if you have not done your work/research etc.
But still, by far, the most dangerous thing on your network is the end user(s)...
That's life, it's the way the cookie crumbles, and it's how you're going to lose brownie points with the PHB at work.
Comcast defends role in Internet based copyright theft: legal team claiming common carrier status not revoked by packet based filtering.
Film at eleven (if we get rebroadcast rights)
Treaties be damned. The question is why should any country outside the US care about a US based business, and it's legal needs?
Clearly there is a solution to this copyright problem for the **AA. STOP selling music to Canadians. If they do that then any of their music in the country is obviously copyrighted and we can all then see just how big a problem it is.
Now, while you are laughing at the suggestion, ask yourself why they won't do that. And then ask again because that is the real problem. They are using the law to try to force people to buy their product without producing any realistic evidence of need for the law in the first place.
Drawn and quartered used to be a good plan for such people, although the French did fairly well on Bastille Day with a little thing with a razor blade in it.
I'm not suggesting anarchy in the streets, but as the English would say I do suggest anarchy in the High Street. In the words of some of the first Americans, and perhaps soon the words of Anonymous; "Don't Tread On Me."
Clearly the ONLY thing that will stop the **AA is if they are starved out of business. Mr Boycott had no clue what he was starting and I think it is time that we start him spinning in his grave with regard to the **AA.
All the usual links apply for where and how to avoid giving the **AA money.
Yeah, yeah, I know it's a real stretch to compare the two, but I'm still waiting to see what the penalties are that come with use of the device/service. A gilded cage is still a cage.
Apparently nobody with power has been listening at the **AA, not even a little bit. I couldn't even work up a yawn for this new service, never mind enough excitement to contemplate what missing features will be on the phone and what 'extra' goodies will be there to track my every move or some attempt at that.
ooops, there, I yawned.
Did I hear someone just call them fucking idiots?
the results of such technology. It's called Science Fiction. Remember 'Minority Report'? It and stories like it are proof that any 'infallible or ingeniously indispensable technology can be both wrong or misused.
Moral of the story here is that any theft-proof or idiot-proof identification method remains so only as long has it has never been tested against either.
The second thing to go wrong with this type of technology is that someone will copyright their retina pattern and there will be copyright disputes as to who owns what all over again.
sad, sad, sad....