This is really interesting. There are other things where we know what the change was, and when it happened that might affect evolution in some species. I wonder if anyone is studying them.
My thoughts: The widespread use of DDT is a known event that had wide ranging affects on the environment. Are there evident evolutionary effects on insects? Does anyone study what the common cold looks like after many attempts to inoculate us against it?
I wonder if there are defined evolutionary differences in any species after the plagues?
Interestingly, we apparently don't even know if the food we eat today has the same nutritional value of the food that humans were eating 100 years ago.
The trouble with the questions you pose is this; the wrong done in those scenarios is done by humans, not robots, thus they do not apply to robotics laws. We mostly already don't agree with humans mistreating animals. We all can agree that animal cruelty is wrong, and Robots should be treated just as well, and thus no new laws are needed. In the case that a robot might be programmed to crave mistreatment, this is a case of mistreatment also.
The basis of the trouble I see with 'new laws' for new things is that we already have laws to cover most if not all aspects of the new laws. This is the basic problem with laws that try to govern the Internet and our interactions on and with it.
If robots remain machines, not sentient, then they are simply machines, no need for new laws. If they become sentient, they then fit nicely into the laws that we have for other sentient beings on this planet.
To enslave sentient beings is not right. Even Star Trek refused to enslave data or consider him property.
So given those two lines of rationality, why do we need robotics laws?
There are more uses than just sending data. I'm using removable hard drive trays instead of dual-booting my machine. Swap the tray, reboot, I'm running Ubuntu. Repeat and its XP. I only keep that one as it came free with the PC, boot it up now and then to keep it updated. It makes life easy when you know that you can't possibly fsck up your regular installation when playing with a new distribution or whatever. Never needed to send one to anyone else, but that might be a huge support possibility for family? Never thought of that.
You have the right idea, and soon Turkey will be another example of why and how governments can no longer censor information from the people. Clearly if you funnel misinformation to the people, similar effects can be achieved (See the U.S.A) but censoring information does not work. For all that the Chinese government has done, its people are not stupid. All attempts to censor information will eventually work themselves back around to bite the censor.
That might sound optimistic, but it is still true. The sci-fi surrealism of knowing that many young Chinese children don't recognize a picture of 'tank man' is haunting, but because this problem exists, they will find out eventually, and the realization that it was censored will cause a backlash.
As for Turkey, they have been on the edge of acceptance for a long time. This won't help them, and how they handle it will make a huge difference to the country's bottom line, IMO.
You are absolutely correct. I stopped listening to broadcast radio several years ago. In fact, it was the moment I hooked up my stereo to a laptop and began listening to Internet based radio. All the music you want, none of the fscked up talking. Its cheaper than XM, better than the cable company alternatives, and has much more choice.
At this point, I'm happy to report that I no longer know anything about any of the local radio stations.
if the distribution companies lower their rates to theaters, it could conceivably make it possible for theaters to offer more movies without raising their operating costs.
Now, on the face of things that sounds like a good idea, however when analyzed with a critical thought process it gets much worse than you think.
First, movie theaters are losing business for a number of reasons and one of the biggest is that many new releases pretty much suck. Add to that the myriad of financial pressures on the public at large and they have a problem that they would like to blame on someone else. That someone else is primarily pirates or illegal downloaders. Once they digitize the movies and transport them over networks they will have a ready made excuse for stock holders: Those downloading pirates are ruining our business.
This is basically the same thing as if they were to get distribution costs that are 1/10th the current costs. It won't make movies any better and will barely give them something to compete with the DVD rental market. Either way, they won't be making tons more money and if they do, it won't be passed on to the consumers. This is just cost cutting to improve their bottom lines in the face of the light at the end of the tunnel.
FTFA: "The new bill, introduced by Californian Democrat Mark Leno, does not name ODF specifically but has stipulated that by 2008 agencies must be equipped to store and exchange documents in an open, XML-based format. Although the name of Microsoft's Office Open XML suggests that it would match the requirement, it is in fact a proprietary format that would fail the open standards test."
It appears that there are more tests than the blurb indicates as to what 'standard' would be accepted. To me, it sounds like the bill is not trying to eliminate any possible software, simply to ensure that all of the apps can play nice together. That is common sense to me as far as business decisions go.
Not only the reasons that you name, but once it is decided to let the government do this, there will be every reason for multiple groups to hack that system. Hacking would be an activity that is not monitored by such a system, so it would take Orwell's worst nightmare to protect it from hackers. Just think of the number of groups that would have a vested interest in controlling or hacking such a data system. My bet is that within months of being put into production it would be owned by a very well financed paramilitary group.
Its actually quite relevant to society at large. While some of the endeavors in this area seem a bit hoax-ish, I have always been curious about patients who have had 'religious' or spiritual experiences during brain surgery.
While some might say that was the angels looking after the patients while in surgery, others will imply that religious or spiritual experiences are a byproduct of brain activity rather than external influences.
There is not a lot of hard science or evidence on this and I think it deserves more attention. It is relevant because if spirituality is a function of the brain, we can all forget organized religions and get on with living our lives free of their interference.
Studying this and similar theories gives us possible hard evidence of things thought to be from god or angels etc. Religion has by far been the most destructive motivational force on the face of the planet. Proving it either right or wrong with physical evidence is a really important thing to do.
While Mr. Jobs has made some money with it, and it does seem to lead the pack of legal downloading systems, it is not successful in the way that McDonalds is. It is not successful in the way that Kleenex is. It is not successful in a ubiquitous way. There are four music fans in my house. One of them has an iPod (teenager - coolness is status for her), and there are zero iTMS accounts.
There is a simply reason why; DRM and cost. When I buy music, I don't want to pay for it again, ever. Yes, I converted all my old vinyl to CD. No matter how nice or good iTMS is, I will not lock myself or my family into a single choice of music players, no matter how cool they might be.
We continue to have the choice of sources for music downloads, and always will. We jointly spend quite a bit on music, but iTMS isn't getting any of that revenue. So while it is successful in the eyes of Mr Jobs and Mr Gates, its not successful in everyone's eyes, especially those of the RIAA as they aren't getting much money at all.
To be successful like McDonalds, everyone in the world needs to know firsthand how your burgers taste. This is not true of iTMS.
Despite your obvious lack of intelligence, I'll explain. If he goes on to develop the 3D Wiimote control sensor, it will make it very cheap to use in other systems. It takes huge volumes to make manufacturing some things become cheap. Right now, its cheaper to buy the Wii and hack it to get the sensor than it is to buy the sensor itself!
What it has to do with the Wii is that the Wii is creating advances, or rather making them available to other people cheaply.
I have not played with a Wii yet, but knowing something about robotics I can say that if they manage to get a 3D sensor set working, and cheaply, it will advance a gazillion projects. Knowing how and when to place mechanical effectors and movement of devices is a terribly difficult problem generally. This type of sensor will help do that very effectively.
This can be used in conjunction with other sensor systems to do things like create a lawnmower robot that doesn't just wonder around till you turn it off. Being able to manage calculation of 3D space is very intensive, but doing so lets us get one step closer to the robot maid and other cartoon dreams of days gone by.
Its not just for games. Most of the semi-successful DARPA grand challenge vehicles used a similar device for navigation support. The reality of a car that drives you (in Soviet Russia) to work without any intervention from you is getting very close. Inertial navigation (AFAIK) relies on 3D motion tracking to determine the motion in between points of absolute (or relatively absolute) positioning data. So, in between GPS readings, inertial navigation estimates where the robot/car/vehicle is in relation to previous GPS readings. I've seen robots do this already, its just not cheap enough for everyone. A small R/C sized robot can travel 1/2 mile and return to its starting point with high accuracy despite obstacles using inertial navigation. This can be applied to a lot of systems.
that if you do everything that you can to be more environmentally friendly, it helps. In fact, every little bit helps. This is a math problem that finds its value in large numbers. If each of us saves 12 watts per hour of use, that could make a huge difference. 12 x 600 million computers (home and business) is somewhere in the area of 7.2 Billion watt hours, or 7.2 million kilowatt hours. Not sure about you, but that is a lot of saved CO2 emissions. Do the same with your old fridge, say you save 75 watt hours per day, multiplied by say 350 million units. You end up with more HUGE savings. Try this on lights, appliances, hot water heaters, A/C units and it really does add up, so supporting power saving devices is worth the effort.
By effectively ignoring this opportunity simply because its not a huge savings for each individual, we miss an opportunity to save hugely in both environmental costs, and overall operations costs for those companies supplying our electricity.
Eventually, both will translate into a better world, in some small way or other, and both should stave off utility bill cost increases, if not stop the growth of electricity usage.
If EU countries were to unilaterally enact laws (for the assurance of government and financial security) that go something like:
If any computer OS/system contains a function A,B, or C, it must conform to API/protocols X,Y, and Z in order to meet applicable trade laws. IANAL so I don't if that would be feasable, but by creating laws that define usage of computing/networking functions, MS and all others would have to comply. This would remove the MS monopoly. I think that the Mass. ODF incident, Sarbanes-Oxley, and other situations are examples of how this could be done, rather than leave MS or anyone else to their own devices on interoperability. I know that MS has failed to be backwardly compatible with their own products, never mind anyone else's products. (Koreans?)
This, of course, raises other issues and problems, but its an interesting idea.
what if somehow we find research data from Area 51 in this new library? I'd like to see that government research online. Don't bother telling me it doesn't exist or should be a secret still, I just would like to see what they have.
Yes, this time it might be news, if you consider this: Mr Ozzie might be recognizing something, that brand recognition and locking consumers and PC manufacturers into your product is not enough. You *ALSO* have to be a company that people *LIKE*. (note the Mac and PC ad campaign among other things)
No matter how much you make or how much market share you have, you will eventually lose it if consumers don't like you or your new products. There will always be a "new kid in town" that will take center stage.
If MS had a good reputation and were a company that people liked on a level par with their market share, they would have nothing to worry about from Google, Mac, iPods, or anyone else. The trouble is that they don't have what they really need to grow profits against "the new kids in town" anymore, or so it seems.
IMO, those people that complain like that will be the first to help empty the shelves of libraries to burn the books that would corrupt little christian children. While that is an overstatement, the idea is that they want the government and everyone else to be responsible for their kid's behaviors, rather than take their own responsibilities to heart. We know that violent games aren't causing school shootings now, and many other myths have been busted too.
There is also this 'entitlement' notion that causes people to complain about christmas trees in an airport because there are no jewish symbols also, or schools that don't sing christmas carols anymore because it might offend someone.
There needs to be a very definite separation of church and state as well as a very well defined definition of what is acceptable WRT public behavior and displays that are religious in nature. I think the athiest movement has a pretty valid point lately. Soliciting door to door for religion is still soliciting. Churches should not be tax exempt institutions. They have proven that their morals behind the smiling faces are no better, if not worse, than politician's.
If any religion is allowed to make laws and set public policy, it will end up being the wrong religion. If we let people's religious morals decide public policy, we have lost the battle for democracy to the ever increasing ferocity of theocratic movements.
I think that when we hear people complaining about such things as this, we have a perfect target for public scrutiny of sorts. Ralph Nader had evidence to back up what he was pushing. Do these people that complain have any evidence? I don't think so. Perhaps we need a social web site to help debunk such complaints and direct people toward creating standards for such complaining to avoid the hype and dangerous aspects of such behavior?
Despite the fact that there is little love for MS on/., we know that MS is a business and they will do whatever they can to continue to make money. The question should not be "is there something going on here?" but "What is MS up to, and how do they intend to increase profits with this move?"
This might have two functions: stop people from using competitors DB products and allow those that want to use PostgreSQL to do so on MS platforms. It is more probably a monkey see, monkey do reaction to Oracle and others.
I think its a 'me too' thing with an attempt to stop bleeding profits and market share through their DB product group. Other 'me too' attempts have not worked out very well for MS. Can you say Zune? Play for sure? etc.
That depends entirely on perspective. If entropy is seen as a relative process, software that is not being developed is going to suffer entropy as the world around that software is changing. So, in relative terms, there is software entropy.
Hypothetically, if your current 'perfect OS' software no longer has any development being done, when new storage devices or networking devices become available, that 'perfect OS' is no longer perfect. For this reason, all software will always be 'incomplete' in as much as the world around it changes at an ever increasing pace. Some software is outdated by the time that it is ready for launch as a beta product. For more on that, see the big software projects that some groups around the world have attempted, only to find that on launch it is not capable of dealing with recent changes in the world.
All software will always be no better than beta given that the above is true. This means that for businesses, good enough is as good as perfect as that is as close to perfect as it is likely to ever get.
Sure, there are cases where good enough really isn't; medical equipment, space travel equipment etc. but for the vast majority of software for consumers, beta grade is good enough and thus worth releasing.
Fortunately, some companies release beta software/apps and treat them as such by continuing to improve them before pronouncing the software is out of beta stage. When software is released as final product rather than beta, consumers get upset when they find out it's really only beta that they paid for.
But the point is, yes, software suffers from entropy and atrophy is relative terms.
Issues of copyright in regard to software infringe on the issues of free speech. Yes, I said that. If someone were to decry the evils of BMW, or publish how to make them more gas efficient there would be no foul. When it comes to copyright, there seems to be no justice.
Even if a person is guilty of helping people download movies for free, they should not be punished for the following reasons:
1 - you cannot help someone break the law if the act is committed without your presence. 2 - Telling someone how to break the law is not an illegal act. 3 - Even if you send them the file sharing program, you did not commit the act. 4 - If you complain to the police that someone stole your paper bag of money containing $50,000 dollars that you left on some street corner, they will laugh at you and tell you that you are stupid. 5 - Theft of copyright is not possible, the premise is theft of 'presumed' revenues. There is no proof that any 'illegal' activity caused known damage to revenues in a quantitative way. 6 - Current legislation doesn't provide protection or compensation for all copyright holders, only the very few and very rich corporations with copyrights. The law is not being applied equally. 7 - The reasonable doubt that 'fair use' implies means that most copyright litigation is of questionable nature to start with. 8 - There is NO proof that pirated copyright materials deprive the artist of what they would have received anyway. 9 - The US entertainment industry is not the lawmaking body for ALL of the world. Resist now. 10 - Punishing hackers does not protect the children, nor does it stop terrorism. 11 - Copyright infringement is not theft, but copyright infringement for profit is. See number 5. 12 - Australia is not a US state, nor is any other sovereign country. Any country that gives up sovereignty to the US over copyrights is seriously sucking ass...
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This is really interesting. There are other things where we know what the change was, and when it happened that might affect evolution in some species. I wonder if anyone is studying them.
My thoughts: The widespread use of DDT is a known event that had wide ranging affects on the environment. Are there evident evolutionary effects on insects?
Does anyone study what the common cold looks like after many attempts to inoculate us against it?
I wonder if there are defined evolutionary differences in any species after the plagues?
Interestingly, we apparently don't even know if the food we eat today has the same nutritional value of the food that humans were eating 100 years ago.
Very interesting.
The trouble with the questions you pose is this; the wrong done in those scenarios is done by humans, not robots, thus they do not apply to robotics laws. We mostly already don't agree with humans mistreating animals. We all can agree that animal cruelty is wrong, and Robots should be treated just as well, and thus no new laws are needed. In the case that a robot might be programmed to crave mistreatment, this is a case of mistreatment also.
The basis of the trouble I see with 'new laws' for new things is that we already have laws to cover most if not all aspects of the new laws. This is the basic problem with laws that try to govern the Internet and our interactions on and with it.
If robots remain machines, not sentient, then they are simply machines, no need for new laws. If they become sentient, they then fit nicely into the laws that we have for other sentient beings on this planet.
To enslave sentient beings is not right. Even Star Trek refused to enslave data or consider him property.
So given those two lines of rationality, why do we need robotics laws?
There are more uses than just sending data. I'm using removable hard drive trays instead of dual-booting my machine. Swap the tray, reboot, I'm running Ubuntu. Repeat and its XP. I only keep that one as it came free with the PC, boot it up now and then to keep it updated. It makes life easy when you know that you can't possibly fsck up your regular installation when playing with a new distribution or whatever. Never needed to send one to anyone else, but that might be a huge support possibility for family? Never thought of that.
You have the right idea, and soon Turkey will be another example of why and how governments can no longer censor information from the people. Clearly if you funnel misinformation to the people, similar effects can be achieved (See the U.S.A) but censoring information does not work. For all that the Chinese government has done, its people are not stupid. All attempts to censor information will eventually work themselves back around to bite the censor.
That might sound optimistic, but it is still true. The sci-fi surrealism of knowing that many young Chinese children don't recognize a picture of 'tank man' is haunting, but because this problem exists, they will find out eventually, and the realization that it was censored will cause a backlash.
As for Turkey, they have been on the edge of acceptance for a long time. This won't help them, and how they handle it will make a huge difference to the country's bottom line, IMO.
You are absolutely correct. I stopped listening to broadcast radio several years ago. In fact, it was the moment I hooked up my stereo to a laptop and began listening to Internet based radio. All the music you want, none of the fscked up talking. Its cheaper than XM, better than the cable company alternatives, and has much more choice.
At this point, I'm happy to report that I no longer know anything about any of the local radio stations.
if the distribution companies lower their rates to theaters, it could conceivably make it possible for theaters to offer more movies without raising their operating costs.
Now, on the face of things that sounds like a good idea, however when analyzed with a critical thought process it gets much worse than you think.
First, movie theaters are losing business for a number of reasons and one of the biggest is that many new releases pretty much suck. Add to that the myriad of financial pressures on the public at large and they have a problem that they would like to blame on someone else. That someone else is primarily pirates or illegal downloaders. Once they digitize the movies and transport them over networks they will have a ready made excuse for stock holders: Those downloading pirates are ruining our business.
This is basically the same thing as if they were to get distribution costs that are 1/10th the current costs. It won't make movies any better and will barely give them something to compete with the DVD rental market. Either way, they won't be making tons more money and if they do, it won't be passed on to the consumers. This is just cost cutting to improve their bottom lines in the face of the light at the end of the tunnel.
Wait a damned minute. MS does NOT have a patent on illegal behavior.....
Oh wait, you said 'patently'
Never mind
or did anyone else read the title and see "Using Java 5 Features in Older *JoKes*"
FTFA:
"The new bill, introduced by Californian Democrat Mark Leno, does not name ODF specifically but has stipulated that by 2008 agencies must be equipped to store and exchange documents in an open, XML-based format. Although the name of Microsoft's Office Open XML suggests that it would match the requirement, it is in fact a proprietary format that would fail the open standards test."
It appears that there are more tests than the blurb indicates as to what 'standard' would be accepted. To me, it sounds like the bill is not trying to eliminate any possible software, simply to ensure that all of the apps can play nice together. That is common sense to me as far as business decisions go.
Not only the reasons that you name, but once it is decided to let the government do this, there will be every reason for multiple groups to hack that system. Hacking would be an activity that is not monitored by such a system, so it would take Orwell's worst nightmare to protect it from hackers. Just think of the number of groups that would have a vested interest in controlling or hacking such a data system. My bet is that within months of being put into production it would be owned by a very well financed paramilitary group.
Its actually quite relevant to society at large. While some of the endeavors in this area seem a bit hoax-ish, I have always been curious about patients who have had 'religious' or spiritual experiences during brain surgery.
While some might say that was the angels looking after the patients while in surgery, others will imply that religious or spiritual experiences are a byproduct of brain activity rather than external influences.
There is not a lot of hard science or evidence on this and I think it deserves more attention. It is relevant because if spirituality is a function of the brain, we can all forget organized religions and get on with living our lives free of their interference.
Studying this and similar theories gives us possible hard evidence of things thought to be from god or angels etc. Religion has by far been the most destructive motivational force on the face of the planet. Proving it either right or wrong with physical evidence is a really important thing to do.
While Mr. Jobs has made some money with it, and it does seem to lead the pack of legal downloading systems, it is not successful in the way that McDonalds is. It is not successful in the way that Kleenex is. It is not successful in a ubiquitous way. There are four music fans in my house. One of them has an iPod (teenager - coolness is status for her), and there are zero iTMS accounts.
There is a simply reason why; DRM and cost. When I buy music, I don't want to pay for it again, ever. Yes, I converted all my old vinyl to CD. No matter how nice or good iTMS is, I will not lock myself or my family into a single choice of music players, no matter how cool they might be.
We continue to have the choice of sources for music downloads, and always will. We jointly spend quite a bit on music, but iTMS isn't getting any of that revenue. So while it is successful in the eyes of Mr Jobs and Mr Gates, its not successful in everyone's eyes, especially those of the RIAA as they aren't getting much money at all.
To be successful like McDonalds, everyone in the world needs to know firsthand how your burgers taste. This is not true of iTMS.
Despite your obvious lack of intelligence, I'll explain. If he goes on to develop the 3D Wiimote control sensor, it will make it very cheap to use in other systems. It takes huge volumes to make manufacturing some things become cheap. Right now, its cheaper to buy the Wii and hack it to get the sensor than it is to buy the sensor itself!
What it has to do with the Wii is that the Wii is creating advances, or rather making them available to other people cheaply.
I have not played with a Wii yet, but knowing something about robotics I can say that if they manage to get a 3D sensor set working, and cheaply, it will advance a gazillion projects. Knowing how and when to place mechanical effectors and movement of devices is a terribly difficult problem generally. This type of sensor will help do that very effectively.
This can be used in conjunction with other sensor systems to do things like create a lawnmower robot that doesn't just wonder around till you turn it off. Being able to manage calculation of 3D space is very intensive, but doing so lets us get one step closer to the robot maid and other cartoon dreams of days gone by.
Its not just for games. Most of the semi-successful DARPA grand challenge vehicles used a similar device for navigation support. The reality of a car that drives you (in Soviet Russia) to work without any intervention from you is getting very close. Inertial navigation (AFAIK) relies on 3D motion tracking to determine the motion in between points of absolute (or relatively absolute) positioning data. So, in between GPS readings, inertial navigation estimates where the robot/car/vehicle is in relation to previous GPS readings. I've seen robots do this already, its just not cheap enough for everyone. A small R/C sized robot can travel 1/2 mile and return to its starting point with high accuracy despite obstacles using inertial navigation. This can be applied to a lot of systems.
that if you do everything that you can to be more environmentally friendly, it helps. In fact, every little bit helps. This is a math problem that finds its value in large numbers. If each of us saves 12 watts per hour of use, that could make a huge difference. 12 x 600 million computers (home and business) is somewhere in the area of 7.2 Billion watt hours, or 7.2 million kilowatt hours. Not sure about you, but that is a lot of saved CO2 emissions. Do the same with your old fridge, say you save 75 watt hours per day, multiplied by say 350 million units. You end up with more HUGE savings. Try this on lights, appliances, hot water heaters, A/C units and it really does add up, so supporting power saving devices is worth the effort.
By effectively ignoring this opportunity simply because its not a huge savings for each individual, we miss an opportunity to save hugely in both environmental costs, and overall operations costs for those companies supplying our electricity.
Eventually, both will translate into a better world, in some small way or other, and both should stave off utility bill cost increases, if not stop the growth of electricity usage.
If EU countries were to unilaterally enact laws (for the assurance of government and financial security) that go something like:
If any computer OS/system contains a function A,B, or C, it must conform to API/protocols X,Y, and Z in order to meet applicable trade laws. IANAL so I don't if that would be feasable, but by creating laws that define usage of computing/networking functions, MS and all others would have to comply. This would remove the MS monopoly. I think that the Mass. ODF incident, Sarbanes-Oxley, and other situations are examples of how this could be done, rather than leave MS or anyone else to their own devices on interoperability. I know that MS has failed to be backwardly compatible with their own products, never mind anyone else's products. (Koreans?)
This, of course, raises other issues and problems, but its an interesting idea.
what if somehow we find research data from Area 51 in this new library? I'd like to see that government research online. Don't bother telling me it doesn't exist or should be a secret still, I just would like to see what they have.
Yes, this time it might be news, if you consider this: Mr Ozzie might be recognizing something, that brand recognition and locking consumers and PC manufacturers into your product is not enough. You *ALSO* have to be a company that people *LIKE*. (note the Mac and PC ad campaign among other things)
No matter how much you make or how much market share you have, you will eventually lose it if consumers don't like you or your new products. There will always be a "new kid in town" that will take center stage.
If MS had a good reputation and were a company that people liked on a level par with their market share, they would have nothing to worry about from Google, Mac, iPods, or anyone else. The trouble is that they don't have what they really need to grow profits against "the new kids in town" anymore, or so it seems.
But how many Libraries of Congress will a bathroom drain hold?
IMO, those people that complain like that will be the first to help empty the shelves of libraries to burn the books that would corrupt little christian children. While that is an overstatement, the idea is that they want the government and everyone else to be responsible for their kid's behaviors, rather than take their own responsibilities to heart. We know that violent games aren't causing school shootings now, and many other myths have been busted too.
There is also this 'entitlement' notion that causes people to complain about christmas trees in an airport because there are no jewish symbols also, or schools that don't sing christmas carols anymore because it might offend someone.
There needs to be a very definite separation of church and state as well as a very well defined definition of what is acceptable WRT public behavior and displays that are religious in nature. I think the athiest movement has a pretty valid point lately. Soliciting door to door for religion is still soliciting. Churches should not be tax exempt institutions. They have proven that their morals behind the smiling faces are no better, if not worse, than politician's.
If any religion is allowed to make laws and set public policy, it will end up being the wrong religion. If we let people's religious morals decide public policy, we have lost the battle for democracy to the ever increasing ferocity of theocratic movements.
I think that when we hear people complaining about such things as this, we have a perfect target for public scrutiny of sorts. Ralph Nader had evidence to back up what he was pushing. Do these people that complain have any evidence? I don't think so. Perhaps we need a social web site to help debunk such complaints and direct people toward creating standards for such complaining to avoid the hype and dangerous aspects of such behavior?
Just a thought
Despite the fact that there is little love for MS on /., we know that MS is a business and they will do whatever they can to continue to make money. The question should not be "is there something going on here?" but "What is MS up to, and how do they intend to increase profits with this move?"
This might have two functions: stop people from using competitors DB products and allow those that want to use PostgreSQL to do so on MS platforms. It is more probably a monkey see, monkey do reaction to Oracle and others.
I think its a 'me too' thing with an attempt to stop bleeding profits and market share through their DB product group. Other 'me too' attempts have not worked out very well for MS. Can you say Zune? Play for sure? etc.
That depends entirely on perspective. If entropy is seen as a relative process, software that is not being developed is going to suffer entropy as the world around that software is changing. So, in relative terms, there is software entropy.
Hypothetically, if your current 'perfect OS' software no longer has any development being done, when new storage devices or networking devices become available, that 'perfect OS' is no longer perfect. For this reason, all software will always be 'incomplete' in as much as the world around it changes at an ever increasing pace. Some software is outdated by the time that it is ready for launch as a beta product. For more on that, see the big software projects that some groups around the world have attempted, only to find that on launch it is not capable of dealing with recent changes in the world.
All software will always be no better than beta given that the above is true. This means that for businesses, good enough is as good as perfect as that is as close to perfect as it is likely to ever get.
Sure, there are cases where good enough really isn't; medical equipment, space travel equipment etc. but for the vast majority of software for consumers, beta grade is good enough and thus worth releasing.
Fortunately, some companies release beta software/apps and treat them as such by continuing to improve them before pronouncing the software is out of beta stage. When software is released as final product rather than beta, consumers get upset when they find out it's really only beta that they paid for.
But the point is, yes, software suffers from entropy and atrophy is relative terms.
Issues of copyright in regard to software infringe on the issues of free speech. Yes, I said that. If someone were to decry the evils of BMW, or publish how to make them more gas efficient there would be no foul. When it comes to copyright, there seems to be no justice.
Even if a person is guilty of helping people download movies for free, they should not be punished for the following reasons:
1 - you cannot help someone break the law if the act is committed without your presence.
2 - Telling someone how to break the law is not an illegal act.
3 - Even if you send them the file sharing program, you did not commit the act.
4 - If you complain to the police that someone stole your paper bag of money containing $50,000 dollars that you left on some street corner, they will laugh at you and tell you that you are stupid.
5 - Theft of copyright is not possible, the premise is theft of 'presumed' revenues. There is no proof that any 'illegal' activity caused known damage to revenues in a quantitative way.
6 - Current legislation doesn't provide protection or compensation for all copyright holders, only the very few and very rich corporations with copyrights. The law is not being applied equally.
7 - The reasonable doubt that 'fair use' implies means that most copyright litigation is of questionable nature to start with.
8 - There is NO proof that pirated copyright materials deprive the artist of what they would have received anyway.
9 - The US entertainment industry is not the lawmaking body for ALL of the world. Resist now.
10 - Punishing hackers does not protect the children, nor does it stop terrorism.
11 - Copyright infringement is not theft, but copyright infringement for profit is. See number 5.
12 - Australia is not a US state, nor is any other sovereign country. Any country that gives up sovereignty to the US over copyrights is seriously sucking ass...
13 - you make up your own for this one
Here here!
I know the kind of pain that you are talking about. Most people think that things just naturally travel in a straight line too!!!! sigh