As others have said there is huge variance in CFLs. I bought one made by General Electric and it sucked, took way too long to reach optimal brightness (5 mins). On the other hand, I've had good experiences with Philips and CFLs from the A or A+ energy class. Good warm colours, no flicker, almost instantenous switch-on, low mercury content (
In this case the old adage of "the more expensive is cheaper" holds true.
You've fallen into a common trap: assuming that the work being allegedly infringed would have been created without copyright.
As far as historical examples go, in the vast majority of cases things get written and published without the need for copyright. Actually, I'm not aware of a single example off the top of my head where a work would definitely have only been created if the author receives the legal assurance of copyright.
Like Donald Duck is much better. Now you won't even sort out the communist past and deal with the officials that were part of making that system, because it would hurt some feelings...
The amount of money she made from the series is immaterial. Actions don't become morally right or wrong based on how much money you've made, unless you're a psychopath.
The problem is that you're assuming copyright CAN be right or wrong in a moral absolutist sense like a lot of laws could be justified in moral terms. Copyright is a TRADE by it's definition, thus whether it is advantageous or a bad deal for "the people" depends on money among other things.
Selling it for money makes it clear they are profitting of someone elses work.
And that would be bad because? Remember the 'work' in this case is just information!
This entire society wouldn't exist if copyright would have existed since ancient times. The creation of derivative works is the cornerstone of a healthy culture, since almost everything is a derivative work, just not always blatantly obvious.
If copyright would have gotten abolished in the early 20th century, we would be possibly not only culturally richer, but more technologically advanced aswell.
Seriously, who does this woman think she is? All she did was all the hard work in creating something. Who is she to profit more than you say she should from it?
Actually, he's just the person to say. You see, copyright is a bargain between the government - in the name of the people - and the author. In any other case, for example if the government would aquire toilet seats for billions of pounds, the people would be rightly outraged at both the government and at the company selling the toilet seats for billions.
Remember, copyright is a monopoly, thus without any balancing power of a free market.
This is an example where copyright is fundamentally broken and hinders our culture*. Every work that has been ever been created by humankind is a derivative work of our culture, that is how building a culture works. Copyright criminalizes that process, which is akin to shooting ourselves in the foot.
*Some would say Harry Potter is not the best example of culture.
I understand where you're coming from I just don't agree with you. When there are two groups of dead people that I have had no personal connection with and their deaths don't affect me personally, then I'm not going to sort and value those groups based on nationality and I think that any distinction between those groups would be morally bad.
The vast majority of the citizens in the USA seems like to disagree with me. There are other signs of the same thing, not treating citizens of other countries as equal human beings is common practice in the USA (which of course is subtly different than looking out for the interests of the citizens of the USA).
Actually, terrorism could be defeated, but not by force of arms. The way you defeat (Islamic) terrorism is by winning the hearts and minds of the Muslim World and addressing their legitimate gripes.
I agree with you. I was merely saying that terrorism is not something you can wage a war on.
Uhh, you see a hidden agenda in this? It tells me that people care more about local events that matter to them (the death of a solider from small town USA matters to the people in that town) then events that happen to people they don't know half a world away.
I agree with you in the context of local news, however not in the case of national news and foreign policy formulating events. A lot of the times the question is "why did so many of our troops lost their lives in Iraq?" instead of "why did so many civilians lost their lives in Iraq and how could we let that happen?".
I'm sorry, but a lot of us are starting to get leery of racism being thrown around. This is offtopic to the discussion about Iraq, but it's reaching the point now where you can't even point out the differences between races without being called a racist. I'm automatically skeptical of anybody that needs to use racism to back up an argument.
I'm sensitive to the misuse of the label of racism too, when people label someone simply stating our natural differences as racist. You should be skeptical about claims of racism. I'm trying to reason to provide ample evidence for my usage of this expression.
And xenophobic? What is your basis for that? That our media isn't paying attention to what's going on in Iraq?
See, this is the problem. The media does pay attention to what's going on in Iraq. But in the order of importance the american troops in Iraq get ranked above pretty much everything else. I can't find a justifiable reason to not talk about the loss of innocent lives of this magnitude as one of the top things in the context of Iraq. Why is the debate about whether "the troops should be brought home", etc.? It seems like a tautology, but the reason you talk about the death and well-being of american troops much more than the death and well-being of iraqi civilians is because you consider americans more important. Remember, this is not who I like more, we're talking about life and death here. There should be no sympathy or countrymanship involved, otherwise the media is not doing it's job properly. This is why I consider the current state of discussion about Iraq deeply offensive. The americans are not talking about the important things! I don't expect the media to completely ignore the casualties from the US Army, but I do expect the media to properly evaluate the weight of certain issues, and 3000 deaths are almost nothing compared to 650'000.
9/11 was causus belli for at least one war, but was at least party used to justify two. From the muslim point of view, wouldn't the things that are happening now in Iraq be ample justification for outright aggression towards the western world? After all, the 9/11 hijackers did nothing else, just ram headfast into a building with a powerful machine, bringing the building down and killing thousands of people. The USA rammed headfast into Iraq, bringing down the social order plunging the country into chaos, killing indirectly but arguably inevitably many more than a few thousand people.
Playing the race card was a stupid move on his part. It's not racism to want our side to win. It's not racism to fail to point out civilian deaths on the other side. At worst it's short-sided.
I wasn't very verbose on this topic, so let me make up for that now. First of all, if talking about winning, in context of a war, that usually presupposes an enemy that can be objectively defeated (not an expression like terrorism or some such). There is no war waged by armies in Iraq, that country is in a civil war.
Let me try to define a good outcome, or "win" for Iraq though: A country with a democratic government, life expectancy and death rate as verified by the medical community to be in the range of a peaceful country, without the need to station massive amounts of foreign troops in Iraq.
The racism comment should be clarified that what I ment is not really racism, but rather a mix of xenophobia and racism. Given that the "win" condition unless you plan to wipe out the iraqi people must be pretty close to what I've defined above, it is unimaginable to suppose that the fight is between the american and the iraqi people. Because of this fact, I would say that it is meaningless to talk about sides in this terms, or if you want to talk about sides you have to include the iraqi civilians on your side.
This is not what happens in the media, is it? You don't treat iraqi civilian lives with the same respect and importance as you treat the lives of the american soldiers. What does this tell me? You grieve more about the death of a trained professional who volunteered to risk even death, than about iraqi children, woman and the elderly people who didn't choose to be in a conflict. But supposedly you're in the whole war in the name of iraqi civilians. This tells me that a lot of the americans and especially the media are at least xenophobic if not racist in this matter. A small bias in this matter could be attributed to caring about one's countrymen more, but not this big.
I feel that the american public condascendingly looks down on the iraqis as some sort of "tribal natives", people who are in need of assistance from the superior americans. This effect is most certainly culturally induced and politically reinforced.
First of all, the 650 thousand number you claim is discredited. The most accurate approximation, done by the Iraq Body Count project, is only around 80,000.
Discredited by who? There is a difference between trying to discredit, trying to ignore and trying to wish it would go away and reality. The IBC is such a low number because they only count deaths that are reported in the media, in multiple news organizations. There has been a study that only around 10% or less violent deaths make it into the media in Iraq. It is not hard to imagine why. Journalists don't want to be killed either and they can't be everywhere all the time in a country torn apart by civil war.
I'm not "a leftie". I'm someone who values human life. I hope that this definition of some of my values does not offend your belief system.
If you define your side as the american soldiers versus iraqi civilians, then we have nothing in common and I have nothing more to say to you.
You forgot a few things:
+ Mass Graves aren't being filled
So more than 650 THOUSAND (in the first three years of occupation) iraqi civilian deaths are not filling them?
According to the surveys Saddam's Iraq was safety paradise to live in, compared to the civil war that is going on in the country as a DIRECT RESULT of the american invasion on the country. (Side note: You (in a general sense), are racist when you talk about the death of a few thousand american soldiers, but neglect to mention or even less, acknowledge the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians.)
The lawsuit is aimed at prohibiting the use of all types of vote counting machines, and requiring hand-counting of all primary and general election ballots in full view of the public.
Finally! I've been saying all along that you can't have a transparent, therefor democratic election unless the ordinary people can verify the results of an election!
The problem is that the reason they can name things like this is because the media does not call their bluff.
Media is only 'title-deep', as it seems. What the politicians are doing is a cost/benefit analysis. When the media is so broken, that a blatantly obvious example of Orwellian doublespeak does not get immediately called out as such, with all the consequences, public shaming, carrier-ending weight of a media shitstorm then the media is terribly broken and generally the people shouldn't rely on the media as much as to receive a single, simple factual information like yesterday's date. When the media is so bent that the elephant in the room does not get called out by definition it HAS TO resort to falsifying and lying to cover up the fact that the elephant is in the room.
...when talking about the internet and the root dns systems. A few points:
My suggestion would be that the UN sets up an organization that maintains an alternative set of opt-in dns servers, maybe with a recommendation to use these in UN countries. The same organization should also be responsible for trying to remedy geographically uneven routing in the core internet infrastructure. Please, spare me of the criticism of the UN, which in this case might not be relevant or warranted (oil for food, poor peacekeeping track record, dictatorships in the UN, etc.). A lot of that dislike for the UN comes from the fact that US politicians actively try or tried to turn public opinion against the UN, because ignoring the UN served as a means for executing a unilateral foreign policy. Of course, there are legitimate criticisms, but the UN merely reflects on the state of the member countries. You can talk about China or North Korea, just as well as you can talk about Sweden or Denmark and their UN track record. But I'm diverging from my main point about the UN: it has a good track record running technical organizations like the ITU that runs the phone system of the world or like the WHO.
Yes, North Korea and China is in the UN. They would censor the whole world if they could. The problem with US foreign policy is that it sees itself as the sole beacon of light and hope in the world, while it is not. The US wants to protect us from censorship? Great news! You CAN oppose China or North Korea when they demand censorship in setting up a UN run system. Just band together with Sweden, Canada, Denmark, the Netherlands, Belgium, France, Germany, UK, etc.. That would require bilateral negotiations and a little less sovinistic attitude, but if you're not doing that, don't hide behind cheap excuses.
The reason was the equally bogus claim that undoing the ROT13 violated the DMCA.
Putting it another way: courts have something called "the laugh test" and this would not pass it. A false hope that somehow you can sue a record label for decrypting your artwork might get you some sympathy from the uninformed masses (the same legal geniuses who've marked your post "Insightful"), but will do you not one bit of good when the record company takes your house.
I'm genuinely interested why ROT13 wouldn't be equivalent to other DRM schemes, when there is absolutely no difference between them. They all violate basic cryptography and do not provide real encryption.
I don't think courts use something like "the laugh test". Why would a copyright/DMCA violation carry less legal weight when it is done by the RIAA? At least, legally speaking, they don't have special immunity granted. Of course, realistically speaking they can afford to litigate almost indefinitely, but that's another matter.
Slashdot Mirror
As others have said there is huge variance in CFLs. I bought one made by General Electric and it sucked, took way too long to reach optimal brightness (5 mins). On the other hand, I've had good experiences with Philips and CFLs from the A or A+ energy class. Good warm colours, no flicker, almost instantenous switch-on, low mercury content (
In this case the old adage of "the more expensive is cheaper" holds true.
Like Donald Duck is much better. Now you won't even sort out the communist past and deal with the officials that were part of making that system, because it would hurt some feelings...
I'll pay you with an imaginary 0+4i dollars for your imaginary property.
This entire society wouldn't exist if copyright would have existed since ancient times. The creation of derivative works is the cornerstone of a healthy culture, since almost everything is a derivative work, just not always blatantly obvious.
If copyright would have gotten abolished in the early 20th century, we would be possibly not only culturally richer, but more technologically advanced aswell.
Remember, copyright is a monopoly, thus without any balancing power of a free market.
This is an example where copyright is fundamentally broken and hinders our culture*. Every work that has been ever been created by humankind is a derivative work of our culture, that is how building a culture works. Copyright criminalizes that process, which is akin to shooting ourselves in the foot.
*Some would say Harry Potter is not the best example of culture.
What more can I say? Um...Allah Akbar!
I understand where you're coming from I just don't agree with you. When there are two groups of dead people that I have had no personal connection with and their deaths don't affect me personally, then I'm not going to sort and value those groups based on nationality and I think that any distinction between those groups would be morally bad.
The vast majority of the citizens in the USA seems like to disagree with me. There are other signs of the same thing, not treating citizens of other countries as equal human beings is common practice in the USA (which of course is subtly different than looking out for the interests of the citizens of the USA).
9/11 was causus belli for at least one war, but was at least party used to justify two. From the muslim point of view, wouldn't the things that are happening now in Iraq be ample justification for outright aggression towards the western world? After all, the 9/11 hijackers did nothing else, just ram headfast into a building with a powerful machine, bringing the building down and killing thousands of people. The USA rammed headfast into Iraq, bringing down the social order plunging the country into chaos, killing indirectly but arguably inevitably many more than a few thousand people.
Let me try to define a good outcome, or "win" for Iraq though: A country with a democratic government, life expectancy and death rate as verified by the medical community to be in the range of a peaceful country, without the need to station massive amounts of foreign troops in Iraq.
The racism comment should be clarified that what I ment is not really racism, but rather a mix of xenophobia and racism. Given that the "win" condition unless you plan to wipe out the iraqi people must be pretty close to what I've defined above, it is unimaginable to suppose that the fight is between the american and the iraqi people. Because of this fact, I would say that it is meaningless to talk about sides in this terms, or if you want to talk about sides you have to include the iraqi civilians on your side.
This is not what happens in the media, is it? You don't treat iraqi civilian lives with the same respect and importance as you treat the lives of the american soldiers. What does this tell me? You grieve more about the death of a trained professional who volunteered to risk even death, than about iraqi children, woman and the elderly people who didn't choose to be in a conflict. But supposedly you're in the whole war in the name of iraqi civilians. This tells me that a lot of the americans and especially the media are at least xenophobic if not racist in this matter. A small bias in this matter could be attributed to caring about one's countrymen more, but not this big.
I feel that the american public condascendingly looks down on the iraqis as some sort of "tribal natives", people who are in need of assistance from the superior americans. This effect is most certainly culturally induced and politically reinforced.
There is the Lancet source.
I'm not "a leftie". I'm someone who values human life. I hope that this definition of some of my values does not offend your belief system.
If you define your side as the american soldiers versus iraqi civilians, then we have nothing in common and I have nothing more to say to you.
According to the surveys Saddam's Iraq was safety paradise to live in, compared to the civil war that is going on in the country as a DIRECT RESULT of the american invasion on the country. (Side note: You (in a general sense), are racist when you talk about the death of a few thousand american soldiers, but neglect to mention or even less, acknowledge the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians.)
Negative opinion of your allies? What allies?
An ordinary vote-counting system scales well. It has worked for countries the size of the USA or larger.
The problem is that the reason they can name things like this is because the media does not call their bluff.
Media is only 'title-deep', as it seems. What the politicians are doing is a cost/benefit analysis. When the media is so broken, that a blatantly obvious example of Orwellian doublespeak does not get immediately called out as such, with all the consequences, public shaming, carrier-ending weight of a media shitstorm then the media is terribly broken and generally the people shouldn't rely on the media as much as to receive a single, simple factual information like yesterday's date. When the media is so bent that the elephant in the room does not get called out by definition it HAS TO resort to falsifying and lying to cover up the fact that the elephant is in the room.
...when talking about the internet and the root dns systems. A few points:
My suggestion would be that the UN sets up an organization that maintains an alternative set of opt-in dns servers, maybe with a recommendation to use these in UN countries. The same organization should also be responsible for trying to remedy geographically uneven routing in the core internet infrastructure. Please, spare me of the criticism of the UN, which in this case might not be relevant or warranted (oil for food, poor peacekeeping track record, dictatorships in the UN, etc.). A lot of that dislike for the UN comes from the fact that US politicians actively try or tried to turn public opinion against the UN, because ignoring the UN served as a means for executing a unilateral foreign policy. Of course, there are legitimate criticisms, but the UN merely reflects on the state of the member countries. You can talk about China or North Korea, just as well as you can talk about Sweden or Denmark and their UN track record. But I'm diverging from my main point about the UN: it has a good track record running technical organizations like the ITU that runs the phone system of the world or like the WHO.
Yes, North Korea and China is in the UN. They would censor the whole world if they could. The problem with US foreign policy is that it sees itself as the sole beacon of light and hope in the world, while it is not. The US wants to protect us from censorship? Great news! You CAN oppose China or North Korea when they demand censorship in setting up a UN run system. Just band together with Sweden, Canada, Denmark, the Netherlands, Belgium, France, Germany, UK, etc.. That would require bilateral negotiations and a little less sovinistic attitude, but if you're not doing that, don't hide behind cheap excuses.
There is. And a lot more injuries.
I don't think courts use something like "the laugh test". Why would a copyright/DMCA violation carry less legal weight when it is done by the RIAA? At least, legally speaking, they don't have special immunity granted. Of course, realistically speaking they can afford to litigate almost indefinitely, but that's another matter.
Kdawson just earned karma to post at least 500 crappy stories, at least from my perspective.